DramaQ

This is going on the assumption that the original ending of Mark (if there was one beyond 16:8) was lost very early on.

Both Matt and Luke were bugged enough by the missing ending (or what they perceived as a missing ending) to compose there own.

By the time Matt and Luke adapted Mark, they apparently did so when (differing) theological communities were developing based at least in part on Mark’s text. That is, they both have their own theological agendas and tailor the story to fit them.

Which, in turn, means Mark SANS ENDING was being circulated to/for/around these developing Christian communities.

My question is: how is it that this manuscript, with its troublesome missing ending (which is lost so early on that its own author or someone close to him didn’t write one back in) go about getting distributed a) sufficiently to be part of development of the communities which Matthew and Luke belonged to and b) without ever getting “fixed� by those distributing it?

I realize there’s no real way to “answer� this question, and that we shouldn’t be about engaging in endless speculation. But… I also realize that human beings act, in general, on the same basic sets of motivations. And there should be an explanation for this that “makes sense� in terms of the behavior of the people who were passing around these texts.

Thanks for the vent…
dq

S.C.Carlson

This question assumes Markan priority. I might suggest that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were attempts to "fix" its ending as well as other aspects of Mark. Of course, scribes would eventually add at least two different endings to the MSS of Mark itself, starting as early as the first half of the second century.

DramaQ

Yes, true. I probably should have started by listing all the assumptions I was making. Sorry.

I agree. "Fix" in terms of making the story better fit their (community's) expectations. This level of reliance on Mark's story is part of the reason I find it surprising that those later scribes didn't get around to appending a new ending to Mark until after a need to reconcile it with the other gospels arose.

See what I mean?

dq

S.C.Carlson

Not really. The later endings of Mark do not seem (at least to me) to be an attempt to reconcile Mark with the other gospels. Otherwise, I would expect that the endings we know about be simply copied over from the other gospels, and that's not what we see.