gregor

I just had to laugh when I read this from praxeus:

"Overall, modern scientific textcrit labors under many paradigmic unbelieving delusions. . ."

Then, the irony meter exploded.

Vorkosigan

Thought I'd walk over this for a second just to see what I could see. I'll skip over the stylistic statistics, which indicate a very high concentration of unusual vocabulary in Mark 16:9-20. Let's look at the style (gospel text in italics)

• 9When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons.

Here the writer of 16:9-20 flashes back to the first day of the week and redoes it again. If Markan, this is the first and only time in the Gospel that the writer of Mark revisits his own story (the Death of JBap is a flashback, but the story has not been told yet). Not only is there no flashback in Mark, nowhere else in Mark is there a place where the author of Mark (AMark) flashes back to the previous pericope. Mark's style is episodic, but it is always forward moving.

But there's another problem that those of you who have followed my structural analysis of Mark will realize. As I demonstrated a while back, 16:8 is most probably a B bracket that should be followed by an A bracket containing a location change, perhaps similar to the passage in the Gospel of Peter where the location shifts to Jerusalem. Here, the writer would have us believe that AMark wrote:

• Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
  When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons.

Not only have we suddenly flashed back in time, we have also forgotten to name the location. Note also that 16:8 in no way feeds into 16:9.

• 16:10 She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping.

In 16:8 she is specifically said to have told no one, in 16:10 she goes and tells those who were with him. Clearly 16:10 is an apologetic for 16:8

• 11When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it. 12Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country.

This looks like a reference to the appearances in Luke.

• 13These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either. 14Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.

Note the signal of late addition here. The writer of 16:9-20 (GHOSTWRITER) thinks that there are only eleven apostles, although AMark NEVER indicates that Judas is not an apostle, and the reader of Mark would have no reason to believe otherwise. Paul also indicates an appearance to the TWELVE. The key point is that later scribes, knowing that the appearance should only have been to eleven, edited the famous passage in 1 Cor 15 to say "eleven." In other words, Ghostwriter is writing at a time when everyone "knows" that there were only eleven. Clear this text contains understandings of the tradition that date from later layers of the tradition.

• 15He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. 16Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."

AMark never wrote this crap. At this point, somewhere in the center, there should be a doublet, or the text should turn back on itself, or parallel itself. It does not at all here. AMark's Jesus speaks in neat literary structures, in triplets or chiastic structures of varying size. There's none of that here.

• 19After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.

Impossible, as AMark's Christology is Adoptionist. This is a blatantly later Christology.

• 20Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.

And thus this last line must be Ghostwriters's as well.

The structure:
*********************************
A: 9When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons.

....B: 10She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. 11When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it.

........C: 12Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country.

............D: 13These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either.

............D: 14Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.

.........C: 15He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. 16Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."

....B: 19After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.

A: 20Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.
*********************************

Clearly non-Markan, as a glance at the center shows. Markan centers have a nice rhythm composed of a prolix line and a pithy one, that look like a doublet, but without simple repetition. There is not even a simple chiasm of the kind that AMark loves so much, like 'sabbath-man-man-sabbath' in Mark 2. This is inferior crap, and it stinks up a brilliant literary composition.

Vorkosigan

JoeWallack

Fools, you, have no perception,
The Stauros we are gambling,
Are frightingly High.
We, must, Crush it (16:9-20) completely,
So like John (1-5.7) before it,
This resurrected Jesus must die!


JW:
The issue of the Original Ending of "Mark" is important because it presents the best potential evidence that Christianity has for Christianity, known fictional characters from the original Gospel saw a supposedly resurrected Jesus and we still have Liars for Jesus claiming that the Christian Bible has been accurately transmitted and that there is no significant excerpt with significant doubt as to the original. After looking at the Evidence here I think any objective person would agree, no matter what they think the Original ending of "Mark" was, that there is significant doubt as to whether 16:9-20 is original. I also think that even Skeptics will be surprised at just how strong the Evidence is for a 16:8 Original.

The first consideration should be Textual Evidence. To keep Textual Evidence in Perspective though, keep in mind that "Mark" was likely written first century while we don't have much Textual Evidence until the sixth century, a gap of 500 years, give or take a 100. The sixth century was about when Christianity gained control (not a coincidence).

Bruce Terry is a Liar for Jesus and Skeptics should not automatically accept anything he says (as we'll see) but he does have a summary of Textual evidence available online:

http://bible.ovc.edu/tc/lay05mrk.htm

"Mark 16:8:
TEXT: include verses 9 through 20
EVIDENCE: A C D K W X Delta Theta Pi f1 f13 28 33 565 700 892 1010 Byz some Lect most lat vg syr(c,p,h,pal) most cop
TRANSLATIONS: KJV ASV RSV1n RSV2 NASV(text ed.) NIV NEBn TEVn

RANK: "A" to omit; included in double brackets
NOTES: omit verses 9 through 20
EVIDENCE: S B 304 2386 most Lect(?) syr(s) one cop(south)
TRANSLATIONS: ASVn RSV1 RSV2n NASVn NIVn NEBn TEVn

NOTES: include the following plus verses 9 through 20: "But they reported briefly to Peter [and] those around [him] all that they had been told. And after this, Jesus himself also sent out through them, from east even to west, the sacred and imperishable preached message of eternal salvation. Amen."
EVIDENCE: L Psi 099 0112 274margin 579 one Lect syr(h)margin some cop
TRANSLATIONS: RSV2n NASV(ref.ed.) NEB TEV

NOTES: include the reading above and omit verses 9 through 20
EVIDENCE: one lat
TRANSLATIONS: ASVn RSVn NEBn

COMMENTS: Verses 9 through 20 are in double brackets in the UBS text, which means that the UBS Textual Committee felt that they were not originally written by Mark. Verses 9 through 20 are missing from manuscript 2386 because a leaf is missing from the manuscript at this point. The so-called "short ending" quoted above is obviously not original. It was possibly written to end a manuscript that was missing verses 9 through 20. Verses 9 through 20 are often suspected of having been added to Mark to give it an ending, because it is supposedly written in a different style from the rest of Mark. A close examination of style, however, reveals that it is not so different in style from the rest of Mark as is sometimes claimed. See the Appendix: " The Style of the Long Ending of Mark." "


JW:
Note that the UBS ranking for 16:8 Original Ending was "A" meaning the text is virtually certain.

First note that relative to each other generally the Earlier manuscripts have 16:8 ending as original. Here's another important textual consideration from Metzger, not identified above by Terry:

http://www.bibletexts.com/versecom/mar16v09.htm

"Not a few manuscripts that contain the passage have scribal notes stating that older Greek copies lack it, and in other witnesses the passage is marked with asterisks or obeli, the conventional signs used by copyists to indicate a spurious addition to a document..."

Of course I'd prefer to have a detailed list of the above but I'm not aware of any such list. The problem is that Christian Bible scholarship traditionally had no incentive to research this huge potential problem. Note then that in the absence of any better Note Evidence than what Metzger has provided above the Textual Note evidence also indicates that 16:8 was the Original ending.

So in summary the Textual Evidence indicates that 16:8 was likely the original ending because:

1) This Textual support is generally older.

2) Related manuscript Notes also support it.



Joseph Caiphais

INTERPRETER, n.
One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

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Steven Avery

Hi Voirkosigan,
I'm just going to pull out the most signficant doctrinal argument to show how convoluted is this stylistic and doctrinal mishegas. The analysts put on some glasses and then try to mold an analysis to match the goal.

Some arguments are just silly. We are supposed to take seriously that Mark could not or would not use the phrase "the eleven" even after writing about the betrayal of one from "the twelve".

Mark 14:10
And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them.

Mark 16:14
Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.

Honestly, it is silly stuff like this that makes me not waste time on the more arcane stuff. If this is put out in a public forum, something is desparately wrong.

Now for the one substantive question raised.

So it is blatantly a "later Christology" to have Jesus
"into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God"

Mark 16:19
So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

Yet Mark had earlier written, completely consistenly with the later Mark 16:19

Mark 12:36
For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.

Mark 14:62
And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.

Whether you posit Mark as adoptionist or not is interpretive and, for this discussion, irrelevant, (as is whether you consider 'right hand' allegorical, figurative, literal). Mark's wording and understanding of Jesus on the right hand of power in the clouds of heaven is consistent. To try to isolate Mark 16 away from Mark's earlier identical understandings shows the desperation and corn-fusion of those who fight the beauty and majesty of the Received Text scriptures that declare Messiah. If they can't find a point of attack, they will simply convince themselves about a pure fabrication.

Sometimes I notice folks deliberately going into a type of spiritual, intellectual and paradigmic funk, inventing arguments to convince themselvses, and maybe a few other -- even if, like these two, they are prima facie nonsense.

Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Steven Avery

Nope, not to any Christian who really believes in Inspired and Preserved Scripture. This includes the Majority Text proponents, the Textus Receptus proponents, and the King James Bible defenders.. These are the individuals who believe in tangible, inspired and preseved scripture, and they all agree 100% on the ending of Mark. You can even throw in the Peshitta primacists, too :-)

Of course the Jim Snapp and Tim Dunkin sites do an excellent and far more thorough job of truly examing the Mark evidence than your cut-and-paste of the alexandrian textcrit crew, so there is no real point unless you have truly examined their sites. There are a couple of minor legitimate gripes on Jim's evidences, but overall he proves the ending overwhelmingly.

Joe, you are welcome to fight with the "Chicago inerrancy" crew all you like, (we believe in inspired scripture that nobody knows what it is) , but it is a Don Wallach Quixote endeavor, because you refuse to discuss honestly with the true defenders of the tangible New Testament as scripture, the Bible that we hold in our hand, as we can hold the Hebrew/Aramaic Bible.

Which is why the dozen or so early church writer references that clearly use the ending of Mark as Scripture before any manuscripts whatosever are alone a virtual proof, when these evidences are combined with the absolutely overwhelming majority of manuscripts in diverse 'textlines' and geographical locales and languages, Greek, Old Latin, Latin Vulgate, Aramaic. And then most especially the absolute overwhelming preponderance in the Byzantine line, through which Messiah preserved his word, is a triple clincher.

The fact that the doofus 'modern scienfific textcrits' dont 'get this' is simply their problem before Messiah. They work from a paradigmic base similar to yours, of fighting the authority and truth of the scripture text, and trying to rewrite and change it and doubt the Bible text, so of course you feel it is helpful for you to use their (sometimes nominally Christian) arguments.

Joe, you refuse to dialog on a level playing field with those who truly believe in tangible inspired and preserved scripture, making your efforts meaningless.

Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Amaleq13

Correct because evidence is irrelevant when one relies primarily on faith for understanding.

I know of Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria. Who are the other 9?

Yeah, Joe, less rational thought and more magical thinking!

John A. Broussard

I'm pleased to find one of those.

Since you believe in tangible inspired and preserved scripture, would you explain the meaning of Joshua10:13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed... ????

When the bible says the sun stood still, does that mean that the sun stood still or does it have some other tangible inspired meaning?

Thank you for making clear this passage which some people believe is erroneous.

Vorkosigan

Well, yes. Something IS wrong. Something is desperately wrong with your understanding of Mark. Please show me the verse in Mark where Judas is considered to have been ejected from the Twelve. Mark never indicates that Judas "betrayed" Jesus -- he "hands him over" so there is quite a bit of scholarly discussion on this. You can't backread interpretations of later authors into Mark, as you are doing now. As of Mark 16:8 there is no reason to imagine that Judas is not part of the Twelve. As I noted before, corrections to "Eleven" are part of a later tradition of back-interpreting later history into earlier documents.

Speaking of fabrication, textual evidence is split on whether the comment in 14:62 is even part of the original text (neither Matt nor Luke copied it from Mark, indicating that their texts did not have it.) So you are using a text of dubious provenance to support a text of dubious provenance -- using a later text to support a later text. Nice. As Grant wrote:

• According to Alexandrian and 'Western' manuscripts, Jesus said, 'I am,' and went on to predict the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven (14:61-2). Several questions arise here. (1) Caesarean manuscripts agree with Origen that the answer was less direct; they read, 'You have said that I am.' Do they preserve Mark's original reading, reflected in different ways in Matthew 26:64 and Luke 26:67-71? Or has the text of Mark been influenced by the later gospels?

Reader-response criticism has also pointed to 14:62 as problematic, as Fowler and others have noted that it may be read as parenthetical and directed at the reader. The son of man/clouds of heaven commentary appears only in later texts, like the fictional account of Stephen's death in Acts, and the fictional account of James' death in Hegesippus'. In short, 14:62 is a very slender reed to hang your argument on. It is most probably a later addition to the text.

As for Psalm 110, that relates to something else entirely, as I have already told you in the other thread, AMark's Simon Maccabaeus program, and the author's program of portraying Jesus as high priest and king.

I note that you did not deal with any of the other Markan habits that this text does not contain. For example, AMark's habits of doublets, of giving Jesus speeches with beautiful literary structures, of changing geographic locations from pericope to pericope, of never flashing back to a previous point in the story, etc.

I should add that there does not seem to be an OT text parallel to this, nor do there appear to be any citations of the OT, two common Markan habits.

It's pretty clear that this text is not from AMark, but from a later hand who had a more developed understanding of Jesus, a later understanding of Church history, and a far lower level of literary skill than the writer of original Mark.

Vorkosigan

andrewcriddle

Minor point

Luke 26:67-71 should be Luke 22:67-71

Andrew Criddle

JoeWallack

Schmuelman:
"Overall, modern scientific textcrit labors under many paradigmic unbelieving delusions (Metzger himself is much like the infidels here in his view of NT authorship, as in 2 Peter) and that is why the skeptics like Joe refuse to battle the true inerrantists on their actual turf of defending an inspired and preserved Bible. This will be noted by folks like me, and is why so much of the skeptic and errantist efforts of folks like Joe are simply irrelevant... GIGO."


JW:
(with teeth clenched allah Seinfeld) Schmuelman!

I indicated in my previous post that the Textual Evidence supports 16:8 as the likely Original Ending. Now let's look at the Patristic Evidence.

Praxeus
"Which is why the dozen or so early church writer references that clearly use the ending of Mark as Scripture before any manuscripts whatosever are alone a virtual proof"

JW:
If you didn't limit your Internet word searches to "Liars" and "Jesus" you'd know there's an even better Category of Patristic evidence, Fathers who Identified the Ending of "Mark" as an issue. We'll see later that there are no "clear", early Father references to "The Whole 9 (-20) Yarns" anyway. For one thing, there is no clear "Long Ending". Which "Long Ending"? Just like exactly which version of the KJV do you claim to be Inerrant? Your Jewdie mind tricks won't work on me.

Anyway, here are the Early Church Fathers who Identified the Ending of "Mark" as an Issue:

Eusebius: (The "Church Historian", maybe you've heard of him)

"The solution of this might be twofold. For the one who sets aside the passage itself, the pericope that says this, might say that it is not extant in all the copies of the gospel according to Mark. The accurate ones of the copies, at least, circumscribe the end of the history according to Mark in the words of the young man seen by the women, who said to them: Do not fear. You seek Jesus the Nazarene, and those that follow, to which it further says: And having heard they fled, and said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."

"For in this [manner] the ending of the gospel according to Mark is circumscribed almost in all the copies. The things that seldom follow, which are extant in some but not in all, may be superfluous, and especially if indeed it holds a contradiction to the testimony of the rest of the evangelists. These things therefore someone might say in avoiding and in all ways doing away with a superfluous question."


Jerome: Epistle 120, to Hedibia (century V)

"Of which question the solution is twofold. For either we do not receive the testimony of Mark, which is extant in rare gospels, almost all of the Greek books not having this chapter at the end, especially since it looks like it narrates things diverse from and contrary to certain evangelists...."


Severus of Antioch: Homily 77 (century VI)

"In the more accurate copies, therefore, the gospel according to Mark has the end until the [statement]: For they were afraid. But in some these things too stand in addition: And having arisen early on the first day of the week he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons."


So, according to this Relieable "Church Tradition" from these outstanding, objective, Bible scholar Father Gedolim with impeccable credentials, 16:8 is Original. Before/if you respond though I have to confess, I do vaguely remember some Church Father guy, whose name may start with a "V" or "Q", who may have kinda said in an unclear, round-a-about, murky, wishy-washy, unconfident manner, who had nowhere near the fine reputation of the Fathers who agree with me, that 16:20 was probably Original. I suggest you expand your search to "Liars", "Jesus" and "Big".



Joseph

Messianic Judaism - The Practice of going through the Jewish Bible and throwing out any evidence that Jesus was not the prophesied Jewish Messiah until there's nothing left.


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