DAY 78 A

“THE END?”

Mark 16

Before we jump into looking at the different endings of Mark’s Gospel, I want to share a few thoughts about The Bible. We know it is highly regarded. We refer to it as God’s Word. You and I are even reading it, all of it, in one year!

And while Homer has been translated into 40 languages, Shakespeare into 60 – the Bible has been translated into 2,100!  Over 530 Million copies are printed each year and it is always the #1 Bestseller.

We must however be honest; sometimes things don’t seem to “add up”. The ending(s) to Mark are case in point. There is a field of study called “textual criticism” which develops methods for answering the questions about the authenticity of the books we read and what to do with situations such as Mark’s endings.

I want us first to appreciate just how bona fide these documents are. One method to determine authenticity is to look at how close the first copies of a book appeared in relation to the original manuscript or event. Basically it says that the closer the first copy appears to the original, and the higher the number of copies found – the higher the odds are that the book we have is genuinely describing the event.

The book of Herodutus (and ancient Greek historian) was written in between 488-429 BC and was first copied in 900 AD, some 1,300 years apart with only 8 known copies – we rely on it.

The works of Thucydides (another historian and Athenian General) was written between 460-400 BC and was first copied in 900 AD, again some 1,300 year with only 8 known copies – again we use his works such as the Peloponnesian Wars.

Caesar’s Gallic Wars was written between 58-50 BC and was first copies in 900 AD, some 950 years with only 9-10 known copies

The list could go on, but here are the numbers for the Gospels/New Testament: written between 40 – 140 AD, first copies appear between 130-350 AD and the number of copies – 5,309!

In the variety and fullness of the evidence the text of the New Testament stands absolutely unapproachable and alone among ancient prose writing (F.J. Haught).

The point of that long introduction is to give you some confidence in what you are reading, and so now on to Mark.

We have a number of Mark manuscripts, the earliest (called the Papyrus 45 dates from between 200-250 AD). If you are really interested in more about other old pieces of Bible parchment here is a link with a fairly easy to read chart:

http://www.usefulcharts.com/religion/oldest-bible-manuscripts.html

So what of the ending of Mark? Here you are going to get my approach to reading the Bible. Simply put, keep the big picture in front of you. In Mark’s Gospel, even the short ending has the tomb empty! Do we know Jesus is risen? We know that the other Gospels have accounts of Jesus being raised. We also know (and this is part of the big picture) that in Mark’s own Gospel Jesus says he is going to die and then after three days be raised up.

Some scholars, and these are serious people, think the last part of the ending was lost. Others scholars, equally serious, suggest that the longer ending was added by people and different scholars suggest different motivations for the additions.

So how should we, those of us reading our Bibles and looking at the footnote and wondering about the ending. My suggestion; we should not be surprised to find a longer ending, nor should we be upset by the shorter – I don’t think that either scenario radically changes “the big picture”.

He is Risen!