Is Mark 16:9-20 In the Original?

[RevSteve45]

Do you believe that Mark 16:9-20 are in the original? I find its absence in 2 manuscripts singularly unconvincing on this point. Here is what my commentary says on the subject:

"Some Bible scholars doubt the authenticity of 16:9-20, insisting that Mark did not write this portion. These verses are not found in two early manuscripts, the Vatican Codex and the Sinaitic Codex. However, they are found in the overwhelming majority of early manuscripts. Those who reject verses 9-20 have attempted to support their opinion by a process called hapax legomena, the citing of some terms found here and not elsewhere in the Gospel. It is one of the least scientific or scholarly methods used to criticize authorship. The futility of such a process may be seen easily by applying it to an equal part of the writings of most any erudite scholar. Some of the same ones who reject these verses also say that Paul did not write Ephesians because they have found 36 words in that epistle, not found elsewhere in Paul's writings.

The authenticity of these verses (16:9-20) should not be doubted: (1) They are found in nearly all Greek manuscripts and have been accepted in the Church from the Second Century A.D. (2) Nothing in these verses contradicts anything in the rest of Scripture." (Reddin, Opal L.S., D.Min., The Complete Biblical Library, Vol. 3: Study Bible, Mark, pg. 453, World Library Press, Springfield, MO., 1986)

[Socrates]

No, for the reasons I already stated in this post www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=91694#post91694 And Jaltus said that I understated the case!

[spl_cadet]

I say yes because of the Council of Trent's ruling on the case :teeth:

[RevSteve45]

Socrates,

Thank you for letting me know that you can answer NONE of the points raised in my commentary.

In His Service,
Steve

[Jaltus]

Do you believe that Mark 16:9-20 are in the original? I find its absence in 2 manuscripts singularly unconvincing on this point. Here is what my commentary says on the subject:

"Some Bible scholars doubt the authenticity of 16:9-20, insisting that Mark did not write this portion. These verses are not found in two early manuscripts, the Vatican Codex and the Sinaitic Codex. However, they are found in the overwhelming majority of early manuscripts. Those who reject verses 9-20 have attempted to support their opinion by a process called hapax legomena, the citing of some terms found here and not elsewhere in the Gospel. It is one of the least scientific or scholarly methods used to criticize authorship. The futility of such a process may be seen easily by applying it to an equal part of the writings of most any erudite scholar. Some of the same ones who reject these verses also say that Paul did not write Ephesians because they have found 36 words in that epistle, not found elsewhere in Paul's writings.

This is a very poorly written and researched commentary. The guilt by association (saying some don't think Paul wrote Ephesians) is a childish trick to try to influence the case through emotion.

The manuscript evidence listed is flat out falacious.

There are NO second century manuscripts that have the longer ending, not a single one. The church fathers who wrote in Greek nearly unanimously DO NOT quote it including many manuscripts of Jerome, except for those writing after Nicea. It is missing from the earliest translations (Armenian, Syriac, Sahedic).

Add to this the total differences between those that actually have the passage, and you can begin to see the problems. Also, the final section does not add to any of the themes Mark is portraying throughout his gospel, so the question would be why is it there at all?

The authenticity of these verses (16:9-20) should not be doubted: (1) They are found in nearly all Greek manuscripts and have been accepted in the Church from the Second Century A.D. (2) Nothing in these verses contradicts anything in the rest of Scripture." (Reddin, Opal L.S., D.Min., The Complete Biblical Library, Vol. 3: Study Bible, Mark, pg. 453, World Library Press, Springfield, MO., 1986)

It may not contradict, but it does add things listed nowhere else in all of scripture, something which I find a bit dubious.

And by the way, never take the word of a D. Min. on text criticism...try to find someone with a PhD since a D.Min just means they are a pastor and have an advanced degree in pastoring, they need not know anything about true scholarship.

[praxeus]

Jaltus
There are NO second century manuscripts that have the longer ending, not a single one.
============================
Praxeus
Well I haven't figured out how to do a highlight reply, and maybe on Sunday I will add more.. My view is that Dean John Burgon put this "issue" to rest a long time ago...

Meanwhile, a question..

What are the second century manuscripts we are talking about here ? Sounds like a real find ! 200 years newer than anything else we have !

(btw, if the reference is Patristics, it ain't much better, since the real heavy duty quoting of the Gospels comes in the third.)

You can always tell when a position is weak when artificial constructs are used to hide real evidence. "Early Greek sources" is often used for that, if one wants to bypass tons of Latin evidence :-) Be careful if you hear that phrase from Bruce Metzger, or Daniel Wallace, or James White. Hold your spiritual wallet. Caveat emptor.

Shabbat Shalom,
Praxeus
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[Pereynol of Sheer Dread]

covah yowah eayas, dahlin....:xmm:

[Jaltus]

No, we actually have a few second century manuscripts (about 3, IIRC, starting off with P 56 from about 100 AD) and we have 4-6 third century (how about good old Aleph and B?).

The reason Greek manuscripts get priority over Latin et al is because those are TRANSLATIONS, not the original language and thus are subject to interpretation and not just straight translation. Thus, Greek is always more important when reconstrucxting the NT.

Besides, the numbers mean relatively little, 1000 copies of an error just makes 1000 bad copies. Manuscripts should be weighed, not counted.

[John Reece]

Today @ 02:24 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=99126#post99126)
Jaltus:

Manuscripts should be weighed, not counted.

:thumb:

[RevSteve45]

Actually, the commentary did NOT say that there were 2nd Century manuscripts that had the text. What they said was, "they have been accepted in the Church from the Second Century A.D." There is a difference between the two statements.

Nor is comparing the arguments of Bible scholars against this passage to the arguments against Pauline authorship of Ephesians an "appeal to emotion." The FACT, is that the exact SAME methods are used to make both arguments. They claim that, in both books, the inclusion of certain words not found elsewhere in the same books, means the words do not belong there. As they said, this is one of the LEAST scientific or scholarly methods used to criticize authorship.

While a few manuscripts omit the passage, many with great authenticity include it. There are over 4200 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and only TWO do not contain these verses.

The Vatican manuscript, which is the one most often cited as leaving out this passage of scripture has a blank space between Mark 16:8 and the book of Luke as if the copier were not sure whether to include it or not.

The vulgate version prepared by Jerome in an early century includes the disputed verses. Many of the early church fathers in their writings quote from the passage, thus further indicating it's genuineness.

If we are going to use the TWO original manuscripts as proof that these signs are not for us today, then we must remember that other very important (and accepted) portions of scripture are also left out of the original manuscripts. Examples: First 46 chapters of Genesis, Psalm 105-137, Hebrews 9:14-13:25.

This is one reason why I use the KJV & NKJV, because they do not use the excuse of weak arguments, to leave out many verses in the New Testament.

In His Service,
Steve

[Jaltus]

Actually, the commentary did NOT say that there were 2nd Century manuscripts that had the text. What they said was, "they have been accepted in the Church from the Second Century A.D." There is a difference between the two statements.

What is that difference? If there are no second century manuscripts, how can there be second century agreement? Totally bogus, especially since the ECFs do not include this passage in their manuscripts.

Nor is comparing the arguments of Bible scholars against this passage to the arguments against Pauline authorship of Ephesians an "appeal to emotion." The FACT, is that the exact SAME methods are used to make both arguments. They claim that, in both books, the inclusion of certain words not found elsewhere in the same books, means the words do not belong there. As they said, this is one of the LEAST scientific or scholarly methods used to criticize authorship.

Blatant oversimplification here. The point is more than words, it is idioms, verb usages, and syntax for Mark. The same cannot be said of Paul, which is why it is bogus, as only vocab is argued.

Add to this that the passage is incredibly inconsistent (very few major manuscripts have the same longer ending, as there are at least 5 endings, not to mention minor variations) and you begin to see the case against it.

While a few manuscripts omit the passage, many with great authenticity include it. There are over 4200 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and only TWO do not contain these verses.

Yes, there are over 4200 Greek manuscripts, but less than 1000 contain Mark (closer to 500 or less), and many more than two do not contain the longer ending. Two majuscules do not contain it, but there are other manuscripts which do not. For example, 304 does not contain it (miniscule).

The Vatican manuscript, which is the one most often cited as leaving out this passage of scripture has a blank space between Mark 16:8 and the book of Luke as if the copier were not sure whether to include it or not.

It also has blank paragraphs at the end of all the gospels as well as other books, so this is not a real argument.

The vulgate version prepared by Jerome in an early century includes the disputed verses. Many of the early church fathers in their writings quote from the passage, thus further indicating it's genuineness.

And many church father's do not include it, including the Greek father's. Jerome himself has it in some manuscripts and not in others, and thus he is not an argument for inclusion. In fact, since it is both there and not there, that is an argument against inclusion since it makes it more dubious. Add to this that the more difficult readings is to be prefered, and you see the strength of the case against growing by the minute.

If we are going to use the TWO original manuscripts as proof that these signs are not for us today, then we must remember that other very important (and accepted) portions of scripture are also left out of the original manuscripts. Examples: First 46 chapters of Genesis, Psalm 105-137, Hebrews 9:14-13:25.

The theology you draw from it is irreleveant, especially since I think the signs are for today simply because cessationism is an argument from silence and not from scripture. Your theological axe to grind is truly beside the point.

This is one reason why I use the KJV & NKJV, because they do not use the excuse of weak arguments, to leave out many verses in the New Testament.

In His Service,
Steve

I don't use the KJV because it is outdated both linguistically and academically. I do use it for OT as I think it is a good translation of that, but the NT is horribly inaccurate since they did not have the manuscript evidence we have today. I John 5:6-8 anyone?

[praxeus]

Shalom.. greetings..

Well, RevSteve45 has the basic facts well in hand, there is an underlying rebellion in folks who simply want to snip, reject, rewrite, redact, change, choose .. the Word of God.

And I wil add that it might be good for some folks to know the SCQ the "Scribal Corruption Quotient" of Sinaticus and Vaticanus.. ie.. if folks really care about the preservation of the Word of God.. Or perhaps they are more interested in quoting their fav "scholars".

These answers below surprised me though, so I will go over them carefully.

Jaltus
No, we actually have a few second century manuscripts (about 3, IIRC, starting off with P 56 from about 100 AD)

Schmuel
Let's call them fragments, and lets admit that they are a red herring here, since they have nothing of Mark in them

Jaltus
and we have 4-6 third century

Schmuel
Still in Fragment City. Maybe you want to go shopping there and pick up some Remnants ? Nothing of Mark, afaik, do you ?

Jaltus
(how about good old Aleph and B?).

Schmuel
The two textcrit darlings, scribally ultra-corrupt, late fourth century, gave us the Apocrapha and the socalled LXX as well, disagree with each other and everything else. Do yourself a favor, and read a bit of Dean John Burgon, the physical and textual desciption, especially of Sinaticus, and its 10+ hand doing 'correcting'. (Vaticanus has that hilarious "you fool and knave" note, to complement Sinaticus).

Jaltus
The reason Greek manuscripts get priority over Latin et al is because those are TRANSLATIONS, not the original language and thus are subject to interpretation and not just straight translation. Thus, Greek is always more important when reconstrucxting the NT.

Schmuel
Way oversimplified, and when you get to Early Church Writers, who wrote their commentaries, some in Greek, some in Latin, it is completely out of the field. Anyway for the end of Mark the evidence is overwhelming in the Greek, so I will not spend extra time on this.

Jaltus
Besides, the numbers mean relatively little, 1000 copies of an error just makes 1000 bad copies.

Schmuel
This is true if you have a late stemmata (e.g. Jerome to the Latin Vulgate), however the Byzantine Text is a wide variety of locales, times and cultures, no stemmata, and that is why the now-discredited Lucian Recension theory was thrown around for years, to justify using this type of logic on the Byzantine Text. Since that theory is kaput, one should realize that the huge numbers, diversity of locales, and consistency of text of the Byzantine manuscripts means a huge amount. Jaltus, you have been fed a liberal textcrit line.. come out from among them, my brother.

Jaltus
Manuscripts should be weighed, not counted.

Schmuel
Yes, and the weight of Aleph and B should be less than a feather... ie. if you believe that God is faithful to His promises to preserve His Word, and if you believe His scribes would succeed in avoiding misteaks.

Shalom,
Schmuel

[Socrates]

praxeus:Well, RevSteve45 has the basic facts well in hand, there is an underlying rebellion in folks who simply want to snip, reject, rewrite, redact, change, choose .. the Word of God. Not fair! Note that there is a tremendous amount of question-begging here, which is sadly par for the course with much KJVO literature. I.e. they argue extensively about the preservation of God's Word, then ASSUME that the way God chose to preserve His Word was with the KJV or the so-called Textus Receptus. From this begged question, they then rail against anyone who argues that God might have chosen to preserve His Word via the older manuscripts which also show less evidence of editorial expansion of piety and harmonization.

Jaltus:

Manuscripts should be weighed, not counted.

And like John Reece, I say :thumb: But Praxeus saith:Yes, and the weight of Aleph and B should be less than a feather... ie. if you believe that God is faithful to His promises to preserve His Word, and if you believe His scribes would succeed in avoiding misteaks. Here we go again with the begged question. Of course, the TR advocates can't satisfactorily explain why their text type did not become the majority, as far as we can tell from actual EVIDENCE of manuscripts, till about the 9th century.

Also, KJVOs can't adequately explain why no actual Greek manuscript agrees with the TR. Nor do they explain why they, in effect, confer infallibility on the anti-Reformation Catholic Erasmus who produced the TR by the dreaded textual criticism of available manuscripts.

So it is highly improper to accuse dissenters from KJVO from being "rebels against God" for not agreeing. Just to show that the argument can easily rebound, please also check out my post "Corruptions" in the TR/KJV :brow: (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=19899#post19899)

[Jaltus]

Welcome to the wonderful world of TWeb, Schmuel.

The drinks are in the fridge and the nuts are everywhere (including me, hehe).

Well, RevSteve45 has the basic facts well in hand, there is an underlying rebellion in folks who simply want to snip, reject, rewrite, redact, change, choose .. the Word of God.

As far as I can tell, the MT is the one that smoothed and changed the word of God (again, I John 5:6-8 anyone?) including adding notes from the margin into the text.

And I wil add that it might be good for some folks to know the SCQ the "Scribal Corruption Quotient" of Sinaticus and Vaticanus.. ie.. if folks really care about the preservation of the Word of God.. Or perhaps they are more interested in quoting their fav "scholars".

The additional hands of the various manuscripts are quite obvious. I find it humorous however that you react against them when it is generally the later hands which change the text to the Byzantine readings.

Schmuel
Let's call them fragments, and lets admit that they are a red herring here, since they have nothing of Mark in them

Irrelevant (and shows a lack of close reading) since it was Rev who brought them up to support his case. My point is that there were not 2nd C manuscripts which support the MT reading, a point which you quickly back up for me. And you are correct that it was a red herring by my opponent.

Schmuel
Still in Fragment City. Maybe you want to go shopping there and pick up some Remnants ? Nothing of Mark, afaik, do you ?

P 45 has a large chunck of Mark from the third C.

Schmuel
The two textcrit darlings, scribally ultra-corrupt, late fourth century, gave us the Apocrapha and the socalled LXX as well, disagree with each other and everything else. Do yourself a favor, and read a bit of Dean John Burgon, the physical and textual desciption, especially of Sinaticus, and its 10+ hand doing 'correcting'. (Vaticanus has that hilarious "you fool and knave" note, to complement Sinaticus).

Actually, I have read Dean Burgon and also seen parts of Sinaticus and Vaticanus, as I have done some work in text criticism.

As for ultra corrupt, not even Dean says that. He says there are issues with the later hands and that some of the copying shows hurriedness. As for manuscripts disagreeing with each other, the MT does as well.

Schmuel
Way oversimplified, and when you get to Early Church Writers, who wrote their commentaries, some in Greek, some in Latin, it is completely out of the field. Anyway for the end of Mark the evidence is overwhelming in the Greek, so I will not spend extra time on this.

Overwhelming? Not particularly.

Schmuel
This is true if you have a late stemmata (e.g. Jerome to the Latin Vulgate), however the Byzantine Text is a wide variety of locales, times and cultures, no stemmata, and that is why the now-discredited Lucian Recension theory was thrown around for years, to justify using this type of logic on the Byzantine Text. Since that theory is kaput, one should realize that the huge numbers, diversity of locales, and consistency of text of the Byzantine manuscripts means a huge amount. Jaltus, you have been fed a liberal textcrit line.. come out from among them, my brother.

You are kidding, right? Wide times? Try ninth Century on. As for being "fed a iberal textcrit line," you are the one showing indoctrination, I have actually done the work myself on some of this.

I truly hope you are not a KJVO quoting Burgon, for that would be overly ironic. You see, Burgon disagreed with the TR and argued against it. He believed that the MT should be coallated and then rescended for a true Greek text.

[EdJones]

"The" original?

I think that if our God is big enough to speak things into exsistance, He can make sure His word is kept the way He wants it.




-----------------------
I Peter 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.

[Solly]

/ot So Jaltus, just what are your credentials to be disussing this matter?

[Socrates]

Ed Jones:[post#15 ] "The" original?

I think that if our God is big enough to speak things into exsistance, He can make sure His word is kept the way He wants it.Of course he CAN. But this doesn't mean that He DID so in the way the KJVOs think He did!

[praxeus]

Hi Jaltus et al,

Jaltus
to the wonderful world of TWeb, Schmuel. The drinks are in the fridge and the nuts are everywhere (including me, hehe).

Praxeus
Thanks.. btw, for those who don't know, I use Praxeus
and Schmuel on the web, trying to use Praxeus here, but sometimes I slip :-)

Praxeus
>Well, RevSteve45 has the basic facts well in hand, >there is an underlying rebellion in folks who simply >want to snip, reject, rewrite, redact, change, choose .. >the Word of God. ”

Jaltus
As far as I can tell, the MT is the one that smoothed and changed the word of God (again, I John 5:6-8 anyone?) including adding notes from the margin into the text.“

Praxeus
I guess you mean MT=Majority Text when you are referring to the TR .. these designations can get confusing :-). I love discussing the Johannine Comma because there is so much misunderstanding
and false information (some of which Bruce Metzgar even retracted !), and it was one of my last resistances to accepting the King James Bible as the Scriptures. Especially I have been researching Cyprian, Priscillian, the Vulgate Prologue to the Canonical Epistles attributed to Jerome, and a number of other issues. The web info is copious, although one must do a little private research to fully handle-ize and collate it.

While the alexandrian texts differ in major ways, even from including/omitting/massive changes in hundreds of verses, the "counter-weight" of the DOMV is that there are a couple of very special textual issues about a handful of verses, such as 1 John 5:7 and Acts 8:36. Can we say "deliberately confusing the issues"? :-)

Praxeus
>And I wil add that it might be good for some folks to >know the SCQ the "Scribal Corruption Quotient" of >Sinaticus and Vaticanus.. ie.. if folks really care about >the preservation of the Word of God.. Or perhaps they >are more interested in quoting their fav "scholars".

Jaltus
The additional hands of the various manuscripts are quite obvious. I find it humorous however that you react against them when it is generally the later hands which change the text to the Byzantine readings.

Praxues
Actually the issue goes much deeper than that. I once spoke to James White about it, and he was so happy that Sinaticus had a dozen hands correcting each others errors, because with spectrographic techniques, we might be able to find out the original corrupt reading, that was rejected by later (not necessarily Byzantine, despite your assertion) scribes. One of the great ironies of all this is that the actual eclectic or proof-text used by the textcrits like W-H (ie. #1-Vaticanus #2-Sinaticus) is developed in an apparatus that really doesn't give much of a hoot or a holla about thee supposed spectrographic rediscovery techniques.

Praxeus
>Let's call them fragments, and lets admit that they are >a red herring here, since they have nothing of Mark in >them.

Jaltus
Irrelevant (and shows a lack of close reading) since it was Rev who brought them up to support his case. My point is that there were not 2nd C manuscripts which support the MT reading, a point which you quickly back up for me. And you are correct that it was a red herring by my opponent. “

Praxeus
Sorry, Jaltus. All that Steve said was
"(1) They are found in nearly all Greek manuscripts and have been accepted in the Church from the Second Century A.D. "
This is clearly a reference to ECW, not to 2nd century Greek manucripts. Please be more careful, especially in using your own errors to accuse me of 'a lack of close reading'.

Praxeus
>Still in Fragment City. Maybe you want to go shopping >there and pick up some Remnants ? Nothing of Mark, >afaik, do you ?

Jaltus
P 45 has a large chunk of Mark from the third C.

Praxeus
True, thanks, "large chunk" is an overstatement, and not 2nd century, and no ending.
Interestingly Jim Snapp, not a KJBO at all, at
http://www.waynecoc.org/MarkOne.html
http://www.waynecoc.org/MarkTwo.html
http://www.waynecoc.org/MarkThree.html
has the most complete web-available review of the evidences. Nicely done. He does mention P45 in #2.

Praxeus
>The two textcrit darlings, scribally ultra-corrupt, late >fourth century, gave us the Apocrapha and the socalled >LXX as well, disagree with each other and everything >else. Do yourself a favor, and read a bit of Dean John >Burgon, the physical and textual desciption, especially >of Sinaticus, and its 10+ hand doing 'correcting'. >(Vaticanus has that hilarious "you fool and knave" note, to complement Sinaticus).

Jaltus
Actually, I have read Dean Burgon and also seen parts of Sinaticus and Vaticanus, as I have done some work in text criticism. As for ultra corrupt, not even Dean says that. He says there are issues with the later hands and that some of the copying shows hurriedness.

Praxeus
Nope..Dean John Burgon goes far, far beyond that.
One example
http://users.vnet.net/theshuecrew/mark16.html
http://www.purewords.org/kjb1611/html/corrupt.htm
"We venture to assure him, without a particle of hesitation, that B, D , and Aleph (Sinaiticus), are three of the most scandalously corrupt copies extant: -- exhibit the most shamefully mutilated texts which are anywhere to be met with - Revision Revised"

Jaltus
As for manuscripts disagreeing with each other, the MT does as well.

Praxeus
Technically, every extant ancient Scriptural manuscript (outside of some Hebrew Pentateuchs) disagrees with every other manuscript in the world to some extent. The question here is one of the huge differences, as Hoskier demonstrated, even between Sinaticus and Vaticanus. Completely different than the situation with the mainstream of Byzantine manuscripts.

Schmuel
>Way oversimplified, and when you get to Early Church >Writers, who wrote their commentaries, some in Greek, >some in Latin, it is completely out of the field. Anyway >for the end of Mark the evidence is overwhelming in the >Greek, so I will not spend extra time on this.

Jaltus
Overwhelming? Not particularly.

Schmuel
Of undamaged copies of the Gospel of Mark, per Jim Snapp, the evidence is over 1000 to 2 or 3. Including many that are placed in the Alexandrian family. What word would you prefer other than overwhelming ?

Schmuel
>This is true if you have a late stemmata (e.g. Jerome to >the Latin Vulgate), however the Byzantine Text is a >wide variety of locales, times and cultures, no >stemmata, and that is why the now-discredited Lucian >Recension theory was thrown around for years, to >justify using this type of logic on the Byzantine Text. >Since that theory is kaput, one should realize that the >huge numbers, diversity of locales, and consistency of >text of the Byzantine manuscripts means a huge >amount. Jaltus, you have been fed a liberal textcrit >line.. come out from among them, my brother.

Jaltus
You are kidding, right? Wide times? Try ninth Century on.

Schmuel
:-).. you are confusing "extant manuscripts" with the full historical evidence, and getting your facts all wrong even there, since A is the earliest extant Byzantine Gospels, and it is 5th century. while also uncials Q (5th), and 6th cent D2, E2, N, O, P, R, sigma, and 064 are Byzantine. (Q and R are largely Byzantine, the others more fully)
David Alan Black, New Testament Textual Criticism,, p.35-36 says "...the Byzantine text is older than the age of the earliest Byzantine manuscript (fifth century). For example, Byzantine readings once thought to be late have been found in early Egyptian papyri. Therefore adherents of this view consider the Byzantine text type to be an early and independent witness to the text of the New Testament.

You might also take a note of this quote the next time you try to place the Byzantine Text as beginning in the 9th century.

"The fundamental Text of late extant Greek MSS generally is beyond all question identical with the dominant Antiochian or Graeco-Syrian Text of the second half of the 4th century." (Hort, The Factor of Geneology, pg 92---as cited by Burgon, Revision Revised, pg 257).

The modern case, from a textual criticism viewpoint,
for Byzantine Priority, is made by Maruice Robinson, in
http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/RobPier.html
THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE ORIGINAL GREEK ACCORDING TO THE BYZANTINE / MAJORITY TEXTFORM
In Robinson's view, you could throw out all the extant evidence after about the 11th century, and you would still have to acknowledge Byzantine priority.

Jaltus
As for being "fed a liberal textcrit line," you are the one showing indoctrination, I have actually done the work myself on some of this.

Schmuel
We all try to do some work, however I firmly believe that many of us look at the texts with a desire to come to the conclusion that God simply did not preserve His Word.

That way, when a Scripture is discomfiting, we can always appeal to "dueling scholars"

(some of which we may see right in the mirror !... as Pogo said.. 'we have met the enemy and he is us')

Jaltus
I truly hope you are not a KJVO quoting Burgon, for that would be overly ironic. You see, Burgon disagreed with the TR and argued against it. He believed that the MT should be coallated and then rescended for a true Greek text.

Schmuel
Oh, most definitely I believe the King James Bible are the Scriptures, and I am very happy to quote Dean John Burgon, and consider him one of the true textual giants. On the NIV thread, I even discuss this a bit.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Shalom,
Praxeus

[Jaltus]

First, let me clear a few things up:

I am working on my PhD in NT studies and have done doctoral research in text criticism. I already have an M Div and an undergrad degree in Greek (classical, though, as well as Koine).

When I talk about the MT and TR, I am being very specific. The MT is NOT the TR nor is the TR the MT. The MT is a wide textual tradition starting between the 7th C and 9th C. Your quote from Wescott shows a lack of research, as he was actually discussing what is now termed "proto-Byzantine" which is a movement from the Western to the Byzantine, a shift that can be seen beginning as early as 400-450 or so, hence your reference to A which is more Western than Byzantine, as seen by the lengthened portions of Luke. This movement is most clearly seen in Cyril of Jerusalem, who tends to have both MT and Western readings in his writings, often of the same verses, though generally only in his use of the gospels (other parts of the canon tend to be a blend of Alexandrian and Western).

As for considering Burgon one of the few textual giants, he would have to be the ONLY textual giant, since he is the only person pre 1970 who backed the MT (NOT the TR, which he thought was awful). As for White, he is inconsistent in the application of the principles he holds to (how else can he explain holding onto the Comma when it has only 8 manuscripts backing it and 4 of those have it as an aside?), which makes him a dubious authority at best.

At least you know a little bit, but sadly you still miss the point of text criticism and what translation really means.

Why is there only one translation which is "inspired" per language?

I'll get back to this thread when I have more time. As for using weblinks for research, interesting idea, but I prefer to read the info firsthand since there is so much false info on the web.

[praxeus]

Jaltus
When I talk about the MT and TR, I am being very specific. The MT is NOT the TR nor is the TR the MT. The MT is a wide textual tradition starting between the 7th C and 9th C.

Schmuel
And with the Hodges-Farsted text, the term "Majority Text" often has yet another meaning, the text they put together. And your definition above does not square well with the context of your quote, tell us, are you asserting that the MT smoothed the Johanine Comma into the text ?

Jaltus
Your quote from Wescott shows a lack of research, as he was actually discussing what is now termed "proto-Byzantine" which is a movement from the Western to the Byzantine, a shift that can be seen beginning as early as 400-450 or so,

Schmuel
You are welcome to offer us a more complete quote. After your 9th century faux pas, similarly with Burgon/Sinaticus, I am going to be reluctant to take any assertions at face.

And you may explain here how the fundamental text of late extant Greek MSS is radically different (in your view) from the Byzantine Text. It definitely looks simply like semantic games on your part.

"The fundamental Text of late extant Greek MSS generally is beyond all question identical with the dominant Antiochian or Graeco-Syrian Text of the second half of the 4th century." (Hort, The Factor of Geneology, pg 92---as cited by Burgon, Revision Revised, pg 257).

Jaltus
hence your reference to A which is more Western than Byzantine, as seen by the lengthened portions of Luke.

Praxeus
You should take that one up with Rober Waltz, very much in the Textcrit camp, who places A as a Gospel Byzantine witness, and accepted by Ron Minton, one who is very anti-KJB.

You seem to like to make personal accusations on scanty evidence, your own testimony, and yet be not a whit concerned about your own errors, they just get <snipped>.

Jaltus
<snip Cyrus>
<snip Burgon non-sequitur.>

As for White, he is inconsistent in the application of the principles he holds to (how else can he explain holding onto the Comma when it has only 8 manuscripts backing it and 4 of those have it as an aside?), which makes him a dubious authority at best.

Praxeus
White does not hold on to the Comma, he is an opponent of it, often using similar deceptive argumentation as Daniel Wallace. He even has his version of the recanted Erasmus story. If White has changed, HalleluYah ! .. give us the source.

Jaltus
At least you know a little bit, but sadly you still miss the point of text criticism and what translation really means.

Praxeus
Translation: oops, I put my foot in my mouth, I thought I could get away with a bunch of loose balderdash.

And Jaltus, I am quite aware of what text criticism means, and some of he absurd paradigms ruling the roost in its modern incarnations, embraced by rebels without a cause (other than fighting the historic Scriptures).

Jaltus
Why is there only one translation which is "inspired" per language?

Praxeus
Whole new topic. Not relating to anything I have said.
However, I will ask you a question, do you believe that God would give two contradictory Scriptures ? What is the Word of God that you embrace ? What Bible do you defend ? If any ?

Jaltus
I'll get back to this thread when I have more time. As for using weblinks for research, interesting idea, but I prefer to read the info firsthand since there is so much false info on the web.

Praxeus
Wisdom is justified in her children.

And I also contact men like Jim Snapp and Maurice Robinson and William Peterson directly on these questions, to go over the details and issues.

Seems like your level of research could actually be a little deeper.

Shalom,
Praxeus

[Jaltus]

Sorry about the last post. My comp crashed part way through. I'll try to edit it later when I have time.

[Jaltus]

Since you already responded, let me post the edited version separately. This should clear up at least two things:

First, let me clear a few things up:

I am working on my PhD in NT studies and have done doctoral research in text criticism. I already have an M Div and an undergrad degree in Greek (classical, though, as well as Koine).

When I talk about the MT and TR, I am being very specific. The MT is NOT the TR nor is the TR the MT. The MT is a wide textual tradition starting between the 7th C and 9th C. Your quote from Wescott shows a lack of research, as he was actually discussing what is now termed "proto-Byzantine" which is a movement from the Western to the Byzantine, a shift that can be seen beginning as early as 400-450 or so, hence your reference to A which is more Western than Byzantine, as seen by the lengthened portions of Luke. This movement is most clearly seen in Cyril of Jerusalem, who tends to have both MT and Western readings in his writings, often of the same verses, though generally only in his use of the gospels (other parts of the canon tend to be a blend of Alexandrian and Western). In other words, come into the 21st century, or at least the 20th. Nobody holds to W-H theory without any changes, and most move well past it.

As for considering Burgon one of the few textual giants, he would have to be the ONLY textual giant, since he is the only person pre 1970 who backed the MT (NOT the TR, which he thought was awful). As for White, he is inconsistent in the application of the principles he holds to (how else can he explain holding onto the Comma when it has only 8 manuscripts backing it and 4 of those have it as an aside?), which makes him a dubious authority at best. (this is inaccurate...I confused White for a different scholar, namely Wisselink)

At least you know a little bit, but sadly you still miss the point of text criticism and what translation really means.

Why is there only one translation which is "inspired" per language? You see, this is the heart of the argument for KJVO's, and it is why they (you?) reject the LXX which is quoted within the NT.

I'll get back to this thread when I have more time. As for using weblinks for research, interesting idea, but I prefer to read the info firsthand since there is so much false info on the web.

I'll admit that you have me really checking the facts on this one, and I am not totally convinced you are wrong and I am right (about Mark, that is). However, once we have finished this discussion, I'd like to move on to consider I John 5:6-8 and the TR as a whole, which is the basis for your KJV.

I'd also like to talk theory.

Thank you for being learned and well read. Most of these discussions are tedious and useless and end in invective and slander. I appreciate your knowledge even if I disagree with your conclusions.

Now, my reply to some of what you have said:

You are welcome to offer us a more complete quote. After your 9th century faux pas, similarly with Burgon/Sinaticus, I am going to be reluctant to take any assertions at face.

And you may explain here how the fundamental text of late extant Greek MSS is radically different (in your view) from the Byzantine Text. It definitely looks simply like semantic games on your part.

"The fundamental Text of late extant Greek MSS generally is beyond all question identical with the dominant Antiochian or Graeco-Syrian Text of the second half of the 4th century." (Hort, The Factor of Geneology, pg 92---as cited by Burgon, Revision Revised, pg 257).


Again, come into the 20th century at least. Hort was wrong! Many of his theories were wrong! Try reading some recent literature, such as Daniel Wallace's essay "the Majority Text Theory: History, Methods, and Critique," found in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research edited by Erhman and Holmes. You will find that the dating of Ninth-Seventh Century is in fact quite accurate and your Fourth Century accounting is quite inaccurate.

You should take that one up with Rober Waltz, very much in the Textcrit camp, who places A as a Gospel Byzantine witness, and accepted by Ron Minton, one who is very anti-KJB.


Never heard of either of them. However, the Alands agree with me as does Wallace, Metzger, Pickering, et al. Originally the texts were thought to be Cesarean (which I cannot spell) but that theory has been disproven (see Roderic Mullen's summary in The New Testament Text of Cyril of Jerusalem).

However, I will ask you a question, do you believe that God would give two contradictory Scriptures ? What is the Word of God that you embrace ? What Bible do you defend ? If any ?


Avoid my question and answer with another? Okay. I do not believe God would give me contradictory scriptures, but I do believe He would make me work to harmonize, otherwise why not explain more explicitly the link between OT and NT? The Word of God I embrace is Christ. I defend the autographs, of which we know probably about 99% accurately.

I am skipping your insults and deragotary terms, and I believe I started such rancor. I am hoping to avoid any further animosity and just discuss like Christians. However, this does not mean I will not point out your short comings, much as I hope you will point out mine.

The major problem I see with your methodology is the classic KJVO method: you argue against Wescott and Hort and ignore the last 100 years of scholarship since them. You argue against theories nobody holds to any longer. You need to read some modern theory (or at least cite it, such as White).

As for going from the MT to the TR, it is possible I could someday embrace the MT, but never the TR. The TR fallacy is obvious and quite horrific in terms of taking poor copies of the MT and claiming them as representative of the MT. That would be like taking 4 high school drop outs and claiming they stand for all of America...an absurd notion. TR advocates will need much better argumentation than that.

[praxeus]

[05-20-2003 @ 05:26 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=102291#post102291)
Jaltus:

Hi Jaltus and readers,
Since the Jim Snapp web pages are so helpful, and Jaltus at least is considering that maybe the Last Verses of Mark are not the weak point in the King James Bible, I am going to do most of this post as a quick summary.

1) Jaltus, good wishes on your PhD, just please be aware that sometimes such training makes it harder to actually think "outside of the box".. sometimes it makes it harder even to think with common sense :-)

2) Nobody holds to the W/H theories ?
Yes and no.. sometimes the theories are adjusted some, (similar to evolution coming up with "plate tectonics" aka continental drift, to try to explain those pesky marine fossils on the top of the mountains) eg. a "proof-text" textual criticism can be renamed with an "eclectic" flavor. Problem is the changes are cosmetic, and the underlying paradigms are as weak as ever, and when false props are taken out (eg. the discredited Lucian recension) nobody is concerned that the theories are then left without any support. Eyes are blinded, still

3) MT and TR.. covered before

4) Burgon, covered before, here and in the NIV thread.
Oh, that my ModernVersion friends would start by accept ting the Dean, and throw away their alexandrian texts. Then we could discuss the TR, MT and KJB issues from a more sensible starting point.

5) White/Wisselink - okay, I see Wisselink did some interesting work on the assimilation/harmonization issues, referened by Maurice Robinson

6) Admit that Jaltus is checking the facts. Excellent. And if you begin to smell some rotting fish in Denmark re: the end of Mark accussation, think of this a bit ---

what type of weird, convoluted paradigms would have people throw away a major section of the Gospels just because some pointy-heads are bound in illogical thinking about the Scriptures ? -- Does it matter that people are essentially told --
'You really don't have the Bible, you have a section in Mark (or in John) that isn't supposed to be there. Poor fella, let us scholars straighten you out.. come, come to our feet and listen, and worship our knowledge.. and we will tell you what the Word of God is.'

7) Johannine Comma and TR discussions
Possibly... this web-based email is a little different for me. I do find the Comma a fascinating topic, and one that is intrinsically bound with our textcrit paradigms, such as likeliness of additions/omissions, and a topic where misrepresentation abounds. The fact that Metzger corrected an error is itself quite worthy of note.

8) to talk theory- makes sense, a lot of times folks are trained only to talk around theory, whatever you do don't examine or re-examine the underlying paradigms.

Jaltus
Thank you for being learned and well read. Most of these discussions are tedious and useless and end in invective and slander. I appreciate your knowledge even if I disagree with your conclusions.

Praxeus
Your very welcome, thank you. Productive, edifying dialog trumps invective every day of the week :-)

Jaltus
Again, come into the 20th century at least. Hort was wrong! Many of his theories were wrong! Try reading some recent literature, such as Daniel Wallace's essay &quot;the Majority Text Theory: History, Methods, and Critique,&quot; found in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research edited by Erhman and Holmes. You will find that the dating of Ninth-Seventh Century is in fact quite accurate and your Fourth Century accounting is quite inaccurate.

Schmuel
Try reading Maurice Robinson. I have found Ehrman and Wallace to be particularly dubious in the way that they present various cases, Wallace on the Comma is a classic. Try understanding that the changes since W-H are basically cosmetic. Vaticanus and Sinaticus are still defacto proof-texts, and the cases where a reading is not from one of those two textcrit darlings are still small in textcrit land.

<snip "A" etc> remember there are a number of Byzantine Texts in the 5th and 6th century. Aleph and B are the 4th. The apostles were the 1st. To try to build a case on the difference between the 4th and 5th is wrong, that is a minor issue compared to many majors, such as locale, diversity, harmony of manuscripts, scribal integrity, and internal and logical and historical consistency issues.

Jaltus
Avoid my question and answer with another? Okay. I do not believe God would give me contradictory scriptures, but I do believe He would make me work to harmonize, otherwise why not explain more explicitly the link between OT and NT? The Word of God I embrace is Christ. I defend the autographs, of which we know probably about 99% accurately.

Schmuel
I could write a few pages on each sentence :-) Since I really disagree with everything there. Anyway, thanks for the explan. Christ is the Word made flesh, the expression of God....His Word, written, the Scriptures, is how we know Christ, the plumbline for all doctrinal measuring.. without the Word, the Scriptures, each one can claim to know Christ in their own individualistic and idiosynchric ways.

<snip understanding that insults, rancor etc are not helpful>

Jaltus
The major problem I see with your methodology is the classic KJVO method: you argue against Wescott and Hort and ignore the last 100 years of scholarship since them. You argue against theories nobody holds to any longer. You need to read some modern theory (or at least cite it, such as White).

Schmuel
Well, I will let my understanding of those theories be judged by my web handiwork, including these posts. I have made it a special point to try to understand where, why and how the textcrits come up with their ideas. That doesn't mean I will blow hard-earned money on an Ehrman book new, but it does mean I will research with any sensible means possible, including used books, journals, textcrit forums, private correspondence with experts in the field, web research sessions, as well as the email and voice chat dialogs.

Jaltus
As for going from the MT to the TR, it is possible I could someday embrace the MT, but never the TR. The TR fallacy is obvious and quite horrific in terms of taking poor copies of the MT and claiming them as representative of the MT. That would be like taking 4 high school drop outs and claiming they stand for all of America...an absurd notion. TR advocates will need much better argumentation than that.

Praxeus
Just to go to a MT would be a tremendous step forward. The big trap is the alexandrian Aleph-B embrace of Scriptural delusion. Once you are out of that, you can at least breath freedom again.

Shalom,
Praxeus

[Jaltus]

[i]Today @ 06:53 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=103678#post103678)
Hi Jaltus and readers,

1) Jaltus, good wishes on your PhD, just please be aware that sometimes such training makes it harder to actually think &quot;outside of the box&quot;.. sometimes it makes it harder even to think with common sense :-)

Mind you, I snip without telling.

It is not hard to get a PhD and think outside the box, but it is hard to get a 4.0 and think outside the box. I challenged one profs dissertation and got a B+ when those in the seminar agreed I had probably the best paper in the class. Ah well, I never really cared about grades anyway (which is quite true, grades mean nearly nothing to me).

2-6) Covered below or no response needed.

7-8) Hopefully to be discussed again later.


Schmuel
Try reading Maurice Robinson. I have found Ehrman and Wallace to be particularly dubious in the way that they present various cases, Wallace on the Comma is a classic. Try understanding that the changes since W-H are basically cosmetic. Vaticanus and Sinaticus are still defacto proof-texts, and the cases where a reading is not from one of those two textcrit darlings are still small in textcrit land.

&lt;snip &quot;A&quot; etc&gt; remember there are a number of Byzantine Texts in the 5th and 6th century. Aleph and B are the 4th. The apostles were the 1st. To try to build a case on the difference between the 4th and 5th is wrong, that is a minor issue compared to many majors, such as locale, diversity, harmony of manuscripts, scribal integrity, and internal and logical and historical consistency issues.

First off, no fair swapping back and forth between names, I get confused easily, hehe.

Second, please name those Byzantine texts from the 5-6th centuries.

Third, you seem to have lost the fact that I mentioned the papyri as being more important (I think Aleph and B should be dumped for the papyri, though I feel like a lone voice in the wilderness) and also earlier. They have nearly exclusively Alexandrian texts, a few Western, and only one Byzantine (that I recall, though I could be wrong) and it was 8th Century (P 41, but I could be wrong about this).

This being said, the papyri by and large back Aleph and B, not the Byzantine text.

Schmuel
I could write a few pages on each sentence :-) Since I really disagree with everything there. Anyway, thanks for the explan. Christ is the Word made flesh, the expression of God....His Word, written, the Scriptures, is how we know Christ, the plumbline for all doctrinal measuring.. without the Word, the Scriptures, each one can claim to know Christ in their own individualistic and idiosynchric ways.

Yup.

Schmuel
Well, I will let my understanding of those theories be judged by my web handiwork, including these posts. I have made it a special point to try to understand where, why and how the textcrits come up with their ideas. That doesn't mean I will blow hard-earned money on an Ehrman book new, but it does mean I will research with any sensible means possible, including used books, journals, textcrit forums, private correspondence with experts in the field, web research sessions, as well as the email and voice chat dialogs.

Actually, just do an interlibrary loan, especially since Ehrman and Holmes is out of print, hehe. I guess I do have a bit of an advantage on you since I am at a school with (alleged) theological facilities and I do have some profs who are known for their work in NT, though not text critical work.

Praxeus
Just to go to a MT would be a tremendous step forward. The big trap is the alexandrian Aleph-B embrace of Scriptural delusion. Once you are out of that, you can at least breath freedom again.

Shalom,
Praxeus

Again, this is what is wrong with a lot of KVJOs, they think everything is Aleph-B based. W-H were normally biased by Alpeh, but nowadays most scholars tend to follow B instead. I myself think that the papyri are a much better source to follow due to the date and generally the quality (obviously you would have to go papyri by papryi on quality, but I hope you see my point). This would put us in the Second century, only about 100 years or less from the writings themselves. I am sure you see the practicality of such a move.

Well, I'd love to say more, but my wife is calling me. Talk to you later.

- Jaltus

[Waterrock]

Greetings Praxeus, Jaltus, and friends ~

I nearly fell off my chair after reading so many inaccurate statements in this thread, accompanied by a warning against inaccurate information on the 'net. It appears that some false ideas are being allowed to float around the atmosphere of this conversation. Allow me to enter and, hopefully, clear the air somewhat:

First, it should be obvious that we can have second-century support without having second-century manuscripts. I think I can explain this in two words: patristic evidence. In compositions from the 100's, Mark 16:9-20 is used explicitly by Irenaeus in "Against Heresies" III:10:5-6. Tatian used it when he made the Diatessaron (c.175). Justin Martyr makes a strong allusion to it. The "Epistula Apostolorum" reflects its usage. And Papias -- Papias, I say, c. 110! -- mentions a case of poison-drinking, which may have been mentioned to provide an example of the fulfillment of Mark 16:18. If anyone wants to question this evidence, have at it.

Also, Vaticanus' blank space at the end of Mark /is/ unique. It's not unique because it's a blank space. It's unique because it's a blank space followed by an intentionally-placed blank column. This is the only place in the manuscript where such a feature occurs. Anyone who took the time to read Hort's "Notes" should know that he admitted that this blank space implies that the copyist was aware of Mark 16:9-20.

Also, Codex W does not have the Short Ending at all. It should be categorized as support for the Long Ending (vv. 9-20), with an interpolation between v. 14 and v. 15.

Now then: I would like to take another look at this question about Mark 16:9-20 (without getting side-tracked about First John 5:7 or the broad question of Critical-vs-Majority Texts). Would someone who believes that Mark 16:9-20 does not belong in the Bible (Jalthus??) please provide a Top Five (or Ten) Reasons for that position? (I know something similar was already supplied in a link. But a fresh presentation may help me see why that evidence seems to convince you.)

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[Jaltus]

Today @ 09:48 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=104251#post104251)
Waterrock:
First, it should be obvious that we can have second-century support without having second-century manuscripts. I think I can explain this in two words: patristic evidence. In compositions from the 100's, Mark 16:9-20 is used explicitly by Irenaeus in &quot;Against Heresies&quot; III:10:5-6. Tatian used it when he made the Diatessaron (c.175). Justin Martyr makes a strong allusion to it. The &quot;Epistula Apostolorum&quot; reflects its usage. And Papias -- Papias, I say, c. 110! -- mentions a case of poison-drinking, which may have been mentioned to provide an example of the fulfillment of Mark 16:18. If anyone wants to question this evidence, have at it.

Papias is not a quotation and also is NOT an allusion to it. Justin himself says that his Greek manuscripts do not have the ending, and your "strong allusion" is five words from the ending appear out of order and separated within a sentence by him. Thus, your "evidence" is quite obviously NOT evidence. I am sorry, but someone else already mentioned these and was shot down. I will however agree that this does show it was known then. However, it shows it was rejected as genuine, which is in fact a count against you.

Also, Vaticanus' blank space at the end of Mark /is/ unique. It's not unique because it's a blank space. It's unique because it's a blank space followed by an intentionally-placed blank column. This is the only place in the manuscript where such a feature occurs. Anyone who took the time to read Hort's &quot;Notes&quot; should know that he admitted that this blank space implies that the copyist was aware of Mark 16:9-20.

Hort was wrong. Blank spaces do appear in many manuscripts including Vaticanus. How do I know? I have seen copies of the manuscript myself. I have the end of Romans and beginning of I Corinthians right next to me, and it has a blank space between them. Not so sure about the column thing. Still, sorry, don't buy it. Even if I did, though, the lack still shows the weakness of the case.

Also, Codex W does not have the Short Ending at all. It should be categorized as support for the Long Ending (vv. 9-20), with an interpolation between v. 14 and v. 15.


Washingtonius has verse 8, the longer ending, and the lengthened 14. It is unique in this respect (and in many others). If I said it had the shorter ending, I mispoke (mistyped?). I am setting up a time to go see this manuscript next summer in DC.

Now then: I would like to take another look at this question about Mark 16:9-20 (without getting side-tracked about First John 5:7 or the broad question of Critical-vs-Majority Texts). Would someone who believes that Mark 16:9-20 does not belong in the Bible (Jalthus??) please provide a Top Five (or Ten) Reasons for that position? (I know something similar was already supplied in a link. But a fresh presentation may help me see why that evidence seems to convince you.)

First, my name is Jaltus.

Secondly, the reason it should not be in there has been listed previously in this discussion, but will be listed again.

1) Lack of early attestation
2) Early attestation of the lack (yes, this is different)
3) The non-NT designation of the apostles (though it is Byzantine usage)
4) The poor grammatical and syntactical connection between 8 and 9-20
5) The shorter reading

[Waterrock]

Jaltus ~

Thanks for responding so speedily. My apologies for not getting your name right before.

Now then: You say that Papias did not quote Mark 16:18. I agree. I did not say he quoted it. But here's the key passage as provided by Eusebius:

"For he [Papias] reports that in his day a man rose from the dead, and again another amazing story involving Justus, who was surnamed Barsabbas: he drank a deadly poison and yet by the grace of the Lord suffered nothing unpleasant."

Philip of Sides (a.k.a. Philip Sidetes) offers a similar, but more detailed statement: "Papias recorded, on the authority of the daughters of Philip, that Barsabbas, whose surname was Justus, drank the poison of a snake in the name of Christ when put to the test by the unbelievers and was protected from all harm. He also records other amazing things, in particular about one Manaim's mother, who was raised from the dead."

(Both quotations taken from "The Apostolic Fathers" translated and edited by Lightfoot-Harmer-Holmes, pp. 315 & 318.)

Apparently you think the correspondence between these accounts and Mark 16:18 is altogether coincidental. I think it is more likely that Papias mentioned this incident as an example of the fulfillment of Mark 16:18's prophecy that a believer drinks something deadly will not be harmed. He does not spell this out, though.

You stated, "Justin himself says that his Greek manuscripts do not have the ending."

Jaltus, I don't think you intended to lie, so I must conclude that when you wrote that, you were as reckless as you were incorrect. Bring forth your citation of Justin's statement that his Greek manuscripts do not have the ending, or don sackcloth and ashes and withdraw your preposterous claim.

You stated "Your "strong allusion" is five words from the ending appear out of order and separated within a sentence by him. Thus, your "evidence" is quite obviously NOT evidence."

Perhaps you are weighing the evidence with an unjust scale, Jaltus. Yes, the words are not in exactly the same order. But the context (in First Apology 45, by the way) is all about the same scene depicted in the Long Ending; furthermore, one of those words is "pantachou," which is quite rare; it occurs only in Mark 1:28, Luke 9:6, and Mark 16:20.

Here's a fuller citation of Justin's statement:

>>> That which he says, "He shall send to Thee the rod of power out of Jerusalem," [Justin is quoting Psalm 110 here] is predictive of the mighty word, which His apostles, going forth from Jerusalem, preached everywhere. And though death is decreed against those who teach or at all confess the name of Christ, we everywhere both embrace and teach it. And if you also read these words in a hostile spirit, you can do no more, as I said before, than kill us; which indeed does no harm to us, but to you and all who unjustly hate us, and do not repent, brings eternal punishment by fire.” <<<

Justin adds "from Jerusalem" to emphasize the parallel with Psalm 110. Take out that insertion, and part of his first sentence says, "... the mighty word, which His apostles, going forth preached everywhere." This yields the following comparison ~

Justin: going forth everywhere preaching.
Mark: going forth preaching everywhere.

The "everywhere" = "pantachou."

If anyone can read that and still imagine that the parallels are coincidental, I would present to that person the slightly-earlier paragraph: Justin wrote, "And that God the Father of all would bring Christ to heaven after He had raised Him from the dead, and would keep Him there until He has subdued His enemies the devils..."

In one brief series of statements, Justin mentioned the resurrection (which is mentioned in 16:9), the ascension (which just happens to be mentioned in 16:19) and the defeat of devils (which just happens to be mentioned in 16:9 and 16:17), and the lack of true harm done to believers (a la 16:17), and the spread of the word (a la 16:20). This all falls short of an explicit quotation, but I think a categorization of "abundantly clear allusion" is quite appropriate.

>>> I will however agree that this does show it was known then. <<<

Hurrah. In light of this material, we agree that Justin, pre-165, knew the Long Ending. (Not bad for something that you just described as "quite obviously NOT evidence.")

>>> However, it shows it was rejected as genuine, which is in fact a count against you. <<<

In no way, shape, or form does it show that, Jaltus!

Onward:
You wrote, "Hort was wrong. Blank spaces do appear in many manuscripts including Vaticanus. How do I know? I have seen copies of the manuscript myself. I have the end of Romans and beginning of I Corinthians right next to me, and it has a blank space between them. Not so sure about the column thing."

Jaltus, blank spaces are not unusual. Hort did not say that blank spaces are unusual. I did not say that blank spaces are unusual. In fact, /no one/ is suggesting that blank spaces are unusual. Since it was customary to begin a book at the top of a column, things could scarcely be otherwise (except when a book ended exactly at the end of the previous column). What's unusual in Vaticanus is the entire blank column at the end of Mark.

Elsewhere in Vaticanus, a couple of blank spaces show up in the O.T. where a copyist finished his assigned text. Those two instances are simply leftover space. But here in Vaticanus at the end of Mark, a blank column has been deliberately left between Mark 16:8 and Luke 1:1 (they are on opposite sides of the same page-leaf).

>>> Still, sorry, don't buy it. Even if I did, though, the lack still shows the weakness of the case. <<<

Demonstrating the ability to reject the implications of this blank column (which, when combined with the blank space after the end of Mark 16:8 in the previous column, comes just 4 lines short of being able to contain the text of verses 9-20) is one thing. Being able to show a better explanation is something else. Imho, the blank column in Vaticanus clearly indicates that the copyist did not have the Long Ending in his master-copy, but did have it in his head.

>>> "... If I said it had the shorter ending, I mispoke (mistyped?)." <<<

Noted. We agree, then, that the Short Ending is not supported by Codex W. Metzger states that the Freer Logion in W was "probably the work of a second or third century scribe who wished to soften the severe condemnation of the Eleven in 16:14" (from his Textual Commentary). If so, then this implies the existence of a second- or third-century copy with verses 9-20.

And now a review of your top 5 reasons to reject Mark 16:9-20. (I appreciate your patience in repeating these things.)

(1) Lack of early attestation.

It is supported by patristic evidence from Irenaeus and Tatian. That implies that it was in the exemplars they used. How is this not early?

It is also supported by Porphyry-according-to-Macarius-Magnes, and Aphraates, and is in Alexandrinus, Bezae, and (with the Freer Logion) Codex W. How is this not early? (Remember, Aphraates and Porphyry both lived before Sinaiticus was made.)

Let me put it another way: if a combination of Irenaeus, Tatian, Porphyry, Aphraates, and Codices A, D, and W (and the memory of the copyist who produced Vaticanus) does not add up to early attestation, what does??

(2) Early attestation of the lack (yes, this is different).

By this you are no doubt referring to Eusebius (325). I recommend taking a closer look at what Eusebius said about this, because he also described the Long Ending as having been written by Mark. (No fair claiming Jerome for support, btw. Jerome's composition "Ad Hedibiam" essentially translates Eusebius' comments; it is not an independent statement.)

(3) The non-NT designation of the apostles (though it is Byzantine usage).

You mean "those who had been with him" in 16:10?? If so, this is quite a feathery objection. A creative investigator could find unique features in practically any 12-verse section of Mark.

(4) The poor grammatical and syntactical connection between 8 and 9-20.

I'm willing to put this on the scales as-is. The transition is awkward. Was Mark capable of writing awkwardly on occasion? I'd say so.

(5) The shorter reading.

Do you mean "the shorter reading" as the abrupt text ending at 16:8, or "the shorter reading" as the Short Ending? Either way I think your position will fall through the ice. Here's why: (a) various studies (Zuntz, Colwell) show it is simply a flawed approach to prefer a reading simply because it is shorter. (b) I think you implied earlier that you didn't really think that Mark stopped writing at the end of 16:8 (it might have been someone else; correct me if this hazy memory is wrong). Thus you would have to admit that the shorter reading (i.e., the ending at the end of 16:8) is not original. (c) The Short Ending is regarded by Metzger and others as support for the abrupt text, but it also interlocks with a scenario in which the Long Ending was lost (i.e., a scenario which produced the abrupt text). It apparently shows (apparently, I say!) that the abrupt text existed before the Short Ending, but it does not show that the Long Ending did not exist before the abrupt text.

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[Jaltus]

Today @ 12:25 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=105662#post105662)
Waterrock:Now then: You say that Papias did not quote Mark 16:18. I agree. I did not say he quoted it. But here's the key passage as provided by Eusebius:

&quot;For he [Papias] reports that in his day a man rose from the dead, and again another amazing story involving Justus, who was surnamed Barsabbas: he drank a deadly poison and yet by the grace of the Lord suffered nothing unpleasant.&quot;

Philip of Sides (a.k.a. Philip Sidetes) offers a similar, but more detailed statement: &quot;Papias recorded, on the authority of the daughters of Philip, that Barsabbas, whose surname was Justus, drank the poison of a snake in the name of Christ when put to the test by the unbelievers and was protected from all harm. He also records other amazing things, in particular about one Manaim's mother, who was raised from the dead.&quot;

(Both quotations taken from &quot;The Apostolic Fathers&quot; translated and edited by Lightfoot-Harmer-Holmes, pp. 315 &amp; 318.)

Apparently you think the correspondence between these accounts and Mark 16:18 is altogether coincidental. I think it is more likely that Papias mentioned this incident as an example of the fulfillment of Mark 16:18's prophecy that a believer drinks something deadly will not be harmed. He does not spell this out, though.

I agree that he does not spell this out, it is an assumption made by you. I do not think one can truly use this other than as a very weak parallel, but not a true piece of evidence.

You stated, &quot;Justin himself says that his Greek manuscripts do not have the ending.&quot;

Jaltus, I don't think you intended to lie, so I must conclude that when you wrote that, you were as reckless as you were incorrect. Bring forth your citation of Justin's statement that his Greek manuscripts do not have the ending, or don sackcloth and ashes and withdraw your preposterous claim.

No, I mistyped, I was referring to Jerome with respect to the mention of the lack of ending.

You stated &quot;Your &quot;strong allusion&quot; is five words from the ending appear out of order and separated within a sentence by him. Thus, your &quot;evidence&quot; is quite obviously NOT evidence.&quot;

Perhaps you are weighing the evidence with an unjust scale, Jaltus. Yes, the words are not in exactly the same order. But the context (in First Apology 45, by the way) is all about the same scene depicted in the Long Ending; furthermore, one of those words is &quot;pantachou,&quot; which is quite rare; it occurs only in Mark 1:28, Luke 9:6, and Mark 16:20.

Sorry, but you are going the wrong way in terms of evidence. The biblical material at this point is beside the point, the words used were common "Byzantine" (for lack of a better term) Greek, though not biblical Greek (I am not saying Koine for I am trying to limit myself to strictly ecclesiological uses). It is a possible adaption, but in no way does it show a strong link to the ending. This is very weak evidence.


If anyone can read that and still imagine that the parallels are coincidental, I would present to that person the slightly-earlier paragraph: Justin wrote, &quot;And that God the Father of all would bring Christ to heaven after He had raised Him from the dead, and would keep Him there until He has subdued His enemies the devils...&quot;

In one brief series of statements, Justin mentioned the resurrection (which is mentioned in 16:9), the ascension (which just happens to be mentioned in 16:19) and the defeat of devils (which just happens to be mentioned in 16:9 and 16:17), and the lack of true harm done to believers (a la 16:17), and the spread of the word (a la 16:20). This all falls short of an explicit quotation, but I think a categorization of &quot;abundantly clear allusion&quot; is quite appropriate.

I do not agree at all. You have too many qualifiers in order to make your case, so I really do not think it is legit at all. So what if he was talking about things that happened at the alleged end of Mark? Those subjects would naturally bring rise to what he was saying, whether or not he had the ending of Mark in front of him or else just the other gospels and Acts. After all, much of the same vocab is found in Luke and John (according to Metzger and Mann).

Hurrah. In light of this material, we agree that Justin, pre-165, knew the Long Ending. (Not bad for something that you just described as &quot;quite obviously NOT evidence.&quot;)

I am not so sure about this now. The more I think about it the less convincing it is.

In no way, shape, or form does it show that, Jaltus!

This will be dealt with below.

Jaltus, blank spaces are not unusual. Hort did not say that blank spaces are unusual. I did not say that blank spaces are unusual. In fact, /no one/ is suggesting that blank spaces are unusual. Since it was customary to begin a book at the top of a column, things could scarcely be otherwise (except when a book ended exactly at the end of the previous column). What's unusual in Vaticanus is the entire blank column at the end of Mark.

Elsewhere in Vaticanus, a couple of blank spaces show up in the O.T. where a copyist finished his assigned text. Those two instances are simply leftover space. But here in Vaticanus at the end of Mark, a blank column has been deliberately left between Mark 16:8 and Luke 1:1 (they are on opposite sides of the same page-leaf).

&gt;&gt;&gt; Still, sorry, don't buy it. Even if I did, though, the lack still shows the weakness of the case. &lt;&lt;&lt;

Demonstrating the ability to reject the implications of this blank column (which, when combined with the blank space after the end of Mark 16:8 in the previous column, comes just 4 lines short of being able to contain the text of verses 9-20) is one thing. Being able to show a better explanation is something else. Imho, the blank column in Vaticanus clearly indicates that the copyist did not have the Long Ending in his master-copy, but did have it in his head.

More assumptions. You cannot use the alleged mental state of a copyist as evidence. This is the flimsiest of reasoning. How do we know he just didn't accidently start at the wrong spot? This is known to happen all the time.

Noted. We agree, then, that the Short Ending is not supported by Codex W. Metzger states that the Freer Logion in W was &quot;probably the work of a second or third century scribe who wished to soften the severe condemnation of the Eleven in 16:14&quot; (from his Textual Commentary). If so, then this implies the existence of a second- or third-century copy with verses 9-20.

Maybe, maybe not. However, I would conceed third-fourth century. Washingtonius is late fourth/early fifth, so having a two hundred year leap is a bit much.

And now a review of your top 5 reasons to reject Mark 16:9-20. (I appreciate your patience in repeating these things.)

(1) Lack of early attestation.

It is supported by patristic evidence from Irenaeus and Tatian. That implies that it was in the exemplars they used. How is this not early?

Irenaeus is not a Greek father. The Latin showed early signs of corruption and expantion. Tatian is not evidence either, as explained above.

It is also supported by Porphyry-according-to-Macarius-Magnes, and Aphraates, and is in Alexandrinus, Bezae, and (with the Freer Logion) Codex W. How is this not early? (Remember, Aphraates and Porphyry both lived before Sinaiticus was made.)

I'll give you third-fourth, but not any earlier. All of the codices you list are fifth century on. I do not know Porphyry nor Aphraates.

Let me put it another way: if a combination of Irenaeus, Tatian, Porphyry, Aphraates, and Codices A, D, and W (and the memory of the copyist who produced Vaticanus) does not add up to early attestation, what does??

Let me edit to what evidence I buy:

Let me put it another way: if a combination of (maybe Porphyry, Aphraates) and Codices A, D, and W does not add up to early attestation, what does??

Hmmm, much less convincing now, isn't it?

(2) Early attestation of the lack (yes, this is different).

By this you are no doubt referring to Eusebius (325). I recommend taking a closer look at what Eusebius said about this, because he also described the Long Ending as having been written by Mark. (No fair claiming Jerome for support, btw. Jerome's composition &quot;Ad Hedibiam&quot; essentially translates Eusebius' comments; it is not an independent statement.)

First, there is large dispute over whether Jerome depended on Eusebius for this quote. I do not know enough to go over it. Second, I cannot find the quote from Eusbius . Do you happen to know where it is (book, chapter)?

(3) The non-NT designation of the apostles (though it is Byzantine usage).

You mean &quot;those who had been with him&quot; in 16:10?? If so, this is quite a feathery objection. A creative investigator could find unique features in practically any 12-verse section of Mark.

Not just that, there is also the qanasimon which is unique, and in the same section. Internally, you will find no other section of Mark with so many anaomalies. Also, this would be the one section of Mark that does not appear in either Luke or Matthew (if you hold to Markan priority). Rhetorically, it is a different style than the rest of Mark. I put a lot of weight on internal considerations when I do text criticism, and I find the internal case to be overwhelmingly against the longer ending, whereas I think the external case is much shakier.

(4) The poor grammatical and syntactical connection between 8 and 9-20.

I'm willing to put this on the scales as-is. The transition is awkward. Was Mark capable of writing awkwardly on occasion? I'd say so.

But ending a sentence with gar and resuming without an explicit mention of the subject, which has changed from the previous verse, and that subject is Jesus? Quite a serious problem.

[qote](5) The shorter reading.

Do you mean &quot;the shorter reading&quot; as the abrupt text ending at 16:8, or &quot;the shorter reading&quot; as the Short Ending? Either way I think your position will fall through the ice. Here's why: (a) various studies (Zuntz, Colwell) show it is simply a flawed approach to prefer a reading simply because it is shorter. (b) I think you implied earlier that you didn't really think that Mark stopped writing at the end of 16:8 (it might have been someone else; correct me if this hazy memory is wrong). Thus you would have to admit that the shorter reading (i.e., the ending at the end of 16:8) is not original. (c) The Short Ending is regarded by Metzger and others as support for the abrupt text, but it also interlocks with a scenario in which the Long Ending was lost (i.e., a scenario which produced the abrupt text). It apparently shows (apparently, I say!) that the abrupt text existed before the Short Ending, but it does not show that the Long Ending did not exist before the abrupt text.[/quote]

I think Mark actually probably (75%) stopped at 16:8. I do not prefer shorter readings because they are shorter (Acts has generally shown that the longer reading should be preferred in just over half the instances). The shorter ending is morelikely to give rise to the longer ending than the longer ending to the shorter. I think no ending at all is more likelyu to give rise to different endings, which is one reason I favor 16:8 as the true ending.

I hope this makes sense to you.

[Waterrock]

Jaltus ~

Allow me to take things point-by-point.

J: "I do not think one can truly use this other than as a very weak parallel, but not a true piece of evidence."

Papias' testimony is evidence (especially when one considers the details in Philip Sidetes' account of it). Overwhelmingly strong evidence? No. I didn't say it was. But it is more than nothing.

J: "You have too many qualifiers in order to make your case [about Justin Martyr], so I really do not think it is legit at all. So what if he was talking about things that happened at the alleged end of Mark?"

What?! Just how do you propose that I find a usage of Mark 16:9-20 in which the author is *not* discussing post-resurrection appearances, signs, or the ascension?

J: "Those subjects would naturally bring rise to what he was saying..."

They would not readily elicit "pantachou," particularly the combination of "pantachou" with the other words from 16:20.

J: "After all, much of the same vocab is found in Luke and John (according to Metzger and Mann)."

A-ha! You're using Mann's commentary! That explains a lot!

WR: "We agree that Justin, pre-165, knew the Long Ending.

J: "I am not so sure about this now. The more I think about it the less convincing it is."

Translation: "Oops. I conceded an important point! Earlier I said categorically, "The ECFs [Early Church Fathers] do not include this passage in there manuscripts," and here I just admitted that Justin used the passage. Can I take that move back?"

WR: "In no way, shape, or form does it show that, Jaltus!" (referring to J's claim that Justin's testimony shows the inauthenticity of Mark 16:9-20.

J: "This will be dealt with below."

But you don't get back to this. To your credit, you did admit that you "mistyped" (i.e., you made a mistake which was actually the entire basis for your statement). Jaltus (and readers) take note: Justin does NOT say that Mark 16:9-20 is not in his manuscripts.

J: "You cannot use the alleged mental state of a copyist as evidence. This is the flimsiest of reasoning. How do we know he just didn't accidently start at the wrong spot? This is known to happen all the time."

The evidence that the copyist of Vaticanus knew the Long Ending = the manuscript + logic. Your question-raising is 100% equivocation, as if to say, "We can't know for sure, so we have to throw out this evidence." Well of course we can't know for sure. But we can gauge probabilities. The copyists of Vaticanus *never* intentionally placed a blank column between books like the one at the end of Mark. Of course, it's /possible/ that a time-traveling Nazi frogman forced the copyist to skip a column. But it is rather unlikely. So is your theory that the copyist /accidentally/ skipped a column.

J: "I would conceed [sic] third-fourth century" [as the date of the origin of the Freer Logion].

Fine. Thus the presence of the Freer Logion in W weighs in with a significance equal to a copy from the 200's-300's with Mark 16:9-20.

J: "Irenaeus is not a Greek father. The Latin showed early signs of corruption and expantion."

It almost seems as if you are bizarrely suggesting that Irenaeus's explicit citation should not count because he didn't write in Greek! But surely you would not suggest such a thing, especially since you already cited versional evidence and seemed to think it matters. Instead, I think you're suggesting that some later writer who preserved Irenaeus' writings just threw this in! In which case I point out that a marginal note in MS 1582 - in Greek - mentions this statement specifically. If you want to continue to question the originality of this statement in "Against Heresies," I think you have some mountains to climb.

J: "Tatian is not evidence either, as explained above."

Are you "mis-typing" again? 'Cause I don't see /anything/ above about Tatian! (This seems to happen frequently. Please be more careful.)

WR: "It is also supported by Porphyry-according-to-Macarius-Magnes, and Aphraates, and is in Alexandrinus, Bezae, and (with the Freer Logion) Codex W. How is this not early?"

J: "I'll give you third-fourth, but not any earlier. All of the codices you list are fifth century on. I do not know Porphyry nor Aphraates."

First of all, the weight of this evidence is not diminished by your lack of knowledge about them. Praxeus already gave you links to online articles that can put you in touch with the writings of Porphyry-according-to-Macarius-Magnes and Aphraates. So you can easily get to know them.

Second, allow me to emphasize that you grant that there is evidence from the "third-fourth" centuries. Jaltus, the earliest MS [manuscript] of Mark extant is P-45, and it's from the third century. The earliest MS with the abrupt text is Vaticanus, from the fourth century (325). You thus admit that the evidence for Mark 16:9-20 is earlier than the date when Vaticanus was produced.

J: [continuing the previous quote] "but not any earlier."

You can only make such a statement by ruling out Papias, Justin, Irenaeus, and Tatian (whom you did NOT address!), not to mention the Epistula Apostolorum and the Didascalia.

J: "Let me edit to what evidence I buy: ... if a combination of (maybe Porphyry, Aphraates) and Codices A, D, and W does not add up to early attestation, what does?? Hmmm, much less convincing now, isn't it?"

Sure, but you're molding the evidence! The impact of Justin's words doesn't seem to have registered (well, it did for a moment there), so you rejected it. It is possible to speculate that Irenaeus' quotation is an interpolation, so you rejected that. You haven't looked into Porphyry or Aphraates, so they can't weigh in (yet). You refuse to see the manifest implication of the blank column in Vaticanus, so that is not allowed to weigh in either. And Tatian? Tatian you simply overlooked!

[Time Out: this guy's done /doctoral/ work on NT textual criticism?! "Sahedic." "Cesarean." "Justin=Jerome=Tatian." Hmm.]

J: "First, there is large dispute over whether Jerome depended on Eusebius for this quote. I do not know enough to go over it."
Second, I cannot find the quote from Eusbius."

Previously you stated, "I have read Dean Burgon." Perhaps you overlooked his book "The Last Twelve Verses of Mark Vindicated" in which he analyzed Eusebius' statement, which is found in "Ad Marinum."

J: "Internally, you will find no other section of Mark with so many anaomalies."

See the online article by Bruce Terry about this frequently-repeated claim.

J: "this would be the one section of Mark that does not appear in either Luke or Matthew (if you hold to Markan priority)."

First, that's not true. Second, the non-use of Mark 16:9-20 is not problematic if Matthew and Luke used pre-publication drafts of Mark (a theory which solves more than one question, by the way). Third, Matthew and Luke could easily independently choose to follow special sources at this climactic point.

J: "I put a lot of weight on internal considerations when I do text criticism, and I find the internal case to be overwhelmingly against the longer ending, whereas I think the external case is much shakier."

That's interesting, since (as anyone can see) throughout this thread you have been focusing on the external evidence. Until you realized that the external evidence might not take you where you wanted to go.

J: "I think no ending at all is more likely to give rise to different endings, which is one reason I favor 16:8 as the true ending."

In other words, when you gauge probabilities, you think it is more likely that Mark intentionally ended the Gospel-account at 16:8 than that the Gospel of Mark originally had verses 9-20, and one of your reasons for this -- perhaps the decisive reason -- is that the abrupt text is shorter. You think that is more likely than the theory that the Gospel of Mark originally had verses 9-20, and they were lost in the early Alexandrian text-stream (where the Short Ending then originated) at an early date. Does that pretty much sum up your approach?

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[Jaltus]

First, an apology. For some reason I keep confusing names. I always get Justin and Jerome confused, but this time I confused Tatian and Papias. My apologies. I'll try to be more careful.

Today @ 10:42 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=106393#post106393)
Waterrock:
Papias' testimony is evidence (especially when one considers the details in Philip Sidetes' account of it). Overwhelmingly strong evidence? No. I didn't say it was. But it is more than nothing.

A concession on your part. Thank you.

What?! Just how do you propose that I find a usage of Mark 16:9-20 in which the author is *not* discussing post-resurrection appearances, signs, or the ascension?

Not what I said at all. You misread me completely. My point was that the subject matter would bring to mind what he was writing about. While the vocab does point in your favor, it is not as strong a parallel as you would wish since, while the word pantacou is common in both classical, Koine, and Byzantine literature (see the list of uses in BDAG, pg. 754 and also in LSJ (I only have the middle, so it has only a partial listing of non-Koine uses)). Your case on the rareness of pantacou is much weaker than you would like to admit.

They would not readily elicit &quot;pantachou,&quot; particularly the combination of &quot;pantachou&quot; with the other words from 16:20.

Five words in the wrong order and non-consecutively? The weakness speaks for itself.

Translation: &quot;Oops. I conceded an important point! Earlier I said categorically, &quot;The ECFs [Early Church Fathers] do not include this passage in there manuscripts,&quot; and here I just admitted that Justin used the passage. Can I take that move back?&quot;

No, unlike some people, I honestly seak to learn through discussion, and thus my opinion sways according to the evidence.

WR: &quot;In no way, shape, or form does it show that, Jaltus!&quot; (referring to J's claim that Justin's testimony shows the inauthenticity of Mark 16:9-20.

J: &quot;This will be dealt with below.&quot;

But you don't get back to this. To your credit, you did admit that you &quot;mistyped&quot; (i.e., you made a mistake which was actually the entire basis for your statement). Jaltus (and readers) take note: Justin does NOT say that Mark 16:9-20 is not in his manuscripts.

Actually, I did get back to this, it would be in number 2 where I asked you questions in order to clarify.

The evidence that the copyist of Vaticanus knew the Long Ending = the manuscript + logic. Your question-raising is 100% equivocation, as if to say, &quot;We can't know for sure, so we have to throw out this evidence.&quot; Well of course we can't know for sure. But we can gauge probabilities. The copyists of Vaticanus *never* intentionally placed a blank column between books like the one at the end of Mark. Of course, it's /possible/ that a time-traveling Nazi frogman forced the copyist to skip a column. But it is rather unlikely. So is your theory that the copyist /accidentally/ skipped a column.

Actually, that is not equivocation. Equivocation is changing definitions. I believe you mean vaciliation (wavering between two options) but in any event you are wrong. You are correct that we can gauge probabilities. Since there is very shaky evidence before the time of the manuscript, it is dubious to claim this as evidence. It is like a tower of cards you are building, and then expecting to live at the top of it.

Fine. Thus the presence of the Freer Logion in W weighs in with a significance equal to a copy from the 200's-300's with Mark 16:9-20.

You misread me again. I was saying the longer ending would be at least 3rd-4th century. I said nothing of the expansion in 14 other than mentioning it was there.

It almost seems as if you are bizarrely suggesting that Irenaeus's explicit citation should not count because he didn't write in Greek! But surely you would not suggest such a thing, especially since you already cited versional evidence and seemed to think it matters. Instead, I think you're suggesting that some later writer who preserved Irenaeus' writings just threw this in! In which case I point out that a marginal note in MS 1582 - in Greek - mentions this statement specifically. If you want to continue to question the originality of this statement in &quot;Against Heresies,&quot; I think you have some mountains to climb.

What I have problems with is the use of other languages to prove that something was in the original Greek. I will give you that this does show the ending is early, but it does not show that it is from the Greek ending, something I find probematic.

Are you &quot;mis-typing&quot; again? 'Cause I don't see /anything/ above about Tatian! (This seems to happen frequently. Please be more careful.)

WR: &quot;It is also supported by Porphyry-according-to-Macarius-Magnes, and Aphraates, and is in Alexandrinus, Bezae, and (with the Freer Logion) Codex W. How is this not early?&quot;

I'll look into the Aphraates and Porphyry sometime this week and get back to you.

First of all, the weight of this evidence is not diminished by your lack of knowledge about them. Praxeus already gave you links to online articles that can put you in touch with the writings of Porphyry-according-to-Macarius-Magnes and Aphraates. So you can easily get to know them.

I did not say it was diminished. I think you have a real chip on your shoulder. You need to calm down a bit.

Second, allow me to emphasize that you grant that there is evidence from the &quot;third-fourth&quot; centuries. Jaltus, the earliest MS [manuscript] of Mark extant is P-45, and it's from the third century. The earliest MS with the abrupt text is Vaticanus, from the fourth century (325). You thus admit that the evidence for Mark 16:9-20 is earlier than the date when Vaticanus was produced.

Yes. I think that showing something from the year 1900, when assumed to be from 1000, will generally show that the original was from before 1900. In this case, I think showing evidence of Mark from the 4th century lends itself to Mark being 3rd century. Thus, I see the longer ending of Mark being made possibly in the 3rd-4th Century due to the evidence from the 4th-5th- century. You evidence from the father's is a bit scant.

You can only make such a statement by ruling out Papias, Justin, Irenaeus, and Tatian (whom you did NOT address!), not to mention the Epistula Apostolorum and the Didascalia.

Well, you just added a few new names there. Give me time to look them up. I am no expert on church history, so these names are not "ringing in my ears" so to speak (my specialty is exegesis).

Sure, but you're molding the evidence! The impact of Justin's words doesn't seem to have registered (well, it did for a moment there), so you rejected it. It is possible to speculate that Irenaeus' quotation is an interpolation, so you rejected that. You haven't looked into Porphyry or Aphraates, so they can't weigh in (yet). You refuse to see the manifest implication of the blank column in Vaticanus, so that is not allowed to weigh in either. And Tatian? Tatian you simply overlooked!

Unlike you, this is not a dogmatic event for me. It is searching for the truth. You assume you have it already, and thus are a closed mind not willing to consider that you could be wrong. I admit you have evidence, I just think it is a house of cards. Perhaps your other finds will convince me, perhaps not. However, I know that if I found overwhelming evidence against, you would not care.

[Time Out: this guy's done /doctoral/ work on NT textual criticism?! &quot;Sahedic.&quot; &quot;Cesarean.&quot; &quot;Justin=Jerome=Tatian.&quot; Hmm.]

I never said my spelling was great, and I did my doctoral work in Acts. The fathers are much less relevant there (depending on the passage you choose).

Previously you stated, &quot;I have read Dean Burgon.&quot; Perhaps you overlooked his book &quot;The Last Twelve Verses of Mark Vindicated&quot; in which he analyzed Eusebius' statement, which is found in &quot;Ad Marinum.&quot;

Yes, I have read some of his works, not all of them. I'll look for that one and see what I can find.

See the online article by Bruce Terry about this frequently-repeated claim.

Do you have a link for this?

First, that's not true. Second, the non-use of Mark 16:9-20 is not problematic if Matthew and Luke used pre-publication drafts of Mark (a theory which solves more than one question, by the way). Third, Matthew and Luke could easily independently choose to follow special sources at this climactic point.

What is not true? It is quite true that there is no close parallel for this section in Matthew or Luke. The prepublication theory is, frankly, bizarre, since books like this are not published, they are written and sent. There were not 15 poor copies written and trashed, there was likely one copy made and sent. Only Luke possibly had a lot of copies made before being sent. Matthew and Luke could have followed special sources, but why change at this point and not the crucifixion which is the climax of every gospel? You must admit this is a small piece of evidence against you.

Let me say this, I have not been overly careful in my writing here, but then this is not the only section I check on this site. You seem to be totally wrapped up in this argument. I think you need to take a step back and calm down a little. I appreciate your critiques of my posts, but not your critiques of me or your snide comments.

That's interesting, since (as anyone can see) throughout this thread you have been focusing on the external evidence. Until you realized that the external evidence might not take you where you wanted to go.

No, I stated earlier that I would like to discuss how we do text criticism. I believe that modern scholars put too much weight on external considerations and not enough on internal. That is how you get the TR instead of the MT and how you get people following Aleph and B instead of the papyri.

In other words, when you gauge probabilities, you think it is more likely that Mark intentionally ended the Gospel-account at 16:8 than that the Gospel of Mark originally had verses 9-20, and one of your reasons for this -- perhaps the decisive reason -- is that the abrupt text is shorter. You think that is more likely than the theory that the Gospel of Mark originally had verses 9-20, and they were lost in the early Alexandrian text-stream (where the Short Ending then originated) at an early date. Does that pretty much sum up your approach?

No, actually I agreed that the shorter reading is not a good hallmark at all. Are you sure you read my post? You sure trimmed out what I said here. I think the grammatical reasons destroy the longer ending, an argument with which you did nothing, instead avoiding it. I think the longer ending is probably more likely than the shorter ending, but I still think the "true ending" should be 16:8, for it is more likely to be original than either "ending."

Grammar is more important than many are willing to admit, and this is one of those spots where the grammar truly presents probelms for those who deal with the longer readings, both of them.

[Pereynol of Sheer Dread]

Today @ 11:42 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=106393#post106393)
Waterrock:


Translation: &quot;Oops. I conceded an important point! Earlier I said categorically, &quot;The ECFs [Early Church Fathers] do not include this passage in there manuscripts,&quot; and here I just admitted that Justin used the passage. Can I take that move back?&quot;

Why speak like this? Why so uncharitable?



J: &quot;You cannot use the alleged mental state of a copyist as evidence. This is the flimsiest of reasoning. How do we know he just didn't accidently start at the wrong spot? This is known to happen all the time.&quot;

The evidence that the copyist of Vaticanus knew the Long Ending = the manuscript + logic. Your question-raising is 100% equivocation, as if to say, &quot;We can't know for sure, so we have to throw out this evidence.&quot; Well of course we can't know for sure. But we can gauge probabilities. The copyists of Vaticanus *never* intentionally placed a blank column between books like the one at the end of Mark. Of course, it's /possible/ that a time-traveling Nazi frogman forced the copyist to skip a column. But it is rather unlikely. So is your theory that the copyist /accidentally/ skipped a column.

The Nazi frogman theory iced it for me....


WR: &quot;It is also supported by Porphyry-according-to-Macarius-Magnes, and Aphraates, and is in Alexandrinus, Bezae, and (with the Freer Logion) Codex W. How is this not early?&quot;

J: &quot;I'll give you third-fourth, but not any earlier. All of the codices you list are fifth century on. I do not know Porphyry nor Aphraates.&quot;

First of all, the weight of this evidence is not diminished by your lack of knowledge about them. Praxeus already gave you links to online articles that can put you in touch with the writings of Porphyry-according-to-Macarius-Magnes and Aphraates. So you can easily get to know them.

Are you referring to Porphyry, the disciple of the Neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus, whom I suppose Macarius the Great ostensibly quoted so as to refute? Why not just tell us and Jaltus about Porphyry instead of using Jaltus' honest statement to your rhetorical advantage?


[Time Out: this guy's done /doctoral/ work on NT textual criticism?! &quot;Sahedic.&quot; &quot;Cesarean.&quot; &quot;Justin=Jerome=Tatian.&quot; Hmm.]

This is the most objectionable kind of contempt I've seen from you so far. "Time Out," indeed.


J: &quot;First, there is large dispute over whether Jerome depended on Eusebius for this quote. I do not know enough to go over it.&quot;
Second, I cannot find the quote from Eusbius.&quot;

Previously you stated, &quot;I have read Dean Burgon.&quot; Perhaps you overlooked his book &quot;The Last Twelve Verses of Mark Vindicated&quot; in which he analyzed Eusebius' statement, which is found in &quot;Ad Marinum.&quot;

Again, why insinuate something negative when you could just politely answer a legitmate question? Why contort your opponent's honest question to imply that he's somehow remiss in his reading---and then fail to answer the question?


J: &quot;I put a lot of weight on internal considerations when I do text criticism, and I find the internal case to be overwhelmingly against the longer ending, whereas I think the external case is much shakier.&quot;

That's interesting, since (as anyone can see) throughout this thread you have been focusing on the external evidence. Until you realized that the external evidence might not take you where you wanted to go.

And as I see more and more, you Waterrock, continue to quibble and insinuate. Jaltus' points about internal evidence, as you say, "are not lessened" by your failure to engage with them, and they "are not lessened" as well, by your attempt to deflect them with a groundless charge.

Is it too much to ask for a clean discussion without recourse to these sorts of rhetorical tactics? I, as a reader of this exchange, would heartily appreciate such a thing....

[Waterrock]

Pereynol ~

I am being uncharitable toward Jaltus' false and misleading statements. I am being uncharitable toward the fanciful speculations that Irenaeus' citation of Mark 16:19 is a corruption and that the copyist of Vaticanus accidentally skipped a column.

That is not the same as being uncharitable to Jaltus, though. What would you have me do, P., pretend that false statements are true, and that wild speculations are probable? It is difficult to show that a statement is silly without implying that the person making the statement is also silly. I assure you, I have no interest in putting down Jaltus, but when he says that Justin states that his manuscripts do not have Mark 16:9-20, what am I supposed to do? Pretend he's right in the interest of civility? I think it is much better manners to tell the truth. I try to do so in love. I would not be so clear with Jaltus if I did not think he could handle it, and perceive frankness as frankness and humor as humor.

You asked, "Why speak this way?" To show what Jaltus is doing, that's why! He made a broad statement about evidence from early church fathers which is not true. He made a claim about Justin Martyr which is not true. And so on.

The "Nazi frogman" illustration was /supposed/ to drive home the point that Jaltus' theory that the copyist of Vaticanus accidentally skipped an entire column was highly speculative. I suppose I could have just said, "No, that theory is fanciful," but the illustration adds something, methinks. In no way am I insulting Jaltus by the use of this illustration.

If the most objectionable contempt I have shown consists of pointing out the inconsistency between Jaltus' statement that he has done doctrinal work in textual criticism and his incorrect spelling of some words which a textual critic should reasonably be expected to know pretty well, then I have to say I am not feeling very bad about the things you are objecting to. Don't blame a mirror for what it reflects.

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[praxeus]

Today @ 07:30 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=106541#post106541)
Waterrock:
Pereynol ~I am being uncharitable toward Jaltus' false and misleading statements. I am being uncharitable toward the fanciful speculations that Irenaeus' citation of Mark 16:19 is a corruption and that the copyist of Vaticanus accidentally skipped a column.

That is not the same as being uncharitable to Jaltus, though. What would you have me do, P., pretend that false statements are true, and that wild speculations are probable? <snip>
Waterrock

And I have to say I understand Waterrock's sharpness and directness and clarity in dialog as well.

Remember we were informed a few times about the level of seminary and scholarship studies, with a certain amount of condescension in tone, and yet on many different Mark ending issues we have seen evidence poorly researched, along with being misrepresented. (And perhaps this is more a result of textual education in seminaries rather than in spite of it.. this is the rather sad conclusion that I am leaning towards).

At one point Jaltus did seem to realize that perhaps the case against the ending of Mark should essentially be put aside, as the fullness of various evidences were pointed out on this thread and through web-info, seemingly in a manner that was much clearer than any of the earlier seminary studies had shown. And that then we would try to switch to other stronger cases against the King James Bible (which appears to be one major undercurrent of the purpose of the attack on the ending of Mark, from the get-go) such as the Johanine Comma. At least in that discussion, the "no" side would not get swamped with such overwhelming manuscript evidence, or patristic evidence in the 2nd century. And they will have James White, Bruce Metzgar and Daniel Wallace firmly on their side. So given the current popular textcrit paradigms, they would at least be on solider ground, even if Wallace et al had done some severe misrepresentations.

Yet, even after this earlier implicit acknowledgment that there was a lot stronger case for the Mark ending than anyone in the "no" side expected, (and I would claim an overwhelming case) we found that instead of being more careful, Jaltus became more careless in discussing the newer aspects that were brought forth in the Waterrock-Jaltus continuation. And honestly, at some point you have to deal with misrepresentation of issues with the equivalent of a strong rebuke. And that is what has occurred here, imho.

For the tone of the discussion to improve would be fine, but it is largely dependent on the quality of the analysis and representation of evidence to similarly improve.

We expect folks to choose and choose evidence somewhat to match their purposes, that is human nature, and also debating style (for better or for worse) but there is a point where errors and misrepresentations demonstrate an agenda that is less than sincere in dialog and research.

Shalom,
Praxeus

[Waterrock]

Jaltus ~

Point-by-point again:

Okay. So we agree that Justin does not say anything about Mark 16:9-20 not being in his manuscripts.

About Papias: I didn't say Papias' testimony was overwhelming (so saying that it isn't is not a concession), just that it should be in the equation.

J: "Not what I said at all. You misread me completely. My point was that the subject matter would bring to mind what he was writing about."

Understood. But you seem to be making the hurdle awfully high, so to speak, by suggesting that the similarities between Justin's statements and Mark 16:20 may be chalked up to two authors talking about the same thing. The idea is valid, but the level of strictness with which you apply it (to explain the verbal parallels) would, if consistently used, make it difficult to confidently identify almost any allusion.

J: "While the vocab does point in your favor, it is not as strong a parallel as you would wish"

It still belongs on the scales in favor of the Long Ending.

J: "the word pantacou is common in both classical, Koine, and Byzantine literature..."

Alas; I don't have BDAG handy at the moment. Please assist: the number of instances of pantachou in the first and second centuries is ...?

J: "Five words in the wrong order and non-consecutively? The weakness speaks for itself."

Hardly. If Justin were unknown and a fragment of this sentence from First Apology 45 were discovered, quite a few folks would probably think it was a piece of Mark 16:20 with a textual variant.

J: "I honestly seak to learn through discussion, and thus my opinion sways according to the evidence."

Excellent.

J: "Equivocation is changing definitions."

It's also attempting to make something vague or unclear which is actually clear. That is the sense in which I was using it.

J: "... but in any event you are wrong. You are correct that we can gauge probabilities. Since there is very shaky evidence before the time of the manuscript, it is dubious to claim this as evidence."

Saying that will not make it so. Even with a skeptical spin, the evidence before Vaticanus lines up in favor of the early existence of the Long Ending:
a possible reference in Papias.
a probable reference in Justin.
an explicit reference in Irenaeus (which is reinforced by a Greek note in MS 1582, and which does not agree fully with the Byzantine form of the text).
Its inclusion in Tatian's Diatessaron.
Its use by Porphyry.
Its use by Aphraates.
Its inclusion in the Vulgate.
Its use in the Gothic version (which is earlier than the Armenian).
Its use by the author of the Freer Logion.

And that is not an exhaustive list. This is no "tower of cards," Jaltus.

WR: "Fine. Thus the presence of the Freer Logion in W weighs in with a significance equal to a copy from the 200's-300's with Mark 16:9-20."

J: "You misread me again. I was saying the longer ending would be at least 3rd-4th century. I said nothing of the expansion in 14 other than mentioning it was there."

Um, 3rd-4th century *is* 200's-300's. What other meaning can such a statement have?

J: "What I have problems with is the use of other languages to prove that something was in the original Greek. I will give you that this does show the ending is early, but it does not show that it is from the Greek ending, something I find probematic."

J, versional evidence should not be underweighted just because it is versional! Besides, as I already noted, a Greek margin-note in MS 1582 cites Irenaeus' statement, and Irenaeus' statement does not agree with the late Byzantine reading of 16:19. So there are two good indicators that the quotation is genuine.

J: "I'll look into the Aphraates and Porphyry sometime this week and get back to you."

Fair enough.

J: "I did not say it was diminished."

I did not say you did. It appeared that you were willing to pass by Porphyry and Aphraates, though, and cling to a position no matter what their impact might be. I'm glad that's not really the case.

J: In this case, I think showing evidence of Mark from the 4th century lends itself to Mark being 3rd century. Thus, I see the longer ending of Mark being made possibly in the 3rd-4th Century due to the evidence from the 4th-5th- century. You evidence from the father's is a bit scant."

No it isn't; I'm just hitting the highlights. And I haven't even mentioned the likelihood that P-45 originally contained Mark 16:9-20 (a deduction based on the high percentage of agreement between P-45 and Codex W). I suppose I should qualify that: it is not overwhelming evidence. But it should be in the equation.


J: "Well, you just added a few new names there. Give me time to look them up."

Okey-dokey.

J: "Unlike you, this is not a dogmatic event for me. It is searching for the truth. You assume you have it already, and thus are a closed mind not willing to consider that you could be wrong."

Hey, you called me a name! Maybe, if I stick around, you might get to know me well enough to be qualified to say if my mind is open or closed. I'm not here to defend my mind.

J: "Do you have a link for this [Bruce Terry essay]?"

Not handy, but there's one in the margin (big red button) at www.waynecoc.org/MarkThree.html . Or do a Google search for "Bruce Terry Style Ending Mark."

WR: "First, that's not true. " ~ This was in reference to your claim that the Long Ending is the only part of Mark not used by Matthew or Luke. There are other sections unique to Mark (for instance, Mk. 14:51-52).

J: "The prepublication theory is, frankly, bizarre, since books like this are not published, they are written and sent."

How much do we really know about how books were published and disseminated in the first century in the early church? Not much. The possibility is a real one, and is certainly not "bizarre;" it is held by some serious investigators of the Synoptic Problem, and was originally proposed waayy back with Richard Simon! It explains the "Minor Agreements" and the early traditions (to the effect that Matthew and Luke published their Gospels before Mark published his) elegantly. It also explains why an Alexandrian copyist might remove an ending that was not in the pre-publication draft of the Gospel of Mark with which he was familiar.

J: "Matthew and Luke could have followed special sources, but why change at this point and not the crucifixion which is the climax of every gospel?"

If one were to adopt that theory, Luke's motive for changing = he wanted to use the detailed Emmaus account, and Matthew's motive for changing = he wanted to use the account of the bribery of the guards.

J: "... I stated earlier that I would like to discuss how we do text criticism."

Maybe we can do that sometime, but I'd like to keep on-topic first.

J: "No, actually I agreed that the shorter reading is not a good hallmark at all. Are you sure you read my post?"

I /think/ I was reading your post that concisely said, as reason #5 for rejecting the Long Ending, "the short ending." That was you ... right? I didn't see any text beyond that. But my computer doesn't like this format; maybe there was some glitch.

J: " I think the grammatical reasons destroy the longer ending, an argument with which you did nothing, instead avoiding it."

I did not avoid it at all, Jaltus. I referred you to an excellent resource about the stylistic considerations ("Thank you for enriching my data-base about this, Waterrock." "You're welcome, brother Jaltus.") -- Dr. Bruce Terry's essay. In addition, allow me to point out that there's another online essay (one Google search away: Iverson Irony Mark) that includes, in a footnote, a list of compositions in which sentences end in "gar." So it would not be grammatically shocking for a pericope to end in "gar." But in order for the entire book to end that way (which is what you suppose to have been the case ... today), Mark would have to have been the second known person (Plato being the first) to ever end a book that way. In this light, the grammatical data about "gar" is a point against the notion that Mark ended originally at 16:8.

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[George Blaisdell]

Water-Rock writes:

> " Pereynol ~

> I am being uncharitable [toward Jaltus'] ...

Learning to be charitable where you are not yet charitable is a really good thing... It is a good topic, and I tend to agree with you, and there is much to learn, and I find myself caught on your uncharitability so much that I don't even care if you are right...

I mean, you really are coming across as a little bully with a big ego and a mouth to match, and I happen to know for a fact that you've got enough smarts to figure out charitability...

I mean - so...

Go Figure! ':tongue:'

geo

[Waterrock]

George B.,

I thought a firm, clear approach was necessary in order to correct some incorrect statements Jaltus had made. As you can see, no one who reads this thread will be deceived any longer by his false statements about Justin, Tatian, and so forth (and I could have listed several more false statements, but did not!). They will realize that those statements are not true. And I don't think Jaltus will make the same mistakes again. That's progress. If the price of this progress is that you think I'm some kind of bully (even though I have insulted nobody), so be it.

The next time Jaltus gets his facts incredibly mixed-up, and presents them with an air of confidence that astonishes y'all, I will charitably be quiet and just let everyone believe it. Maybe.

Nevertheless ... it's important not only to be charitable, but also to appear charitable. So I will take your words to heart and will try to phrase my statements more sweetly in the future. Thank you for speaking up.

And now, back to Mark 16:9-20, okay?

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[RevSteve45]

Here is a link to the article on "The Style Of The Long Ending Of Mark," by Bruce Terry

http://matthew.ovc.edu/terry/articles/mkendsty.htm

[Jaltus]

I would like to point out that TWeb does not have a spell-check feature, my computer, however, does.


Understood. But you seem to be making the hurdle awfully high, so to speak, by suggesting that the similarities between Justin's statements and Mark 16:20 may be chalked up to two authors talking about the same thing. The idea is valid, but the level of strictness with which you apply it (to explain the verbal parallels) would, if consistently used, make it difficult to confidently identify almost any allusion.

Not totally true, but I see your point. Generally a parallel would have a near quote, while an allusion would have words used to ellicite a specific remembrance (such as John's usage of spirit and water to bring to mind Ezekiel). However, I find it unlikely that Mark's ending would be so well known that Justin would be justified in using such a poor allusion.

It still belongs on the scales in favor of the Long Ending.

Ok.

Alas; I don't have BDAG handy at the moment. Please assist: the number of instances of pantachou in the first and second centuries is ...?

Unfortunately, they do not list dates, which is why I referred you to LSJ.

Hardly. If Justin were unknown and a fragment of this sentence from First Apology 45 were discovered, quite a few folks would probably think it was a piece of Mark 16:20 with a textual variant.

Unlikely, but possibly. Still conjecture, however.

It's also attempting to make something vague or unclear which is actually clear. That is the sense in which I was using it.

I have never heard that definition used with respect to argumentation. In fact, that meaning is not listed in the American Heritage dictionary.

Saying that will not make it so. Even with a skeptical spin, the evidence before Vaticanus lines up in favor of the early existence of the Long Ending:
a possible reference in Papias.
a probable reference in Justin.
an explicit reference in Irenaeus (which is reinforced by a Greek note in MS 1582, and which does not agree fully with the Byzantine form of the text).
Its inclusion in Tatian's Diatessaron.
Its use by Porphyry.
Its use by Aphraates.
Its inclusion in the Vulgate.
Its use in the Gothic version (which is earlier than the Armenian).
Its use by the author of the Freer Logion.

The Vulgate is late, not early, IIRC. Please date the Gothic version. 1582 is dated 948 AD! How is that evidence?

By the way, the Latin version of Irenaeus is only dated to 395 AD, so it is not as early as you argued and it does disagree with the original Irenaeus in a few places.

WR: "Fine. Thus the presence of the Freer Logion in W weighs in with a significance equal to a copy from the 200's-300's with Mark 16:9-20."

J: "You misread me again. I was saying the longer ending would be at least 3rd-4th century. I said nothing of the expansion in 14 other than mentioning it was there."

Um, 3rd-4th century *is* 200's-300's. What other meaning can such a statement have?

You misread me yet again. My point was that I WAS NOT REFERRING TO THE FREER LOGION. That is all. Get it now?

J, versional evidence should not be underweighted just because it is versional! Besides, as I already noted, a Greek margin-note in MS 1582 cites Irenaeus' statement, and Irenaeus' statement does not agree with the late Byzantine reading of 16:19. So there are two good indicators that the quotation is genuine.

Nor should it be assumed original if there is no Greek instantiation. Once again, citing something from the 900s does little in terms of veracity for something from the late 300s.

No it isn't; I'm just hitting the highlights. And I haven't even mentioned the likelihood that P-45 originally contained Mark 16:9-20 (a deduction based on the high percentage of agreement between P-45 and Codex W). I suppose I should qualify that: it is not overwhelming evidence. But it should be in the equation.

Here we go again. A friend of a friend said...


WR: "First, that's not true. " ~ This was in reference to your claim that the Long Ending is the only part of Mark not used by Matthew or Luke. There are other sections unique to Mark (for instance, Mk. 14:51-52).

Two verses is not a section. Details were often ommitted by Luke and Matthew, even when quoting from the same part. however, NONE of 16:9-20 appears in either synoptic. I would guess it is the longest stretch of the gospel without a quote in either of the other two.

How much do we really know about how books were published and disseminated in the first century in the early church? Not much. The possibility is a real one, and is certainly not "bizarre;" it is held by some serious investigators of the Synoptic Problem, and was originally proposed waayy back with Richard Simon! It explains the "Minor Agreements" and the early traditions (to the effect that Matthew and Luke published their Gospels before Mark published his) elegantly. It also explains why an Alexandrian copyist might remove an ending that was not in the pre-publication draft of the Gospel of Mark with which he was familiar.

Actually, we know quite a bit. I recommend you spend some time reading secondary literature about Origen since the way he published was considered quite out of the ordinary. Your entire argument here is rather speculative.

If one were to adopt that theory, Luke's motive for changing = he wanted to use the detailed Emmaus account, and Matthew's motive for changing = he wanted to use the account of the bribery of the guards.

That is a reason for adding onto, not skipping.

I /think/ I was reading your post that concisely said, as reason #5 for rejecting the Long Ending, "the short ending." That was you ... right? I didn't see any text beyond that. But my computer doesn't like this format; maybe there was some glitch.

I specifically said I prefer internal to external.

I said this here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=105838#post105838):
I think Mark actually probably (75%) stopped at 16:8. I do not prefer shorter readings because they are shorter (Acts has generally shown that the longer reading should be preferred in just over half the instances). The shorter ending is morelikely to give rise to the longer ending than the longer ending to the shorter. I think no ending at all is more likelyu to give rise to different endings, which is one reason I favor 16:8 as the true ending.


I did not avoid it at all, Jaltus. I referred you to an excellent resource about the stylistic considerations ("Thank you for enriching my data-base about this, Waterrock." "You're welcome, brother Jaltus.") -- Dr. Bruce Terry's essay. In addition, allow me to point out that there's another online essay (one Google search away: Iverson Irony Mark) that includes, in a footnote, a list of compositions in which sentences end in "gar." So it would not be grammatically shocking for a pericope to end in "gar." But in order for the entire book to end that way (which is what you suppose to have been the case ... today), Mark would have to have been the second known person (Plato being the first) to ever end a book that way. In this light, the grammatical data about "gar" is a point against the notion that Mark ended originally at 16:8.


The more difficult reading is more likely to be originally, and in any event I agree that the gar could be a wash, though I'd like to look into that a bit more.

I think Terry's article was excellent, though not wholly convincing. His defenses against 3 and 4 (the numbering within his article) are just so much handwaving. He needs to say why Mary needs this extra identification here as opposed to other places. His response to the objection from anastas de would only work if we assume Mark has our theology, in that the resurrection was indeed his goal and the witness accounts are important. However, this misses the thrust of 16:1-8 entirely and the book as a whole. Mark is "an apology for the cross," not a list of eye-witnesses to the resurrection. Terry's argument from theology fails.

By the way, at TWeb we tend to argue here instead of just using weblinks. So next time you have an argument to make, make it instead of sending me elsewhere. If nothing else, it is proper netiquette.

[Waterrock]

Dear Jaltus,

I'll go point-by-point with brief responses and then add some fresh material:

J: "...I find it unlikely that Mark's ending would be so well known that Justin would be justified in using such a poor allusion."

That seems sort of circular, though; if one assumes (equally circularly, granted) that the Gospel of Mark had 16:9-20 from the first day it was published in Rome, Justin would surely know it and use it. (Btw, "First Apology" 40 also has some parallels with the Long Ending.)

J: "The Vulgate is late, not early"

The Vulgate Gospels are dated to 383-384. If the Vulgate text is not early, Siniaticus is not early. You yourself described the Armenian version as "early," but it was made /after/ the Vulgate, in about 411-415.

J: "Please date the Gothic version."

350, translated by Wulfilas, who was made bishop of Antioch in 341.

J: "1582 is dated 948 AD! How is that evidence?"

Ephraim the Scribe (a different indivual from Ephrem Syrus) who produced 1582 and some other MSS tended to replicate his exemplars. The note almost certainly is older than the MS in which it is preserved. Also, the note is in Greek, suggesting that the writer was using a Greek text of "Against Heresies."

J: "The Latin version of Irenaeus is only dated to 395 AD, so it is not as early as you argued and it does disagree with the original Irenaeus in a few places."

Are you trying to make a case for the idea that someone slipped Mark 16:19 into the Latin text of "Against Heresies?" It will take more than a guilt-by-association approach. Pointing out that the Latin text occasionally varies with the Greek text (a given) does not mean that it originally varied /here/ (in III:10:5-6).

J: "... I was saying the longer ending would be at least 3rd-4th century."

We seem to have experienced some static, but I think we can get around it by just noting that Codex W weighs in as support for the existence of the Long Ending was around in at least the 200's-300's.


J: "Nor should it [Irenaeus' citation of Mark 16:19] be assumed original if there is no Greek instantiation."

You've got to be kidding! The imposition of such a hurdle is (... charity. gentleness ...) of a nature which no patristic scholar could, should, or would take seriously. You are practically treating the Latin translation -- which is generally a rigidly literal rendering -- as if it might as well not exist. Such a methodology is ... ill-advised.

J: "Here we go again. A friend of a friend said..."

The evidence from P-45 does not deserve to be dismissed, let alone be dismissed so casually. Let's go over P-45 again: it has no text extant from Mark 16. But (as L. Hurtado showed in an exquisitely detailed study) its extant text is closely aligned with the text of W, w/68% agreement. One could almost say that W and P-45 represent a text-type. Ergo, it seems probable that since W has the Long Ending, its relative P-45 did too. This does not have the same weight that a page of Mark 16 from P-45 would have. But it sure is something to consider.

J: "Two verses is not a section."

I think it is a short section, but just to be agreeable, I will cite Mark 8:22-26 (5 verses) an another example of why your statement is not true.

J: "NONE of 16:9-20 appears in either synoptic."

If so, then none of either Synoptic appears in 16:9-20, with the result that any case against the Long Ending based on a theory that it depends on material from Matthew and Luke would collapse.

WR: " How much do we really know about how books were published and disseminated in the first century in the early church? Not much."

J: "Actually, we know quite a bit. I recommend you spend some time reading secondary literature about Origen since the way he published was considered quite out of the ordinary."

I emphasize the phrase "in the first century." Origen is third century.

J: "Your entire argument here is rather speculative."

/Any/ solution is speculative to some degree; i.e., every solution is a theory. The question is not, "Is this a theory?"; the question is, "Does this theory fit the evidence well?"


WR: "If one were to adopt that theory, Luke's motive for changing = he wanted to use the detailed Emmaus account, and Matthew's motive for changing = he wanted to use the account of the bribery of the guards."

J: "That is a reason for adding onto, not skipping."

Surely you are not suggesting that Luke, if he had a short account of the Emmaus encounter, and a long account of the Emmaus encounter which included all the short account's details, would place one after the other.

J: "I think no ending at all is more likelyu to give rise to different endings, which is one reason I favor 16:8 as the true ending."

But to get Mark to end the Gospel at the end of 16:8, one has to come up with a sophisticated motive for him to do so. Why would Mark intimate -- twice, in 14:28 and 16:7 -- that Christ will meet His disciples in Galilee, priming readers to expect a post-resurrection appearance, and then fail to provide an account of any post-resurrection appearance?

(One would also have to explain Matthew's reason for neglecting to mention the Ascension, if his source Mark also did not mention the ascension. And Mark's reason for presenting the women as disobedient, since with the abrupt text, the women are last seen disobeying the angel's instructions.)

I think it is possible, with a lot of creativity, to imagine such sophisticated motives. But when I ask, "Which is more complicated: this irony-rich, grammatically innovative, stylistically subtle motivation for Mark, or the idea that the early Alexandrian text-stream lost the last part of Mark?," the latter seems much less complicated and much less subjective.

J: "He [Dr. Bruce Terry] needs to say why Mary needs this extra identification here as opposed to other places."

He may have figured that it's obvious that Mark is mentioning this to pre-answer the question, "Why didn't the disciples believe her?"

J: "Mark is "an apology for the cross," not a list of eye-witnesses to the resurrection."

Even Gundry (who coined that phrase) did not think Mark intentionally ended at 16:8, as I recall. Additionally, one can explain the cross and still describe the post-resurrection appearances (which are clearly forecast).

J: "By the way, at TWeb we tend to argue here instead of just using weblinks."

Understood, but surely it would be inefficient not to make use of readily-available materials online (just as you have referred me to reference-books) to bolster one's arguments. If a cherry is all one needs, there's no reason to grow a cherry tree when a bowl of cherries is sitting on the table.

And now, a list of witnesses which weigh in (whether a gram or a kilogram) for the Long Ending:
Papias. Epistula Apostolorum. Justin Martyr (First Apology 40 & 45). "Gospel of Peter" (use of "mourned and wept," a la 16:10). Tatian's Diatessaron. Irenaeus (Against Heresies III:10:5-6). Tertullian (Treatise on Baptism - possible free rendering of 16:16). Hippolytus (disputed evidence: Peri Charismaton and a reference in "Didascalia Apostolorum." Didascalia is pre-300 no matter how you slice it, though). P-45's relationship to W. Vincentius of Thibaris (256, at the 7th Council of Carthage). "Rebaptism" source used by Ursinus. The non-extant copy used by the author of the Freer Logion. Porphyry [yes, in response to someone's previous question, this Porphyry is Plotinus' assistant] according to Macarius Magnes (but M.M. doesn't explicit say he's quoting Porphyry; that is a deduction based on the similarities of some other quotations of Porphyry with the stuff M.M. responded to). Eusebius' correspondent Marinus. Asterius, maybe (cited in UBS4. I haven't seen the text firsthand, though). Aphraates (a.k.a. Aphrahat, writing "First Demonstration" in 345). Ulfilas, translator of the Gothic Version (350, exemplars almost certainly pre-341). The Curetonian Syriac MS. "Acts of Pilate." The Peshitta. Ephrem Syrus (using the Diatessaron c. 370). Apostolic Constitutions (380, possibly echoing Didascalia Apost.). Jerome's Vulgate Gospels (said by Jerome to be based on old manuscripts). Ambrose.

That brings us to A.D. 400. Slightly less early evidence: Alexandrinus, Bezae, W, Jerome's citation in "Against the Pelagians" 2:14-15, the Peshitta (possibly pre-410, and not likely to include sections of text that lacked widespread acceptance). The lectionary used by Augustine. John Cassian. A citation of 16:20 made by Nestorius and quoted by Cyril of Alexandria.

Plus the copy that the copyist of Vaticanus was thinking of when he left a unique, prolonged blank space after Mark 16:8.

Kinda gives a different impression that the one C.S. Mann gave his readers, doesn't it.

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[Jaltus]

On Porphyry:

His quote is from the early 300s, and it is a possible quote at best.

On Aphraates:

A Syriac document dating from 337 AD and is only a possible quote.

Neither of these are very strong attestations. Both would rank in the "dubious" catagory.

[Waterrock]

Dear Jaltus,

Here is one of the passages from Porphyry-according-to-Macarius-Magnes:

"Again, consider in detail that other passage, where He says, "Such signs shall follow them that believe: they shall lay hands upon sick folk, and they shall recover, and if they drink any deadly drug, it shall in no wise hurt them.""

This is a Crystal-Clear Quotation of Mark 16:18, Jaltus!

You described that passage in the following way: "from the early 300's, and it is a possible quote at best." Ridiculous.

Porphyry died in 305. He wrote quite a while before that. So there is no escaping the conclusion that Porphyry's testimony pre-dates Vaticanus. It almost certainly pre-dates Eusebius' "Ad Marinum," too.

Regarding Aphraates, you said that it is "A Syriac document dating from 337 AD and is only a possible quote."

Of course it is a Syriac document. It is still perfectly good evidence! I hope your allergy to versional evidence (except when it supports your position) is cured soon. In the meantime, here is the passage from "First Demonstration," paragraph 17 --

"And again when our Lord gave the sacrament of baptism to His apostles, He said thus to them: Whosoever believeth and is baptized shall live, and whosoever believeth not shall be condemned," and, "Again He said thus: ‘This shall be the sign for those that believe; they shall speak with new tongues and shall cast out demons, and they shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall be made whole."

"Only a possible quote," Jaltus? Not a very strong attestation, Jaltus? "Both would rank in the "dubious" catagory [sic]," Jaltus?

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I don't intend to be mean. I intend to make a point about the level of seriousness with which Jaltus' approach deserves to be taken. I think Jaltus' own statements about Porphyry and Aphraates make this point for me.

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[Jaltus]

No, the possibility is that it is a quote of Prophyry. As for the dating, the site I read said right around 300 would be the date for his writing.

As for Aphaartes, I am reporting to you what I read from a pro-Mark 16:9-20 site.

Yes, both are possibilities, but neither of them is hard evidence. If you cannot see that, then you are just being dogmatic. Earlier you were perfectly frank about what was solid evidence and what was not.

In any event, I still agree with most scholars who say it is the internal considerations which are the problem.

The Vulgate Gospels are dated to 383-384. If the Vulgate text is not early, Siniaticus is not early. You yourself described the Armenian version as "early," but it was made /after/ the Vulgate, in about 411-415.

I was referring to the dates we were discussing, not to text criticism as a whole. I thought you realized by now that I had conceeded the ending to be at least from the 3-4 Century.

J: "1582 is dated 948 AD! How is that evidence?"

Ephraim the Scribe (a different indivual from Ephrem Syrus) who produced 1582 and some other MSS tended to replicate his exemplars. The note almost certainly is older than the MS in which it is preserved. Also, the note is in Greek, suggesting that the writer was using a Greek text of "Against Heresies."

Do you have any proof that the note is older than the document it is written on? I find that a hard one to swallow, though you could have good reasoning that would change my mind.


Are you trying to make a case for the idea that someone slipped Mark 16:19 into the Latin text of "Against Heresies?" It will take more than a guilt-by-association approach. Pointing out that the Latin text occasionally varies with the Greek text (a given) does not mean that it originally varied /here/ (in III:10:5-6).

But when versions conflict (in general), it is the Latin that has the longer and the Greek which has the shorter (which is where I am guessing they decided that shorter is better, though erroniously). This is evidenced in Origen (one of the few Fathers I have worked with in detail). Here the evidence is more in your favor, though.

Do you know if the Greek agrees? NA 27 lists only ther Latin and not the Greek text of "Against Heresies".

We seem to have experienced some static, but I think we can get around it by just noting that Codex W weighs in as support for the existence of the Long Ending was around in at least the 200's-300's.

Which would be exactly what I said.

You've got to be kidding! The imposition of such a hurdle is (... charity. gentleness ...) of a nature which no patristic scholar could, should, or would take seriously. You are practically treating the Latin translation -- which is generally a rigidly literal rendering -- as if it might as well not exist. Such a methodology is ... ill-advised.

Again, what do the Greek manuscripts say? Is it in any of them?

The evidence from P-45 does not deserve to be dismissed, let alone be dismissed so casually. Let's go over P-45 again: it has no text extant from Mark 16. But (as L. Hurtado showed in an exquisitely detailed study) its extant text is closely aligned with the text of W, w/68% agreement. One could almost say that W and P-45 represent a text-type. Ergo, it seems probable that since W has the Long Ending, its relative P-45 did too. This does not have the same weight that a page of Mark 16 from P-45 would have. But it sure is something to consider.

How many times can the lack of the ending become evidence for the ending? Really, this is getting quite out of hand! A 68% agreement does not put them in the same family (depending on a 68% agreement of what) let alone link them as closely as you seem to be arguing. Surely you see how weak an argument this is?

I think it is a short section, but just to be agreeable, I will cite Mark 8:22-26 (5 verses) an another example of why your statement is not true.

Interestingly enough, Aland cites John 9:1-7 as a loose parallel here. Just FYI, not an argument.

If so, then none of either Synoptic appears in 16:9-20, with the result that any case against the Long Ending based on a theory that it depends on material from Matthew and Luke would collapse.

I think it should collapse. There are slight echoes of the other gospels in there, but nothing overtly strong, with the exception of 12-13.

J: "Actually, we know quite a bit. I recommend you spend some time reading secondary literature about Origen since the way he published was considered quite out of the ordinary."

I emphasize the phrase "in the first century." Origen is third century.

Just because he is third century does not mean they write nothing about 1st century practices. Again, I recommend reading about Origen.

/Any/ solution is speculative to some degree; i.e., every solution is a theory. The question is not, "Is this a theory?"; the question is, "Does this theory fit the evidence well?"

Not at all my point.


WR: "If one were to adopt that theory, Luke's motive for changing = he wanted to use the detailed Emmaus account, and Matthew's motive for changing = he wanted to use the account of the bribery of the guards."

J: "That is a reason for adding onto, not skipping."

Surely you are not suggesting that Luke, if he had a short account of the Emmaus encounter, and a long account of the Emmaus encounter which included all the short account's details, would place one after the other.

No, I am not saying that. However, what if it does not have all the deatils? It sure looks like he skipped 14-18.


But to get Mark to end the Gospel at the end of 16:8, one has to come up with a sophisticated motive for him to do so. Why would Mark intimate -- twice, in 14:28 and 16:7 -- that Christ will meet His disciples in Galilee, priming readers to expect a post-resurrection appearance, and then fail to provide an account of any post-resurrection appearance?

Perhaps because what came after was well-known. Why does Acts end the way it does? Because the themes of Acts were finished, even though Paul's fate was up in the air. For that matter, assuming that this account is parallel in some way to the others, Jesus appeared to them in Jerusalem, not in Galilee. Therefore, the ending does not fit those verses anyway, especially due to the timing given.

(One would also have to explain Matthew's reason for neglecting to mention the Ascension, if his source Mark also did not mention the ascension. And Mark's reason for presenting the women as disobedient, since with the abrupt text, the women are last seen disobeying the angel's instructions.)

I think you made a mistake here, namely if Mark does not talk of the ascension, it would be natural for Matthew not to mention it. I am not sure what your problem is here other than it lends weight to my argument.

The women's disobedience is irrelevent, for it fits the themes Mark has been using throughout the gospel.

I think it is possible, with a lot of creativity, to imagine such sophisticated motives. But when I ask, "Which is more complicated: this irony-rich, grammatically innovative, stylistically subtle motivation for Mark, or the idea that the early Alexandrian text-stream lost the last part of Mark?," the latter seems much less complicated and much less subjective.

Not at all! It is much more likely that this ending was added because there was no ascension, because the women (highly revered) fialed to obey the angel, because the ending was so abrupt. There is no reason for an ending to be dropped and every reason for the ending to be added. Remember, scribes are more likely to make the text smoother, not rougher. Is it more likely that someone will add or remove the ending? Much more likely that someone would add since taking it away makes the document much more difficult to understand.

That is why one of the most important "rules" in text criticism is going with the reading which is most likely to explain the others. No informed scribe would drop the ending to Mark, but they would add it.

He may have figured that it's obvious that Mark is mentioning this to pre-answer the question, "Why didn't the disciples believe her?"

This is not a reason for the specific identification given. It is a question raised by the text, but it in no way (at least in my mind) is linked with who she is.

Even Gundry (who coined that phrase) did not think Mark intentionally ended at 16:8, as I recall. Additionally, one can explain the cross and still describe the post-resurrection appearances (which are clearly forecast).

I am not sure what Gundry thinks about the ending. I did a quick search, but no results on that front. However, it really does not matter what he thinks. Also, the forecast is not as clear as you state since the forecast does not match the fulfillment.

Understood, but surely it would be inefficient not to make use of readily-available materials online (just as you have referred me to reference-books) to bolster one's arguments. If a cherry is all one needs, there's no reason to grow a cherry tree when a bowl of cherries is sitting on the table.


I understand, it was a heads-up, not a warning.

I still think the internal issues are important, and you are looking mostly at external. I will say that the external tends to be in your favor, probably by about 60-40. I think internal goes the other direction, however, and possibly at a larger percentage (70-30? 65-45?).

[Waterrock]

Dear Jaltus,

Once again point-by-point:

J: “No, the possibility is that it is a quote of Prophyry. As for the dating, the site I read said right around 300 would be the date for his writing.”

It is very, very probably a quote from Porphyry. Your source probably used the date-of-death as a safe estimate for assigning the date of writing, but 270-300 would be a better estimate than early fourth century.

J: “As for Aphaartes, I am reporting to you what I read from a pro-Mark 16:9-20 site.”

That does not matter in light of the explicit quotation I provided!

J: “Neither of them is hard evidence. If you cannot see that, then you are just being dogmatic.”

They are both hard evidence, Jaltus. No matter how you slice it, Macarius Magnes quotes either Porphyry (which is very, very likely in light of the parallels between what M.M. quotes and quotations of Porphyry in other writings) or a heretic virtually contemporary to Porphyry, and M.M. himself accepts the Long Ending. And no matter how you slice it, Aphraates clearly uses Mark 16:16-18 in First Demonstration, paragraph 17. I am not the one being dogmatic here.

J: “In any event, I still agree with most scholars who say it is the internal considerations which are the problem.”

Even after reading Bruce Terry’s article. Hmm.

J: “Do you have any proof that the note [in 1582] is older than the document it is written on? I find that a hard one to swallow, though you could have good reasoning that would change my mind.”

1582 is part of family-1. A similar note is in MS 72, as I recall (sorry, the resources are not on hand here to verify for sure). As supplemental evidence, notice how Irenaeus seems to make another use of the Long Ending elsewhere in “Against Heresies” (Book II:32:4). Plus, I state again that the note is in Greek, implying that its originator had access to the Greek of “Against Heresies.”

J: “When versions conflict (in general), it is the Latin that has the longer and the Greek which has the shorter (which is where I am guessing they decided that shorter is better, though erroniously).”
Notice, however, that in this case, there is no conflict. The Greek of this portion of “Against Heresies” is silent (being non-extant), not contradictory.

J: “How many times can the lack of the ending become evidence for the ending? Really, this is getting quite out of hand! A 68% agreement does not put them in the same family (depending on a 68% agreement of what) let alone link them as closely as you seem to be arguing. Surely you see how weak an argument this is?”

If you found a tiny piece of text which looked like it came from a New Testament, and it said, “16 For God so loved the w,” would you say that it is weak to make a surmise about the rest of the text based on a study of more complete copies? The approach I am using here is not as strong as the last page of Mark in P45 would be (and I am not pretending that it is), but it is not weak. First of all, a 68% agreement does indeed put them in the same family – Colwell proposed 70% agreement as a sufficient level to posit a genealogical relationship between MSS, and W and P45 come very close to that. What’s more, P45 is not nearly as close to anything else. I grant that this is a hypothesis, but that does not make it a weak hypothesis.

J: “I think [the objection that the Long Ending depends on material from the other Gospels] should collapse. There are slight echoes of the other gospels in there, but nothing overtly strong, with the exception of 12-13.”

And 12-13, of course, has no verbal affinities with the long Emmaus Encounter in Luke. The only thing they have in common is subject-material which was well-known throughout the early church. So even here there are no grounds to posit that Mark depended on Luke. Thank you for stating this point so clearly. You and I now oppose most commentators about this, btw.

J: “…what if it does not have all the deatils? It sure looks like he skipped 14-18.”

As a non-telepath, I cannot discern exactly what was going through Luke’s head. But if he was not using a pre-publication draft of Mark (which I think he was), and he knew the Long Ending, he may have skipped some material for space considerations, or to avoid raising fresh questions, and to save some details for the beginning of Acts (where in 1:5 he presents Jesus telling His disciples that they will be baptized with the Holy Spirit (that is, they will speak in new tongues).

J: “Perhaps [Mark did not describe post-resurrection appearances of Christ] because what came after was well-known. Why does Acts end the way it does? Because the themes of Acts were finished, even though Paul's fate was up in the air.”

This is the same Mark who told his readers that the grass was green (in 6:39). *Lots* of things in the Gospel of Mark were well-known. Part of the reason for writing a book about a familiar topic is to have the record of events in a definitive form, so as to prevent embellishment in oral tradition. The more important an event, the more likely an author would record it.

Also, there’s a big difference between Mark’s situation (some 30 years after the resurrection) and Luke’s (immediately after Paul’s release) – Acts ends because Luke had nothing else to write. That was certainly not true for Mark!

J: “Jesus appeared to them in Jerusalem, not in Galilee. Therefore, the ending does not fit those verses anyway, especially due to the timing given.”

Look again. Jesus says He will meet them in Galilee in 16:7. No other location is mentioned throughout the Long Ending. The natural understanding would be, then, either (a) Mary Magdalene told them to go to Galilee, but they did not believe her, and stayed in Judea, or (b) the encounter described in 16:14 took place in Galilee.

J: “If Mark does not talk of the ascension, it would be natural for Matthew not to mention it.”

On the contrary, if Matthew knew that his primary narrative-source, Mark, did not mention anything about Christ’s ascension into heaven – an event which he, Matthew, had personally witnessed – then it is difficult to provide a reason why Matthew would intentionally keep his readers uninformed about it, instead of adding a line or two to his Gospel.

J: “The women's disobedience is irrelevent, for it fits the themes Mark has been using throughout the gospel.”

It may be tangential to the issue at hand, but your current position certainly does unavoidably raise the question of how Mark the Divinely Inspired can plainly present the women as disobedient, while Matthew the Divinely Inspired presents them as obedient.

J: “It is much more likely that this ending was added because there was no ascension, because the women (highly revered) fialed to obey the angel, because the ending was so abrupt.”

To me, those look like very good reasons for an author to keep on writing! In addition, this ending leaves the disciples uninformed about the resurrection and uncommissioned to spread the gospel. A piece of the message proclaimed by Peter (which is what Mark was supposed to be preserving, according to Papias, Clement, etc.) is missing.

J: “There is no reason for an ending to be dropped…”

If the text was lost due to an accident in transmission, there doesn’t have to be a text-based reason. That's why they're called accidents. Furthermore, I already mentioned one possible reason why a copyist could/would intentionally remove the Long Ending: it wasn’t in a pre-publication draft of Mark, and he thought it was spurious.

J: “Scribes are more likely to make the text smoother, not rougher. Is it more likely that someone will add or remove the ending? Much more likely that someone would add since taking it away makes the document much more difficult to understand.”

Scribes are not the only ones with an interest in producing a text that is not inexorably difficult. So are authors. What you are doing is simply an over-mechanical, formulaic abuse of “diffficult is bettter.”

J: “… one of the most important "rules" in text criticism is going with the reading which is most likely to explain the others. No informed scribe would drop the ending to Mark, but they would add it.”

The original presence of the Long Ending explains the others, once it is seen that the Short Ending originated in a narrow text-stream where the Long Ending was lost, removed, or replaced. As for your statement that “No informed scribe” would drop the ending, I think a few qualifiers are in order:
(a) not every copyist was well-informed (such as the scribe of Bobiensis),
(b) it is not necessary to assume that the text was intentionally deleted, and
(c) more than one plausible scenario can be imagined in which a highly disciplined copyist would remove the Long Ending.

J: “This is not a reason for the specific identification given. It is a question raised by the text, but it in no way (at least in my mind) is linked with who [Mary Magdalene] is.”

I didn’t say it was linked with who she is. It is linked with why the disciples did not believe her. (Mary Mag is not, btw, the only individual in the Gospel of Mark who is introduced, and then has an extra detail given later.)

J: “Also, the forecast is not as clear as you state since the forecast does not match the fulfillment.”

An early Christian reader of Mark 16 would either understand the encounter in 16:14 to be in Galilee (in which case, it matches the forecast exactly), or he would figure that Jesus had appeared in Galilee, found no disciples, and re-appeared in Judea.

J: “I still think the internal issues are important, and you are looking mostly at external. I will say that the external tends to be in your favor, probably by about 60-40.”

I think 95-5 is more like it, especially when one considers that Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Coptic Codex P. Palau 184 all come from the same locale and exhibit remarkable similarities in script and decoration. Perhaps we can look more closely at that point in another post.

If I understand you correctly, you just said that the external evidence in favor of the Long Ending outweighs the external evidence against it. In that case, it would seem that you would agree that all the Bible-footnotes that cite manuscript-evidence as the reason for their bracketing, italicizing, or removal of Mark 16:9-20 are rather misleading, and would be improved if, instead, they cited internal considerations as the basis for the bracketing, italicizing, or removal. Yes?

Btw, if you’re willing to consider Mark 16:9-20 uncanonical chiefly on the basis of internal considerations, why stop there? Why not delete John 21:1-25, or at least John 21:25? Internal considerations veritably /scream/ there. And while you’re at it, why not remove Second Peter from the Bible, because it is the consensus of many scholars -- based on internal considerations -- that it was not written by Peter. I don't mean to diverge from the main question, but I am wondering, now that you’ve got the ball of internal considerations rolling, Jaltus, how do you propose to stop it?

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[Jaltus]

Today @ 03:21 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=110306#post110306)
Waterrock:
It is very, very probably a quote from Porphyry. Your source probably used the date-of-death as a safe estimate for assigning the date of writing, but 270-300 would be a better estimate than early fourth century.

Maybe, maybe not.

That does not matter in light of the explicit quotation I provided!

They are both hard evidence, Jaltus. No matter how you slice it, Macarius Magnes quotes either Porphyry (which is very, very likely in light of the parallels between what M.M. quotes and quotations of Porphyry in other writings) or a heretic virtually contemporary to Porphyry, and M.M. himself accepts the Long Ending. And no matter how you slice it, Aphraates clearly uses Mark 16:16-18 in First Demonstration, paragraph 17. I am not the one being dogmatic here.

If it is not Porphyry, then how do you know the dating? This seems a bit question begging to me.

Even after reading Bruce Terry’s article. Hmm.

I specifically mentioned what was wrong with his article, so yes.

1582 is part of family-1. A similar note is in MS 72, as I recall (sorry, the resources are not on hand here to verify for sure). As supplemental evidence, notice how Irenaeus seems to make another use of the Long Ending elsewhere in “Against Heresies” (Book II:32:4). Plus, I state again that the note is in Greek, implying that its originator had access to the Greek of “Against Heresies.”

72 is later than 1582, as it is from the 11th century. The lack of it appearing on the rest of family 1 would show a serious chronological problem, then. As for the note appearing in Greek, that is a small point in your favor, but not much of one since it is a note on a MS from 900!

Notice, however, that in this case, there is no conflict. The Greek of this portion of “Against Heresies” is silent (being non-extant), not contradictory.

True, but that was not what we were talking about at the time. My point was that the quote is not necessarily as old as you would wish.

If you found a tiny piece of text which looked like it came from a New Testament, and it said, “16 For God so loved the w,” would you say that it is weak to make a surmise about the rest of the text based on a study of more complete copies? The approach I am using here is not as strong as the last page of Mark in P45 would be (and I am not pretending that it is), but it is not weak. First of all, a 68% agreement does indeed put them in the same family – Colwell proposed 70% agreement as a sufficient level to posit a genealogical relationship between MSS, and W and P45 come very close to that. What’s more, P45 is not nearly as close to anything else. I grant that this is a hypothesis, but that does not make it a weak hypothesis.

Colwell proposed 70% for problem passages, not for the entire text. (IIRC, it is the Colwell-Tune methodology) The question becomes, is there a 68% agreement in problem passages or in the entire document? That is the information my question was posed to ellicit. Also, in general, papyri tend to avoid familial connections, though tending toward Alexandrian rather than any other form of the text. Are you now saying that P 45 should be considered Byzantine? If so, that is news to me. The Alands say that it is "free text" and shows characteristics of no specific type.

And 12-13, of course, has no verbal affinities with the long Emmaus Encounter in Luke. The only thing they have in common is subject-material which was well-known throughout the early church. So even here there are no grounds to posit that Mark depended on Luke. Thank you for stating this point so clearly. You and I now oppose most commentators about this, btw.

Won't be the first time for me.

As a non-telepath, I cannot discern exactly what was going through Luke’s head. But if he was not using a pre-publication draft of Mark (which I think he was), and he knew the Long Ending, he may have skipped some material for space considerations, or to avoid raising fresh questions, and to save some details for the beginning of Acts (where in 1:5 he presents Jesus telling His disciples that they will be baptized with the Holy Spirit (that is, they will speak in new tongues).

Well, first I disagree with what being baptized in the Spirit means, but that is not relevent to this discussion. Second, this is a rather poor argument, but then anything based on this issue is going to be speculative. I believe the lack of crossover between the other synoptics would point in my favor, as you have to posit this "prepublication" theory which assumes 1) publication and 2) Luke had a copy of the prepublication when he had never met Mark.

This is the same Mark who told his readers that the grass was green (in 6:39). *Lots* of things in the Gospel of Mark were well-known. Part of the reason for writing a book about a familiar topic is to have the record of events in a definitive form, so as to prevent embellishment in oral tradition. The more important an event, the more likely an author would record it.

Yes and no. The assumption of timing is important. Why is it that no NT book records the destruction of the temple when at least 1 of them was written after its destruction?

Also, there’s a big difference between Mark’s situation (some 30 years after the resurrection) and Luke’s (immediately after Paul’s release) – Acts ends because Luke had nothing else to write. That was certainly not true for Mark!

It would certainly not be true for Luke either. He could at least tell the audience that Paul was not in fact put to death in Rome. Or is this another case of something important in the history of the church not being mentioned?

Look again. Jesus says He will meet them in Galilee in 16:7. No other location is mentioned throughout the Long Ending. The natural understanding would be, then, either (a) Mary Magdalene told them to go to Galilee, but they did not believe her, and stayed in Judea, or (b) the encounter described in 16:14 took place in Galilee.

They would assume it until the saw the same scene in Luke except it is taking place in Jerusalem. That, my friend, is a serious problem since it makes Mark not only inaccurate but highly unlikely. Why would Mark record an appearance that happened after Luke's and yet still show it to be the first one? Is the Bible suddenly errant?

On the contrary, if Matthew knew that his primary narrative-source, Mark, did not mention anything about Christ’s ascension into heaven – an event which he, Matthew, had personally witnessed – then it is difficult to provide a reason why Matthew would intentionally keep his readers uninformed about it, instead of adding a line or two to his Gospel.

Backwards thinking here. If Matthew is indeed using Mark as a source, and Matthew has tended to add mostly just teachings of Jesus, why would he add a narrative scene? This goes against everything Matthew has done with his source. Sorry, but my speculation fits the data better than yours.

It may be tangential to the issue at hand, but your current position certainly does unavoidably raise the question of how Mark the Divinely Inspired can plainly present the women as disobedient, while Matthew the Divinely Inspired presents them as obedient.

Think about this with respect to the Messianic Secret (a theme Mark portrays and Matthew overthrows), and you will see how it works.

To me, those look like very good reasons for an author to keep on writing! In addition, this ending leaves the disciples uninformed about the resurrection and uncommissioned to spread the gospel. A piece of the message proclaimed by Peter (which is what Mark was supposed to be preserving, according to Papias, Clement, etc.) is missing.

However, the ending fits the themes running through Mark, whereas the Longer Ending fits none of the themes. remember that this is a work of literature as well as canonical. It has themes and plot and development, but the longer ending does away with all that. Why?

If the text was lost due to an accident in transmission, there doesn’t have to be a text-based reason. That's why they're called accidents. Furthermore, I already mentioned one possible reason why a copyist could/would intentionally remove the Long Ending: it wasn’t in a pre-publication draft of Mark, and he thought it was spurious.

Spurious readings were generally recorded by scribes but noted as possibly spurious. this is not a good reason.

Scribes are not the only ones with an interest in producing a text that is not inexorably difficult. So are authors. What you are doing is simply an over-mechanical, formulaic abuse of “diffficult is bettter.”

Difficult is more likely original, especially in Mark whoise syntax is, shall we say, less than classicaly based.

The original presence of the Long Ending explains the others, once it is seen that the Short Ending originated in a narrow text-stream where the Long Ending was lost, removed, or replaced. As for your statement that “No informed scribe” would drop the ending, I think a few qualifiers are in order:
(a) not every copyist was well-informed (such as the scribe of Bobiensis),
(b) it is not necessary to assume that the text was intentionally deleted, and
(c) more than one plausible scenario can be imagined in which a highly disciplined copyist would remove the Long Ending.

a) True, but then you would have to show that those of Aleph and B were not well-informed, something you will be unable to show.

b) Not necessary, no, but it is not necessary to assume it was original either.

c) True, but that is highly unlikely. You yourself have argued that the scribe for one intentionally left a blank for it in order to show he knew of it, but thought it should not be in there. This would show a well-informed scribe who left it out on purpose, assuming you are right.

In other words, your arguments tend to work against you rather than for you, here, showing my scenario to be more likely.

I didn’t say it was linked with who she is. It is linked with why the disciples did not believe her. (Mary Mag is not, btw, the only individual in the Gospel of Mark who is introduced, and then has an extra detail given later.)

Why would the apostles not believe her? This is a seeming non sequitor.

An early Christian reader of Mark 16 would either understand the encounter in 16:14 to be in Galilee (in which case, it matches the forecast exactly), or he would figure that Jesus had appeared in Galilee, found no disciples, and re-appeared in Judea.

Again, synoptically speaking, you are wrong. An early Christian reader would notice this problem with Luke.

I think 95-5 is more like it, especially when one considers that Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Coptic Codex P. Palau 184 all come from the same locale and exhibit remarkable similarities in script and decoration. Perhaps we can look more closely at that point in another post.

But then you are much more certain of the shakey evidence than I am. It is an impressive stack of leaky buckets (as the illustration goes), but it is still a stack of leaky buckets.

If I understand you correctly, you just said that the external evidence in favor of the Long Ending outweighs the external evidence against it. In that case, it would seem that you would agree that all the Bible-footnotes that cite manuscript-evidence as the reason for their bracketing, italicizing, or removal of Mark 16:9-20 are rather misleading, and would be improved if, instead, they cited internal considerations as the basis for the bracketing, italicizing, or removal. Yes?

Not necessarily. I think citing text critical issues to the average layman is going to be more confusing than helpful no matter the reason. A better footnote in all circumstances would be something like “scholars have various reasons for believing this section to be of dubious origins” or the like.

Btw, if you’re willing to consider Mark 16:9-20 uncanonical chiefly on the basis of internal considerations, why stop there? Why not delete John 21:1-25, or at least John 21:25? Internal considerations veritably /scream/ there. And while you’re at it, why not remove Second Peter from the Bible, because it is the consensus of many scholars -- based on internal considerations -- that it was not written by Peter. I don't mean to diverge from the main question, but I am wondering, now that you’ve got the ball of internal considerations rolling, Jaltus, how do you propose to stop it?

Ahhh, ye olde slippery slope argument.

First, because it is a combination of internal and external reasons. If there were no external reasons, then there would be no need to consult internal matters. I believe external problems should signal where there are issues but then internal matters should decide said issues.

Second, because there is no need to. Unlike many scholars, I believe the Bible is inerrant in the original autographs. I believe that the ecumenical councils did the right things and were lead by God. I believe God does interact with history.

For that matter, I believe in God, something many critics cannot themselves say.

However, it was a good attempt to try to caste me as some liberal who wishes to do away with scripture. Quite honest and forthright of you.

[Waterrock]

Dear Jaltus,

Point-by-point again:

J: “Maybe, maybe not.”

There’s no maybe. You are unnecessarily smudging the date when Porphyry wrote “Against the Christians.” It looks to me as if you are rather reluctant to "follow the evidence where it leads." Instead, it looks like you have a desire to reduce the impact of his testimony.

J: “If it is not Porphyry, then how do you know the dating? This seems a bit question begging to me.”

I’m willing to share the same recklessness that practically all other investigators (including Harnack) have exhibited and say categorically that M.M. was quoting Porphyry. You have not offered a single reason for assigning the work to any other author. I invite you to consider the reasoning offered at
http://www.ccel.org/p/pearse/morefathers/macarius_apocriticus.htm for accepting Porphyry as the source.

J: “I specifically mentioned what was wrong with [Bruce Terry’s] article, so yes.”

You mentioned two points as “hand-waving.” If that was all that was wrong with the article, Jaltus, then hardly anything remains of your internal considerations that has not been adequately dealt with. (The vocabulary-based objections, for example, have evaporated.)

J: “72 is later than 1582, as it is from the 11th century.”

But it is not a descendant of 1582, so one would either have to posit that somehow two annotators independently made Greek notes about Irenaeus’ statement at the same point in the text, or that the notes in both were based on an earlier note. I prefer the latter possibility, but either way, the evidence for the originality of the passage in “Against Heresies” is strengthened.

WR: “…there is no conflict. The Greek of this portion of “Against Heresies” is silent (being non-extant), not contradictory.”

J: “True, but that was not what we were talking about at the time. My point was that the quote is not necessarily as old as you would wish.”

Whaddayamean that’s not what we were talking about? You asked me – twice – about the existence of the Greek text of “Against Heresies”! Now you know. So now you have no excuse for pretending that there is a disagreement /about this/ between the Greek and Latin evidence for Irenaeus.

J: “The question becomes, is there a 68% agreement in problem passages or in the entire document? That is the information my question was posed to ellicit.”

I don’t have Hurtado’s study handy to check, but I’m pretty sure that one could take either approach and reach the same, or nearly same, level of agreement. No matter what approach one takes – classical divisions into text-forms, or Alands’ Categories, or whatever, no matter how you slice it, close textual affinities exist between P45 and W.

J: “Are you now saying that P 45 should be considered Byzantine? If so, that is news to me. The Alands say that it is "free text" and shows characteristics of no specific type.”

Certainly I am *not* saying that P45 should be considered Byzantine. I am saying that P45 and W represent an independent free text, and that they are genealogically connected. They are not Byzantine, Alexandrian, Western, and – as Hurtado proved – not Caesarean.

WR: “You and I now oppose most commentators [by affirming that Mark 16:9-20 exhibits no demonstrable dependence upon Matthew, Luke, or John].

J: “Won't be the first time for me.”

Surely you realize that when this point is granted, a major chunk of the internal consideraions that are frequently used to object to the originality of the Long Ending dissolves.

J: “I believe the lack of crossover between the other synoptics would point in my favor, as you have to posit this "prepublication" theory which assumes 1) publication and 2) Luke had a copy of the prepublication when he had never met Mark.”

It would be a rather big tangent to walk through the case for Ur-Markus. But I would say, at least, that some of the Minor Agreements can be enlisted in the case. It’s a rather minute assumption to assume publication, since, after all, the book /was/ disseminated, and its author (Mark) and main source (Peter) were known, even though that information is not specified in the text of the Gospel-account. As for the second point – though I am opening up a tangent – I am curious as to why you think Luke had never met Mark before A.D. 62/63.

J: “Why is it that no NT book records the destruction of the temple when at least 1 of them was written after its destruction?”

Because (a) the destruction of Jerusalem was not germane, and (b) the destruction of Jerusalem had been dealt with in other writings, for starters. But what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? There’s simply no comparison to make between an account about Jesus which (you say) foreshadows but then does not describe post-resurrection appearances, and a short polemical letter against heretics which does not mention the destruction of Jerusalem (in the case of Jude); nor can Mark (which is about events in the past) be compared with Revelation (which is chiefly about events in the future, at least, the future as seen from the perspective of its first readers).

WR: “…Acts ends because Luke had nothing else to write. That was certainly not true for Mark!”

J: “It would certainly not be true for Luke either. He could at least tell the audience that Paul was not in fact put to death in Rome.”

That is implied by the statement that Paul was under house arrest for two whole years. Ramsey argues that this is the equivalent of stating that the statutory period in which the accusers were required to appear and make a case, or else default, expired. Also, the impact of what I said apparently did not sink in: Mark was writing more than 30 years after the events he described; he had plenty of source-material to work with (such as Peter’s sermons, which include post-resurrection appearances and the ascension). Whereas Luke was writing immediately after the events he had described; the last part of Acts appears to be an up-to-the-minute account. See the difference? Luke /could/ not write a more up-to-the-minute account than he wrote. That is not the case in Mark; there is no (valid) comparison between Luke’s motivations for omission (there was nothing to omit) and Mark’s alleged motivations.

WR: “The natural understanding would be, then, either (a) Mary Magdalene told them to go to Galilee, but they did not believe her, and stayed in Judea, or (b) the encounter described in 16:14 took place in Galilee.”

J: They would assume it until the saw the same scene in Luke except it is taking place in Jerusalem. That, my friend, is a serious problem since it makes Mark not only inaccurate but highly unlikely.”

It does not make Mark inaccurate at all. Besides, there’s an unavoidable “huh” when one considers the first impression of a reading of the Great Commission in Matthew and Luke side-by-side regarding its location. Mark (who does not name the location explicitly – it /might/ be Galilee, or Jerusalem) does not add any new level of difficulty to the issue.

J: “Why would Mark record an appearance that happened after Luke's and yet still show it to be the first one?”

Eh? It seems that your conclusion – that the Long Ending post-dates Luke – is invading your equation. Mark selected one of several appearances to include in his account, plus the ascension (a change of scene seems implied at 19a). Luke would simply be expanding on that sequence, if he knew it.

J: “If Matthew is indeed using Mark as a source, and Matthew has tended to add mostly just teachings of Jesus, why would he add a narrative scene?”

Because it would be of colossal theological significance, of course. Your position requires that Matthew (a) witnessed the Ascension, (b) knew that a composition which was likely to embody the definitive record of Jesus’ ministry did not mention the Ascension, and (c) nevertheless, when writing his own Gospel-account, Matthew did not mention the ascension. Just how trivial do you think the Ascension was to the apostles and their students in the early church?

WR: “…your current position … raises the question of how Mark the Divinely Inspired can plainly present the women as disobedient, while Matthew the Divinely Inspired presents them as obedient.”

J: “Think about this with respect to the Messianic Secret (a theme Mark portrays and Matthew overthrows), and you will see how it works.”

Secret, Schmecret; that does not turn two opposite statements into agreement. Anyone reading Mark with the abrupt text only would conclude that the women disobeyed and remained silent. Anyone reading Matthew would conclude that the women obeyed.

“ To me, those look like very good reasons for an author to keep on writing! In addition, this ending leaves the disciples uninformed about the resurrection and uncommissioned to spread the gospel. A piece of the message proclaimed by Peter (which is what Mark was supposed to be preserving, according to Papias, Clement, etc.) is missing. ”


J: “The ending fits the themes running through Mark, whereas the Longer Ending fits none of the themes.”

That is preposterous. The theme of the weakness of the disciples is a significant point throughout the book (but the weakness of the women is certainly not – they are not even mentioned until 15:40). The emphasis on preaching the gospel appears throughout the book. The focus on signs of power that demonstrate authority – who will dare deny that the Gospel of Mark focuses on demonstrations of Christ’s authority? The spread of the kingdom of God interlocks 100% with a climactic scene in which Christ takes His seat upon His heavenly throne. I could go on and on!

J: [The Gospel of Mark] has themes and plot and development, but the longer ending does away with all that.

The Long Ending does not do away with all that at all! The opposite is true; the Long Ending serves as a denouement of what precedes. Meanwhile, the Gospel of Mark has predictions and foreshadowings; the abrupt ending undeniably does away with them. You’re making some wild and unsubstantiated claims here, Jaltus. I don’t see how it is even possible for you to suggest that the Long Ending does away with the plot of the Gospel of Mark, since obviously if it was originally present, the events therein were part of the plot! Once again your conclusion is invading your equation, istm.

J: “Spurious readings were generally recorded by scribes but noted as possibly spurious.”

At all times and places? No. The accent is on the word “generally.” Generally, a copyist in, say, the 500’s, who had two exemplars, one with a short text and one with a long text, might indeed combine them both and add a note to the effect that the longer text was not in all exemplars. But it is sheer conjecture to clothe a different stage of transmission with the habits that existed at a later stage. What hard evidence do you have from the second and third centuries showing that scribes tended to enlarge the text by including all variants, with notes about their exemplars? Furthermore, the umlauts in Vaticanus tend to prove that at least some copyists in the Alexandrian text-stream knew about variants but did /not/ include them in the text; they simply looked at disagreeing exemplars, and made a call about which one to follow.

WR: What you are doing is simply an over-mechanical, formulaic abuse of “diffficult is bettter.”

J: “Difficult is more likely original…”

No; “Diffficult is more likely original.” A rigid, simplistic application of this canon – the sort of application you are employing – requires one to prefer “Diffficult is more likely to be original” over “Difficult is more likely to be original” as the original English form of this expression.

Or to put it another way: in MS 579, the entire text of Mark 3:28-4:8. That’s a pretty difficult reading. But it’s not more likely to be original, because the result makes no sense. And that is the case with the abrupt text of Mark, too: as an ending, it makes no sense, and it will continue to make no sense no matter how much modern interpreters squint at it and try to say that it makes sense, like the royal advisors in the court of the emperor in The Emperor’s New Clothes.

WR: “As for your statement that “No informed scribe” would drop the ending, I think a few qualifiers are in order:
(a) not every copyist was well-informed (such as the scribe of Bobiensis),
(b) it is not necessary to assume that the text was intentionally deleted, and
(c) more than one plausible scenario can be imagined in which a highly disciplined copyist would remove the Long Ending.”

J: “a) True, but then you would have to show that those of Aleph and B were not well-informed, something you will be unable to show.”

The copyist of it-k (or, more precisely, the copyist who produced it-k’s text) was not well-informed. Remove it-k, and you reduce the external evidence for the omission of Mark 16:9-20 by at least 12%. (Your 60-40 would become 65-35.)

Also, I would not have to show that the copyists of Aleph and B were not well-informed. All that is necessarily is for one copyist in the transmission-stream which produced their exemplar(s) to be uninformed, and the case is clear. Happily for me, evidence of an uninformed scribe exists; the evidence (well, one major piece of evidence among several) is at Matthew 27:49 in the Alexandrian Text. No well-informed copyist could make such a mistake. Only a highly disciplined copyist /who was not familiar with the text or with the sequence of events described therein/ would be capable of bringing this phrase into the text (from a marginal cross-reference).

b) Not necessary, no, but it is not necessary to assume it was original either.

c) True, but that is highly unlikely.

As unlikely as the idea that Mark intentionally ended his Gospel at 16:8? I don’t think so.

J: “You yourself have argued that the scribe for one intentionally left a blank for it in order to show he knew of it, but thought it should not be in there. This would show a well-informed scribe who left it out on purpose, assuming you are right.”

Apparently you misunderstood my statement, because that is certainly not what I said. I will try again to express myself clearly:
I did not say (and am not saying) that the scribe of Vaticanus intentionally left a blank space for the Long Ending to show that he knew it, but thought it should not be in there. I am saying that the scribe of Vaticanus intentionally left a blank space because he thought it should be there, but did not have an exemplar available which contained it. Contrary to your apparent misunderstanding of my statement, this would /not/ show a well-informed scribe who left it out on purpose. It would show a well-informed scribe who regarded his exemplar as incomplete or otherwise flawed; it would show a well-informed scribe who believed that the Long Ending belonged there even though it was not in his exemplar.

J: “In other words, your arguments tend to work against you rather than for you, here, showing my scenario to be more likely.”

I think a careful consideration of the paragraph I just wrote will show that the exact opposite of this statement of yours is true.

J: “Why would the apostles not believe her? This is a seeming non sequitor.”

Hmm; let’s see here: why would a first-century male, after witnessing the cricifixion and burial of Jesus, not believe a woman who had previously been possessed by seven demons when she tells him, “I just saw Jesus! He’s alive!” ??? Come on, J., the mention of the previous demon-possession is not a trivial detail; it’s a dash of relevant background.

J: “An early Christian reader would notice this problem with Luke.”

And an early Christian reader of Luke would notice the problem with Matthew 28:16, too. In both cases, logic would take care of things.

J: “… It is an impressive stack of leaky buckets (as the illustration goes), but it is still a stack of leaky buckets.”

So you keep saying, but saying and proving are two things. (Btw, I noticed that you seemed not to pursue my hint that Aleph, B, and the Coptic text’s weight might be reduced if we examine the relationship between them (and, possible, their relationship to Eusebius) more closely. Have you read T.C. Skeat’s article in which he proposes that Aleph and B are /both/ manuscripts produced under Eusebius’ supervision? (I disagree with his conclusions, but I am wondering what you would think of the weight of the external evidence if it were shown that the four important pieces of external evidence – Vaticanus, Aleph, Eusebius, and Jerome – essentially boil down to the weight of a single witness?)

J: “Ahhh, ye olde slippery slope argument.”

Bingo. And I bring it up, not to try to cast you as a liberal, but to get you to see where the road will go (and in some instances, has gone) if followed. Internal evidence is much, much more subjective than external evidence (which, I know, may seem hard for some readers of this thread to believe after seeing the amount of labor required to get some people to acknowledge the incredible antiquity and quality of the early patristic support for the Long Ending, but it’s true). A text drawn up based chiefly on internal evidence will be a subjectively-compiled text.

The slope is real. Take a look at I Cor. 14:34-35 in the NRSV and the TNIV (the TNIV is a version produced by /evangelicals/). The shape of things to come, Jaltus.

J: “First, because it is a combination of internal and external reasons.”

The same can be said of John 21:25 (it was omitted, and then included, in Sinaiticus – this was proven via ultraviolet light analysis).

J: “If there were no external reasons, then there would be no need to consult internal matters. I believe external problems should signal where there are issues but then internal matters should decide said issues.”

And what degree of “external problems” would you say would justify a dependence on internal criteria, Jaltus? In the case at hand, more than 1,700 Greek copies of Mark fully include Mark 16:9-20. Only two (or three, if one counts MS 304, which is questionable, and which clearly is a Byzantine MS) do not contain Mark 16:9-20. I will add to those two the original text of the Armenian Version (a generous addition), the Sinaitic Syriac MS, Coptic Codex Rib. P. Palau, and it-k. I’ll even double that, to account for Eusebius’ comment.

Taking all Vulgate copies, Peshitta copies, Armenian, etc., into the equation on a simple numeric basis would surely be unfair, because they descend from common sources. But Aleph and B and the Coptic MS also seem to descend from common sources. Nevertheless, just to be nice, I will count them individually. The percentage of MSS (including versions, counting the archetype of the original form of each version as equivalent to a single MS) which display non-inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 is …

.7%

So, I can only conclude that when you say, “If there were no external reasons, there would be no need to consult internal evidence,” that you would also say, “If there were external reasons equivalent to .7% of the external evidence, there would be a need to consult internal evidence, and that the internal evidence may overturn the verdict given by 99.3% of the external evidence.”

If that is not your position, why not?

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[Jaltus]

Today @ 01:56 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=111705#post111705)
Waterrock:
There’s no maybe. You are unnecessarily smudging the date when Porphyry wrote “Against the Christians.” It looks to me as if you are rather reluctant to &quot;follow the evidence where it leads.&quot; Instead, it looks like you have a desire to reduce the impact of his testimony.

I’m willing to share the same recklessness that practically all other investigators (including Harnack) have exhibited and say categorically that M.M. was quoting Porphyry. You have not offered a single reason for assigning the work to any other author. I invite you to consider the reasoning offered at
http://www.ccel.org/p/pearse/morefathers/macarius_apocriticus.htm for accepting Porphyry as the source.

Are you sure you read the link? It made the case weaker:

But he has to admit that in any case the Apocriticus simply contains a series of excerpts from Porphyry made by a later anonymous writer, and that Macarius did not know they were from Porphyry, or he would not in one of his answers have referred his opponent to Porphyry's book De Abstinentia as an authority. With regard to the answers, Harnack accepts the theory of a later date, and puts aside my arguments in favour of, the earlier. For the many weaknesses in his theory, and the difficulties which may be better overcome by other explanations, I must again refer to what I have already written.

In other words, scholars assume it was from Porphyry even though they know for a fact that the author did not think he was quoting from Porphyry. As for having Harnack as evidence, that is much the same as citing Bultmann, not effective to an Evangelical in the least.

You mentioned two points as “hand-waving.” If that was all that was wrong with the article, Jaltus, then hardly anything remains of your internal considerations that has not been adequately dealt with. (The vocabulary-based objections, for example, have evaporated.)

False! You barely even responded to my two objections. 2 out of 5 objections would be 40%, which would be a bit more than "hardly anything." As for their even being 5, I think I myself only mentioned 2 (as Terry correctly links 2 of the arguments together as essentially the same thing).

But it is not a descendant of 1582, so one would either have to posit that somehow two annotators independently made Greek notes about Irenaeus’ statement at the same point in the text, or that the notes in both were based on an earlier note. I prefer the latter possibility, but either way, the evidence for the originality of the passage in “Against Heresies” is strengthened.

You are truly trying to tell me that I should buy into 1582 because it is backed up by an even later manuscript? PLEASE!

Whaddayamean that’s not what we were talking about? You asked me – twice – about the existence of the Greek text of “Against Heresies”! Now you know. So now you have no excuse for pretending that there is a disagreement /about this/ between the Greek and Latin evidence for Irenaeus.

I never pretended, I posited as a possibility (which still stands, mind you) much as most of your "early evidence" is posited.

I don’t have Hurtado’s study handy to check, but I’m pretty sure that one could take either approach and reach the same, or nearly same, level of agreement. No matter what approach one takes – classical divisions into text-forms, or Alands’ Categories, or whatever, no matter how you slice it, close textual affinities exist between P45 and W.

Not true at all! The level of affinity would shift drastically depending if it is based on the text en tot or if it is based only on known problems. Aland and Aland disagree that there is a "close affinity" between W and P 45. I am going to take their word over yours on this one.

For that matter, many manuscripts that have a "close affinity" often diverge are specific spots, especially well-known rough spots (look at the entire text of Acts, for example).

Certainly I am *not* saying that P45 should be considered Byzantine. I am saying that P45 and W represent an independent free text, and that they are genealogically connected. They are not Byzantine, Alexandrian, Western, and – as Hurtado proved – not Caesarean.

Hmmm, W is often listed as among the Byzantine witnesses (or proto-Byzantine, if you wish), whereas P 45 is defintely not.

Surely you realize that when this point is granted, a major chunk of the internal consideraions that are frequently used to object to the originality of the Long Ending dissolves.

Not really. There can be no grammatical dependance and yet a semantic dendance. It could also deal with having the same "verbal sources" (I am still a bit leery about this as a general concept, however, smacking too much of Q theory).

It would be a rather big tangent to walk through the case for Ur-Markus. But I would say, at least, that some of the Minor Agreements can be enlisted in the case. It’s a rather minute assumption to assume publication, since, after all, the book /was/ disseminated, and its author (Mark) and main source (Peter) were known, even though that information is not specified in the text of the Gospel-account. As for the second point – though I am opening up a tangent – I am curious as to why you think Luke had never met Mark before A.D. 62/63.

The minor agreements between Mark and Luke would again point in my favor as there is a lack between the endings.

I agree that UrMark would be a big sidebar, one I am not willing to deal with.

All of this is going to depend (the meeting of Mark and Luke) on your dating of the gospels. I would place Mark probably no later than 60 AD, possibly a touch earlier, whereas I would place Luke about 62. This would mean that, if you are correct that the Longer Ending is "postpublication," then after Peter's death Mark added this new ending, after the other synoptics were printed. However, this seems to go against a typical chronology. Mark should have been finished just after Peter's death, putting the writing at around 65-70 AD, and that in the first form (per Irenaeus and the "Anti-Marcionite Prologue"). This would post-date Luke and Matthew! I think this dating argument is going to end up messing up your entire argument.

Because (a) the destruction of Jerusalem was not germane, and (b) the destruction of Jerusalem had been dealt with in other writings, for starters. But what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? There’s simply no comparison to make between an account about Jesus which (you say) foreshadows but then does not describe post-resurrection appearances, and a short polemical letter against heretics which does not mention the destruction of Jerusalem (in the case of Jude); nor can Mark (which is about events in the past) be compared with Revelation (which is chiefly about events in the future, at least, the future as seen from the perspective of its first readers).

Not germaine? Are you sure you read the gospels and Hebrews and the Johannine material? All of them posit the "problem of the temple," which the destruction thereof would solve. Not germaine? You have just gone against every scholar who has ever worked in the NT. Sorry, try again.

That is implied by the statement that Paul was under house arrest for two whole years. Ramsey argues that this is the equivalent of stating that the statutory period in which the accusers were required to appear and make a case, or else default, expired. Also, the impact of what I said apparently did not sink in: Mark was writing more than 30 years after the events he described; he had plenty of source-material to work with (such as Peter’s sermons, which include post-resurrection appearances and the ascension). Whereas Luke was writing immediately after the events he had described; the last part of Acts appears to be an up-to-the-minute account. See the difference? Luke /could/ not write a more up-to-the-minute account than he wrote. That is not the case in Mark; there is no (valid) comparison between Luke’s motivations for omission (there was nothing to omit) and Mark’s alleged motivations.

Acts was certainly not up-to-the minute! The book of Acts must then have been written before Luke for your theory to work, something which nearly all commentators (with the possible exceptions of Parsons and Pervo) would completely disagree with!

It does not make Mark inaccurate at all. Besides, there’s an unavoidable “huh” when one considers the first impression of a reading of the Great Commission in Matthew and Luke side-by-side regarding its location. Mark (who does not name the location explicitly – it /might/ be Galilee, or Jerusalem) does not add any new level of difficulty to the issue.

You're kidding, right? Luke makes it explicit that the first appearances were in Jerusalem, and Matthew does nothing to contradict this. In order for Mark to be correct, it must necessarily contradict Luke. Can you explain how there is not in fact a contradiction, then?

Eh? It seems that your conclusion – that the Long Ending post-dates Luke – is invading your equation. Mark selected one of several appearances to include in his account, plus the ascension (a change of scene seems implied at 19a). Luke would simply be expanding on that sequence, if he knew it.

You missed the thrust of my question, and I'll assume it was not done on purpose.

Assuming the ending of Mark predates Luke, then why did Luke change the location of Mark's ending? If Luke predates Mark's ending, which is what I thought you yourself argued due to the prepublication theory (are you backing out on that now?), then why does Mark negate Luke's account?

Because it would be of colossal theological significance, of course. Your position requires that Matthew (a) witnessed the Ascension, (b) knew that a composition which was likely to embody the definitive record of Jesus’ ministry did not mention the Ascension, and (c) nevertheless, when writing his own Gospel-account, Matthew did not mention the ascension. Just how trivial do you think the Ascension was to the apostles and their students in the early church?

Your answer begs the question. Even if Mark was already written, and even if the Longer Ending was already written (which again seems to go against your earlier story), why would Matthew leave it out? Your own argument works against you, here.

Secret, Schmecret; that does not turn two opposite statements into agreement. Anyone reading Mark with the abrupt text only would conclude that the women disobeyed and remained silent. Anyone reading Matthew would conclude that the women obeyed.

You obviously overlooked my argument. I'll give you another chance to actually deal with it. It is quite the solid answer if you have any understanding of the synoptic problem.

That is preposterous. The theme of the weakness of the disciples is a significant point throughout the book (but the weakness of the women is certainly not – they are not even mentioned until 15:40). The emphasis on preaching the gospel appears throughout the book. The focus on signs of power that demonstrate authority – who will dare deny that the Gospel of Mark focuses on demonstrations of Christ’s authority? The spread of the kingdom of God interlocks 100% with a climactic scene in which Christ takes His seat upon His heavenly throne. I could go on and on!

I highly recommend reading studies on Mark. you seem to be missing the specific nuances of Mark's message.

The Long Ending does not do away with all that at all! The opposite is true; the Long Ending serves as a denouement of what precedes. Meanwhile, the Gospel of Mark has predictions and foreshadowings; the abrupt ending undeniably does away with them. You’re making some wild and unsubstantiated claims here, Jaltus. I don’t see how it is even possible for you to suggest that the Long Ending does away with the plot of the Gospel of Mark, since obviously if it was originally present, the events therein were part of the plot! Once again your conclusion is invading your equation, istm.

And if it was not originally present, then none of it was part of the plot. Look at the book with and then without the longer ending. Without fits the story much better.

At all times and places? No. The accent is on the word “generally.” Generally, a copyist in, say, the 500’s, who had two exemplars, one with a short text and one with a long text, might indeed combine them both and add a note to the effect that the longer text was not in all exemplars. But it is sheer conjecture to clothe a different stage of transmission with the habits that existed at a later stage. What hard evidence do you have from the second and third centuries showing that scribes tended to enlarge the text by including all variants, with notes about their exemplars? Furthermore, the umlauts in Vaticanus tend to prove that at least some copyists in the Alexandrian text-stream knew about variants but did /not/ include them in the text; they simply looked at disagreeing exemplars, and made a call about which one to follow.

No, but strangely enough it tends to be the Alexandrian stream which most often mentions problems with the text, along with the ECFers. Miond you, any text critical mark still shows a weighted decision, something the Byzantine stream generally knows little about.

No; “Diffficult is more likely original.” A rigid, simplistic application of this canon – the sort of application you are employing – requires one to prefer “Diffficult is more likely to be original” over “Difficult is more likely to be original” as the original English form of this expression.

????

Or to put it another way: in MS 579, the entire text of Mark 3:28-4:8. That’s a pretty difficult reading. But it’s not more likely to be original, because the result makes no sense. And that is the case with the abrupt text of Mark, too: as an ending, it makes no sense, and it will continue to make no sense no matter how much modern interpreters squint at it and try to say that it makes sense, like the royal advisors in the court of the emperor in The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Now you are using the "general rule" inappropriately. Come on, get real.

The copyist of it-k (or, more precisely, the copyist who produced it-k’s text) was not well-informed. Remove it-k, and you reduce the external evidence for the omission of Mark 16:9-20 by at least 12%. (Your 60-40 would become 65-35.)

it-k? I see both it and k. "it" stands for the majority of Latin manuscripts, whereas "k" is a specific Latin manuscript from the fourth century. How do you plan on proving that k's scribe was not well-informed?

Also, I would not have to show that the copyists of Aleph and B were not well-informed. All that is necessarily is for one copyist in the transmission-stream which produced their exemplar(s) to be uninformed, and the case is clear. Happily for me, evidence of an uninformed scribe exists; the evidence (well, one major piece of evidence among several) is at Matthew 27:49 in the Alexandrian Text. No well-informed copyist could make such a mistake. Only a highly disciplined copyist /who was not familiar with the text or with the sequence of events described therein/ would be capable of bringing this phrase into the text (from a marginal cross-reference).

This coming from someone who buys into KJVO? How hypocritical can you be! you are now officially arguing against yourself, for you ealier mentioned how the extra space showed the care of the scribe, and now you are saying the opposite!

As unlikely as the idea that Mark intentionally ended his Gospel at 16:8? I don’t think so.

then we disagree, big surprise.

Apparently you misunderstood my statement, because that is certainly not what I said. I will try again to express myself clearly:
I did not say (and am not saying) that the scribe of Vaticanus intentionally left a blank space for the Long Ending to show that he knew it, but thought it should not be in there. I am saying that the scribe of Vaticanus intentionally left a blank space because he thought it should be there, but did not have an exemplar available which contained it. Contrary to your apparent misunderstanding of my statement, this would /not/ show a well-informed scribe who left it out on purpose. It would show a well-informed scribe who regarded his exemplar as incomplete or otherwise flawed; it would show a well-informed scribe who believed that the Long Ending belonged there even though it was not in his exemplar.

In other words, you are trying to slant the case even farther your way without any evidenjce as to the state of mind of this scribe.

Hmm; let’s see here: why would a first-century male, after witnessing the cricifixion and burial of Jesus, not believe a woman who had previously been possessed by seven demons when she tells him, “I just saw Jesus! He’s alive!” ??? Come on, J., the mention of the previous demon-possession is not a trivial detail; it’s a dash of relevant background.

It would show Jesus' favor, not disfavor. Again, this is a seeming non sequitor. The casting out of demons would show how she was a follower of Christ. Be honest, you are arguing from total silence here.

And an early Christian reader of Luke would notice the problem with Matthew 28:16, too. In both cases, logic would take care of things.

Which would show your case that Mark had to have the long ending in order to show fulfillment still equally wrong!

So you keep saying, but saying and proving are two things. (Btw, I noticed that you seemed not to pursue my hint that Aleph, B, and the Coptic text’s weight might be reduced if we examine the relationship between them (and, possible, their relationship to Eusebius) more closely. Have you read T.C. Skeat’s article in which he proposes that Aleph and B are /both/ manuscripts produced under Eusebius’ supervision? (I disagree with his conclusions, but I am wondering what you would think of the weight of the external evidence if it were shown that the four important pieces of external evidence – Vaticanus, Aleph, Eusebius, and Jerome – essentially boil down to the weight of a single witness?)

If true, it would seriously hurt modern text critical theory. Can you give me the bibliographic info?

Bingo. And I bring it up, not to try to cast you as a liberal, but to get you to see where the road will go (and in some instances, has gone) if followed. Internal evidence is much, much more subjective than external evidence (which, I know, may seem hard for some readers of this thread to believe after seeing the amount of labor required to get some people to acknowledge the incredible antiquity and quality of the early patristic support for the Long Ending, but it’s true). A text drawn up based chiefly on internal evidence will be a subjectively-compiled text.

Ah, yes, the cry of subjective. Not like MT or TR theory, which is faith based (preservation). Again, at least I am willing to admit you have a bit of a case, unlike you.

The slope is real. Take a look at I Cor. 14:34-35 in the NRSV and the TNIV (the TNIV is a version produced by /evangelicals/). The shape of things to come, Jaltus.

The NRSV and TNIV were both made by those I would call on the more liberal side. the NRSV is a horrid document, and the TNIV is a perversion (sadly enough, ony of my profs backs this version, but then we are not on the best of terms already).

And what degree of “external problems” would you say would justify a dependence on internal criteria, Jaltus? In the case at hand, more than 1,700 Greek copies of Mark fully include Mark 16:9-20. Only two (or three, if one counts MS 304, which is questionable, and which clearly is a Byzantine MS) do not contain Mark 16:9-20. I will add to those two the original text of the Armenian Version (a generous addition), the Sinaitic Syriac MS, Coptic Codex Rib. P. Palau, and it-k. I’ll even double that, to account for Eusebius’ comment.

When some of the major early witnesses have an issue with a reading, it is something to check internally, especially when no papyrus evidence can be found.

Taking all Vulgate copies, Peshitta copies, Armenian, etc., into the equation on a simple numeric basis would surely be unfair, because they descend from common sources. But Aleph and B and the Coptic MS also seem to descend from common sources. Nevertheless, just to be nice, I will count them individually. The percentage of MSS (including versions, counting the archetype of the original form of each version as equivalent to a single MS) which display non-inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 is …

.7%

So, I can only conclude that when you say, “If there were no external reasons, there would be no need to consult internal evidence,” that you would also say, “If there were external reasons equivalent to .7% of the external evidence, there would be a need to consult internal evidence, and that the internal evidence may overturn the verdict given by 99.3% of the external evidence.”

Hello, weighed, not counted, the major problem with the MT theory in general. .00000001% could still be correct! You are arguing from statistics, now, not from any informed position. You just regressed to the very beginning of this entire discussion.

[Waterrock]

Dear Jaltus,
J: “Are you sure you read the link? It made the case weaker…”
No it didn’t! The quote you provided showed that Harnack believed that the author of the Apocritus was later, not that the composition cited therein was later. You just didn’t understand what Crafer (who then mentions, in your quote, that he has already responded to Harnack’s reasoning) was saying.
J: “In other words, scholars assume it was from Porphyry even though they know for a fact that the author did not think he was quoting from Porphyry.”
That’s right. For M.M. to not be aware he was quoting Porphyry, all that is necessary is that he use a copy of Porphyry’s work that did not credit the original author. For M.M. to actually not be using Porphyry, numerous parallels between the composition M.M. employs, and “Against Christians,” must be attributed to coincidence.
J: “As for having Harnack as evidence, that is much the same as citing Bultmann, not effective to an Evangelical in the least.”
Please observe: if you were defending the view that Jesus was born in Nazareth, you could say, “Even Goodspeed regarded Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem as a historical fact” -- the idea being that if a liberal like Goodspeed accepted the conservative view, it must be pretty uncontroversial because its basis is pretty strong. Likewise, if even Harnack could not persuade himself that M.M. was not using Porphyry’s “Against Christians,” the idea is uncontroversial for the same reason.
J: “You barely even responded to my two objections.”
I responded quite adequately to your objection that Mary Magdalene seems to be re-introduced, via the point that the added detail explains why the disciples did not believe her. I’m not sure, at the moment, what your other objection was (as I mentioned before, my computer doesn’t like the Tweb format, it’s difficult to easily backtrack through the posts once I start writing). But clearly you don’t think the vocabulary-related objections are important, and you explicitly disagree with the idea that the Long Ending is dependent on the parallels in Matthew, Luke, and John. That alone renders the internal considerations to which you cling a rather slender thread.
J: “You are truly trying to tell me that I should buy into 1582 because it is backed up by an even later manuscript?”
Let’s review: You asked me why one should imagine that the note in 1582 is older than 1582. I explained that a similar note is in 72, which (unlike 1582) is not part of family-1, so there’s no genealogical connection between then. Unless you want to propose that the note in 72 descended from the one in 1582, you practically /have/ to conclude that both notes descend from an older ancestor. Got it? “PLEASE!” indeed!
J: “I never pretended, I posited as a possibility (which still stands, mind you) much as most of your "early evidence" is posited.”
But your comparison of your approach to my approach is ridiculous. /You/ seem willing to propose that Irenaeus’ Greek text of “Against Heresies” disagrees with the Latin translation even though (a) a Greek note in 1582 agrees with the Latin, (b) Irenaeus seems to use the Long Ending elsewhere in “Against Heresies,” (c) Irenaeus’ citation does not agree with the later Byzantine text of Mark 16:19, and (d) you have no text with which to support your case. Whereas in every instance of the early evidence I presented, I /do/ have a text to support my claims. My evidence exists, and yours does not.
WR: “I’m pretty sure that one could take either approach and reach the same, or nearly same, level of agreement.”
J: “Not true at all! The level of affinity would shift drastically depending if it is based on the text en tot or if it is based only on known problems.”
How can you say that when you haven’t even looked at Hurtado’s study???
J: “Aland and Aland disagree that there is a "close affinity" between W and P 45. I am going to take their word over yours on this one.”
I think you’re misinterpreting them. Hurtado’s study /proves/ a close affinity.
J: “For that matter, many manuscripts that have a "close affinity" often diverge are specific spots.”
Granted. But, routinely, P75 – which contains much less than the full Gospels – is used as evidence that the entire Gospel-text of B is ancient. Not /absolute/ evidence, but /indicative/ evidence, because P75 and B display the same text-form. I’m just doing the same sort of thing (without a grandiose claim of absolute proof) because P45 and W also display the same text-form.

J: “W is often listed as among the Byzantine witnesses (or proto-Byzantine, if you wish), whereas P 45 is definitely not.”
Simply mentioning categorization-errors is not evidence! Does /any/ of your evidence post-date Hurtado’s study?
J: “There can be no grammatical dependance and yet a semantic de[pe]ndance.”
Ah. That sounds rather a lot like the sort of dependence which Papias and Justin display, doesn’t it.
WR: “… It would be a rather big tangent to walk through the case for Ur-Markus. But I would say, at least, that some of the Minor Agreements can be enlisted in the case.”
J: “The minor agreements between Mark and Luke would again point in my favor as there is a lack between the endings.”
What?! It would seem that you are unfamiliar with the jargon used in Synoptic-studies. The “Minor Agreements” are a series of verbal agreements between Matthew and Luke which do not agree with Mark. The Minor Agreements are sometimes used in Synoptic-studies as part of the basis for positing a common source (besides Mark) used by Matthew and Luke. But some of them may also be accounted for (with less mess than the extra-common-source theory) by the theory that Matthew and Luke used pre-publication drafts of the Gospel of Mark, and when Mark finished the version of the Gospel of Mark which was then published, he tidied up those passages.
J: “I would place Mark probably no later than 60 AD, possibly a touch earlier, whereas I would place Luke about 62.”
We agree about Luke. I would posit drafts of Mark as early as the 50’s, with the finished Gospel of Mark appearing after Peter’s death, in Rome (67/68).
J: “This would post-date Luke and Matthew!”
Well, the publication-date of the Gospel of Mark would post-date the publication of Luke, at any rate. Nothing is messed up in this arrangement. (Plus, Clement of Alexandria explicitly states (and ascribed to ancient tradition) that Matthew and Luke released their Gospel-accounts before Mark released his.)
J: “Not germaine? Are you sure you read the gospels and Hebrews and the Johannine material? All of them posit the "problem of the temple," which the destruction thereof would solve.”
Ahem. Yes, I’m pretty sure I’ve read Hebrews and the Johannine material. Hebrews, I date to before the destruction of the Temple. The Johannine Epistles are too short to justify any insistence that the destruction of the temple be mentioned therein. I don’t see how the Gospel of John addresses the “problem of the temple,” unless very very subtly. And by the time Revelation is written, Roman persecution is arising; the “problem of the temple” is the least of the church’s worries. My objection stands. But I think we would be obfuscating to pursue this line much further.
J: “Acts was certainly not up-to-the minute! The book of Acts must then have been written before Luke for your theory to work…”
Not true. Just think things through, J.: Luke writes the Gospel of Luke c. 62, and begins to follow up immediately with the book of Acts, which is then published when Paul is released (the last thing to happen in the book).
J: “… Luke makes it explicit that the first appearances were in Jerusalem, and Matthew does nothing to contradict this. In order for Mark to be correct, it must necessarily contradict Luke.”
Again your claim is just not true. Mark does not specify the location. I repeat: Mark … does … NOT … specify … location. The contradiction you imagine is a mirage.
J: “Assuming the ending of Mark predates Luke, then why did Luke change the location of Mark's ending? If Luke predates Mark's ending, which is what I thought you yourself argued due to the prepublication theory (are you backing out on that now?), then why does Mark negate Luke's account?”
First of all, let me be clear that we are discussing two (of several) possible explanations, so the assumptions involves in one will not be made when discussing the other. If one assumes that Mark 16:9-20 pre-dates Luke, and that Luke knew (and expanded) the Long Ending of Mark, then Luke does /not/ change the location of Mark’s ending. He simply makes obvious something that is not obvious in Mark, namely, that there is a change of scene between 16:18 and 16:19. If Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke using a pre-publication draft of the Gospel of Mark – a draft which did not have the Long Ending – then the Long Ending does not contradict Luke’s account, he just does not fill in all possible details. There’s a difference between a contradiction and a selection of detail.
J: “Even if Mark was already written, and even if the Longer Ending was already written (which again seems to go against your earlier story), why would Matthew leave [the Ascension] out?”
As I mentioned before, as a non-telepath I cannot read the Evangelists’ minds. It seems like a good guess that Matthew would be more likely to skip the Ascension if he knew it was recorded in another important composition (the Gospel of Mark – both in its pre-publication form or the published form) than if it was recorded nowhere else. (Btw, istm that you are asking some questions that demand conjecture, and then when I respond, you crow that my answer is conjectural, when it could not possibly be non-conjectural. That is not the way to resolve issues!)
J: “You obviously overlooked my argument.”
What argument? All you did was mention the Messianic Secret as if it is a magic cure for the dissonance between Matthew 28:8 and Mark 16:8.
J: “It is quite the solid answer if you have any understanding of the synoptic problem.”
Quite a sentence there, coming from someone who, yesterday, seemed not to recognize what “Minor Agreements” are.
J: “I highly recommend reading studies on Mark. you seem to be missing the specific nuances of Mark's message.”
Istm that one /must/ read modern studies on Mark to see some of those “specific nuances,”
because one will never see them if one just reads the Gospel of Mark. (Also, in case you didn’t realize it – since you said nothing about it -- I just pointed out that the Long Ending meshes well with various themes in the rest of the book.)
J: “And if [the Long Ending] was not originally present, then none of it was part of the plot.”
Granted. Both statements are if/then propositions. Since you modified your statement, I deduce that my point was well-taken.
J: “Look at the book with and then without the longer ending. Without fits the story much better.”
No it doesn’t; the abrupt text leaves 14:28 and 16:7 unfulfilled. The abrupt text leaves the disciples uncommissioned. The abrupt text is missing a big piece of Peter’s preaching which was /known/ to be part of his repertoire (and this can be easily shown by consulting his sermons in Acts). Until Stonehouse, virtually all conservatives considered it a /fantasy/ that Mark intentionally ended at 16:8, and James Edwards makes mincemeat of Stonehouse’s approach – plus, Stonehouse manifestly mis-read the external evidence.
J: “Strangely enough it tends to be the Alexandrian stream which most often mentions problems with the text, along with the ECFers.”
Um, Jaltus, just who /else/ is going to mention problems with the text if not the early church fathers??? Plus, the Alexandrians are certainly not unique in their mention of textual variants! The producers of Fam-1 and Fam-13 do the same sort of thing, and I would say they do it more explicitly, too. Furthermore, the problem-mentioning in quite a few Alexandrian MSS is not the work of Alexandrians, but of later individuals using Byzantine exemplars to attempt to “correct” the MS.
WR: “Diffficult is more likely to be original” …”
J: “????”
It’s not as good a joke when it needs to be explained. Nevertheless ~ I was showing that if the canon “The most difficult reading is the most likely to be original” is applied over-rigidly, then if one would apply it to two variants in different books on textual criticism, one of which said “Difficult is better” and one of which said “Diffficult is better” (notice the three F’s), the critic would have to conclude that “Diffficult is better” is the original form of the rule.

[WR: “… in MS 579, the entire text of Mark 3:28-4:8. That’s a pretty difficult reading.”
Just a note: somehow the words “is missing” in this sentence went missing. I should have typed, “In MS 579, the entire text of Mark 3:28-4:8 is missing.”]

WR: “The copyist of it-k (or, more precisely, the copyist who produced it-k’s text) was not well-informed. Remove it-k, and you reduce the external evidence for the omission of Mark 16:9-20 by at least 12%. (Your 60-40 would become 65-35.)”
J: “it-k? I see both it and k.”
I think that’s because you are still learning how to read a textual apparatus. The only Old Latin MS with an extant text that testifies against the Long Ending is it-k, which is also the only MS (in any language) which has only the Short Ending after Mark 16:8.
J: “How do you plan on proving that k's scribe was not well-informed?”
Sheesh, Jaltus, let me count the ways: (a) he got lines in the Lord’s Prayer way wrong. (b) in the Short Ending, he wrote “puero” instead of “Petro.” (c) he translated the reference to Elijah in Mark 15:36 as a reference to a sun-god (Heliou, i.e., Phoebus), (d) in Matt. 12:12, to represent “huiou” (son) he mistakenly wrote “Ioui” (Jove, i.e., the god Jupiter). [Just to be thorough, I will provide a reference for all this: pages 315-316, The Early Versions of the New Testament, by B. Metzger.] (e) he includes an interpolation at Mark 16:4 (resembling a passage from the docetic “Gospel of Peter.” (f) he deleted the names of the women in Mark 16:1 and the last part of 16:8.

J: “This coming from someone who buys into KJVO? How hypocritical can you be!”
How completely mistaken can /you/ be? I am not KJVO.
J: “You are now officially arguing against yourself, for you ealier mentioned how the extra space showed the care of the scribe, and now you are saying the opposite!”
You are simply not thinking things through. I mentioned how the extra space in Vaticanus showed the care of the copyist /of Vaticanus./ In my comments to which you are responding here, I was (clearly) referring to a different copyist, in the late second or early third century, who produced an ancestor of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. (The misunderstanding, on the part of this early copyist, of material in the margin, accounts for the error in Aleph and B in Matthew 27:49, and a similar misunderstanging may also account for their error in regard to the Long Ending.) [Yes, that is a cue for you to ask what kind of misunderstanding could acount for such a thing.]
To put it another way: the meticulous copyist of B copied the text in his exemplar, even though he recognized that it was missing something at the end of Mark. It was missing something at the end of Mark because of a mistake made by an earlier copyist, who also mechanically followed his exemplar and mechanically followed the instructions therein – except, when he came to the end of Mark 16:8, he misunderstood the marginalia, with the result that he did not copy the rest of the text.
J: “In other words, you are trying to slant the case even farther your way without any evidenjce as to the state of mind of this scribe.”
Ahem. Hort gave the evidence the same “slant.” It’s not me, but you, who are trying to minimize the obvious implication of the evidence from Vaticanus. If you do not want to theorize that the exemplar of B had the Long Ending, but the copyist did not copy the text in his exemplar (that was Burgon’s view. You don’t agree with Burgon … right?), then the logical explanation is that B’s exemplar ended at 16:8, but the copyist was aware of the Long Ending and provided what he thought would be adequate space for it in the event that the eventual owner of the MS wished to include it.

J: “It [Mark 16:9’s mention that Jesus healed Mary Magdalene of 7 demons] would show Jesus' favor, not disfavor. Again, this is a seeming non sequitor. The casting out of demons would show how she was a follower of Christ.”
It is not a non sequitur; it is a relevant point which provides an explanation as to why the disciples were slow to believe her. (Plus, we already knew (from 15:40-41) that she was a follower of Christ.)
WR: “And an early Christian reader of Luke would notice the problem with Matthew 28:16, too. In both cases, logic would take care of things.”
J: “Which would show your case that Mark had to have the long ending in order to show fulfillment still equally wrong!”
I am not sure what you mean. Could you, perhaps, re-phrase this?

WR: “Have you read T.C. Skeat’s article in which he proposes that Aleph and B are /both/ manuscripts produced under Eusebius’ supervision? (I disagree with his conclusions, but I am wondering what you would think…)”
J: “If true, it would seriously hurt modern text critical theory. Can you give me the bibliographic info?”
Sure. It’s in “Journal of Theological Studies,” Oct. 1999, pp. 583-625. As I said, I /disagree/ profusely and profoundly with his theory. He neglects to consider the importance of the differences of the nomina sacra between the two MSS, and the difference in their size, and the “Western” character of the opening chapters of John in Aleph. (I’ll stop there in the interest of brevity.) But he does set the stage for what I think is a much more plausible scenario: Vaticanus is a copy which was produced in Caesarea by copyists overseen (or at least hired) by Eusebius, using MSS from Egypt, and Vaticanus was sent to Constantinople (which would explain why it has marginalia reflecting the use of an early Byzantine lectionary in part of Acts) by Eusebius. Sinaiticus was also produced in Caesarea, but not by Eusebius. Its production was overseen by Eusebius’ successor Euzoius, some 40 years later. (This really merits a separate thread. For now, I am happy just to mention it to show that the theory that the channel of the transmission of the abrupt text is extreemely narrow, is difficult to disprove, and is embraced at least in part by T.C. Skeat.)
J: “Ah, yes, the cry of subjective. Not like MT or TR theory, which is faith based (preservation).”
I ascribe to neither of those views, although I do think that the value of the “Majority”/Byzantine Text has been seriously underestimated by Metzger, the Alands, and most other eclectics.
J: “The NRSV and TNIV were both made by those I would call on the more liberal side. the NRSV is a horrid document, and the TNIV is a perversion”
Jaltus, Jaltus, Jaltus. What a gift you give me! The translation-team that made the TNIV includes Gordon Fee, Douglas Moo, Walter Liefeld, John Stek, Ronald Youngblood (though, as an Old Testament scholar, he had very little to do with the TNIV New Testament), Herbert Wolf, and I.H. Marshall. Several of these scholars were also involved in the production of the NIV. If these folks are “on the more liberal side” – even though they all ascribe to inerrancy, as far as I know – who’s conservative? If you can’t trust the TNIV, regarding which the International Bible Society’s president Peter Bradley assured readers (in Light Magazine, July 2002, which you can read online), “Every word of the original Greek and Hebrew is translated accurately and faithfully in the TNIV,” who can you trust? What you call a “perversion,” Ted Haggard – the new president of the National Association of Evangelicals – wholeheartedly endorses.
J: “Hello, weighed, not counted…”
This oft-repeated proverb about manuscripts should also be applied to scholars.
J: “.00000001% could still be correct!”
Do you really believe that? If so, that would imply that you are willing to make a text-critical decision that would imply that 99.9999999% of the MSS are wrong. The difference between that and introducing a conjectural emendation is pretty small, Jaltus.
J: “You are arguing from statistics, now, not from any informed position.”
On the contrary, in the paragraph you’re talking about here I was not arguing at all, just posing a question and giving you the opportunity to define/refine your position (remember how I put it: I didn’t say, “This is your position.” I said, “If this is not your position, why not?” I drew a caricature and invited you to draw an accurate portrait.) But apparently, you really /are/ willing to let internal considerations overrule 99.9999999% of the manuscript evidence. Which, I think, is a position which you ought to reconsider. (But in a different thread, since we seem to be wandering from Mark 16:9-20.)
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[roger_pearse]

I'm delighted to see people looking at Crafer's version of the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes! May I add a comment or two?


J: “Are you sure you read the link? It made the case weaker…”

No it didn’t! The quote you provided showed that Harnack believed that the author of the Apocritus was later, not that the composition cited therein was later. You just didn’t understand what Crafer (who then mentions, in your quote, that he has already responded to Harnack’s reasoning) was saying.

J: “In other words, scholars assume it was from Porphyry even though they know for a fact that the author did not think he was quoting from Porphyry.”

That’s right. For M.M. to not be aware he was quoting Porphyry, all that is necessary is that he use a copy of Porphyry’s work that did not credit the original author. For M.M. to actually not be using Porphyry, numerous parallels between the composition M.M. employs, and “Against Christians,” must be attributed to coincidence.

However, (it is argued) the pagan in the dialogue then refers to Porphyry as someone else (Apo. iii, 42), so how can the pagan be Porphyry himself?

I read Crafer as saying that (a) the arguments seemed a lot like those we think of as Porphyry's (b) the consensus is that if so, they've been worked over by someone else.

T.D.Barnes, Porphyry *Against the Christians*: Date and the Attribution of Fragments, JTS NS 24 (1973) 424-442, is an excellent article. To read it is a liberal education, through its copious footnotes! He says (p.428) that since Harnack in 1916 "only sporadic doubts have been expressed" (that M.M. is not quoting Porphyry). Harnack posits an epitome of Porphyry, in two books, written around 300. Barnes explicitly disagrees; in his view, all the material derived from Porphyry may be via some other work or refutation.

He goes on, "in no case can it be assumed that Macarius preserves either the words or the precise formulations of Porphyry. It will be wise to disregard him in order to obtain valid conclusions about *Against the Christians* and to concentrate instead on the fragments which later writers explicitly and unambiguously attribute to Porphyry by name."

Barnes is a revisionist by training, so we need not agree, of course.

For the purposes of the argument, can we say with certainty that the text predates 300? I don't see that we can. Yes, it is quite possible that the quote is from Porphyry. But we do not *know* this. For the argument, do we not need to *know*?

J: “The NRSV and TNIV were both made by those I would call on the more liberal side. the NRSV is a horrid document, and the TNIV is a perversion”
... What you call a “perversion,” Ted Haggard – the new president of the National Association of Evangelicals – wholeheartedly endorses.

Um. I don't see how any version whose translation is made and choices of vocabulary explicitly modified with reference to an external ideology -- and who can doubt this? -- cannot be considered a perversion. Such considerations are not legitimate influences on the form of a translation.

What is the difference between such a process, and producing a Nazi bible? -- only the ideology to be conformed to varies.

As far as I can see, this is the essence of corruption -- the modification of the text in accordance with pre-determined extraneous ideological considerations.

Claims of 'objectivity' do not convince anyone, I'm afraid, even if sincere. We all know how these changes are effected in our society. We could believe such claims only if the changes were not in such obvious conformance with 'the clamour of the times.'

J: “.00000001% could still be correct!”
Do you really believe that? If so, that would imply that you are willing to make a text-critical decision that would imply that 99.9999999% of the MSS are wrong. The difference between that and introducing a conjectural emendation is pretty small, Jaltus.

Does not the argument only have weight if all the Mss evidence is of the same value?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

[John Reece]

UPS just delivered The Gospel of Mark: The New International Greek Testament Commentary (NIGTC) by R. T. France. I have been browsing my way through it.

The commentary on the Greek text ends at 16:8, followed by an APPENDED NOTE: THE TEXTUAL EVIDENCE FOR THE ENDING OF MARK, which summarizes the case for the exclusion of the longer ending from the text of Mark.

The NOTE begins with this opening paragraph:

The purpose of this note is not to argue again for what is the virtually unanimous verdict of modern textual scholarship, that the authentic text of Mark available to us ends at 16:8, but rather to set out as simply and clearly as possible (which inevitably will mean oversimplification) the data which have contributed to that consensus.

The following are two footnotes to the above paragraph:

W. R. Farmer, The Last Verses of Mark, stands out as the one serious attempt in recent times to argue for the authenticity of 16:9-20. It has not escaped readers of Farmer’s work that a conclusion of Mark which consists largely of what I have called below ‘a pastiche of elements drawn from the other gospels and Acts’ would fit more comfortably with the Griesbach theory of gospel origins which Farmer champions than with the more common view that Mark was the earliest gospel. For a detailed text-critical review of Farmer’s argument see J. N. Birdsall, JTS 26 (1975) 151-60.

For a recent, well-documented setting forth of the data and summary of the debate see P. L. Danove, End, 119-31.

[Waterrock]

Dear Roger,

I'll address your concerns mechanically, in hopes that this will avoid conversation-knots.

RP: “However, (it is argued) the pagan in the dialogue then refers to Porphyry as someone else (Apo. iii, 42), so how can the pagan be Porphyry himself?”

The person referring to Porphyry in Apocritus III:42) is not the pagan. It’s Macarius Magnes. The pagan did/would not refer to Porphyry as “puffed up in deceit.” … Right? (Crafer states: “Macarius did not know they [the collection of objections to which he was responding] were from Porphyry, or he would not in one of his answers have referred his opponent to Porphyry's book De Abstinentia as an authority.”]

RP: “I read Crafer as saying that (a) the arguments seemed a lot like those we think of as Porphyry's (b) the consensus is that if so, they've been worked over by someone else.”

I agree. A fifteen-book treatise would practically beg for abridgement. However, a /condensation/ of Porphyry is still a condensation of /Porphyry/.

Thank you for the reference to T.D.Barnes’ article in JTS 1973. I’ll have to take a look at that at the next opportunity. In the meantime, I’d like to briefly pursue a piece of evidence similar to what Barnes himself suggested as evidence that Porphyry’s work is what M.M. was responding to: “the fragments which later writers explicitly and unambiguously attribute to Porphyry by name."

But before doing so, let’s recall that a date can be deduced from the text of Apocritus for the time of the pagan’s (i.e., imho, Porphyry’s) excerpts: in Apocritus IV:5, the pagan is cited as saying that since the time when Christ spoke the words in Matthew Mark 13:5-6, “300 years have passed by, and even more, and no one of this kind has anywhere appeared.” 300 years since the ministry of Christ would place the pagan in c. 230. Tack on half a century to account for “and even more,” and ~voila~ we are in 280, exactly the time when Porphyry was writing “Against the Christians.”

And now, a significant fragment which a later writer unambiguously attributes to Porphyry which is paralleled in Apocritus: Jerome (in Epistle 130, “Ad Demetrius”) mentions that Porphyry falsely accused Peter of wishing the death of Ananias and Sapphira. In Apocritus II:21, the pagan accuses Peter of killing Ananias and Sapphira because he wanted their money for the church.

The pagan in Apocritus accused Peter of killing Ananias and Sapphira. Jerome says that Porphyry accused Peter of killing Ananias and Sapphira. Do you know of any writer other than Porphyry who wrote more than 300 years after Christ but less than 400 years after Christ, who said such a thing, or who was important enough to be remembered by Jerome as saying such a thing? If not, I think a juggernaut of logic must drag us to the conclusion that Macarius Magnes was using material from an abridgement of “Against the Christians.”

About the TNIV (How we are wandering!) –

RP: “I don't see how any version whose translation is made and choices of vocabulary explicitly modified with reference to an external ideology -- and who can doubt this? -- cannot be considered a perversion.”

The President of IBS (Peter Bradley) explicitly stated in Light Magazine (July 2002), “IBS never has and never will follow a social agenda in regard to its work. Every word of the original Greek and Hebrew is translated accurately and faithfully in the TNIV.”

Some important Evangelical scholars (Craig Keener, John Stott, Craig Blomberg) have endorsed the TNIV. I don’t bring this up to suggest that the TNIV is a good version. It is not a good version. I bring it up to show the state of Evangelical scholarship (and to suggest where the path of preferring subjective evidence over objective evidence is likely to lead), and to illustrate that scholars, like MSS, must be weighed and not simply counted.

(By the way, I am wondering how Peter Bradley could promise readers in July 2002 that the TNIV faithfully and accurately translates every word of the original /Hebrew/, since the TNIV Old Testament still has not been released.)

RP: “Does not the argument only have weight if all the Mss evidence is of the same value?”

I had expected Jaltus to initially clarify his position by saying something like that: something like, “Even though the Proto-Alexandrian MSS are a numerical minority, their age, their agreement with early church fathers, and the apparent anterior relationship of their readings to (many of) the readings of the Byzantine Text indicate that all the Alexandrian MSS combined merit more weight than all the Byzantine MSS combined.” He seems to hold such a position. But that is not what he said; he said, essentially, that a single MS (representing .00000001% of the external evidence) could be correct and all other MSS (representing 99.99999999% of the external evidence) could be incorrect. And I am not saying that such a thing would violate the laws of physics, just that (a) the critic who proposes such a thing would be relying extremely heavily on subjective probabilities, and (b) there is hardly any difference between asserting such a scenario and asserting that a conjectural reading is the original one. (Plus, such a critic has to deal with Matthew 5:18 somehow, which is particularly difficult to do if the sense of the unique variant he regards as original yields a distinctly different sense from what is conveyed in all other MSS.)

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[Waterrock]

Greetings John Reece,

Just a couple of quick notes:

R.T. France happens to be a member of the team that made the TNIV New Testament, which Jaltus seems to regard as a somewhat liberal group. Also, Jaltus and I have both stated our disagreement with Dr. France's view that Mark 16:9-20 is a "pastiche of elements drawn from the other gospels and Acts."

If Dr. France begins by stating that he is presenting an oversimplified presentation of evidence, I must admit that I initially doubt that his comments will be more detailed than this thread. Nevertheless I may try to check them out, since I am wondering how R.T. France could tell his readers in 1998, regarding Mark 16:9-20, "In many early manuscripts and versions these verses are either absent altogether or marked as of doubtful authority." (p. 214, Doubleday Bible Commentary: Mark, © 1998 by the Bible Reading Fellowship and R.T. France)

The total number of undamaged Greek MSS of Mark 16 which do not contain Mark 16:9-20 is ... two (3 if you count MS 304, from the Middle Ages).

The total number of unmutilated non-Greek manuscripts from before A.D. 800 which do not include Mark 16:9-20 is ... three: Sinaitic Syriac, it-k, and Coptic Codex P. Palau Rib. 182.

The total number of manuscripts from before A.D. 700 in which Mark 16:9-20 is "marked as of doubtful authority" is ... zero.

The early versions which did not include Mark 16:9-20 are an Old Syriac version (represented only by the Sinaitic Syriac MS), the Sahidic version represented by Coptic Codex P. Palau Rib. 182, the Armenian Version, and the Old Georgian version. The Old Latin manuscript it-k could be said to represent a version, but its text is in a class of its own. One could say that *five* early versions lacked Mark 16:9-20, and this seems to be the impression that Dr. France wanted to convey.

However, witnesses must be weighed, not counted. Let's do some weighing:

The Georgian Version was based on the Armenian version; it is a derivative text, so it can only validly be placed behind the Armenian Version when amassing evidence, not beside it. Now we're down to 4.

The Sinaitic Syriac MS (which is the only extant evidence of a Syriac version that did not contain Mk. 16:9-20) was found at St. Katherine's monastery, the same place Sinaiticus was found. Also, another Old Syriac MS, the Curetonian, /supports/ the Long Ending.

The Sahidic evidence reflects the same textual tradition as Aleph and B. Furthermore, there is only 1 Sahidic MS without Mark 16:9-20; the evidence as a whole reflects the gradual acceptance of Mk. 16:9-20 in the Sahidic version even though it was originally absent.

It-k is the only Latin MS that opposes inclusion of Mk. 16:9-20, and (as I hope I demonstrated in this thread) it is quite a quirky MS; its text certainly does not represent a version used by Christians. Several other Old Latin texts support the Long Ending.

Furthermore, France's claim that the markings in many copies are made to reflect copyists' suspicion that the passage is "of doubtful authority" is about 10% right and 90% incorrect. If he had just read Scrivener and Burgon he would have been presented with conclusive evidence that almost all of the marks are accompanied by notes which affirm that Mk. 16:9-20 is in many copies or in older copies. (You can read all about this by tracking down the stuff about Mark 16:9-20 at www.bible-researcher.com .)

So: how can Dr. France make such a claim? By being vague. By failing to tell readers important details. By counting the same evidence twice (once as a MS, and again as a version), it seems. And by ignoring the evidence which indicates that the absence of Mk. 16:9-20 was, until about A.D. 400, confined to one narrow text-stream.

Dr. France's misleading use of the terms "many," "ancient," and "some" is unfortunately not a unique feature of commentaries.

JR/RTF: "For a detailed text-critical review of Farmer’s argument see J. N. Birdsall, JTS 26 (1975) 151-60."

France is correct to reject Farmer's theory (which, in his book, he intimates more than expounds the notion that the ending of Mark was removed by individuals who found Mk. 16:9-20 too difficult to harmonize with the parallels in the other Gospels). But I think we have not seem the last defense of Mark 16:9-20. Btw, Farmer wrote a response to Birdsall's review (which I've read), which JTS did not publish but which Farmer distributed more or less on his own. Farmer grants that Birdsall's observation that Farmer consistently misrepresented the early Sahidic evidence is correct (Farmer, it seems, simply did not know about the publication of Coptic Codex P. Palau Rib. 182, which was released in 1972), but he insists that Birdsall's denial of a connection between it-k and the early Egyptian text(s) is incorrect. Does France mention Farmer's response?

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[Jaltus]

05-30-2003 @ 12:42 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=112812#post112812)
Waterrock:
No it didn’t! The quote you provided showed that Harnack believed that the author of the Apocritus was later, not that the composition cited therein was later. You just didn’t understand what Crafer (who then mentions, in your quote, that he has already responded to Harnack’s reasoning) was saying.

I understood quite well, thank you.

That’s right. For M.M. to not be aware he was quoting Porphyry, all that is necessary is that he use a copy of Porphyry’s work that did not credit the original author. For M.M. to actually not be using Porphyry, numerous parallels between the composition M.M. employs, and “Against Christians,” must be attributed to coincidence.

Or he could have in fact been quoting from someone who sounded like Porphyry for this one argument, or a direct intellectual descendant of Porphyry's. It is still shakey evidence.

Please observe: if you were defending the view that Jesus was born in Nazareth, you could say, “Even Goodspeed regarded Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem as a historical fact” -- the idea being that if a liberal like Goodspeed accepted the conservative view, it must be pretty uncontroversial because its basis is pretty strong. Likewise, if even Harnack could not persuade himself that M.M. was not using Porphyry’s “Against Christians,” the idea is uncontroversial for the same reason.

Wrong is wrong, does not matter who says it in order to be wrong. If I quote a nonChristian who disagrees with your views, or even a well-intentioned Christian, you blow them off (see your C S Mann comments above).


Let’s review: You asked me why one should imagine that the note in 1582 is older than 1582. I explained that a similar note is in 72, which (unlike 1582) is not part of family-1, so there’s no genealogical connection between then. Unless you want to propose that the note in 72 descended from the one in 1582, you practically /have/ to conclude that both notes descend from an older ancestor. Got it? “PLEASE!” indeed!

That is just it, though, families are of little value after the twelfth century, and this is bordering on quite close to that time. Also, due to the late date of 72, it could be based on another copy which was influenced by 1582. There is no need to posit something older than both of them if they show no family resemblance, all that is needed is a geographic nearness or a single person's awareness. You are grasping at straws on this one, especially if there are only 2 notes both dating after 900 AD.


But your comparison of your approach to my approach is ridiculous. /You/ seem willing to propose that Irenaeus’ Greek text of “Against Heresies” disagrees with the Latin translation even though (a) a Greek note in 1582 agrees with the Latin, (b) Irenaeus seems to use the Long Ending elsewhere in “Against Heresies,” (c) Irenaeus’ citation does not agree with the later Byzantine text of Mark 16:19, and (d) you have no text with which to support your case. Whereas in every instance of the early evidence I presented, I /do/ have a text to support my claims. My evidence exists, and yours does not.

True, your evidence does exist and mine does not. However, mine follows the pattern whereas yours is dated quite late. And again I said I was only positing it, not saying I was right. You need to chill just a little.


How can you say that when you haven’t even looked at Hurtado’s study???

Exactly, I have not read his study so I am asking you what method of agreement it is based on. Is it text based or is it difference based? Is the percent agreement based on the total text or is it based on only passages of discrepancies? Please answer this question as it is at least the second time I have asked it.

I think you’re misinterpreting them. Hurtado’s study /proves/ a close affinity.

If this is true, then answer my above question. By the way, this is also an argument from silence just as my argument about the Latin is, so tread carefully lest you shoot yourself in the foot.

Granted. But, routinely, P75 – which contains much less than the full Gospels – is used as evidence that the entire Gospel-text of B is ancient. Not /absolute/ evidence, but /indicative/ evidence, because P75 and B display the same text-form. I’m just doing the same sort of thing (without a grandiose claim of absolute proof) because P45 and W also display the same text-form.

Ok.

Simply mentioning categorization-errors is not evidence! Does /any/ of your evidence post-date Hurtado’s study?

When was his study?

What?! It would seem that you are unfamiliar with the jargon used in Synoptic-studies. The “Minor Agreements” are a series of verbal agreements between Matthew and Luke which do not agree with Mark. The Minor Agreements are sometimes used in Synoptic-studies as part of the basis for positing a common source (besides Mark) used by Matthew and Luke. But some of them may also be accounted for (with less mess than the extra-common-source theory) by the theory that Matthew and Luke used pre-publication drafts of the Gospel of Mark, and when Mark finished the version of the Gospel of Mark which was then published, he tidied up those passages.

I missed that you were using jargon and actually assumed we were talking about the issue at hand. Silly me.

The simplest explanation of the gospel materials would be Mark wrote first, Matthew used him, and Luke used both. Any other explanation is unnecessarily complicated.

Well, the publication-date of the Gospel of Mark would post-date the publication of Luke, at any rate. Nothing is messed up in this arrangement. (Plus, Clement of Alexandria explicitly states (and ascribed to ancient tradition) that Matthew and Luke released their Gospel-accounts before Mark released his.)

Unfortunately for you this is not a position with much evidence.

Ahem. Yes, I’m pretty sure I’ve read Hebrews and the Johannine material. Hebrews, I date to before the destruction of the Temple. The Johannine Epistles are too short to justify any insistence that the destruction of the temple be mentioned therein. I don’t see how the Gospel of John addresses the “problem of the temple,” unless very very subtly. And by the time Revelation is written, Roman persecution is arising; the “problem of the temple” is the least of the church’s worries. My objection stands. But I think we would be obfuscating to pursue this line much further.

I recommend Paul Hoskins' "Jesus as the Fulfillment of the Temple in the Gospel of John" PhD diss., TEDS, 2002 for a look at what you missed. As for the problem of the temple not arising in Revelation, you really need to grab a good commentary.

I also recommend (though I disagree with his conclusions) David Pao's Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus for Luke's usage of the theme.

Not true. Just think things through, J.: Luke writes the Gospel of Luke c. 62, and begins to follow up immediately with the book of Acts, which is then published when Paul is released (the last thing to happen in the book).

And when was Paul released? I think your timeline might be a bit problematic, since many scholars date Paul's death to 64 AD. (see Bruce's commentary)

Again your claim is just not true. Mark does not specify the location. I repeat: Mark … does … NOT … specify … location. The contradiction you imagine is a mirage.

The contradiction was in your claims. Your case against me was the Mark specifically pointed to resurrection appearances in Gaililee wehich I said did not happen. You said that Mark's gospel needed the ending to show that those "prophecies" of appearances in Galilee happened, and I told you that no appearances recorded in Mark took place in Galilee. You have now destroyed your own position for holding to the longer ending as being internally necessary and have now shown it to NOT fulfill the prophecies listed within the gospel. Thank you.

First of all, let me be clear that we are discussing two (of several) possible explanations, so the assumptions involves in one will not be made when discussing the other. If one assumes that Mark 16:9-20 pre-dates Luke, and that Luke knew (and expanded) the Long Ending of Mark, then Luke does /not/ change the location of Mark’s ending. He simply makes obvious something that is not obvious in Mark, namely, that there is a change of scene between 16:18 and 16:19. If Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke using a pre-publication draft of the Gospel of Mark – a draft which did not have the Long Ending – then the Long Ending does not contradict Luke’s account, he just does not fill in all possible details. There’s a difference between a contradiction and a selection of detail.

Either way your earlier explanation for the internal necessity of the ending is now moot, which was my point.

As I mentioned before, as a non-telepath I cannot read the Evangelists’ minds. It seems like a good guess that Matthew would be more likely to skip the Ascension if he knew it was recorded in another important composition (the Gospel of Mark – both in its pre-publication form or the published form) than if it was recorded nowhere else.

We'll just agree to disagree on that one. Your previous argument makes this unlikely.

What argument? All you did was mention the Messianic Secret as if it is a magic cure for the dissonance between Matthew 28:8 and Mark 16:8.

Istm that one /must/ read modern studies on Mark to see some of those “specific nuances,”
because one will never see them if one just reads the Gospel of Mark.[quote]

I suggested you read a study on it instead of the gospel since you obviously missed my point. It was not a knock on the gospel or a leg up for studies, rather it was a comment about you brushing away a strong argument, one which you still have not answered.

Do I need to spell it out? The Messianic Secret is the theme of Jesus not revealing or wanting to reveal who He is. Thus, He is revealed by His deeds to the reader but not necessarily to the characters within the story. In reading the gospel, the answer to "who do you say I am" is quite obvious to the readers, but the characters in the book do not get it. Thus, the ending at 16:8 fits in very tightly with this major theme. The longer ending dismisses the theme completely.


[quote]J: “Look at the book with and then without the longer ending. Without fits the story much better.”
No it doesn’t; the abrupt text leaves 14:28 and 16:7 unfulfilled. The abrupt text leaves the disciples uncommissioned. The abrupt text is missing a big piece of Peter’s preaching which was /known/ to be part of his repertoire (and this can be easily shown by consulting his sermons in Acts). Until Stonehouse, virtually all conservatives considered it a /fantasy/ that Mark intentionally ended at 16:8, and James Edwards makes mincemeat of Stonehouse’s approach – plus, Stonehouse manifestly mis-read the external evidence.

ASgain, either 14:28 and 16:7 are unfulfilled or else Mark contradicts Luke. You cannot have it both ways! Good grief, you contradict yourself in the same post, or else you are positing that Mark did not say where those occurrences took place in order to deceive his readers into thinking they fulfilled 14:28 and 16:7, which I find blasphemous and am sure you do not agree with either.




I think that’s because you are still learning how to read a textual apparatus. The only Old Latin MS with an extant text that testifies against the Long Ending is it-k, which is also the only MS (in any language) which has only the Short Ending after Mark 16:8.

Not really, I was being polite. it and k are in fact different documents. it stands for the majority of Latin manuscripts and k is a specific Latin manuscript. I was being kind to you. However, after something obnoxious like that, I will just tell you that you are flat out wrong, assuming you are using NA 27's notation. I refer you to pp. 65* and 715, respectively, in noting that they are in fact two different notations and not one.

Sheesh, Jaltus, let me count the ways: (a) he got lines in the Lord’s Prayer way wrong. (b) in the Short Ending, he wrote “puero” instead of “Petro.” (c) he translated the reference to Elijah in Mark 15:36 as a reference to a sun-god (Heliou, i.e., Phoebus), (d) in Matt. 12:12, to represent “huiou” (son) he mistakenly wrote “Ioui” (Jove, i.e., the god Jupiter). [Just to be thorough, I will provide a reference for all this: pages 315-316, The Early Versions of the New Testament, by B. Metzger.] (e) he includes an interpolation at Mark 16:4 (resembling a passage from the docetic “Gospel of Peter.” (f) he deleted the names of the women in Mark 16:1 and the last part of 16:8.

Cool, thanks for the info.

You are simply not thinking things through. I mentioned how the extra space in Vaticanus showed the care of the copyist /of Vaticanus./ In my comments to which you are responding here, I was (clearly) referring to a different copyist, in the late second or early third century, who produced an ancestor of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. (The misunderstanding, on the part of this early copyist, of material in the margin, accounts for the error in Aleph and B in Matthew 27:49, and a similar misunderstanging may also account for their error in regard to the Long Ending.) [Yes, that is a cue for you to ask what kind of misunderstanding could acount for such a thing.]
To put it another way: the meticulous copyist of B copied the text in his exemplar, even though he recognized that it was missing something at the end of Mark. It was missing something at the end of Mark because of a mistake made by an earlier copyist, who also mechanically followed his exemplar and mechanically followed the instructions therein – except, when he came to the end of Mark 16:8, he misunderstood the marginalia, with the result that he did not copy the rest of the text.

All assumptions.

Ahem. Hort gave the evidence the same “slant.” It’s not me, but you, who are trying to minimize the obvious implication of the evidence from Vaticanus. If you do not want to theorize that the exemplar of B had the Long Ending, but the copyist did not copy the text in his exemplar (that was Burgon’s view. You don’t agree with Burgon … right?), then the logical explanation is that B’s exemplar ended at 16:8, but the copyist was aware of the Long Ending and provided what he thought would be adequate space for it in the event that the eventual owner of the MS wished to include it.

It is possible, but not necessarily probable.

It is not a non sequitur; it is a relevant point which provides an explanation as to why the disciples were slow to believe her. (Plus, we already knew (from 15:40-41) that she was a follower of Christ.)

Sorry, don't buy it at all. Does Mark show other internal evidence of the 12 (or 11) not believing something Mary said? This is a reach.

I ascribe to neither of those views, although I do think that the value of the “Majority”/Byzantine Text has been seriously underestimated by Metzger, the Alands, and most other eclectics.

I agree. I think that the MT and the papyri should be given much bigger roles.

Jaltus, Jaltus, Jaltus. What a gift you give me! The translation-team that made the TNIV includes Gordon Fee, Douglas Moo, Walter Liefeld, John Stek, Ronald Youngblood (though, as an Old Testament scholar, he had very little to do with the TNIV New Testament), Herbert Wolf, and I.H. Marshall. Several of these scholars were also involved in the production of the NIV. If these folks are “on the more liberal side” – even though they all ascribe to inerrancy, as far as I know – who’s conservative? If you can’t trust the TNIV, regarding which the International Bible Society’s president Peter Bradley assured readers (in Light Magazine, July 2002, which you can read online), “Every word of the original Greek and Hebrew is translated accurately and faithfully in the TNIV,” who can you trust? What you call a “perversion,” Ted Haggard – the new president of the National Association of Evangelicals – wholeheartedly endorses.

I still think the TNIV is horrid, and we all know the NRSV is out to lunch. As for the TNIV, those who translated the NT (and certain parts of the OT) showed a lack of foresight and too much concern for "making it readable" instead of keeping the message as the focus. The loss of "Son of Man" in Ezekiel is horrid, some of the changes make no sense and truly reflect only the thought and not the words of the Greek. I know Doug Moo and a few others on the committee. Let me just say that their concept of "a good translation" is not the same as mine. And I do mean they are more liberal, but I should have nuanced by adding "with respect to translation theory," though some of them are more liberal theologically than I am in terms of general theology, not necessarily inerrancy.

On the contrary, in the paragraph you’re talking about here I was not arguing at all, just posing a question and giving you the opportunity to define/refine your position (remember how I put it: I didn’t say, “This is your position.” I said, “If this is not your position, why not?” I drew a caricature and invited you to draw an accurate portrait.) But apparently, you really /are/ willing to let internal considerations overrule 99.9999999% of the manuscript evidence. Which, I think, is a position which you ought to reconsider. (But in a different thread, since we seem to be wandering from Mark 16:9-20.)
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock


Frankly, I think internal considerations are more important. Again, if you want a thread on TC theory, feel free to start one.

I am sorry if I thought you were KJVO, but I believe I made a comment about it earlier in this thread and was not corrected, so I assumed I was on the right track.

[Waterrock]

Dear Jaltus,

WR: “For M.M. to actually not be using Porphyry, numerous parallels between the composition M.M. employs, and “Against Christians,” must be attributed to coincidence.”

J: “Or he could have in fact been quoting from someone who sounded like Porphyry for this one argument, or a direct intellectual descendant of Porphyry's. It is still shakey evidence.”

Let’s go ahead and shake it, and take the view that M.M. was using a composition by Hierocles which incorporated material from “Against the Christians.” That would mean that the early 300’s is the date of the composition to which M.M. responded, and it would mean that Hierocles echoed Porphyry’s speculation that Peter arranged the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira.

(Btw, I miscalculated when giving those dates extrapolated from Apocritus. Adding on a little more than 300 years to the time of Christ would put us in the early 300’s, not c. 280. (If the pagan was not exaggerating, and if the original did not say “200” as Harnack conjectured.) So let’s go ahead and name Hierocles as the #1 suspect for M.M.’s source, keeping in mind that Hierocles incorporated material from Porphyry into his works (such as the bit about Peter and Ananias & Sapphira). Thus we can use “very early fourth century” as the date for M.M.’s source, keeping in mind who Hierocles was and where he got some of his material. Fair?)

J: “If I quote a nonChristian who disagrees with your views, or even a well-intentioned Christian, you blow them off (see your C S Mann comments above).”

When I conclude (as I concluded about C.S. Mann’s comments about the ending of Mark, after reading them in the Anchor Bible Commentary series) that a statement is terribly inaccurate, I stop treating it as if it is accurate. Patently false statements ought to be regarded as what they are. Dr. Mann stated, “In fact, in all the literature before the middle of the fourth century there are only two possible allusions to this anonymous ending.” That is not true, as I have amply shown in this thread. Furthermore, Dr. Mann’s readers miss the significant detail that there are only two or possibly three Greek copies of Mark extant from before 350, a nugget of data which definitely belongs on the scales when one is claiming that a reading should be rejected because of its lack of wide support prior to 350.

J: “That is just it, though, families are of little value after the twelfth century, and this is bordering on quite close to that time.”

Eh? First, the f-1 family is valuable. Second, you’re bringing up some awfully tangential stuff (in this case, the question of the value of f-1).

J: “Also, due to the late date of 72, it could be based on another copy which was influenced by 1582.”

You’re setting up a win-win scenario for your view: if there /were/ a family relationship, you could say, “See, 72 borrowed the note from its relative 1582.” But since there isn’t a family relationship, you’re trying to posit a connection of some other kind. /Anything/ except admit that the natural deduction which one would normally make is that 1582 and 72 derived a note from a source that is older than both of them.

J: “True, your evidence does exist and mine does not. However, mine follows the pattern whereas yours is dated quite late.”

What pattern? A pattern of adaptation to the Byzantine Text? But Irenaeus’ statement does not conform to the standard Byzantine Text; he refers to the “Lord Jesus,” not to plain “the Lord.” One would have to propose that the Latin text of Irenaeus was conformed to the Pi-family’s text. Two things make your objection irrelevant: first, you have to keep adding new factors to get your theory to work. Second, one can raise a question about /any/ evidence the same way. Origen is not cited in favor of supporting the Long Ending. Suppose I say, though, that Origen originally supported the Long Ending, and some later editor removed his statement, and because of this, Origen should be regarded as a witness in favor of the Long Ending. Ridiculous, right? But that is the same sort of thing you are doing in regard to Irenaeus.

J: “And again I said I was only positing it, not saying I was right.”

Okay. Posit all you like. But that’s certainly not an objective approach. Evidence should shape theory, not the other way around . . . right?

J: “I have not read [Hurtado’s] study so I am asking you what method of agreement it is based on. Is it text based or is it difference based? Is the percent agreement based on the total text or is it based on only passages of discrepancies? Please answer this question as it is at least the second time I have asked it.”

And the library, alas, has not still moved any closer to my house, so I do not have the wherewithal to double-check the study and make sure of the basis of Hurtado’s statement. I am fairly sure it was a comparison based on a comparison of readings in a large constellation of passages notable for their variants. I will try to verify this at the next opportunity.

J: “When was his study?”

Published in 1973.

J: “I missed that you were using jargon and actually assumed we were talking about the issue at hand. Silly me.”

Ho ho. Well, /somebody/ in this thread was talking about the Synoptic Problem.

J: “The simplest explanation of the gospel materials would be Mark wrote first, Matthew used him, and Luke used both. Any other explanation is unnecessarily complicated.”

I know this is the simplest explanation. But it doesn’t fit the evidence exactly (for instance, it fails to explain those Minor Agreements). “Simple” is not always synonymous with “better.”

J: “Unfortunately for you this is not a position with much evidence.”

I think a good amount of evidence for it could be amassed. Perhaps that can be pursued in a thread about the Synoptic Problem.

J: “I also recommend (though I disagree with his conclusions) David Pao's Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus for Luke's usage of the theme.”

Thanks. Somehow, though, I find it hard to imagine that the question, “Was Mark 16:9-20 in the Gospel of Mark as officially first published for church use?” will be resolved by consulting “Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus”.

J: “And when was Paul released?”

I’d say c. A.D. 64. But we’re getting into tangents.

J: “… many scholars date Paul's death to 64 AD. (see Bruce's commentary)”

I consulted Bruce’s commentary (in the New London Commentary series), and it looks line in the footnote on p. 535, he is describing the Great Fire as occurring in A.D. 64; he doesn’t pin down Paul’s death as occurring then (and he says, “this at best can be no more than a matter of probability”).

J: “Your case against me was the Mark specifically pointed to resurrection appearances in Gaililee wehich I said did not happen. You said that Mark's gospel needed the ending to show that those "prophecies" of appearances in Galilee happened, and I told you that no appearances recorded in Mark took place in Galilee.” You have now destroyed your own position for holding to the longer ending as being internally necessary and have now shown it to NOT fulfill the prophecies listed within the gospel.”

I have done no such thing. To review: Mark intentionally forecasts resurrection appearances in Galilee. Check. You said (taking the view that Mark 16:9-20 was not originally present when the Gospel of Mark was first published for church-use) that those appearances did not happen [meaning, of course, that Mark did not record them. I pass by the opportunity to play Inquisition.] I said that they did happen, and that although Mark does not specify the location for them, his readers – having read 16:7 – would naturally assume that they occurred in Galilee.

And they would, until they read Luke. Then logic would take its course and those who attempted to see the harmony would deduce one of three views: (a) Mark tells about two events, one in Galilee and another at Jerusalem, or (b) Jesus had appeared in Galilee, but the disciples had not rendesvoused there on schedule, or (c) Jesus appeared repeatedly, including at least one appearance in Galilee (which Matthew mentions) where he commissioned His disciples, and one appearance (reported in Mk. 16:19-20 and by Luke) in which He ascended to heaven.

J: “Either way your earlier explanation for the internal necessity of the ending is now moot, which was my point.”

Look, appearances in Galilee are forecast by Mark. Appearances in Galilee are explicitly mentioned in Matthew and John, and the Great Commission in Mk. 16:15ff. seems to parallel Mt. 28:18-20 (which took place in Galilee). So it would seem that Mark 16:14 is in Jerusalem, 16:15-18 is in Galilee, and 16:19-20 is back in Jerusalem (a scenario which corresponds exactly with the parallel passages), and Mark simply compressed the account.

J: “In reading the gospel, the answer to "who do you say I am" is quite obvious to the readers, but the characters in the book do not get it. Thus, the ending at 16:8 fits in very tightly with this major theme. The longer ending dismisses the theme completely.”

Eh? That’s not the original “Messianic Secret” motif! Nevertheless: the Gospel of Mark is not only about the weaknesses of Christ’s followers. A much more prominent theme is the power of Christ. The disciples’ weakness is placed in relief alongside His strength, in case after case. If there’s a pattern in Mark, it’s a pattern that involves obvious (not implied) contrasts. But your view of the Long Ending demands something very different and disruptive: whereas Mark has been showing the power of Jesus contrasted with the shortcomings of the disciples, he would have to be showing the shortcomings of the disciples contrasted with … nothing! (Whereas in the Long Ending, the contrast continues. Things don’t just stop halfway through. See?)

J: “Either 14:28 and 16:7 are unfulfilled or else Mark contradicts Luke.”

Or else Mark compresses appearances in Galilee and Jerusalem.

WR: “The only Old Latin MS with an extant text that testifies against the Long Ending is it-k, which is also the only MS (in any language) which has only the Short Ending after Mark 16:8.”

J: “it and k are in fact different documents. it stands for the majority of Latin manuscripts and k is a specific Latin manuscript. I was being kind to you. However, after something obnoxious like that, I will just tell you that you are flat out wrong, assuming you are using NA 27's notation. I refer you to pp. 65* and 715, respectively, in noting that they are in fact two different notations and not one.”

I’m not sure how, after I repeatedly referred to Codex Bobiensis as “it-k,” anyone could possibly misunderstand me, but apparently you have found a way. I think we are experiencing a nomenclature glitch. When I refer to “it-k” I am referring to the Old Latin manuscript Codex Bobiensis (a.k.a. Bobbiensis). The UBS-4 consistently used “it” plus a superscripted letter to represent Old Latin MSS in the apparatus. Since I can’t write superscripted letters in this format, I write, instead, “it-k.” The NA-27’s notation is different; NA-27 just uses “k.”

Since you have your NA-27 handy, look at p. 148 therein. Look at the textual apparatus. Look at the list of witnesses for the omission of Mark 16:9-20. The Old Latin is not listed. There’s no “it.” The only Latin evidence listed for the non-inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 is Codex Bobiensis (“it-k” in the UBS notation; plain “k” in NA-27).

If one looks down a little further, in the apparatus at 16:14, one may observe that “it” is cited as support for the reading in the text. The preponderance of Old Latin evidence favors the inclusion of the Long Ending. “It” or “lat” or “latt” (“latt” referring to the “entire Latin tradition” according to p. 65*) are consistently cited not only at 16:14, but also at 16:17a and 16:17b and 16:18 and 16:19 and 16:20.

Apparently when I used “it-k” to refer (several times) to Codex Bobiensis, a notation-difference led you to think (somehow) that I was referring to two sources (“it” and “k”) instead of one. However the misunderstanding originated, let’s flex the results of its resolution: “it” is not a witness for the omission of Mark 16:9-20. The extant Old Latin evidence, except for it-k (that is, “k”), supports the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20.

Btw, although the NA-27’s apparatus may make it appear that all Old Latin MSS except it-k testify in favor of the Long Ending, one should keep in mind that quite a few Old Latin MSS are mutilated and do not supply evidence one way or the other. Particularly interesting is it-a (plain “a” in NA-27), which is missing its original contents from Mark 15:15 onward. (The text of Mark 16:7-20 has been restored, but in a Vulgate text, not the Old Latin displayed in the rest of the MS.) Normally that would make it-a (“a” in NA-27) irrelevant, but C.H. Turner (back in 1928) calculated the space which the text of Mark 15:16-16:20 would have taken up on the missing pages, and concluded that there would not be enough space for the entire Long Ending unless the copyist had written the text more tightly than usual.

On the other hand, there is no way of knowing if Codex Vercellensis’ copyist (probably Eusebius of Vercelli, c. 365, or his assistant] accidentally skipped text, or if the MS had an unusual page-format at the end (I’m pretty sure there would be no way to detect the presence of an extra bifolium if one had originally been there), or if the copyist had miscalculated the requisite number of pages and ended up doing exactly the kind of text-compacting that Turner described. Plus, Eusebius of Vercelli was a known admirer of Eusebius of Caesarea (Jerome mentions that Eusebius of Vercelli even went through the trouble of translating and editing Eusebius of Caesarea’s commentary on the Psalms), so even if one were to assume that it-a (“a” in NA-27) did not include Mark 16:9-20 (which would be a rather generous assumption), it might be evidence that Eusebius of Vercelli was following the cue in the Eusebian Canons, rather than that he was following his exemplar. This is one coin that is glued on its edge, so to speak (meaning that any decision would be so tentative that it’s better to keep Codex Vercellensis out of the equation, which is what NA-27 does), but I thought that you might nevertheless like to know about it.

J: [The idea that a copyist in the text-stream from which Vaticanus and Sinaiticus descended inserted material from the margin into Matthew 27, and that the same sort of mistake can account for the omission of 16:9-20 from Mark is] “All assumptions.”

I am interested in how else you account for the reading of Aleph and B in Matthew 27:49. To me it is perfectly obvious that in an early copy, someone recollected John 19:24 and wrote it (or, rather, his not-quite-right recollection of it) in the margin next to Matthew 27:50, and later, a copyist using that copy – a copyist who either did not know the contents of John 19:24 (because if he did know, he would have realized that he was creating a monstrous contradiction) or who was so well-trained that he did whatever he thought his exemplar told him to do (no matter how senseless it seemed) – inserted the marginalia into the text.

WR: [Mark’s mention of Mary Magdalene’s previous possession by, and deliverance from , seven demons] “is not a non sequitur; it is a relevant point which provides an explanation as to why the disciples were slow to believe her.”

J: “Sorry, don't buy it at all. Does Mark show other internal evidence of the 12 (or 11) not believing something Mary said? This is a reach.”

There is no need for more internal evidence. Istm that you’re making an unreasonable demand on Mark as an author, as if he has to make a point twice to make it at all.

In other news:

J: “I think that the MT and the papyri should be given much bigger roles.”

Hm. So there is much textual criticism yet to be done? There are mistakes in the NA-27 that need to be amended? Amen. The evidence I have presented shows that the exclusion of Mark 16:9-20 (via double-bracketing … today) is a mistake that needs to be corrected. The UBS Editorial Committee that produced a text identical to the NA-27 gave the exclusion of Mark 16:9-20 an “A” rating, meaning that they were practically certain that their decision was correct. Bruce Metzger and other commentators present the exclusion of Mark 16:9-20 as one of the firm results of modern textual criticism. If this “A” decision is incorrect, what does that say about the “B” “C” and “D” decisions? (Meant rhetorically.)

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[Jaltus]

I probably won't be able to get back to this for a few weeks. I am taking suicide German and have a wedding to attend (so this weekend is out).

[Waterrock]

Does anyone else have any questions or comments about Mark 16:9-20 and the evidence for/against it?

Waterrock

[Dr. Jack Bauer]

It is an important text for charismatics, because it is the only text that makes any reference to "NEW tongues" as a sign that will follow those who believe.

Fortunately for us Reformed tpyes, it's not original. :wink:

Glenn

[Waterrock]

Dear Theonomy/Glenn:

T/G: “Fortunately for us Reformed tpyes, it's not original.”

Thanks for chiming in. However, simply striking a pose will not make the ground you’re (currently) standing on any stronger. /Why/ do you think Mark 16:9-20 is not original? Because Charismatics utilize it???

Those with a Reformed background, istm, ought to be a bit more hesitant to proclaim Mark 16:9-20 inauthentic, for at least two reasons. First, because it’s authentic. Second, because the Westminster Confession states in its first chapter, part 8, “The Old Testament in Hebrew … and the New Testament in Greek … being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as, in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them.”

Now, when the Westminster Confession was formulated, what do you think the formulators had in mind when they thought of the contents of the Gospel of Mark? A Gospel of Mark that ended at 16:8? Certainly not. When they used the Gospel of Mark, it was a Gospel of Mark that ended at 16:20. That is the text which they regarded as having been kept pure in all ages. That is the text which Martin Luther used in his catechism when describing the importance of the sacrament of baptism. Consider the commentaries of the movers and shakers of the Reformation, and you tell me what form of the Gospel of Mark they regarded to have been “kept pure in all ages.”

If Mark 16:9-20 is not authentic, then certainly the text of Mark has not been kept pure in all ages, and the Westminster Confession is in error. It’s as simple as that. This is not some trivial grammatical shift or a minor textual fluctuation. This is 12 verses, Theonomy.

What has been the “Reformed” view of the importance of this passage in the past? I could call Calvin or many others to testify, but instead I call Charles Spurgeon to the stand. In a sermon -- the full text of which can be read online at http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0573.htm -- Charles Spurgeon stated the following in 1864:

“The lines containing the commission of our ascended Lord are certainly of the utmost importance, and demand devout attention and implicit obedience . . . . A clear understanding of these words is absolutely necessary to our success in our Master's work, for if we do not understand the commission it is not at all likely that we shall discharge it aright. To alter these words were more than impertinence, it would involve the crime of treason against the authority of Christ and the best interests of the souls of men.” The sermon-text to which he was referring was Mark 16:15-16.

I'm not saying that a Reformed individual who rejects Mark 16:9-20 is committing treason against the authority of Christ. But Charles Spurgeon said something that amounts to that, didn't he.

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[Dr. Jack Bauer]

Waterrock

My only real point was to explain why the text is so important to some people.

While I am a 'Reformed type,' I don't subscribe to everything the Westminster standards teach, so it's no biggie for me if the WCF teaches that the text of the NT has been preserved. Incidentally however, you do need to ralise that I'm not saying the NT text has NOT been preserved. I'm just saying that I don't think that the text underlying the KJV is a pure representation of it. The two claims are quite different.

Glenn

[Socrates]

Today @ 08:36 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=125768#post125768)
Theonomy:

While I am a 'Reformed type,' I don't subscribe to everything the Westminster standards teach, so it's no biggie for me if the WCF teaches that the text of the NT has been preserved. Incidentally however, you do need to ralise that I'm not saying the NT text has NOT been preserved. I'm just saying that I don't think that the text underlying the KJV is a pure representation of it. The two claims are quite different.

That's a point that is worthy of emphasis, because so manyv KJVOs beg the question. E.g. they wax eloquent on how God would have preserved the text (usually misunderstanding Psalm 12), then asserting that this preserved text must be the KJV or TR. Armed with this "insight", they "prove" that the other Bibles or texts are corrupt, solely by virtue of the fact that they differ from the KJV/TR. Then they use the "fact" of the corruption of the other Bibles as "proof" that the KJV is the only Bible we should use.

[Waterrock]

Dear Glenn/Theonomy,

G/T: "My only real point was to explain why the text is so important to some people."

I'm glad we got that straight. I had somehow misconstrued your statement as if your point was that Mark 16:9-20 was not original. Please bear in mind that for some people, the text is regarded as important simply because it has been regarded for a long time as the Word of God by many people (for instance, by Irenaeus, M. Luther, C. Spurgeon, and copyists of 99.9% of all Greek manuscripts of Mark).

G/T: "you do need to ralise that I'm not saying the NT text has NOT been preserved."

I realize that you are not saying that the NT text has been lost. Which -- if I may climb back to the topic at hand -- implies that either you think that Mark /intentionally/ ended his Gospel-account at 16:8 (a view which James Edwards politely slices and dices in the Pillar Commentary on Mark), or that the Spirit stopped inspiring Mark at the end of 16:8, and it was God's plan all along for the remaining uninspired text to be lost. (Take note, btw, that the Committee which produced the UBS text -- a committee which included K. Aland and B. Metzger -- had no scruples about concluding that the most likely scenario is that the last part of the original text of the Gospel of Mark has been lost. This was also the view of Westcott & Hort.) If you continue to reject Mark 16:9-20, those are your only options, it seems. Which do you prefer?

Yours in Christ,
Waterrock

[Dr. Jack Bauer]

Today @ 03:23 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=126347#post126347)
Waterrock:

I realize that you are not saying that the NT text has been lost. Which -- if I may climb back to the topic at hand -- implies that either you think that Mark /intentionally/ ended his Gospel-account at 16:8 ... or that the Spirit stopped inspiring Mark at the end of 16:8, and it was God's plan all along for the remaining uninspired text to be lost... If you continue to reject Mark 16:9-20, those are your only options, it seems. Which do you prefer?

Well I'm really not sure that it matters which is more likely. I see nothing wrong with simply saying that there is evidence for the exclusion of this passage - evidence that has been well rehearsed in the past, and some of which has been posted on this thread, so somehow the endng of Mark that appears in later manuscripts is not original. It seems to me that it is enough to know that there are possible scenarios to account for this, without the need to actually be able to explain which one seems most likely of all. The fact is, I have no way of being able to tell exactly how textual variants, glosses etc came about. This doesn't mean we're not in a position to recognise when they have occurred.

All the best
Glenn

[Waterrock]

Dear Glenn/Theonomy,

It's like this: the manuscript-evidence presents us with two variants (really, more than half a dozen, but they rapidly devolve to two when analyzed) at the end of Mark: (A) an abrupt ending at 16:8, or (B) a continuation with 16:9-20.

G/T: "I see nothing wrong with simply saying that there is evidence for the exclusion of this passage"

Nor do I. Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, the Sinaitic Syriac, Coptic Codex P. Palau Rib. 182 and Codex Bobiensis are certainly evidence for the non-inclusion of Mark 16:9-20. The thing is, Glenn, that we must also say that there is also evidence for the inclusion of the passage. The job of the New Testament textual critic -- and the goal of this thread -- is to analyze the evidence and discern which part is right. But the approach you describe seems akin to that of a juror who says, "Well, there's some evidence indicating that the defendant is guilty, and some evidence says he's innocent, and we can't really tell what happened, so let's pronounce him guilty."

G/T: "evidence that has been well rehearsed in the past, and some of which has been posted on this thread,"

And you saw how well it fared: Jaltus ended up admitting that the external evidence favors the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20.

I also showed (or referred to materials that show) that much of the evidence used against the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 ~ such as the UBS-2's citation of Origen and Clement of Alexandria and Ammonius against it, which is totally an argument from silence and which is something to which the editors specially resorted to here ~ is bogus.

I showed (or gave precise references to other materials that showed) that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus ought to be regarded as representing one narrow line of transmission. I showed that the blank column at the end of Mark in Vaticanus should be considered a witness for Mark 16:9-20. I showed that early patristic evidence (Justin, Tatian, and Irenaeus in the 100's, for example) overwhelmingly supports Mark 16:9-20. I showed that Jerome is not a valid witness against 16:9-20. I mentioned that Hort himself regarded the vocabulary and style of vv. 9-20 (which apparently was the capstone of Jaltus' position) as "indecisive, but not favourable to genuineness."

And I could go on to demonstrate that in commentary after commentary, the evidence has not been "well rehearsed" at all; it has been grossly misrepresented and unconscionably warped by William Lane and other prominent commentators (Ralph Martin, William Barclay, etc.). [Btw, I really and truly mean that. It's no exaggeration. The bald errors in the descriptions of the external evidence regarding Mark 16:9-20 in commentaries are nothing short of scandalous.]

G/T: "It seems to me that it is enough to know that there are possible scenarios to account for this"

But Glenn, you have to consider the /likelihood/ of those possible scenarios. If you go with Scenario A (that Mark stopped writing at the end of 16:8), all sorts of problems arise, as James Edwards shows in his commentary. For example, the women seem to be introduced for the sole purpose of showing their failure -- a failure which is never undone in Mark, giving the reader of Mark an impression which utterly collides with the impression given by Matthew. On the other hand, if you go with Scenario B, then part of the original text of the Gospel of Mark is lost, and the preacher who says, "Trust the Gospel of Mark" is thus placed in the same position as the cook who tells his assistants, "Trust this recipe, even though some material originally present has been lost."

I understand your hesitancy to embrace either of these two options, Glenn, but as long as you reject the authenticity of Mark 16:9-20, there are no other options. And a non-decision is tantamount to a decision against treating the text as material that is profitable for doctrine, reproof, etc., on the same level as the rest of the New Testament.

Meanwhile, if you back up and consider the "could've's" that are required for Mark 16:9-20 to be original, things are not complicated at all: Mark finished a paragraph with "gar" and wrote the resurrection-appearances using a piece of source-material which he did not drastically alter. A later copyist in the locale which produced the "Proto-Alexandrian" text failed to copy the resurrection-appearances.

(Why this failure? Here we, lacking the ability to time-travel, are in the realm of speculation, but those who try to concoct motives to end the Gospel of Mark at 16:8, or those who envision hypothetical lost endings, enter the same realm. Whereas their speculations are rather complex, the theories about how Mark 16:9-20 could have been lost are relatively simple: a copyist (a) regarded the Long Ending as spurious because something else had been there in a pre-publication draft of Mark known to him, (b) used a copy in which the last page of Mark, containing vv. 9-20, was lost, or (c) misinterpreted a marginal note which originally signalled the end of a lesson-unit at 16:8, or (d) misinterpreted a liturgical flourish written in the margin beside the end of 16:8 which was originally intended to conclude a lection that ended at 16:8; the copyist misinterpreted it to mean that he ought to replace vv. 9-20 with the material in the margin; when he did so he created a text with the "Short Ending."

The occurrence of any of these events in the late second century in one isolated locale accounts for the external evidence against Mark 16:9-20 (including all evidence for the "Short Ending"). The internal evidence ~ or rather, what is claimed to be internal evidence ~ against Mark 16:9-20 is accounted for by, imho, a faulty method of research which lacks sufficient comparison-controls (in other words, most of the internal evidence used by Metzger and all who have echoed him about this dissolves under close examination of the sort done by Dr. Bruce Terry).

Inasmuch as the external evidence against Mark 16:9-20 has been accounted for, and the internal evidence has been exposed as mostly hollow and severely unbalanced, what is keeping you from accepting Mark 16:9-20 as authentic? Surely it's not just a dislike of what it says ... right?

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[Waterrock]

Okay; break's over: I deduce from the existence of the new "NT Poetry" thread that there is currently no schedule-related impediment to resuming this discussion.

A recollection of some points may help get things back up to speed: It has been claimed that no extant second-century MSS of Mark have 16:9-20. This is readily granted, since no extant MSS of Mark are known to exist (unless one assigns P45 a late second-century date, which would still be less than decisive since P45, due to damage, has no text from Mark 16).

But the lack of extant second-century MSS does not mean that we have no second-century support for Mark 16:9-20. There's a possible reference in the writings of Papias (from 110), a probable reference by Justin Martyr (c. 150), a probable usage by the author of "Epistula Apostolorum" (pre-160), and a definite reference by Irenaeus (c. 180). Although the Greek text of Irenaeus' quotation of Mark 16:19 is apparently not extant, a Latin translation is, and Irenaeus' quotation of Mark 16:19 is supported by a Greek note in the margin of MS 1582. Also, many scholars (including B. Metzger and B.F. Streeter) have stated categorically that Tatian included Mark 16:9-20 in his "Diatessaron," c. 175.

Also, contrary to the often-repeated claim that Clement of Alexandria and Origen state that Mark 16:9-20 is absent in their MSS, these two writers simply do not use material from Mark 16:9-20 in their extant writings. Clement did not make any obvious use of Matthew 28, either. And Origen makes it clear that he did not use Mark much -- and it is equally clear that he used some pseudepigraphical texts which may have disagreed with Mark. So these two witnesses are justly dismissed; they are nothing more than an argument from (completely explicable) silence.

After we vigorously evicted some bad data, it became clear that the patristic support for Mark 16:9-20 is strong -- not only in the second century but throughout the third and fourth centuries, contrary to the inaccurate statements perpetuated in various commentaries (by Lane, Martin, NET-Bible, and others). Hippolytus, Vincentius of Thibaris, "Rebaptism," the producer of the Freer Logion, Porphyry and/or Hierocles, Aphrahat, Ulfilas, the "Acts of Pilate," the "Acts of John," Ephrem Syrus, Jerome, and Augustine (and more!) all indicate the existence and acceptance of these verses.

Although it is possible to devise theories to belittle some references (something to which just about all such references are vulnerable), the cumulative weight of the patristic evidence and manuscript evidence (which includes 99.9% of the Greek MSS of the Gospel of Mark [including the early uncials Codex W, Codex C, Codex D, and Codex A], the Curetonian Syriac, the Peshitta, and all undamaged Old Latin MSS of Mark except Codex Bobbiensis) outweighs the external evidence against the inclusion of the passage.

A special concern involves the only two Greek MSS which clearly do not include Mark 16:9-20: Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. (While some other Greek MSS do not include the last part of Mark because of mutilation, in the case of these two MSS the absence of Mk. 16:9-20 is not due to accidental mutilation). In Sinaiticus, Mark 15:54-Luke 1:56 is written on a replacement-page. In Vaticanus, there is a unique blank space after Mark 16:8 which is nearly sufficient to contain the Long Ending. Vaticanus' blank space implies that the copyist recollected the Long Ending but did not have it in his exemplar and therefore left space for it in the event that the eventual owner of the MS would be able to include it.

(Another interesting feature of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus is that scholarly investigators tend to agree (I know of none that confidently disagree) that these two MSS were produced at the same scriptorium (that is, the same center for making copies of Scripture), and thus the weight of their testimony may be reduced. If Vaticanus is one of the 50 copies produced by Eusebius for Emperor Constantine, and if Sinaiticus is a copy produced by Euzious and Acacius -- Eusebius' successors at Caesarea later in the mid-300's -- and inasmuch as Jerome's letter "Ad Hedibiam" is essentially a paraphrase/re-presentation of material from Eusebius' composition "Ad Marinum," then much of the weight of some witnesses that have been offered for the non-inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 dissolves, inasmuch as some of these witnesses cannot be validly considered independent of the others.)

Another special concern is the existence of the "Short Ending," something which we still have not finished looking into. The earliest MS with the "Short Ending" -- "it-k" also known as "k" -- has a highly unusually and somewhat docetically tinged text of Mark 16.

Having reached agreement that the external evidence favors the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 (Jaltus says the external evidence for inclusion outweighs the contrary evidence by a ratio of about 60:40, while I say the external evidence is a veritable avalanche in favor of inclusion), we have turned to internal considerations.

Jaltus and I agree that the vocabulary of Mark 16:9-20 demonstrates no dependence upon Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, or Acts. We also agree that some of the observations made by Dr. Bruce Terry in his online article about the style of Mark 16:9-20 effectively deflect some of the vocabulary-based objections made by (among others) Bruce Metzger in his "Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament." (Jaltus retained some objections related to style but I'm still not sure exactly what he meant, since we were both referring loosely to parts of Dr. Terry's essay and I don't think we were using the same terms for the same parts.)

In major commentaries (Lane, Stonehouse, Metzger) which argue against the authenticity of Mark 16:9-20, the claim that the author of the Long Ending knew the texts of Matthew and John (especially John) is a very important part of the internally-based objections to the passage's authenticity. Clearly if the author knew the Gospel of John, he could not = Mark or anyone else associated with the production of the Gospel of Mark; he must be someone writing after the Gospel of John was written (i.e., after about A.D. 90). Since this capstone-argument is not part of Jaltus' approach at all, I am not sure what Jaltus regards as the internal evidence against Mark 16:9-20 which -- he says -- outweighs the external evidence.

(We also entertained some thoughts about what direction one might end up going in if one indiscriminatingly gave internal considerations a higher value than external ones: one might have to remove Mark 1:1-3, John 21, Second Peter, etc. It occurs to me that some internal objections may be sliced if the paramount question is not, "Did Mark write this?" but "Was this an original part of the Gospel of Mark?". In other words, if the form of the text as of its "first issue" is the question, not authorship, then the Long Ending need not be particularly "Markan" to be authentic, any more than John 21:24-25 needs to be Johannine, Romans 16:22 needs to be Pauline, or Deuteronomy 34:5ff. needs to be Mosaic.)

Finally, there was a lingering question about the nature of Larry Hurtado's investigation of the relationship between P45 and Codex W. I proposed that since the texts of P45 and W are closely related, it is fair to put P45 on the scales as a /very light/ witness in support of Mark 16:9-20. The idea is that inasmuch as P45 and W share the same general text-type in the second half of Mark, it is a reasonable hypothesis that they both had the Long Ending when produced. *Just* a hypothesis, I emphasize -- but a reasonable one, which deserves to be given weight, especially since MSS from the fourth century (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) have been presented as evidence of the absence of Mark 16:9-20 in the second-century text-stream from which they descend (even though the only strongly-agreeing MSS from the second century that display the same text-type as Sinaiticus and Vaticanus do not even have a shred of Mark). I now have in front of me Dr. Hurtado's study, so we can re-explore the questions previously raised about it.

That is, I think, the basic gist of the story so far. Jaltus, could you offer any clarifications/corrections/emphases or aspects of the thread which I may have overlooked?

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[Waterrock]

Dear Jaltus,

You had asked a while ago, "I have not read [Hurtado's] study so I am asking you what method of agreement it is based on. Is it text based or is it difference based? Is the percent agreement based on the total text or is it based on only passages of discrepancies? Please answer this question as it is at least the second time I have asked it."

In "Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Caesarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark," Larry Hurtado insisted that "a large body of text" must be studied to establish textual relationships of manuscripts. He studied ...

88 variation-units in Mark 1
69 variation-units in Mark 2
64 variation-units in Mark 3
95 variations-units in Mark 4
84 variation-units in Mark 5
152 variation-units in Mark 6
77 variation-units in Mark 7
100 variation-units in Mark 8
131 variation-units in Mark 9
103 variation-units in Mark 10
85 variation-units in Mark 11
103 variation-units in Mark 12
68 variation-units in Mark 13
149 variation-units in Mark 14
71 variation-units in Mark 15:1-16:8.

(These numbers are from Appendix 1 of his study.)

P45 was used "only in a limited section" because it is not extant in all sections. Hurtado states (p. 12) "The most intact portions used here are 6:37-48, 7:4-10; 7:25-35; 8:11-23; 8:36-9:5; 9:19-29. These sections, combined, contain (he says on p. 63) 103 variation-units.

So while his study is not exhaustive in the sense that it covers every conceivable variant, it certainly makes good use of what we have to work with. Istm that Hurtado's thorough cross-comparison of 103 variants in 6:37-48, 7:4-10; 7:25-35; 8:11-23; 8:36-9:5; 9:19-29 cannot (barring bad data) yield anything but reliable results.

(It would seem that Hurtado went through every single variation-unit that is listed in NA-27 for these passages, inasmuch as NA-27 lists, in Mark 6:37-48, 7:4-10, 7:25-35, 8:11-23, 8:36-9:5, and 9:19-29, a total of 103 variants.)

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[Jaltus]

Waterrock,

I should be able to get back to this (looks at calender) probably early next week.

*cough*

I have a paper I forgot about.

:blush:


The two other threads I have going in here are ways for me to blow off steam. This thread makes me do a little more work.

Anyway, my goal is to try to post by August 29th, and I should actually be able to post before then.

[Waterrock]

Jaltus,

I think I've given you plenty of time to reply. I hereby conclude this thread and consider my task of defending the authenticity of Mark 16:9-20 accomplished, unless you have some other material to address.

Waterrock

[Jaltus]

Frankly, I do not have the time.

Life is just too busy.

[EdJones]

Is Mark 16:9-20 In the Original?

Which "Original" are you talking about??

[Waterrock]

EdJones ~

Ed: "Which "Original" are you talking about??"

By the "original" Gospel of Mark, I mean the Gospel of Mark in the form in which it was first published as a finished work.

Waterrock

[EdJones]

Is it true that out of 620 manuscripts that contain Mark’s gospel, only 2 omit the last 12 verses?

[Waterrock]

EdJones asked, "Is it true that out of 620 manuscripts that contain Mark’s gospel, only 2 omit the last 12 verses?"

Sort of. That statement was made by Dean Burgon in his lengthy and very detailed defense of the genuineness of Mark 16:9-20, "The Last Twelve Verses of Mark Vindicated," a book well-worth reading. However, some information in that book is obsolete, and such is the case with the statement about 2-out-of-620 manuscripts.

Nowadays, there are many more than 620 known copies of the Gospel of Mark. I have not personally made a count, but the number is something above 1,500. A scholar named Michael Holmes referred to over 1,700 manuscripts of Mark in an article about Mark 16:9-20 a few years ago in the magazine "Bible Review."

Also, the statement is referring not to manuscripts in their extant form, but to manuscripts in the state in which they were originally produced. For instance, a manuscripts might list reading-units including all of Mark 16 at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, but be mutilated toward the end, and not actually contain any text from Mark 16. Even though such a manuscript does not contain Mark 16:9-20, it counts as a witness for inclusion because the original form of the manuscript can be ascertained.

Also, Burgon's statement referred only to Greek manuscripts. If the total number of Latin manuscripts were to be included, the number of manuscripts with Mark 16:9-20 would be inflated by the thousands. On the other hand, if the total number of Armenian manuscripts were to be included, the number of manuscripts with Mark 16:9-20 would be increased dramatically, and so would the number of manuscripts without Mark 16:9-20. But none of the extant Armenian manuscripts of Mark are particularly early.

Instead of using Burgon's claim, I recommend the following statements:

(1) Out of over 1,500 Greek copies of the Gospel of Mark, only two can be clearly shown to have lacked Mark 16:9-20 when they were produced, and these two ~ Vaticanus and Sinaiticus ~ show signs that they were produced either at the same location or by scribes trained at the same location. Furthermore, the scribe of Vaticanus left a prolonged blank space after Mark 16:9-20, which almost certainly indicates that he knew of the existence of Mark 16:9-20. The medieval manuscript 304 is a possible exception; however its text is mainly Byzantine and the evidence does not presently seem conclusive.

(2) Besides Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, there are only three early manuscripts extant which clearly did not contain Mark 16:9-20 when originally produced: Coptic Codex P. Palau Rib. 182 (written in Sahidic), the Sinaitic Syriac (written in Syriac), and the Old Latin Codex Bobiensis (written in Latin). (Bobiensis concludes the Gospel with the "Short Ending" instead.) In addition, the Old Latin Codex Vercellensis probably originally lacked Mk. 16:9-20 but it is missing its original contents for all of Mark 16, making it hard to tell for sure. (Furthermore, Vercellensis and the Sinaitic Syriac both show clear signs of influence from the docetic "Gospel of Peter.")

So a simple numerical count of extant Greek manuscripts produced a ratio in favor of the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 much higher than 2-vs-618. A numerical count of extant Greek and non-Greek manuscripts ~ boiling down counting copies of a version to count as the equivalent of one manuscript ~ also produces a ratio higher than 2-vs-618.

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock

[EdJones]

That pretty much shot down our local self proclaimed Bible correctors now didn't it.

[Waterrock]

Amazing Rando ~

Well hello there. I noticed your question about Mark 16:9-20. I am entering this post to float this thread to the top of the Biblical Languages Forum. The question about Mark 16:9-20 has, as you will see in this thread, been discussed in detail. Notice especially the parts of the thread in which Jaltus and I examine the manuscript-evidence. I include some links to an in-depth online study of this subject -- beginning at www.waynecoc.org/MarkOne.html -- which is much more up-to-date than Dean John Burgon's 1871 analysis.

I am surprised ... well, perhaps not, really ... that Jaltus did not inform you of this earlier discussion about this subject in which he took a major part.

See the other related thread (the one you started) on the same subject for some more observations from me. I think a competent investigation of the evidence will lead to the conclusion that Mark 16:9-20 existed as part of the Gospel of Mark before the "Short Ending" and the abrupt non-ending at the end of v. 8.

Yours in Christ,

Waterrock