MARK 16:7-8

Unless you are convinced that the King James Version is the only inspired English translation of the Bible, you have to face up to the fact that there is a glaring contradiction between Mark's conclusion and those of the other Gospel writers.

In agreement with every modern translation, it is almost a given that Mark's authentic words end with Mark 16:8 with any subsequent words added much later so as to agree more with the other three accounts. As the textual scholar Bruce Metzger concludes after reviewing the four other existing endings of this Gospel, “on the basis of good external evidence and strong internal considerations it appears that the earliest ascertainable form of the Gospel of Mark ended with 16.8.” To all the arguments he adduces to support this view, I have added my own evidence arising from embedded symmetrical word patterns found in Mark's Gospel. See my post “The Ending of the Gospel of Mark” for a detailed description.

But then the problem we are faced with is why Mark ends on such a strange note. We could be left with the unsettling conclusion that in this account, probably the first of the four gospels to be written, no one at all saw the risen Christ, and only two women are witnesses to the words of a man who may or may not have been an angel. Not only that, but it appears that those women didn't tell anyone of their experience. That scenario could easily lead to the theory that those subsequent appearances of the resurrected Christ recorded in Matthew, Luke, and John were only later legendary accounts.

So returning to the postulate that Mark's authentic account ends at 16:8, even that opens the door to several possibilities enumerated by Metzger as to why the conclusion to the gospel is so abrupt.

It was Mark's intended ending
As J. Brown states, “the abrupt nature of the ending of Mark (Mk 16:8) made it a fertile area for discussion of narrative closure – or lack thereof in Mark's case.”

Theological Explanations: Most of the reasons given by scholars for such an apparently unsatisfying conclusion seem, at least in my mind, to make much more sense to modern theologians than to the original intended audience. Thus, we have the following explanations:

    “The message of Mark is that there were indeed resurrection appearances, but first the community must share with the trembling women all the feelings of fear, know those fears to be in the final analysis groundless and only then can they hear the voice the women heard – just as he told you.” (Mann)

    “In point of fact, the present ending of Mark is thoroughly consistent with the motifs of astonishment and fear developed throughout the Gospel...With his closing comment he wished to say that 'the gospel of Jesus the Messiah' (ch. 1) is an event beyond human comprehension and therefore awesome and frightening.” (Lane)

    Hugh Anderson says that “their fearful silence eloquently enough proclaims the truth that the first word and the last word of the good news is not anything men or women can say or do, but God's own witness to his Son (verse 7).”

    Perrin agrees with Hooker's assessment that “Mark creates a situation of suspense to force an existential decision: to follow or not to follow Jesus despite the costs...”

    Childs accepts the ending at v. 8 as being purposeful and explains, “Mark's intention is not to evoke faith in unbelievers, but is addressed to the church. Moreover, his purpose appears to be to remind his audience that the need for a believing response to the crucified Lord – a theme which has dominated his whole gospel – had not been changed by the resurrection. The mystery of Christ's revelation as both concealing and revealing his identity continues past the resurrection.”

    Raymond Brown agrees: “Mark's theology is consistent: Even a proclamation of the resurrection does not produce faith without the hearer's personal encounter with suffering and carrying the cross.”

    Yeung says that it is consistent with the observation that “the believing disciples are continuously found to be lacking in faith and understanding (Mk. 4:40; 6:50-52; 8:17-19; 9:19; 16:8).”

    The impossibility of Jesus being hidden is captured in the irony of the last verse of the Gospel (Mk 16:8).” See the “hidden identity of Jesus” theme throughout Mark (1:34; 1:45; 3:12; 5:19-20; 7:36). (Twelftree)

    Mann presents the view of Crossan: “What we have in this pericope is a symbolic representation of the Jerusalem community in the persons of the women. Their failure to communicate the message of the resurrection is a clear representation of the failure of the Jerusalem community (in the persons of the disciples, especially Peter) to accept the call extended by the Risen Lord given to it by the Markan community.” As Mann responds, “It is very difficult to know what to make of this,” and so I won't attempt to enumerate the problems with Crossan's reasoning.

Stylistic Explanations: Others stress that this ending fits in perfectly with Mark's rough and ready, unpolished mode of writing:

    Perrin: “Among the four Gospels, Mark is the most inelegant in terms of style. Starting with an abrupt beginning (Mk 1:1-3) and coming to a close with an even more abrupt ending (Mk 16:8), Mark's Gospel hurdles forward to its climax.” Although I realize that a number of Bible scholars hold to this view of this gospel being an unpolished first draft at best, my own analysis of the literary structure (see the post “Gospel of Mark: Introduction to the Literary Structure”) leads to the exactly opposite conclusion.

    Brown feels that this “may be a suspended ending...where the readers are expected to complete the story from the hint in the text. Then Mark would be offering and communicating a post-resurrection reunion without narrating it. Opponents respond that this is an attractive answer, but one that supposes considerable subtlety.”

    The same criticism applies to Grassmick's comments: “The abrupt ending is consistent with Mark's style...The reader is left to ponder with awe the meaning of the empty tomb as interpreted by the angel's revelatory message.”

Positive Exegetical Explanations:

Finally, there are those, mainly evangelical scholars, who feel that Mark 16:8 has been badly misunderstood for years and actually presents us with a very upbeat ending in which there is no contradiction at all with the other Synoptic accounts.

    Thus, The Living Bible paraphrases Mark 16:8 as “The women fled from the tomb...too frightened to talk.” This wording could easily be understood as indicating only a momentary silence in the heat of the moment, a silence which was soon overcome. Similarly, The Message says, “Stunned, they said nothing to anyone.”

    Short: “This encounter with the angel startled the women, and they fled from the tomb, and temporarily said nothing to anyone...”

    Grassmick: “For a time they said nothing to anyone...”

    The best champion of this intriguing view is probably K.L Anderson: “Mark 16:1-8 points not to discipleship failure, but rather to the role of the women and the other disciples as witnesses to Jesus' resurrection. Contrary to the common interpretation of this passage, the women's response in Mark 16:8 should be interpreted positively in light of the young man's words in Mark 16:7...the double negative 'they said nothing to no one' indicates exclusive, not absolute silence on the part of the women.” As proof of this interpretation he cites Mark 1:44 where Jesus tells the cured lepers to 'say nothing to no one,' but instead to talk only to the priest.

    Also in favor of the positive view of the women's reaction is Lane's observation: “Fear is the constant reaction to the disclosure of Jesus' transcendent dignity in the Gospel of Mark (cf. Chs. 4:41; 5:15,33,36; 6:50; 9:6,32).” However, Grassmick also points to the presence of “fear” in 10:32, which does not fit Lane's pattern.

    Also, to those such as above who feel that the women's responses of fear and trembling are actually proper responses of faith, Mann replies that phugeo ('to flee') never has a positive connotation in Mark's Gospel. In support of his contention, see Mark 5:14; 13:14; and 14:50,52.

Mark was interrupted before he had time to complete his writing

Swift expresses this view as well as the following one when he states, “The generally accepted view is either that the Gospel was, very early on, mutilated at the last page, or that Mark was unable to finish, perhaps owing to the rising tide to persecution.”

I will defend the first of these two explanations below. As to Mark being interrupted, only a few scholars hold to this explanation and their scenarios do not make much historical sense.

The original ending was lost accidentally

After reviewing the above two explanations, Metzger settles on this last possibility as the most probable: “the Gospel accidentally lost its last leaf before it was multiplied by transcription.”

But even if a longer version of the Gospel of Mark did indeed exist (as I believe was clearly the case: see my post, “The Ending of the Gospel of Mark”), what are we to make of the fact that there is a clear contradiction between his account saying that the women decided not to tell the disciples what they had seen and heard versus the other gospels stating that they did tell them immediately. Just compare the following parallel accounts of the angel's (or Jesus' in the case of John) words to Mary Magdalene (and other women) at the empty tomb:

    Mark 16:7-8: “'Go, tell his disciples and Peter, He goes before you to Galilee: there you will see him as he said.' And they went out, and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.”

    Matthew 28:7-8: “'Go quickly and tell his disciples, He is risen from the dead; and he goes before you to Galilee. There you will see him: lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring his disciples word.”

    Luke 24:7-8: “'He said that the Son of man must be delivered up into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and rise again on the third day.' And they remembered his words, and returned from the tomb, and told all these things to the eleven and to the rest.”

    John 20:17-18 has instead Jesus himself speaking to Mary Magdalene after which she “came and told the disciples, 'I have seen the Lord' and what he had told her.”

It is my feeling that the annotation in The Jerusalem Bible for Mark 16:8 may have inadvertently hit upon part of the explanation for the fact that the women did tell the apostles, as the other three accounts attest. That note proposes that Mark “may have deliberately refrained from speaking of it to avoid having to append an account of the apparitions which he had made up his mind to omit.”

While I do not at all agree that Mark purposely decided to omit all the post-resurrection appearances (presumably for theological reasons of his own), JB does point to the fact that if Mark had said along with the other gospels that the women had relayed the information to the apostles, he could have not very well stopped at that point, but would have needed to continue his narration.

So in conclusion, let me propose that the best explanation for the present ending of the gospel at 16:8 is as follows:

    1. The last page(s) or sheet(s) of the original ending of Mark's Gospel, containing post-resurrection material after 16:8, was accidentally lost at an early date but not before some or all of the other evangelists utilized it as the basis for their own conclusions to their accounts.

    2. Verse 16:8 then read something like that in the other accounts: “ And they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring his disciples word.”

    3. But this truncated version made no sense as it stood since readers would have then wanted to know how the apostles got word of the message and knew to go to Galilee.

    4. So an editor altered the wording of that verse to avoid having to explain what happened subsequently.

    5. Finally, this new truncated version was felt to be totally unsatisfying to subsequent copyists and so they added various endings of their own to round out the gospel account as best they could.

I will leave my comments at this point and let you decide for yourself.