The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inventory

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JoeWallack
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The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inventory

Post by JoeWallack »

The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An inventory of Markan endings and interpretations/fantasies of the original ending (16:8).

JW:
While all evidence, External & Internal, points to 16:8 as the original ending:

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid For. Confirmation 16:8 Original

Christian Bible Scholarship (CBS) has recently increased its efforts for the last two thousand years, pricking against the galiloads, to try and change the direction of 16:8, going through the stop signs and avoiding "Mark's"/Paul's ticket to Heaven. Traditionally CBS has relied on denial/avoidance of 16:8 but due to improved CBS sholarship, CBS now confesses that 16:8 is original. Related to this, with CBS also accepting that GMark was the first Canonical Gospel, there has been a CBS Christlash trying to explain why the original Canonical Gospel, like the Tin son of man, lacked a Christian heart, a post resurrection narrative reunion (so to speak).

In order to try and argue that the words of 16:8 do not mean what the words of 16:8 mean and present us with Fake Good News, CBS now relies on two major literary works:
  • 1) A collection of Gospel writings titled They Never Wrote That

    and

    2) A collection of Patristic writings titled They Never Said That
I think it would be instructive for my fellow Truth Speakers here to gaze upon a relatively recent timeline of CBS Christlash to 16:8:

Date Apologist Source Apology Commentary
1990 Raymond Brown The New Jerome Biblical Commentary 629
Mark probably assumed some familiarity among his readers with the appearance traditions, and so he chose to end the Gospel subtly and dramatically by leaving the readers acknowledging the resurrection and looking forward to the parousia.
"subtly and dramatically"? A hopelax legoame. Brown did not write this but he was an editor of the book so presumably he agreed. Here we have the traditional related Christian apology, "Mark" (author) did not provide supposed known witness to a resurrected Jesus because his readers already knew who they were. This is of course ridiculous/comical or as Brown would say, "fantastic", because:
  • 1. As far as we know GMark is the original Gospel narrative that all others were based on.
    2. Most of GMark's hearers probably had never heard of Jesus.
    3. Orthodox Christianity has always claimed that the most important assertion of Christianity is that there was known
    historical witness to a resurrected Jesus. Strange/bizarre/macabre that the original Gospel would not only not show this but put a lot of effort into denying it.
Brown was the outstanding CBS scholar of his time writing the classics Birth and Death. He always said he also wanted to write Resurrection but never got around to it. Presumably because he would have to deal in detail with the lack of detail in GMark. For example, showing that GMatthew copied GMark to 16:8 and than the only significant edit was changing the women not telling anyone to the women telling everyone, how do you spin that?


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Re: The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inven

Post by Charles Wilson »

From Michael Turton's Site: http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark16.html

MT has Decoded Mark into Chiastic Structures. When the Section is awkward or does not follow the Chiastic Rubric, mischief appears to be at work. At Mark 16: 8, it is asserted that there should follow an A' bracket involving Movement that would have been paired an A bracket, also involving Movement. The 3 dots (" ... ") replace the intermediate Chiastic Steps - I just left them out for space. Have a look at Turton's work. It's great.

He states:
"There is no A' bracket to oppose v2, a bracket involving movement from one geographical location to another. v8 resembles a very typical B' bracket that should be followed by an A' bracket reading, in typical Markan style, something like: "And they returned to Jerusalem."

A. And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen.
___B. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?"
...
______C. And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them;
___B. and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.
A'. It was the last day of the feast of the unleavened bread and many people were going out, returning to their houses since the festival was over. (Gospel of Peter)

The lack of an A bracket to oppose 16:2 suggests that the Gospel originally ended at some point past 16:8, and that the current ending was not in fact the original ending."

CW
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Re: The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inven

Post by JoeWallack »

Charles Wilson wrote:From Michael Turton's Site: http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark16.html

MT has Decoded Mark into Chiastic Structures. When the Section is awkward or does not follow the Chiastic Rubric, mischief appears to be at work. At Mark 16: 8, it is asserted that there should follow an A' bracket involving Movement that would have been paired an A bracket, also involving Movement. The 3 dots (" ... ") replace the intermediate Chiastic Steps - I just left them out for space. Have a look at Turton's work. It's great.

He states:
"There is no A' bracket to oppose v2, a bracket involving movement from one geographical location to another. v8 resembles a very typical B' bracket that should be followed by an A' bracket reading, in typical Markan style, something like: "And they returned to Jerusalem."

A. And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen.
___B. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?"
...
______C. And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them;
___B. and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.
A'. It was the last day of the feast of the unleavened bread and many people were going out, returning to their houses since the festival was over. (Gospel of Peter)

The lack of an A bracket to oppose 16:2 suggests that the Gospel originally ended at some point past 16:8, and that the current ending was not in fact the original ending."

CW
JW:
Aw contraire Peter:

16
1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the [mother] of James, and Salome, bought spices, that they might come and anoint him.

2 And very early on the first day of the week, they come to the tomb when the sun was risen. [ARRIVAL]
  • 3 And they were saying among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the tomb?[QUESTION]
    • 4 and looking up, they see that the stone is rolled back: for it was exceeding great.

      5 And entering into the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, arrayed in a white robe; and they were amazed.[WHAT THEY SEE]
    6 And he saith unto them, Be not amazed: ye seek Jesus, the Nazarene, who hath been crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold, the place where they laid him!

    7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, He goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.[ANSWER]
8 And they went out, and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them: and they said nothing to any one; for they were afraid.[DEPARTURE]
JW:
  • 1) The beginning and ending, arrival and departure, is the most distinguishing feature of Markan chiasms and suggests all by itself that 16:8 is original. Anything after would break the chiasm unless it was a new pericope.

    2) 16:1-8 is structurally a solid chiasm as illustrated above.

    3) 16:1-8 also forms a thematic inclusio with Jesus arriving from Galilee all by himself at the start and departing to Galilee all by himself (so to speak) at the end. Related to this you have the ironic contrast of the messenger at the start that everyone (and "Mark" (author) does say "everyone") is following and the messenger at the end that no one is following.

If you accept that "Mark" does have a style of chiasms then I think 16:1-8 may be the clearest one and is solid Internal evidence for 16:8 as original.


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Re: The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inven

Post by Charles Wilson »

Thank you very much, JW!
The problem, as you illustrate, is that a Chiasm may be wrongly cast. Perhaps Turton is wrong. What leads me to believe that Mark may be truncated after verse 8 is the Moffatt Translation:

Mark 16: 8 (Moffatt):

[8] And they fled out of the tomb, for they were seized with terror and beside themselves. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid of ___.*

"* The following appendix represents a couple of second century attempts to complete the gospel. The passage within brackets in the first of these epilogues originally belonged to it [Text given] but was excised from it for some reason at an early date. Jerome quoted part of it but the full text has only recently been discovered in Codex W, the Freer uncial of the gospels."

OK. The major idea here is that Mark ends awkwardly - "...for they were afraid of___". The problem is recognized quite early in the History of the Document. I've always thought that there was precisely one version of Mark that perhaps lost its "Last Page", the previous "page" ending with "...for they were afraid of". Consider finding a book that has lost pages. The end of the last extant page reads, "They went to Washington DC to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of".

The implication is obvious. There was something else that followed "...the Fourth of" and it is "July". In Mark, we don't have that "Fourth of July" moment but we do have the implication that there was something that finishes the phrase, "...they were afraid of___".

You may be correct JW, I dunno. If, however, Mark did write something that he didn't write (Errr, see Thread Title...), the first Copyist [of this only Book of Mark] was presented with a Document that ended awkwardly and he copied it as he found it. He almost certainly didn't notice or care about the possible Chiasms that were altered (or not).

CW
Last edited by Charles Wilson on Fri Jan 13, 2017 10:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inven

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Charles Wilson wrote:Thank you very much, JW!
The problem, as you illustrate, is that a Chiasm may be wrongly cast. Perhaps Turton is wrong. What leads me to believe that Mark may be truncated after verse 8 is the Moffatt Translation:

Mark 16: 8 (Moffatt):

[8] And they fled out of the tomb, for they were seized with terror and beside themselves. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid of ___.*
This kind of argument is suggestive, but not final. This verb, in the imperfect tense, usually takes an object or an infinitive or prepositional clause, but not always. In the gospel of Mark, for example, it takes an object or a clause at 6.20; 9.32; 11.18, 32, but it stands alone at 10.32. Luke-Acts has five instances of the imperfect, always with an object or a clause. John has only one instance, and it has an object. The LXX has nine instances of this verb in the imperfect, of which only one (1 Chronicles 10.4) lacks some kind of object or clause. So one could say that it is more likely to take an object or a clause at 16.8 (and that object or clause is missing) than not, or one could say that Mark uses it without the object or clause once elsewhere, so why not here too? (Full disclosure: I think that something has been lost at 16.8, and I do think that this verb is one reason to think so, but it is not by any means a slam-dunk argument; it stands or falls with other arguments.)

I have examined Marcan chiasms in the past, and I think their discovery in the text is way too subjective to count for much here.
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Re: The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inven

Post by Charles Wilson »

Ben C. Smith wrote:
Charles Wilson wrote:Thank you very much, JW!
The problem, as you illustrate, is that a Chiasm may be wrongly cast. Perhaps Turton is wrong. What leads me to believe that Mark may be truncated after verse 8 is the Moffatt Translation:

Mark 16: 8 (Moffatt):

[8] And they fled out of the tomb, for they were seized with terror and beside themselves. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid of ___.*
This kind of argument is suggestive, but not final.
Agreed. 100%
Full disclosure: I think that something has been lost at 16.8, and I do think that this verb is one reason to think so, but it is not by any means a slam-dunk argument; it stands or falls with other arguments
This thread would be a wonderful vehicle for you to enlighten us. I, for one, would be very interested in reading your arguments.
...
One of the other supporting arguments here is that Chapter 16 is not Jewish. The first verses of 16 are a hash. "What was this Sabbath thing again?...When does it start?" A continuance of someone looking at Jewish Culture (Talitha cum...) - "_________, which means______". Someone knows a lot, but maybe not enough, like Col. Cathcart in Catch-22:

"
Chaplain: "...there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion."

Cathcart: Zion? Let's forget that one right now. I wonder how it even got in there. I'd like to keep away from the subject of religion altogether if we can"


Nice analysis, Ben.

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Re: The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inven

Post by Charles Wilson »

BTW, Ben. Great catch on Mark 10: 32 (RSV):
Ben C. Smith wrote:This kind of argument is suggestive, but not final. This verb, in the imperfect tense, usually takes an object or an infinitive or prepositional clause, but not always. In the gospel of Mark, for example, it takes an object or a clause at 6.20; 9.32; 11.18, 32, but it stands alone at 10.32... So one could say that it is more likely to take an object or a clause at 16.8 (and that object or clause is missing) than not, or one could say that Mark uses it without the object or clause once elsewhere
Mark 10: 32 (RSV):

[32] And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him

Compare with 16: 6 - 8:

[6] And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him.
[7] But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you."
[8] And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.

Almost looks intentional, doesn't it?

CW
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Re: The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inven

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Charles Wilson wrote:
Full disclosure: I think that something has been lost at 16.8, and I do think that this verb is one reason to think so, but it is not by any means a slam-dunk argument; it stands or falls with other arguments
This thread would be a wonderful vehicle for you to enlighten us. I, for one, would be very interested in reading your arguments.
Maybe I will at some point. The arguments are not a slam dunk, though, either way. But I have not had the time or the mental presence of late to write everything out about the ending of Mark.
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Re: The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inven

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Charles Wilson wrote:This thread would be a wonderful vehicle for you to enlighten us. I, for one, would be very interested in reading your arguments.
Many are looking forward to this

Charles Wilson wrote:What leads me to believe that Mark may be truncated after verse 8 is the Moffatt Translation:

Mark 16: 8 (Moffatt):

[8] And they fled out of the tomb, for they were seized with terror and beside themselves. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid of ___.*
But note that the last word in Greek is "because, indeed" and not "they were afraid". Years ago German scholar Gert Lüderitz wrote a famous article about Mark’s literary techniques. One of the points of his study was the sound effect of Mark’s word usage. Lüderitz argued that the sound of the words are perfect for the end at Mark 16.8: dark and dead sounding.

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Re: The Best Markan Ending That "Mark" Never Wrote. An Inven

Post by JoeWallack »

JW:
Date Apologist Source Apology Commentary
1968 Raymond Brown The New Jerome Biblical Commentary 629
Mark probably assumed some familiarity among his readers with the appearance traditions, and so he chose to end the Gospel subtly and dramatically by leaving the readers acknowledging the resurrection and looking forward to the parousia.
"subtly and dramatically"? A hopelax legoame. Brown did not write this but he was an editor of the book so presumably he agreed. Here we have the traditional related Christian apology, "Mark" (author) did not provide supposed known witness to a resurrected Jesus because his readers already knew who they were. This is of course ridiculous/comical or as Brown would say, "fantastic", because:
  • 1. As far as we know GMark is the original Gospel narrative that all others were based on.
    2. Most of GMark's hearers probably had never heard of Jesus.
    3. Orthodox Christianity has always claimed that the most important assertion of Christianity is that there was known
    historical witness to a resurrected Jesus. Strange/bizarre/macabre that the original Gospel would not only not show this but put a lot of effort into denying it.
Brown was the outstanding CBS scholar of his time writing the classics Birth and Death. He always said he also wanted to write Resurrection but never got around to it. Presumably because he would have to deal in detail with the lack of detail in GMark. For example, showing that GMatthew copied GMark to 16:8 and than the only significant edit was changing the women not telling anyone to the women telling everyone, how do you spin that?
2016 Larry Hurtado Jesus, the Cross, the Women, and Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark
Part of my argument was that Mark 16:8 does not depict the women as disobeying and failing to do what they were told to do–to go to Peter and the Twelve with news of Jesus’ resurrection. Instead, “they said nothing to anyone” should be read as meaning that they said nothing to anyone else.
Standard apologetic technique of ignoring/denying clear, explicit and absolute meaning in favor of unclear, supposed implied and relative meaning. Not to mention that his supposed implication is contradicted by all Internal evidence such as theme, context and style. Note that in the Comments section he further devolves into standard Apologetic defense of moving basis of related discussion to any dissent being based on not reading/understanding/agreeing with his argument rather than the basic issue itself.


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