The (short) ending of Mark is not original, maybe more...

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rgprice
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The (short) ending of Mark is not original, maybe more...

Post by rgprice »

I'd long accepted Mark 15:40-47 and 16:1-8 as "original" to the first Markan narrative, but I have increasing doubts.

We first have to begin with the treatment of Peter in Mark.

Mark 1:
16 As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon (later renamed to Peter) and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him.


Mark 8:
31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.


Mark 14:
27 “You will all fall away,” Jesus told them, “for it is written:

“‘I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered.’

28 But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.”

29 Peter declared, “Even if all fall away, I will not.”

30 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times.

Verse 28 here is key. Many scholars have argued that verse 28 is a later addition to the narrative. These arguments, however, tend to claim that verse 28 was added by "Mark" to an existing narrative, i.e. they argue that Mark was using a source, but that Mark added verse 28 to the source. I agree with their logic that this is an addition, but think its possible this was done by the editor who added Mark to the NT anthology. Verse 28 clearly interrupts the flow of the narrative and is introduced as a tie into the ending. Also, the preceding text makes no mention of Jesus rising.

Mark 15:
21 A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross.

Simon-Peter has abandoned Jesus. Instead of Simon-Peter taking up the cross and following Jesus, a new Simon has taken his place.

Mark 16:
6 “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, 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, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’

Clearly, the person who wrote 14:28 also wrote this, and 14:28 is an addition to the narrative, which means that this must also be a later addition to the narrative. But in addition, clearly the original layer of Mark is against Peter. Yet we are supposed to believe that the messenger of Jesus is now saying to notify Peter and the disciples even though they have abandoned him? Of course Christians have interpreted this as being about forgiveness, but it actually just doesn't make sense. This ending comes out of nowhere and acts as if Mark 14 never happened. There is no reconciliation, there is no moment where Peter has second thoughts, nothing. The first layer of Mark identifies Peter as Satan and makes a point of his abandonment. Then some later tradition came along and tacked this on to the ending as if nothing had happened in order to bring Peter back into the good graces.

I think this points to two major possibilities: 1) Mark was moderately revised by someone when it was put into the NT or 2) Mark as we know it is a revised work of an earlier Gospel that has become entirely lost (except for what is retained in canonical Mark).

Under the first scenario, the editor of the NT is who changed the ending of Mark and may also have made other revisions throughout the narrative. Some of these revisions may then have been made in light of the other Gospels in teh collection, meaning that Mark may have been revised in light o Matthew, Luke and John.

The second possibility, however, is that most such revisions, such as the addition of 14:28 and the 15:40+ ending were done by someone prior to the inclusion of Mark into the NT, but that these revisions were nonetheless "Catholicizing" in nature. In that scenario, Mark as we know it may have been produced much like Matthew or John, where someone took an existing narrative, cut it up, re-ordered it and added additional narrative elements to it in order to re-frame the original story. If they did, they would appear to have mostly left the original text in place and not to have re-written very much, but rather to have re-ordered, cut some stuff out, and added a relatively modest amount of interpretive material and material designed to align the text with proto-Catholic traditions (such as the naming of Jesus' mother as Mary).

I'm not sure which of these is more likely.

But I do know that the Hermeneia on Marks lists a significant number of scholars who think that much of the material after Mark 15:38 is later addition to an existing narrative. There are numerous conflicting views, but it seems there is a lot of agreement that there are many reasons to think that the material after 15:38 is not part of the earliest layer of the narrative. Again, most such scholars think that these changes to the original were made "by Mark". In other words, most such scholars think that Mark was composed by someone who was using a source for the Passion narrative (only), i.e. that there was a written account of the Crucifixion that preceded Mark, and that Mark wrote most of the material in the Gospel himself, but he used a source for the Passion, and then reverted to his own narrative in 15:39 or 15:40.

I don't think that is quite the case, because I think that the Crucifixion scene was written by the same person who wrote the other major parts of the narrative. The way that the scriptures are used in the Passion narrative is the same was the way they are used from the beginning of the story. So I don't believe there was some original Passion narrative derived from Psalm 22 that existed on its own, and then someone wrote the rest of the story around it. The person who wrote the Passion narrative based on Psalm 22 is the same person who described John the Baptist as Elijah from 2 King 1:8 and who derived the scenes of Jesus' miracles from teh scriptures, etc.

But, it is possible that all of those elements, part of a lengthy story, were cut up and edited by someone to create the canonical version of the story that we know. And I think that such an editor would likely have been the one who added a lot of the names to the story and little details that tie into canonical traditions.

The question then becomes: Does Marcion's Gospel, and thus Luke 3-23, preserve a more original reading of "Mark"? In Marcion's Gospel the mother of Jesus is not named. There is also no Mary Magdalene and of course no commission to Peter. This is not to say necessarily that an "original Mark" would have had the same ending as Marcion's Gospel.
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