Mark 16:9-20

(9-20) Now when Jesus was risen early. — See Notes on Matthew 28:16. The history of the verses that follow is in every way remarkable. They are not found in two of the oldest MSS. — the Sinaitic and the Vatican — are marked as doubtful in many others, and are wanting in some versions. In some of these (e.g., in the Vatican MS.) there is a blank space left between Mark 16:8 and the beginning of St. Luke, as though the writer had suspended his work and waited for materials. The absence was noticed by Jerome, who says that “nearly all the Greek texts omit them.” Eusebius states the same fact as true of “the correct MSS.;” and no reference is made to them in the tables of parallel passages which were constructed for reference by Eusebius and Ammonius. On the other hand, they are referred to by Irenæus (about A.D. 170), and are found in the Alexandrian and Cambridge MSS., and in twelve other uncials which are nearly (some say, quite) as old as the two which omit them. When we turn to the internal evidence we find that the narrative, which up to this point had followed closely in the footsteps of St. Matthew, now becomes a very condensed epitome of St. John’s record of our Lord’s appearance to Mary Magdalene (Matthew 20:11), of St. Luke’s account of the journey to Emmaus (Luke 24:13), of the appearance to the ten disciples in John 20:19 and Luke 24:36, of the mission of the eleven reported in Matthew 28:16, of the Ascension as given by Luke 24:50. Two explanations of these facts are possible. (1) We may suppose that the writer of the Gospel wrote two copies of it, leaving one unfinished, ending at Mark 16:8; that this passed into the hands of persons by whom it was copied as complete, and so became the archetype of the MSS. in which the verses are wanting; while those that contain the subsequent verses were made from a more perfect text, written by St. Mark himself. (2) That the Gospel, having been originally completed by the writer, was in some way, by accident or design, mutilated; that as such it was reproduced faithfully by some transcribers, while others thought it better to give it a completion of some kind, by condensing what they found in the other Gospels. Of the two hypotheses the latter seems the more probable. It seems better, looking to these facts, to reserve notes, for the most part, for the Gospels in which the narratives appear in what was probably their original and certainly their fuller form.