Mark 16:9-20. Yesterday I told you we were at the end of Mark’s story of Jesus and I also mentioned that you might notice and object because there are twelve more verses in most Bibles.  I also told you that I believe that Mark’s writing ends with verse 8 and most Bible scholars agree.  So here comes the hard part of all of this. First I absolutely believe that the Bible is God’s word to us, that it was absolutely perfect as it was written by each of the original authors (there were at least 8 for the New Testament:  Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, and Jude plus the author of Hebrews which may have been one of theses guys).  If you have read “The New Testament Dissection” you know that the New Testament existed as several different writings that were passed around by the early believers and often copied.  There were other writings but in the year 397 the early believers called together leaders form their churches at a council in Carthage in Northern Africa and that council decided that the twenty seven “books” we have in our New Testament were the ones God had communicated to his church (a word that means chosen ones or picked ones).

There are lots and lots of old manuscripts in  existence which are parts of the New Testament.  In fact there are more pieces of the New Testament in museums and private collections around the world that several of the most popular ancient Greek documents quoted and studied today; the writings of Plato, Caesar, Aristotle, and others.  If we take the 17 that we have the most copies and pieces of there are about 418 different manuscripts (all together by one experts count).  When it comes to the New Testament there are are at least 4000 manuscripts (and that’s just in the Greek language.  Remember that Rome ran the world at the time and Latin was their official language so many the original writing were eventually translated into Latin as well).  Of these copies some are believed to be as close to the events as 90 years (we have a copy of part of the New Testament from 130 AD).  The next closest thing in ancient literature is a guy named Livy who wrote in about 500 BC.  We have about 20 old manuscripts (copies) from as early as the time of Jesus or 500 years after Livy wrote.  So we see that, although we do not have the original piece of paper or whatever that Mark (or his secretary) wrote on we have a lot of copies that we can compare to figure out what Mark actually wrote.  And for the most part that job is not that difficult because most of the manuscripts are very very close to each other, maybe 2-3% variation, and most of the differences are things like spelling of a name.  And remember that these were hand copies, no printing presses, no copy machines or scanners.  That’s a pretty good record.  In fact by the standards of ancient documents it is stellar, A+++, at least.  And remember that these copies belonged to churches or individuals.  Some of the variations may have been notes that they made on their copy, maybe while preparing for a sermon or a personal memory that they wrote on the margin that a later copyist mistakenly stuck into the original writing.

Mark 16:9-20 seem to fall into this category.  Those verses do not appear in some of the oldest and best copies that we have of Mark.  Additionally we also get clues from the writings of early church leaders, and at least two of them seem to indicate that Mark ended with verse 8.  Many later manuscripts have the longer ending though some have a medium ending too.  Out of respect the translators of our English Bibles still include these verses but s you will notice they usually put some sort of brackets around them and have foot notes explaining that these verses are suspect.  Part of that respect goes back to the efforts mad buy translators in the days of King James of England.  Those men gave us the original King James translation.  They were working from manuscripts that were later in date and did not have several of the ones we have now.  If they had had them they might have come to the same conclusions that more recent scholars have come to and never even included verses 9-20 or possibly put them in a foot note or brackets too.

So where do we go from here?  There are at least two more things to think about in order to answer that question.  First is, “Why would someone way back in the day add these verses?” and second, what do we do with these verses if we want to accept them as part of God’s word?”  I think the answer to the first question involves something I have been covering in several, if not all, of the posts on Mark, the original readers of Mark and Mark’s purpose in writing to them.  Remember that these were believers under extreme pressure about their faith in Jesus.  The Jews hated them, the people around them hated them, and the Roman government hated them.  They were in a bad situation and I’m sure more than one of them failed spiritually; ran away, hid, skipped church, didn’t stick up for Jesus or a fellow believer, denied Jesus, offered a sacrifice to a false god.  In other words they were afraid like the original disciples and the women at the tomb.  Since these Roman believers knew the ultimate end of the story (that the women did go back and tell the others and that the others did eventually speak up for Jesus) ending the book at verse 8 would have been a way for Mark (and God) to say< “It’s ok that you are afraid, it will be alright, you don’t need to worry just move forward like they did.”  But later some one with one of these copies became embarrassed by this ending, missing the point they wanted to make the disciples look better, or maybe they just wanted to make sure others got the point too, that the disciples did not stay in hiding and they did tell the world about Jesus, so they added some or all of the last twelve verses.  After that those verses just kept getting copied.

So what do we do with these verses? After all they just might be part of God’s word (even though it is pretty obvious that they were added and almost as obvious that they were written by a different author).  First we need to notice that most of what they say can be found in other places in the New Testament, we know the women went and told the disciples (eventually), we know that at least some of the disciples didn’t believe them, we know that Jesus appeared to at least some of them personally after his resurrection and he did appear to all of them together.  We know that he told them to go tell the world about him.  And we know that the early disciples did at least some of the miracles described in these verses.  So most of this doesn’t change much for most of us.

There is one thing to be careful about though.  There are some groups of believers that take these verses and build whole doctrines (their own rules and traditions, like the Jewish leaders in the rest of the book) on them.  There are groups of believers that over emphasize baptism, or others that teach that if you have faith that you can play with poisonous snakes and not be harmed.  Like the Sadducees who didn’t believe in a resurrection or after life because they didn’t understand the Scriptures or the power of God (Mark 12:24).  We need to be careful to look at the whole Bible and not just pieces when we figure out what it is saying about a topic (like the Sabbath and work, or baptism and eternal life and like miracles).  WE need to be careful to start with what is clear and let it help us understand what is hard in the Bible.  God is the same yesterday, today, and forever and His word does not change, we need to be careful to get the whole story (including the “back story” or history) as we live out what the bible teaches.  If, in the course of honoring him and telling the world about him we need a miracle God will do it, not for our personal glory or comfort or need but so that the message will be made more sure.  We need to follow what is clear and leave the rest up to God.  Bottom line don’t play with poison snakes, living your life day to day with Jesus is more impressive anyway, it’s a hard thing to do especially when the word is against you and Jesus.

God thank you for the short ending of this book, it shows me that you love in spite of our failures.  The truth bout the disciples that is in the long ending is no secret.  They changed their world in spite of hiding in fear after you crucifixion and even after your resurrection.  Help me change my world too, by honoring you each day in my life.  And let me leave the miracles up to you, after all your words were that we needed to be servants not spectacles.  Let my service to you and others proclaim to the world that you wee the ultimate servant who came to give his life a ransom for many.