Craig A. Smith, Ph.D.

The text-critical problem of Mark’s ending remains one of the more vexing difficulties in studies of a book which is by no means a stranger to controversy.  Though there is relatively little doctrine at stake in the question of the originality of Mark 16:9-20, the desire to settle the debate is understandable.  If nothing else, it would be nice to have some means of bridging the gap between Evangelical scholars – the majority of whom seem to have decided against the originality of the final 12 verses[1] – and the average Christian who is understandably confused and even distraught by footnotes in their Bibles calling into question the legitimacy of these verses.  This distress is compounded when the popularly accessible commentaries not only deny the originality of the ending but go on to assert either that the Gospel was never completed or that the original ending was lost.[2]

As we shall review in a moment, the evidence for additional text beyond 16:8 is both substantial and early, suggesting at the very least that ending Mark at 16:8 has long been perceived to be problematic. This remains a widespread perception; the abrupt and “open-ended” nature of 16:8 causes many casual readers to feel that it cannot have been intended as the conclusion to the book. There are several observations which contribute to this sense.  First, the promise of 14:28 (“But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee”) is seemingly unfulfilled in Mark if the text ends at 16:8.  Second, the women are left “trembling and bewildered” instead of rejoicing.  Third, we are left with the assertion that the women “said nothing to anyone” which seems to contradict their witness to the apostles as reported in the other Gospels. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, concluding Mark at 16:8 means that there is virtually no account of the Resurrection itself, and this is difficult to reconcile with the fact that Mark is known to us as a Gospel, a term intimately connected in the rest of the N.T. to the announcement of the Resurrection of Jesus.[3]  How could one write a Gospel and yet leave off nearly everything about the Resurrection itself?

These observations are significant and make the persistent unease with 16:8 as the original ending to Mark perfectly understandable.  However, a critical look at these observations reveals that they are nearly all based on expectations which emerge from a particular understanding of what kind of text Mark is; that is, from a perception, conscious or unconscious, of the genre of Mark. But what if the perception about the genre of Mark is mistaken to some degree?  Could it be that an adjustment of our view of Mark’s genre might cast new light on the likelihood that 16:8 was the originally intended conclusion to the book?  That is the subject of this short inquiry.

A Short Review of the Problem

The manuscript evidence regarding the ending of Mark is, unfortunately, inconclusive. As the footnotes in most English Bibles indicate, the earliest complete manuscripts, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, do not have 16:9-20 and many later manuscripts give some explicit inter-textual indication that vv.9-20 were regarded with some hesitation if not suspicion.[4] On the other hand, the majority of extant manuscripts include vv.9-20 without any hesitation as to their originality and several of these are quite nearly as old as those which omit the longer ending.[5]

The patristic evidence is likewise inconclusive.  Several patristic writers demonstrate no awareness of vv.9-20, but their silence is hardly conclusive evidence against the originality of the longer ending.  However, the possible citation of 16:20 by Justin Martyr and the certain citation by Irenaeus and Tatian clearly demonstrate that the longer ending was well-known by the mid-2^nd century.

Internal analysis of the longer ending is, in my opinion, slightly weighted against the originality of vv.9-20, but this is by no means conclusive.  Differences in vocabulary, stylistic oddities and the fact that the longer ending of Mark “feels” a bit like a composite summary of material that appears in Matthew, Luke and Acts may suggest that the longer ending was a later attempt to provide a more satisfactory ending than the abrupt conclusion at v. 8.  However, these are largely subjective assessments and can hardly be seen as definitive evidence.

In short, the objective evidence is insufficient to determine with certainty whether or not vv.9-20 were original to the Gospel of Mark.  If there is evidence which might enable us to make a more confident determination, we will have to look elsewhere for it.  Again, it is my proposal that such evidence may be found in a proper understanding of the genre of Mark.

The Gospels as Ancient Biography

Until the last century, the Gospels were generally considered a kind of biography and this view seemed plausible until the genre of biography itself began to change in response to modernism.  During the nineteenth century, likely spurred by the parallel development of modern psychology,[6] biographers became more interested in explaining the character of their subjects by detailing their childhood, upbringing, schooling, etc.[7]  Prior to this, details of a subject’s early years do not appear to have been standard features of the biography. As one might imagine, however, once such features became standards of the biography, their relatively conspicuous absence in the Gospels made it increasingly difficult to see the Gospels as biographical works.[8]  However, this dissimilarity obtains only in comparison of the Gospels to modern biography. Comparison of the Gospels with ancient biographies yields “marked similarities of form and content”.[9] While there is still considerable debate about the degree to which the various canonical gospels fit within the genre of ancient biography, there appears to be a general consensus that this is the most appropriate classification for them.  For the purposes of this inquiry I will depend upon this new consensus that the canonical Gospels are best considered within the general milieu of Greco-Roman bios, taking it as very unlikely that they would have deliberately set out to create an entirely novel genre.[10]

However, to say that the Gospels are bioi does not mean that their authors were slavishly devoted to a restrictive set of “rules of the genre” and in fact, it would be quite difficult to argue that such formal “rules” existed.  To say that the Gospels are a kind of ancient biography is really only to say that they are interested first and foremost in a historical person, one Jesus of Nazareth, and in the significance of this person and his teachings for their audience(s).  As such, they are all to be considered historical works, contra many of the scholarly opinions in the previous century which supposed them to be deliberately and consciously a-historical.  In other words, to say that the Gospels are a kind of ancient biography is only to say that they are intended to recount events from the life of a historical person.  Determinations of which events are most significant and how best to present them in service of an author’s purpose will vary, sometimes substantially, from one biographical work to the next, regardless of the fact that each author will still consider their work to belong to the genre of biography. Plutarch’s Lives provides an illuminating example of the degree to which texts may vary from one another while still belonging to the same genre. 

The consequence of this is that while we may properly consider Mark to be a biography of Jesus, alongside Matthew and Luke and perhaps even John,[11] we do not necessarily have to think of it as being precisely the same kind of biographical work as the other gospels or interpret Mark through precisely the same lens.  The genre of Greco-Roman bios is widely recognized to have distinct sub-types.[12]  Talbert has advocated this approach to the canonical gospels, classifying Mark & John as defenses of the subject against misunderstanding[13], Luke as “life of the founder” and Matthew as “hermeneutical key”.[14]  These particular micro-classifications need not be accepted in order to acknowledge the central point:  to say that the Gospels belong to the genre of biography is not necessarily to say that they are all the same kind of biography.

There is obvious justification for thinking of Mark in different terms than the other Gospels.  Though source criticism has led us to focus on the fact that most of Mark’s content is duplicated in Matthew or Luke, we should not fail to note that there are things which are unique to Mark such as the Messianic Secret, a surprising emphasis on the failure of the disciples, et.al. While Mark does have some unique features, it is the omissions which are most remarkable. For instance, with the exception of 13:5-37, Mark does not contain the kind of extended discourses by Jesus that are common in Matthew and Luke and is, on the whole, a far more action-oriented Gospel. Of more interest for this inquiry, however, is the fact that Mark has no birth narrative or genealogy.  These are particularly puzzling omissions since Matthew and Luke placed such emphasis on these elements in their presentation of Jesus. If Mark was the first of the Gospels and Matthew and Luke looked to him as a model for their own work, it is strange that their early chapters differ so substantially from his.

And, of course, we have not yet mentioned the possible difference between Mark and the other Gospels which most directly bears upon this discussion:  the Resurrection accounts.  If the longer ending of Mark is original, then this difference is somewhat lessened, though it would still be noteworthy.  There is a clear tendency on the part of Matthew and Luke to abbreviate Mark’s longer pericopae, but the questionable ending of Mark would represent a rare exception to this, since even the longer ending of Mark is dramatically shorter than the Resurrection and post-Resurrection accounts in the other Synoptics.  In other words, this would be a reversal of the trend from long pericopae in Mark to shorter pericoape in Matthew and Luke, with no obvious explanation as to why this should be the case.

On the other hand, if Mark originally concluded at 16:8, then Mark’s Gospel would omit the same sort of material at its beginning and end, material which the other Synoptics felt the need to include.  This would support the idea that Mark, while still broadly biographical, is not precisely the same kind of biography as Matthew and Luke. But if Mark intended to write a somewhat different kind of biography than Matthew, Luke and John, do we have any indication of what Mark was aiming to do? 

Does Mark Indicate His Genre?

Burridge and others[15] have observed that the opening features of a text – that is, its title and opening formulae/prologue/preface – are often important indicators of genre and/or the purpose of the text.  It is appropriate, therefore, to look to the title and opening lines of Mark to see if they provide any illumination. 

Unfortunately, the earliest evidence of titles attached to Mark tells us very little about its genre as they are primarily variations on the preposition kata,[16] and it is only in the mid-2^nd century that Justin Martyr indicates that the word “gospel” was being used in reference to these books.[17]  Furthermore, Mark’s opening line does not obviously fit into a formulaic pattern that is evident in ancient texts of an identifiable genre.[18]Still, the expectation that the opening lines of a text might well be expected to provide some indication of its genre is both reasonable and supported by surveys of other ancient literature.[19] As Mark 1:1 contains no verb, it cannot easily be seen as the beginning of the narrative itself, and some have taken this as evidence that Mark intended “beginning the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God” to be the title for his work. I think this an intriguing possibility, but it would be an unusually long title.  Its length makes the phrase more likely to be an opening line, but still quite possibly one which was intended to help readers orient themselves to the rest of work.  As such, it bears closer examination.

Mark’s opening line is unusual in at least two respects.  First, it is the only NT work to use the word euangelion in a way that could be a reference to a literary work.  In fact, it seems quite plausible that the early church took to calling these texts “gospels” because of Mark’s use of the term here. As such, it may be that Mark intended euangelion to be a genre-designation, but as we shall see in a moment, there are significant difficulties with this view. The second unusual feature of Mark’s opening line is the use of an anarthrous and preposition-less archē  to begin the text.  This is, to the best of my knowledge, a wholly unique way to begin a literary work.

There appear to be three possible functions of archē in Mark 1:1: First, could be meant to place Mark in an O.T. context by drawing a parallel to Gen 1:1. It has been suggested that Mark’s opening line bears some resemblance to the opening line of Genesis,[20] but the absence of the preposition enmakes it unlikely that this was authorially intended.[21]  Second, it could serve as an identifier of an opening section of the Gospel that was meant to be distinguished from the rest of the text; 1:1, 1:1-8, 1:1-13 and 1:1-15 have all been suggested as constituting this archē that precedes the narration of Jesus’ ministry.  The difficulty with this view is evident in the disagreement over the extent of this opening section. It is difficult to know which parts of vv.1-15 can be meaningfully separated from the rest of the narration of Jesus’ ministry.  Moreover, the return of attention to John the Baptist in 6:14-29, 8:28 and11:30-33 strongly suggests that narratives like this opening section, that is, narratives concerning John the Baptist, are to be considered an integral part of Mark’s narrative. Therefore, setting the initial narrative about John apart from the rest of Mark has the appearance of arbitrariness. 

However, this understanding of archē as a designation for a literary unit is a very natural way to understand its use here in Mark 1:1, as evidenced in the multitude of commentators who have taken it in precisely this way.  But if it is unlikely to designate an introductory section, then to what could it refer?  I would like to suggest that the third possible function of archē  in 1:1 is as a designation of Mark’s entire work.

In this view, it would be archē rather than euangelion which identifies the genre or, more properly, the sub-genre of Mark;[22] that is, the book of Mark is not a euangelion but an archē .  Admittedly, giving such weight to the word archē may seem counter-intuitive to the modern reader who is accustomed to seeing the word “Gospel” as a title before each of these books, but there is good reason to doubt that Mark used euangelion as a genre-designation.  First, we know nothing of a Gospel-genre preceding Mark and it is problematic to assume that Mark self-consciously invented and designated a novel form with no other indication of his intention to do so.[23]  Second, Mark’s intention to create a novel form would seem to require his conscious awareness of this thing we call genre and this may presume more than we can know of his formal literary sensibilities.[24]  Third, if Mark was inventing a new genre, his most immediate successors seem to have missed it; neither Matthew nor Luke use euangelion as a designation for their own texts in spite of their apparent dependence on Mark as a literary source.  Fourth, the N.T. uses of euangelion seem, in the majority of instances, to flow from Isa 61:1 where it is an announcement of freedom from oppression.[25]  The arrival of the person of Christ, accompanied by miraculous signs and culminating in his defeat of death itself is referred to throughout the N.T. as “the Gospel.”[26] In other words, it is a kerygmatic use. Is it likely that Mark would have completely conflated his particular recounting of this good news with the kerygma itself?  Fifth, it is problematic to think that Mark called his work “the Gospel” and yet included only a very brief Resurrection account or even omitted it entirely simply because the Resurrection itself seems to have been at the very core of what the early church considered to be the Gospel.[27]  If Mark is significantly dependent on the teaching of Peter, whose recorded speeches in Acts are clearly Resurrection-centric, the brevity with which Mark recounts the Resurrection is nearly incomprehensible if he intended his text to be considered a recounting of the “Gospel”.

On the whole, then, it seems unlikely that euangelion should be taken as a designation of genre for Mark, but is archē any more likely a candidate? There are at least two reasons to think that it is. The first reason is grammatical: archē  is the first word in the text and the only nominative.[28]  Moreover, it is also the only known example of an ancient writer beginning a text with an archē  that is both anarthrous and preposition-less.  This may well have served to draw attention to the word itself.  Second, there is a logical reason why it is sensible to think that Mark used archē in this way:  it fits the nature Mark perfectly.  Mark, more than any of the other Gospels, revolves around conflict.  Virtually every literary unit in Mark involves explicit conflict between Jesus and the powers-that-be, whether spiritual, religious or judicial.  If the gospel, to employ the normal NT usage, is the good news of the Resurrection, then Mark is the story of how Jesus came to be crucified.  It is the story of the ever-escalating conflict culminating in the crucifixion which was, itself, the necessary precursor to the Resurrection which is the heart of the good news.  In other words, Mark did not write to paint a portrait of Jesus so much as to explain how he came to be crucified.  In that sense, Mark is not a proclamation of the good news so much as it is the back-story to the good news.  It is what Paul Harvey calls “the rest of the story”.  It sets the stage and provides meaningful context for the good news with which his audience was already familiar…and archē is a very good word for such a thing.

In the same way that Paul Harvey’s radio broadcasts brought his listeners up to the point in the story that they already knew and then stopped, this view of Mark could easily account for the abrupt ending of the Gospel at 16:8.  It could also account for the abrupt beginning to Mark:[29]  if Mark is the back-story to the Resurrection, it is primarily concerned with the escalating conflict that culminated at Golgotha.  The birth of Jesus and his early life did not provide suitable material for describing this escalating conflict and so were unsuited to Mark’s purpose.[30]  There may also have been a structural reason for excluding a birth account.  If Mark intentionally left off a Resurrection account then he may have wanted to exclude a birth account for the sake of balance. The first pericope of Mark is concerned with John the Baptist who heralds the coming of Christ.  If the original conclusion of Mark is at 16:8, then the final pericope of Mark is concerned with another herald who announces the return of Christ.  Bauckham has also suggested an inclusio of Petrine references at the beginning and ending of Mark.[31]  Both observations suggest that Mark was interested in having his beginning and ending balance each other.

Conclusion

In conclusion, what I am suggesting is that Mark is perhaps best understood as archē  bios, a kind of sub-genre of Greco-Roman bios which explained how he came to be crucified, thus recounting the background to the “Gospel” as his audience already knew it.  I am not suggesting that Mark intentionally set out to create a distinct literary sub-genre or that he meant his readers to take archē as a formal literary term.  Rather, I imagine he envisioned his work as a stage-setting enterprise and used archē in the same way we might call a book An Introduction to the New Testament, where “introduction” describes our intention for the work without necessarily being intended as a formal genre-designation.  To the extent that Mark was genre-conscious, he likely thought of his work as a subtle alteration to the existing genre of bios.  In this vein, what I am saying here is quite close to the view of those who, like Talbert, have identified Mark as an attempt to dispel misunderstanding of their subject, similar to Xenophon’s Memorabilia or Philodemus’ Life of Epicurus.[32] If I am really saying anything new here at all, it boils down to two things

1.  archē may tell us more about Mark’s intention for his work than euangelion, and this could easily be understood as consistent with the present view of Mark as Greco-Roman bios.
   
2. This view of Mark’s genre (or sub-genre) explains both the accepted abrupt beginning and disputed abrupt ending, providing an additional plank in the broader argument that the Gospel originally ended at 16:8.  In that sense, this view suggests that Evangelicals have no need to resort to disturbing assertions that Mark was either never completed or that its ending has been lost.