(Repost for M. Bell) Re: Ending of Mark

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Matt, 

I posted this over 2 weeks ago, and have seen no response from you, do you 
still intend to respond? 

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From:           	Self <achilles>
To:             	errancy@infidels.org
Subject:        	Re: Ending of Mark
Date sent:      	Fri, 27 Nov 1998 23:00:34 -0500


> > ACHILLES

> > 

> > FIne. The ball is in your court. Explain why the "most ancient

> > witnesses" should be discarded in favour of the later ones. 

> > 

> M.BELL

> Please define what you understand the 'most ancient witnesses' to

> consist of? 

This should be enough to get you started. 

Codex Vaticanus, early 4th century, the oldest extant copy of the bible.

St. Eusebius, early 4th century, was aware of the longer ending but
proclaimed that the "accurate" manuscripts ended the book at 16:8. 

Codex Sinaiticus, late 4th century, the second oldest extant copy of the bible.

St. Jerome, late 4th - early 5th century, said that "nearly all"
manuscripts in his day lacked it. 

Interestingly, it is this same Jerome who effectively canonized the long
ending (by including it in the vulgate,) despite his admission regarding
the manuscript evidence against it. Likely his rationale was the same as I
have heard from numerous inerrantists, "it may be a redaction but it is
still an *inspired* redaction." If I am not mistaken that is to this day
the official catholic position on the matter. 

There are also internal indicators that the long ending was not the work
of "Mark." To summarize what I found quickly searching on this: 

Where "Mark" always (outside the disputed passage) uses "te mia sabbaton"
suddenly "prote sabbaton" is used instead - a phrase which occurs nowhere
else in the bible. Where "Mark" (again outside the disputed passages uses
"kai" and occasionally "de" there suddenly appear several alternate
phrases found not only nowhere else in Mark but nowhere else in the bible
- "meta de tauta" "husteron" "ho men oun" and "ekeinoi de." 

I confess I know very close to no greek, and I would be happy to hear from
anyone on the list that does to expand on what I found, but I do know what
it means when you find clear style changes, particularly ones like these,
where basic concepts like "and" are suddenly expressed in ways very
different to how the writer has expressed them consistently over several
chapters previously. Were we dealing with phrases that were not so basic,
I would be very skeptical of such an argument - if a writer focuses on
something not focused on before, he may well use words not used before -
but the very basic elements are not so easily changed, nor is there any
good reason for them to change. If I wrote an essay and went on for pages
with "and" over and over, occasionally breaking the monotony of it with a
"plus" and then suddenly for the last few lines pulled out four different
phrases to express the same context, that would certainly be a good reason
to suspect that I got stuck and got a friend to write the ending. 

In these 12 verses there are at least 17 words or simple phrases like the
above which are used nowhere else in Mark, and only 3 of them are found
anywhere else in the bible - each of those only once, two in Luke and one
in John, both written by writers who showed far more polish in their greek
than "Mark." 


/Achilles_     achillesz@usa.net

Random thought for the moment:

    Never trust machinery more complicated than a knife and fork.
           -- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land

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