The long ending of Mark

I've been listening to this podcast, NT Pod extended 5, which includes a discussion about the long ending of mark. This is Mark 16:9-20, which is missing from some of our earliest manuscripts. Most scholars this these verse are a later addition to the gospel and I would agree that it is a distinct possibility.

13th century manuscript
 of long ending

But Mark 16:8 seems an odd ending to a gospel because while the empty tomb has been discovered, the resurrection appearances, which are such an important part of other early Christian accounts of Jesus, has not yet been covered. And the fact is that if it did originally end at verse 8, someone felt it needed more and added verses 9-20 fairly early in the history of the church.

I've heard three explanations advanced as to why Mark might have ended at verse 8. The first is that originally there was some other ending, but that it got torn off and lost, presumably when there was only one accessible copy. (The problem with this is that if the earliest copy was a scroll then the end would be on the inside, most protected and least likely to be lost.) The second is that the writer was interrupted before he could finish his composition, perhaps by being taken away to be martyred, which seems improbably melodramatic. And the last I've heard from other is that it is deliberately enigmatic so as leave you asking questions, which seems rather post-modern for an ancient author.

But another explanation has occurred to me which I find a fascinating possibility. So I want to write it out here and take a look at its plausibility. This idea starts with one of the scenarios for the circumstances under which Mark was written.

In the Apostolic fathers we have a few snippets of the early stories and traditions about how the gospels were composed. There is this story about how the Gospel of Mark was written were Peter is preaching in Rome and Mark is there as his translator or amanuensis. People come to Mark and ask for a record of Peter's preaching and what is produced is the Gospel of Mark. Peter finds out about this either while Mark is in the middle of writing this or after it is already finished and either approves it retroactively or just says nothing giving it implied approval.

Many scholars dismiss the patristics witness, but many also endorse the criteria of embarrassment. And the patristics authors do seem to find Peter's late approval embarrassing so it seems unlikely that they are entirely making up the story and I think it makes sense to consider what it might mean if the story is generally true.

When Peter first comes into Rome, this huge city with a small, new group of Christians who may never have talked to an apostle before, what is the first thing he is going to preach on? What is his best tool for making new converts and generally convincing people that following a executed convict from the sticks is not crazy? I'm convinced it was his personal testimony of meeting the resurrected Jesus in his new transformed body. It would make perfect sense for him to have preached on that first, probably repeating it several times in different venues, recruiting a group to come together and listen to his longer lecture series, "My memories of life with Jesus." This would mean that everyone attending the lectures would have already heard the resurrection appearances, many several times.

When someone came to Mark with the idea of making a document to help the people attending these lectures remember them, It might have been very natural to start at the beginning of more or less chronological part of Peter's tale, especially if this was proposed after the lectures were already underway.

Peter, knowing that his audience had already hear the resurrection appearance stories, might not feel the need to repeat those appearance at the end of his lectures. And I can see Mark, perhaps already uncertain about an unapproved project, thinking this is something only intended for local distribution, not adding the appearances on his own initiative. Later, when it ended up being circulated more generally people would have realized that the wider audience needed more explanation of the resurrection appearances and added the various additional material. This to me is the most satisfying explanation of why Mark might have originally ended at such an awkward point.

Do we rule out a Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew?

So I’m reading some material about the synoptic problem. One thing I’ve run across is the fragments of patristic commentary on the order and circumstances of the gospels’ composition. particularly I’m thinking about the seeming mention of Mathew being first composed in Hebrew. This seems to be dismissed as obviously wrong in the scholarship I have seen. No one seems to be arguing for it being in Hebrew so the arguments it are not given in detail. The one time it seemed to be address definatly the argument was just that surely if there had been a hebrew Matthew some of it would have survived.

Apostle Matthew

But as far as I know NO Hebrew copy of an Old Testament book has come down to us through christian hands. That is, if it weren’t for jewish copies we would only have today the old testament in Greek, Latin and other gential langueges. You can see in Justin Martyr that the fact that Christians are using a translation is an issue and difference are being debated but Justin defends the translation as legitimate and having the same sort of inspiration and therefore the same authority as the original scriptures.  When Jerome is doing a new Latin translation the question of differences between the greek and hebrew text comes up again. It is debated within the Church and Jerome recommends that concerned Christian leads check with their local Jewish communities to confirm his translations from the Hebrew. I don’t remember him referring to any authority or community within the Church that has a hebrew manuscript or can check Jerome’s translation. Moreover it the story sounds like not only did Jerome have to go to Jews for Hebrew lessons but also for a manuscript to translate from. If already, still within the Roman period, Christians had lost all or most Hebrew copies of the old testament books, whose translation into greek was a live issue , still being debated, that not copies of a single book would have comes down to us?

If Matthew was translated into Greek during the apostolic age, then the translation itself would bear the same authority as the other books being composed originally in Greek during that same time. With no controversy over the translation there would be no motive for non-Hebrew speaking congregations to hold on to a manuscript they couldn’t read. And though we know second hand of Hebrew congregation surviving into the second or third century I’m not aware of us having any documents from them. We know there are a number of significant early Christian documents that have been lost except for quoted fragments or that survive only in translations in other languages than their original composition. Lossing a version in a language that few Christians or no Christin read and for which there was an elegant and complete translation in wide circulation doesn’t seem a stretch to me.

There are other things that might be motives, if not reasons, for dismissing the claim that Matthew was first composed in Hebrew. First of course is that a Hebrew gospel is more likely if it’s fairly early, when the Jesus movement was still centered around Jewish communities. People who would like devalue or discredit its witness would like it to be late and therefore would like it to be originally Greek. Defenders of Christianity would also like it to be Greek because today we are not as comfortable as Christians of the first couple of centuries with the idea that certain translations can be divinely inspired, just as originals were; and if Matthew was originally in Hebrew then we definitely don’t have the original wording. There is also the desire to see the earliest church as primitive. Those who want to snobbishly look down on the disciples or nostalgically romanticize them can want to portray them all as illiterate peasants. The assumption seems to be that classes stick together so that illiteracy is seen as a group phenomenon; also that you can’t really be a peasant without being illiterate. But the Jewish religious tradition valued the reading of the scriptures and reading and studying were already part of the way non priests would participate in religious ritual. After pentecost there would have been hundreds of Jews involved in this new religious movement among whom might have been one who who could compose and write down an account of Jesus’s life.  There is also the modern tendency to assume anything earlier must always be more primitive then something latter and especially that the very beginning of a new thing should be poor quality and unsophisticated. In literature latter writers can build on earlier writers but it isn’t a universal rule. And the early Christians weren’t starting from scratch. there was a rich and varied tradition in the Old Testament to give them inspiration.

There may be arguments against a Hebrew gospel of Matthew that I just haven’t heard. But I’m not convinced that the possibility has really been explored adequately. I’ll be keeping an open mind on this for now.