Gospel of Mark

[PersonaNonGrata]

yeah lets say there is one human that reincarnates repeatedly within the world history... That chosen one comes warns rules and leave ...
wow thats quite a conspricy huh..

[WolfgangvonUSA]

I had posted this earlier on another thread, and it seems to me that this longer ending might have been added by a Pauline operative in order to add some credibility to the Pauline/Lukan doctrine of speaking in tongues, handling vipers and drinking poison.

Rightfully removing this ending has the effect of removing any endorsement by the original 12 apostles of the contentious Pauline doctrine, which along with Marcion, was not accepted by the early church.


http://www.religioustolerance.org/mark_16.htm



FORGERY IN THE

GOSPEL OF MARK?

var bnum=new Number(Math.floor(99999999 * Math.random())+1);document.write('');Forgery is perhaps a rather harsh word. Within Christian religious circles, the term "apocryphal addition" is commonly used to describe a passage that an unknown copyist added to the original manuscript.

Conservative Christians, and some others, believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. This means that God inspired its authors to write error-free text. However, the concept only applies to the original, autograph copies, not to later additions, deletions, "corrections" etc. Thus, the various endings after Mark16:8 are not necessarily inerrant.


The original ending of Mark:

Some of the oldest copies of the Gospel of Mark, the Sinaitic (circa 370 CE) and Vatican (circa 325 CE), end at Mark 16:8. Papyrus-45 (a.k.a. P-45) is an even older version of Mark, but it is incomplete; none of its text from Mark 16 has survived. Various additions after Mark 16:8 appear to have been added later by unknown Christian forgers. One addition was quoted in the writings of Irenaeus and Hippolytus in the second or third century CE.

Chapter 15 of Mark describes Jesus' death and burial. Chapter 16 describes how Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James), and Salome went to the tomb on Sunday morning. They found that the stone blocking the tomb had rolled back. A young man in the tomb told them that Jesus had risen, and that they should tell the disciples that he had gone to Galilee where they should meet him. The Gospel ends by describing how the women trembled and said nothing to anyone about their experience.

The Gospel is viewed by many as incomplete. It appears to ends abruptly. The reader has been primed to expect an account of the women telling the disciples of the empty tomb, and a subsequent description of a meeting of Jesus and his the disciples in Galilee. However, none is forthcoming.

Theologians have offered 4 explanations for this strange ending:

1. The writer of the Gospel did actually intend it to end it abruptly. This is a possibility because over a dozen ancient Greek compositions have survived which end sentences with the Greek word "gar" as Mark 16:8 does.

2. The author was interrupted (perhaps by death) and never finished the Gospel.

3. The Gospel of Mark did originally continue beyond Verse 8, but the ending was accidentally destroyed: perhaps the scroll was damaged or the last page of the codex was lost.

4. Mark 16 originally extended beyond verse 8, where it described the meeting of Jesus and his disciples. However, it was intentionally destroyed because it conflicted with the Gospel of Luke or Matthew. The perpetrator may have felt that Christians might doubt the accuracy of the Christian Scriptures if the Gospels did not agree precisely. Scholars have pointed out that the lost ending of Mark presumably would have described the meeting between Jesus and the disciples as happening in Galilee, whereas Luke says that it occurred near Jerusalem. This explanation also sounds unreasonable, because Mark 16:1 already disagrees with Matthew 28:1 over the number of women who visited the tomb: (Matthew describes that only two women went to the tomb: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Mark 16:1 says there were three women and adds Salome.) Surely, if someone were to go to the effort of destroying the ending of Mark in order to make the Gospels harmonize, then they would have altered Mark 16:1 and also modified:



16:8 to delete a reference to Salome, and



16:7 to change the location of the meeting from Galilee to Jerusalem.



Also, a person who intentionally destroyed the ending would probably have cleaned up the end of verse 8 to make it appear as if that was the true ending, and leave no trace of the forgery.

Popular endings for Mark

The most ancient full manuscripts of Mark end mid-sentence with Mark 16:8. A variety of endings appear in later manuscripts:



The Longer Ending: This consist of verses 9 to 20, and is the ending found most often in Biblical translations. They describe that Jesus visited Mary Magdelene, who told the disciples about the empty tomb. But the disciples did not believe her. Jesus then appeared to two of the disciples who told the others; still they did not believe that he was risen. Afterwards, Jesus was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God. The disciples then followed the Great Commission. Theologians often refer to this passage as the "Marcan Appendix," because it appears to have been written by a later copyist, and not by the author of the rest of the Gospel of Mark. It "has traditionally been accepted as a canonical part of the gospel and was defined as such by the Council of Trent." 1 The Appendix is incorporated without comment in the King James Version of the Bible. However, more recent authorities suggest that it is a forgery:



A note in recent copies of the New International Version of the Bible states: "The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20."



Most biblical translations contain a footnote indicating that the verses were not written by the author of Mark.



Mohamed Ghounem & Abdur Rahman comment: "...approximately 100 early Armenian translations, as well as the two oldest Georgian translations, also omitted the appendix." 2



"The longer ending...differs in vocabulary and style from the rest of the Gospel, is absent from the best and earliest mss. now available, and was absent from mss. in patristic times. It is most likely a 2nd-cent. compendium of appearance stories based primarily on Luke 24, with some influence from John 20." 3

There is a break in the flow of the story between verses 14 and 15. This might be evidence that the forger used two different sources when creating the longer ending.

The additional passage is quite important for a number of reasons, because it contains important material relating to the duties of Christians to proselytize, the criteria needed for personal salvation, and some of the powers granted to Jesus' disciples:



Mark 16:15 includes a direct quotation from Jesus that is usually called the "Great Commission." It instructs the 11 surviving disciples to go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Conservative Christians regard the Great Commission to be their prime directive.



Verse 16 contains Jesus criteria for salvation. In order to be saved, a person must:



"believe" - presumably this refers to belief in the "good news."



"be baptized" - one must first be baptized before one is saved.

This appears to disagree with other passages in the Bible which discuss different criteria for salvation.



Jesus told his disciples that they would be able to cast out devils, speak with new tongues, heal the sick, and be immune from death by snake bite or poison. The Church of God with Signs Following have interpreted these verses as the basis of their occasional practices of drinking poison or allowing themselves to be bitten by poisonous snakes. Many have died as a result of this testing of their faith.





The Shorter Ending: One Old Latin manuscript, the Codex Bobiensis, has survived from circa 400 CE. It contains a "shorter ending" in place of the "long ending."

One translation reads:

"But they reported briefly to Peter and those with him all that they had been told. And after this, Jesus himself sent out by means of them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation."

The Revised Standard Version of the Bible includes this verse as a footnote.

The validity of this ending is suspect for a number of reasons:



"Earlier in Mark 16, it contains an interpolation which seems to have an affinity with the 'Gospel of Peter'..." 4 That gospel is one of almost 50 gospels that were circulated among the early Christian movement, but which were never accepted into the official canon of the Christian Scriptures (New Testament).



Part of Mark 16:8 has been deleted. This text said that the women kept silent about the empty tomb; they told none of the disciples about it. If the copyist had left this verse intact, it would blatantly conflict with the "shorter ending."



"The so-called shorter ending consists of the women's reports to Peter and Jesus' commissioning of the disciples to preach the gospel. Here too the non- Marcan language and the weak ms. evidence indicate that this passage did not close the Gospel." 3



Some theologians believe that the Shorter Ending was probably written by an unknown forger, who based it on the Gospel of Matthew. His motivation was to quickly wrap up the Gospel less abruptly.





For the full article go to
http://www.religioustolerance.org/mark_16.htm

[Juliana]

Yes, very interesting. But what do you think of this guy's theory?

[self promo link removed]



Juliana

[I, Brian]

Interesting, but perhaps over-simplifying a more complex story.

And welcome to CR, Juliana.

[Juliana]

Interesting, but perhaps over-simplifying a more complex story.

And welcome to CR, Juliana.

Thanks for the welcome, Brian.

Did you read what's on that website. There is a summary and interesting excerpts from the book. It sounds very plausible, the mass and sequence of correspondences cannot be explained just by coincidence.

Juliana

[Abogado del Diablo]

Speaking of this "Jesus is Ceasar" idea, there is a book coming out early next year by Joe Atwill ("Caesar's Messiah") in which he attempts to prove the thesis that the Jesus myth was written by or at the direction of the Flavian Caesars to create a religion based around the exploits of Titus Flavianus. Most of the evidence he uses are parallels between Josephus's "Jewish War" and the life of the Flavian Caesar Titus. Probably not a lot of hard evidence I expect. It will probably be in the "historical speculation" category right next to Leigh & Baigent books and Harry Turtledove.

[Juliana]

Originally Posted by Abogado del Diablo

Speaking of this "Jesus is Ceasar" idea, there is a book coming out early next year by Joe Atwill ("Caesar's Messiah") in which he attempts to prove the thesis that the Jesus myth was written by or at the direction of the Flavian Caesars to create a religion based around the exploits of Titus Flavianus. Most of the evidence he uses are parallels between Josephus's "Jewish War" and the life of the Flavian Caesar Titus. Probably not a lot of hard evidence I expect. It will probably be in the "historical speculation" category right next to Leigh & Baigent books and Harry Turtledove.

Well, I must this Joe Atwill looks very much like a bad plagiator, the same as this guy:

[link]

Juliana

[Flavius]

Originally Posted by Juliana

Well, I must this Joe Atwill looks very much like a bad plagiator, the same as this guy: http://www.users.bigpond.com/pontificate/index.htm

Juliana

??? I do not understand. Courtney's book is from 1992, Carotta's book is from 1999. Isn't it the other way around?
Salve,
Flavius

[Flavius]

Originally Posted by Flavius

??? I do not understand. Courtney's book is from 1992, Carotta's book is from 1999. Isn't it the other way around?

And now that I've compared both sites: Courtney is also a much better writer!!

[I, Brian]

Juliana's self-promo removed.