Open almost any modern Bible to Mark 16 and read to verse 8. Right there you'll find a small letter, a pair of brackets, or a note at the bottom of the page.
What does it mean? The answer is already in the Bible in front of you.
Where the oldest copies stop
Here is the verse with the note.
So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Mark 16:8
The women have come to anoint Jesus's body. The stone is rolled back. A young man in white tells them Jesus has been raised and is going ahead of them to Galilee.
But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”
Mark 16:6-7
Then they run, and tell no one. In the two oldest nearly complete Greek Bibles we have, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, both from the fourth century, that is the end of the book. The tomb is empty and the news is given, but nobody in Mark sees the risen Jesus.
The NRSVue footnote says it plainly: "Some of the most ancient authorities bring the book to a close at the end of 16.8." The verses that follow are printed inside double brackets, the translators' sign for a passage generally held to be a later addition, kept because it is old and important.
The endings that came after
Later copies did not leave the story there. The manuscripts carry more than one attempt to finish it.
The shorter ending. A sentence or two: the women report to Peter, and Jesus sends the message out "from east to west." It is found in a handful of later manuscripts.
The longer ending. This is Mark 16:9-20, the one most people know. It opens with an appearance to Mary Magdalene.
Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.
Mark 16:9
It goes on to more appearances, a commission to preach to the whole world, and an ascension. It is old. Writers in the second century already knew it, and Irenaeus quotes it in the late second century. So this ending is older than the two great manuscripts that leave it out.
A longer ending, expanded. One fifth-century manuscript adds a whole conversation between Jesus and the disciples after verse 14. Your NRSVue prints it in a footnote there.
The snakes and the poison
The longer ending holds a promise many people have heard of without knowing where it comes from.
And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
Mark 16:17-18
These are the verses behind the serpent-handling churches of Appalachia, which have read them as scripture for about a century. They sit inside the twelve verses the earliest manuscripts do not include.
How scholars decide
Textual critics compare thousands of handwritten copies to work back toward the earliest wording. A few working rules guide them. Older copies, and copies from many different regions, carry weight. Witnesses are weighed, not counted, so a later majority does not win by numbers alone. And copyists tended to smooth what was rough and soften what was shocking, so the harder reading often gets the benefit of the doubt.
For Mark, the outside evidence and the inside evidence point the same way. Some of the oldest copies stop at verse 8. Several early church writers say the Greek copies they knew stopped there too, and some later scribes marked the longer ending as doubtful. Inside the text, the longer ending uses many words Mark uses nowhere else, and the seam at verse 9 shows: the women are the subject in verse 8, and then Mary Magdalene is introduced as if for the first time, though she was named eight verses earlier. Almost all scholars hold that verses 9-20 were added by someone who knew a Mark that ended at verse 8.
Did Mark mean to end there?
This is the part that is still open.
Some scholars think Mark meant to stop at verse 8. The command to "go, tell" is left with frightened women, and the reader is the one left holding the news. The study notes in The New Oxford Annotated Bible point out that Mark's first audience already knew the story went on.
Others think verse 8 was never meant to be the end. Ending a Greek sentence, let alone a whole book, on the little word for "for" is very rare. Bruce Metzger, one of the great textual critics of the last century, thought it likely that Mark was stopped before he finished, or that the last page of the first copy was lost before anyone copied it. Nobody knows which.
What is not in doubt is what the oldest copies show. What the ending means is still argued. Your Bible's footnote gives you both.
If you want more like this, the footnotes are one of the first things seminary students learn to read, and they are already on your nightstand.
For further exploration
- Read Mark 16:1-8 on its own, then stop. Notice where the story leaves you. Then read verses 9-20 and notice what changes.
- Find the footnote at Mark 16:8 in your own Bible. Compare how two translations mark the longer ending: a bracket, a line, a smaller font, or a note.
- Read Mark 16:9-20 beside Luke 24 and John 20. Look for the scenes you already know from those Gospels.
Sources
- Mark 16:6-7; 16:8; 16:9; 16:17-18 (NRSVue), with the NRSVue note at Mark 16:8
- Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, on the endings of Mark and on how variant readings are weighed
- Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, entry on Mark 16:9-20
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible, notes on Mark 16