Quote:
Originally Posted by jbergsing  I don't know if this helps, but Matthew Henry wrote this: He is here said to have appeared to them in another form, in another dress than what he usually wore, in the form of a traveller, as, in the garden, in such a dress, that Mary Magdalene took him for the gardener; but that he had really his own countenance, appears by this, that their eyes were holden, that they should not know him; and when that restrain on their eyes was taken off, immediately they knew him, Lu. 24:16-31. |
I'm not trying to start a fight over text criticism here but it might be helpful to know that both the NIV and ESV have notes in the text to the effect that the oldest MSS and other ancient witnesses (i.e., even some of the later copies from as late as the 12th century) do not have verses 9-20.
The United Bible Society textual commentary has a long discussion (4 page -- most notes are about a paragraph long) of the questions surrounding the longer ending of Mk.
What is impressive about the absence of the longer ending is that it occurs in two different text types, Alexandrian and Western, in other words, its absence cannot be said to belong to only one text family and thus dismissed. It is absent from Syriac MSS, Old Latin MSS, and Aremenian MSS and Georgian MSS from the 9th and 10th centuries. Clement of Alexandria and Origen do not know the longer ending and Eusebius and Jerome testify that it is not in the oldest Greek texts.
Several witnesses from the 7th-9th centuries do not have the longer ending but have a note about things reported to Peter. I don't think this ending appears in any major English translations.
There is yet another ending after v. 8 that is not regarded as credible on the basis of extenal/textual history.
The longer ending found in the AV and and the "textus receptus" (Stephanus' so-called "received text") is present in the Byzantine texts (ACDK et al), the basis for the Majority Text and thus is found in a large number of texts. If numbers count, then the longer ending is "in" but there are good reasons for doubting that this is the best way to make text-critical decisions. This reading is in Irenaeus (c. 130-202), the Diatesseron. There is some evidence that Justin Martyr (c.100-65) knew it. I suppose that this is the strongest evidence for the longer ending.
The textual/external evidence favors omitting the longer ending but the main argument is from "internal" evidence, i.e., the vocabulary of the ending and the style are not Markan.
The UBS has the traditional longer ending in brackets.
I'm thinking about this because I'm preaching through Mark and have to decide whether to preach the longer ending. The UBS folk are correct that the transition between 8 and 9 is very rough. It certainly appears to be the work of a Scribe trying to make Mark conform to the other synoptics.
Why is Mary Magadalene so identified in 16:9 since she was identified in 15:40.
The term that raises the question for the thread, form/
morphe appears only here. That seems unlike Mark hitherto.
Further, "signs" (16:17) are not used positively in Mark (8:11, 13:4, 22). Now "signs" are used to validate the apostolic ministry. Finally, with the shorter ending the temptation must have been great to fill-in the story but that filling-in doesn't really seem to fit the narrative of the book thus far.
All this is to suggest caution about how much weight one gives to the longer ending.