The empty tomb and Mark's ending

Open a modern Bible to the end of Mark and you will see something most other gospels do not have: brackets, footnotes, alternative endings printed side by side. Some Bibles end the gospel at 16v8 with the women fleeing the tomb in fear; some carry on to 16v20 with appearances of the risen Christ; some print both with a note that the longer ending is not in the earliest manuscripts. This sidebar names what is going on, why this course stops at 16v8, and what that ending is doing.

What the manuscripts show

The earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts of Mark — Codex Sinaiticus (fourth century) and Codex Vaticanus (fourth century), together with quotations from early church fathers like Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius — end the gospel at 16v8. The women come to the tomb, find it empty, are told by the young man in white that Jesus has gone ahead to Galilee, and 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. The Greek ends, abruptly, with the word gar, "for", which is almost grammatically impossible to end a sentence with, let alone a gospel.

After 16v8, the manuscript tradition gets messier. Three things appear in different combinations.

The longer ending (16v9–20). Mary Magdalene tells the disciples; they don't believe her; Jesus appears to two on the road; Jesus appears to the eleven; the great commission and ascension. This is the version that became standard in the Western and Byzantine traditions. It is almost certainly not original to Mark. The vocabulary, style, and theology do not match the rest of the gospel; the manuscripts that contain it are later and less reliable; and the early church fathers do not cite it as Markan.

The shorter ending (a single sentence: all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter, and afterwards Jesus himself sent out through them the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation). Found in some manuscripts as the only ending after 16v8, in others as a bridge between 16v8 and the longer ending.

The Freer Logion (a longer interpolation between 16v14 and 16v15, found only in one fifth-century manuscript). Almost certainly secondary.

The scholarly consensus is that Mark's original gospel ended at 16v8, and that the longer and shorter endings were added by later scribes who could not accept the abrupt ending and tried to round it off.

Why the course stops at 16v8

Three reasons.

First, textual integrity. If 16v9–20 is not original to Mark, treating it as Mark is teaching the wrong text. The course reads what Mark wrote.

Second, theological coherence. Mark 16v8 is not an accident or a textual mishap. It is one of the most carefully placed sentences in the New Testament. The gospel opens with the heavens tearing open and the voice from heaven proclaiming Jesus' identity (1v9–11); it closes with the women silent and afraid, and the risen Christ off-page in Galilee. The reader is left holding the ending. The gospel does not resolve. The discipleship the gospel asks for is the discipleship of those who do not yet know how the story ends.

Third, the political-pastoral reading sharpens. Myers reads 16v8 as the gospel's call to the post-Easter community: the resurrection is not on the page because it is in your hands. The women's silence is the place the church is invited to break. The gospel hands the reader the work.

How to preach 16v8 pastorally

Three things to hold.

First, the women's fear is not failure. The English word "afraid" carries a connotation of timidity that the Greek ephobounto does not always carry. The women's terror and amazement is the right response to the empty tomb; the only response in Mark to genuine encounter with the holy is fear. The gospel does not chastise the women for their fear.

Second, the silence is not the last word. Mark wrote the gospel; therefore the women must have spoken eventually. The reader is invited into the silence, not condemned by it. The gospel says: this is where the discipleship of the silent ends and the discipleship of speaking begins.

Third, the appointment with Jesus is back in Galilee. The young man's word to the women is he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you. Galilee is where the gospel began, the place of the calling of the first disciples, the place where the kingdom-work happened. The risen Christ is found by going back to where the discipleship started. Mark hands the reader a return — to where the calling first came, with new eyes.

What this means for the course

Sessions 15 and 16 carry the bulk of this material. The course teaches the empty tomb without the longer ending. The Easter sermon, when this course is run through Lent into Easter 2027, will need to hold the gospel's actual ending rather than a tidier later one. Worth a sidebar of its own, when the time comes, on how to preach a gospel that doesn't resolve.

Further reading

Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (United Bible Societies, second edition 1994), pp. 102–107 — the standard scholarly treatment of the manuscript evidence.

N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (SPCK, 2003) — a theological treatment of the resurrection that takes the Markan ending seriously while arguing for a robust historical resurrection claim.

Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia, Fortress, 2007), the chapter on 16v1–8 — the major academic commentary's treatment.

Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man, the closing chapter.