Abstract
The Roman lectionary solves the problem of anticlimax by cutting out the problem at verse 8 and stopping at Mark 16.7. This plays havoc with some commentators’ accounts of Mark’s intentions. The scenario suggested here implies that the liturgists may accidentally have got Mark right. If this reconstruction is entertained, their mutilation of Mark no longer spoils his literary and theological design.
Many who read or hear Mark 16.1–8 as the Gospel on Easter Sunday (Year B) will have been struck by its abrupt and anti climactic ending. Those who hear or preach on it directly, without benefit of the pause provided by a gospel procession, alleluias, censing etc. may have felt a disjunction between verses 6–7, the joyful Easter message with instruction to pass it on, and the surprising ending in verse 8 where the command is ignored or disobeyed. Ending the reading at verse 7 (as the Roman lectionary prescribes) provides a good springboard for the homily. As the first disciples are led back to Galilee by the Risen Lord, so we hearers or readers are to go back to beginnings in the company of Jesus and continue his work transformed by our relationship to God in Christ within the Christian community. Some will think of the famous last paragraph of Albert Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historical Jesus: ‘He comes to us … He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfil for our time.… And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who He is.’ But verse 8 seems to undercut the verse 7 which suggests all that.
The first half of the verse is an anticlimax, but not a problem. The women’s terror and amazement at the theophany is natural, and their flight provides an exeunt at the end of the drama. But the second half, ‘and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid’ (six short words in the Greek) is not just abrupt. It disrupts the story which Mark implies but does not narrate. The next stage is the resurrection appearance in Galilee (16.7, echoing 14.28). That depends on the women obeying the angelic command and passing on the message to Peter and the other male disciples.
Even when the added endings to Mark (16.9–20) are discounted on text-critical grounds, few readers notice the problem. Like those later editors, they fill out the story from their memory of the later Gospels and assume the women got over their fright and delivered the message. The story requires that, and Matthew and Luke provide it. But Mark is strongly negative, and Matthew and Luke have to contradict their Markan source. If Mark ended at verse 8, the continuation demanded by verse 7 is obstructed. Matthew altered Mark 16.8 to allow him to follow the Mark 16.7 link to Galilee, but how did Mark himself think this final verse 8 served his evangelistic and pastoral aims?
Many twentieth-century critics have thought that Mark inserted verse 7 into his source or tradition (16.1–6 + 8), and did not realize he was creating a tension between verse 7 and verse 8, or did not care. The insertion hypothesis (which includes the corresponding verse 14.28) is plausible. Mark has a special interest in Galilee, and both 16.1–8 and 14.26–31 read more smoothly without those Galilee verses. At 14.29 Peter responds to verse 27, totally ignoring verse 28, and without 16.7 the older tradition contains no disobedience to an angelic command. However, the suggestion that Mark did not notice the tension he was creating (whether by inserting v. 7 or by composing or repeating 16.1–8) has lost ground as exegetes have come to appreciate Mark’s literary skill and theological intelligence. Since about 1960 many have attempted to explain his ending (vv. 7–8) on the assumption that the difficult verse 8 was intentional, and so subtle that for 19 centuries readers and commentators failed to get the point.
In the 1970s a new suggestion was briefly popular: that Mark’s criticism of the disciples was code for his attacks on other Christians in his own day, especially the church in Jerusalem. 1 He certainly seems reserved about the family of Jesus. However, they were perhaps as little engaged in Jesus’ ministry as the Gospels suggest, and the ‘Markan polemic’ theories do not fit the total presentation of the Twelve during the ministry. They would make sense of Mark 16.8, but to be credible surely require a more consistently negative presentation of the disciples. Mark emphasizes the disciples’ failures to understand (4.13; 6.52; 8.17–21, 32; 9.32–34; 10.35–37) and records their cowardice at Jesus’ arrest and trial, but they remain disciples and are promised restoration (14.28; 16.7). They responded to Jesus’ initial call, received his instruction and are expected to continue his mission despite suffering and persecution. It is far more probable that this literary motif is intended to teach and encourage Mark’s hearers and readers in their own discipleship than aiming to criticize other Christian groups. Even the Twelve failed – and were forgiven. The shadows in their portrait also provide a foil to Jesus himself.
Mark’s general aim to give positive instruction to his readers through his presentation of the disciples’ failures is widely agreed, but appeal to this to explain the women’s fearful disobedience at 16.8 is less convincing. The differences between pre- and post-resurrection situations (9.9), the generally positive presentation of women disciples in Mark and the serious disobedience to an angelic command implied by 16.8b tell against it. Only those six difficult words (16.8b) which disrupt any natural reading of the Gospel as a whole have generated this extension of the motif at such cost to the Gospel’s coherence. Some say that Mark is criticizing the women for going to the tomb when Jesus had already been anointed for burial at 14.3–9, but there is no indication that he thinks they were present on that occasion, and it is even harder to believe that ‘from afar’ at 15.40 is intended critically. The negativity of the 16.8b gloomy ending to the Gospel far outweighs any positive message to be drawn from the women’s silence. Explaining 16.8 as part of the disciples’ failure motif looks like a desperate expedient.
Nevertheless, the women are silent at verse 8b, and exegetes must try to make sense of this difficult text, especially if (as some think) Mark composed this pericope himself. The new literary theories about Mark’s intentions deserve a more detailed evaluation than is possible here. They have given rise to readings which in themselves are attractive even if perhaps not corresponding to Mark’s authorial intention.
Some who think Mark understood the women’s failure to obey after the resurrection (16.8b) as a continuation of the disciples’ failure to understand during the ministry appeal to Markan irony. 2 Mark’s irony in 15.16–32 (Jesus really is a king) is evident, but finding it elsewhere assumes highly sophisticated readers. Others have stressed the balance between the promise and hope Mark communicates at 16.7 and the failure or disappointment in verse 8, which realistically is often a feature of Christian discipleship. Andrew Lincoln 3 and Donald Juel 4 among others have provided profound readings of the Gospel on this basis, as have the commentaries mentioned in note 2. But most of what these commentaries, monographs and articles say about Mark’s teaching discipleship is established earlier in the Gospel, without the final twist. Mark does not need 16.8b to register that disciples fail, and ending on that note weakens his good news that their suffering will be crowned by vindication, and their failures forgiven, as readers know those of the repentant Peter were. Especially if Mark in the Neronian persecution in Rome a few years earlier had witnessed family members betraying believers (13.12), it is hard to suppose he would have ended his Gospel on such a depressingly negative note.
If all other explanations of verse 8 fail, we may be driven to consider as a last resort the nuclear option of textual disturbance. That is what the older theories of a lost ending suggested, but these failed to provide plausible suggestions about how the hypothetical ending was lost and not replaced before Matthew and Luke could read it. On the other hand, those difficult six words (16.8b) could have been added by a scribe less attuned than Mark would have been to the tension they create with verse 7. It is not certain that the later evangelists knew them (and so contradicted them) despite Matthew’s mention of (holy) ‘fear’ at 28.8. The scribe (or Mark himself) may have wanted to explain the (possibly) late emergence of this story of the empty tomb. And the subsequent history of reception shows it is possible to be untroubled by the tension with verse 7.
Mark makes clear in verses 6–7 that the resurrection of Jesus has taken place, as Jesus had foretold (14.28, but also 8.31; 9.9, 31; 10.33). It is also clear that he envisaged at least one resurrection appearance in Galilee. The suggestion that at 14.28 and 16.7 Mark, writing around
One novel suggestion is that Mark did not insert 16.7 into an earlier tradition (16.1–6 + 8) but that he replaced verse 8 with his new verse 7. Without verse 7 the supposed earlier tradition was unproblematic and the change provided a brilliant end to his Gospel. However, other readers or reciters felt the need for a human response to the angel, and they knew the earlier tradition. They therefore restored verse 8, adding it on to Mark’s verse 7. Theirs is the canonical text and is prescribed by most lectionaries, though not the Roman one. If the creative explanations of verse 8 by the recent scholars mentioned above are correct, the Roman lectionary plays havoc with Mark’s intentions. Now that multiple interpretations of literary texts are accepted as valid in some contexts, that might not matter. Theological argument on the basis of appeals to a New Testament text surely requires respect for (supposed) authorial or textual intention, but in some kinds of teaching and preaching modern readings not intended by the author can be justified if they cohere with Scripture as a whole. The downside of that licence will be painfully familiar to some who listen to sermons by preachers untrained in exegesis. It is not necessary in this case if the textual disturbance hypothesis suggested here is even possibly correct. The Roman liturgists may have intuitively or accidentally got Mark right. Our uncertainty about Mark’s intentions permits any who wish to preach on 16.1–7 without reading verse 8, to do so without feeling bad about reversing Mark’s aims.