THE BIBLE SAYS TO WORSHIP JESUS IS IDOLAT

PattyaMainer wrote:   This has been given great study by theologians from the Vatican.  Here is one brief response:   This passage of Mark 16:9-20 is sometimes called "The Longer Ending". This designation is in comparison to the shorter ending found in some less important manuscripts. Citations from the early Church Fathers indicate that this passage was composed in the first century. The vocabulary and style of the passage, however, indicate that it was written by someone other than Mark.

PattyaMainer wrote: The issue, however, is not really whether or not Mark wrote the passage or if it was added later. The only real issue is whether is belongs in the canon of inspired Sacred Scripture. Tradition has always considered this passage as Scripture,but if there were any doubts the Council of Trent officially and infallibly declared this passage to be part of the canon of Mark.

PattyaMainer wrote: The passage certainly is a true statement. The footnotes of the NAB remark: "It is, in essence a general resume of the material concerning the appearances of the risen Jesus, refelcting, in particular, traditions found in Luke 24 and John 20." Bottomline: it looks like Mark did not write this passage of Mark 16:9-20, but nevertheless the Church has declared the passage to be Sacred Scripture.   Bro. Ignatius Mary     Kind Regards, Patty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_16

Mark 16 is the final chapter of the Gospel of Mark. There is much debate about the ending of Mark, and many textual problems�there are nine different endings known�but most of the debate focuses around the so-called �longer� ending (16:9-20).

Possible Scenarios

* The original ending of Mark was lost, and somebody else at a very early date completed the gospel. C. H. Turner has suggested that the original version of the gospel may have been a codex and the last pages may have been lost. However, it seems unlikely that Christian use of the codex form stretched as far back as the proposed date for the writing of Mark, though there is evidence for its adoption in the second century;

* The author(s) of Mark intentionally ended the gospel at 16:8, and someone else at an early date completed the gospel;

* More than one edition of Mark�s Gospel was made, so some Christian communities would have possessed the longer ending edition, and others would have possessed the edition that stopped at 16:8. ( SAM- MEANING PEOPLE HAD DIFFERENT BIBLES)

* The original ending was inconvenient to the church, and it was replaced.

Verses 16:8-9 read as follows in the New Revised Standard Version:

(16:8) 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. (16:9) Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from who he had cast out seven demons.

Note the way the narrative flow abruptly changes from "they were afraid" to "now after he rose". Also, Mary Magdalene, introduced at the beginning of the chapter (16:1), is re-introduced almost as though she had not already been mentioned.

The final sentence in v.8 is also regarded as strange by many scholars, because in the Greek text it finishes with the conjunction ?a? (gar, 'for'). It is contended by those who see 16:9-20 as originally Markan that ?a? literally means �because�, and this ending to v.8 is therefore not grammatically coherent (literally, it would read �they were afraid because�). However, this objection misunderstands the nature of the Greek language. Since Greek is an inflexive language as opposed to a syntactic language such as English, word order is not as important. (Compare Grammar in Greek language and Grammar in English language.) ?a? is never the first word of a sentence: there is no such rule that states it can never be the last word, though it is very rare for a book to end with ?a?.

Still, ?a? aside, the grammar of v.8 is still odd, as the verb f?�e?�a? (phobeomai, 'I fear') has no object. Gundry also mentions that only 10% of Mark�s ?a? clauses�6 out of 66�conclude pericopes (Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross, Chapters 9-16). As such, this statistic favours the view that, rather than concluding 16:1-8, v.8 begins a new pericope, the rest of which is now lost to us. Gundry therefore does not see v.8 as the intended ending; a resurrection narrative was either written, then lost, or planned but never actually written. Either way, the originality of vv.9-20 is denied by Gundry�and, indeed, the overwhelming majority of textual critics.

Mark 16:9-20 is in most of the undamaged Greek copies of the Gospel of Mark. A copy of a manuscript, however, is only as good as the text being copied, so all of the texts with 16:9-20 may simply be copies of the same non-Markan addition. The verses are absent in the oldest manuscripts of Mark, including the vitally important Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, which both conclude the gospel at 16:8.

However, Mark 16:9-20 is absent in other early church fathers (e.g. Clement of Alexandria, Origen). At any rate, all that can be concluded from this use of the longer ending is that, rightly or wrongly, Mark 16:9-20 had become part of Church tradition and scripture much like other apocryphal writings such as The Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache, neither of which are now considered canonical.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09674b.htm

 Some textual problems, however, still remain, e.g. whether Gerasenon or Gergesenon is to be read in v, 1, eporei or epoiei in vi, 20, and whether the difficult autou, attested by B, Aleph, A, L, or autes is to be read in vi, 20

the great textual problem of the Gospel concerns the genuineness of the last twelve verses. Three conclusions of the Gospel are known: the long conclusion, as in our Bibles, containing verses 9-20, the short one ending with verse 8 (ephoboumto gar), and an intermediate form which (with some slight variations) runs as follows: "And they immediately made known all that had been commanded to those about Peter. And after this, Jesus Himself appeared to them, and through them sent forth from East to West the holy and incorruptible proclamation of the eternal salvation." Now this third form may be dismissed at once. Four unical manuscripts, dating from the seventh to the ninth century, give it, indeed, after xvi, 9, but each of them also makes reference to the longer ending as an alternative (for particulars cf. Swete, op. cit., pp. cv-cvii). It stands also in the margin of the cursive Manuscript 274, in the margin of the Harclean Syriac and of two manuscripts of the Memphitic version; and in a few manuscripts of the Ethiopic it stands between verse 8 and the ordinary conclusion. Only one authority, the Old Latin k, gives it alone (in a very corrupt rendering), without any reference to the longer form. Such evidence, especially when compared with that for the other two endings, can have no weight, and in fact, no scholar regards this intermediate conclusion as having any titles to acceptance.

We may pass on, then, to consider how the case stands between the long conclusion and the short, i.e. between accepting xvi, 9-20, as a genuine portion of the original Gospel, or making the original end with xvi, 8. In favour of the short ending Eusebius ("Quaest. ad Marin.") is appealed to as saying that an apologist might get rid of any difficulty arising from a comparison of Matt. xxviii, 1, with Mark, xvi, 9, in regard to the hour of Christ's Resurrection, by pointing out that the passage in Mark beginning with verse 9 is not contained in all the manuscripts of the Gospel. The historian then goes on himself to say that in nearly all the manuscripts of Mark, at least, in the accurate ones (schedon en apasi tois antigraphois . . . ta goun akribe, the Gospel ends with xvi, 8. It is true, Eusebius gives a second reply which the apologist might make, and which supposes the genuineness of the disputed passage, and he says that this latter reply might be made by one "who did not dare to set aside anything whatever that was found in any way in the Gospel writing". But the whole passage shows clearly enough that Eusebius was inclined to reject everything after xvi, 8. It is commonly held, too, that he did not apply his canons to the disputed verses, thereby showing clearly that he did not regard them as a portion of the original text (see, however, Scriv., "Introd.", II, 1894, 339). St. Jerome also says in one place ("Ad. Hedib.") that the passage was wanting in nearly all Greek manuscripts (omnibus Gr�ci� libris poene hoc capitulum in fine non habentibus), but he quotes it elsewhere ("Comment. on Matt."; "Ad Hedib."), and, as we know, he incorporated it in the Vulgate. It is quite clear that the whole passage, where Jerome makes the statement about the disputed verses being absent from Greek manuscripts, is borrowed almost verbatim from Eusebius, and it may be doubted whether his statement really adds any independent weight to the statement of Eusebius. It seems most likely also that Victor of Antioch, the first commentator of the Second Gospel, regarded xvi, 8, as the conclusion. If we add to this that the Gospel ends with xvi, 8, in the two oldest Greek manuscripts, B and Aleph, in the Sin. Syriac and in a few Ethiopic manuscripts, and that the cursive Manuscript 22 and some Armenian manuscripts indicate doubt as to whether the true ending is at verse 8 or verse 20,

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/mark.html

The author of the Gospel of Mark does indeed seem to lack first-hand knowledge of the geography of Palestine. Randel Helms writes concerning Mark 11:1 (Who Wrote the Gospels?, p. 6): "Anyone approaching Jerusalem from Jericho would come first to Bethany and then Bethphage, not the reverse. This is one of several passages showing that Mark knew little about Palestine; we must assume, Dennis Nineham argues, that 'Mark did not know the relative positions of these two villages on the Jericho road' (1963, 294-295). Indeed, Mark knew so little about the area that he described Jesus going from Tyrian territory 'by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee through the territory of the Ten Towns' (Mark 7:31); this is similar to saying that one goes from London to Paris by way of Edinburgh and Rome. The simplist solution, says Nineham, is that 'the evangelist was not directly acquainted with Palestine' (40)."

http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/mark/intro.htm

Other hands have attached additional endings after Mark 16:8; see the note on Mark 16:9-20.