At least three endings exist for the gospel of Mark. The ending that the readers of the KJV are familiar with is a comforting one. Jesus returns from the dead just as he promised. He appears to Mary Magdalene and then to the other apostles; he urges them to preach the gospel "to every creature"; and he assures them that they will be protected from danger as they heal the sick and perform good works. The story achieves closure, the prophecies are all fulfilled, and everyone is at peace when Jesus ascends to heaven.
However, this is probably not how Mark ended his story.
The "Longer Ending" of Mark
Mark 16:9-20, which I summarized above, is known by scholars as the Longer Ending of Mark. This ending is quoted by the bishop Irenaeus around the year 180, so we do know that the document was in circulation during the second century. However, these eleven verses do not appear in many important manuscripts, including the two oldest surviving Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus.
Even as early as the fourth century, the church historian Eusebius would pointedly exclude these verses from his Canons, explaining in a letter to his friend Marinus that the best copies of Mark that he knows of all end at 16:8. A little later, Jerome would also express his doubts that these verses are original to Mark, since "almost all" of the Greek books that he has encountered do not contain them (see Against the Pelagians 2.17).
There is internal evidence that speaks against these verses too. Although Mark's gospel is notorious for its colloquial and choppy Greek, verses 9-20 are awkward even by Mark's standards. The careful reader of the KJV translation will notice that square brackets have been placed around the word [Jesus] in 16:9. The reason for this is that the Greek reads simply "he," and the subject Jesus must be assumed. But isn't the (feminine, plural) subject of the previous sentence the women at the tomb? If Jesus is the new subject, shouldn't he be named? And speaking of naming people, why is Mary Magdalene introduced all over again, even though she appeared only a few verses ago? Admittedly there are other occasions in the gospel of Mark where the subject changes to Jesus suddenly (see, e.g., 6:43-45), but this particular shift is unusually abrupt.
Mark's writing style is very distinctive, and his fingerprints simply do not appear in this passage. Thus, based on both internal and external evidence, Biblical scholars today are nearly unanimous in drawing the conclusion that Mark did not write verses 9-20 of this chapter. That said, some conservative Christian scholars try to make the opposite case in order to preserve the traditional reading.
The "Shorter Ending" of Mark
A handful of manuscripts add the following verse after verse 8. Some stop there, while others go on to add the Longer Ending too. One manuscript puts "Amen" at the end. Can't have too many endings, I suppose.
And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.
This ending is poorly attested, and it also seems to contradict verse 8, which asserts that the women "said nothing to anyone." Therefore this line is certainly not original to the gospel.
The "Real Ending" of Mark?
If we strip away all the other endings, what are we left with? What we have is, to be sure, not very satisfying:
As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 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." 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.
They were afraid. What a strange way to end a book that is described in its opening lines as "good news." Furthermore, and more distressingly, the man in the white robe tells the women (and thus, by extension, the reader) that Jesus is risen, but we never actually see Jesus again. There is no post-Resurrection appearance, no final words, nothing but silence and terror.
It is no surprise, then, that the earliest generations of Christians found this ending -- what is usually called the Abrupt Ending -- intolerable. Matthew, Luke, and John all add post-Resurrection scenes of varying lengths and levels of detail. Luke's second volume even has a dramatic scene in which Jesus rides a cloud into heaven.
What, then, is the matter with Mark? Even the scholars who have concluded that the author of the gospel did not write verses 9-20 are uneasy with the ending as it stands. Some have argued that the real ending was torn off the original manuscript of Mark so early on that no surviving copy preserves it. Others say that the author may have stopped writing, or died, before he could finish his story -- an answer that feels just a bit too Monty Python for me.
However, there is a small but growing group of scholars who are trying to take Mark's bizarre ending seriously. Is there a reason why the evangelist may have intended for his gospel to end this way? How might an ancient reader have responded to the confusing presence of those frightened women? Might that reader have identified with them, particularly if he was living in a time of persecutions? Paula Fredriksen wonders whether the absence of Jesus in the text is a reflection of the absence of Jesus in the lives of the first Christians, who were still recovering from the shock of his sudden and humiliating death. In that sense, is it possible that the Abrupt Ending is somehow honest about the fears and uncertainties experienced by the first generation of Christianity in a way that the nicer endings are not?
The Historical Impact of the Different Endings
Though the longer ending has been criticized by textual scholars, it has still had a dramatic effect on Christian history which cannot be denied. For example, Jesus' post-resurrection promise that whoever believes in him
will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them
became a major focus for the ritual lives of the snake handlers in Appalachia in the early twentieth century. The phrase "signs following," taken from Mark 16:20, became a kind of code-word for snake-handling churches, and remains so today.
Even for more mainline churches than those in the rural Southern U.S., the KJV has had enough of an impact that most Protestant Christians think all four gospels describe a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus. The charge to Jesus' followers in Mark 16:9-20 neatly summarizes the job that many Christians (particularly missionaries) see themselves as having, which makes these verses a particularly important proof text for them.
Further Reading:
A detailed summary of the evidence can be found on this superb web page: http://www.textexcavation.com/marcanendings.html
I use the NRSV for all Biblical quotations, except for the examples that I note from the KJV.
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