From: mib@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Michael I Bushnell)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: The Ending of Mark (was: Myths Concerning Christianity #3)
Date: 7 Apr 92 16:26:28 GMT
	<MIB.92Apr6093631@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu> <6fpjs9.sheaffer@netcom.com>
Organization: Free Software Foundation, Cambridge, MA

In article <6fpjs9.sheaffer@netcom.com> sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer) writes:

   In article <MIB.92Apr6093631@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu> mib@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Michael I Bushnell) writes:
   >  Mark cannot have ended at 16:8; the
   >grammatical construction is ended prematurely.  Both additions after
   >verse 8 are in very different styles from the rest of Mark; the
   >shorter ending is remarkably abrupt.  It is quite likely that the last
   >page was lost very early on in the history of the Gospel, and a
   >reconstruction of it, perhaps from memory, perhaps not, was added by a
   >scribe later.
   >
     If there ever was any "last page" or "original ending" to this
     Gospel, it must have been lost *very* early, so early that the
     authors of Matthew and Luke were unable to find it, and hence
     had to invent their own mutually-contradictory accounts of
     people seeing the risen Jesus.

That's why I said "very early."  So nice of you to quote it.  The
usual thought is that it was lost before the circulation of the text,
thus, before the writing of Luke and Matthew.

     A more likely scenario was that there *never was* any "original
     ending" to Mark, and that the Longer Ending was composed to meet
     the objection from unbelievers that nobody actually SAW Jesus
     after his supposed resurrection. I set out a detailed argument
     supporting this in my book, "The Making of the Messiah"
     (Prometheus Books, 1991).

There must have been something.  The text ends without a proper

Do you see the point?  That last sentence isn't grammatical.  It just
stops, in mid thought.  If this paragraph weren't written here, you
would assume that my software or my fingers had made an error and left
off the end of the post.  The Greek text is similarly abrupt.  It is
fairly clear that neither the "shorter ending" nor the "longer ending"
was written by the author of the rest of the text.  It is feasible
that the longer ending was created by someone who know the content of
the original, but not the words, and so wrote (and circulated) an
addition.  It is also feasible that scribe noticed that the book ends
prematurely, and added the account himself.  If this was done, it was
done without much attention to Matthew or Luke, because it isn't
copied from either.

Having read your book now, and resisted the temptation to throw a
library book in the Charles River, I can now say that the arguments
you raise in it are specious, and indicate rather an ignorance of the
scholarship that has been done on the subject in the last few
centuries.  You seem to have taken your task to be starting over,
forgetting the past, in a not-to-different fashion from fundamentalist
"scholarship", and, like them, you reach the conclusions you set out
to find.

--
Michael Innis Bushnell	  | This is a virulent meme.  Whether or not you place
Email: mib@gnu.ai.mit.edu | this into your signature file is irrelevant.  You
Phone: (617) 625-4518	  | have already participated in its further trans-
			  | mission, and will doubtless continue to do so.
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc