From: sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Subject: Re: The Ending of Mark (was: Myths Concerning Christianity #3)
Date: Tue, 07 Apr 92 18:21:33 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In article <MIB.92Apr7112628@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu> mib@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Michael I Bushnell) writes:
>>    (Sheaffer wrote)
>     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.

  Well, if *I* lost the last page of something I wrote, I'd replace
  it immediately. If it was lost *that* early, then I wonder why it
  is that we still have texts of Mark from the fourth century or
  later that are without it, since you seem to be implying that it 
  was likewise restored rather soon.

>
>     A more likely scenario was that there *never was* any "original
>     ending" to Mark, 
>
>There must have been something.  The text ends without a proper
>

 My understanding is that the end is abrupt, but gramatically
 correct. Its bluntness seems intended for dramatic
 effect: the body is missing, they spoke to an angel, and
 they went out and said nothing because they were AFRAID! (Which
 better explains the lack of saying anything about seeing
 Jesus until much later).


> 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. 
  
  If this happened *soon* after Mark was written, there would not
  be so many copies without it. If this happened long after Mark
  was written, it is less plausible that anyone would know the
  "original ending".

> It is also feasible that scribe noticed that the book ends
>prematurely, and added the account himself. 

  In other words, woven from whole cloth. This is indeed possible,
  even likely.

> If this was done, it was
>done without much attention to Matthew or Luke, because it isn't
>copied from either.
>
  The "Longer Ending" of Mark is fully consistent with the post-
  Resurrection events in Luke. It was obviously written by somebody
  who favored *that* version of events over the mutually-contradictory
  accounts in Matthew and John. Indeed, the Longer Ending of Mark,
  and the last chapter of Luke, are the only two Gospel accounts
  of post-Resurrection events that do not contradict each other.
  (i.e., L.E. vs. Matthew is contradictory, L.E. vs. John is,
  Matthew vs. John is also contradictory, but L.E. vs. Luke is
  the only permutation of the texts that do not contradict.)

  My guess is that the Longer Ending was written by
  the author of Luke. Note also that there is a "handling snakes safely"
  passage in the Longer Ending, as well as in chapter 20-something
  of Acts (Paul does it), suggesting (but not proving) a common author.
   

>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.
>
 I'm glad to hear that you found my "Making of the Messiah" to be
 provocative! If I have ignored certain weighty arguments of the past
 few centuries' scholarship, please let us know what those are; the
 authors of the modern references I relied on should likewise be
 notified of their shortcomings. 
-- 
  
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!

     "In the 1970's the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions
     of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs 
     embarked upon now ... in 1985, when it is calculated [under the most
     optimistic scenario] that the major die-back will be over, ..."
       
                       Dr. Paul Ehrlich, "The Population Bomb," 1968

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