A Deep Look At Mark 16

The resurrection story is one of the most famous stories in history.

Many people know how Easter morning unfolds, even if they have not been near a church. The women arrive, the stone has been rolled away, Jesus has risen, and, before long, the risen Christ appears to his followers.

It might be surprising then to discover that Mark’s Gospel may not end like that at all.

If you open almost any modern Bible and turn to Mark 16, you will probably find a small note somewhere after verse 8. It may say that the earliest manuscripts do not contain verses 9–20, or that some manuscripts have a different ending.

It is the sort of note most of us ignore. To be honest, I did for years. Yet once you stop and read what comes immediately before it, the ending becomes extraordinary.

The women enter the tomb and find a young man dressed in white. He tells them that Jesus has risen and gives them a very clear instruction:

“Go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’”

Then Mark says:

“Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

And then, in two of our earliest complete Greek manuscripts, Mark stops. No appearance of Jesus. No reunion with the disciples. No Great Commission. No ascension.

Just an empty tomb, a promise, and three frightened women running away.

The Ending Most of Us Keep Reading

Most modern Bibles continue after verse 8.

Verses 9–20 describe Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene, appearing to two disciples, rebuking the Eleven for their unbelief, commissioning them to preach the gospel, and finally being taken up into heaven. There are also some memorable lines about speaking in tongues, handling snakes and drinking poison without harm.

For centuries, Christians have read these verses as part of Mark’s Gospel, and most surviving Greek manuscripts contain them. But the manuscript story is more complicated than that.

Two of the oldest surviving complete Greek manuscripts of Mark, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, finish at verse 8. Some ancient translations do the same. Eusebius, writing in the fourth century, knew copies that ended there, and Jerome later acknowledged the same problem.

Yet the case is not settled, because the longer ending is ancient too.

Irenaeus appears to quote Mark 16:19 in the second century, which means these verses were circulating remarkably early. They were not invented by a medieval monk who suddenly decided Mark needed a more satisfying ending. Whatever happened at the end of Mark happened very early in the history of the Gospel.

And then things become even stranger.

Mark Has More Than Two Endings

We tend to imagine there are two possibilities: Mark finished at verse 8, or verses 9–20 are the original ending.

But the manuscript tradition contains other endings too.

A shorter conclusion appears in some witnesses, quickly reporting that the women told Peter’s companions what had happened before the message of salvation was proclaimed throughout the world. Another manuscript, Codex Washingtonianus, includes the longer ending but inserts an additional passage into it, usually called the Freer Logion.

So, at some point in the early transmission of Mark, Christians were copying a Gospel that could circulate with different conclusions. That is fascinating in itself. It suggests that we are not the first readers to reach verse 8 and think, Surely that cannot be where it finishes?

Something about Mark’s ending has long made Christians uncomfortable.

There are also reasons many scholars doubt that verses 9–20 came from Mark himself. The vocabulary and style change, although those arguments should not be pushed too far. Then there is the transition between verses 8 and 9.

In verse 8, the women are the focus of the story. Then verse 9 suddenly begins again with Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene. The other women disappear, and Mary is described as the woman from whom Jesus had driven seven demons, even though Mark has already mentioned her several times.

It feels less like the next sentence in the same story and more like someone beginning a conclusion using traditions already known elsewhere. That is why most New Testament scholars regard verses 9–20 as secondary.

But that only solves one mystery by creating another.

Where Did Mark Actually End?

If verses 9–20 were not Mark’s original conclusion, there are two obvious possibilities.

The first is that Mark originally wrote an alternative ending, which was somehow lost. That is entirely possible. Ancient texts were physical objects, and their beginnings and endings were particularly vulnerable to damage. If Mark’s conclusion disappeared very early, later copies could inherit the same abrupt ending.

There is also a good narrative reason to expect more. Earlier in the Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that after he has risen, he will go ahead of them into Galilee. Then the young man at the tomb repeats almost exactly the same promise.

“He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.”

You naturally expect the next scene to take place in Galilee.

Instead, the page goes blank. Perhaps something really is missing. But there is another possibility that has fascinated scholars for decades.

Perhaps Mark meant to stop there.

A Gospel Full of People Who Do Not Understand

At first, that sounds ridiculous.

Why would anyone tell the story of Jesus, spend sixteen chapters building towards the resurrection, and then finish just before the risen Jesus actually appears?

Yet the more closely you read Mark, the less strange it becomes.

Mark’s Gospel is full of people struggling to understand what is happening before their eyes. The disciples watch miracles and still fail to grasp who Jesus is. Peter identifies him as the Messiah, then objects when Jesus explains what that Messiahship will entail. Again and again, they misunderstand, become frightened and fail to see what Jesus is trying to show them.

Then, as the cross approaches, everything falls apart. Judas betrays him. Peter denies him. When Jesus is arrested, Mark says simply that “everyone deserted him and fled.”

By the time Jesus reaches the cross, the male disciples have almost completely disappeared from the story.

The women are different.

Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and other women remain close enough to witness the crucifixion. They watch where Jesus is buried. Then, after the Sabbath, they return to the tomb carrying spices. For a moment, they appear to be the disciples who finally get it right.

Then they enter the tomb, hear the news Christians have been waiting two thousand years to celebrate, and they do exactly what everyone else has done.

They flee.

Perhaps Mark’s ending is not a strange interruption of the story at all. Maybe it is the final expression of a theme he has been developing from the beginning.

Fear Has the Last Sentence

There is something deeply uncomfortable about that.

We like resurrection stories to move quickly from darkness to celebration. The tomb is empty; everybody understands, joy breaks out, and Easter begins. Mark refuses to give us that satisfaction.

At least, not immediately.

The women hear that Jesus has risen, but their first response is not joy. It is terror. Scholars disagree over how negatively we should read that response. Some see the women as failing in exactly the same way as the male disciples. They have been explicitly told to speak, yet they remain silent.

Others argue that fear and astonishment are entirely understandable responses to encountering something so overwhelming. Throughout Scripture, encounters with the divine rarely leave people calmly taking notes. Perhaps Mark wants us to feel both.

The women are afraid because resurrection is not simply good news in the ordinary sense. If a dead man has genuinely been raised, then reality itself has changed. The world they thought they understood is no longer the one they stand in.

But they have also been given something to do.

Go and tell.

And for the moment, they do not, and that tension may be exactly the point.

A Promise Without a Resolution

There is one detail in the final scene that I find especially moving.

The young man does not simply tell the women that Jesus has risen. He gives them a promise. Jesus is going ahead of the disciples into Galilee, and then he adds two words that are incredibly easy to miss:

“And Peter.”

Peter, who promised he would never desert Jesus. Peter, who denied even knowing him. Peter, whose last appearance in Mark before Easter ends with him breaking down and weeping.

He is still included.

The disciples have failed spectacularly, but Jesus is already going ahead of them. Peter has denied him, but Peter is still invited. The women flee, but the promise remains. That changes the feel of Mark’s final scene.

Human beings fail all over it, but the resurrection does not depend upon their competence. Jesus has risen, whether they understand it or not. He is going ahead of them whether they are ready or not. The promise is already waiting in Galilee.

Maybe that is why an ending at verse 8 can work after all.

The Story Obviously Did Not End There

There is also a wonderful irony hidden inside Mark’s final sentence.

The women “said nothing to anyone.”

Yet here we are reading about it. Clearly, their silence did not last forever; somebody eventually told somebody. At some point, Peter heard. The disciples came to believe that Jesus was alive. Stories of encounters with the risen Jesus circulated through the earliest Christian communities. Most obviously of all, Mark himself somehow knew what happened at the tomb.

Fear may therefore have the final sentence of the written Gospel, but it plainly does not have the final word. And that may be the most interesting possibility of all.

Perhaps Mark ends without showing the women speaking because his readers already know the story continues. Or perhaps the original ending really was lost, and we are asking far too much of an accident of ancient manuscript history.

We simply do not know, and I rather like that. Because whichever explanation is correct, Mark 16:8 still leaves us with an extraordinary picture.

An empty tomb. A message that Jesus has risen. A group of frightened people who do not yet know what to do with it. And a promise that Jesus has gone ahead of them.

For years, I thought the resurrection stories were primarily about certainty. The tomb is empty, Jesus appears, doubt disappears, and everyone finally understands. Mark reminds me that faith rarely works quite so neatly.

Sometimes we receive the promise before we see its fulfilment. Sometimes fear and faith occupy the same moment, and we understand what God is doing only after we have run in entirely the wrong direction.

And sometimes the story appears to finish while God is still going ahead of us.

Perhaps that is not such a strange ending after all.