Hello and welcome to another episode of Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia, and today is Friday, October the 21st of 2016. In this episode we're going to be continuing a sermon review that I started in episode 60. This is a review of a sermon that was preached in October of 2012, four years ago, by Pastor Kerry Hardy of the Twin City Bible Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in which he addressed the ending of Mark in a sermon titled, The Added Ending. And this came to my attention through one of my members in my church who asked me to give some feedback analysis of this. And so I agreed to do it again. I'm not just offering this as some kind of gratuitous criticism. I don't know Pastor Hardy. I did send him an email. I have not yet heard back from him, but he may be very busy as pastors usually are. But at any rate, I want to pick up the review. I said I would try to do this in three parts. Part one was episode 60, where we looked at preliminary issues. In this episode, I'm going to try to listen to the part of the sermon from about the 14-minute mark on to, let's see, I think it's about the 29-minute mark. We can get that far into it. We'll be doing really, really good. In this part he deals with the external evidence and in the final part he'll deal with the internal evidence. The external evidence simply means the existing or extant Greek manuscripts and also the versions or translations of the Bible. Which one of those support the so-called longer ending or traditional ending and which ones do not support the longer ending or the traditional ending. And when we ended last time, we noted that Pastor Hardy has come to the conclusion, as have other evangelicals like John MacArthur and others, that Mark 16 9 through 20 is not part of the inspired Word of God. It is not authentic. It's not part of the original text of the Gospel of Mark. I am not in agreement with that position. I don't think that is the right position. I'm an advocate for the confessional text. So anyways, that's what this review is about. And again, with this episode, we're turning to the so-called external evidence. So let's pick up the sermon here again. It's about at the 14 or so minute mark. And here is Pastor Kerry Hardy. External evidence first. Here's some examples of external evidence related to these verses. These verses, number one, this would be part of external evidence. These verses are lacking in some very important early man. Okay, so he's going to say that he does not believe in the traditional ending of Mark because it is lacking, he says, in some very important early manuscripts. Now he, in this part of the sermon, he takes a minute here and reviews some of the nomenclature that is used for biblical manuscripts. I'm just going to skip a little bit forward to about the, let's see, the 1546 mark. Here we go. Now the two earliest manuscript copies have names. A copy would be called, in technical language, a Codex, C-O-D-E-X, that's just a general kind of category. There is Codex B, letter B, it's a very famous copy, and Codex Aleph, A-L-E-P-H, Aleph, that's a Hebrew letter, first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph, letter A, basically. There's Codex B and Codex Olive. These have two other famous names, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. You don't have to remember any of that. But I will tell you, these very early copies date from the 300s. So that's really old in technical language. Okay, so he's again marshalling his evidence against the legitimacy of Mark 169320. And he begins by mentioning the fact that there are two ancient Greek manuscripts, two ancient codices that do not have Mark 16, 9 through 20. They end the Gospel of Mark at Mark 16, 8. They are Codex Vaticanus, so-called because found in the Vatican Library in Rome and Codex Sinaiticus. Some people pronounce it as he does, Codex Sinaiticus. I was thinking about that. I've always pronounced it Codex Sinaiticus and I think I picked that up from my professor in seminary when I took a course on text criticism, John Polehill at Southern Seminary. Maybe I just adulterated it myself. I'm not sure. But anyways, I've always pronounced it Codex Sinaiticus, but I noticed that some people do pronounce it Codex Sinaiticus. So anyways, these two ancient manuscripts, he says dating from 300. In truth, we're not 100% sure when these codices were written. They often are dated to the 4th century. Does that mean 300? Does that mean 350? Does that mean 390? In truth, we really don't know. But they end at Mark 16 and verse 8. Now, this is going to be an issue as we go through this review. The one thing that Pastor Hardy does not mention at this point is the fact that these are in fact the only extant Greek manuscripts that do not include Mark 16, 9 through 20 as the proper ending for the Gospel of Mark. These are the, it's not that, it's not that these are some of the most important Greek manuscripts. These are the only, only Greek manuscripts. Of the over a thousand Greek manuscripts that we have, only two do not include Mark 16 9 through 20 and end at Mark 16 and verse 8. We'll come back to this a little bit later and I just just add to anticipate that that some of the manuscripts that include Mark 16, 9 through 20, are of comparable antiquity to Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. But even with these two, as he's about to point out, There are some strange things related even within these two manuscripts, the only ones that exclude the so-called longer ending or traditional ending. There are some textual anomalies and that's what he'll address next. Let's listen. And this longer ending is missing in these very, very important early manuscripts. In fact, the scribe who made B, the scribe who made the copy that we have called B, contrary to his usual practice, because he had a habit, you can tell, okay, this is what he did. When he got here, he left a blank column after concluding Mark at verse 8. He left a blank column there, though, that had these words that he wrote in. In other words, this was the last verse of the copy, verse 8, and it had a blank and a column, and then he put, according to Mark. That little comment was letting us know that he knew that there was a longer edition out there, but he wanted folks to know it's ending here according to Mark. They are also missing, and believe me, if you're just going to know two names of manuscripts, just know those, Codex B and Codex Olive, and you're OK. But there are more. All right. Let me pause there. Actually, there are not more Greek manuscripts. It's simply not true. You can take, if you have a copy of and you can read the apparatus, you can pick up the 2012 Nestle Alon 28th edition. and you can look at the textual apparatus and there aren't any other Greek manuscripts that exclude the traditional ending of Mark other than Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. He mentioned the fact that in Codex Vaticanus, there's an oddity. And I did a blog post on this. I'll do a post to my blog, JeffRiddle.net, that corresponds to this Word Magazine, Word Magazine 61, and I'll put a link to this. but if you look at Codex Vaticanus and it ends the Gospel of Mark in one column and what the typical practice of the scribes was when they ended a work and it came to an end in the middle of one column, they would generally start the next book in the very next column. So we would expect that if Mark 16, 8 appears, if they say that's the ending in column 2, then you would expect Luke to begin at the top of the next column. And instead, it not only leaves the remainder of the column where Mark 16, 8 appears, but it leaves the next column completely blank, indicating that the scribe, as he points out, as Pastor Hardy rightly points out, that the scribe knew of controversy surrounding the ending of Mark. And he knew that by ending it at verse 8, that he was doing something that was contrary to another trend, and that was to include verses 9 through 20. Some have even argued that there would have been enough space to write in the rest of the ending of Mark. I know James Snapp has made this argument that there was enough space to complete the rest of Mark within the half column where Mark 16, 8 ends, and then the next blank column, that there would have been enough space. But anyways, it's just an oddity. And in the post, you can look again. I think I called it, the post, the odd empty column. in Codex Vaticanus. I have put up there pictures of the ending of Matthew and the ending of Luke and the ending of John so you can see what an anomaly the textual setup is for the ending of Mark. The other one that he doesn't directly address, and I went back this week and did some more research on this, and I got the world we live in. It's amazing. I mean, you can be anywhere in the world now and you can pull up on your computer Codex Vaticanus and also Codex Sinaiticus. It's there. The British Museum has Sinaiticus in a searchable digital format. I went back and looked at Sinaiticus, and I did a blog post this week on what's strange about the ending of Mark in Sinaiticus. The other, along with Vaticanus, are the only two Greek manuscripts that end at Mark 16.8. And what is interesting there is two things. One is the line, the very last line, it ends at 1608, and the last words are tagar. Then the rest of the line is filled in with a fancy arabesque, which is totally uncommon for Sinaiticus. If a book ends in the middle of a line, it typically just leaves it blank. But this one is filled in to the end of the column with an arabesque. Then there's an ornamental feature in Sinaiticus where at the end of a book, There is a horizontal line and a vertical line that intersect at the end of the text in the column at the end of the book. And that appears at the ending of mark. But what's odd is that the horizontal line, which normally goes only part of the way, maybe a third to a half of the way across the column. In this case, there's that line that goes a third to the half of the way. But then someone has gone in, apparently, and went in a different decorative form has extended the line to the end of the column, almost kind of like filling it up so that nothing else can be added. And you might say, well, that proves he wanted to say definitively that Mark ends at Mark 16, 8. But what that also indicates is that he knew of a tradition of the longer ending. And this is a point that is made by Nicholas Lund in his book, The Original Ending of Mark. And if you're really interested in this topic, you must go out and get Nicholas Lund's book. It just came out in 2014. And I went back this week and read the two chapters that he has on external evidence. I'm going to quote a few things from it. It's really worth reading. Nicholas Lunn is a Wycliffe Bible translator and also an associate tutor at Spurgeons College in London. And in 2014, he published this book, The Original Ending of Mark, a new case for the authenticity of Mark 16, 9 through 20. And it really is essential reading if you're interested in this topic. So, and I'm going to quote quite a bit from him upcoming. So, at any rate... We have the two manuscripts, the only two Greek manuscripts, the only two extant Greek manuscripts that end Mark at Mark 16, 8 and do not include Mark 16, 9 through 20. Both of them have physical anomalies in the text indicating that they know of the longer ending. And that, in fact, becomes part of the evidence for the antiquity of the older ending. And Lund makes this point well. Again, I encourage you to listen or look at the blog posts that I did on the ending in Sinaiticus and the ending in Vaticanus. All right. Well, that said, let's go ahead and pick up again with Pastor Carey's comments as he's going to talk about other manuscripts that he claims are evidence for the so-called shorter ending or what Lund calls the abrupt ending at Mark, Mark 16, 8. Here we go. These verses are also missing in Codex K, which has another name, Codex Mobiensis. which happens to be the very best example of the earliest African manuscript, which would be an old Latin text. All right, so the next thing he mentions is Codex Babiensis, Codex lowercase K, it's called, in the critical apparatus. And although he does go on and say it's an example of old Latin, Again, if someone were just listening to this, they might think this is a Greek manuscript. It's not a Greek manuscript. It's an old Latin manuscript. So translations or versional evidence is very important. But the Greek manuscript evidence is more important than the old Latin evidence. So Mark 16, 8 is where Mark ends in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. In this old Latin manuscript, K. Codex Babientius, It ends at Mark 16.8 and then it adds what is called the so-called shorter ending. And I'm going to just again turn to Lund for just a moment because he has a discussion of this. And the fact that it's an African It's provenance. The place it comes from is Africa. I think it's significant, because that makes it more likely that it was influenced by the tradition that's represented in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, because they are Alexandrian manuscripts. They came from Alexandria, Egypt. And so it would make sense that they might have had an influence on at least this one Old Latin manuscript. There's some interesting things that Lund also points out about Babiensis. He says that it exhibits a number of unusual readings. In fact, within Mark 16, 1 through 8, there are two significant and sort of strange omissions and interpolations within it. For one, it leaves out the name of the women who went to the tomb. While in Mark 16-7, it omits the clause that the women said nothing to anyone. There's also a lengthy text inserted between Mark 16 verse 3 and Mark 16 verse 4, according to Lund, which describes darkness falling upon the earth, angels descending from heaven, then ascending again with the risen Christ and the restoration of the light. And he suggests that that may have been an insertion drawn by the influence of the apocryphal gospel of Peter. So the point is that Codex Babiensis is a strange document. And one of the evidences of the strangeness of it is that it ends the Gospel of Mark at Mark 16, verse 8, and then includes the so-called shorter ending. But it's not even a Greek manuscript. It's an old Latin manuscript. And it doesn't agree with other old Latin manuscripts, because the old Latin manuscripts in general include Mark 16, verses 9 through 20. And Lunn mentions several of these, including Codex Corbiensis, Codex Sangallensium, Codex Monachensis, Codex Radigerianus and the Fragmentum Sungalense, Codex Arius, Codex Colbertinus, et cetera. So Codex Babiensis is a strange bird. It's an oddity. And so not the strongest support for the antiquity or authenticity of ending Mark at Mark 16 verse 8. But let's continue. It's missing from Codex K. It's missing in the Cyanidic Syriac Codex. It's missing in about 100 Armenian manuscripts. Okay. Again, the thing that's confusing about this for people who are a lay listener, I think, is that they might not know the difference between a Greek manuscript and this versional evidence. There weren't many Greek manuscripts he could possibly cover because, again, there are only two. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. So then he leaps into the virginal evidence. He mentions one old Latin manuscript, K. Babiensis. And then he mentions one Syriac manuscript, the Sinaitic Syriac. And what he also doesn't mention is the fact that, in general, the Syriac version or translation supports the so-called longer ending. It's there in what's called the Curritonian Syriac. It's there in the Peshitta Syriac. It's there in the Harklian Syriac. Also, it's there in the earliest Syriac, which is the Diatessaron that was put together by the early Christian apologist, Patian. And then he mentions the Armenian manuscripts, Armenian. And he says there are about 100. I think Lund says there are 99 Armenian manuscripts where Mark is at Mark 16, 8. Lund suggests that the Armenian manuscripts were influenced by the same Alexandrian stream that produced Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. But one thing about the Armenian manuscripts is they're very late. The earliest of them is not till the 9th, 10th century. And also it's a mixed It's a mixed tradition. There are other Armenian manuscripts That include the longer ending so it's not that all of them end at 16 to 8 But some of them also include Mark 16 93 20 a significant number of them, but let's listen to a little bit more of what he has to say Armenian. It's a country missing in about 100 early Armenian manuscripts. There's a group of manuscripts called cursives, a number of cursives have verses 9 through 20 in them, but they add a note out to the side, a mark, a note of uncertainty about these verses. Okay, this is again, it's another place where it gets a little confusing because now he starts talking about the cursive manuscripts And I think, if I'm following him correctly, now he's gone back to talking about Greek manuscripts. So he talked about two Greek manuscripts, the only two that omit Mark 16, 9 through 20, and have Mark end at Mark 16, 8. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Then he's talked about some versions, and now he's jumping back into talking about Greek manuscripts, the cursives, and what he's talking about are later Greek manuscripts that were written in the minuscule script, the lowercase minuscule and cursive script, as opposed to earlier Greek manuscripts like Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and others. that are called unseal, written in uppercase or majuscule script. I was talking with a friend at church Wednesday night and when I said unseal, he thought I was saying unsealed. No, it's U-N-C-I-A-L, unseal. The earliest manuscripts written on vellum, like Sinaiticus Vaticanus, are written in this uppercase script called unsealed and later ones, mainly starting around the ninth, 10th century, they're written in the minuscule or cursive script. So he's talking about them and he's making a point about them having notes. And so let's see if we can catch just a little bit more than I wanna respond to that or say something about it. Here we go. They're missing in some other very important early manuscripts, including the two oldest, what are called the Georgian manuscripts. Whoops, hold on. He's going to come back and say something about the cursives and notes. But now we've, again, sorry, this is confusing. But now we've jumped back again to versions or translations. And he mentions the fact that two early Georgian manuscripts also end at Mark 16, 8. And again, I think consulting Lund here is pretty helpful. On page 52 of Lund's book, he discusses these Georgian manuscripts and there are two Georgian manuscripts. This is another early version. This is not Greek, but it was a translation of the New Testament into the Georgian language. And these two early manuscripts, one dates to I think the year, let's see, what is it? One dates to 897, the other dates to the year 913, and they end at Mark 16, 8. However, Lund points out there are other Georgian manuscripts, including one that dates to 997, that includes Mark 16, 9 through 20, and he also helpfully points out that the Georgian manuscripts most believe were dependent upon the Armenian So there was definitely a tradition probably resulting from the influence of Egypt, influence of the Alexandrian texts that definitely is evident there in the Armenian stream and is definitely then correspondingly evident in at least two, only two, Georgian, early Georgian manuscripts, but not in all of them. So I think now he's going to jump back to the cursive. I know this is a little bit confusing to follow, but let's see what he says about the jumping back to Greek manuscripts that include Mark 16, 9 through 20. He's going to suggest that some of them have notes that cast some doubts on the authenticity of Mark 16, 9 through 20. So let's pick it up again. One from AD 897, the other one AD 900-something, 913. They're missing in those. Some of the manuscripts that do include these verses also have scribal notes stating that they are absent in some older Greek copies. So if they were later copies, the copyist would put a note in that we're aware that these are missing in earlier copies. And in other Greek manuscripts, the verses, if they're included, are marked with something like an asterisk to indicate that they are not authentic. Some manuscripts dating from the 6th century or later, as well as a whole slew of others, the Ethiopic, the Sahitic, the Harklian Syriac, and the earliest Bohiric copies, have two endings. All right, I went a little too far, but let me go back to this issue of did some of the later manuscripts have asterisks and notes, even though they included 16.9 through 20. And again, I'm dependent upon Lunn. You really ought to get his book and read it if you're interested in this topic. But he discusses this, beginning on page 35 of his book, And he mentions the fact that, that, um, and I'm, I'm guessing here, um, that pastor Hardy is, is being dependent on secondary information. You know, it's, it's, it's doubtful that he has examined these minuscule manuscripts himself. He's, he's, he's basing his information on things that he's read by others. Probably he's probably read Bruce Metzger's textual commentary on the New Testament where he makes reference to this, but, um, Lund, Notice the fact that sometimes scholars talk in inexact ways about not a few or several manuscripts have this, and I love this part on page 35. He says several is, in fact, a more accurate description. Overall, there are fewer than 30 Greek manuscripts displaying notes and signs around Mark 16, 9 through 20. in comparison with the several hundred copies of Mark's Gospel in total, this is not a hugely significant amount. Secondly, the majority of these manuscripts are of a relatively late date. Three originate from the 7th to 8th centuries, but most of the remainder were produced after the 10th century, one even as late as 1400. Thirdly, and more importantly, that the notes in question are to be taken as indicating the spurious nature of Mark 16 9 through 20 is not the actual case regarding many if not most of them as shall be demonstrated below. And then as he continues on page 37 He says, the presence of these marks, we are told by those scholars that he cites within the book, signify doubt on the part of the scribe concerning the genuineness of the passage that follows. This function of the signs might be as they claim, but it cannot be assumed. The symbols might serve simply to signal the occurrence of a textual variant without any implications of doubt. And he finishes that paragraph on page 37. The implicit information of these textual symbols, therefore, need not indicate anything more than what is expressed explicitly throughout the scribal notes appearing in other manuscripts in the same location. So no one is contesting that there was controversy over the ending of Mark. There obviously was. It's perhaps unsurprising that in some later Greek manuscripts some might have put obelisks or asterisks or notes out in the margin to let the reader know that there had been textual controversy about this, but they all include Mark 16 9 through 20. They include it. They don't exclude it. And there are no notes where the scribe says, I'm putting this in here, but it's really not part of the text. No, it's just a note out to the side, an obelisk or an asterisk indicating that there perhaps have been some textual controversy about it. But we must not over-conjecture or speculate as to what their intention was. They did, after all, include Mark 16, 9 through 20 in the manuscript. So I know we've jumped around quite a bit and I sort of bled over into the next section where he's talking about what is called the so-called shorter ending. So he notes that starting around the 6th century, that there is inserted what is called this shorter ending. And let's listen to a little bit more and then I'll come back and talk a little bit about the shorter ending. There's a whole group that have two endings from about the 6th century onward. They have this one, nicknamed the longer ending, and in addition they have another ending that's out there called the shorter ending. And that shorter ending is inserted between verse 8 and verse 9 in this group of manuscripts. It's only about what we would say maybe a paragraph. It's only about three or four sentences long. All right, well, let's talk a little bit about the so-called shorter ending. He says it's three or four sentences long. It's actually, I think in most translations, put it as two sentences long. It's not really a lot of mystery about it. If you have the current modern critical Greek text, it appears bracketed, not in the apparatus, but within the text itself. Also, it's included now in several modern translations. If you have the New Living translation, it appears right there in the text. If you have the New Revised Standard Version, It's right there in the text. If you have the English Standard Version, the ESV, thankfully they don't yet put it right in the text, but they do put a translation of it in the footnotes. And I just picked up my copy of the New Revised Standard Version, which is the normal translation used in most modern Protestant, mainline Protestant churches. And this is the shorter ending of Mark as they translate it. 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. That is the so-called shorter ending. And he mentions that this begins to show up in some Greek manuscripts. Actually, it only appears in six Greek manuscripts, and it appears in the margin of a seventh Greek manuscript. for, again, the printing of the modern critical Greek text, it will list the manuscripts in which it appears. It appears in Codex L, Codex Psi, in 083099, 579, and in Lectionary 1602, and it also appears in the margin, as a marginal note, in Codex 274. So there are six manuscripts, seven if you count, two, seven, four, where it's a marginal note, where the so-called shorter ending appears. And again, one of the oddities of the postmodern world we're living in is that we're actually having a trend toward modern translations that are now including this. So they'll label it, like the New Living Translation or the New Revised Standard Version, they'll label it as the shorter ending of Mark, And they'll put it between verses 8 and 9, and then they'll have verses 9 through 20, and they'll call it the longer ending. And it's kind of like, you know, you make up your own mind, you create your own text. So we haven't had this for hundreds of years. We are now having a resurgence of people saying that this so-called shorter ending should be treated as legitimate. Now, it also is included in some of the versions or translations. But again, it's only in six or seven Greek manuscripts. And by the way, when it appears there, They also include verses 9 through 20. So even these documents, these manuscripts that are evidences for the shorter ending are also witnesses for the longer ending because they include them, although they include this insertion that I believe is spurious. But he goes on to say that he believes it's spurious and late too. I think it probably developed in the Alexandrian circles when there were manuscripts like Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, where people were trying to say, let's end Mark at Mark 16, 8. And that wasn't satisfying, and so they tried to invent the shorter ending. And that would be an argument that we'll come to later in this survey. He's going to argue, as John MacArthur and others have, that Mark 16, 8, Dan Wallace argues this as well, that Mark 16, 8 is the proper ending for Mark. Well, if it were the proper ending of Mark, Why was there such dissatisfaction with it so much so that the shorter ending was created? And so actually the existence of the shorter ending I think is evidence against any possibility that Mark was originally intended to end at 1608. But let's listen as Pastor Hardy picks things up here. It's inserted in there. So they have the longer ending in addition to this one inserted in. We find a bunch like that. Not a bunch. There are only six and possibly seven. Two endings. All alone, that shorter ending that I just talked to you, it's found in one manuscript all by itself without all the other verses. The only one that it appears in by itself without any other verses is Codex Babiensis, which we've already talked about. The one old Latin manuscript known as Codex K, lowercase k. But again, it's old Latin, not a Greek manuscript. Without 9 through 20 following it. So one manuscript has that shorter ending after verse 8 all by itself. I can tell you something about the shorter ending. It's not controversial. Everybody is in agreement that that shorter ending is definitely a scribal addition. It was either an attempt to come up with an ending, because if you read through chapter 16 and you get to verse 8 and you finish verse 8, I admit to you, it feels just a little bit like, and, I will comment on that though later tonight. And so it's agreed by everyone that that shorter one is definitely a scribal edition. I should have brought it to read it to you. There's a couple of statements in there that are kind of weird, frankly. Well, I just read it from the New Revised Standard Version. You know, again, I think it's spurious. I don't think it's original. I think it was created probably in the Alexandrian circles because there was an effort to reproduce Mark ending at verse 8. But again, I'm just reading it again. It appears, again, the New Revised Standard Version under the title, The Shorter Ending of Mark, 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." I mean, it's spurious, but it's not, it doesn't have anything that weird. There's no mystery to it. And like I said, if you pick up a New Living Translation ESV, it's there in the footnotes, or the NRSV, you can read it for yourself. So somebody came up with it just to provide an ending, you know, some sort of ending for this thing. Or to provide a smoother transition when it's inserted between verse 8 and the rest of these verses, they've determined that some of those manuscripts, they have both endings, the shorter one and then the longer one. The shorter one is inserted just to provide a smoother transition between verse 8 and verse 9 because there is a problem there about the translation, the transition from verse 8 to verse 9, which I'll talk about. Then there is also another edition. Its name is the Freer, F-R-E-E-R, or the Washingtonian edition. And it's called that because the fragment that has that ending is kept in the Freer Museum, which is part of the Smithsonian in Washington. So it's called the Freer fragment, the Freer ending, or the Washingtonian. OK, now he's going to address another anomaly that is found in one manuscript, one Greek manuscript. As he mentions, it's Codex W. It's the Codex Washingtoniensis. And this insertion is sometimes called the Freer Logion. And again, if you want to read it, there's not a lot of mystery about it, you can pick up a New Revised Standard Version. And at least they don't include the Freer Logion in the main text of the Bible the way they do with a shorter ending, but they do include it in the footnotes. And let me just read it. This is the Freer Logion, so you can know what it says. Let's see. Other ancient authorities add, in whole or in part, and here's the Freer Logion. And they excuse themselves, saying, this age of lawlessness and unbelief is under Satan. who does not allow the truth and power of God to prevail over the unclean things of the spirit, therefore reveal your righteousness now. Thus they spoke to Christ and Christ replied to them, the term of years of Satan's power has been fulfilled, but other terrible things draw near. And for those who have sinned, I was handed over to death, that they may return to the truth and sin no more, that they may inherit the spiritual imperishable glory of righteousness that is in heaven. And that's the Freer Logion, one Greek manuscript, Codex W. It's inserted, what I just read is inserted after verse 14. And then it resumes with verse 15, which is the Great Commission. And he said to them, go into all the world and proclaim the good news. I'm reading it this from the New Revised Standard Version to the whole creation. So, that is the Freer Logion. Again, one Greek manuscript, and there are also some abbreviated references to it in the writings of Jerome, some partial references to it, but that's it. It doesn't appear in any freestanding translations of the New Testament that we are aware of. And it is very obviously just something stuck in. In fact, it occurs after verse 14. Let me just say about the Freer Logion. Again, it's completely spurious, and it shows a tendency in some circles to want to add or to interpret, but It also, kind of like with Vaticanus and Sinaiticus with the strange decorative markings in their Gospels, it also is of course a witness for the longer ending. It includes Mark 16, 9 through 20. as part of the legitimate text of Mark, it just includes an interpretive insertion after verse 14. So Codex W is actually a witness in favor of the antiquity of the so-called traditional ending. It's not a testimony against it. You might say it could show evidence of a tendency to add things, but it's a witness in favor of Mark 16, 9 through 20. So let's go on and listen as Pastor Hardy gives some further explanations. On the longer ending, likely they've determined to soften a little bit what is found in verse 14, which I'll comment on in a moment. And that is a condemnation by Jesus supposedly of the disciples in verse 14. So somebody realized, wow, that was unexpected. That was harsh. And so inserted something to kind of draw some attention away from that and to smooth it over. And then it goes on with verse 15. But it accepts verse 14 and verse 15 as a legitimate part of Mark, even if it's trying to, even if it was, if his speculation is right. And it was an attempt to soften or explain Jesus' rebuke of the disciples and then his commissioning of them. I should point out one more issue related to manuscript copies. There are actually two basic types when it comes to the quality of the text. There is what is called the medieval type of text. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds that are kind of classified that way. The actual text itself is the medieval kind of text. That's considered the inferior of the two. The other one is called the text of medium value. That's just what it's called. And so you've got the medieval type of text, the medium value type of text. Those oldest two manuscripts that I told you about, Aleph and B, they're so important to us. Those oldest two manuscripts of the two types of text, the inferior medieval and the better quality called the medium value, they're of that better quality, the medium value. OK, I don't really understand this. I think what he's trying to say is he's trying to draw a distinction between the unsealed manuscripts, the early majuscule manuscripts like Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, and later manuscripts, which he calls the medieval ones that were written in the minuscule text. And so he's trying to make a distinction between them. I'm not really familiar with. I couldn't make it out if it was a median value or a medium value. I'm not familiar with that terminology, but I think what he's trying to say is he's trying to give a rationale for why we should give more weight to these two, only two, extant Greek manuscripts that end Mark at Mark 16, 8. We should accept them because they're earlier and, in his opinion, superior to the mass of later manuscripts that compromise the majority text or the Byzantine text that absolutely support Mark 16, 9 through 20 as a legitimate authentic part of Mark. And again, that's a subjective judgment as we'll see in just a moment. It's not that Mark 16, 9 through 20 is only in the later minuscule manuscripts or so-called medieval manuscripts. It's there in the very earliest manuscripts and references that we have to the ending of Mark, but we'll talk more about that in a moment. That's another thing that makes them so significant, and it's those two very important early manuscripts that do not include these verses. Just so you'll know, the King James and New King James are based upon later manuscripts which are of the medieval type of Greek text. As I said in the first part of this review, this is a confusion. This is not a King James Version question. It's not a translation question. This is a textual question. And in this case, as we'll see in just a moment, The argument can be made that the King James Version and the New King James Version are based on the earliest manuscripts that we have. They're not merely based on medieval manuscripts. I'm going to make the argument in just a moment that the earliest evidences that we have for the ending of Mark support Mark 16, 9 through 20. In fact, as I've said again and again, only two, only two, only two Greek manuscripts, extant Greek manuscripts end Mark at Mark 16, 8. And there are manuscripts of equal antiquity. And I'm going to suggest there are even the earliest witnesses to Mark, the ending of Mark, support or validate the authenticity of Mark 16, 9 through 20. So again, I think it's just muddying the water to talk about, to try to use this opportunity to denigrate the King James Version. This isn't a question about translations. We could have a conversation about translations. But this is this we're talking about a textual issue. What should be the text that should be translated? Now it cannot be denied that many great manuscripts do contain these words, okay, I'm telling you about the ones that don't Actually the majority of the copies do contain these verses Again, I said in the first review that I appreciate the fact that Pastor Hardy, at least, is addressing this issue with his congregation. I don't agree with his perspective, I don't agree with his conclusions, but I appreciate the fact that he's addressing this issue with his congregation. It would have been nice at this point in the sermon if he had told the congregation, well, what is the evidence? What manuscripts are there that support the inclusion of Mark 16, 9-20? And I often on my blog, I do text notes and very often I'll say, here's a textual issue and let's look at the external evidence and I'll look at the apparatus and the nestle along and I'll list, here are the manuscripts that support the traditional reading and here are the manuscripts that omit the traditional reading or change the traditional reading. And it's comparing apples and apples. Let's look. I wish that he had done that, because it's not just a matter that it's in the majority tradition. It's that some of the earliest Greek manuscripts that we have support the inclusion of the traditional ending, Mark 16, 9 through 20. And if you look at, again, the critical apparatus to the Nestle on 28th edition, the state-of-the-art modern critical text, it will tell you there. It lists among the manuscripts that include Mark 16, 9 through 20, Codex Alexandrinus, which is also an unsealed manuscript, a majuscule manuscript. which dates to roughly the same time as Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Also, there's Codex C, which is called Codex Aframi Rescriptus, which is also a 5th century manuscript. It has Mark 16, 9 through 20, similar antiquity to Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. Also, Codex D, Codex Basi, This is the oldest, what is called Western text. It has Mark 16, 9 through 20, as does Codex Q, as does Family 13, and on and on and on. Let me pick up here. My copy of Nessl Alam, 28th edition. Let me just read. Codex A, that's Alexandrinus. Codex C, Ephraimi Rescriptus. Codex D, Codex K, it mentions as well Codex W, Washingtoniensis, as evidence for Mark 16, 9 through 20. Codex Gamma, Codex Delta, Codex Theta, which is Chorodethy, Family 13, 28, 33, the so-called Queen of the Cursives. 565, and then 33 normally agrees with Alexandrian text, so it's an Alexandrian witness, but it includes Mark 16, 9 through 20. 565, 700, 892, 1241, 1424, 2542, lectionary 844, lectionary 221, and then the majority text tradition. That means it appears in about 1,000 Greek manuscripts. And again, not only the late minuscules, not only the so-called medieval texts, as he calls them, but also some of the earliest manuscripts. And another thing that Lund does a great job of pointing out is the fact that the passages that either omit Mark 16 9 through 20 and have Mark in at Mark 16 8 like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus or like Codex Babiensis which has ends at 16 8 and then includes a shorter so-called shorter ending in Latin. that these basically represent only one stream. And scholars talk about something called ubiquity. A reading is more legitimate if it is found geographically in multiple locations, multiple streams. And you find evidence for the longer ending in the Western text, Codex Basi, you find it even in the Alexandrian tradition. You find it in the Byzantine tradition, of course, in the so-called Caesarean. So it has ubiquity. Not only does it have antiquity, but it has ubiquity. And then it's also in the versions and translations I've already mentioned. It's the dominant reading in the Old Latin. It's the dominant reading in Syriac, the Diatessaron, the Curatonian Syriac, the Peshitta, the Harklian. It's even in the Coptic Boheric, in Gothic, in Ethiopic. It's also, and we'll come back to this in a moment as well when we talk about the Church Fathers, it is the reading of the Vulgate. It's a reading adapted by Jerome. So the dominant reading of the Christian tradition is in favor of the so-called longer ending or authentic ending Mark 16 9 through 20. Now he's going to point out that manuscripts should not just be counted but they should be weighed But I would suggest that the balance in favor of Mark 16, 9 through 20, its legitimacy and authenticity, is true both when it is counted and when it is weighed. But let's listen to him as he sums things up here. A lot of those go together, those later copies and texts, medieval text copies, go together to form what is actually called the majority text. But when the manuscript evidence itself is properly evaluated and not just counted, see, that's a very important issue, not just to be, well, which is the most, but actually evaluate it and determine which is worth the most, then the balance swings heavily toward the omission of these verses and not the inclusion of them. I think this summary statement by a man named Everett Harrison captures what was the norm when it came to errors and copies that scribes were prone to add, like I said, and not delete. He wrote that if verses 9, and I'm paraphrasing some of this and we'll quote some of it, he wrote that if verses 9 through 20 were part of the original, it is difficult to see then why scribes would have omitted them. Why would this large section be taken out? That's just not done by scribes. But if the copies ended abruptly at verse 8, quote, it is easy to see that there was a felt need for supplementation. Well, not exactly. I mean, a lot of things from church history certainly are lost to us in the mists of time. It also, as Lund points out, it doesn't seem that there was an effort to remove the traditional ending of Mark till probably around the time of Sinaiticus Vaticanus. We don't have any early evidence of of the Gospel mark ending at Mark 16, 8. This is about as early as we get. We don't have papyri to give evidence of this. As we're going to see in a moment, we don't have early church fathers pre 300 who show any knowledge of mark ending at Mark 16, 8. So this is something that happened later. I don't know why it happened. Maybe it came about through Christological controversy. Maybe it came about through controversies over the resurrection appearances of Jesus, how they were to be understood, interpreted. I don't know why, but I could certainly see that there could have been an effort to attempt to remove this text. It would have been an intentional effort. So, and again, we've got the conundrum, if it originally ended at 1608 and this was such a satisfying literary ending, why was there dissatisfaction with that? Why did there have to be the concoction of the so-called shorter ending? So again, I don't agree with his conclusion here. With all due respect to Pastor Hardy and to the quote from Mr. Harrison, I think we can definitely consider reasons why there would have been controversy over the ending of Mark, and that's something we will talk about when we get to the discussion of the internal evidence as well. For now, finally, the last part of the discussion of the external evidence is going to be a discussion of the church fathers. So, let's listen to what Pastor Hardy has to say about the evidence from the Church Fathers for the ending of Mark. So, when it comes to external evidence, this is an important aspect of external evidence, the fact that these verses are lacking in the important early and old manuscripts. Something else in this category of external evidence, and that is what the early Church Fathers, we called them, what they thought about this, what they said, For example, famous names, not that we agree with everything they said. This was a long, long time ago, of course. Clement of Alexandria, famous early church father and church history origin. The point is whether we agree with them or not is not the issue on everything they taught. The importance is those two early church fathers in their writings showed no knowledge of the existence of verses All right, so he's gonna start off his survey of the church fathers by mentioning two of the earlier church fathers, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and he's going to say this is an argument against the so-called longer ending of Mark because these two men, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, never make reference to the longer ending of Mark. This is, with regard to logic, this is called an argument from silence, an ex silencio argument, an argument from silence, because Clement of Alexandria never cites Mark 16, 9 through 20. It wasn't in the manuscripts that he knew of. And because Origen never preached a sermon on this passage, we don't have an extant sermon or we don't have any of his commentary. on Mark 16 9 through 20 then it must not have existed in the manuscripts that he knew. And I really think this is a very easy argument to contest and again if you're interested in studying this you really have to get hold of Dean Bergen's monograph on the last 12 verses of Mark. The section, his discussion on the church fathers is really devastating, I think, for the argument that's typically made against it. But Lund also has a nice discussion of this. And both Berg and Lund point out, first of all, with regard to Clement of Alexandria, no, he never quotes from Mark 16, 9 through 20. But again, it's an argument from silence. He never speaks negatively about it. And Lund points this out, as does Bergen. We also don't have anything in Clement of Alexandria's writings where he quotes anything from Matthew chapter 28. Does this mean that Matthew used to end at Matthew 27 and didn't include chapter 28? No, of course not. We don't have anything he wrote about it. Price wrote about it and it's lost. There are a lot of things that are lost. But the fact that he never writes about it doesn't mean that it didn't exist. And Lunn also points out, we don't have anything from Clement of Alexandria where he quotes anything from Mark 16 verses 1 through 8. Does that mean that they didn't exist because Clement of Alexandria never cites it? And a similar argument can be made with regard to Origen. Lund points out that Origen never wrote a commentary on the Gospel of Mark. We don't have any collection of his homilies or sermons from the Gospel of Mark. And origin is a notoriously difficult church father with regard to the text because his views were later deemed by the church to be heretical. And I think this is what was driving Pastor Hardy to want to carefully mention evidence from origin. Origen had some strange views on how to interpret scripture. He had some strange views on the text of scripture in general. So the fact that this argument from silence that he never addresses, Mark 16, 9 through 20, is in no way a fatal argument against its antiquity within early Christianity. So, let's go on. He's going to mention a couple of the big ones, mainly Eusebius. Eusebius' comments, but let me listen to what he has to say. Eusebius is a very famous church historian. He was born about the year A.D. 260. He died about 340. He wrote this, this early church historian, quote, the most accurate copies and almost all the copies of Mark's gospel ended with the words of chapter 16, verse 8, for they were afraid. Let me just pause here for a moment, because this is the one that's most often cited. Again, I would commend to you reading Dean Bergen on this passage and also reading Lund. Lund, very helpfully in his work, includes the entire quotation from Eusebius. And these comments from Eusebius about the ending of Mark don't come in the Ecclesiastical History, which is Eusebius' work that most people are familiar with. But it comes in another work that was called Gospel Questions and Solutions. And one part of that is a letter that is ad marinum, to Marinus. And he has the entire, on page 93 of his Alun's book, he has the entire in-context quotation from Eusebius. In fact, when you look at the context, Eusebius was actually answering a question about controversy on reconciling or harmonizing the time sequence in Matthew's description of the Resurrection and Mark's description of the Resurrection, mainly a reference in Matthew to the appearances of Jesus in the evening and Mark's references to the Resurrection appearances being in the morning. They're not a historical, temporal contradiction, and Origen is giving an explanation. In the midst of giving this explanation, he sort of hypothetically says, Some people defend this argument by simply denying the traditional ending of Mark and that solves the problem for them because they just cut out the ending of Mark. He's not saying he agrees with that position. He's not saying he supports that position. He's simply quoting it hypothetically as a position. Again, we're not denying that there was controversy, particularly beginning around the fourth century, with regard to the ending of Mark. So that quotation from Eusebius must be read in context. And, as we're going to see in just a moment, he'll mention Irenaeus. There is strong early evidence in the Church Fathers, pre-300, there's no controversy that's registered about the ending of Mark. The controversy comes after 300 or so. But he's going to go on and mention Jerome and a man named Victor as well, and let's just listen to this. famous name, who was probably born about the year that Eusebius died, so somewhere around 340, he wrote from Bethlehem, because he was there for a while, he wrote from Bethlehem in the early 400s, that almost all the Greek copies created by that time, so there's been more copies made after that, later copies. So copies are constantly being made, you know, from day one. All the copies created by that time, Jerome said, lacked verses 9 through 20. Alright, let's stay with Jerome here for a minute. Here's the problem with this, and Bergen points this out, Lunn points this out, here's the thing. Jerome was quoting Eusebius. This is not a new witness against the authenticity or veracity of the ending of Mark. Jerome was simply quoting the same argument that had been put forward by Eusebius. In addition, and Alain very helpfully points this out, he says there are at least three reasons why we can argue that Jerome did, in point of fact, support the traditional reading of Mark 16 9 through 20. The first of those is an epistle, epistle 120, in which he makes reference to the ending of Mark. The second argument that he says in favor of the traditional ending is the fact that the ending of Mark appears in the Latin Vulgate. Let me see if I want to make sure I get this correct. I'm looking at Lund on page 101, his discussion of Jerome, and he says, he mentions that Epistle 120 to a lady named Hadibia and that's where, oh sorry, that's where you have the quotation from Eusebius. But then Lund goes on to point out some of the reasons why or evidences that Jerome did in fact make use of Mark 16 9 through 20 and here they are this is being on page 103. The first of these is he says there's a citation of Mark 16 14 in his dialogue against the Pelagians written about 417 Secondly, he says is the fact that Jerome included the Mark and ending in his Vulgate version. I mean, that should be evidence in and of itself as to whether or not Jerome thought Mark 16, 9 through 10 was authentic. He included it in the Vulgate. And then third, he mentions that there is a reference to Mark 16.9 in one of Jerome's homilies. So when it comes to the evidence regarding Jerome, the evidence is actually overwhelmingly in support of Jerome defending the traditional ending of Mark. So the last one he's going to mention is Victor, so let's listen to this. Victor of Antioch, not quite as famous, he's later on in the 5th century, which is the 400s. He was the first known commentator on the Book of Mark. He repeated that statement of Eusebius. Yep, so Pastor Hardy did admit this. Yes, Victor of Antioch simply recycles and quotes the same thing from Eusebius. So he gives three pieces of evidence, Eusebius, Jerome, and Victor. It's actually just one piece of evidence that's Eusebius. As we've already seen, clearly Jerome, although he quotes Eusebius, that's not the opinion that he chose. It's also questionable whether that was actually even Eusebius's position, because he puts it forward as a hypothetical. With Victor of Antioch, he's simply, again, citing Eusebius. His church fathers often did. They cited earlier fathers as part of the discussion. So he's going to make a backtrack here and talk about an earlier church father, and this one is very, very important. This is a reference to Irenaeus. Let's listen to Pastor Hardy's discussion of reference to the ending of Mark in Irenaeus. I do want to be fair on this issue, though. It is true that also some early church fathers did talk about these verses. One is Irenaeus, a very famous name. He, in his writings, never said anything about the verses that called him into question, is my point there. Well, it's a little bit more than that. Let's not downplay. Again, let's be fair with the evidence. Let's be fair with the evidence. It's not just that he never said anything to call into question, it's that he explicitly... made use of the ending of Mark showing that he accepted it or understood it to be part of the authentic Word of God. So again, I'm going to turn to Lunn. This is on page 82 of his book, The Original Ending of Mark, and you really should have a copy of this and read it for yourself. But he gives us the quotation, it's from Irenaeus' most famous work, Against Heresies, and in Against Heresies it says, Irenaeus wrote, also toward the conclusion of his gospel, Mark says, So then, after the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was received up into heaven and sits on the right hand of God, confirming what had been spoken by the prophet. So, we have a verbatim quotation from Mark 16, 19 in Irenaeus against Heresies, and he says that it's from Mark and it's from the ending of Mark. Also towards the conclusion of the gospel Mark says and then a verbatim quotation of Mark 16 19 and This is in fact the the earliest reference that we have in any of the church fathers to the gospel of Mark the very earliest reference we have is a quotation from Irenaeus, from this supposedly disputed portion. That's a lot more than he just didn't say anything against it. So this is from, we could date this. Against Heresies is written between 175 and 189 AD. The earliest reference that we have here explicitly is to the legitimacy of the so-called traditional ending of Mark, certainly to Mark 16, 19. He's also going to mention Justin Martyr and so, and Tertullian, so let's listen to this as well. Our names, Justin and Tertullian, both accepted that these verses were part of the original. But here's something important to consider. Okay, let me just pause here. And again, I would once again ask you to look at Lund's book. He's got a nice section where he talks about evidence from the church fathers. And he does some things here that are, I think, pretty interesting. He goes back to the apostolic fathers. He says there's evidence for Mark 16, 9 through 20, prior to A.D. 150, and he looks at the first epistle of Clement. He looks as well to the Shepherd of Hermas, and he looks to the epistle of Barnabas, and he sees allusions to the ending of Mark. He also looks at early non-canonical writings like the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Peter, The so-called Epistle of the Apostles, the Epistula Apostolorum. He sees allusions to the ending of Mark then, as Pastor Hardy concedes in Justin Martyr, who wrote his first apology. about the year 161. He has references to the ending of Mark. Here's just, and also his writing called Dialogue with Trifo the Jew written between sometime around 152 to 155. So there are references to the ending of Mark very early on. He mentions Tertullian as well. We can mention Tatian's diatessaron. So the actual earliest evidence that we have from the Church Fathers is for the non-controversial nature of the ending of Mark. It's only, again, when we get to Eusebius and we get to Vaticanus and Sinaiticus that we have intentional efforts to end Mark at Mark 16 and verse 8. The very presence of these attempts to smooth things over, to fill in gaps, to complete the story, etc., along with the many notes along the way in manuscripts trying to explain the endings, It was grand, yeah. Obviously there was controversy about the ending of Mark that began around the 4th century. There's no doubt about it. But the fact that there's evidence of this controversy doesn't mean necessarily that the traditional ending is void and null and not authentic. More spaces in some other manuscripts after verse 8 are in themselves a very strong proof of something. There was proof of the fact that there was textual controversy over this passage. The great theologian, conservative theologian, and warrior for the scriptures, B.B. Warfield, said it this way, quote, the existence of a shorter inclusion over against using the longer passage is a fortiori evidence against the longer one. It's just clear cut, a proof in and of itself against the longer one. If you want to have an opinion about the longer one, the fact that a shorter one was created to stick in there to help the longer one is some evidence all in itself is what that means. He goes on to say, for no one doubts that this shorter conclusion is a spurious invention of the scribes, but it would not have been invented except to fill the blank. So in summary of all this, the external evidence, at the very least, casts this note of suspicion on these verses. All right, so that's the conclusion of his words about the external epics. Let me just say a couple things about Warfield. He cites Warfield. There are things that are admirable about B.B. Warfield. He defended Orthodox Christianity against modernism. However, many believe that when it comes to text criticism, that B.B. Warfield conceded too much to modernism. I would point you in the direction of Theodore Ledis and some of his critiques of B.B. Warfield. Warfield thought, I can adopt the modern text criticism that is being practiced. And he's the one who, I think, came up with the idea of the inerrancy of the original autographs. And there's a real question as to whether or not he abandoned the confessional view of the scriptures that they had been providentially preserved not in the original, in some pristine original autographs that are now lost, but they had been preserved in the opographs and the copies. And so Warfield in this area is actually controversial and may have introduced compromise. No man is perfect and B.B. Warfield wasn't perfect. We might admire him for many things, But he may have made an error in this particular sphere. But even the quotation that he gave is simply him saying, denouncing the validity of the shorter ending, which we agree with. But again, the shorter ending only develops in the Alexandrian tradition. It only develops in the tradition that's influenced by codices like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. The shorter ending doesn't have ubiquity. It doesn't appear in Byzantine texts. It doesn't appear in Western texts or Caesarean texts. It only appears in a handful of Alexandrian influence manuscripts. And so yes, we reject it and it actually, its very existence, I think, is a counter to any notion that there was propriety for the ending of Mark at Mark 16, 8. Well, this has gone on kind of long, as might be expected. It's already been, what, about an hour and 20 minutes. As I close this part of the review up, though, I do want to look at one last thing from Alun. At the very end of his discussion of the external evidence, I think he's got a fantastic kind of closing argument, closing statement. And I want to read this to you. I just think it's so beautiful. Pages 115 and 116. So this is what he says. It's a little bit lengthy, but I think it's worth hearing. And so if you would listen to this. He says, for the vast majority of its history, the church as a body has pronounced in favor of this passage. The indications of doubt on the part of Eusebius and the copious of a small number of manuscripts do not reflect the view of the church in general. Its inclusion was unambiguously accepted from the earliest times with the second century fathers. The Byzantine, Vulgate, and Peshitta texts, which were to hold sway in the principal sections of the Church for a thousand years or more, each embraced it. The humanist scholars and reformers of the early 16th century all received it as authentic, it being published in the Greek New Testament editions of Erasmus, Stephanus, Elsevier, and Beza. The Bible translation tradition set in motion by Tyndale included it. The passage appearing in Coverdale's version, the Great Bible, the Anglican Bishop's Bible, the Puritan Geneva Bible, the Catholic Reims-Dewey version, as well as the King James Bible, which came to dominate the English-speaking world for the next three centuries. In the great awakening of the mid-18th century and other subsequent revivals, the Gospels were preached and read in a form that contained the final verses of Mark. The great missionary movement of the early 19th century brought about the translation of the New Testament into numerous languages of Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas. With the received Greek text and the King James Bible as the only possible and indeed the only known base text, the longer version of Mark's gospel passed into the hands of the indigenous churches. It was not until the latter half of the 19th century that the long established acceptance of Mark 16 9 through 20 began to be seriously challenged in certain academic quarters of the Western world. This turnaround found its impetus in the rediscovery of codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, two manuscripts which, it should be remarked, had long lain unused by the Church. History shows, therefore, that also in the matter of ecclesiastical tradition, or what may be termed canonicity, the longer ending has received a clear stamp of approval. Within the parameters of a range of different criteria, the external evidence weighs in on the side of the originality of the longer Markan ending. In terms of antiquity, the earliest evidence shows its inclusion. In terms of ubiquity, it far exceeds its rivals in geographic distribution. In terms of diversity, it appears in more Greek text types and versions. in terms of quantity, those copies containing it far outnumber all others, in addition to which it has canonicity on its side, being the form of the text as traditionally received by the church through the ages." And that's the end of the quote. That is a tremendous statement. If you look at antiquity, if you look at ubiquity, you look at diversity, you look at quantity, you look at canonicity, the evidence, the weight is in favor of the authenticity of Mark 16, 9 through 20. I think we should call upon our fellow evangelicals, our fellow conservative men, Calvinistic men, Reformed men, to really reconsider the jettisoning of Mark 16, 9 through 20, particularly on the basis of the external evidence. In the next part of this review we will turn to the final segment which is going to be arguments related to the internal evidence, the literary evidence. Is this passage in keeping in its language and theology and syntax with the rest of the Gospel of Mark and with the kerygma of the early church. So till then, take care and God bless. As the deer seeks flowing rivers, so I long for you, O God. How my soul longs for his presence, for the ever-living God. When shall I behold his face in his holy dwelling place? Now I feed on tears from weeping, while they say, is your God sleeping? All these things I call to memory, and I ponder in my heart. How with throngs I moved rejoicing To his temple's sacred court. Why, my soul, be in despair? Why this worry and this care? Open, God, my soul's salvation, Him I'll praise with jubilation. I recall once more, as the headwaters of Jordan from the mount of Herm and Por. Deep to deep roars out its sound, waves in rapids surging round. In the day God's love comes freely, and at night His song is with me. To my God, my Rock, I murmur, How could you forget me? How? All my foes, oppressors, taunt me, Where's your God? they ask me now. Why my soul be in despair? Why this worry and this care? Hope in God, my soul's salvation, Him I'll praise with jubilation.