So if there was an original ending in circulation, even if Matthew didn’t use it, why wasn’t it ever recovered? People were evidently looking for such an ending very early on.
If there was an original ending in circulation. But there wasn’t. (I thought that was settled.) It was lost at the outset of the transmission. End of problem.
The only reason that we find Mark’s ending strange is that we’ve all read Matthew.
Not so. We find it strange because it is strange, so strange as to be incredible, and no amount of special pleading and fantasizing will make it credible to those familiar with contemporary compositional practices. The original ending was lost. That is far and away the most plausible hypothesis.
I’m happy to be convinced if someone is willing to make a case for it.
The case on the other side is very strong, in my opinion. Mark saw Jesus’ return (to Galilee) as an apocalyptic event, fulfilling the prophecy made in chapter 13, that prophecy being a prophecy very local to Judea, and clearly one meant to happen soon after the events narrated. There is no ending to Mark because the next big event is the apocalypse. Until that occurs, there is nothing more to say.
Maybe Mark was planning to write about that when it happened?
Do you mean that it’s strange to end a book with the word γάρ as in ἐφόβουντο γάρ? To me, though I’m hardly an expert, it seems that the sentence as it stands is highly irregular and would need some sort of a continuation. But apparently you’re also implying that from a stylistic and/or narratological point of view as well the text would need some sort of a coda. I think I believe you, but can you elaborate a bit – what exactly do you find strange?
It’s not just the γάρ, though that’s part of it. The book is patently incomplete, breaking off as it does. I feel it would be a waste of time to argue the point, but:
The unexpectedly encountered young man in white (let’s call him an angel) tells the women to deliver a message to the disciples and to Peter, but they’re scared out of their wits and don’t.
I can understand why some have wanted to accept this as the gospel’s intended ending, but for an ancient book to just stop like this seems to me out of the question. The abruptness and ellipticality and open-endedness might work as an embedded Herodotean tale, or as a Pindaric one, or in a modern short story, but not as the conclusion of a book in antiquity, certainly not one as stylistically and narratologically (thankyou Paul) naive as this one is. It lacks any mark of conclusion, and leaves too much up in the air.
Recognition of the book’s incompleteness seems to me the essential first step in approaching the problems of the ending(s) it was later provided with.
(Edited to delete a comment which might have been taken as rude to those who believe Mark originally ended at 16:8. I didn’t mean it that way.)
The gospel of Mark was one of the first texts I tackled in Greek, and was profoundly struck by how naive it was – it’s surprising how all translations somehow circumvent the sheer naivety of the original.
Lightfoot suggests that this might have been the literal rendering of a particular Aramaic equivalent which I will not try to reproduce without a request.
Mark has several sections that parallel 16:1-8 in form. 1:23-27, 2:3-12, 4:36-41, 6:46-51, 7:32-37. The formula is generally: problem → miraculous solution → amazement from onlookers. Lightfoot has a longer description of the parallels. Regardless, in addition to all of the other coincidences of Mark losing a page at the beginning of transmission, it would seem that it had to happen exactly on a section break.
Mark 16:6-7 is a perfectly natural way for an ancient, especially such a naive stylist such as Mark, to end his Gospel. For Mark, the empty tomb was the central evidence of the resurrection. Also for Mark, Galilee is central to Jesus’ ministry in a way it is not for the other Evangelists.
Mark 16:8 is simply an “and they were amazed” coda to the section. Mark does some variant of “and they were amazed” to end most of his vignettes. It is not meant to contradict the commandment in 16:7, and Mark himself probably did not even notice the contradiction. Compare the apparent contradiction between Mark 14:47 and 48, which we discussed here earlier. I believe the consensus here was that Mark did not notice the contradiction, unlike his redactors Matthew and Luke, who both thought that it was odd.