In some ways Mark remains the most difficult Gospel. Although in seminary courses it may well be the most frequently taught, it is surely the least familiar of the four Gospels to many Christians, especially to Catholics. It was scarcely ever read on Sunday in the pre–Vatican II lectionary; and in citations of passages shared by the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, functioning as “the church’s Gospel,” was quoted by preference.1 Even among scholars who have studied Mark with great intensity, it remains a conundrum, producing little or no consensus as to sources, locale, or goals. The terse Marcan style, which leaves much unexplained, has been an open invitation for imaginative theorizing.2
Mark 16, the chapter pertinent to the resurrection, is a prime example of how since the second century Mark has confounded attempts at understanding. Only the first eight verses of the chapter are safely attested as having belonged to the original Gospel. Yet 16:8, which follows an authoritative angelic instruction to speak of the import of the resurrection to the disciples and Peter, has the women who were so instructed “say nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” With great difficulty scholars have come up with a grammatical parallel for the abrupt phrasing of this ending, but that parallel does not solve the issue of how what is related in 16:8 constitutes a suitable conclusion to what began in 1:1 as “The Good News of Jesus Christ.” How is it good news that the women were afraid to tell anyone of Jesus’ resurrection? Textual witnesses of Mark that do not terminate with 16:8 offer three variant continuations, only one of which has enough frequency to be considered traditional. That one, known as the “Long Ending,” is Mark 16:9-20, which appears in all Catholic and most Protestant Bibles (sometimes in the latter in smaller print or as a footnote in order to indicate textual doubt).
Since liturgically Mark 16:1-8 and the most widely attested ending (16:9-20) tend to be read as separate pericopes,3 I think it best in this series to treat 16:1-8 as if Mark intended to end the Gospel there.4 Following the treatment of 16:1-8, I shall ask how 16:9-20 makes sense as part of the canonical text of Mark.5
MARK 16:1-8: THE WOMEN AT THE TOMB
The principal characters in this scene are the women: Mary Magdalene, Mary of James, and Salome. We were introduced to these three in 15:40-41 (where the second Mary was designated as “of James the less [younger] and of Joses”). There they were identified as women who had followed Jesus when he was in Galilee and ministered to him, and who were now at a distance observing the death of Jesus on the cross. In so describing them, Mark kept them clearly distinct from “his disciples” and/or “the Twelve” who were companions of Jesus at the Last Supper (14:12, 17), who went with him to Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives (14:26, 32), and all of whom fled when he was arrested (14:50). What would Mark have us think of these women?6 Mark insists that Jesus died alone, abandoned by all his disciples. While these women were not among the disciples who abandoned him, their presence distant from the cross could have been of no consolation to him. The women had not been put through the same test as the disciples who were physically closer to him in Gethsemane and failed. Are the women positive models to the Christian readers? Or are they those who once followed him in Galilee but are now passive onlookers? Or have they not failed simply because they have not been tested?
The second Marcan reference to them during the passion (15:47) does not answer these questions. Joseph of Arimathea, “who was himself looking for the kingdom of God,” whether or not he was a disciple,7 did a pious act by getting permission from Pilate to take Jesus’ body and bury it. Mark tells us that “Mary Magdalene and Mary of Joses saw where Jesus was laid.” Why they did not participate in Joseph’s burial of Jesus is never explained and so the impression of uninvolved onlookers persists.
To an extent the ambiguity about the women is partially resolved in the scene we are discussing when Mark reports that after the Sabbath was past (thus sometime after approximately 6 P.M. on Saturday) the women at last get involved on Jesus’ behalf, for they buy spices in order to go and anoint him.8 In Mark 14:8 Jesus revealed that the anointing of his body by an unnamed woman had been a preparation for his forthcoming burial. This plan of the three women to anoint Jesus after burial will be the occasion for revealing his resurrection.
Mark gives a second time-reference which fixes the moment when the women acted on their intention; it was “very early on the first day of the week.” Throughout the Marcan passion narrative there has been an extraordinary sequence of precise three-hour time intervals: the story began with “evening” on the first day of the unleavened bread when Jesus ate the supper with his disciples (14:12, 17); it continued through cockcrow when Peter concluded his denials (14:72) and a morning hour when Jesus was given over to Pilate (15:1); and it culminated with the third, sixth, and ninth hours as he hung on the cross (15:25, 33; i.e., 9 A.M., noon, 3 P.M.); only at “evening” was Jesus at last buried (15:42).
Not without plausibility scholars have suggested that such time precisions mean that already within Mark’s experience there were set times of commemorative prayers as Christians recalled the death of the Lord. The references in 16:1-2 to the end of the Sabbath and to the early hour on the first day of the week may be part of the same picture.9 The further specification that “the sun had risen” may be a symbolic reference to the resurrection having already taken place. Mark 8:22-26 shows a symbolic interest in seeing and blindness, and that at least makes possible a symbolic interest in light and darkness.
In 16:3-4 the women pose a rhetorical question to themselves as to who will roll away the stone that has been placed at the door of the tomb, and we are reminded that this was a very large stone. The picture helps to reinforce the contrast between human incapacity and God’s power. When Mark reports that the women saw the stone already rolled back, he is using the passive to indicate divine action. God has undone the sealing that the Sanhedrin member Joseph of Arimathea so carefully placed (15:46).
As the women look inside the tomb, they see a young man sitting on the right side (a place of dignity) clothed with a white robe. He is surely a divine spokesman;10 and the amazement that greets him is typical of the reaction to the appearance of angels. In addition, however, this reaction at the end of the Marcan Gospel constitutes an inclusion with the amazement that greeted Jesus when he drove out an evil spirit at the beginning of the Gospel (1:25-27). There the demon addressed him as “Jesus the Nazarene” (1:24), and so it is not surprising in the present scene to hear the heavenly appearance in the tomb tell the women that he knows that they are seeking “Jesus the Nazarene.” This makes the reader certain that the same person who at the beginning of the Gospel manifested his power over evil is the one in whom God now manifests His power over death. From beginning to end Satan has been defeated by Jesus the Nazarene.
From the initial act of Jesus’ power and throughout his ministry, those attracted to him could not fully recognize or believe in his divine identity because he had not yet suffered on the cross (8:31-33; 9:31-32). Now at last the angelic youth can add the crucial identification of Jesus the Nazarene, namely, “the one who was crucified.” It is only of Jesus the Nazarene who has died on the cross that the triumphal affirmation “He has been raised” (16:6) makes sense in God’s plan. The women have been inside the tomb looking about. Yet it is not tautological that having said, “He has been raised,” the heavenly youth goes on to say: “He is not here; see the place where they laid him.”11 The significance of the empty tomb in terms of the resurrection of the one who was crucified is not a matter of simple observation. Because of the youth’s message the women now know that their well-meaning search for Jesus was in vain.
The Marcan scene, however, is more than a revelation of the resurrection, for 16:7 reports a commission given to the women by the heavenly youth—a commission that makes clear that the risen, crucified Jesus of Nazareth has still more to do. At the beginning of the passion Jesus predicted the loss of faith (skandalizein) and scattering of all his disciples who had come with him to the Last Supper. This prediction was not without a ray of hope, however: “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee” (14:28). The angelic youth harks back to that promise: “Go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him as he told you” (16:7).12 The disciples may have utterly failed even to the point where one would-be follower fled away naked (14:52) and Peter cursed Jesus, swearing that he did not even know this man (14:71). Yet Mark indicates that this failure can be overcome if the disciples go back to Galilee where Jesus called them at the beginning of the story (1:14-20—still another inclusion).13 Thus the Marcan readers are not left in total suspense about the fate of Jesus’ disciples: he has no intention of losing them permanently. In 10:32 Jesus went before his disciples on the road to Jerusalem while warning them that there the Son of Man would be given over, condemned to death, killed, and after three days be raised up. All his words have proved true, and now he will go before them back to Galilee and there reunite them. Those who were “scattered” (14:27) by the events of the passion at Jerusalem will once more become a community when they return to the place where they were first called together as disciples. This will happen because God will make them see Jesus the Nazarene raised from the dead, the victor over crucifixion whom they had committed themselves to follow.
If the angelic message in 16:7 concerns the disciples and Peter, Mark’s primary attention is still centered on the women who had been given this angelic revelation. Their reaction (16:8) has to be a total surprise to the readers. Instead of going forth to the disciples to proclaim with joy that Jesus had been raised and has positive plans for them in Galilee, the women flee from the tomb overcome with trembling, amazement, and fear. They tell nothing to anyone. Inevitably scholars have speculated about the reasons for the silence, at times offering suggestions that have little to do with Mark’s expressed line of thought;14 yet there is where the answer lies. Throughout the Gospel Mark has shown how those who followed Jesus failed because they did not understand that Jesus had to suffer or because they were unwilling to accompany him into his passion. Because of the when, where, and how of the appearance of these three women in the passion story (after the death, watching from a distance), readers would get the impression that they had escaped the great trial. Above I have described their coming to the tomb to anoint Jesus as their first act of involvement in the passion. Here, although they have received the revelation of the risen Lord and an angelic commission to proclaim him, they fail. The final words with which Mark describes their failure are: “For they were afraid.” This uncomplimentary portrait is in harmony with Mark’s somber insistence that none can escape suffering in the following of Jesus.
Amidst Mark’s readers surely there were some who had been tested by persecution and had failed. They could find encouragement in the story of Jesus’ own disciples, all of whom failed during the passion. But others among Mark’s readers would not have been so tested. There is a parallel between them and the women who appear on the scene only after the crucifixion and observe his death without having become involved even in his burial. Like the women they are will-inclined, but after they hear the proclamation of the resurrection and receive a commission to proclaim what has happened to Jesus, they too can fail if they become afraid. Mark’s enduring warning, then, would be that not even the resurrection guarantees true faith in Jesus’ followers, for the resurrection cannot be appropriated unless one has been tried. People may say that they believe firmly in the risen Christ, but they must realize existentially in their own lives that the one they are following is none other than Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. Mark who has been somber in describing discipleship throughout the passion remains somber about the requirements of discipleship after the resurrection.
MARK 16:9-20 (THE “LONG ENDING”): THREE APPEARANCES OF JESUS
That grammatically this addition is awkwardly attached to Mark 16:1-8 is obvious from the way 16:9 begins: “Now, having risen early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene from whom he had thrown out seven demons.” Although the “early on the first day of the week” partially echoes Mark 16:1,15 the readers are introduced to Magdalene as if she had not hitherto been encountered as one of the main protagonists in the preceding verses. Moreover, the readers are not introduced to the unnamed “he”; the Jesus who is meant was not an active subject previously in 16:1-8, for there the “he” was the heavenly young man who interpreted the empty tomb.
More important than grammatical awkwardness in the joining is the theological suitability of an appearance to Magdalene. Mark 16:8 left her fleeing in fear and trembling, disobediently silent, failing to communicate the angel’s directive to the disciples. Whoever added 16:9 had to assume that Mark did not deny hope to Magdalene despite her behavior.16 In that assumption he was surely correct: if Mark could report a promised appearance in Galilee to disciples who had fled abandoning the Lord himself when he was arrested, and to a Peter who had denied and cursed the Lord, he could not have been less optimistic about Jesus’ mercy to a woman who had failed to obey an angel. Indeed, the way Magdalene is identified makes sense precisely on that score. Jesus had already delivered her from demons (see Luke 8:2); he would scarcely abandon her now.
This appearance of Jesus to Magdalene17—literally, his becoming visible—gives her the courage to do the very thing that the angel had previously commanded: she goes to tell “those who had been with him” (the Twelve [Eleven]; Mark 3:14; 16:14), who were mourning and weeping. In describing the reaction of these disciples to Magdalene’s message, the author of the Long Ending shows that he shares the pessimistic view of Jesus’ followers that characterizes Mark. He reports (16:11) that when these disciples heard that Jesus was alive and had been seen by Magdalene, they were unbelieving.
Disbelief does not defeat the risen Lord, for afterwards he appears “in another form” to two of them as they are going into the country-side.18
The reference to “another form” tells us how Christians came to explain why Jesus could not be easily recognized. Evidently, however, such a different appearance is enough to overcome previous disbelief, for the two return (to the city of Jerusalem) to tell the rest of the disciples. Just as they had not believed Magdalene, the others do not believe these two. Thus the Long Ending presents us with a remarkable sequence where only an encounter with the risen Jesus himself overcomes previous failure to believe. The harshness of Jesus’ rebuke to “the rest” of the disciples (who clearly include the Eleven) for their disbelief and hardness of heart (16:14) is intelligible in light of the reason offered: “They had not believed those who had seen him (after he had been) raised.” The community that is reading or hearing Mark consists of people who have to believe those who saw the risen Jesus, and the Long Ending is insisting that such faith was demanded by Jesus even of “those whom he also named apostles” (Mark 3:14 [variant reading]).
When Jesus makes himself visible to the Eleven, they are at table. In other Gospels the appearance of the risen Lord at meals has a eucharistic import,19 but Mark 16:14 does nothing to emphasize that. If the eucharistic connection was known to the readers of the Long Ending, the rebuke by Jesus about obduracy and disbelief could have been seen as a comment on the failure of those who took part in the eucharistic meal to discern the presence of Jesus (somewhat as in 1 Cor 11:20-34, especially 11:29).
Be that as it may, the primacy in the Long Ending’s account of this third appearance of Jesus centers on another feature characteristic of Gospel resurrection stories, namely, the commissioning of those who now become apostles. In Mark 16:15 it is both startling and encouraging that those who have just been upbraided for lack of faith and hardness of heart are now entrusted with preaching the gospel to the whole world. What better way to show that God’s grace and not human merit is a primary element in the Good News proclaimed by Jesus. By preaching the risen Christ to others, the Eleven will be strengthened in their faith. Jesus’ directive, “Going into the whole world, preach the gospel to every creature,” is even more comprehensive than the close parallel in Matthew 28:19, “Going, make disciples of all nations.” Mark 1:1 identified this writing as “The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”; and it is that gospel with its christological content that is to be preached by the disciples, for it has within itself the power to change all creation. Through this preaching the risen Lord establishes the authority he has won over all things.
The effect of the preaching is described in 16:16: “The person who believes and is baptized will be saved, but the person who does not believe will be condemned.” In this the Long Ending resembles Johannine theology wherein Jesus provokes judgment as people are forced to choose between light and darkness: “The person who believes in him is not condemned, but the person who does not believe is condemned already” (John 3:18).20 The church situation envisaged by the Long Ending is one where those sent out by Jesus carry on his work and the proper response of faith has to be sealed by baptism in order to bring salvation (see 1 Pet 3:21). The harsh fate that punishes the refusal to believe is partially explicable from the indication in the following verse (Mark 16:17) that the preaching of the gospel will be accompanied by persuasive signs, so that rejection reflects obduracy. Nevertheless, to preach in our times this statement which dualistically equates belief in Christ with salvation and disbelief with condemnation requires caution. Today disbelief flows from many factors including unconvincing signs, e.g., the proclamation of Christ by some who scarcely resemble him.
In the promise that “Signs will accompany those who believe,” Mark 16:17 again is close to Johannine theology: “The one who believes in me will do the works that I do and greater” (John 14:12). These signs show that the power as well as the life of the risen Jesus is given to those who believe in his name. Yet since the proclamation of these disciples is “to all creation,” the manifestation of that power is wider than during Jesus’ ministry. Of the five signs that Mark 16:17-18 enunciates, only the first (casting out demons) and the last (laying hands on the sick and healing them) were characteristic of the Marcan Jesus’ own ministry (Mark 1:25-26; 3:11-12, 22; 7:32-33; 8:25). Prodigies resembling the five signs are portrayed in the accounts in Acts of what the followers of Jesus accomplish after they receive the Holy Spirit and begin their mission. Paul drives out a possessing spirit in Acts 16:16-18. Speaking in new tongues occurs at Pentecost in Acts 2:4-13 (see 10:46). As for picking up serpents and drinking something deadly without harm, one may think of Acts 28:3-6 where a viper fastens on Paul’s hand and hangs from it without his suffering harm.21 Both Peter and Paul use their hands to heal the sick (Acts 3:7; 28:8). Whether or not the composer of the Long Ending knew Acts directly, he certainly knew traditions about how the emissaries of the risen Christ manifested the power that he had over all creation.
The Long Ending of Mark has developed this third appearance at greater length than the first two because the readers derive their faith from the proclamation by the disciples to whom Jesus appeared. The commissioning of these disciples is the concluding action of “the Lord Jesus”22 on earth; accordingly in 16:19 he is now taken up to heaven and seated at the right of God. Here the Long Ending is close in sequence, but not in wording, to Luke 24:36-52 where, appearing to the Eleven (24:33, 36) in the general context of a meal (24:41), Jesus predicted that there would be preaching in his name to all the nations (24:47), and then having gone out to Bethany, he was taken up to heaven.
The doubts that the disciples once had (Mark 16:13-14) have now been totally overcome, and they obey by going forth and preaching everywhere (16:20). True to his promise the Lord, even though enthroned in heaven, works with them confirming “the word” through the signs that follow the disciples.23 This sense of divine reinforcement was what gave courage to martyrs, as we see in Justin, Apology 1.45:
This mighty word his apostles, going forth from Jerusalem, preached everywhere. And although death is decreed for those who teach or at all confess the name of Christ, we everywhere both embrace and teach it.
1 The fact that before 1960 Catholics were officially taught that Matthew either directly or indirectly (in translation) was written by an eyewitness member of the Twelve was also a factor.
2 The range of views is illustrated by the thesis of a few, but important, scholars that canonical Mark is a censored, bowdlerized version of an esoteric gospel of less sober caliber, as seen in the Secret Gospel of Mark, mentioned in a letter of Clement of Alexandria. H. Koester who holds this view dates canonical Mark to around 180!
3 In the B year Mark 16:1-8 is the selection for the Easter Vigil and (as alternative) for the morning Easter Mass. Mark 16:9-15 is read on Saturday in Easter week, and 16:15-20 on Ascension Thursday in the B year.
4 The Marcan situation which involves manuscript evidence differs from that of John. There it is purely a scholarly hypothesis to treat John 20 as the end of the Gospel, for there is no ancient manuscript that lacks John 21.
5 The Council of Trent insisted on its list of books “as sacred and canonical in their entirety with all their parts according to the text usually read in the Catholic Church and as they are in the ancient Latin Vulgate.” Discussions clarified that Mark 16:9-20 was included among the “parts.” Yet that Tridentine statement about canonicity does not settle the issue of whether Mark wrote 16:9-20.
6 While without doubt the two groups are kept distinct in the passion narrative, scholars dispute whether in Mark “disciples” ever includes such women followers. In Matthew the term does not, but Mark is less clear.
7 In CBQ 50 (1988): 233–45 I argued that in Mark’s understanding this member of the Sanhedrin was not a disciple at the time of Jesus’ death (even if he may have become one later)—that may explain why the women could not join Joseph in the burial.
8 There is considerable scholarly discussion as to whether the intent to anoint a corpse several days after burial is historically plausible. I wish to express the caution that Mark would have wanted his account to be plausible about such an incidental. He is a better guide to plausibility in burial practices of the first century than are 20th-century scholars who base their judgments on the very limited available knowledge about burial in that period.
9 There are psalm references to morning (early, hour of wakening) as a time of prayer and of awareness of God (17:15; 30:6; 59:17; 101:8). Mark’s descriptions of the day of burial as the day before the Sabbath (15:42), of the Sabbath as being past (16:1), and of the first day of the week (16:2) fulfill Jesus’ predictions of resurrection “after three days” (8:31; 9:31; 10:34). Yet it is significant that the tomb stories do not refer to “the third day” but to “the first day of the week.” How early, without abandoning their reverence for the Sabbath, did Jewish Christians begin to give reverence to the next day, the first of the week, because it was associated with the Lord’s resurrection?
10 Despite the imaginative attempts of some scholars to identify him with the young man who fled away naked from Gethsemane (14:51-52), Matthew 28:2 and Luke 24:23 were correct in understanding Mark to refer to an angelic appearance (also John 20:12).
11 Genesis 5:24 reports that Enoch was not found because God had translated him (to the other world), but we are not told that Enoch had died. There is no silence about Jesus’ death.
12 In 16:5-7 Mark supplies a double inclusion, one inclusion with the beginning of the whole Gospel (1:24-27) and one with the beginning of the passion (14:27-28).
13 Nothing in Mark suggests that this geographical direction is meant to support Galilean Christianity over Jerusalem Christianity. (After all, in the early years of post-resurrectional Christianity Peter, mentioned specifically here, was associated with Jerusalem Christianity and no longer with Galilee.) Nor is there much to support the thesis that Mark related Galilee to the Gentile mission as Matthew 4:15 does. The specific mention of Peter who failed outstandingly in the passion shows that “Galilee” is meant to reverse the fate of the disciples during the passion. I do not exclude the added possibility that Mark’s use of the place name is meant to remind the reader of all that Jesus taught and said there in the presence of his disciples.
14 Surely Mark is not interested in explaining why the empty tomb story has appeared so late in Christian tradition or in suppressing the memory of a resurrection appearance to the women because they could not serve as legal witnesses.
15 “Partially” because the wording for “first” is different, and because the chronological indication in Mark 16:1 refers to the time of the visit to the empty tomb, while here the reference is to a time before that, when Jesus had risen.
16 The issue of relating Mark 16:1-8 and the Long Ending is important, for readers of copies of Mark would scarcely be expected to know that two different hands had composed 16:1-8 and 16:9-20 when they were sequential on the same page.
17 Matthew 28:9-10 and John 20:14 narrate an appearance to Magdalene although the wording of those accounts is not the same as the Long Ending’s. I do not plan to debate here the relationship of the Long Ending to the other Gospels. Did its composer have a copy of all or some of the other Gospels before him; or did he sometimes draw on memories of the other Gospels that he had read or heard previously; or did he draw independently on traditions similar to those that had been employed in the other Gospels?
18 This appearance is similar to Luke’s story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, but once again the wording is not the same.
19 See the discussion of the meal of bread and fish in John 21:9 (p. 260 below).
20 In John the judgment is in the present time and is provoked by Jesus himself; in the Long Ending the judgment is future and is provoked by those whom Jesus sends out.
21 See also Luke 10:19: “Behold I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall harm you.”
22 There is some textual doubt about this phrase; it would constitute with the dubious Luke 24:3 the only Gospel instances of a title found in Paul and Acts.
23 This is not far from the description of “the word” in Hebrews 2:3-4: “Announced first by the Lord, it was attested to us by those who had heard him, while God also witnessed to it by signs and wonders and varied acts of power.”