Mark 16 Footnotes

16:1 All the Gospels agree that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb along with other women (Lk 24:10; Jn 20:2). The first three Gospels agree that one of the others was named Mary. Mark tells us Salome was also present, and Luke that Joanna was present. If the story of the empty tomb were invented by the early church or by Mark, it is hardly likely that it would feature women as the primary witnesses, especially in the way Mark portrayed the incident. John’s (and perhaps Luke’s) apparently independent version corroborates this judgment. The women presumably supplemented the supply of spices they had prepared earlier (Lk 23:56) by buying more on Saturday night, after the Sabbath had ended. Conversely, Mark may have compressed the events of Lk 23:56 since his point was that they bought spices to anoint the body on Sunday morning.

16:5-7 Mt 28:2-4 agrees with Mark that there was one angel at the tomb (describing an angel as a “young man” was common in Jewish literature). Lk 24:4 (and Jn 20:11-12, if we can assume it records the same events) indicates two angels. As with the entire resurrection narrative in all four Gospels, the account of the angel(s) is told in a highly selective manner. There were apparently two angels, but Mark and Matthew focused on the one who took the initiative. Mark placed the angel in the tomb, and Luke seems to have done the same. Matthew had him initially outside the tomb, but his location when he addressed the women is not clear. Presumably he had at that point moved into the tomb.

16:6 The resurrection can be doubted on philosophical grounds, but it is a historical certainty that the first disciples of Jesus believed he had actually risen from the dead (1Co 15). Such belief cannot be accounted for merely by hallucination, wishful thinking, or conspiracy to commit fraud.

16:8 Manuscript evidence indicates that this Gospel probably did not originally include any of vv. 9-20. Either Mark ended his Gospel here, he never wrote an intended ending, or his original ending has been lost. The Greek syntax of v. 8 and the fact that all the other Gospels include the announcement to the apostles and subsequent resurrection appearances lead some scholars to conclude that Mark’s original ending has been lost.

If the Gospel ended with v. 8, Mark intended his readers to assume the women did as they were told. Their fearful silence did not imply their failure to deliver the angel’s words to the disciples. The reading provides the mental image of the resurrected Jesus heading for Galilee and the women and disciples doing the same, their minds full of the inescapable and wonderful conclusion, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (15:39). Many times before, the response to Jesus’s work was fear and faith (4:41; 5:15,33; 6:50; 9:6,32; 10:32). Furthermore, the abruptness of such a conclusion matches the abruptness of Mark’s beginning as compared with the other Gospels.