WWUTT 2242 The Women and the Markan Appendix (Mark 16:9-13)

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The Gospel of Mark includes another ending that we know was not originally written by Mark, but whoever it was that added this appendix borrowed passages from the other

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Gospel accounts. And we get that when we understand the text. This is when we understand the text studying

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God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Find all our videos online at www .wutt

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.com, as well as links to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Here's your teacher,

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. Well, in our study of the Gospel of Mark, we really finished up our study.

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At least we've read through everything that we know that John Mark wrote when we wrapped up with the resurrection narrative yesterday,

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Mark 16, verses 1 through 8. The rest of the Gospel of Mark, verses 9 through 20, is what's called the

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Marken Appendix. And your Bible will probably have a note in it that says that the earliest manuscripts did not contain these passages.

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We still want to look at them anyway, get an understanding of where these verses came from. Before doing that,

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I want to go back to the resurrection narrative and consider the identity of the women who were at the tomb.

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In fact, not just according to Mark, but even what we read in Matthew and what's in Luke and in John.

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How many women are mentioned? How many Marys are there? And who are these women? So let's consider that today as well.

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I'm going to begin by reading Mark 16, verses 9 through 13. As we work through the Marken Appendix, we'll at least get through that much today.

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I'm reading from the Legacy Standard Bible. Now, after he had risen early on the first day of the week, he first appeared to Mary Magdalene from whom he had cast out seven demons.

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She went and reported to those who had been with him while they were mourning and crying.

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And when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it.

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After that, he appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking along on their way to the countryside.

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And they went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either.

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And let's stop there. So, just five verses that we've covered thus far of the Marken Appendix. And we'll look at the rest of it tomorrow.

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We'll finish up the rest of the Marken Appendix on Wednesday. But first, in this first verse here, verse 9, it says, after he had risen on the first day of the week, we read that in Mark 16, 1, he first appeared to Mary Magdalene from whom he had cast out seven demons.

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Now, Mary is also mentioned there at the beginning of the resurrection narrative. Mark 16, 1.

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And when the Sabbath passed, Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Salome bought spices so that they might come and anoint him.

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Now, already here in Mark's account, we have one more woman mentioned than was mentioned in Matthew's account.

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Matthew just mentioned Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, though we don't know who the other

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Mary was, doesn't say that she was the mother of James, as it says here in Mark.

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There are some women that are mentioned in Luke's account. Some other women.

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Let's see. It would be, I'm bringing up the text here now, Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary, the mother of James, and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles.

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But then you go to John 20. Now, in John's account, only one woman is mentioned.

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In fact, it's the one woman that is consistent across all four accounts. That's Mary Magdalene. John 20 verse one.

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Now, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

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So in Matthew's account, you have Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. In Mark's account, you have

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Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Salome. In Luke's account, you have a mention of several women, but the only names that are given are

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Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary, the mother of James and the other women, it says, with them who told these things to the apostles.

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So we really don't know how many women there were. It would have been more than three, five or more, in fact.

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And then in John's account, you have a mention of only one woman. Now, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early.

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So let's consider the identity of these women. Who were they? Who all were they?

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There's some other women that were mentioned at the cross that were not mentioned at the resurrection, specifically

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Jesus' mother. She is mentioned at the crucifixion, but is not mentioned at the resurrection.

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Now, you may not be used to hearing that because I think a lot of traditions hold that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was one of the witnesses to the resurrection.

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But the gospels don't clearly say that. In fact, you might have to infer that from the text, but it doesn't plainly say that Jesus' mother was one of the witnesses to the resurrection.

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After Jesus commissions John to take care of his mother for him, we never see

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Mary, the mother of Jesus, come back into any of the gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.

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She does come up again in Acts, in Acts chapter one in the upper room, where they are talking about replacing

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Judas, and then the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and they go out to Pentecost and preach.

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So it's there in the upper room with 120 disciples that are gathered, Mary, the mother of Jesus is mentioned, and James, Jesus' brother, which we would have understood to have been his half -brother, and his other brothers are there, is talked about as well.

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So Mary, Jesus' mother comes up there in Acts one, and then she's never mentioned again in the rest of the

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Bible. So that's the last occasion in which her name, at least, comes up. The Apostle Paul does talk about, in the book of Galatians, Jesus being born of woman.

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Of course, those things are talked about elsewhere in the New Testament, but Mary herself is never mentioned again after Acts chapter one.

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There was a book that was written several years ago called The Final Days of Jesus. I believe the authors were Justin Taylor and Andreas Kostenberger, and one of the things that they argued in the book was that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was one of the witnesses to the resurrection, and I disagree with that.

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I don't think there's anything in the text that clearly says Mary, the mother of Jesus, was one of those witnesses.

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Like I said, you might be able to get that by inference, but it's never directly said.

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So let's work through the names of these women, starting with the first one that we have mentioned here, Mary Magdalene.

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Now, Mary was from Magdala, which was a town in Galilee. That's why she's called

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Mary Magdalene. It would be more like calling her Mary the Magdalene, just like Jesus was called

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Jesus the Nazarene, being from the town of Nazareth. Now it says in Luke 8 too that Jesus delivered her from seven demons.

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You might also capture that the very same thing was said in Mark 16 9. Now, after he had risen early on the first day of the week, he first appeared to Mary Magdalene from whom he had cast out seven demons.

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Well, that was not written by John Mark, but whoever wrote the Mark and appendix and tacked that on to the end of the gospel, believing that Mark didn't properly finish it and he needed a little bit of help.

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These verses are drawn from various other places in the New Testament. That account there of Mary Magdalene having been the one from whom

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Jesus cast out seven demons that's taken from Luke 8 2. So that's where we come to that understanding.

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It's really not because of what's written in Mark. It's because of what Luke had said about her. Now she was a follower of Jesus and a very important follower of Jesus.

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In fact, the first one to see Jesus alive that's mentioned in John 20.

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So the fact that the Mark and appendix includes that he first appeared to Mary Magdalene, that fact would have been taken from John.

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It was not divinely inspired by whoever wrote the Mark and appendix.

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So that's the significance of Mary Magdalene. And as I said, she is the one constant across all four resurrection accounts.

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The only one that is consistently mentioned in those four accounts is Mary Magdalene. So let's go to the next one,

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Mary, the mother of James. So who is that? Well, some have assumed that that could be

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Mary, the mother of Jesus. It just happens to be that they mentioned her as Mary, the mother of James.

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Since it was said earlier that Mary, Jesus' mother was also the mother of several men that included

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James. So this was in Mark 6 verses two through three. On the Sabbath, he began to teach in the synagogue and many who heard him were astonished saying, where did this man get these things?

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What is this wisdom that is given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?

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Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon and are not his sisters here with us?

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And they took offense at him. So because it is said that Jesus is the son of Mary and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon, there are some that will assume that because it is said,

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Mary is the mother of James, that it could be talking about Mary, the mother of Jesus in a more humble way.

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I disagree with that, though, because we do have, we do have it mentioned that there is a

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Mary other than the mother of Jesus, who is also the mother of James and Joseph and or James and Joseph, who is also called

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Joseph. So one of the witnesses to Jesus' crucifixion, burial and resurrection is

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Mary, the mother of James that was talked about in Matthew, or it says the other Mary and Matthew here in Mark 16, one, it's

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Mary, the mother of James. She's the second woman mentioned after Mary Magdalene.

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So her sons were James, the younger and also Joseph's or who would have also been understood to be

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Joseph. This is in Matthew 27, 56 and 61.

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So among those who were at the cross were Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee that would have been

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James and John. And then Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there sitting opposite the tomb.

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That's also recalled at the end of Matthew chapter 27. We saw that too in Mark 15, 47,

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Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph were looking on to see where he had been laid. So see, that's unusual.

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And that kind of causes a wrinkle in this whole thing of who the identity of these women were because it's

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Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph. And then in the very next verse, you have

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Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James. It's odd that Mark would include a different son if that was the same

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Mary. And this is why this has caused a lot of confusion with regards to who are all these

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Mary's. And was that therefore Mary, the mother of Jesus. And then the other

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Mary, Mary, the mother of Joseph, was the one that, you know, may have been

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Mary, the wife of Clopas or somebody like that. How many Mary's were there in this whole thing? There could have been as many as four.

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So we know there's three for sure. We know there's three. There's Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James.

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And there's Mary, the mother of Jesus, who, again, I would argue may not have been one of the witnesses to the resurrection.

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She was a witness to the crucifixion, though. So at least in these accounts with the crucifixion and the resurrection, we have three

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Mary's mentioned Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, Mary, the mother of Jesus.

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And is there a fourth? Is Mary, the wife of Clopas or the mother of Joseph, a different Mary?

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So there was a another witness to Jesus' crucifixion who is identified as Jesus' mother's sister in John 1925.

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But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene.

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Now, you could read that a couple of different ways. You could read that as Jesus' mother,

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Mary, and his mother's sister, whose name is not given and Mary, the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene.

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So there's four women mentioned there. You could also read it as there was Jesus' mother,

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Mary. There was his mother's sister who was Mary, the wife of Clopas. And there was

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Mary Magdalene. And if you read it that way, there's three women there. So even the way that that's listed in John 1925 is not absolutely clear.

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You could come to either conclusion that there's four women there or that there's three women there. So, again, there could be four

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Marys. There could be Mary Magdalene. There could be Mary, the mother of Jesus. There could be Mary, the mother of James and Joseph.

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And there could be Mary, the wife of Clopas. Maybe there's five. There's Mary, the mother of James and Mary, the mother of Joseph.

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Since we have a distinction that seems to be made here in Mark 1647, or sorry,

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Mark 1547 and Mark 161. Like I said, it gets kind of confusing as to the identity of all these women, but this is how we have this broken up.

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So another explanation is that Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, and Mary, the wife of Clopas is the same woman.

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And this woman would have been Mary, the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

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It was so common a name that Mary and Mary even have the same name.

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So if that's the case, then Mary, the wife of Clopas would therefore be

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Jesus' aunt, and James and Joseph would be his cousins, not his half -brothers.

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But that doesn't account for all of the other names of men that are listed as Jesus' brothers.

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Because we have James and Joseph, if they are the sons of Mary, wife of Clopas, and then there's also

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Judas and Simon, who are not accounted for as being the sons of any other woman. So they might be half -brothers of Jesus.

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And then of course, back to Mark 6, 3, where it says, are not all of his sisters with us?

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There are unnamed sisters that Jesus had too. So at least enough evidence is given to us that Mary did have other children after Jesus, but which

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Mary did they belong to? How many Marys were there? There's some debate about that.

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So okay, we've worked through a few identities there as to who the different Marys could have been.

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There's one other woman that's mentioned, or two other women that are mentioned, sorry, Salome, I guess I did mention Salome, the mother of James and John, who were disciples of Jesus.

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They were the sons of thunder. They were among those three closest to Jesus, Peter, James, and John.

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And she is also mentioned as a disciple of Jesus, a follower of Jesus, witness to the crucifixion, and also went to the tomb on Sunday morning.

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So back in verse 40, Mark 15, 40, there were some women looking on from a distance among whom were

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Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother of James the less, and Joses, and Salome, who of course was the mother of James and John.

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James seems to be a very, very common name, of course, because you have James that was a son of Salome, you have

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James that was a son of one of the Marys, and you have James that was likely a half -brother of Jesus.

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So we have a lot of Jameses going on. Now the one other woman that I haven't mentioned is

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Joanna. And Joanna is mentioned in Luke 24 .10.

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She's also mentioned as one of the woman disciples in Luke chapter eight. But she's mentioned as those who came to the tomb.

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She was the wife of Chusa, who was the steward of King Herod of Antipas.

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So he was in the household of Herod. His wife became a disciple and follower of Jesus.

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That's mentioned in Luke chapter eight. Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Herod's household manager.

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There's also some other women there, including Susanna and many others who provided for them out of their means.

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We'll consider this again when we get to Luke chapter eight. But at least as far as the resurrection narrative goes, here's the women that we have mentioned and the different theories concerning each one of their identities.

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Again, we don't know exactly how many women there were. We know for sure that Mary Magdalene was one of them because she's mentioned in all four gospels.

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Mary, the mother of James, being another one. Joanna and Salome being two more. And there were at least two more than that, because other women is mentioned as plural.

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So it would have to be two or more women, could have been seven women. We don't know. We don't know for sure how many women came to the tomb.

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But they come on that morning to anoint the body of Jesus and find the stone rolled away.

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And they are the first witnesses to the resurrection. So now let's come to the

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Mark and Appendix again, the few verses that we've read here in this lesson. And we'll finish this up for today and come back and tackle the rest of it tomorrow.

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So again, in verse nine, after he had risen early on the first day of the week, he first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.

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We've come to understand who she is. Verse 10, she went and reported to those who had been with him while they were mourning and crying.

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None of the four gospel accounts tell us that that's what was happening with the disciples.

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In fact, we aren't told for sure what they were doing, probably in hiding, of course, thinking that because the

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Roman guard had come against Jesus and had taken him away and crucified him, maybe they'll be looking for his disciples next.

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So they could have been in hiding. They probably weren't meditating on the Lord and praying and waiting for the resurrection of Jesus because they didn't understand his words when he said this.

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They did not even understand the women when the women came and said, the body of Jesus is gone.

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Peter and John ran to the tomb. They were the first of the disciples there to see that the tomb was empty, but they still marveled and did not understand exactly what it was that they witnessed.

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So whoever had written in the rest of Mark's gospel had included that detail that doesn't come from any of the other gospels, that the disciples were off mourning and crying somewhere.

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It doesn't say that specifically anywhere else. So then in verse 11, and when they had heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it.

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Now that is in one of the gospel accounts. It's in Luke 24, 11, when the women that included

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Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James and the other women, when they said these things to the apostles, these words seemed to them to be an idle tale and they did not believe them.

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So whoever wrote this appendix here is including that from what was said in Luke 24.

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But then in verse 12, after that, he appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking along the way to the countryside.

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Now where does that come from? That's also from Luke's account. That's the account of the road to Emmaus where you had two, two disciples that were on this road.

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Jesus appeared with them and it didn't just appear with them like startled them, but he's with them on the road and he's talking with them and he explains to them how the things that they have witnessed concerning the death of Jesus was to fulfill what had been written in the scriptures.

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And then it's not till they get to where they are going that Jesus sits down with them. He breaks bread and then their eyes are open and they recognize him.

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And then he vanishes right from before their eyes. So that's the, that's the account that we have in Luke 24.

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And so Mark or whoever did this Mark and appendix here mentions that in brief.

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So he appeared to, he appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking on their way to the countryside.

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And then verse 13, and they went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either.

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Now it could be that that's in reference to Thomas because Thomas did not believe even when the other disciples said that the

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Lord had risen and Thomas is going, eh, unless I put my hands in the scars on his hands and see the scars on his feet and the hole in his side, then

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I'm not going to believe it. I have to see it with my own eyes. And Jesus of course does appear to Thomas and says to him, you believe because you have seen, but blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe.

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And we have come to believe in what it is that we have read because of the, the gospel accounts that have been given to us.

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Gospel meaning good news. We have heard of Jesus earthly ministry. We have heard of his death on the cross for our sins.

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We have heard of his resurrection from the dead so that whoever believes in him, our sins are forgiven and we are promised eternal life.

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Blessed are we blessed of God. Blessed are we though we have not seen yet we believe and we don't believe in blind faith to say that we haven't seen and yet we believe doesn't mean that the evidence is not clearly laid out before us.

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What we read about here in the gospel accounts are historical events and it's because we have such great detail into these events that really did happen that we can know looking at the earliest manuscript evidence that this section of Mark 16 was not written originally by Mark.

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It was added by someone else later and whoever added this borrowed phrases from the other gospels and included them here.

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We're not missing anything from the Bible by saying that this wasn't included in the original text.

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We have it in other places in the gospels and we'll finish up looking at these different passages tomorrow.

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Let's conclude here with prayer heavenly father. We thank you for the good news that has been preached to us that we may see

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Jesus the son of God who was born in the likeness of man who was obedient to the will of the father even to the point of death on a cross.

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He rose again from the dead. He was seen by hundreds in the 40 days between his resurrection and his

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Ascension into heaven. He is ascended into heaven where he is seated at the right hand of God and he's coming back again to judge the living and the dead.

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We continue to look to our Lord Jesus Christ for our salvation and for our deliverance awaiting that day when he returns and we will join him forever in his kingdom for all eternity.

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Convict us, convict our hearts where we doubt for our sin. May we turn from all wickedness.

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May we turn from the ways of this world to the Lord Jesus Christ and live as Christ in these days until his coming.

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It is in Jesus' name that we pray, amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the

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Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt

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.com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our

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Bible study, When We Understand the Text. Good night.