The Longer Ending of Mark (Textual Variants)

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If your Bible is open, turn with me to Mark chapter 16 and go to verse 9.
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Looking out, seeing tonight that several of you are visiting our
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Wednesday night service for the first time, I almost feel the need to begin with an apology because you're coming in to probably the most difficult class in this whole series.
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Because last year I began teaching on Wednesday night through the Gospel of Mark and I began teaching verse by verse through these 16 chapters and we have learned a lot in this last several months of study and we come to the end of the
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Gospel of Mark and we find in our Bibles a notation, if you're using the
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English Standard Version, a notation about the end which raises some questions and causes us to have to investigate why this note is here.
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Now I want to make a mention, if you are using a King James Bible, this note may not be present.
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If you're using a New King James Bible, this note I think is present but I don't remember how it's noted.
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But if you are in the English Standard Bible, which is the one that I preach from, this is the same one that you guys, if you have a
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Pew Bible, this is the same Bible. You'll notice right above verse 9, these words.
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Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16, 9 through 20.
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Now how many of your Bibles say that? Okay? Alright. So, and again,
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I'm assuming if it doesn't say that, then it's probably a King James Version or a New King James Version.
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Is that, I know you guys use King James. Anybody have a New King James? Okay, if Andy were here, we could.
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I was going to say, Andy's not feeling well so he's not here to ask him. So, what we are dealing with is we're dealing with something called textual criticism.
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Now, again, I am hesitant to assume anything tonight, not only because we have new people here with us, several in fact, but also because even if you've been a part of this church for a while, you may not have heard me teach on this.
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You may not have heard us talk about this. And so, I'm going to try to address this subject assuming you know nothing.
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And if it's too elementary, it'll just have to be too elementary. But I want to assume that at least some of you, this is the first time you're having to deal with this.
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Because one of the things that we say as Christians is we say we believe the
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Bible. And we say that the Bible is the Word of God. And we say the
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Bible is, and we use certain descriptors for the Bible, certain adjectives for the Bible. We say the
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Bible is inerrant. We say the Bible is infallible. We say the Bible is verbally inspired, right?
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These are all terms that we use for the Bible. And I want you to know that I believe every one of those is true.
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But, we also have to deal with the fact that when we are looking at the history of the text, we are looking at a text which has been handed down, particularly, we'll limit ourselves tonight to the
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New Testament, has been handed down over a period of 2 ,000 years, beginning when the first book of the
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New Testament was written, which was probably at the end of the 40s, which would have either been,
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I believe James was actually the first New Testament book written, possibly written somewhere around the year 44.
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Possibly that early, we don't know. But the next book of the Bible, I believe, probably was the book of Galatians or Thessalonians.
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I think Galatians came first. Probably around 48, 49, somewhere around in there.
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So, this is the first books of the New Testament are written within two decades of Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection.
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Jesus would have died somewhere around the year 30. So, if James is in 44, we're looking at a book that is within right at 14 years or so after his birth.
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People say 33, you know, give or take, right? So, we can say somewhere 10 to 14 years after the time of Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection.
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Now, the rest of the books of the Bible are written somewhere in the following decades.
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I believe the last book of the Bible was written before the year 70, which would put the writing of the
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Bible within that 30 -year period, between 44 and 70.
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This is the New Testament, right? Now, the Old Testament is quite different. The Old Testament was, the first book of the
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Old Testament was written by Moses somewhere around 1440 B .C., and the last book of the Old Testament, which is the book of Malachi.
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Well, actually, 2 Chronicles is actually probably the last written because it's historical, but it's written somewhere about 400 years before the time of Christ.
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And so, we're looking at a 1 ,000 -year period of writing versus a 30 -year period of writing.
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Does that make sense? So, we're looking at two vastly different... The Old Testament is written in Hebrew, some Aramaic, but mainly
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Hebrew, over a 1 ,000 -year period. The New Testament is written about a 30 -year period, and it's written in the language of Greek.
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So, the Greek New Testament, I'm going to use that phrase, GNT, the Greek New Testament is finished somewhere around 70.
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Some people push it out to 95, so if we want to be real liberal, not liberal in the sense of like bad liberal, but like if you want to really say, okay, we can expand it out possibly to 95.
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But by the year 100, all of the New Testament books are written.
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By the year 100, all the New Testament books are written, and by this time, certain books had began to be collected and put together, like the first grouping of New Testament books.
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Does anybody know what the first group of New Testament books that were collected together and sent out? It's the
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Pauline Corpus, the writings of Paul were collected together and sent out as a group. That's the first of the groups, and also the
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Gospels put together, sent out. It was much later that we would come to a conclusion that all of the books would go together and be bound together.
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We're looking at a much later date in the 200s and 300s as we're looking at is when we find those, what we call the ancient codexes, like Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, which date somewhere to the fourth century, right?
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So these are the manuscripts that go back that far. But I'm mentioning all of this to simply say, from 100 to 2024, which is where we are today, we have over 5 ,000 manuscripts, so I'm going to put greater than, 5 ,000 manuscripts in the
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Greek language of the New Testament. And no two of them, and I'm going to switch to this screen here, no two of them are alike, meaning every manuscript that has been passed down or has been unearthed or has been found will have something called variance.
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Variance. And that's just the reality, because God did not wait until the invention of the photocopier to provide
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His written Word. And only after the printing press was the written
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Word in such a way that it could be mass produced and perfectly reproduced. And only with the photocopier could something be reproduced in photo quality, right?
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So the vast majority of human history, written documents have been passed down through what method?
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Handwriting. Handwriting, right? Let me ask you this, if I asked you to sit down today and write your
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Bible, and that's the only way you could have it, is if you were willing to sit down and write it for yourself, how many of you would own a
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Bible? You'd want to do it, okay, you'd want to do it, all right. But there is historical times where that was the only way to have one, either you had to have enough money to pay somebody to write it for you, or you had to take and write it yourself, right?
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And so these manuscripts which exist, these 5 ,000 plus manuscripts, have variations.
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Now many of these manuscripts were produced in something called scriptoriums. Scriptoriums were places, here's some photographs.
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Scriptoriums were places where Bible manuscripts were hand copied.
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The one on your left is a reproduction of what it would have looked like in a scriptorium where the scribe would have his original, his exemplar, and then he would copy from that exemplar to the new copy, and it would be done by hand.
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If you look at the picture to the left, I'm sorry, to the right, that, I believe, if I remember correctly, is the remains of a place called
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Qumran. Qumran was, excuse me, or the Essene community in Qumran, they're the ones we believe copied the
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Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a group of copied manuscripts that were written about 200 years before the time of Christ, and they are the oldest
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Old Testament manuscripts that we now possess. And they were probably written, many of them, in that scriptorium right there, which is now just stones because it's, again, 2 ,000 years old.
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But that scriptorium was where the people would go, the scribes would go, that's what a scribe was.
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Remember you've heard the term scribes and Pharisees. The scribes were the ones who would write the text, would handwrite copies of the text.
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Here's a picture of one of the oldest Bible manuscripts that exists today.
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This is Codex Sinaiticus. This dates somewhere around 4th to 5th century, we're looking, which is the 3 to 400s.
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So, very, very early manuscript. But I want you to notice, and I know you probably have to have very good vision for this, and maybe you do, maybe you don't, notice that even on this one page of Codex Sinaiticus, there are marks where errors were made.
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You can look, you can see just little corrections in the margins, where either a word was left out and then that word was added in later, or where one had to be deleted and another word put in its place.
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They didn't have white out, they didn't have photocopiers, and this was an example of what would have to be done.
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And all manuscripts have this. All manuscripts that were handwritten would have these notations, sometimes noting errors, sometimes noting issues within the text that have to be dealt with and things like that.
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Different, sometimes there's multiple words that are used and they write out the second or third word on the edge there.
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And so, what we have today is we have handwritten manuscripts that go back into the 2nd century, the earliest ones we have go all the way back into the 2nd century, and they have variations.
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That's the reality, that's the reality. But that does not mean that we cannot know what the original said.
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What it means is that there are times where we will come to a text where there is a question mark as to what the original said, because the evidence is not compelling in one direction or the other.
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And that's where we are with the end of Mark. I said all that because we are looking at Mark's ending.
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Last week, we read to verse 8 and we stopped at verse 8, and I said the reason why
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I wanted to stop at verse 8, because beginning at verse 9, if you have a modern translation, it will say these verses are not in the oldest manuscripts.
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And so, it raises the question, does the gospel of Mark accurately represent, as is written in our
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Bibles past verse 9, accurately represent what Mark actually wrote?
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And that is a very difficult issue to ascertain. And so, that's what we're going to address.
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But before we do, I want to just for a moment talk about this idea of textual criticism, because some people think textual criticism in itself is wrong.
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They think we shouldn't be doing this. We should just not even try to ascertain. We should just accept whatever translation we've got and use that.
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Textual criticism is the process of attempting to ascertain the original wording of a text based upon the available manuscript evidence.
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Lower criticism is what we are talking about. Lower criticism is an honest attempt to determine the original text of biblical books.
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Higher criticism is what we would not be involved in, and that is making a judgment over the genuineness of the biblical text in regard to authorship, dating, and accuracy.
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The findings are often subjective and normally present a very low view of scripture.
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So, for instance, here's how this works. How many of you have ever heard of Jordan Peterson?
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Do you know who that is? Jordan Peterson is a very popular speaker right now. He's a philosopher, and a lot of what he says
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I like. A lot of what he says is true. But when he talks about the Bible, he always takes a higher critical approach to the
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Bible. If you've ever read his book, my wife and I have both read it. It's called Twelve Rules for Life. In his book, he takes a higher critical view, which means things like Moses didn't really write
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Genesis because it was written by a committee of people, and that's called the documentary hypothesis.
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If you've taken my New Testament class, I think you guys have. You remember I talked about the documentary hypothesis. That's the idea that Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy weren't written by Moses, but rather were written by a committee of, or not really a committee, but it was basically, it was written by different groups and put together by a committee.
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I don't believe that, and I don't believe that that's the way we should approach scripture. That's higher criticism, and I don't agree with that.
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But lower criticism is simply asking the question, what do these manuscripts have in them?
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What do these manuscripts actually say? And can we come to a conclusion about a text's accuracy or not based upon what the manuscripts say?
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And again, I see some of you, hopefully you're not already checked out on me, because you think
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I'm making this harder than it needs to be. I hope I'm not. I hope I'm making some sense here, because ultimately, to understand textual criticism is to understand the variants themselves.
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A textual variant is any place where there are differences between the handwritten manuscripts.
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That's the definition of a variant. So we have 5 ,000 manuscripts, 5 ,000 manuscripts.
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The New Testament, if I remember correctly, has about 250 ,000
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Greek words. If I remember that, I might be a little off on that. How many variants do you think exist in the manuscripts?
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How many variants? Ah, you knew that. Yes, OK, you're right.
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There are over 400 ,000 variants. And you say, well, wait a minute, there's there's there's only 250 ,000 words, so if there's 400 ,000 variants, that means there's at least two options for every word.
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No, that's not how it works, but that is how you will hear some people who are trying to question the authenticity of the
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Bible. They'll say it like that. They'll say, well, the Bible only has 250 ,000 words. There's 400 ,000 variants. That means there's two options for every word.
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No, that's not how it goes, because we're looking at five variants. There's 250 ,000 manuscripts and every difference is a variant.
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So, for instance, if a Bible says Christ Jesus, if one manuscript says
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Christ Jesus and another manuscript says Jesus Christ, guess what that is?
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That's a variant. And what if another manuscript says the Lord Jesus?
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It's another variant. What if one says the Lord Jesus Christ? It's yet another variant.
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And we actually see this happening as the manuscripts get later. This is the idea of holy expansion as we don't want to just say
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Jesus. So we'll say Jesus Christ. We don't want to say just Jesus Christ. So we say the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we say the almighty
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Lord Jesus Christ. And then the almighty Lord Jesus Christ. But it's but the original was just Jesus.
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Right. It was we see this holy expansion. And that's one of the ways variants is introduced. And that's what is called an intentional variant, an intentional variant, which is introduced into the text.
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And there are intentional variations which are introduced into the text. We can see them. We can trace them out.
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We can find where they come in and we can explain, at least in part, why they're there. But then you have something called unintentional variation, unintentional variation happens when, for instance, a scribe is writing a word.
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Let's say the word is I'm going to use English because that's what I read. But let's say the the scribe is writing the word construction and there is another word which has this same ending.
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And as he's looking down, he sees that word rather than the word before it. And he ends up skipping a word because he's jumping to the next word because he was following the ending with his eyes.
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That's called homeo teleoton, it means to have a similar ending. Right. And having that similar ending, it makes sense if a word is skipped.
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If we see a whole line of manuscripts that skip a word and then we look at the other family manuscripts and they all have the word and you can see how that word would have been skipped.
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You can say, OK, here's how that was unintentionally introduced into the text.
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Does that make sense? So that's an unintentional variant. Another type of unintentional variant is.
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Misspelled words. There are some translations that misspell words. Also, there are some translations that use or not translations,
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I got to correct myself, some manuscripts that use something called the the the sacred name.
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And so where the word for God in Greek is that which is the word they ask, sometimes manuscripts would only have that letter to represent the whole word.
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And that letter can represent the whole word. They also do it with this letter. What letter do you think that represents?
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Christ. That's the letter in Greek. And that is the word which looks like this when you spell the word
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Christos. I shouldn't put a dot over the other than the Greek, but it's so used to doing it. But that's
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Christos. So what they would do, this is called the Nomena Sacra or the sacred name.
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The sacred name would sometimes be reduced to one single letter. So there's a manuscript variant where in the
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King James Version, it says God became flesh and or no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's a different it's a different word.
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There's a there's a there's a verse where it says he who is in the in the in the in the
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ESV, it says he who but in the King James says God and the difference literally is that and that.
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It's it's God is one letter word, it's a Nomena Sacra or it's
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Haas, which in Greek is just one letter. And so the question is, is it this or is it this?
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Well, the only manuscript that the manuscript where the issue comes up is written on papyri and papyri is made with a plant that is pressed together and the plant has reeds running this way and reeds running this way and they're all pressed together onto to make paper.
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That's where the word paper comes from is the word papyri. And so you have the reeds going this way and the reeds going this way.
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The letter is there. And the question is, is that in the middle or not? Because the reeds going this way make it difficult to discern whether or not that little jot is there or not.
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And it would determine whether it's the word God or whether it's the word he who. This is making sense as far as how these variants begin to become an issue, because if you have an entire sub family of manuscripts based upon the manuscript that says he who or you have an entire sub family based upon the manuscript that says the
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Nomena Sacra, then you're going to end up with an entire set of manuscripts that had that unintentional variant.
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OK, so this is how variants work and this is how when we're studying the history of manuscripts and we come to a textual variant that matters, we have to begin asking the question, well, how is this variant introduced into the text or was it the original?
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So something you need to know.
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Four hundred thousand textual variants is a true number. Ninety nine percent of the textual variants, and I'm oversimplifying a little, but it's very close to ninety nine percent, are either unviable or meaningless.
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They're either unviable or meaningless. Here, I'll put it on the board. Viable variants are one that have the possibility of being original.
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There are most of the most of the the the manuscripts, most of the variants are non -viable.
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I'll give you an example. I talked about this earlier in the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Mark, man comes to Jesus and the and the
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Gospel of Mark says moved with pity, he healed him. And I talked about that word pity because in almost all of the manuscripts, the word is the word pity, splachnestes.
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But in one manuscript, it says orgestes, orgestes means anger.
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So when the man came to Jesus to be healed, the vast majority of the manuscripts says he was moved with pity and he healed him.
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And you notice one thing about orgestes and splachnestes, they both have a similar ending. Notice the ending sound is the same.
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There's one manuscript that says he was moved with anger. Do you think that's a viable difference?
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I don't think so. I would say that's not a viable variant, but the variant exists.
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We have to we have to note that it's one of the 400 ,000, but it is a non -viable variant.
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I was at the debate between James White and Bart Ehrman. Jennifer is with me. Bart Ehrman is a textual scholar who makes his argument against the
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Bible using the very things I'm teaching you tonight. He says, well, we can't believe the Bible is true because if God wrote the Bible, then he would have assured that every manuscript was absolutely perfect.
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And because every every manuscript contains variations, there's no way you can trust the word of God. That's his argument.
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James White debated him on this subject, did a masterful job. We were there. It's a three hour debate. You can go online and watch it tonight.
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But one of the arguments he made was about that passage in Mark. I think I think that this was the original reading.
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Jesus was moved with anger. It doesn't make sense. It's not a part of any other manuscript tradition except for that one.
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And here's the thing. When you look at it, it's not viable, but he wants it to be so that he can prove that there's no way to trust the manuscript tradition, because if you got this one thing that was introduced and it's the real one.
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Then that's that that calls into question everything else. All right. So non viable versus viable, intentional versus unintentional.
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Those are two ways to look at variance. And I should say meaningful. Some variants are meaningless.
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I showed you one already, so I won't I won't write it again. But if it says Jesus or Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus or the
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Lord Jesus Christ, those are all variants, but they don't change the meaning at all. So of the 400 ,000 variants, when you get it down to 1 percent, what's 1 percent of 400 ,000?
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4000, you still got a pretty good amount of variants that are either viable or meaningful.
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But now you're looking at a again, 5000 manuscripts. You're looking at 250 ,000 words.
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You're down to a much more reasonable number. Whoo. I think we just lost our live feed.
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I don't think. I don't know.
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Perhaps the perhaps people don't want to hear what
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I'm saying. Maybe the Lord's shutting us down. Well, hope that's not the case. So of those 400 or excuse me, of those 4000 viable, possibly meaningful variants, you're still looking at a relatively low number because many of those variants are passages which are repeated in other places.
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For instance, one of my favorite variants to point out is the variant in the Lord's prayer.
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When you read the Lord's prayer in Matthew's gospel, it reads very close to what most of you memorized when you memorized the
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Lord's prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us for our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
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For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen. All right. That's Matthew's version of the
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Lord's model prayer. Luke's version of that prayer is much shorter.
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Model prayer, but short. There are manuscripts where it is apparent that the scribes, in an attempt to harmonize
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Luke and Matthew, expanded what was in Luke to match what was in Matthew.
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And we can see that introduction into the manuscript tradition where there was an attempt to harmonize the two gospels.
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And so now, when you look at certain Bibles, it will have the exact same prayer in both.
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But if you look at the manuscript tradition, the gospel of Luke's model prayer is shorter.
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And so that would be one of these 4 ,000. But we can see how it happened. We can see the history of it.
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We can see the situation. When you really boil it down to absolutely the brass tacks, you get down to a very small number of actual issues that you have to address.
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And there are more than this. But the top three, top three variants that are debated.
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Number one is called the Comma Johannium, which is 1
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John 5, 7. The second one is called the
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Pericope Adulterae, and that's just Latin for the the the pericope or the aside about the adulterous woman.
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And that is in John 7, 53 through 8, 11.
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And the last one is the longer ending of Mark.
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The longer ending of Mark is Mark 16, 9 through 20.
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Now, those three are the what we would say the granddaddy of the textual variants.
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And they tend to eat up the biggest amount of time in this conversation because these are the ones people will literally go to the mat over.
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And I understand particularly the longer ending of Mark, which we're going to get to eventually.
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But in regard to the other two, if you remember this text, 1
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John 5, 7, it says there are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the
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Word and the Spirit. And these three are one. Now, that's a great text if you're trying to prove the Trinity, because it says exactly what the
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Trinity says. These three are one. But the problem with 1 John 5, 7 is that particular verse is not in any
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Greek manuscript prior to the 11th century. Now, it is in the
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Latin tradition. And you have to ask, why is it in the Latin tradition? Why was it introduced into the
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Latin tradition? Why was it there? But it is not in any Greek manuscript prior to the 11th century.
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So we have to ask the question, is this part of what John originally wrote? I am convinced and have argued and have even debated that this is not part of what
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John originally wrote. But it is a debated text. So that's the first one.
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And you can have your own opinion as to how you think it should go. But that's one that I would say is a major textual variant, not because of its length, but because of the depth of it, because of the importance of what it says.
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I think it's very important. And the fact that we can see in the history of the text when it was introduced.
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We can see, in fact, I'll give you a short little story. This is a fun story. If you know anything about the history of the text, the person most responsible for producing the
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Greek manuscript that would go on to become the published Greek text that the reformers used, known as the
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Textus Receptus, was a man by the name of Desiderius Erasmus. And when
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Erasmus was putting together the first edition of his Greek New Testament, he did not include this verse because he realized it was not part of the
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Greek tradition and he was putting together a Greek manuscript. It wasn't until the third edition, because of pressure from the church, because it was in the
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Latin, that it was introduced into what became known as the Textus Receptus. So this particular verse, I think, has enough for us to at least say,
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I'm not confident in it. The Pericope Adultery is the story of the woman caught in adultery. It's probably my favorite story in the
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Bible in the sense of showing the humanity and love of Christ for someone who has been caught in sin and who was in a desperate situation.
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And Jesus says, I forgive you and all those things. A wonderful story. It is not in the earliest manuscripts and it also is found in some manuscripts in various places.
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It's what's called a moving story. One manuscript even has it in the Gospel of Luke, which puts it completely different.
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So this particular portion of the text is most likely not part of the original.
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The ending of Mark, however, is a little bit different in that it is more difficult to ascertain.
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And I tell you the reason why. The reason why is because the longer ending of Mark is in the vast majority of manuscripts.
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It's absolutely in this text here is in 99 .999
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% of the manuscripts. So the question is, well, if it's in most of them, why is it even being called into question?
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The reason why it's being called into question is because the two that it's not in specifically are the two oldest manuscripts we have.
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The two oldest manuscripts we have do not contain the longer ending of Mark. And so, and there are manuscripts which include a shorter ending.
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Some have the longer ending and a shorter ending. Some have a mixture of the two.
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Not all of them read the same way this one reads. So I said it was in 99 .9,
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but it's not all the same. There is variation within those longer endings. There's a shorter ending.
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There's a longer ending. But it's not in the two oldest.
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Let me just read to you. I'll read this. It says, the
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Gospel of Mark ends at this point in some witnesses. I said only two. There's a couple more, a couple later manuscripts.
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But it says, including the two most respected manuscripts, that is Oliphant B, that is
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Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. The two oldest manuscripts we have do not have this in it.
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And the following shorter ending is found in some manuscripts. This is the ending that's in some of the manuscripts.
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It says, they reported briefly to those around Peter all that they had been commanded. After these things, Jesus himself sent out through them from the east to the west, the holy and imperishable preaching of eternal salvation.
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Amen. That's the shorter ending. So that's verse nine, essentially, in some of the translations. Just ends with the
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Gospel went out into the world. The end. The shorter ending is usually included with the longer ending.
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I have a list of what manuscripts have what. However, Jerome and Eusebius knew of almost no
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Greek manuscript that had this ending. Remember, Jerome and Eusebius are writing within the first few centuries of the church.
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And they had not seen that shorter ending. So several manuscripts have marginal comments, noting that earlier
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Greek manuscripts lack the verses, while others mark the text with asterisks or obli, which are symbols to indicate that scribes called that portion into question.
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So this is what's interesting. If you look at some of the manuscripts that have it, the manuscripts will have markings indicating that they are not certain about its authenticity, even in the handwritten copies.
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So how we have done this here, and we've printed in the text, oldest manuscripts don't have some of the handwritten copies have the same note.
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So that leads at least enough to question whether or not this is part of Mark's original gospel.
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And as I said last week, the biggest issue with it is if this is not the end of Mark's gospel, we're left with one of three possibilities.
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The first is Mark's gospel ends abruptly. Because verse eight says the women went away and were afraid.
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That's a very abrupt ending to the gospel of Mark, if that is the original ending.
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I think it's possible. In fact, I think that I think it lends partway with Mark's style.
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But the second thing is that there was an ending that was lost. I don't like that. So I don't like to go in that direction.
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But the third ending, or the third option, is that this is actually the accurate ending of the gospel of Mark.
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So we've got one of three ways. We can either say that it ends abruptly at verse eight. The ending has been lost.
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I don't accept that. Or this is the accurate ending, and this is the one we should accept. Here's what happens, though.
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People tend to make their decision not based upon the evidence, but based upon tradition.
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I don't want to think that my Bible has something in it that wasn't part of the original, so I'm going to accept it no matter what the evidence says.
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That's one way. Or some people go the other extreme, who say, anytime there's a question or a variant, we shouldn't accept it at all, and we should just cancel it out.
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And that's the opposite. Like I said, we talked about the two ditches, right? And that's the other ditch. I do know some people say, if there's any question at all about a text, we shouldn't accept it.
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Well, every text, you know, we talked about how many variants there are, right? We have to really address that a little bit more graciously.
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And so for me, I look at this text and I say, what does it say that would be distinct from the other
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Gospels? And when I ask the question, what does it say that would be distinct from the other Gospels? That's the part
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I'm most concerned about. Here's why. Mark's ending, as it is written, the longer ending, verses 9 through 20, essentially agrees in almost every way with the other
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Gospels. But it does have a few parts that are very unique to it that make me step back and say, this at least has to be considered.
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One is it very much ties baptism and salvation together.
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We're going to talk about that in a moment. It tells about drinking poison and being bitten by snakes.
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How many people in Appalachia have died because they used that verse as their argument for their snake handling churches?
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Those two by themselves are enough to say, OK, well, I got to consider this. But also, the style and language of this section, having studied all of Mark and studied this, is different.
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There are 16 words in these 11 verses which are not used anywhere else in the
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Gospel of Mark, which are used here. Meaning the style and language in this section is different than what
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Mark wrote in the rest of the book. So there are reasons to, on internal evidence, ask the question, is it possible that this may not be part of the original?
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So having said all that, let's actually read what it says and talk about what it says. We got about 10 minutes left, so we got enough time to read it and make some comments.
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All right, beginning at verse 9, it says, Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.
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She went and told those who had been with him as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.
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After these things, he appeared in another form to two of them as they were walking into the country, and they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.
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Afterward, he appeared to the 11 themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.
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And he said to them, Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.
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Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
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And these signs will accompany those who believe. In my name, they will cast out demons. They will speak in new tongues.
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They will pick up serpents with their hand. And if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them.
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They will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover. So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God, and they went out and preached everywhere while the
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Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.
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Okay, so the majority of it agrees with the other gospels.
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And my original intention actually was to simply preach this section alongside the sections that agree with it and say, even if it's not part of the original, we know that these things are true because they're in other books.
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And so that's a safe way of simply saying, even if this isn't part of what Mark wrote, we know where these traditions came from because they came from other books.
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And that's a safe way of doing it. And it kind of satisfies wherever you're at.
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But for a moment, notice verses 9 and 10. Verses 9 and 10 are essentially a restatement of what we learn in the gospel of John.
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Last week, we looked at the gospel of John, and what does John tell us? Mary Magdalene was the one who went to the tomb and then went and told the others, but she wasn't by herself, right?
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She was with the other women. Well, those women are mentioned earlier in the story. But this focuses on her and focuses on what we learn about in the gospel of John.
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But there is some things that are not here. It doesn't talk about her seeing Jesus.
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It doesn't talk about the incident in the garden. Remember in John's gospel when she goes back and Jesus is there, and she says,
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Rabboni, right? That part's not here. So this is a scaled -down version of the story that we find in the gospel of John.
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It also indicates that when they heard, they did not believe. It doesn't say anything about Peter and John running to the tomb.
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So if this is a retelling of John's, or if this is informed by John's gospel, then what we are seeing here is an abridgment of what happened in John's gospel.
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Then in verse 12, it says, After these things, he appeared in another form to two of them as they were walking into the country.
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Where do we read that story? The road to Emmaus.
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Yeah, Luke 24, right? Luke 24, you have the two on the road to Emmaus. And this is that.
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I'm assuming it's referring to the same thing. And so, again, we have 9 and 10 agree with John's gospel.
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12 and 13 agree with Luke's gospel. Verse 14,
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After he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.
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And he said to them, Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel of the whole creation. What does that sound like?
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The Great Commission. Where do we find that? Gospel of Matthew, right? Going to all the world and preach the gospel, baptizing them, making disciples, or going to all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the
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Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. But then we get to verse 16.
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And I don't know how much history you guys have with the Church of Christ. The Church of Christ believes that baptism is an essential element of salvation.
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They believe if you're not baptized and immersed in water in the name of Jesus Christ, then you will not have your sins forgiven.
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They believe that there's a causal link between baptism and salvation. They cite
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Mark 16, 16 as one of their primary verses, because it says, whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.
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But every good Baptist I know who wants to argue against that interpretation will say, read the rest of the verse, because the rest of it says, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
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And I remember one of my professors says, it doesn't say believe and be baptized. It says he who does not believe is condemned. So there is some debate here.
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I am less inclined to be concerned about this verse because the New Testament does link baptism and salvation together, not in a causal sense, but certainly in a ceremonial sense.
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And I'll use you guys as an example for just a moment. You guys are going to be married on the 29th.
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You're going to go through a ceremony which you will make a covenant before the world and you'll say words and you'll take rings and you'll establish that ceremony.
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But there's going to be something happening spiritually where you are going to become one spiritually that something
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God is doing that the ceremony represents, right? The ceremony is not what actually causes it.
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God is the one who brings two people together. What God brings together, let not man separate. But the ceremony is still important.
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Baptism is a ceremony given to believers whereby we demonstrate our faith in Christ and his promises to those who have faith by receiving the sign of baptism, which is a picture of our being born again.
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So tying salvation and baptism together is not wrong as long as you understand it's not causal.
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Baptism does not produce salvation. How do we know this? Because people get baptized and aren't saved. You ever met somebody who's been baptized and wasn't saved?
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I was. I got baptized when I was eight, but I think it saved I was 19. So baptism didn't cause me to be saved.
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It didn't cause me to be born again, right? In the same way, have you ever met someone who was saved but not yet baptized?
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That happens as well. People believe and believe unto salvation, but they have not yet been baptized.
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So baptism is not a causal factor in salvation. I do believe it should be tied together.
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I think when somebody gets saved, we should baptize them. I don't think we should make them wait six years to be baptized. I think they should be baptized.
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But this idea of being too concerned about this verse one way or another, I don't think is necessary.
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But I will say those who hold to baptismal remission, the Church of Christ specifically, will cite this verse as one of their three key verses.
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It's this, John 3, 5, and 1 Peter 1, 21. That's the three verses they tend to... Or Acts 2, 38 too, so four verses.
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But, and again, I know I'm running out of time here. Something to consider.
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If you ask a Church of Christ person whether or not the longer ending of Mark should be there, they're going to say absolutely.
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But not because of the history of the text, but because they want this verse in there. It's part of their tradition.
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It's part of their proof. So that shouldn't be what causes us to accept the authenticity of a text, just because it proves our point.
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If that were true, we should go back to 1 John 5, 7, because it proves the Trinity, if you want to make the argument that we need a verse that says these three are one.
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All right. Well, we're out of time. You'll, as I said, the parts that are interesting are yet to come, and that's verse 17, where it says the signs will accompany those who believe.
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They'll cast out demons. They'll speak with new tongues. They'll pick up serpents with their hand, and they'll drink deadly poison. There's no other passage in the
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New Testament that has that combination of things.
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But there is a passage where we can... If this is a later emendation, if, in fact, this is a later insertion, what story from the
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New Testament do you think this would be surrounding? When Paul was on Malta, and he reached into the sticks, and he was bitten by the serpent, and he wasn't harmed.
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So if this is, in fact, a later insertion, it would make sense that they're drawing from things that they saw happen, and they're adding into the text things to complete the ending.
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Again, my admonition to you tonight is to understand that when we talk about these things, we're not trying to introduce confusion.
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We're trying to address real issues that we really have to deal with. And you could say, well,
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I don't want to have to deal with it. That's fine. I'm going to deal with it. I'm going to study them because they're important.
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I think that it's worth it for two reasons. One, I do want to seek to know what
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Mark wrote. And that's the big issue. I don't care what's in the Texas Receptus because the
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Texas Receptus is a published translation or a published edition. It's not a handwritten manuscript. I don't care what's in any translation of the
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Bible. What I care is what did Mark write. That's what I want to know. So my goal is to try to discern that.
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And if you ask me tonight, do I think Mark wrote the longer ending of Mark? My answer is,
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I don't think so. But I don't know for sure. I'm willing to say on this one, there's enough question marks in my mind to make me not yet willing to plant my flag on one side or the other.
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I was recently interviewed on a podcast on this very subject. And the man who was doing the podcast believed it shouldn't be there.
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And he was very robust. Oh, it's no, it shouldn't be there. But I told him, I said, there is some evidence for its inclusion.
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It shouldn't be written off automatically. We need to study and we need to seek to discern.
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Some variants I would say, no, I don't think that's part of the original. This one I'm a little less convinced in.
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If you listen to John MacArthur's sermon series, he did on the gospel of Mark. The very last sermon he did was this.
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It was the last sermon he did 40 years of preaching the New Testament. He has preached every verse of the
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New Testament. Took him 40 years to do it. And the last sermon he did was a sermon on textual variants because the last book that he did was the gospel of Mark.
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So if you would like to hear a better explanation of what I gave you tonight, go look up John MacArthur's sermon on the longer ending of Mark.
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He's convinced it's not supposed to be there. But as I said, I remain skeptical, but I'm not certain.
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And if that is not satisfying to you, then I'm graciously sorry because I have to be honest.
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Yes, brother. Do you have the hidden by circumstances?
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I don't know. That's a great question. I don't know the Church of Christ position on verse 17 or verse 18.
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No, that's a great question. I don't know their position on that. I mean, I know they accepted a scripture, but whether or not they would say that we should be tempting
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God by drinking poison or handling snakes, I don't think that they practice that. The only churches that I know that practice snake handling usually identify themselves as serpent handling churches.
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They're a very peculiar lot. Most of them are in the mountains, kind of a strange subdivision of churches.
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But you ain't gonna see me at one. I'm not gonna be doing that. All right, guys.
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Well, we're way out of time. Does anybody have a question you need me to answer? Probably a thousand of them. Next week, we are going to finish out our study of Mark.
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We're going to do an overview of what have we learned? What did Mark tell us that the other Gospels don't?
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And what do we not have in the Gospel of Mark that we find in the other Gospels? Like, for instance, the
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Gospel of Mark doesn't include many of the parables of the
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Gospel of Luke. And so we're going to look at what have we learned from Mark?
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And what are some of the things that we've gained? What are some of the things that we would gain by looking at the other letters?
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All right, let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I pray and hope this has been useful and helpful.
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I know it's a difficult subject. And for some, it may be like getting hit in the face with a fire hydrant tonight,
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Lord, trying to take in all this information. And I pray it hasn't been confusing. I pray that, Lord, ultimately, we would be able to remember that you have provided us your word and you've done so in a way that is actually good.
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That so many manuscripts have been written that they could not have had wholesale changes made without being able to recognize those changes.
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And so, Lord, we are able to look at where the changes are, where they were introduced, and how they were introduced and be able to come to conclusions about them.
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And where we still have question marks, Lord, because we are not perfect, because we still have areas where we're still studying. I pray that you would give us wisdom and clarity in the time to come.