Textus Receptus vs Critical Text, Part 2

Good things do come in pairs, and this will be the first of two debates we have between Dr. White and Dr. Riddle. And for those of you in Asia, it will be two debates in 24 hours, two debates. Well, that 24 hours happens everywhere, but two debates on the same day.

It's early Saturday morning for those of you in Asia. We're gonna be having two debates. The second one will be live at 11 a .m. Eastern tomorrow or 11 p .m. Hong Kong or Malaysia for those of you in Asia.

The Longer Ending of Mark as the Debate Topic

Our topic tonight will be on the longer ending of Mark and our panelists will be debating the resolution, Mark chapter 16, nine to 20 is not original and should not be received as the word of God. And defending that resolution in the affirmative position, we have Dr. James White.

It's been on this channel many times before, no need for introduction, but I still will anyway. He's the director of Alpha Omega Ministries based in Phoenix, Arizona, host of the Dividing Line and author of many books.

The most relevant one to tonight's discussion would be the KJV only or the King James only controversy. He's also written other classic books like the Forgotten Trinity and let me go public and saying my favorite, The Potter's Freedom.

So it's a pleasure to have you on Dr. White and it's not been a great week for debates. I must say, yes. And also for moderators as well, it's not been a great one, I'm just saying. And so just share with us if you will, your preparation for this debate and yeah, just feel free to just share what do you think.

Coming into this debate? Well, this will be the first debate that anyone will see this week actually, to be perfectly honest with you. This isn't gonna be a fashion show or a food fight. So, and you should only have to be able to, you should only be required to keep the time, not have to actually engage the debate itself.

So hopefully that's what we'll be doing. Obviously, the topic is extremely important. The issue of what the word of God is, how it has been transmitted to us, why we can believe it and trust it. And most importantly, defend it.

I have defended the inerrancy and inspiration of scripture in mosques in South Africa and in London and in Australia. Around the world, literally. And so this is a key important issue. I think it's central to the issue of how people understand how we got the New Testament, how it was transmitted to us.

And I'm really looking forward to hopefully being able to clarify a lot of key issues.

Thank you, thanks so much for that. And we also have Dr. Jeff Riddle with us who will be defending, or rather opposing the resolution and defending the long ending of Mark and the Texas Receptors. We have.

Dr. Riddle is a pastor at Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia. He has a PhD in New Testament from Union Presbyterian Seminary. He is a husband and a father of five. It's his first time on the channel.

Dr. Jeff, we are privileged to have you. Just thank you so much for willing to do this, to set aside your time to do this.

It's a real honor to have you on the channel. Great, thank you, Samuel, for the invitation. And I'm happy to be here tonight. And I agree that it is a very important topic. It's a foundational topic. I'm a pastor, I'm not a professional apologist.

And my main interest in work and labors is in ministering to my congregation, preaching and teaching and baptizing, serving the Lord's Supper. So, but the scriptures are foundational. And as an expositional preacher, a number of years ago, I had to deal with, what is the text of scripture that I'm going to preach?

The text of scripture I'm going to exegete. And so through that process of week by week preaching and having to deal with the text, I had to confront the issue of text. And so I came to some convictions about that.

And I'm happy to have the opportunity and platform to share some of those ideas tonight. And I, like my opponent, certainly anticipate this will be a charitable engagement. And I don't think we'll be yelling or talking over each other.

So anyways, thank you for the invitation. I'm glad to be here.

Absolutely, and just like I asked Dr. White as well, could you just briefly just share with us a bit of the preparation? And you've been very kind to me, and it's been a pleasure to get to know you over the last two months as well.

We've had lots of phone calls. And if you could just share with us your preparation coming into this. Also, what are you hoping to accomplish in both this debate and the debate tomorrow morning?

And that's directed to me, Samuel, I'm sorry. Yes, yes, Dr. Jeff, yeah. Sorry, preparation, I mean, over the last couple of weeks, I've been reading and studying. I actually told my wife when I left, and I'm at the school where I teach right now, but I said, I'm gonna kind of be happy when this is over tomorrow afternoon so that I can pick up some of the devotional books and other things that I've enjoyed reading.

I've got about four or five books sitting on my desk at home that I've wanted to read, but I've sort of put those aside for the last couple of weeks so that I could read and study things related to these topics.

But so it hasn't been any extraordinary preparation. I mean, what can actually, can you do extraordinarily to prepare for anything except doing reading and studying and going back and reviewing some things that I've previously written, talking to colleagues in ministry and other people who are friendly to the position that I have and getting their insights.

So that's basically been the extent of my preparation.

Well, thanks for that, Dr. Jeff. And again, we're very grateful to have both Dr. Jeff and Dr. James White doing this for us. And I hope that all of you watching at home or wherever you're watching this from, you benefit from this.

Just let me run through the format real quick before we start. As I mentioned earlier, Dr. James White will be taking the affirmative position defending the resolution. And as such, he would be going first, Dr. Riddle will be going second and that format of Dr. White first and Dr. Riddle going second will continue until, for this debate, for the entirety of this debate.

The opening statements, we will begin with 20 minutes of opening statements from both sides, followed by rebuttal, 10 minutes from both sides. And then we'll have the cross-examination from both sides with beginning with Dr. White cross-examining Dr. Riddle and then vice versa.

We'll also have a response and a closing period for 10 minutes before we have the Q &A. We will have about 20 minutes Q &A at the end. As for time, we will stick closely to the time for this one since this is a formal debate.

The bell will ring once if there's 30 seconds left and twice when the time is up. So that way, even those of you watching at home, you'll get an idea of where we are in the time. And for the Q &A, really important for those of you watching, we would love to hear your questions and also to have your Super Chats.

Priority will be given to the Super Chats for the Q &A. You can send in your questions in the live chat, but please do type in the initial of the speaker you want to direct your questions to. Please do not direct them to both because we want to accommodate as many questions as we can.

So direct them to one particular speaker. Please put the initials in all caps or the name of the speaker in front before your question, and our team will be noticing your question and passing them to me.

With that, we're about ready to start. We will begin with the opening statements, 20 minutes, beginning with Dr. James White. The time starts whenever you're ready, sir.

External Evidence for the Longer Ending of Mark

All right, well, thank you very, very much. Let's get right into the topic this evening. The thesis has to do with the question, is what's called the longer ending of Mark, Mark 16, nine through 20, original to Mark itself?

And of course that asks the question, which will be the key question in both of these debates, what is our ultimate authority? For me, I want to know what is apostolic. I want to know what the apostles themselves wrote.

The history of the text and its transmission over time, all of that is important only in so far as it allows me to know what the apostles themselves wrote, because that's what makes something inspired.

It is the very nature of scripture itself that is under discussion here. And so the question is, is there a reason, and why is it, I guess we could put it this way, that a large majority of even reformed scholarship in the world today questions the reliability of Mark 16, nine through 20, and sees it as secondary, as coming after the actual writing of the Gospel of Mark itself, and being something though very ancient and very early on, something that was written because of a concern about the actual form of the Gospel of Mark ending the way that it did.

So a lot of folks aren't aware of what the data is. Let's look at the data that's very, very important, and then make some comments there on. The manuscripts provide about five different endings, depending on what you count as an ending, about five different endings to the Gospel of Mark.

The two earliest manuscripts that we have, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, we do not have any surviving papyrus manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark at this point that contain the last chapter. We have some papyri manuscripts, P45, for example, but it does not make it to the end of the book.

And so the two earliest manuscripts we have do not contain the longer ending or any other endings. They end at verse eight with the strange statement, for they were afraid. And so those are the two earliest.

There's another interesting manuscript, though much later, manuscript 304, that likewise ends there. And then, as I'll mention a little bit later on, you have certain of the Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian manuscripts as well that do not contain anything beyond verse eight.

Now, a few other manuscripts have a short summary statement, and it's clearly of secondary origin. I haven't run across anyone who actually believes that this shorter ending is original. It just seems very clearly to be something that was tacked on to the shortest ending, ending at verse eight.

And that says, and all that had been commanded them, they told briefly to those with Peter, and afterward, Jesus himself sent out through them from the east and as far as the west, a holy and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation, amen.

And so that's in Babiensis. It's in some forms like that. And we'll run into it a little bit later on as well. Now, a key, very early unseal manuscript, Codex Washingtonianus, Codex W, contains what is called the Freer Logion, inserted into the longer ending after verse 14.

We knew about it originally from Drome, and then once we found Washingtonianus. And that says, and they excuse themselves, saying this age of lawlessness and unbelief is under Satan, who does not allow the truth and power of God to prevail over the unclean things of the spirits, therefore reveal your righteousness now.

Thus they spoke to Christ and Christ replied to them, the term of years of Satan's power has been fulfilled and other terrible things draw near. And for those who have sinned, I was handed over to death, that they may return to the truth and sin no more, that they may inherit the spiritual imperishable glory of righteousness that is in heaven.

Now, the large majority of later manuscripts contain the block of 12 verses known as the LE, or the longer ending of Mark, the text that has the resurrection appearances of Jesus, along with the odd sections concerning speaking in tongues, drinking poison, handling snakes, et cetera, et cetera.

But it should be noted that at least a dozen manuscripts contain notes indicating the scribe was aware of this material, was not present in manuscripts in his day. Further, there are an inordinate number of variants to be found within those 12 verses, especially in the earlier witnesses to the longer ending, which is often a sign of a textual variant that has entered the tradition at a later point.

Finally, a group of manuscripts combine the longer ending and the shorter ending, not the Freer Logion, but the short one that I read before that. And there's, again, not only Greek manuscripts, some written in margins, some in the text, but also some translations as well, some Syriac, some Coptic, even some manuscripts in the Boheric.

And obviously, that's coming from a later point in time when you have someone looking at two manuscripts that have both endings, and they're, well, I'm not gonna lose anything, so we're gonna put them all together, is basically what you have in that situation.

So it should be noted that some manuscripts combine some of these at different locations as well, showing, again, that there was a great deal of confusion, but that the tendency seen throughout the history of the transmission of the text of the New Testament remained constant, and this is a good thing.

When faced with multiple readings, the scribes were loathe to lose anything that might be original. And so the tendency was combining, keeping things, not getting rid of anything, and that's a good thing.

That's a very positive thing in regards to the nature of the transmission of the text of the New Testament. Now, as to my position, why would I, when I get to, if I'm preaching through the Gospel of Mark, when I get to the 16th chapter, why would I make sure to either do a Bible study or a sermon, depending on what the situation was, where I was, obviously in the church where I'm an elder, everybody there knows what I do, they've watched a lot of my debates, and so it's not like it would be surprising to them to hear something about a textual variant or something like that.

But why would I stop the proclamation of inspired scripture at verse eight, and then talk about everything we just mentioned and everything we'll be talking about during the course of this discussion, maybe in a Bible study or something along those lines?

Well, as we noted, the two oldest exemplars of Mark in Greek end at verse eight. And there's been discussion about, well, there was enough room to put it in. Well, no, there really wasn't. In reality, Codex Vaticanus does, which is in the background here, have an open column, and yet it wouldn't be long enough for verses nine through 20 and there were other places in Vaticanus where open columns were left.

So it's not really a thing there, and there's issues regarding how Vaticanus made note of textual variants and things like that. But the fact is the two oldest exemplars we have do not contain this text.

That has to be taken into account in light of the multiple other endings that exist. Why would you have multiple endings? Why only in Mark? Why don't we have multiple endings of John and Revelation and all these other books in the New Testament?

That is an important question to keep in mind. The Sinaitic Syriac manuscript displays the oldest form of the Gospels in the Syriac language, and it likewise ends at the same point. There are about 100 Armenian manuscripts, and most would say that they represent the earliest forms of the Armenian, lack the longer ending.

And when we start asking questions about early fathers, this is a challenge for one simple reason. When we look outside of the New Testament, we look to people who were writing, whether it be Ignatius or Tertullian or Didache or the super early stuff in the apostolic period or going to Origen or Clement or Irenaeus and so on and so forth.

The question that you end up encountering is we're talking about whether people had the text in their manuscripts or whether they didn't. How would you know that they didn't? You could only know if they did if they especially made reference to it.

And so there seems to be in Irenaeus a clear reference. Some people said maybe something in Justin, even though it's not nearly as clear, Justin Martyr in the middle of the second century. Irenaeus definitely has reference to it.

But what about Origen? What about Clement? Well, it's hard to prove a negative. It's hard to prove that they didn't have something. They just might not have quoted it. I mean, how many, you know, if we were to try to prove that everybody had Second Chronicles, that'd be tough to prove because how often are we quoting from Second Chronicles?

Does that mean it wasn't in our Bibles? No, it just means we weren't quoting from it. So those are some of the issues that come up in looking at some of the second and third centuries. The most we can say is that we don't have any evidence that they had it.

But then we get into something very important, Eusebius, who provides us with all sorts of interesting quotes that sometimes send us off on all sorts of interesting rabbit trails. Eusebius, in reference to this issue of verses 9 through 20, of course, they didn't call it verses 9 through 20 because versification is introduced long, long later.

But in regards to this longer ending of Mark, said, this can be solved in two ways. The person not wishing to accept these verses will say that it is not contained in all copies of the gospel according to Mark.

Indeed, the accurate copies conclude the story according to Mark in the words, they were afraid for the end is here in nearly all the copies of Mark. So some people wanna argue that Eusebius is just quoting somebody else.

Not gonna get into that this evening. The point is in Eusebius' day, there is a division and there is the statement made that the accurate copies end with verse 8. And then there are other copies that have this, what is seen as an addition.

Now, of course, then you have Jerome. And Jerome is considerably more of a textual critical scholar because he is not only one of the few early church fathers who could read both Greek and Hebrew, but he was comparing manuscripts because he was obviously the one who translated the Latin Vulgate.

And yet he can't travel around the world. He doesn't have the internet. So he only has the manuscripts that are available to him locally in his area. And so he said that in scarcely any copies of the gospel almost all the Greek codices being without this passage.

So he said almost all the Greek codices in his day were without this particular passage. Some people say he was just paraphrasing Eusebius. There's reasons to disagree about that. But it's interesting to remember that Jerome is also the first person from who we know about the Freer Logion, which we found in Codex Washingtonianus.

But we knew about that from Jerome long before we found that particular manuscript that matched up to it. And so he did have a good insight into the background materials about this particular passage.

And so he said in his day, almost all the Greek codices that he had access to did not have this passage. However, about 100 to 120 years later, you've got Victor of Antioch late fifth century saying very many copies of the gospel ended at verse eight and very many copies ended at verse 20.

And by that point, Victor is saying, and you need to have those verses. And so there's a progression over time in regards to how these verses are being viewed, but very plainly for literally half a millennium, you have differing perspectives in regards to having or not having the longer ending.

So why the question is, do the large majority of those who study New Testament textual criticism agree with placing the longer ending, for example, in double brackets, providing a footnote? I mean, it would be good, I believe, I realize there are others who would say it wouldn't be good but I believe that it would be very good to provide all the information.

I believe Erasmus would have believed the same thing as well, to provide all the information and to let people know, here's what the data is, here's what the texts said. So give the short ending, give the freer logion, give the longer ending, put it all out there.

Don't hide anything. I think that's extremely negative. Let everybody know. And when you see those double brackets, one of the first things I was taught as a very young man is that you never build a dogma or a doctrine upon a disputed text of scripture.

Now, some people just don't want there to be any disputed texts of scripture, but there are, as we see in early church history. We can find various ways around that. King James onlyism does it its own particular way.

For example, that doesn't change the fact there have been disputed texts of scripture. And our Muslim friends and our Mormon friends and our atheist friends are going to remind us of that reality. We can't really hide those things.

So we keep in mind that the evidence is widespread that in the earliest centuries, it, the longer ending, was not the majority reading. That is, it is secondary to the rest of the text of Mark from the information that we have.

Second, and this is key for me, the presence of other endings and the mixtures of those other endings speaks loudly to the reality that in later centuries, it was felt that Mark needed to look like Luke and Matthew and hence needed something beyond verse eight.

Now, anyone who has done synoptic gospel studies knows how frequent that comes up in textual critical studies, where scribes are trying to harmonize Matthew, Mark, and Luke, sometimes just based upon ignorance.

But obviously that's what people felt. They felt that there needed to be, there's needed to be something more than what was there. If the longer ending was original, why would the other endings have ever appeared?

Why would the other endings have ever appeared? Now, surely a great deal can be said about the so-called internal evidence, the actual content of longer ending, its style, its actual doctrinal content.

Maybe we'll get into some stuff about speaking in tongues, drinking poison, and handling snakes, and where the Jesus appeared in different forms and things like that. There are some truly problematic material that can be interpreted in an orthodox way, but you sort of got to stand on your head facing west at three o 'clock in the morning to make it really work.

We can talk about that, but the biggest objection that people have raised against a 16 -8 ending, the shortest ending, is that there must be resurrection appearances, not just an empty tomb, despite the fact that the Gospel of Mark prophesies it and everything else.

Let me just throw out an interesting thesis that I think is very valuable and doesn't get much discussion. I think that the Gospel of Mark is incredibly early, very much earlier than what most people would say in New Testament classes and things like that today.

It is very regular to put Mark well after 50, 60, sometimes after 70 AD, so that you can push all the synoptic Gospels later and have all the fall of Jerusalem stuff be after the fall of Jerusalem and that kind of stuff.

But what if the Gospel of Mark is extremely primitive, so that there are many eyewitnesses who are still alive? In that instance, what the Gospel of Mark does is lead you directly into the testimony of the eyewitnesses themselves who saw Jesus.

Rather than providing it for you in written form, it is so early that they're there. And the reader is brought into dealing with the fact that they've probably been given this book or this book is being read to them by people who either are eyewitnesses or new eyewitnesses.

And then as time goes by and it becomes associated with Matthew and it becomes associated with Luke and so on and so forth, the idea is, well, it has to look like these others that have the resurrection of Jesus included.

And so we might get into a discussion of how Matthew, Mark and Luke are related to one another, whether you believe in literary dependence. I do not personally, it puts me in a minority, but there are people who would say that if Mark's the earliest, and this is why Matthew and Luke differ on resurrection appearances and things like that, because they didn't have anything in Mark to look at at that point.

But the point is that the gospel prophesied the resurrection and then said the grave was empty. And so it ushers you directly into a gospel presentation. What if Mark is like a really effective gospel tract rather than some kind of dry historical document as we might like to try to have it function today?

If that's the case, then where it finishes would be a perfectly logical spot for it to finish. And so the key issue for me is quite simple. The external evidence, especially the translations into other languages and most importantly, the existence of multiple other endings.

There would be no need for the multiple endings if in point of fact, verses nine through 20 were original. And we can talk about whether leaves would fall off and stuff like that and scrolls and issues like that as we get into it.

But there is a positive presentation as to why I would say the majority of folks today take that perspective and we'll be able to talk about a little bit more as we continue on.

Well, thank you for that Dr. James White finishing 10 seconds before the time. We now turn our attention to Dr. Jeff Riddle for his 10 minute opening statement. Dr. Riddle, the time will start whenever you start speaking.

Confessional Text and the Preservation of Scripture

So let me begin again by expressing my thanks to Samuel Nassan of Explain Apologetics for this invitation to be part of this debate and discussion. And let me also extend my thanks to Pastor Chris Myers of the Phoenix Reformed Presbyterian Church for extending the offer for us to host this event in his congregation.

I'm sorry that we weren't able to work that out. Tonight, I am here representing the confessional text position, also known as the traditional text position or the textus receptus position. And the word textus receptus means received text.

Before I proceed to a defense of the traditional ending of the gospel of Mark, I wanna spend a few moments just talking about what the confessional text position is. I believe the proper texts of the Bible are found in the printed editions of the Old and New Testaments of the Reformation era, which in the providence of God were preserved as the authentic texts of the Bible, as it had been faithfully transmitted from the time of the apostles.

Whereas modern text criticism is based on an enlightenment influence reconstruction or restoration model, the confessional text position is based on a pre-critical preservation model. This position is perhaps best expressed in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689 in chapter one, paragraph eight.

It's the same in the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Mother Confession for the Baptist Confession and in the Savoy Declaration. It affirms that scripture has not only been immediately inspired by God in the original Hebrew and Greek but that it has also been kept pure in all ages by God's singular care and providence.

The framers of the reformed confessions believed that the Masoretic texts of the Hebrew Old Testament and the received texts of the Greek New Testament had been faithfully preserved by God through the process of copying and that with the technological revolution of the invention of the printing press, these faithful copies in God's providence were then firmly fixed in a stable and printed form which could become the basis for uniform translations of the Bible and for confessions, doctrinal preaching and scholarly study.

Such as the view reflected in the writings of John Owen, the Prince of the Puritans, who in a 1659 essay wrote, let it be remembered that the vulgar copy we use was the public possession of many generations that upon the invention of printing, it was in actual authority throughout the world with them that used and understood that language.

And then he concludes, let that then pass for the standard which is confessedly it's right and due. With respect to the Greek New Testament, the acknowledged Protestant standard is the Texas Receptus, the received text.

It is an eclectic text, meaning it was chosen or compiled by the scholars who edited it from a number of extant manuscripts that were available to them. Therefore, we might say that their method was providential eclecticism.

In most cases, the received text reflects the text that is found in the vast majority of extant manuscripts, the so-called majority text. In some cases, however, a reading was recognized as authentic from a minority tradition.

In our debate tonight, we are considering a text that has majority support, Mark 16, 9 through 20. And tomorrow we will examine a text that is supported only by a minority of extant witnesses, Ephesians 3, 9, reminding us that manuscript evidence can only take us so far.

Our task, we believe, is not to reconstruct the text from scratch, but to recognize the authentic text as it has been providentially preserved in history as evidenced by its use among God's people. This brings us then to our specific examination of Mark's inspired ending, Mark 16, 9 through 20.

My opponent has the unenviable task of attempting to prove that this text is spurious and uninspired, and so it cannot be received as the word of God. I believe he will fail in this task because God's word will ultimately vindicate and defend itself against all opposition.

Mark 16, 9 through 20 should be gladly received as the word of God for at least three reasons. First, on the basis of the external evidence. Second, on the basis of the internal evidence. Third, on the basis of the historical, theological, and canonical evidence.

Let's start off with the external evidence. Mark 16, 9 through 20 should be received on the basis of the overwhelming support we find for it in the external evidence. A scholar named James Kelhoffer, hardly a TR advocate, acknowledges the massive external support for the traditional ending of Mark in his book, Miracle and Missions, when he writes, quote, in addition to numerous patristic citations and the longer endings inclusion in the Byzantine lectionary readings, 99 of the surviving manuscripts agree with the Texas Receptus and preserve the reading of the longer ending.

Let's look at the Greek manuscript evidence. My opponent is fond of speaking about the importance of the papyri, but when it comes to the ending of Mark, as he's already acknowledged, there are no extant papyri evidence.

There is no extant papyri evidence for the ending of Mark. The earliest Greek witnesses to the traditional ending come in what are known as the unseal manuscripts, including Codex Alexandrinus from the 5th century, as well as Codices C, Aframi Rescriptus, and D, Beza, from the same era.

Codex Washingtoniensis, W, comes from the 5th century, and it's also a witness to the traditional ending, even though it has the Freer Logion, it has 9 through 20 also. As already noted, the traditional ending prevailed as the dominant reading across all geographic regions where early Christianity was found, to appear in 99 of the over 1 ,600 currently extant Greek manuscripts.

Despite this, we will still find notes in our modern Bibles, like the ESV, that read something like this. Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16, 9 through 20. How many is some? Think about a number in your head.

Does it mean there are 10, that there are 20, that there are 100 manuscripts that don't have the traditional ending? In this case, some actually means only two, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. But since the 19th century, these two have exerted an outsized influence among many academic scholars as they have been used to attack and topple the traditional text.

Both Sinaiticus and Vaticanus do indeed end Mark's Gospel at 16, 8, but it has been rightly pointed out that the ending in both of these manuscripts is very strange. In Sinaiticus, there are two strange features.

First, the last verse ends in the middle of the line, and then the scribe filled in the remainder of the line space with an elaborate arabesque. On the next line, the scribe added another decorative line that extended to the end of that line.

Both of these things were done to discourage addition to Codex Sinaiticus at Mark 16, 8. The ending in Vaticanus is even stranger, perhaps. Mark ends in the middle of the second of three columns, and the entire third column is left blank.

This is not consistent with the formatting that is used in the transition from any other book to another book in the New Testament in Codex Vaticanus. As Nicholas Lunn has pointed out, these two early unseals actually provide implicit testimony to the existence of a mark and ending beyond Mark 16, 8.

Let's turn to the patristic evidence, the evidence of the church fathers. Here, we will find the earliest witnesses to the traditional ending of the text of Mark. Justin Martyr, in his first apology written about the year 150, cites Mark 16, 20, and they went forth and preached everywhere.

Tatian, Justin's disciple, included the traditional ending in his diatesaron, through the four, his attempt to put together the four gospels. He did that about the year 160. Hippolytus, in his apostolic constitutions around the year 200, offers citations from Mark 16, 16, and also Mark 16, 17, and 18.

But most striking of all the patristic references to the traditional ending is that that we find in the writings of the great bishop and apologist Irenaeus of Lyon in his work Against Heresies, book three, chapter 10, in which he describes how the gospel of Mark begins and ends.

This is what Dr. White talked about it either. Sometimes there's not explicit reference, but it's explicit in Irenaeus. He writes this, wherefore also Mark, the interpreter and follower of Peter, does thus commence his gospel narrative, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

He quotes Mark 1 .1. This is how Mark begins his gospel. Quotes Mark 1 .1. Then he continues and says this, also toward the conclusion of his gospel, Mark says, so then after the Lord Jesus spoke to them, he was received up into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God, citing verbatim Mark 16, 19.

That's in the year 180 that Irenaeus writes this. This isn't just the earliest explicit citation of the traditional ending of Mark. It is the earliest explicit citation of the gospel of Mark in all the patristic literature.

In addition to these citations and others from the church fathers, references are also made to the traditional ending of Mark, oddly enough, in the writings of early pagan opponents of Christianity, such as Celsus and the Platonist Porphyry.

What about the versional evidence, early translations? The traditional ending is the dominant reading found in the extant versional evidence of the ancient translations of the gospel of Mark. It's in the Old Latin, the Syriac, the Latin Vulgate, among others.

So first, external evidence is overwhelming. Second, internal evidence. Mark's ending should be received on the basis of overwhelming support of the internal evidence. By internal evidence, we mean the language, the vocabulary, the style, the content.

It is consistent overall with what is found in the rest of Mark's gospel. Questionable subjective claims are sometimes made against the authenticity of the traditional ending based on its supposed lack of a Markan style.

Some will claim, for example, that this passage has vocabulary that is unusual. But when we examine this more closely, we find this isn't true. For example, one of the words that appears for the first time in the traditional ending is in verse 14.

When the disciples are referred to as the 11, the Hindeka. Right, it's a hop-box. Only one time in Mark's gospel. But it only makes sense in Mark 16, 14 because it only makes sense when the 12 have been reduced to the 11 after the departure of Judas Iscariot.

Another allegedly unique word is the verb to follow after. Ep-akalotheo. Ep-akalotheo. It's the prefix epi plus the verb to follow. Well, that appears just once in Mark 16, 20, but the root verb, to follow, appears 20 other times in Mark's gospel.