Tongues 3

3. Mark 16:17 (Textus Receptus)
"And these signs will follow those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons, they will speak in new tongues..."

For some conservative Pentecostals, this verse also plays a prominent role. I say conservative because the only translations of the New Testament that consider it to have been in the original text of Mark are the King James Version and the New King James Version. Other versions only print the text because of its historical importance, but this is in deference to tradition. Their translators did not consider them original.

After I have said this, however, I have no problems with the message of this text. I believe that Mark 16:9-20 is a pastiche of post-resurrection events that some author took probably from the endings of the other gospels and Acts. When 16:18 mentions taking up snakes, for example, I picture Paul on the island of Malta in Acts 27. The mention of Mary Magdalene in 16:9 reminds me of John. The two mentioned in 16:12 are the men on the road to Emmaus in Luke. 16:15 is drawn from the Great Commission in Matthew 28.

Finally, 16:17 surely alludes to the Day of Pentecost. The word "new" tongues ("new" isn't even in all the manuscripts that have this ending) seems simply a reference to the fact that the languages on the Day of Pentecost were new to the apostles. I suppose it is possible that it is a reference to the tongues of 1 Corinthinans 14.

So even if the passage was original, it would not contribute anything new to our discussion of tongues. For example, the verse doesn't say that every Christian will do all these things.

I might just rehearse the reasons why there is such uniform agreement that Mark 16:9-20 was not a part of the original Mark:

External Evidence
There are two types of evidence that are discussed when one is trying to decide what the original reading of a text was. This is a science that can be used on any text in which we only have copies of copies that differ from one another and we are trying to decide between the various readings to figure out what the first copy said.

With regard to what we might call "the longer ending" of Mark, the external evidence is not good. I call it the longer ending because there is also a shorter one and a longer, longer one. The presence of the shorter one shows that someone else added another ending because 16:8 didn't seem like a good way to end the gospel... and thus even those manuscripts with the shorter ending are evidence that there was no ending after 16:8 in the manuscripts before them.

Jerome (400) says that he does not know many Greek manuscripts with the longer ending. Eusebius (300's) divided up the gospels into sections but made no room for verses at this point. The longer ending is not in any of the major ancient manuscripts and translations, including the two most famous, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. However, it was used by Tatian in the late 100's in his spliced together "four gospels" and Irenaeus knows of it as well (Justin Martyr has a sentence with some of the same words, but it's not a conclusive allusion).

A late Armenian manuscript says, "of Ariston" right before the longer ending. Ariston lived in the early 100's, but most textual scholars don't believe some copier in the 800's (I think) could know who came up with the ending when no other manuscripts say this. But Ariston did live at the right time for the creation of this ending.

To sum up the external evidence, we have evidence that the reading existed by the mid to late 100's, but it did not appear in most ancient Greek manuscripts, particularly those considered most weighty.

Internal Evidence
The internal evidence is, however, determinative. Verse 9 basically starts all over again with the post-resurrection. It's like 1-8 never happened. Verse 8 ends with the women telling no one. Then all of a sudden we're talking about "Now having risen on the first day" again. The women were the subject in verse 8. Then Jesus is suddenly the subject in verse 9. This fact alone militates against the verses being original.

There are at least nine words or phrases in these few short verses (including connecting phrases) that appear no where else in Mark, and the style is different. These verses are more of a summary than the narrative we have been reading up to this point. I've already mentioned that the content of this ending is a pastiche of references from other gospels. If these verses were original, they would be the most "harmonistic" track of gospel anywhere in the four gospels. That's one of the reasons why many don't notice how odd they are--because we're used to reading the gospels as a single witness to Jesus rather than four distinct witness.

In short, there are a few ultra-conservative people with PhD's who think these verses are original. But their very position on this issue demonstrates to me that they have come to the evidence with their conclusion already in hand. I consider no one a reliable textual scholar who thinks these verses were original.

As a side note, I have finally admitted to myself that Mark probably did have some other ending that is lost. It would be unprecedented for a book to end with the word "for" (which is how it ends in the Greek... I won't go into it). And the other places in Mark where the word "fear" is used in this way, someone is usually afraid of something. Witherington thinks the ending of Matthew is the best place for us to go to figure out what the original ending might have looked like. That's a fair enough suggestion, if Matthew used Mark, but given the beginning of Mark, I doubt Mark had as much at the end as Matthew does.