The following is a message from a visitor to the DTS Website:

Type: DTS Faculty/Staff -->Wallace, Daniel B.

Dr. Wallace, is it true that in the Codex Sinaiticus the Book of Mark ends at ch.8 v16 where the women
see the empty tomb and say nothing to anyone? late versions introduce 12 new verses. Then again in
the with the Smith sister in the Syriac Sinaiti we find the women at the end of Mark say nothing as the
Book of Like begins...No resurrection. Please can you point me to an answer to this unsettling question.
If true what is our hope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccyibMVEJ60

Mr. ***,
Thank you for your question on the text of the Gospel of Mark. I am an intern for Dr. Wallace and he
asked me to answer this question for you as he is unable to do so himself.
I have watched the video youve attached to your question and want to point your attention to couple
of things.
The first one is that the author of the video really concentrated on the texts that are different in the
manuscripts he talked about and silenced the fact that there are way more similarities than differences
between the texts of these manuscripts. For instance, there are no significant differences in the
accounts of the two other synoptic Gospels (Mathew and Luke) as well as in Gospel of John. Further, at
the 45:20 mark in the video Prof. Simon Goldhill states that the short ending of Mark (16.8) threatens
the resurrection; theres no good news, they were terrified, thats the opposite of the good news, they
did not tell anybody
It is interesting though that even without the longer ending it is still clear from Mark 16.6 that Jesus was
raised from the dead. The author of the video does not mention this fact. This makes me think that the
author of the video is biased towards a certain agenda, which he tries to follow leaving out the evidence
that does not support it.
Thus, the author mentions thousands of changes to the Greek text of the New Testament that the
discovery of new MS brought to light. But he fails to analyze the nature of these variant readings. Thus,
there are approximately 5800 Greek New Testament manuscripts that are known to the scholarly world
today. Due to such a big number of manuscripts (so-called embarrassment of riches) and to the fact that
they were copied by hand, there are undoubtedly numerous differences between the texts in these
manuscripts. But, again, it is extremely important to look at the nature of these variant readings. It
appears that the absolute majority of these variations are merely due to the differences in wordspelling, accidental mistakes caused by the eye jumping to a different part of the text, or the scribe
clarifying the text (by changing the pronoun he to Jesus for instance). Less than 1% of this vast
number of variants are meaningful and viable to the understanding of the text and none affect any
Christian doctrines, such as the resurrection.
Concerning the longer ending of the Gospel of Mark (16:9-20): this is one of the few passages in the
Bible that was found to be missing from the early Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Does this

affect the teaching of the Bible concerning the resurrection of Christ? Multiple conservative scholars
think that it does not. The reasons are as follows:
1. Mark states in 16:6 that Christ did rise from the dead; scholars think that there may be good
reasons for the gospel ending so abruptly. (see the NET Bible, Mark 16.8, note #9,
https://net.bible.org/)
2. As it was stated earlier, three other evangelists Mathew, Luke and John join with Mark in
support of the affirming of the resurrection of Christ.
3. The Apostle Paul in 1 Cor 15:6 stated that at the time of his writing of this text there were about
500 men who saw resurrected Christ and most of them were still alive. This was a very
dangerous statement if there were no resurrection!
4. Finally, almost all of the 12 Apostles died as martyrs. If Christ did not rise from the dead they
would be the ones who would know the truth. If they did know that Christ did not rise from the
dead, why did they die for their faith in a resurrected Christ? Why one would be willing to die
for a lie?
The resurrection of Jesus Christ was and still remains the basis of Christian faith and hope and, like point
1 above, I think the shorter ending of Mark causes us, like the 3 women who went to see the tomb, to
ask ourselves what do we do with the evidence of who Jesus was and what he did?
Thanks and let me know if anything above is unclear,
Alex Dudka