Mark 16: The Story Continues

Mark 16 stands as one of the most fascinating and controversial chapters in the entire New Testament, and for good reason. The resurrection account takes an unexpected turn when we discover that the earliest and most reliable manuscripts end abruptly at verse 8 with the women fleeing from the empty tomb "trembling and bewildered, saying nothing to anyone because they were too frightened."

This seemingly incomplete ending has puzzled readers for centuries, but as we unpack the manuscript evidence, the picture becomes clearer. The oldest manuscripts consistently end at verse 8, early church fathers only referenced up to this verse in their commentaries, and linguistic analysis reveals a noticeable style shift afterward. What likely happened? Commentary notes written in margins gradually found their way into the main text through centuries of hand-copying. Rather than undermining our faith, this textual history actually strengthens our confidence in careful Biblical scholarship.

Most remarkably, this abrupt ending perfectly aligns with Mark's narrative approach throughout his Gospel. From the very beginning, Mark presents compelling evidence about Jesus, then challenges readers to decide what they'll do with this information. The empty tomb becomes the ultimate evidence, and the unresolved ending forces us to confront the same question that echoes throughout the entire book: What will you do with Jesus? The story doesn't end with Mark 16:8—it continues through us as we respond to the risen Christ.

For Bible Breakdown podcast listeners who've journeyed through Scripture together, this marks a significant milestone as we complete the entire New Testament. As Pastor Brandon reminds us, "There's only one thing better than reading through the Bible, and that's doing it again." Each reading reveals new connections and insights as God's Word continues to transform us. Stay connected through social media, TheBibleBreakdown.com, or text RLCBIBLE to 94000 to join us for upcoming projects including Bible Breakdown Deep Dive and Bible Breakdown Apologetics!

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Chapters

• 0:24 Welcome to Mark 16: The Story Continues
• 1:43 The Gospel in Motion: Mark's Unique Style
• 3:05 Manuscript Controversy in Mark 16
• 7:12 Reading Mark 16:1-8: The Empty Tomb
• 9:21 The Perfect Ending: What's Your Decision?
• 10:40 Celebrating Milestones and Future Plans
• 14:22 Final Prayer and Scripture

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown podcast with your host, pastor Brandon. Today, the grand finale, mark, chapter 16, and today's title is the Story Continues and we're going to have a lot of fun. This is one of the most controversial chapters in the entire New Testament. Plus, at the very end we've got a very special announcement and I'm going to get a little sappy on you this morning or whenever you're listening to this, but hopefully it'll be okay. We'll get into all that in just a moment. But before we do any of that, get your Bibles ready, get your popcorn ready, get all that ready and make sure you like, share and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. I've been noticing a lot more lately that on all these different platforms people are liking the videos and also they are leaving those five-star reviews. Thank you so much, because wherever you get the content, if you five-star review those things, it really puts it in those search engines. So we can just continue to build this community If people just read the Bible like that's. What we rally around is want to read the Bible, know God's word and make no apologies for it. And also make sure you're going to the Bible breakdown discussion on Facebook where we are just putting out those devotions. There's an amazing team and they work so hard and I encourage you to comment on those. That's the reason why they do that is we want engagement, we want to learn by grappling with the text together, and you get links to all of that at thebiblebreakdowncom.

Speaker 1: 1:19

Well, I want to tell you about something, but first, for those of you who are just now joining us, I don't know why you started with Mark 16, but here we are. We have been walking through the book of Mark, the gospel of Mark, one chapter at a time, and we're calling it the gospel in motion. And the reason why is because Mark was written by Peter. Like Mark wrote it, but he was writing down the stories that he heard from Peter while being his translator in Rome, and so these stories are of the gospel that he heard and he writes them all down and it just sounds like Peter. I mean, you know, matthew and Luke, they tell the birth narrative. John starts with the beginning. Mark, you know, ghostwriter of Peter. He's just like let's get down to business, right. He just do that. You know, ghostwriter of Peter, he's just like let's get down to business, right, and he'd just do that. And so he's telling all of this and you can kind of just you feel, in the context of what's going on here, that the goal of it is to present to you the evidence, and then you decide this is who Jesus is, over and over and over. And so there is this debate that's happening with Mark, chapter 16 that I want to talk to you about, because it's kind of a big deal in some of the circles and I don't think it should be necessarily, but it is and that is this that some people say that the biggest chunk of scripture that should not belong in the Bible is actually Mark 16. Now let me kind of unpack that for you. Actually, mark 16. Now let me kind of unpack that for you.

Speaker 1: 2:47

Mark chapter 16, in some Bible translations, some older, older, older Bible translations, will have several verses after Mark, chapter 16, verse 8. But if you look at most of the newer translations and some of the revisions of those translations, what you will see is is you will see a parenthesis and it will say some manuscripts do not have this. So this is what happened that when people first started translating the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into English, there were only a handful of complete manuscripts in Greek that the translators of the time could get a hold of. They were there all over the world, in monasteries and in just other places all over the world. But the translators only had a few full copies and so they translated what they had. But as time has gone on and some of the different monasteries have shown us their different you know the Greek versions and we're able to do carbon dating and make sure all the dates are right and all this kind of stuff what they started to notice is this there are three things that started to stand out. Number one the oldest manuscripts ended at Mark 16, verse 8.

Speaker 1: 4:00

Also, many of the early church fathers. Those are people who were either discipled directly by the original 12 apostles or they were discipled by them. Like, for instance, there's a guy named Polycarp. I know that is a name that would not fly today, but Polycarp literally sat at the feet of John the Apostle and learned of him. He would be considered a patriarch, a early church father. And a lot of these people what they would do is they would write commentary on the gospel, the other things that they had learned straight from the apostles. And all of them, many of them, should I say it that way? They all end their commentary the same place Mark 16, verse 8. And then also linguists and different people who study such things, 8. And then also linguists and different people who study such things, they notice that there is a style and vocabulary shift. That happens after Mark, chapter 16, verse 8.

Speaker 1: 4:53

So what happened was is these early translators who translated things like, you know, the King James Version and the Revised Standard Version, some of those really old English versions they only had a handful of completed manuscripts, but as these older ones were, you know, revealed to the public that had been there for a long time not necessarily hidden, it's just in monasteries and libraries, and all that they started to notice. Wait a minute, these older ones, they stop. And so that's why some of the older versions will have more verses, but most of the newest ones, who are trying to be as true to Scripture as possible, say well, we can't put this in here because the oldest manuscripts do not have it in there. Why was it included? Well, there's a number of reasons why it could have been, but one of the things that many scholars believe is that what would happen is is you would have in some of these earlier codex books, you would have a page and you would have in some of these earlier codex, you know books, you would have a page and you would have all the biblical text on it. You know you'd have just all the verses and then what you'd have is you'd have in the margins, you would have notes about it. You ever seen that before? Nowadays you can get these Bible journals that will have notes and these notes would cover just all around the actual text. And we don't have, like we have today, where we always have, like you know, really firm, you know kind of margins. And so what they think probably happened is there were, you know, a commentary that was taken on this and it unintentionally slowly found its way, leaking from the margin into the text and that's why they started to notice this and go, wait a minute, that looks like maybe a commentary, someone's idea, that's not, that's not there, and so it took it out. And so this was not something that was in the early church and so that's why we know it ended with Mark 16, verse eight. We feel very confident by that and the amazing thing is is, either way it doesn't really change any doctrine in the Bible to not have it in there, so it doesn't really matter at that point as far as doctrine is concerned. What's really cool about it, though, is that it makes absolute sense that it would end this way. So we're gonna read this, we're gonna finish it up, and then I'm gonna make an announcement to you as we end our time together. So here we go.

Speaker 1: 6:56

Mark, chapter 16, according to the earliest manuscripts, verse one says this Saturday evening, when the Sabbath ended, mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Salome, went out and purchased burial spices so they could anoint Jesus' body. Very early on Sunday morning, just at sunrise, they went to the tomb. On the way, they were asking each other who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb, but as they arrived, they looked up and saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled away. When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and the women were shocked. But the angel said don't be alarmed, you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He isn't here. He has arisen from the dead. Look, this is where they had laid his body. Now go and tell his disciples, including Peter. Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee and you will see him there, just as he told you before he died. And the women fled from the tomb, trembling and bewildered, and they said nothing to anyone because they were too frightened. Pause Now.

Speaker 1: 8:07

For anything else, you would look at that and you would be like, well, where's the rest of the story? But if you notice, throughout the Gospel of Mark that was the point is what are you going to do about it? It ends with them not seeing the body of Jesus. Oh no, he's risen. He's risen. And then they run out frightened because they don't know what this actually means. And then boom, which is exactly the way the rest of the gospel of Mark went.

Speaker 1: 8:31

Because the point is is, when Mark is writing this down from Peter, he's writing it as Peter is giving this gospel call to these people and he is ending with so what say you? This Jesus I've been speaking about and I've told these stories about, and all of these different things and all of this, he's now alive and he has come to save you. What an amazing ending. I mean, that sounds exactly like what that should be right. And so the story continues and as it continues, we then see that they went back and they told the apostles, and then Jesus appeared to them and all this good stuff. And it continues to go even to today. And that's what I love about the gospel of Mark is it ends with basically what we old people would call an altar call.

Speaker 1: 9:21

What are you going to do about it? And I love that, and I would like to ask you that question before we do anything else what are you going to do with Jesus At some point? That's the question that we don't know about other things in life. We don't know what else is going to go on throughout life, but what we do know is Jesus is alive, and that causes us to have to make a decision Will we ignore him or will we follow him? But we can't. We can't stay in between. We have to make a decision, and I hope your decision is that you will follow Jesus with all of your life, because he is worth following. Amen, all right. Well, before I pray for us, I want to get a little bit nostalgic, so I'm going to kind of go off script here a little bit, because this is a really we're going to move on from this.

Speaker 1: 10:07

And if you are reading through the Bible and you started in Matthew, this means nothing to you. So if you have not been with us at the beginning of this recording, don't pay attention to the rest of this. But for some of us, we started reading the Bible together back almost three years ago and we started with the book of Luke, and now we have read through the entire New Testament. And if you've been with us, what we do is we read through a New Testament book, then an Old Testament book and then a new. You know back and forth, back and forth, and we've still got quite a bit of Old Testament to go. As a matter of fact, we're going to finish the Old Testament and then we've still got to come back and do Genesis and Exodus. We've still got a long way to go on that.

Speaker 1: 10:43

But when it comes to the New Testament, one time I think you should celebrate that. I think that is amazing and that is awesome and it really, really excites me, because the more we get into God's word, the more we're able to learn about him. That's the power of God's word as he reveals himself to us through his word. I want to tell you something. There's only one thing better than reading through the Bible, and that's doing it again. I mean that Because when you read through God's word the second time you know what's going to happen Is you're going to start picking up stuff that you did not know before, you didn't see before. You're going to start seeing connections happen, and that's when you get to where, at some point, you read it through the third time, read it through the fourth time, your mind is going to see stuff you've never seen before. So I am more excited about going through the Bible the second time, as far as the New Testament is concerned, than before, and then eventually the Old Testament.

Speaker 1: 11:35

But here's the thing I want to tell you, and just very practical information. When we first started recording this, we had no idea what this was going to become, and so the recording is raw. There's not even a video on YouTube for a while, and so I plan to eventually go back and at least re-record the first chapter of the New Testament books, because I know a lot of you have said you've really enjoyed the dig in, you know, at the very beginning of just getting some of that background. So I'm going to do that eventually. But when we start over again in the book of Luke, you're going to notice a little bit of a quality difference and a little bit of just a difference in the way we're doing it. You get to experience the growth process with us, as we have gone through this. So it's going to be fun, it's going to be enjoyable. I can't wait to see what God continues to do in all of our lives as we learn and grow together.

Speaker 1: 12:22

We've got a lot of other projects that we want to do. We're going to do a Bible breakdown deep dive, where we're just going to dig into a book of the Bible and just spend a whole lot of time on it. We've got another podcast we also want to begin, called Bible Breakdown Apologetics, and that is learning how to defend your faith from hard questions. So we've got a lot of things we're going to do. So make sure you keep reading God's word with us and make sure you go to two places you can stay up to date with what's going on. First of all, on social media, both on Facebook and on Instagram. We have a the Bible Breakdown page for both of those. So make sure you subscribe there or follow those things, because we'll have those and go to TheBibleBreakdowncom, because we're going to find a way to give you announcements there as well. Finally, if you want all the information, make sure you text RLCBIBLE to 94000, and you'll get that as well. Okay, all right? Well, we still got a whole lot more Bible to go, but I wanted to kind of acknowledge that milestone, and so let me pray for us.

Speaker 1: 13:18

We're going to read our final verse and then we are going to be on our way today. You ready, let's pray God. Thank you so much for today. Thank powerful, it's always good. We celebrate your word today. Thank you for giving us your word because it gives us a doorway to know you. We celebrate you today in jesus name. We pray amen and what god's word says. In mark, chapter 8, verse 34. It says if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. My, my, what a god we have to follow. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for the next part of the Bible Breakdown Podcast.