The Lost Ending of GMk, pt. 1

I did promise a post on the lost ending of GMk, didn't I?  Well, alright, here it is.  This will be a series of two or three posts, I think.  Then we'll get back to describing the final sign in the Signs Gospel.

The key to understanding the lost ending of GMk lies in understanding the chiasmic nature of the original GMk.  As I have often mentioned, Michael Turton (following principally John Dart, but others as well of course) has helped show how each authentically Markan pericope has achiastic structure with a twinned or paired center.  I don’t think Turton gets every one quite right (and in fact I’m probably going to do my own version of GMk, chiasm by chiasm), but he at least makes a good go at it, and some are very insightful.   

Turton tries his hand at constructing a chiasm for Mk 16:1-8, showing that it seems to be missing an A' bracket, ending enigmatically--and infamously--with "they were afraid, for" (EFOBOUNTO GAR).  There is a strenuous debate in the scholarly literature about whether this is a sentence fragment or not, focusing in particular on the question of whether GAR can serve as the end of a sentence, as well as at the end of an entire work.  To summarize, yes, sentences can occasionally end with GAR in ancient Greek (including the Septuagint), but only one other work, the Third Treatise of Plotinus, ends in GAR.

There is also the problem of why the Markan author would predict an appearance of the risen Jesus in Galilee, but fail to describe it, or why he would leave the reader hanging on the questions of whether the women would tell the disciples about what they saw, whether the young man's prediction would come true, whether Jesus were truly risen at all, etc.

Here is Turton's attempt at a chiasm:

A And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen.

  B And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the

  tomb?"

    C And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back; -- it was very large.

      D And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white

      robe; and they were amazed.

      D' And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.

      He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and

      Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you."

    C' And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon

    them;

  B' and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.

A' It was the last day of the feast of the unleavened bread and many people were going out, returning to their houses since the festival was over. (Gospel of Peter)

Turton insightfully (and correctly) makes a connection between GPet's continuing narrative and what should be found at the end of this pericope.  I agree that in the original Markan gospel, there was a pericope that followed after this one, and that the lack of an A' bracket in Mk 16:1-8 is evidence of this.  But I think we're getting ahead of ourselves, because I actually think Mk 16:1-8 is missing even more than Turton thinks.  In other words, I think the chiasm needs to be rearranged.

Turton has noticed some plausible pairings--the women speak to one another on the way to the tomb, but speak to no one on the way from it.  However, this may not be an exact parallel--on the way there, they "talk to each other" [ELEGON PROS 'EAUTAS], but on the way back they "say nothing to no one/anyone [OUDENI OUDEN EIPON], which to my mind signifies a different kind of speaking (or lack thereof) with a different kind of verb; the point is that they do not address anyone on the way back from the tomb (this is actually a very old observation which I hardly need to cite).  Turton also probably correctly opposes the amazement of the women with the young man's admonishment not to be afraid in the D/D’ bracket, but the C/C' bracket doesn't work at all.  Something seems slightly wrong here.  Should we not break up 16:5 into two lines?  First the women enter and see; then they are amazed.  Those are two different actions.  If we do this, we get the following:

A And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen.

  B And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the

  tomb?"

    C And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back; -- it was very large.

      D And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white

      robe;

        E and they were amazed.

        E' And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.

        He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and

        Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you."

      D' And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon

      them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.

This opposes "they were amazed" with the obvious contrast "Don't be amazed", and the D/D' brackets describe the women's entrace into the tomb, and their exit out of it.  I would argue that "They said nothing" belongs with the preceding clause ("They went out, and fled", lit. "Going out, they fled") because after all the women say nothing—they perform no new action.  Mark is just describing how they fled.  At the very least, "they said nothing" belongs with "they were afraid".  At any rate we can now see that the gospel should not end on GAR, and that likely this line continued further.  It's unclear how the sentence should end; various proposals have been made (I myself would suggest "for they did not yet understand the gospel", in opposition to the young man, who obviously does).

The larger point, however, is that the chiasm is on its way back from the center, and needs two or three lines for completion, not merely one as Turton suggested.  I think a giant clue as to what those lines contained are in the B and C brackets themselves: "Who shall roll away the stone (LIQON) for us...they saw that the stone (LIQOS) had been rolled away".  Because there's another kind of stone, isn't there?  There is also Peter, the rock.  Mark doesn't want to give it away by being too obvious, but I read a subtle critique of Peter in this pericope.  In all the other gospels, Peter's witness to the resurrection is critiqued; in GMt it isn't even mentioned, in GLk it's made ambiguous at best, and in GJn it's downright ridiculed.  I argue all of these find their source in the gospel that first wrote of Peter's witness to the resurrection, i.e. original GMk.

If we look for Peter's witness of the empty tomb in the other gospels, we find what we're looking for in GJn, and in some manuscripts of GLk: the women tell Peter, who runs to the tomb, and "stoops" (PARAKUPSAS) to look in—as opposed to the women, who “look up” (ANABLEYASAI) to see the open tomb—then departs without understanding what happened. 

Putting all of this together, we get something like:

A And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen.

  B And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the

  tomb?"

    C And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back; -- it was very large.

      D And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white

      robe;

        E and they were amazed.

        E' And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.

        He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and

        Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you."

      D' And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon

      them; and they said nothing to any one; for they were afraid, for [they did not yet understand?]

    C' [When they told Peter and the disciples, Peter ran to the tomb, and stooping and entering 

    saw]

 

  B' [Peter left the tomb, disebelieving]

A' [On the last day of the feast, people returned to their homes.]

But there was obviously even more to the original ending than this.  In the next post, we'll continue to use the chiastic principle to uncover what that original ending could have been.