The Lost Ending of GMk: Conclusion

In my last post, I presented a completed ending to original GMk.

So what happened to it?

1) First, Cerinthus added the resurrection scene.  He then removed the angel’s direction to report to the disciples and Peter, but notice that he cuts off the women’s visit not with “they were afraid, for”, but rather with a simple description of their anxious flight.  He still uses their silence, however, for Pilate orders the Roman-Jewish crowd who witnessed the resurrection to “say nothing” (MHDEN EIPEIN, Mk 16:8 OUDEN EIPON).  Cerinthus was more concerned with accusing the Jewish leadership of conspiracy than he was with Mark’s “back to Galilee” motif, which Cerinthus probably didn’t understand and couldn’t make any use of.

Next, in accordance with his previous edits, he removed the visit of Peter to the tomb.  Cerinthus seems to want to preserve at least some of the reputation of Peter, since after all, Peter himself narrates the next pericope, the fishing trip with the disciples.  Hence, he would have been motivated to remove Peter’s visit to the tomb, since (as we’ve reconstructed it above) Peter would have left the tomb unbelieving.  Cerinthus clearly knew the missing verses, however, because when the women enter the tomb, they “bend down” (PAREKUYAN), and the angel likewise tells them to “bend down and see” (PARAKUYATE).  Cerinthus is taking these phrases from Peter’s visit to the tomb in original GMk (they are, after all, echoed in Peter’s visit to the tomb in GJn, in Jn 20:5 PARAKUYAS, which we have demonstrated was also derived from original GMk).

Cerinthus did keep the miraculous catch of fish, however, possibly with some slight revisions.  I would also argue that he added material from the original Signs Gospel, but we’ll discuss that later.  His gospel would have ended with a mountaintop commission by Jesus, just as GMt does.

2) John, reacting strongly to this, kept the bit about the women’s flight to the disciples, and Peter’s visit to the tomb.  He likewise kept the catch of fish at the end of the gospel, and likewise adapted it to his own purposes—and also probably added material from the original Signs Gospel, in a different combination than Cerinthus did.

3) The canonical Markan redactor, confused and perhaps offended by Peter’s disbelief and the overall disdain for Peter by Jesus in the original Markan gospel, solved the problem in his own clumsy way: he just lopped off the entire ending, picking the wrong grammatical point to do so.  This is how we got the enigmatic ending go GMk that we know today: the canonical redactor (perhaps a native Latin speaker) wasn’t quite smart enough to realize how strange it would sound for his gospel to end with “GAR”, so strange that others immediately tried their hand at giving it a “proper” ending—hence the short and long endings to GMk that we know today.

4) Matthew seems to want to preserve the tradition of Mary having the first post-resurrection appearance (perhaps something he found in the Syriac tradition of GEbi) so he gives it back to her.  He may also have found something odd or undesirable in the catch of fish in Q—maybe Jesus remained unrecognized in the Q version, and/or vanished from the disciples’ sight,  as he does at Emmaus in GLk.  Matthew may also not have found Cerinthus’ rehabilitation of Peter to have gone quite far enough, or maybe what he disliked most of all was the commission of authority to forgive to the disciples as a group.  Matthew instead broke apart the seaside appearance, sending half of it to the Water-Walking, and dispersing the rest of it in the succeeding chapters, particularly in a specific commission of authority to Peter alone in Mt 16, but also in the half-miracle of the fish and the coin in Mt 17, as well as in a second commission of authority to the disciples as a group in Mt 18.  In each case, he made sure to rewrite it to clearly give Peter powers that the other disciples do not have.  Canonical GMk also gave him a textual motivation for all this, since the seaside appearance is nowhere to be found in canonical GMk.

5) Marcion then rewrote the end of Q in his own way, likewise relocating the catch of fish to earlier in the gospel, but keeping some other elements that he probably found in Q, including the appearance to the disciples indoors at table, as well as to a pair of travelers on the road—both of these probably taken by Cerinthus from the Signs Gospel (just as John did, at least for the appearance indoors at table).  The ending of Matthew and Marcion’s gospel is the same: a mountaintop departure by Jesus (though not in Galilee). 

6) Luke largely kept everything found in Marcion, adding a final discourse in Ac 1, and a few other anti-Marcionite details, like the eating of the fish in Lk 24:43, and perhaps a slight rewrite of 24:39.

We're done now with the original ending to GMk.  My next post will be a brief update to the HSH Diagram, followed by my long-delayed post on the identity of the seventh sign in the Signs Gospel.  After that...we'll be taking an unexpected detour.  I had hoped to return to various affairs--adding a few logia to my list of Thomasine sayings in Q/GPet, beginning a discussion of the so-called "Gospel of the Hebrews", etc--but I've made an unexpected finding that I'd like to devote some significant attention to.  I think it will be worth it, and I hope you all will, too.