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{"id":38490,"date":"2020-10-04T05:24:44","date_gmt":"2020-10-04T09:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=38490"},"modified":"2020-10-03T18:30:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T22:30:57","slug":"was-mark-on-a-roll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/10\/was-mark-on-a-roll.html","title":{"rendered":"Was Mark on a Roll?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019ve expressed my view on how the Gospel of Mark probably continued. I am unpersuaded by those who insist that the ending indicates that this premodern author had postmodern sensibilities, inviting us the readers to succeed where ancient disciples failed. The ending as it stands implies that we never could have received that invitation if we take what is written at face value (i.e. in the plain sense\u2014despite my Genesis fandom there is no allusion to Phil Collins\u2019 first solo album here).<\/p>\n

Saying the abrupt ending was not how the author intended their work to end calls out for an explanation of what happened. (Let me offer another important aside: it does not \u201cbeg the question of how the ending was lost\u201d because that is not how one uses the expression \u201cbegs the question.\u201d To \u201cbeg the question\u201d is a philosophical term for the fallacy of assuming what you need to prove, and not just a way of saying something \u201craises a further question\u201d).<\/p>\n

Some years ago Peter Gurry on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog drew attention to the suggestion Daniel Wallace made that the Gospel of Mark might have originally been written and copied on scrolls<\/a> rather than in the context form in which we know it in all our extant manuscripts. That is certainly possible. But as Gurry points out in response to Wallace, scroll endings were not significantly less prone to damage than codices (think of the covers detaching from your comic books, fellow nerds).<\/p>\n

Which leads me to conclude that Mark was on a roll with his storytelling and probably did not stop here regardless of whether his words were originally published on a roll.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"