Bonus: Mark 16:9–20 — The Extra Verses

If you've been reading with us through our series on the Gospel of Mark that concluded last week,

this is kind of a bonus episode addressing the additional verses that are found in some

translations of Mark 16. We taught through Mark 16, verse 8, but some translations have an

Mark 16:8

additional verses 9 through 20. So I wanted to offer some explanation as to why we decided

not to preach from those. I think the driving principle here for us as a church is that we

really highly value Scripture as it was written by men who were inspired to write it by the Holy

Spirit. And in this case, most modern biblical scholars would not say that these verses were

actually written by Mark, for a few reasons that I'll get into here. For starters, these verses

just don't exist in the earliest manuscripts that we have. There are more preserved manuscripts from

Scripture than any other source in the world, which gives us a tremendous amount of confidence

in the translations that we have today and their accuracy. There is an incredible degree of

consistency from the oldest manuscripts to the most modern word-for-word translation,

like the ESV that we use for preaching. So you can have a lot of trust in the words of the Bible

that is in your hands, especially in a good translation. And when you do find differences,

usually what you find is that older manuscripts will have an additional word here or there that

at some point either got left out or translated a little bit differently. You don't have material

differences. You have these tiny differences in an individual word or two. But what we usually

don't have are sections that don't exist in the older copies, but do exist in the newer ones.

So usually what that means is that it was added at some point and probably not by Mark.

Second, the theological focus and the writing style of these 11 verses are not completely

in line with the rest of Mark's writing.

So to my eyes, it appears to be a combination of details that we actually find in some of

the other Gospels.

So my guess is, for this particular edition, is that probably at some point a scholar copying

the manuscript thought, this is a very abrupt end, which we noted it is, and tried to fill in the

details that they knew from the other gospel accounts. So the question that's facing most

Bible scholars isn't whether these verses were written by Mark, but rather what was at the end

of the book. So you have two options. One option is that there was more written or intended to be

written that we just don't have, either because it was lost from the original parchment or

because Mark never wrote the end that he had planned. We know that Mark lived during a great

time of persecution under Nero and that he was close with Peter. So the possibility does exist

that Mark was martyred before he finished his planned account. The other option, of course,

is that Mark did indeed intend to end abruptly, which we have already noted is in line with the

immediacy and quickness of his writing style. This is, of course, what I inferred in my last sermon,

ending with verse 8. Either way, there's no way for us to know for sure, and we are warned in

scripture against intentionally adding or subtracting from God's word. So the approach

that we have taken is, regardless of what may or may not have been written, verse 8 is what God has

ensured was preserved for us to have today. And not only that, but we also have three other gospel

accounts which tell us in detail about the resurrection and the interactions with people

during the 40 days that Jesus walked the earth after the resurrection and about the ascension

of Jesus and the history of the early church, we are blessed by records and writings about

these things.

So, in summary, we don't need these uncertain verses 19 through 20 because we have the whole

council of the rest of the Gospels and of Scripture to be confident in our faith without

adding something additional.

Just as a note, we'll be taking a break from publishing the podcast for the rest of January

2026, but we will return in February with a new series teaching through Philippians and

on the call on disciples of Jesus to be evangelists.

So if you want to learn more about Ecclesia churches and are interested in joining a local

church family that's centered around scripture in the Council Bluffs in Omaha area, you can

get in touch with us directly.

at pastors at ecclesiachurches.org.