The Christian Standard Apologetics Study Bible online contains the following note regarding the end of the Gospel of Mark:
16:8 Manuscript evidence indicates that this Gospel probably did not originally include any of vv. 9-20. Either Mark ended his Gospel here, he never wrote an intended ending, or his original ending has been lost. The Greek syntax of v. 8 and the fact that all the other Gospels include the announcement to the apostles and subsequent resurrection appearances lead some scholars to conclude that Mark’s original ending has been lost.
The cheapo CSB printing that I have, not a study Bible, only notes that some of the earliest manuscripts do not have verses 9-20 (some is actually only two, but they are careful to avoid saying it that way. “Some” sounds more impressive). I expect most of the CSB study Bibles have this note (above). Christian people reading their Bibles have become complacent about such assertions. These kinds of assertions are standard fare, and readers likely tend to overlook them, not considering their real import.
Either...or
There are at least three options. We really do not know what Mark wrote. We will never be sure what the canonical book of Mark should look like. The “either/or” answer to the question “what is the Bible” is clearly problematic.
Mark ended his Gospel here
Nevertheless, we do not have enough confidence in that being true, so here are two other options (just in case). There is a long ending we will put in brackets. Then there is another short ending we will put in the footnotes (even though hardly any conservative Christian thinks that is original) just to confuse the issue a bit more.
he never wrote an intended ending
Mark did not finish. What meaneth this? Was it Mark who decided what would be inscripturated and he did not finish his job? Or is it the inspiring God who writes the scriptures we have? Did Mark want to write more but God stopped him, or did God fail to inspire Mark to finish the job? If we believe in divine inspiration and inerrancy, what is this statement even supposed to mean?
his original ending has been lost
We do not have the end of Mark’s gospel. Evangelical textual critics continually harp on the fact that the inspired words of God are found somewhere in the manuscript tradition. Do they really believe that? Does Broadman & Holman have non-evangelicals writing the notes for the study Bibles? If not (I am assuming a Southern Baptist sponsored Study Bible would have evangelical study notes!), apparently some evangelical scholars do not believe that we have all the inspired words of God in the manuscript tradition, if they think original ending of Mark has been lost.
Honestly, some of us traditionalists think that at least some of the evangelical text critics are playing word games. They try on the one side to be acceptable in their academic world and try on the other side to appease their evangelical audience. Such equivocation in the CSB on the word of God in Mark 16 helps prove that is a reasonable assumption. Equivocation on the word of God is dangerous.
Bible believing Christians need to drop a ho-hum approach to the notes that are in their study Bibles. If we do not have a ho-hum approach, we need to seriously rethink what we are accept as truth!
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