Whose Mark 16:9–20? Mine, Yours, Theirs?

Ben Witherington, who blogs as “one of the world’s leading evangelical scholars,” has up a post entitled, “Evidence of Mutilation and Deterioration— Mk. 16.”  He gets us looking at a corner not part of this text

or of this text either

and comes to some rather final conclusions.  These:

I remain utterly unconvinced by the arguments that Mark 16.8 is the original ending of that Gospel, an ending that involves all sorts of problems…. [T]he second and later century additions such as the Freer logion, or the long ending (16.9ff.) were attempts in the early church to supply an ending because the church recognized Mark 16.8 couldn’t have been the ending.

and

Of course this is bad news for the KJV only/Majority Texters, but good news for Protestants in snake handling Kentucky, as it means that those verses about snake handling and drinking poison are not an original part of the inspired text of Mark’s Gospel.

Now, I don’t know what Mark 16:9-20 is for you (despite your practices or beliefs about snake handling and poison drinking or the lack thereof).  But I like to read this little Greek text rhetorically.

I find it fascinating that a presumably male author (someone like “Mark”) writing to other men, would presume to end it the way Mark 16:9-20 ends this good news.  Even if it’s an attempt by “the early church” to complete this story, maybe especially if it’s such an attempt, then it’s amazing.

We have a woman who was once familiar with demons, seven of them, being the first one Jesus appears to after death.  We have her as the witness, testifying to emotional, weepy and mourning men.

And like Ben Witherington, these men “remain utterly un-convinced by the arguments.”

Or, as the little bit of Greek rhetoric puts it:  κἀκεῖνοι ἀκούσαντες ὅτι ζῇ καὶ ἐθεάθη ὑπ’ αὐτῆς ἠ-πίστησαν.

Then Jesus shows us himself, to two of the men, who also remain utterly un-convinced:  οὐδὲ ἐκείνοις ἐπίστευσαν.

Then this final text of “Mark” has Jesus showing himself to the remaining living disciples and the author describes them to us readers as the ones who remain utterly unconvinced:  τὴν ἀ-πιστίαν αὐτῶν.

And Jesus speaks a few choice rhetorical words at them because these men had remained utterly un-convinced:  οὐκ ἐπίστευσαν.

Is the little addition, then, about the snake handling and the poison drinking and the ascension of the dead body now alive something we readers are to be less convinced of than we are of this implausible prior, womanly post-demonic failed rhetoric?