Here follows a very brief summary (without notes and bibliography) in English of Bonar Lumban Raja’s master thesis with the original title “Markan Ending: Penerapan Teori dan Metode Kritik Teks Perjanjian Baru Terhadap Akhir Injil Markus.” Bonar holds an M.Th. from the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Indonesia (STT Injili Indonesia Medan), where he now teaches. I have wanted to highlight his work not least because it comes from a totally different part of the world than my own privileged context.
Summary of “Markan Ending: The Application of Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism to the Ending of Mark’s Gospel”
Introduction
Most textual critics agree that the ending(s) of Mark reflect one of the most signficant textual problems in the New Testament. Although the issue has been vigorously debated by textual critics and commentators over the past 150 years in the Western world, it is still rarely discussed in my context in Indonesia. The ending of Mark is not simply a binary problem – whether Mark ended his Gospel at modern v. 8 with the phrase frase ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ or whether he wrote a longer ending vv. 9–20. In fact, the problem of the ending of Mark is very complex. Depending on how you count, there are at least five variants which are possible endings of the initial text of Mark. My master thesis on this topic attempts to understand how these variants appeared in the transmission of Mark by applying the so-called “Reasoned eclectic method,” taking into account external and internal evidence.
Textual Analysis of the Endings of Marks
There are six different variants of the ending of Mark reflected in the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament: The Abrupt Ending (omits vv. 9-20), the Intermediate (Short) Ending, the Intermediate Ending and the Longer Ending, the Longer Ending with the Freer Logion, the Longer Ending with critical note or sign, and the Longer Ending. The distribution of textual witnesses for these different endings of Mark are laid out in the table below according to their type (papyri, uncials, minuscules, lectionaries, early versions, and patristic citations); the traditional text type, and their date.
