Mark 16: Printed, Bracketed, or Rejected?

Part II: Mark 16 and Scrivener · Article 1 of 3

Does a Bible “omit” Mark 16:9–20 if the verses remain visibly printed between brackets?

Stephen Steele correctly observes that most modern English Bibles and critical Greek editions retain the words on the page. The Trinitarian Bible Society’s unqualified language of omission is therefore inaccurate when it refers to physical contents. A reader can open the ESV, NIV, NASB, or a Nestle–Aland text and see the longer ending.

But physical presence does not settle textual or canonical status. The brackets are not decoration. The official explanation of the modern Greek text says that double brackets mark passages the editors do not consider part of the earliest recoverable text but regard as additions at an early stage of transmission. Mark 16:9–20 is named as a traditional instance.¹

The dispute is not whether the words have been typeset. It is whether they belong to Mark’s Gospel as inspired Scripture.

Steele’s Necessary Correction

Steele begins with a fair verbal objection. TBS material asks why some Bibles “omit part of Mark 16.” He answers that the surveyed modern versions do not remove verses 9–20 from the printed page. He proposes a more accurate question: why do some translations place notes or brackets around the passage and question its originality?²

TBS should adopt that wording. Precision does not weaken the defense of the longer ending. It removes an easily refuted overstatement.

The same duty applies to claims that doubt arose from only two codices. Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are the two fourth-century Greek manuscripts that end at 16:8, and their influence is enormous. Yet they are not the whole adverse case. Several early versions end there. Eusebius and Jerome discuss copies lacking the verses. Some manuscripts that contain the longer ending carry notes or marks of doubt. A shorter ending appears in a small but diverse group of witnesses, sometimes together with verses 9–20. Internal arguments address vocabulary, the transition after verse 8, and the reintroduction of Mary Magdalene.³

If TBS says that the “issue” began only with the discovery of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, Steele is right to correct it. Knowledge of copies ending at verse 8 is ancient.

Those corrections, however, do not decide the text.

What Double Brackets Mean

Steele’s answer turns on the ordinary sense of omit: the words are not absent. That point becomes an equivocation when it is made to answer the charge that modern critical texts reject the verses as original.

The modern editorial convention is explicit:

• Single brackets indicate particular doubt about whether enclosed wording belongs to the earliest form.
• Double brackets indicate that the enclosed passage is not considered part of the earliest text, though it is printed because of its place in the history and reception of the New Testament.⁴

Thus critical editors can physically include Mark 16:9–20 while textually excluding it from the Gospel’s earliest form. English publishers can print the verses while warning that they are absent from the earliest manuscripts or probably later additions. Readers are given access to the traditional passage, but they are also instructed not to receive it with the same textual confidence as the unbracketed Gospel.

That editorial judgment has a direct canonical entailment. If the verses are a post-Markan addition, they are not words inspired as part of Mark’s original Gospel. A scholar may construct a separate theory of canonical reception by which a non-Markan ending later became ecclesiastically canonical. That is not the ordinary Protestant doctrine that the canonical books consist of the inspired prophetic and apostolic text.

The question “printed or omitted?” therefore conceals the more important alternatives:

1. Printed and received as Mark’s inspired ending.
2. Printed for historical and ecclesiastical reasons but judged secondary.
3. Removed from the main text.

Most modern editions choose the second. TBS has sometimes spoken as though they choose the third. Steele speaks as though the difference between the first and second scarcely matters. Both descriptions fail.

The Evidence for the Longer Ending

The external case for Mark 16:9–20 is formidable.

More than 99 percent of extant Greek manuscripts of Mark copied between the fifth and fifteenth centuries contain the passage. Even Peter Head, arguing against its originality, accepts the force of that numerical fact.⁵ The longer ending is not a late curiosity hovering at the edge of the tradition. It is the stable ending in the overwhelming body of surviving Greek transmission.

The testimony is also ancient. Irenaeus, writing in the second century, expressly attributes Mark 16:19 to the conclusion of Mark’s Gospel:

“Toward the conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says” that the Lord was received into heaven and sat at God’s right hand.⁶

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1. The Greek New Testament: A Reader’s Edition, sample introduction (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2026), <a href="https://shop.die-bibel.de/media/ac/ed/09/1750765508/9783438053114Leseprobe01.pdf.pdf”>https://shop.die-bibel.de/media/ac/ed/09/1750765508/9783438053114Leseprobe01.pdf.pdf. ↩
2. Stephen Steele, “Unpicking a Misleading Meme on Mark 16 (Part 1),” Gentle Reformation, June 23, 2026, https://gentlereformation.com/2026/06/23/unpicking-a-misleading-meme-on-mark-16-part-1/. ↩
3. Peter M. Head, “A Case against the Longer Ending of Mark,” Text & Canon Institute, June 14, 2022, https://textandcanon.org/a-case-against-the-longer-ending-of-mark/. ↩
4. Greek New Testament: A Reader’s Edition, sample introduction. ↩
5. Head, “Case against.” ↩
6. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.10.5, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103310.htm. ↩

That citation predates Sinaiticus and Vaticanus by well over a century. It proves that the longer ending circulated as the conclusion of Mark in a geographically significant stream of the second-century church.

The passage stands in major Greek witnesses such as Alexandrinus, Ephraemi Rescriptus, and Bezae, as well as in the great mass of later copies. It appears widely in the versional tradition and received sustained ecclesiastical use. The critical case must therefore explain how a secondary ending entered the transmission early enough to be known by Irenaeus and broadly enough to become nearly universal in surviving Greek copies.

The layout of Vaticanus adds an unusual feature. Its text of Mark ends at verse 8, but the following column is left blank before Luke begins. It is the only completely blank column in the New Testament portion of that codex. The space does not prove that its scribe accepted verses 9–20, and scholars dispute what inference should be drawn from it. At minimum, the physical layout is consistent with awareness that another ending existed or that something about the ending was unsettled. Vaticanus cannot simply be presented as though its page contains no trace of a problem.⁷

The cumulative argument is therefore stronger than “many late manuscripts.” It includes early patristic recognition, broad Greek transmission, versional support, and longstanding ecclesiastical reception.

The Evidence against It

A fair defense must face the contrary evidence without caricature.

Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are the earliest surviving complete Greek codices of Mark, and both end at verse 8. Codex Bobiensis, the Old Syriac tradition, and early Armenian and Georgian witnesses supply important versional evidence for the shorter form. Eusebius’s discussion of the apparent chronology between Matthew 28:1 and Mark 16:9 reports copies in which Mark’s text ended at verse 8; Jerome transmits similar information. Notes in later manuscripts show that the issue did not begin with modern critics.⁸

The existence of multiple endings also demands explanation. The shorter ending reads like an attempt to relieve the abruptness of “for they were afraid.” Codex Washingtonianus inserts the so-called Freer Logion within the longer ending. Variation around the conclusion is evidence that some transmitters encountered a text ending at verse 8 or judged the existing ending problematic.

Internal objections are not imaginary. Verse 9 begins with a new grammatical subject. Mary Magdalene is identified afresh after appearing in verses 1 and 8. The transition has often been judged abrupt, and several words or constructions are uncommon in Mark. Defenders answer that short sections routinely contain unique vocabulary, that Mark’s style includes abrupt movement, and that the paragraph may function as an independent concluding summary. The internal case cannot be settled by counting unusual words alone.

These are substantial arguments. The Received Text position is not entitled to say that only unbelief could notice them. Its task is to weigh them within the full doctrine and history of the text.

The Exceptional Weight Given to Two Codices

TBS’s sharpest point is not that Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are the only evidence against the ending. They are not. The sharper point is that the modern judgment grants exceptional weight to a narrow early stream despite the passage’s second-century attestation and overwhelming later reception.

The age of a manuscript matters, but age is not identity with the autograph. An early copy can omit text. A later copy can faithfully preserve an ancient reading. The Irenaean citation proves that the longer ending is older than either fourth-century codex, even though it does not by itself prove Markan authorship.

The contrast is especially striking because the modern editions retain the passage for its historic standing while denying it a place in the earliest text. The tradition is too early and too widespread to disappear from the page, yet the adverse witnesses are judged sufficient to remove it from Mark’s authored Gospel.

That is the precise judgment TBS should challenge. “The critical editors print the verses” is no answer to it.

Preservation and Canon

Mark 16 also exposes a theological question too often excluded from the apparatus.

Christ promised that His words would not pass away. The church confessed that the inspired-language Scriptures were kept pure in all ages. If Mark’s inspired ending vanished before the earliest recoverable stage, and the church then received a secondary substitute for most of its history, preservation becomes difficult to state in public and ecclesiastical terms.

Some opponents of the longer ending say Mark intentionally concluded at verse 8. That theory avoids a lost ending but leaves the nearly universal received ending secondary. Others suggest that Mark’s original conclusion disappeared very early. That proposal carries the heavier preservation problem: the inspired wording was lost before the surviving tradition stabilized.

A third position receives verses 9–20 as original, authentic, and canonical while allowing that the final passage may have had a distinct compositional history. Even that formulation must be handled carefully. If “not Mark’s intended ending” is allowed to mean “not part of the inspired Gospel,” the canonical problem returns.

Textual criticism cannot be forbidden from asking hard historical questions. Confessional judgment cannot be forbidden from asking what the proposed history entails for the identity and preservation of the canonical book.

A More Accurate Verdict

Both parties have a correction to make.

TBS should stop saying without qualification that modern Bibles omit Mark 16:9–20. Most print the passage. It should also acknowledge the versional, patristic, and marginal evidence against the longer ending rather than reducing the adverse case to two manuscripts.

Steele should stop treating typographical presence as though it answered canonical rejection. Double brackets formally classify the passage as an early addition, not the earliest text. A Bible can preserve the words for the reader while its editors deny that Mark wrote them.

The evidence should then be stated cumulatively:

Mark 16:9–20 possesses overwhelming Greek transmission, explicit second-century recognition as Mark’s conclusion, broad versional support, and enduring ecclesiastical reception. The contrary case includes two exceptionally early Greek codices, early versional witnesses, patristic reports, multiple endings, and internal difficulties. The Received Text judgment does not rest on percentage alone; it receives the longer ending as the publicly transmitted and canonical conclusion of Mark.

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1. The Greek New Testament: A Reader’s Edition, sample introduction (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2026), <a href="https://shop.die-bibel.de/media/ac/ed/09/1750765508/9783438053114Leseprobe01.pdf.pdf”>https://shop.die-bibel.de/media/ac/ed/09/1750765508/9783438053114Leseprobe01.pdf.pdf. ↩
2. Stephen Steele, “Unpicking a Misleading Meme on Mark 16 (Part 1),” Gentle Reformation, June 23, 2026, https://gentlereformation.com/2026/06/23/unpicking-a-misleading-meme-on-mark-16-part-1/. ↩
3. Peter M. Head, “A Case against the Longer Ending of Mark,” Text & Canon Institute, June 14, 2022, https://textandcanon.org/a-case-against-the-longer-ending-of-mark/. ↩
4. Greek New Testament: A Reader’s Edition, sample introduction. ↩
5. Head, “Case against.” ↩
6. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.10.5, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103310.htm. ↩
7. The feature can be inspected in the Vatican facsimile and is discussed from opposing perspectives in James Snapp Jr., “A Case for the Longer Ending of Mark,” Text & Canon Institute, June 1, 2022, https://textandcanon.org/a-case-for-the-longer-ending-of-mark/, and Head, “Case against.” ↩
8. Head, “Case against”; Steele, “Part 1.” ↩

Steele has corrected a careless verb. He has not dissolved the textual and canonical issue to which the verb was pointing.

Notes

Bibliography

Head, Peter M. “A Case against the Longer Ending of Mark.” Text & Canon Institute. June 14, 2022.

Irenaeus. Against Heresies. Book 3.

Snapp, James, Jr. “A Case for the Longer Ending of Mark.” Text & Canon Institute. June 1, 2022.

Steele, Stephen. “Unpicking a Misleading Meme on Mark 16 (Part 1).” Gentle Reformation. June 23, 2026.

Trinitarian Bible Society. “Mark 16.9–20.” Quarterly Record. 2026, no. 1.