I’m sure you remember the song, “Clementine.” Who could forget that chorus: “Oh, my darling. Oh, my darling. Oh, my darling Clementine. You are lost and gone forever. Dreadful sorry, Clementine.” Of course, you remember it. It is one of the top 100 western songs of all time—all time! “In a cavern, in a canyon; excavating for a mine, dwelt a miner, a forty-niner, and his daughter, Clementine.” Huckleberry Hound introduced the song to me (the Huckleberry Hound Show also introduced us to Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo!). “Light she was and like a feather, and her shoes were number nine. Herring boxes without topses, sandals were for Clementine.” It was those size-nine feet in sandals that did Clementine in. One morning, she got a splinter in her toe (if only she had footwear that had topses!), tripped, fell into the river, and drowned. “Ruby lips above the water, blowing bubbles soft and fine. But Alas! I was no swimmer, so I lost my Clementine.” Now, originally the song was a serious lament; but at some point, people started adding verses, and it all became rather silly. Verse five leads the way in this regard: “How I missed her; how I missed her; how I missed my Clementine. So, I kissed her little sister and forgot my Clementine. Dreadful sorry, Clementine.” Here’s the point to all of this: Sometimes things are lost are gone forever; and sometimes they’re gone, but some traces of them are found elsewhere. You just need to know where to look. And here’s the real kicker: That’s not just true about western romances. That’s also true about the ending to Mark’s gospel.
Mark’s ending is a puzzle. It just doesn’t seem right. Every other gospel has a resurrection story that is incredibly moving and glorious. We really can’t say that about Mark’s ending which reads (16:8): “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” Let’s face it: That’s not an ending anyone would expect or, frankly, want, but it is what we have. Scholars have proposed four options for what to do with this ending. First, scholars in the early church decided that they needed to “fix” Mark’s ending. They did this by providing an “extended version” on to the ending. However, it is quite clear that verses 9-20 are not original. They don’t feel, sound or look like Mark; and the theology present in this section is questionable, at best. It is clearly someone inserting material from elsewhere back onto Mark. My advice: Ignore the “extended version.” It has no authority or authenticity.
Option two is unsettling at first, but it grows on you. Maybe verse 8 is Mark’s intended ending. Maybe Mark wanted to force his readers to come to their own conclusions about who Jesus was and felt the best way to do so was to leave them hanging. Mark gives us everything we need. He provides a firm nudge toward seeing Jesus as the risen Lord, but he doesn’t drive us there. He wants us to decide for ourselves. Plus, it should not surprise us that Mark ends emphasizing discipleship failure. Throughout his book, he has shown us how the disciples failed to grasp the truth that was right in front of them. Now, he didn’t do this because he had an axe to grind with the disciples, but so that we would be brought to the point of decision and choose for ourselves what we were going to do with Jesus. Mark’s startling ending is a call for us to make up our own mind about Jesus. And it works beautifully.
And yet, there are problems with this view. Mark 16:7 seems to be an antecedent looking for a conclusion. Mark writes:
“But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee.
There you will see him, just as he told you.’”
As the reader, wouldn’t you expect something to come that would resolve this? Of course, you would. The command to go to Galilee suggests more to come than what verse 8 delivers. And there is no way to deny that there is a contradiction begging to be resolved between verses 7 and 8. Verse 7 commands these women to go and tell the disciples, but verse 8 has them saying nothing to anyone. The easiest way to resolve that dichotomy is to posit a verse 9 that would show that the women’s silence was only temporary and that they ignored talking with anyone along the way because they could not wait to get back and tell the disciples. But such a verse 9 is missing. On a macro level, the whole gospel has been preparing us for a victorious ending where Jesus is proclaimed as the promised Messiah and Lord, but what we have today in Mark’s gospel fails to do so. And while we, today, appreciate Mark’s dramatic, unexpected conclusion, in Mark’s day, such an ending would have violated the rules of ancient storytelling. Today, we enjoy a shock ending (e.g., The Sopranos), but in the ancient world, such an idea was unthinkable. Every story needed to end on a positive note. And that leaves us wondering where that positive note is. And that leads us to our third option; and while it may sound unsettling at first, it has a lot of merit.
Option three: Mark’s original ending is lost and is gone forever. Consider this the Clementine option. In this view, very early on in its transmission, Mark’s original ending was lost. How this happened, no one knows. It has been suggested that the last leaf of Mark’s text may have been accidentally torn off or damaged. In this case, we would have to insist that Mark wrote his gospel on a codex (a many-paged book) and not on a scroll. Or perhaps, Mark’s full ending was separated from the rest of the gospel for a legitimate reason, but never found its way back home. Bottom line: We don’t know what happened, but it is clear that something did, leaving us with a gospel without its proper ending. And yet, this seems strange. Had the break come in the middle of a sentence (“Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and…”), it would more plausible. But coming at a perfect spot at the end of a sentence makes this option, far less likely in my opinion. And yet, we all get it. Errors in copying occur easily and frequently. If you don’t believe me, give it a try. Take the gospel of Mark, and try to copy it word for word without skipping a word, duplicating a word, jumping a line or inserting words that you feel ought to come next. It is really hard. And, if Mark 16 originally had ten verses, we could envision a situation where those last two verses were accidentally omitted. In short, it is sad, but possible and, maybe in this case, likely. Somehow, Mark’s original ending was lost. Hence, the reason we sing: “Oh, Mark’s ending, oh, Mark’s ending, oh, Mark’s ending, you are lost. You are lost and gone forever. Dreadful sorry, where’s the end?”
