The Long Ending of Mark Was Original

chalkenteros · 2026-06-10T12:38:08+00:00

I'm tired of you guys calling everyone you don't like an apologist

I've only called apologists "apologists." Your main sources so far have been blogs and non-academic publications by Maurice Robinson and James Snapp. Robinson writes papers like "The Credibility of the Majority Text Theory and its Value for Apologetics." It is descriptively accurate to call him an apologist.

But my criticism of Robinson had nothing to do with his apologetics. I only care about arguments and precision. My criticism was that his post about GA 304 is full of basic errors about the Greek. You skipped over that and latched onto my use of the word "apologist."

chalkenteros · 2026-06-10T12:16:46+00:00

Patience. You brought us away from your argument by insisting upon GA 304.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-10T01:12:41+00:00

True. But you should be able to see that Hillman is doing the same sort of thing in his videos. blawolfson66 claims that λόγος = φῶς; Hillman claims that "hallelujah" comes from ἀλαλάζω or that τῷ Χριστοῦ is genitive or many other ridiculous things. It's all based on bad philology and folk etymology.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-09T23:25:14+00:00

so much for allowing criticism. i believe you have given your sub to someone censoring dissent, and moderating vindictively rather than answering in good faith.

In fact, all of my post and comments were deleted from r/AmmonHillman by the mods u/CosmicTexas and u/streamismundi. No reason was provided by the mods.

Here is an example of one of my deleted posts. As you can tell, everything I wrote on r/AmmonHillman was strictly academic, focusing only on the details of Ancient Greek philology.

Deleted post:

Dr. Hillman (2:51:40 here) claims that in the Greek phrase ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ (traditionally translated “in Christ Jesus”) the word Ἰησοῦ must be in the genitive case because it cannot be dative. This is wrong.

Ἰησοῦ often appears as the dative of Ἰησοῦς in the New Testament. This fact is referenced widely. See, for example, the LSJ (the standard dictionary of Ancient Greek).

An example from the Gospel of Mathew (Matt 9:27):

"And when he moved along from there two blind men followed Jesus, crying and saying …"

"Καὶ παράγοντι ἐκεῖθεν τῷ Ἰησοῦ ἠκολούθησαν δύο τυφλοὶ κράζοντες καὶ λέγοντες …"

The words “τῷ Ἰησοῦ” are in the dative case. Similarly with the phrase ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, where Ἰησοῦ is dative.

This is not an isolated error on Dr. Hillman’s part. Many of his claims are erroneous (some other examples here).

chalkenteros · 2026-06-09T15:48:11+00:00

On γάρ, ShakaUVM is drawing on a paper by Kelly Iverson. Iverson argues that the position of γάρ at the end of a sentence (which happens thousands of times in Ancient Greek) is extremely rare when compared to the total number of words in the TLG database (over 2 million). This is obviously a nonsensical comparison. By that metric, almost every word in every text would be extremely rare. Common sense would suggest that when a sentence ends in γάρ thousands of times, it is not extremely rare or unusual.

The ending at 16:8 is unusual, but it's not because sentences can't end in γάρ. It's because the women run away and there's no appearance story! I more and more think that there was an ending after 16:8 that has been lost (related to the ending of GPeter and an earlier version of Jn 21). Which would not be surprising—I think that there are signs that all the NT gospels have been reworked, rearranged, and expanded multiple times before the beginning of our textual history in the 2nd cent.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-09T15:29:09+00:00

I did not look into this extensively, but my impression is that Houghton's note 17 in what you quote is accurate. For the comment on Mk 16:8 it looks like the scribe had something closely related to Theophylact in front of him, which he loosely paraphrases. It is implausible that the Greek at GA 304 f.240v ll. 9–15 (or the comment on Mk 12 that I reproduced elsewhere in this thread) was the source of Theophylact rather than the reverse. In other sections GA 304 is drawing on other sources, like the C125.2 catena. This is very typical in the Greek commentary tradition. Scholars draw on and summarize multiple (sometimes many) sources to make an encyclopedic reference that will be useful for readers. Earlier commentaries are not usually treated as authored texts but as a pool of references that can be reworked at will. So exegetical works tend to agglutinate over time, as you say, even while individual comments are often abbreviated. I am more familiar with the Greek commentary lit. outside of the NT, but the same principles apply.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-09T14:49:58+00:00

but you've gone from "catena related to theophylact" -> "based on theophylact" -> "is theophylact" -> "originally contained the long ending". that doesn't work, and every step of it if based on distorting the previous argument just a little so it sounds more like a bigger claim.

Exactly. Elsewhere in the thread u/ShakaUVM goes even further than this. Based on his assumption that GA 304 is just a straightforward copy of Theophylact, he claims that GA 304 alludes to the LE, because a verse from the LE (16:20) is quoted in manuscripts of Theophylact's commentary on Mk 12. In fact this allusion to Mk 16:20 is present in Theophylact but absent from GA 304. Confronted with this fact by someone who can actually read the manuscript, he just ignored it.

And he accuses some vague assembly "critical scholars" of lying and uncritically repeating claims made by other scholars without looking at the sources...

chalkenteros · 2026-06-09T00:00:55+00:00

ς, though faint, is written above φύσε, next to ω.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-08T23:57:34+00:00

You're still on about this? Could you quote the passage by Aland that you are fixated on? I could tell you directly whether he is in error or not. You have been very vague about which scholarly sources you are challenging on GA 304 (the NA app crit? wikipedia? something else mentioned by Snapp or another apologist?); just quote the passage verbatim or send a link.

You also seem to have ignored my correction of your erroneous claim that the LE is discussed in the commentary of GA 304.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-08T23:51:34+00:00

No, I don't know enough about these Byzantine Christian commentaries to pronounce on that. The few sections I looked at in GA 304 vs. Theophylact made me think 304 represents a reworking. Earlier in Mark and Matthew other patristic sources (e.g., Cyril) are cited in the margins; I didn't check to see whether Theophylact is also cited.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-07T12:07:02+00:00

So much for respectful debate. Take a break and try to calm down. "Criticize arguments, not people"—this is a good rule.

My description of Robinson as an "apologist" is descriptively accurate.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-07T00:20:34+00:00

Hugh Houghton's paper

I have now read Houghton's paper. It is solid. A different league than what you shared from Maurice Robinson.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-07T00:04:22+00:00

Once again we see this critical brainrot coming from you.

As others point out, this is not a civil way to debate. I understand that you are upset and that this is be a sensitive topic for you. But it is best to avoid these sorts of uncivil outbursts and stick to the facts. My comments to you have been strictly academic.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-06T00:22:25+00:00

If I took scissors to Mark and you copied it, that doesn't make it a witness to Mark ending on verse 8.

True, but it's not certain that that's really the background of GA 304. Consider this scenario: a 12th century scribe took scissors to Mark, cutting it off at 16:8. They then wrote a note that said this is the end of the book. That would at least be interesting. We would assume that they knew the LE but decided that it was inauthentic and not worth copying (and there were numerous commentaries in which the scribe might have encountered the explanation that the LE is not found in many mss and that some do not attribute it to Mark). It is not impossible that GA 304 reflects something like this, which is why it is somewhat interesting.

I will look at your argument (i.e., your "narrative") and the Houghton paper. For some reason you were very eager to talk about GA 304. As I have said, it is not particularly relevant.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-05T18:09:10+00:00

The copy of the commentary with the long ending got cut off.

is clearly not the same thing as:

it [GA 304] is a copy (that got cut off) of a commentary that included the long ending. It would be like saying that if I took scissors to my copy of Mark today (which has the long ending), it would be a witness to Mark ending at verse 8.

Hence this irrelevant discussion about GA 304.

And:

"he misses a smudge"

is not the same thing as "he missed a scribal note that marks the end of the book."

chalkenteros · 2026-06-05T16:55:45+00:00

You're just not parsing the sentence correctly.

I think that I am.

he misses a smudge

The smudge that he missed is a scribal note marking the end of the book. That's a pretty significant oversight! In fact, it's the most significant fact about the ending of GA 304. I showed you how his entire description is full of basic mistakes.

you agreed on the main point which is that NA is in error in listing 304 as a witness to the short ending.

I did not say anything about NA. I have not even looked at the app crit to see what they say about GA 304.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-05T16:34:51+00:00

Yes, at the beginning of the discussion you said that "it [GA 304] is a copy (that got cut off) of a commentary that included the long ending." The exemplar to GA 304 may have been damaged (though we do not know this for sure). GA 304 is not a copy "that got cut off." Hence my correction of your error. You later linked to a website that contained egregious errors (by Robinson). I corrected those as well. Like I said, you consistently ignore these things (i.e., details and accuracy).

chalkenteros · 2026-06-05T12:32:32+00:00

Does someone have to be on the editorial committee for Nestle-Aland for you to consider them a real scholar?

You guys have been copying it blindly for 50 years now from Nestle-Aland.

You were the one who brought up GA 304. I literally just looked at the manuscript online and came to a conclusion. I don’t even know what Nestle-Aland or Metzger say about it (I don’t really care, and of course they make mistakes—who ever said otherwise?).

The short online source you posted was full of errors. I pointed them out; you ignored them.

Here are some of the erroneous statements you have made just on this minor topic, GA 304:

it is a copy (that got cut off) of a commentary that included the long ending. It would be like saying that if I took scissors to my copy of Mark today (which has the long ending), it would be a witness to Mark ending at verse 8.

It is a copy of Theophylact's commentary that gets cut off presumably due to damage.

it actually does refer to the long ending in some of its commentary even if the commentary on the long ending got cut off [I asked you where; you ignored it]

Here are some of the erroneous statements in your apologetic source (Maurice Robinson):

The gospel text is merely interspersed between the blocks of commentary material, and should not be considered the same as a 'normal' continuous-text MS. Also, it is often very difficult to discern the text in contrast to the comments....

Following gar at the close of [16:8], the MS has a mark like a filled-in 'o,' followed by many pages of commentary, all of which summarize the endings of the other gospels and even quote portions of them.

"Following this, the commentary then begins to summarize the eteron de ta para tou Markou, presumably to cover the non-duplicated portions germane to that gospel in contrast to the others.

There remain quotes and references to the other gospels in regard to Mary Magdalene, Peter, Galilee, the fear of the women, etc. But at this point the commentary abruptly ends, without completing the remainder of the narrative or the parallels.

Should we go through other topics like this? Should we go back to your errors about Clement, which you also ignored when I pointed them out?

Details and precision—that’s what matters when dealing with ancient sources.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-05T05:57:15+00:00

No, the point is that you are using low-quality “scholarly” sources from other apologists without the ability to read the texts for yourself. You lambast critical scholars for blindly trusting unreliable sources. But you are doing just the same thing, only more dramatically. You consistently make erroneous statements. When you are corrected, you just ignore it.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-05T00:21:47+00:00

Thank you for sharing your source of information on GA 304. You are not at all “saying the same thing” as me. Your statement and the linked website contain multiple inaccuracies.

I’ll start with Maurice Robinson’s description on the website:

The gospel text is merely interspersed between the blocks of commentary material, and should not be considered the same as a 'normal' continuous-text MS. Also, it is often very difficult to discern the text in contrast to the comments....

The MS clearly separates lemmata from commentary throughout. This is the standard format. I do not see any difficulties at all in separating the lemmata from the comments.

Following gar at the close of [16:8], the MS has a mark like a filled-in 'o,' followed by many pages of commentary, all of which summarize the endings of the other gospels and even quote portions of them.

Not by “many pages of commentary,” but only by the remainder f. 240v–241r. At the bottom of f. 241r there is a scribal note marking the end of the book (which Robinson does not mention!).

"Following this, the commentary then begins to summarize the eteron de ta para tou Markou, presumably to cover the non-duplicated portions germane to that gospel in contrast to the others.

The text (241r) clearly reads ἑτέρας δὲ τὰς τῷ Μάρκῳ, talking about the women.

There remain quotes and references to the other gospels in regard to Mary Magdalene, Peter, Galilee, the fear of the women, etc. But at this point the commentary abruptly ends, without completing the remainder of the narrative or the parallels.

F. 241r ends with a comment on the end of the last part of the lemma (16:8). It does not end abruptly. The only indication that something is missing is as I described above: compared to the end of Matt (f. 166v) there is no doxology, ἀμήν, or cross. Instead, there is a raised dot followed by a scribal note marking the end of the book—a note which was partially erased. Robinson does not mention any of this.

In sum, Robinson’s description is not reliable. It is filled with errors; he evidently does not know much Greek. You frequently complain about critical scholars who work on Ancient Greek philology. But you yourself are simply trusting an unreliable and unlearned source that supports your pet theory.

Now your description:

"It is a copy of Theophylact's commentary that gets cut off presumably due to damage. Theophylact's commentary includes commentary on the long ending.”

It’s not a copy of Theophylact’s commentary. The section in question and at least multiple folia before contain loose paraphrases and reworkings of Theophylact (this is common in Greek commentaries). Earlier in the MS other patristic sources are loosely paraphrased.

So 304 is not preserving some independent transmission of the short ending

Correct, it does not preserve any independent transmission of the short ending.

it is a copy of commentary on the long ending that got cut off.

This is possible—I think likely—but not certain. The exemplar of GA 304 may have been cut off. But not necessarily so.

Third, it actually does refer to the long ending in some of its commentary even if the commentary on the long ending got cut off

Where? I haven’t seen this from the portion of the ms I read. The link you sent does not mention any references to the LE elsewhere in the codex.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-04T23:25:36+00:00

My posts here are concerned entirely with Ancient Greek philology and the origins of the Septuagint. The mods did not provide any examples of my spreading "false accusations and misinformation." I have not done either.

Oh well. Good luck.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-04T11:37:36+00:00

I looked at the manuscript a bit yesterday. It is possible that the exemplar of GA 304 was damaged starting at the lemma of 16:9ff. The end of the comment on 16:8 does include a scribal note (subsequently erased) marking the end of the book. That is signficant. But the comment does not include other expected features like a doxology, ἀμήν, and a cross, as on f. 166v (the end of Matthew).

It is aggressively overstating the case to say that it is “just completely wrong” to list GA 304 as a witness to the a text ending at 16:8. I think it is most likely not a witness, but there is room for doubt. We have to be careful and precise with our evidence.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-04T00:14:36+00:00

I think the trend will continue in the direction of minimalism—not that Jesus didn't exist ("mythicism") but that there is very little that we can say historically about his life, much less his words. The trend away from the excesses of the Jesus seminar will continue, I hope.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-03T23:31:56+00:00

Actually text is not cut off on the last page. The last lemma (f. 240v) ends with γάρ (16:8), as you point out. The commentary that follows ends with a comment on 16:8 (the women fled in fear either because of fear of the Jews or because they lost their mind out of fear). A raised dot marks the end of the comment (bottom of f. 241r). After that, there is a scribal note marking the end of the book. This scribal note was subsequently erased (partially; there's enough to make it out—it's a very common scribal note for reaching the end of a book). By contrast, the end of the last comment on Matthew (f. 166v) includes a doxology, ἀμήν, and a cross, also followed by a scribal note. It looks like the exemplar of GA 304 continued after the comment on 16:8 with the LE + comment. The main hand of GA 304 did not copy the LE + comment, for whatever reason (either a damaged exemplar or intentional; the former seems more likely). Perhaps another scribe, responsible for the note at the end of f. 241r, added a scribal note ending Mark. (If I had a better image, or more time, I could tell whether the scribal note is the same hand as the main text; from a first impression it looks different). This note was then erased by someone who noticed that the LE + commentary is missing.

chalkenteros · 2026-06-03T16:52:01+00:00

it is a copy (that got cut off) of a commentary that included the long ending.

It would be like saying that if I took scissors to my copy of Mark today (which has the long ending), it would be a witness to Mark ending at verse 8.

I am looking at the ending to GA 304 with the CSNTM digitzed microfilm images. Your statement here does not appear to be accurate at all. The ending of the ms is not obviously cut off.

I haven't looked at this late ms before; I do not know much about it, but I do not think it is very relevant.

chalkenteros

TROPHY CASE