Facebook - context of Mark ending
@[1175837841:2048:Roberto Scrofani] First, let me start with the easier things, so I'll stick with the numbers, but not the sequence. 4) a) The Diatessaron is a Syriac (=Eastern Aramaic) text from...
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Andrej Immanuel Friedemann
Roberto Scrofani
First, let me start with the easier things, so I'll stick with the numbers, but not the sequence.
4)
a) The Diatessaron is a Syriac (=Eastern Aramaic) text from the 2nd century (ca. 165-175AD), and it contains the long ending (See 55:9, source:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/diatessaron.html ). However, although it was complied in the 2nd century, it is based on even older Syriac texts.
b) The text of the Peshitta is also older than the Old Syriac, mainly for three reasons:
- The Peshitta Gospel text was the template for the Diatessaron.
- Many Codices testify to being copied long before the Old Syriac being created - e.g. Khabouris (12th c.) was copied from a very old text during the Persian persecution (ca. 325AD-380AD), a text which itself was most likely copied in the 1st or 2nd century.
- The Old Syriac texts bear the title "Evangelion De-Mepharreshe" (separated Gospels) written atop Matthew and at the end of John in sinaitic Syriac. This text was created as a translation from the Greek by Rabulla (Bishop of Edessa) to replace the earlier Diatessaron in ~430AD, who said: "The presbyters and deacons shall see to it that in all the churches a copy of the Evangelion de Mepharreshe shall be available and read." (Zahn, Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons, i. (1881), p. 105). So we know the late origin of the OS Palimpset, and it cannot possibly be the earliest Aramaic Gospel text.
- The Peshitta, without the Diatessaron or the Old Syriac, was more wide spread than the Greek in the 9th to 14th century.
c) The OS texts were considered of such bad quality, and so unimportant, that they were overwritten without prejudice. They were only in use as long as Rabullah was alive.
-> 99.99% of all Syriac texts do not contain the ending, and the ones that do are very late translations from the Greek (made by Rabulla).
d) The Armenian Bible was first translated from the Syriac Peshitta (both OT and NT), but later, there were many revisions, most of which were based on the Greek text. This means after the initial translation, there have been *many* other attempts of compiling an NT. This is admitted by the Armenian church, and part of their history.
e) Pretty much the same is true for the Old Latin text, which has ancient readings as well as later edits, and imports of Greek variants.
f) The Ethiopic text, while based on Egyptian minority texts (just like Vaticanus), is yet a distinct text type more original than Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. If despite its dependence on the Alexandrinian text, it contains the longer ending, as it did not rely on the late 4th minority century texts, which were heavily edited in Egypt. It is no wonder they also added the short reading, as they liked to collect the texts like this.
-> Virtually all tradition is on the side of the Long Ending, which was the original version in Syriac (Aramaic), Armenian, Ethiopic, Greek, and very likely also Latin and others. In addition, the vast majority of NT texts in all languages contains the longer ending.
Therefore, an honest look at the most earliest versions of the NT reveals the long ending of Mark is present everywhere in tradition. The Long Ending is found in 99% of non-Greek texts apart of the Armenian, and in 99% of the Greek texts.
