The Disputed Longer Ending of Mark and the Pericope of the Adulteress

The evidence explained

The two oldest and generally most highly regarded Greek manuscripts of Mark's gospel, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, both end at Mark 16:8, with the women fleeing the empty tomb in fear, and without any resurrection appearance narrated directly in Mark's own text. The familiar longer ending found in most printed Bibles, Mark 16:9-20, describing appearances to Mary Magdalene and others, the great commission, and a set of sign-gifts, is absent from these earliest witnesses and is written in a Greek style noticeably different from the rest of Mark, using vocabulary uncharacteristic of the author elsewhere in the gospel.

Similarly, the story of the woman caught in adultery, John 7:53-8:11, is absent from the earliest papyri of John, including P66 and P75, and from Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, and appears in different locations in different manuscript families where it does appear, sometimes attached to Luke's gospel instead. Its vocabulary and style also differ from the surrounding Johannine material, leading nearly all textual critics, across confessional lines, to conclude it was not part of the original text of John, whatever independent historical value the underlying story about Jesus may or may not have.

These two passages are commonly used in textbooks, including Metzger and Ehrman's The Text of the New Testament, as clear teaching examples of how textual criticism identifies secondary additions: through the combined weight of the earliest and most geographically diverse manuscripts lacking the passage, internal stylistic evidence, and the pattern of the passage appearing in inconsistent locations across the later manuscript tradition, which is itself a sign of a floating tradition being inserted at different points by different scribes rather than an original, stable part of the text.

Most modern critical editions, including the Nestle-Aland text used as the basis for nearly all contemporary translations, mark these passages with brackets or notes explaining the manuscript evidence, and most modern English translations, including the NRSV, NIV, and ESV, include explanatory footnotes rather than silently presenting the passages as original, reflecting the near-unanimous judgment of the discipline.

There remains a live theological question, distinct from the textual-critical question, about whether either passage nonetheless preserves an authentic early tradition about Jesus that simply was not part of the original written text of Mark or John; some scholars regard the adulteress story in particular as possibly reflecting genuine early oral tradition later inserted into John, a question textual criticism alone cannot settle since it concerns origin and authenticity of content rather than manuscript placement.