Shiner draws on his experience of performing the Gospel of Mark to make this comment about the ending of Mark (16:8) that has perplexed many readers.
Mark does not want us to feel comfortable with the closure. Mark shows his brilliance by drawing us to participate in the amazed befuddlement of the women by deliberately confusing us. The closing lines overcome us with a sudden emotional shift.
What kind of ending is that? We do not grasp the resurrection if we are not shocked. We have heard the story too often to be shocked by the empty tomb. I never stop being shocked by the fleeing women. After all, the impertinent young man gave us the order. I am prepared to go and tell someone. I am totally identified with the woman and then they run off like fools. I have the rug pulled out form under me. Just like the women. For a while I am not sure what to say either. I am still waiting for a real ending. Mark is already sitting in the audience with the rest of us.
Whitney Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel: First-Century Performance of Mark (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003), 189.
This description fits with Fowler’s assessment of ambiguity and says that one of the functions of this type of ambiguity is to achieve an affective response.
Regarding the ending of Mark: all sorts of reasons have been proposed to explain why Mark intentionally stopped writing at 16:8 — and that’s part of the problem with that theory. If scholars were told that Mark intented to stop at the end of 15:47, or 16:5, or 16:7, they would invent exactly the same reasons. To put it another way: all these reasons are preservative. They do not naturally flow from the evidence, which indicates a non-intentional stop.
And if Mark stopped his Gospel-account at EFOBOUNTO GAR non-intentionally, and his colleagues at Rome, perceiving that the text was not complete, attached another short text to it before releasing the Gospel of Mark for church-use, then by normal standards, Mark 16:9-20 is part of the original text, just as other passages in the Bible (Proverbs 30, 31, Jer. 52, many psalms, etc.) are original even though they were not attached by the primary human author of the book in which they are found.
For a more detailed explanation of this theory, and a detailed survey of the early and widespread external evidence that supports Mark 16:9-20 (with corrections of some of Metzger’s influential and frequently repeated claims), write to me for a free digital copy of my research on this subject.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
Minister, Curtisville Christian Church
Indiana