The Long Ending of Mark in the Book of Mormon w/ LDS Discussions – 15

Introduction to the Long Ending of Mark

John Dehlin 0:02 Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. We are in the middle of an amazing series with LDS discussions or my friend. Oh, what neighbor? We're using Mike with my friend Mike from LDS Discussions). We have talked several episodes about the Book of Mormon and now we're kind of knee deep into the Bible and Mormon truth claims. We've covered Adam and Eve, Global Flood, Tower of Babel, and Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Mormon. And today we're going to be talking about a subject I literally know zero about. Literally zero. The topic is the long ending of Mark and the Book of Mormon. And with us today, as always on this amazing, is the host and author and founder of the LDS discussions.com website. We're calling him Mike. Hey, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 0:58 Hey, how's it going, everybody?

John Dehlin 0:59 Thanks for joining us again. This is such a great series.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02 Yeah, like I said, I feel like I say it every time. I hope it's helpful. And we're getting into through the Bible stuff and then, and then I know a lot of people want to hear about the more historical stuff with Mormonism, so we'll be getting there soon. But these are definitely important ones to, to cover to kind of give more of an insight into the, the scriptures of Mormonism.

John Dehlin 1:19 Well, today's going to be a quicker one and so let's just dive right in. We'll, we'll break a record for the shortest episode, the long ending of Mark in the Book of Mormon. Tell. I don't even know what this is, so give us an explanation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33 So this is really cool. This is another one that I did not know about until I was in the middle of the overview project. And it was a Radio Free Mormon podcast where he was talking about, I think it was the backdating prophecy 1. And he mentions this kind of at the end of the, at the episode. And I was kind of like, what is he talking about? And this is really cool. But what it is is that the, the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament has an ending to it that scholars now have pretty much a universal consensus that was that the ending of Mark that we know in the King James Bible was actually a late addition.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:07 And if you see the, if you're watching this, the image on the right says this is from a Bible. And it says the most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have mark chapter 16, verses 9 through 20. And so like we've talked about in some previous episodes about like the Global flood and DNA. This is solid enough to the point where, in this case, Bibles are putting this notation in there. So they still have the verses in, but they're telling the reader of this Bible that these are not part of the early manuscripts and is likely a late edition by a later scribe.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:39 And we'll get into some apologetics from people who disagree and think that this was an original ending. But there are a lot of reasons why scholars can show that these verses were late additions to the Gospel of Mark.

What Is the Long Ending of Mark?

John Dehlin 2:50 Okay, I want to learn. I'm already ready to ask questions, but I know you've got another slide on this. You have a reference or a quote from Bart Ehrman, who is a New Testament scholar who we've had on Mormon Stories, but he is one of the. He knows more than almost anyone in the world about kind of how the Bible, especially the New Testament, was put together. So I guess you're going to read from Bart Ehrman to tell us more about the long ending of Mark.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:14 Yeah. And so Bart Ehrman kind of goes through and talks about the clues that the text gives us to tell us it was not original to the text. And so Bart Ehrman says the evidence that shows that these verses were not original to Mark is similar in kind to that for the story of the woman taken in adultery. It is absent from the two oldest and best manuscripts of Mark's Gospel, along with other important witnesses. The writing style varies from what we find elsewhere in Mark. The transition between this passage and the one preceding it is hard to understand. An example of that is Mary is introduced in verse nine as if she had not been mentioned yet, even though she is discussed in the preceding verses.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:52 And then there's another problem with the Greek that makes that transition even more awkward. And then Bart Ehrman says, and there are a large number of words and phrases in the passage that are not elsewhere found in Mark. In short, the evidence. Evidence is sufficient to. To convince virtually all textual scholars that these verses are a late addition to the Gospel of Mark.

John Dehlin 4:12 Okay. And just to back up a tiny bit, is Bart Ehrman taught on his Mormon Stories episode? We think of the Gospels, especially Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as having been written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John while they were alive. And without really going into it, go back and watch the Bart Ehrman episodes. What we learn is, is that, you know, not only were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but they were written, like, sometimes many generations after the time that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John would have lived. And they contradict each other and conflict in all sorts of ways.

John Dehlin 4:52 And so this is called historical criticism or biblical criticism. And it's a really important approach to help you understand why, why there's so many problems with the Bible and why you need to take almost everything in the Bible with a grain of salt. And if you still want to believe in the Bible, you can. So having said that, to drill a little bit deeper, if I'm understanding you correctly, Mike, we all know what the Gospel of Mark is, but now we're finding out that there's this chunk that was added later that. And, and that's important why? Because it, it calls into question whether it's legitimate. It calls into question whether it's reliable.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:36 So for the purpose of this episode, it's going to relate into how it's going to fill into the Book of Mormon. But to back up to what you said. So for anyone who has not done any research on the New Testament textual scholarship, you know we have the four Gospels, and the earliest written one is Mark. So Mark was written, they believe, about 60, 60, 60 A.D. i believe Matthew and Luke are written after. And so Mark, Matthew and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels. They all fit together. And then John is kind of off in its own little world. They believe that was the last one written.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:10 And so the reason it's important is because one of the things you see in Matthew and Luke in a lot of ways, and one of them actually says, and I think it might be Matthew, they're actually kind of referencing Mark and basically saying we're correcting some of the things that were said there because John Hamer pointed this out, I think, in one of the episodes with you. But he points out that the authors, all of the Gospel writers are anonymous. It's not Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but Matthew and Luke seem to hate the ending of Mark because the ending of Mark doesn't have this grand resurrection story.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:39 And so in a lot of ways, Matthew and Luke are trying to fix that. And then it would appear that, that this was a widespread kind of worry because this Christology evolves after Jesus dies, is crucified. As that evolves, the, the, the Gospels are going to have different meanings to different communities. And so Mark's not going to be written down for 60 years. I think Matthew and Luke are like 75 to 80 or 75 to 90 somewhere in there. And in that time, the Christology is changing and people want that resurrection story in there, and Mark doesn't have it. And so the reason that's important is because using that textual analysis is going to fill in to the Book of Mormon and that's going to be our next slide. And that will kind of answer that question as to why we're talking about this today.

John Dehlin 7:25 Yeah. And just to kind of say one more thing about what you're saying, for those who again, know nothing about historical criticism or the Bible, the New Testament, if you don't look at Matthew, Mark, if you don't look at them as all harmonizing and just filling in holes, respective holes, if you look at them in the sequence in which we know they were written, it's kind of like a fish story, right? The fish grows over time. And in the same way, this is something you just mentioned, people won't know what Christology means if they haven't studied this. What, what you mean, Tell me if I'm right, Mike, what you mean by Christology is that.

John Dehlin 8:04 That the story about who Christ was gets bigger and bigger and more significant the later the account is. And so in the, in the first written gospel, and I don't remember which one it is, Jesus is more just like a wise, you know, more of almost like just a wise rabbi or a really important prophet, not necessarily the son of God sitting on the right hand throne. But. But then the next gospel, the story gets a little bit bigger. Jesus gets more powerful. And by the end, Jesus is what, you know, gospel Jesus is the son of God and. Yeah, I mean, resurrected and dies again and all that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:50 Well, and the resurrections isn't. Isn't all. But what's. What's really cool about the different gospels is you can see a little bit of the evolution of how people perceived them and so might bungle this a little bit. But I think in Mark, Mark's the first one, I believe Jesus isn't really considered a divine being until he's baptized, I think. And then I think in Matthew, it's when he's born and then when you get to John, he's divine from the beginning of. Beginning of everything, you know, and so it just shows that, you know, in the beginning they viewed God or, sorry, they viewed Jesus's divinity a little differently.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:21 Then all of a sudden when you get to John, which John is the least, is not historical really, it's more theological. But in John, Jesus is divine from the creation of the world, whereas in the other ones, it's when he's baptized and then when he's born. And it's why Mark does not have a nativity scene, but Matthew and Luke have a nativity scene. And so Those differences are a lot, have a lot to do with the fact that the communities that these stories are being told to have different developments in their beliefs and also have different needs that they're trying to address with these teachings.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:49 And so that's why there are discrepancies. And as we've mentioned, these are not going to be written down for many decades after Jesus would die. And so imagine a game of telephone that you play on the playground. We have 10 kids. The first kid tells a sentence, and by the time you get to the 10th kid, it's a lot different. Well, these stories are being retold and retold and retold. And so that's why you have the discrepancies, because this is like a game of telephone through different communities, through many decades before they're written down. And so these stories develop in different ways.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:19 And so while there are a lot of similarities, there's also a lot of discrepancies. And that's a problem, especially when you get into issues within. Within Mormonism, because of the fact that Joseph's going to pull these as if they were written contemporaneously and that they're kind of free of problems.

John Dehlin 10:34 Do you have an essay on New Testament scholarship?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:38 I mean, not really. We have. So we've got the long ending of Mark and then we did. Our last episode was on Sermon of the Mountain. So those things kind of, I think, cover a lot of it, but I don't really have one. Just to New Testament stuff, just because for the most part, everything I was doing was kind of looking at it through the lens of Mormonism. But like I said, it's absolutely fascinating and I would recommend anyone who is interested, especially in New Testament. Bart Ehrman has a blog and he, I know he referenced it on the episode with you. It's like, I think it's like Ehrman blog.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:05 Just start Google Bart Ehrman Blog. And it's like $25 a year. He donates all the money to charity, but he puts up like four or five things a week. And I signed up for it a few years ago. I don't read it that often, but it's just amazing because you could search for literally any topic and he will go through what the scholars say. He has people on his blog who disagree with them. And so it's just really cool because you learn all these little tidbits as to why they were writing certain things, like why, you know, I never. I always grew up thinking the Book of Revelations was about the future.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:35 And Then you learn. No, no. The Book of Revelations is about, like, you know, Nero and the Roman Empire. And it's just so cool because it really gives a much better meaning to the texts. It also helps you understand why they were written, when they were written. But on the flip side, it also is going to force you to rethink some of the beliefs that we had, especially when we talk about literalism in the Bible.

John Dehlin 11:56 Yep. And we'll also put a link to some of his books. Is. Is Jesus interrupted? Is that. What. Is that one of his books? So we've got the Triumph of Christianity, misquoting Jesus, reinventing Jesus. We'll put a list to several of his books up there as well. Anyway.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:16 Yep. Yeah. Anyway, so. And that's why this is. And so we go to the next slide. This is why it matters for the Book of Mormon. And so the problem with regards to the Book of Mormon is that language from these verses of Mark, which we now know were attached to the Gospel of Mark by an unidentified scribe, likely a couple hundred years after it was originally written down, appears in the Book of Mormon. And so Mark, chapter 16, verses 17 through 18, which are part of the late edition, says, and these signs shall follow them that believe in my name. They shall cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.

Anachronistic Parallels in the Book of Mormon

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:53 They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. Now this is in Mormon 9. 24 in the book of Mormon. These signs shall follow them that believe in my name. They shall cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. So almost word for word in the Book of Mormon is part of a text in Mark which was not authentic or original to the gospel, which the Book of Mormon people would have no access to anyway. So we have, like, layers upon layers of anachronistic problems here, and that's why this is so important for the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 13:32 Did you read the Mormon verse?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:34 I did.

John Dehlin 13:35 Okay. Okay. All right. So if I'm just. And I. I need to go slowly on this one, because I. I know nothing about this. So we've got the. The two verses in Mark that are considered late editions, and they're appearing almost word for word in Mormon. In the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:54 Yep.

John Dehlin 13:54 Okay. All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:56 And so if you go to the next slide, this will kind of explain. So we've talked about this before, but it's incredibly anachronistic by any definition for the Book of Mormon to have King James wording within its text, because the KGB was not produced until 1611. And then you add to that how anachronistic it is for the Book of Mormon to have New Testament material and a really frequent reliance on it. And it also carries a 19th century Christology, which we talked about, which is a problem because these are supposed to be books of an ancient people who have a 19th century understanding of how we believe about Jesus Christ.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 14:33 And so to think that they would have access to any of this material when Lehi leaves with the brass plates, it makes no sense because he'd have no access to the New Testament, he would have no knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 14:44 Yet in the Book of Mormon, they know all of these things, even though they don't have access to it. And so the long ending of Mark, because it's not an original part of the Gospel, it's kind of like an anachronism on steroids. Because not only is it an anachronistic to have King James language in the Book of Mormon, not only is it an anachronistic to have New Testament material in the Book of Mormon, but now we have New Testament King James material that was not authentic to the original Gospel of Mark, which tells us that Joseph Smith is using a very late script for a text that's purportedly ancient.

John Dehlin 15:17 And again, this is probably coming from the Bible that we know Joseph Smith had, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:22 Yes. And so the phrases match the King James Version pretty much identically as we did the last slide. But, yeah, so he's pulling in, you know, a King James Version, which obviously has issues with the translation and the phrasing, as we've talked about before, then New Testament material which Book of Mormon people could not have accessed, and then to have material that is not authentic to the Gospel of Mark appearing in another ancient text, that's highly problematic because, you know, we'll get into the apologetics. But yeah, it's like an anachronism on top of anachronism on top of a huge one, because it's like, you know, again, we talk about kind of foundational stuff.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:56 This is what is considered to not be a text that would be authentic to the original Gospel of Mark. So how is it in a text that's supposed to be happening in the Americas that they would have never known about? It just. It really illustrates the problems that come from Joseph Smith relying so heavily on the King James Bible because he doesn't necessarily. He wouldn't have known at this time. No one, I don't think, at this time knew that this would be a late addition because they didn't have the, the, the textual, you know, desire to criticize. You know, David Bachboy talks in this episode about how, how the Bible is a privileged text.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:26 And so people didn't criticize it in a textual way until, you know, I don't know exactly when, but so Joseph Smith probably is not going to have access to people who are like, yeah, this is likely a late addition. And so he includes it in the Book of Mormon because he just assumes it's, it's authentic to the text.

John Dehlin 16:40 And also we will refer people to our previous episode, like you say Book of Mormon and the King James Version for an overview as well, Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:50 Yep, definitely. Definitely.

John Dehlin 16:52 And all right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:53 And so we, we talk in a lot of these episodes. Yeah, we talk in these episodes about patterns. And so we've been building on this theme. But the pattern becomes clear that Joseph Smith is completely reliant on both 19th century text and 19th century ideas when producing his Scriptures. And so Joseph Smith is pulling material that would never have been made available to Book of Mormon people that contains the errors of later translations. And worst of all, in some instances, such as the long ending of Mark, texts that would not be authentic to the declared author. So in this case, it's an addition by a later scribe, Deutero Isaiah, which we're going to get into, is where a second person is writing under the name of Isaiah, almost like Pseudepigrapha, and they both make their way into the Book of Mormon, which is a huge problem because now we have patterns where Joseph Smith is not just sometimes pulling in biblical stuff and making errors such as like believing that Adam and Eve is a literal story, the Global Flood's a literal story, but also pulling in text that is not only anachronistic to being in the ancient Americas, but becomes problematic because it's not authentic to the text.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:55 And so you just have all of these layers of problems and then you have it happening over and over again, which is going to tell you that the writer of the Book of Mormon was using very late text and ideas to produce it.

John Dehlin 18:09 Yeah, and again, we have. If you haven't been watching or listening in series, we have a full episode on Deutero Isaiah and the.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:20 Oh, no, our next episode, Isaiah. Yeah, so that's our next one. And it's going to follow some of these. Yeah, it'll follow some of these same problems. And that's why this is so important to cover, because once you start seeing that it happens more than once, it's really hard to just be like, oh, it's just, you know, an error. Or, you know, we'll get to the apologetic responses. But yeah, it's just, it becomes difficult to use these apologetic responses when it keeps happening in different ways that are all tied back to Joseph Smith. Yeah.

John Dehlin 18:44 If God, and this is to our translation episode of God, if Joseph's looking at a stone and, and literally Joseph's reading from it, why isn't God just giving the pure word of Jesus or an independent story that's in just regular English? Why is he happening to channel into the seer stone the text that conveniently is on the Bible that's probably sitting right next to Joseph at the time? It kind of strains credulity that God would work that way if Joseph's reading off a stone.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:16 And that's just it. And, you know, and we're told in the translation episode that the stone doesn't change until the words are read perfect. And so then you have have to say, well, is God giving Joseph Smith a text from Mark that we know is, from a scholarly perspective, not authentic? And it just makes no sense because it would have no place in the Americas regardless. And so that's why you start looking and you go, well, it couldn't have come from, it couldn't have come from God unless God is willing to trick Joseph Smith. And then if it's coming from Joseph Smith, and then you have to answer like, again, because we're trying to tie these back into earlier episodes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:45 In the 116 pages episode, we're told through revelation that God will not allow Joseph Smith basically to be proven false or to be, you know, taken down by Lucy Harris trying to expose him. And yet again and again and again, he puts things in the scriptures that we know now today in 2022 are not correct. And so then you go, well, why is God allowing him to be proven a false prophet 200 years later? Get the 116 pages he puts a stop to immediately. You would think there'd be consistency there. And again, I know calling him a false prophet is going to be hard for a believer, but I am saying that when he makes these claims that these, these texts are from ancient America and we can show they weren't even authentic to the biblical text, that that's a huge problem. That would show that whoever wrote it was pulling from more contemporary sources and not from ancient text.

John Dehlin 20:33 All right, so what is the apologetic response to this? Do they acknowledge that it's a problem?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:38 Not really. So this is from Fair Mormon, but they're heavily leaning off of a Book of Mormon central article. So that's why I'm putting Fair slash Book of Mormon for anyone who's wondering why I'm combining them, it's Fair Mormon kind of using them as their kind of their, their main rebuttal. And so there they say. In recent years, several scholars have argued that the text in Mark 16, 9, 20 is indeed an authentic part of the Gospel of Mark. And I just want to point out you can always find a few scholars who are going to argue for any position, especially in a situation where you're talking about biblical history, because we're going to have a lot of religions that are going to want to fight for that position because of the fact that if it's not historical, you know, it does create some issues as to why it was added.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 21:21 And does that mean that the additions were, you know, late, you know, kind of like late backfitting of stories? And so I, you know, again, to say several scholars have argued it really ignores the fact that the consensus is saying that's not the case. And I think that's really important to note because they're basically saying, let's, let's listen just to these few people and ignore all of the other people who are working off of a lot of. We said with Bart Ehrman's thing, it's not just, you know, there's, there's different reasons. It's the language, it's the fact that there's phrasing that's not authentic. There's, there's issues with the way the Greek is written there versus the original part of Mark.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 21:53 And so they're telling you to ignore all of the evidence we have because there might be a few people who are going against the consensus. And I'm not saying you should always ignore people who are going against the consensus. I'm just saying you shouldn't present it as if that means the problem goes away, because it doesn't. It just means that they're giving plausibility. And we're obviously going to go through that here.

John Dehlin 22:11 Anybody with an understanding of how academics and scholarship and science works will realize that consensus is what you should always go with. You can mention outliers, but it's disingenuous to, number one, not name the several scholars, but to cite anomalies or exceptions within the discipline, especially if they're motivated by, by religious motivations. To, to be exceptions and to ignore overwhelming consensus, it's just, it's just dishonest and they should know better.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:54 Yeah, and I think they do cite one of the scholars, I think. But you know, the point is, like I was saying, you know, you can find some scholars who will tell you that the Book of Abraham is actually on a lost scroll against all the evidence, or you can tell, you can find some scholars in the church who will tell us, you know, that the Book of Abraham, that Joseph Smith got some of it right when, you know, as you had Dr. Robert Riddner on, he was going through those point by point and showing why it's being misused. And so to find several scholars to go against the consensus still doesn't, doesn't necessarily answer the problems that come from the consensus.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:23 And more importantly, they're citing some scholars here. And as we go through these, these few slides on apologetics, I'm going to kind of point out why they're not actually going to solve the problem from Mormonism. They might be trying to, those scholars might be trying to solve the problem for, for a more mainstream Christian view. But Mormonism, just like we, we, we've talked about the Adam and Eve and the Tower of Babel and the Global Flood, they're cementing this down as literal history. And that is when it gets messier than it does for, for more, you know, other Christian religions.

John Dehlin 23:51 Yeah. And with the Book of Abraham, it's not, it's not just that, you know, the overwhelming consensus of scholars view it differently than the BYU scholars. It's that the Book of Abraham is a laughingstock to the entire discipline. It's ridiculous to the entire field of Egyptology and an insult to the discipline of Egyptology outside of byu. And ecologists should acknowledge that sort of thing when they're trying to cite scholarship.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:26 I think when we get to the Book Abraham episodes, we'll talk about that. Just because there's a very interesting way that the churches, two main apologists for the Book Abraham handle Egyptology because when they, when they present peer reviewed paper papers to, you know, the greater community of scholars, it's never about the Book of Abraham. It's about, you know, actual Egyptian things. And then they use those credentials then to push Book Book of Abraham apologetics under the guise of being an expert in Egyptology. And that's where you start to get into kind of using your scholarship to push bad apologetics. And, and, and you see that everywhere, but you have to be aware of it when you're doing this because in this case that we're talking about today, they're.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:03 And we'll go through it, but they're, they're kind of using someone else's argument, just kind of trying to slap it onto Mormonism. But Mormonism has more problems because of the fact that it brings it into another ancient text.

John Dehlin 25:12 Yeah. All right, so now you're asking, was there a longer ending in the original. Is it the Bible manuscript?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:20 Yeah, the original manuscript for Mark and so Fair and Slash Book of Mormon Central will say it is also significant that several scholars who reject Mark 16 verses 9 through 20 as part of the original Gospel of Mark nonetheless believe that the long ending pre existed its attachment to Mark. And again, we're talking about using several scholars to go over the kind of almost unanimous consensus here. But you know, one of the things Dr. Bart Ehrman states, as we mentioned earlier, is some scholars agree with the scribes in thinking that 168 is too abrupt an ending for a gospel. As I indicated, it is not that these scholars believe the final 12 verses in our later manuscripts were the original ending.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:00 They know that's not the case. But they think that possibly the last page of Mark's gospel, one in which Jesus actually did meet the disciples in Galilee, was somehow lost. And then all of our copies of the gospel go back to this one truncated manuscript without the last page. And this is really important because this is saying what Book of Mormon Central and Fair Mormon are saying is some scholars think that there was a longer ending. And my point is this. There might have been a longer ending, but the problem is that is the long ending that ends up in the Book of Mormon. So even if there was an original one that a scribe tried to replace place hundreds of years later, Joseph Smith is still using the replacement.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:35 He's not. No matter how you want to do this, Joseph Smith is still using an added text. So they're basically kind of throwing a little bit of a smokescreen here by saying that some scholars say there was, was a, a longer ending originally. And no one, like Dr. Ehrman says, no one's arguing that what we're saying with Mormonism is Joseph Smith, no matter how you cut it, is still using the ending that is a late addition. And that's the problem. Okay.

John Dehlin 27:00 And I, I'm sorry, I'm just not super smart about this stuff. So Mark has 16 chapters.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:07 Yeah.

John Dehlin 27:08 And we're literally talking about the final verses. So.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:11 Yeah.

John Dehlin 27:11 So the final verses of Mark are. It's, it's an abrupt ending. What. What do you mean?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:17 So if you read mark, chapter 16. It ends basically with them being told, you know, go and tell no one about what you saw. Right. And so it is a very fairly abrupt ending. I'm going to read. I'll read the last few verses. So it would end and it says, you know, they go and they're looking at the tomb. And he says, the guy at the tomb says, he saith unto them, be not a frightened, be not affrighted. Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth which was crucified. He is risen. He is not here. Behold the place where they laid him. But go your way. Tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee, and there shall you see him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:56 And he said unto you. And they went out quickly and fled from the sepulcher. I always say that wrong sepulcher. I always get that mess up. For they trembled and were amazed. Neither said they anything to any man, for they were afraid. End. That's it. So it's a really abrupt ending. Right.

John Dehlin 28:11 And so that's verse eight you just read.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:14 That's where it would end.

John Dehlin 28:15 But it goes through to 20.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:17 So nine. Nine through 20 is what would be a late addition from a scribe. So nine through 20 is. Is the part of Mark that scholars say is a late addition. So that's why some scholars will argue there probably was a longer original manuscript, because it is a really abrupt ending. And that's also why, as John Hamer pointed out, the authors of Matthew and Luke probably hated it because it's so abrupt. It doesn't really give, you know, the real resurrection story.

John Dehlin 28:40 And so, yeah, it's almost like the verse reboots in the middle. I mean, the chapter reboots in the middle of the chapter.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:47 And.

John Dehlin 28:47 And that's why Jesus is saying in 7. I'm sorry, this is all just now coming together for me.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:54 Yeah.

John Dehlin 28:54 Because. Because in 8, he's saying, and they went out quickly and fled from the sepulcher, for they trembled and they were amazed. Neither said they anything to any man, for they're afraid. And then nine says, now, when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:07 Yeah.

John Dehlin 29:09 He appeared first to Mary Magdalene. Okay, I. We're repeating what you said earlier, but now it makes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:15 And when you read it. And that's the thing.

John Dehlin 29:17 Mark 8 is clearly an end. And, and then it's almost like in verse nine, it backs up and. And gives a new. A new ending. And that's just. That's like jarring. I never.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:28 Of course it is.

John Dehlin 29:29 None of us ever noticed this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:30 No. And yeah. And again, that's why, like, Bart Ehrman kind of talked about. We talked about earlier how it's not just the fact that it kind of seems jarring, but the fact that, you know, they took. When they look at the original Greek, there's some issues that tell you that the writer of 9 through 20 is likely a different person because you're using different words that appear nowhere else in Mark. It's like if you're writing a book, you're going to use a lot of patterns and phrases. Kind of like it came to pass or we talked about therefore and wherefore, you know, those things in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:55 And so those clues tell them that this is a second author. And so what Fair Mormon and Book of Mormon central are saying is saying that because it's so abrupt, there are scholars that believe there. There might have been addition to that text that was original that got lost, and so some scribe down the road was trying to replace it to make it more of a fulfilling gospel to readers. The problem is Joseph Smith, no matter. No matter how true that might be, is still going to use the late edition that we have today. And that's the problem for Mormonism, because Joseph Smith is pulling from whether or not there was an original lost ending.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:28 He's still pulling from a late edition. It doesn't really matter if there was an original ending that got lost because we know what Joseph's pulling from.

John Dehlin 30:35 Okay, so I'm going to ask for your forgiveness. But to explain to me one more time why this question of was there a longer ending in the original manuscript? Explain one more time why this is so significant.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:52 So basically what fair Mormon is saying here is to say that there are scholars who believe that there was originally an ending that goes beyond verse eight there. So they're basically saying, so once upon

John Dehlin 31:05 a time, there was something else that came after eight.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:08 Yeah. And, you know, if you think about it, there are. When you talk about documents throughout time, there's gonna be documents where pieces get broken off or lost. And so just picture this being on a scroll or something and this piece getting kind of torn off on accident and lost. And they didn't have tons of scrolls back then, so someone uses it for toilet paper, right? Yeah, I mean, but, you know, it happens. And so what Bart Ehrman is saying in that quote below is to say no one's really, like, there are a lot of people that would freely admit that there might have been a longer ending originally, but it was lost.

Apologetic Responses and Their Problems

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:36 And so because it was lost, we can still tell that what we have today is still a late addition. And so Book of Mormon central and fair Mormon are saying, you don't have to worry about it because some scholars say there was. There originally was a longer ending, but that's missing the point that Joseph Smith is still using the later one either way. So he's still using the inauthentic one. No matter what might have happened to any original long ending of Mark.

John Dehlin 31:58 Okay. All right. But I mean, and just. Just because I'm really thick, it could be that the. The part that shows up first is the older or the newer, and the part that came later is older or newer. Right. Like, we don't know if. If the. The long ending predates or follows. Correct.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:21 Well, the only thing they can tell from the text is to say that the person who wrote 9 through 20 is likely a different author because of the. The different wordings he uses.

John Dehlin 32:31 They're different. It's different.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:32 They're different. And I believe. And now I might be misremembering this a bit, but I believe in 9 through 20 there's also some. Some kind of phrasing that seems to be borrowing from, I think, Matthew as well. And so that's another area where they're kind of saying, like, this is a little bit later of language than Mark was. And so it's not just that this could have been like an ending that maybe got lost and reattach. It's because of the fact that they can show that it almost certainly is a different writer altogether. So then whoever did write the original Gospel of Mark, if there was an original ending, the ending should still kind of match that writing style, the phrasings, because this doesn't.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:09 It tells us that it's a different. A second author in. In the dating. It's not that it's irrelevant. It's just that even if it's dated to. To like 50 years later or 200 years later, it's still going to be a second author and not original to the gospel. And yet Joseph Smith is pulling it into the Book of Mormon as if it would be.

John Dehlin 33:27 Yeah. So it's just kind of weird. We've got this Frankenstein book in the New Testament.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:33 Yeah.

John Dehlin 33:34 So it would make no sense that somehow a book that was Frankensteined together is somehow magically appearing on Joseph's Peepstone.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:43 Exactly.

John Dehlin 33:43 We would expect whatever came through the Peepstone, even if it was somehow miraculously referencing Mark, which makes no sense to begin with. Right. It would do so from a consistent intact manuscript.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:56 Yeah. And so, you know, in theory, if Joseph Smith was. Was channeling an original manuscript of Mark at the end, we wouldn't even know it because we wouldn't have it to compare to. But because he's pulling from the late edition, we can see the phrasing are identical, and that's how you know where he's coming from. Yeah, and so that. That's. That's the problem.

John Dehlin 34:13 Okay. All right. That's weird.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 34:14 Okay, then, Fair Mormon and Book of Mormon central continue and say another important detail to keep in mind is that even among those who reject the authenticity of Mark 16, 9, 20, there is considerable, considerable debate about how the Gospel of Mark originally ended. And again, I just want to point out this is not the problem at all. The problem is that the version that we do have, which is a late edition, is not in the earliest manuscripts yet ends up in the Book of Mormon. That should not have any New Testament material in the first place, let alone what is a later addition to Mark.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 34:46 So this is just, again, a distraction to say we don't know how it originally ended, but that doesn't matter, because even if it ended up in a way that was similar but written completely different, the fact that we have the exact same phrases in the Book of Mormon tells us Joseph Smith was pulling from that late edition. So this is just a smokescreen to keep you from understanding why the problem applies to Mormonism. So they're trying to almost solve a problem for Christianity, except that Joseph Smith expands the issue in the Book of Mormon. And that's what we're trying to figure out here.

John Dehlin 35:12 Yeah, it's like. It's like a red herring or a smokescreen to take you off the scent of the real problem, which is the pattern of how a Mormon apologetics often acts.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:23 Yeah, and that's. I mean, we've been pointing it out. And so it's just, like I said, it's this. This is a shorter episode, obviously, but it's just. It's a problem that's really important because this should not be there. And yet we can kind of see not just the fact that it's there, but also the way the apologetics are working with it, which I think is just as important. And so this is the last part from the Fair Mormon article that I wanted to talk about. And they just say it is important to recognize, however, that even though the English translation of Mormon 9:22 through 24 was possibly influenced by the King James translation of Mark 16, 15, 18, Moroni's source was not the Gospel of Mark Rather, Moroni was drawing on the teachings of Christ recorded among the Nephites.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:02 Thus, the authenticity of the words of Jesus in Mormon 9, 2225 is not ultimately dependent on the authenticity of the long ending of Mark. Indeed, belief in the authenticity of these words and the ending of Mark may or on the other hand benefit from the testimony of the Book of Mormon. And so what they're saying here is almost, it's very circular logic. They're saying the long ending of Mark is true because the Book of Mormon is true. And that's just a really horrible way to look at it. And to argue that the Book of Mormon is not being directly influenced by the King James translation is just ridiculous because to say that Moroni's source is not the King James Bible ignores the fact that we can show directly that Joseph Smith is using the King James Bible throughout the entire Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:45 And so to say possibly there is just a weasel word that is being thrown in to effectively give some, you know, to try to keep, again, keep you off the track of the, of the real problem here. And so on both of these issues, I think they're missing the mark in such a bad way. And as a believer I think you can kind of read it and just kind of go, oh yeah, yeah. But when you take away that layer, it's like, oh, these are horrible apologetics because you're using the Book of Mormon, which we can show as a 19th century text to try to give authenticity to the long ending of Mark, which is just a really bad way to do it.

John Dehlin 37:16 Yeah. And again, we'll reference people to our episode on King James Version in the Book of Mormon and deutero Isaiah. But you know, whether it's the italics that goes from Joseph Smith's Bible into the Book of Mormon or the phraseology or, or plagiarized text or all the Isaiah in Second Nephi or the Deutero Isaiah that shouldn't be there, or the Sermon on a Mount. There's just zero question that Joseph, it is factual that Joseph had his, you know, 17, whatever hundred version of the King James Bible there in the room. He's reading from it and inserting that text into what becomes the Book of Mormon. And anyone who tries to say that he was not doing that, these apologists are really deceiving people. They really are.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:03 It's just, it's just, it's, it's, it's a horrible, it goes against all the evidence we have. And again, we've talked about this in previous episodes, but this idea that you throw out what you don't know in hopes that maybe what we find out is good is just, you wouldn't give the space to any other religion. And so if we want to be consistent, you cannot say that all of these. I mean, the Book of Mormon is screaming that it's taking from the King James Bible. So if you want to say Moroni's source was the teachings of Christ, then you have to argue, why are there errors from the King James Bible if that's not the source?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:32 And that's where obviously their article is going to just completely sidestep that, because it's trying to fix one problem while opening up problems elsewhere. And that's what we keep talking about in these episodes. And that's why going through these things the way we're doing is so important. So that once you start seeing these patterns, both from Joseph Smith and apologetics, then when you get to these things, all of a sudden you'll start. You'll start noticing these things. Before I tell you in these, like, as we do these episodes down the road, you're going to start picking up on them before I go to the next slide and tell you why I think it's a problem, because you're going to be starting to look at it in a more critical way to see the tricks they're doing to try to deflect from these problems and try to make you think they're not going to be an issue for Mormonism, because we found a way to make it work elsewhere.

John Dehlin 39:12 Yeah, this is, this is really bad apologetics. It's, it's, it's up there with, like, maybe when they said horse, they meant taper kind of thing. It's the type of apologetic that has caused so many people to go from questioning the church, to reading Fair Mormon and the Maxwell Institute, to feeling like they're being intentionally misled and deceived through dishonest means, which then makes them want to leave the church. I think it's a fair argument to say that a lot of Mormon apologetics actually accelerates people's disaffection for Mormonism, which, you think, if I hated the Church, I would just want to see fair. You know, I would want to see fair Mormons succeed with their deceptions. But the truth is, I just want people to know the truth and to be able to think clearly. And that's why Fair Mormon just needs to go away, because this is hurting everybody. This stuff's hurting everybody.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:10 It does. And, and that's a good segue into the next one actually kind of talking about the way apologetics work. So, yeah, I have an article on LDSDiscussions.com called Follow the Footnotes on kind of leaning into that, but this isn't in there. But so in the article I've been citing from Book of Mormon Central, they have a footnote and cited as number 13 that claims Moroni source in writing this material was not the Gospel of Mark. And when you should go to the footnote, it's not even a source. It's an editorial note that says it is unreasonable to believe. And there is no evidence that Joseph either opened a Bible to the ending of Mark and read these words or had memorized them and then wove them smoothly into the flow.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:45 The translation of Mormon 9. And this is just a horrible argument because again, yeah, there's no proof. We don't have someone saying Joseph had the Bible open, but textually we have all sorts of proof that Joseph Smith is using the King James Bible. And I will tell you guys, we covered this in the Book of Mormon how the Book of Mormon was composed episode. If you want to see how Joseph Smith was able to weave text together, watch that episode again when we talk about the Parable of the Olive Tree. Joseph Smith absolutely weaves his words from the King James Bible into the text. And in that case, he was weaving two different sources into a text.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:18 And he was doing it in a way that tells us when he kind of lost track of where he was pulling from. So to say that we have no proof or evidence that he did it is just absolutely goes against all the evidence we have. And so, you know, again, I don't know how more we've illustrated this so many times throughout these episodes. And so for Book of Mormon Central to state that as fact, again, it's in a different realm. And it goes from being scholarly to just being trying to, you know, Book of Mormon central has a lot of, you know, they're not my favorite apologists because they do take a lot of liberties with a lot of their material, but it's just, it does not make any sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:53 And then to stick with their reasoning, just for fun, it leaves you with two options. One is that God preserved the gold plates for thousands of years only to give Joseph Smith a revelation from the stone and the hat, which matches the King James Bible with translation errors, italics, and late editions included, which is what they're saying. Or two, Joseph would pull these long phrases and verses as he saw fit, which necessitates the use of the King James Bible. During the composition of the Book of Mormon as many of these long passages are nearly identical as we show above with mark and obviously as we've shown before with errors and italics as well. I mean, there's no other way to do this.

John Dehlin 42:27 Yeah. And I'm just really tired of this there is no evidence argument. They try to do this with polygamy. Brian Hales will say, well, there's no evidence that Joseph Smith had sex with any of his plural wives or any of his underaged wives or any of his wives that were married to other men. I'm like, what do they want, a VHS tape? Do they want like a, do they want video? Like what do they want? And there is evidence. There's all these women after Joseph Smith died who, who, who signed sworn affidavits that they had sex with Joseph in the very deed. There's women who wrote in their journals. And yet apologists want to say there's no evidence. And I just hate this argument of there's no evidence.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:07 Well, I will give. One thing, I will say is Brian Hales will admit that he had sex with them because he actually has an, he runs the Joseph Smith polygamy site. So he does have a page on it. But there are a lot of people who will, a lot of apologists will say there's no proof. And they'll say that the people who

John Dehlin 43:20 are saying he'll say there's no proof of sex with the underage or polyandrus.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:25 Right? Yeah, he will say that. I think, I think there's one polyandrous one where he says it's kind of like you could go, you could, there's some like, what's, I've tried to think of the word like fragmentary possibility. And you know, and we'll get into this with polygamy. You know, there's a lot of implications beyond whether or not he actually had sex with the, the two 14 year old polygamous wives. But you know, I just, I think what we see here is just they'll state these things as fact in these footnotes and it's like it's not a source. And you are going against all evidence to say, to say there's no proof that Joseph Smith didn't use the King James Bible.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:57 Just again, it's special pleading to such a degree that it just, it defies any logic. And it would be space that you would never create for anyone else. Like if you were a professor, if whoever wrote this Book of Mormon central article was a professor and someone was plagiarizing long passages from another book. And he. That professor figured out he or she from Book of Mormon central, they figured it out, and they called the student, and the student looked at him in the eye and they said, you have no proof that I own those books or open them. Do you think that professor's gonna be like, you know what?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:24 You're right, I'm gonna give you an A? Or do you think they're gonna be like, I don't care. These are. There's too many. You know what I mean? Like, you cannot apply this logic one way in with Mormonism and then criticize critics for, you know, or criticize any other person for plagiarism. You lose that moral ground forever. If you're going to make this claim and to do so in a way that doesn't present all of the evidence that tells us the opposite is where I get frustrated. Because at least with what I'm doing on the overviews, I'm giving you the links to this. If you want to read more on what they say, the links are on the website, so nobody who's reading my stuff can go away and say he's hiding it, because I'm literally answering it and putting the links to it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:03 Yet on the flip side, they're putting footnotes to make it look scholarly. And then the footnote itself is just basically saying, you know, a statement of fact, which is just not even within the realm of reasonable thought. And so. And again, I don't want to rant too much about apologetics, but, yeah, this is why it's problem, and this is why you have to follow the footnotes and be careful about what you're perceiving as scholarly references, because sometimes they're just not.

John Dehlin 45:27 No, these are not written. It's just like Richard Bushman once said that Sunday school is not to educate. It's a ritual apologetics. Mormon apologetics is never to find truth. It's to get you to stop thinking or to get you to think there's no problem, or to mislead you, to provide you with false information so you arrive at an accurate conclusions. Yeah, Mormon apologetics is never, never about discerning the truth.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:58 Well, I mean, it's about keeping you in the boat, you know, and so, yeah, I mean, that's just the only

John Dehlin 46:02 way tells you that. All right, so we have. We're done. Let's conclude. What's the concluding slide for this episode?

Summary, Conclusions, and What Comes Next

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:09 So just basically to wrap up, the long ending of Mark is not in the earliest manuscripts. And so while we've mentioned that some scholars debate whether or not there was an original ending. The overwhelming consensus is that whatever ending might have existed is not what we have in the Bible today. And so that is, again, that's the huge differentiation between kind of the apologetic response and what I'm trying to portray is that Joseph Smith, using New Testament materials, anachronistic by itself, but then using text in the Book of Mormon that we know one way or the other, was a late addition.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:40 It kind of elevates that problem to a whole new level. And we've illustrated throughout these overviews that these problems continually point to the author of the Book of Mormon being someone in the 1820s that's relying on a 19th century view of the Bible and Christianity. And those clues and those fingerprints are telling us not just who wrote the Book of Mormon, how they produced it, where they're pulling material from, and how we can date the text in the long ending of Mark obviously is not a modern text. It was added a couple hundred years after the original Gospel of Mark was probably penned down. But the fact is these are fingerprints that tell us whoever wrote the Book of Mormon did not know this kind of biblical scholarship believes it to be literal history.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:17 And so when you add all of the overviews we talked about, we're just in a situation where, as I've said before, not only could the Book of Mormon not have been written before the 1820s, but no one else but Joseph could have written it. And here, this just shows us that it cannot be ancient or historical because it's putting into the words of ancient prophets material that was just simply not authentic to the Bible and would have never been accessible by anyone in the Americas.

John Dehlin 47:42 Yeah, and just think back to the episodes you've already watched. The witnesses to the creation of the Book of Mormon. Think of the tight and loose translation episode. Well, and the Golden Plates episode. We're told that golden plates were preserved and given to Joseph. We're told that he had his stone in a hat and it was telling him word for word, you know, what should be written down to the scribes. And it makes no sense that an imperfect Bible of a specific edition would be channeled through that stone in the hat.

John Dehlin 48:20 If you go with Occam's razor, what makes much more sense is that Joseph had his Bible sitting next to him. And because there was a sheet between him, potentially, or he's on the stairs or whatever, he's accessing that Bible and then reading that. And that's why those passages in the Bible along with the Italics and. And everything else. That's why it's appearing in the Book of Mormon. Yeah. Hawkins Razor. You. You decide. But I, you know, I think you've made a great case here today, so thank you, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:55 Thanks so much.

John Dehlin 48:56 All right, so what's next? What's next, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:00 I'm trying to think what we got next on this list here. We've got, I believe.

John Dehlin 49:03 Yeah, Deutero Isaiah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:04 Yeah, Deutero Isaiah's next. And that one's going to be a good one because it really is a similar issue to this, where we're talking about material that was a later edition that is going to appear in the Book of Mormon when it would have no ability to be in there. And so these are areas where scholars can now date some of these biblical texts. And again, these might not be huge problems for people who have more of a general belief in the Bible because Joseph Smith is going to build off it with the Book of Mormon, it becomes massive problems. And so, as we talked about in our first book, you know, kind of overview with Adam and Eve, these areas of biblical scholarship, a lot of times you might kind of glaze over a bit and be like, why does this matter for Mormonism?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:38 But it actually undercuts the historicity of Mormonism before you even get into any uniquely Mormon things. And that's why they're so important to kind of try to piece out together, you know, kind of topic by topic.

John Dehlin 49:48 Yeah. And I'd have to say, just objectively speaking, every episode we've done so far has. Has been a smoking gun as far as I'm concerned. I've been impressed with every episode that. That was a. Every episode's been a big deal. And as soon as Deutero Isaiah is one of the biggest deals for. For so many people. It's up there with Book of Abraham. And then we immediately are going to start first vision and the priesthood, restoration, the Word of Wisdom, kinder hug plates, changes to Doctrine and Covenants. We've got so many amazing episodes to come, so I'm super excited, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:24 I am, too. It'll be fun.

John Dehlin 50:25 You stay healthy. You know, watch out when you're walking on the sidewalk. Like, you stay healthy and safe, Mike, because we. We want to make it all the way through.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:36 Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me again.

John Dehlin 50:39 All right, thanks so much. Thanks. Bye, everybody. And thanks again to everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast. Again, this episode is. Can be the text for what inspired this episode can be found at LDSDiscussions.com mark we have show notes in the description of this episode as well as time codes. So if you don't like our commentary, you can always go to YouTube, watch on YouTube and then skip to the parts that you want to skip to and skip over our commentary. But many of you have given us the feedback that you want. Commentary, you want analysis, and that's what you're valuing about these episodes.

John Dehlin 51:21 So you continue to give us your feedback@mormonstoriesmail.com you can also comment on YouTube or on Facebook or on the blog. And most importantly, share this stuff with anyone you think might benefit. And most importantly, finally, we, we need your financial support to keep this going. So please go to MormonStories.org click on the Donate button right now and become a monthly donor. And not only will we continue the series with your support, but will provide this series to future generations so that people can have informed consent and engage Mormonism or not at whatever level they want to, having been given all the facts. Thanks everybody. Stay tuned for another episode of Mormon Stories in the coming days, weeks and months.

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