Mark 16:9-20 — The Textual Question¶

The text. "And he said to them, 'Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.'" (Mark 16:15-18, ESV)

The setting: the textual question first¶

The first thing to be said about Mark 16:9-20 is that it is very probably not Mark's.

The ending is absent from Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, the two great fourth-century Bibles, and from the Old Latin codex Bobiensis, the Sinaitic Syriac, most Armenian manuscripts, and the oldest Georgian. It stands in the great majority of later Greek copies and in the Vulgate and the Peshitta — which is why it is familiar to anyone who has read a pew Bible.

The fathers are uneven. Irenaeus, around 180, quotes verse 19 as Mark's, and Tatian's harmony contains the ending; but Eusebius knew of copies that lacked it, and Jerome said almost all the Greek manuscripts he had seen ended at verse 8.

Most scholars judge the ending a second-century composition; the earliest recoverable Mark ends at 16:8, "for they were afraid." The ESV prints 16:9-20 in double brackets, and the Nestle-Aland and UBS editions bracket it. A continuationist who needs this passage has built on sand, and this page does not need it.

The cessationist reading¶

The cessationist makes two moves, and they should be separated. The first is textual: the ending is not Mark's, so it cannot be quoted as dominical teaching, and a doctrine that depends on it has no foundation. This is, in the main, correct.

The second is theological: even if the ending is genuine, the signs were the credentials of the founding mission. "Those who believe" means the generation that saw the risen Lord; the signs accompanied the apostles while the gospel was planted, and when the plant was established the scaffolding came down.

Notice what that needs: "those who believe" must mean "the apostles and their companions," though the phrase is not so limited; the commission must expire, though it is "to the whole creation"; and the signs must be credentials, though verse 20 says the Lord confirmed "the message," not an office. The textual move is a judgement about a manuscript; the theological move is an inference about history.

The problems¶

1. The textual doubt cuts both ways¶

A disputed verse cannot carry a doctrine in either direction. If the ending is not Mark's, it cannot be quoted to prove that signs continue, and it cannot be quoted to prove that they have ceased. It contains no "until," no "when the canon is complete," no terminus at all. The objection can remove a witness; it cannot supply an argument for the other side.

2. Even a second-century ending is a witness¶

Suppose the majority judgement is right. What follows is not that the church had stopped expecting the signs, but that it had not. Whoever wrote these verses wrote them because he believed the risen Lord had promised exactly this, and because the church he knew was casting out demons, speaking in tongues, and laying hands on the sick. Verse 18 is a list of practices, not of doctrines. By the second century the apostolic generation was dead; if the gifts had died with it, no one would have invented a commission that promised them.

3. The promise is attached to "those who believe"¶

Hoi pisteusantes — "the ones who have believed" — is an aorist participle with no qualifier in the sentence. It is not "the apostles," not "those who saw me," not "the Twelve." The commission it accompanies is "to the whole creation," and Matthew's parallel runs "to the end of the age" (28:20). If the promise were tied to the founding office, the mission would be tied to it too, and the church would have stopped evangelising when the last apostle died. It did not. The signs are attached to faith, not to ordination.

4. The list is the church's actual life¶

The list is not strange; it matches the contents of Acts. Demons are cast out at Samaria, Philippi, and Ephesus (Acts 8:7; 16:18; 19:12); tongues are spoken at Jerusalem, Caesarea, and Ephesus (2:4; 10:46; 19:6) and regulated at Corinth (1 Corinthians 12-14); the sick are healed through Peter, Paul, and ordinary elders (Acts 3:6-8; 5:15-16; 28:8; James 5:14-15); and Paul is bitten by a viper and shakes it off (Acts 28:3-6). A forger would have to invent a list matching that practice.

5. Snakes and poison are promises of protection, not tests of God¶

The verbs matter. "They will cast out," "they will speak," "they will pick up," "they will lay hands" — these are future indicatives, statements of what will happen, not imperatives. There is no command to handle snakes or drink poison. The promise is that the mission will not be stopped by what kills other travellers: the messenger may be bitten and live.

Acts 28 is the illustration. Paul is gathering firewood on Malta, a viper fastens on his hand, and he shakes it into the fire. He was not testing God; he was doing his work. To turn the promise into a programme — the Appalachian practice that arose in the early twentieth century — is to read an indicative as an imperative, and to do what Jesus refused in the wilderness: "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test" (Matthew 4:7). The early church took it otherwise: Eusebius preserves Papias's report that Justus Barsabas drank poison and suffered no harm; the story is told as a wonder, not a liturgy.

The continuationist reading¶

Read at its best, the passage gives the church a promise for the road. The Lord sends; the Lord accompanies; the signs follow the message. Verse 20 names the object of the confirmation: "the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs." The message is still preached, and the Lord who confirmed it has not changed.

So the passage is corroborative, not load-bearing: a case built on it would deserve to fall. If the ending is Mark's, it is a dominical promise — not a guarantee that everyone recovers, and not a licence for recklessness, but an assurance that the mission will be accompanied by the Lord's power. If it is not Mark's, it is the early church saying the same thing. Either way it is a witness the cessationist has to explain, not a proof the continuationist can rest on.

What this does and does not prove¶

It proves: that the long ending's textual status is doubtful and should be conceded; that even so the passage contains no terminus and attaches the signs to "those who believe"; that a second-century ending is still evidence of what the church expected; and that its signs match the practice reported in Acts.

It does not prove: that Mark wrote the ending; that snake-handling or poison-drinking are Christian practices; or that the gifts continue today. It removes an objection and adds a corroborating witness. The load-bearing argument is made from other texts.