Those blasted snakes!

Leading up to the passage that we know as the Great Commission, there is one of the more remarkable passages in New Testament scripture:

¹⁶ Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:16-20 ESV) 

Sometimes we wonder how anyone could have witnessed a single miracle and doubted. (Surely not I!) Yet here, among the twelve less Judas, among eleven men present for the entirety of Jesus’ ministry and who witnessed most if not all of the miracles, and who fell under the Lord’s direct tutelage, and who are in the presence of a resurrected Jesus who not long before was crucified, dead and buried, we are told that some doubted! The mind reels.

I wish that we were told exactly what they doubted, but we aren’t, but we can be certain, I think, that they doubted the resurrection, for that is the apex of redemptive history. It would make no sense (as far as I can tell) to accept that this was a dead man walking and then doubt what is lower on the revelation pyramid. But in any event, some doubted. Who doubted, and what they doubted, is a mystery.

If there was ever a moment for a rebuke from the Master, this would be it. Jesus, before the cross, was not hesitant to rebuke his apostles (Get behind me, Satan!). It would be quite understandable for Jesus to be anthropomorphically exasperated. But he doesn’t rebuke them. The passage tells us that he came up and spoke to them about his authority. To me there is tenderness in his response, but at a minimum we can say that he proceeded in his discourse neutrally, with no sign of anger.

This is why I have trouble accepting the disputed parallel version in Mark, from the ending that appears in the later “Majority Text” or Erasmus’s closely related subset, the“Textus Receptus” (used for KJV and NKJV) but not in the earlier but fewer “Critical Text” manuscripts (e.g., as used for the ESV).

Here is part of the disputed ending, from the NKJV:

¹⁴ Later He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. ¹⁵ And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. ¹⁶ He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. ¹⁷ And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; ¹⁸ they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (Mark 16:14-18, NKJV) 

Why do I have trouble with this?

• It's obvious, it’s those blasted snakes! No, I don’t give a rat’s derriere about the snakes. I solve that problem by not putting it to the test. 

•  It’s that baptism, in the plain reading, is presented as a requirement. Yes that is troubling, but I can accept a certain amount of exegetical gymnastics to get around that problem. 

•  It’s that the plain reading of the text indicates that the signs, including evicting demons, speaking in tongues, faith healing, drinking Draino with impunity, and yes the blasted snakes would seem to apply to all who believe, not just say, Paul on Malta. Well yes, that is a problem. But it is still not the big problem for me. 

• The big problem for me is Jesus' tone. In the disputed passage, the last interaction between Jesus and the eleven is a sharp rebuke. It doesn’t jibe with the undisputed account in Matthew.

I continue to favor the few and older manuscripts. I could very well be wrong, as I am about so many things (my personal Majority Text). The good news, for all of us, is that the disputed texts are in agreement when it comes to the gospel. The areas of disagreement are in the weeds.

---

¹ There is a “numbers” argument that more texts from more regions (the Majority Text) makes them more reliable. By itself that is not a compelling argument. If the ending of Mark was added by a misguided scribe, it could have spread like a virus. The argument is sometimes shored up by claiming, as Rome does, that God will have taken supernatural measures to preserve his Word. ² There is still a weakness there. First of all, how do we know it wasn’t the Critical Text manuscripts that God used to preserve His Word? And secondly, while all the Majority Text manuscripts contain the disputed ending, there are different versions of the ending. So one is then forced to decide which subset of the Majority Text manuscripts are the ones that God preserved.

² This is in contrast to the my position, which is identical to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, ³  which argues only that the original autographs were innerant, and makes no explicit claim that any derived manuscripts were supernaturally guided.

³ And now the Gold Standard for preserving free speech on campus is the Chicago Statement on Freedom of Expression. Clearly we also need a Chicago Statement on Shrubberies.