The long ending of Mark

What's at stake

After the women find the empty tomb in Mark 16:1-8, the gospel either ends there (in the earliest manuscripts) or continues with appearances of the risen Jesus, the Great Commission, and promises of miraculous signs (snake handling, drinking poison, casting out demons, speaking in tongues).

If the long ending is not original, the only New Testament basis for snake-handling and 'drinking deadly poison' theology evaporates — and Mark's original ending becomes the chilling 'they were afraid' at 16:8. Almost every modern translation now brackets these verses or notes that they are absent from the earliest manuscripts.

Witnesses