MarkThree

In Egypt, in the third century, copyists perpetuated the Abrupt Ending. Although
copies from other locales invaded, so to speak, four factors worked in favor of the
Abrupt Ending:

(1) Papyrus tended to last longer in Egypt than elsewhere. Thus copyists may have
been able to appeal to an old copy as an authority for the abrupt ending, even though
other, younger copies displayed 16:9-20.

(2) The tradition persisted among Egyptian copyists that Mark 16:9-20 had been
added without Mark's consent. This consideration, combined with the built-in features
of the Long Ending's text -- a woman is in the spotlight, and the apostles are sternly
rebuked, and then Jesus is said to describe tongues-speaking, snake-handling and
poison-drinking among the signs accompanying believers -- induced copyists to regard
Mark 16:9-20 as intrinsically inferior to the rest of the book.

(3) The contents of 16:9-20 appeared difficult to harmonize with the other Gospels to
some individuals in the early church. It occurred to some individuals (as it did to
Eusebius), as they attempted to display the harmonious unity of the four Gospels, that
the task is simplified if one embraces the manuscripts which lack Mark 16:9-20. A
motive to achieve harmonization between the Gospel-accounts was not the source of
the absence of Mark 16:9-20 in the Proto-Alexandrian Text. But this motive helped
Egyptian copyists convince themselves that these 12 verses could not and should not
be included in the Gospel of Mark.

(4) Egyptian copyists noticed how smoothly the abruptly-ending text of Mark 16 flows
into John 21. They speculated that John 21 was an apostolic ending to Mark's
otherwise unfinished narrative. With that interpretation of John 21 in place, they did
not view the abruptly-ending text of Mark 16:8 as difficult.