The link below is to James McGrath’s article on the ending of Mark where he suggests that John 21 is the original ending of the Gospel of Mark.
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/mcg.shtml
I find the argument for John 21 being the original end of Mark very persuasive. Against the suggestion that we should accept that there is evidence that Mark was intended to end this way and that this is the simpler theory, I would say that it’s difficult to work with that assumption as being true because it is an unusual ending for a story like this. It is odd that it didn’t have an ending attached sooner. James is correct to say that the last words leave the listener thinking that the angels’ message is given in vain and does not advance the plot because the reader is told the women told no one. But our evidence from Paul suggests that Christianity had an appearance tradition even before Mark. It is strange that the confirmation of the resurrection is not shown in Mark. All the other gospels that narrate the resurrection do. While the suggestion that the end is meant invite the reader to do as the disciples are going to do, go find Jesus in Galilee is clever, it is not explicitly explained and one wonders how much, if not all the audience would be left guessing, “did he rise?” even if they ultimately knew the ending. It would be like Star Wars ending with Obi-Wan telling Lea that everything is great, Luke destroyed the death star and skipping the attack scene. It is certainly possible. I once even wondered if it was a sort of circular story where the reader is to reflect back on the open chapters in Galilee in a new light, but most of the audience would be listeners not readers, so one couldn’t re read the work again at ones leisure. You would here it as a single performance, not examine specific passages. So long as there is a suspicion, however, that the real end is missing, it is proper to look for evidence that this is so. Some have suggested that Matthew or Luke contain the original ending of Mark. Both must be discounted since Mark ends with the women telling no one due to fear and Luke and Matthew both conclude with the women rushing off to tell the disciples (this shows how difficult some found Mark’s ending at the time).
The suggestion that the ending, which much more assuredly not part of the original composition, of the Gospel of John is the original ending of Mark has a number of features that make its case at least equal to the suggestion that Mark ended as it now does. As has been pointed out, the last words of Jesus in John’s boat story, other than the prophecy which is clearly an addition from the Johnian author from Jesus are “Follow me,” which in Mark would poetically link what would be Mark’s last words from Jesus, an invitation to follow the risen Jesus even to martyrdom, with the invitation made earlier in Mark, where Jesus calls the disciples who are fishing. Another convincing piece of evidence is the way that this tale is inserted in the gospel of Peter. Here it begins where mark ends with the women afraid at the tomb. It picks up with the apostles who by fleeing home have gone to where Jesus said he would meet them. This is evidence that G. Peter is aware of the original Markan ending. If this how Mark ended, with the frightened apostles trying to get back to their old lives only to be confronted by the risen Jesus, then the end has a rather exiting and touching twist ending.
How this occurred, that this ending went missing from Mark and wound up in the Gospel of Peter and John is still a mystery. What we know is that Luke and Matthew don’t use it so it is likely that it was missing from the copy or copies they used. I say copy or copies, because it has recently occurred to me that there may have been originally very few manuscripts of Mark to begin with. In the past I imagined church scribes copying books as soon as they received them and sending them out to other churches like a chain letter. But it is very likely such a divergent leaderless, apocalyptic sect would not use all its time and resources to distribute editions of stories they all knew to each other. Instead the first copy of Mark may have stayed with the same community or been carried on a circuit for many years without a duplicate being made. It is possible that mark and Matthew used the same copy of Mark but at separate occasions and without knowledge of each other. It is also likely that most telling of the story in mark were from memory, not reading from the book (that is a paraphrase of mark, like when someone tells you the story of Mark or the Terminator) it is thus possible that the ending was somehow removed from the end of the monograph of mark, before copies were made. The Gospel of Peter may be based on a well-rehearsed recitation of the tale of Mark independent of tis text. This would account for both the general similarity and many specific differences. The ending in John may be adapted from one of these floating recitations of Mark’s tales. It is also possible that John’s community had an edition of Mark that had not lost its end (or was made of recitation of the original Mark) or they had the original missing end. The latter is more likely given how John would have had to remove this end to insert the alternate tradition (also picked up by Luke). The version in john seems to have retained a couple of elements that connect it to Mark, like the reference to Peter’s triple denial and the “Follow me” line. Had this tale circulated independently, the elements that reference the other narrative might be dropped as not adding to the central story of Jesus performing a miracle with the catch when revealing himself to disciples. This is not proof that John’s community had the original monograph of the end of Mark and from Luke it does seem that an independent short legend of Jesus providing a miraculous catch was circulated. But look how it is presented. I think it is more likely that this rather odd resurrection appearance, divorced from its original setting would be turned into a calling story than a calling story be reused as a resurrection appearance.
What do you think?