The vast majority of text critics argue that the longer ending in Mark 16:9-20 is a later addition to a text that ended at 16:8, though whether the evangelist purposely ended the narrative on the note of the women leaving the empty tomb or the original ending was lost is a more debated question. However, there are a few monographs that have been written in defense of the originality of the longer ending:
- Farmer, William R. The Last Twelve Verses of Mark. SNTSMS 25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
- Lunn, Nicholas P. The Original Ending of Mark: A New Case for the Authenticity of Mark 16:9-20. Cambridge: James Clarke and Co,
- Snapp Jr., James. Authentic: The Case for Mark 16:9-20: 2016 Edition. Amazon Digital Services, 2011.
- See also the contributions of Maurice Robinson and David A. Black in Black, D. A., Editor. Perspectives on the Ending of Mark: Four Views. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2008.
There are two informative posts written by James Snapp and Peter Head debating the textual evidence for the longer ending of Mark 16:9-11. Snapp has also contributed a website on “Resources for the Study of Mark 16:9-20” and frequently discusses this issue on his blog “The Text of the Gospels“, while Head is a contributor to the blog Evangelical Textual Criticism that also has a number of informative posts on this topic. Stephen Carlson has written a critical review of Lunn’s book for the Australian Bible Review. A conference on Mark 16 was put on by Claire Clivaz, Mina Monier, and Dan Botovici. My take is that the scribal addition of a longer ending to Mark’s Gospel, like Matthew’s and Luke’s redactional changes (e.g., adding other traditions about Jesus’s birth or post-Easter appearances and editing select verses such as Mark 6:5 or 10:18) or the Patristic traditions linking the evangelist to the Apostle Peter, ultimately helped rescue Mark’s narrative for Christian orthodoxy and preserved Mark’s distinctive voice in the canon of Christian Scripture.
The Jesus Memoirs 