From: Edward Hobbs (EHOBBS@WELLESLEY.EDU)
Date: Tue Dec 10 1996 - 17:37:00 EST
Dear Carl,
In your response to Stephen Carlson, you wrote that you thought EFOBOUNTO
GAR supposedly being an incomplete sentence was NOT Metzger's central
reason "concerning Mk 16:8"--that it "was someone else's objection to the
ending at 16:8." Your remark was so brief that I'm not positive what you
meant; but if I DID get it, you missed Metzger's (famous or infamous) position.
See pp. 226-229 in his _Text of the New Testament_ (any edition), and pp.
296-297 of the Appendix of the Third Edition. He believes that the three
endings beyond 16:8 are all spurious, added to a gospel ending at 16:8.
But he argues against 16:8 being the original ending (this "short ending"
is the parent of all transcriptions, but not the original gospel); instead,
the parent copy had lost its last page, or else Mark was intrrupted (perhaps
by death) from finishing. He has two reasons, plus a "possible" third.
(1) To end the "Good News" on a note of fear--he cannot believe
that the evangelist could have done such a thing.
(2) Terminating a Greek sentence with GAR "is most unusual and
exceedingly rare."
(3) And perhaps Mark really means "They were afraid of . . ." with
no object specified. (Wasn't that Moffatt's famous translation?)
Metzger sticks by his guns in his 1992 edition. But he was ridiculed
widely for his repetition of the "no GAR at the end of a sentence" argument
from the 19th century, considering the number of examples readily found,
including the wonderful example of Sarah, EFOBHQH GAR, in Gen 18:15, where
even the verb is the same! (And of course Gen 45:3, etc., etc.) All these
arguments were beautifully handled by R. H. Lightfoot back in 1938, and
again in shorter form in 1950.
Bruce is a friend, and he is a dear person; but he can certainly be
unbelievably traditional about many things. He is certainly the most
(publically) pious scholar of my acquaintance. He used to start any SNTS
session which he chanced to chair with prayer! (I remember the shock on
Kaesemann's face when that happened!)
Edward
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