(1) The endings of Mark’s gospel
The arguments against the acceptance of the last twelve verses of Mark’s gospel can be arranged in various ways, also called evidences, being external evidence, internal evidence, and theological evidence.
The argument of external evidence focuses on the absence of such a long closure. In the two oldest manuscripts containing the end of Mark’s gospel (Syntactic Codex and Vatican Codex), the last twelve verses are omitted. The fact that certain manuscripts contain two shorter endings also precludes the idea of the longer reading being the original.
Clement of Alexandria and Origen do not seem to consider the existence of these verses, whereas Eusebius and Jerome supposedly say they were absent from almost all the Greek manuscripts they knew.
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(a) The vocabulary and style of the vv. 9-20 are not from Mark. (b) The connection between v. 8 and the vv. 9-20 is so forced that it is difficult to believe that the evangelist intended that this continuity to the gospel.
Thus, the subject of v. 8 it is women, while Jesus is the presupposed subject in v. 9; In v. 9 Mary Magdalene is identified, although only a few lines were mentioned before; the other women of the vv. 1-8 are not forgotten [...].
In short, all these aspects indicate that the section was added by someone who knew a form of Mark that ended abruptly in v. 8 and wanted to suppress it with a more appropriate conclusion. In view of the inconsistencies between the vv. 1-8 and 9-20, it is unlikely that the longer clasp would have been made ad hoc, in order to fill an obvious gap; the more likely it is that the section has been drawn from another document, perhaps dating back to the first half of the second century.