Theory About Mark’s Ending by slaveofone
Those familiar with New Testament scholarship are aware that many theories that have popped up to explain the strange and variegated endings of the gospel called Mark. While I am no New Testament enthusiast, I do have a theory that I have not heard before, which might explain the abrupt and confused ending(s) of Mark in terms of the historical and literary milieu of the text.
We take for granted the fact that our scriptures today come in packages called books. But in the ancient world, books did not come onto the scene until Hellenistic times. Even then, it was not until the fourth century of our Lord that the use of books supplanted more ancient forms. One of those ancient forms was the scroll. A scroll differed from a book in many ways. While a book was meant to encompass an entire work and could be expanded to accommodate the necessary text, a scroll was more like an archive or storage room. The length of a scroll did not accommodate a work or works, but a work or works were accommodated to a scroll. Thus, for instance, multiple, independent texts could be included on a single scroll until it was filled. In the case of lengthy texts, they would have to be interrupted and continued on other scrolls.
My theory is that the text of Mark was originally written on a scroll either after another text or on its own, but the author ran out of room for its complete composition. Whether the rest of the text was written elsewhere and has been lost or whether the rest was never completed, we may never know. Expanded or contracted endings could have resulted from the extra space or lack thereof that presented itself to those who copied the scroll onto another papyrus of equal length.