How many endings are in Mark's Gospel?

Answer 1

A:Mark's Gospel, in its original form, ended at verse 16:8, with the young man telling the women that Jesus was risen and they told no one. The earliest known manuscripts do not contain any material about the risen Jesus, and this is confirmed by the framework structure of Mark. This is a parallel structure - a literary sequence in which an opening set of events is contrasted with another, parallel set of events that mirrors the first. Mark has a very sophisticated parallel structure which the present 'Long Ending' breaks.

Verses 16:9-25 of the modern Gospel form what is now known as the 'Long Ending and were added to the Gospel at a much later stage, to provide resurrection appearances and to more or less harmonise it with the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

There was also, at one stage, a 'Short Ending' which can be found in several early manuscripts.

It seems that there was also an intermediate ending that combined material from the Short Ending with concepts found in the Long Ending.