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Mark's shorter ending (16:1-8) is understood as a paratext, one that interrupts the existing text by forcing a relectureof the entire Gospel. It compels the intended readers to realign themselves with the provocative narration of Jesus as the atypical Messiah who challenges the physiognomic stereotypes of an honour-shame-based context. From this hermeneutical perspective, the reference text of Mark provokes a second text, the reception text, but does not replace it. Rather, it takes on motifs and themes of the first text as a kind of "interpretive development". This new reception text, which is embedded in Mark's original reference text, pushes the intended readers not only to re-read the Gospel, but also to re-understand it in light of Mark's provocative presentation of the "non-godly" bodily demeanour of Jesus. However, it would appear that the original intertextual relecture, prompted by the ending of Mark 16:1-8, did not wholly succeed. Its open-ended nature, coupled with its provocative interpretation of Jesus, probably created too much dissonance for an unknown author who eventually added the longer ending of 16:9-20 in a different vocabulary and style.
Stephan Joubert (Thu,) studied this question.