MARK 16:17-18
17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
18They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
Many cessationists claim that Mark 16:9-20 does not exist in the oldest and "best" manuscripts, but was spuriously inserted into more recent, and therefore less reliable, manuscripts. This claim is then used as their basis for asserting that tongues ceased when the last of the Twelve Apostles died, or when the canon of New Testament Scripture was finalized.
But if tongues indeed ceased when the last of the Twelve Apostles died, and if it had been taught by the Apostles that this was to happen, and if it was commonly understood by the time the spurious "newer" manuscripts were being written that tongues had now already ceased - then what motive could have existed for anyone to include such a spurious insertion?
There wouldn't have been any benefit from inserting a reference to "tongues" in any new manuscript where no references to tongues existed in any older, original, "better" manuscript - if tongues had already ceased by then.
So could this mean that tongues had not ceased by the time the "newer" manuscripts containing Mark 16:9-20 were written? that the very oldest manuscripts must have included Mark 16:9-20? and that the manuscripts containing Mark 16:9-20 may not have been newer manuscripts after all?
In any case, the truths about tongues contained in Mark 16:9-20 can be established elsewhere in the New Testament without even relying on the confirmation provided by Mark 16:9-20. So the contrived controversy about this passage can't prove anything against the truth that tongues are still for today.
Hello John, just wondering are you saying that you believe that the Alexandrian manuscripts are not more accurate than the Byzantine ones?
ReplyDeleteI'm saying that the argument used by some cessationists (that tongues had already ceased by the time Mark 16:17-18 was spuriously added in later manuscripts) is a self-defeating argument - because if tongues had already ceased by then, no motive could have existed to include reference to tongues to a text where no reference to tongues originally existed in the first place. So either tongues still existed, or the so-called 'later' manuscript (which includes Mark 16:17-18) is true. No matter what one's favoured manuscript is, neither supports the idea that tongues had already ceased.
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