Is the ending of the Gospel of Mark (16:9-20) original?

In the vast majority of textual additions that have been made to the Bible over the centuries, the changes have been so insignificant as to have very little effect on the content of the narrative and virtually no impact on the important doctrinal claims of Christianity.

Mark picks up, here and throughout his gospel, a major theme from the ancient Hebrew scriptures: that when Israel’s God acts in fulfillment of his ancient promises, he will do so in dramatic and radically new ways.

Why? Because a careful exercise of reason is not important in understanding what the Bible says for many of us. Besides, it takes work!

This is the nemesis, at another stage of the argument, of the idea that the main point of the New Testament at least is to chronicle “early Christian experience,” as though such “experience” is the main thing that matters and anything which will enable people to approximate to it, to recover the initial enthusiasm of Jesus’s first followers, is to

This, to be sure, is why the gospels, which on the surface look like such easy reads, indeed quite the page-turners, are in fact highly complex, repaying hours and years of patient thought and reflection.