Where Mark Actually Ends
The Moffat rendition of the Book of Mark is very revealing with the footnote found at Mark 16:8:
The following appendix represents a couple of second century attempts to complete the gospel. The passage within brackets in the first of these epilogues originally belonged to it, but was excised for some reason at an early date. Jerome quoted part of it, but the full text has only been discovered quite recently in codex W, the Freer uncial of the gospels.
So there was a passage in the first of these two “attempts”, that reads, starting around verse 14 of the KJV and all modern renditions:
But they excused themselves, saying, “This age of lawlessness and unbelief lies under the sway of Satan, who will not allow what lies under the unclean spirits to understand the truth and power of God; therefore,” they said to Christ, “reveal your righteousness now.” Christ answered them, “the limit of years for Satan’s power has now expired, but other terrors are at hand. I was delivered to death on behalf of sinners, that they might return to the truth and sin no more, that they might inherit that glory of righteousness which is spiritual and imperishable in heaven.”
Imagine that! In the conversion of the Gospel of Mark into a business plan such slurs against Futurism were removed. – It would not do for Jesus to be saying that, Christ answered them, “the limit of years for Satan’s power has now expired…
More significant to Pragmatism is that reading only what is written in the original Book of Mark renders it quite plausible that Jesus survived the Cross, and that Joseph of Arimathaea paid Pilate and one of Pilate’s guards to pronounce Jesus dead when somebody caused Jesus to black out in pain by dousing him in vinegar. Expecting Mary, His wife and Mary His mother would be coming by the tomb to prepare his body for the rotting process Jesus left a messenger to let them know which way to go to find Him.
Interestingly in other gospels Jesus meets up with His Apostles hungry and showing his wounds yet Christians still believe that He was resurrected from the dead.