If you're someone who's reading along with today's Scripture reading from Mark 15-16 (ESV), you may find yourself puzzling a bit over the brief annotation that's printed in most Bibles right before Mark 16:9-20 which states:

[SOME OF THE EARLIEST MANUSCRIPTS DO NOT INCLUDE 16:9-20]

This may get you thinking, "What?!?  I thought that the Bible was the Word of God, and that it was without errors?!?"  This may seem like a very troubling annotation to read when you first run into it!  

So if you are troubled by this, let me try to put your mind at ease by answering two questions that you may be having about Mark 16:9-20 based on this annotation:

1. What's the problem with Mark 16:9-20?
2. Does it matter that it wasn't included in "some of the earliest manuscripts"?

First of all, what's the problem with Mark 16:9-20?  Looking back at the numerous copies of the original Greek manuscripts that have been discovered of the Gospel of Mark, for some reason some of the earliest copies, as this annotation suggests, didn't include these verses.  Furthermore, many of the Early Church Fathers didn't seem to be aware of them either when they wrote about Mark, which makes us wonder if maybe they were included a bit later, possibly by somebody other than Mark; perhaps by another follower of Jesus who felt that these teachings of His should be included.  So it is possible that they were added later by someone other than Mark. 

But if they were, would it matter?  No... not really... And here's why.  Theoretically speaking, even if some zealous follower of Jesus did add these teachings of Jesus later on, after Mark had already finished writing everything that he intended to put in his Gospel, there's nothing in these final verses of Mark that contradicts the teachings of Jesus or our faith in Him in any way!  Since these verses don't add or take away from the truth of who Jesus was and what He taught, we really don't see any problem with going ahead and including these verses in Mark.  It would only be a problem if these verses somehow presented a Jesus different from the one that we meet throughout the rest of Mark and the other Gospels!

So did Mark write these verses or didn't he?  We'll never know... and it doesn't matter.  In the end, what matters is that the same Jesus that we know and love is still being proclaimed, with or without these verses - the Son of God, God Himself, who came to die and rise to life again to save us from our sins!