Feeling the Silence: A Moment-by-

Moment Account of Emotions at the

End of Mark (16:1-8)
Michael R. Whitenton
Baylor University
Waco, TX 76707

Abstract: Despite the volume of ink spilled over the ending of Mark, thus far no
investigation has focused on the variety of emotional responses that the jarring conclu-
sion would have aroused among audiences. In this article, I attend to emotional
responses evoked by the narrative as a natural extension of the recent emphasis on the
Gospel as “heard” (communally) rather than “read” (privately). After demonstrating
the inherent heterogeneity of ancient audiences, I draw on cognitive science to discuss
different ways audience members become emotionally involved in a narrative. I then
present what I believe are the most plausible emotional responses to the abrupt ending
of the Gospel of Mark. As we will see, the intersection of ancient theories of emotions
and modern theories of cognition yield valuable insights for an audience-oriented
reading of Mark’s ending.
Key Words: Audience identification • emotions • appraisal theory • embodied
cognition • cognitive science • Gospel of Mark • Mark’s ending

A group of women fleeing a graveside, seized with terror and mute with
fear—what a way to end a Gospel! The abruptness of this ending has incited
various responses over the years. Early readers added a more appropriate conclu-
sion to what seemed to be lacking, while some modern interpreters have claimed
that the original ending has been lost in the sands of time.1 Scholars in the past few
decades, however, have been more likely to find some literary or rhetorical goal

1 For early readers, see Mark 16:9-20; Matt 28:1-20; and Luke 24:1-52. For modern readers

arguing that the original ending has been lost, see Robert H. Stein, “The Ending of Mark,” BBR 18
(2008) 79-98; N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question
of God 3; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003) 623.

272 
 EMOTIONS AT THE END OF MARK (16:1-8)  273

in the silence of the women. Indeed, nearly thirty years have passed since J. Lee
Magness set forth his compelling argument that Mark’s Gospel intentionally ends
abruptly at 16:8 in order to draw readers to participate in the story and create an
ending of their own.2 Narrative critics have been offering their own riffs on—or
at least in conversation with—Magness’s thesis ever since.3 Yet, despite this veri-
table scholarly deluge, a glaring lacuna has lingered: there remains no account of
the plausible spectrum of emotions that audience members may have exhibited in
response to such an abrupt ending. I offer the following study as a small attempt
to address this desideratum by attending to the diverse emotional responses one
might imagine among a performance audience at the sudden end of Mark’s Gospel.
Though the study of emotional responses to literature is well grounded in cog-
nitive research, as well as in both ancient and modern literary theory, it has thus far
remained overlooked among biblical scholars as a fruitful avenue for exploration.4

2 J. Lee Magness, Sense and Absence: Structure and Suspension in the Ending of Mark’s
Gospel (SemeiaSt; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986). Magness was not the first to proffer such a
reading. See Robert C. Tannehill, “The Disciples in Mark: The Function of a Narrative Role,” JR
57 (1977) 386-405; Norman R. Petersen, “When Is the End Not the End: Literary Reflections on
the Ending of Mark’s Narrative,” Int 34 (1980) 151-66; Thomas E. Boomershine and Gilbert L.
Bartholomew, “The Narrative Technique of Mark 16:8,” JBL 100 (1981) 213-23; Thomas E.
Boomershine, “Mark 16:8 and the Apostolic Commission,” JBL 100 (1981) 225-39.
3 For a helpful discussion of many of the major literary proposals, see Joel F. Williams, “Literary

Approaches to the End of Mark’s Gospel,” JETS 42 (1999) 21-35. See also Andrew T. Lincoln, “The
Promise and the Failure: Mark 16:7, 8,” JBL 108 (1989) 283-300; Paul L. Danove, The End of Mark’s
Story: A Methodological Study (BIS 3; Leiden: Brill, 1993); J David Hester, “Dramatic Inconclusion:
Irony and the Narrative Rhetoric of the Ending of Mark,” JSNT 57 (1995) 61-86; Mary Ann Tolbert,
Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s Work in Literary-Historical Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996)
288-89; Bridget Gilfillan Upton, Hearing Mark’s Endings: Listening to Ancient Popular Texts through
Speech Act Theory (BIS 79; Leiden: Brill, 2006); David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie,
Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel (3rd ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012)
142-44. On performance of Mark’s ending, see Whitney Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel: First-
Century Performance of Mark (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003) 187-89; Thomas E.
Boomershine, “Audience Address and Purpose in the Performance of Mark,” in Mark as Story:
Retrospect and Prospect (ed. Kelly R. Iverson and Christopher W. Skinner; SBLRBS 65; Atlanta:
Society of Biblical Literature, 2011) 115-42, here 137-38.
4 On emotional response to narrative, see, e.g., Keith Oatley and P. N. Johnson-Laird, “Towards

a Cognitive Theory of Emotions,” Cognition & Emotion 1 (1987) 29-50; Keith Oatley, Best Laid
Schemes: The Psychology of Emotions (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction; Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992); idem, “A Taxonomy of the Emotions of Literary Response and
a Theory of Identification in Fictional Narrative,” Poetics 23 (1994) 53-74; Ed S. Tan, Emotion and
the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine (New York: Routledge, 1995); Gerald
C. Cupchik, Keith Oatley, and Peter Vorderer, “Emotional Effects of Reading Excerpts from Short
Stories by James Joyce,” Poetics 25 (1998) 363-77. This is not to say that study of the emotions and
the NT has been entirely neglected. For example, some work has recently been undertaken on
psychagogy and the NT. See, e.g., Stephen C. Barton, “Eschatology and the Emotions in Early
Christianity,” JBL 130 (2011) 571-91; Michael R. Whitenton, “Figuring Joy: Gratitude as Medicine
 274  THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 78, 2016

One reason may be the glaring subjectivity of emotions.5 How, one may ask, are we
to approximate different emotional responses that occurred nearly two thousand
years ago? Yet current research from the cognitive sciences suggests predictable
patterns of emotional responses, which offer signposts for those willing to venture
beyond traditional boundaries. Rather than something found at the periphery, emo-
tions lie at the core of the human experience;6 indeed, they were believed to play
major roles in ethics and decision making, to say nothing of an audience’s experience
of a performance.7 If the emotions are central to human existence, why should they
remain uncharted ground for biblical studies?
Mark’s earliest audiences would have experienced the Gospel narrative
through performance, whether through public reading or a more dramatic affair.
Thus, I approach the end of Mark as a narrative that was “heard” (communally)
rather than “read” (silently and privately).8 Although we cannot access the actual

in 1 Thessalonians 2:1-20,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 39 (2012) 15-23; John A. Darr,

“Narrative Therapy: Treating Audience Anxiety through Psychagogy in Luke,” Perspectives in
Religious Studies 39 (2012) 335-48.
5 On the rise of the modern biblical scholar and a critical look at the hunt for the ever-elusive

“objectivity,” see Stephen D. Moore and Yvonne Sherwood, The Invention of the Biblical Scholar:
A Critical Manifesto (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011).
6 Indeed, an emotionless state indicates dysfunction. For example, the absence of empathy

may be the result of a dysfunctional mirror neuron system. See Justin H. G. Williams et al.,
“Imitation, Mirror Neurons and Autism,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 25 (2001) 287-95;
Mirella Dapretto et al., “Understanding Emotions in Others: Mirror Neuron Dysfunction in Children
with Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Nature Neuroscience 9 (2006) 28-30.
7 On emotions as faculties in virtues and vices, see, e.g., Aristotle Nic. eth. 2.5.1-6. On

emotions conveyed by performers to audience members, see, e.g., Quintilian Inst. 6.2.26-36.
Quintilian maintains, “The heart of the matter as regards arousing emotions, so far as I can see, lies
in being moved by them oneself” (Inst. 6.2.26 [Russell, LCL]). See also Aristotle Poet. 17; Horace
Ars 101-7, Cicero De or. 2.189.
8 Here and throughout I use the term “performance” to refer to any oral delivery of a literary

text. As Daniel Nässelqvist has recently demonstrated, the most common such method was public
reading, whereby a lector would read a text aloud for a group with skill and precision. Though I do
not discount the possibility of ancient performances of Mark’s Gospel from memory, the usual
method would have been public reading. A decision on this matter, however, is irrelevant for the
study at hand, which deals with the common factor of all these methods, namely, that the text was
heard not read silently by the vast majority of those experiencing Mark’s Gospel.See Daniel
Nässelqvist, “Public Reading and Aural Intensity: An Analysis of the Soundscape in John 1-4”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Lund, 2014) 61-104. “Performance criticism” as a whole has recently
been challenged by Larry W. Hurtado, “Oral Fixation and New Testament Studies? ‘Orality,’
‘Performance’ and Reading Texts in Early Christianity,” NTS 60 (2014) 321-40. Hurtado takes aim
at what he believes are a number of “oversimplifications (and so distortions) of relevant historical
matters” related to the “composition and use of texts in early Christianity” (p. 323). Ironically,
however, Hurtado’s own characterization of “performance criticism” as (nearly?) univocally
focused on bombastic and dramatic renditions of (e.g.) Mark’s Gospel from memory contains
“oversimplifications (and so distortions)” of the actual landscape of performance critics doing
 EMOTIONS AT THE END OF MARK (16:1-8)  275

emotional responses from an ancient audience, cognitive appraisal theory, as well

as research from the burgeoning field of embodied cognition, allows us to imagine
a myriad of plausible emotional responses to the jarring end of this Gospel.9 This
article facilitates such an exploration. First, I offer a brief discussion of the inher-
ent heterogeneity of audiences. Next, I attend to theories of audience identification
and the accompanying emotional response, taking as my starting point Keith
­Oatley’s theories of mimetic simulation and cognitive appraisal, together with
recent work from the field of neuroscience. With this groundwork laid, I offer a
plausible spectrum of emotions that may have been elicited by the jolting end of
Mark’s Gospel. As we will see, the intersection of ancient theories of emotions and
modern theories of cognition yield valuable insights for an audience-oriented read-
ing of Mark’s ending that seeks to do justice to the narrative and its ancient hearers.

I. Inherent Audience Heterogeneity

While it is common among narrative critics to speak of a monolithic implied
audience based on the internal cues of a narrative, internal textual features do not
necessarily tell us about the actual audience(s) for whom a narrative was per-
formed.10 Carried to its logical conclusion, a performative approach destabilizes

research in the texts of early Christianity. It must be conceded, however, that his criticisms do reach
some of the major contributions to the field thus far. Although this article is not the place for a full
response to Hurtado, I am struck by the fact that, in my own experience at the performance workshop
and sections at the SBL annual meetings in 2012 and 2014, performance critics are an eclectic bunch,
with Hurtado’s arguments reaching the work of only some. It is telling that I count myself as a
“performance critic,” but do not find myself in Hurtado’s caricatures. Rather, I agree with Hurtado
that public reading was the most prevalent mode of oral delivery. Perhaps Hurtado would not call
“public reading” performance, but the care and training that went in to developing effective lectors
and preparing a manuscript for delivery—including attention to dramatic pauses and proper
intonation—suggest that the practice is thoroughly grounded in the rhetorical training of the day,
even if a manuscript was in use. To put the matter differently, attention given to proper public reading
was different in degree from, but of the same kind as, oratory and theater. In any case, while
Hurtado’s complaints must be registered and even provide a helpful corrective to some trends in
certain sectors of performance criticism, I find no compelling reason to give up the “performance”
terminology (not least because it is used by many of the classicists Hurtado himself cites, e.g.,
Milnor; see below) or the endeavor of seeking to do justice to the experience of hearing a written
text effectively and publicly delivered in performance. See Kristina Milnor, “Literary Literacy in
Roman Pompeii: The Case of Vergil’s Aeneid,” in Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in
Greece and Rome (ed. William A. Johnson and Holt N. Parker; Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009) 288-319. For the most complete treatment of public reading in antiquity to date, see
Nässelqvist, “Public Reading,” 1-104.
 9 While I differentiate my approach from print-dependent approaches that assume, whether
explicitly or implicitly, a private reading, I nevertheless benefit from the readings provided by
scholars who utilize such an approach.
10 See further, Kirsten Marie Hartvigsen, Prepare the Way of the Lord: Towards a Cognitive
 276  THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 78, 2016

audience homogeneity since it forces us to think in terms of real flesh-and-blood

hearers, each of whom approaches the narrative from a unique perspective. This
diverse composition is consistent with depictions of audiences in early Christian
literature and is buttressed by empirical and theoretical research from sociology
and psychology.
In antiquity, we need look no further than Paul, whom Acts depicts as address-
ing Jewish people, God-fearing proselytes, and gentile “outsiders” (Acts 13:13-
52). Paul himself assumes the possibility of unbelievers entering house-church
assemblies in Corinth (1 Cor 14:22-24). These texts need not represent social
reality or any particular audience of Mark’s Gospel in order to be instructive; the
social structures of Mediterranean life in the first centuries of the Common Era
point toward complex and dynamic audiences for household church meetings.11
Aside from the more pronounced differences among audience members’ edu-
cation and socioeconomic levels, ethnicity, gender, and religion, the infinitely
diverse set of personal experiences that make up one’s identity ensure that each
hearer responds distinctly; the audience does not respond as a collective whole. As
Marisa Bortolussi and Peter Dixon write,
Even if a collectivity could be identified on the basis of obvious, common character-
istics, it would never be the case that all members comprising it would share exactly
the same values, aspirations, ideas, opinions, or, in short, the same life experience.
After we reject monolithic notions of reading publics, we can no longer justifiably
believe that the reading experience of all members of any given group will be identi-
cal and reducible to intuitive hypotheses about collective responses.12

Given the inherently mixed quality of audiences in general, I adopt a hetero-

geneous hypothetical audience for Mark, made up of both “insiders” and “outsid-
ers,” both Jews and gentiles living somewhere in the Roman Empire late in the
first century of the Common Era. For the sake of this article, let us assume that
these audience members are present for a performance of Mark’s Gospel in its
entirety. We do well to keep in mind that each audience member’s experience of
the Gospel performance would be informed by his or her own context in the
broader Greco-Roman world, his or her personal knowledge of the cultural mem-
ory grounded in the LXX, and his or her individuating personal experiences.13 In

Poetic Analysis of Audience Involvement with Characters and Events in the Markan World (BZNW
180; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012) 13-14. See also Bengt Holmberg, Sociology and the New Testament:
An Appraisal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990) 118-44.
11 Kelly R. Iverson, “‘Wherever the Gospel Is Preached’: The Paradox of Secrecy in the

Gospel of Mark,” in Mark as Story: Retrospect and Prospect (ed. Iverson and Skinner), 181-206,
here 205-6. Cf. David E. Aune, The New Testament in Its Literary Environment (LEC 8; Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1987) 60.
12 Marisa Bortolussi and Peter Dixon, Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical

Study of Literary Response (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 9-10.

13 The question of whether Gospels were ever performed in their entirety cannot be entertained
 EMOTIONS AT THE END OF MARK (16:1-8)  277

order to delimit the scenario further, let us suppose that this is the first time many
in our audience have heard Mark read in its entirety. Of course, some will have
prior exposure to the Gospel itself, and we may suppose that some bits of the nar-
rative will have reached the community through word of mouth prior to the first
performance of the manuscript. Still, for many, this will be the first time.
Finally, I take it for granted that early performances of Mark’s Gospel were
intended to persuade audience members to adopt certain values and beliefs expe-
rienced vicariously through the narrative, although the rhetorical texture of the
performance would undoubtedly affect various audience members in unique ways
based on the intersection of the story with their own experiences, values, and
beliefs.14 Their formative personal experiences would have steered them toward a
variety of different textual sense making—and associated emotional responses—at
the same performance.15 Indeed, this seems to be what we have from our earliest
extant “readers” of Mark, each of whom responds to the ending in their own way
(e.g., Matt 28:1-20; Luke 24:1-52; the longer ending [Mark 16:9-20]).
Mark’s inherently open-ended Gospel practically begs audience members to
finish the story. In what follows, I discuss the array of possible responses. Though
I am not offering a discussion of “the” emotional response(s) that would “cer-
tainly” have been present in any given ancient audience, the imaginative explora-
tion I present below is certainly plausible, located at the intersection of ancient and
modern reflection on emotional response to literature. In order to determine the
sorts of responses that we may expect among audience members at the end of the
Gospel, I begin with the dynamic relationship audience members develop with
characters in narratives, as well as the emotional responses that accompany the
formation of these bonds.

I I. Audience Identification and Accompanying Emotional

Responses
Emotional responses to narratives are elicited essentially on the basis of iden-
tification with audience members. The often automatic and unconscious process
of identification is occasioned by several factors.

in full. While hard evidence for the specific extent to which Gospels were read publicly in first- and
second-century Christian communities is lacking, a reasonable decision regarding general early
Christian practice would be that a Gospel was sometimes read in full, while at other times only
excerpts could be managed for the sake of time. See further, Nässelqvist, “Public Reading,” 97-98.
14 As with any ancient audience-centered approach, I work from a construct. But my approach

differs from a traditional narrative reading in that it attempts to account for the diversity likely
present among actual audience members.
15 By “textual sense making,” I mean basic, even unconscious and automatic, sense making,

rather than something akin to modern text-based scholarly hermeneutics.

 278  THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 78, 2016

A. Factors Influencing Audience Identification

Audience identification with characters and their goals and plans may be
forged through the delivery of the lector/storyteller, but it also reliably occurs as
part of audience members’ own compulsory internal simulation of the narrative.
At a rudimentary level, a storyteller or lector may induce audience identification
through glances or gestures. While much of the action in storytelling occurs with
an “on-stage focus,” as though between characters in the story world, the performer
is also able to engage the audience through an “off-stage focus,” thereby directly
involving the audience in the unfolding narrative.16 When the storyteller shifts the
orientation “off-stage,” through a turning of his or her gaze or gesture of hand, the
audience is invited to identify closely with, or even “become,” a character in the
dialogue for the duration of that address.17 We regularly find this technique in
modern performances of Mark’s Gospel, like those by Max McLean and Tom
Boomershine.18 In our case, this would involve audience members closely identi-
fying, or even “becoming,” the women at the tomb, while the lector, as the young
man, addresses them with news of the resurrection.
Audience members also (and perhaps more reliably) form bonds of identifica-
tion on their own through their internal simulation of the story. Intimations of this

16 Terry Giles and William J. Doan, Twice Used Songs: Performance Criticism of the Songs
of Ancient Israel (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009) 21-22; Philip Ruge-Jones, “Omnipresent, Not
Omniscient: How Literary Interpretation Confuses the Storyteller’s Narrating,” in Between Author
and Audience in Mark: Narration, Characterization, Interpretation (ed. Elizabeth Struthers Malbon;
New Testament Monographs; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2009) 29-43, here 35-36; Boomershine,
“Audience Address,” 115-42; Kelly R. Iverson, “Incongruity, Humor, and Mark: Performance and
the Use of Laughter in the Second Gospel (Mark 8.14-21),” NTS 59 (2013) 2-19, here 15-16.
17 Boomershine, “Audience Address,” 124.
18 See, e.g., Max McLean’s performance of the entire Gospel from memory in his “Mark’s

Gospel on Stage with Max McLean” (Worcester: Vision Video, 2010). Boomershine has likewise
performed a number of scenes from Mark’s Gospel, available at http://tinyurl.com/nvo3ued. Both
McLean and Boomershine produce a performance of Mark that is in some ways more bombastic
than we might expect from a first- or second-century lector. Yet it is equally the case that a well-
trained lector may have read the Gospel in a more careful and compelling way than either of these
modern performers. Though the analogy is inherently imperfect, these modern performers carry out
something similar to what we find in ancient rhetorical theory. See Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel,
172-75. In his first-century treatise, On the Sublime, Ps.-Longinus discusses a rhetorical tactic
whereby a performer/lector could draw his or her audience into the performance/reading by address­
ing them directly through a shift from the third person to the second ([Subl.] 26.1-3). He writes,
“All such passages with a direct personal address put the hearer in the presence of the action itself”
(πάντα δὲ τὰ τοιαῦτα πρὸς αὐτὰ ἀπερειδόμενα τὰ πρόσωπα ἐπ’ αὐτῶν ἵστησι τὸν ἀκροατὴν τῶν
ἐνεργουμένων) ([Subl.] 26.2). Likewise, issues such as length of the address, style, and delivery
could be tailored to prepare the audience to participate actively in the performance event. See further
Aristotle Rhet. 3.9.6; Quintilian Inst. 11.3.2 (cf. 6.1.30); see also Cicero De or. 2.178, 188, 191, 193;
3.216.
 EMOTIONS AT THE END OF MARK (16:1-8)  279

phenomenon were present already in Aristotle’s discussion of mimesis in the con-

text of tragedy: audience members were meant to experience a catharsis, a purifi-
cation, of pity and fear in response to those emotions in the tragedy itself.19 More
recently, Oatley has articulated a theory of mimesis as simulation that helps explain
why this close association takes place.20 Working from Aristotle’s notion of mime-
sis, Oatley suggests that, when audience members experience a narrative, they
automatically mentally simulate that narrative as the story progresses, playing an
imaginary version of the narrative internally in their mind’s eye. This involuntary
phenomenon may be especially vivid when that narrative is performed since, even
in muted performances such as public reading, the audience is essentially told how
to imagine the events in the story through the delivery of the lector. This internal
mental simulation of the narrative confronts audience members with the emotional
experiences of characters in the story (Aristotle Poet. 1449b 20-27). Indeed, neuro-
scientific studies have tracked these empathetic reactions to basic, even “aborigi-
nal,” human brain function involving “mirror neurons.”21 In essence, these neurons
“mirror” internally witnessed or narrated actions, thus enabling sense making,
based on our own prior experiences.22
In short, experiencing a narrative, especially in an oral/aural context, is an
imaginative and creative act in which the real world and the narrative world blur
together. This dynamic has been called the “diegetic effect,” which refers to the
phenomenon whereby the narrative world invades the real world and envelops the
audience.23 In neuroscientific terms, the internal simulation of narrative, facilitated
by mirror neurons, is cued by a story. Audience members who deeply enter the
narrative world—or are engulfed by it—tend to do so either as “addressees” or as
“side-participants.” That is, they may identify so closely with the character(s) that

19 It must be admitted that the meaning of “catharsis” in Aristotle is difficult to ascertain and

is debated among scholars. See further, Richard Janko, ed. and trans., Aristotle: Poetics (Hackett
Classics; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987) xvi-xx; John Anthony Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of
Literary Terms and Literary Theory (rev. Claire Preston; 4th ed.; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998)
115.
20 Oatley, “Taxonomy of the Emotions,” 53-74.
21 See, e.g., On Being Moved: From Mirror Neurons to Empathy (ed. Stein Bråten; Advances

in Consciousness Research 68; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2007); Marco Iacoboni, “Imitation,
Empathy, and Mirror Neurons,” Annual Review of Psychology 60 (2009) 653-70. On the foundational
nature of empathy, see Vittorio Gallese, “The ‘Shared Manifold’ Hypothesis: From Mirror Neurons
to Empathy,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2001) 33-50, here 42-47.
22 On automatic and subconscious imitation, an action fueled by mirror neurons that forms

the basis for empathy, see Iacoboni, “Imitation, Empathy,” 657-59. In fact, researchers have found
that those who traditionally struggle with empathy—those with autism spectrum disorder—appear
to have dysfunctional mirror neuron systems. See Justin H. G. Williams et al., “Imitation, Mirror
Neurons and Autism,” 287-95; Dapretto et al., “Understanding Emotions in Others,” Nature
Neuroscience 9 (2006) 28-30.
23 Ed S. Tan, “Film-Induced Affect as a Witness Emotion,” Poetics 23 (1994) 7-32, esp. 10-13.
 280  THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 78, 2016

they hear words addressed to the characters as literally addressed to them (“address-
ees”). Alternatively, they may experience the narrative in a more informational
capacity in which they do not necessarily experience compulsory obligation to
abide by the suggested actions in the address (“side-participants”).24 Naturally,
these categories are fluid and blend together to some degree, with each audience
member falling somewhere on the spectrum based on their own particular perspec-
tive.
Though recent work has made much of the lector–audience relationship in
direct address, the narratological cognitive dynamics are such that the lector need
not even address a line directly to the audience for it to be received by them as
address.25 This phenomenon is due to the bonds of identification forged between
audience members and certain characters. When this identification is formed
between an audience member and a character, an emotional response is induced.

B. Emotional Responses and the Narrative Experience

Oatley has articulated a model for how emotional responses are elicited in
everyday life based on cognitive appraisal theory.26 As humans, we care about the
goals and plans we make, even the unconscious ones, and we feel emotions when
those goals and plans are successful, when they fail, or when they seem to be near
success or failure.27 This theory must be adapted, however, when it comes to emo-
tional responses to literature, since we do not have goals of our own with respect
to narrative. For example, when Patroclus dies in Homer’s Iliad, this bears on the
plans and emotions of Achilles. Yet why do we feel emotions when Patroclus dies?
The same could be asked of our emotional experience of the tragic deaths of the
star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet.28 For Oatley, this happens because we iden-
tify with certain characters in the story as part of our own automatic mimetic

24 See further Oatley, “Taxonomy of the Emotions,” 53-74.

25 On direct address facilitated by the performer, see Iverson, “Incongruity, Humor, and
Mark,” 2-19. See also Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel, 172-75; Boomershine, “Audience Address,”
115-42.
26 For the most comprehensive discussion, see Oatley, Best Laid Schemes. Oatley explored

this theory of emotional response in relation to literature in “Taxonomy of the Emotions,” 53-74.
27 Patrick Colm Hogan, Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists

(New York: Routledge, 2003) 140-48. See further Oatley, Best Laid Schemes, 14-68. In the parlance
of cognitive appraisal theory, “goals” are anything a person wants to accomplish. Hogan uses the
example, “I want to have enough food.” In order to accomplish this goal, subgoals are created
leading to a “plan” for accomplishing this particular goal of having enough food. In this case, the
plan would be something like, “I will gather food regularly.” These goals, subgoals, and plans may
be subconscious or conscious, a factor that does not necessarily augment emotional response. See
further Hogan, Cognitive Science, 144.
28 Hogan, Cognitive Science, 148.
 EMOTIONS AT THE END OF MARK (16:1-8)  281

representation of the narrative.29 When we simulate a narrative, we adopt the goals

and plans of the central character(s) in any given scene. As a result, we experience
emotions:
[P]eople can mentally simulate the plans of others and understand their emotions, just
as they can run simulations of their own plans and test their own emotional reactions
in advance. In understanding narrative a subject may identify with the protagonist of
a plan, and the simulation can have many of the properties of real plans, including the
property of eliciting emotions appropriately to the junctures that the plan reaches.30

Emotions are elicited when audience members appraise the goals and plans
of the characters.31 Empathizing is second nature, given our emotional constitution
as human beings. Actually, “we hardly have to explain empathy at all. Indeed, we
have to explain the absence of empathy.”32 As it turns out, “we can understand the
response of a reader largely in terms of the experiences of the main characters in
the narrative. In this way, an understanding of character emotion should go a long
way toward explaining audience emotion.”33 This is particularly the case during
the experience of some vicissitude, which offers the opportunity to reevaluate the
goals and the current plans or projects in the story.34
In cognitive terms a plot is typically a plan of one or more characters. A plan meets
some vicissitude, perhaps a reversal of the fortunes of the protagonist. Communication
of emotions to a spectator or reader occurs at such a juncture, because a plot allows a
spectator or reader to identify with a character. But then it is our involvement in the
plans of the plot that causes our own emotions.35

In other words, plot twists or junctures provide a particularly opportune time in

which audience members are gripped by their involvement in the story and iden-
tification with the protagonist(s) of a scene, which results in a particular emotional
response. Though, as we have seen above, this emotional response often mirrors

29 Oatley, “Taxonomy of the Emotions,” 53-74. See further Slater, “Entertainment Education,”

171-75; Jeffrey J. Strange, “How Fictional Tales Wag Real-World Beliefs: Models and Mechanisms
of Narrative Influence,” in Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations (ed. Melanie C.
Green, Jeffrey J. Strange, and Timothy C. Brock; Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
2002) 278-79. See also Hartvigsen, Prepare the Way of the Lord, 55.
30 Oatley, Best Laid Schemes, 107-8.
31 Hogan, Cognitive Science, 140-65. See also Hartvigsen, Prepare the Way of the Lord, 78.
32 Hogan, Cognitive Science, 187. See also Tan, “Film-Induced Affect,” 18-19; idem, Emotion

and the Structure of Narrative Film, 174-75. As I have noted above, the absence of empathy may
be the result of a dysfunctional mirror neuron system. See Williams et al., “Imitation, Mirror
Neurons and Autism,” 287-95; Dapretto et al., “Understanding Emotions in Others,” 28-30.
33 Hogan, Cognitive Science, 148. See also, Tan, “Film-Induced Affect,” 24; Hartvigsen,

Prepare the Way of the Lord, 53, 79.

34 Hartvigsen, Prepare the Way of the Lord, 78.
35 Oatley, Best Laid Schemes, 400.
 282  THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 78, 2016

the emotions of the characters involved, audience members will never experience
even identical emotions in exactly the same way as the characters in the narrative.36
This difference creates space for irony in the narrative, as well as for other emo-
tional dynamics.37
Patrick Hogan and Ed Tan have qualified the work of Oatley, pointing out that
the emotions of audience members may differ from those of the characters when
hearers are elevated above them by means of vital information to which the char-
acters are not privy.38 As Tan points out, it is possible and indeed often the case
that there are “differences between the situational meaning structure for the viewer
and the situational meaning for the character. For instance, characters may be
aware of only a part of the total situation seen by the viewer.”39 In other words,
“divergent perspectives can result in different emotions.”40 While elevated audi-
ence members are engulfed in the story and thus have identified with the
protagonist(s) automatically to a certain degree, their different perspectives cue
unique emotional responses.
This idea is evident also in the writings of Aristotle, who suggests that when
fear is instilled in an audience, it “makes people inclined to deliberate” (ὁ γὰρ
φόβος βουλευτικοὺς ποιεῖ) about what they might do if put in the same position.41
Indeed, this deliberation often leads to the conclusion that, if put in the same sce-
nario, the audience member would have succeeded where the character(s) failed.42
According to modern theorists, this confidence is rooted in an elevated perspective
that allows audience members to understand certain things that the characters did
not or could not. Aristotle lists several such factors, including instances when fear
is not instilled in those perceived to be equals, those considered inferior, or those
believed to be superior (cf. Rhet. 2.5.18). Likewise, if audience members possess
considerable advantages over the characters, including abundance of money,

36 This emotional mirroring was observed already in antiquity from the vantage point of the
performer, who embodied the emotion he or she wished the audience to experience. As Quintilian
wrote, “The heart of the matter of conveying emotions . . . lies in being moved by them oneself”
(Inst. 6.2.26). Later he writes, “I have frequently seen tragic and comic actors, who, having put aside
their masks at the end of some emotional performance, leave the stage weeping” (vidi ego saepe
histriones atque comoedos, cum ex aliquo graviore actu personam deposuissent, flentes adhuc
egredi) (Inst. 6.2.35).
37 Oatley, “Taxonomy of the Emotions,” 62.
38 Hogan, Cognitive Science, 150; Tan, Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film, 184.
39 Tan, Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film, 184.
40 Hartvigsen, Prepare the Way of the Lord, 79.
41 See Aristotle Rhet. 2.5.14-16; 1383a; quotation from 2.5.14. While these comments come

from Aristotle’s discussion in his Rhetoric, their foundational psychological focus justifies their
appropriation by ancient understandings of emotional responses in genres other than oratory.
42 See William D. Shiell, Delivering from Memory: The Effect of Performance on the Early

Christian Audience (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011) 14.

 EMOTIONS AT THE END OF MARK (16:1-8)  283

physical strength, friends, territory, and military equipment, fear is likely to be

replaced by confidence (2.5.19-20). More generally, if audience members believe
that they are well with the gods, especially when signs or oracles have confirmed
that conviction, a feeling of confidence in place of fear becomes all the more plau-
sible (2.5.21).
Although emotional response to narrative is well documented itself, imagin-
ing which particular emotions may be evoked in any particular hearer is a complex
endeavor.43 Research thus far suggests that some form of empathetic emotion is
most likely to be cued as a result of the simulation process (see fig. 1 below44).
Among the empathetic responses, admiration, sympathy/antipathy, pity, hope, and
fear are most likely to be elicited. Admiration may be felt if an audience member
views the character(s) as superior. Factors eliciting sympathy include the charac-
ter’s pursuit of goals related to a just cause or the display of minor shortcomings,
which present characters in compellingly relatable terms. Sympathy is also elicited
when those in the audience view the character as an equal; such feelings are often
precipitated through a shared experience or social status.45 As Thomas Scheff
notes, “When we cry over the fate of Romeo and Juliet, we are reliving our own
personal experiences of overwhelming loss, but under new and less severe condi­
tions.”46 In other words, the shared experience (in this case, loss of a loved one)
catalyzes the emotional response. In the absence of a shared experience, the inter-
nal simulation of the narrative prompts us to imagine such a loss via mirror neu-
rons.47 If the character is viewed as weaker or inferior to the audience, pity is a
likely emotion. Alternatively, fear and hope are likely to be experienced when the
character is in some danger or—particularly relevant for Mark’s ending—when
the character has the opportunity to do the right thing, but whether he or she will

43 Tan, “Film-Induced Affect,” 23-24.

44 Figure 1 is adapted and extended from Hartvigsen, Prepare the Way of the Lord, 76, working

from Oatley, “Taxonomy of the Emotions,” 57, including detailed emotional response cues from
Tan, “Film-Induced Affect,” 7-32; and Hogan, Cognitive Science, 140-66. Graphic design by Mike
Trozzo.
45 Oatley, “Taxonomy of the Emotions,” 53-74; Gerald C. Cupchik, “Identification as a Basic

Problem for Aesthetic Reception,” in The Systemic and Empirical Approach to Literature and
Culture as Theory and Application (ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Irene Sywenky; Lumis-
Publications: Special Edition 8; Edmonton: Research Institute for Comparative Literature and
Cross-Cultural Studies, 1997) 11-22, here 18; Slater, “Entertainment Education,” 172; Christian
Ronning, “Soziale Identität – Identifikation - Identifikationsfigur: Versuch einer Synthese,” in
Literarische Konstituierung von Indentifikationsfiguren in der Antike (ed. Barbara Aland, Johannes
Hahn, and Christian Ronning; Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 16; Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2003) 233-51, here 236-38; Hartvigsen, Prepare the Way of the Lord, 69-71.
46 Thomas J. Scheff, Catharsis in Healing, Ritual, and Drama (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1979) 13.

47 Bråten, ed., On Being Moved; Iacoboni, “Imitation, Empathy,” 657-59.
 Internal audience members who Emotion Memories
would enter the narrative world empathy
Irretrievable but in dialectic
with Empathy

admiration sympathy pity hope fear

Audience members who
If character is viewed If character is viewed If character is viewed as If outcome is If outcome is
are side-participants
as superior as equal, in pursuit of viewed as inferior uncertain uncertain
just cause, minor
shortcomings

antipathy
If character is
antagonistic

identification
Audience members who
identify with characters
as addressees
Emotions mirror those Emotional response is
experienced by the character augmented in keeping with
with whom one identifies with emotions above, based
on differing perspective

Figure 1. Emotional Responses to Narratives

From Michael R. Whitenton, “Feeling the Silence: A Moment-by-Moment Account of Emotions at the End of Mark (16:1-8),” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 79 (2016): 272–89.
 EMOTIONS AT THE END OF MARK (16:1-8)  285

successfully act on the opportunity has been cast in some doubt. If a character’s
success seems likely, positive emotions will be elicited, whereas negative emotions
will follow from indications of failure on the part of the character.48
In sum, once simulation and thus identification take place between hearers
and the protagonists, a predictable array of empathetic emotions are plausibly
elicited. These emotional responses are chiefly keyed by vicissitudes or junctures
in the story, which offer an opportunity for reappraisal of the goals at stake in the
scene. These emotional responses may mimic the emotions of the characters with
which particularly strong bonds of identification have been formed, though other
empathetic emotional responses may be expected based on a variety of factors,
including audience elevation and the inferences made from that elevated perspec-
tive. Of course, it bears repeating that these categories are heuristic and blend
together to a degree. Figure 1 above necessarily presents a cleaner picture than
most emotional experiences, which will usually combine two or more of those
emotions at any particular juncture in the story. Such are the dynamics of audience
identification and the emotions.

I II. Audience Identification and Emotions at the End of Mark’s

Gospel (16:1-8)
In the remainder of the article, I examine the currents and levels of audience
identification with the women at the empty tomb and attend to the emotional
responses cued by their silence. What follows is backed by cognitive research but
remains necessarily speculative given the nature of the subject.

A. Audience Identification with the Women at the Tomb (16:6-7)

Audience members listen as certain women—Mary Magdalene, Mary the
mother of James, and Salome—come to Jesus’ tomb to anoint his body (16:1).
These are the same women who were the only other sympathizers to witness his
death (15:40-41). In other words, together with the women, these audience mem-
bers are the only followers who did not utterly abandon Jesus. This shared experi-
ence would strengthen the bonds of identification between the audience members
and the women. Moreover, the women are the protagonists of the scene in 16:1-8,
and the story is narrated from their perspective. As we have seen above, audience
members automatically and unconsciously identify with a scene’s protagonists as
a result of the internal simulation of a narrative. This cognitive function is based
on neurological structures (mirror neurons) and occurs across peoples, provided

48 Hartvigsen, Prepare the Way of the Lord, 78. See further Oatley, Best Laid Schemes, 47-50;

Hogan, Cognitive Science, 146-48.

 286  THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 78, 2016

their mirror neuron system is properly functioning.49 In short, as the story’s end
fast approaches, engaged audience members would have identified to some degree
with the women and would thus be primed for an emotional response.50

B. Emotional Responses to the Silence of the Women (16:8)

Mark’s Gospel ends abruptly without the women’s testimony or the meeting
between Jesus and his disciples. At least some audience members would likely find
this vicissitude jarring. If the τρόμος καὶ ἔκσαστις (“awe and amazement”) of the
women calls to mind the motif of amazement from earlier in the narrative, audience
members would probably conclude that the women were silent because they were
awestruck at the extraordinary events.51 These hearers would most likely then
mimic the women’s reverential awe and amazement and conclude that the women
must have said nothing to anyone except the disciples and Peter.52 Indeed, the
authors of Luke (24:1-12) and Matthew (28:1-8) seem to have understood the
women’s silence in this very manner. Along these lines, the wording earlier in 1:44,
which features a similar command to silence issued to a once-leprous man, sug-
gests that the women’s silence was meant to last only until they reached the disci-
ples.53 Yet, given the unceasing pace of a performance, it is doubtful that many, if

49 Again, see Williams et al., “Imitation, Mirror Neurons and Autism,” 287-95.
50 It will always be the case that at least some audience members remain detached, rather than

engaged, at any given point in the oral/aural experience of the narrative. See further Ed S. Tan,
“Engaged and Detached Film Viewing,” in Cognitive Media Theory (ed. Paul Taberham and Ted
Nannicelli; AFI Film Readers; New York: Routledge, 2014) 106-23.
51 On amazement and fear, see 1:27; 2:12; 4:51; 5:15, 42; 6:49-51; 7:37. Cf. Mark 9:6, where

Peter is left bereft of speech in response to the experience of the transfigured Jesus.
52 See most recently Mary Ann Beavis, Mark (Paideia; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011)

246. See also Olof Linton, “Der vermißte Markusschluß,” TBl 8 (1929) 229-34, here 230-31;
Robert H. Lightfoot, The Gospel Message of St. Mark (Oxford: Clarendon, 1950) 80-97; David R.
Catchpole, “The Fearful Silence of the Women at the Tomb: A Study in Markan Theology,” Journal
of Theology for Southern Africa 18 (1977) 3-10; Joachim Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus
(2 vols.; EKKNT 2; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978) 2:344-45; Elizabeth Struthers
Malbon, “Fallible Followers: Women and Men in the Gospel of Mark,” Semeia 28 (1983) 29-48,
here 43-46; Magness, Sense and Absence, 87-105; Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevangelium, vol. 2,
Kommentar zu Kap. 8,27–16,20 (HTKNT 2; Freiburg: Herder, 1991) 535-36; Timothy Dwyer, The
Motif of Wonder in the Gospel of Mark (JSNTSup 128; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996) 56-58;
Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007) 800; Beavis,
Mark, 246. On the empirically grounded connection between mimicry and empathy, see Iacoboni,
“Imitation, Empathy,” 653-70.
53 Like the women at the empty tomb, this man is commanded to “say nothing to anyone”

(μηδενὶ μηδὲν εἴπῃς) on his way to testify to the priest (cf. 1:40-45). Mark imperatival ὅρα μηδενὶ
μηδὲν εἴπῃς in 1:44 is content addressable and strikingly close to the indicative οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν
in 16:8. In 1:44, the command to silence is explicit, extending to all but the temple priest, but this
 EMOTIONS AT THE END OF MARK (16:1-8)  287

any, hearers would have this distant intratext called to mind.54 Rather, in the con-
text of an oral performance, the story will most likely have ended on a rather pes-
simistic note for many.
If the failure of the other disciples during the passion is activated, that is,
recruited from long-term memory to working memory for manipulation in the
construction of meaning, along with the passion’s overwhelming tenor of abandon-
ment and derision, audience members would likely reason that the women have
failed absolutely and that the story ends in dismal failure.55 These hearers, who
have anticipated the women’s final testimony, will be sorely disappointed. The
women’s overwhelmed state, they may infer, has led to enduring silence.56 If many
in the audience understood the silence as failure, what emotion(s) might this fail-
ure have elicited?
Most in the audience would probably not merely mimic the women’s awe-
struck feeling because their elevated position would make them aware of how
egregious such silence would be. In place of the silence-inducing shock, a variety
of alternative emotional responses are conceivable, based on their particular per-

episode could be activated for audience members. If so, the suggestion that the women, like the
once-leprous man, were only silent on their journey to testify would be difficult to resist.
54 Cognitive research suggests that incoming information competes with just-learned informa­

tion for scarce cognitive resources, a phenomenon known as interference. That is, the sensory input
from the present performance (“cue-overload”) tends to block access to prior knowledge (“memory
cues” to prior performances). Quintilian, it seems, would have approved of this modern research,
considering his views of the disadvantages of hearing over silent reading (see Inst. 10.1.19). Unlike
the act of reading, which enables and encourages reflection and review, listening to spoken narratives
requires the hearer to make split-second (and often unconscious) decisions. Listeners must decide
whether to reflect on any given detail—and run the risk of losing the narrative thread—or continue
to follow the narrative as it develops in the performance, at the risk of forgetting an important detail.
For a discussion of interference theory in relation to oral tradition, see David C. Rubin, Memory in
Oral Traditions: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-out Rhymes (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995) 147-55.
55 Scholars who follow a non–performance-based approach have reasoned similarly. See, e.g.,

Johannes Schreiber, “Die Christologie des Markusevangeliums,” ZTK 58 (1961) 154-83, here 175-
79; Werner H. Kelber, Mark’s Story of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979) 83-87; Pheme Perkins,
Resurrection: New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1984) 121-22; Bas M. F. van Iersel, Mark: A Reader-Response Commentary (trans. W. H.
Bisscheroux; JSNTSup 164; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998) 203-4; Francis J. Moloney, The
Gospel of Mark: A Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002) 351; Upton, Hearing Mark’s
Endings, 150-52; Hartvigsen, Prepare the Way of the Lord, 523-24.
56 For modern scholars who have reasoned thus, see Moloney, Mark, 351; Upton, Hearing

Mark’s Endings, 150-52; Hartvigsen, Prepare the Way of the Lord, 523-24. Collins (Mark, 800)
draws attention to Callimachus Hymn 4.57-60 as an analogue to the women’s epiphany-induced
awestruck fear. On fear as a common reaction to divine epiphany, see Neil Hopkinson, ed.,
Callimachus: Hymn to Demeter (Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 27; Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004) 132.
 288  THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 78, 2016

spective as audience members. As we saw above (fig. 1), audience members would
likely exhibit a wide array of empathetic emotions, such as admiration, sympathy/
antipathy, pity, hope, and fear, based on how they made sense of the emotions of
the women from their elevated perspective.57 Some in the audience who viewed
the women as equals due to shared experiences as “co-witnesses” to the crucifixion
(if even only through the performance) would probably have sympathy for them.
The same would be the case if they understood the women’s plan to anoint Jesus’
body as a noble pursuit, or if they admired the women’s being the first to visit the
empty tomb, or if they saw the women as possessing understandable shortcomings
due to their epiphany-induced silence.
Those in the audience who contemplate the failure of the women would likely
experience fear and hope, as derivatives of their sympathy.58 For example, we may
expect these hearers to fear that the disciples were never told of the resurrection
and/or hope that they were somehow informed.59 Alternatively, audience members
identifying strongly with the failure of the women might experience hope provided
that they recalled that failure is an integral part of discipleship in Mark and that
there is genuine value in suffering, as well as in following Jesus, irrespective of
one’s success. By the time of Jesus’ death in Mark, all of his closest followers have
completely abandoned him, save perhaps for the women, who watch from a dis-
tance (cf. 15:40); failure is in the air and unsuccessful hearers find themselves in
good company. Moreover, the proclamation of the good news routinely comes up
in contexts of suffering (8:35; 10:29; 13:10).60 If the script of the failure of the
male disciples is activated by their experience of the women’s failure, hearers
would be all the more likely to experience hope in the face of their own potential
failure.
As emotions welled up in the aftermath of the women’s failure, audience
members identifying with the women may carefully consider what it must have
been like to be in the women’s position. After all, this often automatic and uncon-
scious question lies at the heart of identification and empathy.61 Yet their unique
perspectives as members of such an elevated audience allows for more confidence
than the women would have been able to claim. Faced with the failure of the
women, these emotionally engaged audience members may infer that they are the

57 On the array of possible emotions, see Oatley, “Taxonomy of the Emotions,” 57.
58 Tan, “Film-Induced Affect,” 24.
59 Of course, from the perspective of the story, the existence of Mark’s Gospel itself implies

that the disciples were ultimately informed of the resurrection.

60 Similarly, Brian K. Blount, “Is the Joke on Us? Mark’s Irony, Mark’s God, and Mark’s

Ending,” in The Ending of Mark and the Ends of God: Essays in Memory of Donald Harrisville
Juel, ed. Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Patrick D. Miller (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005)
15-32.
61 Tan, “Film-Induced Affect,” 24.
 EMOTIONS AT THE END OF MARK (16:1-8)  289

only ones who can keep the young man’s commission. For some, this elevated
position would elicit feelings of confidence, even superiority. These audience
members would probably pity the women as they contemplate the fact that they
are now the only ones who can keep the story going.62 Alternatively, if some hear-
ers lack confidence despite their elevated perspective, they nevertheless may rea-
son that there is value in trying and find hope that, if—like the men and women in
the Marcan narrative—they fail, that failure need not be absolute. As a result, some
in the audience would probably feel a sense of urgency to preach the resurrection,
though with varying degrees of confidence.

IV. Concluding Remarks
Narratives affect us all in different ways, and the same was true of ancient
audience members. In the case of Mark’s ending, the silence would have been felt
in a variety of ways. Engaged audience members would have identified with the
women, at the very least on the basis of their own internal simulation of the nar-
rative. With identification now secure, the jarring end of the narrative would elicit
a variety of different emotions among these hearers. Some would experience
excitement or amazement (cf. Luke 24:1-12; Matt 28:1-8; Mark 16:9-20), while
others would take a more pessimistic outlook. Based in empathy, less optimistic
audience members would exhibit sympathy, even while remaining confident that
they would respond differently than the women. Others would sympathize and fear
that the disciples were never informed. Yet others would revel in an ironic hope,
reassured by failure as an integral aspect of discipleship. While we cannot be
“certain” of any of these emotional responses, they are certainly plausible. They
are also fully compatible with the readings of Mark’s ending propounded by
Magness and others, in which audience members find their own places in Mark’s
story. The rendering above, however, is also more complex and rich than tradi-
tional literary approaches, reflecting recent research on how narratives elicit emo-
tions from audience members. Any one-dimensional reading does not do justice
to the complexity of the narrative and its impact on early hearers, especially in
performance contexts such as the ones that played host to early readings of the
second canonical Gospel. In these scenarios, the silence of the women may not
have been heard, but it was surely felt . . . in a variety of ways.

62 Similarly, Hartvigsen, Prepare the Way of the Lord, 524.