The textual apparatus of the fourth edition of the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament has a variety of shortcomings in its representation of the evidence that testifies for the omission of Mark 16:9-20.
Fourteen witnesses are listed as testifying for the omission of verses 9-20:
(1) Codex Sinaiticus. The apparatus gives no indication that Mark 16:9-20 is on a replacement-page.
(2) Codex Vaticanus. The apparatus gives no indication that the copyist, abandoning his usual custom of starting a book in the column that immediately follows the end of the preceding book, deliberately placed a blank column between the column in which Mark 16:8 ends and the column in which Luke 1:1 begins.
(3) 304. The apparatus gives no indication that there is a high probability that this is simply a damaged manuscript. Dr. Maurice Robinson has seen a microfilm of 304, and among the things he observed is that 304 does not feature the closing title of Mark after 16:8.
(4) The Sinaitic Syriac manuscript.(5) One Sahidic manuscript (the one at Barcelona, produced c. 425).
(6) Armenian manuscripts.
(7) Two Old Georgian manuscripts: the Adysh Codex and the Opiza Codex.
(8) Eusebius. Apparently this refers to the Eusebian Canons.
(9) Manuscripts according to Eusebius.
(10) Epiphanius 1/2. As far as I can tell, this is a reference to a statement in Epiphanius' Panarion where he mentions the number of Sections into which Eusebius divided each Gospel. That is, this reference is actually the testimony of Eusebius, reported by Epiphanius.
(11) Hesychius. After reading Hesychius' "60 Difficulties & Solutions," it looks pretty clear to me that when Hesychius said that Mark ends his account after mentioning the one angel, Hesychius was referring not to the entire text of Mark's Gospel, but specifically to what Mark says about the angels at the tomb. That is, Hesychius' statement only means that Mark did not tell about the two angels inside the tomb. Hort, back in 1881, already acknowledged this. Kelhoffer, in his essay on Ad Marinum, did not present the context of Hesychius' statement. Hesychius does not clearly chime in for or against Mark 16:9-20. His name should be removed from the apparatus.
(12) Manuscripts according to Severus. The apparatus does not indicate that Severus was repeating what he had read in Ad Marinum (which he explicitly mentions in his 77th Homily).
(13) Jerome. The reason for the inclusion of Jerome here is a mystery, since Jerome included Mark 16:9-20 in the Vulgate and casually used Mark 16:14 in "Against the Pelagians" to state where he had seen, in some copies, especially Greek codices, the interpolation that is now known as the Freer Logion. Jerome's statement in Ad Hedibiam, where he translates and abridges part of Eusebius' Ad Marinum, cannot reasonably be construed to imply that Jerome himself did not accept the passage.
(14) Manuscripts according to Jerome. The apparatus gives no indication that this consists entirely of a statement that appears within Jerome's abridged translation of part of Eusebius' Ad Marinum.
So, of those 14 items in the list for the omission of Mark 16:9-20 . . .
304 should be removed from the apparatus, at least temporarily, because it has not been verified that its text ended at 16:8 when the manuscript was in pristine condition, and because its text is essentially Byzantine, and because, according to Maurice Robinson, its commentary-portion appears to be unfinished and because, according to Hort, its commentary-portion resembles the comments of Theophylact, which cover 16:9-20.
Epiphanius 1/2 should be removed from the apparatus, because this reference is merely a statement about the Eusebian Sections, for which Epiphanius was not responsible.
Hesychius should be removed from the apparatus, because he does not actually say that the Gospel of Mark ends when he has reported the one angel; the statement that has been misrepresented as if it means that has been taken out of context.
Manuscripts according to Severus should be qualified so as to alert the reader that Severus used Eusebius' Ad Marinum and derived the pertinent statement from him.
Jerome should not be listed as a witness against Mark 16:9-20 at all.
Manuscripts according to Jerome should be qualified so as to alert the reader that the entire statement that Jerome made to this effect is part of Jerome's loose Latin abridgement of part of Eusebius' Ad Marinum.
Thus, out of an initial 14 witnesses for the omission of verses 9-20, three (Epiphanius 1/2, Manuscripts according to Severus, and Manuscripts according to Jerome) are repetitions of statements by Eusebius. One (304) is unclear because the significance of its evidence is in question. One (Hesychius) turns out to be neutral on the question. And one (Jerome) never says that he rejects Mark 16:9-20, while showing twice that he accepts the passage.
Thus the valid listings that remain are
(1) Sinaiticus, (2) Vaticanus, (3) the Sinaitic Syriac, (4) the Sahidic copy at Barcelona, (5) Armenian manuscripts, (6) the Old Georgian Adysh and Opiza Codices, (7) the Eusebian Canons, and (8) manuscripts according to Eusebius.
This list might plausibly be boiled down a bit further: it is unlikely that Eusebius would have left Mark 16:9-20 out of the Eusebian Canons if all his manuscripts included the passage, so #7 (the Eusebian Canons) may be considered an echo of manuscripts that Eusebius used which lacked the passage. In addition, when one reflects that the Old Georgian Version was translated from Armenian, item #6 falls into place as an echo of item #5, rather than being an independent witness. So the list could be recalibrated as follows:
(1) Sinaiticus, (2) Vaticanus, (3) the Sinaitic Syriac, (4) the Sahidic copy at Barcelona, (5) Armenian manuscripts and two Old Georgian codices, (7) manuscripts known to Eusebius and used by him as part of the basis for the Eusebian Canons & Sections.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.