Should the New Testament Scriptures contain Mark 16:9–20? Christians have little to fear if Mark’s Gospel stops at Mark 16:8.
Doubt for keeping Mark 16:9–20 in the Bible comes from the fact that this section is missing in two of the most ancient copies of the Christian Scriptures. These manuscripts are Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, which come from the fourth century. Scribes copied these manuscripts by hand. Scholars note that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus have errors in spelling and grammar like all other manuscripts. Scribes also edited these manuscripts throughout the centuries. They edited Sinaiticus unto the twelfth century (Bruce Metzger, “The Text of the New Testament”; Dirk Jongkind, “Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus“). Both of these fourth-century manuscripts often disagree, but the Alexandrinus manuscript resolves most of these variants. Academics associate Alexandrinus with the Byzantine text-type. This family of handwritten scriptures contain the majority of Koine Greek copies of the Christian Scriptures and include Mark 16:9–20 (5th–17th c.).
This early fifth-century manuscript, Alexandrinus, contains Mark 16:9–20. In addition to Alexandrinus, other fifth-century manuscripts named Ephraemi, Bezae, and Washingtonianus also contain the long-ending. Add also the whole family of manuscripts from the Byzantine text-type (7th–10th c.) and early church writers like Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (Florian Voss, “Textual Notes,” The UBS Greek New Testament. 4th ed. 152). In AD 180, Irenaeus quoted Mark 16:19, “Also, towards the conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says: ‘So then, after the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God'” (Against Heresies 3.10.5). Mark 16:9–20 was an early part of the Gospel of Mark. Presumption has caused critical scholarship to adopt a critical position and hesitancy of accepting Mark 16:9–20. Here are further academic observations of critical scholarship:
Donahue recorded that the fourth-century texts of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus along with the fifth-century Alexandrinus attest to the text of Mark. There is a significant textual variant for the Gospel of Mark, because Sinaiticus and Vaticanus lack Mark 16:9–20. Donahue described Mark 16:9–20 as the canonical and traditional ending.[1] The long ending of Mark has external textual support. Alands reported that 99 percent of the Greek manuscripts include the traditional ending of Mark 16:9–20.[2] Furthermore, Irenaeus quoted Mark 16:19 in reference to Psalm 110:1 in the late second century (Haer. 3.10.5).
Scholars rely upon internal evidence as indication that the Gospel of Mark concluded at 16:8. Travis B. Williams reported that scholars reject Mark 16:9–20 because of its style. However, Williams described that conclusions upon statistics exceed the evidence. Williams argued that a case cannot form upon vocabulary because such can change according to subject matter. Williams revealed that the style of the Gospel of Mark changes from the first half to the second without questioning the authorship.[3]
Boomershine and Bartholomew reported that the narrative technique of ancient literature required that the author completely finish a narrative leaving nothing to the imagination. By comparing Mark to the other Gospels, they observed that the short-ending of Mark was accidental. The author of Mark often included comments as brief notes to explain events to the audience, and yet ending the Gospel of Mark at 16:8 is the opposite of what the author did throughout the Gospel of Mark.[4] However, Boomershire and Bartholomew rejected this point, because they perceived that other sections of Mark including Mark 6:52, 11:18, and 12:12 left the reader without a full conclusion.[5]
John Christopher Thomas concluded that scholars should prefer the short ending of Mark 16:8. However, Thomas recognized William R. Farmer’s position that Mark 16:9–20 is genuine because this pericope may consist of older source material, which explains the difference in style.[6] However, others like Donahue perceived that redactionists extended Mark to include a resurrection appearance.[7] Despite the ending, Mark does conclude with an empty tomb and an angelic proclamation of Christ’s bodily resurrection. Furthermore, the significance of Mark to critical scholarship is that, “Mark represents the oldest surviving account of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection.”[8] Marcus observed that the defense of the short-ending of Mark does not exclude experiences of the resurrection appearances (Mark 14:28; 16:7).[9]
[1] Donahue, “Mark,” 903.
[2] Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987) 287.
[3] Travis B. Williams, “Bringing Method to the Madness: Examining the Style of the Longer Ending of Mark,” BBR 20 (2010): 398.
[4] Thomas E. Boomershire and Gilbert L. Bartholomew, “The Narrative Technique of Mark 16:8,” JBL 100 (1981): 214.
[5] Boomershire and Bartholomew, “The Narrative Technique of Mark 16:8,” 217.
[6] John Christopher Thomas, “A Reconsideration of the Ending of Mark,” JETS 26 (1983): 418.
[7] Donahue, “Mark,” 903.
[8] Evans, “Mark,” 1065.
[9] Marcus, “Gospel of Mark,” 860.
[MORE from: An Introduction to the Gospel of Mark]
Seeing God's Breath 
Mark,
All of this evidence is covered in my book, “Authentic: The Case for Mark 16:9-20.”
You need to update your data. The claim you repeated about “The older Ethiopic manuscripts” is flat-out incorrect, as Metzger acknowledged in 1980.
You can’t expect to get valid conclusions from invalid data.
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1. OK thanks. He was definitely wrong concernng John 3:5.
2. One more in the pile of uncertainties.
3. See #2.
4. If one is really saved then they ought to be water baptized.
5. The evidence is so divided as it is. Like I said if it is that important of a doctrine it would be taught elsewhere that a person today needs to be water baptized in order to be saved.
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1. Name a passage cited by Tertullian that is more powerful in terms of water baptism than Mark 16:16.
2. In terms of Victor of Antioch see my comment posted yesterday. The evidence is just too disputed – guesses, probably’s, maybe’s etc.
3. Just because Irenaeus knew of this passage does not necessitate that it is inspired. Some manuscripts had the Longer ending while others did not.
Those who insist that water baptism is necessary for salvation today must look elsewhere than in this highly disputed section to base their erroneous/heretical doctrine on.
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Marc,
(1) John 3:5 and I Cor. 10:1-4, the way Tertullian interpreted them, support baptism in water more than Mk. 16:16, because in those passages water is specifically mentioned.
(2) Regarding Victor of Antioch, yes, there is some question about the evidence, but it is a simply question of whether the note that mentions the Palestinian exemplar of Mark is by Victor, or by someone else, and thus our options are either (a) that Victor accepted Mk. 16:9-20, repeating Eusebius’ comment that closes with instructions on how 16:9 should be read, or (b) that Victor accepted Mk. 16:9-20, and went through the trouble of finding many manuscripts that had the passage, including a particularly cherished Palestinian exemplar. The claim that Victor “omitted” Mk. 16:9-20 is not an option.
(3) Of course a passage does not become inspired just because Irenaeus he read it in a copy of the Gospel of Mark that was made less than 120 years after the autograph was produced. Likewise a passage does not become non-inspired just because an early Egyptian copyist excised it.
While, as you say, “Some manuscripts had the Longer ending while others did not,” MSS that had it were in use throughout the Roman Empire (and were used by three church-leaders in the 100’s), while the ones that did not have it are first mentioned in the 300’s, and were confined until the 400’s mainly to Egypt (from where came Codex Bobbiensis, the Sinaitic Syriac, an early form of the Sahidic Version, and, later, copies with the “Shorter Ending”) and to the library at Caesarea (from where came Vaticanus and Sinaiticus), which consisted in part of MSS from Egypt.
Whatever your views about the purpose of baptism are – whether you think it is some sort of formal afterthought (and that the church is authorized to welcome unbaptized individuals to partake of communion — a view which pretty much everyone in the early church would probably consider heretical), or some sort of public display of salvation (although it is conducted /privately/ on several occasions in the New Testament) – they should not be maintained by misrepresenting the evidence.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
James Snapp, Jr.
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No matter what he or anyone else says one can not deny how very disputed these passages are. If I were to debate a person who denies the Deity of Christ I would not use highly disputed texts for my position (such as 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 John 5:7). If it is that important of a doctrine (which salvation certainly is) there will be other passages that clearly demonstrate the truth of what God intends to convey.
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1. Even the Longer Ending in Codex Vercellensis is highly suspect.
2. Christ’s Virgin Birth is attested elsewhere (Luke) but not so with some of things recorded in Mark 16:9-20.
3. These Armenian manuscripts still don’t contain the Longer Ending. This along with the other reasons I mentioned demonstrate it is too unreliable of a text to base any doctrine on.
4. Bruce Metzger: Mark 16:9-20 “are absent from the oldest Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic and Armenian manuscripts” (The Canon of the New Testament: It’s Origin, Development and Significance; Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987, pages 269-270).
5. See #3.
6. You mentioned Tertullian: Why in his “De Baptismo” he cites many passages showing the importance of water baptism but not once does he mention Mark 16:16?
7. Jerome wrote a letter to Lady Hedibia stating “almost all of the Greek codices lack the longer ending” (omnibus Graeciae libris pene hoc capitulum non habentibus). –> Epistola cxx.3, PL 22.980-1006.
8. Victor of Antioch who wrote the earliest known commentary on Mark omits the Longer ending as well.
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These are not conclusive for your position, but I’d like to see Mr. Snapp’s reply.
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Marc,
Again, point-by-point (though not so briefly, since more details are necessary):
(1) This does not diminish the simple point that Codex Bobbiensis is not the oldest witness to the Latin Bible. And, regarding Codex Vercellensis, if by “suspect” you mean “non-existent,” then, the testimony of Codex Vercellensis (Old Latin a) about the ending of Mark is suspect. Its last original page stops in Mark 15:15 (although a page containing the Vulgate text of Mk. 16:7-20 has been inserted). There are four pages cut out, but there’s no way to tell with confidence what those missing pages contained, or whether there were additional pages after the four detectable pages. C. H. Turner proposed that due to space-considerations, the absent pages had to have either the Shorter Ending, or else end at 16:8, but his proposal was built on several assumptions, mainly that there were no other pages after the four cut-out ones, and that the person who added the new page with 16:7-20 began a page where an original page began.
No matter how you slice it, the point stands that Codex Bobbiensis is not the oldest witness to the Latin Bible. Plus, consider how abundantly Ambrose utilized the contents of Mark 16:9-20 in the 370’s-380’s: at one point he says, “We have heard the passage read where the Lord says, ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to all creation.’” This shows that the passage was no dubious alien thing; it was in the series of texts that were read aloud in the church-services. (Ambrose proceeded to use the verse, without any hint at all that it was in any way questionable, to draw support for the point that Jesus is the Creator, not a creature.)
(2) Again, this does not diminish the point that the Sinaitic Syriac and Codex Bobbiensis share a common line of descent.
(3) Yes; those Armenian copies don’t contain Mk. 16:9-20, and they belong on the scale. So do the 100’s of Armenian copies that /do/ contain Mk. 16:9-20. And so does the testimony of Eznik. (But, I ask rhetorically, how many commentators mention the parts of the Armenian evidence that support Mk. 16:9-20??)
(4) Metzger’s statement is a great sound bite, but it gives a false impression of the real state of the evidence. The oldest Greek MS of Mark, P45, does not have any text at all from Mark 16 due to damage. The oldest Latin MS of Mark (Codex Vercellensis) is missing its final pages. The oldest Syriac MS of Mark is the Sinaitic Syriac, but that is the /only/ Syriac MS in which Mark stops at 16:8; plus, the Curetonian Syriac (very severely mutilated, but containing text from Mark 16:17-20) is only slightly younger. What Metzger thought was the oldest Coptic MS of Mark (Sahidic Codex Palau-Ribes Inv. Nr. 182) may not be as old as he thought; its assigned production-date is 425 but it may be centuries later, i.e., later than the Coptic text of “The Enthronement of the Archangel Michael” which uses Mk. 16:15-18. The oldest Armenian MS of Mark (Matenadaran 6200) was produced in 887. (Plus, Matenadaran 2374, which includes Mk. 16:9-20, and which was produced in 989, not only has (like some other Armenian Gospels-codices) a colophon stating that it was made from ancient exemplars, but also has covers and illustrated pages assigned to the 500’s. Figuring that the covers and pictures are surviving pieces of Matenadaran 2374’s exemplar, then Matenadaran 2374, while not the oldest Armenian Gospel-MS, was copied directly from an exemplar produced in the 500’s (i.e., an exemplar a minimum of 287 years older than Matenadaran 6200).
Plus, consider what can be said when one does not arbitrarily focus exclusively on manuscripts: Mark 16:19 is attributed to Mark by Irenaeus in a composition written 140 years before the production-date of our earliest Greek MS of Mark 16. Mark 16:15-18 was read in the church-services in Milan where Ambrose preached in the 370’s, decades before the production of the oldest extant Latin MS containing its original pages of Mark 16. Mark 16:9-20 is also included in the Latin Vulgate Gospels produced by Jerome c. 383. Mark 16:16-18 was used by the Syriac writer Aphrahat in 337, well before the production of the Sinaitic Syriac. The Syriac Peshitta also includes Mk. 16:9-20. Mark 16:17-18 was used by the Armenian writer Eznik of Golb in 440, centuries before the production of the earliest extant Armenian copy of Mark 16.
(5) Again I simply emphasize that while no evidence should be ignored, (a) the medieval Old Georgian evidence from the 800’s and 900’s is an echo of the Armenian evidence, and (b) lot of people who have read Metzger have gotten a false impression of the scope of the evidence for the non-inclusion of Mk. 16:9-20 because they were unaware that the Old Georgian was translated from Armenian.
(6) You asked why Tertullian, in De Baptismo, cites many passages showing the importance of water baptism but not once does he mention Mark 16:16. First, his statement (following a citation of Mt. 3:11), “A true and steadfast faith is baptized with water unto salvation, but a feigned and feeble faith is baptized with fire unto judgment” may be modeled on Mk. 16:16. Second, while I can’t read Tertullian’s mind, I suspect that he did not explicitly cite Mark 16:16 in “De Baptismo” for the same reason that he did not explicitly cite Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16, Romans 6:4, Galatians 3:27, and First Peter 3:21. As George Salmon pointed out over a century ago, many an author has had the experience of writing something, and then later recollecting some illustration or case-fortifying argument that would have fit perfectly. I don’t think the patristic writers were any different. Third, because Mk. 16:16 does not specifically mention water, Tertullian probably figured that it would be pointless to employ it, reckoning that the heresy he had to address did not consist of a rejection of all conceivable kinds of baptism, but a rejection of baptizing /in water/, and to use Mk. 16:16, which does not specifically mention water, would have only invited the response that this verse refers to a spiritual sort of baptism that one experiences while physically dry. (With this in mind notice the emphasis on water throughout De Baptismo.)
(7) You are referring to part of Jerome’s letter to Hedibia in which Jerome condensed, and translated into Latin, an extract from Eusebius’ earlier composition Ad Marinum. If you put this part of Jerome’s Latin Ad Hedibiam alongside the first three Q-and-A in Eusebius’ Greek Ad Marinum, it should be obvious that this is essentially the same material. It is, in Ad Hedibiam, Jerome’s presentation (without attribution) of Eusebius’ statement, spontaneously restated in Latin as Jerome composed his letter to Hedibia by dictation; it describes neither Jerome’s observations nor Jerome’s manuscripts. Make the comparison, and you’ll see that what the commentators refer to as Jerome’s testimony to MSS with the abrupt ending consists of nothing but Jerome’s efficient plagiarism of Eusebius. (One might as fairly cite the evidence-descriptions given by Metzger *and* the evidence-descriptions given by Witherington.)
(8) Victor of Antioch’s “commentary,” which probably was put together in the mid-400’s, is not the sort of composition that we think of when we use the word “commentary.” It is more like a compilation, a collecton of excerpts from earlier (unattributed) authors’ compositions. Arriving at a standard text of Victor’s work is not easy, because so much of it is not really Victor’s own work, and because copyists sometimes copied it incompletely, and because copyists sometimes supplemented it. Burgon’s “Appendix D” goes into some detail about this. At the end of Victor’s Commentary/Compilation on Mark, there’s a condensed presentation of what Eusebius said in Ad Marinum, including Eusebius’ recommendation to retain Mark 16:9-20 and harmonize it with Mt. 28:1 via the use of a pause in 16:9. Then, in some copies of Victor’s Commentary, there is a note (given in Burgon’s “Appendix E”) which was added as a corrective of what was said by the first person pictured by Eusebius. This note, which begins by referring to the “many copies” lacking the passage to which the first person pictured by Eusebius alluded, says something like this:
“Notwithstanding that in many copies the passage that begins by stating, ‘Now when he was risen early the first day of the week he appeared first to Mary Magdalene’ is not found – certain individuals having supposed it to be spurious – yet we, at all events, have discovered it in many copies, and we have copied the account of the Ascension out of accurate copies, in accord with the Palestinian exemplar of Mark that truly exhibits the authentic Gospel, that is, from the words ‘Now when he was risen early the first day of the week,’ and so forth, down to ‘with signs following. Amen.’”
Victor did not omit verses 9-20; negligent commentators have misrepresented his testimony. The only question is whether this note was added by Victor, or by someone else. It does not appear in all the copies of Victor’s Commentary, but that may be chalked up to copyists’ casual neglect of Victor’s own comments about the comments he had collected (the way one might decline to copy editors’ notes if one were hand-copying a Shakespearean play). The thing to see is that if Victor did not write this note, then his last comment about Mark was simply a partly-paraphrased repetition of Eusebius’ comment, including Eusebius’ recommendation that 16:9 should be punctuated and retained. If Victor /did/ write this note, then his testimony about the presence of Mark 16:9-20 in many copies, and in a particularly cherished Palestinian copy, should be added to the equation; that is, we would have here attestation to the existence of “many copies” that contained Mark 16:9-20, each as old as Codex C, as well as to a Palestinian copy that had some sort of special status in the writer’s eyes (such a manuscript may have been connected in some way to the Jerusalem Colophon).
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
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Thank you, James. I appreciate the read and your great study on this. I hope that you will post your comments on your site, and you are welcome to place links here. I think that you will get more readers by using a weblog and embedding them into your sight.
God bless you in your studies and your walk with Christ.
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Marc Taylor,
Briefly, point-by-point:
(1) Bobbiensis (k) is not the “oldest witness to the Latin Bible.” Codex Vercellensis is older, and Latin-writers such as Tertullian (late 100’s, very early 200’s) and Ambrose (370’s-380’s) are also older. In addition, the testimony of k should be weighed with an awareness of how anomalous its text is in Mark 16. It omits the women’s names in 16:1; it omits the statement that they said nothing to anyone in 16:8, and it has an interpolation describing Jesus’ resurrection and ascension between 16:3 and 16:4. It seems clear that whoever added that interpolation (which resembles a scene in the docetic(ish) “Gospel of Peter”) had no intention of mentioning post-resurrection bodily appearances of Jesus. In other words, the text of Mark 16 in Codex Bobbiensis is terribly corrupt.
(2) The Sinaitic Syriac is indeed an important witness. Its readings in Matthew 1 that deny Christ’s virgin birth are well-known. The Sinaitic Syriac MS shares some special readings with Codex Bobbiensis, at Mt. 1:25, and Mt. 4:17, and, particularly, in Mark 8:31-32. Instead of saying the equivalent of “And He spoke this word openly,” they both say, instead, “And He will openly speak the word.” This is a symptom of a textual relationship between the Sinaitic Syriac and Codex Bobbiensis.
(3) The “100 of the early Armenian manuscripts” that you mention are not particularly early; they are all medieval (i.e., they are “early” only when compared to other Armenian copies, some of which are rather young). They descend from the Armenian Version which was made, and then revised, in stages, in the 400’s. This evidence should not be ignored. But it should be set alongside the testimony of hundreds of other Armenian manuscripts that include Mark 16:9-20, and alongside the testimony of Eznik of Golb, an Armenian scholar who was involved in the revision of the Armenian Version; in his composition “De Deo” (c. 440), Eznik used Mark 16:17-18.
(4) Your statement that “the older Ethiopic manuscripts” lack Mark 16:9-20 is fictitious. For decades, this claim stood in commentary after commentary, and no one tested it. In 1980, though, Bruce Metzger published the results of his investigation of the Ethiopic evidence (in New Testament Tools and Studies), and concluded that not a single Ethiopic copy of the Gospel of Mark ends at 16:8. Barring incidental damage, they all contain Mark 16:9-20. The foundation of the entire claim seems to have been a misinterpretation of an abbreviation in an article written in the late 1800’s. Please don’t spread this false claim in the future. (Unfortunately, even after Metzger corrected this false claim in 1980, it is still perpetuated in the current edition of Metzger’s own “Text of the NT” handbook, which is currently edited by Bart Ehrman.)
(5) The fact that the two oldest Old Georgian MSS (the Adysh Codex and the Opiza Codex) lack Mark 16:9-20 should be weighed in light of the fact that the Georgian version was translated from Armenian. What this means, Marc, is that these two witnesses are echoes of a form of the Armenian Version; they do not add another line of evidence to the equation. (Also, the author of a much earlier Georgian composition – The Martyrdom of St. Eustathius of Mzketha – demonstrates familiarity with the contents of Mk. 16:9-20.)
I notice that you have reached into the 900’s for your evidence. If I were to list individually every piece of evidence older than the Opiza Codex (from A.D. 913) that supports the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20, this would be a very long comment indeed. So instead, let’s just review some support for Mark 16:9-20 from the time of the Roman Empire (before its fall in 486). The degree to which these witnesses support the passage is not uniform, but as a simplified reference I will treat them the way that the (non-)testimony of Clement and Origen has been treated by so many commentators. Here’s the list: Justin, Epistula Apostolorum, Tatian, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Clement, Vincentius, De Rebaptismate, Porphyry/Hierocles, Marinus, Eusebius, Manuscripts known to Eusebius, Aphrahat, Acts of Pilate, the Peshitta (over 180 copies), Apostolic Constitutions, Epiphanius, the Gothic Version/Wulfilas, the author of the Freer Logion, the Vulgate, Ambrose, the Claromontanus Catalogue, the Curetonian Syriac, Ephrem Syrus, De Trinitate (probably by Didymus), Augustine’s Latin copies, Augustine’s Greek copies, Latin Breves/Argumentum, all extant Old Latin copies except Codex Bobbiensis, Leucian Acts/John the Son of Zebedee, Chromatius, Macarius Magnes, John Chrysostom, Jerome (Against the Pelagians), Doctrine of Addai, Pelagius, Philostorgius, Marcus Eremita, Prosper of Aquitaine, John Cassian, Marius Mercator, Syriac Gospel-Canons, Nestorius/Cyril of Alexandria, Leo the Great, and Saint Patrick (in Confessions and in Letter to Coroticus).
Perhaps if the commentators on whom you have relied would check their data, and present the evidence in a balanced way, instead of just repeating and distorting the misleading claims that Bruce Metzger made in “Text of the New Testament” and in “A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament,” they would not have reached such erroneous conclusions.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
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Amen! You know your manuscripts.
God bless.
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These also do not have the longer ending:
1. Codex Bobbiensis (k) – oldest witness to the Latin Bible (written 400AD). It contains the Shorter Ending after verse 8. “But they reported briefly to Peter and those with him all that they had been told. And after these things Jesus Himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.”
2. Sinaitic Syriac (4th century) – “it represents a text from the late second or early third century” (Perspectives on the Ending of Mark, Daniel Wallace, edited by David Black, Broadman and Holman Publishers Nashville Tennessee, 2008, page 19).
3. 100 of the early Armenian manuscripts
4. The older Ethiopic manuscripts
5. Two of the oldest Georgian manuscripts – (Adysh Gospels, 897AD and Opiza Codex, 913AD).
————
See R.H. Lightfoot’s “The Gospel Message of St. Mark” (pages 80-97) for a detailed analysis for a Mark 16:8 ending.
a. This ending is:
1. “…the virtually unanimous verdict of modern textual scholarship” (The Gospel of Mark, R.T. France, page 685).
2. “…the authentic text…” (NIDNTT 2:359, Joy, Beyreuther, Finkenrath).
b. 16:9-20 is:
1. “…the inauthentic Marcan ending…” (TDNT 5:240, oneidizw, Schneider).
2. “…the false Marcan ending…” (TDNT 3:753, kleis, Jeremias).
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