Andrew T. Lincoln, "The Promise and the Failure: Mark 16:7,8," JBL 108 (1989): 283-300. ***

Lincoln takes Mark 16:7 and 8 together as the Markan paradigm for the tension between divine promise and human failure in Christian experience. The unexpectedness of v 8 causes the reader to hesitate and review the narrative immediately preceding. Lincoln concludes that vv 7-8 should be taken as the final and climactic instance pattern of juxtaposed promise and failure which begins at 8:27-33, but which is also present in a more subdued way in the first half of the Gospel.