“And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.”
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid — Mark's original ending (the earliest and best manuscripts end at verse 8) is the most abrupt ending in the New Testament. Trembling, bewildered, fled, said nothing, afraid: the women's response to the resurrection is not triumphant proclamation but fear and flight and silence. The fear is the appropriate response to the encounter with divine reality — the same ecstatic terror as every theophanic encounter in the Gospel. The silence that ends the Gospel is the inverse of the first line (the beginning of the good news) — the beginning has been announced; the ending is the ongoing story that the reader must now live.