They Said Nothing to Anyone

A Queer Reading of the Original Markan Ending

Abstract

Vicar Jenny offers a queer reading of the original ending of the Gospel of Mark (16:6b–8a), arguing that the women’s silence at the empty tomb should not be interpreted as a failure of proclamation but as a historically and socially intelligible strategy of embodied witness. Drawing on queer communicative practices—including flagging, subtext, and nonverbal signaling—and on testimonies from the AIDS crisis, they reframe the women’s fear and silence as modes of truth-telling that emerge under conditions of danger and marginalization. By juxtaposing Mark’s narrative with C.S. Lewis’s discernment motif in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and with contemporary queer experiences of identifying “safe” interlocutors, they propose that the earliest resurrection testimony may have been conveyed through action, presence, and communal recognition rather than speech. This reading highlights Mark’s subversive insider/outsider dynamic, restores the women’s role as the first evangelists, and invites modern readers to consider how theological truth is often borne by bodies and communities whose witness resists normative expectations of speech.