What's Up with the End of Mark?

In most modern translations of the Bible there is some sort of note after Mark 16:8 which explains that the verses coming after v.8 were not part of the earliest manuscripts used to preserve the God-inspired words of the original authors of the New Testament (a similar passage like this is also found in John 7:53-8:11). So, what is going on with these kinds of passages and should they be a concern for us in having confidence in God’s Word?

The New Testament we have is composed from a number of various ancient manuscripts that were copied again and again and handed down from century to century. In other words, there are no preservations of the original documents composed by the original authors. While the original documents contain words inspired by God, the manuscripts copied from these original documents contain various differences, mainly due to minor human transmission errors here and there. For example, from one copied manuscript to the next a word could be spelled differently or an article (a, an, the) added or dropped, etc.

Though these slight differences exist between ancient manuscripts, it is not of great concern, for two  reasons primarily. First, the number of NT manuscripts in existence are far greater than any other number of manuscripts of other ancient works of the same time period, which makes the NT by far the most reliable ancient document that we have. Second, because scholars know exactly where manuscript discrepancies exist, and what the nature of each of them is, it is known and verified that none of the discrepancies affect or contradict any major teaching or doctrine found in the rest of Scripture.
 
So, should we accept as God-inspired words passages like the ending of Mark that we are pretty sure were inserted later? The short answer is probably not. However, this doesn’t mean that we have to necessarily throw out these kinds of passages altogether. As long as they do not contradict any of the other teachings or doctrines of the Bible, then it is no danger for us to read them. So, the “longer ending” Mark is okay for us to read, as long as we realize it is likely a later insertion that was not part of the original God-inspired text written down by Mark himself.