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| MS 270 does not have "And the Lord said" in Luke 7:31. The verse begins a lection and a Eusebian Section (#73/5). |
The Textus Receptus – the Greek text
from which the New Testament was translated in the King James Version, the New
King James Version, and the Modern English Version (and others) – contains an introductory phrase at the beginning of Luke 7:31: “And the Lord said”
(in Greek, ειπεν δε ο κυριος). An investigation of this little
phrase may have a significant impact not only on an
accurate reconstruction of the text of this particular verse, but also on a
larger issue involving the King James Version.
The phrase “And the Lord said” is not in Luke 7:31 in most major recently-made translations of the New
Testament. This is not surprising,
because instead of being based on the Textus
Receptus, the NIV, NASB , NRSV, ESV , etc. are based primarily on the Nestle-Aland Novum
Testamentum Graece compilation, which relies very heavily on the Alexandrian
Text – a text that is transmitted by a relatively small number of manuscripts,
but which many researchers consider to be of higher quality than the Byzantine
Text, which is supported by a much higher number of manuscripts. The Alexandrian Text does not contain this phrase.
The Textus
Receptus usually agrees with the Byzantine Text.
In the Gospel of Luke, there are 220 disagreements between the Textus Receptus and the Byzantine Text
(these sums are based on a comparison of Scrivener’s 1881 reconstruction of the
Textus Receptus, and the
Robinson-Pierpont 2005 Byzantine Textform). When one sets aside variations involving the spelling of
names, and the benign interchange of similarly-pronounced vowels (a kind of variant
called itacism, due to the frequent
interchange of the Greek vowel iota),
and word-spacing, the number of disagreements shrinks to 188.
If one then sets aside instances of
word-order differences that do not affect the meaning of the sentence in which
they occur, the number of differences between the Textus Receptus and the Byzantine Text in the Gospel of Luke is reduced to 172. In the chapters of the Gospel of Luke that come before the reading in Luke 7:31 that is our focus, 18
differences between Scrivener’s 1881 reconstruction of the Textus Receptus
and the Byzantine Text occur which are capable of having an impact on
translation. They are:
4:8 – The Textus
Receptus has γαρ
(For); the Byzantine Text does not.
6:7 – The Textus
Receptus has αυτον
(him) in the opening phrase.
6:9 – The Textus
Receptus ends the verse with απολεσαι (destroy); the Byzantine Text has, instead, αποκτειναι (kill). (Here the NA/UBS
compilation agrees with the TR.)
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| MS 490 does not have "And the Lord said" in Luke 7:31. |
There is so little support for ειπεν δε ο κυριος that
even though this variant is four words long, it is not listed in the UBS
Greek New Testament’s apparatus, or
in the Nestle-Aland-27 apparatus. It is covered in the newly expanded 2015 edition of Wieland Willker’s Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels. I have not found this exact phrase in the text of any Greek manuscripts, and although my research is not exhaustive (I checked over 20 manuscripts, sampling various Byzantine sub-groups), I suspect that it may have entered the Textus Receptus as a retro-translation from the Latin phrase “Ait autem Dominus,” found in the Clementine edition of the Vulgate (but not found in most earlier Vulgate manuscripts such as the Book of Kells and the Moutier-Grandval Bible – although the phrase “Tunc Iesus dixit” (Then Jesus said) appears here in Codex Perusinus, a fragmentary Vulgate manuscript made in the 500’s or 600’s).
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| MS 119 does not have "And the Lord said" in Luke 7:31. |
This variant is
one of many exceptions to the often-repeated generalization that the Textus Receptus echoes the majority of
Greek manuscripts. Jack McElroy, in the pro-KJV book, Which Bible Would Jesus Use,
states that the Byzantine text “is the form found in the largest
number of surviving manuscripts and underlies the Received Text” (p. 49) – but
here in Luke 7:31, the inclusion of ειπεν δε ο κυριος is opposed by the vast majority of Greek manuscripts.
The 2005 Robinson-Pierpont edition of the Byzantine Textform does not
include ειπεν δε ο κυριος in Luke 7:31.
Neither does Wilbur Pickering’s compilation of the family-35 text. And neither does the 1904 compilation by Antoniades.
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| The words "And the Lord said" are not in the text of MS 2407, but a barely visible lection-note in the upper margin has the words "The Lord said" as part of an incipit-phrase. |
So
why, one might ask, are these four words in the KJV, NKJV, and MEV?
Why were they included in the Textus
Receptus? They are there in order to make the meaning
of the text more obvious to ordinary readers. The preceding two verses (Luke 7:29-30) are a
parenthetical statement by Luke, but without this opening phrase in verse 31, English
readers – before the use of quotation-marks was widely adopted – might think
that verses 29-30 are a continuation of Jesus’ words, as if Jesus thus
described the people who heard John the Baptist. Although the original text did not have ειπεν δε ο κυριος, its presence (or, in English, the
presence of “And the Lord said”) helps ensure a correct understanding of the
passage.
Even
without the phrase “And the Lord said,” versions such as the HCSB, NASB ,
NLT, 1984 NIV, and ESV make it clear that verses 29-30 are a parenthetical comment by
Luke. In these versions, verse 31 thus resumes
Jesus’ words with no introductory phrase.
The transition is obvious in modern English thanks to punctuation
and quotation-marks (and, in some cases, the use of parentheses).
In
ancient Greek, however, written without quotation-marks, and with only sporadic
punctuation, verses 29-30 could be interpreted as part of Jesus’ discourse. To help readers understand that verses 29-30
are not part of Jesus’ discourse, a phrase was added from the lectionary-incipits
– that is, the phrases which were used to introduce passages from the Gospels
when selections were read in church-services.
The phrase “ειπεν ο κυριος” was one such
phrase, and it was used in the church-services to introduce Luke 7:31-35 when
the passage was annually read on the third Friday after New Year’s Day.
Codex Campianus (M, 021 – an important uncial from the 800’s) provides an example of
this. In Luke 7:31, an asterisk in the
text guides the reader to the margin, where there is a note that does two
things. First, it identified Luke 7:31
as the beginning of the lection for the Friday of the third week after New
Year’s Day. Second, it instructs the
lector to begin reading the lection with the words, ειπεν ο κυριος [using the
usual contraction, κς] τινι ομοιωςω, that is, “The Lord said, ‘To what
shall I liken.’” (It is worth noticing that the word “therefore” has been left out.) The same instructions
to the lector can be observed in the margins of minuscules 8, 10, 261, 2399, 2407, and some
other manuscripts that have the Byzantine lectionary-apparatus with
incipit-phrases in the margins.
What the Textus
Receptus conveys via the addition of four Greek words, modern English
versions (based on compilations without those four words) convey via the
addition of quotation-marks and parentheses.
The 2011 NIV even resorts to the same sort of thing we see in the Textus Receptus; in the 2011 NIV, Luke
7:31 begins, “Jesus went on to say.”
This little investigation should teach us three
things.
● First: most of
the Textus Receptus’ deviations from
the Byzantine Text do not affect translation.
● Second: in cases
where the Textus Receptus’
minority-readings affect translation, they usually have a clarifying or
magnifying effect, bringing the original text’s meaning into sharper focus,
rather than introducing some new idea.
● Third: the Textus Receptus does not constitute the
original text in its pristine form. Here
in Luke 7:31 the Textus
Receptus contains an accretion – benign and helpful though it be – which
can be clearly traced to the lectionary-apparatus.
Some Christians believe that the Textus
Receptus is the original text, preserved in the same form in which it was
written. Some of these individuals
adhere to a creed known as the Westminster Confession, which affirms in the
eighth part of its first section that the New Testament, being immediately
inspired by God, has been “by
His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages.” The manuscript-evidence for Luke 7:31 (and
other passages) compels the conclusion that if such an affirmation is to be
retained, it must be with the understanding that the purity which has been
providentially maintained in the Greek New Testament is an aspect of the message of the Greek text used by the church,
and not its exact verbal form.
[The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. is Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.]
[The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. is Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.]
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