Matthew
6:33 is a verse which many Christians have committed to memory. There is a textual contest in this verse, and
although it does not drastically change the meaning of the verse, the contest
here has some instructive features.
Most
manuscripts begin the verse with the phrase, “Seek first the kingdom of God
Contrary to
what is stated in Willker’s Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels, minuscule
57 has the usual Byzantine reading, albeit with βασιλείαν harshly
contracted. I consulted 157’s
online page-views, but it, too, supports the usual Byzantine reading, and
so does 579.
Vaticanus
and Sinaiticus, however, do not have the words “of God” (τοῦ Θυ);
Vaticanus also has a transposition here, so as to read “Seek first the
righteousness and His kingdom” (Ζητεῖτε δὲ πρῶτον τὴν δικαιοσύνην και τὴν βασιλείαν
αὐτοῦ). (Metzger theorized that this
transposition “is perhaps the result of the desire to suggest that
righteousness is prerequisite to participation in the kingdom; compare 5.20,”
in which case, such a scribe would seem rather reckless –
but it is also possible that B’s word-order here is just an effect of a scribe
losing his place, that is, the scribe’s line of sight may have jumped from the
first τὴν to the second τὴν, and then he attempted to salvage his mistake rather than remove it.)
In the 1881
revision of Westcott & Hort, the Greek words underlying “of God” were not
included, and this reading is still followed in the NIV, which reads, “But seek
first his kingdom and his righteousness” (applying “his” (αὐτοῦ) to both of the
preceding nouns); the RSV read the same way.
The ESV and CSB, however, reject the readings of both B and À. The NLT,
though rendered somewhat imprecisely, also favors the Byzantine reading: “Seek the Kingdom of God
When we
turn to early versions, there is widespread support for the Byzantine
reading: the UBS apparatus (2nd ed.) lists most Old Latin copies, the Vulgate, the Sinaitic Syriac, the Curetonian
Syriac, the Peshitta, the Harklean Syriac, the Palestinian Aramaic, the
Armenian version, and the earliest Georgian copies as allies of the Byzantine
text at this point. (Codex Argenteus,
containing most of the Gospels in Gothic, is unfortunately not extant for
Matthew 6:33.)
.
.
If not for
a smattering of patristic and versional witnesses that support the
non-inclusion of “of God,” one might think that when viewing the Greek
manuscripts where “of God” is not present, we are looking at merely a random
assortment of examples of recurring scribal carelessness. But along with evidence from Eusebius of
Caesarea (in the early 300s) and Didymus (in the late 300s), the Sahidic and
Bohairic versions (both from Egypt) confirm this reading – and, according to
James Leonard, so does the Middle Egyptian manuscript Schøyen
2650, a.k.a. Mae2 (from the 300s, perhaps the early 300s). These witnesses echo an earlier shared
ancestor. (The Coherence-Based
Genealogical Method may be incapable of detecting much of a historical link
among these witnesses because it is limited to manuscript-evidence, but things
look different when patristic evidence and versional evidence are in the picture.)
Before
proceeding further, let’s momentarily leave these witnesses to notice something
on display in some entirely different passages:
● In
Matthew 13:42, where most manuscripts refer to “the kingdom of their Father,”
Codex Θ* and minuscules 124, 700, and 78 refer to “the kingdom of heaven.”
● In Matthew
19:23, where other manuscripts refer to the kingdom of heaven, minuscule 579 refers to the kingdom of God
● In
Matthew 19:24, where most manuscripts (including À B D K W) refer to the
kingdom of God, Codex Z, f1,
33, 157, and the Sinaitic Syriac (and the Curetonian Syriac as well) refer to
the kingdom of heaven.
● At the
end of Mark 10:25, where most manuscripts refer to the kingdom of God
In Mark
15:43, where the Greek text refers to the “kingdom of God
● At the
end of Luke 6:20, where most manuscripts refer to the kingdom of God
● At the
end of Luke 7:29, where most manuscripts refer to the kingdom of God
● At the
end of Luke 9:60, where most manuscripts refer to the kingdom of God
● In Luke
12:31, where most manuscripts refer to the kingdom of God
● In Luke
13:18, where most manuscripts refer to the kingdom of God
● In Luke
13:28, where most manuscripts refer to the kingdom of God
● At the
end of Luke 14:15, where most manuscripts refer to the kingdom of God
● At the
end of Luke 18:16, where most manuscripts refer to the kingdom of God
● In Luke
18:24, where most manuscripts (including À A B D W) refer to the kingdom of God
● In Luke
23:51, where the Greek text of Luke 23:51 says that Joseph of Arimathea was
waiting for the kingdom
of God
Thus, where
there is a contest in the Synoptic Gospels between variants that refer to the kingdom of God , or to the kingdom
of heaven, a strong scribal tendency
is shown toward replacing the phrase “kingdom of God
With this
scribal tendency in mind, let’s consider the other horses that are running in
this race. John Chrysostom, though he
repeatedly used Matthew
6:33 in its usual form, once uses the phrase, “Seek first the kingdom of
heaven and his righteousness.” Clement
of Alexandria
(Some
readers may be interested to know that the last part of Clement’s statement,
and another statement of Clement in Stromateis
I, chapter 24, appear to constitute a utilization of a statement which
circulated in the early church as a saying attributed to Jesus: “Seek what is great, and the little things
shall be added.” Though not preserved in
any of the canonical Gospels, this saying (or “agraphon”) was used
not only by Clement but also by Eusebius of Caesarea.)
Earlier
yet, Justin Martyr, in First
Apology 15:16 (c. 160), writes, “Take no thought, therefore, as to what
you shall eat, or what you shall put on, for your heavenly Father knows that
you need those things. But seek the
kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you.” This resembles Luke 12:31 more closely than
it resembles Matthew 6:33,
but the parallel is inexact due to the reference to the kingdom of heaven.
If we
consult Ephrem
Syrus’ Commentary on the Diatessaron,
we may find some data that helps explain the origin of Justin’s and Clement’s
form of the verse. Writing in the
mid-300s, Ephrem offered comments on substantial parts of Tatian’s Diatessaron, a composition which Tatian
put together in about the year 172, blending the contents of the four Gospels
into one continuous account. Tatian was
a student of Justin, who appears to have used a similarly blended-together
composition that combined the texts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
This would
interlock with the idea that Justin (or whoever made his harmonized narrative
that blended together Matthew, Mark, and Luke) – and subsequently Tatian,
building on his teacher’s materials – without feeling obligated to maintain the
meticulousness that a copyist might feel when making a copy of an individual
Gospel, took some minor liberties with the text, resulting in a statement in
the Diatessaron, based on Matthew
6:33 and Luke 12:31, which reads, “Seek the kingdom of heaven, and all these
things, over and above, shall be added to you as well.” According to Willker (citing Carmel
McCarthy’s translation of the text of Ephrem’s commentary on the Diatessaron),
Ephrem Syrus utilized just such a statement in his commentary.
When we
consider the widespread influence of the Diatessaron, and the scribal tendency
to replace “kingdom of God” with “kingdom of heaven,” an explanation for the
readings in Matthew 6:33 in the Alexandrian codices presents itself: in an early manuscript, the text was altered
so as to read, “Seek first the kingdom of
heaven and his righteousness” – the only difference being the replacement
of “of God” with “of heaven” – precisely the sort of change that we see (with
problematic frequency) not only in minuscule 579, but in much earlier witnesses
such as the Sinaitic Syriac.
Subsequent
copyists considered this reading intolerably puzzling, and removed “of heaven,”
leaving only “the kingdom,” yielding the reading in À. This scribal modus operandi is basically the same one observed in Papyrus 75 in
Luke 12:31, where – whether one regards “His kingdom” or “the kingdom of God
In
conclusion, we have good reasons to be confident that the Byzantine reading of Matthew 6:33 is
original.
Readers are invited to
explore the embedded links for additional resources.
1 comment:
Thank you James. This was well stated and researched. I have long theorized that the Wescottian dictum "lexio brevior" was employed by 3rd and 4th century scribes/copyists to bring the NT text into more formal conformity. Albeit Matthew 6:33 presumes either "kingdom [of heaven]" or "kingdom [of God]" by inference it is nonetheless critical for us to have a thorough grasp of such textual tendencies. All NT manuscripts are by providence the Word of God.
Post a Comment