Video Lecture 20: Luke 22:43-44: Jesus in Gethsemane

 

The 20th video lecture in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism is accessible at YouTube and at Bitchute.  This lecture is 32 minutes long.  Here's an extract:

            Justin Martyr, who was martyred in the 160s, used this text in his composition Dialogue With Trypho, chapter 103.  Commenting on Psalm 22, verse 14, he wrote, “In the memoirs which, I say, were drawn up by His apostles and those who followed them, it is recorded that His sweat fell down like drops of blood while He was praying.”

             Reckoning that the Gospel of Luke was not written before the early 60s, this implies that Justin’s copy of the Gospel of Luke was separated from the autograph of the Gospel of Luke by less than a century.

            About two decades after Justin, Irenaeus wrote the Third Book of his composition Against Heresies.  In the 22^nd chapter, Irenaeus used Luke 22:44, mentioning that if Jesus had taken nothing of Mary, that is, if He had not experienced a physical human nature, he would not have eaten food harvested from the earth, He would not have become hungry, or weary, “Nor would He have sweated great drops of blood.” 

            Irenaeus’ contemporary Tatian included Luke 22:43-44 in his Diatessaron, around the year 172.  Around the year 360, as Ephrem Syrus composed his commentary on the Diatessaron, he also mentioned the detail about Jesus’ sweat becoming like drops of blood. 

            Also, in Ephrem’s Carmina Nisibena, in Hymn 35, part 18, Ephrem pictures the devil saying about Jesus, “While He was praying I saw Him and was glad, because He changed color and was afraid:  His sweat was as drops of blood, because He felt that His day had come.”

            In the early 200s, the writer Hippolytus referred to Luke 22:44, near the beginning of chapter 18 of Against Noetus.  In the course of giving examples of the contrast between Jesus’ divinity and humanity, Hippolytus wrote that “In agony He sweats blood, and is strengthened by an angel.”

            The first patristic writer to mention manuscripts that do not support Luke 22:43-44 is Hilary of Poitiers.  Around 350, in Book 10 of his Latin composition De Trinitate, in part 41, Hilary wrote, “We cannot overlook that in very many Greek and Latin codices nothing is recorded about the angel’s coming, and the sweat like blood.” 

            Despite acknowledging such manuscripts, Hilary does not offer a judgment on whether the passage has been omitted in the copies where it is absent, or interpolated in the copies in which it is found.  He seems to have been less concerned about reaching a correct verdict on the textual question and more concerned about promoting correct theology.

            He said that heretics should not be encourage by the idea that Jesus’ weakness is confirmed by the need for an angel to strengthen Him, and that His sweat should not be construed as a sign of weakness.  And like Irenaeus, he points out that the bloody sweat demonstrated the reality of Jesus’ physical body.  When he states, “We are forced to the conclusion that all this happened on our account.” He seems content to use the text.

            In 374, Epiphanius of Salamis made some very interesting statements about Luke 22:43-44.  In Panarion 19:4, he quoted these verses an example of passages that Arians use to show that Jesus sometimes needed assistance from others, or that He was inferior to the Father:  “And it says in the Gospel according to Luke, ‘There appeared an angel of the Lord strengthening Him when He was in agony, and He sweat; and His sweat was as it were drops of blood, when He went out to pray before His betrayal.” 

            It should be noticed that Epiphanius quoted verse 43 with the reading “angel of the Lord.”  

            In Panarion 61, Epiphanius used the passage again in the same way.  He used the passage for doctrinal purposes, and stated that without the display of agony and sweat pouring from His body, the Manichaeans and Marcionites might seem reasonable in their theory that Christ was an apparition, and not completely real.”  He emphasizes how Jesus’ sweat like blood showed that “His flesh was real, and not an apparition.”

            Epiphanius claims in Panarion that Arius cited this very passage from the Gospel of Luke in an attempt to demonstrate the subordination of the Son to the Father.

            So far, we could read Epiphanius’ remarks and think that the only form of the text he knew included verses 43 and 44.  But in Ancoratus, chapter 31, Epiphanius wrote that the passage “is found in the Gospel according to Luke in unrevised copies.”  Then he said, “The orthodox have removed the passage, frightened and not thinking about its significance.”  Coming from someone who seemed ready to blame heretics for bad weather, this is a remarkable statement.

            Epiphanius uses Luke 22:43-44 again in Ancoratus chapter 37 as evidence that Jesus was truly human, and that His sweat shows that He was physical.    

            Around the year 405 in Asia Minor, Macarius Magnes, in the third part of the work Apocriticus, quoted from a pagan writer, probably Hierocles, a student of Porphyry.  Hierocles lived in the late 200s and early 300s. 
            When this pagan writer objected to Jesus’ statement, “Do not fear those who kill the body,” he wrote that Jesus Himself, “being in agony,” prayed that His sufferings should pass from Him.”  The term “being in agony” here is probably a recollection of Luke 22:43, because this term is used there, but not in the parallel-passages.          

            For the testimony of Amphilochius of Iconium, who lived from about 340 to about 400, we rely on a collection of extracts in the medieval manuscript Athous Vatopedi 507, from the 1100s.  A note simply says:  “Of Amphilochius bishop of Iconium, on the Gospel of Luke:  it states there, “Being in agony, He prayed more earnestly.”

            There is some reason to wonder whether Didymus the Blind, or someone else, was the author of the Greek composition called De Trinitate that is attributed him.  Some interpretations of the author are different from interpretations expressed by Didymus in some other works.  But, theologians do sometimes change their views.  Whoever wrote De Trinitate, he made an accurate quotation of Luke  22:43 in Book 3, Part 21.

             Ambrose of Milan, in the late 300s, in his commentary on Luke, seems to use a text that did not include verses 43-44; he does not mention the appearance of an angel and he does not mention that Jesus’ sweat became like drops of blood.

            John Chrysostom is yet another patristic writer who used Luke 22:43-44.  Once he did so in a comment on Psalm 109.  And once he did so in the course of his 83^rd Homily on the Gospel of Matthew, which covers the parallel-material in Matthew 26:36-38.

            In Homily 83 on Matthew, Chrysostom does not say that he has put down the text of Matthew and has turned to the text of Luke.  But after referring to Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denials, and Peter’s insistence that he will never deny Jesus, Chrysostom transitions to the contents of Luke 22:43, stating, “And He prays with earnestness, in order that the thing might not seem to be acting.  And sweat flows over Him for the same cause again, even that the heretics might not say this, that His agony was a pretense.  Therefore there is a sweat like blood, and an angel appeared strengthening Him, and a thousand sure signs of fear.”
            After interpreting this for several sentences, Chrysostom returns to the text of Matthew 26:40.

            We will reconsider the significance of this after we have seen the testimony of the cluster of manuscripts known as family 13.

            For now, let’s go on to the next patristic reference.

            The testimony of John Cassian should not be overlooked, even though his name does not appear in the textual apparatus for Luke 22:43-44 in the UBS Greek New Testament or the Nestle-Aland compilation.  John Cassian traveled widely:  to the Holy Land, to Egypt, and to Rome, before residing in what is now France in about 415.  In his First Conference of Abbot Isaac on Prayer, also known as the Ninth Conference, in chapter 25, Cassian states that the Lord, “in an agony of prayer, even shed forth drops of blood.”

            Jerome, in Against the Pelagians, Book 2, part 16, shows that he was aware of some copies that had Luke 22:43-44, and some copies that did not.  In 383, he included this passage in the Vulgate.  Later, in Against the Pelagians, he wrote that these words – the words we know as Luke 22:43-44 – are “In some copies, Greek as well as Latin, written by Luke,” which implies that Jerome also knew of copies in which the verses were not included.

           Theodore of Mopsuestia, a contemporary of Jerome who worked mainly in Syria and Cilicia, also had Luke 22:43-44 in his Gospels-text.  In 1882, the researcher H. B. Swete published a collection of some fragments from Theodore’s works, and one of them includes a full quotation of Luke 22:43-44.

            Only slightly later comes Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who famously oversaw the withdraw of 200 copies of the Diatessaron in his churches.  In 453, Theodoret wrote Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium, and in this work, after presenting Jesus’ statement in John 12:27, he says that Luke taught more clearly how Jesus was indeed suffering, when He was in agony, and he proceeds to use part of verse 44.   

            Now we come to the testimony of Cyril of Alexandria, who died in the year 444.  In Cyril of Alexandria’s Sermon 146 and Sermon 147 on the Gospel of Luke, Cyril describes the events in Gethsemane in Luke 22, but he does not mention the appearance of an angel, and he does not mention Jesus being in agony or shedding drops of sweat like blood.  

            He states, “Everywhere we find Jesus praying alone, you may also learn that we ought to talk with God over all with a quiet mind, and a heart calm and free from all disturbance.”  This is not the sort of thing one says when one is reading a text that says that Jesus is praying in agony, and sweating huge drops of blood.

            Cyril says in Sermon 147,  “Let no man of understanding say that He offered these supplications as being in need of strength or help from another – for He is Himself the Father’s almighty strength and power.”  Cyril does not come out and say that he rejects the idea that an angel appeared and strengthened Jesus, but he comes very close to doing so.

            Severus of Antioch, in the first half of the 500s, supplies some additional information about the text used by Cyril.  In an extract from the third letter of the sixth book that he wrote to “the glorious Caesaria,” Severus stated the following:

            “Regarding the passage about the sweat and the drops of blood, know that in the divine and evangelical Scriptures that are at Alexandria, it is not written.  Wherefore also the holy Cyril, in the twelfth book written by him on behalf of Christianity against the impious demon-worshipper Julian, plainly stated the following: 

            “‘But, since he said that the divine Luke inserted among his own words the statement that an angel stood and strengthened Jesus, and his sweat dripped like blood-drops or blood, let him learn from us that we have found nothing of this kind inserted in Luke’s work, unless perhaps an interpolation has been made from outside which is not genuine. 

            The books therefore that are among us contain nothing whatever of this kind.  And so I consider it madness for us to say anything to him about these things.  And it is a superfluous thing to oppose him regarding things that are not stated at all, and we shall be very justly condemned to be laughed at.’”

            Then Severus says:  “In the books therefore that are at Antioch and in other countries, it is written, and some of the fathers mention it.”  He names “Gregory the Theologian” and John Chrysostom as two examples.  Then he says that he himself used this text, “in the sixty-fourth homily.”

            In this way, Severus drew his reader’s attention to Emperor Julian’s use of the passage in the mid-300s, and to Cyril of Alexandria’s rejection of the passage in the early 400s, and to the acceptance of the passage in Antioch, and by Gregory of Nazianzus, by John Chrysostom, and by Severus himself. 

            Severus’ testimony is particularly significant because he specifies that the copies in Alexandria lacked the passage.    

            Later, in the 600’s, a writer named Athanasius, Abbot of Sinai, is credited with yet another text-critically relevant statement about Luke 22:43-44.  Amy Donaldson, in her 2009 dissertation, Explicit References to New Testament Variant Readings Among Greek and Latin Church Fathers,  included his statement: 

            “Be aware that some attempted to delete the drops of blood, the sweat of Christ, from the Gospel of Luke and were not able.  For those copies that lack the section are disproved by many and various gospels that have it; for in all the gospels of the nations it remains, and in most of the Greek.”

            There is also a marginal note, preserved in minuscule 34, that states that “the report about the sweat-drops is not in some copies, but Dionysius the Areopagite, Gennadius of Constantinople, Epiphanius of Cyprus, and other holy fathers testify to it being in the text.” 

            We could examine more patristic support for Luke 22:43-44, from Augustine and Nestorius, for example.  But let’s go back to the evidence from Chrysostom. 

            Why, in Homily 83 on Matthew, does he take a detour to comment on Luke 22:43-44?  It cannot be absolutely ruled out that he just wanted to cover a parallel-passage.  But another possibility is that by the time John Chrysostom wrote Homily 83 on Matthew, it was already customary that when the lector read the Gospels-reading for the Thursday of Holy Week, after reading Matthew 26:39, he also read Luke 22:43-44.

            John’s brief detour into Luke 22 interlocks very snugly with this custom.  In addition, in Codex C, a secondary hand has written the text of Luke 22:43-44 in the margin near Matthew 26:39. 

            This brings us to the evidence from the cluster of manuscripts known as family 13.  In most members of family-13, Luke 22:43-44 appears in Luke, either in the text or margin after Luke 22:42.  Most of the members of family 13 also have these two verses embedded in the text of Matthew after 26:39. 
            The evidence from minuscule 1689, a member of family 13, is very helpful.  This manuscript was lost for several years, but has been found safe and sound in the city of Prague.  It has Luke 22:43-44 in the text of Luke, and alongside Matthew 26:39, there is a margin-note instructing the lector to jump to Section 283 in the Gospel of Luke – that is, to jump to Luke 22:43-44.

            Many other manuscripts have similar notes in the margin at this point, as part of the lectionary apparatus.
            It does not require a long leap to deduce what has happened in family 13:  instead of resorting exclusively to margin-notes to instruct the lector to jump from Matthew 26:39 to Luke 22:43-44 and then return to Matthew 26:40, someone whose work influenced members of family 13 simplified things for the lector, by combining the parts of the lection in order within the text of Matthew. 

             Some commentaries have misrepresented this as if it implies that the passage is not genuine.  But the evidence in family 13 just shows that a passage that was regarded as part of the text of Luke was embedded into the text of Matthew after 26:39 for liturgical purposes.

            On a related point:  when Luke 22:43-44 is accompanied by one or more asterisks, such as in minuscule 1216, the default deduction should not be that the purpose of the asterisks was to express scribal doubt, but to serve as part of the lectionary apparatus, drawing attention to the two verses that were to be read after Matthew 26:39 in the lection for Maundy Thursday. 

            So:  was Luke 22:43-44 initially present, or initially absent?  The passage is supported by a broad array of manuscripts, plus the manuscripts of over 20 patristic writers, and a couple of non-Christian writers.  Four patristic writers – Hilary, Epiphanius, Jerome, and Athanasius of Sinai – show that they were aware that verses 43-44 were not supported in all copies, but nevertheless they favored the inclusion of the verses.        Epiphanius even said that orthodox individuals had attempted to remove the passage.

            One Latin writer – Ambrose of Milan – did not have verses 43 and 44 in his text of Luke 22. 

            And one Greek writer, Cyril of Alexandria, from the 400s, definitely did not have verses 43-44 in his text.

            The most ancient evidence, from Justin, Tatian, and Irenaeus, includes the passage.  The most geographically diverse support points in the same direction.  And support for these verses does not come only from authors with only one doctrinal view.

            Plus, internally, nothing in the surrounding material calls for the insertion of additional material.  Bart Ehrman has proposed that verses 43-44 do not look like something Luke would write, on the grounds that Luke had an interest in portraying Jesus as “imperturbable.”  However, Luke reports about several actions of Jesus in which His disposition is far from stoical or disinterested, including His criticism of the synagogue-ruler in chapter 13, and His weeping over the city of Jerusalem in chapter 19.  There is no substantial case based on internal evidence for the idea that verses 43-44 could not originate with Luke.

            When we look at the external evidence that supports Luke 22:43-44, the question should not be “Did someone remove these verses from the text of Luke,” but “Why did someone remove these verses from the text of Luke?”

            It is virtually unique to see a Christian writer assert that “the orthodox” tampered with the Gospels-text, and to imply that some orthodox believers revised the text in a way that was influenced by their fear.

            In the 100s, the second-century writer Celsus, in a statement preserved by Origen, claimed that some believers “alter the original text of the gospel three or four or several times over, and they change its character to enable them to deny difficulties in face of criticism.”

            There’s no way to tell if Celsus saw what he says he saw, but it can’t be ruled out that he did indeed notice Christians making changes to the Gospels-text, and that because some of those changes appeared to him to relieve perceived difficulties in the text, he naturally believed that this was the motivation for the changes.

            However, he might have seen, and misunderstood, something else:  textual adjustments that were not made to minimize interpretive difficulties, but to render the text easier to use when it was read in church-services.

            One of those adjustments may have involved a liturgical feature pointed out by John Burgon in The Revision Revised.   Here I slightly paraphrase his observations: 

            “In every known Greek Gospels lectionary, verses 43-44 of Luke 22 follow Matthew 26:39 in the reading for Maundy Thursday.  In the same lectionaries, these verses are omitted from the reading for the Tuesday after Sexagesima – the Tuesday of the Cheese-eaters, as the those in the East call that day, when Luke 22:39-23:1 used to be read.

            Furthermore, in all ancient copies of the Gospels which have been accommodated to ecclesiastical use, the reader of Luke 22 is invariably directed by a marginal note to skip over these two verses, and to proceed from verse 42 to verse 45.

            What is more obvious, therefore, than that the removal of verses 43 and 44 from their proper place is explained as a side-effect of a lection-cycle of the early church?

            Many manuscripts have been discovered since the time of Burgon, but in general, what he describes is accurate:  Luke 22:43-44 is embedded after Matthew 26:39 in the lection for Maundy Thursday, and it is left out of the lection assigned to the Tuesday after Sexagesima Sunday. 

            The customary transfer of Luke 22:43-44 into the text of Matthew, when the text was read during Easter-week, may explain the sudden detour that Chrysostom took into this passage in the course of his Homily 83.

            A scenario that explains the most evidence in the fewest steps is that when an attempt was made to revise the text for liturgical reading, one group of liturgical revisors took verses 43 and 44 out of Luke 22, but failed to re-insert them into Matthew 26.  As soon as these verses dropped out of the text, the shorter reading was defended along the same lines that we see Cyril of Alexandria use to defend it.

            We do not have hard evidence of this particular liturgical step of revision being undertaken in the second century, but the elegance of Burgon’s explanation is a strong factor in its favor.  Plus, this theory accounts for the correspondence between this particular feature in the Easter-time lections, and the very similar contrast between forms of the text with and without the passage.

            So:  I conclude that Luke 22:43-44 was an original part of the Gospel of Luke. 

             I also conclude that its removal, in the second century, was probably not the result of some copyist’s desire to get rid of what he considered a problematic passage; nor was it the result of a heretic’s desire to remove a text that demonstrated the physicality of Jesus’ body.  Instead, it occurred when orthodox believers transferred verses 43 and 44 into Matthew, after 26:39, conforming to their Easter-time custom, but failed to retain it in Luke, again reflecting their early Eastertime liturgy.  As a result, these two verses fell out of the text. 

            This influenced texts known to Hilary, to Ambrose, and especially  Cyril of Alexandria.  It affected the text that was translated into Sahidic, and the Greek text that was translated into Armenian, and the Armenian text that was translated into Georgian.  But as Athanasius the Abbot of Sinai stated, although some attempted to delete the drops of blood from the Gospel of Luke, the legitimacy of the passage is shown by the “many and various Gospels-manuscripts in which the passage is read.”

            Luke 22:43-44 should therefore be respected and cherished for what it is:  part of the Word of God.

 

Video Lecture: Luke 23:34a - Father, Forgive Them

 The 19th video lecture in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism is accessible at YouTube and at Bitchute.  This lecture is almost 34 minutes long.  Here's an extract:

            Hilary of Poitiers, known as the “Athanasius of the West,” around the year 360, wrote his Twelve Books on the Trinity, and in that work he quoted Luke 24:34a three times.  It might be worthwhile to show some of the context of his statements:

            In Book 1, As Hilary takes his theological opponents to task for perverting the meaning of the words of Christ, he emphasizes the importance of interpreting each passage in light of its context.  In Part 32, he says that his opponents commit blasphemy when they misinterpret the words of Christ, “Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit,” and, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”   Hilary writes, “Their narrow minds plunge into blasphemy in the attempt at explanation.”

            In Book 10, Part 48, as Hilar illustrates the fearlessness and power of Christ shown in the Gospels, he mentions that “He prayed for His persecutors while the nails were driven through Him.”

  

            And near the end of Book 10, in Part 71, Hilary writes, “Christ prayed for His persecutors, because they knew not what they did.” 

             ● Ambrose of Milan, in the 380s, in his Commentary on Job, Part Two, Section 6, in the course of offering a rather unlikely interpretation of Job 9:5, quotes Luke 23:34a.  He cites the passage again in Part 5, Section 12, stating that he is quoting what the Lord Jesus says in the Gospel.

            Ambrose also explicitly quotes Luke 23:34a in The Prayer of Job and David. 

             ● Gregory of Nyssa, working in the late 300s in what is now east-central Turkey, wrote a book On Christian Perfection, and in it, he presented Christ as a model of longsuffering:  Gregory of Nyssa pointed out that the longsuffering of Christ was displayed when He endured chains and whips and various physical injuries, and nails, and His response was “Father, bear with them, for they know not what they do.”

             ● In the fourth-century story called the Acts of Philip, at one point in the story, persecutors hang Philip by his ankles, and it looks like he is about to die. Philip escapes by cursing his persecutors, causing them to all be swallowed up by the earth.  But before he pronounces the curse, his companions John and Barthlomew and Mariamne try to persuade him no to do it:  they say, “Our Master was beaten, and scourged, and was stretched out on the cross, and was made to drink gall and vinegar, and said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

 

            ● A composition known as the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, from the mid-300s, uses Luke 23:34a near the beginning of the fifth part of its sixth book, preserved in Latin by Jerome’s contemporary Rufinus: 

            “The Master Himself, when He was being led to the cross by those who knew Him not, petitioned the Father for His murderers, and said, ‘Father, forgive their sin, for they know not what they do.’”  The author’s memory does not seem to have been having its best day, considering that this statement was given while Jesus was on the cross, not while He was being led to the cross.

            ● In the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, which is basically a different form of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, Luke 23:34a is utilized, specifically in Homily XI, Part 20, where the author wrote:  “The Teacher Himself, being nailed to the cross, prayed to the Father that the sin of those who slew Him might be forgiven, saying, ‘Father, forgive them their sins, for they know not what they do.’”

             ● Amphilochius of Iconium, who lived from about 340 to about 400, is traditionally identified as the author of a brief sermon called Oration #5, On the Holy Sabbath.  In this text, which has been translated by J. H. Barkhuizen, after briefly contrasting the divine nature of Christ with His sufferings during His trials and crucifixion, Amphilochius says, “While suffering these things for the sake of those who were crucifying Him, He prayed as follows: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’  He conquers the evil through goodness.  He speaks in defense of the Christ-murderers while drawing them in His net toward salvation.  He brings to naught the accusation by blaming their ignorance.”

            ● The heresy-hunter Epiphanius of Salamis, in the late 300s, also quoted Luke 23:34a, in Panarion, also called The Medicine-Chest; in Part 77, which is about the errors of the Antidicomanians.  Epiphanius slightly tweaked the text, replacing the reference to “forgive” with a different word that means “bear with.”   The same word was used by Gregory of Nyssa.

            Epiphanius also reports that James, the Lord’s brother, was martyred in Jerusalem when he was thrown down from the pinnacle of the temple, but survived, and knelt and prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” and he was then struck on the head with a fuller’s rod, and he died. 

            Epiphanius’ main source for this material was probably Eusebius’ work Ecclesiastical History, Book Two, Part 23.  Eusebius acknowledged his own sources for the story:  first, Eusebius says that Clement was his source for the report that James was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple and then beaten to death with a club.  Then he mentions the fifth book of the Ánecdotes of “Hegesippus, whom lived immediately after the apostles,” as his source for a more detailed account. 

 

            According to Eusebius, Hegesippus specified that it was the scribes and Pharisees who opposed James the Just, and that after he survived the fall from the temple, they began to stone him, at which point he said, “I entreat You, Lord God our Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

 

            ● John Chrysostom, who became archbishop of Constantinople in 397 after serving at Antioch for about 20 years, quoted Luke 23:34a several times.  In Against Marcionists and Manichaeans, Chrysostom wrote, “He commanded men to pray for their enemies; and He teaches this through His actions, for when He had ascended the cross, He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

            In Homily 7 on the Epistle to the Ephesians, as Chrysostom describes the grace given to Israel, he says, “And after He was crucified, what were His words? ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’  He was cruelly treated before this, and even cruelly treated after this, even to the very last breath.  For them He did everything; He prayed in their behalf.”
            Chrysostom also says in Homily 14 on the Epistle to the Ephesians that the Son of God prayed for those who crucified Him, and shed His blood for those who hated Him.

            In Homily 79 on Matthew, Chrysostom mention that among the ways in which displayed His meekness, “on the very cross, He was crying aloud, “Father, forgive them their sin.”

 

            In the sixth chapter of The Cross and the Thief, Chrysostom states that during the time when Christ was being nailed to the cross, and His garments were being divided, He did not get angry or have guile in His heart against them; instead, “Hear Him declaring, ‘My Father, forgive them because they do not know what they are doing.’”

            Or does he?  The author of The Thief on the Cross is probably not Chrysostom, but Theophilus, who served as the patriarch of Alexandria from 384 to 412.  Or it might be an anonymous author who attributed his own work to Theophilus. 

            In favor of the idea that the author was in a locale where a Coptic form of the text was in use is the observation that in its ninth chapter, the text says that the lost will be swallowed up in the abyss, and go down to the place of their brother Nineveh.  A mangled form of the name “Nineveh,” without its first syllable, is the name given to the rich man, in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, in Luke 16:19 in Papyrus 75, and the interpolation “named ‘Nineveh’” also appears in this verse in some later Arabic manuscripts.   

             ● Another author, like Chrysostom, whose name was transferred to material written by someone else, was the second-century writer Justin Martyr.  The composition known as Questions and Answers for the Orthodox was attributed to Justin, but it probably comes from Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who died in 457.

             The 108^th Question in this composition begins something like this:  If the Jews were forgiven, then why did the ancient Jews, who crucified Christ out of ignorance, suffer many unbelievable afflictions, as Josephus testifies in his account of the fall of Jerusalem?  And why have those who refuse to obey Christ now been expelled from their homeland?” And it goes on to say, “Wasn’t the Lord aware of their condition, when He said, "Father, I say, forgive them, for they do not know what they do"?  And doesn’t the Apostle say, "If they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory?”

            The odds that the author is Theodoret of Cyrrhus are increased when we compare this to Theodoret’s Commentary on the Letters of Paul, and see that when he comments on First Corinthians 2:8, he interprets it through the filter of Luke 23:34a, stating that Pilate, Herod, Annas, Caiaphas, and the other rulers of the Jews were unaware of the divine mystery, and that is why they crucified the Lord.  Theodoret writes, “Surely, this is why the Lord, on the cross, also said, “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.”  Theodoret goes on to say that after the resurrection, and the ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the apostles’ miracles, they persisted in unbelief, and so He delivered them to be besieged.

           ● Jerome is another patristic writer whose use of Luke 24:34a should not be overlooked, even though we have already seen that he included this text in the Vulgate.  In his composition Ad Hedibiam, produced around the year 400, Jerome goes off on a little tangent, and writes, “We should not be surprised that after the death of the Savior, Jerusalem is called ‘the holy city.’ 

            “For before it was completely ruined, the apostles did not have a problem entering the temple, and observing the ceremonies of the law, in order not to offend those among the Jews who had embraced the faith of Jesus Christ.

            “We even see that the Savior loved this city so much that the disasters with which it was threatened drew tears from His eyes, and when He was on the cross, He said to His Father, ‘Forgive them, My Father, for they do not know what they are doing.’”              Jerome continues:  “So his prayer was answered, since shortly after His death, the Jews believed in Him by the thousands, and God gave this unhappy city forty-two years to repent.  But in the end, when its citizens  had not taken advantage of the opportunity, and still persisted in their malice, Vespasian and Titus, like the two bears of which the Scriptures speak, ‘came out of the middle of the woods, and killed and mauled those children who blasphemed and insulted the true Elisha, when he went up to the house of God.’”

            The same line of reasoning that is used by Jerome, specifically mentioning Vespasian and Titus, is used in the composition In Principium Actorum, which is often attributed to Chrysostom.

             ● Augustine, in North Africa in the early 400s, wrote the following in his Sermon 382:  “Did He not say, as He hung on the cross, ‘Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing?’”  And he continues:  “When He was praying as He hung on the cross, He could see and foresee.  He could see all His enemies.  He could foresee that many of them would become His friends.  That is why He was interceding for them all.  They were raging, but He was praying.  They were saying to Pilate, ‘Crucify,’ but He was crying out, ‘Father, forgive.’”

And from near the end:

The reason why Luke 23:34a is supported by such a vast array of evidence is that it is original.  It was removed in an early transmission-line that influenced not only the text of Codex Bezae and the Sinaitic Syriac, but also Papyrus 75, and Codex Vaticanus, and the Sahidic version.

         There was a strong motivation to make this excision:  a desire to avoid the impression that Jesus had prayed for the Jewish nation, and His prayer had been rejected.

            About 40 years after Jesus’ crucifixion, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, and it was devastated again in the Bar Kokhba Revolt.  Hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed.  The pagan jibe can easily be written:  “Is this what happens when Jesus asks for people to be forgiven?  Their city is laid waste, and they and their families are slain or enslaved.  His intercession does not seem very effective.” 

            Even without a pagan around to express the objection, an ordinary reader could perceive a difficulty when comparing Jesus’ prayer to the history of the Jews in the century that followed.

            When we look at how the passage is approached by patristic writers, we see that addressing this misconception is a high priority.  Almost all of the patristic writers who comment on the passage regarded it as a petition regarding the Jewish people. 

            The author of the Diascalía Apostolorum slightly modified the prayer, framing it with the words “if it be possible.”  Epiphanius and Gregory of Nyssa added a slight interpretive nuance, replacing the term “forgive” with the term “bear with.”     

            Later writers approached the problem thoughtfully, perceiving that the Jews as a nation had been forgiven for what had been done at Calvary, but this did not mean that they were forgiven for later offenses of unbelief.

            But to a reckless early Western copyist, the statement that Jesus asked the Father to forgive those who engineered His death appeared to contradict what they saw God do to the Jewish nation historically.  And to such a copyist, the easiest way to resolve the tension was to excise the sentence.

            Hort’s objection to this is not a good example of his acuity; he basically argues that such a thing can’t have happened because such a thing never happened.  Similarly, Metzger’s claim, that the shorter reading here “can scarcely be explained as a deliberate excision,” is more of a decree than an argument.

            The effects of anti-Judaic tendencies on the part of some copyists show up occasionally in the form of the text that is seen in the Old Latin version, the Sinaitic Syriac, and Codex Bezae. 

            Despite its name, the Western Text was known and used in the east, in Egypt.  Contrary to the claim that the text in all of the New Testament papyri discovered in Egypt is Alexandrian, Papyri 37, 38, and 48 support the Western text-form.

            The Glazier Codex, also known as G-67, written in Coptic in the 400s, strongly supports the Western Text.  The anti-Judaic sympathies of its text’s

producers occasionally manifest themselves; this does not mean that the copyist of this particular manuscript had such views, but they were held somewhere further back in the text’s ancestry.

            For instance, in Acts 10:39, it is not enough for the Western Text to say simply that “they” killed Jesus.  In the Glazier Codex, the text in this verse is changed, so as to specify that the Jews rejected Him and killed Him.  According to Eldon Epp, this reading is supported by the Old Latin Codex Legionensis, Old Latin MS 67. 

            It appears that very early in the history of the text of the Gospels in Egypt, a witness that was corrupted with readings that expressed an anti-Judaic prejudice, existed along with some much better copies.  But although those better copies generally were preferred, here and there a reading supported by this witness was preferred. 

             As a result, one of those corruptions – the removal of Luke 23:34a – was adopted into the transmission-stream from which came Papyrus 75, Codex Vaticanus, the Sahidic version, and a few other witnesses.   

            This may also be the case at other points of textual variation where we see major Alexandrian witnesses agree with the text represented in the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript, and disagree with both the vast majority of early patristic testimony and the vast majority of manuscripts and versions representing a variety of locales.  But this is a more general point that invites separate investigation.

            Although Papyrus 75 and Codex Vaticanus are widely regarded as representatives of a generally reliable transmission-line, this does not make them immune from occasional corruptions, and we should vigilantly avoid giving them an oracular status that they do not deserve. 

            Inasmuch as Luke’s reference to Jesus’ saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” is inspired Scripture, we should not cause Bible-readers to perpetually question its authority by introducing  vague footnotes that raise more questions than they solve, pretending that concise footnotes do justice to the evidence. 

            We should acknowledge that Luke 23:34a is original.  And as part of the original text of the New Testament, it was not given so that we could doubt it.  It was given to be profitable to us, to teach us, to rebuke us, to correct us, and to instruct us.

Video Lecture: John 7:53-8:11

Now on YouTube: Lecture 18 in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism: John 7:53-8:11.
     Here's an excerpt from this 43-minute lecture:
     Today, we are investigating one of the most famous textual variants in the New Testament: John 7:53-8:11, also known as the story of the adulteress. The textual contest involving these 12 verses is often introduced to Bible-readers by a heading, such as the one that appears in the Christian Standard Bible between John 7:52 and 7:53: “The earliest manuscripts do not include 7:53-8:11.”
     Back in 1982, when the New King James Version was published, its footnote about these verses said that they “are present in over 900 manuscripts.” More recently, Dr. Maurice Robinson has confirmed that although 270 manuscripts do not include these verses, they are supported by 1,500 manuscripts. That is a ratio of 85 to 15, in favor of the inclusion of the passage.
        But it is a well-grounded axiom that manuscripts must be weighed, not counted. Among the early manuscripts that do not include John 7:53-8:11 are Papyrus 66, Papyrus 75, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Ephraimi Rescriptus, Codex T, also known as 029, Codex Washingtonianus, and Codex N, also known as 022, a purple uncial from the 500s.
Most of these manuscripts represent the Alexandrian Text. The early versions based in Egypt, such as the Sahidic version, agree, along with the Ethiopic version. But some relatively early non-Coptic versions also agree: Codex Argenteus, the primary witness to the Gothic version of the Gospels, does not have the story of the adulteress. Neither does the Peshitta, which in the Gospels is frequently an ally of the Byzantine Text.
        To researchers who value the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text as if their weight is greater than all other manuscripts put together, the evidence I have just mentioned settles the question of whether John 7:53-8:11 is part of the original text of the Gospel of John. They would say that this passage is not original, and that the evidence against its genuineness is “overwhelming.” However, there is other evidence that points in the other direction. There is also a considerable amount of misinformation circulating about this passage that has to be sorted out.
        Some researchers have stated that out of the 322 majuscule manuscripts that were catalogued, as of several years ago, only three support the inclusion of John 7:53-8:11. That statement is built on a false picture of the majuscules, as if they are all majuscule manuscripts of John.
        Most of those 322 majuscule manuscripts do not have any text from chapters 7 and 8 of the Gospel of John. Using “3 out of 322 majuscules” as a frame of reference is a silly proportion; it is like combining all of the baseball games, football games, and hockey games played in 1972, and saying, “The 1972 Miami Dolphins only won 17 out of 500 games.”
        Sounds like the 1972 Dolphins weren’t very good.
        Plus, the claim that only three majuscules include John 7:53-8:11 is simply false. The uncials D, E, G, H, K, M, U, S, G, Γ, Λ, Π, Ω, 047, and 0233 support the passage. Codex F, Boreelianus, included it when the manuscript was in pristine condition. Codex Y, Macedonianus, does not have the passage, but its marginalia expresses awareness of the missing verses. In Codex Delta, and in Codex L, John 7:53-8:11 is absent, but a large blank space appears between John 7:52 and John 8:12, evidently left as memorial-space; acknowledging the copyists’ recollection of the missing verses.
I don’t want to give the impression that the way to solve textual variants is to hold a democratic election with manuscripts in the role of citizens. But since an appeal to the number of manuscripts has been attempted, we might as well improve its accuracy: The number of majuscules that have John 7-8, and include John 7:53-8:11 or part of the passage, is 16, and the number of majuscules that have John 7 and 8 that do not include John 7:53-8:11 is 18, but two of those 18 – Codex Regius and Codex Delta – leave memorial-space for the passage.
        Codex Macedonianus, already mentioned, does not include the passage but has symbols in the margin that appear to refer to it. In the case of Codex A, Codex C, and 070 – three of the 18 majuscules counted as witnesses for non-inclusion – we don’t see a text in which John 8:12 follows John 7:52; we have to depend on space-considerations. Granting that those considerations are correct, the count is 16 for inclusion, 16 for non-inclusion, and a three-vote buffer-zone that both supports a text without John 7:53-8:11 while also supporting a memory of an exemplar with John 7:53-8:11.
        In addition, a few manuscripts, such as Codex Lambda and minuscules 34 and 135, have notes that refer to the presence of the story of the adulteress in earlier copies. I will say more about this feature later in the lecture.
        What we see here are the signs of two early forms of the text of the Gospel of John: one based in the West, that included John 7:53-8:11, and one based in the East, that did not.
        The dry climate of Egypt gave an advantage to papyrus manuscripts there, allowing the writing-material to survive longer, regardless of the quality of the text that was written on it. Outside Egypt, papyrus tended to naturally experience more rapid decomposition. Partly for this reason, the heading that states that the “earliest manuscripts” do not include John 7:53-8:11 is true. But there is also early evidence in favor of the story of the adulteress.
        Jerome, writing in the early 400s, said in his composition Against the Pelagians, 2:17: “In the Gospel according to John, there is found, in many copies, Greek as well as Latin, the story of the adulteress who was accused before the Lord.”
        About 30 years earlier, in 383, Jerome had included John 7:53-8:11 in the Gospel of John in the Vulgate Gospels. In his Preface to the Gospels, Jerome wrote that he had revised the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John “by a comparison of the Greek manuscripts. Only early ones have been used.”
        In his Epistle 27, To Marcella, Jerome was more candid. He stated, “The Latin manuscripts of the Scriptures are demonstrated to be faulty by the variations which they all exhibit, and my objective has been to restore them to the form of the original Greek.” 
        So: when Jerome translated the Vulgate Gospels, he did so on the basis of “ancient Greek manuscripts” – that is, manuscripts that were already considered ancient in 383. This testimony alone goes a long way toward outweighing the early Egyptian manuscripts. We don’t know exactly how many Greek manuscripts Jerome would call “many,” but if it was more than nine, that would imply that Jerome saw as many manuscripts, made before the year 400, with the passage, as we have seen without it.
        In a composition from the 200s, called the Didascalia Apostolorum, we find the following, in Syriac, in chapter 7, after the author used King Manasseh as an example of those who have received mercy from God:
        “If you do not receive the one who repents, because you are without mercy, you shall sin against the Lord God, for you do not obey our Savior and our God, to do as He also did with her who had sinned, whom the elders set before Him, and leaving the judgment in His hands, departed. But He, the searcher of hearts, asked her and said to her, ‘Have the elders condemned you, my daughter?’ She said to Him, ‘No, Lord.’ And He said to her, ‘Go your way; neither do I condemn you.’ In Him therefore, our Savior and King and God, is your pattern, O bishops.”
        The author of the Didascalia appears to regard the scene about Jesus and this woman as if it as well-known as the many other passages that he refer to in this composition. He uses Jesus’ act of forgiveness as a precedent for Christian bishops to emulate. 

        Another significant early witness is found in the Old Latin chapter-summaries, or capitula. In some Old Latin copies of John, and in many Vulgate copies that preserve Old Latin supplemental material, before the text of the Gospel, there are lists of chapter-numbers, chapter-titles, and brief chapter-summaries.
        There are eleven forms of the Old Latin capitula that mention the adulteress, plus one that mentions that Jesus went to the Mount of Olives, referring to what is said in John 8:1.
        One of these forms is called the Cy form, because it is assigned to the time of Cyprian or shortly later, that is, the mid-200s or late 200s. In John’s chapter-summaries in the Cy-form of the Old Latin capitula, the summary of chapter 30 begins like this: “Wherein he dismissed the adulteress, and said that he was the light of the world.” This indicates that the story of the adulteress was in an Old Latin text in the 200s, right before John 8:12.
        Furthermore, as Hugh Houghton has confirmed, the chapter-summary in some Latin manuscripts uses a loan-word based on the Greek word for adultery. The same loan-word also appears in the text of Codex Corbeiensis, from the 400s or 500s, indicates that the Latin text here echoes a Greek text.
        The testimony of Saint Ambrose of Milan, from about the 380s, deserves attention. Although some commentators have claimed that none of the early writers used the story of the adulteress, Ambrose made several extensive quotations of the story of the adulteress. Ambrose is widely regarded as the author of Apologia David, in which, in the course of commenting on sub-title of Psalm 51, the author says, “Perhaps most people are taken aback by the title of the Psalm, which you have heard read, that Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Likewise those with weak faith could be disturbed by the Gospel-reading, which has been covered, in which we see an adulteress presented to Christ and sent away without condemnation.” If the author was indeed Ambrose, this reference shows that the story of the adulteress was routinely read in Milan. If not, it shows that the passage was routinely read somewhere else.
    In his Epistle 25, To Studius, Ambrose addresses the question of whether a Christian official may pronounce a death-sentence. In the course of his comments on this question, he refers to how Jesus dealt with the adulteress. Ambrose quotes the words, “Let him that is without sin cast the first stone at her. And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.” He continues: “When they heard this they began to go out one by one, beginning at the eldest.” And then he quotes, “So when they departed, Jesus was left alone, and lifting up His head, He said to the woman, Woman, where are those your accusers? Has no man condemned you? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”
        In his next letter, Epistle 26, To Studius, Ambrose goes into even more detail, introducing the passage about the adulteress by saying that it is “very famous,” and once again he quotes extensively from the passage.
    Earlier than Ambrose is the writer Pacian of Barcelona, who became a bishop in 365. In his Third Epistle to Sympronian – Against the Treatise of the Novatians, in paragraph 39, Pacian writes with heavy sarcasm: “O Novatians, why do you delay to ask an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and to demand life for life? Why do you wait to renew once more the practice of circumcision and the sabbath? Kill the thief. Stone the petulant. Choose not to read in the Gospel that the Lord spared even the adulteress who confessed, when none had condemned her.”
        So it is not as if the early evidence all points one way: there is very strong evidence from the East, especially from Egypt, against the passage. And there is evidence from the West, in the Old Latin capitula, and in the quotations from Pacian and Ambrose, and in the “many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin,” mentioned by Jerome, in favor of the passage.
        Before considering what caused the difference between these two forms of the text, there are other forms of the text to consider: forms in which the story of the adulteress appears at different places. As a footnote in the Christian Standard Bible states, “Other manuscripts include all or some of the passage after John 7:36, John 7:44, John 7:52, John 21:25, or Luke 21:38.”
        This is sometimes presented as definitive proof that the passage is secondary. For example, apologist James White has commented, “Such moving about by a body of text is plain evidence of its later origin,” and these different locations of the story constitute “absolute evidence” that it is not genuine.
        In 2008, Dan Wallace similarly stated that this account “has all the earmarks of a pericope that was looking for a home. It took up permanent residence, in the ninth century, in the middle of the fourth gospel.”
        This sort of comment suggests that some researchers need to get better acquainted with the influence of early lection-cycles. What is a lection-cycle? A lection-cycle is the arrangement of specific passages of Scripture assigned to be read in church-services on specific days of the year. Eventually lectionaries were developed, in which the daily readings were arranged in the chronological order in which they were to be read, but until then, there were simply local customs about which passage was assigned to each day. Important celebrations were among the first days for which specific readings were assigned. Easter-week was a very prominent annual observance on the Christian calendar. The Quartodeciman Controversy was a serious dispute in the late 100s, about precisely when the annual celebration of the Resurrection of Christ should be observed.
        Another important annual feast-day was Pentecost, a festival inherited by the church from its earlier observance in the old covenant. The Christian church has been celebrating Pentecost ever since Acts chapter 2.
        In the Byzantine lection-cycle, the Gospels-reading assigned to Pentecost consists of John 7:37-52, plus John 8:12. Thematically, it is a natural choice: Pentecost was known as the day when the Holy Spirit came to the church, and in John 7:37-39, Jesus speaks about the coming of the Holy Spirit. The inclusion of John 8:12 forms a positive closing flourish for the lection.
When the realization is made that one of the most important annual celebrations in the early church involved reading a passage of John beginning at John 7:37, continuing to the end of 7:52, and concluding with John 8:12, several things are resolved regarding manuscripts in which John 7:53-8:11 is moved around:
        The movement of the passage to precede John 7:37, in minuscule 225, was done so that the lector (the person who read the text in the church-services) would have the Pentecost-lection all in one piece, without having to stop at the end of verse 52 to find the final verse. This kind of conformation to lectionary usage is also shown in minuscule 225 where it has John 13:3-17 in the text of Matthew, after Matthew 26:20.
        So much for the claim that the movement to John 7:37 shows that the story of the adulteress was a “floating anecdote” in the early church. But what about the manuscripts in which it appears at the end of John, after John 21:25?
        These are not a random assortment of manuscripts; they consist mainly of members of the family-1 group. In the best representatives of this group, minuscules 1 and 1582, there is a note after John 21:25 that introduces the story of the adulteress there. The note goes like this:
    “The chapter about the adulteress: in the Gospel according to John, this does not appear in the majority of copies; nor is it commented upon by the divine fathers whose interpretations have been preserved – specifically, by John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria. Nor is it taken up by Theodore of Mopsuestia and the others. Therefore, it was not kept in the place where it is found in a few copies, at the beginning of the 86th chapter, following, ‘Search and see that a prophet does not arise out of Galilee.’” 

        This note states that prior to being moved to the end of John, the story of the adulteress was found in a few copies immediately following John 7:52. And although the minuscules that display this note are medieval, their common ancestor probably originated no later than the 400s. Many Armenian copies also have the story of the adulteress at the end of John; if this echoes the initial form of the Armenian text then this format goes back at least to the early 400s.
        In the Palestinian Aramaic Lectionary, only part of the story of the adulteress was transferred to the end of John. In the lection that includes John 8:2, the Palestinian Aramaic text in two manuscripts says, “The Gospel of John was completed in Greek in Ephesus,” and in one manuscript, after John 8:2, it says, “The Gospel of John was completed by the help of Christ.”
        As J. Rendel Harris deduced back in the late 1800s, this implies that the Palestinian Aramaic lectionary was initial made by individuals using a text of John in which John 8:3-11 had been transferred to the end of John. The individuals who made the Palestinian Aramaic lectionary included in the lection the subscription-note to the Gospel of John, as well as John 8:3-11. Considering that John 7:53-8:2 is in the Palestinian Aramaic text of John, this shows that the story of the adulteress was in the text of John 7 and 8 before John 8:3-11 was transferred to the end of the Gospel.
        John 8:3-11 constituted the lection for October 8, which in the Byzantine Menologion is the feast-day honoring Saint Pelagia. This bring us to the testimony of minuscule 1333, which has been very poorly described by some commentators as if it has John 7:53-8:11 after the end of Luke.
        Minuscule 1333 would be listed among the manuscripts that do not include the passage, if someone had not written John 8:3-11 on what had been a blank page between the end of Luke and the chapter-list for John. All that has happened in minuscule 1333 is that someone who wanted to read lections from this manuscript added the lection for Saint Pelagia’s Day on the blank page. Contrary to Dan Wallace’s claim that the story of the adulteress stands as “an independent pericope between Luke and John,” in minuscule 1333 the lection’s title is explicitly provided: “For Saint Pelagia, on October 8, from the Gospel of John.”
        But what about the manuscripts related to the cluster known as family-13, in which the story of the adulteress appears at the end of Luke 21? This is a later adaptation to the series of lections that honor saints in the Menologion. After John 7:53-8:11 was moved out of the text of John, the passage was transferred to a location where it would conveniently follow the previous day’s lection in the Menologion.
        Earlier in Luke 21, verses 12-19 serve as the lection for October 7, the feast-day of Saints Sergius and Bacchus. At the end of the chapter, where verse 38 refers to Jesus teaching in the temple, the text is thematically similar to John 8:1-2. So, in the family-13 manuscripts, when the Pentecost lection was turned into one block of text via the removal of the story of the adulteress, the story of the adulteress was moved to this location, so that the lection for October 8 would be near the lection for October 7. In the main members of family 13, when you look at the transplanted text of John 8:2-3, you can see that the text has been shortened to create a smoother fit with Luke 21:37-38. After “And early in the morning He came into the temple,” the text in family 13 then says, “and the scribes presented to Him.”
So with just a few minutes spent looking at the details of the case, we can see why copyists moved the story of the adulteress, from where it had previously been found after John 7:52, to a location after John 7:36, a location after John 21:25, and a location after Luke 21:38.
        But one other location has not yet been explained: the Christian Standard Bible’s footnote says that “Other manuscripts include all or some of the passage after John 7:44.”
        There are no Greek manuscripts in which the story of the adulteress appears after John 7:44. What the CSB’s footnote refers to here is a small number of Georgian copies, including Sinai Georgian MS 16. These Gospels-manuscripts generally support the Caesarean Gospels-text, like the early Armenian manuscripts and the main members of family-1.
        What has happened is that when the Georgian version was revised, the revisor was guided by the same kind of note that appears in minuscules 1 and 1582, stating that the passage had been found in the text “at the beginning of the 86th chapter. This is a reference to the 86th Eusebian Section, which begins at the beginning of John 7:45. The note that guided the Georgian revisor apparently did not get more specific than that. And so, guided by a note that stated that the story had been found at the beginning of the 86th Eusebian Section, that is where he put it.
        Thus, instead of showing that John 7:53-8:11 was floating around like a butterfly, the transmission-streams that transfer the passage also contain earlier evidence of the passage in its usual location position between John 7:52 and John 8:12.
        What about the 270 manuscripts in which the story of the adulteress is simply absent? Before addressing that question, there is another aspect of some of the early manuscripts that should be pointed out. The Caesarean form of the text had the story of the adulteress at the end of John, introduced by a note that stated that it had been found in a few copies after John 7:52. If this was where it was in some of those early manuscripts, there would be no way to tell. 

        ● Papyrus 66 is not extant after John 21:17.
        ● Papyrus 75 is not extant after John 15:10.
        ● The Lycopolitan manuscript of John is not extant after 20:27.
        ● Codex T is not extant after John chapter 8.
        ● And, in Codex Vaticanus, marks called distigmai, resembling umlauts, appear frequently in the margin alongside a line of text that has a textual variant. One such mark appears alongside the blank space after the end of John.
        I don’t think these dots are contemporary with the main scribes of Codex Vaticanus. But others disagree, and if they are correct, then this leaves an open question about whether the transfer of the story of the adulteress was known to copyists in the early 300s.
        Considering how the Pentecost lection plays a large part in the displacement of the passage, I submit this hypothesis as an explanation for the initial omission of the passage:
        I first propose that John 7:53-8:11 was in the text of John in an exemplar used by a copyist in Egypt in the mid-100’s. By the mid-100s, the churches in Egypt already had a basic lection-cycle for their major annual festivals, including Eastertime and Pentecost.
        This doesn’t mean that each congregation, or each locale, observed exactly the same series of readings on the same feast-days, or that gradual expansion and adjustments did not happen. My first point here is simply that the celebration of Pentecost was an extremely ancient practice, included among the annual feast-days mentioned in the late 300s by the pilgrim Etheria, also known as Egeria.
In order to make it clear to the lector – the individual responsible for the reading of Scripture in the church-services – what the contours of the Pentecost-reading were, a copyist in the 100s marked his copy of the Gospel of John with simple notes signifying that when he reached the end of John 7:52, he was to jump ahead and resume at chapter 8, verse 12.
        Now picture the puzzle that presented itself to a professional copyist who used that exemplar: as he copies down the text of John chapter seven, after the end of verse 52 the copyist sees in the margin the instructions, “Skip ahead.” Unaware that these instructions were meant for the lector, he interprets them as if they were meant for him, the copyist. And so he skips ahead until he finds instructions in the margin which say, Restart here.
        The copyist follows these instructions, and accordingly he does not copy John 7:53-8:11, thinking that he is faithfully following instructions.
        And the manuscript – or manuscripts, if the same copyist made several copies – which contained this mistake proceeded to affect both the main Alexandrian transmission-stream and whatever transmission-streams to which it was exported.
        This simple theory explains why the text in the East, especially the text in Egypt, tends to not have the story about the adulteress, and the text in the West does.