John 17:1 - "The Son" or "Your Son"?

There’s a small textual variant in John 17:1 that impacts translation.  At the beginning of his high priestly prayer, did Jesus say, “Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you,” or did he say “Glorify your Son that your Son may glorify you”?

          Did John write ὁ υἱος or did he write καὶ ὁ υἱος σου or did he write ὁ υἱος σου?
          The English versions are not in unison:

 ESV:  “Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you,”

CSB:  “Glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you”

NASB 95:   “Glorify Your Son, so that the Son may glorify You”

NRSV:  “Glorify Your Son so that the Son may glorify You.” 

EHV:  “Glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you”

NET:  “Glorify your Son, so that your Son may glorify you – ”

NIV:  “Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.”

 

KJV:   “glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee”

NKJV:  “Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You”

EOB:  “Glorify your Son, so that your Son may also glorify you”

WEB:  “Glorify your Son, that your Son may also glorify you.”

(The NLT blurs the translation as if a pronoun is in the base-text, yielding “NLT:  “Glorify your Son so he can give glory back to you.”)

 

          In his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Bruce Metzger defended the UBS Committee’s choice by  stating, “On the basis of the weight of p60^vid ﬡ B C* W 0109 it d e ff² al the shorter text is preferred.”

          [Papyrus 60, assigned to the 600s/700s, was found at  Nessana (Nitzana, on the border of Egypt and Israel).  GA 0109 is assigned to the 600s/700s.]

          In favor of reading ὁ υἱος we have a smattering of witnesses:  P60^vid ﬡ B C* W 0109 it^d it^e it^ff2  Origen (1 of 2) Victorinus of Rome Hilary of Poitiers (4/6) Ambrose (2/4), and Augustine (1/10).

          Weighing in for ὁ υἱος σου we have A D Θ 0250 1 579 it^{a aur b c f r1} Vulgate Sinaitic Syriac Peshitta Palestinian Aramaic Sahidic Bohairic Achmimic² Armenian Georgian Slavic Origen (½). 

           In favor of καὶ ὁ υἱος σου:  C³ G K L M N S U Γ Δ Λ Π Ψ 0141 f13 2 28 33 118 157 180 205 597 700 1006 1010 1071 1241 1243 1292 1342 1424 1505 Byz [E H] Lect it^q some Vulgate copies Ethiopic Origen (½) (Lat ½) Didymus^dub Chrysostom Cyril Theodoret Ambrose (1/4) Quodvultdeus Varimadum Pseudo-Vigilius.

           We begin with two possibilities:  either scribes unnecessarily added σου, or scribes unnecessarily removed σου.  I think that scribes removed σου, considering it superfluous so close to σου τὸν υἱον.   

          Καὶ was either added or removed twice in the verse, after οὐρανον and before ὁ υἱος σου.  Apparently an early scribe – early enough to affect the Alexandrian and Western transmission-lines – economized by removing the και before ὁ υἱος, regarding it as unnecessary to preserve the meaning of the sentence.  An opposite tendency was also at work in the early Byzantine transmission-line – και was added after οὐρανον.

          The same Alexandrian tendency to economize the text elicited the omission of  σου, but it was never popular in Egypt, as the support for σου from the Sahidic version and all copies other than ﬡ B C* W shows.       

          The UBS Committee appears (again) to have too easily embraced the shorter reading.

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This post is dedicated to James Bechtel.