First Corinthians 13:1-5 is the arena for today's combat. In the Evangelical Heritage Version this passage runs as follows: "If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all the mysteries and have all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I give up my body that I may be burned[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love does not envy. It does not brag. It is not arrogant. It does not behave indecently. It is not selfish. It is not irritable. It does not keep a record of wrongs."
Our combatants are a lectionary from the 1300s - GA l2466 - and Papyrus 46, which despite some evangelicals' desire to give it a dating earlier than it really merits I assign to the first half of the 200s. The text of First Corinthians 13:1-5 in lectionary 2466 is almost perfectly Byzantine, agreeing with either the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform or the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text throughout, except for the omicron in καυθήσομαι.
Using the UBS4 compilation as the standard of comparison here are l2466's deviations:
1 - no variants
2 - μεθιστάνειν – UBS 4 has μεθιστάναι (+2, -1)
3 - καὶ ἐὰν – UBS4 has καν (+3)
3 – καυθήσομαι – UBS4 has καυχησωμαι (+2 , -2)
4 - η αγαπη – UBS4 has ἡ αγάπη in brackets [inasmuch as brackets were not in the autograph this variant is not counted]
5
- no variants
With 7 letters' worth of addition and 4 letters' worth of omissions l2466 has a total of 11 letters' worth of corruption in First Corinthians 13:1-5.
1 – ει τι (after και) – (+1)
1 – υμειν (instead of υμιν) – (+1)
2 – καν (instead of και εαν) – (-3)
2 – καν (instead of και εαν) – (-3)
3 – και (instead of και εαν) – (-2)
3
– ουθεν
(instead of ουδεν)
– (+1, -1)
4 – η
αγαπη after περπερεύεται - (+6) [inasmuch
as brackets were not in the autograph this variant is not counted]
5 – ευσχμονει (instead of ασχημονει) – (+2, -1)
5
– το
(instead
of
τα)
– (+1,
-1)
Thus,
ignoring the non-decision of the UBS editorial team in v. 4, the text
of P46 has 6 letters’ worth of additions and 11 letters’ worth of
omission, for a total of 17 letters’ worth of corruption.
The
victor: l2466.
How
did a lectionary from the 1300s manage to preserve a more accurate
text of First Corinthians 13:1-5 than a papyrus from the 200s?
The impact of proof-reading in the Byzantine transmission-line, and
the lack of consistent careful proof-reading in the early Alexandrian
transmission-line, cannot be underestimated.
This post was created at the request of Larry Thompson Jr.
3 comments:
Were P46, P66, and the other various papyri used only for student scribes and then later thrown out?
ChristIsLord, my powers of telepathy are not quite strong enough to discern that from the scribes' long-dead corpses. In addition circumstances are not likely to have been identical in all of Egypt.
Hi James - you've included two variants there in P46 (your first two) which are a part of 12:31, and not 13:1; and it should be ευσχημονει, not ευσχμονει. An alternative suggestion here is not that P46 hasn't been able to preserve "a more accurate text", but rather the text decisions as to what the earliest text is have been made in error - P46 isn't alone in reading καν twice in verse 2 (A C 33. 104. Bas. and Cyr read the first καν; A B 33. 104. Clem. Or. and Cyr read the second καν - note the agreement here between P46 A 33. 104. and Cyr for both); in v3 P46 has Basil, Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria in reading και, and א A 33. 104. 441. and Bas. for support in reading ουθεν; in v5, B agrees with P46c in having το μη εαυτης, alongside Clement and Origen (Chrysostom has P46*'s το εαυτης). Only ευσχημονει seems to be without later support (possibly 1241, but that has αυσχημονει which could just be a misspelling of ασχημονει). That P46 has the support of later uncials and later minuscules shows that its readings could in fact be the "original", and that the decisions in TC editions are what are at fault. With even patristic authors also showing 5 out of 6 of these variants in their writings demonstrates that P46 has a lot more support for its readings than what seems to be given credit to it, and one might be more inclined to question editorial decisions as to the "original" (or "earliest attainable" which seems to be the norm these days) text :-)
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