Mark 7:2 - Polishing in the Byzantine (and Western) Text

A variant in Mark 7:22 illustrates the weight of intrinsic evidence – when textual critics ask, “What did the scribe probably have in  front of him in his exemplar?” and “Which reading accounts for the rise of its rivals?”  It may also illlustrate how reasonable people can interpret the intrinsic evidence in opposite ways. 

This contest consists mainly of the presence or absence of ἐμέμψαντο, represented in the NKJV by the words “they found fault.”   The word is not in the NA28, the UBS GNT, or in Mitchell’s GNT.   Although Swanson listed the majority text as support for non-inclusion, the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform and Hodges-Farstad both include ἐμέμψαντο, as does the Solid Rock GNT. 

The base-texts of the ESV, NIV, NLT, NASB 1995 and EHV do not include ἐμέμψαντο.

To most proponents of the Alexandrian text, supported in non-inclusion by 01, 02, 03, 011, 019, 037, 0211, 0274, and 19 minuscules (including 713 892 1424 and 2200), it is obvious that a scribe added ἐμέμψαντο to ensure that the meaning of the sentence would be understood.  The alteration had to have been early to affect witnesses which include 032, the Greek Byzantine stream and family 1, the Peshitta, and the Vulgate (vituperaverunt).

But it may seem equally obvious to some advocates of Byzantine Priority that an early scribe excised ἐμέμψαντο on the grounds that the Pharisees only thought that they found fault with the activity that Jesus permitted, and did not want to risk having readers misunderstand as actual what merely an impression.

The Western text of Codex D (05) may help.  If the Byzantine text originated as a blend of the Alexandrian and Western texts, as Hort proposed, we would expect to find, instead of ἐμέμψαντο, D’s unique reading κατέγνωσαν.   This indicates that the Byzantine text’s earliest layer of expansion did not depend upon the existence of the Western text, and (assuming that the shorter reading is original) that in both streams a scribal tendency to polish sentences that could seem difficult was at work. 

Interestingly, the primary scribe of minuscule 2 did not include ἐμέμψαντο, ending the sentence with ἄρτον (agreeing with À!); a corrector has added ἐμέμψαντο αὐτοῖς.