Romans 10:17 - Whose Word Is It Anyway?

Neither :of Christ" or "of God" on 010!

What should be read at the end of Romans 10:17” – “word of God” or word of Christ”?

You can usually tell what kind of base-text is used in English versions of the New Testament by looking at the end of Romans 10:17.  Byzantine-based versions (KJV, NKJV, EOB, MEV, MLV, WEB) end the verse with “word of God”.  Alexandrian-based versions (ESV, NIV, CSB, NASB, NET, NLT, NRSV) end Romans 10:17 with “word of Christ”   The rendering in the New Life Version seems to be based on a third reading that ends the verse without either “God” or “Christ.”

The diverse array of support for Θεοῦ is good, including À¹ Alexandrinus 06¹ K P Ψ 049 33 1175 1241 1881 2200 the Peshitta, the Georgian version, and Basil Chrysostom Jerome and Theodore. 

The support for Χριστοῦ less in quantity but greater in terms of diversity:  P46^vid À* B C^vid 06* 6 81 1506 1739 1853, the Sahidic, Bohairic, and Armenian versions, and Augustine (in On Nature and Grace ch. 2).

The difference come down to a single letter – Χῦ or Θῦ.  Among modern-day compilations, Nestle-Aland/UBS, SBLGNT, and Mitchell GNT4 favor Χριστοῦ; R-P Byz and Hodges-Pierpont both favor Θεοῦ.   

The reference to the “word of Christ” or “message of Christ,” if original, occurs only here in the New Testament.  This is a slight point in favor of Θεοῦ because “word of God” is a Pauline (though not uniquely Pauline) expression (ῥῆμα Θεοῦ in Eph. 6:17).

Θῦ  fits the context better in light of Paul’s preceding use of Isaiah 53:1 and his immediately following use of Psalm 19, which both can be naturally categorized as divine messages, but only one of which is particularly Messianic.

Neither "of Christ" or "of God" in 012!

The shorter reading should not be casually rejected.  It is supported by F G and Old Latin witnesses f (VL 10), g (VL 77) and o (PEL(B))  and by Hilary Ambrosiaster and Pelagius.  An argument could be made that the shorter reading plausibly accounts for the rise of both rival readings:  a hanging reference to hearing the message would be very tempting for scribes to expand. 

Χῦ appears to be an early substitution that began in the Western transmission-line (and passing from the Old Latin into the Vulgate) and which was adopted into the early Alexandrian line.  The scribal tendency to change a general reference to Θς (“God”) or Κς (“Lord”) into a reference specifically to Christ or to Jesus repeatedly impacted both the Western and early Alexandrian transmission-lines.

 

What a Modern Movie Can Teach Us About How John 8:1-11 was Remembered

Not part of the Scriptural account.

With the popularity of programs like The Chosen, perhaps as many Americans get their impressions about what happened during Jesus’ ministry from what they see onscreen as much as what they read off the pages of their Bibles.  Which is why the depiction of Jesus’ interaction with the adulteress in the movie Son of God is a bit concerning.

Some scholars, such as James Hamilton, insist that we shouldn’t treat this episode, usually found in John 7:53-8:11, as part of the Bible at all.  I disagree in my book Jesus and the Adulteress and offer there a theory about how early scribes mistakenly removed the passage.  But today, as Easter 2026 approaches, I want to look into how Son of God re-imagines this episode.

The historical Jesus never did
what he does in this scene.

The adulteress is brought to Jesus in the 22^nd minute of the show – but in a scene that’s set in a wilderness, not in the temple as stated in the Gospel of John 8:2.  In Son of God, her daughter is with her, calling the adulteress “Mother” – an unnecessary embellishment that lacks any Scriptural basis whatsoever.

When questioned by a religious legalist, Jesus – already standing – does not put his finger to the ground.  Instead he picks up a stone from the ground and walks around.  Then he raises it over his head as if he intends to throw it at the adulteress – another unnecessary visual embellishment with absolutely no Scriptural warrant.

He says, “I’ll give my stone to the first man who tells me that he has never sinned” – a deviation from “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” in John 8:7 (EHV).  Then Jesus, instead of asking the adulteress about her accusers, simply tells her, “Go and sin no more” which accurately echoes part of what he says in John 8:11.  She says “Thank you.  Thank you.”  Jesus then kneels and kisses her on her head – another unnecessary an Scripturally unwarranted embellishment.

Then she stands and a young child runs to her and hugs her, and the scene ends.

Have you assumed that the scribes and Pharisees
were holding stones and dropped them?

            It occurs to me that if a modern-day screenwriter can start with John 7:53-8:11 and end up with what we see in Son of God, it is not difficult at all to picture the early writer of the Didascalia Apostolorum adding new details in the course of recollecting the interaction between Jesus and the adulteress in the course of critiquing the hard-heartedness of some church leaders.

            Let’s look at the seventh chapter of the Didascalia Apostolorum, a Syriac text which is generally assigned to the 200s:  “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 that 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 thee, my daughter?’  She said to him, ‘No, Lord.’  And he said unto her, ‘Go your way; neither do I condemn thee.’  In him therefore, our Savior and King and God, is your pattern, O bishops.” 

Although this is far from a precise rendering of John’s account, when these words are entered into Google’s search-bar, Google’s artificial intelligence Gemini states, “The quote provided is a strong exhortation regarding mercy, repentance, and the forgiveness of sins, echoing the spirit of Jesus' interaction with the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11).” 

            If it is granted that the Didascalia’s author was recollecting from the Gospel of John, we have here patristic testimony that is comparable in date – using Brent Nongbri’s re-dating of Papyrus 75 – to the earliest manuscript evidence of the non-inclusion of the pericope adulterae. Nongbri wrote (in 2016 in Journal of Biblical Literature, in the article Reconsidering the Place of Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (P75) in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament) that “we should seriously consider the possibility that p75 was also produced in the fourth century.”  Such an assessment overturns the popular view, held by the late Philip Comfort, that P75 was made in the late 100s or early 200s.  The catalogue of witnesses in the Nestle-Aland 27^th edition of NTG simple assigned a “III” to papyrus 75, which could be any time in the 200s.  Which tends to expose as lies or at least as exaggerations the claims of those who have said that the story of the adulteress originated as a late "floating anecdote."



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The movie Son of God directed by Christopher Spencer is copyrighted by ©Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation 2014 All rights reserved.  

Possible Witchcraft Influence in Ancient Gospels Manuscript

In the 800s in western France, as Charlemagne’s successors worked to eliminate paganism, the manuscript known as the Harkness Gospels was produced. The illustrations in this copy of the Vulgate Gospels are suspected to express pagan mockery of the holy evangelists.  Some specialists suspect that the original orthodox illustrations were replaced by an artist involved in “maleficium,” defiling holy materials with the exaltation of pagan deities. 

The frontispiece, depicting all four evangelists with Jesus Christ in the center, derides the authors in two ways: first, as if they are all casting an ancient Frankish spell against rocks and paper, and second, as if the evangelist Mark is represented by a duck rather than a lion. Similarly in the interior of the manuscript, Mark is depicted as a horse-headed creature, Luke is represented by a humanoid horned creature with wings, and John’s symbol, instead of being a majestic eagle, is a lowly vulture. 

This blasphemous imagery would normally have never been allowed to survive in Christendom, but the Harkness Gospels were protected intact in the collection of a distinguished family until ownership passed to the family of Edward S. Harkness in 1926. The manuscript is now in a collection in New York, USA.

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