Aphrahat and the Final Section of the Gospel of Mark

Aphrahat (The Persian Sage)

            Aphrahat the Persian Sage, also known as Aphraates (280-345), was a church leader in Syria who wrote a lengthy series of sermons in acrostic form, called Demonstrations – one composition for each of the 22 letters of the Syriac alphabet. This was completed by A.D. 337,  and was supplemented by a 23rd homily in 345. Aphrahat was a contemporary of Eusebius of Caesarea, and from a distance he heard of the spiritual transition of those in charge of the government of the Roman Empire (from prohibiting Christianity as Diocletian did, to embracing it, as Constantine I ostensibly did).

            Among the implications of this is that neither the Sinaitic Syriac MS, nor the Curetonian Syriac MS, nor the Syriac Peshitta (if its Gospels-text is correctly assigned to the late 300s), constitutes the earliest extant Syriac evidence regarding how the Gospel of Mark concluded, for Aphraates lived before any of those witnesses were produced.  It may be worthwhile to draw attention here to Aphrahat’s testimony regarding the final portion of Mark (which has been utterly ignored by many commentators).

            In the 17th paragraph of Demonstration One: Of Faith, Aphrahat wrote, “And when our Lord gave the sacrament of baptism to His apostles, He said to them, ‘ Whosoever believes and is baptized shall live, and whosoever believes not shall be condemned.’”

            Thus Aphraates used what we know as Mark 16:16 in Syriac in 337.  He expressed no doubts about it whatsoever.  (Non-Syriac-reading English readers may consult, to see the context, John Gwynn’s English translation of Demonstration One, (in Volume 13 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series), which I rely upon for these quotations.)

            At the end of the same paragraph, Aphrahat writes, “He also said thus, ‘This shall be the sign for those who believe; they shall speak with new tongues and shall cast out demons, and they shall place their hands on the sick and they shall be made whole.’”  Although the passage is quoted very imprecisely (notice the absence of any reference to the signs being done “in my name,” and the absence of any reference to serpent-handling and poison-drinking), what Aphrahat quotes here is clearly based on Christ’s words in Mark 16:16-18.

            Aphrahat is regarded as a frequent user of Tatian’s Diatessaron, but his quotation is significantly different from the passage found in the Arabic Diatessaron.  The differences may be very probably attributed to the later conformation of the Arabic Diatessaron to the text of the Syriac Peshitta.  (The Arabic Diatessaron is itself an echo of a Syriac source.)

            Let us accept, for the moment, that Aphrahat was utilizing the Diatessaron when he wrote the 17th paragraph of Demonstration One: Of Faith.  In which case, we have here, embedded in Aphrahat’s writings, a quotation from a source no later than 175 (namely, Tatian’s Diatessaron).  (To put this another way:  Aphrahat quoted from Tatian's Diatessaron, which - if the completion of the Gospel of Mark is correctly assigned to the year 68 - was made by Tatian less than 110 years after the autograph of the Gospel of Mark was written, using copies of the Gospels earlier than any complete copies that have survived to the present day.]

            (Not to detour, but, another neglected author, the Armenian known as Eznik of  Golb (also known as Yesnik Koghbats‘i), also used Mark 16:17-18 in the first half of the 400s, writing in his composition De Deo (a.k.a. “Against the Sects”) 1:25, “And again, ‘Here are signs of believers:  they will dislodge demons, and they will take serpents into their hand, and they will drink a deadly poison and it will not cause harm.’”  This appears to be a citation that Eznik made from memory.  Notice, by the way, Eznik's inclusion of the words "into their hand" in v. 18.)

            Some additional evidence that Aphrahat, writing in Syriac, was using Tatian’s Diatessaron is found in Demonstration 2, paragraph 20, where he states that Jesus “showed the power of his greatness when he was cast down from a high place into a valley, yet was not harmed.”   This statement is not based on anything in the canonical Gospels as we know them; it is based on a quirky rendering of Luke 4:29-30 which recurs when the episode is described by other writers who used the Diatessaron. (It is not in the Arabic Diatessaron; at this point the Arabic Diatessaron’s exemplar has been, again, conformed to the text of the Peshitta).   A few decades after Aphrahat wrote, Ephrem Syrus wrote (I rely on others for the English translation), “When they cast him down from the hill, he flew in the air.”  (More has been written about this interesting detail (by the late William Petersen for instance), but I focus here upon Aphrahat’s testimony.)

            If it is granted that Aphrahat wrote Demonstration 23 in 345 (shortly before he died), then he must have had more than Tatian’s Diatessaron to work with, because (a) it is generally granted that the Diatessaron, as produced by Tatian, did not include Jesus’ genealogies, and (b) in Demonstration 23, paragraph 20, Jesus’ genealogy is quoted as it appears in Matthew 1:13 to 16.

            Whether or not Aphrahat is regarded as the author of Demonstration 23, Aphrahat was definitely the author of Demonstration One: Of Faith and thus, his testimony from 337 (prior to the production of Codex Sinaiticus) provides us with a window on a Syriac text that existed in his lifetime.

             (A good transcript of Aphrahat’s Demonstrations 1-10, produced in 474, exists today as British Museum Add. MS. 17182.  The same MS includes Demonstrations 11-23, written down in 510.)

            Aphrahat has been confused with another Syriac author, Jacob of Nisibis, partly because Aphrahat took the name “Jacob” at his baptism.  (Jacob of Nisibis was among those who attended the Council of Nicea in 325.)  Although John Burgon, in 1871, pointed out that Aphahat’s Demonstrations were wrongly attributed to Jacob of Nisibis (Burgon pointed this out on p. 26 of The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel of Mark, calling Aphrahat “Aphraates”).  Nevertheless Jacob of Nisibis was named in the textual apparatus of the first edition of the UBS Greek New Testament (1966).  This may be an indication of how little attention was paid to John Burgon by the compilers of the Nestle-Aland NTG and the UBS GNT in its first and second editions.

            Rather than replace Jacob of Nisibis’ name with Aphrahat’s name, the textual apparatus for Mark 16:17-18 in the fourth and fifth editions of the UBS GNT features neither.  For those who rely on the textual apparatus of the UBS GNT4 and UBS GNT5, it is as if Aphrahat’s support of Mark 16:16-18 in Demonstration One, instead of being changed from an incorrect identification (as Jacob of Nisibis) to a correct identification (as Aphrahat), has blinked out of existence.   

            No doubt this was merely an editorial oversight; certainly Carlo Martini and Kurt Aland and Bruce Metzger would never have thought of attempting to evade or silence an important voice such as Aphrahat’s.  (I would like to imagine that Aphrahat’s name did not appear in the textual apparatus of NA27 simply because there was not enough room on the page to include it – but, alas, I cannot, because half of the page of NA27 that features Mark 16:17b-20 is entirely blank.  The editors of NA27 found room to include GA 2427 (which has turned out to be a forgery made in the 1800s) in the apparatus for Mark 16:18, and GA 579 (from the 1200s), but somehow they did not find room to include Aphrahat’s name.)  (A novice reader, unfamiliar with the complex nuances of evidence-citation and apparatus-making, could get the impression that the selection of witnesses in the apparatuses of the Nestle-Aland NTG and UBS GNT has been somewhat biased.)  

            The GNT’s current editors are welcome to express their penitence (or serve as proxy-voices for previous editors) by including Aphrahat’s name in the textual apparatus of the yet-to-be-released 6^th edition.  Perhaps someone by then will still dare to rely on such an unreliable source for patristic evidence as the UBS GNT’s textual apparatus has been.

            (A final note about Aphrahat:  he believed strongly that baptism is central in conversion – that is, he did not treat it as an optional afterthought.  In his Demonstration 6, Concerning Monks – in which Aphrahat’s writing seeps with Scripture-references like a dead skunk smells like skunk – he writes, in the 14th paragraph, the following (translated into English from Syriac):  “Remember the warning that the apostle [St. Paul in Ephesians 4:30] gives us:  ‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit whereby ye have been sealed unto the day of redemption.’  For from baptism do we receive the Spirit of Christ.  For in that hour in which the priests invoke the Spirit, the heavens open and it descends and moves upon the waters [cf. Gen. 1:2].  And those that are baptized are clothed in it.  For the Spirit stays aloof from all that are born of the flesh, until they come to the new birth by water, and then they receive the Holy Spirit.  For in the first birth they are born with an animal soul which is created within man and is not thereafter subject to death, as he said, ‘Adam became a living soul.’  [Cf. Gen. 2:7] But in the second birth, that through baptism, they received the Holy Spirit from a particle of the Godhead, and it is not again subject to death.”)

  

  

Matthew 21:31 - Who Did the Father's Will?

            “Overall this is a very difficult problem.”  Thus wrote Wieland Willker, in his Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels, about the variation-units in Matthew 21:29-31, to which he devoted eight pages of analysis before concluding that “a fully convincing solution is currently not available.”

            “Verses 29-31 involve a rather complex and difficult textual problem.”  Thus begins the NET’s note on the same subject – one of the longest notes in the NET.

            But you wouldn’t know that there is a very tough textual variant here from most of our English Bibles.  The CSB, ESV, NASB, NIV, NLT, EHV, MEV, NRSV, and NKJV all say that the answer to Jesus’ question was “The first,” and they have no footnote here.  (The EOB-NT is a rare exception; the EOB-NT has “The first” in the text and a footnote says, “A few manuscripts, notably D, read “the second” which is unlikely but presents the Jews as spoiling the parable by giving (seemingly deliberately) the wrong answer.”  The EOB’s note could be improved, though, by replacing “the second” with “the last.”)   

            I think one has to go back to J.B. Phillips’ version to find, in English, anything other than “the first” (or, in the CEV, “the older one”) as the answer that was given to Jesus’ question in Matthew 21:31.  (In Phillips’ version, the answer is given as “The second one,” echoing the variant δευτερω.  A different reading, ὁ ὕστερος, was in the text of the 25^th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation, and was also adopted by Westcott & Hort and Tregelles.  (The 1881 Revised Version reads “The first.”  Perhaps the Revision Committee was unimpressed with Westcott and Hort’s divided opinion.)     (The Tyndale House GNT deviates from Tregelles’ compilation, adopting the usual reading ὁ πρῶτος, with an exceptionally thorough apparatus-entry.)    

            Hort, in 1881, devoted over two full pages (in Notes on Select Readings) to Mt. 21:28-31, and mentioned the view of Lachmann that the Jews’ answer to Jesus in Mt. 21:31 is “an early interpolation” (along with the four words which follow it).  Westcott inserted a note of his own into Hort’s analysis, stating, “Considering the difficulty of the Western combination of readings it seems not unlikely that Lachmann is substantially right.”

            The array of readings in this passage is interesting:  first comes a contest in verse 29:  οὐ θέλω, ὔστερον δέ μεταμεληθεὶς ἀπῆλθεν is read by the Byzantine Text, and by C L M W Π 157 565 579; À* has almost the same reading but without the δέ).  Codex Vaticanus has, instead, ἐγώ κε καὶ οὐκ ἀπῆλθεν (“I go, lord, and did not go”).  Third, f¹³ and 700 (Hoskier’s 604) read ὕπαγω κύριε καὶ οὐκ ἀπῆλθεν.  Fourth, Θ (038) has ὕπαγω καὶ οὐκ ἀπῆλθεν.  Fifth, Codex Bezae (05) reads οὐ θέλω ὔστερον δέ μεταμεληθεὶς ἀπῆλθεν but adds εἰς τὸν ἀμπελωνα (repeating the words from v. 28).       

            There are other textual contests (Byzantine witnesses have και before προσελθὼν; Alexandrian witnesses tend to have προσελθὼν δε, and the scribe of À skipped ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς ειπεν in v. 30), but the main contest near the beginning of v. 30 is between ἑτέρω (another) and δευτέρω (second). 

          Δευτέρω (second) is supported by B L M S Ω and by most Greek manuscripts, and by 28 33 700 892 and 1424.  The Byzantine Textform is somewhat split here, though:  δευτέρω is in the text and ἑτέρω is in the margin.  

            Ἡτέρω (the other) is supported by À*, D, Q, K, Π, W, Y, Δ, 157, 565, 579, et al.  In Codex À, someone creatively changed ἑτέρω by putting δ in the left margin and υ between the first  ε and τ, thus producing the variant δευτέρω. 

            Those two textual contests must be kept in mind as we approach the main textual contest in verse 31, where we see (after another variation-unit in v. 31:  after λεγουσιν, most MSS have αυτω but not B À L D Θ 33 f¹³ 788) the answer that Jesus’ listeners gave:

            Codex B and some Ethiopic copies support ὁ ὕστερος (“the later [one]”).

            Almost all manuscripts support ὁ πρῶτος (“the first”).

           Codex D and Θ 700 f¹³ and several Old Latin copies (a, b, d, e, ff², h, l) and the Sinaitic Syriac and the Armenian version support ὁ ἔσχατος (“the last”).    

            Let’s remember one of the canons of textual criticism:  prefer the more difficult reading.  The reading of Codex Bezae is the more difficult reading here – but it also makes Jesus’ hearers appear idiotic; it is obvious that the son who told his father that he would go, but did not go, did not do what the father wanted him to do.

            Jerome’s Vulgate supports ὁ πρῶτος.  But in his Commentary on Matthew, Jerome said something about the variant in verse 31: “one should know that with respect to what follows: ‘Which of the two did the father’s will? And they said, ‘the last,’ the authentic copies do not have ‘the last’ but ‘the first.’”  Jerome proposed that “If we want to read ‘the last,’ the interpretation is plain.  We would say that the Jews indeed understood the truth, but they are evasive and do not want to say what they think.”  In other words, to Jerome, the reading ὁ ἔσχατος (“the last”) makes the Jews seem not stupid, but duplicitous. 

            Bruce Metzger, in his Textual Commentary, rejected the very difficult reading of Codex Bezae, stating that “it is not only difficult, it is nonsensical” – and explained that the UBS committee judged that D’s reading originated “due to copyists who either committed a transcriptional blunder or who were motivated by anti-Pharisaic bias.”  Whatever the mechanism was, the range of its effect must have extended not only to Codex D but to several Latin copies, to the Sinaitic Syriac, and to Jerome’s “authentic” Latin manuscripts – most of which are major representatives of the Western Text.

[But not the Curetonian Syriac.  As Willker notes, the Curetonian Syriac was erroneously cited in NA27 as if it supports ὁ ἔσχατος.  Willker supplies Peter Williams’ rendering of the Curetonian Syriac, which concludes with “The first/former”.] 

[Another oddity in the apparatus of NA27 is that Θ is assigned two readings in v. 31:   ἔσχατος and ὕστερος.] 

[A mistake might have been made by Kurt and Barbara Aland in their Text of the New Testament where they took a close look at this passage (beginning on p. 233), and they zoom in on Mt. 21:31 (beginning on page 235).  The Alands stated that ὁ ὕστερος is supported by Codex Vaticanus “and other Greek manuscripts as well as in some Sahidic manuscripts and the whole Bohairic tradition.”  What are the “other Greek manuscripts” here?  The apparatus of NA27 lists  B Θ f¹³ 700 al; however, this seems to refer to the reading ὕστερον near the end of v. 30; Swanson gives ὁ ἔσχατος as the reading of Θ f¹³ 700 in v. 31 before λέγει.  If there are any other Greek manuscripts that read ὁ ὕστερος other than Codex Vaticanus, I do not know what they are.  If anyone knows of any, please mention them in the comments.]      

            Now let’s apply another canon:  prefer the variant which accounts for its rivals better than they account for it.  The reading in Mt. 21:31 adopted in the UBS compilation – ὁ πρῶτος – does not explain ὁ ὕστερος.  And ὁ ὕστερος can account for ὁ πρῶτος and  ὁ ἔσχατος. 

            As as answer to Jesus’ question, ὁ ὕστερος is a somewhat fluid answer; to someone whose first language was Latin, ὁ ὕστερος might be misunderstood as if it means “the latter.”  And such a misunderstanding explains the origin of the Western reading; there is no need to suppose that an “anti-Pharisaic bias” was involved here.     

            Ὁ ὕστερος also explains ὁ πρῶτος:  The answer “The later one” refers to the first son, not initially (when he said that he would not go), but later (after he changed his mind).  An early scribe who perceived that ὁ ὕστερος could be misunderstood as a reference to the second son could easily avoid the misunderstanding that mars the Western Text by making the wording clearer, and he did so, creating the reading ὁ πρῶτος.

            This internal evidence – (1) ὁ ὕστερος is difficult but not nonsensical, and (2) ὁ ὕστερος accounts for ὁ πρῶτος better than ὁ πρῶτος accounts for ὁ ὕστερος, and (3)  ὁ ὕστερος accounts for ὁ ἔσχατος – compels the adoption of ὁ ὕστερος. 

NA 25

            Whatever other shortcomings Vaticanus’ Gospels-text has, here in Matthew 21:31, it preserves the original wording.   This was the verdict of Tregelles, and it should be the reading in future editions. 

            By the way, I adopted ὁ ὕστερος over a decade ago in my Equitable Eclectic English Edition of the Gospel of Matthew, rendered as “The later one.”   EEEE Matthew, as I call it, is available as a Kindle e-book on Amazon for $1.99.

             In closing, I recommend that that the Armenian and Ethiopic evidence in Matthew 21:31 should be double-checked.

The Myth of Tenacity

            On page 78 of The King James Only Controversy, author James White states:   “Once a variant reading appears in a manuscript, it doesn’t simply go away.  It gets copied and ends up in other manuscripts.”  To support this statement, White appealed to Kurt & Barbara Aland’s similar statement:  “Once a variant or a new reading enters the tradition it refuses to disappear, persisting (if only in a few manuscripts) and perpetuating itself through the centuries.  One of the most striking traits of the New Testament textual tradition is its tenacity.” – Aland & Aland, The Text of the New Testament, p. 56.

            Aland & Aland, however, only provided three examples of this “tenacity” – and two of the three are very poorly attested among later Greek manuscripts.  Their first example is the abrupt ending of the Gospel of Mark (i.e., the ending at 16:8); among extant Greek manuscripts, it is supported by exactly one later copy (304).  In addition, 304’s text of Mark is 90% Byzantine; there is a very real possibility that 304’s exemplar contained Mark 16:9-20; like 2386 and 1420 (both of which used to be cited – erroneously – as support for the abrupt ending), 304’s support for the abrupt ending of Mark may turn out to be merely a quirk. 

            What about Aland & Aland’s other two demonstrations of tenacity?  They are found in Matthew 13:57 and Mark 1:16:

            Regarding Matthew 13:57:  Aland and Aland point out that whereas some manuscripts (B D Θ 33 700) simply present Jesus saying that a prophet is without honor in [his] homeland (πατριδι), and some manuscripts (À f¹³) present Jesus saying that a prophet is without honor in his own homeland (ἰδία πατριδι), and some manuscripts (L Byz K N W) present Jesus saying that a prophet is without honor in his homeland (πατριδι αὐτοῦ), the scribe of Codex C conflated two readings, so as to write ἰδία πατριδι αὐτοῦ.  “This is typical,” Aland and Aland say – “a scribe familiar with both readings will combine them, reasoning that by preserving both texts the right text will be preserved.”

            The obvious problem with the Alands’ proposal is that Codex C’s reading in this passage is anything but “typical;” C’s reading is singular – that is, it is the only Greek manuscript that has this reading!  Far from being “tenacious,” this reading burst into existence with the scribe of C, and then went extinct.  We may have here a tenacious page of parchment, but not a tenacious reading.

            The example in Mark 1:16 is better, where it can be argued that the majority reading is a combination, or conflation, of the reading in Codex A (του Σίμωνος) and the reading in Codex D G W Θ and the Textus Receptus (αὐτου), producing the longer reading αὐτου του Σίμωνος.  Although a counter-argument can be made, let’s step back at this point and survey the evidence that has been collected to illustrate the proposal that once a reading (whether part of the original text, or the creation of a scribe) appears in a manuscript, it does not go away:

            ● The presence of the abrupt ending of Mark in minuscule 304.

            ● The reading ἰδία πατριδι αὐτοῦ in Codex C (a singular reading), and

            ● The reading αὐτου του Σίμωνος in the Byzantine Text of Mark 1:16.  

            Now consider the mass of evidence against the concept of tenacity:  the hundreds of singular readings that appears in ancient manuscripts, but of which there is no trace in later manuscripts.  How many such readings are there?  Greg Paulson wrote his 2013 thesis on singular readings in the codices Vaticanus (B), Sinaiticus (À), Bezae (D), Ephraemi Rescriptus (C), and Washingtonianus (W) in the Gospel of Matthew, and he mentioned how many singular readings – i.e., readings that do not recur in any other Greek manuscript – each one of these codices has in its text of Matthew.  Paulson’s data:
            Vaticanus:  97.

            Sinaiticus:  Scribe A:  163. 

            Bezae:  259.

            Ephraemi Rescriptus:  75

            Washingtonianus:  112.

            I emphasize that these numbers – showing that five important early manuscripts combine to produce a total of 706 singular readings – only take the text of Matthew into consideration.  If one were to extrapolate, so as to maintain a proportion of 25 singular readings per chapter of the Gospels, then we could reasonably expect that a study of all the singular readings in these five manuscripts throughout the four Gospels would total about 2,225.  Well, there we would have 1,500 non-tenacious readings – never seen before or after the one time they appear – versus the three submitted by Aland & Aland.  Suppose that two-thirds of these were nonsense-readings which scribes could reasonably be expected to regard as mistakes.  That would leave 500 non-tenacious, non-nonsense readings, just in the Gospels, just in these five manuscripts.

            And what if we consider some earlier manuscripts?   A single quotation from James Royse (from p. 246 of Scribal Tendencies in the Transmission of the Text of the New Testament, chapter 15 of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research, © 1995 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Ehrman and Holmes, editors) may serve to tell us:  Royse provides a chart which conveys that Papyrus 45 has 222 significant singular readings; Papyrus 46 has 471 significant singular readings; Papyrus 47 has 51 significant singular readings; Papyrus 66 has 107 significant singular readings; Papyrus 72 has 98 significant singular readings; Papyrus 75 has 119 significant singular readings.  (In a footnote, Royse helpfully defines “significant singular readings” as “those singular readings that remain after exclusion of nonsense-readings and orthographic variants.”)  

            Hundreds of readings refute the Alands’ claim about tenacity.  (Over a thousand in just six papyri.)  There is no evidence that these readings were ever perpetuated after they entered the transmission-stream precisely once.  Here the case might rest, Q.E.D. 

  

            But let’s also consider a few peripheral pieces of evidence.             

            ● Origen and Luke 1:46.  Bruce Metzger pointed out (in his essay References in Origen to Variant Readings) that Origen, in his commentary on Matthew, mentioned that in some copies, the Magnificat is said to be sung by Mary, while according to other copies, Elizabeth is the singer.  Presently, no Greek manuscripts say that Elizabeth was the singer. 

            ● Tertullian and John 1:13.  All Greek manuscripts of John 1 support the use of a plural in this verse, so as to understand it as a generalization about all genuine believers.  Tertullian, however, seems to have been convinced that the original reading here was singular, and that Valentinian heretics were responsible for changing it to a plural form.  (Denis S. Kulandaisamy has written a 300-page book on this little subject.)   

            ● Epiphanius and Matthew 2:11.  The apologist Epiphanius of Salamis, in the late 300s, mentioned that the wise men opened their “wallets” (πήρας), and noted that some manuscripts – like all Greek manuscripts extant today – referred instead to their “treasures” (θησαυροὺς).  No known manuscript today has the reading πήρας.  

            ● Jerome, Isidore, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Ephesians 5:14.  Several significant patristic writers drew attention to a textual variant in Ephesians 5:14, where instead of “And Christ will shine on you,” some manuscripts in their day read “And Christ will touch you.”  John Chrysostom seems to have alluded to this variant, too, although he did not go into detail about it.  If it is extant in any Greek manuscripts, there is no mention of them in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece. 

            ● Origen and Matthew 4:17.  Origen says plainly that some manuscripts do not have the word “Repent” in this verse.  All of our Greek manuscripts, however, presently support the inclusion of “Repent” in this verse; only in the Old Syriac copies and in the Old Latin Codex Bobbiensis is it missing.     

            ● Jerome and Matthew 13:35.  Jerome firmly asserts that all of the ancient copies state that these things were done to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Asaph.  No manuscripts of Matthew today have this reading, and Jerome mentions that by his own time, the text had been altered; one alteration had yielded the erroneous reading “Isaiah the prophet.” 

            If you take in hand Amy Donaldson’s two-part dissertation Explicit References to New Testament Variant Readings Among Greek and Latin Church Fathers, you will find details about these readings, and others, which were cited by early patristic writers but which now are never or only rarely found.

            Finally, the myth of tenacity is not only refuted by empirical evidence; it is rendered superfluous by logic.  For if a reading were to enter the transmission-stream, and then fall into oblivion, and the manuscript containing it did not survive, and no one referred to it in patristic writings, how would we know?  Even if we did not have the empirical evidence that thoroughly refutes the theory of tenacity, the theory could only ever be an assumption, not a verifiable thing.

                         

(Readers are invited to double-check the data in this post.)

Galatians 3 and 0176 - The Byzantine Text in Egypt

Let’s take a look at one of the earliest manuscripts of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians:  0176, a small uncial fragment from the 400s (or, perhaps, the late 300s).  Researcher Brice Jones described 0176 back in 2015 as the remains of a “miniature codex,” that is, a small book designed for personal use (as opposed to large codices that were intended to be the ancient equivalent of pulpit Bibles).  It is indeed rather small; the description that accompanies the page-views at the CSNTM reports that 0176 is only 8.7 cm x 5.7 cm.  When intact, 0176 would have probably resembled a Gideons New Testament.  It is housed in Florence, Italy at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.

The text that survives on this single parchment sheet, excavated in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, is from Galatians 3:16-24.  Here is the Byzantine Text of Galatians 3:16-24, adjusted to correspond to how the text was formatted by early copyists:  sacred names (God, Lord, Jesus, Christ) are abbreviated and underlined, and punctuation is reduced to a minimum.  The bold print represents text that has survived in 0176.  Red letters are letters in the Byzantine text that are not in 0176; green letters are letters in 0176 that are not in the Byzantine text: 

RECTO: 

16  Τω δε Αβρααμ′ ερρηθησαν αι επαγγελιαι και τω σπερματι αυτου·  Ου λεγει και τοις σπερμασιν ως επι πολλων αλλ’ ως εφ ενος και τω σπερματι σου ος εστιν Χς.

17   Τουτο δε λεγω διαθηκην προκεκυρωμενην υπο του Θυ εις Χν ο μετα ετη τετρακοσια και τριακοντα γεγονως νομος ουκ ακυροι εις το καταργησαι την επαγγελιαν.

18  Ει γαρ εκ νομου η κληρονομια ουκετι εξ επαγ[ν]γελιας· τω δε Αβρααμ′ δι επαγγελιας κεχαρισται[ε] ο Θς.

19  Τι ουν ο νομος;  των παραβασεων χαριν προσετεθη αχρι ου ελθη το σπερμα ω επηγγελται διαταγεις δι’ αγγελων εν χειρι μεσιτου.

VERSO: 

20  Ο δε μεσιτης ενος ουκ εστιν ο δε Θς εις εστιν.

21  Ο ουν νομος κατα των επαγγελιων του Θυ; Μη γενοιτο.  Ει γαρ εδοθη νομος ο δυναμενος ζωοποιησαι οντως αν εκ νομου ην η δικαιοσυνη.

22  Αλλα συνεκλεισεν η γραφη τα παντα υπο αμαρτιαν ινα η επαγγελια εκ πιστεως Ιυ Χυ δοθη τοις πιστευουσιν. 

23  Προ του δε ελθειν την πιστιν υπο νομον εφρουρουμεθα συγ[ν]κεκλεισμενοι εις την μελλουσαν πιστιν αποκαλυφθηναι.

24  Ωστε ο νομος παιδαγωγος ημων γεγονεν εις Χν ινα εκ πιστεως δικαιωθωμεν.

Although the text of 0176 has been classified as “mixed,” there seems to be no valid reason not to classify it as Byzantine, since its only deviations from the standard Byzantine text are trivial orthographic differences.  (This was noticed by Daniel Buck in the NT Textual Criticism discussion-group on Facebook.)  In verse 21, space-considerations require the inclusion of the phrase του Θυ (“of God”); otherwise the copyist would have begun the words that follow (Μη γενοιτο) further to the left.  Space-considerations seem to justify αχρις rather than αχρι in verse 19, but this is quite a minor difference (especially since the Hodges-Farstad 1982 Majority Text reads αχρις).   

The presence of an essentially Byzantine text of Galatians in use at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt in the 400s should elicit a question about how widespread it was, and about the plausibility of the theory that the Byzantine text’s popularity was limited to locales where John Chrysostom was influential. 

A few more observations round out this examination:

●  The copyist used ekthesis (slight reverse indentation) to separate paragraphs, a feature also seen in Vaticanus and some other early manuscripts.  The initial Pi at the beginning of Galatians 3:23 is also somewhat larger than the other letters; in this respect the script resembles that of Codex Alexandrinus. 

● The reading εις Χν in Galatians 3:17 is supported not only by 0176 (at Oxyrhynchus) but also by Chrysostom (at Constantinople) and by the Peshitta (in Syria) and some Old Latin copies (in the West).  Its support is thus as widespread as the support for non-inclusion.  When one observes that the scribes of the text in Papyrus 46 and Codex Vaticanus managed to find a way to omit short phrases such as “of God” (του Θυ) in nearby 3:21, and also that a copyist could easily consider the phrase “in Christ” as out-of-place in a description of the establishment of the Law of Moses, it seems more reasonable to conclude that an omission yielded the shorter text, rather than that independent copyists reproduced the same accretion.  The phrase “in Christ” should therefore be retained in Galatians 3:17, as it is in the text of the Evangelical Heritage Version.

● The Alands’ categorizations of “mixed” texts (“Category III”), to whatever extent they are accepted, should be tested, in case other manuscripts that support the Byzantine Text have been improperly categorized, giving a false impression (spread by James White and others) that the Byzantine Text has less widespread support than it actually has.

You can see photographs of 0176 at the CSNTM website and elsewhere online.  Here is an artificially enhanced replica, with verse-numbers added and with the Byzantine text superimposed over the manuscript.

Minuscule 304, Theophylact, and the Ending of Mark

          Minuscule 304 is a medieval Greek manuscript which contains a commentary on Matthew and Mark, along with the text of those two Gospels.  Sometimes, medieval commentaries are formatted so as to surround the Gospels-text:  the Gospels-text is positioned in a small rectangle, near the inner edge of the page, and the commentary occupies the space on the three outer margins of the page.  In 304, however, the Gospels-text and the commentary-text are interspersed:  a segment of Scripture is followed by a segment of corresponding commentary, separated by a small dark circle. 
          304 is considered to be a very minor manuscript, in terms of its significance for textual criticism, with one exception:  its text of Mark concludes at the end of 16:8.  In the second edition of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament, 304 was not mentioned; minuscule 2386, instead, was listed as if it is the only extant Greek manuscript which ends at the end of 16:8 in agreement with Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.
          In 1973, however, Kurt Aland deduced the reason why 2386 does not contain verses 9-20:  a thief has removed the page upon which those verses were written, in order to obtain the illustration of the Evangelist Luke which was on the opposite side of the page.  At that point, 304 was promoted, so that one now finds it mentioned in the textual apparatus as an ally of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus at Mark 16:8 in the fourth edition of the UBS Greek New Testament, and in the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation.
          Let’s take a closer look at 304.  This manuscript is housed at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France – the National Library of France, and page-views of the manuscript, from microfilm, were recently made available.
          The catalog-note near the beginning of 304 assigns it to the 13th century, which disagrees with Aland & Aland, who described it as if it was made in the 12th century.  At the beginning of the portion that contains the text of Mark, the title is not “The Gospel of Mark.”  It is, instead, “The  Explanation (Ερμηνεια) of the Gospel of Mark.”  This commentary came to the attention of researchers centuries ago, when a transcription of its contents was printed by Pierre Poussines (also known as Petrus Possinus) as “Codex Tolesanus” in 1673, in Catena Graecorum Patrum in Evangelium Secundum Marcum.

The title, above Mark 1:1-3, in 304:
"The Explanation of the Gospel of Mark."

          The Gospels-text of 304 is essentially Byzantine, and its commentary-material on the Gospel of Mark consists mainly of a commentary written by Theophylact of Achrida (or Ochrid) (c. 1050-1108), supplemented by comments from various patristic writers, including – according to name-abbreviations which appear in the margin next to the excerpts – Cyril, Origen, Photius, Eusebius, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Apollinaris, and occasionally an excerpt is attributed to “Others.”   (Similar abbreviations also appear in the margins in the commentary on Matthew, in which Chrysostom’s works are cited very frequently.)

          In 1881, Hort mentioned the contents of 304, stating, “The third commentary printed by Poussin likewise comes to an end at v. 8 in the Toulouse MS employed by him.  But it is not yet known whether other MSS attest a similar text; and at all events the Toulouse scholia are here almost identical with those that are attributed to Theophylact, which certainly cover vv. 9-20.”

          Indeed, when we compare Theophylact’s commentary to 304, the text-divisions usually correspond exactly.  Most of the comments on Mark in 304 are derived from Theophylact, and this can be confirmed with certainty via direct comparisons between Theophylact’s comments and the comments found in 304.  To demonstrate this important point, here are translations of the beginnings of the comment-segments in 304, and the beginnings of the comment-segments in Theophylact’s commentary, throughout Mark chapter 15:

● After 15:15 –

304:  The Jews handed over Christ to the Romans. 

Theophylact:  The Jews delivered the Lord to the Romans.

● After 15:21 –

304:  Soldiers typically rejoice . . . 

Theophylact:  Soldiers typically rejoice . . .

● After 15:28 (which is not in the Alexandrian Text) – 

There is some difference in content and order, but in 304, sixteen lines into the comment, and in Theophylact’s commentary at the outset of this segment, we find this statement:

304 –There is an old tradition which says that Adam was buried in that place, where Christ was crucified, so that in the place where death began, it would also meet its end.

Theophylact – There is a tradition handed down from the holy fathers which says that Adam was buried in that place . . . so that where death began, there also death would be destroyed.
(This tradition, by the way, is why medieval illustrators sometimes drew a skull-and-crossbones at the base of the cross, representing the corpse of Adam.)

● After 15:32 –

304 – Not only did the soldiers blaspheme the Lord, but also those who were going by blasphemed him . . .

Theophylact – Even those who were going by, that is, along the road, blasphemed the Lord . . .

(The parallel continues throughout the comment, concluding with a reference to Luke’s observation about the repentant thief.)

After this, 304 has an excerpt which is assigned to Hesychius, beginning with Ακριβατε, about what Matthew and Luke say about the two thieves.  

● After 15:37 –

304 – The darkness was not in one place only, but over all the earth.  And at the end of the comment, there is a statement that Luke tells us the words of Jesus’ cry:  into your hands I commit my spirit.

Theophylact – The darkness was not only in that place, but over the whole earth.  And near the end of the comment, there is a statement that Luke tells us the words of Jesus’ cry:  into your hands I commit my spirit.

● After 15:41 –

304 – By the tearing of the curtain, it was shown by God that the spirit of grace had departed from the temple, and the Holy of Holies . . .     

Theophylact – By tearing the curtain, it was demonstrated by God that the grace of the Spirit had departed from the temple, and the Holy of Holies . . .

● After 15:47 –

304 – Joseph of Arimathea, though being a servant under the decrees of the law, understood Christ to be God . . .  

Theophylact – O Blessed Joseph!  Though a servant of the Law, he perceived the divinity of Christ . . .

          This very close relationship between Theophylact’s commentary and the commentary-material in 304 continues into chapter 16, as shown by this picture, in which the Greek text of Theophylact’s comments on Mark 16:1-8 are highlighted in blue when there is a verbatim correspondence in 304, and in yellow where the match is out of order or otherwise approximated. 

          When one looks at the final lines of the commentary-material in 304, the text ends as follows:  Η υπο του φοβου τον νουν απολεσασαι. (“Out of fear, they had lost their minds.”)  This corresponds to similar material in Theophylact’s commentary.  (In Theophylact’s commentary, there is another sentence after this, stating, And because of this they said nothing to anyone, ignoring even what they had heard. – Και δια τουτο ουδενι ουδεν ειπον,  επιλαθόμεναι και ων ηκουσαν.)   There the text of 304 ends, without any special marks (other than the usual dark circle that separates the commentary-material from the Scripture-text) – not even the “+” marks that appear in 304 at the end of the commentary on Matthew.  There is no closing-title.  There is not even an “Amen.”  (The opposite side of the page contains scrawled notes which are not part of the commentary.)

      There is, however, a faintly written note which indicates that this is where the exemplar of 304 ended.  Beginning on the very next line after the last line of commentary-text, and preceding the damage to the lower margin of the page, it runs as follows:

A two-line note -- faint but decipherable -- appears
in 304 below the last line of commentary.

ώσπερ ξένοι χαρουσι ιδειν πατρίδα

ουτω και η γράφοντες βιβλιον τελος 

As travelers rejoice on their homeland to look,

Thus also the scribe at the end of a book.

           Below this, in even fainter lettering, someone has repeated part of the first line of this little note, but then the damage takes over and nothing else is legible.

           A similar, slightly longer note is also found in 304 below the end of the commentary on Matthew.  (Similar notes are found in other medieval manuscripts, such as Lectionary 1663.)  There, the format is different:  the end of the commentary is signified by a plus-mark (“+”) at the end of the last line of text, followed by another line occupied solely by two additional plus-marks, before the note is written (followed by two more lines of text).

          All things considered, the following points should be clear:
          (1)  Pending further research, 304’s testimony to the ending of Mark at 16:8 should be considered highly dubious, inasmuch as Theophylact’s Explanation of the Gospels, the main source of 304’s Gospels-text and commentary-text, continues, not only with another sentence about Mark 16:1-8, but with two more segments, the first of which explains Mark 16:9-13 (beginning with a sentence descended from one that is also found in Eusebius’ Ad Marinum, stating that the opening phrase of 16:9 should be read with a pause) and the second of which explains Mark 16:14-20. 
          (2)  Considering the essentially Byzantine nature of the text in 304, it seems very likely that 304 was copied from a damaged exemplar which was missing its final pages, rather than that 304 echoes an exemplar which was designed to display Mark 16:8 as the final text of Mark with no further comment. 

          (3)  One cannot absolutely rule out the theory that (a) the exemplar of 304 contained a note similar to the one mentioned by Migne in a footnote in P.G. 123, found in “Codex 26”:  “Some who have commented on this passage say that Mark’s Gospel ends at this point [at 16:8] and that the remainder began its existence later.  An explanation of this passage is also necessary in order that no injury may be done to the truth,” and (b) on the basis of the first part of this note, the scribe of 304 boldly decided to abstain from copying any further text or comment.  However, this theory seems highly unlikely, inasmuch as the copyist displays no intention of altering the text according to patristic observations about variant-readings elsewhere in 304 (such as at Matthew 27:16-17 and Mark 1:2).

          (4)  If manuscripts which contain Theophylact’s commentary interspersed with the Gospels-text can be shown to share a particular collection of fairly unique readings (such as τον Ιησουν at the end of Mark 16:1), their weight should be considered collectively, rather than individually, and these manuscripts’ texts could plausibly be regarded as very extensive quotations made by Theophylact, rather than as continuous-text Gospels-manuscripts.

          (5)  More research on Theophylact’s Gospels-commentary would be welcome.  A good start (for any aspiring researcher) might involve a comparison of 304 and 2214.  2214 is another 13th-century copy of Theophylact’s commentary in which the Gospels-text and commentary-material are arranged in alternating segments.  It was thought to be lost in the 1980’s, but it is not lost; it resides as MS #233 at the Ivan Dujčev Research Center in Bulgaria.  Future investigators of Theophylact’s commentary and his Gospels-text should also look into minuscule 2879, which is at Oxford.