Strange Bedfellows in Acts 4:12

     The Textus Receptus – the base-text of the New Testament in the King James Version – usually is precisely the same as the Byzantine Text, the New Testament text used by Greek-reading churches for over a thousand years, and represented in over 85% of Greek manuscripts (at least in Matthew-Jude).  But occasionally – 1,005 times, not counting differences involving the spelling of nomina sacra – the Textus Receptus has a reading that is not the same as what is printed in the 2005 Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform or the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text, and agrees instead with the mainly Alexandrian Text found in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece compilation.  Acts 4:12 contains such a variant-unit.

Καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν ἄλλῳ οὐδενὶ ἡ σωτηρία οὐτὲ γὰρ ὄνομά ἐστιν ἕτερον ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν τὸ δεδομένον ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἐν ᾧ δεῖ σωθῆναι ἡμᾶς 

The TR and the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation both read  οὐδὲ instead of οὐτὲ, but the more significant agreement is that both include the words ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν, which are absent from the Byzantine Text, resulting in the absence of the words “under heaven” in the majority-based World English Bible.  Zooming in on this part of the verse we see a remarkable variety of readings after γὰρ and before τὸ δεδομένον (nomina sacra contractions are not noted here):

ἐστιν ἕτερον ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν:  03 05 1505 2147

ἕτερον ἐστιν ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν:  02 08 044 33 104 1175 1739

ἐστιν ἕτερον:  056 330 547

ἕτερον ἐστιν:  69 (ἐστι) 330

1611 reads ἕτερον ἐστι τὸ δεδομένον ἐν ἀνθρώποις ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν

Codex Sinaiticus has a unique word-order:   ἕτερον ὄνομά ἐστιν ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν.

Codex Vaticanus agrees with the TR but reads ὐμᾶς instead of ἡμᾶς at the end of the verse.

Unraveling the likely mechanisms that led to each rival reading would be an interesting exercise and provide a basis for a family tree of witnesses, but here let’s be content to defend the original reading and account for the shorter Byzantine reading.  Internal probability commends Καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν ἄλλῳ οὐδενὶ ἡ σωτηρία οὐτὲ γὰρ ὄνομά ἐστιν ἕτερον ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν τὸ δεδομένον ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἐν ᾧ δεῖ σωθῆναι ἡμᾶς.  The words ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν were dropped accidentally when an early scribe’s line of sight drifted from -ον in ἕτερον to -ον in οὐρανὸν.    

GA 2878 and Its Textual Anomalies

GA 2878 is a Gospels fragment from the 1100s that resides in the Dunham Bible Museum of Houston Baptist University.  It survives as a single leaf containing text from Luke 23:7-25.  Eusebian Canon/Section numbers in its margin show that it is no a lectionary. Its text is Byzantine, agreeing with the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform or the Hodges-Pierpont Majority Text with three exceptions:

23:8 - After εξ ικανου, 2878 reads χρονων, agreeing with H M N W Π Ψ f¹.  The textual contest here is interesting:  

P75 01* 03 T 579:  ἐξ ἱκανῶν χρόνων θέλων ἰδεῖν αὐτὸν

02 Δ Byz:  θέλων ἐξ ἱκανοῦ ἰδεῖν αὐτὸν

05:  θέλων ἰδεῖν αὐτὸν ἐξ ἱκανῶν χρόνων

2878 H M N W Π f¹:  θέλων ἐξ ἱκανοῦ χρόνοῦ ἰδεῖν αὐτὸν

157:  θέλων ἐξ ἱκανῶν χρόνων ἰδεῖν αὐτὸν

019:  ἐξ ἱκανῶν χρόνων ἰδεῖν αὐτὸν

Internal probabilities favor the idea that both the Alexandrian and Western forms are later than the Byzantine reading, inasmuch as χρόνων or χρόνοῦ would be a natural augmentation of Luke’s statement, but there is no ready reason why it would be omitted if initially present (unless it was dropped via parablepsis, -ῶν –ων, in the entire Byzantine transmission-line and then re-entered). 

23:12 - After εν αυτη, 2878 reads ωρα και ημερα (579 reads ωρα.) -  a scribal expansion making the expression superfluously complete.

23:25 – After Απέλυσεν δε, 2878 reads αυτοις, a natural specification agreeing with M Π and the Textus Receptus.  

It can be viewed at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.   

Rising Star: What's Nelson Hsieh Think? (Part One)

Nelson Hsieh

"James, you handsome rogue," I wondered, "Regarding New Testament textual criticism, what school of thought is represented by the new guy, Nelson Hsieh, the Assistant Professor of New Testament at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary?"  I decided to find out, so here is the first part of an interview with Dr. Hsieh on an assortment of issues.

Q:  The foundational premise of Hort’s approach, and his motive for rejecting all distinctly Byzantine readings, was his theory of a Lucianic recension.  Peter Gurry insists that virtually nobody adheres to that theory anymore.  So, regarding the Gospels-text only, where and how did the Byzantine Text originate?

         

Hsieh:  I’m not fully convinced that the Lucianic recension theory has been 100% refuted. The testimony of Jerome certainly suggests that Lucian had some sort of editorial hand among Gospel manuscripts. And the Lucianic recension of the Septuagint is quite well-established and the characteristics of the Septuagint Lucianic recension certainly match many of the characteristics of the New Testament Byzantine text; see Bruce M. Metzger, “Lucian and the Lucianic Recension of the Greek Bible,” NTS 8 (1962): 189–203; Kurt Aland, “The Text of the Church?,” TJ 8 (1987): 131–44.

 Furthermore, we probably shouldn’t create a false dichotomy where, on one side, there is a recension in the strict sense (a large-scale editorial effort to edit a text according to predetermined principles) and, on the other side, there is no editing or revision at all. Maybe Lucian made some small revisions in the fourth century in just the Gospels (since Jerome speaks about Lucian in the context of the Gospels), and not necessarily a large-scale recension of the entire New Testament.

Certainly some Byzantine readings are early as shown by Harry Sturz with alignments between the papyri and later Byzantine readings; see Harry A. Sturz, The Byzantine Text-Type and New Testament Textual Criticism (Nelson, 1984) and also David Alan Black, “A Sturzian Solution to the Problem of ‘Original Text’ as Illustrated by Eph 1:1, Matt 5:22, and John 3:13,” in Can We Recover the Original Text of the New Testament?, ed. Abidan Paul Shah and David Alan Black (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2023), 67–86. 

The papyri were not available to Westcott & Hort, so they obviously couldn’t see examples of Byzantine-papyri agreements. And the church fathers often show us that Byzantine readings are early, even if we don’t possess any early Greek manuscript witnesses for a Byzantine reading (e.g. with the Long Ending of Mark being found in Irenaeus). But a few isolated early Byzantine readings do not mean that the Byzantine Text as a whole is early.

Maybe the answer about origin is a combination of several factors: Lucian’s revisions to the Gospels, early scribal interpolations (e.g. the Long Ending of Mark in the second century, and Pericope of the Adulteress in the third century), and later scribal revisions/smoothing out of the text — which eventually were supplemented by later editorial efforts (like the Harklean Syriac version and von Soden’s K^r group) leading to a fairly standardized late Byzantine Majority text in the 13th century onwards (as Klaus Wachtel argues for the Catholic Epistles). But we can’t be certain. And I don’t see why Lucian has to be tossed out entirely; he could have had a small part in the origin of the Byzantine Textform.

Q:  Considering the likelihood that users of Scripture in languages other than Greek would like to observe that the the text in their language was based on Greek, when a Greek text was used at a scriptorium as the basis for a version, did that particular form of the Greek text get locked into place?

Hsieh:  It is hard to see why a version must have been “locked into place” by an initial Greek exemplar. On subsequent copying, it would be unsurprising for scribes to check against whatever Greek manuscripts were available, which could have differed from the initial Greek exemplar. 

And we have clear examples where versions are corrected/updated against different Greek exemplars (Old Latin vs. Vulgate, and Old Syriac vs. Peshitta). Any “locking in” probably had more to do with liturgical use and/or ecclesiastical authority like with the Peshitta as liturgical standard for the Syriac church, and with the Vulgate for the Latin/Western church.

Q:  In Acts 27:37, 03 and an early layer of the Sahidic version both say that “about 76” souls were aboard the ship.  F. F. Bruce, and Dean John Burgon before him, surmised how this variant came into existence from the usual “276.” Considering how unlikely it is that two independent scribes made the same quirky mistake, was 03’s exemplar (or ancestor) the basis for the Sahidic version of Acts?

Hsieh:  To draw a connection between 03’s exemplar and the Sahidic version of Acts, we would need far more evidence than a single reading, so I wouldn’t make any claim until we could look at more instances of 03-Sahidic agreements that disagree with the rest of the tradition. This is not something I’ve researched before, so I can’t say anymore unless someone already has a list of such agreements.

Q:  In the book of Revelation, what reading do you consider the most unstable in the Nestle-Aland compilation? 

Hsieh:  Probably Revelation 5:9: “You redeemed to God by your blood,” which follows the singular reading in Codex Alexandrinus that omits the pronoun “us,” so there is no object for the verb

“redeem.” ECM Revelation rightly goes with the rest of the manuscript tradition in including the pronoun “us.” The variant occurs at the end of a column in Codex Alexandrinus, so it is easy to understand the scribe of Alexandrinus accidently omitting the pronoun.

Q:  There is a longstanding philosophical debate that overlaps with the text-critical contest between the Byzantine Textform and the Nestle-Aland compilation, orbiting the question, To what is the ordinary Christian obligated to submit to:  the text as issued by the initial producers of each book of the New Testament, or the text as approved and disseminated by the church?.  Which side do you favor?

Hsieh:  Of course, we don’t have the initial/original text regardless of whether one is a Byzantine Textform or critical text advocate, so it’s not possible for an ordinary Christian to submit to a text that we do not possess. We only have an approximation of the initial/original text (whether Byzantine Textform or critical text – both are approximations). I am an evangelical and a Baptist, so obviously I wouldn’t favor a Roman Catholic approach where the biblical text is approved and disseminated by the “church.”

I would say that the ordinary Christian submits to the Word of God that (in God’s providence) is available to them. So a tenth century monk who only has access to one Byzantine text manuscript submits to the biblical text available to him, while a Christian in the twenty-first century submits to the biblical text available – whether a translation, or a Greek critical text. 

But more important is how significant the differences are between the Nestle-Aland editions and the Byzantine Textform. I have looked at all the differences between Robinson & Pierpont’s Byzantine Textform and Nestle-Aland 27 (in RP’s lower apparatus), and I will say that there is not really any textual difference that would significantly affect doctrine or practice for the ordinary Christian. For example, the Byzantine text has four more references to fasting (1 Cor 7:5; Matt 17:21; Mark 9:29; Acts 10:30) than NA27, but I doubt that this would increase (or decrease) the practice of fasting among ordinary Christians. A person’s theological beliefs or denomination would probably have more influence on one’s practice of fasting than which biblical text was used. 

Johannes Karavidopoulos, the only Eastern Orthodox scholar on the UBS4/NA27 editorial committee, said during committee meetings: “I fought especially for New Testament verses which are very familiar to the Greek Orthodox audience because of their liturgical use (e.g., Mark 9:29) . . . But I did not succeed in many cases.” (see Peter J. Gurry, “ETC Interview with John Karavidopoulos,” Evangelical Textual Criticism (blog), September 22, 2015, http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2015/09/etc-interview-with-john-karavidopoulos.html). Karavidopoulos has passed away, but he would probably be pleased to see the THGNT and ECM Mark (and therefore NA29) adopting the Byzantine reading with fasting in Mark 9:29.

Other examples – the doctrine of the Trinity does not need the Johannine Comma to be supported and believed. Without the Pericope of the Adulteress, we do lose a beautiful story about Jesus’s mercy towards a marginalized woman and his critique of the religious leaders – but such themes are prevalent throughout the rest of the Gospels. Without Luke 23:34a (“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”), we do lose a magnificent saying of Jesus from the cross. But other passages in the New Testament teach about loving our enemies (Matt 5:44; Luke 6:35) and about the ignorance of the Jews in condemning Jesus to death (Acts 3:17; 13:27), so the essential teaching of Luke 23:34a is still found elsewhere in the New Testament, even if the text is judged to be a later interpolation.

Q:  The conjectural emendation in NA28 in Second Peter 3:10 that effectively reverses the meaning of the sentence printed in previous edition: do you support it?

Hsieh: No, I disagree with the NA28’s conjecture – although I suppose it hinges more on the meaning of εὑρεθήσεται (can it mean “exposed” in ESV or “laid bare” in NIV-1984?). Metzger and others cannot make sense of εὑρεθήσεται – how can the earth “be found” after the eschatological burning up of all things? 

But an intelligible meaning is possible: Jörg Frey suggests that in the context of apocalyptic literature, the verb can have the sense of “being brought to judgment,” so that there is no need for a conjecture (what Frey calls “an act of desperation” on the part of the ECM). See Jörg Frey, The Letter of Jude and the Second Letter of Peter, trans. Kathleen Ess (Baylor University Press, 2018), 409-11. 

And there is an additional argument in favor of viewing εὑρεθήσεται as judgment: it’s not only the physical earth (γῆ) being exposed, but the earth and its works (τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ ἔργα) being exposed, so that mankind is in view and not just the physical earth.

NA27 / THGNT’s reading εὑρεθήσεται seems to best represent the original text. The external evidence is early and good (01, 03, 025, 1739txt; P72 indirectly) and it’s easier to understand a change from εὑρεθήσεται to κατακαήσεται based on harmonization than the other way around. In other words, I think that the Byzantine reading κατακαήσεται (“be burned up”) is probably a harmonization to earlier in the verse: στοιχεῖα δὲ καυσούμενα λυθήσεται (“the elements being burned up will be dissolved”) and verse 12 also: στοιχεῖα καυσούμενα τήκεται (“the elements being burned up will melt”).

However, I do look forward to hearing Peter Gurry’s paper on this issue at SBL in November 2026, where he still insists that conjecture is still necessary. In his SBL paper abstract, he says: “a near consensus has developed among modern commentators and translators that the original text is εὑρεθήσεται (“will be found”). This shift relies on a lexical interpretation where the verb means “laid bare” (NIV) or “disclosed” (NRSVue). This paper challenges this consensus based on a survey of over 850 uses of the verb, demonstrating that it cannot sustain such a meaning in this context. Consequently, conjectural emendation remains a legitimate and even necessary solution.”

Q:  Michael Holmes’ benign conjectural emendation in the SBL-GNT in First Corinthians 6:5:  do you support it?

Hsieh: On principle, I am against conjectural emendations, but they are certainly interesting in revealing exegetical difficulties and attempts to solve such difficulties. Erasmus (in his Annotations on 1 Corinthians) noticed the grammatical difficulty in 1 Cor 6:5 (διακρῖναι ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ) – how is it possible to judge between one brother? We would either expect the plural ἀδελφῶν (“judge between brothers”), or an additional phrase like καὶ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ (“judge between a brother and a brother”), but no Greek manuscript attests to either possibility. According to the INTF’s Database of Conjectures, Theodore Beza conjectures the plural ἀδελφῶν, while Zuntz, Weiss, and Grotius conjecture various additional phrases that add a second individual. Also see Jan Krans, Beyond What Is Written: Erasmus and Beza as Conjectural Critics of the New Testament, ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, NTTS 35 (Brill, 2006), 180-81, and Jeffrey Kloha, “1 Corinthians 6:5: A Proposal,” NovT 46 (2004): 132-42.

The Latin Book of Armagh (Vetus Latina 61; Oxford Vulgate D) supports Beza’s conjecture of the plural “brothers.” [“Ad verecundiam vestram dico. Sic non est inter vos sapiens quisquam qui possit iudicare inter fratrem suum?” - JSJ]  The second type of conjecture adding an additional phrase is supported by the Syriac Peshitta and five Latin manuscripts – Codices Augiensis, Boernerianus, Sarisburiensis, a recent addition to Toletanus, and a correction to Ulmensis, but the evidence is not so easy to interpret; see the discussion of these Latin manuscripts in Gunther Zuntz, “The Critic Correcting the Author,” Philologus 99 (1955): 295-303. On patristic evidence for either the plural or a longer reading, see Kloha, 139-41.

Holmes and the SBLGNT’s conjecture at 1 Cor 6:5 are almost certainly dependent on Zuntz, who suggests that these versional witnesses do not go back to the original text of 1 Corinthians, but are conjectures/variants arising within the Syriac and Latin tradition, demonstrating attempts to make the text more clear and “correct.” Zuntz also suggests that the omission of an additional phrase (καὶ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ) arose in Paul’s autograph since no Greek manuscript attests to an addition, and the omission was not a scribal error in copying.

To avoid conjecture, one could also better explain the grammar of 1 Cor 6:5. Johannes Weiss (Der erste Korintherbrief [Ruprecht: 1910], 150) and BDAG, 57, provide some examples to alleviate the grammatical difficulty by suggesting Paul is using an abbreviated expression (Gen 16:5, ἀνὰμέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ σοῦ; Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (SEG) IX.8.64, ἀνὰμέσον Ἑλλήνων; JosAs 28:6, ἀνὰμέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ ὑμῶν; Sir 25:18). But only Sirach 25:18 is a true parallel to 1 Cor 6:5 with a singular object of the preposition: ἀνὰ μέσον τῶν (v.l. τοῦ) πλησίον αὐτοῦ, although there is a variant with the article τῶν. If τῶν is the original text (as adopted in the Göttingen Septuagint), then it is not a true parallel to 1 Cor 6:5. The other examples demonstrate that two objects are needed (Gen 16:5; JosAs 28:6), or a plural (SEG IX.8.64).

On the whole – I would agree with Zuntz that the Latin and Syriac readings were probably conjectures/variants that arose within those versions rather than witnesses to a Greek variant or to the original Greek text. It is especially revealing that Codices Boernerianus and Augiensis are both Greek-Latin diglots, yet the Greek sides do not match the additional text on the Latin sides in 1 Cor 6:5. However, I’m not so comfortable with Zuntz’s conjecture and explanation; perhaps additional grammatical study will yield more and better examples that can alleviate the grammatical difficulty in 1 Cor 6:5.

 

Continued soon in Part Two!

 

Read the Fine Print: The KJV and the Byzantine Text

             Many champions of the King James Version emphasize that before the Reformation ever began, the Textus Receptus was the most widely used text throughout Christendom, and that this shows the fulfillment of a divine promise that God would preserve what he revealed in his word – both in terms of its promises (keeping his word), and in terms of its verbal expression – in each generation for his people.  But this is wrong.

            The Textus Receptus – defined as the Greek base-text of the 1611 Authorised Version – has over a thousand readings that are not majority readings, and some readings in the TR  (such as variants in Acts 9:5-6, Luke 2:22 and Eph. 3:9) have very little valid manuscript support – none at all, in the case of Acts 9:5-6.  At such points, what is printed in the Textus Receptus was never the ordinary text of the ordinary church.

            The Westminster Confession of Faith has been used as the basis for regarding both the Textus Receptus and the Byzantine Text (which is very similar to the Textus Receptus without its minority readings) as the  New Testament in Greek that God, “by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages.”  “The text that the formulators affirmed was, historically, the Textus Receptus.   But we should be aware of how the Received Text was received – as a somewhat fluid quantity.  Consider, in selected segments, how the KJV’s Preface The Translators to the Reader describes various English translations that includes Tyndale’s and the Geneva Bible:

Segment 1:  “We do not deny, nay we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God. As the King’s speech, which he uttereth in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, is still the King’s speech, though it be not interpreted by every Translator with the like grace, nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expressly for sense, everywhere. For it is confessed, that things are to take their denomination of the greater part; and a natural man could say, Verum ubi multa nitent in carmine, non ego paucis offendor maculis, etc. A man may be counted a virtuous man, though he have made many slips in his life, (else, there were none virtuous, for in many things we offend all) [James 3:2] also a comely man and lovely, though he have some warts upon his hand, yea, not only freckles upon his face, but also scars.”

             “Things are to take their denomination of the greater part.” – And the Textus Receptus was
much more pure than impure.  The KJV’s translators, though, must have understood that it did not need to be absolutely pure to be sufficiently pure enough to be considered the word of God, even with textual variations of the kind exhibited in the early English versions prior to 1611.  So although, in Romans  12:11, Tyndale used a Greek text that differed from the KJV’s base-text, this did not disqualify Tyndale’s version - “Applye youre selves to ye tyme” – from being considered the word of God.   Nor did his version of Acts 13:33 –  in which Peter is depicted quoting from the first psalm, rather than the second – condemn Tyndale’s entire New Testament as something impure and unfit to use.  Small variants – characterized as “warts,” and “freckles” and “scars” – even if they  change the meaning of a sentence, were not thought to disqualify a text, provided that it was harmonious with the general message of the New Testament. 

Segment 2:  “No cause therefore why the word translated should be denied to be the word, or forbidden to be current, notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting forth of it. For what ever was perfect under the Sun, where Apostles or Apostolic men, that is, men endued with an extraordinary measure of God's spirit, and privileged with the privilege of infallibility, had not their hand?”

            Again we see that “some imperfections and blemishes” in other versions of the New Testament made by Protestants did not disqualify them from being considered the word of God.  If the KJV’s translators did not regard those features as fatal, why do KJV-Onlyists insist that deviations from the Textus Receptus are fatal?  Particularly where the KJV echoes a minority reading, some deviations are improvements, resembling more accurately the text written by inspired authors. 

Segment 3:   “The like we are to think of Translations. The translation of the Seventy dissenteth from the Original in many places, neither doth it come near it, for perspicuity, gravity, majesty; yet which of the Apostles did condemn it? Condemn it? Nay, they used it, (as it is apparent, and as Saint Jerome and most learned men do confess) which they would not have done, nor by their example of using it, so grace and commend it to the Church, if it had been unworthy the appellation and name of the word of God.”

            Thus the KJV’s Preface not only affirmed the historical reality of the Septuagint (that is the “translation of the Seventy” referred to), but even grant it status as the word of God in spite of obvious deviations in meaning from the original Hebrew text.  The cry of “Ad Fontes” is thus balanced by the understanding that what the apostles used, the apostolic church may use also.  When a modern translation such as the NET prefers a reading in the Septuagint over the Masoretic Text, it is not necessarily a disqualifying feature.   (The Eastern Orthodox churches to this day appraise the Septuagint as their authoritative text, comparable to how Roman Catholics appraised the Vulgate as their canonical standard.)  Rather than the novel and extreme all-or-nothing approach of KJV-Onlyists, the KJV’s translators subscribed to the belief that a degree of variation did not disqualify a translation.

Available on Amazon 

           When the alternative to the KJV were limited mainly to the Living Oracles, the Revised Version, the American Standard Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Version, and the New International Version (1984) – some fans of the KJV could validly argue that these versions were not to be used on the grounds that their New Testament base-text was Alexandrian, not Byzantine (and thus not the same text that was “kept pure in all ages.”  Already in 1982, though, the New King James Version entered the market, and now there are other English New Testaments that are Byzantine-based such as the Eastern Orthodox Bible’s New Testament and the English Majority Text Version (EMTV) and the World English Bible and the Modern Literal Version and the Text-Critical English New Testament.  If the translators of the KJV were alive today, they would probably consider these versions the word of God just as they considered the versions by Wycliffe and Cranmer and the Geneva Bible to be the word of God.  King James Version Onlyism, as a dogma, is not justifiable.

 

 

 

Review: New Testament Textual Criticism for the 21st Century

Charles L. Quarles

The Director of the Caskey Center for Biblical Text and Translation, in Wake Forest, South Carolina USA, has given the public a new resource that promises to shine a bright light on a field that is often overlooked and minimized in modern Christian academia.  Resisting the temptation to treat the field as a mere branch of apologetics, Dr. Charles L. Quarles efficiently presents in 161 pages the purposes, materials, and methods used in the field of New Testament textual criticism, and gives readers examples of his own detailed analysis in three specific textual contests (Matthew 16:2b-3, John 1:18, and Colossians 1:12) and invited consideration of many more (without gauging importance according to their length) such as those in Matthew 19:4, Mark 7:2, Luke 7:31, John 8:20, Romans 14:19, Hebrews 10:38, and James 1:12.  No variants from the Petrine Epistles, Jude, or Revelation are covered.

Quarles’ volume has much less well-masked propaganda that Metzger & Ehrman’s obsolete The Text of the New Testament:  Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration.  Whereas Metzger adhered to the untenable theory of the Lucianic recension for his entire academic career, Quarles appears up-to-date and does not suffers from an excess of Hort-echoing like his predecessor.  Rather than badger his readers with reminders of how awful the Textus Receptus and the Byzantine Text are supposed to be, Quarles reports that Western Christian academia in general has treated the case for Byzantine Priority with relative disinterest so far. 

Unfortunately he seems to have assumed, in the course of Part One, some points that he himself acknowledges as tentative by the end of the book.  For example he asserts that “no satisfactory explanation for this disappearance [ i.e., the disappearance of predominantly Byzantine manuscripts prior to Chrysostom] has been offered,” but this is not true:  the simple historicity of the enforcement of Roman policies under Decius, and again under Diocletian, resulted in the destruction of Christian writings of all kinds.  This, and the effects of humidity upon papyrus everywhere, except in Egypt’s exceptionally dry conditions, explains the lack of early Byzantine manuscripts outside Egypt.  

In addition, while patristic evidence is lacking for sustained strings of distinct Byzantine readings in patristic writings, that is due to (1) the tendency of the Byzantine, Alexandrian, and Western transmission-lines to agree, and (2) the absence of patristic ante-Nicene evidence from many locales where the Byzantine Text dominated soon afterward.  Are we so fixated on the Egyptian text, merely because the writing-materials have endured thanks to the dry weather of Egypt, that  in the middle of the doctrinal disputes of the second half of the 300s the Gothic version and the Peshitta arose brimming with novel readings and that the churches, rather than protest and riot,  welcomed the novelties and tossed aside the texts handed down to them by their persecuted predecessors?  Liturgical adjustments aside, such a wholesale replacement seems unlikely.

Back to the book though:  the last section of Part 1 superbly reviews the tools for New Testament textual criticism, sampling the best parts of the author’s earlier 40 Questions About the Text and Canon co-written with L. Scott Kellum.  New features in the Nestle-Aland compilation such as the blank diamond (♦) are included.  Online tools are also described and links are given to the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Muenster, Germany, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts in Texas, the International Greek New Testament Project, and the Center for New Testament Textual Studies at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and more.

The second part is a delightfully balanced presentation about how to evaluate external and internal evidence, blended with an investigation into Matthew 18:15.  Quarles is a strong advocate for Hort’s dictum that “Knowledge of documents should precede final judgment upon readings,” and he appeals to it repeatedly.  He very candidly acknowledges however that the foundation of Hort’s transmission-model – that the Byzantine text emerged as a combination of the Alexandrian and Western text-types – was incorrect:  “Text critics have recognized that the old text-type approach is problematic and must be abandoned.”    Without the acceptance of text-types Hort’s model cannot exist.

Instead of shifting the text-critical train into reverse and shouting a loud apology to Western Christendom for leading to public down the wrong path by a phantom theory for generations, though, Quarles proceeds to make a case for retaining the popular “reasoned eclectic” approach which happens to produce the same results as Hort’s approach 99% of the time.  Nevertheless he affirms that “The testimony of multiple witnesses is usually more trustworthy than the testimony of a single witness” – and (with the Tyndale House GNT and the SBLGNT) recommends ἀμάρτήσῃ εἰς σέ in Matthew 18:15.  

Over and over the reader is shown that it is crucial to engage one’s intelligence when weighing internal considerations against each other.  Nevertheless, while Quarles’ most detailed analysis is made to three small contests in Part Three, he expresses his position about many others as if they are fully settled, content to leave some details vague and some assertions unbalanced in the interest of brevity.  For instance regarding the contest between ΘΣ and ΟΣ  in First Timothy 3:16 he states, “The reference to Jesus’ incarnation in the verse understandably prompted a Christian scribe to mistakenly read the Ο as a Θ.”  It is equally understandable however that any scribe could in a moment of carelessness fail to add the crossbar, just as people writing by hand have  occasionally failed to cross the lowercase “t” and thus wrote about limes instead of times.

An interesting development in the evaluation of internal evidence is that conflations are downplayed; consideration of scribal subvocalization is given as much emphasis.  A degree of subjectivity is likely to be unavoidable when readers attempt to apply Quarles’ cogent-sounding statement (p. 89), “Textual critics should prefer readings that initially seem difficult but make better sense after further study.”   How difficult does a reading need to be before it merits being rejected as a palpable mistake?  The reading τῆς Ἰουδαίας in Luke 4:44 is used as an example of a superficially difficult reading – but not a very persuasive one inasmuch as the longevity of the writing-materials seems to have been given too much weight (i.e., the age of the ancestor shared by Α D Byz 700 Vulgate Peshitta it^a it^e it^aur Syriac Harklean^margin  Armenian Georgian Ethiopic was not necessarily later than the shared ancestor of P75 01 03 019 032 892 Sahidic).    A reading may be intelligently salvageable without this becoming commendable.  I wonder what Quarles does with the readings of 01 in Matthew 13:35 and Luke 1:26.

Without telling Quarles’ conclusions about Matthew 16:2b-3 and John 1:18 and Colossians 1:12 in Part Three, I am confident that there is plenty to both dismay and delight readers whether they favor the readings of supermajorities or tiny minorities of witnesses. 

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Repeatedly I was confronted by a candid regret that more research needs to be done in specific areas of research – the same sort of plea that John Burgon made over 120 years ago.  The dating of the supplemental pages of 032 is particularly significant, and Quarles’ observations should be considered through the lens of what Ulrich Schmid wrote in his chapter “Reassessing the Palaeography and Codicology of the Freer Gospel Manuscript” on pp. 227-249 of The Freer Biblical Manuscripts (2006 ed. Larry W. Hurtado).

The Appendices must not be overlooked, especially III (Problems with the Text-type Approach) – which tends to show that the problem is by no means fatal to the apparoach but comes down to an over-reliance on statistics, but that is something to explore elsewhere) and IV (Thoroughgoing Eclecticism, eulogizing the great J. K. Elliott).  The glossary, though, is too short. 

In conclusion, Quarles has provided an helpful and intriguing and up-to-date introduction to the field of New Testament textual criticism that raises as many little questions as it resolves – and that is not a bad thing. 

A few closing points:

On p. 79 the reinforcement of 03’s text is attributed to a “10^th- or 11^th- century scribe” but the basis for this date is not given; I suggest that a date several centuries later is plausible.

On page 31 in a footnote, “305” should read instead “304.”

On p. 65 all mention of the forgery 2427 should be removed.

Revelation 20:5 - A New Attempt to Change A Doctrinally Significant Text

The first half of Revelation 20:5 has been part of the English text of the book as long as the English text of Revelation has existed – until now.  It appears the same in the Byzantine Text and Textus Receptus:  οἱ λοιποὶ τῶν νεκρῶν οὐκ ἔζησαν ἄχρι τελεσθῇ τὰ χίλια ἔτη.   The meaning is plain:  “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.”

A quick review of Bible Gateway shows that English versions including the KJV, ESV, NKJV, NIV, NET, WEB, NASB, NRSV, NLT, CSB, CEV, and EHV include the entire verse. 

The first half of 20:5 is missing, though, in Codex Sinaiticus and in an interesting array of minuscules:   61 82 93 141 177 201 218 325 452 456 498 522 808 1424 1719 1734 1780 1795 1849 1852 1872 2030 2048 2053 2062 2138 2256 2350 2377 2494 2495 2582 2672 2681 2845 2847 2886 2917 and 2921.

Victorinus of Pettau (Ptuj in Slovenia) quoted the full text of 20:5 in a commentary composed around 260.  At the New Advent website his comments can be read in English:

“[20:4] And I saw thrones, and them that sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them; and I saw the souls of them that were slain on account of the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast nor his image, nor have received his writing on their forehead or in their hand; and they reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

[20:5] The rest of them lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. There are two resurrections. But the first resurrection is now of the souls that are by the faith, which does not permit men to pass over to the second death. Of this resurrection the apostle says: If you have risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.

[20:6] Blessed and holy is he who has part in this resurrection: on them the second death shall have no power, but they shall be priests of God and Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years. I do not think the reign of a thousand years is eternal; or if it is thus to be thought of, they cease to reign when the thousand years are finished. But I will put forward what my capacity enables me to judge. The tenfold number signifies the decalogue, and the hundredfold sets forth the crown of virginity.  For he who shall have kept the undertaking of virginity completely, and shall have faithfully fulfilled the precepts of the decalogue, and shall have destroyed the untrained nature or impure thoughts within the retirement of the heart, that they may not rule over him, this is the true priest of Christ, and accomplishing the millenary number thoroughly, is thought to reign with Christ; and truly in his case the devil is bound.”

The loss of οἱ λοιποὶ τῶν νεκρῶν οὐκ ἔζησαν ἄχρι τελεσθῇ τὰ χίλια ἔτη is explained by one of the most common scribal accidents:  a scribe’s accidental omission of material when his line of sight shifted from letters in his master-copy to the same (or similar) letter recurring further along in the text.  Anyone can see how such an accident, technically called parablepsis, occurred when a scribe’s line of sight jumped from the χιλια ετη at the end of 20:4 to the identical letters in this middle of verse 5:

⁴και ειδον θρονους και εκαθισαν επ αυτους και κριμα εδοθη

αυτοις και τας ψυχας των πεπελεκισμενων δια την μαρτυριαν

ιυ και δια τον λογον του θυ και οιτινες ου προσεκυνησαν

τω θηριω ουτε την εικονα αυτου και ουκ ελαβον το χαραγμα

επι το μετωπον αυτων και επι την χειρα αυτων

και εζησαν και εβασιλευσαν μετα του χυ [τα] χιλια ετη

⁵και οι λοιποι των νεκρων ουκ εζησαν αχρι τελεσθη τα χιλια ετη

αυτη η αναστασις η πρωτη . . . .

 

I note that in the UBS GNT 1966, there was no apparatus entry for Revelation 20:5, and in the UBS GNT 4^th edition, likewise, there was no apparatus entry for Revelation 20:5.   It is exasperating to see such a shift in the new compilation, particularly when no new pertinent external evidence has appeared.  I recommend that from now on translators of Revelation should use Wayne Mitchell's The Greek New Testament, 4th edition, or the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform, and set aside the unstable UBS compilation.   

 

 

 

 

 

Anomalies in Codex Beratinus (043)

Codex Beratinus (043), a copy of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark from the 500s, is semi-famous as the most unique of the Purple Uncials (022, 023, 042, and 080).  It is officially categorized as Byzantine (Category V) but its editor Pierre Batiffol noticed that its text is more accurately described as Mixed. 

Codex Beratinus contains only the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark, with several considerable lacunae (Matthew 1:1-6:3, 7:26-8:7, 18:23-19:3, and Mark 14:62-end). The codex contains 190 extant parchment leaves measuring 31.4 × 26.8 cm, or approximately the same size as those of Codex Alexandrinus, and have two columns per page, with 17 lines per page,^[1] in characters larger than the script in Codex Alexandrinus^[2] in 8-12 letters per line, applied in silver ink.^[3] The title and the first line in Mark are written in gold.^[4] The writing is continuous in full lines without stichometry. Quotations from the Old Testament are marked with an inverted comma (<).  

The text is divided according to the κεφαλαια (chapters) and according to the Ammonian Sections (smaller than κεφαλαια). On the left margin are inserted the numerals of the κεφαλαια and above the pages are inserted the τιτλοι (titles) of the κεφαλαια. The numerals of the Ammonian sections are given on the left margin, and a references to the Eusebian Canons were added by a later hand in the 8th century. A note in the manuscript states that the loss of the other two Gospels is due to "the Franks of Champagne", i.e. some of the Crusaders, who may have seen it while at Patmos, where it was believed formerly to have been.^[5]

The text of the codex is generally of the Byzantine text-type, but it contains the long Western addition after Matthew 20:28, occurring also in Codex Bezae:^[6] Aland gave it the following textual profile: 131¹, 83^1/2, 11², 18^s.^[1]

"But seek to increase from that which is small, and to become less from which is greater. When you enter into a house and are summoned to dine, do not sit down at the prominent places, lest perchance a man more honorable than you come in afterwards, and he who invited you come and say to you, "Go down lower"; and you shall be ashamed. But if you sit down in the inferior place, and one inferior to you come in, then he that invited you will say to you, "Go up higher"; and this will be advantageous for you."^[5]

In Matthew 21:9, the following interpolation occurs, shared only with syr^cur:^[6]

και εξελθον εις υπαντησιν αυτω πολλοι χαιροντες και δοξαζοντες τον θεον περι παντων ων ειδον

And many went out to meet him; all who were seeing [him] round about were rejoicing and glorifying God.

In Matthew 27:9, in the phrase επληρωθη το ρηθεν δια Ιερεμιου του προφητου (fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet) the word Ιερεμιου (Jeremiah) is omitted, as in Minuscule 33, a, b, syr^s, syr^p, and cop^bo.^[7]

In Matthew 27:16 it has additional reading ος δια φονον και στασιν ην βεβλημενοις εις φυλακην (who for murder and insurrection had been thrown in prison).^[8]

In Matthew 27:35, it includes ἵνα πληρώθη τὸ ῤηθὲν διὰ τοῦ προφήτου, Διεμερίσαντο τὰ ἱμάτια μου ἑαυτοῖς καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν ἱματισμὸν μου ἔβαλον κλῆρον along with 0250, 037, 038, 1424, 1582, 124, 348, 788, 1279, 1579, and 517.

This is a unique manuscript with an interesting textual ancestry.  It merits a lot more attention that it typically receives from researchers who belittle manuscripts with an essentially Byzantine text.

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.