John Barton and the Text of the New Testament

            What does John Barton say about New Testament textual criticism, and related subjects, in his new book, A History of the Bible –The Story of the World’s Most Influential Book?  Those who take this volume in hand will require some time to find out:  it is 489 pages long (not counting the extra sections that contain Notes, Further Reading, a bibliography, and indices), and covers the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, and several chapters are devoted to the treatment of the Biblical text in the Middle Ages and later.  

            The path to information relevant to New Testament textual criticism in Barton’s book will take readers through a veritable zoo of theological liberalism.  On the very first page Barton asserts that the Bible is rooted in “folklore and myth.”  In what follows, readers are told: 

            ● In Christianity, “there are absolutely central doctrines, such as that of the Trinity, that are almost entirely absent from the New Testament.” (p. 3)

            ● Moses did not have The Ten Commandments (pages 78-79).

            ● “A rough consensus has arisen among specialists that biblical books are unlikely to go back much before the ninth or tenth century.” (page 32)

            ● The story of the repentance of king Manasseh was invented. (page 56)

            ● Ruth, Jonah, and Esther are “probably fictitious,” (page 56) along with the stories in Daniel 1-6.

            ● Out of the 66 chapters in the book of Isaiah, only chapters 1-8 and 28-31 contain the work of Isaiah. (page 102)  Chapters 24-27 “could be as late as the third century or even the second century BCE.” (page 103)

            ● The book of Acts is “not necessarily by the same author as Luke” (page 162).

            ● The Didache is “at the latest from the very early second century, and so probably earlier than at least some of the New Testament books.” (page 162)

            ● “Paul’s letters, and the other letters in the New Testament, are to be seen as actual letters rather than as inspired Scripture.” (page 413)

            ● Paul’s statement in Romans 5:12 that death entered the world because of sin is “clearly untrue.” (page 428)

           

            You get the idea:  Barton is a liberal, and his liberalism glows on every page of this book like radiation from a nuclear bomb-site.  Practically from cover to cover, Barton rejects basic beliefs of Christianity.  If you have sought for a volume that could be validly sub-titled, “How Liberals Reject the Gospel,” your search is over.  But that doesn’t mean that the author is not erudite.  John Barton was educated at Oxford, and taught at Oxford for several decades.  He was joint editor of the Journal of Theological Studies from 2004-2010. 

            What, then, can we learn from John Barton regarding New Testament textual criticism and the materials most relevant to the enterprise of reconstructing the original text of the New Testament?  We learn in chapter 12 that “Earlier attempts to establish ‘the original text’ of any book have now largely been set aside.” (page 286)  And we are told, “There is not, and never can be, a text of ‘the New Testament’ as it left the hands of Paul Luke or John:  we have only variants.” (page 286)  This may be the wishful thinking of Barton’s fellow-liberals, but it is not the view of most evangelical researchers in the field.  Don’t expect the existence of evangelical or conservative scholarship to be acknowledged in this book.

            What else can we learn?  We learn the following:

            (1)  Papyrus 73 contains “large sections of Luke and John.” (page 286)

            (2)  Codex Bezae contains “not only the New Testament but also the Old Testament in Greek”  (page 288)  but – on the same page – Codex Bezae “contains the Gospels and Acts,” but – on page 444 – Codex Bezae is “a fifth-century manuscript of the whole Bible in Greek and Latin.”

            (3)  “There are 196 extant uncial codices.” (page 288)

            (4)  When editors of modern printed Greek New Testament prepare critical texts, “This is often mainly a matter of intuition.” (page 290)

            (5)  “People in the early Church usually believed that Jesus was, like God himself, omniscient.” (page 292)

            (6)  “Many papyri” support the non-inclusion of John 7:53-8:11.  (page 294)

            (7)  The story of the adulteress “is present only in very few manuscripts.” (page 294)

            (8)  “There is an eleventh-century Gospel manuscript (1,333) that places it [i.e., the story of the adulteress] at the end of Luke.” (page 294)

            (9)  “The Peshitta Old Testament was probably translated directly from the Hebrew, and the New Testament from the Greek, in the second century.” (page 305)

            (10)  Regarding the Comma Johanneum, “We would now probably think of it as coming from the early second century CE.” (page 407)

            (11)  “There are several thousand New Testament manuscripts from the first few centuries CE.” (page 285)

            (12)  In the world in which lectionaries were made, page-numbers did not exist.  (page 289)

           

            All of these statements from John Barton’s book are incorrect or hopelessly garbled.  In real life:

            (1)  Papyrus 73 is a small fragment that contains text from Matthew 25 and 26; it has no text at all from Luke and John.  Barton probably meant to refer to P75.

            (2)  Codex Bezae is a damaged codex which contains most of the Gospels and Acts, and a page with text from Third John.  It is certainly not a copy of the whole Bible.  Even a beginner in the field of New Testament textual criticism should know this as naturally as he recognizes his home-country on a map.  

            (3)  There are over 300 extant uncial codices, although many of them are very fragmentary.  Barton’s claim of 196 indicates that he has been working with some very obsolete data, which the most basic online search would remedy.  A complete beginner relying on Wikipedia could do better.
            (4)  Editors of critical texts do not mainly rely on intuition; Barton’s claim is absurd and backwards.  Editors apply scientific guidelines, or canons, to the evidence, and only in remarkably close contests is intuition – or, one might say, experienced instincts – employed.

            (5)  The claim that early Christians believed that Jesus knew everything cannot survive a plain reading of Mark 13:32. 

            (6)  The UBS textual apparatus’ entry for John 7:53-8:11 lists exactly two papyri as witnesses for the non-inclusion of this passage:  Papyrus 66 and Papyrus 75.  This is not “many papyri.”       

            (7)  Barton’s claim that the story of the adulteress is “present only in very few manuscripts” is hilarious in light of the presence of the passage in over 1,400 manuscripts.  The estimate that the story of the adulteress is present in about 1,500 Greek manuscripts, and absent in about 300 Greek manuscripts, is not far off.  One can only wonder how many of Barton’s students at Oxford have absorbed his fiction and spread it to their congregations.

            (8)  Minuscule 1333 has John 8:3-11 (not 7:53-8:11) inserted after the end of Luke, but contrary to the impression given by Barton, it is neither presented as part of the Gospel of Luke nor as a “floating” anecdote.  As I have shown, the passage was inserted so that minuscule 1333 would include the lection for Saint Pelagia’s Day (Sept. 8), and before the text of John 8:3 begins, there is an ordinary lection-title, “ek tou kata Iw.,” that is, “from the [Gospel] of John.” 

            (9)  The Peshitta, which initially included only 22 books of the New Testament – Second Peter, Second and Third John, Jude, and Revelation were excluded – was not produced in the 100s.   For well over a century, most Syriac specialists have viewed the Peshitta as a form of the text that did not clearly emerge until the late 300s or 400s.   

            (10)  Barton is free to suppose that the Johannine Comma existed in the early 100s, but that is a fantastically unrealistic view.  Its earliest attestation in Latin is from the late 300s (in an inexact form); as a Greek reading it is practically non-existent until the late Middle Ages when it was retro-translated from Latin and inserted, with variations, in a few Greek manuscripts.  (Regarding the claim that the Johannine Comma was cited by Cyprian in the mid-200s, see this post.)  Furthermore, Barton has misquoted the text:  he states that First John 5:7 says “There are three that testify in heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one,” but a glance at the actual reading would have been enough to inform him that passage refers to “the Word,” not “the Son.”   

            (11)  While there are several thousand New Testament manuscripts, most of them are medieval; fewer than 100 are “from the first few centuries CE.” 

            (12)  Page-numbering existed in medieval manuscripts and in ancient manuscripts, as anyone who has studied them can attest.

            Other misleading statements about New Testament manuscripts abound in Barton’s book, made barely palatable by the addition of “possibly” or “perhaps.”  For instance, Codex Vaticanus is said to be “possibly” a Roman manuscript, although no basis for this is provided, and on the same page Codex Vaticanus “comes from Egypt.”  Codex Sinaiticus (almost certainly made in Caesarea) is said to be written “perhaps in Rome.”   Frankly, confusion is on display almost every time Barton attempts to go into detail about any New Testament manuscript, which fortunately does not happen much outside of chapter 12.             

            Barton does not need textual criticism to create tendentious justifications to reject the teachings of the Bible.  To Barton, “When we have established the oldest reading available to us, we should not delude ourselves that we have therefore got back to . . . what the author originally wrote.”  (page 292)  What this means in practice is illustrated by a comment he makes on page 425 about Matthew 28:19, where Jesus instructs His disciples to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  This passage that is overwhelmingly supported by ancient manuscripts and early patristic citations; yet Barton says:  “This passage is widely suspected of being a later addition to the Gospel,” and (on page 327) “Many scholars think this command has been added in the light of the later doctrine of the Trinity.”  Thus skepticism becomes its own foundation.  He might as well have said, “My friends and I at Modern Church just don’t want to believe that.”  For someone who has studied the Bible as a career, Barton certainly seems eager to find excuses to ignore (and replace) its teachings.

           

            Once there was a time when being taught at Oxford, and teaching at Oxford, commanded respect.  Nowadays it demands suspicion – not only of heresy, but of a lack of basic competence.  John Barton’s embarrassing failure to grasp basic data about the materials relevant to New Testament textual criticism is a demonstration of this sad fact.

A History of the Bible – The Story of the World’s Most Influential Book? by John Barton is Copyright © John Barton, published by VIKING, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, first published in Great Britain by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK. 

Matthew 14:24 - In the Middle of the Sea

Matthew 14:24 in Codex L.

In Matthew 14:24, as Matthew sets the stage for Jesus’ miraculous walk upon the Sea of Galilee, there is a clear difference between the Byzantine Text and the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation.  NA27 (followed by the CSB, ESV, NET, NIV, and NASB) reads σταδίους πολλοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἀπεῖχεν, that is, the ship already “was many stadia from the land.”    

            The Byzantine reading is μέσον τῆς θαλάσσης ἦν, that is, the ship already “was in middle of the sea.”  This reading is supported not only by the vast majority of Greek manuscripts but also by Codex Sinaiticus and a strong array of uncials including Codices C, E, F, G, L, W, Δ, K, M, Π, P, Σ, Φ, S, U, V, X, 073, and 0106.  A singular reading in Codex D – ἦν εἰς μέσον τῆς θαλάσσης – agrees far more closely with the Byzantine reading than with NA27’s reading; the text of D simply transposes the word ἦν and adds εἰς.  A similar reading in the important minuscule 1424 has the same reading as D except without the word εἰς.  

             Strong Old Latin support favors “was in middle of the sea.” The Latin witnesses for this reading include not only the Vulgate text but also Codex Vercellensis – VL 3, which is thought to have been produced in the 370s by, or under the supervision of, Saint Eusebius of Vercelli – and Codex Aureus – VL 15, from the 600s – and Codex Veronensis – VL 4, from the 400s – and Codex Brixianus – VL 10, from the 500s – and Codex Corbiensis – VL 8, from the 400s – and Codex Sangermanensis – VL 7, from the 700s or 800s – and Codex Claromontanus – VL 12, from the 400s (not to be confused with the identically named Greek codex of the epistles of Paul) – and Codex Rehdigeranus – VL 11, from the 700s – and Codex Monacensis – VL 13, from the 500s or 600s. 

The Peshitta, on the other hand, agrees with Codex Vaticanus, the only uncial that reads in Matthew 14:24 exactly like the text in NA27.  So does the Curetonian Syriac manuscript and the main members of the small cluster of Greek manuscripts known as f¹³.   The Middle Egyptian evidence is interestingly divided:  mae² (Schøyen MS 2650 – one of the few versional MSS that supports À and B in Mt. 27:49, where they both have a substantial interpolation based on John 19:34), which is assigned to the 300s, agrees in Matthew 14:24 with the reading in B.  Mae¹ (the Scheide Codex, assigned to the late 300s or early 400s), meanwhile, has a reading which says that the ship was about 25 stadia from the land, which is clearly a harmonization to John 6:19.

The Diatessaron (a popular composition made by Tatian around 172, combining the contents of all four Gospels into one continuous report) blended details from Matthew, Mark, and John at the end of Section 18 and the beginning of Section 19; the Arabic Diatessaron runs as follows:  “And when the nightfall was near, His disciples went down unto the sea, and sat in a boat, and came to the side of Capernaum.  And the darkness came on, and Jesus had not come to them.  And the sea was stirred up against them by reason of a violent wind that blew.  And the boat was distant from the land many furlongs, and they were much damaged by the waves, and the wind was against them.  And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus came unto them, walking upon the water, after they had rowed with difficulty about 25 or 30 furlongs.”  The segment, “the boat was distant from the land many furlongs” clearly supports the reading of B, but it is an open question as to whether this echoes the work of Tatian in the second century, or the Peshitta, to which the Syriac ancestor of the Arabic Diatessaron was conformed.

            An anomaly seems to exist in the reporting of the Palestinian Aramaic (formerly called Palestinian Syriac or Jerusalem Syriac) version; the UBS apparatus lists the Palestinian Syriac text as support for the reading of B; however, a consultation of the List of Variants portion of Agnes Smith Lewis’ and Margaret Dunlop Gibson’s The Palestinian Syriac Lectionary of the Gospels (1899) reveals this comment about the three manuscripts used for their compilation:  “All add μέσον τῆς θαλάσσης before βασανιζόμενον.”

 

Matthew 14:24 in Codex X.

           Turning to patristic testimony, we find that Origen, in his Commentary on Matthew, Book XI, chapter 6, refers to this occasion “when they had got as far as the middle of the sea, and the boat was distressed because the wind was contrary to them,” and a little later he mentions that “they were not able to advance farther than the middle of the sea.”  Consulting Erich Klostermann’s edition of the Greek text of Origen’s Commentary on Matthew, one may extract from page 43, line 10, Origen’s description of the disciples:  ἰσχυροτέρους καὶ δυναμένους ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον τῆς θαλάσσης φθάσαι (they were “stronger and capable of reaching the middle of the sea”), and from page 44, lines 1-2, as Origen draws a spiritual application, he states:  λογιζώμεθα ὅτι πλοῖον ἡμῶν μέσον ἐστὶ τῆς θαλάσσης τότε, βασανιζόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν κυμάτων, that is, “Let us consider that our boat is in the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves.”   This does not leave room for a reasonable doubt about the text of Matthew 14:24 that Origen read in the 200s; his copies clearly agreed with the Byzantine text at this point.

            Other patristic evidence comes from John Chrysostom (in Homily 50 on Matthew); not only does the cited text agree with the Byzantine text, but in the course of the homily on this passage Chrysostom mentions that the disciples were “mid-sea.”  And Chrysostom’s Greek copies in Antioch and Constantinople are allied with Augustine’s Latin copies in North Africa; Augustine’s Sermon 25 has this reading in its sub-title.  Notably Augustine began this sermon by referring to “The lesson of the Gospel which we have just heard,” the “lesson” being the lection for that day.  The UBS apparatus includes Chromatius and Jerome as support for ἦν εἰς μέσον τῆς θαλάσσης, too – but not a single patristic writer, it seems, can be found anywhere who used the reading in the Nestle-Aland compilation.

           

           

Matthew 14:24 in GA 2373.

All things considered, then, the external evidence shows that μέσον τῆς θαλάσσης ἦν, and not the reading of Vaticanus, is the reading with the oldest, the most abundant, and the most diverse support.  Now let’s consider internal evidence:

● First, it should be noted that the term σταδίους does not appear anywhere (else) in the Gospel of Matthew. 

● Second, against Metzger’s theory that the text of Matthew 14:24 has been harmonized to Mark 6:47, it should be observed that scribal tendencies were strongly in the opposite direction, that is, Matthew’s Gospel tended to be the one that influenced the others, rather than the other way around.  Also, a direct comparison of the two passages shows that such an alteration would be a harmonization that does not harmonize; Matthew’s wording is μέσον; Mark’s is ἐν μέσῳ.  Also, a harmonizer who attempted to bring the text of Matthew into closer agreement with the text of Mark would be likely to have also tweaked Matthew’s text to say, like Mark, that the disciples were distressed, rather than that the ship was distressed.    

● Thirdly, we see in some Egyptian versional evidence (Mae¹ and the Bohairic version (see Horner’s 1898 edition of the Bohairic version, Vol. 1, p. 123; Horner mentions that Bohairic MS E1 features an Arabic note which states that the Greek text says, “And the boat was in the middle of the sea”)) a reading in Matthew 14:24 that harmonizes Matthew 14:24 to John 6:19, mentioning that the boat was specifically 25 stadia from land.  This indicates shows that in Egypt, the text of Matthew 14:24 was affected by the text in John, rather than by the text in Mark.

            ● Fourthly, while there is nothing about the reading σταδίους πολλοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς ἀπεῖχεν that seems capable of being misunderstood, a scribe may have been concerned that readers might momentarily misconstrue the phrase μέσον τῆς θαλάσσης as if it meant that the ship was already submerged under the water.  An easy way to reduce such a perceived risk would be to describe the distance in a different way.  (In a manuscript mentioned, but not identified, by Adam Clarke, the text reads βαπτιζόμενον rather than βασανιζόμενον, which would suggest just this understanding.  [Update:  this manuscript is the late minuscule 70.  Thanks, Daniel Gan, for tracking down this detail.])  This factor shows that between “in the middle of the sea,” and “many stadia from the land,” the first reading is more difficult inasmuch as it has (or was thought to have) a higher risk of being misconstrued.  As the more difficult reading, it explains the rise of its rival. 

                The internal evidence thus points in the same direction as the external evidence, and leads to the conclusion that the reading in Codex B did not originate with Matthew, but with an early copyist who prioritized the meaning of the text over a strict perpetuation of its exact form. 

As an addendum it may be noted that if the Byzantine Text were used as the standard of comparison, the texts of B and À would have to be classified as inaccurate and heavily edited forms of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ walk on the Sea of Galilee – but even using NA27’s text as the standard of comparison, the following deviations do not inspire confidence in the reliability of Alexandrian scribes:

14:22:  À initially omitted εὐθέως and B added αὐτοῦ and B omitted τὸ.

14:23:  À initially omitted ἀπολύσας τοὺς ὄχλους.

14:26:  À initially transposed the opening phrase and did not include οἱ or μαθηταὶ.

14:27:  À initially omitted ὀ Ἰησοῦς.

14:28:  B transposed to ὁ Πέτρος εἶπεν αὐτῷ, and À transposed to εἰ σὺ εἶ, Κε.

14:29:  À initially read ελθιν ηλθεν ουν after υδατα.

14:30:  B and À both omitted ἰσχυρὸν.

Fool and Knave! Hebrews 1 in Codex Vaticanus

            Many textual critics consider Codex Vaticanus the centerpiece of the church’s collection of New Testament manuscripts.  Besides containing Greek text from much of the Old Testament (in a form of the Septuagint), Codex Vaticanus includes all books of the New Testament except First Timothy, Second Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Revelation.  (After the book of Hebrews, which abruptly stops midway through 9:14 at the end of a page, the text of the book of Revelation is present, but it is written in handwriting typical of the 1400’s, and constitutes a separate manuscript from the much more ancient portion.)

            Today, let’s take a close look at one of the better-known pages of this important manuscript, which was produced around 325:  the page that contains the first chapter of the book of Hebrews.  I will simply list twelve features on this page, and describe them one by one.

            First, though, for those who might want to explore Codex Vaticanus’ pages directly, here is an index of the online images of the first page of every New Testament book that is included in the manuscript, in the order in which they appear in Codex Vaticanus.  Clicking the embedded link will take you to the image of that page at the Vatican Library’s website.

From Codex Vaticanus:  Second Thess. 3:11-18 and Hebrews 1:1-2:2.
This image is digitally altered; a digital photo of the page
is at the Vatican Library website.

Matthew

Mark 

Luke

John 

Acts

James

First Peter 

Second Peter      

First John   

Second John 

Third John

Jude

Romans

First Corinthians

Second Corinthians

Galatians

Ephesians

Philippians

Colossians

First Thessalonians

Second Thessalonians

Hebrews

Last extant page (Heb. 8:7-9:14)

Revelation

1.  Book title, in the upper margin of the manuscript.

2.  Decoration.  Similar decorative lines are not unusual in later manuscripts, which sometimes feature horizontal lines made of braided ropes or thorns.  In this case, the decoration was added long after the initial production of the manuscript.  Such decorations serve a practical purpose as well as an artistic one, helping draw attention to the beginnings of books.

3.  Enlarged initial.  When Codex Vaticanus was produced, it did not have this feature, which was added later.  A close look at the page shows that originally the letter pi at the beginning of Hebrews 1:1 was written in the same script, and in the same size, as the rest of the letters in the word Πολυμερως.  (In some manuscripts, the initial at the beginning of books is not only enlarged, but drawn in the shape of animals, or even of people.  It is not unusual, in medieval Gospels-manuscripts, for an initial to signify the beginning of a Eusebian Section, and for the initials to be written larger, and in different ink, than the rest of the text.)

4.  Distigme.  The two dots in the margin which resemble an umlaut (¨) seem to have been added to draw attention to a textual variant in the text.  In some other manuscripts, margin-notes similarly draw attention to textual variants, but they usually mention the alternative reading.  Probably whoever added these symbols to the pages of Codex Vaticanus (and there are wide-ranging opinions about whether these marks are ancient, or medieval, or even Renaissance-era) possessed another volume in which the same points of textual variation were marked, with notes about the readings in Codex Vaticanus.  More distigmai appear on this page (for example, at Hebrews 1:3). 

5.  Coronis.  Barely visible, a simple decorative design here, made of dots and flourishes, designates the end of a book.  Early copyists tended to use their own distinct designs, so the occurrence of different designs in the same manuscript is a clue that more than one copyist contributed to its production.  The remarkable similarity between a coronis-design that appears repeatedly in Codex Vaticanus (for example, at the end of Genesis), and a coronis that appears in Codex Sinaiticus (at the end of Mark), has suggested to some researchers that the same copyist was involved in the production of both manuscripts, possibly as a normal copyist for Vaticanus, and as a scriptorium-supervisor for Sinaiticus. 

6.  Subscription.  This is the closing-title of a book – in this case, Second Thessalonians. 

7.  Subscription expansion.  After the closing-title of Second Thessalonians, someone wrote an additional note:  “Written from Athens.”

8. Secondary Corrector’s Note.  Made somewhat famous by Bruce Metzger in his 1981 book Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament:  An Introduction to Palaeography, this note was written by someone who had discovered that someone had corrected an erroneous reading.  The copyist of Codex Vaticanus had written Φανερων in Hebrews 1:3, and a corrector had replaced that with the correct reading, Φέρων (which is supported by all other manuscripts, including Papyrus 46).  The person who wrote this note, however, objected to this correction, and wrote, ἀμαθέστατε καὶ κακέ, ἂφες τὸν παλαιόν, μὴ μεταποίει.  Metzger translated these words as, “Fool and knave, can’t you leave the old reading alone, and not alter it!”  Another rendering:  “Untrained troublemaker, forgive the ancient [reading]; do not convert it.”  He re-wrote Φανερων, erasing most of the corrector’s Φερων.  Apparently, the note-writer regarded Codex Vaticanus as a museum-piece to be protected and preserved, rather than as a copy of Scripture to be used as such.  

9. Diple-marks.  The “>” symbols in the margin accompany quotations from the Old Testament – in this case, quotations from Psalm 2:7 and Second Samuel 7:14.

10.  A Correction.  The copyist of Codex Vaticanus appears to have written  ελεον, but the person who reinforced the otherwise faded lettering throughout the manuscript declined to reinforce the second ε (epsilon), and either he or another corrector wrote above it the correct letters, αι.  See also the insertion of the letter ε in λειτουργοὺς in verse 7, in the last line of the second column on this page, and the lack of reinforcement of the letters ε and ν in εχρεισεν in verse 9, in the tenth line of the third column.

11.  Modern Chapter-number.  A relatively recent owner (or steward) of the manuscript wrote the modern chapter-number directly on the page in the margin, and crudely but clearly delineated the chapter-division in the text.

12.  Editorial Pruning.  Somewhere in the transmission-stream of Codex Vaticanus’ text, a copyist removed the words του αἰωνος, probably because he considered them superfluous.  (There seems to be nothing that would make these words vulnerable to accidental loss, and the difference between the inclusion or omission of the words is the difference between “forever and ever” and “forever.”) 

            It is sometimes claimed that no textual variants that are closely contested have an impact on Christian doctrine.  In Hebrews 1:3, however, most Greek manuscripts affirm that Jesus, by Himself – δι’ αὐτου or δι’ ἑαυτου – cleansed our – ἡμων – sins.  This unquestionably impacts the interpretation of the verse:  is there room for any other source of purification of sins – for instance, is it valid to seek purification through one’s own works, or through the intercession of Mary or of other saints – or was purification from sins fully obtained by Christ, and by Him alone?  And, did Jesus achieve the forgiveness of the sins of all people (as the American Bible Society’s 1976 Good News Translation says:  “after achieving forgiveness for the sins of all human beings”), or forgiveness for the sins of believers (as the New Living Translation says:  “When He had cleansed us from our sins”)?  Does this verse teach that atonement was provided solely by Christ?  And does it affirm that the atonement covers believers, or does it allow the belief that the atonement covers all people in general?

            (It is difficult to see how the UBS/Nestle-Aland compilations could beget the New Living Translation’s rendering.  Neither compilation has the Greek equivalent of “us” or “our.”  Yet the NLT’s publisher explicitly asserts that the text of the fourth edition of the UBS Greek New Testament and the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation was its New Testament base-text.)  

            It is possible, of course, to find answers to questions about the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice, and about the range of His atonement’s effectiveness, elsewhere in the New Testament, and that is what is meant (or, what should be meant) by those who say that closely contested textual variants do not have an impact on doctrine:  if one were to simply ignore the verse in which the textual contest takes place, the doctrine which one might, or might not, find in that verse is affirmed elsewhere in the New Testament.  However, the fact remains that some textual variants do have an impact on the interpretation of specific passages of the New Testament.

Codex Vaticanus and the Ending of Mark

            “Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9-20.”   So says a bracketed heading-note in the English Standard Version.  The number of Greek manuscripts in which the text stops at the end of 16:8 is three.

            Minuscule 304 is one of those three.  It is a medieval commentary-manuscript in which the text of Matthew and Mark is interspersed with commentary-material.  Its text in Mark is essentially Byzantine and the manuscript appears to have undergone some damage near the end.  There’s nothing about 304 that would suggest that it has more weight than any other medieval manuscript. 

            The other two manuscripts in which Mark’s text stops at 16:8 are another story:  Codex Vaticanus (produced c. 325) and Codex Sinaiticus (produced c. 350) are the oldest and second-oldest Greek manuscripts of Mark 16.  (These two manuscripts are not the earliest evidence pertaining to the ending of Mark, just the earliest manuscripts.  Patristic writers in the 100’s, 200’s, and early 300’s utilized the contents of Mark 16:9-20, but the manuscripts used by those writers are not extant.)  I have previously described the unusual features in Codex Sinaiticus involving the ending of Mark.  Today, let’s examine the last page of Mark in Codex Vaticanus. 

The last page of Mark in Codex Vaticanus.

          The text on this page begins in 15:43, and ends at the end of 16:8, on the 31^st line of the second column.  The closing book-title appears a little further down the second column.  The third column is completely blank.  It was normal for copyists to begin books at the tops of columns, and thus some space was typically left below the end of each book before the next book began at the top of the next column (except in those cases where the book happened to conclude right at the end of a column).  It was not normal, however, for the copyist of Vaticanus to leave an entire column blank.  This is the only blank column in the New Testament portion of Codex Vaticanus.

           Of course this raises a question:  why did the copyist leave this column blank?  The obvious answer is that the copyist was aware of copies that contained verses 9-20, and although his exemplar lacked these verses, he left space to give the eventual owner of the manuscript the option of including them in the event that another exemplar was available.

            The blank space is not quite adequate to include verses 9-20.  If one were to erase the closing-title and write the contents of verses 9-20, beginning at the end of v. 8, using the copyist’s normal handwriting, there would still be four lines of text yet to be written when one reached the end of the last line of the third column.  It is perhaps for this reason that Daniel Wallace, referring to this blank space in his chapter of the 2008 book, Perspectives on the Ending of Mark, has said, “The gap is clearly too small to allow for the LE.”  In the same book, Maurice Robinson affirmed, “The space is insufficient to contain the entire LE.”  Their co-author J. K. Elliott stated less definitively, “Vaticanus actually contains a blank column after 16:8 that could possibly contain verses 9-20, suggesting that its scribe was aware of the existence of the longer reading.”

The last page of Mark in Codex Vaticanus with verses 9-20
in the blank space after v. 8, using cut-and-pasted characters
from Mark 15:43-16:8 on the same page.  

           If a copyist were to resort to compacted lettering – the script that the copyist of Sinaiticus used in the first six columns of the text of Luke – then the blank space is practically an exact fit.  In a reconstruction of Mark 16:9-20 (shown here) in the blank space after 16:8, using characters that were written elsewhere on the page in Mark 15:43-16:8, verse 20 concludes on the next-to-last line of the third column.     

            Although the implication that the copyist of Codex Vaticanus clearly recollected 9-20 when he wrote the text of Mark 16:1-8 from an exemplar that did not have verses 9-20, Daniel Wallace has proposed a different explanation, namely, that the copyist was using an exemplar in which the Gospels, though containing the Alexandrian text, were arranged in the Western order (Mt-Jn-Mk-Lk), and although the copyist rearranged the Gospels into the order Mt-Mk-Lk-Jn, he added a blank space to represent the blank space at the end of his exemplar.  This theory seems like the result of a determined effort to dismiss the obvious implication of the blank column.  Where is the evidence that the Alexandrian form of the Gospels-text was ever anything but in the order Mt-Mk-Lk-Jn?  (In Papyrus 75, John follows Luke.)  And why would any copyist regard the blank space at the end of an exemplar as a feature worth replicating?  Any manuscript, unless its text happened to end at the end of its last column, would contain some blank space at the end.   And why would a copyist replicate such a blank space, but not the order of the books?  And why would a copyist consider such a blank column worth replicating, but not add a blank column between John and Acts, or between Acts and James, or between Jude and Romans? 

            In addition to the contrived idea of an Alexandrian Gospels-exemplar with the Gospels arranged in the Western order with blank space at the end which the copyist wished to replicate, Wallace has questioned the significance of the blank space by pointing out that there are three large blank spaces in the Old Testament portion of Codex Vaticanus.  However, all three of those blank spaces are accounted for by special factors:

● One of these blank spaces is the space between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament; the last page of the Old Testament portion concludes with the apocryphal text of Bel and the Dragon, incorporated into the Septuagint’s text of Daniel.  To expect the Gospel of Matthew to begin in the next column would be a preposterous expectation. 

● One of these blank spaces occurs at the end of Second Esdras, before the beginning of the book of Psalms.  Only two lines of text are placed in the first column of the last page of Second Esdras, and after the closing-title (and what appears to be the signature of someone named Klement, possibly a former owner of the codex), the rest of the page is blank.  But the reason for this is obvious:  the book of Psalms begins on the very next page, and the text of Psalms is formatted in two columns, rather than three.  It was absolutely necessary to begin Psalms on a new page, due to the difference in the number of columns on the page.

● One of these blank spaces occurs between the end of the book of Tobit and the beginning of the book of Hosea.  The text of Tobit concludes in approximately the middle of the second column of a page, and the third column is blank.  Wallace claimed that “The gap at the end of Tobit lacks sufficient explanation.”  However, the explanation becomes obvious upon close examination.

            One copyist’s work ended at the end of Tobit, and another copyist’s work begins with the Prophetic Books, which begin with the Minor Prophets, which begin with Hosea.  At this point where one copyist’s work was connected to another copyist’s work, what we have after the end of Tobit is simply leftover space.  This should become very obvious when we notice that the leftover space after the end of Tobit did not initially consist of just the remainder of the page.   As Dirk Jongkind mentioned on page 31 of Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus, besides the one and a half columns on the remainder of the page on which Tobit concludes, there was an entire unused page (front and back) after that – the last leaf of quire 49 – that was cut out when the manuscript was sewn together. 

            To restate:  what we have in Codex Vaticanus between Tobit and Hosea is nothing but a “seam,” so to speak, that resulted from the production-process, where one copyist’s work was attached to the pages produced by another copyist.  The situation is entirely different in Mark, where Mark 16:8, and the blank space, are on one side of a page, and the beginning of Luke is on the opposite side, and the text on both sides is, of course, written by the same copyist. 

            Wallace’s claim that “All in all, the reasons for the gaps are anything but clear” is not true.  Every blank space between books in Codex Vaticanus is fully capable of obvious explanation: 

(1)  The blank space before Psalms was required by the shift from a three-column format to a two-column format. 

(2)  The blank space before Hosea is a production-seam, where one copyist’s work was attached to another copyist’s work. 
(3)  The blank space between the Septuagint’s text of Daniel (concluding with the story of Bel and the Dragon) is the end of the Old Testament portion.   
(4)  The blank space after Mark 16:8 was elicited by the copyist’s recollection of verses 9-20.

            So:  there is more to the picture than the simple statement that “Some early manuscripts do not include verses 9-20.”  As far as early Greek manuscripts are concerned, “Some” = two.  “Early” = over 100 years later than clear patristic use of the contents of verses 9-20.  And “Do not include” = do not include, but show their copyists’ awareness of, verses 9-20.