Matthew 2:11 and the Westminster Confession of Faith

Mt. 2:11 in the 1611 KJV.

In Matthew 2:11, in the passage where the wise men visit Jesus and present their gold, frankincense, and myrrh, there is a difference between the early English Bibles of the 1500’s and the King James Version:

            William Tyndale made his English translation from a printed Greek compilation that had been made earlier by Desiderius Erasmus.  Since Erasmus’ Greek compilation had the word ευρον (euron) here, Tyndale’s English text said that the wise men found the child.
            The Coverdale Bible, in 1535, also stated that the wise men “found the chylde.”

            The Geneva Bible, in 1557, was also based on a Greek base-text with ευρον, so it also said that the wise men found the child.

            The King James (Authorized) Version of 1611 says that the wise men saw the young child.  This implies that ειδον (eidon) was in the KJV’s Greek base-text.

            Neither reading brings the veracity of the text into question (inasmuch as the wise men found and saw the young child Jesus), but the original form of the passage cannot consist of both readings.            

The textual contest is easy, since the support for ειδον is more ancient, more widespread, and more abundant.  Practically everyone accepts ειδον as the original reading:  it is in the  Byzantine Textform; it is in the 1904 Antoniades compilation; it is in Pickering’s family-35 text; it is in the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation. 

Although ευρον was printed in the 1500’s in Greek New Testaments compiled by Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza (and this reading fits the Vulgate reading, invenerunt), it does not have strong Greek manuscript support. 

Lectionary 1599
supports "saw."

In minuscule 2 – a manuscript used by Erasmus in his initial compilation of the Greek New Testament – a page begins in Matthew 2:11 with the word ειδον.  It has ευρον written in the margin; the word is written in different ink than what was used for the main text; the word ειδον appears to have been underlined with the same ink in which the word in the margin was written. 

This little difference in the Greek base-texts and early printed English New Testaments of the Reformation era may shine some light on how subscribers to the Westminster Confession of Faith should interpret their creed’s statements about the preservation of Scripture – specifically, the part that states that the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, being inspired by God, have been, “by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages.” 

A form of “Confessional Bibliology” has arisen which interprets the WCF’s reference to textual purity as a reference not only to the message of the text but to the exact form of the text, as if all text-critical questions are settled.  Since the Westminster Confession of Faith affirms that the text has been kept pure in all ages, it is proposed that this means that the Textus Receptus must be upheld as the authoritative New Testament text and that this renders investigations of manuscripts and other textual evidence superfluous; the Textus Receptus is the text. 

GA 439:  One of

hundreds of Greek

MSS that support "saw."

But this variant in Matthew 2:11 shows that to an extent, there was no “the” Textus Receptus in the 1640’s, when the Westminster Confession of Faith was formulated.  There were multiple editions of the New Testament, and their contents varied in small details such as here in Matthew 2:11. 

How could anyone, reading editions of the Greek New Testament prepared by Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza with ευρον in Matthew 2:11, and the Authorized Version that echoes ειδον instead, say that both forms of the verse are pure?  By understanding “pure” as a reference to the general character of the text, and not to every little detail.

The author of the preface to the King James Version, The Translators to the Reader, seems to have had an idea something like that in mind when he wrote the following (slightly modernized): 

“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) contains the word of God, nay, is the word of God.”

(Before continuing, I interrupt to explain something:  by “our profession,” the author was referring to the translators’ profession of faith, as opposed to the Roman Catholicism.  The Rheims New Testament, which Roman Catholic scholars had translated from a Latin Vulgate base, had been translated in 1582, but the complete Bible (now known as the Douay-Rheims) had not been read by the author of the KJV’s preface at the time he wrote.  This is the context in which the reference to “profession” should be understood; it is not as if professional butchers and bakers were creating new Bible translations; nor is it as if the author meant that anything with the words “Holy Bible” on the cover is the Word of God; he meant that even the least-esteemed English Bible produced by Protestants, at the time he wrote, was the Word of God.)  

A few sentences later the preface-writer continued:     

“A man may be called comely and lovely, though he has some warts upon his hand, and not only freckles upon his face, but also scars.  There is no reason 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.”

Codex K supports "saw" in Mt. 2:11,
with a spelling-related variant.

Now if a person were to say that regardless of whether an English Bible says “found” or “saw” in Matthew 2:11, it is the Word of God – and the preface-writer affirms this to be the case – then the speaker would have to be referring to the general character of the text, and not its exact form.  Both forms of the text are pure to the extent that neither one teaches an error, even though one of them must be the textual equivalent of a scar left from an injury received from an inattentive or undisciplined copyist. 

The claims of some “Confessional Bibliologists” to the effect that subscribers to the Westminster Confession of Faith are obligated to use the Textus Receptus are therefore not well-grounded.  For although it is convenient to appeal to a “settled” text, the Textus Receptus itself was not 100% settled throughout the 1500s and early 1600s.  Not only in Matthew 2:11, but in some other passages, too, there are variations in the exact form of the Greek text used in that period. 

Minuscule 700, a Gospels-MS
with many unusual readings,
supports "saw" in Mt. 2:11.

Thus, assuming that the formulators of the Westminster Confession wrote from a sufficiently informed position – that they knew about differences in printed editions of the Textus Receptus and about the differences in the English versions based upon it – it seems precarious, presumptive, and arbitrary to assume that they intended for their words to strictly refer to one and only one edition of the Greek text.  Adherents to the Westminster Confession of Faith might feel obligated to refuse to accept Greek variants which convey a meaning opposed to that of the reading of the vast majority of Greek manuscripts – but there are not many such variants. 

Blood Moons, Signs of the End, and Two Small Textual Variants

          This coming weekend, a lunar eclipse will occur, bringing to an end (I hope) the speculation that a recent series of four lunar eclipses, of which this one will be the fourth, has a special significance as a sign of the end-times.  The view that these particular lunar eclipses may be portents of the end of the world was developed by Mark Biltz, who recently expressed his ideas in a book, Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs.  Biltz’s theory was expanded and popularized by John Hagee, a preacher in Texas, in his book, Four Blood Moons: Something Is About To Change.  In my view, both Biltz (who seems to be affiliated with the highly problematic "Hebrew Roots Movement") and Hagee should apologize to their readers for severely overstating the importance of these lunar eclipses.  (For a lucid review of Hagee’s views about the “blood moons” see the brief two-part article prepared by Christian astrophysicist Hugh Ross.)

          There is little that textual criticism can offer to discourage poorly grounded theories about signs of the end-times – but little is more than nothing, so let’s take a look at two passages from two prophecies in the New Testament that involve both the moon and the end of the world:  Matthew 24 (paralleled in Mark 13 and Luke 21) and Revelation 6.  Both of these prophetic chapters involve scenes which bring to mind the wording of Joel 3:15:  “The sun and moon will grow dark, and the stars will diminish their brightness.”  And in their descriptions of signs of the end of the world, they both contain small textual variants.

          In Matthew 24:7, after famines are mentioned, almost all of the Greek manuscripts include the words “and pestilences,” or “and plagues.”  However, in most of the newer translations – the ESV, NIV and NLT – there is no reference to pestilences or plagues at all in Matthew 24:7.  The HCSB does not mention them in the text either, but a footnote says, “Other manuscripts add epidemics.”  This gives readers a very one-sided and incomplete impression of how strongly the Greek manuscript-evidence favors the inclusion of και λοιμοι (“and pestilences”).
          In the apparatus of the fourth edition of the UBS Greek New Testament, only five manuscripts are cited as support for the non-inclusion of λοιμοι:  Sinaiticus (À), Vaticanus (B), Bezae (D), Basiliensis (E), and the minuscule 892.  However, only two of those manuscripts (E and 892) have precisely the text that is in UBS4:  Bezae has a spelling-variation, Vaticanus has a spelling-variation, and Sinaiticus puts earthquakes before famines (besides having two spelling-variations).  Furthermore, in Codex E, the short text has been corrected; the words και λοιμοι are written in uncial-script in the margin, and a mark shows where they should be placed in the text (after λιμοι).

          As an alternative to the position that the exact form of the text of Matthew 24:7 is preserved in no uncials except E (in which the absent και λοιμοι is in the margin, apparently added by the copyist himself), and in no minuscules except 892, I propose that και λοιμοι is part of the original text, and that it was accidentally lost when an early copyist’s line of sight drifted from the final letters of λοιμοι to the final letters of λιμοι.  The similarity of the words λοιμοι and λιμοι and the recurrence of –αι at the end of εσονται and at the end of και in this verse also contributed to the omission.

          Besides exhibiting how the Alexandrian Text was shortened by early scribes (not, in this case, due to any mischievousness, but because of negligence), this little variant illustrates – contrary to the claims of some researchers – that the translators of the KJV paid close attention to the Greek text instead of just reproducing the work of Tyndale and other earlier translators.  

          In Tyndale’s 1534 English New Testament, this verse refers to “pestilence, honger and erth quakes.”  Likewise in the 1557 Geneva Bible, Jesus stated in Matthew 24:7, “There shal be “pestilence, honger, and earthquakes,” that is, λοιμοι και λιμοι και σεισμοι instead of λιμοι και λοιμοι και σεισμοι.  This word-order is supported by the Vulgate, and by Codex W (which was unknown to modern researchers until the early 1900’s) and by Codex L (which was cited in the notes of Stephanus’ 1550 edition of the Textus Receptus).  Erasmus' 1516 text read the Greek equivalent of "famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes."  So did the text compiled by Theodore Beza.  The King James Version’s translators made their English translation fit the Greek text of Matthew 24:7 precisely, adjusting the word-order and expressing the conjunctions. 

          So when looking for signs of the end, remember Jesus’ words of caution first:  “Take heed that no man deceive you.”  In and of themselves, the arrivals of false prophets and false teachers and false messiahs are nothing special.  In and of themselves, wars do not signal the end-times.  Nor do famines and pestilences and earthquakes in various places.  These things come and go.
          Now let’s look into Revelation 6:12, where John describes the vision of the sixth seal:  “I looked when he opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black like sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood.”
          When Erasmus initially compiled the book of Revelation, he had one manuscript, which had been entrusted to his temporary care by Johann Reuchlin, a fellow scholar (who was also the uncle of Philip Melanchthon, a very influential Reformer).  This manuscript used to be known as 1^r (not to be confused with 1, an important Gospels-manuscript).  For some time its location was unknown.  When it resurfaced in 1861, researcher Franz Delitzsch realized that it was the same manuscript that Erasmus had used.  As Erasmus had stated in his annotations on the text, this manuscript had undergone some damage, and for that reason, it was missing the last six verses of the final chapter.

          Reuchlin’s manuscript has been given a new identification-number:  2814.  It was produced in the 1100’s, and contains not only the Greek text of Revelation but also the commentary on Revelation written by Andrew of Caesarea (the Caesarea in Cappadocia, not the one in Israel) in the year 610.  Like 82 other Greek copies of Revelation, it contains not only the text of Revelation but also the text of Andrew of Caesarea’s commentary.  (Fifteen other manuscripts of Revelation, while lacking the full commentary, feature extracts from Andrew’s work.)

          In the Majority Text compiled by Hodges and Farstad, and in the Byzantine Text compiled by Robinson and Pierpont, the Greek word ολη (“whole”) follows the Greek word σεληνη (“moon”).  Apparently a copyist skipped this word when his line of sight drifted from the final letter of σεληνη to the final letter of ολη.  Not only does the majority-text of Revelation include the word ολη here, but so does Codex A, and so does the Nestle-Aland compilation.  If one considers this combination of testimony to be trustworthy, then one may conclude that the original text of Revelation 6:12 included a small emphasis – not just the moon turned to blood, but the whole moon – which was lacking in the Textus Receptus.  The effect of this difference is, however, extremely small. 

          Those wishing to investigate such details further may consult Herman Hoskier’s 1929 book Concerning the Text of the Apocalypse, in which he collated every Greek manuscript of Revelation that was known to him, and also separated the manuscripts into groups and sub-groups according to shared distinctive readings.   

(It should be noted, as a point of caution, that on page XXXVIII of his introduction, Hoskier stated that “for what it may be worth,” he had included in the apparatus a reading (in Rev. 21:4) that was claimed to have been obtained via a séance-like spirit-channeling-session in 1856.  The basis for this appears to have been nothing more than a book written by Baron Guldenstubbe in French in 1857.  I suspect that Hoskier regarded this as merely a curiosity, but included it in his apparatus in order to maintain with absolute veracity his claim to have collated every Greek manuscript that testified about the text of Revelation.)

          One additional little thought occurs to me when thinking about eclipses.  The technical term for what happens when the sun, earth, and moon align (either in a solar eclipse, or in a lunar eclipse) is “syzygy,” which has a Greek root.  A similar word occurs in Philippians 4:3, where Paul refers to his true “yoke-fellow” – Συζυγε.  Some commentators (and the creators of a few English paraphrases) have theorized that this might not be an adjective, but a proper name, Syzygus (otherwise unknown).  May we all be yoke-fellows of one another, and of Christ – ready to serve Him, and ready to meet Him, as He said in Matthew 24:44:  “Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”