Fact-checking Bart Ehrman's Skepticism Course about the Gospel of Mark

The tradition about the origin of the Gospel of Mark is that Mark composed it in Rome to preserve a record of Peter's remembrances about Jesus.  I see no reason not to subscribe to that.

Bart Ehrman  

Dr. Bart Ehrman has recently focused on this, asking his readers about the Gospel of Mark's author, date, and purpose.  Let's put some of his claims under my analytical magnifying glass.

He called Sinaiticus and Vaticanus "our oldest two manuscripts, assigning them both to "toward the end of the fourth century  (around 375 CE)."  In real life Papyrus 45 is older.  And Vaticanus probably dates from the early 300s, not the later 300s (by which the Eusebian Sections had become very popular among scribes transcribing the Gospels).

He also stated that "they have the shortest titles," but in real life Sinaiticus has the longer form of the subscription to the Gospel of Mark (see picture).

"The titles were added by a later scribe (in a different hand" he state, and this is correct - but "later" in this case may simply be a matter of days; the diorthotes (supervisor/proofreader) acting as scribe as he finished approving the codex book by book via the addition of the closing titles.

Ehrman then claimed "the manuscripts that the authors of both these 4^th century manuscripts used apparently didn’t have titles at all (since they lacked them until the later scribe added them)."  At this point Dr. Ehrman was over-extrapolating and making little sense.   It is simply baseless to look at a systematic approach to adding page-titles and book subscriptions and conclude that it is an echo of exemplars rather than simply show tighter compartamentalization of the labor assigned to the transcription team of scribes. 

Ehrman supposes that it's anyone's guess whether the titles were added a year after 01 and 03 were made, but in real life it would require less than a minute before manuscript-readers of the Gospels in the 300s would encounter no book-titles and no subscriptions before they would demand a refund and/or send it back to the scriptorium to be finished.

For some reason - probably an irrational adherence to skepticism - Ehrman questions the testimony of Papias about Mark's authorship.  First he claims "There’s no way of knowing for certain that he’s talking about our Mark.  I’m not just being overly skeptical here."

Bart Ehrman certainly is being overly skeptical, as usual.  It's not as if there were multiple small books floating around Rome in the late 100s and reporting testimony about Jesus.  Papias' report made sense to subsequent generations.  If Ehrman really considers it "odd" that second-century writers prior to Irenaeus did not make their reports of the origins of the Gospels more explicit I invite him to consider that they were writing for audiences informed by oral tradition, not for atheistic readers 1900 years later.  

Papias wasn't throwing down words from the clear blue sky.  As Eusebius of Caesarea wrote, "he shows by the words which he uses that he received the doctrines of the faith from those who were their friends."  Papias wrote that he "learned carefully from the elders and carefully remembered" what he heard.   

For those new to Papias, I remind everyone what Timothy Mitchell pointed out in 2016, :  Papias perpetuated an older tradition when he wrote "And the elder used to say this: "Mark, having become Peter's interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered - though not in  systematic order - about the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him.  But afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teachings as needed but had no intention of giving an ordered account of the Lord's discourses. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong by writing down some things as he remembered them, for he made it his primary concern not to omit anything which he heard, and to avoid making any false statement in them."  This is preserved in Eusebius' Church History Book 3:39.  

(I mention in passing that this does not seem to be how anyone would describe Mark's Gospel without 16:9-20.)

Ehrman wrote, "Earlier authors who appear to quote Mark (e.g., Justin in 150 CE) - "

Allow me to pause and consider Ehrman's needless nebulosity.  Justin Martyr utilized Mark 3:16-17 when he mentioned that Jesus changed the moniker of the sons of Zebedee to Boanerges (in Dialogue with Trypho 106).   

Ehrman claimed that "If we look for any evidence in the Gospel itself that it was written by Mark or from provides Peter’s perspective on Jesus, there’s really nothing there."  He is incorrect again, as a thoughtful reading of Broadus' commentary on the Gospel of Mark demonstrates. [Take ten minutes and use the embedded link to obtain this wonderful resource.]

Ehrman assumed that Peter didn't know what Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane - as if Peter and Jesus could not have discussed the subject when Peter and Jesus were eating during the 40 days following Jesus' resurrection.  That's his atheism talking.

Ehrman correctly observed that "Peter is not portrayed in a positive light in the Gospel: he cannot understand who Jesus is, he puts his foot in his mouth, he denies him three times, and at one point Jesus calls him Satan."  So what?  Peter did not want to brag about himself; he honestly pointed out some of his faults to his Roman audience.  Of course he wanted to point to Jesus and Mark in his Gospel recorded Peter's accounts.  

Ehrman's irrational skepticism is on display when he wrote that Mark "almost certainly could not have written this kind of subtle and elaborate account in Greek" on the grounds that Mark's native tongue was Aramaic.   Dr. Ehrman simply underestimated how thoroughly being raised in a bilingual society - in this case, Judea-Samaria-Galilee - produced a literate mind such as that of Mark.  His incredulosity that Mark produced his Gospel (totaling 52 page if written in a tidy little book today) in the course of his lifetime is hard to understand anything other than a theatrical effect.  

Ehrman claimed that to compose Mark's little Greek book "was highly unusual."  Considering the educational system organized by Queen Salome Alexandra that was already in place when Mark was born this assumption is unwarranted.  The Septuagint was in play.  Many Jews in Roman-occupied Judea were literate in Greek.

When Ehrman asked why the Gospel of Mark was attributed to Mark he seems to overlook the historical reason that the Christians at Rome who knew Peter and Mark were aware that Mark was writing a composition to preserve Peter's recollections about Jesus, and when Mark passed his work along to them it was simply the natural thing to do.  

Like most liberals, Ehrman assigned the Gospel of Mark to "maybe" 70-75.  Being a skeptic who denies the miraculous he seemingly considers certain sayings of Jesus foreseeing the destruction of Jerusalem as if they were concocted after the fact.  A production-date in the mid-60s (not to put too fine a line on it but I suspect 68) seems to me more probable, with earlier stages of the composition being accessible to Christians such as Luke.  (Independent records of early apostolic traditions about Jesus were also circulating as Luke attested in the opening verses of his Gospel).  

Ehrman didn't go far enough when he observed that in the Gospel of Mark "Jesus repeatedly declares he has to die for others and not even his closest intimates can get their minds around it."  Peter and his fellow apostles didn't have an accurate idea of Jesus' mission prior to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ - but afterwards, following the coming of the Holy Spirit, they did.  Their enlightenment didn't start with the composition of Mark's Gospel; Mark's Gospel echoes Peter's education.  Considering that Peter died as a crucified martyr rather than deny Christ, that ought to say something about his integrity and the truthfulness of his testimony about Jesus as written by Mark.

Parablepsis: When Nothing Is Something

             Parablepsis is what happens when a copyist’s line of sight drifts from one word or set of letters in his master-copy to the same (or similar) word or set of letters a little further along in his master-copy, accidentally skipping the words or letters in between.  When manuscripts share arrays of short readings that look like they were caused by parablepsis, it’s reasonable to posit a relationship of some sort between the manuscripts with those short readings.  Before looking into that further, let’s take a look at four examples of parablepsis that appear in the Gospel of Matthew in one of the most important manuscripts we have:  Codex Sinaiticus. 

● Matthew 7:27 – In the description of the fall of the house of the foolish builder, the scribe’s line of sight drifted from ποταμοὶ καὶ to ἄνεμοι καὶ, accidentally losing the phrase about the blowing winds.  The scribe of minuscule 579 made the same mistake in verse 25.  Another Alexandrian manuscript’s scribe made a worse mistake:  the scribe of minuscule 33 skipped from the words τη οικία ἐκείνη (“that house”) in verse 25 to to the same words in verse 27, skipping verse 26 entirely and producing a Greek sentence which says that when storms came to the wise man’s house, it fell with a great crash!

● Matthew 9:15 – The scribe of À skipped from the word νυμφίος at the end of Jesus’ question to the recurrence of the same word, losing the phrase “But days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them.” 

● Matthew 13:39 – The scribe of À skipped from the letters ο δε after διάβολος to the similar letters οι δε before θερισται, thus missing the phrase “the harvest is the end of the age.” 

● Matthew 21:19 – The scribe of À did not write the word ευρεν (“found”) between the word ουδεν and the word εν.  The omission could have been elicited by either homoioteleuton (“same endings” or by homeoarcton (“same beginnings”). 

            As far as I know, Codex Sinaiticus is the only manuscript that has all four of these readings.  If we were to find another manuscript, and all we knew about it was that it contained these three exact readings, I would strongly suspect that it was extremely closely related to Codex Sinaiticus.   As Kirsopp Lake wrote, “Whereas agreement in a correct reading is no criterion of similarity of origin, agreement in erroneous readings is a very good criterion.”  The odds seem extremely low that two copyists would make the same series of parableptic errors.  The thing to see is that by observing readings in manuscripts that can be accounted for by parablepsis, we can deduce that the manuscripts that share those readings are related to one another.

            Consider Matthew 12:47:  this verse is not in the English Standard Version, because the editors of the ESV relied so heavily on the Alexandrian Text.  But the absence of this verse is elegantly accounted for as a parableptic error; an early copyist’s line of sight jumped from the word λαλησαι (“to speak”) at the end of verse 46 to the same word at the end of verse 47, losing the words in between, which constitute verse 47.  Are the manuscripts that lack verse 47 closely related?  While there are a smattering of unrelated manuscripts that do not include this verse, the major Greek manuscripts for non-inclusion are Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Codex L, and Codex Γ, and although Codex Γ’s text is Byzantine, the other three are flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text.  Even Codex Γ reveals the influence of Alexandrian manuscripts in its ancestry; it includes a rare interpolation in Matthew 27:49 that is also attested by À, B, and L. (For more about Mt. 12:47, see this post.)  The ESV really should put this verse back in the text where it belongs.

            Now let’s aim this principle at some readings in the Byzantine Text that are shorter than their rival readings in the Alexandrian Text.  There are hundreds of such readings; here I will briefly focus on just 20 – five from each Gospel.

● Matthew 10:8 – If the text originally read Ασθενουντας θεραπεύετε νεκρους εγείρετε λεπρους καθαρίζετε (Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers), the shorter Byzantine reading can be accounted for by a parableptic error from -ετε to -ετε. 

● Matthew 13:40 – If the text originally read κατακαίεται, an accidental skip from κα- to κα- would account for the Byzantine reading.

● Matthew 19:24 – If the text originally read πλούσιον εισελθειν εις την βασιλείαν του θεου, a parableptic error from εισ- to εις could elicit the loss of the intervening letters, eliciting further the movement of εισελθειν to the end of the verse.     

● Matthew 24:38 – If the text originally read εν ταις ημέραις εκείναις, an accidental skip from –αις to –αις could result in the loss of the word εκείναις.

● Matthew 27:40 – If the text originally read και κατάβηθι, an accidental skip from κα- to κα- could result in the loss of the word και.

● Mark 2:21 – If the text originally read απ’ αυτου, an accidental skip from α- to α- could result in the loss of απ’.

● Mark 3:28 – If the text originally read και αι, an accidental skip from -αι to αι could result in the loss of αι.

● Mark 4:18 –If the text originally read ουτοί εισιν οι τον, an accidental skip from ο- to ο- could result in the loss of ουτοί εισιν.

● Mark 12:8 – If the text originally read εξέβαλον αυτον, an accidental skip from -ον to ον could result in the loss of αυτον.

● Mark 14:21 – If the text originally read Οτι ὁ μεν, an accidental skip from Ο- to ὁ could result in the loss of Οτι.

● Luke 11:20 – If the text originally read εγω εκβαλλω, an accidental skip from ε- to ε- could result in the loss of εγω.

● Luke 19:4 – If the text originally read εις το εμπροσθεν, an accidental skip from ε- to ε- could result in the loss of εις το.

● Luke 20:19 – If the text originally read εφοβήθησαν τον λαόν, an accidental skip from -ν to –ν could result in the loss of τον λαόν.    

● Luke 22:18 – If the text originally read απο του νυν απο, an accidental skip from απο to απο could result in the loss of απο του νυν.

● Luke 22:30 – If the text originally read τραπέζης μου εν τη βασιλεία μου, an accidental skip from μου to μου could result in the loss of εν τη βασιλεία μου.  (Many Byzantine manuscripts, including manuscripts used to form the Textus Receptus, have the longer reading here.)

● John 1:19 – If the text originally read οτε απέστειλαν προς αυτον οι, an accidental skip from

-ν to -ν could result in the loss of προς αυτον.

● John 1:50 – If the text originally read οτι ειπόν σοι, οτι ειδον, an accidental skip from -ι to -ι could result in the loss of οτι.

● John 4:3 – If the text originally read και απηλθεν παλιν εις την Γαλιλαίαν, an accidental skip from -ν to –ν could result in the loss of παλιν.

● John 11:30 – If the text originally read αλλ’ ην ετι εν τω τόπω, an accidental skip from ε- to ε- could result in the loss of ετι.

● John 21:21 – If the text originally read Τουτον ουν ιδων ο Πέτρος, an accidental skip from -ν to -ν could result in the loss of ουν.   

            There are many more textual contests in the New Testament in which (a) the Byzantine Text has a reading that is shorter than its rival Alexandrian reading, and (b) the shorter reading can be accounted for as a result of parablepsis.  For example, in the Byzantine Text, James 4:12 does not have the words και κριτής (“and Judge”), a short reading which can be explained if the verse originally began with Εις εστιν νομοθέτης και κριτης and an accidental skip was made from the -της at the end of νομοθέτης to the -της at the end of κριτης. 

From all this, we should draw two conclusions:

(1)  If is acknowledged that, say, half of these short Byzantine readings are the result of parablepsis, then unless we assume that scribes independently made the same mistake at the same point in the text ten times – which seems highly improbable – then they must echo an earlier ancestor-manuscript in which the text of these passages had been shortened via parableptic error. 

(2) Textual critics should use manuscript-evidence that represents different text-types, not just the Byzantine Text.  This is the only way to detect (and remedy) parableptic errors in which some text was lost but a sensible sentence was formed nevertheless.  It appears that most Byzantine Gospels-manuscripts are descended from a master-copy or master-copies in which some small snippets of the text have been lost via parablepsis.  It also appears, from other research, that most Alexandrian Gospels-manuscripts are descended from a master-copy or master-copies in which much more text has been lost via parablepsis.  To depend too heavily on one form of the text, merely because its oldest representatives lasted longer in Egypt’s low-humidity climate, or upon another form of the text, because it has circulated in a much higher number of manuscripts, is not our best option. 

News: Ancient Byzantine Gospels at Mount Sinai!

Georgian NF 19, 57v -
reconstructed lower writing.

       Last month, I briefly described many of the manuscripts in a collection of palimpsests (recycled manuscripts) that are being studied by the Sinai Palimpsests Project – including 15 Greek manuscripts of New Testament books.  Today, let’s take a closer look at parts of two specific manuscripts in the collection:  Georgian NF 19 and Georgian 49.  (NF = New Finds.) 
            The upper (i.e., most recent) writing in Georgian NF 19 is a copy of a book of hymns, or chants, in the Georgian language – the Iadgari of Mikael Modrekili.  It was produced in 980.  The parchment on which this copy of the Iadgari was written previously held text from at least 13 other compositions.
            Eight of those compositions are in the Palestinian Aramaic language.  The remaining seven are in Greek – including (1) a leaf from the Gospel of Matthew (containing Matthew 21:32-41), (2) a leaf from the Gospel of John (containing John 9:17-26), and (3) a leaf from the Gospel of Luke (containing Luke 8:12-20).

           These pages are clustered together and probably came from the same manuscript of the four Gospels, which has been assigned to the 500s.  All three are written in uncial script, formatted in two narrow columns per page, with 22 lines per column.  At the Sinai Palimpsests Project website, in the lower writing of Georgian NF 19, the text from Matthew is on fol. 56, the text from Luke is on fol. 57, and the text from John is on fol. 54.

            The text of the Gospels-manuscript that was recycled to provide parchment for the Georgian chant-book was essentially Byzantine.  Taking a close look at the text from Luke, for example, the only deviations from the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform are minor variants such as ακουοντες instead of ακουσαντες and συνπνιγονται instead of συμπνιγονται in verse 14. 

            The same textual character is present in Matthew:  in Matthew 21:35-41, the text of this manuscript is practically identical to the Byzantine Text.  Its text of John 9:17-31 is also very strongly Byzantine.

            Initial letters are enlarged and reverse-indented at the beginnings of verses 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19.  The Eusebian section-number ΠΒ (82) stands in the margin near the beginning of Luke 8:19, showing that these pages were once part of a manuscript that contained all four Gospels.

            Another manuscript in the collection, Georgian 49, contains five leaves that were recycled from a Greek copy of the Gospel of Mark (fol. 25, 26, 28, 29, and 30), and a leaf that was recycled from a Greek copy of the Gospel of John – but not the same Gospels-codex that was recycled to provide writing-material for Georgian NF 19.

            The text of Mark that appears in the lower writing of Georgian 49 was also formatted in two columns per page, but in columns of 25 lines, rather than 22.  A comparison of its text of Mark 10:46-47 and 10:49-51 reveals the following readings:

The Gospels-text in the lower writing
of Georgian NF 19 is unmistakably
Byzantine.

● v. 46:  the non-inclusion of ὁ after ἱκανοῦ.

● v. 46:  the Byzantine word-order and wording in the second half of the verse.

● v. 47:  the non-inclusion of ΙΥ (the customary contraction of Jesus’ name, Ἰησοῦ) after ΔΑΔ (the customary contraction of David’s name).  This might be the earliest Greek manuscript with this reading.  (Notice, however, the dots above ΔΑΔ which may represent a proof-reader’s expression of the detection of a scribal error; a correction may have been in the left margin.)

● v. 50:  αναστας (agreeing with Byz) instead of αναπηδήσας (the reading of B À L D).

● v. 51:  the Alexandrian non-inclusion of λέγει and inclusion of ειπεν.

● v. 51:  the Alexandrian word-order Τί σοι θέλεις ποιήσω.

            It would appear that the manuscript of Mark that was recycled to make Georgian 49 had a much higher amount of Alexandrian readings than the Gospels-manuscript that was used to make Georgian NF 19.  The text of John 11:29b-31a on fol. 54r in Georgian 49, however, contains only one significant variant-unit; it agrees with the Byzantine Text, and disagrees with the Alexandrian Text, via the non-inclusion of ετι in verse 30.

            This is just a sample of the harvest of textual data that is yet to come from the Sinai Palimpsests Project.  A guide to navigating the website is planned; in the meantime, allow me to walk you through it in the course of the next few paragraphs.

Byzantine readings continue
to dominate in the text of John
in Georgian NF 19.

            The manuscripts can be viewed, once one has been admitted entrance to the image-gallery by the stewards of the Sinai Palimpsests Project website.  Viewers should agree to the Terms of Use.  Once in the gallery, visitors will have the ability to browse through a list of the manuscripts, complete with descriptions of the texts in the lower writing and their locations.  You might want to have a pen and paper handy to jot down which compositions are in the lower writing of which pages of which manuscripts.

            When a specific page-view is accessed, some basic imaging-tools are available:  visitors have the ability to zoom in on details (in a no-nonsense, intuitive method), and to adjust the brightness, contrast, and color-saturation of the photograph; there are also options to rotate the page-view, to switch from full-color to grayscale, and to invert colors.  There is also a digital ruler; if you do not feel like measuring any of the letters in the manuscripts you can use the menu in the upper right corner to select “Hide ruler” and it will hide.

            In the same sub-menu in the upper right corner of each page-view, readers are given the option of switching from page view mode (which displays a single page in the main window but allows page-selection via a virtual rolodex below the main image) to gallery view mode (in which all of the manuscript’s pages are displayed in a grid of thumbnail-views).  (In page view mode, you might need to move the whole window north a bit to access the virtual rolodex’s controls.)

            More useful than all of these remarkable features, however, are the multi-spectral images of the pages, which can be accessed by selecting the three horizontal lines which appear in the menu in the upper left corner:  “Toggle the side panel,” a pop-up note will say when you do so.  (A special page is dedicated to explaining the use of different wavelengths and other technological aspects of multi-spectral imaging, including the special book cradle at Saint Catherine’s monastery.)

            After the side-menu appears and gobbles up the far-left fifth of your screen, another menu will appear which gives you the options of “Index” and “Layers.”  “Index” does nothing, as far as I can tell (no doubt something awesome is planned to go there eventually), so select “Layers.”  A series of images – all multi-spectral images of the same page, each one at a different wavelength – will appear.

            Viewers will need to check a little box to select specific wavelengths.  Some experimenting has shown that the most useful wavelengths for reading the lower writing in the palimpsests are toward the top (above the “raking light” setting); the ones toward the bottom are useful for getting an idea of what the page would look like without any writing on it.  Once a wavelength or multiple wavelengths are selected, the enhanced view can be digitally manipulated (by changing the contrast, brightness, etc.) so as to allow – though usually still requiring some effort – a much clearer look at the lower writing than would otherwise be possible.

            To the people of Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, and to the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, gratitude and congratulations are offered for making possible these exciting new discoveries about the text of the Bible, patristic compositions, the Byzantine liturgy, and other historically significant writings!

Sinaipalimpsests.org is a publication of St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai in collaboration with EMEL and UCLA.

All images courtesy St. Catherine's Monastery of the Sinai.  

Used with permission. 

News: Manuscripts at Saint Catherine's

For at least the past five years, reports have circulated about the contents of palimpsests (recycled manuscripts) that were discovered in 1975 at Saint Catherine’s monastery.  National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, The Atlantic, ScienceBlog, Ancient-Origins, and the BBC have all told readers that major research is underway that involves ancient manuscripts and expensive manuscript-reading equipment. 

            Now the Sinai Palimpsests Project has a website, and visitors can easily get some sense of the scale of the work that is being done with the (relatively) newly discovered manuscripts.  The manuscripts at Saint Catherine’s include all kinds of compositions:  ancient medicine-recipes, patristic sermons, poems, liturgical instruction-books, Old Testament books, and much more. 

Fifteen continuous-text Greek manuscripts are among the newly discovered palimpsests.  All but one of these New Testament manuscripts have been given production-dates in the 500s or earlier.

Also among the new discoveries:

● Syriac manuscripts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and some of the Pauline Epistles from the 400s and 500s.

● Various New Testament books (including all four Gospels) written in Christian Palestinian Aramaic (formerly known as “Jerusalem Syriac”) from 500-700.

● A substantial manuscript of the Gospel of John in Caucasian Albanian (a virtually extinct language).

● A Latin copy of Mark in insular cursive from the 700s (implying a link between some manuscripts at St. Catherine’s monastery and some manuscripts subsequently used in Ireland). 

            So many of the palimpsests have been assigned production-dates in the 500s that it is tempting to surmise that what we are looking at here is part of a library that was donated to the monastery on the occasion of its official founding by Byzantine Emperor Justinian in 530.  

            Here is a list of most of the New Testament materials that are among the texts being studied by scholars associated with the Sinai Palimpsests Project and the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library.  Some materials are from the New Finds; some have been in the monastery’s library for a long time.  In this list, a “page” = a single side of a two-sided leaf.  Dates are approximate unless based on a colophon.  Yellow-highlighted texts are Greek New Testament materials.

● Arabic 514.  The copyists who made this manuscript recycled

Six pages of the Protevangelium of James in Syriac,

54 pages of the Gospel of Matthew, 

Eight pages of Acts,

Four pages of Hebrews,

Eight pages of Colossians,

88 pages from the Gospel of John (chapters 1-8, 12, and 17-21),

Six pages from First Timothy,

Two pages from Second Thessalonians,

Two pages from Ephesians, and

Two pages from the Gospel of John (chapters 5 and 6) in Syriac. 

The texts in these recycled pages are all in Syriac, and all have been assigned to the 500s.

● Arabic 588.  The copyists who made this manuscript recycled

Eight pages from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in Syriac. 500s.

11 pages from the Protevangelium of James, in Syriac.  500s.

● Arabic NF 28.   The copyists who made this manuscript of the Four Gospels in Arabic (Kufic script) in 850-900 (16 folios intact) recycled

20 pages of Exodus in Greek.  500s.

12 pages of Genesis in Greek.  500s.

● Arabic NF 8.  The copyists who made this manuscript of the Four Gospels in Arabic (Kufic script) in 850-900 recycled

            18 pages from a copy of Recipes for different diseases, a Greek medical text.  400-600.

            12 pages from a copy of Hippocrates, De diaeta I-IV, a Greek medical text.  500-600.

Four pages from a copy of Hippocrates, De morbis popularibus (Epidemiae), in Greek.  500-600. 

Eight pages from a copy of Hippocrates, Letters, a Greek medical text.  500s.

56 pages from a Greek copy of the Gospel of John.  500s.

18 pages from a Greek copy of the Gospel of Matthew.  500s.

Four pages from a Greek copy of Genesis.  500s.

12 pages from a Greek copy of Exodus.  500s.

Four pages from a Greek copy of Ecclesiasticus.  500s.

13 pages from a Latin copy of the Gospel of Mark (in insular cursive minuscule script).  700s.

Two pages from a Latin copy of Revelation (in half uncial script).  500s.

One page from a Latin copy of the Gospel of Luke (in Latin majuscule).  500s.

[115v of Arabic NF8 shows Greek letter from underwriting.]

[124r of Arabic NF 8 shows Greeks letters from underwriting in blank space.]

[The last page of Arabic NF 8 shows Greek letters from underwriting in blank space.]

  

● CPA NF frg. 12.  The copyists who made this manuscript of Psalms in 800-1000 (12 folios) recycled 24 pages of the book of Psalms in Christian Palestinian Aramaic (henceforth “CPA”).  500s-700s.

● CPA NF frg. 13.  The copyists who made this manuscript recycled one page from a copy of the Gospel of John in CPA.  1100s.

● CPA NF frg. 16. The copyists who made this manuscript recycled

Two folios from the Gospel of Luke (ch. 18) in CPA.  600s. 

Four pages from the Gospel of Luke in CPA.  400-700.

Two pages from the Gospel of Luke in Georgian.  Late 900s.

● CPA NF frg. 7.  The copyists of this manuscript of John Chrysostom’s Homily on the Prodigal Son, in CPA (7 folios) recycled eight pages from the Gospel of Luke, in CPA, 500-700.

● Georgian 10.  The copyists of this Georgian Apostolos (266 folios from 1000-1100) recycled 16 pages of a lectionary (Jerusalem type) in Georgian.  800-900.

● Georgian 49.  The copyists of this Georgian Menaion (119 folios from the 1200s) recycled

Four pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac.  500s.

Six pages of the Gospel of Mark, in Syriac.  500s.

Four pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac.  500s.

Six pages from the Life of Saint Pelagia, in Syriac.  500-700.

Ten pages from the Gospel of Mark, in Greek.  500s.

Two pages from the Gospel of John, in Greek.  500s.

Two pages from the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac.  800s.

Two pages from the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac.  800s.

● Georgian NF 13.  The copyists of this Georgian collection of saints’ biographies from the 900s-1100 (107 folios) recycled

75 pages of the Gospel of John in Caucasian Albanian.  600-800.

90 pages of a lectionary, mainly from the New Testament, in Caucasian Albanian.  600-800.

Some pages of the Pauline Epistles in Georgian (Asomtavruli script).  600s.

12 pages of the Pauline Epistles in Armenian (Erkatagit script).  700-900. 

● Georgian NF 19.  The copyist who made this Georgian manuscript in 980 (61 folios) recycled

            Two pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in CPA.  500-700.

            Eight pages of a liturgy with New Testament readings, in Greek (minuscule).  800-1000.

Two pages of the Gospel of John, in Greek (majuscule).  500-600.

Two pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Greek (majuscule).  500-600.

Two pages from the Gospel of Luke, in Greek (majuscule).  500s.

Two pages of a New Testament Lectionary, in CPA.  500-700.

[Greek lower writing is visible on 57r and 57v of Georgia NF 19.]

● Georgian NF 55. The copyists who made this Georgian manuscript in the 900s (78 folios) recycled

            66 pages of the Gospel of John in Caucasian Albanian.  600-800,

            41 pages of a New Testament lectionary in Caucasian Albanian.  600-800.

            Eight pages of the Pauline Epistles, in Armenian.  700-900.

            Two pages from Hebrews, in Armenian.  800-1000.

            Four pages from the Gospel of Mark, in CPA.  600-800.

● Georgian NF 71.  The copyists who made this Georgian Gospels-lectionary (8 folios) in the 900s recycled four pages of the Gospel of Matthew in CPA.  500-700.

● Georgian NF 90.  The copyists who made this Georgian manuscript (38 folios) in the 1000s recycled 16 pages of the Gospel of Matthew in Georgian.  500-700. 

● Greek 2053.  The copyists who made this Greek manuscript of Excerpts from Scripture (Acts & Epistles) (34 folios) in the 1200s recycled 16 pages from a Greek Synaxarion.  800s.

● Greek 212.  The copyists who made this collection of lections from the Greek New Testament (including Resurrection-readings) in the 700s or 800s) (114 folios) recycled many pages of a Greek Psalter.  700s.

● Greek NF M 98.  The copyists who made this Greek liturgical manuscript in the 1200s (2 folios) recycled four pages of the Gospel of Luke in Greek.  975-1025.

● Greek NF MG 29.  The copyists who made this Octoechos manuscript in the 800s recycled many pages (mostly fragmentary) from the Gospel of Matthew in Greek.  550-600.

● Greek NF MG 32.  The copyists who made this Greek Martyrologion (21 folios) in the 800s recycled eight pages of a Gospels-lectionary in CPA.  400-700.

● Greek NF MG 99.  The copyists who made this Greek liturgical manuscript in the 800s recycled

            12 pages from First Corinthians, in Greek.  425-475.

Two fragments from Colossians, in Greek.  425-475.

Four fragments from Philippians, in Greek.  425-475.

Two fragments from Romans, in Greek.  425-475.

● Syriac 2A.   The copyists who made this Syriac manuscript of the Four Gospels in the 500s (180 folios) recycled

            14 pages from the Gospel of Mark, in Syriac.  425-475.

22 pages from the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac.  425-475.

Four pages from the Gospel of John, in Syriac.  425-475.

● Syriac 30.  The copyists who made this Syriac manuscript of saints’ biographies in 779 (181 folios) recycled

            Eight pages of the Gospel of John, in Greek.  500s.

            44 pages of the Gospel of Mark, in Syriac.  450-600. 

69 pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac.  450-600.

            98 pages of the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac.  450-600.

            72 pages of the Gospel of John, in Syriac.  450-600.

Syriac 5 - Something else is there! 

● Syriac 5.  A Syriac manuscript of the Epistles of Paul (198 folios). 500s.

● Syriac 7. St.  The copyists who made most of this Syriac lectionary in the 1000s (73 folios) recycled

            Four pages of Hebrews, in Armenian (erkatagir script).  800s.

            Four pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Greek.  500s.

● Syriac NF 11.  The copyists who made this manuscript of Cyril of Scythopolis’ Life of Sabas in Syriac (112 folios) in 850-1000 recycled

            Two pages of the Gospel of John in CPA (early script).  500-700.

            16 pages of the Gospel of Mark in CPA (early script).  500-700.

            20 pages of the Gospel of Matthew in CPA (early script).  500-700.

            18 pages of the Gospel of Luke in CPA (early script).  500-700.

● Syriac NF 23.  The copyists who made this Syriac Gospels-lectionary (14 folios) in 800-1000 recycled

            Eight pages of the Gospel of John, in Syriac (Old Estrangela script).  450-550. 

Eight pages of the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac (Old Estrangela script).  450-550.

One page from Ephesians, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Two pages from First Thessalonians, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Two pages from Titus, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Six pages from Philemon, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Two pages from Hebrews, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

● Syriac NF 3.   The copyists who made this devotions-book in the 1200s in Syriac (Melkite script) in the 1200s (164 folios) recycled four pages from Second Corinthians, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.  

● Syriac NF 37.  The copyists who made this manuscript of Evagrius Ponticus’ On Prayer (6 folios) in Syriac in 850-1000 recycled

            Four pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

            Six pages of the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

            Two pages from the Gospel of John, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s. 

● Syriac NF 38.  The copyists who made this Syriac manuscript of John Climacus’ The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Letter to a Shepherd (Codex Climaci rescriptus) in 800-1000 (8 folios) recycled 16 pages from First-Second Corinthians, in CPA.  500-700.

● Syriac NF 39.  The copyists who made this manuscript of a composition by Diadochos of Photiki in Syriac (18 folios) in 800-1000 recycled

            Six pages of the Gospel of Matthew, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Eight pages of the Gospel of Mark, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

18 pages of the Gospel of Luke, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

Four pages of the Gospel of John, in Syriac (Estrangela script).  500s.

● Syriac NF 42.  This Syriac Gospels-lectionary in CPA (8 folios) was made in the 1100s.

● Syriac NF 56.  The copyists who made this Syriac Gospels-lectionary (121 folios) in 933 recycled

            14 pages of the Gospel of Matthew in CPA.  550-700.

            66 pages of the Gospel of Mark, in CPA (calligraphic script).  550-700.

● Syriac NF 64.  The copyists who made this Syriac copy of Genesis (Peshitta version) in the 800s (4 folios) recycled four pages of Hebrews, in CPA.  600-800.

● Syriac NF 66.  The copyists who made this Syriac liturgical text in 800-1000 (8 folios) recycled 16 pages of Acts in Syriac (Estrangela script).  600-800.

            Stay tuned for more news about the Greek texts hiding in the lower writing of the palimpsests at Mount Sinai!

A Moment Please, Dr. Holmes!

             In a recent article at the Bible Odyssey website, What Are English Translations of the Bible Based On?, Dr. Michael W. Holmes made some claims about the external support for some verses that appear in the text of the New Testament in the King James Version but not in the New International Version, the New Revised Standard Version, or the English Standard Version.  He claimed that Matthew 17:21, Matthew 18:11, Matthew 23:14, Mark 7:16, Mark 9:44, Mark 9:46, Mark 11:26, Mark 15:28, Luke 17:36, Luke 23:17, John 5:3b-4, Acts 8:37, Acts 15:34, Acts 24:6b-8a, Romans 16:24, and 1 John 5:7b-8a were all added to the New Testament; that is, that they are not original. 

From beginning to end, Holmes’ article seems designed to convey that these verses are not in the NIV, NRSV, and ESV because they are not supported by early evidence.  That is undoubtedly the impression that many of Dr. Holmes’ readers derived from the article.  However, the real state of the evidence is quite different.  Readers of Bible Odyssey may find their impressions modified by the following observations:

● Although it is claimed that the oldest manuscript used by Erasmus was “from the 10th century,” Erasmus also used the quotations made by patristic writers who wrote long before then, including Irenaeus (who wrote in the second century).  Also, in the course of making his revised editions, Erasmus learned of readings in other manuscripts, including some readings from Codex Vaticanus (made around 325). 

● Dr. Holmes claimed that to scholars in the late 1700s and 1800s, it became clear, as they studied ancient manuscripts, that “the text of the New Testament had “grown” slightly as it was copied by hand century after century.”  However, while this was indeed the impression that those scholars had at the time – and they were so sure of it that a guideline was developed, Lectio brevior potior (the shorter reading is to be preferred) – a series of more recent studies (including a particularly extensive piece of research by James Royse) has shown that copyists’ tendency to omit was much more dominant than their tendency to add.  Dr. Holmes no doubt already knows that one should not casually adopt short readings from ancient manuscripts; he retained Matthew 12:47 in the text of the SBL-GNT although it is not supported by the early manuscripts Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.  (The ESV, meanwhile, does not have Matthew 12:47 in its text.)

 

Matthew 17:21 in Codex W.

● Matthew 17:21 is not only in over 99% of the Greek manuscripts of Matthew; it was in the manuscripts used by the early church writer Origen (early 200s-254).  One can consult Origen’s Commentary on Matthew, Book 13, chapter 7, to see this.  It is also in the Vulgate, which was translated by Jerome in 383.  (Jerome stated in his Preface to the Vulgate Gospels that he had consulted ancient Greek manuscripts in the preparation of the Gospels’ text.)  Codex W, found in Egypt, also includes the verse.  The Latin manuscripts used by Ambrose of Milan in the 300s also included this verse, and so do several Old Latin manuscripts.  Thus the support for this verse does not only come from the vast majority of Greek manuscripts; it comes from a patristic quotation earlier than the earliest manuscript of this part of the Gospel of Matthew, and it comes from witnesses in at least four different parts of the Roman Empire. 

● Matthew 18:11 was in the Greek manuscripts used by John Chrysostom (late 300s, in Constantinople) and in the Latin manuscripts used by Augustine (early 400s, in North Africa).  The verse is not only in the vast majority of manuscripts, but also in Codex Bezae (“one of our oldest witnesses,” according to Bart Ehrman) and Codex W and the Vulgate and the Peshitta – quite a diverse quartet from the late 300s and 400s (depending on what production-date is given to Codex D). 

● Matthew 23:14 – the verse in which Jesus mentions widows’ houses and long prayers as He denounces the scribes and Pharisees – is in most manuscripts, and in most manuscripts it appears before the verse that is, in the KJV, verse 13.  The inclusion of this verse (whether before or after verse 13) is not just supported by a strong majority of Greek manuscripts; it is also supported by the testimony of Hilary of Poitiers (310-367, in France), John Chrysostom (late 300s-407, in Constantinople), and the Peshitta version (in Syria).

            Another consideration regarding this verse is that verse 13 and verse 14 begin with precisely the same word (“Woe,” Greek Οὐαὶ), which would make it easy for a verse to disappear if a copyist’s line of sight accidentally drifted from one occurrence of the word Οὐαὶ to another occurrence of the word Οὐαὶ.   

● Mark 7:16 is supported by the vast majority of Greek manuscripts and also by Codex Alexandrinus, by Codex Bezae, by the Gothic version (made c. 350), by the Vulgate, by some Old Latin copies, and by Augustine.  By no possible stretch of the imagination is its support limited to late evidence. 

● Mark 9:44 and 9:46 are supported by the vast majority of manuscripts, and also by Codex A, Codex D, the Gothic version, the Vulgate, and some Old Latin copies. 

● Mark 11:26 is supported by the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, and by Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Bezae, by Old Latin copies including Codex Vercellensis (probably made in the 370s), by the Gothic version, the Vulgate, and by Augustine. 

Another consideration is that this verse ends with the same phrase (“your trespasses,” Greek τὰ παραπτώματα ὑμῶν) as the verse that comes before it, which made this verse vulnerable to accidental omission in the event that a copyist’s line of sight drifted from one occurrence of the phrase to the occurrence of the same phrase further along in the text (thus skipping all the words in between). 

● Mark 15:28 is supported by a large majority of Greek manuscripts, and by the Vulgate, the Gothic version, the Peshitta version, and very probably by Eusebius of Emesa (in the mid-300s).  Eusebius of Caesarea, in the early 300s, seems to have known it and included it in his Canon-tables as a cross-reference with Luke 22:37.

● Luke 17:36 is not supported by a majority of Greek manuscripts, but it has support from Codex D, a dozen Old Latin copies, the Vulgate, the Peshitta, both forms of the Old Syriac (that is, both the Sinaitic Syriac and the Curetonian Syriac), and from Ambrose of Milan, and from Augustine. 

Another consideration is that this verse ends with the same word with which the previous verse ends (“shall be left,” Greek ἀφεθήσεται), which made this verse vulnerable to accidental omission when a copyist’s line of sight drifted from the ἀφεθήσεται at the end of verse 35 to the ἀφεθήσεται at the end of verse 36, skipping the words in between.      

● Luke 23:17 is supported by the vast majority of manuscripts, and by Codex Sinaiticus (note that at the Codex Sinaiticus website, the English translation is completely bogus at this point), Codex W, Old Latin copies, and the Vulgate, and in Codex Bezae and in both Old Syriac manuscripts, the verse is found after verse 18 rather than before it.  
            Another consideration is that this verse begins with the word Ἀνάγκην and the following verse begins with the word Ἀνέκραξαν; a copyist’s line of sight could feasible drift from one Ἀν- to the next Ἀν, omitting the words in between.   

● John 5:3b-4 is supported not only by the vast majority of manuscripts but also by the Vulgate, by Ambrose of Milan, by Chrysostom,  and by Tatian’s Diatessaron (as cited in the commentary on the Diatessaron by Ephraem the Syrian in the mid-300s) and by Tertullian (in De Baptismo, that is, On Baptism, chapter 5).  Tatian lived in the mid-100s, and Tertullian wrote in the early 200s.  Chrysostom also used this passage.    

● Acts 8:37 is only supported by about 15% of the Greek manuscripts of Acts, but it was used by Irenaeus (in Book 3, 12:8 of Against Heresies, written c. 180, long before the earliest existing manuscript of this part of Acts was made), by Cyprian (in the 200s, in Book Three of his Testimonies, Treatise 12, chapter 43), by Pontus the Deacon (in the mid-200s), by Pacian of Barcelona (late 300s), and by Augustine (early 400s); it is also in the Coptic (Egyptian) manuscript known as the Glazier Codex (made in the 400s or 500s).

            Now I set aside the remaining four passages mentioned by Dr. Holmes, in the interest of brevity (and to avoid getting distracted by the “Comma Johanneum,” the interpolation in the Textus Receptus in First John 5 that originated as an interpretive note in a branch of the Old Latin version).  Even the evidence-descriptions I have given are far from complete.  My goal today was simply to demonstrate that the historical details about most of the passages in Dr. Holmes’ list of “added verses” do not sustain his presentation, or any presentation which conveys that in these textual contests, the shorter reading is supported exclusively by early evidence, and the longer reading is supported exclusively by late evidence.
            Contrary to the picture that Dr. Holmes has painted, the real-life scenario here is not one in which all the ancient evidence pertinent to these passages points one way, and all the young evidence points a different way.  It is not a simple matter of older-versus-later, as anyone can see by observing that evidence for both readings can be found in testimony from the 300s – and in some cases, evidence for the longer reading comes from sources earlier than the earliest evidence for the shorter reading. 

In closing:  this is not intended to represent a full defense of the genuineness of all or any of these passages.  My sole point is that in most cases, there is ancient evidence on both sides.  If you read anything that gives any other impression – whether a Bible Odyssey article, or a commentary, or vague Bible footnotes – I recommend that your suspicions should be alert to the possibility that instead of reading a disinterested and balanced description of the evidence, you are reading a well-disguised campaign speech for the Alexandrian Text – a speech that cannot be persuasive unless you remain uninformed about the actual state of the evidence.

[Readers are encouraged to explore the embedded links in this post for additional resources.]