Aphrahat and the Final Section of the Gospel of Mark

Aphrahat (The Persian Sage)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

  

Mark 7:3-4: Immerse or Pour, and Other Questions

In Mark 7:3-4, Mark makes a parenthetical remark in which three textual contests occur:

(1)       How did the Pharisees and all the Jews wash their hands:  did they wash often (πυκνά), or did they wash with the fist (πυγμῇ) – a rare term that refers to a particular kind of ceremonial hand-washing? 

(2)       Did Mark describe the Pharisees’ ceremonial washings as if they immersed (βαπτίσωνται) or as if they poured water (ῥαντίσωνται)?

(3)       Did Mark mention, in addition to the washing (βαπτισμοὺς, technically immersing) of cups and pitchers and copper vessels, the washing of beds (καὶ κλινῶν)?

Few passages have received as diverse treatment at the hands of translators as these two verses.  The erudite translators of the KJV considered it fitting to add a note to their rendering, “oft,” stating, “Or, diligently, in the original, with the fist; Theophylact: up to the elbow.”  (Theophylact was a famous commentator; he wrote in the late 1000s.)  Inasmuch as the Greek texts compiled by Erasmus, by Stephanus, and by Beza in the 1500s all read πυγμῇ (as far as I have been able to ascertain), it appears that the rendering in the text of the KJV at this point was derived from the Vulgate’s term crebro.  Before anyone chides the KJV’s translators for this course of action, however, it should be noted that two important uncial manuscripts which were unknown to the KJV’s translators (Codex Sinaiticus – “the world’s oldest Bible” – and Codex Washingtoniensis – “considered to be the third-oldest parchment codex of the Gospels in the world”) confirm the reading πυκνά. 

Mark 7:3-4 in the 1611 KJV.
       Notice the notes in the side-margin.

            In this first contest, internal evidence is a safe guide:  one reading is easy to understand and raises no difficulties; the other one is obscure and invites questions.  It is more likely that a copyist created the easy reading in an attempt to make plain the meaning of the more difficult reading, than that a copyist created the harder reading.  The cogency of the text-critical canon lectio difficilior potior (prefer the more difficult reading), applied in a balanced and realistic way (as all canons should be), is on display here.  In this case, it works against Codex Sinaiticus, the Vulgate, and the KJV’s text, and in favor of the reading which is found in the majority of Greek manuscripts and referred to as “the original” in the KJV’s margin. 

But what does πυγμῇ mean?  That is an interpretive, rather than textual, matter.  Here are a few examples of how modern translations say that that Pharisees washed their hands in Mark 7:3:  “properly,” “ceremonially,” “ritually,” “carefully,” “poured water over their cupped hands,” and “with clenched fist.”  The RSV’s translators gave up on representing the word πυγμῇ, admitting in a footnote, “One Greek word is of uncertain meaning and is not translated.”  Of the various ideas that have been proposed, I think the one that makes the most sense is that πυγμῇ refers to ceremonial hand-washing in which the entire fist is submerged in a wash-basin along with the forearm.  In this case, the NLT’s rendering is wrong and the ESV’s rendering is inaccurate, especially considering that Jesus rebuked the promoters of such meticulous rituals rather than call them “proper.”  

            The second contest, in verse 4, is similar.  Picture a copyist in a historical setting where neighboring Jews practiced a form of hand-washing in which water was poured into one’s hands.  (This is, to this day, the form of hand-washing normally practiced by observant Jews before meals that include bread.)  It would be tempting for a copyist to adjust a detail in the text to make it more relevant, or more precise, to his readers.  Somewhere along the way, a very small number of copyists also adjusted the text so that the hand-washing described in Mark 7:4 referred specifically to washing before eating bread; Codex Bezae and minuscule 71 (Codex Ephesinus) add ἄρτον, and a corrector of Codex M adds τὸν ἄρτον, after ἐσθίουσιν in verse 3.   

(This sort of textual adjustment to make the text applicable to local circumstances might account for an anomaly in the text of Mark 4:21:  most manuscripts record the end of Jesus’ statement about where to place a lighted lamp as. “Should it not be placed upon the lampstand?” but in Codex Vaticanus (B), Codex Macedonianus (Y), and f¹³, it reads, “Should it not be placed under the lampstand?”.  Possibly this is merely the effect of carelessness when a scribe’s line of sight shifted backward to the reference to “placed under a bushel, or under a bed,” earlier in the verse.  Another possibility, however, is that somewhere a copyist was used to suspending lamps from lamp-holders on chandeliers, in which case “below the lampstand” could make sense.) 

In minuscule 692, the text refers to
pouring rather than immersion.

    

            Because water-pouring was the normal method of hand-washing in later times, it would not be difficult for some medieval copyists to imagine that their exemplars had been poorly copied and that the correct reading must be ῥαντίσωνται (washing via water-pouring) rather than βαπτίσωνται (washing via immersion).  Wieland Willker reports that 55 medieval minuscules (which include 71, 692, and 1222) read ῥαντίσωνται.  This reading would be casually dismissed as a case of simplification by medieval scribes if not for the fact that it is also attested by Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus – the second-oldest and third-oldest Greek manuscripts of this part of the Gospel of Mark.  (Papyrus 45, unfortunately, is damaged so thoroughly that it is unclear whether it reads ῥαντίσωνται or βαπτίσωνται.)

            (Sinaiticus does not agree with Vaticanus exactly here; when produced, it read ῥαντίσωντε; a corrector has touched up the spelling.)

            In 1881, Westcott and Hort were so confident in the accuracy of Codex Vaticanus that they adopted the reading ῥαντίσωνται, against all evidence to the contrary.  The Nestle-Aland compilation used to have this reading as well; ῥαντίσωνται was consistently read in Novum Testamentum Graece until the 27th edition, at which point the editors adopted βαπτίσωνται instead.  The decision against ῥαντίσωνται should have been made much sooner, and would have been, if not for an overestimate of Alexandrian copyists’ resistance against simplifying the text.  Βαπτίσωνται is presently read not only in the Nestle-Aland and UBS compilations but is also in the text of the SBL-GNT, the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform, and the Tyndale House GNT.      

           

            On to our third contest:  should verse 4 end with a reference to beds (or, dining couches)?  To put it another way:  do the words καὶ κλινῶν belong in the text?  In many editions of Novum Testamentum Graece, these two words are not included in the text; in the 27th edition, however, the editors included them – bracketed.  Michael Holmes included them in the text of the SBLGNT, without brackets.  The Tyndale House GNT does not have καὶ κλινῶν in the text, and its readers are handicapped by the sparseness of the THEGNT’s textual apparatus, which fails to inform readers about the abundant versional support for the inclusion of καὶ κλινῶν, and although the apparatus reports the testimony of minuscule 69 (from the 1400s), there is never any mention of the testimony of Origen (from the 200s). 

To rectify the unfortunate frugality of the THEGNT’s apparatus, here is what Origen says in Book XI, chapter 11, of his Commentary on Matthew.  In the course of a comment on Matthew 15:9, Origen refers to Matthew’s quotation of Isaiah 29:13, and after briefly referring also to Isaiah 29:14-15, he writes:  “I have thought it right briefly to set forth the prophecy, and to a certain extent elucidate its meaning, seeing that Matthew made mention of it.  And Mark also made mention of it, from whom we may usefully set down the following words in the place, with reference to the transgression of the elders who held that it was necessary to wash hands when the Jews ate bread, ‘For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, unless they wash hands diligently, do not eat, holding the tradition of the elders.  And when they come from the marketplace, unless they wash themselves, they do not eat.  And there are some other things which they have received to hold, washings of cups and pots and brazen vessels and couches.’”

            To verify that this was not some conformation to the Byzantine text on the part of some copyist of Origen’s composition, I checked the Greek text of Book XI of Origen’s Commentary on Matthew as presented in Erich Klostermann’s 1935 edition – Volume 40 of the series Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (printed page 52, digital page 66).  Although Klostermann’s apparatus pointed out some very minor variations in nearby passages (such as καὶ versus δὲ in the preceding sentence), it mentioned nothing about any variation in the text of Origen’s quotation of Mark 7:3-4.  Furthermore, the quotation given by Origen features a distinctly non-Byzantine reading:  instead of πολλά (after καὶ ἄλλα), Origen’s quotation says τινά.  I conclude that there is no basis on which to suspect that scribes have conformed the text of Origen’s quotation of Mark 7:3-4 to a Byzantine standard. 

            Someone might say, “Origen is indeed an important witness, but so is Papyrus 45, and space-considerations eliminate the possibility that P45’s text included καὶ κλινῶν.”  There is a problem, however, with the simple reference to “P45^vid.” 

An examination of the relevant page of P45 shows that not only is there insufficient space for καὶ κλινῶν, but there is also insufficient space for καὶ χαλκίων.  Whether one supposes that P45’s text of verse 5 began with καὶ ἐπερωτῶσιν (agreeing with À B D L et al) or ἔπειτα ἐπερωτῶσιν (agreeing with Byz A K Π), or ἔπειτα ἐρωτῶσιν (agreeing with W), the subsequent six lines of P45 clearly indicate how long the lost text was:  between 13 and 16 letters are missing from each of these lines – casualties of incidental damage.  The damage to the line ending in ποτηρίων καὶ is more severe than the damage to the next six lines; the surviving text on this line is consequently three or four letters shorter.  We may thus expect the lost text to consist of no more than 20 letters.

Mark 7:4ff. in P45
(artificially augmented)

Between ποτηρίων καὶ and –σιν, there were either

(a) 38 letters, if P45’s text matched the Byzantine text exactly, or

(b) 26 letters, if P45’s text matched the text of À and B exactly, or

(c) 36 letters, if P45’s text matched the text of W exactly, or

(d) 32 letters, if P45’s text matched the text of Codex Δ exactly. 

However, even with generous latitude, none of these four readings can be crammed into the available space in P45 between ποτηρίων καὶ and -σιν.

            Another possibility is that the scribe of P45 accidentally omitted καὶ χαλκίων and καὶ κλινῶν.  If he wrote ξεστῶν and immediately skipped (via h.t.) to the beginning of verse 5 and there wrote ἔπειτα ἐρωτῶ-, then the lost text between ποτηρίων καὶ and -σιν totals 17 letters.

If instead he proceeded from ξεστῶν to the beginning of verse 5 and there wrote καὶ ἐπερωτῶ- then the lost text between ποτηρίων καὶ and -σιν totals 16 letters.

If he proceeded from ξεστῶν to the beginning of verse 5 and there wrote ἔπειτα ἐπερωτῶ- then the lost text between ποτηρίων καὶ and -σιν totals 19 letters.

And, if the scribe of P45 made a unique mistake by writing ποτηρίων καὶ κλινῶν (skipping καὶ ξεστῶν καὶ χαλκίων via simple parablepsis) and proceeded to write ἔπειτα ἐρωτῶ- then the lost text between ποτηρίων καὶ and -σιν totals 17 letters.

The thing to see is that P45 does not testify to a simple non-inclusion of καὶ κλινῶν; the text written by the scribe of P45 must involve a lengthier omission, and the evidence is capable of more than one explanation of what was omitted.  The testimony of P45 is unclear.

            Meanwhile the inclusion of καὶ κλινῶν is supported by the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, and by Origen (in the 200s), and by a diverse array of uncials such as Α D Κ Μ W Γ Θ Π, and by the uniform testimony of the Old Latin copies, and by the Peshitta, the Gothic version, and the Armenian version.  The non-inclusion of καὶ κλινῶν can be accounted for as a simple scribal mistake elicited by the recurrence of και.  Wieland Willker reports that minuscules 440, 1053, and 2200 also do not have καὶ κλινῶν.  While this increases the diversity of witnesses for the shorter reading, what this really shows is that the words were vulnerable to accidental omission via parablepsis.  It is appropriate here to express the canon that when the same reading occurs in witnesses that are genealogically distant from one another, it is more likely that a common phenomenon (such as parablepsis) has affected them both independently, rather than that the shared reading is an effect of shared descent.      

            Besides noticing that mere carelessness can account for the non-inclusion of καὶ κλινῶν, we should consider what would be required to account for its addition.  It seems intrinsically unlikely that the idea would pop into a scribe’s head that the list of items being washed in Mark 7:4 would be incomplete unless beds were included in the list, and that such an expansion (involving the immersion of furniture) would be welcomed favorably.  In conclusion, καὶ κλινῶν should be fully accepted, bracketless, as part of the original text.       

             

            Four additional notes may be added about this passage. 

● First, Codex Bezae has an interesting variant in verse 4; its Greek text adds ὅταν ἔλθωσιν, when they come, making explicit what the non-expanded text implies.  This reflects the Old Latin text, cum venerint, and constitutes an example of the passages in Codex Bezae’s text which have been adjusted to conform to the Latin text.   (Another example is nearby in Mark 7:19.)  Because this reading is attested in the Old Latin copies so consistently, it suggests that contrary to the popular idea that many individuals made wholly independent Old Latin translations before the Vulgate came along, at some point there was one Old Latin translation which formed a textual core for all, or most of, the others. 

            ● Second, the entire text of Mark 7:3-4 is missing from the infamous forgery known as minuscule 2427 (which still resides at the University of Chicago).  This is very probably because the forger, using as his exemplar a copy of Philipp Buttmann’s 1860 Greek New Testament, misunderstood the parentheses around these two verses, as if they signified that these verses’ authenticity was in doubt (like double-brackets in NA27), and he omitted them for this reason.  In the event that some manuscript’s genuineness is questioned in the future, its examiners may want to see if its text similarly contains omissions of phrases which some printed compilation contains within parentheses.

● Third, in Vincent’s Word Studies, the author claims that if καὶ κλινῶν belongs in the text, then “we certainly cannot explain βαπτισμοὺς as immersion,” the objection being perhaps that beds are too big to immerse.  However, Vincent is definitely wrong, inasmuch as Jews did ritually immerse beds and other furniture; Willker refers to two references in the Mishnah to this practice, including the statement (in Mishnah Mikvaot 7:7), “If one immerses a bed in it [in a miqveh containing precisely forty se’ah], even if its legs sink into thick mud [at the bottom of the miqveh, which is not counted as part of its waters] it is pure, because the waters precede it.” (Re: “before the waters precede it” – that is, the water in the miqveh touches the bed before the mud does.) 

            ● Fourth, there is a question about just what objects are referred to at the end of Mark 7:4:  are κλινῶν tables, or beds?  Both, one might say, inasmuch as a long rectangular Roman table, topped by a mat or pillows, could be used as a couch or bed.  The rendering “dining couches” captures the sense well. 

            The term ξεστῶν also has an interesting background.  Rendered as “pots” in the KJV, it has become “pitchers” in some versions.  This Greek word is based on the Latin sextarius, which refers to a vessel capable of holding a little more than a fluid pint (1.15 pints to be precise).  “Sextarius” was also the name for this liquid measure; it was one-sixth of a Roman congius, which consisted of what we would today call three and a half quarts.  Mark’s use of this particular term is consistent with a readership familiar with Latin.

Nestle-Aland 28: Much Ado About Even Less

          In the previous post, I concluded that although it has been claimed that the new edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation of the Greek text of the New Testament reflects the editors’ acknowledgement of “much greater value of the Byzantine manuscripts” than before, such a thing is practically indiscernible in the compilation in James, First Peter, and Second Peter – the first three books of the General Epistles, which is the only part of the New Testament in which NA28 introduces text-critically derived alterations to the text.  Previous, NA27 and the Byzantine Text disagreed in those three books 187 times; now NA28 and the Byzantine Text disagree 181 times.  That’s not much of a shift.

          But what about the Epistles of John, and the Epistle of Jude?  Does the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation have more agreements with the Byzantine Text in those four books?  Let’s find out, investigating all of the textual changes from NA26 (1979) to NA28 (2013) in First John, Second John, Third John, and Jude.  Red text signifies that NA28 rejects a Byzantine reading that was in NA26 and NA27.  A dot accompanies each adoption of a Byzantine reading.

FIRST JOHN

1:7:  δε is not included after εαν near the beginning of the verse, agreeing with 1739 but disagreeing with the Byzantine Text.

3:7:  Παιδια instead of Τεκνία at the beginning of the verse, agreeing with A and 1739 but disagreeing with the Byzantine Text.

● 5:10:  αυτω instead of εαυτω, agreeing with B, A, and the Byzantine Text.  Here NA28 reverts to the reading that was in NA25.

● 5:18:  εαυτον instead of αυτον, agreeing with À, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.

SECOND JOHN

● v. 5:  γράφων σοι καινην instead of καινην γράφων σοι, agreeing with B and the Byzantine Text, but disagreeing with a wide array of witnesses including À A 1505 and 1739.  Here NA28 reverts to the reading that was in NA25. 

● v. 12:  ᾐ πεπληρωμένη after υμων, instead of πεπληρωμένη ᾐ, agreeing with the Byzantine Text.

THIRD JOHN

● v. 4:  τη is not included before ἀληθεία, agreeing with À, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.

JUDE

v. 5:  ἅπαξ has been moved; ἅπαξ πάντα appears between υμας and οτι (NA27 read  πάντα οτι after υμας.  The new reading disagrees with the Byzantine Text, in which υμας is followed by ἅπαξ τουτο οτι.

v. 5:  Ιησους instead of [ο] κύριος, disagreeing with the Byzantine Text, but agreeing with the Vulgate.  Although it is sometimes claimed that textual variants have no impact on Christian doctrines, James White recently acknowledged, “That’s interesting:  Jesus delivered the people from Israel.  That’s got some pretty important theological ramifications to it.  There’s no question about that.”  (Of course he meant to refer to Egypt, not Israel.)  

v. 18:  οτι is not included before επ’ εσχάτου, agreeing with À and B but disagreeing with Papyrus 72, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.  The Byzantine Text here reads οτι εν εσχάτου.   

● v. 18:  του is not included after εσχάτου, agreeing with the Byzantine Text.   

           Added up, that comes to five new disagreements, and six new agreements.    

           In the 27^th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation, there were 92 disagreements with the Byzantine Text in these four books.  But now, in the 28^th edition, the editors’ newfound appreciation for the Byzantine Text has caused that number to plummet to 91.  Combined with the results from James, First Peter, and Second Peter, this means that the number of times the Nestle-Aland compilation disagrees with the Byzantine Text in the General Epistles has dropped from 279 to 272. 

Nestle-Aland 28: Much Ado About Almost Nothing

          It has been almost four years since the release of the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, the first revision of the critical text of the Greek New Testament since 1979.  Its text in the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles of Paul, and in Revelation is unchanged from what was printed in 1979.  The apparatus (the list of variants and the witnesses that support them) is much improved, but still has room for improvement.  

          Aside from the introduction of a new font, new orthographic standardization, and new formatting, the only place where NA28 reflects new text-critical decisions is in the General Epistles (James-Jude), where 36 alterations of the text in the previous edition have been introduced.  (Officially, the count is 34, but in First Peter 1:16, two variant-units occur close together, and in Jude verse 5, two variant-units overlap.)    

          One persistent claim about NA28 is that it expresses a new appreciation for the Byzantine Text.  Dan Wallace, for example, reported that Klaus Wachtel conveyed that as the editors worked through the General Epistles, “They came to see much greater value of the Byzantine manuscripts than they had previously.”  James Leonard has similarly stated than an “interesting result” of the use of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method is that “it is finding more and more individual Byzantine readings to be more plausible.”

          However, an examination of the new readings in NA28 indicates that the Byzantine Text was valued primarily in the role of a merely confirmatory witness, reinforcing the readings found in the important minuscule 1739.  As evidence of this, let’s investigate all of the textual changes from NA26 (1979) to NA28 (2013) in James, First Peter, and Second Peter.  Red text signifies that NA28 rejects a Byzantine reading that was in NA26 and NA27.  A black circle accompanies each adoption of a Byzantine reading.

JAMES

● 1:20:  κατεργάζεται instead of εργάζεται, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.

2:3:  η κάθου εκει instead of εκει η κάθου, rejecting the word-order found in the Byzantine Text, and which was followed in NA27. 

● 2:4:  Και is adopted before ου at the beginning of the verse, agreeing with the Byzantine Text.

● 2:15:  ωσιν is included after λειπομενοι, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.

● 4:10:  του is included before κυριου, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.

FIRST PETER

1:6: λυπηθέντας instead of λυπηθέντες, rejecting a Byzantine reading that was in NA27.

● 1:16:  οτι is not included after γέγραπται.  The non-inclusion of οτι is supported by P72, À, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.

1:16: ειμι is not included at the end of the verse, rejecting a reading which is supported by the Byzantine Text, P72, and 1739.  At this point, the compilers of NA28 returned to a reading found in NA25. 

2:5:  τω is not included before θεω, rejecting a Byzantine reading that was in NA27 in brackets.  (Papyrus 72 supports the inclusion of τω here.)

● 2:25:  αλλ’ instead of αλλα.  This orthographic shift in NA28 constitutes the adoption of a Byzantine reading that is also supported by À.

● 4:16:  μέρει instead of ονόματι, agreeing with a Byzantine reading that is opposed by a widespread array of witnesses, including P72, À, B, 1739 and 1505.

● 5:1:  τους after Πρεσβυτέρους, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.  Rival variants are ουν (supported by P72, A, and B), no word at all (supported by 1505), and ουν τους (supported by À).  This is an interesting variant-unit, not least because the reading in Codex Sinaiticus looks like a conflation, made by a copyist using two exemplars, one of which had ουν and the other of which had τους.  

● 5:9:  τω is not included before κόσμω, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.

5:10:  Ιησου is not included after Χριστω, rejecting a reading that is supported by P72, A, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.  The non-inclusion of Ιησου is supported by À, B, and 1505.

SECOND PETER

● 2:6:  ασεβειν instead of ασεβέσιν, agreeing with À, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.  Ασεβειν was also the reading of NA25. 

● 2:11:  παρα κυρίω instead of παρα κυρίου, agreeing with À, B, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.  Παρα κυρίω was also the reading of NA25. 

● 2:15:  καταλιπόντες instead of καταλείποντες, agreeing with P72, 1739, and the Byzantine Text.

● 2:18:  όντως instead of ολίγως, agreeing with 1739 and the Byzantine Text.  The recent history of this variant-unit is interesting:  in the first edition (1966) of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament, the compilers adopted ολίγως and ranked it at level “C,” signifying a “considerable degree of doubt” about it.  In the fourth edition (2001), the compilers still adopted ολίγως but ranked it at level “A,” signifying that “the text is certain.”  Obviously it was not so certain after all. 

● 2:20:  ημων is not included after κυρίου, thus agreeing with B and the Byzantine Text but disagreeing with a wide array of witnesses.   

3:6:  δι’ ον instead of δι’ ων at the beginning of the verse, rejecting a reading with very widespread support that includes the Byzantine Text, in favor of a reading with negligible support:  according to J. K. Elliott, the Greek witnesses for this reading consist of 025, eight minuscules, and one lectionary.  One of those minuscules was 1175 (from the 900’s), which was given special weight in the CBGM.  Nevertheless it is difficult to see what drove, or could ever drive, the conclusion that all Greek manuscripts are incorrect at this point except for that small group. 

3:10:  ουχ ευρεθήσεται instead of ευρεθήσεται, rejecting the Byzantine Text and rejecting all Greek manuscripts.  The Greek reading in NA28 is not supported by any Greek manuscripts.  As a Greek word, it is a conjectural emendation, based on the assumption that a reading in the Sahidic text of Second Peter was translated from an exemplar that had this reading. 

●3:16:  ταις after πάσαις, agreeing with À, 1739, and the Byzantine Text. 

3:16:  στρεβλώσουσιν instead of στρεβλουσιν, rejecting the Byzantine reading and adopting the reading of P72 and 1739.

3:18:  αμήν is not included at the end of the verse, rejecting the reading of P72, A, and the Byzantine Text and adopting the reading shared by B and 1739.

          From this review of the newly adopted readings in James, First Peter, and Second Peter in NA28, a few conclusion can be drawn:

(1)  The Byzantine Text’s readings are hardly ever adopted unless they agree with 1739.  Exceptions are at James 2:4, First Peter 2:25, 4:16, and Second Peter 2:20.  

(2)  NA28 agrees with the Byzantine Text at 15 places where NA27 disagreed.

(3)  NA28 disagrees with the Byzantine Text at 9 places where NA27 agreed. 

(4)  Calculating that the net number of agreements between the Nestle-Aland compilation and the Byzantine Text has thus increased by six, and observing that there are 187 disagreements between NA27 and RP2005, it follows that the total number of disagreements between the Nestle-Aland compilation and the Byzantine Text in these three books has decreased from 187 (in NA27) to 181 (in NA28).

         How exactly does a net gain of six agreements in James, First Peter, and Second Peter express a significant new appreciation for the Byzantine Text when the compilers of Novum Testamentum Graece continue to reject the Byzantine readings in 181 other places in these three books?  The answer is simple:  it doesn’t.     

Nestle-Aland in Mark 11: Alexandrian or Eclectic?

          In the preceding three posts, I observed that even though the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation of the Greek New Testament is often described as an eclectic edition, based on hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts, in three sample-chapters it is almost entirely Alexandrian, and it hardly contains any distinctive Byzantine readings which represent the vast majority of extant Greek manuscripts.  To be precise, in Galatians 1, NA is .3% distinctly Byzantine; in Luke 15, NA is 1% distinctly Byzantine, and in NA’s 2,812-letter compilation of John 20, there is only one letter (and a bracketed letter, at that) which is in the Byzantine Text and not in Vaticanus (B) or Sinaiticus (À).

          Let’s make another investigation; this time, we will look at the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of Mark, which describes Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the temple, and some other incidents that occurred during the final week of Jesus’ ministry.  In Reuben Swanson’s comparison of the readings of some major manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark, chapter 11 is divided into 59 text-lines.  In 45 of those text-lines, NA agrees precisely with B.  (One of those lines is repeated, however, due to a printing error, so the real total is 58 text-lines, of which B agrees precisely in 44.)   Out of the remaining 14 text-lines, three agree precisely with À (after nomina sacra contractions are taken into consideration).  This means that if we are to find distinctly Byzantine readings in Mark 11 in the Nestle-Aland compilation, they will be somewhere in the remaining 11 text-lines.  Here is what we find there:

● At the beginning of verse 1, NA adopts À’s spelling of Βηθφαγη (disagreeing with B’s Βηδφαγη and with the Byzantine Text’s Βηθσφαγη – though the Byzantine Text is divided at this point; RP2005 has Βηθφαγη in the margin) and then rejects À’s inclusion of εις (agreeing with B and with the Byzantine Text).  Thus, while the line as a whole agrees with relatively few manuscripts (such as W Δ f1), each component agrees with either B or À. 

● In the second half of verse 1, NA disagrees with B’s reading το (disagreeing with των which is read by À and the Byzantine Text), and then agrees with B’s reading of the next word, Ελαιων, disagreeing with À’s Ελεων.  The line as a whole thus agrees with the Byzantine Text; however, neither component agrees with the Byzantine Text distinctly; each component agrees with either B or À. 

● At the end of verse 3, NA adopts B’s spelling ευθυς (instead of the Byzantine reading ευθεως) but then adopts the word-order found in À (disagreeing with B).  NA also adopts the word παλιν near the end of verse 3; the word is not in the Byzantine Text.  Next, NA adopts και απηλθον (read by B and À) instead of απηλθον δε, which is read by the Byzantine Text.  NA also does not include τον before πωλον, although τον is read by À.  Thus, this text-line does not entirely agree with B, or with À, or the Byzantine Text.  Swanson lists only one manuscript – Codex L – that has the combination of readings selected in NA.  Yet, taken individually, each component agrees with either B or À.

● In a text-line which ends with the first three words of verse 6, NA rejected the spelling found in B, À, and in the Byzantine Text (ειπον), adopting instead ειπαν, which is read by a small but respectable cluster of manuscripts (including A, L, Δ, and Π).  This component stands as a non-Byzantine reading which disagrees with À and B.

● Midway through verse 7, NA reads επιβάλλουσιν (agreeing with B and À against the Byzantine Text’s reading επέβαλον) but after the word ιμάτια, NA reads αυτων (agreeing with the Byzantine Text and disagreeing with B’s reading εαυτων and À’s reading αυτω).  The text-line as a whole thus agrees with relatively few manuscripts (including Codices C and L) and its last featured reading (αυτων after ιμάτια) is a Byzantine reading not supported by B or À.

● In the next text-line (in which verse 8 begins), NA adopts εκάθισεν (agreeing with B and the Byzantine Text but disagreeing with À’s reading εκάθισαν), and then adopts και πολλοι (agreeing with B and À but disagreeing with the Byzantine Text’s πολλοι δε), and then, after ιμάτια, adopts αυτων (agreeing with À and the Byzantine Text but disagreeing with B’s reading εαυτων).  The line as a whole thus agrees with relatively few manuscripts (including Codices C, Δ, and 579).  However, each component agrees with either B or À.    

● In the second half of verse 11, NA disagrees with À’s reading οψε (reading οψιας instead, agreeing with B and with the Byzantine Text), and also disagrees with B’s non-inclusion of της ωρας (thus agreeing with À and with the Byzantine Text).  Thus, as a whole, this text-line agrees with the Byzantine Text.  Individually, however, each component agrees with either B or À.

● At the beginning of verse 21, NA rejects the spelling of Ραββει, adopting instead Ραββι and thus agreeing with the Byzantine Text.

● At the beginning of verse 25, NA adopts στήκετε as the third word in the verse, thus disagreeing with B and with the Byzantine Text (which read στήκητε)  and with À (which reads στητε).    

● At the beginning of verse 30, NA includes το after βαπτισμα (agreeing with B and À but disagreeing with the Byzantine Text) but does not adopt B’s spelling of John’s name (Ιωάνου), agreeing instead with À and the Byzantine Text, which read Ιωάννου.  Then NA disagrees with À’s inclusion of the word ποθεν.  As a whole, this text-line agrees with relatively few manuscripts (including Codices A, D, and L).  Individually, each component agrees with either À or B. 

● At the end of verse 33, NA adopts οχλον instead of λαόν, thus agreeing with B and À against the Byzantine Text.  But then NA rejects À’s reading παντες, adopting instead απαντες which agrees with B and with the Byzantine Text.  But then, NA rejects B’s spelling of John’s name (Ιωάνην), reading  Ιωάννην instead.  And next, NA includes the words οντως οτι, agreeing at this point with B but disagreeing with À (which has only οτι) and with the Byzantine text (which transposes these two words).   The text-line as a whole thus agrees with none of Swanson’s witnesses except for a corrector of À.  Taken individually, each component agrees with either B or À.

          Thus, when the variant-units are examined individually, the distinctly Byzantine readings in Mark 11 in the Nestle-Aland compilation consist of the following:

(1)  In verse 7, NA reads αυτων (agreeing with the Byzantine Text and disagreeing with B’s reading εαυτων and À’s reading αυτω), and  

(2)  In verse 21, NA rejects the spelling Ραββει, adopting instead Ραββι and thus agreeing with the Byzantine Text.

          Thus, in Mark 11, the impact of the Byzantine Text is felt by the absence of one letter (ε) in verse 7, and by the absence of one letter in verse 21.  Reckoning that the text of Mark 11 in NA consists of 563 words, and that the Byzantine Text’s contribution to the compilation is discernible in two words, this implies that .4% of the Nestle-Aland compilation of Mark 11 is distinctly Byzantine.  Or, calculating that the text of Mark 11 in NA consists of 2,752 letters, one could say that the Byzantine Text’s existence is manifest in less than .02% of the Nestle-Aland compilation.  The rest originates with other witnesses, primarily Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Codex L.

Postscript:  In the course of this series of posts, a point has been raised in the comments:  because the Byzantine Text and the Alexandrian Text agree so frequently, the Byzantine Text’s existence cannot be manifested in 100% of the compilation, but can only be expressed at those points where the Alexandrian and Byzantine texts disagree.  That is undoubtedly true, but how can one answer the question being asked – To what extent is the Nestle-Aland compilation an eclectic text rather than an Alexandrian text? – if not by identifying non-Alexandrian readings (especially Byzantine readings) and seeing how much of the compilation they constitute?  Nor does it affect the answer to the question:  whether one looks at the whole compilation, or only at the parts where the Alexandrian and Byzantine Texts disagree, it is obvious that the Nestle-Aland compilation contains hardly any readings that are found in the Byzantine Text and not in the Alexandrian Text.     

Nestle-Aland in John 20: Alexandrian or Eclectic?

          In the two preceding posts, I showed that the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation is almost entirely Alexandrian in Galatians 1 and in Luke 15.  To be precise, the NA compilation adopts a Byzantine reading instead of an Alexandrian reading in .3% of Galatians 1, and in 1% of Luke 15.  Let’s take another sample from the Gospels – John 20 – and see what kind of results we get.

          Sifting through John 20 in Reuben Swanson’s presentation of the text in horizontal-line comparisons of the contents of many important manuscripts, I observe that out of 53 text-lines, NA agrees entirely with Vaticanus (B) in 39 of them.  In the remaining 14 text-lines, NA agrees entirely with Sinaiticus (À) in six.  This leaves eight lines that do not agree entirely with either B or À.  Let’s investigate those eight lines to see how non-Alexandrian the Nestle-Aland compilation is in this chapter:

          ● At the end of verse 4, NA adopts τάχιον (agreeing with À), and also adopts À’s reading ηλθεν, but then follows the word-order in B.  Thus, although this three-part series of readings, collectively, agrees with the Byzantine Text, each component agrees with either B or À.

          ● At the beginning of verse 13, NA has και at the very beginning of the verse (agreeing with B) and does not have και later in the verse before λέγει (agreeing with À).  Thus, in this case, each component of the text of NA agrees with either B or À.      

          ● At the beginning of verse 17, NA does not adopt ὁ before Ιησους (agreeing with B), and then adopts the word-order in À (μου απτου), and then does not adopt μου (agreeing with B and À).  Thus, taken as a series, this text-line agrees with D against B, À, and the Byzantine Text, but taken individually, each component is found in either B or À.

          ● In verse 22, NA adopts the variant αφέωνται, disagreeing with B (αφειονται) and À (αφεθήσεται) and the Byzantine Text (αφίενται), agreeing with a small minority of manuscripts including Codices A and D.

          ● At the beginning of verse 25, NA adopts ουν after ελεγον, and αλλοι before μαθηται (agreeing both times with B), but then adopts Εωράκαμεν, agreeing instead with À and the Byzantine Text.  Thus, taken individually, each component of this text-line is found in B or À. 

          ● At the end of verse 27 and the beginning of verse 28, NA reads γίμου, rejecting the itacism in B (γειμου) and agreeing with À.  Further along in the line, however, NA does not adopt ὁ before Ιησους (agreeing with B but not with À).  NA also rejects Και at the beginning of the verse.  Each component of this text-line is found in B or À or both. 

          ● At the beginning of verse 29, NA adopts λεγει, agreeing with B and the Byzantine Text against À (which reads ειπεν δε).  Then NA adopts ὁ before Ιησους (disagreeing with B and the Byzantine Text, but agreeing with À), and further along in the verse reads εωρακάς, disagreeing with the Byzantine Text (which reads εωρακάς) but agreeing with B and À.  NA also does not include και after με (thus agreeing with B and the Byzantine Text but disagreeing with À).  Thus, in this series of variant-units, NA collectively disagrees with B, with À, and with the Byzantine Text (agreeing instead with Codices A, C, D, N, and an assortment of other manuscripts).  Each component of this text-line, however, agrees with either B or À.          

          ● Near the beginning of verse 31, NA places the letter sigma in brackets, so as to read πιστεύ[σ]ητε which disagrees with B and À and agrees with the Byzantine Text.

          Thus, out of the eight text-lines which do not entirely agree with B or À, we see that in terms of their component-parts, they all agree with either B or À except at two points:  the adoption of αφέωνται in verse 22 (disagreeing with the Byzantine Text’s reading αφίενται), and the inclusion of the bracketed letter sigma in πιστεύ[σ]ητε in verse 31.   

          The existence of the Byzantine Text is thus manifested in the Nestle-Aland text of John 21 by one letter.  That is, a distinctly Byzantine reading (one that is not found in B or À) is preferred in one of John 20’s 615 words in the Nestle-Aland compilation.  Or, calculated by letters:  exactly one of  this chapter’s 2,812 letters in the Nestle-Aland compilation is found in the Byzantine Text and not in Vaticanus or Sinaiticus.  The letter is bracketed, however, so do not be surprised if the number of distinct Byzantine readings in John 20 is zero in the next edition.  (The New Living Translation is already based on the reading without the sigma.)