Acts 20:28 – Smuggling in an Emendation?

          Two textual issues in Acts 20:28 have impacted translations of the verse:  First:   did Luke refer to the church as the “church of God,” the “church of the Lord,” or the “church of the Lord and God”?  Second, at the end of the verse, did Luke write that the church was obtained through his blood, or through the blood of his Son?

          Let’s review the external evidence:
          Greek Support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ includes ﬡ B 056 614 1175 1611 104 2147 1505 Byz, Lectionary 60, l592, l598, l603, l1021, and l1439.  Versional support is provided by the Vulgate, the Peshitta, the Harklean Syriac, the Georgian version, and it^{ar, c, dem, ph, ro, w} and a Bohairic copy.  Patristic support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ is supplied by Athanasius, Basil, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Cyril, and Ambrose.    

          Greek support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου includes P74 A C* D E Ψ 33 181 307 453 547 610 945 945 1678 1739 1891 2344 2464 and l599.  Versional support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου is supplied by it^{d, e, gig, p} the margin of the Harklean Syriac, Sahidic, Bohairic, and Armenian versions.  Patristic support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου comes from Irenaeus (in Latin), Didymus (in Latin), Theodoret, Ambrosiaster, Jerome, and Pelagius.      

          Greek support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου καί θεοῦ includes H L P C³ 049 1 69 88 226 323 330 440 618 927 1241 1245 1270 1828 1854 2492 and most lectionaries.  Versional support is limited to a Slavic lectionary copy.

          (In addition, Swanson recorded GA 1837’s ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυ ιυ καί θῦ.)

          The KJV, reflecting the Textus Receptus, reads “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.” [emphasis added here, and in the following quotations]

           Similarly, the Christian Standard Bible reads “shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.”  The Evangelical Heritage Version reads “shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.”  The ESV reads “care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.”  The NIV reads “shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.” 

          The World English Bible, following the Byzantine Text, reads, “Take heed, therefore, to yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the assembly of the Lord and God which he purchased with his own blood.”

          Modern versions render Acts 20:28 in quite diverse ways:  usually the base-text τοῦ θεοῦ is followed, not only in the English Standard Version, NIV, EHV and CSB but also in the NET, RSV, NRSV, CEB, and CEV.

          The New World Translation (a translation produced for the cult known as “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” also known as the Watchtower Society) reads “Pay attention to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the holy spirit has appointed you overseers, to shepherd the congregation of God, which he purchased with the blood of his own Son.”           Inasmuch as no manuscript of Acts reads “of his own Son,” it appears that the modern Arian cult has added to the words of God.  But the Jehovah’s Witnesses Bible butchers are not alone in this respect.  The NET also renders Acts 20:28 with an appeal “to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son.”

          Likewise  the NRSV (including the compromised Updated Edition) have Paul tell the Ephesian elders to “shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son” – echoing the RSV, which reads, “care for the church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own Son.”  The relatively recent Common English Bible reads “shepherd God’s church, which he obtained with the death of his own Son.”  The CEV (Contemporary English Version) reads, “Be like shepherds to God’s church. It is the flock he bought with the blood of his own Son.”  

          The Lexham English Bible likewise reads, “shepherd the church of God which he obtained through the blood of his own Son.”  The Complete Jewish Bible reads “shepherd God’s Messianic community, which he won for himself at the cost of his own Son’s blood.”  The Good News Translation reads “shepherds of the church of God, which he made his own through the blood of his Son.”  The New Century Version says “You must be like shepherds to the church of God, which he bought with the death of his own son.”  The Mounce Reverse Interlinear New Testament reads, “shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with the blood of his own Son.”  The Voice says “Shepherd the church of God, this precious church which He made His own through the blood of His own Son.” 

          English versions which end Acts 20:28 with a clear reference to the blood of God’s Son – even though the Greek equivalent of the word “son” is not in the base-text – include the NWT, NET, RSV, NRSV, CEV, Lexham, GNT, Mounce, The Voice, and CEB.

          In 1881 Hort wrote over three columns of his Notes on Select Readings about Acts 20:28 and concluded that “It is by no means impossible that ΥΙΟΥ dropped out after ΤΟΥΙΔΙΟΥ at some very early transcription affecting all existing documents.  Its insertion leaves the whole passage free from difficulty of any kind.”  Metzger mentioned that Hort’s proposal is not necessary – but no less than nine modern English versions appear to be conformed to Hort’s proposed emendation!

Metzger dismissed the majority reading as “obviously conflate.”  The  Byzantine reading τοῦ κυρίου καί θεοῦ may account for both of the longer readings, however, if early scribes committed parablepsis, skipping from the –ou of κυρίου to the –ου of θεοῦ (producing ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου), and some subsequently substituting θεοῦ in place of κυρίου, resisting the idea of God having blood.   

          The Tyndale House Greek New Testament reads “ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου” and concludes with “αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου.”  Holmes’ SBL-GNT reads “ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ” and concludes the verse with “αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου.” 

          It may be worthwhile to consider the thoughts of some who have approached the textual issue from a pastoral perspective – for example Bob Luginbill, Sam Shamoun, and the La Vista Church of Christ (near Omaha Nebraska).

          Considering that the longer reading’s earliest appearance is relatively late, and that ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ is supported by the Peshitta, the Vulgate, Chrysostom and Athanasius, ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ should be adopted, being early, geographically widely supported, and attested in multiple transmission-lines.  GA 1739’s text may be adopted for the entire verse.   

          English readers should be aware that at least eight modern versions essentially echo a conjectural emendation in this verse.

Irenaeus and Mark 16:19

            Irenaeus.  Ever hear of him?  You won’t see his name mentioned in the NET’s notes about Mark 16:9-20, or in footnotes about Mark 16:9-20 in the ESV, NLT, CSB, NIV, NKJV, and NRSV.  (The footnote-makers for all these versions seem to have had a strange aversion to mentioning patristic evidence, even when it is earlier than the earliest extant manuscripts of the text being supplemented.)  Irenaeus was a very important patristic writer.  Born around 120, Irenaeus grew up in the city of Smyrna in Asia Minor, and he reports that in his youth he heard the teachings of Polycarp (who had, in turn, been a companion of Papias, and had heard John).   When we walk with Irenaeus, so to speak, we are chronologically barely two generations away from the apostles themselves.

            Irenaeus went on to serve as a presbyter at Lyons (Lugdunum), in Gaul, around 170.  In 177, Irenaeus visited Rome, where he advised Eleutherius about how to deal with Montanism.  When he returned from Rome to Lugdunum, Irenaeus found that in his absence, the church there had been the target of persecution.  Many Christians had been martyred, including Blandina and the church’s bishop, Pothinus.  Irenaeus was chosen to take Pothinus’ place as bishop, an office in which he remained for the remainder of his life.

            As bishop of Lyons, Irenaeus would later counsel Victor of Rome in 190 regarding the Quartodeciman Controversy, recommending the allowance of liberty regarding how to settle a question related to the church’s liturgical calendar which had not been settled in earlier times.  But Irenaeus best-known work is one he composed earlier, in five books:  Against Heresies, in which he exposed the errors of various false teachers, including Marcion. 

            Irenaeus tells his readers when he composed Book Three of Against Heresies, in chapter three, paragraph 3:  it was during the same time that Eleutherius was presiding at Rome, i.e., approximately between 174 and 189. 

            Irenaeus explicitly quotes Mark 16:19 in Book 3 of Against Heresies (in chapter 10, paragraph 5), stating, “Also, towards the conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says: ‘So then, after the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God.’”  This portion of Against Heresies in extant only in Latin (as “In fine autem euangelii ait Marcus: Et quidem Dominus Iesus, postquam locutus est eis, receptus est in caelos, et sedet ad dexteram Dei.”

            Dr. Craig Evans, in 2013, claimed (in the Holman Apologetics Commentary) that “it is far from certain that Irenaeus, writing c. 180, was acquainted with Mark’s so-called Longer Ending,” apparently imagining that the Latin translator of Against Heresies “may have incorporated this verse from much later manuscripts.”   Dr. Evans is wrong.  In real life, not only is there no evidence that the Latin translation of Book 3 has been interpolated at this point, but there is clear evidence against the idea.  Irenaeus’ use of Mark 16:19 in Book 3 of Against Heresies is mentioned in Greek in a marginal notation that appears in several copies of the Gospel of Mark, including GA 1582, 72, and the recently catalogued 2954.

The margin-note about Irenaeus' quote of Mark 16:19.
Viewable at the British Library's website.

            Page-views of GA 1582 and GA 72 are online.  GA 1582 is a core representative of family 1 (which would be better-named “family 1582”), a small cluster of MSS which can be traced back an ancestor-MS made in the 400s.  The margin-note says, “Irenaeus, who lived near the time of the apostles, cites this from Mark in the third book of his work Against Heresies.”  (In Greek:   Ειρηναιος ο των αποστόλων πλησίον εν τω προς τας αιρέσεις Τριτωι λόγωι τουτο ανήνεγκεν το ρητον ως Μάρκω ειρημένον.)  Thus there should be no doubt that the Greek text of Against Heresies Book 3 known to the creator of this margin-note contained the reference to Mark 16:19.  Dr. Craig Evans is invited to retract his statement.

            The copy of Mark used by Irenaeus in Lyon, had it survived, would have been older than Codex Vaticanus by a minimum of 125 years.  In addition, Irenaeus was familiar with the text of Mark used in three locales – Asia Minor, Lyons, and Rome (the city where the Gospel of Mark was composed); yet, although he comments on a textual variant in Revelation 13:18 (in Against Heresies Book 5, ch. 29-30) - a passage from a book written a few decades before Irenaeus was born - he never expresses any doubt whatsoever about Mark 16:19.  It may be safely concluded that Irenaeus knew of no other form of the Gospel of Mark except  one that contained Mark 1:1-16:20. 

            As a secondary point, evidence of Irenaeus’ familiarity with Mark 16:9-20 might also be found in Against Heresies Book Two, chapter 32, paragraphs 3-4 (which was quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea in Church History 5:7).  Close verbal connections are lacking here (Irenaeus does not say, in Book Two at this point, that he is referring specifically to what Mark wrote; he points false teachers to “the prophetical writing”), but thematic parallels abound:  Irenaeus states:

            “Those who are truly his disciples, receiving grace from him, do in his name (cf. Mk 16:17) perform [signs], so as to promote the welfare of others, according to the gift which each one has received from him. For some do certainly and truly drive out devils (cf. Mk. 16:17), so that those who have thus been cleansed from evil spirits frequently both believe, and join themselves to the church (cf. Mk. 16:16).

            Others have foreknowledge of what is to come.  They see visions, and utter prophetic expressions.  Yet others heal the sick by laying their hands upon them, and they are made whole (Cf. Mk. 16:18).

          Yea, moreover, as I have said, even the dead have been raised up, and  have stayed among us for many years. And what shall I more say? It is not possible to name the number of the gifts which the church, throughout the whole world (cf. Mk. 16:15), has received from God, in the name of Jesus Christ.”

          Irenaeus concludes Book 2, chapter 32 (which can be read in English at the New Advent website) by stating the the Christian church, “directing her prayers to the Lord . . .and calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, has been accustomed to work miracles for the advantage of mankind, and not to lead them into error,” in contrast to the false teachers Simon, Menander, and Carpocrates.

          If there are to be English Bible-footnotes about Mark 16:9-20 (a passage which is attested in all Greek manuscripts of Mark (over 1,650) except two - GA 304 should no longer be considered a legitimate witness to the non-inclusion of vv. 9-20), they should certainly mention the testimony of Irenaeus.  The present footnotes in the ESV, NIV, NLT, CSB, and NASB (to name a few), like the notes in the NET,  do not give readers an accurate picture of the evidence regarding Mark 16:9-20, and, imho, seem designed (by selecting which witnesses are allowed to speak, and which witnesses are silenced) to provoke doubts about the passage.  One could almost think that the footnote-writers did not want readers to know about the evidence for Mark 16:9-20 from the 100s.

 

 

Luke 2:22 - His, Her, or Their?

          In Luke 2:22, there is a mildly famous – or infamous – textual variant which involves the Textus Receptus, the base-text of the KJV:  did Luke write that “the days of her [that is, Mary’s] purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished”?  That is how the passage is read in the KJV.  The NKJV, MEV, the Rheims New Testament, the New Life Version, the NIrV, and the Living Bible read similarly.  The phrase is different, however – referring to the days of their purification – in the ASV, CSB,  EHV, EOB-NT, ESV, NASB, NET, NLT, NRSV, and WEB.  (The NIV inaccurately avoids saying either “her” or “their,” and simply says vaguely that “the time came for the purification rites.”  The Message hyper-paraphrase makes the same compromise, saying that “the days stipulated by Moses for purification were complete.”  Other versions that have rendered the passage imprecisely include the CEV, ERV, and GNT.)  

        The difference in English reflects a difference in Greek:  the KJV’s base-text (and the base-text of the Geneva Bible in the 1500s) says αὐτῆς, which means “her,” while the base-text of the EHV, EOB-NT, WEB, etc., reads αὐτῶν, which means “their.”  The text compiled by Erasmus in 1516, and the text printed by Stephanus in 1550, and the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilations have αὐτῶν. 

          This little difference is a big deal to some champions of the KJV, who regard the KJV’s base-text as something which was “refined seven times” (cf. Psalm 12:6) in the course of the first century of the printed Greek New Testament.  D. A. Waite wrote as if the reading αὐτῶν implies that Jesus was a sinner:  “The word her is changed to their, thus making the Lord Jesus Christ One Who needed "purification," and therefore was a sinner!” (p. 200, Defending the King James Bible, 3rd ed., Ó 2006 The Bible for Today Press)  Will Kinney, a KJV-Onlyist, has written, “The reading of HER is admittedly a minority reading, but it is the correct one.”    

 

          In 1921, William H. F. Hatch, after investigated this variant, reported in the 1921 (Vol. 14) issue of Harvard Theological Review (pp. 377-381) that “The feminine pronoun αὐτῆς is found in no Greek manuscript of the New Testament.”  Quite a few manuscripts have been discovered since 1921, but I have not found any Greek manuscripts that support αὐτῆς (though it is possible that αὐτῆς might be found in very late manuscripts made by copyists who used printed Greek New Testaments as their exemplars).        
            Hatch explained that À A B L W G D P and nearly all minuscules support αὐτῶν, and αὐτῶν is also supported by the Peshitta and by the Harklean Syriac, the Ethiopic, Armenian, and Gothic versions.  He observed that Codex Bezae (D, 05) has neither αὐτῆς nor αὐτῶν, but αὐτοῦ (“his”), and at least eight minuscules (listed in a footnote as 21, 47, 56, 61, 113, 209, 220, and 254) have this reading as well.  Also, αὐτοῦ is supported by the Sahidic version.  Latin texts are rather ambiguous on this point, whether Old Latin or Vulgate; the Latin eius can be understood as masculine or feminine (but not plural).  Hatch also noted that “A few authorities have no pronoun at all after καθαρισμοῦ,” but he did not specify which ones.

          Hatch advocated a relatively not-simple hypothesis:  that most of the first two chapters of Luke were “based on a Semitic source” and in this source, the wording in the passage meant “her” purification but “Luke, or whoever translated the source into Greek, having read in the preceding verse about the circumcision and naming of Jesus, took it as masculine, ‘his purification,’ and translated it by καθαρισμοῦ αὐτοῦ.”  Hatch proposed, further, that before the time of Origen, someone realized that αὐτοῦ could not be correct (inasmuch as the law of Moses says nothing about the purification of male offspring) and changed it to αὐτῶν.

          “Αὐτῆς,” Hatch wrote, “appeared as a learned correction, but its range was extremely limited until the appearance of the Complutensian edition in 1522.”    

          Those not willing to embrace Hatch’s hypothesis may be content to adopt what is in the text of most manuscripts, whether Alexandrian or Byzantine:  καθαρισμοῦ αὐτῶν – “their purification.”  Facing D. A. Waite’s contention that texts with “their purification” are “theologically deficient,” interpreters have at least three options:  to understand (1) that Luke’s “their purification” is a reference to the custom observed by followers of Judaism in general, or, (2) that Joseph as well as Mary participated in the purification-rites, having been in contact with Mary at Jesus’ birth, or (3) that Joseph accompanied Mary in the purification-rites even though it was not required by the Mosaic law.  In no scenario does the text imply that Jesus “therefore was a sinner,” inasmuch as the purification-rites commanded in Leviticus 12 followed ceremonial uncleanness, not sinfulness.              

          Another detail in Hatch’s 1921 essay is worth pointing out:  he insisted, in his fourth footnote, that minuscule 76 is not a witness for αὐτῆς, and referred to C. R. Gregory’s examination of 76 in 1887 as support for this.  To this day, minuscule 76 is erroneously claimed to read αὐτῆς by James R. White (The KJV-Only Controversy, p. 112 in the 2009 edition; p. 68 in the 1995 edition, both published by Bethany House Publishers) – adding to the book’s many inaccuracies – and by online apologist Matt Slick, and by James D. Price, and by the notes in the NET (Dan Wallace, Senior NT editor).  This falsehood was corrected 101 years ago.  Maybe within another hundred years, some editors will repair the works of James White and the notes in the NET, et al, so that their false claim does not continue to be spread in perpetuity.                       

 

Bible Footnotes and the Byzantine Text

             Do the text-related footnotes in the NIV, CSB, NLT, and NKJV give an accurate picture of the differences between the Byzantine Text and the Alexandrian Text?  No, they do not.  Readers should not treat the text-related footnotes in those Bibles as if they fully denote the differences between the Byzantine Text and the primarily Alexandrian Nestle-Aland/United Bible Societies compilation.  To illustrate this, let’s look into the textual disagreements between the Byzantine Text and the Nestle-Aland compilation in the book of Ephesians.  

             If one were to take in hand the NIV, one might say, “Hmm; only one footnote in Ephesians mentions a difference in manuscripts; that must be the only textual variant in this book. Those copyists were phenomenally accurate.”

            A reader of the ESV might say, "Hmm; only two footnotes in Ephesians mention a disagreement in the manuscripts; those copyists were extremely accurate.”

            Reading the CSB or NLT, one might conclude, “Hmm; eight footnotes in Ephesians mention a difference in manuscripts.  I guess the manuscripts of Ephesians are all alike except for that.”

            Reading, instead, the NKJV, readers could understandably think, “Hmm; fifteen footnotes in Ephesians refer to differences in the manuscripts.  That’s remarkably uniform considering how long the text was transmitted in handwritten copies.”

            The NKJV’s text-related footnotes point out three differences between the Textus Receptus and the Majority (Byzantine) Text, and 12 differences between the Byzantine Text (including the Textus Receptus) and the primarily Alexandrian Nestle-Aland compilation.  Thus, readers who get their idea of the contents of Greek New Testament manuscripts from footnotes in major English translations could understandably conclude that there are only 12 differences in Ephesians between the Nestle-Aland compilation and the Byzantine Textform. 

            Readers who look into the text in more detail by studying the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament could also conclude that there are only 23 significant variant-units in Ephesians, because only 23 variant-units are in the UBS apparatus.  If, instead, they read the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament,they might think that there are only 21 significant variant-units in Ephesians (because only 21 variant-units are covered in Ephesians its apparatus).    

            Here are the textual variant-units that the NKJV tells its readers about: 

            ● 1:14 – Byz reads “who” while NA reads “which.”

            ● 3:9 – NA does not include the phrase “through Jesus Christ.”

            ● 3:14 – NA does not include the phrase “of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

            ● 4:6 – At the end of the verse, NA does not include “us” before “all.”  (The Textus Receptus reads “you all.”)

            ● 4:9 – NA does not include “first” before “descended.”

            ● 4:17 – NA does not include “the rest of.”

            ● 5:5 – NA reads “For know this” instead of “For this you know.”

            ● 5:9 – NA reads “fruit of the light.”  Byz and the Textus Receptus (supported here by Papyrus 46) read “fruit of the Spirit.”

            ● 5:21 – NA reads “fear of Christ.”  Byz reads “fear of God.”

            ● 5:30 – NA does not include “of His flesh, and of His bones.”

            ●  6:9 – NA reads “He who is both their Master and yours” instead of “your own Master also.”

            ● 6:12 – NA reads “rulers of this darkness” instead of “rulers of the darkness of this age.”

            It would require a deliberate effort on the part of an interpreter to perceive a significant difference of meaning in some of these twelve cases of different wording.  In other cases, though – especially 3:9b and 3:14 and 5:9 and 5:30 – I would say that the differences in wording are likely to yield some differences of exegesis; preachers are not likely to treat the different readings in those four passages as if they are saying the same thing. 

            The NKJV’s footnotes, however, do not inform readers of the full extent of the significant differences between the Byzantine Text and the primarily Alexandrian Nestle-Aland compilation.  Not even close.  When one takes in hand the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform and consults its text-related footnotes, it becomes obvious that there are more than 12 passages where the Byzantine Textform and the Nestle-Aland compilation diverge.  The actual number of differences between the Byzantine text and the Nestle-Aland text in Ephesians is 93.

            If we start with that 93 and consider bracketed readings in the Nestle-Aland compilation to be merely unstable, but still in the text, and if we set aside the variants in 3:2 and 4:21 which are a matter of different divisions of letters into words (in both places, Byz = εἴγε, NA = εἴ γε), then 11 differences can be removed from consideration, thus lowering the number of differences to 82.

            If we further eliminate from consideration transpositions of words which, while changing the wording, do not materially affect the meaning – such as the transposition in 1:1 where the Byzantine Text says “Jesus Christ” and the N-A compilation says “Christ Jesus” – then another nine differences may be set aside as trivial, yielding now a total of 73.

            Continuing to filter out trivial variants, if we collect differences which are matter of orthography (spelling), such as αλλα versus αλλ’ in 4:29 and 5:29 and 6:4, we can set aside variants in 3:13 (εκκακειν versus εγκακειν), 3:16 (δωη versus δῷ), 4:2 (πραότητος versus πραΰτητος), 6:6 (οφθαλμοδουλείαν versus οφθαλμοδουλίαν), and even 6:17 (δέξασθαι versus δέξασθε), reducing the number of non-trivial disagreements to 65.

            Some of those 65 disagreements are too minor to have an impact on the meaning of the text, but the following do have such an impact:

            ● 1:6 – the small difference here (εν η versus ης) is the difference between “in which He made us accepted” and “which He lavished upon us.”

            ● 1:14 – the difference between ος and ο is the difference between “who is” and “which is.”  (This variant is not stable in the N-A compilation.)

            ● 1:16 – The Byzantine reading υμων makes explicit what is implied in the N-A text.

            ● 1:18 – The Byzantine Text has “and” after “calling.”

            ● 1:20 – The difference here is the difference between “seated” and “having seated.”

            ● 2:1 – The longer Alexandrian reading here ends the verse with “your sins.”

            ● 2:17 – The longer Alexandrian reading here consists of a repetition of the word “peace,” so as to read, “Peace to you [who are] far off and peace to those [who are] near.”

            ● 2:19 – The longer Alexandrian reading consists of a repetition of the word “are,” so as to read, “you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but are fellow citizens . . . .”

            ● 3:3 – The Byzantine reading means “He made known to me,” whereas the Alexandrian reading means “was made known to me.”

            ● 3:6 – The Byzantine text says “His promise.”  The Alexandrian text does not say “His.”

            ● 3:6 – The longer Alexandrian reading says “in Christ Jesus” instead of “in Christ.”

            ● 3:8 – The Byzantine reading means “among the nations,” the Alexandrian reading, without εν, means “to the nations.”

            ● 3:9 – The Byzantine reading affirms that God created all things through Jesus Christ.  The Alexandrian reading only says that God created all things.

            ● 3:14 – The Byzantine text has the phrase “of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  The Alexandrian text does not.

            ● 3:21 – The longer Alexandrian reading adds “and” between “church” and “Christ Jesus,” whereas the Byzantine reading, without και, means “in the church by Christ Jesus.”

            ● 4:6 – The Byzantine Text means “us all.”  The Alexandrian Text only says “all.”

            ● 4:8 – The Byzantine Text has “and” before “He gave gifts to men.”

            ● 4:9 – The Byzantine Text says that He descended first.

            ● 4:17 – The Byzantine Text says “as the rest of the Gentiles.”  The Alexandrian Text only says “as the Gentiles.”

            ● 4:28 – The longer Alexandrian reading, besides changing the word-order, includes “own,” so as to say, “producing with his own hands what is good.”

            ● 4:32 – The Byzantine Text says “us.”  The Alexandrian Text (and the Textus Receptus) says “you.”

            ● 5:5 – The Byzantine Text says “For this you know.”  The Alexandrian Text says “For know this.” (Byz:  εστε.  Alex.:  ιστε)

            ● 5:9 – The Byzantine Text (henceforth “Byz”) says “fruit of the Spirit.”  The Alexandrian Text says “fruit of the light.” 

            ● 5:17 – Byz says “understanding,” whereas the Alexandrian reading is a command, “understand.”

            ● 5:19 – The longer Alexandrian reading includes εν (“in”) before “psalms.”

            ● 5:22 – Byz says “submit yourselves.”  The Alexandrian text does not (implying a re-application of the same verb from the previous verse).

            ● 5:24 – Byz says “Husbands, love your own wives.”

            ● 5:28 – The longer Alexandrian reading includes “also” before “husbands.”  

            ● 5:29 – Byz says “even as the Lord does for the church.”  The Alexandrian Text says “even as Christ does for the church.”

            ● 5:30 – Byz includes the phrase, “of His flesh, and of His bones.”  The Alexandrian Text does not.

            ● 5:31 – Byz says “his” after “father.”  The Alexandrian text does not.

            ● 6:9 – The longer Alexandrian reading says “both their Master and yours.”  Byz says “your own Master” (the “your” is plural).

            ● 6:10 – Byz includes the words “my brothers.”  The Alexandrian text does not.  

            ● 6:12 – Byz refers to “the rulers of the darkness of this age.”  The Alexandrian reading refers to “the cosmic powers of darkness.” (Cf. CSB.)

            ● 6:16 – The Alexandrian text begins the verse with εν, so as to say “In all circumstances.”  Byz begins the verse with επι, so as to say, “Above all.”

            ● 6:24 – Byz closes the book with “Amen.”

           

            Thus, in terms of differences in the Greek base-text that have an impact on the wording in English, there are 36 textual disagreements between the Byzantine Text and the Alexandrian Text that have an impact on English wording.  It may be safely concluded that the 15 textual footnotes in Ephesians in the NKJV (and the eight textual footnotes in the CSB and NLT, and the two in the ESV, and the one textual footnote in the NIV) do not remotely approach a full presentation of the significant differences between the Alexandrian and Byzantine Texts. 

What about the textual apparatus in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece?   James White, in 1993 (in the 29th minute of this audio), claimed the following:   “I wish people would take the time, even if you don’t buy it, to go by a Christian bookstore and pick up the Nestle-Aland text, the UBS, now fourth edition that just came out.  Look at the text, and look at the bottom of the page.  Anyone who has these critical texts has all the readings of the manuscripts right there in front of them.  When I look at a passage, I can tell you exactly what any of the manuscripts in the various manuscript – all through the Byzantine tradition, so on and so forth – what they read, due to the tremendously advanced, very wisely put together textual apparatus at the bottom.  And any reading that is in any of these traditions is found either in the text or in the footnotes.” (emphasis added)

            Sadly, that is not true.  The textual apparatus of the Nestle-Aland compilation fails to report the Byzantine reading in Ephesians 1:20, 2:3, 2:11, 2:12, 2:13, 2:20, 3:6, 3:7, 3:8 (twice), 3:11, 3:12, 3:16 (twice), 4:2, 4:29, 5:3, 5:4, 5:5, 5:24 (twice), 5:27, 5:29, 6:4, 6:6 (twice), 6:8, 6:9 (twice), 6:17, and 6:18.  To restate:  in the Nestle-Aland apparatus, the reading found in the majority of manuscripts of Ephesians is not reported in 30 out of 93 places where the two compilations diverge.   

            White’s comment should be tempered by his subsequent statement in The King James Only Controversy, regarding a Byzantine reading at the end of Acts 22:16 (another reading not reported in the Nestle-Aland apparatus):  “Surely such a reading, despite it probably being secondary, should at least be noted for the sake of all those who wish to do textual studies.”

             Daniel Wallace has also exaggerated the situation, stating, “It is certain that the original wording is found either in the text or in the apparatus.”  But (to give just one example) is it certain that a copyist added the word ἰδίοις in Ephesians 5:24, and utterly inconceivable that a copyist accidentally omitted the word ἰδίοις when his line of sight drifted from the letters οις in the preceding word (τοις) to the same letters at the end of ἰδίοις?  (The NET’s footnotes, by the way, cover 18 variant-units in Ephesians.)   More recently, Wallace wrote (as Maurice Robinson has observed),  “Pragmatically, the wording of the original is to be found either in the text or the apparatus of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament. We have the original in front of us; we’re just not sure at all times whether it is above the line or below it.”  This is difficult to take seriously in a world in which nearly one out of three readings that are supported by the majority of Greek manuscripts (in Ephesians) are absent from the Nestle-Aland apparatus.

            The textual footnotes in major English translations of the New Testament only provide mere samples of the differences between the Byzantine/Majority manuscripts and the Alexandrian manuscripts.  Furthermore, even the Nestle-Aland apparatus badly fails to report Byzantine readings.  The only convenient and reliable way to identify the Byzantine-versus-Alexandrian readings is to consult the footnotes in the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform, also known as The New Testament in the Original Greek (2005).

Readers are invited to double-check the data in this post.

Lessons from GA 2437

            Practically every manuscript of the Gospels is textually interesting in some way.  Today, let’s take a look at the medieval minuscule 2437 – the oldest New Testament manuscript in South America – and see what we can learn from its contents.  2437 is a Gospels-manuscript from the 1000s or 1100s.  It is damaged; the text of Matthew 1:1-9:16 is absent, and so are the pages that contained John 17:14-18:2.  It was prepared for reading in church-services, as is indicated by the presence of marks delineating the beginnings and ends of lections embedded within the text.  Its text is Byzantine with some minor deviations, plus one major one. Page-views of all extant pages of this manuscript can be viewed, fully indexed, at the website of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.  (Some pages are out of order.)  A PDF of the manuscript is also available online, from the National Library of Brasil.    

            What can we learn from this manuscript?

            One thing we can learn from 2437 is that it is potentially very helpful to have digital reproductions of manuscripts.  This manuscript is housed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and there was recently a terrible fire at the National Museum in which over three-fourths of the 20 milllion items in the museum’s collections were lost.  Fortunately 2437 was housed elsewhere in Rio de Janeiro (at the National Library), but the tragic fire nearby serves as a reminder that digital  reproductions can ensure that the manuscript-evidence is disaster-proof.    

Another thing we can learn from 2437 is that many Byzantine manuscripts of the Gospels contain some liturgical expansions.  Exhibit A in this regard is in Luke 14:24.  The main text of the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform contains an extra phrase at the end of Luke 14:24:  “for many are called, but few are chosen” – the same words found in Matthew 22:14.  A hyphen in the margin of RP2005 conveys that this phrase is not in a significant portion of Byzantine manuscripts.  The Textus Receptus does not have this phrase in Luke 14:24, and thus the KJV and NKJV do not have it either.  The family-35 archetype reconstructed by Wilbur Pickering does not have it; neither does the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text (1982). 

2437 provides evidence of how this phrase entered the text of Luke 14:24:  it was used as a liturgical flourish at the end of a lection.  The main text of Luke 14:24 in 2437 does not contain the phrase, but it is written in the margin – in red, as part of the lectionary apparatus, instructing the lector about how to finish the lection. A similar marginal note appears in Codex S, also in red:  “for many are called.”  This illustrates how this phrase entered the text – not just in relatively young manuscripts, but also in earlier manuscripts such as Codex Y (034), from the 800s.  

Codex Macedonianus' text has absorbed
the flourish found in the margin of 2437.

A takeaway from this should be that when we find short phrases in some manuscripts that are absent from other manuscripts, we should ask if the phrase appears at the end of a lection, and if it could be used as a concluding flourish for a lection – and if the answers are“Yes,” then that is a strong indication of the origin of the phrase.  It ought to be noted that this accretion is supported by family-13 manuscripts, indicating that the form of text in family-13 is essentially a text that was prepared as a sort of liturgical hybrid:  a Gospels-text edited to facilitate the needs of lectors.

Similarly, 2437 shows how accretions occasionally slipped into the text at the beginnings of lections.  In Luke 7:31, the Byzantine Text does not have the phrase “And the Lord said,” but the Textus Receptus does.  These words originated not with Saint Luke but as an incipit, or introductory phrase for lection-reading, which can be seen in 2437, in red (as part of the lectionary apparatus) in an abbreviated form, between Luke 7:30 and 7:31.

Luke 7:30-32 in 2437.

A third lesson from 2437 is that even the most ordinary-seeming manuscript can have surprising and unusual readings.  Taking in hand the UBS Greek New Testament, and turning to Matthew 22-27, there are hardly any contests in the textual apparatus in which 2437 does not agree with the Byzantine text.  Exceptions, however, include a variant-unit in 24:31, where 2437 agrees with the unusual reading in Codex Bezae (and 1241 and the Vulgate and most Old Latin witnesses) – the equivalent of “with a trumpet and a loud voice” instead of “with a great voice of a trumpet.”  

Even more remarkable is a variant in Matthew 27:49, where 2437 agrees (mostly) with the fourth-century Alexandrian codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus (and Codex Regius) by including a statement at the end of the verse that someone came and took a spear and pierced His side, and water and blood came out.  In Codex Vaticanus the reading is as follows:  αλλος δε λαβων λογχην ενυξεν αυτου την πλευραν και εξηλθεν ϋδωρ και αιμα.

Someone tried to erase three lines written
by the scribe of 2437 in Matthew 27:49.

            2437 is one of thirty-five Greek manuscripts which have (or had) this unusual reading in Matthew 27:49.  (See Dirk Jongkind’s data for a complete list.)  In addition to those witnesses, the testimony of Codex Y should not be overlooked; while it does not have this variant in its text, it has a red wavy obelus (~ with a dot above and below the ~ ) between the end of Matthew 27:49 and the beginning of 27:50; the same symbol appears in the inner margin.            

This reading is remarkable for several reasons.  Perhaps the paramount reason is that although it is supported by two manuscripts (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus) that are often referred to as our “most reliable” manuscripts, if it were to be included in the text, it would form a contradiction with the parallel-passage in John 19 by stating that Jesus was pierced before He died; John’s account specifies that Jesus’ body was pierced, and that blood and water flowed from the wound, after He was dead.   

It is no surprise that there is no footnote about this reading in the Christian Standard Bible and the English Standard Bible, for their publishers probably did not want to bear the burden of telling their evangelical customers that if their two “oldest and most reliable” manuscripts were consistently followed – the two manuscripts which steered the compilation of their base-text to a large extent – their text would not be inerrant.    

            Another reason why this reading is interesting is that Severus of Antioch, a patristic writer in the first half of the 500s, commented about it in his Epistle 107, written to Thomas, another bishop.  In his younger days, Severus had studied in Alexandria, Egypt, and this may explain why he was aware of this reading, about which he wrote along these lines:
            “The holy evangelist John, and no one else, recorded that our Lord Jesus Christ was pierced in the side with a lance by a soldier, after He gave up the ghost, and blood and water came forth from it in a miraculous manner.  But certain persons have clearly falsified the Gospel of Matthew and inserted this very passage, when the contrary is the fact, in order to show that it was while He was alive that the soldier pierced His side with the spear, and afterwards He gave up the ghost.”

            Severus continues on this subject for several paragraphs, mentioning at one point that the question about whether this passage belongs in Matthew or not was resolved via a consultation of a copy of the Gospel of Matthew – perhaps the autograph is intended to be meant – which was (according to Severus) found in the tomb of Saint Barnabas; this volume, stored in the royal palace in Constantinople, was examined and found to not contain the passage in Matthew. 

            Severus proceeds to raise a question about John Chrysostom’s treatment of Matthew 27:49-50 in Chrysostom’s Homily 88 on Matthew, a text which is still extant.  Chrysostom (c. 400) cited Matthew 27:49 and included the reading about another coming to Jesus and piercing His side with a spear – but then Chrysostom affirmed that Jesus was dead when he was struck.  No wonder Severus was puzzled.

            More of Severus’ comments, and some additional information about this variant, can be found in Wieland Willker’s Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels.  One point worth special notice is that Eusebius of Caesarea included John 19:34 in the tenth list of passages in his Canon Tables, and the tenth list was reserved for material found in only one Gospel – which clearly implies that Eusebius did not find the passage about Jesus being struck with a spear anywhere but in the Gospel of John.  (This reduces the plausibility of the theory that Eusebius was directly involved with the production of Vaticanus and/or Sinaiticus.)

            In 2437, the text of the Alexandrian reading occupied three lines when the manuscript was produced, but the text there has been erased.  Enough traces of the writing have survived, however, not only to confirm that it is the same variant, but that in 2437, the phrase ended with “blood and water” (as in John 19:34) rather than “water and blood.”  

            Hort, one of the scholars who prepared the 1881 revised text, studied this reading, and called it a corruption, but he favored agreements of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus so much that he kept it in the main text, within double-brackets.  Hort categorized this reading – or rather, the non-inclusion of this reading – as a “Western Non-interpolation” – that is, as an interpolation found in all early forms of text except the Western Text.  Thanks largely to the discovery of Papyrus 75, the collection of verses and phrases in Luke 24 which Hort considered spurious – favoring the shorter Western variants at those points (some of which were also missing in the Revised Standard Version) have been restored to the text.  This reading in Matthew, however, has not been adopted, and it is rare to find a modern version that even mentions it in a footnote (the NRSV and the NET being two exceptions.)  The recently published Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament does not acknowledge its existence at all.

An annotation in the margin of minuscule 72,
alongside Matthew 27:48-50.

            John Burgon also gave this reading some attention, and the results of his research can be found in Appendix H of his 1871 book The Last Twelve Verses of Mark.  He concluded that the variant is probably an extract from Tatian’s Diatessaron (a continuous combination of the four Gospels, produced in the 170s).  Evidence for this position may be found in a margin-note in manuscript 72 which states that “In the Gospel account, according to a report of Diodorus and Tatian and assorted other holy fathers, this is also there:  “Another came with a spear and pierced His side, and there came forth water and blood.”  This is also said by Chrysostom.”

            Another possibility exists.  Just as some marginal notes in 2437 related to liturgical Scripture-reading are formatted as part of the text in other manuscripts, the phrase “And another came with a spear and pierced His side, and there came forth water and blood” may have stood as a marginal note in an early lector’s copy – not with the intention that the phrase should be added after Matthew 27:49, but as a signal to the lector that in the annual Scripture-readings on Good Friday, the lector was to turn to the excerpt in John in which this occurred – that is, the lector was to stop reading from Matthew 27 at this point, and continue the narrative by turning to John 19:31-35 (or 19:31-37).

            In other words, this variant originated as the equivalent of an early chapter-title in the margin, rather than as something intended to be inserted in the text.  The surprising thing is not that it entered the Alexandrian Text (in much the same way that the accretions in Luke 14:24 and 14:31 entered many Byzantine copies), but that it was replicated in some Old Latin copies (echoed by extant Latin copies such as the Garland of Howth, the Book of Mulling, the Book of Armagh, and the Book of Kells (all with the word-order “water and blood” at the end), in the Middle Egyptian version, and in over two dozen Byzantine manuscripts such as 2437.    

            In closing, I wish to briefly delve into what may seem to be a tangential subject:  lection-divisions in the closing chapters of the Gospel of John.   If this allows readers to decipher the marginalia which appears in 2437 in those chapters, in addition to illustrating a theory about the possible origin of the variant in Matthew 27:49, this scenic detour will be time well spent. 

            The Byzantine chapters in John are much fewer than in the other three Gospels, being only 18 in number (or 19, with the story of the adulteress listed as a chapter).  The last chapter begins at John 19:38, and the next-to-last chapter begins at 15:26.  But one also finds marks and marginal notes designating smaller segments of the text:  lections which were read especially at Eastertime.  In 2437, in addition to faint marks identifying John 15:26 as the beginning of chapter 17, and John 19:38 as the beginning of chapter 18, there are designations for the beginnings of lections (or portions of lections) at the following points:

● in John 16:2, where the mark ⁜ appears (= lection for the Tuesday of the seventh week after Easter),

● before John 16:15 (= lection for the Wednesday of the seventh week after Easter),

● in John 16:23 (= lection for the Thursday of the seventh week after Easter),

● in 17:1 (= lection for the seventh Sunday after Easter),

● at the beginning of 18:28 (= first segment of the Gospels-lection for the ninth hour of Good Friday),

●  at 19:20 (= lection for the second hour of Good Friday),

● 19:25 – archou (“Resume”) (= first segment of the lection for the ninth hour of Good Friday),

● 19:31 – archou (“Resume”).  (= second segment of the lection for the ninth hour of Good Friday),

● 19:38 (= the beginning of chapter 18, and the fourth in a series of lections (Matthew 27:1-38 + Luke 23:39-43 + Matthew 27:39-54 + John 19:31-37 + Matthew 27:55-61 + First Corinthians 1:18-2:1) in the liturgy for Good Friday).

                                    

            The arrangement of the series of lections in the liturgy for Good Friday – in which John 19:31-37 is flanked by passages from Matthew 27 – probably resembles, approximately, the kind of liturgical arrangement which was expressed in the marginal note that found its way into an ancestor of 2437.  (It could feasibly have been modeled on Tatian’s Diatessaron, which would explain, at least in part, the annotation in 72.)  Such a note could not possibly reach Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, the Middle Egyptian version (as represented by Codex Schøyen 2650, from the 300s), the copies mentioned by Severus, several important Latin Gospels-manuscripts, and the ancestor of over two dozen Byzantine manuscripts (such as 2437) unless somewhere in their ancestry their texts were all influenced by the early introduction of the same (or very similar) notations which expressed the arrangement of text-segments to be read on Good Friday.  This implies that at some point in the 100s, or the early 200s at the latest, a reading-cycle for major Christian feast-days existed; its influence was widespread, and, where it was not understood by copyists, it was capable of impacting the Gospels-text.

   

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