John 4:1 - "Jesus" or "The Lord"?

Papyrus 75

           At the beginning of the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John readers of modern Bibles encounter a minor deviation from the usual text:  The Byzantine text reads “When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John.”  Agreeing with the Byzantine text are versions such as the KJV, MEV, NKJV, and RSV.   The Tyndale House GNT, echoing Tregelles, also has “ὁ κύριος,” as did Scholz’s 1836 compilation, Nestle’s Greek New Testament in 1899, and Nestle’s 1948 Novum Testamentum Graece.  The 1881 compilation by Westcott and Hort also read ὁ κύριος.   

          In the Evangelical Heritage Version, the English Standard Version, the Christian Standard Bible, the Contemporary English Version, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, the Legacy Standard Bible, the NET, New International Version, the NRSV, and the New Living Translation, “Jesus” fills the place where “the Lord” appears near the beginning of the verse.

Codex 032 (W supplement)

          Have the ESV, NIV, NRSV, and NLT rejected the reading in the majority of manuscripts in order to conform to the earliest manuscripts?  No! Although Papyrus 66* and Codex Sinaiticus, 05, 038, 039, 086 (a Greek-Coptic fragment that contains  John 1:23-26, 3:5-4:18, 4:23-35, and 4:45-49, assigned to the 500s) and f¹ support Ἰησοῦς, Papyrus 66^c, Papyrus 75, and Vaticanus support ὁ κύριος, as do A C L W^supp 044 083 0141 33 700 892 etc.  You read that right:  the reading in the Byzantine text has earlier manuscript support than its rival.

          Versional evidence is quite divided.  The Vulgate, the Peshitta, the Harklean Syriac, the Bohairic, the Fayummic, and most Old Latin copies support Ἰησοῦς.  The Armenian and Georgian versions diverge:  the Armenian version supports Ἰησοῦς but the Georgian version supports ὁ κύριος.  The Sinaitic Syriac supports ὁ κύριος and the Curetonian Syriac supports Ἰησοῦς – and so does the Sahidic version, the margin of the Harklean Syriac, and one Bohairic copy. 

Codex Regius (L, 019)

          Ἰησους is read by Epiphanius and Chrysostom, whereas Cyril supports ὁ κύριος.  Augustine is inconsistent, supporting Ἰησους in three out of four cases but ὁ κύριος once. 

          The NET has a relatively long note arguing for Ἰησοῦς, but the annotator’s argument is somewhat presumptive:  the “immediate context” is simply asserted to outweigh John’s style, and Ἰησοῦς is simply asserted to be “the harder reading.”  There really is no reason to regard either Ἰησοῦς or ὁ κύριος as the harder reading expect the observation that Ἰησοῦς occurs later in the verse – so the adoption of Ἰησοῦς yields a slightly odd-sounding verse:  “Therefore when Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John.”

          The scribe of Codex 039 (Λ) may have felt that the second occurrence of Ἰησοῦς seemed jarring; he left out the second Ἰησοῦς from the text.  Likewise in modern times only one occurrence of “Jesus” is in John 4:1 in the English versions CSB, CEV, EHV, HCSB, NET, NIV, NLT, although in the Greek base-text of these versions Ἰησοῦς appears twice.  In my opinion this shows the translators’ reluctance to have the word “Jesus” appear twice in close proximity – although that was done in the Rheims version, ESV, LSB, and NRSV.        

          Bruce Terry, in defense of the reading Ἰησοῦς, has offered the theory that “Since “Jesus” occurs twice in the following clauses, copyists were more likely to change “Jesus” to “the Lord” to improve the style than visa versa.”  The UBS committee was divided (favoring Ἰησους with a C grade) but Metzger stated that Ἰησοῦς was preferred on the grounds that “it is unlikely that a scribe would have displaced it [ὁ κύριος] with Ἰησοῦς.”   That is more of an assertion than an argument.  

          A better explanation is that early scribes in the Western transmission-line  anticipated that readers would be confused by the vagueness of “ὁ κύριος” – which could refer to the Father as well as to the Son – and decided to make the text more specific.  This was adopted in part of the Alexandrian transmission-line.  Considering that support for ὁ κύριος comes not only from the vast majority of witnesses but also from multiple transmission-lines and from very early witnesses, and that Ἰησοῦς is supported by early Western witnesses in which exchanges from less specificity to more specificity is typical, the reading Ἰησοῦς should be rejected in favor of the less specific reading.

 

Clement's Byzantine Text of First Thessalonians

            Clement of Alexandria is one of the best-known writers of early Christianity; although we lack details of his birth and death, an estimate of 150-215 is probably not far off.  He was trained at Alexandria by Pantaenus, and after Pantaenus died, Clement began to lead the catechetical school at Alexandria, around A.D. 200.

            Clement of Alexandria left behind several compositions in which he quoted, referred to, or otherwise used many passages from the New Testament.  By putting together these Scripture-utilizations, we may get a picture of the New Testament text that Clement used.  By working through Clement’s Hortatory Address to the Greeks and Paidagogus and Stromateis and Hypotyposeis and What Rich Man Can Be Saved?, and other compositions, it is possible to isolate Clement’s Scripture-utilizations and tentatively reconstruct the text he used. 

            One might expect to find that Clement used a New Testament with strong Alexandrian affinities – after all, he was located in Alexandria.  But back in 2008, Carl Cosaert analyzed Clement’s Gospels-text and acknowledged that “Clement fails to meet the 65% rate of agreement necessary for classification as an Alexandrian witness in the Gospels.”

            In Matthew, Cosaert’s analysis indicated that although Clement’s text agrees with Sinaiticus more than with any other manuscript – at 73 out of 116 units of variation – Codex Π was a very close second, at 68 out of 109, and Codex Ω was a very close third, at 72 out of 118.  This is statistically a tie.  But it is not just a tie between these three witnesses.  Cosaert also compared Clement’s text of Matthew to the Textus Receptus – and it performed as well as Codex Vaticanus (B):  the Textus Receptus agreed with Clement’s text of Matthew 73 times out of 118 units of variation (61.9%); Codex B agreed with Clement’s text of Matthew 71 out of 117 units of variation (60.7%).

            In Mark, Cosaert’s analysis indicated that Clement’s text agrees more with the Textus Receptus – 29 times, out of 47 units of variation – than with À (21/42) or B (25/47).  The data from Clement’s utilizations from Mark is, however, rather sparse:  fewer than 50 units of variation, stretched over 16 chapters, are extant to consider. 

            In Luke, Cosaert’s analysis indicated that Clement’s text agrees more with Codex D than with any other Greek manuscript – 89 agreements out of 134 units of variation. In comparison, Codex Ω agreed with Clement’s text 77 out of 143 units of variation; P75 agreed with Clement’s text 62 out of 116 units of variation, and Codex Π agreed with Clement’s text at 74 out of 140 units of variation. 

            In John, Cosaert’s analysis indicated that Clement’s text agrees more with Codex L than with any other witness – 54 agreements out of 72 units of variation.  Manuscripts 33, B, and P75 (all between with a 70-75% agreement-rate) also agree with Clement’s text of John more than Π, Ω, and the Textus Receptus (which all hover around 60%).  Codex À does even worse, though, with an agreement-rate of only 54.3%.

            Cosaert’s data instructively illustrates two things.  First, it shows that it is precarious to draw conclusions based on sporadic sampling:  we cannot know the textual affinities of Clement’s text of Matthew by looking at his text of John, and we cannot know Clement’s text of Luke by looking at his text of Matthew.  Analyzing a patristic writer’s text is not always as simple as putting one knife into one jar one time and concluding that the whole jar contains peanut butter.   Clement’s Gospels-text is not comparable to a horserace in which one horse wins; it is more like four horse-races in which the outcome is different in every race:  In Mark, the Byzantine text seems to win; in Luke, the Western text comes out ahead; in John, the Alexandrian text wins, and in Matthew, the race is close and ends in a cloud of dust.

            Second, it shows that there is not much basis for the idea that the text of Clement’s compositions has been corrupted (toward a Byzantine standard).  Had this been the case, we would not see Western affinities in Clement’s text of Luke, or such strong Alexandrian affinities in Clement’s text of John.

            With all that in mind, let’s turn to another piece of research on the text used by Clement:  Maegan Gilliland’s 2016 doctoral thesis at the University of Edinburgh School of Divinity:  The Text of the Pauline Epistles and Hebrews in Clement of Alexandria.  (Use the link to download the thesis!)  This is a very detailed piece of research; Gilliland presents a book-by-book apparatus of Clement’s utilizations of each of Paul’s epistles, collated against representative witnesses of each text-type.  Although neither the Robinson-PierpontByzantine Textform nor the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text was included in the comparison, the Byzantine Text is well represented by minuscule 2423, a manuscript housed at Duke University.

            Although it would be worthwhile to take a leisurely tour of Gilliland’s thesis book-by-book, today I want to zero in on the data it contains about Clement’s text of First Thessalonians.  First Thessalonians is a rather small book, containing only five chapters; in these five chapters Gilliland has identified 32 variant-units utilized by Clement.   

            Before proceeding further, let’s briefly revisit  Cosaert’s data for the Gospel of John:  72 variation-units are stretched across 21 chapters.  The witness with the strongest agreement with Clement was Codex L (54/72) and after also observing that Clement’s text of John agrees with 33, B, and P75 about 70-75% of the time, Cosaert concluded, “Clement’s strong levels of agreement with the Alexandrian tradition clearly identify his text as Alexandrian.”   I want to make sure that it has registered that with one Alexandrian witness agreeing with Clement’s text 75% of the time over 21 chapters, and with three Alexandrian witnesses agreeing slightly less, Clement’s text of John was clearly identified as Alexandrian. 

            Now let’s look at Gilliland’s data about Clement’s text of First Thessalonians:  Gilliland compared Clement’s use of readings in 32 passages:  1:5, 2:4, 2:5, 2:6, 2:7, 2:12, 4:3, 4:4, 4:5, 4:6, 4:7, 4:8, 4:9, 4:17, 5:2, 5:4, 5:5, 5:6, 5:7, 5:8, 5:13, 5:14, 5:15, 5:17, 5:19, 5:20, 5:21, 5:22, 5:23, and 5:26.

            No utilizations were detected from chapter 3, and only one utilization – the use of a single word, δυνάμει in Str. 1.99.1 – was detected in 1:5 (and it seems to me that this could be a utilization of First Corinthians 4:20 instead).  If we set that aside, then Clement’s references to First Thessalonians cover only 2:4-12, 4:3-4:9, 4:17-5:8, and 5:13-5:26.  The existence of 30 utilizations concentrated in four segments, consisting of 11 verses, 7 verses, 10 verses, and 14 verses – a total of 42 verses – ought to be a plentiful basis on which to form an impression of the form of Clement’s text of First Thessalonians.  This is especially true when we remember that 72 utilizations, stretched over 879 or 866 verses (depending on which compilation one is using), were considered sufficient to tell us about Clement’s text of John.  (A rough-and-ready picture of the situation may be gained by considering that in these four segments of text from First Thessalonians, Clement gives us no data about 12 verses, in the Gospel of John Clement gives us no data about 794 verses (at least).

            Gilliland found that the medieval Byzantine minuscule 2423 agrees with Clement’s utilizations in First Thessalonians in 29 of the 32 variation-units – yielding an agreement-rate of 91%. 

            This justifies Gilliland’s statement (on p. 542 of her thesis) that “A glance at the individual manuscripts reveals a strong association between Clement’s text of 1 Thessalonians with the Byzantine manuscripts,” and (on p. 543), that Clement’s text of First Thessalonians “exhibits a text that is strongly aligned with the Byzantine tradition.”

            However, in the fifth chapter of Gilliland’s thesis, on p. 567, she states, “Perhaps the unusually high agreement with the Byzantine text is only a fluke resulting from a small data set.”  One page later, she states less tentatively, “There simply are not enough variation units for 1 Thessalonians to come to any conclusion about its textual nature,” and suddenly, “Clement’s text of I Thessalonians cannot be labeled as Byzantine.”

            The apparent reason for this sudden shift:  an “Inter-Group Profile” shows that Clement agrees with no Byzantine readings in First Thessalonians that are distinctly Byzantine; it also shows that Clement agrees with no Western readings that are distinctly Western, and it also shows that Clement agrees with one distinctly Alexandrian reading. 

             But let’s take a close look at the differences between the text of First Thessalonians in the Byzantine Text, in Clement’s text, and in Codex Vaticanus, to see if this reasoning is sound.  First, we should notice that in First Thessalonians 2:6, the Byzantine Text (Robinson-Pierpont) reads ἀπό rather than ἀπ’.  (The Textus Receptus there reads ἀπ’, agreeing with 2423 and Clement.)  Second, we should notice that in First Thessalonians 5:8, where 2423 appears to includes ὑιοι, the Byzantine Text does not.  Compared to 2423, the Byzantine Text thus loses one agreement in 2:6 and gains one agreement on 5:8; its net rate of agreement is thus the same as that of 2423:  out of 32 opportunities to agree with Clement, the Byzantine Text agrees 29 times.  The Textus Receptus agrees with Clement even more:  30 agreements out of 32 opportunities to agree. 

            Besides the Byzantine Text’s reading ἀπό instead of ἀπ’ in 2:6, the Byzantine Text also disagrees with Clement’s text at three points:

            ● 4:5 – Byz has θεόν where Clement has κυριον, but because all of the flagship-witnesses disagree with Clement, this variation-unit was set aside.

            ● 5:5 – Byz does not have γὰρ after πάντες

            ● 5:6 – Byz has καὶ before οἱ λοιποί

            ● 5:8 – Byz has σωτηρίας at the end of the verse, where Clement has σωτηριου, but because all of the flagship-witnesses disagree with Clement, this variation-unit was set aside.

            Codex Vaticanus, in comparison, disagrees with Clement’s text of First Thessalonians at

            ● 2:5 – B does not include ἐν before προφάσει

            ● 2:7 – B (and À) has ἀλλα instead of ἀλλ’

            ● 2:7 – B (and À* and P65 and C*) has νήπιοι instead of ἤπιοι

            ● 2:7 – B (and C and 1739) has ἐὰν instead of ἂν

            ● 4:5 – Byz has θεόν where Clement has κυριον, but because all of the flagship-witnesses disagree with Clement, this variation-unit was set aside.

            ● 4:6 – B (and À* and A and 33 and 1739) does not include ὁ before κύριος

            ● 4:7 – B has ἀλλα instead of ἀλλ’

            ● 4:8 – B (and A and 33 and 1739*) does not include καὶ

            ● 4:8 – B (and À*) reads διδόντα instead δόντα

            ● 5:7 – B has μεθυοντες where all other flagship-manuscripts have μεθυσκόμενοι,  However, Clement does not agree with Clement at this point:  in Paed. 2.80.1, Clement uses μεθυοντες, while in Strom. 4.140.3 μεθυσκόμενοι is used.

            ● 5:8 – Byz has σωτηρίας at the end of the verse, where Clement has σωτηριου, but because all of the flagship-witnesses disagree with Clement, this variation-unit was set aside.

            ● 5:19 – B has ζβέννυτε instead of σβέννυτε

           

            B has important Alexandrian support in six of these readings; in four cases B and À* agree.  It thus seems undeniable that no amount of spin can prevent the conclusion that Clement’s text of First Thessalonians really is much more Byzantine than Alexandrian.

Post-script:  

Two Translation-Impacting Variants in First Thessalonians

            First Thessalonians 2:7 contains a textual variant that has a potentially drastic effect on the meaning of the verse:  does Paul say “we were gentle (ἤπιοι) among you” (as in the KJV, NKJV, ESV and CSB), or does he say “we were like young children (νήπιοι) among you” (as in the NIV and NLT; the NLT does not have the word “young”)?

First Thessalonians 4:8-10
in GA 1022

            Bruce Metzger, from the first edition of his handbook The Text of the New Testament, used this textual variant-unit to illustrate a contrast of external and internal evidence to his students.  “Gentle” (ἤπιοι) has broad support from witnesses such as A K L P 33 the Peshitta, the Sahidic version, Clement, and Chrysostom; “infants” (νήπιοι) also has diverse support from P65, À* B C Old Latin, the Vulgate, the Bohairic and Ethiopic versions, and patristic writers such as Cyril and Augustine.

            Metzger explained that because the preceding word, ἐγενήθημεν (“we were”), ends with the letter ν, it would be easy for the letter ν to be added to ηπιοι, creating “νήπιοι” – and it would also be easy for the letter ν to be phonetically dropped from νήπιοι, creating ἤπιοι.  After presenting both sides of the issue, Metzger gave a verdict in favor of ἤπιοι, appealing to Daniel Mace’s axiom that no manuscript is as old as common sense – that is, considering that the transcriptional probabilities seem about equal, one should consider what the author is likely to have written, and this consideration favors ἤπιοι.  It is intrinsically unlikely that Paul would suddenly drop the idea, like lightning from a clear sky, that he and his associates had behaved like babies, and in the next breath say that they had been like a nursing mother cherishing her children.           

            Nevertheless, despite Metzger’s lucid argument – which he later restated in a protest-note in his Textual Commentary – he was outvoted by his colleagues.  Today, the reading in the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation is (incorrectly) νήπιοι.   

            First Thessalonians 4:8 contains two overlapping textual variants:  (1)  the inclusion or non-inclusion of καὶ followed immediately by (2) a contest between διδόντα and δόντα.  The reading καὶ δόντα (supported by Clement and the Byzantine Text) may account for the rise of καὶ διδόντα and διδόντα:  an early copyist whose uncial-writing was less than ideal wrote KAIDONTA but the first A was mistaken for a Δ, as if he had written  KΔIDONTA.  Subsequently, the letter K was regarded either as a stray letter and removed (leaving what was then understood as διδόντα (found in Codex B), or else it was regarded as a kai-compendium, which was then expanded into καὶ before διδόντα (read by À*).

            One may see a progression from καὶ δόντα to διδόντα in sync with progression from Clement to Origen.  For reference:  Griesbach and Scholz had καὶ δόντα; Tregelles and Westcott-Hort and Nestle (1899) and Souter adopted διδόντα (without καὶ); Holmes’ SBL-GNT reads καὶ διδόντα; one wonders by what reasoning this longer reading was preferred.  The Tyndale House Greek New Testament correctly reads καὶ δόντα.

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

Hand to Hand Combat: B and Aleph vs. 6 and 2401

How reliable are the manuscripts Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, compared to medieval manuscripts? Ask that question to promoters of translations based on the Nestle-Aland compilation – versions such as the NIV, NLT, ESV, and CSB – and the answer you receive will very probably be something like, “Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were made in the 300s.  The older a manuscript is, the closer it is to the original document; thus, the text in these two ancient manuscripts is more accurate than what one finds in medieval manuscripts.”

That seems reasonable, right?  Yes indeed.  On the other hand, it seemed reasonable for centuries to think that the sun revolves around the earth.  All the textbooks said so.  There is just one way to tell whether what seems reasonable is factual:  scientific testing.

When it comes to testing the accuracy of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, we have a problem:  what shall one use as the standard of comparison?  If the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece is used, there is a problem:  the Nestle-Aland compilation is the same as the UBS compilation; the UBS Greek New Testament’s Introduction acknowledges that its editors began “on the basis of Westcott and Hort’s edition of the Greek New Testament,” and Westcott and Hort (back in 1881) acknowledged that they esteemed Vaticanus and Sinaiticus so highly that they (the editors) were willing to reject their agreements only tentatively, even when their readings opposed all other Greek manuscripts.  So there is a bit of a circularity problem when an echo is used as the standard by which to measure the quality of the voice from which it came.      

Another option might be to use the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform as the standard of comparison – but then the objection would arise that such a standard would give an unfair advantage to the medieval manuscripts.  So, acknowledging the echo-problem, let’s put Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and two medieval manuscripts in a boxing-ring – today we leave the usual arena in the Gospels, and turn to Colossians 3:1-11 – and see which manuscript’s text is more accurate.                 

The two medieval manuscripts going up against the two “oldest and most reliable” heavyweights are minuscule 6 and minuscule 2401.  Let’s take a brief look at the medieval challengers.

Minuscule 6 has a distinguished history:  it was one of the collection of manuscripts cited by Stephanus in his printed Greek New Testament in 1550/1551.   Its production-date is not certain; in the 1800s, Scrivener consider it to be from “xi or later” but the production-date given in the Nestle-Aland Introduction is “XIII” – the 1200s.  Stephanus cited it as witness #5 (“ε′”).  The Nestle-Aland compilers gave it special treatment, listing it as a “Frequently Cited Witness” in Acts and the Pauline Epistles.  It is one of the few manuscripts that does not include the words “in Ephesus” in Ephesians 1:1.

          The description of minuscule 6 in Scrivener’s Plain Introduction (1894 edition) is brief:  “In text it much resembles Codd. 4, 5, and 75.  12mo, 5½ ´ 4½, ff. 235,” – supplemented by book-prologues, chapter-lists, chapter-numbers in side-margins, chapter-headings, Eusebian section-numbers in the margins in the Gospels, and a liturgical calendar of lections with St. Chrysostom’s liturgy; the writing-material is parchment.  Scrivener continues:  “This exquisite manuscript is written in characters so small, that some pages require a glass to read them.”  Robert Waltz provides some additional information about MS 6 at the Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism, including the observation by Wisse that 6’s Gospels-text is affiliated with a subgroup of family-Π.  I would say, too, that some parts of its text have a special closeness to the text of 1739.

          Minuscule 2401 is part of the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection at the University of Chicago, where it is nicknamed “The Theophanes Praxapostolos.”  It was produced in the 1100s.  In addition to the books of Acts, the Pauline Epistles (including Hebrews), and almost all of the General Epistles (pages from Second Peter are missing), it has book-summaries (part of the Euthalian Apparatus) and stichoi-counts.    

          Before we investigate the text of Colossians 3:1-11 in minuscules 6 and 2401, let’s consider how Vaticanus and Sinaiticus each compare to the Nestle-Aland compilation.  (As in past comparisons, the contractions of sacred names are not counted as variants, and words that are bracketed in NA are counted as part of the text.  Calculations will be made of the raw total amount of variation, and of non-trivial variation.)           

Vaticanus Compared to NA27

3:1 – no variation

3:2 – no variation

3:3 – no variation

3:4 – B reads μων instead of υμων (+0, -1)  (A close examination of the online digital image of this page of the manuscript shows that the copyist wrote ΖΩΗΜΩΝ.)  

3:5 – no variation

3:6 – no variation

3:7 – B does not include επι τους υιους της απειθειας (-24) 

3:8 – B reads νυνει instead of νυνι (+1)

3:9 – no variation

3:10 – no variation

3:11 – no variation

Number of non-original letters:  1

Missing original letters:  25

Total number of letters lost or added:  26

It looks like the Nestle-Aland compilation is practically a transcript of Codex Vaticanus, until we reach verse 7.  That’s a significant non-inclusion.  (The NIV, by the way, presently does not include επι τους υιους της απειθειας in its base-text; the reading is only mentioned in a footnote.)  The variant in 3:8 is an orthographic triviality, so we can conclude that Vaticanus contains 25 letters’ worth of non-trivial variation from the Nestle-Aland compilation in Colossians 3:1-11. 

Let’s see if Codex Sinaiticus’ text is better. Sinaiticus has some corrections in this passage and it is not easy to tell with complete confidence whether or not a correction was made before the manuscript left the scriptorium, or at some later time.  I will simply follow the main uncial text, and mention the corrections. 

Sinaiticus Compared to NA27

3:1 – À has εν instead of τω (+2, -2)  (Each letter in εν has been marked over with “/” and τ and ω have been written above the line.)

3:1 – À does not have εστιν (+0, -5)  (The word has been added above the line by a later corrector.)

3:2 – no variations

3:3 – no variations

3:4 – À reads υμις instead of υμεις (+0, -1)

[3:5 – À’s scribe initially did not write υμων after μελη; the word is added above the line.  The addition is not counted as part of the text of À.]

3:5 – À reads πορνιαν instead of πορνειαν (+0, -1)

3:5 – À reads πλεονεξειαν instead of πλεονεξειαν (+1, -0)

3:6 – À reads απιθιας instead of απειθειας (+0, -2)

3:7 – À reads υμις instead of υμεις (+0, -1)

3:8 – À does not read και υμεις (+0, -8) (The words have been added in the side-margin.) 

3:9 – no variations

3:10 – À reads επενδυσαμενοι instead of ενδυσαμενοι (+2, -0)  

3:11 – À does not have τα after αλλα (+0, -2) (The word has been added by a corrector above the line.)

Number of non-original letters:  5

Missing original letters:  22

Total number of letters lost or added:  27

When we remove trivial orthographic variants from the picture, and if we give the corrections in verse 8 the benefit of the doubt by assuming that it was made before the codex left the scriptorium, then the list of disagreements between À and NA boils down to just five –

            3:1 – À has εν instead of τω (+2, -2) 

            3:1 – À does not have εστιν (+0, -5) 

            3:8 – À does not read και υμεις (+0, -8)

            3:10 – À reads επενδυσαμενοι instead of ενδυσαμενοι (+2, -0)  

            3:11 – À does not have τα after αλλα (+0, -2)

This yields 21 letters’ worth of non-trivial variation.  Together, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus contain 46 letters’ worth of non-trivial variation in Colossians 3:1-11.  Now let’s look at this passage in minuscules 6 and 2401. 

MS 6 Compared to NA27

3:1 –  no variation

3:2 –  6 does not have της [At least I did not see της in the microfilm-images from the National Library of France.  Digital images might clarify this point, and I invite others to investigate.]  (+0, -3)

3:2 – 6 does not have τω before Θω (+0, -2)

3:3 – no variation

3:4 – 6 reads ημων instead of υμων (+1, -1)   

3:4 – 6 reads υμων after μελη (+4)  

3:5 –  6 reads ειδωλαλατρεια instead of ειδωλαλατρια (+1, -0)

3:6 – no variation

3:7 –  6 reads αυτοις instead of τουτοις (+1, -2)

3:9 – 6 appears to read πεκδυσαμενοι instead of απεκδυσαμενοι (-1)  [I suspect that the letter is present in the MS but not visible in the microfilm.]

3:10 – no variation

3:11 – 6 reads πασι instead of πασιν (-1)

Number of non-original letters:  7

Missing original letters:  10

Total number of letters lost or added:  17 

When we remove trivial orthographic variants from the picture, then the list of disagreements between 6 and NA27 boils down to the following:

3:2 –  6 probably does not have της (+0, -3)

3:2 – 6 does not have τω before Θω (+0, -2)

3:4 – 6 reads ημων instead of υμων (+1, -1)  

3:4 – 6 reads υμων after μελη (+4) 

3:7 –  6 reads αυτοις instead of τουτοις (+1, -2)

3:9 – 6 appears to read πεκδυσαμενοι instead of απεκδυσαμενοι (-1) 

which yields 6 non-original letters and 9 missing original letters, for a total of 15 letters’ worth of non-trivial variation (or less, depending on whether or not της  is in verse 2 and depending on whether the α in απεκδυσαμενοι is there or not).

      

Now let’s turn to our final combatant. 

2401 Compared to NA27

3:1 – no variations

3:2 – no variations

3:3 – no variations

3:4 – 2401 reads ημων instead of υμων (+1, -1)  

3:4 – 2401 does not include συν αυτω (-7)  (This non-inclusion is supported by Codex A.)

3:5 – 2401 reads υμων after μελη (+4)  (This reading is supported by Codex A.)

3:6 – no variations

3:7 – 2401 reads αυτοις instead of τουτοις (+1, -2)

3:8 – no variations

3:9 – no variations 

3:10 – no variations

3:11 – 2401 does not include βαρβαρος (+0, -8)

There are no trivial readings in Col. 3:1-11 in 2401, so the raw data and the final totals are the same:  its text has 6 non-original letters, and is missing 18 original letters, for a total of 24 letters’ worth of non-trivial variation.

Final score:

Letters’ worth of non-trivial variation in Vaticanus:  25

Letters’ worth of non-trivial variation in Sinaiticus:  21

Letters’ worth of non-trivial variation in 6:  15

Letters’ worth of non-trivial variation in 2401:  24

Conclusion

This little two-on-two contest does not verify the popular axiom “The older the manuscript, the better the text.”   Vaticanus is slightly older than Sinaiticus, and both Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are at least 600 years older than minuscule 6.  Yet, using NA27 as our proxy for the original text, the young minuscules 6 and 2401 introduce, combined, only 39 letters’ worth of non-trivial deviations from the original text, while ancient Vaticanus and Sinaiticus introduce 46 letters’ worth of non-trivial deviations from the original text.

As an additional exercise, suppose we possessed a manuscript that read exactly like the Robinson-Pierpont 2005 Byzantine Textform in Colossians 3:1-11.  Here is how it would compare to the NA27 compilation: 

Byzantine Textform (RP2005) Compared to NA27

3:1 – no variation

3:2 – no variation

3:3 – no variation

3:4 – Byz reads ημων instead of υμων (+1, -1)  

3:5 – Byz reads υμων after μελη (+4) 

3:6 – no variation

3:7 – Byz reads αυτοις instead of τουτοις (+1, -2)

3:8 – no variation

3:9 – no variation 

3:10 – no variation

3:11 – no variation

            Thus, in Colossians 3:1-11, the Byzantine Text, with six non-original letters present and three original letters absent, is closer to the original text than any of the manuscripts in today’s contest – if the Nestle-Aland compilation, which relies heavily on the “the most reliable manuscripts,” is used as the standard of comparison.   

John 4:17 - Prefer the Shorter Reading, Unless . . .

John 4:16ff.
in Codex L.

          Today, let’s take a look at the text of John 4:17.  This verse is not exactly at the epicenter of text-critical debates, but the evidence pertaining to it is nevertheless interesting.  In all English versions, in a discussion between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, after Jesus tells the woman, “Go call your husband, and come here,” John 4:17 runs along the following lines:

            The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”  Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband.’”  

            The Greek text: 

            Ἀπεκρίθη ἡ γυνὴ καὶ εἶπεν, Οὐκ ἔχω ἄνδρα.  Λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Καλῶς εἶπας ὅτι Ἄνδρα οῦκ ἔχω·

            That, at least, is the text that is found in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of John, and in most editions of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.  In the 26th, 27th, and 28th editions, though, the word αὐτῷ (“to him”) appears after εἶπεν (supported by Papyrus 66, Papyrus 75, and by B, C, N, et al).  Nevertheless several modern versions – including the CSB, NIV, NLT, and NASB – do not show any sign that αὐτῷ is in their base-text. 

            So, already, we have found something interesting in John 4:17:  although the Byzantine Text is often described as a text full of expansions, perpetuated by copyists who worked on the principle, “When in doubt, don’t leave it out,” in this case, the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilers must think that the Byzantine copyists did leave something out, because the Alexandrian form is longer.  One might get the impression that the compilers employed here the principle, “Prefer the shorter reading, unless it is Byzantine.” 

            Another interesting feature, with interesting implications, appears in the text of John 4:17 in Papyrus 75.  The copyist of P75, it is alleged, was meticulous and precise.  Yet in this verse the copyist wrote λεγει instead of εἶπεν – an arbitrary change, since both words mean the same thing.  This hurts the theory that the copyists of the early Alexandrian transmission-stream were immune from the temptation to attempt to “improve” the text. 

            The copyist of P75, however, was a model of discipline compared to the copyist or copyists responsible for the text that was written in Codex Sinaiticus (ﬡ).  In the text that was written by the main copyist in Codex Sinaiticus, the copyist apparently considered the words “καὶ εἶπεν” (“and said”) to be superfluous, and left them out.  Next, we see in ﬡ (and in Codices C*, D and L) a change in the order of the three words in the woman’s response:  Ἄνδρα οῦκ ἔχω rather than Οὐκ ἔχω ἄνδρα. 

            What elicited this change?  Probably not scribal piety, as if the copyists thought that the woman’s words should be conformed to Jesus’ response later in the verse, for in ﬡ and D, Jesus’ words are altered to Ἄνδρα οῦκ ἔχεις and thus there is no close conformity.  A more likely explanation is that this reading originated earlier in the Western transmission-stream, and was an attempt to simplify the Greek text for readers whose first language was Latin.

Jacob's well
(in a modern enclosure)

            A final observation may be made about the text of John 4:17 as it exists in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece:  when we compare John 4:17 in Byzantine manuscripts to John 4:17 in Alexandrian manuscripts, the Byzantine transmission-line appears much more stable.  According to Reuben Swanson’s horizontal-line comparison, the uncials A Y K M S U Δ Λ Π Ψ Ω all read the same way.  Consider, in contrast, the fluctuation displayed among the “earliest and best” manuscripts: 

            Papyrus 75 reads λεγει instead of εἶπεν.          

            Codex B* reads εἶπες instead of εἶπας.

            Codex ﬡ* omits καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, reverses the word-order of the woman’s words to Ἄνδρα οῦκ ἔχω, reads εἶπες instead of εἶπας, and changes the last word of the verse to ἔχεις.

            Codex ﬡ’s corrector added καὶ εἶπεν (without αὐτῷ).  

            Codex C* changes the word-order of the woman’s words to Ἄνδρα οῦκ ἔχω.

            Codex D does not include αὐτῷ, changes the word-order of the woman’s words to Ἄνδρα οῦκ ἔχω, and changes the last word of the verse to ἔχεις. 

            Codex L does not include αὐτῷ, and changes the word-order of the woman’s words to Ἄνδρα οῦκ ἔχω.

            Codex W (in a supplemental portion) does not include αὐτῷ. 

            Thus, it appears that only one manuscript – Papyrus 66 – agrees with the Nestle-Aland compilation letter-for-letter throughout the entire verse, without corrections.  A question about probability seems appropriate:  how likely is it that in two short and uncomplicated sentences, only one extant manuscript would preserve the original text?      

Luke 23:34a - Answering the Apologists (Part 1)

            This week, as Christians contemplate the words spoken by Christ during His crucifixion, we shall take a close look at the textual variant in Luke 23:34a, where, in almost all Greek manuscripts (and in the Latin Vulgate and the Peshitta), these words of Jesus are recorded:  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  It may seem overly cerebral to offer a technical analysis of these words which convey such a power message about the love of God – but future Bible-readers won’t see that message if it is taken out of their New Testaments, which is what some evangelical apologists would like to do, claiming that Luke did not write it.

            Before we survey the evidence pertaining to this sentence, let’s investigate how a few modern translations treat this passage, remembering that the editors of the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece put it within double-brackets, meaning, according to the Nestle-Aland Introduction, that the words within the brackets “Are known not to be a part of the original text.”     

            ●  The New American Standard Bible (© 1995 by the Lockman Foundation) has no footnote at all to indicate that a textual variant exists at this point.

            ● The 1984 New International Version (no longer in print), had the sentence in the text, with a footnote stating, “Some early manuscripts do not have this sentence.” 

            ● The English Standard Version has a similar footnote, stating that “Some manuscripts” omit the sentence. 

            ● The New Living Translation (© 2004 Tyndale House Publishers) also has a footnote; it says, “This sentence is not included in many ancient manuscripts.”       

            The New Living Translation’s footnote is inaccurate, and it should have been corrected a long time ago. 

            Now suppose someone asked the footnote-writers, “If a dozen manuscripts can be described as ‘many,’ then how should one describe the over one thousand and five hundred Greek manuscripts that include the sentence?”  Their response would doubtlessly be, “Manuscripts must be weighed, not counted” – the most abused axiom ever spoken in the field of New Testament textual criticism. 

            The idea behind that saying is entirely legitimate, in theory:  if one manuscript is shown to be a direct copy of another manuscript, or if two manuscripts are shown to have been copied from another manuscript, then, in the first case, we have a voice and its echo, and in the second case we have a voice with two echoes.  When we have both a manuscript, and its exemplar (that is, the manuscript from which it was copied), we have one witness repeated, rather than two independent witnesses. 

            This principle may be extended to groups of manuscripts which, although none of them is a direct copies of any of the others, share the same meta-textual features:  if they possess the same exact form of canon-tables for the Gospels, the same book-introductions, the same chapter-titles, the same subscription-notes, and the same lection-divisions, it is generally safe to say that they are all twigs on the same branch, so to speak.  This is especially true of manuscripts which exhibit the same commentary in the margin alongside the text or interspersed between blocks of Scripture-text.

            And what is true of meta-textual features is also true of the text:  if, out of a thousand manuscripts, two dozen share the same array of otherwise unattested readings – not just in a few cases which may be explained as randomly recurring scribal errors, but consistently in chapter after chapter – the group of manuscripts with shared rare traits may be considered to be related to each other, like great-grand-children of an ancestor whose rare genetic trait they have all inherited.

            And there is no reason to limit this to small groups.  Large groups of manuscripts which share the same readings are in some sense specially related; at least they are more closely related to each other than to the families of manuscripts that share rare readings. 

            That is the main application of the axiom that manuscripts must be weighed:  it means that manuscripts must be separated into groups, or branches; the voice of the individual manuscript is not regarded as an independent voice when it sings in unison with fellow-manuscripts in the same choir.  Different groups of manuscripts singing different notes – that is, displaying different textual variants – are organized into different groups, providing insights into the contents of their respective ancestor-manuscripts. 

            Other factors – such as a manuscript’s age, the skill of its scribe, and its physical condition – also come into play when assigning “weight” to a manuscript.  The valid objective of this approach is to amplify the ancestral texts that contain the readings shared by distinct groups of manuscripts – to put the focus not on the twigs, but at the points where the branches diverge, so to speak.

            Unfortunately that is not what most of today’s textual critics do.  For over a century, the “weighing” of manuscripts has been more like the handicapping of horses at a crooked race-track:  after several races in which one horse consistently wins, the race-track owners put weights on the other horses, so that the “best” horse wins more and more races – even if they are run at different distances, at different locations, and under different conditions than the races in which that horse won.   

            With that in mind, we come to the external evidence about Luke 23:34a.  In Papyrus 75, Codex Vaticanus, and the earliest stratum of the Sahidic version, the sentence is not there – which implies that these witnesses do not have it because the ancestral text upon which they were based did not have it.  Similarly, Codex Bezae, the Sinaitic Syriac, and Old Latin Codex Vercellensis (from the late 300’s) appear to echo an earlier Western form of the verse that did not have this sentence. 

            Those witnesses are joined by a few other Greek manuscripts – Codex W (which has an essentially Byzantine text in Luke after 8:12), Codex Θ (which is regarded as having a Caesarean text), 070, 579, and 1241 – but without them, it would be clear that the non-inclusion of the sentence is a very ancient reading, apparently traceable to a point in the transmission-stream when the Alexandrian and Western branches had not yet diverged.   

            The word “apparently” should not be overlooked, for the non-inclusion of the sentence is also attested by a smattering of relatively late manuscripts.  If we apply the canon, A reading attested sporadically in unrelated manuscripts tends to be non-original, then this would suggest the existence of a special factor which affected the text of Luke 23:34 in separate branches. 

            But instead of exploring that possibility today, let’s linger over the external evidence a while longer.  While the just-mentioned witnesses lack Luke 23:34a, an imposing array of manuscripts includes the sentence, including Codex Sinaiticus (in which the sentence, after being written by the main copyist, was marked alongside the text with parentheses around each line, after which someone else erased (without complete success) the parentheses-marks) and Codices A, C, N, L, 700, 1424, family 1, and family 13 – plus the Byzantine minuscules, which constitute a huge mass (over 90%) of the Greek manuscripts here.  Most of the Old Latin manuscripts also have the passage.  So do early versions such as the Vulgate, the Palestinian Aramaic version, the Armenian version, the Old Georgian version, and the Ethiopic version.  That covers quite a lot of territory.

            So when this evidence is considered in terms of weight, three Alexandrian heavyweights and three Western heavyweights do not have Luke 23:34a; nor do Codex W and Codex Θ.  On the other hand, one Alexandrian heavyweight (Codex Sinaiticus), most of the Caesarean heavyweights, and all of the Byzantine heavyweights except Codex W include Luke 23:34a.

            However, there is some important and weighty evidence yet to consider:  the patristic evidence.  Where a patristic writer from the 100’s or 200’s makes a specific quotation, it is like finding a small  papyrus fragment embedded in his writings; where a patristic writer from the 300’s makes a specific quotation, it is like an echo of a manuscript from the same time when Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were made.   In addition, the patristic writers’ comments sometimes express difficulties that they had when interpreting a passage – and if a passage seemed problematic to a commentator, the probability is high that it seemed problematic to copyists as well.  (See Wieland Willker’s textual commentary for details about the following patristic references.)

            The patristic evidence shows that “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” is an extremely ancient reading:
            ● Tatian (170’s) had the sentence in his Diatessaron, as shown by three citations in Ephrem Syrus’ Commentary on the Diatessaron (c. 360). 

            ● Hegesippus (170’s) recorded, according to Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History Book Two (chapter 23), that when James the Just was killed after being thrown from a tower, he prayed, “I entreat you, Lord God our Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  The same anecdote is recorded by Epiphanius (c. 375) in Panarion 77 (Antidicomanians 14:5).

            ● Irenaeus (c. 180), in Against Heresies, Book Three, twice mentions the passage:  in chapter 16, he alludes to Jesus’ prayer that His Father would forgive those who crucified Him; in chapter 18 he quotes Jesus’ words.

            ● Pseudo-Ignatius, in the late 100’s, stated that Jesus prayed for His enemies, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

            ● Hippolytus (early 200’s) uses the passage in Contra Judaeos 3, in the course of interpreting Psalm 69.  Hippolytus points out that when Jesus said, “Father, forgive them,” those to be forgiven were the Gentiles.  The authorship of Contra Judaeos is disputed; however, Hippolytus also quoted the passage in The Blessings of Jacob and Isaac, in the course of comments about Genesis 27.

            ● The Syriac Didascalia (c. 250) includes the following imprecise but recognizable statement:  “Our Savior made supplication to His Father for those who had sinned, as it is written in the Gospel, ‘My Father, they know not what they do, nor what they speak; yet if it be possible, forgive them.”

            ● Origen (c. 230-250), as translated by Rufinus (in Latin), appears to cite the passage in part of his Homily on Leviticus; however there is a chance that this is a parenthetical comment inserted by Rufinus.  In De Pascha 2:43, a text recovered among the Tura Papyri and published in 1979, Origen appears to utilize the passage. 
            ● Archelaus (late 200’s), in Disputation with Manes, quotes the passage and compares Jesus’ prayer to Moses’ prayer for Pharaoh and the Egyptians.

            ● Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 330) included the passage in his canon-tables, in Canon Ten.

            ● Acts of Pilate/Gospel of Nicodemus (300’s), in chapter 10, uses Jesus’ words in Luke 23:34a along with some of the surrounding text of Luke.

            ● Apostolic Constitutions (c. 380), which depends at some points upon the Syriac Didascalia, quotes the passage more precisely in II:16, and again in V:14.

            ● Ambrose (late 300’s), in his Commentary on Job, cites this passage twice (in 2:6 and 5:12).

            ● Many others use the passage – all without raising any question about its genuineness:  Gregory of Nyssa (late 300’s), Hilary (c. 350), Acts of Philip (300’s), Clementine Recognitions (300’s), Chrysostom – several times (c. 400), Pseudo-Justin (c. 400), Jerome, in Ad Hedibiam (c. 400), Hesychius (early 400’s), Augustine (early 400’s), and Theodoret (c. 450).  The only writer who challenges the sentence’s right to be in the text is Cyril of Alexandria (c. 425) – hardly surprising considering his location – as reported by the writer Oecumenius, around the year 600, in Asia Minor, in his commentary on Revelation.  In the course of commenting on the first part of Revelation 7, Oecumenius cites Luke 23:34a and mentions that “Although Cyril, in the thirteenth book of Against Julian, says that this prayer of the Lord is not found in the Gospels, we use it nevertheless.”     

            Now that we have some idea of the scope of early evidence in favor of the inclusion of this passage – for in the case of most of these patristic references, it is perfectly clear that Luke 23:34a was in the Gospels-manuscripts used by the writer, and that he expected the passage to be found in his readers’ copies as well – we can proceed, in the following post, to analyze the treatment of the passage in more detail.  First, though, as I conclude today, I wish to address a claim that Alan Kurschner recently made. 

            At James White’s Alpha & Omega website, Kurschner stated:  “If this is an excision,” – that is, if the sentence is original and has been removed in the early Alexandrian text – “it is difficult to explain its omission in toto from an anti-Judaic tendency of a scribe. There are examples in which over-pious scribes in the copying process would omit a single word with theological, pious, or “harshness” effects. . . . Surely then, we should see at least one example of a witness altering Jesus’ prayer for theological reasons. But this is not the case; the witnesses either omit the prayer all together, or it is all intact.”

            However, not only does this line of reasoning seem circular – claiming that copyists could not remove a sentence because copyists did not remove sentences – but according to Nathan Eubank in a detailed 2010 essay about this variant-unit, Epiphanius altered the wording slightly, so as to say, “Father, yield to them,” or, “Father, be patient with them” – a shift from ἄφες to συγχώρησον.  This is how Gregory of Nyssa cited the passage as well.   This little clue provides some guidance about the significance of some other patristic treatments of the passage – as we shall see, God willing, in the next post.