Video Lecture: Challenging Hort

Lecture 13:  Challenging Hort

Now at YouTube:

In lecture 13 in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism, I describe some discoveries made in the 1900s that posed serious problems for the sustainability of Hort’s theory of the Lucianic recension. (32 minutes)

Here is an excerpt:

In Papyrus 45, in the fragments of chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 of the Gospel of Mark, there are at least 17 readings that are not supported by the leading manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text and Western Text, but which are supported by the Byzantine Text.  I will mention some of them: 

① In the closing phrase of Mark 6:45, Papyrus 45 supports the Byzantine reading, disagreeing with the reading that is supported by the Alexandrian Text and the Western text.

② In Mark 7:5, Papyrus 45 supports the Byzantine reading that means “answering,” which is not supported by the Alexandrian and Western Text.

③ At the beginning of Mark 7:12, Papyrus 45 supports the Byzantine reading “And,” which is not in the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text and Western Text.

④ In Mark 7:30, Papyrus 45 supports the word-order in the Byzantine Text, disagreeing with the word-order in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae.

⑤ In Mark 7:31, after the word “Tyre,” Papyrus 45 supports the Byzantine reading.  Both the form and meaning of this passage are different in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Codex Bezae.

⑥ In Mark 7:32, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text do not have the word “and,” where it appears in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae.

⑦ In Mark 7:35, Papyrus 45 has the word “immediately.” The Byzantine Text has this word here too.  But the Alexandrian Text and the Western Text do not.

⑧ In Mark 7:36, Papyrus 45 is difficult to read but it appears to support a reading that agrees with the Byzantine Text and disagrees with the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text and Western Text.

⑨ In Mark 8:19, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text share the same word-order, disagreeing with the word-order in the Alexandrian Text and also disagreeing with the word-order in Codex D. 

⑩ In Mark 9:6, the wording in Papyrus 45 agrees with the Byzantine Text, disagreeing with Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae.

⑪ In Mark 9:20, the word-order in Papyrus 45 agrees with the Byzantine Text, disagreeing with the reading in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and also disagreeing with a different reading in Codex Bezae.

⑫ And, again in Mark 9:20, the Byzantine Text has a reading that is supported by Papyrus 45 but which is not found in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, or Codex Bezae.

            Now, this is a long way from proving that the fully formed Byzantine Text existed in Egypt in the early 200s.  But Papyrus 45 is from Egypt; it is not from a locale where we would expect the Byzantine Text to be found.  The thing to see is that in the world according to Hort – a world in which the Byzantine Text is a combination of Alexandrian and Western readings –  none of these readings should exist before the late 200s. 

            If Papyrus 45 had been discovered before 1881, nobody would have dreamed of proposing a theory that the non-Alexandrian, non-Western readings found in the Byzantine Text did not exist before the lifetime of Lucian of Antioch.  If anyone had said that, people would look at readings such as the ones I just listed, and say, “What about these?”

            Support for distinctly Byzantine readings in Papyrus 45 does not stop in Mark 6-9.  The fragmentary pages of Papyrus 45 in Luke 10-13 have a dozen distinctly Byzantine readings.  For example:

① In Luke 10:39, Papyrus 45 agrees with the reading “Jesus,” where Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae have the reading “Lord.”  Papyrus 75 also reads “Jesus.” 

            Notice the lack of a conflation in the Byzantine Text here.  It would have been very easy to create the reading “the Lord Jesus” if the Byzantine Text came from someone telling himself, “When it doubt don’t throw it out.”

② In Luke 10:42, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text share the same word-order that is not supported in the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian or Western forms of the text.  In addition, where there is damage to Papyrus 45, Papyrus 75 has the Greek equivalent of the word “from” before “her” at the end of the verse, agreeing with the Byzantine Text.  “From” is not supported by Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, or Bezae.

③ In Luke 11:12, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text share the same word-order at the beginning of the verse.  The Alexandrian Text has a different reading and the Western Text has another different reading.

④ In Luke 11:33, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text have the Greek word  φέγγος instead of the word φως, which is in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae.  I note that in the Society of Biblical Literature’s Greek New Testament, compiled by Michael Holmes, φέγγος has been adopted.

⑤ In Luke 12:5, Papyrus 45 supports the same word-order found in the Byzantine Text.  Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and Bezae have the opposite word-order.

⑥ In Luke 12:22, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text include a word that means “to you.”  Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and Bezae do not.

⑦ In Luke 12:30, Papyrus 45 has a reading that is in the Byzantine Text but Vaticanus and Sinaiticus have a longer reading, and Codex D has a shorter reading. 

⑧ In Luke 12:31, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text refer to the kingdom of God.  Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae refer to “His kingdom,” and Papyrus 75 refers to just the kingdom.

            Also worth mentioning is a reading in Luke 11:13 where the text refers to “good gifts.”  Papyrus 45 and the Textus Receptus share the same word-order here.  Yes; in Luke 11:13, the reading in the Textus Receptus is supported by the oldest manuscript of the passage, against the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian, Western, and Byzantine forms of the text.

            These are the kinds of readings – in manuscripts made before Lucian – that researcher Harry Sturz collected and listed by the dozens in a dissertation in 1967, just a few years after Bruce Metzger had written that it is a fact that Lucian of Antioch made the Byzantine Text. 

            Sturz’s findings were eventually published as a book, The Byzantine Text-type & New Testament Textual Criticism.  Sturz showed that not only  Papyrus 45, but also Papyrus 46, Papyrus 66, Papyrus 75, and others, share some readings with the Byzantine Text that are not supported in the flagship manuscripts that represent the Alexandrian and Western Text. 

            This demonstrates that it is incorrect to assume that readings which only have Byzantine support ought to be set aside as late readings. But this assumption is at the very foundation of the approach used by Westcott and Hort.  Hort did not have any of these papyri.  If he had, he would not have proposed that non-Alexandrian, non-Western readings in the Byzantine Text are no earlier than the lifetime of Lucian of Antioch.

The Myth of Tenacity

            On page 78 of The King James Only Controversy, author James White states:   “Once a variant reading appears in a manuscript, it doesn’t simply go away.  It gets copied and ends up in other manuscripts.”  To support this statement, White appealed to Kurt & Barbara Aland’s similar statement:  “Once a variant or a new reading enters the tradition it refuses to disappear, persisting (if only in a few manuscripts) and perpetuating itself through the centuries.  One of the most striking traits of the New Testament textual tradition is its tenacity.” – Aland & Aland, The Text of the New Testament, p. 56.

            Aland & Aland, however, only provided three examples of this “tenacity” – and two of the three are very poorly attested among later Greek manuscripts.  Their first example is the abrupt ending of the Gospel of Mark (i.e., the ending at 16:8); among extant Greek manuscripts, it is supported by exactly one later copy (304).  In addition, 304’s text of Mark is 90% Byzantine; there is a very real possibility that 304’s exemplar contained Mark 16:9-20; like 2386 and 1420 (both of which used to be cited – erroneously – as support for the abrupt ending), 304’s support for the abrupt ending of Mark may turn out to be merely a quirk. 

            What about Aland & Aland’s other two demonstrations of tenacity?  They are found in Matthew 13:57 and Mark 1:16:

            Regarding Matthew 13:57:  Aland and Aland point out that whereas some manuscripts (B D Θ 33 700) simply present Jesus saying that a prophet is without honor in [his] homeland (πατριδι), and some manuscripts (À f¹³) present Jesus saying that a prophet is without honor in his own homeland (ἰδία πατριδι), and some manuscripts (L Byz K N W) present Jesus saying that a prophet is without honor in his homeland (πατριδι αὐτοῦ), the scribe of Codex C conflated two readings, so as to write ἰδία πατριδι αὐτοῦ.  “This is typical,” Aland and Aland say – “a scribe familiar with both readings will combine them, reasoning that by preserving both texts the right text will be preserved.”

            The obvious problem with the Alands’ proposal is that Codex C’s reading in this passage is anything but “typical;” C’s reading is singular – that is, it is the only Greek manuscript that has this reading!  Far from being “tenacious,” this reading burst into existence with the scribe of C, and then went extinct.  We may have here a tenacious page of parchment, but not a tenacious reading.

            The example in Mark 1:16 is better, where it can be argued that the majority reading is a combination, or conflation, of the reading in Codex A (του Σίμωνος) and the reading in Codex D G W Θ and the Textus Receptus (αὐτου), producing the longer reading αὐτου του Σίμωνος.  Although a counter-argument can be made, let’s step back at this point and survey the evidence that has been collected to illustrate the proposal that once a reading (whether part of the original text, or the creation of a scribe) appears in a manuscript, it does not go away:

            ● The presence of the abrupt ending of Mark in minuscule 304.

            ● The reading ἰδία πατριδι αὐτοῦ in Codex C (a singular reading), and

            ● The reading αὐτου του Σίμωνος in the Byzantine Text of Mark 1:16.  

            Now consider the mass of evidence against the concept of tenacity:  the hundreds of singular readings that appears in ancient manuscripts, but of which there is no trace in later manuscripts.  How many such readings are there?  Greg Paulson wrote his 2013 thesis on singular readings in the codices Vaticanus (B), Sinaiticus (À), Bezae (D), Ephraemi Rescriptus (C), and Washingtonianus (W) in the Gospel of Matthew, and he mentioned how many singular readings – i.e., readings that do not recur in any other Greek manuscript – each one of these codices has in its text of Matthew.  Paulson’s data:
            Vaticanus:  97.

            Sinaiticus:  Scribe A:  163. 

            Bezae:  259.

            Ephraemi Rescriptus:  75

            Washingtonianus:  112.

            I emphasize that these numbers – showing that five important early manuscripts combine to produce a total of 706 singular readings – only take the text of Matthew into consideration.  If one were to extrapolate, so as to maintain a proportion of 25 singular readings per chapter of the Gospels, then we could reasonably expect that a study of all the singular readings in these five manuscripts throughout the four Gospels would total about 2,225.  Well, there we would have 1,500 non-tenacious readings – never seen before or after the one time they appear – versus the three submitted by Aland & Aland.  Suppose that two-thirds of these were nonsense-readings which scribes could reasonably be expected to regard as mistakes.  That would leave 500 non-tenacious, non-nonsense readings, just in the Gospels, just in these five manuscripts.

            And what if we consider some earlier manuscripts?   A single quotation from James Royse (from p. 246 of Scribal Tendencies in the Transmission of the Text of the New Testament, chapter 15 of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research, © 1995 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Ehrman and Holmes, editors) may serve to tell us:  Royse provides a chart which conveys that Papyrus 45 has 222 significant singular readings; Papyrus 46 has 471 significant singular readings; Papyrus 47 has 51 significant singular readings; Papyrus 66 has 107 significant singular readings; Papyrus 72 has 98 significant singular readings; Papyrus 75 has 119 significant singular readings.  (In a footnote, Royse helpfully defines “significant singular readings” as “those singular readings that remain after exclusion of nonsense-readings and orthographic variants.”)  

            Hundreds of readings refute the Alands’ claim about tenacity.  (Over a thousand in just six papyri.)  There is no evidence that these readings were ever perpetuated after they entered the transmission-stream precisely once.  Here the case might rest, Q.E.D. 

  

            But let’s also consider a few peripheral pieces of evidence.             

            ● Origen and Luke 1:46.  Bruce Metzger pointed out (in his essay References in Origen to Variant Readings) that Origen, in his commentary on Matthew, mentioned that in some copies, the Magnificat is said to be sung by Mary, while according to other copies, Elizabeth is the singer.  Presently, no Greek manuscripts say that Elizabeth was the singer. 

            ● Tertullian and John 1:13.  All Greek manuscripts of John 1 support the use of a plural in this verse, so as to understand it as a generalization about all genuine believers.  Tertullian, however, seems to have been convinced that the original reading here was singular, and that Valentinian heretics were responsible for changing it to a plural form.  (Denis S. Kulandaisamy has written a 300-page book on this little subject.)   

            ● Epiphanius and Matthew 2:11.  The apologist Epiphanius of Salamis, in the late 300s, mentioned that the wise men opened their “wallets” (πήρας), and noted that some manuscripts – like all Greek manuscripts extant today – referred instead to their “treasures” (θησαυροὺς).  No known manuscript today has the reading πήρας.  

            ● Jerome, Isidore, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Ephesians 5:14.  Several significant patristic writers drew attention to a textual variant in Ephesians 5:14, where instead of “And Christ will shine on you,” some manuscripts in their day read “And Christ will touch you.”  John Chrysostom seems to have alluded to this variant, too, although he did not go into detail about it.  If it is extant in any Greek manuscripts, there is no mention of them in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece. 

            ● Origen and Matthew 4:17.  Origen says plainly that some manuscripts do not have the word “Repent” in this verse.  All of our Greek manuscripts, however, presently support the inclusion of “Repent” in this verse; only in the Old Syriac copies and in the Old Latin Codex Bobbiensis is it missing.     

            ● Jerome and Matthew 13:35.  Jerome firmly asserts that all of the ancient copies state that these things were done to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Asaph.  No manuscripts of Matthew today have this reading, and Jerome mentions that by his own time, the text had been altered; one alteration had yielded the erroneous reading “Isaiah the prophet.” 

            If you take in hand Amy Donaldson’s two-part dissertation Explicit References to New Testament Variant Readings Among Greek and Latin Church Fathers, you will find details about these readings, and others, which were cited by early patristic writers but which now are never or only rarely found.

            Finally, the myth of tenacity is not only refuted by empirical evidence; it is rendered superfluous by logic.  For if a reading were to enter the transmission-stream, and then fall into oblivion, and the manuscript containing it did not survive, and no one referred to it in patristic writings, how would we know?  Even if we did not have the empirical evidence that thoroughly refutes the theory of tenacity, the theory could only ever be an assumption, not a verifiable thing.

                         

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

Non-Alexandrian Papyri and Early Versions

            In The King James Only Controversy, author James White made two claims on pages 195-197 that invite clarification.  First, he stated on page 195, “Every papyrus manuscript we have discovered has been a representative of the Alexandrian text-type.” Second, on page 197, he wrote, “An examination of the early New Testament translations reveals they were done on the basis of Alexandrian type manuscripts.”

            Is it true that all of the papyrus manuscripts that have been discovered represent the Alexandrian text-type? No.  The low-humidity climate in parts of Egypt allowed papyrus to survive longer there than in other places, so it would not be particularly surprising if all of the papyri that were found in Egypt contained Egyptian forms of the text.    

            In other locales, papyrus was much more vulnerable to natural decay, which is why we don’t find a lot of New Testament papyri in, say, Ephesus and Athens, for the same reason that we don’t find a lot of ancient Greek sales-receipts there. 

            And yet some New Testament papyri with distinctly non-Alexandrian contents have survived.  Papyrus 45, for example – a heavily damaged manuscript that contains text from the four Gospels and Acts – is the substantial manuscript of (part of) the Gospel of Mark (the surviving portion is from Mark 4-12).  While there is general agreement that P45’s text of Acts is Alexandrian, this is not the case regarding its text of Mark.  Researcher Larry W. Hurtado, in the 2004 paper P45 and the Textual History of the Gospel of Mark, affirmed that P45’s text of Mark was neither Byzantine nor Western nor Alexandrian nor Caesarean.  Hurtado also stated that “This third-century manuscript had numerous readings that previously had been thought to be “Byzantine.””

            Here are some examples of non-Alexandrian readings in Mark in Papyrus 45:
            ● 6:16 – Byz and P45 include οτι (not included in B À).

            ● 6:22 – Byz and P45 read αρεσάσης (B À:  ηρεσεν).

            ● 6:22 –Byz and P45 (here P45 is corrected; the scribe first wrote Herod’s name instead of “the king”) have the word-order ειπεν ο βασιλευς (B À read ο δε βασιλευς ειπεν)    
            ● 6:38 – Byz and P45 have the word-order αρτους εχετε (B L:  εχετε αρτους)  
            ● 6:41 – Byz and P45 have αυτου (not in B À L)

            ● 6:41 – Byz and P45 have παραθωσιν (B À* L have παρατιθωσιν)

            ● 6:45 – Byz and P45 have απολύση (B À L D have απολυει)

            ● 6:48 – Byz and P45 have ειδεν (B À L D have ιδων) [The letters ιδε in P45 here are tentatively reconstructed]

            ● 6:50 – Byz and P45 have -ον so as to read ειδον (B À read ειδαν; D omits)   

            ● 7:5 – Byz and P45 have the word-order οι μαθηται σου ου περιπατουσιν (B À L have a different word-order)

            ● 7:6 – Byz and P45 have αποκριθεις (B À L do not have the word)

            ● 7:6 – Byz and P45 have οτι (B À L do not have the word) 

            ● 7:10 – Byz and P45 have τιμα (B D have τειμα)

            ● 7:14 – Byz and P45 have ελεγεν (B has λέγει)

            ● 7:15 – P45 has -ν κοιν-, supporting inclusion of κοινωσαι (which B does not include)

            ● 7:29 – Byz and P45 have the word-order το δαιμονιον εκ της θυγατρός σου (B À L have a different word-order)

            ● 7:30 – Byz and P45 share the same word-order (B À L have a different word-order; so does D)

            ● 7:31 – Byz and P45 share the word-order, with ηλθεν after the reference to Tyre and Sidon.  B À L D have ηλθεν after Τύρου and before δια Σιδωνος (in B, δια Σειδωνος)

            ● 7:35– Byz and P45 include ευθέως (not included in B À)

            ● 7:35 – P45 is difficult to read but it ends the word with –χθησαν, supporting the Byzantine reading διηνοιχθησαν (B À D have ηνοιγησαν)

            ● 7:36 – P45 is difficult to read but appears to support the inclusion of αυτος (agreeing with Byz and disagreeing with B À L D.

            ● 8:13 – P45 has εις το πλοιον, agreeing with D; Byz has εις πλοιον; B À L do not have the phrase)

            ● 8:15 – P45 ends the verse with Ηρωδιανων, agreeing with the Caesarean text (W Θ 565 f¹  f¹³)

            ● 8:19 – P45 and Byz share the word-order πληρεις κλασματων ηρατε (B À L have κλασματων πληρεις ηρατε; D has κλασματων ηρατε πληρεις

            ● 8:20 – P45 and Byz have ειπον (B L have λεγουσιν αυτω; À has λεγουσιν)  

            ● 8:34 – P45 and Byz have ακολουθειν (B À L have ελθειν)

            ● 8:35 – P45 and Byz share the word-order αυτου σωσαι (B has εαυτου before ψυχην σωσαι) 

            ● 8:36 – P45 and Byz have εαν (B À L do not have the word)

            ● 8:36 – P45 and Byz have κερδηση (B À have κερδησαι)

            ● 8:37 – P45 and Byz have δωσαι (B À* have δοι; À^c has ιδω)

            ● 8:37 – P45 and Byz have αυτου (B has εαυτου)

            ● 9:2 – P45 and Byz have μεθ’ (B À L D have μετα)          

            ● 9:6 – P45 and Byz have ησαν (B À D have κφοββοι)

            ● 9:20 – P45 and Byz share the word-order ευθεως το πνευμα (B À L have το πνευμα ευθυς; D has το πνευμα.

             

            Thus, while P45 is far from a strong ally of the Byzantine Text, it is certainly not an Alexandrian manuscript in Mark chapters 8 and 9.  In addition, notice the eleven readings introduced by red dots; these readings shared by P45 and the Byzantine Text are not shared by the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian and Western forms of the text.  (How seriously should we take Dan Wallace’s claim – repeated by James White – that there are no more than eight uniquely Byzantine readings to be found among the papyri?  A question of methodology occurs to me:  if Dan Wallace were to take in hand the text of Mark 6-9 in the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform, would he ever find the Byzantine Text?  How many readings in Mark 6-9 are uniquely Byzantine?)    

           Papyrus 38, a single damaged leaf from a codex of the book of Acts, has been assigned to the early 200s – about the same period when P45 was made – and its text is definitely Western, not Alexandrian.  Papyrus 29 was also identified by Bruce Metger as an ally of the Western Text.

            Papyrus 48, despite being small and difficult to read, is generally regarded as having a text that is more closely allied with the Western Text than with the Alexandrian Text.    

            Papyrus 41, from the 700s, is Greek-Coptic manuscript containing a form of the Western Text of Acts (chapters 17-22).                                                     

            In addition, although the text of uncial 0176 is written on parchment rather than papyrus, that is not a valid reason to ignore it.  Here we have a miniature codex from Oxyrhynchus, made in the late 300s or 400s, with a text that is practically indistinguishable from the Byzantine Text.   

            Also, analysis of the text of several other papyri is inconclusive as far as the task of categorizing the text’s type is concerned, usually because the papyrus is a small fragment, or because its text is hard to read, or because its contents are limited mainly to a passage where there are not a lot of textual contests.  These include Papyrus 17, Papyrus 19, Papyrus 69, Papyrus 70, Papyrus 98, Papyrus 107, Papyrus 108, Papyrus 109, Papyrus 110, Papyrus 111, Papyrus 113, Papyrus 114, Papyrus 115, Papyrus 116, Papyrus 118, Papyrus 121, Papyrus 122, and Papyrus 126.

            Papyrus 37, containing text from Matthew 26, has a non-Alexandrian text.    

            Papyrus 72 is basically Alexandrian in First Peter and Second Peter, but in Jude its text is definitely not Alexandrian.

            Papyrus 2 is probably not a continuous-text manuscript; assigned to the 600s, it contains text from Luke 7 and John 12, in a Western form. 

            Papyrus 3 is also probably the remains of a lectionary; it is assigned to the 500s or 600s and contains a non-Alexandrian form of Luke 7:36-45 and Luke 10:38-42.

            Papyrus 104, though very small, betrays non-Alexandrian influence via the non-inclusion of Matthew 21:44.

                         
            And that, I think, is sufficient to demonstrate that the claim that all of the papyri support the Alexandrian Text is false. 

           

            Is the claim that the early New Testament translations were done on the basis of Alexandrian type manuscripts any better?  No.  Certainly the affinities of the Old Latin version(s) favor the Western Text far more than the Alexandrian Text.  The Gothic version has long been regarded as a strong ally of the Byzantine Text, and although research by Roger Gryson may yield a slight adjustment of that assessment, it is not a drastic reappraisal.  The Sinaitic Syriac and the Curetonian Syriac are both characterized as Western, and the Peshitta agrees with the Byzantine Text about 80% of the time.  The Gospels-text of the Armenian version, and the Old Georgian version which echoes an early form of it, are Caesarean rather than Alexandrian.

            Only in Egypt is there clear evidence that early translators were aware of the existence of the Alexandrian Text.  To different degrees, the Egyptian languages (or dialects) of Sahidic, Bohairic, Achmimic, and Middle Egyptian reflect a primarily Alexandrian base-text.  The earliest strata of the Sahidic version is aligned closely with the text of Codex Vaticanus.  This relationship is demonstrated succinctly and effectively by evidence from their texts of Acts 27:37, where Luke mentions (in the Nestle-Aland compilation) that there were 276 souls aboard the ship.  In both Codex Vaticanus and in the Sahidic version, the text says that “about 76” souls were on board.

            F. F. Bruce, in his commentary on Acts, offered a compelling explanation for the reading in B and the Sahidic version – an explanation that had already been offered by John Burgon in his book The Revision Revised.  It may be worthwhile to present a full extract from Burgon:

            “Whereas the Church has hitherto supposed that S. Paul’s company ‘were in all in the ship two hundred threescore and sixteen souls’ (Acts xxvii. 37), Drs. Westcott and Hort (relying on the authority of B and the Sahidic version) insist that what S. Luke actually wrote was ‘about seventy-six.’  In other words, instead of διακόσιαι ἑβδομηκονταέξ, we are invited to read ὩΣ ἑβδομηκονταέξ.  What can have given rise to so formidable a discrepancy?  Mere accident, we answer.  First, whereas S. Luke certainly wrote ἧμεν δέ ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ αἱ πᾶσαι ψυχαί, his last six words at some very early period underwent the familiar process of Transposition, and became, αἱ πᾶσαι ψυχαί ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ ; whereby the word πλοίῳ and the numbers διακόσιαι ἑβδομηκονταέξ were brought into close proximity.   (It is thus that Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, &c., wrongly exhibit the place.)  But since “276” when represented in Greek numerals is СΟϛ, the inevitable consequence was that the words (written in uncials) ran thus:  ΨΥΧΑΙΕΝΤΩΠΛΟΙΩϹΟϛ.  Behold, the secret is out!  Who sees not what has happened?  There has been no intentional falsification of the text.  There has been no critical disinclination to believe that ‘a corn-ship, presumably heavily laden, would contain so many souls,’ – as an excellent judge supposes.  The discrepancy has been the result of sheer accident:  is the merest blunder.  Some IInd-century copyist connected the last letter of ΠΛΟΙΩ with the next ensuing numeral, which stands for 200 (viz. Ϲ); and made an independent word of it, viz. ὡς – i.e., ‘about.’  But when Ϲ (i.e., 200) has been taken away from ϹΟϛ (i.e., 276), 76 is perforce all that remains.”

James White, February 19, 2019

            This faulty reading in the text of B and the Sahidic version requires such a special set of circumstances to come into existence that it suggests that the Sahidic version not only is related to the Alexandrian Text in general but also to Codex Vaticanus specifically.                       

            In conclusion:  the claims that have been tested here are not just wrong; they are horribly, catastrophically wrong.  One might say that they are laughably wrong, but considering that they continue to mislead readers of The King James Only Controversy (published by Bethany House), this is no laughing matter. 



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    

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

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

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

           

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

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

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

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

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

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

Between ποτηρίων καὶ and –σιν, there were either

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

             

            Four additional notes may be added about this passage. 

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

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

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

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

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