Romans 12:11: “Lord,” or “Time”?

           Venturing outside the Gospels today, let’s look into Romans 12:11.  Nowadays there is virtually no debate about how the fourth phrase in this passage should be read:  τῷ κυρίῳ δουλεύοντες – “serving the Lord.”   A search through the NIV, KJV, ESV, NKJV, NASB, CSB, NLT, and NET shows no sign that there is a textual variant here.  Bruce Metzger, in his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, used four and a half lines of text to dismiss the alternative reading τῷ καίρῳ δουλεύοντες – “serving the time” – assigning the usually-found κυρίῳ an “A” rating (which indicated, according to the preface of the UBS Greek New Testament, p. 3*, that “the text is certain.”)  In the SBL-GNT, there is no footnote about this phrase.  Likewise the Tyndale House GNT does not indicate a textual variant here.

          In the 1500s, this phrase was an epicenter of textual dispute.  The editions of the Greek New Testament released by Erasmus in 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535, as well as Stephanus’ 1550 edition, read τῷ καίρῳ δουλεύοντες – “serving the time.”  (Erasmus’s first edition, in 1516, had a misprint, reading κυρίου, with the final -ου combined into a single character.)

          Consequently, William Tyndale’s 1534 New Testament read here, “Applye youre selves to ye tyme.”  The 1535 Coverdale New Testament likewise read, “Applye youre selues vnto the tyme,” and so did the 1537 Matthews Bible, echoing Tyndale’s rendering.  The 1539 Great Bible, issued with the endorsement of Henry VIII, also read “Applye youre selues to the tyme.”  Martin Luther, using Erasmus’ second edition, also translated the final phrase of Romans 12:11 as the German equivalent of “serving the time.”  John Calvin, in his commentary on Romans, used the reading “serving the time,” but Calvin also noted that he did not dare to altogether reject the reading “serving the Lord,” on the grounds that it was supported by many ancient copies.

          In the Preface of the 1582 Rheims New Testament, the Roman Catholic translators took to task some of their Protestant counterparts on account of their handling of this phrase, claiming, “They translate not according to the Greek text, Tempori servientes, serving the time, which Beza says must be a corruption, but according to the vulgar Latin, Domino servientes, serving our Lord.”

            The 1560 Geneva Bible and the 1568 Bishops’ Bible, however, had “seruing the Lord.”  And when the 1611 King James Version was issued, it also had “seruing the Lord.”   

          The reading “τῷ κυρίῳ δουλεύοντες” dominates both the Byzantine Text and manuscripts such as P46, Vaticanus, and Sinaiticus, as well as versional evidence such as the Old Latin, Peshitta, and Coptic and Armenian versions.   

          In the Greek-Latin Codex Claromontanus (06, D), a majuscule manuscript from the 400s (or maybe the early 500s), the initial writing of the last line of Romans 12:11 reads τῷ καίρῳ δουλεύοντες.  (This was changed to the usual reading, and then was changed back.)  The majuscules F (010, Augiensis) and G (012, Boernerianus), both from the 800s, also read τῷ καίρῳ δουλεύοντες here, as does minuscule 5 (which was consulted by Stephanus).  It was once thought that minuscule 2400 contained this phrase, but it does not.  (2400 is a richly illustrated New Testament manuscript from the 1100s which is online as part of the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection at the University of Chicago, catalogued as MS 965 in the collection; this phrase in Romans 12 begins the first line on Image 321.) That’s it, as far as extant Greek manuscript-evidence for is concerned.

          An assortment of patristic evidence indicates that in the first several centuries of Christianity, “serving the time” in Romans 12:11 was much more widespread than it is today.  The Latin writer known as Ambrosiaster, writing the second half of the 300s, maintained that this was the correct reading.  Jerome, in his Epistle 27, To Marcella, energetically defended the Vulgate against some of its critics, calling them “two-legged asses.”  In the course of his lively defense he wrote that his critics “may say if they will, ‘Rejoicing in hope, serving the time,’ but we will say, ‘Rejoicing in hope, serving the Lord.”  Rufinus, a contemporary of Jerome, also favored “serving the Lord” but was aware that copies existed which supported “serving the time.” 

          Earlier, Cyprian, who wrote in Latin about halfway through the 200s, seems to allude to the phrase serving the time, in his Letter 5, although this reference is far from a direct quotation, and he does not use the wording of Romans 12:11 found in Codex Claromontanus.   

          In the first, second, and third editions of the UBS Greek New Testament, the writer Theophilus of Antioch (who lived in the 100s) is cited as if he supported κυρίῳ.  But as J. L. North ascertained in the course of research his thesis about this verse, this is erroneous; it is perhaps a result of an inattentive editor misreading an abbreviated reference to the medieval author Theophylact.  But only slightly later than Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria used Romans 12:11 with κυρίῳ. 

          Origen is cited in the fourth edition of the UBS Greek New Testament as if he was aware of manuscripts that supported καίρῳ.  The reference in question, however, is to Origen’s material as translated into Latin by Rufinus – who did not always strictly separate Origen’s comments from his own.  Origen accepted the reading “serving the Lord” but also – apparently – attested to the existence of Latin copies in the early 200s that read “serving the time.”   Κυρίῳ is also supported by John Chrysostom. 

          Athanasius, advising his contemporary Dracontius to embrace the office of bishop at Alexandria around 355, in the third paragraph of his Epistle 49, To Dracontius, wrote, “If you feared the times and acted as you did from timidity, your mind is not manly.  For in such a case you ought to manifest zeal for Christ, and rather meet circumstances boldly, and use the language of blessed Paul, ‘In all these things we are more than conquerors’ – and the more so, inasmuch as we ought to serve not the time, but the Lord.” [emphasis added]  Whether this is entirely coincidental, or is based on his awareness of the textual contest in Romans 12:11, is hard to say.

          The meaning and application of both readings are unobjectionable:  we are certainly instructed to serve the Lord, and we should also serve the time, in the sense that we should make the most of the opportunities we have – “redeeming the time,” as Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:16 and Colossians 4:5.

An unusual sacred-name contraction
in Codex Augiensis.

          If we grant that κυρίῳ, with its extremely broad support, is the original reading, how did the reading καίρῳ originate?  It probably had something to do with both the way the sacred name κυρίῳ (”Lord”) was contracted (normally, it was written in New Testament manuscripts as κω), and with the way the word και was sometimes abbreviated (as ϗ, the kai-compendium).  Rarely, the kai-compendium replaced the letters και when και was part of a larger word.  And it is possible that in a time and place where the nomina sacra were not entirely standardized, κυρίῳ could be contracted as κρω.  (See the very unusual contraction of κυριον as κρν in First Corinthians 9:1 in Codex Augiensis.)  A copyist who read κρω in his exemplar could, in theory, think that he was not looking at a nomina sacra, but at a kai-compendium embedded within a word, and decide to de-contract it, as καίρῳ.

          On the other hand, if we approach the question on the premise that καίρῳ was the original reading, it is conceivable that κυρίῳ originated after a copyist wrote καίρῳ as ϗρω, and a subsequent copyist, not recognizing the kai-compendium, thoughtfully expanded ϗρω into κυρίῳ.  But this is not likely to have influenced the majority of manuscripts, early or late. 

          Meanwhile, multiple transmission-streams support Κω.  Κυρίῳ was the original reading here.  But a text-critical footnote acknowledging the early existence of καίρῳ would not be out of the question, considering the historical impact of Tyndale and Erasmus.

          Readers wishing to investigate this textual contest further may wish to consult the mercilessly detailed and meticulous research found in J. L. North’s 1988 thesis “Romans 12.11: a Textual, Lexical and Ethical Study.” 

  

Five Bad Reasons to Use the Textus Receptus

            The Nestle-Aland text of the Greek New Testament is over 95% Alexandrian at points where the Alexandrian and Byzantine manuscripts meaningfully disagree (i.e., where they disagree in both form and meaning, not in mere matters of spelling and transpositions).  This means, among other things, that this modern critical text almost always adopts readings found in a small minority of manuscripts – the “oldest and best manuscripts” that the ESV’s footnotes refer to – and almost always rejects the readings in the vast majority of manuscripts, including the manuscripts upon which the New Testament in the King James Version (and other Reformation-era versions such as Tyndale’s version and the Geneva Bible) was based.

            This poses a problem for some individuals in the Reformed tradition, which in several creeds (such as the 1647 Westminster Confession of Faith) affirms that the original Hebrew and Greek text of the books of the Bible have been, by God’s singular care and providence, “kept pure in all ages.”  The New Testament text that the formulators of this doctrinal statement had in mind was not theoretical:  it was in their hands, in the forms of the Textus Receptus which had been published up to that time.  The editions of the Textus Receptus that had been made by Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza had some variations (at Romans 12:11 for example) – but not much. 

            It has been proposed that inasmuch as (a) the Greek text of the New Testament was kept pure in the age of the Reformation, as in all other ages, and (b) the Textus Receptus is pure, it follows that other forms of the text – especially in cases where the form of the text is so thoroughly changed as to mean something that the Textus Receptus does not mean – must be corrupt.  This logically leads to a rejection of the UBS/Nestle-Aland compilation.

            It also leads to a complete embrace of the Textus Receptus, minority-readings and all.  For those who believe that divine authority rests in the original text, and not in readings created by copyists, this is not a good idea.  Here are five reasons why a dogmatically-driven adherence to the Textus Receptus – Textus Receptus-Onlyism, one might say – should be avoided.

ONE:  God has promised to make every word and letter of the original text available to me. 

            There is no divine promise that God will make His exact written words perpetually available to His people on earth.  Jesus said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” in Matthew 24:35.  Peter likewise affirmed the words of Isaiah:  “The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.”  And in Psalm 12:6, following the statement that the words of the Lord are pure words, Psalm 12:7 says, “You shall keep them, O Lord, You shall preserve them from this generation forever.”  Specialists might argue that the text of Psalm 12:7 has been miscopied or mistranslated, and that the subject of Psalm 12:7 is not God’s words, but God’s people; this is why the NIV, CSB, et al translate the verse differently.  But even if were granted that God will preserve His words forever, why should anyone interpret this to mean anything except that God’s declarations, emanating from an unchanging and eternal God, do not change?

            Greater consideration should be given, when affirming that heaven and earth shall pass away, but the word of the Lord endures forever, that the material which constitutes copies of the New Testament (whether papyrus, or parchment, or paper) is part of the earth which shall pass away.  But more pertinent to the subject at hand is the point that saying “I will always keep My word and I will never forget what I have said” is not the same as saying, “I will make sure all Christians have every word I revealed to the authors of the New Testament in the exact form in which it was first written down.”  The approach of “Confessional Bibliology,” however, seems to equate the two.

            Historically, there is no evidence that the exact words of the Gospels were ever copied with 100% accuracy in a single manuscript.  If we look at the early versions – the Old Latin, and the earliest known form of the Sahidic version, for example – and reconstruct their base-texts, we can see that they were different.  And if we look at the early papyri, we can observe that that they, too, often differ from one another.  Of course, it can be claimed that the early Sahidic version is corrupt because it was based on Greek manuscripts that were corrupt; it was not (the theory runs) descended from the manuscripts of Christians, but from the manuscripts of second-century heretics in Egypt.  So little is known of the state of Christianity in Egypt in the 100s that it is difficult to prove or disprove such a theory.  But let anyone select whatsoever early version of the Gospels, from whatsoever locale, and see if it agrees with the Textus Receptus in all respects.  He will find that it certainly does not.
            Likewise, if we survey all surviving manuscripts of the Gospels, do we find any which contain the exact words found in the Textus Receptus, 100%, without any deviation?  If very late manuscripts which were based on printed copies of the Textus Receptus are set aside, the answer is No.  There is simply no reason to posit that God has ever promised to make every letter of the original text of the New Testament perpetually available to the church on earth; nor is there evidence that God has actually done so, for if we were to collect half a dozen Greek manuscripts of the Gospels, from whatsoever ages and locales, and compare their texts, we would find some differences.

TWO.  If the Textus Receptus was good enough for the formulators of the Westminster Confession of Faith, it’s good enough for me.

            The discussions of text-critical issues in the Reformation period is often belittled nowadays, as if people in the 1500s and early 1600s had little awareness of controversies involving, for instance, the ending of the Gospel of Mark, or the story of the adulteress in John 7:53-8:11, or the doxology of the Lord’s model prayer in Matthew 6:13.  However, if one were to consider just the comments of one obscure writer of the day – the Roman Catholic scholar Nicholas Zegers – one would see that these textual contests, and many others, were carefully studied. 

            Such research did not suddenly cease when the Westminster Confession of Faith – or any other creed – was formulated and approved by leaders in the Protestant churches.  The Reformers’ belief that the text in their hands was pure did not spur them to stop accumulating evidence (in the form of manuscripts, patristic writings, etc.) that would potentially confirm or challenge specific readings in that text.  James Ussher (1581-1656), an important Protestant scholar of the time, does not seem to have regarded the readings of the Textus Receptus as irrevocable in all respects; as Peter Gurry has observed, Ussher wrote that when it comes to most textual contests, it is clear what the original reading was, but in the cases where  a decision is very difficult, one may maintain indecision without drawing into question any point of doctrine.  Here we may see the application of a less exact, but more realistic, understanding of what was meant by “pure” in the Protestant creeds’ statement about the Greek text:  the point was not that every textual question was settled, or that the Textus Receptus could not possibly resemble the original text more than it already did, but that the still-unsettled points in the Greek text of the New Testament (in which, in some editions, many textual variants were noted) in their hands did not pose any doctrinal danger.

John Mill's 1723 Greek New Testament
- with variant readings.

            In addition, it should be kept in mind that in the late 1500s and early 1600s, the main question about Biblical authority was the question of whether or not the Latin Vulgate should be considered authoritative.  The Council of Trent, in the mid-1500s, had advanced a position that the Vulgate was the “authentic” text, and that no one was to dare to reject it under any pretext whatsoever.  This was commonly understood by Roman Catholics to mean that if the time-honored Vulgate meant something different from the text found in Greek manuscripts, the proper conclusion is that the Greek text, not the Vulgate, should be considered defective.  The Protestant reaction against this decree involved the affirmation that the Roman Catholic magisterium does not have the authority to toss out original Greek readings in favor of non-original readings supported by the Latin text.  Roman Catholic scholars responded, in turn, that the Greek text cannot be trusted because – as the Preface to the 1582 Rheims New Testament asserted – the Protestants’ compilations of the Greek text contained poorly attested readings, occasion retro-translations based on versional evidence, and even the compilers’ conjectures, and were “infinitely corrupted.”     

            The Protestant adoption of the Textus Receptus was primarily an answer to the larger question – Vulgate versus Greek – rather than an answer to the various smaller questions concerning variants in the Greek manuscripts.  When Protestant scholars such as Brian Walton, John Fell, John Mill, and Johann Bengel subsequently investigated textual variants, their conclusions were either scientifically accepted, or they were scientifically challenged; no one responded by saying, “What are you doing, heretic; it has all been settled by the Westminster Confession of Faith.”  The Protestant approach to the text has always been based on evidence, not on the decrees of ecclesiastical assemblies.

THREE.  The Textus Receptus always has the evidence on its side.

          Some modern versions of the New Testament, based primarily on the Alexandrian Text, have drawn many readings into question even though the readings are affirmed in ancient patristic compositions and are supported by the overwhelming majority of manuscripts.  This is true of Mark 16:9-20, which is included in over 99.5% of the existing Greek manuscripts of Mark; only two Greek manuscripts end the text of Mark at 16:8 followed by the closing subscription to the book “The end of the Gospel according to Mark,” and in both of those manuscripts (Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus) there are anomalies which strongly indicate that their copyists were aware of the absent verses.  Why are the headings in the ESV and CSB about the ending of Mark so vague and imprecise?  Because if they said, “Two manuscripts from the 300s end the text at 16:8; over 1,600 manuscripts support the inclusion of verses 9-20, including Codices A, D, and W, and Irenaeus, around the year 180, specifically quoted Mark 16:19,” the note would not have the effect upon readers that the translation’s note-writers wanted it to have – that is, it would not induce readers to reject verses 9-20.

            Similarly, if the CSB’s footnote mentioned the age and quantity of manuscripts that support the inclusion of “and fasting” in Mark 9:29 – including Papyrus 45 from the 200s and over 99% of the Greek manuscripts – the CSB’s footnote would not have quite the same effect as its present footnote to Mark 9:29, which only mentions that “Other mss add and fasting.” 

            The frustration that some advocates of “Confessional Bibliology” feel, when they discover that the footnotes in the NIV, ESV, and CSB habitually spin the evidence so as to elicit a false impression which induces their readers to adopt an uninformed prejudice against readings in the Textus Receptus, is understandable. 

            However, while it is generally true that in Matthew-Jude, the reading that is found in the Textus Receptus has many more manuscripts in its favor than the alternate reading found in the Nestle-Aland compilation, this is not always the case.  To restate: although most of the time, an overwhelming quantity of manuscripts agrees with the reading in the Textus Receptus, there are some exceptions.  To re-restate:  the Textus Receptus contains some readings which are only supported by a small minority of Greek manuscripts, and some readings for which the Greek manuscript support is negligible, and even a small number of readings which have no Greek manuscript support.
            Consider, for example, the words, “‘It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.  And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me do?’  And the Lord said to him,” in Acts 9:5-6 in the KJV.  The late Bruce Metzger stated in his Textual Commentary on theGreek New Testament, “So far as is known, no Greek witness reads these words at this place; they have been taken from 26.14 and 22.10.”  Some claims that Metzger made have not aged well, but as far as I know, this one remains valid.  Erasmus added the passage known as Acts 9:5b-6a to correspond to the Vulgate, which supports their inclusion.  But if we answer the question, “Vulgate or Greek?” as the Reformers answered it, in favor of the text found in Greek manuscripts, then we should not claim that every part of Acts 9:5-6 as printed in the Textus Receptus is the original text of the passage.
            And consider the word κοινωνία (koinōnia) in Ephesians 3:9.  This word is in the Textus Receptus, and is rendered “fellowship” in the KJV.  But in the majority of Greek manuscripts, what we find is not the word κοινωνία.  The Byzantine Textform reads, instead, οἰκονομία (oikonomia), which means “dispensation” or “administration.”  Most manuscripts, whether Alexandrian or Byzantine, do not support κοινωνία; they support οἰκονομία.  Pickering’s reconstruction of family 35’s archetype has οἰκονομία in Ephesians 3:9.  Antoniades’ 1904 compilation of the ecclesiastical text has οἰκονομία in Ephesians 3:9.  It should not be difficult to see that the Textus Receptus contains a corruption at this point, and quoting the formulators of the Westminster Confession of Faith will not change that.
            More examples of minority-readings in the Textus Receptus could be considered; there are hundreds of them – in Matthew 7:2, Mark 4:18, Luke 7:31, etc., etc.  (A list of the many differences between the Textus Receptus and the Byzantine Textform is online.)  I do not mean to suggest that textual critics ought to adopt a policy of the-majority-of-manuscripts-is-always-right; nor am I proposing that there is no such thing as a minority reading for which a persuasive case for genuineness can be made.  What I am saying is that some ultra-minority-readings in the Textus Receptus demonstrate that it is capable of improvement as a representation of the original text.

FOUR.   Treating the Textus Receptus as if it is the original text resolves the question, “If God inspired the New Testament, why didn’t He preserve it?”.

          The advocates of “Confessional Bibliology” are not the only people who have asked such a question.  Bart Ehrman similarly asks, in Misquoting Jesus, “If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of Scripture, what would be the point if we don’t have the very words of scripture?”.  Instead of concluding, with the Confessional Bibliologists, that we must have all of the original text of the New Testament, and that the Textus Receptus is it, and instead of concluding, with Ehrman, that we don’t have all of the original text, and this somehow renders the extant text unreliable, I would start by asking another question in the “Why didn’t God do it like this” category:  why didn’t God ensure that everyone would interpret the New Testament the same way? 

            If we are to ask, “Why inspire the text without guaranteeing its preservation?”, why not also ask “Why preserve its form without preserving its meaning?”.  For it is indisputable that the meaning of a statement matters more than the form in which it is expressed.  So, if God inspired the New Testament text, why didn’t He guarantee that everyone’s interpretation of it would be identical?  If one is going to pose questions at the intersection of textual criticism and the motives of God, I think this is a much better question.  But people can easily see the answer:  it was not God’s will to compel all interpreters to form a specific interpretation.   Similarly, it was not God’s will to compel all copyists to write a specific text, exactly the same in all details.  God’s will for perfect performance in the task of copying and interpreting is no doubt real, but not at the expense of the autonomy of copyists and interpreters. 

            God values human liberty, to an extent.  And why would God deprive copyists of that liberty if He looked forward in history and foresaw that text-critical problems involving manuscripts used by the church would matter as little as they do?  Inasmuch as God always knows the future, why would He not entrust the ship consisting of His inspired words to a crew of fallible copyists, knowing that while the ship’s hull might many times be scratched, and that barnacles would become attached to it, the net effect of the journey upon the cargo would be benign?  This is not to say that there are not some manuscripts with wildly anomalous texts, such as Codex Bobbiensis and the Sinaitic Syriac, but these “stray cat” manuscripts have not had a consequential influence on the church’s text as a whole.

FIVE.  Using the Textus Receptus as my authoritative standard simplifies sermon preparation.

            No doubt, having an authoritative textual standard – any textual standard – simplifies sermon preparation.  The question is, how closely does that textual standard convey the meaning of the original text?  A preacher with confidence in the Textus Receptus may live in the same city as a preacher with confidence in the Sahidic version, and a preacher with confidence in the NIV may live nearby, next door to a preacher with confidence in the Peshitta.  Does their confidence resolve anything?  No; all that has happened is that we have gone from a situation in which manuscripts disagree to a situation in which preachers disagree.  The confidence of preachers does not make the textual questions go away.
            It is one thing to resort to accepting the text that one has received from one’s trusted elders when one is a novice.  It would be another thing to avoid learning about textual evidence and its implications for simplicity’s sake.  How will the textual contests ever be resolved, if every preacher is content to say, “I embrace the text that was handed down to me, and that is that”?   And which congregation is likely to be more confident that its preacher is sharing the Word of God:  the congregation of the preacher who engages the evidence, and develops the skill to make a scientific case for every textual variant that he endorses, or the congregation of the preacher who tells his flock that he is deliberately wearing blinders to avoid doing so?
            No doubt many occasions may come along when a busy preacher or isolated missionary is compelled by circumstances to utilize a New Testament passage without really taking the first proper step of all hermeneutics – confirming what the text is.  But this ought to be a last resort, not a goal. 

Meet Codex Boernerianus (012)

            Two months ago (April 2018) we met Codex Sangallensis (a.k.a. Codex Δ (Delta), or 037), an important manuscript of the Gospels, in which the Greek text is accompanied by an interlinear Latin translation.  (This Latin text is known as VL (Vetus Latina) 77.)  Today, let’s get to know Codex Δ’s sibling:  Codex Boernerianus (a.k.a. Codex G^p or 012), made in the 800s.  It is a copy of the Epistles of Paul (not including Hebrews), and is named after the German scholar Christian Frederick Boerner (1685-1753), who loaned it to his contemporary Richard Bentley.  It has been cited in compilations of the Greek New Testament ever since the 1752 edition by Johann Jakob Wettstein.    

 

Romans 12:7-16 in Codex 012,
with verse-numbers superimposed,
and unusual readings framed
(Yellow:  12:11)  (Orange: 12:14)

           Codex 012 was probably a companion-volume of Codex 037; they are very similar in size and format.  The text of 012 is not quite complete.  It is missing some portions – Romans 1:1-4, Romans 2:17-24, Romans 14:24-36 (as presented in the usual Byzantine Text), First Corinthians 3:8-16, First Corinthians 6:7-14, Colossians 2:1-8, and the last five verses of Philemon.  In each case, the copyist perceived that his exemplar was defective, and left memorial-space to convey that there should be additional text where the page on which he wrote was blank.   

            Photographs of 012 were made in 1909, and that was a fortunate event, because a few decades later in 1945, during World War II, the manuscript was severely damaged when the city of Dresden (where it was kept) was bombed.  The photographs of the pages from 1909 can be viewed online at the website of the Saxon State and University Library at Dresden. (The book-by-book index, though all in German, is easy to understand.)  All of the 1909 photos of the entire manuscript can be downloaded as a PDF, too.  Gary S. Dykes has provided an introduction to the 1909 facsimile of 012 (with an informative section about the relationship between Codex Boernerianus and Codex Augiensis), and at CSNTM, facsimile-pages have been indexed page by page.

            The text of 012 is not Alexandrian.  It is usually categorized as “Western.”  A list of its idiosyncratic itacisms would be extremely long and wearisome; it is as if much of the Greek text has been deliberately written in what seemed to a copyist (not necessarily the copyist of 012, but a copyist somewhere in its text’s transmission-line) to be phonetic spelling.  Here is a sample of 012’s other (not itacisms) readings from Romans chapter 12:

3 – 012 repeats τὸ ἀγαθὸν, a case of dittography.

3 – 012 skips παρ’ ὃ δεῖ φρονεῖν, a case of parablepsis (the copyist’s line of sight drifted from the final letters of the preceding word ὑπερφρονεῖν to the same letters that occur a little later in the text). 

4 – 012 begins the verse with ωσπερ instead of καθάπερ.

5 – 012 does not have the word ἐσμεν.

8 – 012 does not have ειτε at the beginning of the verse.

8 – 012 repeats εν τη after παρακαλων (another case of dittography).

9 – 012 reads μεισουντες instead of αποστυγουντες.

11 – 012 reads καιρω (“time”) instead of Κυρίω (“Lord”).  This variant is old; Jerome alluded to it in his Epistle 27, To Marcella), and, if Rufinus did not expand on the comments of Origen when he (Rufinus) translated his (Origen’s) commentary on Romans, then Origen, in the first half of the 200s, was also aware of this variant.  Ambrosiaster, too, shows an awareness of this reading; he even prefers it, proposing that it was meant to convey the same idea as Ephesians 5:16.  It was later adopted by the scholar Stephanus in his 1550 edition of the Greek New Testament – a clear example of the variations among different compilations that circulated in the 1500s, showing that Stephanus and Beza did not unthinkingly reproduce the work of Erasmus.

13 – 012 reads μνίαις instead of χρείαις.

14 – 012 skips the words τους διώκοντας ὑμᾶς εὐλογειτε, a case of parablepsis in which the copyist’s line of sight drifted from the εὐλογειτε at the beginning of the verse to the same word a little later in the text.

17 – 012 has an extra phrase, ου μονον ενώπειον του Θυ αλλα κει, so as to make the sentence read, “Give careful thought to do what is right not only in the sight of God but also in the sight of all men.”  The Greek text has been conformed to the Vulgate, in which this part of the verse is made to resemble Second Corinthians 8:21.

21 – 012 reads απο instead of υπο.

The text of 012 is almost famous (or infamous) for moving First Corinthians 14:34-35 to a location after verse 40.  Here are some other anomalous readings of 012 in First Corinthians 14:

1 – 012 reads Αιώκεται instead of Διώκετε.  Apparently somewhere along the line, a copyist misread his exemplar, confusing the similar letters Α (alpha) and Δ (delta).

2 – 012 reads γλώσσαις instead of γλώσσῃ.

4 – 012 adds Θυ after εκκλησείαν, yielding the reading, “builds up the church of God.”

5 – 012 reads αλλειν instead of λαλειν, a case of letter-transposition.

7-9 – 012 does not have the word τοις, and reads γνώσθη instead of γνώσθησεται.  It also reads γλώσσ instead of γλώσσης in v. 9, as if copied verbatim from a damaged exemplar.

10 – 012 does not have τοσαυτα at the beginning of the verse.

10 – 012 adds εστιν after αφωνον.

10 – 012 reads γινώσκω instead of ειδω.

21 – 012 reads ετεραις γλώσσαις instead of ετερογλώσσαις. 

22 – 012 reads πιστοις instead of πιστεύουσιν.

23 – 012 does not include ουν.

29 – 012 reads ανακρινέτωσαν instead of διακρινέτωσαν.

37 – 012 reads εστειν instead of εστιν (or εισιν) εντολη.

The oddities of the text of 012 are myriad.  Perhaps this is due to three factors in its textual ancestry:  a copyist who did not hesitate to conform the Greek text so as to make its meaning agree more closely with his Latin Text, and a copyist who was nearly illiterate in Greek and who attempted to copy his exemplar’s contents mechanically, and a copyist who attempted to spell the Greek text in a somewhat phonetic way.  As a result, Codex Boernerianus (along with its very close relative Codex Augiensis) is perhaps the most unreliable of all Greek manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles.

Readers of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece may be interested to know that the Nestle-Aland apparatus’ record of the readings of 012 is occasionally in error.  For example, as Reuben Swanson reported, in Galatians 1:8 012 clearly reads ευαγγελιζαηται, not ευαγγελιζηται.  Swanson also reported that the N-A apparatus is wrong in Galatians 4:25; the reading from Codex 012 should be η συνστοιχουσα τη.  (But not, contra Swanson, συνστοιχουσα δε.)  Swanson listed other miscitations of Codex 012 in the Nestle-Aland apparatus in I Cor. 1:15, 1:22, 1:29, 3:1, 3:2, 3:3, 3:12, etc., etc. – not less than 50 imprecise or erroneous citations in just the first 10 chapters of First Corinthians.   

                 No description of Codex Boernerianus would be complete without mentioning the short Irish poem which appears in the lower margin of folio 23r (below the text of First Corinthians 2:9b-3:3a).    It runs as follows:

Téicht doróim mór saido beic torbai · INrí chondaigi [n (with deletion-marks)] hifoss manimbera / latt ni fog bai ·

Mór báis morbaile mór coll ceille mór

mire ·  Olais airchenn teicht doécaib ·  Beith fo étoil maíc Maire ·

Not being fluent in medieval Irish, I am dependent on other sources when I say that that means something like this:

To go to Rome is to have much trouble, and little profit.

Unless you bring here the thing (or, the King) you seek, you do not find it (or, Him).

[It is] Much foolishness, much frenzy, much nonsense, much craziness –

For surely you have set out for death,

displeasing the Son of Mary.

            That these lines are written in Irish strongly suggests that Codex Boernerianus was made by Irish monks at the monastery of Saint Gall (in modern-day Switzerland).  (Saint Columba’s student Gallus founded the monastery there.)  Possibly these Irish lines represent a copyist’s (or reader’s) recollection of words attributed to Saint Bridgit in a story about the demise of Conlaeth (a.k.a. Conlaed, Conleth, Conlaith, etc.) – the first bishop of Kildare.    

The story goes that Conlaeth, in the year 519 or 520, wanted to visit Rome (perhaps to study advancements in metallurgical artwork, a craft in which he was gifted, or perhaps to replace his priestly wardrobe, which had been sold or traded in service of the poor) but Saint Bridgit refused to bless his plan, and warned him against leaving.  As Saint Bridgit had predicted, the journey turned out to be fatal to Conlaeth, who, after departing, was eaten by wolves while still in Ireland.  It might be worthwhile to explore the possibility that a lection from chapter 2 or 3 of First Corinthians was read in honor of Saint Conlaeth or Saint Bridgit in some lection-cycle used by Irish monks; that might account for the appearance of these lines at this particular place in the text. 

            Two other items of interest in Codex Boernerianus are (1) the intriguing title of “The Beginning of the Epistle to the Laodiceans” after the text and closing-title of Philemon, which is followed immediately not by the patchwork composition presented in some Latin manuscripts as the Epistle from Paul to the Laodiceans, but instead by (2) several pages of a Latin commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, written by a scribe who used every square inch of the page.

Readers are encouraged to explore the embedded links in this post, which will lead to additional resources.

The Textus Receptuses

Erasmus of Rotterdam,
a compiler of the
Greek New Testament

The Latin term “Textus Receptus” (“the text that is received”) is often used to refer to the Greek base-text of the King James Version – the English version which, despite the best efforts of the marketers of modern versions, remains by far the most-read English version of the Bible.  The Textus Receptus was published by the Elzevirs in 1624 and in 1633; it was in the preface to the 1633 edition that the term Textus Receptus was introduced.  Much later, in the late 1800s, F. H. A. Scrivener attempted to meticulously retro-translate the KJV’s New Testament’s English text into readings (and, very rarely, conjectures) known to be in circulation at the time of, and available to, the KJV’s translators.

            The term “Textus Receptus” is also used to refer in a general sense to the printed Greek New Testaments which were compiled and published in the 1500’s by the scholars Desiderius Erasmus, Robert Estienne (better-known as Stephanus, who standardized the verse-numbers), and Theodore Beza.

For general purposes, there’s nothing wrong with calling all those printed compilations by the same name, since their basic contents are so similar.  The modern critical text is likewise often referred to simply as “the critical text,” even though there are differences among the various editions.  (Likewise, the edition of the New International Version as it is published today still retains the name of the 1984 edition, even though there are many differences between them.)

            It may be helpful, however, to raise the magnification-level, so to speak, with which the compilations of the 1500s and early 1600s are viewed.  This may reduce the chance that people will get the impression – all too easily obtained from some oversimplifications of the history of the text – that the exact same compilation made by Erasmus that left Froben’s printing-shop in 1516 was the sole Greek resource consulted by the King James Version’s translators in 1604-1611. 

            So, here is a list of some differences between the KJV’s base-text and some of the base-texts of earlier English translations in the 1500’s, drawn from the four Gospels:   

Matthew

2:11 – KJV:  “saw” (ειδον), not “found” (ευρον)

10:10 – KJV:  “staves” (ραβδους) not “staff” (ραβδον)

21:7 – KJV says “they set him” (επεκάθισαν) instead of “he sat” (επεκάθισεν)

23:13-14 – KJV reverses the order of these verses.

Mark

5:38 – KJV includes “and” (και) before “them that wept” (κλαίοντας)

9:40 – KJV says “us” and “our” (ημων) instead of “you” and “your” (υμων)

12:20 – KJV includes “Now” (ουν) in the opening sentence.

15:3 – KJV includes “But he answered nothing.” (αυτος δε ουδε απεκρίνατο)

Luke

1:35 – KJV includes “of thee” (εκ σου).  This difference is still echoed in the NKJV, which does not include the phrase.

2:22 – KJV says “her” (αυτης) instead of “their” (αυτων).

6:37 – KJV does not include “and” (και) at the beginning of the verse.

7:45 – KJV says “I came in” (εισηλθον) instead of “she came in” (εισηλθεν)

10:22 – KJV does not include Και στραφεις προς τους μαθητας ειπεν (“And turning to the disciples he said”)

17:36 – KJV includes this verse.

20:31 – KJV includes “also” (και)

John

8:6 – KJV has “as though he heard them not” (μη προσποιούμενος) at the end of the verse.  (This phrase was not italicized in the 1611 KJV; Scrivener suggested that the italization occurred in the 1769 update of the KJV.) 

8:42 – KJV does not include “therefore” (ουν). 

18:24 – KJV has “Now” (ουν).   

            An especially notable difference between the KJV’s Greek base-text and some of the compilations of the 1500’s occurs in the final phrase of Romans 12:11.  Nowadays, it is taken for granted that the original text read “serving the Lord” (τω Κυριω δουλεύοντες), but in several editions of the Greek text prepared in the 1500’s, the phrase reads “serving the time” (τω καιρω δουλεύοντες).  (Both readings are ancient, having been both mentioned by patristic authors such as Jerome (in Epistle 27, written in 384.) 

            This sample-list should be a sufficient demonstration to those who subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith that its declaration to the effect that the Greek text of their day was “pure” did not mean that the authors of that creed regarded every text-critical detail to be settled, as if one could answer all text-critical issues merely by pointing to a particular compilation.  In general terms the KJV’s New Testament is based on the Textus Receptus but regarding some details there is not one definitive Textus Receptus, unless one uses the term to refer to compilations (the Elzevir’s compilation of 1633 being the most famous) designed to reconstruct the base-text of the King James Version. 

If these differences between the King James Version and some of the Greek compilations of the 1500’s are kept in mind, this will hopefully reduce the spread of oversimplifications of the history of the text.  For it is sometimes said by the KJV’s promoters that its text agrees with the majority of manuscripts, which is generally true, but not in every case.  Likewise it is sometimes said by the KJV’s detractors that its text is based on merely a handful of manuscripts used by Erasmus, which unfairly minimizes not only Erasmus’ extensive research undertaken before he sat down in Basel to prepare his first edition of the Greek New Testament, but also overlooks the 88 years of additional textual analysis and refinement that commenced between 1516 and 1604, some of which involved ancient manuscripts (Codex Bezae and Codex Claromontanus) and extensive quotations by early patristic sources. 

[Readers are invited to explore the embedded links to find additional resources.]