Student's Toolkit: When Your Professor Rejects Mark 16:9-20

          How should preachers handle Mark 16:9-20?  Since I regard this passage as sacred Scripture, I encourage them to preach from it.  I also recommend that they point out to their congregations that most English versions have headings or footnotes which state that some manuscripts (or, the two earliest manuscripts) of Mark do not contain these 12 verses.  Then, point out that footnotes have to be concise, and cannot be expected to always adequately describe the evidence.  Sometimes they even contain mistakes, like the notes about Mark 16:9-20 in the NET, the CSB, the ESV (until 2010), and the hyper-paraphrase known as The Message.

Hey NavPress:  are you ever going to
correct this false footnote?

  

          The impression given by vague footnotes changes drastically when the evidence is described in precise terms:  two Greek manuscripts from the 300’s, and one medieval commentary-manuscript, conclude the text of chapter 16 at the end of verse 8; meanwhile over 99% of the Greek manuscripts (over 1,600, including ancient ones, contrary to the footnote in The Message) support these verses.  In addition, patristic writers used these verses as Scripture in the 100’s, including Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Irenaeus, the last of whom specifically quoted Mark 16:19 in Book Three of his composition Against Heresies (c. 180).  

          In a way, the answer to the question, “Is Mark 16:9-20 part of the canon of Scripture?” – Yes, or No – will also answer the question, “Did the early Christian church hand down the Greek text of the New Testament in a form which accurately conveyed the message of the original text?”.  For clearly the presence or absence of these 12 verses changes the narrative quite a bit.  Most folks will grant that since we trust the early leaders of the church where the canon is concerned, we should trust them where the text is concerned as well – not necessarily in fine details (where their own quotations vary), but at least where readings that heavily impact the meaning are concerned.  

          The patristic writers (and anonymous compositions) who show, in one way or another, that they used manuscripts of Mark that included 16:9-20 include Ambrose and Aphrahat and “Apostolic Constitutions” and Augustine and “Acts of Pilate” and “De rebaptismate” and “Doctrine of Addai” and “Enthronement of Michael” and Epiphanius and “Epistula Apostolorum” and Eusebius and Eznik of Golb and Fortunatianus and Fulgentius and Hierocles (a pagan writer) and Hippolytus and Irenaeus and Jerome and John Cassian and Justin Martyr and Leo and Macarius Magnes and  Marcus Eremita and Marinus and “Martyrium Arethae” and Nestorius and Patrick and Pelagius and Peter Chrysologus and Philosturgius and Prosper of Aquitaine and Pseudo-Didymus and Severus of Antioch and Tatian and Tertullian and Vincent of Antioch and Vincentius of Thibaris and Wulfilas – plus several forms of the Old Latin chapter-summaries of Mark, and Syriac section-divisions.  Most people conclude that all this makes it obvious that the people who recognized the New Testament canon also recognized Mark 16:9-20 as Scripture.   

  

          Some seminary professors, however, are not like most people.  What should a seminary student do when a professor denies that Mark 16:9-20 belongs in the Bible – implicitly tipping his hand on the question of whether or not he believes that the Greek-speaking churches handed down the text of the Gospels with sufficient accuracy to preserve the original message without drastic adulteration or loss?  Here are four suggestions.

1.  In the classroom, ask your professor for details about the evidence pertaining to this passage.  If he says things like, “Clement and Origen do not use it,” or, “Eusebius and Jerome say that it was absent from the best copies,” and if his description of the manuscript-evidence is vague, it is safe to deduce that your professor has only a marginal and shallow grasp of the evidence, and that his statements are mere mirrors of Bruce Metzger’s obsolete Textual Commentary which was designed to defend the readings adopted in the UBS Greek New Testament.      

2.  Meet with your professor privately and inquire about how much attention he has given to this textual variant.  It is quite possible that he has never read a single commentary written by an author who defends the passage.  Introduce him to resources that may be new to him, such as Roger Pearse’s Eusebius of Caesarea – Gospel Problems & Solutions (which shows what Eusebius really wrote, instead of just misleading snippets and summaries), and Carl Cosaert’s The Text of the Gospels in Clement of Alexandria (which shows how exceedingly rarely Clement quoted from Mark), and the 2016 edition of my book, Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20 (which covers external evidence and internal evidence in minute detail).  Nicholas Lunn and David W. Hester, too, have both recently written in favor of this passage.

3.  Treat your professor like he has a brain and is not obligated to conform to groupthink or “conventional wisdom.”  Scholars and teachers should be especially happy when they learn that a position to which they once subscribed is not really sustained by the available evidence – even when abandoning that position means admitting not only that they were wrong, but that the “scholarly consensus” is also wrong.  Your professor probably already has some opinions that are shared by only a small minority of his peers; encourage him to investigate the ending of Mark with the same curiosity that led him to those minority opinions.   

4.  Keep the lines of communication open.  It may seem natural to want to ignore a teacher who advocates the view that practically the entire Christian church outside the borders of Egypt failed to hand down a form of the Greek text of the Gospels that conveyed the meaning of the original text.  However, your professor might gradually realize, if he is encouraged to continue to investigate the subject, that a lack of meaningful peer review has allowed research on the ending of Mark to stagnate (as one can see by observing the many commentaries that simply rephrase Metzger’s words). 

           Your professor may then perceive that the scholarly consensus on this subject has grown unjustifiably entrenched, even though more evidence than ever before has come to light supporting the genuineness of these 12 verses.  With prayerful and gentle but persistent interaction, attempt to guide your professor to a new appreciation for the longstanding ecclesiastical acceptance of a form of the text that includes Mark 16:9-20.  This might even provoke similar journeys regarding other textual variants.        

[This post is intended as a response to a recent post by Danny Akin at the Gospel Coalition blog, and echoes it in some respects for rhetorical effect.]

Interview with Maurice Robinson, Part 1

Dr. Maurice Robinson

        This week at The Text of the Gospels, Dr. Maurice Robinson of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (in Wake Forest, NC) joins us for an interview about the Byzantine Text.  He is known to many as one of the compilers of The New Testament in the Original Greek – Byzantine Textform.   Thanks for accepting my invitation, Dr. Robinson.

Robinson:  I am pleased to have this opportunity to respond to various questions.

Q:  Let’s jump right in.  The Robinson-Pierpont text, the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text, and Wilbur Pickering’s family-35 text are all presented as representations of the Byzantine text.  How different from one another are these compilations?

Robinson:  All three differ approximately 6 to 7 percent from what appears in the Nestle-Aland/UBS critical text, and represent forms of the Byzantine text that vary due to differing theoretical and methodological approaches.  Were I to estimate the degree of difference between any of these basically Byzantine editions, it would probably be only about one-half percent in any paired comparison, given that these all agree in relation to the vast bulk of the NT where the Byzantine Textform basically remains undivided.
          I would not label these other editions “Byzantine-priority,” however, since their underlying methodology allows for some minority group (i.e., far from dominant) Byzantine readings at various points of Byzantine division, whether based on stemmatic preferences (H-F) or by following a minority subgroup within the Byzantine mass (Family 35).  These alternative theories and methods might reflect a general “Byzantine preference,” but they do not in all instances reflect the prevailing agreement reflective of a basic consensus of all Byzantine manuscripts.

Q:  Can you provide a few differences between RP2005 and the BGNT that have an impact on translation?

Robinson:  I really haven’t had any need to compare RP2005 against the Family 35/Kr type of text since no individual Byzantine minority subgroup is determinative in establishing a general consensus text within a Byzantine-priority approach.  While the BGNT does not directly note the differences between the two editions, Pickering’s closely related Family 35/Kr edition does footnote differences between his text and RP2005 (along with various other editions).  I have also seen an English-based list of “clearly translatable differences” that exist “between Kx and Kr/f35” that likely covers most of these variations — but even then, almost all of these are extremely minor in nature, especially when involving word order, synonym substitution, or inclusion/exclusion of short words.

Q:  What is the single biggest difference, outside the pericope adulterae, in the Gospels?

Robinson:  Among the more meaningful instances of inclusion/exclusion between the two texts, consider Luke 22:47, where RP2005 ends the verse with “and he drew near to Jesus to kiss him,” but where Kr/Family 35 adds the harmonization (from Matthew 26:48 and Mark 14:44), “For he had given them this sign, ‘Whomever I should kiss, he it is’” — a reading that according to von Soden is supported among the primary bulk of Byzantine manuscripts (Kx) only in the proportion 1:12, even though thoroughly present among the much later and revisionary Kr group of manuscripts.
          I would suggest such an expansion to be secondary, and not only on external but on transmissional grounds:  had such a lengthy phrase originally been present, no good reason would exist for its omission among the bulk of remaining Byzantine manuscripts (including many much earlier than those comprising Family 35/Kr); further, an original lack of such a phrase readily could impel later revisers to insert such in order to harmonize with the remaining synoptic gospels.

Q:  Several English translations based on the Byzantine Text have been made.  Do you have a favorite?

Robinson:  Most of these translations you speak of are electronic in nature, and readily available on the internet. Of these, the English Majority Text Version (EMTV), based on the Hodges-Farstad Interlinear, and the World English Bible (WEB), based on an updated and textually adjusted form of the 1901 ASV, probably are among the better renderings, although I often might differ regarding the translation of certain words and phrases (just as with most published English translations).

Q:  Do you think there is a potential market in the near future for an English translation based on the Byzantine Text?

Robinson:  Indeed I long have held that there is a significant market for a Byzantine-based formal-equivalence English translation, and I would strongly support publishers who might see fit to develop and market such, who might even be willing to adapt existing translations such as the NASV, NKJV, or ESV to an alternate Byzantine edition that could be marketed alongside their current holdings based on the critical text or TR.  Even beyond that, I would strongly support a new, committee-based, formal equivalence translation from the Byzantine Textform that could be published and marketed in hard copy, and thereby fulfill the original desire of Hodges and Farstad regarding both the NKJV and HCSB — intentionally sidetracked along the way by their respective publishers.
          As an aside, I suggest that the ESV committee severely errs in now declaring their current translational form to be a “permanent text edition.”  That procedure guarantees an eventual extinction or readership departure from the ESV as (1) the English language or syntactical understanding might change, and (2) particularly where the ESV critical text base might require alteration due to new textual theories or discoveries (one need only consider what changes CBGM might require in future NA/UBS editions — changes which all other translations based on the critical text will accept and follow, but apparently not the ESV).

Q: How do you resolve variant-units where there is no strong majority?

Robinson:  The easiest answer is this:  where the Byzantine Textform is sharply divided, one obviously cannot appeal solely to external testimony in order to establish the most plausible original reading. Resolution of intra-Byzantine division requires consideration of internal evidence as such might relate to the various readings found among the Byzantine witnesses at those points (several such internal evidence principles are mentioned in “The Case for Byzantine Priority”).

Q: Are the rest of us putting the books of the New Testament in the wrong order?

Robinson:  Based on what appears among the earlier manuscripts, this most definitely is the case. The RP2005 text reflects that early order, where Acts is immediately followed by the General Epistles, then the Pauline Epistles (in which Hebrews divides the church letters from those to individuals), and then Revelation.
          The RP2005 arrangement of the NT books is not new; the same order appears in Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott-Hort, and von Soden, and remains far more historically based and thematically logical than the familiar but later ordering that derives more from Latin and TR traditions than anything else.

Q:  In “The Case for Byzantine Priority” you state, “Whenever possible, the raw number of MSS should be intelligently reduced.” How would you reply to a proposal to boil down the weight of the copies of Theophylact’s Gospels-text to the weight of their archetype, seeing that the various Byzantine subtypes can be grouped “according to their hypothetical archetypes”

Robinson:  Regarding the Theophylact manuscripts, my PA collation data suggests that the Theophylact commentary along with its quoted biblical text jointly derive from a common archetype.  That base tends to prevail among nearly all Theophylact manuscripts, and thus the multiplicity of Theophylact manuscripts (approximately 125) really says little or nothing beyond the text of its original archetype.

Q:  Do you mean that just as we tend not to count individual copies of the Vulgate, we should not count individual copies of clearly identifiable Byzantine sub-groups?

Robinson:  Regarding the various Byzantine subtypes, those with relatively limited support almost certainly derive from their own separate sub-archetypes characterized by their differences from the primary majority bulk of Byzantine documents. This is not to say that their existence is of no value, but that whatever presence a particular Byzantine subgroup might have would represent only the limited degree of popularity that specific line of transmission represents (this in terms of copying frequency and historical preservation).

Q:  If someone were to compile the text via a mathematical formula, adopting whatever reading was favored by a majority of archetypes (not just text-types, but also Byzantine sub-groups) and base-texts of early versions rather than by a majority of manuscripts, wouldn’t the resultant compilation differ at some points from the Byzantine Textform?

Robinson:  Obviously, the RP text offers no “mathematical formula,” but only a basic transmissional consensus approach. Thus I would not recommend a “majority of archetypes” methodology to replace the general consensus found amid the mass of Byzantine manuscripts.  Indeed, were some “majority of archetypes” method to be followed (whether limiting the sub-archetypes to Byzantine or otherwise), the resultant text necessarily would differ at various points from the prevailing consensus that represents the dominant line of Byzantine transmission.

Q: Even though you state in “The Case for Byzantine Priority” that “Manuscripts still need to be weighed and not merely counted,” it has been claimed that the Byzantine Priority view seeks to establish the text by “counting manuscripts.” What do you say in response?

Robinson:  By its very nature, the Byzantine Textform in its aggregate does represent the vast numerical majority of manuscripts; therefore “number” is one component within Byzantine-priority theory, but hardly the sole element (even Burgon suggested seven different data categories to be necessary for establishing the text). Within Byzantine-priority theory, transmissional factors are far more significant than mere number, as even Scrivener had suggested.
          Compare a parallel example: were one to advocate a theory of “Alexandrian-priority” or “Western-priority,” intending to establish a putative archetype of those forms of text from its extant representatives, “number” alone would not be the primary factor. The published research of Heimerdinger and Rius-Camps in relation to their view of “Western priority” demonstrates the point.  Similarly, claims of mere “nose-counting” reflect a gross over-simplification and offer little more than a misleading caricature of the more thorough and reasonable case being advocated.

Q: Can internal evidence ever overrule the external evidence when over 95% of the manuscript-evidence is in agreement? Is there any reading in the Byzantine Textform that you can identify as a case where this has happened?

Robinson:  The short answer is no, and that specifically because of the nature of Byzantine-priority. Put simply, one cannot be consistent in advocating a valid form of Byzantine-priority (or even Alexandrian-priority) while rejecting the dominant consensus of that text-type. While some might prefer a more general “Byzantine-preferred” position and thereby feel free to depart the Byzantine at various points on the basis of external or internal considerations (e.g., united versional or patristic testimony differing from the Byzantine, or internal criteria considered strong enough to override any external consensus), the resultant theory and praxis no longer would be “Byzantine-priority,” but a less-than-exclusive “Byzantine-preference” or even some sort of “Equitable Eclecticism.”
          I do not suggest, however, that internal criteria are invoked only where the Byzantine Textform is sharply divided and they are neglected where the mass of Byzantine manuscripts agree. Rather, internal criteria can and should be utilized in every instance of variant reading, either to confirm and defend the external data (when basically united) or to assist in determining the best reading where the Byzantine manuscripts are seriously divided). This is specifically what Dan Wallace has suggested Byzantine or majority text supporters should do, and is the intent of the Textual Commentary I currently am working on (two years in, with many more to go given that more than 3000 variant units need to be discussed).

(To be continued)

END OF PART ONE

The 2014 Pericope Adulterae Symposium: Part 5: Robinson: Removal Elicited by Early Lectionary Usage

Maurice Robinson, the last presenter at the conference, argued that the PA is an original part of the Gospel of John, and that it was excised in the second century as a consequence of lectionary-influence.  Robinson’s presentation seemed to have been carefully composed, like a symphony, starting slowly and building to a crescendo.  At first he described how, following a suggestion from William Pierpont, he began investigating the PA.  Then he introduced an impressive army of data, drawn from his collations of the manuscripts that contain the PA (a printed copy of which he showed at the conference):  267 Greek manuscripts do not contain the PA; 1,476 MSS contain it; 2,285 lectionaries do not contain it (because it’s assigned to saints’ feast-days, not the main calendar-cycle), and 495 lectionaries contain John 8:3-11.  He also insisted that the question about whether or not the PA is Scripture is a technical issue, not a doctrinal one. 

            

The gist of Robinson’s theory goes like this:  in the 100’s, lections were assigned to the major feast-days of the church-calendar, such as Christmas, Easter-time, and Pentecost.  The lection for Pentecost consisted, as it does today, of John 7:37-52 plus 8:12.  The reasons for this unusual combination were (1) the subject-matter of the PA did not fit the general theme of Pentecost, but (2) the uplifting statement in 8:12 was added so as to not end the lection on the negative note that would otherwise conclude the lection at the end of 7:52 – the statement that no prophet arises from Galilee.  An early copyist, either deliberately adjusting the text to make the lector’s job easier, or accidentally misinterpreting lectionary-related marginalia that told the lector to skip from the end of 7:52 to the beginning of 8:12, omitted the PA.  A copy in which the PA was thus dropped from the text – not due to squeamishness, but as a conformation to the form of the text as used in a rudimentary lectionary-system – subsequently influenced the text in Egypt from which most of the early manuscripts (p66, p75, Aleph, B, T) are descended.

            

In the course of arguing his case for the genuineness of the PA, Robinson emphasized various internal features, describing the PA as part of a verbal tapestry which is inextricably linked to the surrounding text.  He listed direct links and indirect links.  Even if half of them are sheer coincidence (and some of them definitely are), this is something worth careful consideration.  His argument against the existence of the PA (in all its extant forms) as a “floating” story was efficient and devastating:  how does the PA start?  “And everyone went to his own house.”  Does anyone begin a story like that?  Imagine it:  “Once upon a time, everyone went home.”

            

Robinson also pointed out that Chris Keith, in his earlier work on the PA, had incorrectly claimed that kategrafein is the majority-reading in John 8:6.  Keith has already commented about this on his blog (at http://historicaljesusresearch.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-pericope-adulterae-conferencechris.html ), acknowledging that the majority-reading, by a score of 1,220 to 207, is egrafen.  (Keith wondered why he ever thought otherwise.  Perhaps as he read the RP-2005 Byzantine Textform, his line of sight drifted to the katē- of katēgorein on the preceding line, above egrafen.)  Aside from this relatively minor point, though, Robinson had high praise for Keith’s research, describing it, ironically, as the best defense of the genuineness of the PA based on internal evidence, if readers ignore the word “interpolation.”

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Some thoughts: 

           

Robinson showed how his theory works, but he did not show real evidence, aside from the elegance of his theory, that a rudimentary lectionary-system for major feast-days existed in the second century, or that its lection for Pentecost consisted of John 7:37-52 + 8:12.  Inasmuch as the Pentecost-lection goes without a pause from 7:52 to 8:12, why isn’t this evidence that the lectionary was based on a text of John that did the same thing? 

Robinson pre-answered that question (if I recall correctly) by pointing out that had the PA been adopted sometime after John 7:37-8:12 (without the PA) was assigned to Pentecost, nobody would dump the PA into the middle of the Pentecost-lection.  However, this assumes a very simple series of events.  If instead, the PA was inserted between 7:52 and 8:12 in a location where the Pentecost-lection was unknown, and this expanded text proceeded to infiltrate the locale where the Pentecost-lection had originated as a natural unit consisting of John 7:37-8:12 (without the PA), then as the expanded text prevailed, the logical reaction by copyists who wished to denote lection-readings in the margins of continuous-text manuscripts of the Gospels would be to add the symbol that precedes the PA in various manuscripts, instructing the lector to skip from the end of 7:52 to the beginning of 8:12.  Clearly, something happened here, but the lectionary-related evidence presented by Robinson does not say clearly that what happened was an excision, rather than an expansion.   

            

Also, I would like to know, since Robinson pointed out that Jonathan Borland, in his thesis on the Old Latin treatment of the PA, identified the form of the PA preserved in family-1 as being congruent to the earliest form supported by the Old Latin evidence (especially Codex Palatinus), whether or not Robinson regards the family-1 form of the PA as the original form, instead of the text read by the majority of MSS.

And, figuring that Luke 22:43-44 is another passage which is omitted from a lection (and which is placed in Matthew in family-13 in a way comparable to the way that the PA is similar to the way the PA is placed at the end of Luke 21 in family-13), and figuring that Burgon proposed that Luke 9:54-56 could be lost via lectionary-influence, it occurs to me that it might be worthwhile to investigate the possibility that early lectionary-influence elicited the early loss of several passages besides the PA.  An early copyist’s misinterpretation of marginalia in a lector’s copy could account for several short (or shortened) variants.     

  

The 2014 Pericope Adulterae Symposium: Part 3: Knust: Against the Ecclesiastical Suppression Theory

Jennifer Knust, Wasserman’s co-author of some earlier work on the PA, directly challenged Punch’s theory of ecclesiastical suppression.  She reviewed some patristic statements which took non-Christians to task for (allegedly) altering the Scriptures.  This included a brief examination of the exchange between Origen and Julius Africanus regarding the question of the spuriousness of the book of Susanna.   Knust, like Wasserman, used a digital slideshow, which included, among other things, a picture of a page from Codex Marchalianus (displaying the use of asterisks and obeli for text-critical purposes (the same page, I think, that one can see at http://www.katapi.org.uk/BibleMSS/Q.htm ) and a page from Codex Basiliensis (E, 07) showing the beginning of the PA with asterisks in the margin. 

Knust emphasized Origen’s statement (in Contra Celsum 2:27), “I do not know of people who have altered the Gospel apart from the Marcionites and the Valentinians.”  This, she argued, shows that early Christian copyists did not make large excisions.  Additional evidence cumulatively shows that editors of non-Biblical as well as Biblical texts, when their exemplars disagreed, did not remove passages that did not possess uniform support, but included them instead, accompanied by marks such as an asterisk or obelus. 

The general implication of all this is that the theory that Christian copyists deliberately omitted the PA is improbable.  Scribal squeamishness about the subject-matter of the PA would not have elicited its removal.  Had there been a question about its genuineness, scribes’ default reaction would have been to include the PA, accompanied by asterisks, which is what we see in a significant number of manuscripts in which the PA is included.  This implies that the reason the early manuscripts do not include the PA at all is because it was not in their ancestor-manuscripts.     

The PA is, however, early material.  Is it earlier than Origen?  Knust mentioned that there may be good reasons to think that Origen was aware of the story, even though Origen does not comment on it in his Commentary on John, one of which is that in his Homilies on Jeremiah (19:15), Origen seems to take for granted that stoning was the prescribed penalty for adultery, and he pictures an adulteress desiring that the Word would intervene for her so that she would be spared.

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Some thoughts: 

A couple of points in Knust’s presentation were very questionable.  First, her claim that copyists did not make omissions would have been substantially shaken if one of her fellow panelists had pointed out Origen’s statement (in his Commentary on Matthew, 15:14) that “The differences in the Greek manuscripts have become great, either through the negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others,” who “in the process of checking, make additions or deletions as they please.”  That is a plain claim that copyists were doing exactly what Knust said they did not do.  Second, her theory that copyists treated New Testament texts in the same manner in which copyists treated the Iliad, or the Hexapla, adding asterisks or obeli alongside unstable passages, was posited rather demonstrated.

That asterisks were sometimes placed alongside passages in New Testament manuscripts to convey scribal doubt is not questioned.  What is questioned, specifically, is whether the asterisks that sometimes accompany the PA were intended to convey scribal doubt, or whether they served a completely different purpose.  The example that Knust provided of asterisks accompanying the PA was a digital slide of the beginning of the PA in Codex Basiliensis.  In the Q-&-A period after her presentation, we revisited that slide. 

The asterisks do not begin at the beginning of the PA.  They accompany 8:2-11.  The lectionary symbol that means “skip” appears at the beginning of 7:53.  Lectionary-symbols for “begin” (αρχη) accompany the beginning of 8:12 (in the text, and in the margin).  A cross has been added in the text within 8:12 immediately before εγω ειμι.  An “end” (τελος) symbol appears at the end of 8:12.  And, in the upper margin, in the same (though slightly smaller) uncial handwriting in which the main text is written, the lectionary-incipit is given for the lection for the fifth day of the fourth week after Easter (which = John 8:12-20); that explains the purpose of the cross before εγω ειμι:  after the lector had read the incipit, he was supposed to continue from that point.  All of which tends to indicate that the asterisks in Codex Basiliensis alongside John 8:2-11 were not intended to convey scribal doubt, but had something to do with the lectionary instead.    

Knust attempted to show that early copyists of the Gospels, when they encountered passages that were absent from some exemplars, athetized the dubious passage rather than remove it.  She did not present some readily available evidence that opposes that idea.  (And, one might ask, if copyists ordinarily included and athetized passages not found in all exemplars, why are the extant manuscripts not brimming with asterisks??)  She also attempted to show that the PA has been included and athetized, but the evidence she presented did not support that idea.  (One could also raise the question of whether copyists of any composition other than the Hexapla considered the act of athetizing a permanent solution, or a prelude to excision.  But an exploration of this subject would go beyond my purposes today.)      

(Small question:  Knust seemed to think that the non-inclusion of the PA was supported by the Eusebian Canons.  Can this really be confidently sustained?  Granting that the mutilated Canon-tables fragment analyzed by Nordenfalk implies that the PA was given its own section-number, is that necessary, or could the PA be considered part of a larger section in Canon 10?)

The 2014 Pericope Adulterae Symposium: Part 2: Wasserman: The PA as an Editorial Expansion

Tommy Wasserman, who came all the way from Sweden, argued that the PA is not authentic.  Wasserman’s lecture involved a digital slideshow, which resisted his efforts to make it work, but eventually surrendered after a valiant struggle with Dr. Black’s research assistant Jacob Cerone.  Wasserman reviewed the opposing views about the PA (mentioning that SEBTS professor Andreas Köstenberger rejects the passage), briefly surveyed some external evidence, including the testimony of Didymus the Blind, and proceeded to plunge into a comparison of the PA and some other disputed passages.  His purpose for doing so was to illustrate a couple of points:  (1)  in the early witnesses, textual alterations tend to be accidental, not editorially motivated, and (2) even where scribes took liberties with the text, the scribal activity was limited to individual words or phrases; no scribal omissions involve the omission of an amount of text anywhere near the size of the PA.

            

Wasserman reviewed some readings which reflect editorial activity; these include the incident in the Diatessaron (≈ Luke 4:29-30) in which Jesus flies, the “fire in the Jordan” mentioned by Justin, the incident of Jesus’ bloody sweat and strengthening angel (Luke 22:43-44), Luke 9:54-56 (the “Shall we call down fire?” incident), Luke 23:34a (“Father forgive them,” etc.), the Syriac expansion of Luke 23:48 (“Woe unto us,” etc.), the Freer Logion, John 5:4’s description of the angel moving the water at Bethesda, and the expansions of Luke 6:4 and Matthew 20:28 in Codex D and some other Western witnesses.

Wasserman also mentioned that Hugh Houghton has discovered that in an early form of the Old Latin chapter-lists (capitula), there is a chapter-title for the story of the adulteress that includes the term moechatio.  This loan-word seems to imply that in the branch of the Old Latin tradition that produced this form of the capitula, the PA was inherited, in its normal location following John 7:52, from a Greek source.  This implies that the PA was present in a Greek copy of John’s Gospel in the 200s (or was it the 300s?   It wasn't clear to me which century Wasserman meant; Houghton seems to put the origin of the Old Latin capitula in the 200s); nevertheless Wasserman argued that this only implies that the PA is an early interpolation rather than a late interpolation.

What, then, should be done with the PA?  Wasserman proposed that instead of rejecting the PA, the church should consider enlarging its effective canon, imitating the churches in Ethiopia.  Jude, he noted, used the Book of Enoch, even though it was not written by Enoch, so why shouldn’t Christians feel free to use the PA even though it was not part of the original text of the Gospel of John?  If we do not want to criticize Jude for using the Book of Enoch, then doesn’t the same principle preclude the criticism of those who use the PA? 

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Some thoughts: 

Wasserman’s list of passages which display editorial activity cuts both ways:  while one could argue that it shows that scribes tended not to remove large portions of text, it also shows that scribes tended not to add large portions of text.  So, while the excision of the PA would be a special case, its insertion would be a special case too.  If Wasserman has shown anything via this comparison, it is only that the PA is a special case, a point which is granted by all sides.

Also, Wasserman’s list of proposed editorial expansions seems problematic in two ways. 

First, it included some very isolated readings.  For example, Justin’s “fire in the Jordan,” the Sinaitic Syriac’s “Woe unto us” insertion, Codex D’s Man-on-the-Sabbath episode at Luke 6:4, its extra saying after Matthew 20:28, and its comment about the size of the stone in Luke 23:53, and Codex W’s Freer Logion, all have extremely limited support among Greek manuscripts.  (One could add to this list the expansion in Luke 11:2.)  The reception of those readings is so limited that they are not really analogous to the reception of the PA; rather, they are contrary to it:  the very limited attestation of these expansions shows the opposite of what Wasserman proposed; that is, they show that editorial expansions that spread much beyond their origination-point tended to be rejected.  That’s why their Greek manuscript support is teensy-tiny. 

Second, it included some passages which may have been editorially omitted rather than added.  If the rejection of Luke 9:54-56 (regarding which Burgon mentioned the possibility of loss due to lectionary-influence), and the rejection of Luke 22:43-44, and the rejection of Luke 23:34 (regarding which see Nathan Eubank’s 2010 JBL article) are necessary for Wasserman’s case, then his case is precarious.                                

Dr. Wasserman does not recommend that the church should stop using the story of the adulteress, but I strongly suspect that his line of reasoning will bounce off those who both reject the PA and subscribe to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.  That is, if one maintains that (a) the church regards Scripture as authoritative because it regards Scripture as inspired, and (b) the text that the church recognizes as inspired is the original text, not a form of the text that includes material of scribal origin, then it follows that if the PA is regarded as material of scribal origin, then it will not be regarded as authoritative Scripture.  Jude’s use of Enoch will be placed alongside Paul’s use of the writings of Epimenides as a quotation made to illustrate a point, not to endorse its source.

It was remarkable to hear, from a presenter who had already stated his view that the PA is an interpolation, the review of a substantial amount of external evidence in favor of the early date of the passage.  The evidence presented by Wasserman practically requires the existence of a manuscript of John with the PA in the early 200s, contemporary with P66 (the earliest Greek manuscript that does not include the PA).  As Keith (I think) quipped at one point during the conference, we don’t see the fire – i.e., the manuscripts have not survived – but we see a lot of smoke – i.e., we see evidence that there were Greek manuscripts in the 200s that included the PA.

The 2014 Pericope Adulterae Symposium: Part 1: John David Punch: Ecclesiastical Suppression of the PA

On April 25-26, I had the pleasure of attending the conference on John 7:53-8:11 (the Pericope Adulterae) that was held at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.  Five scholars answered the following questions and explained their answers: 

            (1)  Is this passage original to John’s Gospel, or is it a later interpolation?

            (2)  Should it be proclaimed or proscribed?

This conference was very timely, because earlier in 2014, calls for the removal of John 7:53-8:11 from the text of the Gospel of John were made online by Dr. Jim Hamilton (of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Kentucky), Dr. Owen Strachan (of Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky), and Dr. Denny Burk (also of Boyce College).  Daniel Wallace, of Dallas Theological Seminary (where Hamilton studied), has been expressing the same sentiment since 2008.  Andreas J. Köstenberger (of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary), in his 2004 commentary (in the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament series), likewise declared that these 12 verses “should not be regarded as part of the Christian canon.”

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John David Punch went first – which is always a tough position, since the first presenter can’t easily react to the others, but they can respond to him.  His view is that that pericope adulterae is genuine and that it was ecclesiastically suppressed by some pious church-authorities who felt that the story was likely to cause simple-minded readers to view adultery as a minor and easily overlooked offense. 

Punch offered several pieces of internal evidence to support the Johannine character of the PA, or, at least, to answer charges that it is non-Johannine.  Rather than interrupting the surrounding text in chapters seven and eight, the PA is consistent with its context.  The imagery of Jesus writing with His finger, as a prelude to the dispensing of divine mercy, is just the sort of contrast with Moses (who gave the Law written by the finger of God; cf. Exodus 31:38) that one might expect from John.  Jesus’ instruction to “Sin no more” is very similar to His words in John 5:14.  

Punch also pointed out that (as Alan Johnson as observed) the charge that the vocabulary used in the PA is non-Johannine is greatly reduced when one considers, first, that John 2:13-17 has roughly congruent proportions of once-used words and Lukan words, and, second, that the PA has several Johannine features, and, third, that 8:12 does not (contrary to the claims of some commentators) smoothly interlock with 7:52:  the scene at the end of 7:52 is a gathering of the chief priests and Pharisees and their officers, without Jesus present, whereas Jesus is present with them (and the rest of the crowd) in 8:12.  Punch also briefly reviewed the external Greek evidence, noting that the evidence for the omission of the PA is early but is mainly limited, textually, to the Alexandrian text and, geographically, to the vicinity of Egypt.       

            

Turning to patristic evidence, Punch pointed out that the non-use of the PA by some patristic writers may be an effect of their (or their predecessors’) reluctance to preach about the passage in church-services.  Ambrose and Augustine, both of whom accepted the passage, convey that some individuals regarded the story of the adulteress as a risky passage to entrust to those who might be looking for an excuse for sin.  The loss of the PA in the early Alexandrian transmission-line was probably initiated by a bold editor who was similarly motivated.

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Some thoughts:

I felt that Punch’s case would have been more forceful if he had selectively utilized some of Burgon’s (and Ehrman’s) points about orthodox corruptions (see Burgon’s “Causes of Corruption,” pages 211-231), so as to show that some orthodox individuals boldly removed theologically difficult words, phrases, and verses from their exemplars so as to protectively prevent misunderstandings or misapplications; while the removal of the PA would be (if Punch is correct) the largest such orthodox excision, it would thus be special only in terms of its size.  Another point that might favor his theory is that in the early churches, if forgiveness was granted to a Christian who, after baptism, committed adultery, it was only after a long period of penance.  If, sometime in the 100’s, opponents of such a strict standard appealed to the PA as a basis for leniency, a ruthless bishop might react by removing the passage. 

In the Q-&-A time, I asked Dr. Punch why those who found the PA offensive to pious sensibilities would be offended by the opening verses 7:53-8:2, and remove those three verses along with the rest.  He acknowledged that this is not easy to explain.