Answering James White's Questions About Mark 16:9-20

            In a recent video, Dr. James White asked some questions about Mark 16:9-20.  Here are some answers.

(1)  How do you define overwhelming evidence?

            Something like this: 
99.9% of the extant Greek manuscripts of Mark 16.  The score is something like 1,650 to 3.

99.9% of the extant Latin manuscripts of Mark 16. The score is something like 8,000 to 1 (and the one, Codex Bobbiensis, is the worst-copied Latin manuscript of Mark in existence).

99% of the extant Syriac manuscripts of Mark 16.  The score is at least 100 to 1. 

100% of the extant Gothic manuscripts of Mark 16.  The score is 1 to 0.

At least 80% of the extant Sahidic manuscript of Mark 16.  The score is at least 5 to 1.

100% of the extant Bohairic manuscripts of Mark 16.  

100% of the Ethiopic manuscripts of Mark 16.  The score is about 200 to 0.   

100% of the extant Greek lectionaries of the Heothina series. 

(The ratios regarding Syriac and Sahidic manuscripts should be increased; I used low amounts here.  The one Syriac manuscript that ends the text of Mark at 16:8 is the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript; the one Sahidic manuscript that ends the text of Mark at 16:8 is Codex P. Palau-Ribes Inv. Nr. 182.) 

(2)  How could Eusebius and Jerome have said what they said?

            For some preliminary data about the testimony of Eusebius and Jerome regarding the ending of Mark, see section #2 of the 2016 post, Mark 16:9-20:  Sorting Out Some Common Mistakes.  As David Parker has acknowledged, Jerome simply recycled material from Eusebius to save time when facing a broad question about reconciling the Gospel-accounts.  (Additional details are in my book, Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20.)
            Eusebius worked at Caesarea in the early 300s, and part of the library there had been passed along from Origen in the 200s.  Origen had previously worked in Egypt, and it can be safely deduced that some copies of Mark in Egypt in the 200s ended their text at 16:8.  Eusebius’ comments reflect his awareness of such copies, or of copies at Caesarea descended from such copies. 

            In his composition Ad Marinum, however, Eusebius did not reject Mark 16:9-20.  He addressed Marinus’ question of how a person can harmonize Matthew 28:1-2 with Mark 16:9, regarding the question of the timing of Jesus’ resurrection.  Eusebius said that there are two ways to resolve the question:   one way might be to reject Mark 16:9, and everything that follows it, on the grounds that the passage is not in every manuscript, or is in some copies but not in others, or that it is seldom found.  But that is not the option that Eusebius recommends.  Instead, he advises Marinus to retain the text he has, and to resolve the question by understanding that there is a pause, or comma, in Mark 16:9, so that “early on the first day of the week” refers to the time of Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene, rather than to the time He arose.    

              The Greek text of Eusebius’ composition can be read in Roger Pearse’s free book, Eusebius of Caesarea: Gospel Problems and Solutions, with an English translation.  The things to see are that (a) Eusebius framed the claim that one could reject Mark 16:9-20 on the grounds that it is not in most manuscripts as something that could be said, not as his own favored option, even though there were manuscripts at Caesarea (descended from manuscripts from Egypt) which ended at 16:8, and (b) Eusebius recommended to Marinus that Mark 16:9-20 should be retained, and (c) he used Mark 16:9 on two other occasions in the same composition, and (d) Eusebius showed no awareness of the Shorter Ending.

            (It is extremely likely that Eusebius of Caesarea rejected Mark 16:9-20 when he developed his Canon-Tables, but that is a separate subject from his statements in Ad Marinum.)  

(3) Why do you have early fourth-century codices that do not contain this text?

            We have two fourth-century Greek codices in which Mark stops at 16:8 because those two fourth-century codices were based on manuscripts from, or descended from, Egypt, where Mark 16:9-20 had been lost or taken from the text in a previous generation. 
            Unusual features in Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus show that their copyists were aware of the absent verses; for details see this post about Codex Vaticanus and this post about Codex Sinaiticus.  I show, among other things, that Codex Vaticanus has a blank space after Mark 16:8 that is capable of containing Mark 16:9-20, and that the page on which the text of Mark ends at 16:8 in Sinaiticus is part of a cancel-sheet, that is, four pages that replaced the work of the main copyist.  

(4)  Why do other early fathers never mention material from that passage?  

            Who is Dr. White talking about?  Clement and Origen?  Clement never quoted from 12 entire chapters of Mark.  Saying that Clement never mentioned material from Mark 16:9-20 is like saying, “Clement used Mark 16:9-20 as much as he used 90% of the book.”

            Origen might allude to Mark 16:17-20 in the reworked composition Philocalia, but even if one is not persuaded that he did so, Origen didn’t use the Gospel of Mark very much; there are very large segments of Mark that Origen never quoted.  Here is one way of picturing the situation:  if you divide the text of Mark into fifty-six 12-verse segments, Origen only quotes from 22 of them.  Even if we were to arbitrary increase that amount, and say that Origen used half of the 12-verse segments in Mark, the point would stand that we should approach the data from Origen with the understanding that the chance of Origen quoting from any 12-verse segment of the Gospel of Mark is 50%. 

            Origen did not use 54 consecutive verses from Mark 1:36 to 3:16.  Origen did not use 41 consecutive verses of Mark from 5:2 to 5:43.  Origen did not use 22 consecutive verses from 8:7 to 8:29, and Origen did not use 39 consecutive verses from 10:3 to 10:42. 

            So when he does not quote from 12 verses in Mark 16:9-20, is that supposed to suggest that the passage wasn’t in his manuscripts?  Seriously?  Too many apologists have read “Clement and Origen show no knowledge of these verses” in Metzger’s Textual Commentary, and thought, “Well, that sounds important,” and rephrased Metzger’s claim without ever investigating whether it’s solid evidence, or propaganda.  Well, folks, it is empty propaganda.  Origen shows no knowledge of 450 verses of Mark.  The claim that Origen does not use Mark 16:9-20 – if he wasn’t doing so in Philocalia – has no real force as an argument against the passage, and commentators who use it as if it does deserve to be ignored.

            While we are on the subject of patristic evidence:  when someone claims that early church fathers never use the contents of Mark 16:9-20, that person shows that he is not qualified to give an informed opinion on the subject.  Lots of patristic writers mention material from Mark 16:9-20.  

            In the 100s, Justin Martyr alluded to Mark 16:20.  Tatian incorporated almost the whole passage in his Diatessaron.  And Irenaeus, in what is now France, specifically quoted Mark 16:19, in his work Against Heresies, in Book Three.  In the 200s, passages from Mark 16:9-20 are used in Syriac in the Didascalia Apostolorum, and in a Latin statement by Vincent of Thibaris at a council in Carthage, and in the Latin composition De Rebaptismate, in the 250’s.            

            In the late 200s or early 300s, the pagan writer Hierocles, in the area that is now Turkey, used Mark 16:18 in the course of mockingly challenging Christians to select their leaders by poison-drinking contests.  Also in the 300s, the Latin writer Fortunatianus mentioned that Mark told about the ascension of Christ.  In the same century, the unknown author of the Acts of Pilate used Mark 16:15-16, and so did the author of the Syriac text of The Story of John the Son of Zebedee.    Meanwhile, Aphrahat the Persian Sage utilized Mark 16:17 in his composition First Demonstration, in 337.  Elsewhere, Wulfilas included Mark 16:9-20 in the Gothic version in the mid-300s.  In Syria in the late 300s or early 400s, the translators of the Syriac Peshitta included Mark 16:9-20.  Meanwhile in Milan, Ambrose quoted from Mark 16:9-20 in the 380s. 

            In 383, Jerome made the Vulgate, stating specifically that he had consulted ancient Greek manuscripts for the purpose, and he included Mark 16:9-20.  A little later on, in the early 400s, Jerome made a reference to the interpolation known as the Freer Logion, and said that he had seen it “especially in Greek codices.”  Metzger proposes that the Freer Logion itself was composed and inserted into the text between Mark 16:14 and 16:15 sometime in the second or third century.   

            In the 400s, Patrick quoted from Mark 16:16 in Ireland; Augustine quoted from Mark 16:9-20 in North Africa – and he casually mentioned that his Greek copies affirmed a reading in verse 12 – and Macarius Magnes used it in Asia Minor, and Marcus Eremita used it in Israel, and Eznik of Golb quotes verses 17 and 18 way over in Armenia, and five forms of the Old Latin chapter-summaries, displayed for instance in Codex Corbeiensis, refer to the contents of Mark 16:9-20. 

            How many names of patristic writers who utilized Mark 16:9-20 are found in The King James Only Controversy in the section where James White focuses on external evidence about this passage?    Is Justin mentioned?  No.  Tatian?  No.  White mentioned two Georgian copies made after the time of Charlemagne, but did he mention Irenaeus?  No.  He mentioned the Slavonic version from the ninth century, because he thought it supports non-inclusion (it actually supports inclusion), but did he mention the Gothic version from the fourth century?  No.  Why not?

            James White didn’t mention the evidence from Justin, and Tatian, and Vincent of Thibaris, and Hierocles, and Fortunatianus, and Wulfilas.  But why should his readers feel as if they have been misled?

            James White didn’t mention Acts of Pilate, and the repeated quotations of Mark 16:9-20 by Ambrose in Italy, or by Augustine in North Africa. He didn’t mention that Augustine’s Greek manuscripts had Mark 16:9-20.  But why should his readers feel misled?    

            James White didn’t mention Patrick’s use of Mark 16:15-16 in Ireland, or Macarius Magnes’ extensive use of the passage in Asia Minor, or the use of Mark 16:18 by Marcus Eremita in Israel – but he did not lie to anyone.  Maybe his readers just misunderstood what they were being told.  

            White didn’t mention that Pelagius, Prosper of Aquitaine, and Peter Chrysologus used Mark 16:9-20.  But his readers have not been lied to.   

            James White did not mention a single one of these Roman-era witnesses that support Mark 16:9-20.  He did not mention that Irenaeus, c. 180, had a manuscript that contained Mark 16:9-20, over a century before Vaticanus was made. But why should anyone feel misled by White’s selectivity in choosing what evidence to share, and what to hide?      

(5)  Most importantly, why the differing endings if the one is original?

            Well, let me tell you.  The question is, in part, a request for a hypothesis:  in the first century, after the Gospel of Mark began to be disseminated from the city of Rome (with 16:9-20 included), a copy reached Egypt.  At this point, the last twelve verses were lost; a simple accident is possible, but I think they were removed or obelized (and then later removed) deliberately by someone who recognized them as resembling a short composition which Mark had written on another occasion as a freestanding text, summarizing Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances.  This individual regarded Peter as the primary author of the Gospel of Mark; Mark being merely a recorder and organizer of Petrine material.  He therefore obelized verses 9-20 as something that was not the work of the primary author, and in the next generation, the obelized portion was not perpetuated.   

            Of course we do not have this on video – just as we do not have any of the dozens of scribal corruptions that James White proposes in his book on video.  And this hypothesis can be tweaked without essential change; for example, it is possible that verses 9-20 were removed in a single step.  But this or something like this accounts for the absence of Mark 16:9-20 in Egypt, while the Gospel of Mark spread with 16:9-20 included everywhere else, as the patristic evidence shows – that is, as the patristic evidence would show, if the patristic writers had not been tied up and gagged, and thrown in a pit where they cannot be heard.

            In a later generation, in Egypt, the Shorter Ending was created by someone who could not stand the abruptness of the text in its truncated form (ending at the end of 16:8).  There are six Greek manuscripts that have the Shorter Ending; some of them are damaged, but all six also have verse 9, which implies that all six also had verses 9-20 when the manuscripts were in pristine condition. 

            Did James White tell you about the notes that appear in some of those manuscripts?  No?  Maybe that has something to do with why he is asking this question.  Let’s take a few minutes to zoom in on those notes.  Without getting bogged down in details, the thing to see is that most of these six manuscripts are related to the same narrow Egyptian transmission-stream.  Here are the basic details:

            In Codex L, a note appears before the Short Ending:  “In some, there is also this.”  And between the Shorter Ending and 16:9, a note says, “There is also this, appearing after ‘for they were afraid.”  It may be safely deduced from these notes that the person who wrote these notes knew of some copies with the Shorter Ending after verse 8, and some copies with verses 9-20 after verse 8.

            In Codex Ψ, the six lines that follow the line on which Mark 16:8 ends contain the Short Ending, and then there is a note:  “This also appears, following ‘for they were afraid.’”  The wording of the note is not quite identical to the note in L, but it is very close. 

            083 is a damaged fragment, but enough has survived to show that 083 has the closing-title “Gospel According to Mark” after 16:8, and then has the Shorter Ending in the next column, and before 16:9, the note, “There is also this, appearing after ‘for they were afraid,’” exactly as in Codex L. 

            099, which is even more fragmentary than 083, has a feature which creates a link to a locale in Egypt.  16:8 is followed by a gap, which is followed by the Shorter Ending, which is followed by another gap.  Then, instead of the beginning of 16:9, the contents of 16:8b are repeated (beginning with ειχεν γαρ αυτας τρομος ) and after 16:8 is completed, 16:9 begins.

            Why does this link these manuscripts to Egypt?  Because of the Greek-Sahidic lectionary 1602 – which James White mislabeled “l, 1602” in the second edition of his book, just as he mislabeled lectionary 153 as “l, 153” on the previous page.  In l 1602, a note appears between 16:8 and the Shorter Ending:  “In other copies this is not written.”  Then, after the Shorter Ending, there is the same note that appears in Codex L.  After the note, instead of beginning 16:9, the text resumes in 16:8b (at ειχεν γαρ, as in 099), which is followed by 16:9ff. 

            To review:  L and Ψ and 083 and  l 1602 have the note “There is also this, appearing after ‘for they were afraid,’” before 16:9.  099 and l 1602 both repeat the text of 16:8b before 16:9.  Thus, all five of these witnesses are traced to the same narrow transmission-stream, where Sahidic was read (i.e., in Egypt).     

 

            That leaves two Greek manuscripts with the Shorter Ending:  579 and 274.  579 (from the 1200s) does not share any of the notes that L, Ψ, 099 and 083 have, but it shares (approximately) the rare chapter-divisions that are displayed in Codex Vaticanus, the flagship manuscript of the Alexandrian Text.  It also shares many readings with Vaticanus, such as the non-inclusion of Luke 22:43-44 and Luke 23:34a.

            That leaves 274.  In the main text of 274 (from the 900s), 16:9 begins on the same line on which 16:8 ends (the verses are separated by an abbreviated lectionary-related note, “End of the second Heothina-reading”).  The Shorter Ending has been added in the lower margin of the page, to the right of a column of five asterisks; another asterisk appears to the left of 16:9 so as to indicate where the Shorter Ending was seen in another manuscript.    The Shorter Ending in 274 is more like an incidental margin-note, mentioning an interesting feature in some secondary exemplar, than part of the manuscript’s text copied from the main exemplar.

           

            The takeaway from this is that the Greek witnesses for the Shorter Ending echo situations in one particular locale, namely Egypt, where Mark 16:9-20 was first lost (or excised), and the Shorter Ending was then created to relieve the resultant abrupt stop of the narrative, and then copies appeared in which 16:9-20 followed 16:8.  Copyists in Egypt, facing some exemplars with no text after 16:8, and some exemplars with the Shorter Ending after 16:8, and some exemplars with verses 9-20 after 16:8, resolved the situation by including both endings.  Meanwhile, everywhere else – from Ireland to France to Rome to North Africa to the coast of Italy to Asia Minor to Palestine to Cyprus to Israel to parts of Egypt to Syria to Armenia – copies of Mark were being used in which 16:8 was followed unremarkably by 16:9-20.          

            The Sahidic, Bohairic, and Ethiopic versions, like almost all versions, echoed the Greek manuscripts accessible to their translators:  the earliest strata of the Sahidic version echoes a situation in Egypt when and where the text of Mark ended at 16:8; the versions with the double-ending (always with the Shorter Ending first, when it appears in the text – for it would be superfluous after 16:20) echo later situations.  (Notably, the Garima Gospels, the oldest Ethiopic Gospels-manuscript, does not have the Shorter Ending after 16:8; it has 16:9-20.)

                       

            If Dr. White has any other questions on this subject, or still feels obligated to put Mark 16:9-20 in a "Maybe Scripture, Maybe Not" category, I will be happy to discuss this topic with him in a formal debate – anywhere, any place, any time.

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

Biblical Archaeology Review and the Ending of Mark (Part 1)

            In 2001, Bible Review, which was at the time a sister-publication with Biblical Archaeological Review, featured an article by Michael Holmes:  To Be Continued … The Many Endings of the Gospel of Mark.” Although Bible Review was discontinued, that article is still being distributed by BAR  in a collection of article titled, Easter:  Exploring the Resurrection of Jesus.  Unfortunately, Holmes’ article contains numerous statements which either significantly distort the evidence pertaining to the subject of the ending of the Gospel of Mark, or else omit important details which, if presented, convey a different impression to readers.  Here they are, with clarifying notes.

(1)  “At least nine versions of the ending of Mark can be found among the 1,700 ancient Greek manuscripts and early translations of the Bible.”

            This sensationalistic claim gives the impression that nine different endings were composed for Mark 16.  Granted, Holmes goes into more detail further along in his article – but this sentence is likely to be quoted solo for sensationalistic effect.  In real life, the tally looks like this, in basic terms of whether the Greek manuscripts have verses 9-20 or the Shorter Ending or both:

            ● In Codex Vaticanus (from c. 325), Mark 16:8 is followed by the book-title, which is followed by a deliberately-placed blank space.

            ● In Codex Sinaiticus (from c. 350), Mark 16:8 is followed by an emphatic column-wide decorative design, followed by the book-title.  In addition, all four pages in Codex Sinaiticus containing Mark 14:54-Luke 1:56 constitute a cancel-sheet; that is, these four pages were produced by the diorthotes, or proofreader/supervisor, when the manuscript was in production; the text on these four pages was not written by the same copyist who wrote the text on the surrounding pages.  The diorthotes wrote Luke 1:1-56 in extremely compact lettering, and wrote the text in the ninth column of the cancel-sheet in extremely stretched-out lettering. 

            ● In 304 (from the 1100’s), the text of Mark ends at the end of 16:8 without a subscription and without the book-title.  304’s text of Mark is interspersed with a commentary, and the commentary continues after this point for several pages, describing parallel-passages from the other Gospels, but then it abruptly stops.  304 is probably simply a damaged manuscript, possibly one which, when initially produced, was a single-volume Gospels-manuscript which was rebound as two volumes.

            ● In six Greek manuscripts, the Shorter Ending appears – always accompanied by at least part of Mark 16:9-20.  These six Greek manuscripts are 083 (from the 600’s), 099 (from around 600), L (from the 700’s), Ψ (from the 800’s), 274 (from the 900’s), and 579 (from the 1200’s).  

            ● In the remaining 1,600+ Greek manuscripts of Mark, 16:8 is followed by 16:9. 

            When we leave Holmes’ sensationalistic fantasy of “nine versions” of Mark 16, and explore the evidence, we see that two endings – not nine – were attached to Mark 16:8.  We also see that every Greek witness for the Shorter Ending also contains at least part of verses 9-20. 

(2)  “We also have copies of Syriac, Sahidic Coptic and Armenian translations dating as early as the fourth century that preserve this form.”

            The blurriness of Holmes’ statement may be remedied by focusing on the evidence.

            ● One Syriac manuscript (the Sinaitic Syriac) ends the text of Mark at 16:8.  It is the only Syriac manuscript to do so. 

            ● One Sahidic Coptic manuscript ends the text of Mark at 16:8.  This is Codex P. Palau-Ribes Inv. Nr. 182.  When initially published, it was assigned a date around 425 (which is not “as early as the fourth century”) but it may be centuries younger.

            ● We do not have Armenian manuscripts of Mark from the fourth century.  The Armenian alphabet was not created until the early fifth century.  Holmes’ claim is simply erroneous.

(3)  “Eusebius wrote:  The accurate copies conclude the story according to Mark in the words of the young man seen by the women and saying to them, “Do not be afraid.  You seek Jesus . . . for they were afraid.”  For the end is here in nearly all the copies of Mark.”

  

            If Holmes had given his readers a closer look at Eusebius’ statements about Mark 16:9-20, they would receive a far different impression than the one given by this cherry-picked quotation.  That statement – from Eusebius’ composition Ad Marinum – is part of a response to a question about how to harmonize the accounts of Matthew and Mark when it comes to the time of Jesus’ resurrection.  Eusebius says that there are two ways to settle this question:
            “This could be resolved in two ways.  On one hand, the person who rejects the passage itself – the pericope which says this – might say this:  ‘It does not appear in all copies of the Gospel of Mark.  At least, the accurate copies close Mark’s account with the words of the young man who appeared to the women and said to them, “Do not fear.  You are seeking Jesus the Nazarene” and so forth, proceeding to where it says, ‘And having heard, they fled, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.’
            “For there the Gospel of Mark is brought to a close in almost all the copies.  The material that comes afterward seldom appears; it is in some copies but not in all, and may be spurious, especially since it implies a disagreement with the witness of the other Gospels.’  This, then, is what someone might say to avoid and altogether dismiss a superfluous question.
            “On the other hand, someone else, who dares to set aside nothing at all which appears, by whatever means, in the Gospel-Scriptures, says that this point in the narratives, like many others, is described in two ways, and each of the two must be accepted, since they are advocated by the faithful and pious, not this one instead of that one, or that one rather than this one. 
            “And furthermore, since it is granted that this section is true, it is appropriate to seek to fathom the meaning of the passage.  And if we accurately discern the sense of the words, we would not find it contrary to what Matthew said: ‘Late on the Sabbath’ the Savior was raised.  For we will read Mark’s ‘and having risen early on the first day of the week’ with a pause:  after ‘and having risen,’ we shall add a comma.  And we will separate the meaning of what is read next:  so, on one hand, we could read ‘having risen’ in regard to Matthew’s ‘late on the Sabbath,’ for that is when he was raised.  On the other hand, we might join what follows, producing a different meaning, with what is read next:  for ‘early on the first day of the week he appeared to Mary Magdalene.’

            “At any rate, John has also made this clear, and has himself testified that the appearance to the Magdalene was ‘early on the first day of the week.’  So, likewise, in Mark also he appeared ‘early’ to her.  It is not [that] he ‘rose early’ but much earlier, according to Matthew, ‘late on the Sabbath.’  For having arisen at that time, he did not appear to Mary at that time, but ‘early.’  The implication is that two episodes are represented by these phrases:  one is the time of the resurrection, which was late on the Sabbath; the other, of the appearance of the Savior, which was early.  Mark referred to the later time when he wrote, saying what must be read with a pause:  ‘And having risen.’  Then, after adding a comma, one must read the rest – ‘early on the first day of the week He appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons.’”

            When the full contents of this part of Ad Marinum are revealed, it is plain that Eusebius was not very concerned about the consistency of the view of a hypothetical person who rejected Mark 16:9-20:  the description of the manuscript-evidence swings from “not in all” to “hardly in any” – because that was not Eusebius’ approach to the issue when he wrote Ad Marinum.  He recommended that Marinus should accept Mark 16:9-20 and resolve the perceived discrepancy via the insertion of punctuation in Mark 16:9.    Furthermore, in the course of answering Marinus’ third question in Ad Marinum, Eusebius refers to Mary Magdalene as the Mary “from whom, according to Mark, he [Jesus] had cast out seven devils.”  (This detail, also related less precisely in Luke 8:2, is stated in Mark only in 16:9), showing that Eusebius used a text which included Mark 16:9-20.  (Those who wish to see the text of Ad Marinum for themselves may consult Eusebius of Caesarea:  Gospel Problems and Solutions, edited by Roger Pearse; see especially pages 96-99, 112-113, and 118-119.)

            Holmes did not warn his readers against interpreting Eusebius’ statement about quantities of manuscripts anachronistically, so I will do so here.  When Eusebius wrote in the early 300’s, not long after the Diocletian persecution, he had no means to survey the manuscript-collections of libraries and churches in far-flung locations.  When he refers to quantities of manuscripts, he is not referring to proportions of all manuscripts in existence.  At best – if he is not casually guessing or repeating unverified claims from some other writer – he is describing proportions of manuscripts that he has encountered.  The experience of a contemporary somewhere else might be entirely different (and was different to Eusebius’ contemporary Marinus).   

(4)  “Eusebius’ report is echoed some decades later by Jerome (c. 343-420), who based his Latin translation of the Vulgate on the oldest Greek texts known at the time.  Speaking of Mark 16:9-20 (the final verses that are not included in the shortest form), he writes that this section “is found in only a few copies of the Gospel – almost all the Greek copies being without this final passage.”

            “Echo” is truly the correct word to describe how Jerome used Eusebius’ material in Ad Marinum.  Jerome frequently borrowed material from other writers without naming his source – and he straightforwardly admitted doing so.  That is what he did in the early 400’s, when he was writing Ad Hedibiam (at a time in his life when most of his letters were written by dictation).  Facing a broad question about how the accounts of events following Jesus’ resurrection should be harmonized, Jerome replied by summarizing Eusebius’ first three responses to Marinus – along with forms of Marinus’ first three questions – and loosely restated them in Latin.  As David C. Parker has pointed out (on page 135 of The Living Text of the Gospels, © 1997 David Parker), in this part of Ad Hedibiam, “Jerome’s work is simply a translation with some slight changes of what Eusebius had written.  It is thus worthless for our purposes.”

            Holmes thus presented part of Eusebius’ statement twice (once from Eusebius, and once from Jerome’s Latin abridgement) – and both times, he somehow neglected to mention that in Eusebius’ Ad Marinum, and in Jerome’s Ad Hebidiam, the person to whom the letter is addressed is instructed to retain Mark 16:9-20. 

(5)  “The intermediate ending is found only in Codex Bobbiensis, an Old Latin manuscript that was written in the late fourth or early fifth century but that preserves a text whose roots go back at least to the early third century.  We know this because the text is very similar to that cited by Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (d. 258), in his writings.”

            Holmes omitted some important details:  (a)  Codex Bobbiensis is thoroughly damaged, rendering it somewhat tenuous to extrapolate a close relationship to Cyprian’s Gospels-text.  (b)  The text of Mark 16:1-8 in Codex Bobbiensis is extremely corrupt; among other things, it contains a unique insertion between verses 3 and 4, and omits part of verse 8.  (c)  The Shorter Ending is very badly written in Codex Bobbiensis:  he wrote “puero” (child) instead of “Petro” (Peter), and wrote the Latin equivalent of “from east to east,” and omitted the word “praedictionis.”  Basic errors abound throughout the text of this manuscript, as if the copyist was seeing an exemplar of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark for the very first time. 

(6)  “These verses are also found in a wide range of early translations.  They include most manuscripts of the Old Latin.”

            Or to put it another way:  every undamaged Old Latin manuscript of Mark 16 includes verses 9-20, except Codex Bobbiensis.  The Gothic version (produced by Wulfilas in the mid-300’s) was not mentioned by Holmes. It includes Mark 16:9-20 immediately after 16:8.  Likewise the Garima Gospels – the earliest Ethiopic Gospels-manuscript, produced sometime in the 400’s-600’s – should be ungagged:  it contains Mark 16:9-20 immediately after 16:8.

              

(7)  “This long version was known among the early church fathers.  The Christian apologist Justin Martyr (d. c. 165) probably knew the longer ending; the church father Irenaeus, who quotes Mark 16:19 in his work Against Heresies (written c. 175), certainly did.  The apologist Tatian apparently cited it in his Diatessaron, a late second-century harmony of the four Gospels, and the church father Hippolytus (c. 170-236) quotes 16:17-18.”

            This is all true as far as it goes (though I would say that Justin’s use of Mark 16:9-20 is more than just probable, and the corresponding arrangement of Mark 16:9-20 in the Arabic Diatessaron and in Codex Fuldensis locks down the case that Tatian used the passage).  But some other patristic witnesses in support of Mark 16:9-20 should be added to the list besides those four.  For example, Robert Stein has stated that the author of the second-century composition Epistula Apostolorum knew Mark 16:9-20.  (If these four second-century witnesses – Justin, Tatian, Epistula Apostolorum, and Irenaeus – were papyri instead of patristic utilizations, I wonder if we would need to write anything further in defense of Mark 16:9-20.) 

            Other witnesses include Vincentius of Thibaris at the Seventh Council of Carthage (257), the author of De Rebaptismate (258),  Hierocles, recycling the work of Porphyry (305), Acts of Pilate (early 300’s), Aphrahat (335), Fortunatianus (c. 350), Ambrose (370’s), De Trinitate (by Didymus or Pseudo-Didymus, c. 380), Apostolic Constitutions (380), manuscripts seen by Jerome with the Freer Logion (late 300’s), Augustine (c. 400), Greek manuscripts mentioned by Augustine (400), Apocryphal Acts of John (early 400’s or earlier), Philostorgius (late 300’s/early 400’s), Macarius Magnes (405), Pelagius (410), Marcus Eremita (435), Eznik of Golb (440), Marius Mercator (mid-400’s), and Patrick (mid-400’s). 

            Is it fair to individually name every Greek manuscript in which Mark’s text ends at the end of 16:8, and then casually skip over 20 early patristic witnesses that support the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20?  No; that is not a fair presentation.

(8)  “In five medieval manuscripts, the long form is accompanied by asterisks or obeli (the ¸ symbol), marks traditionally used to indicate suspect or spurious material.”      

           

            This false claim was repeated by Daniel Wallace in a chapter in the 2007 book, Perspectives on the Ending of Mark.  Wallace listed the five medieval manuscripts:  138, 264, 1221, 2346, and 2812.  However, in 138, the mark in the margin alongside Mark 16:9 is not alone; the manuscript has a note in the margin, and commentary-material below the text.  In 264, the symbol that accompanies the beginning of Mark 16:9 also accompanies the beginning of Mark 11:12, 12:38, and 14:12; at each point it appears at the beginning of a lection.  The idea that these marks in 264 were intended to convey scribal doubt is baseless.  They either serve the same purpose as modern footnote-numbers, or else are part of the normal lectionary-related marginalia.
            In 1221, the symbol between Mark 16:8 and 16:9 is neither an asterisk nor an obelus; it is a lozenge-dot (four dots arranged in a north-south-east-west pattern), and this symbol also appears in Mark in 1221 after 2:12, halfway through 5:24, and at 6:7.  In Luke, this symbol appears several more times:  at the beginning of 1:24, at 1:26, and at the end of 1:56.  In each case, the symbols indicate the start of a lection.  They were added for the convenience of the lector and have no text-critical significance.

            In 2346, we again encounter a lozenge-dot above the line, between Mark 16:8 and 16:9.  In the margin are symbols for τελος and αρχη, indicating the end and beginning of lections.  Once again, this is all lectionary-related and does not indicate a smidgen of scribal doubt.  (The same symbols converge in 2346 at the end of John 1:28.)

            In 2812, a Gospels-manuscript from the 900’s, in which the Biblical text is accompanied by a commentary in the margins, there is a “comet” symbol which is intended to draw the reader’s attention to the commentary-material on a following page, where one finds the Victor of Antioch’s comment about Mark 16:9-20 in the margin – an ordinary component of the Catena Marcum.  This symbol is merely drawing the reader’s attention to one of this manuscript’s many commentary-notes.

None of these five manuscripts have the feature which Holmes said they have.  The lectionary-related symbols, instead of conveying scribal doubt or suspicion about Mark 16:9-20, show that the passage was a prominent lection (to be read at Ascension-Day, and as part of the eleven-part cycle of resurrection-related lections known as the Heothina).

(9)  “In 12 manuscripts, the long form is accompanied by a critical note.”

            199 (from the 1100’s), a MS related to Λ/566.  Its short note says, “In some of the copies this does not occur, but it stops here” (that is, at the end of 16:8).

            20, 215, and 300 share a note which says, “From here to the end forms no part of the text in some of the copies.  But in the ancient ones, it all appears intact.”   

1, 205, 205abs, 209, and 1582 share a note which says, “Now in some of the copies, the evangelist’s work is finished here, and so does Eusebius Pamphili’s Canon-list.  But in many, this also appears.”

15, 22, 1110, 1192, and 1210 share basically the same note displayed in MSS 1 and 1582, minus the part about the Eusebian Canons:  “In some of the copies, the Gospel is completed here, but in many, this also appears.”

These are not independent notes; they descend from two ancestors:  one ancestor-manuscript of the copies with the Jerusalem Colophon had a note stating that although some copies do not have Mark 16:9-20, the ancient copies contain it all.  Another note, in an ancestor-manuscript of the family-1 MSS, stated that some copies did not contain the passage, and the Eusebian Canons did not include it, but it was found in many copies.  The latter note was then truncated some time (or somewhere) when the Eusebian Canons had been adjusted to include Mark 16:9-20.

(10)  “Form 3b occurs in several manuscripts that include the long form (Mark 16:1-20) but indicate (in different ways) that this longer ending might not be original.”

            Holmes is referring to the five non-existent asterisked MSS, and to the 14 (not 12) MSS with notes, described above.  Contrary to the impression which one could easily receive from Holmes’ article, close examination of these notes, especially in their older, fuller forms, these notes tend to encourage readers to accept, rather than reject, the passage, by appealing to either the majority of copies, or to the ancient copies, in support of the inclusion of the passage.

            (It may be worth mentioning that although the note displayed in some MSS with the Jerusalem Colophon, and the note displayed in the family-1 MSS are not very similar, they might both have originated as nothing more than summaries of the comment of Victor of Antioch.)      

(11)  “One typical note reads, “In some copies the evangelist finished here [that is, Mark 16:8] – which is also as far as Eusebius the student of Pamphilus canonized; but in many copies this also [16:9-20] is in circulation.”

            This rendering of the note does not convey its meaning accurately.  Eusebius of Caesarea did not “canonize” any texts; the note refers to the Eusebian Canons, a cross-reference system for the Gospels which Eusebius of Caesarea developed, and which is found in many Gospels-manuscripts. 

(12)  “Form 4 is an expanded version of the long form.”

            Exactly!  What Holmes calls one of “nine versions of the ending of Mark” is just the usual 12 verses after verse 8, with an interpolation between verses 14 and 15.  This is not a “different ending” (as the NET erroneously described it).  It is the normal twelve-verse ending, plus an interpolation.  If we were to describe the last 12 verses of Matthew, or the last 12 verses of Luke, as a “different form of the ending,” just because of the presence of textual variants, we could easily state that there are a dozen forms of the ending of Matthew, and two dozen forms of the ending of Luke.  But this would be highly misleading, which is my point:  it is misleading to look at a ship, and then look at the same ship with a barnacle on it, and call it a different ship.

(13)  “Our final form, Form 5, is a combination form that appears in several manuscripts in four variations, which is how we get a total of nine different versions of Mark.”

           

            To rephrase what Holmes admits in this sentence:  what he calls “Form 5” is not a fifth composition.  It is not even a third composition:  it is the combination of the Shorter Ending, followed by verses 9-20, sometimes accompanied by brief notes and sometimes not.    

            In the Greek core-witnesses to the double-ending – 083, 099, L, and Ψ – the notes accompanying the Shorter Ending and verses 9-20 (or, due to damage, only the first part of verses 9-20) share either content, or an unusual format, or both, with Greek-Sahidic lectionary 1602, placing the origin of this arrangement squarely in Egypt.     

            After 16:8 and before the Shorter Ending, Greek-Sahidic Lectionary 1602 has a note that says, “In other copies this is not written.”  After the Shorter Ending, Greek-Sahidic Lectionary 1602 has basically the same note that is present in L, Ψ, and 083:  Εστιν δε και ταυτα φερομενα μετα το εφοβουντο γαρ.  Then it begins, like 099, a little more than halfway through 16:8, at the words ειχεν γαρ, and its text proceeds from there, presenting the rest of verse 8 followed by verse 9.

            So, these several (i.e., six) manuscripts do not constitute six independent annotations.  Four of them clearly emanate from an Egyptian edition of the Gospel of Mark.  (In the remaining two – 274 and 579 – the Shorter Ending is not accompanied by a note.)  It seems obvious that what Holmes described as “a continuing awareness of the multiple endings of the Gospel of Mark” was an awareness, isolated somewhere in Egypt, of manuscripts of Mark with no text after 16:8, and manuscripts of Mark with 16:9-20 after verse 8, and manuscripts of Mark with only the Shorter Ending after verse 8.  The annotators simply described the manuscripts that they inherited – which is not a new independent ending; it is a description of the manuscripts they inherited in that particular location. 

(To be continued . . .)

The Text of Reasoned Eclecticism: Is It Reasonable and Eclectic? Part Two of a Four-Part Response to Dan Wallace

External Evidence

            Wallace began his consideration of what external evidence implies about the Byzantine Text with a simple misrepresentation.  He stated that the primary premise in the Byzantine Priority view is, “Any reading overwhelmingly attested by the manuscript tradition is more likely to be original than its rivals,” he added, “In other words when the majority of manuscripts agree, that is the original.”  But somewhere in those other words, the word “overwhelmingly” was murdered – sacrificed for the sake of caricature-drawing.  A majority might be 50.1%.  The overwhelming support for Byzantine readings that Wallace routinely vetoes in favor of Alexandrian readings include majorities of 85%, 98% and 99% and higher proportions of the manuscript-evidence. 

            Wallace says, “In historical investigation, presumption is only presumption.”  But when facing textual variants in which 99% of the Greek manuscripts disagree with the Alexandrian reading, we do not face mere presumptions; we face implications:  either a corruption permeated 99% of all Greek manuscripts, or else a corruption was adopted in 1% of them.  In general, which is more likely:  that many copyists in many places created or adopted a non-original reading, or that few copyists in few places did so?  The original text is the text with the head start, so to speak, and if one is to posit that a non-original reading overtook it so as to become more popular, one must explain how that happened – and this is not easy to do without making some assumptions, or presumptions.  So let the axiom, “Presumption is only presumption,” be aimed at all presumptions, not just those that maintain Byzantine Priority. 

            Moving along.  Wallace claimed that if the Byzantine Text were the original text, then one would expect to find it “in the earliest Greek manuscripts, in the earliest versions, and in the earliest church fathers,” and “One would expect it to be in a majority of manuscripts, versions, and fathers.”

            “But,” he continues, “that is not what is found.”  However, by definition, the majority text is what is found in the majority of manuscripts (at least in passages where a majority exists, rather than a split-decision among three or more rival variants).  Wallace attempts to circumvent this obvious fact by redefining the majority as the majority of long-lived manuscripts.  “As far as the extant witnesses reveal,” he claims, “the majority text did not exist in the first four centuries.” 

            Considering that it comes from someone attempting to avoid presumptions, that is an extremely presumptive claim.  Other than the papyri from Egypt, there is not much New Testament manuscript-evidence to indicate what texts were being used throughout the Roman Empire before the year 400.  The available manuscript-evidence is not remotely close to being extensive enough to justify statements about what the majority of manuscripts read in the second or third centuries, at points where the testimony of the extant evidence is diverse.  To presume that the manuscript-evidence from Egypt depicts the text that was used in other locales is a huge presumption.  By the year 235 or so, Origen stated that the manuscripts were in disagreement with each other.¹³  That is difficult to reconcile with the idea that a uniform Alexandrian Text, or any text-type, was an established standard text at that time in a multitude of non-Egyptian locales. 

             When Wallace appeals to the papyri as vindication for his idea that the Byzantine Text did not exist in the first three centuries of Christendom, he states, “More than fifty of these came from before the middle of the fourth century. Yet not one belongs to the majority text.”  That is not quite true.  Papyrus 104, which currently contends with Papyrus 52 for the claim of earliest-known-New-Testament-manuscript, is a fragment of text from Matthew 21 that agrees with the Byzantine Text as much as it agrees with the text of Codex Vaticanus.¹⁴  In addition, large portions of Codex W (from the late 300’s or early 400’s) display the Byzantine Text.¹⁵  

            Papyrus 98, a fragment from the late 100’s or early 200’s which contains text from Revelation 1:13-2:1, disagrees twice with the Byzantine Text (though in one of these two instances, the Byzantine Text is divided), and disagrees once with the Nestle-Aland text – so it is rather presumptive to say that the fragment favors one text-type significantly more than the other, especially since P⁹⁸ disagrees with Codex Sinaiticus five times.  Papyrus 16, a fragment from the 300’s with text from Philippians, diverges from the Byzantine Text eleven times, but it also disagrees with Codex Vaticanus nine times.  The much-mutilated Papyrus 45, which is currently the earliest known manuscript of the Gospel of Mark, from the early 200’s, agrees much more closely with the text of Mark in Codex W than with the text of Mark in Codex Vaticanus, and in Mark 7, P⁴⁵ agrees repeatedly with the Byzantine Text.  Papyrus 46 also frequently disagrees with the Nestle-Aland text.¹⁶

            Wallace can’t have it both ways:  if the mere existence of a non-Byzantine local text displayed in the early papyri constitutes strong evidence that the Byzantine Text did not exist, then the existence of a non-Alexandrian text in the early papyri (such as what is seen in P⁴⁵) constitutes strong evidence that the Alexandrian Text didn’t exist.  Obviously this sort of reasoning is an overextrapolation, since witnesses such as P⁷⁵ show that the parts of the Alexandrian Text that they contain did exist in the 200’s.  The non-existence of Byzantine papyri in Egypt does not imply the non-existence of Byzantine papyri in other locales, just as non-Alexandrian readings in some Egyptian papyri do not imply the non-existence of Alexandrian readings in other Egyptian papyri.

            Wallace stated, “Many hypotheses can be put forth as to why there are no early Byzantine manuscripts.  But once again an ounce of evidence is worth a pound of presumption.”  As if there is some mystery about it!  Until the 300’s, New Testament manuscripts were made of papyrus, which decomposes in virtually every climate except for the low-humidity climate of Egypt.  This is not a presumption; it is a scientific fact.  High humidity was even more systematic and thorough than the Roman persecutors who destroyed Christian manuscripts during the Diocletian persecution. 

            This is a perfectly reasonable explanation why we have New Testament manuscripts – and fragments of the works of Homer, and Greek poetry, and tax-receipts, etc. – from Egypt, and not from very many other locales, from the 200’s and 300’s.  It’s not as if Christians in other locales were not reading the Gospels, or reading the Iliad, or writing receipts and letters.  The unique climate of Egypt is the factor that has resulted in the preservation of papyrus documents there.  And they provide a fairly good sample of the texts that were used in Egypt (especially at Oxyrhynchus).  But they cannot do the impossible; they do not tell us what sort of New Testament text was in use elsewhere. 

            Wallace moves on to consider the early versions.  He correctly points out that the Old Latin evidence is consistently Western (where its witnesses are not barnacled by Vulgate readings, at least).  However, some Old Latin witnesses habitually collide with other Old Latin witnesses; there was not one monolithic Old Latin tradition; there were, instead, numerous independent Latin versions, as Jerome indicated in his preface to the Vulgate Gospels.  The extant Old Latin manuscripts are samples from that collection.  And while the Old Latin texts are not Byzantine, they agree with the Byzantine Text much more than they agree with the Alexandrian Text.  This is no more proof of the non-existence of the Byzantine Text than it is proof of the non-existence of the Alexandrian Text. 

            The Coptic version, Wallace states, “goes back to an early date, probably the second century.”  There was not just one Coptic version.  What we have are New Testaments (or at least portions of the New Testament) in several Egyptian dialects, displaying several different forms of the text from different areas and different eras:  Sahidic, Bohairic, Achmimic, Sub-Achmimic, Middle Egyptian, and Fayyumic.  Part of the Sahidic version is strongly Alexandrian, but the collective testimony of the Coptic versions is very far from a uniform endorsement of the Alexandrian Text; the Coptic Glazier Codex (Cop^G67), for example, displays a thoroughly Western text of Acts.  In addition, one should consider that the second-century origin of the Sahidic version is a calculated guess.  Due to the uniformity of Coptic lettering across centuries, the production-dates of Coptic manuscripts are notoriously difficult to specify on a paleographical basis.    

            Wallace next turns his attention to the Gothic version, which he, in agreement with Metzger, affirms to be the earliest representative of the Byzantine Text.  However, he blurs its production-date, stating that it was produced “at the end of the fourth century,” i.e., the late 300’s.  The Gothic version was produced by Wulfilas, who was appointed to be a bishop in 341; he undertook his translation-work shortly after that, in the mid-300’s, that is, at about the same time Codex Sinaiticus was produced.

            What does the existence of these early versions imply about the Byzantine Text?  Wallace proposes two implications.  First, he proposes that “If the majority text view is right, then each one of these versions was based on polluted Greek manuscripts.”  As far as the Old Latin versions are concerned, that sword cuts both ways:  advocates of the Alexandrian Text consider the Old Latin versions’ texts to be thoroughly corrupt.  Wallace has no right to treat this as a problem, since he believes it too.    

            Second, he proposes that the early versions represent the texts used in a wide variety of locales:  “the Coptic, Ethiopic, Latin, and Syriac versions came from all over the Mediterranean region. In none of these locales was the Byzantine text apparently used.”  (Did you see how he just threw the Ethiopic version in there, as if it existed before the 300’s?)  I challenge Wallace to name a single Byzantine reading anywhere in the Gospels that does not have some support from one or more of these versions.  The Syriac Peshitta version, in particular, exhibits strong alignment with the Byzantine Text.  And neither the Sinaitic Syriac nor the Curetonian Syriac displays an Alexandrian Text; put either one alongside the text of Vaticanus or Sinaiticus and you will observe a plethora of disagreements.  So when Wallace’s sentence is filtered by reality, and only versions from before the 300’s are in view, this is what survives:  “The Sahidic, Latin, and Syriac versions came from all over the Mediterranean region.  Only in the Sahidic version was the Alexandrian Text apparently used.”   

            The early Sahidic version did not come from all over the Mediterranean region.  It was a local text.    

            Rather than constituting “strong evidence that the Byzantine text simply did not exist in the first three centuries—anywhere,” the Old Latin evidence that Wallace has called to the stand testifies that diverse forms of the Western Text were used as the basis for Latin translations.  They are no more anti-Byzantine than they are anti-Alexandrian.  And, I note in passing, that in many cases, the Old Latin aligns with the Byzantine Text and not with the Alexandrian Text.  (This alignment provides pro-Alexandrian critics with an excuse to see only a few early Byzantine readings:  when a Byzantine reading agrees with a Western witness, the reading is categorized as Western.) 

            Again:  the only early version with a strongly Alexandrian Text is the Sahidic made-in-Egypt version.  Thus, what Wallace has in the early versions – even when the Gothic version and the Peshitta are set aside – is not evidence that the Byzantine Text did not exist anywhere.  The evidence does not come remotely close to warranting such a sweeping conclusion.  It implies, rather, that by the time the Old Latin versions were made, the Western Text had already developed, and that by the time the earliest strata of the Sahidic version was made, the Alexandrian Text had developed in Egypt.  It does not, and cannot, inform us about the text that was being used in other locales.

            What about the early patristic writers?  Wallace affirms that “Many of them lived much earlier than the date of any Greek manuscripts now extant for a particular book.”  His readers could easily get the impression that many patristic authors before the year 300 wrote so extensively that researchers can confidently observe what text-type they used in their utilizations of the New Testament.  However, in 1881, Hort wrote,

            “The only extant patristic writings which to any considerable extent support Pre-Syrian readings at variance with Western readings are connected with Alexandria, that is, the remains of Clement and Origen, as mentioned above (§ 159), together with the fragments of Dionysius and Peter of Alexandria from the second half of the third century, and in a certain measure the works of Eusebius of Caesarea, who was deeply versed in the theological literature of Alexandria.”¹⁷

            In other words, if one searches through all the known patristic literature produced before 300, the only places one finds substantial agreement with non-Byzantine, non-Western forms of the New Testament are in the writings of a few individuals who were linked to Egypt either geographically (Clement of Alexandria lived in Alexandria, of course, and Origen worked there prior to moving to Caesarea around 230) or in terms of training (Eusebius of Caesarea was a fan and defender of Origen).  

            Even in some of the writings of individuals who were either in, or from, Egypt – where one would naturally expect the local Alexandrian Text to exert the most influence – there is as much evidence for the Byzantine Text as for the Alexandrian Text.  In Carl Cosaert’s analysis of the Gospels-text used by Clement of Alexandria, Cosaert listed 125 utilizations of the text of the Gospel of Luke in which Clement’s text agrees with either one or two members of a group consisting of Codex Vaticanus, Codex Bezae, and the Textus Receptus.  Clement’s text, according to Cosaert, agrees with D 62 times (49.6%), with B 65 times (52%), and with the Byzantine Text 68 times (54.4%).¹⁸  This is not evidence that Clement used a manuscript of Luke that closely resembled the Byzantine Text – but it is evidence (contrary to what Wallace is trying to show) that Clement’s support for the idea that the Byzantine Text of Luke was non-existent when he wrote is not any greater than Clement’s support for the idea that the Alexandrian Text of Luke was non-existent when he wrote.

            None of the patristic research conducted in the last 80 years has shown that any writers outside Egypt and Caesarea prior to the year 300 used the Alexandrian Text.  There simply are not “many” patristic writers before 300 who wrote enough, and cited the New Testament enough, to clearly show that they favored the Alexandrian Text.     

            Wallace’s claim that “The early fathers had a text that keeps looking more like modern critical editions” does not accurately describe a single early patristic writer outside the borders of Egypt and Caesarea.  It does not even accurately describe the text used by Clement of Alexandria.  In some cases, the texts used by early patristic writers look more Byzantine than Alexandrian.  For example, the Alexandrian Text does not contain Mark 16:9-20, but utilizations of Mark 16:9-20 are found in the writings of Justin Martyr (160), Tatian (172), Irenaeus (180’s), Hippolytus (220’s), and the pagan author Hierocles (305), who was very likely recycling material composed by Porphyry in the 270’s.  Matthew 17:21 is another example of a non-Alexandrian reading supported by a patristic author who is supposed to have an Alexandrian text:  this verse was cited by Origen, but the entire verse is absent in the Alexandrian Text.¹⁹ 

            Wallace presents the Greek manuscripts, the early versions, and early patristic quotations as “a threefold cord” of testimony.  But in reality those three things do not come together:  the early Egyptian papyri display the texts used in Egypt.  The texts in the Old Latin versions and the Sinaitic Syriac and Curetonian Syriac are not Byzantine, but they are certainly not Alexandrian either.  Early patristic evidence from outside Egypt-and-Caesarea does not support the Alexandrian Text, and even some writers in Egypt and Caesarea support readings that are in the Byzantine Text, against the Alexandrian Text. 

            Everything we see in these three forms of evidence – manuscripts, versions, and patristic utilizations of the New Testament – indicates that the New Testament text was disseminated in localized forms.  And a local text, while capable of showing us what text was used in a specific locale, does not show us what text was being used in another locale hundreds of miles away.  We don’t look at an early Old Latin manuscript such as Codex Vercellensis and conclude that it reveals the local text of Alexandria.  Nor do we look at the Sinaitic Syriac and conclude that it reveals the local text of southern Italy.  But Wallace apparently wants us to look at a local Greek text of Egypt, and very different local Latin texts from who-knows-where – possibly also from Egypt, in some cases²⁰ – and conclude that they reveal the local texts of Antioch, Asia, Cyprus, Edessa, Nicomedia, and the cities of Greece. 

            What text of the New Testament was being used by Christians in that vast territory before the year 300?  We do not know:  manuscripts, versions, and substantial patristic writings from that area, in the ante-Nicene era, are not extant.  But in the 400’s, the Byzantine Text was the Greek text that was in use in the Greek-speaking churches in these areas, and the Peshitta was the Syriac text that was in use in the Syriac-speaking churches.  In addition, we observe that

            ● the Gospels-text in Codex Alexandrinus (from around 400) is mainly Byzantine,

            ● portions of the Gospels in Codex W (from the late 300’s or 400’s) are Byzantine,

            ● Basil of Caesarea (330-379) used a text of Matthew that was primarily Byzantine,²¹

            ● The texts of John and the Pauline Epistles used by Gregory of Nyssa (335-395) agree more with the Byzantine Text than with any other text-type.²²

            Before moving on to address Wallace’s comments about internal evidence, there is one more of his claims about external evidence that invites a response:  he stated that some patristic statements show that what is the majority-reading now was not the majority-reading when those statements were made.  Wallace provided only two specific examples of this:  (1)  Jerome’s statement (in Ad Hedibiam) that Mark 16:9-20 “is met with in only a few copies of the Gospel – almost all the codices of Greece being without this passage,” and (2) Jerome’s statement that at Matthew 5:22 “most of the ancient copies” do not contain εικη.   Regarding the first example, I believe that anyone who takes the time to compare Jerome’s comments in Ad Hedibiam to Eusebius’ comments in Ad Marinum will conclude that the part of Jerome’s composition in which this statement is found is essentially a loose recycling of Eusebius’ material; in the course of answering Hedibia’s broad question about how to reconcile the Gospels’ accounts of events after Christ’s resurrection, Jerome utilized three of Marinus’ specific questions on the subject, as well as three of Eusebius’ answers, in the same order in which they appear in Ad Marinum. 

            This should provide some instruction about the high degree of caution that should accompany patristic references to quantities of manuscripts.  In some cases, such as we see in Ad Hedibiam, the claim may have been borrowed second-hand from a source who was describing manuscripts in a different time and place.  In other cases, it may indeed reflect what the author has encountered, but it would be quite a leap to conclude that what the author encountered is what one would encounter when surveying all manuscripts everywhere that were contemporary to him.  In other words, there is no justification for the assumption that a reading found in the majority of manuscripts known to a specific author would also be found in the majority of manuscript that were not known to that author.  When we approach a statement about manuscripts that an author knows about, that is what we should understand it to be – not a statement about manuscripts about which the author knows nothing.  There is no necessary correlation between the contents of majorities of manuscripts known to Origen, or to Eusebius, or to Jerome, and the contents of actual majorities of manuscripts at the time of Origen, or Eusebius, or Jerome.  This point seems to have completely eluded Wallace.

- Continued in Part Three - 

_______________

FOOTNOTES

13 – See Metzger’s quotation of Origen on page 88 of New Testament Tools & Studies – Historical and Literary Studies, Vol. 8 (1968), at the outset of his article, Explicit References in the Works of Origen to Variant Readings in New Testament Manuscripts:  “The differences among the manuscripts have become great, either through the negligence of some copyist or through the perverse audacity of others,” etc.

14 – A thorough description of P¹⁰⁴ is among the files of the NT Textual Criticism group on Facebook.

15 – Specifically, Codex W is essentially Byzantine in Matthew and in Luke 8:13-24:53.  In Mark 5-12, it seems to be loosely, and uniquely, aligned with the text found in P⁴⁵.  The text of Luke 1:1-8:12 and John 5:12-21:25 is essentially Alexandrian.  This block-mixture shows that it was possible for rival text-types to exist side-by-side in the same locale.

16 – See the comments by Dennis Kenaga regarding P⁴⁶ on page of Skeptical Trends in New Testament TextualCriticism:  “The oldest witness, P46, was rejected 303 times, 30% of the time, in 1 Corinthians.”  (The wording of this sentence could be improved, but the basic point is correct.)    

17 – See page 127 of Hort’s Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek.

18 – See the data in Carl P. Cosaert’s The Text of the Gospels in Clement of Alexandria, © 2008 by the Society of Biblical Literature.  A preview is at https://books.google.com.au/books?id=27U9z0LKccIC .

19 – It is feasible that Origen was quoting from Mark 9:29, but he tended to quote from Matthew much more frequently than from Mark.  Even if one were to grant that Origen was quoting Mark 9:29, the quotation is clearly not based on the Alexandrian Text, because Origen includes the words “and fasting,” which are not in the Alexandrian Text of Mark 9:29.

20 – See Metzger’s comment on page 37 of The Bible in Translation:  The Coptic versions of the Old Testament frequently show a relationship with the Old Latin version . . . . This is not surprising, because the Old Latin version is regarded as having been of preeminent importance for the African Church.”

21 – See Jean-Francoise Racine’s 2004 book, The Text of Matthew in the Writings of Basil of Caesarea.

22 – See James A. Brooks’ 1991 book, The New Testament Text of Gregory of Nyssa.