John 7:46 - Neither Shortest Nor Longest

In his obsolete Textual Commentary of the Greek New Testament, regarding the end of John 7:46 Bruce Metzger briefly stated, "The crisp brevity of the reading supported by p^{66c, 75} B L T W copt^bo al was expanded for the sake of greater explicitness in various ways, none of which, if original, would account for the rise of the others."  

Let's test that.

Following ἄνθρωπος, we see the following variety: 

ὡς οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος - Byz K M N U Γ Δ Θ Λ Π Ψ  f¹ f¹³ 2 28 33 69 124 157 565 579 1071 1424 1505

ὡς οὗτος λαλει ὁ ἄνθρωπος  - P66* 01* (There is an itacism in 01 and P66*, and 01 has a singular reading at the beginning of the verse, pictured.)

ὡς οὗτος λαλει (after ἄνθρωπος ἐλάλησεν) - 05

That's not a lot of variety.   03 P66^c 019 T and 032 appear to be the only manuscripts which support the reading adopted in UBS4.

Meanwhile, support for a longer reading comes not only from all other Greek manuscripts (with GA 13 dissenting due to a scribal error, initially failing to include ἐλάλησεν earlier in the verse, and with a transposition - ἐλάλησεν οὗτως - in N Ψ 33 1071 1241) but also from the Sahidic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Georgian, and Syriac (Sinaitic, Curetonian, Peshitta, and Harklean) versions, as well as the Palestinian Aramaic and the Vulgate.  A very impressive array.

While some commentators point out that the Byzantine text displays a tendency to clarify via embellishment, one should also be aware of the opposite tendency in the Alexandrian text to economize via abbreviation - i.e., to attempt to express the same idea using fewer words.  

If one were to treat the reading supported by the vast majority of manuscripts and versions as original here, the reading of 03 and allies is readily explained as either the result of a parableptic leap from the first ἄνθρωπος to the second ἄνθρωπος., or as an intentional attempt to eliminate superfluity.  

An early scribe could conceivably consider the Alexandrian reading in need of embellishment, and add "like this" or "like this man."  On the other hand, the addition of "like this" and "like this man" adds nothing that anyone could not figure out in a moment.  If John wrote ὡς οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος, his reason for doing so would be obvious:  that is what he overheard the soldiers say.  In addition, the reading in P66* and 01 is accounted for as a conflation of the Byzantine reading and the reading in 05.

Instead of defending the Alexandrian reading by assigning to scribes a desire to make a frivolous embellishment, it is better in this case to regard the reading of 03 and allies as an accidental or intentional truncation of what John wrote.

One medieval scribe - the copyist of 2483(2866) - illustrated that a scribe in the Middle Ages could commit dittography while copying John 7:46-47.  And where dittography is possible, parablepsis tends to be possible too.

For those who may be interesting in how English versions treat this variant:  KJV NKJV MEV RSV Message NASB95 NET NIV EHV EOB all support the longer reading, demolishing any  assumption that those who reject Metzger’s premise here must harbor a pro-Byzantine prejudice.    

(Thanks to Ben Crawford for sharing this photo of GA 2483 from the Benjamin Crawford Collection, Alabama.)

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Fact-checking Bart Ehrman's Skepticism Course about the Gospel of Mark

The tradition about the origin of the Gospel of Mark is that Mark composed it in Rome to preserve a record of Peter's remembrances about Jesus.  I see no reason not to subscribe to that.

Bart Ehrman  

Dr. Bart Ehrman has recently focused on this, asking his readers about the Gospel of Mark's author, date, and purpose.  Let's put some of his claims under my analytical magnifying glass.

He called Sinaiticus and Vaticanus "our oldest two manuscripts, assigning them both to "toward the end of the fourth century  (around 375 CE)."  In real life Papyrus 45 is older.  And Vaticanus probably dates from the early 300s, not the later 300s (by which the Eusebian Sections had become very popular among scribes transcribing the Gospels).

He also stated that "they have the shortest titles," but in real life Sinaiticus has the longer form of the subscription to the Gospel of Mark (see picture).

"The titles were added by a later scribe (in a different hand" he state, and this is correct - but "later" in this case may simply be a matter of days; the diorthotes (supervisor/proofreader) acting as scribe as he finished approving the codex book by book via the addition of the closing titles.

Ehrman then claimed "the manuscripts that the authors of both these 4^th century manuscripts used apparently didn’t have titles at all (since they lacked them until the later scribe added them)."  At this point Dr. Ehrman was over-extrapolating and making little sense.   It is simply baseless to look at a systematic approach to adding page-titles and book subscriptions and conclude that it is an echo of exemplars rather than simply show tighter compartamentalization of the labor assigned to the transcription team of scribes. 

Ehrman supposes that it's anyone's guess whether the titles were added a year after 01 and 03 were made, but in real life it would require less than a minute before manuscript-readers of the Gospels in the 300s would encounter no book-titles and no subscriptions before they would demand a refund and/or send it back to the scriptorium to be finished.

For some reason - probably an irrational adherence to skepticism - Ehrman questions the testimony of Papias about Mark's authorship.  First he claims "There’s no way of knowing for certain that he’s talking about our Mark.  I’m not just being overly skeptical here."

Bart Ehrman certainly is being overly skeptical, as usual.  It's not as if there were multiple small books floating around Rome in the late 100s and reporting testimony about Jesus.  Papias' report made sense to subsequent generations.  If Ehrman really considers it "odd" that second-century writers prior to Irenaeus did not make their reports of the origins of the Gospels more explicit I invite him to consider that they were writing for audiences informed by oral tradition, not for atheistic readers 1900 years later.  

Papias wasn't throwing down words from the clear blue sky.  As Eusebius of Caesarea wrote, "he shows by the words which he uses that he received the doctrines of the faith from those who were their friends."  Papias wrote that he "learned carefully from the elders and carefully remembered" what he heard.   

For those new to Papias, I remind everyone what Timothy Mitchell pointed out in 2016, :  Papias perpetuated an older tradition when he wrote "And the elder used to say this: "Mark, having become Peter's interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered - though not in  systematic order - about the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him.  But afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teachings as needed but had no intention of giving an ordered account of the Lord's discourses. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong by writing down some things as he remembered them, for he made it his primary concern not to omit anything which he heard, and to avoid making any false statement in them."  This is preserved in Eusebius' Church History Book 3:39.  

(I mention in passing that this does not seem to be how anyone would describe Mark's Gospel without 16:9-20.)

Ehrman wrote, "Earlier authors who appear to quote Mark (e.g., Justin in 150 CE) - "

Allow me to pause and consider Ehrman's needless nebulosity.  Justin Martyr utilized Mark 3:16-17 when he mentioned that Jesus changed the moniker of the sons of Zebedee to Boanerges (in Dialogue with Trypho 106).   

Ehrman claimed that "If we look for any evidence in the Gospel itself that it was written by Mark or from provides Peter’s perspective on Jesus, there’s really nothing there."  He is incorrect again, as a thoughtful reading of Broadus' commentary on the Gospel of Mark demonstrates. [Take ten minutes and use the embedded link to obtain this wonderful resource.]

Ehrman assumed that Peter didn't know what Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane - as if Peter and Jesus could not have discussed the subject when Peter and Jesus were eating during the 40 days following Jesus' resurrection.  That's his atheism talking.

Ehrman correctly observed that "Peter is not portrayed in a positive light in the Gospel: he cannot understand who Jesus is, he puts his foot in his mouth, he denies him three times, and at one point Jesus calls him Satan."  So what?  Peter did not want to brag about himself; he honestly pointed out some of his faults to his Roman audience.  Of course he wanted to point to Jesus and Mark in his Gospel recorded Peter's accounts.  

Ehrman's irrational skepticism is on display when he wrote that Mark "almost certainly could not have written this kind of subtle and elaborate account in Greek" on the grounds that Mark's native tongue was Aramaic.   Dr. Ehrman simply underestimated how thoroughly being raised in a bilingual society - in this case, Judea-Samaria-Galilee - produced a literate mind such as that of Mark.  His incredulosity that Mark produced his Gospel (totaling 52 page if written in a tidy little book today) in the course of his lifetime is hard to understand anything other than a theatrical effect.  

Ehrman claimed that to compose Mark's little Greek book "was highly unusual."  Considering the educational system organized by Queen Salome Alexandra that was already in place when Mark was born this assumption is unwarranted.  The Septuagint was in play.  Many Jews in Roman-occupied Judea were literate in Greek.

When Ehrman asked why the Gospel of Mark was attributed to Mark he seems to overlook the historical reason that the Christians at Rome who knew Peter and Mark were aware that Mark was writing a composition to preserve Peter's recollections about Jesus, and when Mark passed his work along to them it was simply the natural thing to do.  

Like most liberals, Ehrman assigned the Gospel of Mark to "maybe" 70-75.  Being a skeptic who denies the miraculous he seemingly considers certain sayings of Jesus foreseeing the destruction of Jerusalem as if they were concocted after the fact.  A production-date in the mid-60s (not to put too fine a line on it but I suspect 68) seems to me more probable, with earlier stages of the composition being accessible to Christians such as Luke.  (Independent records of early apostolic traditions about Jesus were also circulating as Luke attested in the opening verses of his Gospel).  

Ehrman didn't go far enough when he observed that in the Gospel of Mark "Jesus repeatedly declares he has to die for others and not even his closest intimates can get their minds around it."  Peter and his fellow apostles didn't have an accurate idea of Jesus' mission prior to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ - but afterwards, following the coming of the Holy Spirit, they did.  Their enlightenment didn't start with the composition of Mark's Gospel; Mark's Gospel echoes Peter's education.  Considering that Peter died as a crucified martyr rather than deny Christ, that ought to say something about his integrity and the truthfulness of his testimony about Jesus as written by Mark.

Meet GA 0206

GA 0206 was found and catalogued by Grenfell and Hunt and was featured in Volume XI of their series  Oxyrhynchus Papyri.  Its text of from First Peter 5 has been assigned to the 300s, and when Don Barker re-read its page-number as 829 instead of 229 (the second digit is basically a toss-up between 10 and 20 (Ι and Κ), it became clear that 0206 is what remains of quite a hefty volume; possibly a pandect like Codex Sinaiticus.  

 
At Wikipedia one can read details about its text.  

 ● 5:8a – 0206 reads ο before διαβολος along with p72 and 33, disagreeing with NA27 and the Byzantine Text.

● 5:8b – after ζητων 0206 lacks τινα, agreeing with Codex Vaticanus, and disagreeing with the Byzantine Text.   NA 27 has τινα in brackets.

 ●5:9b – 0206 lacks τω, agreeing with the Byzantine text and disagreeing with Papyrus 72 and Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.  Again the NA27 uselessly resorted to brackets.

 ● 5:9c – 0206 reads επιτελεισθαι (to be experiencing) along with the majority,  disagreeing with Papyrus 72 (επειτελειται) and with Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus and  (επιτελεισθε) (you are experiencing).

● 5:10 – 0206 lacks τω agreeing with the Byzantine Text, disagreeing with Papyrus 72 and Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

 ● 5:10 – 0206 lacks the nomina sacra for “Jesus” agreeing with Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.  NA27 resorts to brackets.

 ● 5:10 – 0206 reads καταρτιει (an orthographic error, probably elicited by the scribe's line of sight drifting ahead in the text of his exemplar.  The word υμας is not included, disagreeing with the Byzantine text.

 ● 5:10 – the final word of the verse θεμελιώσει is absent, a parableptic error elicited by homoeoteleuton.  

 ● 5:11a – 0206 reads αυτω κρατος (to whom [is to be attributed] dominion), agreeing with NA27 and Papyrus 72 02 03, disagreeing with the longer Byzantine reading αυτω η δοξα και το κρατος.   (A liturgical flourish appears to be have been added to the Byzantine text here.)

 ● 5:11b – 0206 reads εις τους αιωνας των αιωνων αμην (to the ages of the ages, Amen), agreeing with the Byzantine text and disagreeing with the more economical Papyrus 72 and Vaticanus and NA27 (εις τους αιωνας αμην) (to the ages Amen).  Simple parablepsis accounts for the shorter reading.

 ● 5:12 – 0206 lacks the του after χαριν, agreeing with Papyrus and disagreeing with the Byzantine text and NA27.

Not only does this fragment excavated in Egypt show that Byzantine readings were floating around in Egypt in the 300s in a large multi-book manuscript, but this analysis shows that the editors of NA27 were, in this particular passage. seem to have been timidly averse to doing their job.

John 17:9 - A Glitch in the Matrix

          In John 17:8 there is an interesting textual variant which, as far as I know, receives no attention in the footnotes of any major English translation.  It is not noticed in the UBS Greek New Testament (4^th edition), although Metzger made a brief commend about it in his Textual Commentary on the GNT.

          Following ἔλαβον, the words καὶ ἔγνωσαν (“and knew”) are absent in ﬡ*, A, D, W, 0211, pc, a, d, e, q, ac², vg^ms, pbo, and the Gothic version.  The Old Latin presented with Beuron numbers = VL 3 (Vercellensis), VL 5 (Bezae), VL 2 (Palatinus) VL 13 (Frisingensis/Monacensis) and VL 16 (Fragmenta Curiensa).

          This has to have been a very early variant, considering that it somehow spread to early representatives of Alexandrian, Western, and Byzantine transmission-lines. Since there is more or less no way to connect these particular witnesses closely through a textual relationship, logic seems to require positing a scenario in which the omission of καὶ ἔγνωσαν was elicited in the minds of two or more scribes independently in separate transmission-lines.  In other words, more than one early scribe fell to the temptation to relieve a perceived difficulty by removing the ostensibly problematic text.  The suspicion of Marie-Joseph Lagrange – that καὶ ἔγνωσαν was omitted because it seemed to collide with John 6:69 – is probably correct.

Matthew 17:21 - What's the Early Evidence Say?

In the Evangelical Heritage Version, Matthew 17:21 says, "But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”  The KJV, NKJV, EOB-NT, MEV, WEB, and 1995 NASB read similarly.  In the RV 1881, ASV, ESV, NIV, NLT, and NRSV, however, there is no such verse; the versification jumps from 20 to 22.  What has happened?

Bruce Manning Metzger

          Bruce Metzger did not spend many words explaining:  “Since there is no good reason why the passage, if originally present in Mathew, should have been omitted, and since copyists frequently inserted material derived from another Gospel, it appears that most manuscripts have been assimilated to the parallel in Mk. 9.29.”  (Textual Commentary on the GNT, p. 43)  His concise treatment is unsatisfactory for at least three reasons, first of which is the consideration that Matthew himself when using Mark’s Gospel (or something closely resembling it) had no discernible reason to skip over this statement of Jesus. 

          Second, the external evidence merits a closer look.  Neither the apparatus in the UBS GNT nor the Nestle-Aland NTG is sufficient.  We begin with their data, supplemented by Swanson:  verse 21 is absent in À* B Q 579 788 892* l253 it^e  ff¹ the Sinaitic Syriac, the Curetonian Syriac, Palestinian Aramaic, the Sahidic version, some Bohairic witnesses, an Ethiopic witness, and an early strata of the Old Georgian version.    Everything else favors the inclusion of τοῦτο δὲ τό γένος ούκ ἐκπορεύεται εἰ μὴ ἐν προσευχῇ καὶ νηστείᾳ (À^c reads ἐκβάλλεται instead of ἐκπορεύεται, 118 reads ἐξέρχεται, and 205 1505 l1074 read εξέρχεται) – including C D F G H K L Y O W Y Δ Σ Φ 0281 f¹ f¹³ 28 157 180 565 597 678 700 892^c 1006 1010 1071 1241 1243 1292 1342 1424 Byz Lect it^a it^aur it^b it^c it^d itf it^ff2 it^g1 it¹ itⁿ it^q Vulgate Peshitta Harklean Syriac Armenian some Georgian, and the patristic evidence is lopsided in favor of inclusion:  Origen Asterius Basil-of-Caesarea Chrysostom Hilary Ambrose Jerome Augustine.  Hort noted that daemonii is sometimes added in Old Latin witnesses.  The writer of an article at NeverThirsty stated, “The verse is not included in the newer Bibles because the older and better manuscripts of Matthew do not include it” and “Apparently in the process of copying the manuscripts, someone at a much later date copied the verse from the Gospel of Mark and added it to the Matthew account. “

 

         Now let’s zoom in on some patristic witnesses. 

          In 2010 Jonathan C. Borland presented a paper titled “THE AUTHENTICITY AND INTERPRETATION OF MATTHEW 17:21” at a gathering of the Evangelical Theological Society in Atlanta, Georgia.  He noted that 1604 2680 should be added to the list of MSS favoring non-inclusion, and that the percentage of Greek MSS favoring inclusion is 99.4%.  He also took a close look at some patristic witnesses:

          ● The author known as Pseudo-Clement, in Letters on Virginity (1:12) did not specify which Gospel he was quoting but the wording looks more like Matthew 17:21 than  Mark 9:29 when he wrote against individuals who “do not act with true faith, according to the teaching of our Lord, who hath said: ‘This kind goeth not out but by fasting and prayer,' offered unceasingly and with earnest mind.’”

          ● Clement of Alexandria, c. 200, in Extracts from the Prophets, wrote, “The Savior plainly declared to the believing apostles that prayer was stronger than faith in the case of a certain demoniac, whom they could not cleanse, when he said, ‘Such things are accomplished successfully through prayer.’”

          ● Tertullian, in de Jejun 8:2-3, without specifying whether he was citing Matthew or Mark, wrote the following:  “After that, he prescribed that fasting should be carried out without sadness.  For why should what is beneficial be sad? He taught also to fight against the more fierce demons by means of fasting. For is it surprising that the Holy Spirit is lead in through the same means by which the sinful spirit is lead out?”

          ● Origen, in his Commentary on Matthew (13:6-7) wrote, “That those, then, who suffer from what is called lunacy sometimes fall into the water is evident, and that they also fall into the fire, less frequently indeed, yet it does happen; and it is evident that this disorder is very difficult to cure, so that those who have the power to cure demoniacs sometimes fail in respect of this, and sometimes with fastings and supplications and more toils, succeed.”  And, “But let us also attend to this, ‘This kind goeth not out save by prayer and fasting,’ in order that if at any time it is necessary that we should be engaged in the healing of one suffering from such a disorder, we may not adjure, nor put questions, nor speak to the impure spirit as if it heard, but devoting ourselves to prayer and fasting, may be successful as we pray for the sufferer, and by our own fasting may thrust out the unclean spirit from him.”

          ● The Latin writer Juvencus wrote in Book 3 of Libri evangeliorum quattuor, “For by means of limitless prayers it is faith and much fasting of determined soul that drive off this kind of illness.”

          Although defenders of modern versions have claimed that “The verse is not included in the newer Bibles because the older and better manuscripts of Matthew do not include it,” antiquity in this case favors inclusion:  the oldest witness for inclusion is older than the oldest witness for non-inclusion.

          The scope of attestation also favors inclusion at least as much as it favors non-inclusion:  Western witnesses for inclusion far outnumber the Western witnesses for non-inclusion, and they are geographically widespread.

          We are left with the appeal to the “best” manuscripts as the basis for rejecting the verse.  But this is circular reasoning; the real question is “What are the best witnesses at this specific point?”, and generalizations simply do not answer that question. It is like deciding which football team wins the ballgame when the score is tied by asking which kicker has made the most field goals, instead of by actually scoring more points than the other team.  

          Third, this supposed harmonization doesn’t yield a tight harmony.  Let’s compare the text of Matthew 17:21 to Mark 9:29.  Mark wrote, τοῦτο  τό γένος ἐν οὐδενὶ δύναται ἐξελθειν εἰ μὴ ἐν προσευχῇ καὶ νηστείᾳ.  (Regarding the Alexandrian text’s non-inclusion of καὶ νηστείᾳ, see my earlier analysis.)  Metzger’s plea that Mark 9:29 was transplanted into Matthew 17 is complicated by the distinct lack of verbal similarity:

          Matthew:  τοῦτο δὲ τό γένος ούκ ἐκπορεύεται εἰ μὴ ἐν προσευχῇ καὶ νηστείᾳ.

          Mark:  τοῦτο τό γένος ἐν οὐδενὶ δύναται ἐξελθειν εἰ μὴ ἐν προσευχῇ καὶ νηστείᾳ.

          This is not a verbatim harmonization – out of 12 words (in Matthew 17:21), nine are identical – and Metzger’s comment that “copyists frequently inserted material derived from another Gospel” fails to explain why a scribe with Mark 9:29 in front of him would change 25% of its wording when inserting it into the text of the Gospel of Matthew.  It should also be noted that the kind of harmonization Metzger referred to usually involved harmonization to the text of Matthew in Mark and Luke, not the other way around (the harmonization of Matthew 9:13 and Mark 2:17 to Luke 5:32 being a notable exception).

          I propose that an early Western scribe intentionally omitted the material we know as Matthew 17:21 out of concern that readers might think that the ability of the Son of God was limited depending on whether he fasted or not.  (The same concern motivated the omission of καὶ νηστείᾳ in Mark 9:29.)  This exclusion was subsequently adopted by scribes in the Alexandrian transmission-line, which led to the reading (or non-reading) in À B Q et al.

          Matthew 17:21 should be regarded as an authentic part of the Gospel of Matthew.  The oldest evidence, the most geographically diverse evidence, and the vast majority of evidence all point in favor of its inclusion.  The NIV, ESV, etc. should be corrected accordingly.

Thanks to Jonathan Borland for sharing his insightful research.

Hand to Hand Combat: GA 2414 versus Sinaiticus in John 10 - and a variant in John 10:12-13

GA 2414 is more interesting and important than the average New Testament manuscript.  It resides in Greece in the Public History Library in the village of Zagora - a place that has been occupied for quite a long time.   The manuscript is assigned to the 900s.  It is fully indexed on the CSNTM website.  

How does its (Byzantine) text compare to, say, the text of Sinaiticus in one of the most famous passages in the Gospels - verses 10-16 of Jesus' "Good Shepherd" discourse in John 10?  Let's find out, using the text of NA27 as the referee.  Trivial deviations from the compilation such as final nu and nomina sacra contractions will be noted but not counted as variants.

John 10:10-16 in GA 2414 

10 - has εχουσι instead of εχουσιν (-1)

11 – no variants

12 – has δε between μισθωτὸς and και [+2]

12 – has εισι instead of εστιν [+2, -3]

12 – has τὰ πρόβατα after σκορπίζει [+9]

13 – begins with Ὁ δὲ μισθωτὸς φεύγει [+17]

14 – has γινώσκομαι ὑπο τῶν ἐμῶν instead of γινώσκουσι με τὰ ἐμα [+11, -7]

15 – no variants

16 – transposes, reading με δει instead of δει με

16 – reads γενήσεται instead of γενήσονται [+1, -2]

2414 has 42 non-original letters added and 13 original letters missing, for a total of 55 letters’ worth of corruption.

Now let's compare Sinaiticus' text to NA27:

10 – has αιωνιον after ζωην [+7]

10 - has εχουσι instead of εχουσιν (-1)

11 – no variants

12 – has δε between μισθωτὸς and και [+2]

12 – has εισι instead of εστιν [+2, -3]

12 – has τὰ πρόβατα after σκορπίζει [+9]

13 – begins with Ὁ δὲ μισθωτὸς φεύγει [+17]

14 – has γινώσκομαι ὑπο τῶν ἐμῶν instead of γινώσκουσι με τὰ ἐμα [+11, -7]

15 – no variants

16 – transposes, reading με δει instead of δει με

16 – reads γενήσεται instead of γενήσονται [+1, -2]

That’s 18 non-original letters included, and 11 original letters omitted, for a total of 29 letters’ worth of corruption.  Codex Sinaiticus wins!  

Or so it seems.  Much depends on what happens at the end of verse 12 and the beginning of verse 13.  The NASB renders these two verses as follows:  "He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf snatches them and scatters the flock.  He flees because he is a hired hand and does not care about the sheep."  

            The italicized words salvage the problem:  without them, the antecedent of  the entity who flees is the wolf!  The shorter Alexandrian reading is clearly the more difficult reading - but it is so difficult that it is rather nonsensical. What, if the Byzantine reading is original, could have elicited the creation of the shorter reading?  Simple parablepsis:  If a copyist wrote, after a line ending in σκορπίζει, the words τα πρόβατα ὁ δε μισθωτός φευγει, inattentiveness could have cause a subsequent scribe to omit all six words, skipping from -ει to -ει.  Major Alexandrian witnesses - P66, P75, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, 019, etc. - weigh in for the shorter text, as well as 05 032 and the Sinaitic Syriac and the Coptic version.       

            Byzantine witnesses are not entirely uniform.  Most MSS read τα πρόβατα ὁ δε μισθωτός φευγει but Swanson notes that Codex Π 565 and 1071 read ὁ δε μισθωτός φευγει (and the Peshitta and the Latin texts concur) - suggesting to me that an early exemplar written in narrow columns read 

        πρόβατα καὶ φευγει

        και ὁ λύκος ἁρπάζει

        αὐτὰ και σκορπίζει

        ὁ δε μισθωτός φευγει - 

four consecutive lines ending with -ει.

       This is an especially notable variation-unit - not only because the non-inclusion of the six or four words is accounted for so readily, but also because the shorter reading is supported by the primary witnesses in both the Alexandrian and Western transmission lines - so the Byzantine reading would be, in theory, a non-Western elaboration.  At the same time, the sentence without ὁ δε μισθωτός φευγει is jarring - Jesus' subject jumps from the role of the wolf to the role of the hireling without warning.  One could argue that the shorter reading is thus the more difficult reading - but it can also be argued that the shorter reading is so difficult that it is unlikely to be what John initially wrote.  

        I propose that the text of John 10:13 should be amended in the Nestle-Aland compilation to include ὁ δε μισθωτός φευγει.  If the calculation of letters' worth of corruption is altered accordingly, GA 2414 has 38 letters' worth of corruption, and Codex Sinaiticus has 47.  Yet again the outcome of the contest depends on the selection of the umpire.

 

 

  

                     

Looking into the Alexandrian Text at John 12:12

            War – what is it good for?  “Absolutely nothing,” many have answered.

            And when the question is asked, “What is the Alexandrian text good for?”, quite a few people have responded with the same answer.  Independent Fundamentalist Baptists tend to insistently subscribe to the Textus Receptus, and some KJV-Onlyists even make it a formal condition of church fellowship to use the KJV or versions in languages other than English that conform to the meaning of the KJV New Testament.

            Simultaneously you might think, listening to other folks, that the Alexandrian text is the greatest invention since sliced bread.  The text of the New Testament portion of the ESV, NIV, CSB, and NRSV are all based primarily on the Alexandrian Text – the “critical text” that is published in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece and the UBS Greek New Testament.  (And why is this compilation referred to as the critical text?  Weren’t all compilations critical, i.e., thoughtfully compiled?  Are we supposed to be given the impression that other compilations are not critical, and merely reproduce the text found in a particular manuscript??) 

            I reckon that 99% of American preachers who promote English versions based on the NA/UBS compilation(s) still get their justification for using it, at any given point of variation, from Bruce Metzger’s Textual Commentary of the Greek New Testament – apparently never realizing that Metzger’s Textual Commentary was made with the intention of promoting the UBS compilation.  (So if you’re looking for an objective textual commentary, Metzger-readers, or for one written by an author who wasn’t writing under the influence of the Lucianic recension delusion, you’re digging in the wrong place.)

            Meanwhile, advocates of the Byzantine Text tend to reject the Alexandrian text as a matter of course; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be majority-text advocates. 

            I would argue, though, that the Alexandrian text excels in at least one area:  the preservation of the original grammar.  For example:  there’s a little variation-unit in John 12:12 that doesn’t get attention often, because its effect on translation is so slight:  between τη επαύριον and ἐλθὼν, did John write ὄχλος πολὺς ὁ or ὁ ὄχλος πολὺς ὁ or simply ὄχλος πολὺς?  The Byzantine text has ὄχλος πολὺς ὁ, and its allies include Codex Alexandrinus, D K W X Π Ψ f¹ 579 700 1424 (etc.) plus the Peshitta, the Sahidic version, and the Gothic version.  Even Origen is cited in the UBS GNT as support for ὄχλος πολὺς ὁ – apparently the only patristic reference the editors considered worth mentioning.  Papyrus 2^vid, assigned to the 500s, also supports ὄχλος πολὺς ὁ.

            Codex Sinaiticus initially read ὄχλος πολὺς but a corrector has conformed its text to the  Byzantine/Western/Caesarean reading.  D 565 892 and 1195 agree with À’s initial reading.  But that’s not the true Alexandrian reading.   The Alexandrian reading here is what Vaticanus has:  ὁ ὄχλος πολὺς ὁ.  And Codex B is allied with P75 P66^vid B L 1241, the Sinaitic Syriac, and the Bohairic version.  (The UBS apparatus listed f¹³ as if it supports ὁ ὄχλος πολὺς ὁ; Swanson lists f¹³ as support for ὄχλος πολὺς ὁ).

            Bruce Metzger, a few verses earlier, treated support from multiple transmission-streams as a strong indicator of a reading’s genuineness (“the overwhelming manuscript support for the verse seemed to a majority of the Committee to justify retaining it in the text,” wrote Metzger).  That’s a general principle with which I enthusiastically agree.  But in this case, despite the shallowness of the external evidence in favor of the minority reading, there’s a valid reason for favoring it:  the internal evidence.  It’s the reading more likely to have been written by John, and it’s the reading more likely to have been altered by scribes.    

            Metzger’s colleagues seem to have had some misgivings about the Alexandrian reading here, giving their decision a “C” rating.  Metzger wrote, “The expression ὁ ὄχλος πολὺς serving as the subject of a verb [in verse 9] is such unusual Greek (with πολὺς in the predicate position) that serious doubts arise whether the evangelist could have written it thus.”  The counter-argument should be obvious:  are later scribes likely to have changed the text from ὄχλος πολὺς ὁ to ὁ ὄχλος πολὺς ὁ?

            Granting that some Alexandrian scribes were not particularly attentive in the vicinity of this variant-unit (P75’s scribe skipped the second part of verse 8), I am content to accept the Alexandrian reading, not on the grounds that its external support is stronger, but on the grounds than internal considerations are in its favor.  There are many other examples that could be selected to show the Alexandrian tendency to preserve original grammatical quirks – not errors; just grammatical quirks, like when a baseball umpire correctly says, “That ain’t a strike” – but this one may suffice for today.

  

Glitches in Christ's Genealogy

          The genealogy of Jesus Christ, which appears in Matthew 1:1-17 and the genealogy of Jesus Christ which appears in Luke 3:23-38, may both be skipped by casual Bible-readers, but they are both interesting passages to both the textual critic and the Christian apologist.  Today, let’s look at some of the ways in which copyists treated – and mistreated – parts of these two portions of Scripture.

          Perhaps the most famous variations within the genealogy in Matthew appear at the end of verse 7 and in verse 10.  These were the first two variant-units to be commented upon by the late Bruce Metzger in his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament.  The Alexandrian text reads Ἀσάφ instead of the Byzantine Ἀσὰ in verse 7, and it reads Ἀμώς instead of Ἀμών in verse 10.    Neither Asaph the psalmist nor Amos the prophet was ever a king of Judah, so the presence of their names in the genealogy is surprising.  If the canon prefer the more difficult reading is applied, in both cases the Alexandrian reading will be adopted.  This was the course taken by Elijah Hixson in 2019, and it has been for over a century the usual decision.   (Hixson briefly described the main external evidence, so in the interest of brevity I will not review that here.)

          I argued in 2012, and again in 2016, however, in favor of Ἀσὰ and Ἀμών, proposing that lectio difficilior potior has been applied here too mechanically. As I showed in 2016, there was quite a bit of orthographic variety in the spelling of names by early Alexandrian copyists.  And I still propose that these erroneous readings originated as an attempt by an early copyist (one with “Western” proclivities) to “pad the resume” of Jesus, by including prophets in his genealogy. 

          Less famous, but no less interesting, is the treatment of Jesus’ genealogy in Luke in Codex Bezae (D, 05).  (Matthew 1 is not extant in D.)  The text in D omits Luke 3:24-31, and has instead the names of the ancestors listed in Matthew 1:6-16, in reverse order (Zadok’s name is not included), and there are other aberrations, including the names Ασαφ and Αμως) before resuming Luke’s list of Jesus’ ancestors in verse 31b.

          In Codex W (032), the genealogy in Luke is missing.  After Joseph’s name in Luke 3:23, the text of 032 simply jumps to chapter 4.  Perhaps this reflects a scribe’s awareness that the genealogies were absent in Tatian’s Diatessaron, or it could conceivably be a deletion by a recklessly bold scribe who did not want to transcribe anything that could be construed as a contradiction of the genealogy in Matthew 1.
         

          A small cluster of manuscripts (including M U Θ 1 1582 33, and over 150 minuscules) reflects a reading that was known to Epiphanius (in the late 300s):  somebody inserted, between Josiah and Jeconiah, a reference to Jehoiakim (Ἰωακείμ).  This is a harmonization to First Chronicles 3:15.  Some copyists, it appears, were not averse to attempting to correct their exemplars, even if it meant disrupting the total in one of Matthew’s groups of fourteen generations.  (Matthew probably intended foe this 14x structure to bring to his readers’ minds the memory of the numerical value of David’s name).

          Other glitch-readings occur in other manuscripts.  A notable error by the scribe of GA 109 was mentioned by Metzger (Text of the New Testament, p. 195):  the copyist mechanically copied the text of his exemplar, in which the individuals in the genealogy in Luke were formatted in two columns, as if they were one continuous piece, thus making a garbled mess of things.  A detailed analysis of how this occurred can be found near the entry of an entry at CSNTM’s “From the Library” blog from 2018.  

The beginning of the genealogy in Luke in GA 1273.

           The copyist of GA 1273 (the George Grey Gospels) also was discombobulated when formatting the genealogy in Luke.  Putting the names of Jesus’ ancestors in three columns, he mixed up the whole series of names, concluding with “of Adam, of Serug, of God.”  A little detective work (which Daniel Buck has done) can reveal the format of the genealogy in Luke in the exemplar used by the scribe of GA 1273.  It might be interesting to compare the format in 1273’s reconstructed exemplar with the three-names-per-line format in GA 2. 

The end of the genealogy in Luke in 1273.

          Other treatments of Luke’s genealogy have been identified by Daniel Buck; he has noticed that glitchy treatments in Luke’s genealogy seem to arise especially in verse 33, and that GA 1305, 1424, 2563, 2658, 2661, 2756, and 2882 all have glitches of one kind or another.  GA 28 also has some unusual readings, such as the insertion of τοῦ Ἀρὰμ in verse 33.

          Quite a few scribes, when listing the names in Luke’s genealogy, gave each name a single line.  These include the copyist of Sinaiticus (À) and Codex Vaticanus (B, 03) – mostly.  In B, near the end of the last column on a page, the copyist wrote Ιωσηφ του Ηλει (“Joseph, of Heli”) on one line, as long as his normal lines, with a space between “Ιωσηφ” and “του Ηλει”, but on the next line (the last line on the page), του Ματθατ gets a line all its own, and on the next page, each ancestor’s name, preceded by του, gets its own line.

          One glitch that has received special attention is the omission of τοῦ Καϊναν (or τοῦ Καϊναμ) at the beginning of Luke 3:36 in P75^vid and Codex Bezae (D, 05).  Kainan’s name is not in Genesis 10:24 in the Masoretic Text, or in the Samaritan Pentateuch.  It may be that due to its absence in Genesis in these witnesses, a scribe deliberately removed it from the Western text as it appears in D.  A question arises:  the texts of P75 (early Alexandrian) and D (Western) are so different from each other, how could they share this reading if it is not original?

          But do they?  In 2019, Henry B Smith Jr. and Kris J. Udd published a 46-page essay in the Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal, On the Authenticity of Kainan, Son of Arpachshad, in which this variant-unit was minutely examined.  A reconstruction of the relevant part of P75 (the MS is extremely fragmentary in this portion) was made by Smith and Udd in which “The inclusion of -Α TOΥ KAINAN at the beginning of line 5 would only increase its line length to 26 letters, fitting the context well.”  This reconstruction helps clear up some inaccurate records of P75’s text in Luke 3:36.  It also demonstrates that P75 never lacked Καϊναμ, though the question is open as to whether P75 read Καϊναμ or Καϊναν. 

          Thus the only manuscript that omits Kainan’s name in Luke 3:36 is Codex D.  Finding Kainan’s name absent in the early Alexandrian text and in a relatively early Western manuscript such as Codex D would have been remarkable.  But finding Kainan’s name omitted only in in the Western text of Luke attested by D is like finding a hamburger at McDonald’s; it is not remarkable at all, considering the other liberties that have been taken in Luke’s genealogy in D.

          While some readers might be taken aback by how some scribes messed up the genealogy of Jesus Christ, one should remember that the bulk of manuscripts in different transmission-streams maintain the original text of the genealogies very well.  A blizzard of scribal errors does not make the sun stop shining.
          

 

 

(Thanks to Kris Udd and Daniel Buck for their help obtaining some of the data in this post.)