Mark 10:24: Is It Easy to Enter the Kingdom?

            In Mark 10:23, Jesus told His followers, “How difficult it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God.”  This was just after a young man with many possessions had gone away from Jesus, after Jesus had invited him to sell everything he had, and give to the poor, and expect heavenly treasures instead.  The disciples were astonished.  But then, in Mark 10:24, Jesus affirmed:  “Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!”

Mark 10:24 in GA 2474 (900s).

            That is Jesus’ statement in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark, representative of a broad assortment of locales.  The same sense is given in the KJV, the NKJV, the EHV (Evangelical Heritage Version), the MEV (Modern English Version), and the WEB (World English Bible).  The Latin Vulgate (produced by Jerome in 383), the Gothic Version (produced by Wulfilas in the mid-300s), the Peshitta (the dominant Syriac version, probably produced in the late 300s), the Sinaitic Syriac, and most Old Latin copies (representing Latin translations made before the Vulgate) agree with this.

            Yet, when one turns to popular modern English versions such as the ESV, NIV, and CSB, the text of Mark 10:24 is shorter:  the phrase “for those who trust in riches” is absent.  This is not due to any editorial decision on the part of translators:  the phrase is missing in four important early manuscripts Sinaiticus (ℵ), Vaticanus (B), Delta (Δ), and Ψ, and in the Old Latin Codex Bobbiensis (k), and two Egyptian versions (the Sahidic and Bohairic). 

            Although ℵ, B, and k are old (from the fourth and fifth centuries) they are relatively isolated.  Furthermore, this is one of those cases – not as rare as one might think – in which our earliest manuscripts are not our earliest evidence.  Two important patristic writers provide significantly older evidence:  Clement of Alexandria (in the fourth chapter of his composition Who Is The Rich Man Who Shall Be Saved?), and Ephrem Syrus (in his Commentary on the Diatessaron). Let’s look at them one at a time.

            The exact years of Clement of Alexandria’s birth and death are unknown, but it can be safely deduced that he served the church from some time in the 180s to some time in the 210s.  Clement espoused various controversial doctrines, but for today’s purposes, we may zoom in on his quotations in the composition Who Is the Rich Man Who Shall Be Saved?:  in chapter 4, Clement makes an extensive quotation from Mark 10:17-31, specifically stating (at the outset of the next chapter) that he is drawing on text from the Gospel of Mark.  The text of Clement’s work was the subject of a doctoral dissertation by Reuben Swanson, and in his volume on Mark in the New Testament Greek Manuscripts series, he provides the relevant extract from Mark 10:23:
            περιβλεψαμενος δε ο Ιησους λεγει τοις μαθηταις αυτου, πως δυσκολως οι τα χρηματα (χρημα 1 ms) εχοντες ειςελευσονται εις την βασιλειαν του θεου.   
            Here is the Byzantine text of Mark 10:23, with differences noted:

            Και περιβλεψαμενος [Clement has και before περιβλεψαμενος, instead of δε after it]

            ο Ιησους λεγει τοις μαθηταις αυτου, [no differences]

            πως δυσκολως οι τα χρηματα (χρημα 1 ms) [no differences]

            εχοντες εις την βασιλειαν του θεου ειςελευσονται [Clement has ειςελευσονται before the words εις την βασιλειαν του θεου instead of after them].  

            Likewise for Mark 10:24, Swanson has provided Clement’s text:

            Οι δε μαθηται εθαμβουντο επι τοις λογοις αυτου.   παλιν δε ο Ιησους αποκριθεις λεγει αυτοις, Τεκνα, πως δυσκολον εστι τους πεποιθοτας επι χρημσασιν εις την βασιλειαν του θεου εισελθειν.

            Comparing this to the Byzantine text of Mark 10:24, bit by bit, we see the following differences:

            Οι δε μαθηται εθαμβουντο επι τοις λογοις αυτου.   [no differences]

            παλιν δε ο Ιησους αποκριθεις λεγει αυτοις, [transposition of παλιν]

            Τεκνα, πως δυσκολον εστιν τους πεποιθοτας επι χρημσασιν [spelling; χρημασιν]

            εις την βασιλειαν του θεου εισελθειν [no differences].

            (I think Swanson’s transcription contains a typo and should read χρημασιν.)

            The thing to see is that as Clement quotes Mark 10:24, he quotes it with the words τους πεποιθοτας επι χρημσασιν – not in the Alexandrian form (which lacks this phrase), and not in the Western form (in which verse 24 appears after verse 25).  Thus we have confirmation, in a patristic composition written around the year 200 in Egypt, of the presence of this phrase in Mark 10:24.

            Now we turn to Ephrem Syrus.  Ephrem wrote in the mid-300s, in Syria, in the Syriac language.  The Diatessaron – the text upon which he wrote a commentary – is older; an individual named Tatian compiled the Diatessaron as a combination of all four Gospel accounts, in the early 170s.  The discovery of an important manuscript of Ephrem’s commentary on the Diatessaron was announced in 1957, when Syriac MS 709, assigned to the late 400s, was added to the Chester Beatty collection – and subsequently additional parts of Ephrem’s commentary were found, including two more portions of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 in the 1980s.  Not only was this evidence was unavailable to Hort in 1881; it was unavailable to Metzger when he wrote his Textual Commentary on the New Testament. 

            When we look into Ephrem’s quotations from Tatian’s Diatessaron, (cf. page 231 of Carmel McCarthy’s Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron:  An English Translation of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 with an Introduction and Notes) we see this statement:  “When he turned away, our Lord said, It is difficult for those who trust in their own riches.”  One might initially suspect that Ephrem has merely cited 10:23, but the quotation does not refer merely to those who possess wealth; it refers to those who trust in their wealth – a statement not found in Mark 10:23, nor in the parallel accounts in Matthew 19:23-24 and Luke 18:24-25, but exclusively in Mark 10:24.

            Via Ephrem’s comment, we may see the Gospels-text used by Tatian in the 170s – a text in which Mark 10:24 included the phrase “for those who trust in riches.”

            Thus two very early patristic writers, from two far-removed branches of the transmission-stream, constitute strong support for the inclusion of the words “for those who trust in riches” in the text of Mark 10:24; finding these citations in the quotations of Clement and Ephrem is roughly congruent to finding small second-century papyrus fragments of Mark 10:24 in Alexandria (where Clement wrote) and in Rome (where Tatian studied under Justin Martyr).

            Nevertheless, what answer shall be given to Metzger’s theory (phrased as an assertion):  “The rigor of Jesus’ saying was softened by the insertion of one or another qualification that limited its generality and brought it into closer connection with the context”?  Besides mentioning the usual reading, he adds that two different readings are attested:  Codex W and it^c support πλουσιον, and 1241 reads οι τα χρηματα εχοντες.  The counter-point is not hard to find: πλουσιον is not a wholesale insertion, but a harmonization to the parallels in Matthew and Luke; meanwhile οι τα χρηματα εχοντες is a harmonization to the identical phrase in Mark 10:23.  (Willker mentions that the latter harmonization is read by five other minuscules, 588, 973. 1090, 2791, and 2812.)

            Finally, we may consider the simple mechanics by which the phrase for those who trust in riches could be lost.  This phrase – τους πεποιθοτας επι χρημασιν – ends with the same two letters that come before it, at the end of the word εστιν.  If an early copyist’s line of sight drifted from the letters ιν at the end of εστιν to the letters εστιν at the end of χρημασιν a line or two later, the accidental disappearance of the phrase in an early transmission-stream in Egypt is accounted for.  Meanwhile, everywhere else, the phrase was included, perpetuating the original reading, though in some witnesses it was expanded (so as to read “in their riches”) or harmonized to the parallels in Matthew and Luke or to the preceding verse.

            So, rather than tell His disciples that it is hard to enter into the kingdom of God, Jesus did not contradict what He said elsewhere, that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.  Entering God’s kingdom can be hard indeed, if we attach ourselves to the things of this world and turn them into priorities above the will of God.  But if we let go of the things of this world, and trust in the atoning work of Christ, with surrendered hearts, then the entrance into God’s kingdom, even through tribulations, can become not only easy, but joyful.

Book Review: Textual Criticism of the Bible (Anderson & Widder)

            Seminary students unfamiliar with New Testament textual criticism may learn a lot from Textual Criticism of the Bible, by Amy Anderson and Wendy Widder, recently published by Lexham Press.  (The same volume includes an introduction to the textual criticism of the Old Testament – but since my research-specialty is in New Testament textual criticism, this review is not intended to address the portions about the Old Testament; this review does not cover the third chapter, which concentrates on the textual criticism of the Old Testament.)  Novices should be cautioned, however, that they would learn just enough to be dangerous if they were to stop with this book.

            In chapter 1, a scant eight pages are sufficient to define textual criticism, to describe the distinct goals of textual criticism, and to illustrate the need for its existence.  Readers will notice here the authors’ use of the novel term “Ausgangstext,” defined as “the ancient form of the text that is the ancestor of all extant copies, the beginning of the manuscript tradition.”         

Chapter 2, An Overview of Textual Criticism, includes a helpful tour of examples of different kinds of scribal corruptions, from the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Haplography, parablepsis, conflation, glosses, metathesis, and harmonizations are among the error-inducing mechanisms that are covered.  (Conflations are incorrectly described as “common” in the Byzantine Text on p. 117.)  

Readers who approach this chapter expecting to learn about the excellence of Codex Vaticanus may be surprised at some of the examples given:  although Alexandrian readings are favored in Mark 1:2, Luke 23:17, Luke 24:53 and I Tim. 3:16, readings found in Vaticanus in John 17:5, Mark 3:16, Acts 19:34, and First Thessalonians 2:7 are presented as examples of scribal errors.  (I think.  The authors seem undecided in some cases; in the discussion about Mark 3:16 on page 24, it is not easy to tell which reading is preferred by the authors.)  In most cases, external evidence is only frugally described; a paragraph on John 5:3-4, for example, fails to mention Tertullian’s support for the passage. 

Although several mistakes in the text of Codex Vaticanus are used as examples of scribal errors, the appeal to “the oldest and best manuscripts” is made repeatedly in this chapter, and “the oldest and best manuscripts’ can safely be understood to mean “Codex Vaticanus and whatever happens to agree with it.”  Readers might wonder how it is that the best manuscripts contain some of the worst errors.

Similarly some readers may feel misled by the following statement on pages 12-13:  “Those variation units that affect the meaning of a biblical text are found in the footnotes of any good English Bible.  Even these variants do not affect doctrine or theology.”  This is misleading on two levels.  First, it is misleading because the textual footnotes in most English translations are minimal:  consider that the NASB has only one textual footnote in Jude; the ESV has one; the CSB has five; meanwhile, the number of meaning-affecting textual differences between the Byzantine Text and the Nestle-Aland compilation in Jude is twelve.  Do the authors think that the NASB and ESV and CSB are not good English Bibles?  Second, it is misleading because textual variations that affect doctrine exist.  For example, the doctrine of inerrancy would be wrecked if the reading found in Matthew 27:49 in “the earliest and best manuscripts” were to be placed in the text.

The chapter concludes with a brief review of basic principles of textual criticism, and fortunately this includes the key principle that that the reading that best explains the origin of its rivals is to be preferred.  Unfortunately it also includes the idea that “The reading found in the oldest manuscripts” should be preferred; this canon should be reworded to include not only manuscripts, but all forms of external evidence, and it should be qualified by mentioning that this canon gives an edge to evidence found in Egypt, inasmuch as the low-humidity climate there allowed papyrus to survive longer than elsewhere. 

Worse than this, however, is the authors’ endorsement of lectio brevior (prefer the shorter reading).  Only readers careful enough to consult the footnotes will notice a heavy qualification that this principle has been challenged and empirically reversed in research on some early manuscripts by James Royse.  No means are offered by which to verify the authors’ assertion that lectio brevior is nevertheless a valid criterion for later documents; recent research by Alan Taylor Farnes indicates that the authors are wrong, and that even in later manuscripts neither the length nor the brevity of a reading should be used as an indicator of genuineness.

Chapter 4 – Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism – serves the same purpose as similar sections of Bruce Metzger’s The Text of the New Testament, describing early scholarship in the field (beginning with patristic writers, and continuing to the present day) and manuscripts, versions, and patristic evidence.  Some significant researchers, and some significant witnesses, have been left unmentioned.  Bengel and Griesbach are mentioned, but not Bentley and Scrivener.  Codices Π, Κ, and Σ receive no special attention. 

Readers will learn on page 116 that the early papyri demonstrate a “careful scribal tradition” but when they read page 127 they will also learn that in the early papyri, “errors and changes” may be “fairly common.”  This might confuse beginners who may not understand how the best manuscripts can be riddled with mistakes. 

It was a little disappointing that Amy Anderson, who has done some detailed research about family-1, did not say more about this cluster of manuscripts; there is not even a list of its core members.  Its text has received a slight chronological upgrade, although the confidence with which it is made has not:  whereas Metzger described it as a text which appears to go back to the third and fourth centuries, here the agreements of minuscules 1 and 1582 are considered likely to be the text of the archetype of the group, which is thought to represent a text from the third century.

Very little is said about lectionaries, and nothing is said about amulets, and nothing is said about conjectural emendations – just the opposite of what should have happened, considering the significant research on these subjects that has occurred since Metzger wrote his introduction. 

Versions are given surprisingly little attention – so little that one can only imagine that the authors foresee that their readers are likely to have Metzger’s book about versions on the shelf; otherwise they will not learn anything about the Gothic, Armenian and Georgian versions, or the Peshitta, in this chapter, except that they exist.  The description of the Sinaitic Syriac and Curetonian Syriac should be changed, lest readers conclude that these manuscripts, rather than the texts they contain, are “possibly dating back to the early third century.”

In a brief review of modern editions of the Greek text of the New Testament, a bias in favor of the Nestle-Aland compilation is not entirely concealed; the Nestle-Aland compilation is called “eclectic” even though it is very heavily Alexandrian.  Metzger’s chapter From Griesbach to the Present is superior to the too-concise review here in all respects except one:  Anderson is up-to-date, and includes sections on the Byzantine Textform compiled by Robinson and Pierpont, the SBLGNT compiled by Michael Holmes, and the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament.  (It is only via a quotation from the preface to the Tyndale House compilation that Samuel Tregelles is mentioned at all in this book; he (like Scrivener and Burgon) was completely passed over in the section on New Testament textual criticism in the late seventeenth century to the present.) 

The Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform is mistreated in this book.  First, the authors associate it with KJV-Onlyism, even though Dr. Maurice Robinson, co-editor, has plainly dismissed KJV-Onlyism as a flawed position.  Second, rather than utilize statements from advocates of Byzantine Priority (except for a 24-word quotation from Hodges and Farstad), the authors have turned to Philip Comfort and Daniel Wallace to describe it.  This is patently unfair (especially because the essays by Wallace on the subject – mentioned in a footnote – contain more than their fair share of specious reasoning and mistakes). 

It did not go unnoticed that the authors mention, on page 148, that in the Tyndale House edition (2017), the books of the New Testament are arranged in the order Gospels-Acts-Catholic Epistles-Pauline Epistles – Revelation.  Why was this not also said about the 2005 Byzantine Textform, which also arranges the text this way?  I cannot help wondering, Did the authors not bother to read the Byzantine Textform enough to notice? Similarly, the authors mention that the SBLGNT is online – but so is the Byzantine Text; why was this not mentioned?

Continuing:  readers are told (p. 121) that the discovery of the papyri “provided scholars with new evidence to confirm or refine Westcott and Hort’s findings.”  Perhaps a more candid description would add, “and refute,” inasmuch as Hort’s assumptions that distinctly Byzantine readings are all late, and that conflations imply lateness, and that some shorter readings in Codex D (Western Non-interpolations) are original, were opposed by the data from the early papyri (see Sturz, The Byzantine Text-type and New Testament Textual Criticism, for details).    

 As chapter 4 concludes, the authors take readers on a tour of selected variant units, and this section serves (as its sub-title indicates) as a lesson in How To Do New Testament Textual Criticism.  Along the way, readers are introduced to the various symbols that can be found in the Nestle-Aland compilation (such as º and ^□ and ^┬).  The main variant-units covered are in Ephesians 1:1, John 3:32, Mark 1:2, First Thessalonians 2:7, Luke 4:4, Revelation 1:8, and Romans 5:2. 

This section is unsatisfactory in several ways:

● First, lectio brevior continues to be used as if it is a valid premise. 

● Second, parts of this section just restate what has already been stated:  compare for example page 45 – “The reading that best explains the origin of the other readings is probably original” – with page 158 in this section:  “If you can explain how one variant led to the occurrence of the other variants, that variant is the most probable Augsgangstext.” 

● Third, the section is not really a lesson in how to do textual criticism; it is a lesson in how to let Bruce Metzger posthumously do your textual criticism.  For example, in the portion about Mark 1:2, witnesses that are not mentioned in the Nestle-Aland or UBS apparatuses are treated as if they do not exist.  Variants that are not mentioned in the Nestle-Aland or UBS apparatuses are treated as if they do not exist.  An appeal is made (on behalf of the Alexandrian reading) that “the citing habit of ancient times” account for the reading “in Isaiah the prophet,” without anything to verify that ancient citation-habits actually do this.  The authors attempt to excuse the reading “in Isaiah the prophet” by theorizing that Mark “may not have had any access at all to copies of OT books.”  Seriously?  Finally, the authors propose that “It is much more difficult to imagine a later scribe changing τοῖς προφήταις to τῷ Ἠσαΐᾳ τῷ προφήτῃ” – but there is an abundance of evidence that copyists tended to make citation-sources more specific, not more generalized – supplying a prophet’s name (and in some instances the wrong name) when the reference in the original text was non-specific.

● Fourth, the authors misrepresent some witnesses as if they are members of textual groups to which they do not really belong.  For example, as the authors discuss the variant-unit in Luke 4:4 they state that the reading chosen by the Nestle-Aland editors is “supported by the Syriac Sinaiticus, Sahidic, and part of the Bohairic.  This group is mainly related to the Alexandrian textual stream.”  The Sinaitic Syriac (I do not know why they described it as the “Syriac Sinaiticus,” which is correct but old-fashioned) is, however, not Alexandrian; as Metzger states in The Text of the New Testament, “In general the Old Syriac version is a representative of the Western type of text.”  This error is compounded when the authors proceed to argue that “only one textual group is represented” in favor of the shorter reading.

● Fifth, although the authors recommend consulting Metzger’s Textual Commentary and commentaries in which the commentators give special attention to text-critical issues, there is no special mention of Wieland Willker’s superior (and free) Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels, nor of Reuben Swanson’s multi-volume New Testament Greek Manuscripts, in which the exact words of important Greek manuscripts are lined up horizontally and compared line by line, giving readers access to much more data than what is presented in the Nestle-Aland and UBS apparatuses.  Robert Waltz’s online Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism and Alan Bunning’s Center for New Testament Restoration have also gone unmentioned.   

           

            Readers may find useful the inclusion of a list of Resources for Further Study at the end of each chapter.   Strangely, David Alan Black’s New Testament Textual Criticism:  A Concise Guide and Philip Comfort’s Encountering the Manuscripts are in the list in chapter two and in chapter four – with two different descriptions.  J. Scott Porter’s 1848 Principles of Textual Criticism is in the list for chapter 2; readers may find it interesting that J. Scott Porter was also the author of Twelve Lectures on Unitarianism, in which he attempted to use textual criticism as a weapon in his battle against the doctrine of the deity of Christ; meanwhile Scrivener’s A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament has gone unmentioned.    

The glossary at the end of the book is helpful, but it would be more helpful if it included a few more entries, and did not display a slight bias in favor of the Alexandrian Text.

In closing:  while Anderson and Widder’s book is ten times better than the recently escaped Fundamentals of New Testament Textual Criticism by Porter and Pitts, it may serve readers best as an update to Metzger’s Text of the New Testament than as a stand-alone introduction, generally echoing the same pro-Alexandrian approach and assumptions.  New Testament researchers with access to Metzger’s Text of the New Testament and the online materials by Wieland Willker and Robert Waltz may consider it superfluous.       

P.S.  The word “critic” is missing in line 10 on page 43.  Also, contrary to the list on page 140, minuscule 1424 is no longer housed in Chicago; it was returned to Greece in 2016.

Nestle-Aland in Mark 11: Alexandrian or Eclectic?

          In the preceding three posts, I observed that even though the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation of the Greek New Testament is often described as an eclectic edition, based on hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts, in three sample-chapters it is almost entirely Alexandrian, and it hardly contains any distinctive Byzantine readings which represent the vast majority of extant Greek manuscripts.  To be precise, in Galatians 1, NA is .3% distinctly Byzantine; in Luke 15, NA is 1% distinctly Byzantine, and in NA’s 2,812-letter compilation of John 20, there is only one letter (and a bracketed letter, at that) which is in the Byzantine Text and not in Vaticanus (B) or Sinaiticus (À).

          Let’s make another investigation; this time, we will look at the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of Mark, which describes Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the temple, and some other incidents that occurred during the final week of Jesus’ ministry.  In Reuben Swanson’s comparison of the readings of some major manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark, chapter 11 is divided into 59 text-lines.  In 45 of those text-lines, NA agrees precisely with B.  (One of those lines is repeated, however, due to a printing error, so the real total is 58 text-lines, of which B agrees precisely in 44.)   Out of the remaining 14 text-lines, three agree precisely with À (after nomina sacra contractions are taken into consideration).  This means that if we are to find distinctly Byzantine readings in Mark 11 in the Nestle-Aland compilation, they will be somewhere in the remaining 11 text-lines.  Here is what we find there:

● At the beginning of verse 1, NA adopts À’s spelling of Βηθφαγη (disagreeing with B’s Βηδφαγη and with the Byzantine Text’s Βηθσφαγη – though the Byzantine Text is divided at this point; RP2005 has Βηθφαγη in the margin) and then rejects À’s inclusion of εις (agreeing with B and with the Byzantine Text).  Thus, while the line as a whole agrees with relatively few manuscripts (such as W Δ f1), each component agrees with either B or À. 

● In the second half of verse 1, NA disagrees with B’s reading το (disagreeing with των which is read by À and the Byzantine Text), and then agrees with B’s reading of the next word, Ελαιων, disagreeing with À’s Ελεων.  The line as a whole thus agrees with the Byzantine Text; however, neither component agrees with the Byzantine Text distinctly; each component agrees with either B or À. 

● At the end of verse 3, NA adopts B’s spelling ευθυς (instead of the Byzantine reading ευθεως) but then adopts the word-order found in À (disagreeing with B).  NA also adopts the word παλιν near the end of verse 3; the word is not in the Byzantine Text.  Next, NA adopts και απηλθον (read by B and À) instead of απηλθον δε, which is read by the Byzantine Text.  NA also does not include τον before πωλον, although τον is read by À.  Thus, this text-line does not entirely agree with B, or with À, or the Byzantine Text.  Swanson lists only one manuscript – Codex L – that has the combination of readings selected in NA.  Yet, taken individually, each component agrees with either B or À.

● In a text-line which ends with the first three words of verse 6, NA rejected the spelling found in B, À, and in the Byzantine Text (ειπον), adopting instead ειπαν, which is read by a small but respectable cluster of manuscripts (including A, L, Δ, and Π).  This component stands as a non-Byzantine reading which disagrees with À and B.

● Midway through verse 7, NA reads επιβάλλουσιν (agreeing with B and À against the Byzantine Text’s reading επέβαλον) but after the word ιμάτια, NA reads αυτων (agreeing with the Byzantine Text and disagreeing with B’s reading εαυτων and À’s reading αυτω).  The text-line as a whole thus agrees with relatively few manuscripts (including Codices C and L) and its last featured reading (αυτων after ιμάτια) is a Byzantine reading not supported by B or À.

● In the next text-line (in which verse 8 begins), NA adopts εκάθισεν (agreeing with B and the Byzantine Text but disagreeing with À’s reading εκάθισαν), and then adopts και πολλοι (agreeing with B and À but disagreeing with the Byzantine Text’s πολλοι δε), and then, after ιμάτια, adopts αυτων (agreeing with À and the Byzantine Text but disagreeing with B’s reading εαυτων).  The line as a whole thus agrees with relatively few manuscripts (including Codices C, Δ, and 579).  However, each component agrees with either B or À.    

● In the second half of verse 11, NA disagrees with À’s reading οψε (reading οψιας instead, agreeing with B and with the Byzantine Text), and also disagrees with B’s non-inclusion of της ωρας (thus agreeing with À and with the Byzantine Text).  Thus, as a whole, this text-line agrees with the Byzantine Text.  Individually, however, each component agrees with either B or À.

● At the beginning of verse 21, NA rejects the spelling of Ραββει, adopting instead Ραββι and thus agreeing with the Byzantine Text.

● At the beginning of verse 25, NA adopts στήκετε as the third word in the verse, thus disagreeing with B and with the Byzantine Text (which read στήκητε)  and with À (which reads στητε).    

● At the beginning of verse 30, NA includes το after βαπτισμα (agreeing with B and À but disagreeing with the Byzantine Text) but does not adopt B’s spelling of John’s name (Ιωάνου), agreeing instead with À and the Byzantine Text, which read Ιωάννου.  Then NA disagrees with À’s inclusion of the word ποθεν.  As a whole, this text-line agrees with relatively few manuscripts (including Codices A, D, and L).  Individually, each component agrees with either À or B. 

● At the end of verse 33, NA adopts οχλον instead of λαόν, thus agreeing with B and À against the Byzantine Text.  But then NA rejects À’s reading παντες, adopting instead απαντες which agrees with B and with the Byzantine Text.  But then, NA rejects B’s spelling of John’s name (Ιωάνην), reading  Ιωάννην instead.  And next, NA includes the words οντως οτι, agreeing at this point with B but disagreeing with À (which has only οτι) and with the Byzantine text (which transposes these two words).   The text-line as a whole thus agrees with none of Swanson’s witnesses except for a corrector of À.  Taken individually, each component agrees with either B or À.

          Thus, when the variant-units are examined individually, the distinctly Byzantine readings in Mark 11 in the Nestle-Aland compilation consist of the following:

(1)  In verse 7, NA reads αυτων (agreeing with the Byzantine Text and disagreeing with B’s reading εαυτων and À’s reading αυτω), and  

(2)  In verse 21, NA rejects the spelling Ραββει, adopting instead Ραββι and thus agreeing with the Byzantine Text.

          Thus, in Mark 11, the impact of the Byzantine Text is felt by the absence of one letter (ε) in verse 7, and by the absence of one letter in verse 21.  Reckoning that the text of Mark 11 in NA consists of 563 words, and that the Byzantine Text’s contribution to the compilation is discernible in two words, this implies that .4% of the Nestle-Aland compilation of Mark 11 is distinctly Byzantine.  Or, calculating that the text of Mark 11 in NA consists of 2,752 letters, one could say that the Byzantine Text’s existence is manifest in less than .02% of the Nestle-Aland compilation.  The rest originates with other witnesses, primarily Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Codex L.

Postscript:  In the course of this series of posts, a point has been raised in the comments:  because the Byzantine Text and the Alexandrian Text agree so frequently, the Byzantine Text’s existence cannot be manifested in 100% of the compilation, but can only be expressed at those points where the Alexandrian and Byzantine texts disagree.  That is undoubtedly true, but how can one answer the question being asked – To what extent is the Nestle-Aland compilation an eclectic text rather than an Alexandrian text? – if not by identifying non-Alexandrian readings (especially Byzantine readings) and seeing how much of the compilation they constitute?  Nor does it affect the answer to the question:  whether one looks at the whole compilation, or only at the parts where the Alexandrian and Byzantine Texts disagree, it is obvious that the Nestle-Aland compilation contains hardly any readings that are found in the Byzantine Text and not in the Alexandrian Text.     

Nestle-Aland in John 20: Alexandrian or Eclectic?

          In the two preceding posts, I showed that the Nestle-Aland/UBS compilation is almost entirely Alexandrian in Galatians 1 and in Luke 15.  To be precise, the NA compilation adopts a Byzantine reading instead of an Alexandrian reading in .3% of Galatians 1, and in 1% of Luke 15.  Let’s take another sample from the Gospels – John 20 – and see what kind of results we get.

          Sifting through John 20 in Reuben Swanson’s presentation of the text in horizontal-line comparisons of the contents of many important manuscripts, I observe that out of 53 text-lines, NA agrees entirely with Vaticanus (B) in 39 of them.  In the remaining 14 text-lines, NA agrees entirely with Sinaiticus (À) in six.  This leaves eight lines that do not agree entirely with either B or À.  Let’s investigate those eight lines to see how non-Alexandrian the Nestle-Aland compilation is in this chapter:

          ● At the end of verse 4, NA adopts τάχιον (agreeing with À), and also adopts À’s reading ηλθεν, but then follows the word-order in B.  Thus, although this three-part series of readings, collectively, agrees with the Byzantine Text, each component agrees with either B or À.

          ● At the beginning of verse 13, NA has και at the very beginning of the verse (agreeing with B) and does not have και later in the verse before λέγει (agreeing with À).  Thus, in this case, each component of the text of NA agrees with either B or À.      

          ● At the beginning of verse 17, NA does not adopt ὁ before Ιησους (agreeing with B), and then adopts the word-order in À (μου απτου), and then does not adopt μου (agreeing with B and À).  Thus, taken as a series, this text-line agrees with D against B, À, and the Byzantine Text, but taken individually, each component is found in either B or À.

          ● In verse 22, NA adopts the variant αφέωνται, disagreeing with B (αφειονται) and À (αφεθήσεται) and the Byzantine Text (αφίενται), agreeing with a small minority of manuscripts including Codices A and D.

          ● At the beginning of verse 25, NA adopts ουν after ελεγον, and αλλοι before μαθηται (agreeing both times with B), but then adopts Εωράκαμεν, agreeing instead with À and the Byzantine Text.  Thus, taken individually, each component of this text-line is found in B or À. 

          ● At the end of verse 27 and the beginning of verse 28, NA reads γίμου, rejecting the itacism in B (γειμου) and agreeing with À.  Further along in the line, however, NA does not adopt ὁ before Ιησους (agreeing with B but not with À).  NA also rejects Και at the beginning of the verse.  Each component of this text-line is found in B or À or both. 

          ● At the beginning of verse 29, NA adopts λεγει, agreeing with B and the Byzantine Text against À (which reads ειπεν δε).  Then NA adopts ὁ before Ιησους (disagreeing with B and the Byzantine Text, but agreeing with À), and further along in the verse reads εωρακάς, disagreeing with the Byzantine Text (which reads εωρακάς) but agreeing with B and À.  NA also does not include και after με (thus agreeing with B and the Byzantine Text but disagreeing with À).  Thus, in this series of variant-units, NA collectively disagrees with B, with À, and with the Byzantine Text (agreeing instead with Codices A, C, D, N, and an assortment of other manuscripts).  Each component of this text-line, however, agrees with either B or À.          

          ● Near the beginning of verse 31, NA places the letter sigma in brackets, so as to read πιστεύ[σ]ητε which disagrees with B and À and agrees with the Byzantine Text.

          Thus, out of the eight text-lines which do not entirely agree with B or À, we see that in terms of their component-parts, they all agree with either B or À except at two points:  the adoption of αφέωνται in verse 22 (disagreeing with the Byzantine Text’s reading αφίενται), and the inclusion of the bracketed letter sigma in πιστεύ[σ]ητε in verse 31.   

          The existence of the Byzantine Text is thus manifested in the Nestle-Aland text of John 21 by one letter.  That is, a distinctly Byzantine reading (one that is not found in B or À) is preferred in one of John 20’s 615 words in the Nestle-Aland compilation.  Or, calculated by letters:  exactly one of  this chapter’s 2,812 letters in the Nestle-Aland compilation is found in the Byzantine Text and not in Vaticanus or Sinaiticus.  The letter is bracketed, however, so do not be surprised if the number of distinct Byzantine readings in John 20 is zero in the next edition.  (The New Living Translation is already based on the reading without the sigma.)

Nestle-Aland in Luke 15: Alexandrian or Eclectic?

          Is the Nestle-Aland compilation basically a slightly tweaked presentation of the Alexandrian Text, relying very heavily on Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus?  Or is it an eclectic text based on thousands of manuscripts?  In the previous post, I investigated Galatians chapter 1 and found that the text in NA27 can be almost completely derived from readings in Vaticanus and/or Sinaiticus.  The Byzantine Text’s unique contribution to Galatians 1 amounts to .3% of the text.  What about the text in the Gospels?  Let’s investigate, using Luke 15 as a sample-passage – a chapter known for its parables:  the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son.

          Sifting through the horizontal-line comparison prepared by Reuben Swanson for the text of the Gospel of Luke, we find that out of 51 lines of text, Swanson reports that NA and B agree in 39 of them.  Out of the remaining 12 lines of text in which NA and B do not agree, the NA compilation agrees with Sinaiticus in six of them.  This leaves six text-lines in Luke 15 in which NA does not consist of the contents of either B or À.  Here are those six deviations:   

● In a line in which verse 10 begins, NA reads γίνεται χαρα, adopting the word-order found in B and À but not adopting their spelling. (They both read γεινεται χαρα.)  Apparently, only one manuscript used by Swanson (minuscule 579) has this reading; the Byzantine Text reads χαρα γίνεται instead. 

● At the beginning of verse 14, NA reads λιμος ισχυρα, adopting the second word in agreement with B and À but rejecting their spelling of the first word (λειμος).  The occurrence of λιμος and ισχυρα side-by-side here appears to be attested in only a few manuscripts, one of which is Codex L.  The Byzantine Text reads λιμος ισχυρος instead.    

● In the middle of verse 15, NA rejects the spelling of B and À (where both read πολειτων), adopting instead the spelling used in Codex L and in the Byzantine Text (πολιτων).

● Near the end of verse 17, NA rejects the reading found in Papyrus 75, B and À (λειμω ωδε) and the shorter reading found in the Byzantine Text (λιμω), and the transposition supported by other manuscripts (including Codices D, N, and Θ), adopting instead the reading found in Codex L (λιμω ωδε).  (The transposed reading, whether ωδε λειμω or ωδε λιμω, explains its rivals:  when ωδε was accidentally skipped after the preceding word δε, it was lost in the Byzantine Text, and in the Alexandrian Text, after the loss was detected, the word ωδε was moved, as a practical preventative measure, to the other side of λειμω or λιμω.)  

● At the end of verse 21, NA rejects the reading found in B and À (and in Codex D and a minority of minuscules including 700), ποίησόν με ως ενα των μισθίων σου (that is, “Make me as one of your hired servants,” the same phrase found in verse 19), adopting the shorter reading supported by almost all other Greek manuscripts, including Papyrus 75, Codex L, and the Byzantine Text.  (More Greek manuscripts support the variant in B and À here than support the non-inclusion of Mark 16:9-20; yet this variant does not even receive a footnote in translations such as the ESV, HCSB, NIV, and NASB.)

● At the beginning of verse 25, NA adopts the word-order in B (ουτος ο υιος μου), and then adopts the next variant from À (ανέζησεν, instead of B’s εζησεν) – a combination found in only a few manuscripts, including Papyrus 75 and Codex L.  NA also rejects the Byzantine Text’s inclusion of the word και.

          Thus, out of the six text-lines in Luke 16 that do not agree with either Vaticanus or Sinaiticus, Novum Testamentum Graece adopts a reading found in the Byzantine Text in two of them.  The effect of the Byzantine Text upon the text in Luke 16 thus amounts to the removal of one letter in the À-B text in verse 15, and the removal of seven words at the end of verse 21. 

          One could argue that the real impetus for these deviations was Codex L – a strongly Alexandrian witness in Luke – rather than the Byzantine Text, inasmuch as Codex L’s readings were adopted in both of these places and in verses 14 and 25.  Nevertheless, presuming the maximum discernible impact of the Byzantine Text, out of Luke 16’s 2,703 letters in the Nestle-Aland compilation, had the Byzantine Text not been consulted, the text in verse 15 would be one letter longer, and the text in verse 21 would be 27 letters (that is, seven words) longer, yielding a total of 2,731 letters.  Thus, the impact of the Byzantine Text upon the text of Luke 15 in the Nestle-Aland compilation may be said to be discernible in 1% of the text. 

The Nestle-Aland Text in Galatians 1: Alexandrian or Eclectic?

       It is sometimes claimed that the text in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece and the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament was compiled via a process that rejects the contents of over 90% of the existing manuscripts of the New Testament, strongly preferring the contents of two manuscripts:  Vaticanus (B, 03) and Sinaiticus (À, 01).  Is that true?  Let’s find out – or at least, let’s use a sample to get some idea about how accurate that claim is – by comparing the text of the first chapter of Galatians in the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece to the text in Codex Vaticanus, the text in Codex Sinaiticus, and to the Byzantine Text.  (In Galatians, the text in the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation is the same as the 26th and 27th edition, going back to 1979; the same text is in the fourth and fifth editions of the UBS Greek New Testament.)  In Matthew-Jude, the Byzantine Text usually represents the contents of the vast majority of Greek manuscripts.       

          In Galatians chapter 1, there are only nine differences between the  Nestle-Aland compilation and the Byzantine Text, and in three of those cases, the text in NA27 is bracketed, indicating that the NA compilation is unstable at those three points.  Here are the differences:   

● 1:3 – NA rejects the word-order in B and Byz, adopting À’s reading instead.

● 1:4a – NA rejects the reading of Byz and À and Papyrus 46 (περι), adopting instead the reading in B (υπερ).

● 1:4b – NA rejects the shorter reading found in Byz (ενεστωτος αιωνος), agreeing instead with B and ﬡ (αιωνος του ενεστωτος), 

● 1:6 – NA has Χριστου (supported by B, Byz, and À) in the text, but it is bracketed.

● 1:8 – NA has υμιν (supported by Byz), but bracketed.

● 1:8 – NA has ευαγγελίζηται where Byz also has ευαγγελίζηται.  The Byzantine Text, however, is divided here:  the text of the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text, and the margin of RP2005, read ευαγγελίζεται.  B agrees with RP2005 at this point in the verse, but disagrees earlier, reading καν instead of και εαν. 

● 1:10 – NA rejects the Byzantine reading γαρ before ετι, thus agreeing with B and À.

● 1:11a – NA rejects δε (thus disagreeing with Byz and ﬡ), and accepts γαρ (thus agreeing with B).  (And, in 1:11b, NA rejects the extra two occurrences of το ευαγγελιον in B, agreeing instead with Byz and À.)

● 1:15 – NA has ο θεος (agreeing with Byz and À) in the text, but it is in brackets.  (The words are not in B.)  [The ESV, by the way, does not translate these words, deviating from the NA text.]
● 1:18 – NA rejects the Byzantine reading Πετρον in favor of Κηφαν (which is supported by B and À).

          Another comparison may be considered.  Using the late scholar Reuben Swanson’s volume of line-by-line comparisons of the contents of various manuscripts, let’s investigate line-by-line to see whether the NA compilation looks like it depends heavily upon B and ﬡ, or if it looks like an eclectic text, in terms of its results.  

The result:  out of 44 lines of text in Galatians in Swanson, 35 lines match the text of B without variation.  Out of the remaining nine lines, which in NA do not agree with B, five of them agree with À.  So when one reads Galatians 1 in the Nestle-Aland compilation, one is reading a text that is in either B or ﬡ roughly 91% of the time, if one divides the text into the comparison-lines in Swanson.

          Does this mean that NA is Byzantine in the 11% of comparison-lines where it is not Alexandrian?  No.  Out of the remaining four lines in Swanson where NA does not agree with B and does not agree with À:

■ At the beginning of verse 8, NA disagrees with B and with ﬡ and agrees with the text in RP2005.

■ Near the end of verse 8, NA disagrees with B and with ﬡ and agrees with Byz. (The word υμιν is, however, bracketed in NA27.)

■ At the beginning of verse 11, NA disagrees with B (due to B’s weird triple occurrence of το ευαγγελιον) and with À and Byz (which both read δε instead of γαρ early in the verse). This sequence of readings adopted by NA is found as a correction in B, a correction in ﬡ, and in G and 33.

■ At the beginning of verse 19, where B has ουχ ειδον and À has ουκ ιδον, NA agrees with Byz (and a correction in B), reading ουκ ειδον.

          So: in Galatians 1, if we divide the text into Swanson’s 44 lines (as a convenient reference):  35 lines agree with B.  Five of the 9 remaining lines that do not agree with B, agree with ﬡ.  Three of the four remaining lines that do not agree with B, nor with À, agree with Byz.  Thus, in Galatians 1, in terms of how many full lines in Swanson’s comparison agree with either B, À, or both, the Nestle-Aland compilation is roughly 91% Alexandrian, 7% Byzantine, and 2% something else.

          If we zoom in for a closer look at those three lines in which NA agrees with Byz against B and ﬡ, we see how small the impact of the Byzantine Text is:  

(1) The difference at the beginning of verse 8 amounts to καν (in B) versus και εαν, which is read by ﬡ as well as by Byz.

(2) The contest near the end of verse 8 is between the absence (in B and ﬡ) or presence (in Byz) of υμιν.  Inasmuch as the word is bracketed in NA27, this should not be considered a stable portion of the NA compilation. And,

(3) The difference near the beginning of verse 19 is a matter of two letters in two words.  Treated as separate variants, each word adopted in NA is supported by either B or ﬡ:   B has ειδον and ﬡ has ουκ.

          Thus, one can produce a compilation of Galatians 1 that is identical to the text of NA by picking and choosing exclusively from first-hand readings in B and ﬡ, with one exception:  the Byzantine Text has contributed one bracketed word (consisting of four letters) in verse 8.  (B also has υμιν, but before ευαγγελίζηται instead of after it.)   It seems to me that the presence of a single word (constituting a little less than one-third of one percent of the text of Galatians 1) does not justify calling the NA compilation of Galatians 1 an eclectic text.  Whatever has been said about the eclecticism of the method used to compile the Nestle-Aland text, the compilation itself in Galatians 1 is more than 99% Alexandrian.