Acts 20:28 – Smuggling in an Emendation?

          Two textual issues in Acts 20:28 have impacted translations of the verse:  First:   did Luke refer to the church as the “church of God,” the “church of the Lord,” or the “church of the Lord and God”?  Second, at the end of the verse, did Luke write that the church was obtained through his blood, or through the blood of his Son?

          Let’s review the external evidence:
          Greek Support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ includes ﬡ B 056 614 1175 1611 104 2147 1505 Byz, Lectionary 60, l592, l598, l603, l1021, and l1439.  Versional support is provided by the Vulgate, the Peshitta, the Harklean Syriac, the Georgian version, and it^{ar, c, dem, ph, ro, w} and a Bohairic copy.  Patristic support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ is supplied by Athanasius, Basil, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Cyril, and Ambrose.    

          Greek support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου includes P74 A C* D E Ψ 33 181 307 453 547 610 945 945 1678 1739 1891 2344 2464 and l599.  Versional support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου is supplied by it^{d, e, gig, p} the margin of the Harklean Syriac, Sahidic, Bohairic, and Armenian versions.  Patristic support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου comes from Irenaeus (in Latin), Didymus (in Latin), Theodoret, Ambrosiaster, Jerome, and Pelagius.      

          Greek support for ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου καί θεοῦ includes H L P C³ 049 1 69 88 226 323 330 440 618 927 1241 1245 1270 1828 1854 2492 and most lectionaries.  Versional support is limited to a Slavic lectionary copy.

          (In addition, Swanson recorded GA 1837’s ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυ ιυ καί θῦ.)

          The KJV, reflecting the Textus Receptus, reads “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.” [emphasis added here, and in the following quotations]

           Similarly, the Christian Standard Bible reads “shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.”  The Evangelical Heritage Version reads “shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.”  The ESV reads “care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.”  The NIV reads “shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.” 

          The World English Bible, following the Byzantine Text, reads, “Take heed, therefore, to yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the assembly of the Lord and God which he purchased with his own blood.”

          Modern versions render Acts 20:28 in quite diverse ways:  usually the base-text τοῦ θεοῦ is followed, not only in the English Standard Version, NIV, EHV and CSB but also in the NET, RSV, NRSV, CEB, and CEV.

          The New World Translation (a translation produced for the cult known as “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” also known as the Watchtower Society) reads “Pay attention to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the holy spirit has appointed you overseers, to shepherd the congregation of God, which he purchased with the blood of his own Son.”           Inasmuch as no manuscript of Acts reads “of his own Son,” it appears that the modern Arian cult has added to the words of God.  But the Jehovah’s Witnesses Bible butchers are not alone in this respect.  The NET also renders Acts 20:28 with an appeal “to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son.”

          Likewise  the NRSV (including the compromised Updated Edition) have Paul tell the Ephesian elders to “shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son” – echoing the RSV, which reads, “care for the church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own Son.”  The relatively recent Common English Bible reads “shepherd God’s church, which he obtained with the death of his own Son.”  The CEV (Contemporary English Version) reads, “Be like shepherds to God’s church. It is the flock he bought with the blood of his own Son.”  

          The Lexham English Bible likewise reads, “shepherd the church of God which he obtained through the blood of his own Son.”  The Complete Jewish Bible reads “shepherd God’s Messianic community, which he won for himself at the cost of his own Son’s blood.”  The Good News Translation reads “shepherds of the church of God, which he made his own through the blood of his Son.”  The New Century Version says “You must be like shepherds to the church of God, which he bought with the death of his own son.”  The Mounce Reverse Interlinear New Testament reads, “shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with the blood of his own Son.”  The Voice says “Shepherd the church of God, this precious church which He made His own through the blood of His own Son.” 

          English versions which end Acts 20:28 with a clear reference to the blood of God’s Son – even though the Greek equivalent of the word “son” is not in the base-text – include the NWT, NET, RSV, NRSV, CEV, Lexham, GNT, Mounce, The Voice, and CEB.

          In 1881 Hort wrote over three columns of his Notes on Select Readings about Acts 20:28 and concluded that “It is by no means impossible that ΥΙΟΥ dropped out after ΤΟΥΙΔΙΟΥ at some very early transcription affecting all existing documents.  Its insertion leaves the whole passage free from difficulty of any kind.”  Metzger mentioned that Hort’s proposal is not necessary – but no less than nine modern English versions appear to be conformed to Hort’s proposed emendation!

Metzger dismissed the majority reading as “obviously conflate.”  The  Byzantine reading τοῦ κυρίου καί θεοῦ may account for both of the longer readings, however, if early scribes committed parablepsis, skipping from the –ou of κυρίου to the –ου of θεοῦ (producing ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου), and some subsequently substituting θεοῦ in place of κυρίου, resisting the idea of God having blood.   

          The Tyndale House Greek New Testament reads “ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου” and concludes with “αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου.”  Holmes’ SBL-GNT reads “ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ” and concludes the verse with “αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου.” 

          It may be worthwhile to consider the thoughts of some who have approached the textual issue from a pastoral perspective – for example Bob Luginbill, Sam Shamoun, and the La Vista Church of Christ (near Omaha Nebraska).

          Considering that the longer reading’s earliest appearance is relatively late, and that ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ is supported by the Peshitta, the Vulgate, Chrysostom and Athanasius, ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ should be adopted, being early, geographically widely supported, and attested in multiple transmission-lines.  GA 1739’s text may be adopted for the entire verse.   

          English readers should be aware that at least eight modern versions essentially echo a conjectural emendation in this verse.

First Corinthians 10:9 - "the Lord" or "Christ"?

             Leaving the Gospels momentarily, today we explore a textual variant in the Pauline Epistles:  in First Corinthians 10:9, did the text originally say “Nor let us tempt Christ” (Χριστόν) or “Nor let us tempt the Lord” (Κύριον) or “Nor let us tempt God” (Θεόν)?  All three readings are nomina sacra (sacred names, usually written in contracted form), and thus, with the nomina sacra in play, amount to the difference between ΧΝ, ΚΝ, and ΘΝ.

Erasmus' text of I Cor. 10:9 (1522)

            The treatment of this variant by editors, publishers and printers of the (mainly) Byzantine Text has been consistent:  Erasmus (all editions), Gerbel (1521), Stephanus (1550), Melchoir Sessa (Venice) 1538, John Fell (1675), Bengel (1734), and Scholz (1836) all have favored “Χριστόν”; Griesbach also had Χριστόν in the text.  Χριστόν is read in Hodges & Farstad’s Majority Text (1982), and in the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform (2005), and in the Solid Rock Greek New Testament. 

            English Bibles in use today with “Christ” in First Corinthians 10:9 include the KJV, NKJV, EOB (Eastern Orthodox Bible), WEB, EHV, and also the CSB, ESV, NET, NIV 2011, NLT, NCV (New Century Version), and NRSV.

I Cor. 10:9 (Nicolaus Gerbel, 1521)

            Κύριον was consistently adopted by most editors of the critical text, other than Griesbach, until about 1970:  “Lord” was the reading adopted by Lachmann (1831), Buttmann (1862), Tregelles (1869), Tischendorf (8^th edition, 1872), Westcott & Hort (1881), Eberhard Nestle (1904), Alexander Souter (1920), and the Nestle-Aland compilation up to and including the 25^th edition.  The first and second editions of the United Bible Society’s Greek New Testament also read Κύριον.      

I Cor. 10:9 (Fell, 1675)

            Consequently, “Lord” has appeared in First Corinthians 10:9 in several English Bibles of the past 150 years, including the Revised Version (1881), the American Standard Version (1901), the Revised Standard Version, the Living Bible, the New Life Version, the New American Standard Bible (1960 & 1995), the New International Version 1984, and the Tree of Life Version (2011).  Meanwhile, the Tyndale House GNT reads “κύριον” and the SBLGNT reads “Χριστόν.”

            Now let’s look at some text-critical data: 

Fell's footnote (1675)

             In 1982, in New Testament Textual Criticism:  Its Significance for Exegesis:  Essays in Honor of Bruce M. Metzger, a chapter by Carroll D. Osburn focused on this variant.  Osburn’s data is far more detailed than any other apparatus:  in support of Χριστόν, Osburn listed P46, D, E, F, G, K, L, Ψ 056 0142 0151 and 489 minuscules (including 1 6 18 35 69 88 131 205 209 323 330 424 440 451 489 517 547 614 618 629 630 796 910 945 999 1241 1242 1243 1245 1270 1315 1353 1424 1448 1505 1611 1646 1734 1738 1739 1827 1852 1854 1881 1891 1912 1982  1984 2125 2200 2400 2412 2492 2495), numerous Old Latin witnesses including it^ar, ^b, ^d, ^dem, ^e, ^f, ^g, ^o, ^x, ^z and the Vulgate, the Peshitta, the main text of the Harklean Syriac, the Sahidic version, and the Bohairic version.   

I Cor. 10:9 in Codex Sinaiticus     

           Κύριον, meanwhile, is supported by À B C P 0150 33 43 104 181 255^vid 256 263 326 365 436 1175 2110 2127 2464 and 22 other minuscules, and the margin of the Harklean Syriac, the Armenian version and the Ethiopic version.

            Osburn’s thorough list extends to two other readings:

            Codex A, 2 81 1127 1595 and 14 other minuscules (and 2815 which Osburn did not list, but Swanson does) read Θεόν.

            Nothing appears between ἐκπειράζωμεν and καθως in 97 1729* 1985 and 2659.

             Settings aside Θεόν and the complete absence of any nomina sacra, Osburn focuses on the contest between Κύριον and Χριστόν.  Things get very interesting in the patristic evidence: 

            The earliest support for Χριστόν is Marcion (the arch-heretic from Pontus who worked for a while in Rome c. 140); Epiphanius, in the late 300s, claimed that Marcion changed the text from Κύριον to Χριστόν.  But, as Osburn argues, it is reasonable to understand Epiphanius’ claim as a presumption – i.e., that Epiphanius’ text read Κύριον and he assumed that Marcion had changed it – rather than as an observation.  Slightly later is Irenaeus (in Against Heresies, Book 4, ch. 27), and slightly later than Irenaeus are Clement of Alexandria, Origen (in a statement preserved in the margin of GA 1739), and Theotecnus (bishop of Caesarea-in-Palestine, and an associate of Origen), writing against Paul of Samosata for the Council of Antioch (268).  

            The bishops involved in the Council of Antioch in 268 also produced the Letter of Hymenaeus, of which Osburn provided a relevant extract, which implies that “neither Paul of Samosata nor his opponents were aware of a biblical text which read other than Χριστόν in v. 9.”  (Osburn mentioned in a footnote, however, that the text of the Letter of Hymenaeus printed by M.J. Routh in 1846, and by E.Schwartz in 1927, has Κύριον.) 

            Also in support of Χριστόν are Ambrosiaster, Ephraem Syrus, Pelagius, Augustine, Pseudo-Oecumenius, and Theophylact.  Chrysostom also cites I Cor. 10:9 with Χριστόν three times.

            Κύριον is supported by Epiphanius, Theodoret of Cyrrhus (in a substantial quotation in his commentary on the Pauline Epistles), Cassiodorus, John of Damascus, and Sedulius Scotus.  Chrysostom is cited as using κύριον once.  

           Now let’s analyze this evidence and reach a conclusion. 

I Cor. 10:9 in Tregelles' text.

            The case for κύριον is not lightweight:  agreements of À and B were considered practically decisive by Westcott & Hort, and their judgment held sway for over a century, though as early as 1899 Theodor Zahn, as Carroll noted, firmly opposed it.              

            Χριστόν has in its favor the support of very early and geographically diverse patristic witnesses.  The discovery of P46 with Χριστόν (written as ΧΡΝ - see BP II f.49 in the online Chester Beatty Papyrus Collection on the fourth line from the bottom) probably should have instantly elicited a change in the critical text here, inasmuch as with its discovery, Χριστόν scores high on multiple metrics:  it is the reading of the oldest manuscript; it is the reading of the most manuscripts (by far); it is the reading of the most diverse array of manuscripts; it is the reading favored by a strong combination of early patristic writers.  About the only counter-argument that favors Κύριον is the internal consideration that Paul would be unlikely to have written that the Hebrews in the wilderness tempted Christ – but as indicated in a note in the NET, Osburn built an effective cumulative argument that the case against Χριστόν driven by this internal evidence is weak.  I cannot think of any reason but haste, and perhaps over-reliance on the work of Tregelles (who had no access to P46) to elicit the Tyndale House GNT’s adoption of κύριον.  It was due to over-reliance upon À and B that κύριον was ever adopted in printed Greek New Testaments; hopefully the days of such over-reliance, repeatedly shown to be merely a disguised bias, are behind us. 

              Χριστόν merits confident inclusion in the text.                     

        

 

Dirk Jongkind versus Reality: Vaticanus' Scribe

            Dirk Jongkind, editor of the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament, is featured in a series of video-lectures and discussions hosted by the Forum of Christian Leaders (FOCL), with titles such as   

           ● Introduction to the Greek New Testament, and                    

           ● Greek Textual Criticism, and

           ●  The Earliest Evidence for the Text of the New Testament, and

           ●  Studying the Manuscripts. 

            In the last-named lecture (uploaded in November of 2017), which is only 23 minutes long,  Jongkind made some claims about Codex Vaticanus which invite clarification.

            The New Testament text in Codex Vaticanus, Jongkind stated, was made by a scribe who almost never made significant mistakes:  “When you’re copying a text, you’re going to make blunders.  The scribe responsible for this one hardly made any.”

           

            This claim should be considered alongside the observations made by Greg Paulson in his 2013 thesis at the University of Edinburgh, Scribal Habits in Codex Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Ephraemi, Bezae, and Washingtonianus in the Gospel of Matthew; on page  60 Paulson observes, “There are 97 singular readings in B in Matthew.”  [Let me break that down for newcomers:  “B” = Codex Vaticanus, and a singular reading is a reading which occurs in only a single manuscript.]    Paulson also notes that two of the readings attested exclusively by Codex Vaticanus are adopted into the Nestle-Aland compilation, in Matthew 9:3 and 26:53b.  In the Tyndale House compilation, B’s reading in 9:3 (ειπαν) is rejected in favor of ειπον, and B’s reading in 26:53b (μοι αρτι πλείω) is rejected in the Tyndale House compilation in favor of μοι αρτι πλείους.  Although I have not thoroughly consulted the Tyndale House edition to check the editors’ decisions in all 97 passages where Codex Vaticanus has a singular reading, it seems reasonable to expect that none of them were adopted.

            Most of B’s anomalous readings in Matthew are benign.  But the readings attested exclusively by Codex Vaticanus in Matthew include – just a sample here – the following:

            ● the insertion of εις την χώραν αυτων in 2:13 (repeated from 2:12)

            ● the omission of εργα at the end of 5:16

            ● the omission of μὴ δέξηται in 10:14

            ● the insertion of ουκ before αφεθήσεται (first occurrence) in 12:32

            ● the omission of και δίκαιοι in 13:17

            ● the omission of εις after αγαθου in 19:17

            ● the repetition of πληρωθη το ρηθεν δια του in 21:4

           

Sifting through three chapters from Mark and three chapters from Luke, more mistakes from Codex Vaticanus’ scribe are observed – and this does not include Vaticanus’ itacistic (vowel-switching) anomalies and unusual name-spelling:
   

In Mark chapters 6-8:
            ● 6:2:  B adds οι before πολλοι
            ● 6:17:  B* omits την γυναικα

            ● 6:20:  B omits και before συνετήρει

            ● 6:33:  B reads εγνωσαν instead of επέγνωσαν

            ● 6:38:  B transposes to εχετε αρτους

            ● 6:39:  B reads εν instead of επι

            ● 6:54:  B* omits αυτων

            ● 7:4:  B reads ραντίσωνται instead of βαπτισωνται

            ● 7:9:  B reads τηρητε instead of στήσητε

            ● 7:14:  B reads λέγει instead of ελεγεν

            ● 7:15:  B reads το κοινυν instead of ὁ δυναται κοινωσαι

            ● 7:24:  B reads ηδυνάσθη instead of ηδυνήθη

            ● 7:37:  B adds ως after πεποίηκεν

            ● 8:2:  B omits μοι

            ● 8:3:  B reads εισιν instead of ηκασιν

            ● 8:10:  B adds αυτος after εμβας

            ● 8:12:  B omits υμιν after λεγω

            ● 8:20:  B reads και λεγουσιν αυτω instead of οι δε ειπαν

            ● 8:25:  B reads εθηκεν instead of επέθηκεν

            ● 8:35:  B reads εαυτου ψυχην instead of ψυχην αυτου

            ● 8:37:  B adds ὁ before ανθρωπος

            ● 8:37:  B reads εαυτου instead of αυτου

In Luke 1-3:
            ● 1:37:  B* reads οτι ουκ αδυνατήσει twice.

            ● 2:9:  B omits φόβον μεγαν, reading, instead, σφόδρα
            ● 2:19:  B omits ταυτα after ρηματα

            ● 2:22:  B omits του after ημεραι

            ● 2:37:  B reads αφειστα instead of αφίστατο

            ● 2:47:  B omits οι ακούοντες αυτου

            ● 3:8:  B transposes to αξίους καρπους

            ● 3:17:  B reads αβέστω instead of ασβέστω

            ● 3:33:  B omits του Αμιναδαβ

            These are not exhaustive lists.  “His execution is very careful,” Jongkind said of the scribe who produced these readings.  It seems to me that while the scribe of Codex Vaticanus is certainly not the worst scribe ever (a title that must go to the scribe of Old Latin Codex Bobbiensis), his execution leaves something to be desired, and the claim that he hardly ever made blunders must be regarded as an exaggeration.

            In addition, near the end of his lecture on Studying the Manuscripts, Jongkind employed a slide which stated, “This Byzantine Text is the text printed by Erasmus and became the received text.”  That is the sort of oversimplification which Jongkind elsewhere warns his audience against making.
            There are over 1,000 significant differences between the Byzantine Text and the Textus Receptus.  Both the Byzantine Text and the Textus Receptus usually are supported by the majority of Greek manuscripts at points in Matthew-Jude where they disagree with the Nestle-Aland compilation, but the Textus Receptus has some readings which are only supported by a small number of Greek manuscripts (and in a few cases, by none).  A professor who continues to describe the Byzantine Text as if it is one and the same as the Textus Receptus, over a decade after the release of the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform, might be vulnerable to the charge of intentionally confusing and misleading his audience.



Readers are invited to check the data in this post.

093: A Byzantine Fragment of Acts from the 500s in Egypt

            Today, let’s take a close look at part of 093 – a small fragment that contains text from Acts 24:22-26, and text from First Peter 2:22-3:7.  (I will focus here especially on the text from Acts.  093 is a palimpsest with an interesting history:  it was among the approximately 193,000 fragments that had been stored in the Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo over the course of centuries.  (The story of how researchers Charles Taylor and Solomon Schechter discovered this immense collection of materials and, in 1896-1897, arranged for its transportation to Cambridge University for continued study, can be found online.) 

            Charles Taylor published a transcription of the text from Acts in 093 in 1900, along with a short summary of the text from First Peter, and some other texts.  He also noted that the upper writing on the palimpsest consisted of Hebrew extracts from the Bereshith Rabbah (ch. 45, 47,and 98). The lower writing contains most of Acts 24:22-26 on one page in two columns of 24 lines each.  The text on the verso is mostly illegible but Taylor made out words from the tops of the two columns:  from Acts 24:26, οτι χρηματα / δοθησεται, and from Acts 24:27, ελαβεν διαδο / χον ο Φηλιξ  / Πορκιον Φη / στον.  (This manuscript is identified in the catalog of Joseph van Haelst as item 487; in the Taylor-Schechter Collection it is in Collection 12, 189 and 208.  For a while, 093 was identified with the siglum ﬥ.)

Green lines:  093 disagrees with Alex.
Red lines:  093 disagrees with Byz.

            The smattering of text on the verso does not allow much insight regarding the type of text of Acts that 093 contains, inasmuch as the Alexandrian Text and the Byzantine Text are in exact agreement in those parts of Acts 24:26 and 24:27.  When we turn to the much more extensive text on the recto, however, there can be no doubt:  093’s text of Acts is Byzantine:  except for its inclusion of the contracted sacred name Ιν after Χν in verse 24, and the reading λαβων instead of μεταλαβὼν in verse 25, the text from Acts in 093 agrees perfectly with the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform.  (The Textus Receptus differs from RP2005 in this passage in two places; the TR includes αυτου after γυναικι in 24:24, and reads δε between αμα and και in 24:26.)

            Meanwhile, 093 disagrees with the Nestle-Aland compilation at the following seven places:
● 1.  In verse 22, there is a word-order variant:  ανεβαλετο αυτους follows Φηλιξ, instead of the Alexandrian reading in which ανεβαλετο δε αυτους precedes ὁ Φηλιξ.

● 2.  In verse 22, after οδου, 093 reads ειπων, not ειπας.

● 3.  In verse 23, before τω, 093 reads τε. 

● 4.  In verse 23, after τηρεισθαι, 093 reads τον Παυλον instead of αυτον.

● 5.  In verse 23, before αυτω, 093 reads η προσέρχεσθαι.

● 6.  In verse 24, before γυναικι, 093 does not read ιδία. 

● 7.  In verse 25, after μέλλοντος, 093 reads εσεσθαι.

            Two points are illustrated by this evidence. 

            First, contrary to the much-repeated claim that the Textus Receptus is a late medieval compilation (as opposed to an essentially early form of the text with a relatively small stratum of late medieval readings), 093 confirms that the Byzantine Text of Acts – at least, Acts 24:22-26 – existed in the 500s, around a thousand years before Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza made their compilations.

            Second, there is some reason to suspect that apparatuses in some widely used Greek New Testaments cannot be trusted to present evidence in an even-handed way in cases where Byzantine readings receive early support:  

                 ● Of the seven reading in Acts 24:22-26 that are supported by 093 and the majority of Greek manuscripts, the Nestle-Aland apparatus (in NA27) fails to record four of them (#2, 3, 4, and 6). 

                 ● In the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th ed.) only one variant-unit is covered in the verses that are extant in 093:  the contest between Ιν Χν and just Χν in 24:24.  In this case the theoretical mechanics of the “expansion of piety” have been rejected in favor of strong early support (including support from 093) for the longer reading. 

                 ● In the apparatus of the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament, only one textual contest in the passage that is extant in 093 is mentioned:  the contest in Acts 24:24 between the inclusion or non-inclusion of ιδια before γυναικι, and the inclusion or non-inclusion of αυτου after γυναικι.  The reading found in 093 is mentioned as a reading supported by C* L P 1424, but 093’s support is not mentioned.  The compilers of the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament apparently never looked at 093.  (A list of consulted witnesses in an appendix of THEGNT does not mention 093, although over a dozen manuscripts younger than 093 are listed.)   

            Third – provisionally accepting the classification of the fragmentary text from First Peter 2:22-3:7 as Alexandrian – it was possible for a Byzantine text of Acts to appear in the same manuscript as an Alexandrian text of First Peter in Cairo, Egypt.  While it cannot be demonstrated that 093 was produced in Egypt, the presence of an Alexandrian text of First Peter in the manuscript favors this possibility, and the presence of 093 among the genizah’s fragments also indicates that the Byzantine Text of Acts in the 500s was used in a broad range of territory. 

            093 is not the only manuscript with texts from the New Testament that was discovered in the Cairo Genizah.   A few palimpsests were discovered to have material from the New Testament in their lower writing, in Palestinian Aramaic; these texts were studied, and published, by the scholarly sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, with assistance from J. R. Harris – including a palimpsest-fragment with Palestian Aramaic text from John 14:25-15:16.  The Syriac specialist G. H. Gwilliam published the contents of five palimpsest-fragments (assigned to the 700s) in 1893, containing text from chapters 4 and 5 of Numbers, and from Colossians 4:12-18, First Thessalonians 1:1-3 and 4:3-15, Second Timothy 1:10-2:7, and Titus 1:11-2:8.  Michael Sokoloff and Joseph Yahalom brought such investigations up to date in 1979, and expanded upon them, in a detailed essay in Revue d’Histoire des Textes, “Christian palimpsests from the Cairo Geniza.”  (Fragments of manuscripts of the Hexapla from the Cairo Genizah, by the way, can be viewed at the Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism website.)

            A few other palimpsest-fragments in the Cairo Genizah contain some New Testament passages.  (One fragment contains Syriac text from Second Corinthians 3:2-15; another fragment contains Syriac text from chapters 3 and 4 of First Thessalonians.)  The lower writing on yet another fragment consists of the remains of an early (600s or 700s?) Greek uncial lectionary, now catalogued as lectionary 1276, a.k.a. Taylor-Schechter 16.93, containing excerpts from Matthew 10:2-15 and John 20:11-15.  We may take a closer look at lectionary 1276 in a future post.

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

Review: Jongkind's Intro to the Tyndale House GNT

            Today, let’s take a look at An Introduction to the Greek New Testament, by Dirk Jongkind, a researcher at Cambridge (Ph.D. 2005, Cambridge).  The Greek New Testament that is referred to the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament.  Very little is said about any other edition of the GNT.

            This volume measures just 7¾” inches tall and 5¼” wide – approximately the same dimensions as the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament.  It is not long:  only 124 pages, including (at the back) acknowledgements, a glossary, and indices, and (at the front) several brief reviews, front matter, the table of contents, an analytical outline, and an illustrations-list.  The actual book, from the first page of the first chapter to the last page of the last chapter, is just 93 pages long, but considering that  pages 40, 86, and 92 are blank, and that illustrations fill parts of several pages, and that each of the book’s eight chapters begins halfway down the page, the actual amount of used pages is something like 80.  This is a short book.    

            Jongkind presents the Tyndale House edition of the GNT as a compilation which the editors consider “the most accurate edition of the Greek New Testament published so far.”  He also states (p. 35), “we do see it as our task to reflect the earliest manuscript tradition.”  Readers of the Tyndale House GNT may reasonably expect, therefore, to find a filtered form of the Alexandrian text in the pages of the Tyndale House GNT.  

            A chapter-list may shine some light on what Jongkind covers (and does not cover):

            1.  Your Greek New Testament and the Manuscripts

            2.  Practicalities [i.e., how to read the GNT apparatus]

            3.  Manuscripts

            4.  How Decisions Are Made (and Some Important Variants)
            5.  Why Not the Textus Receptus?
            6.  Why Not the Byzantine Text?

            7.  Biblical Theology and the Transmission of the Text

            8.  Where Do We Go From Here?

            As a user’s guide to the Tyndale House GNT, Jongkind’s book is an adequate manual, but as an introduction to the issues involved in the study of the text of the New Testament, it is very uneven, and Jongkind’s treatments of specific passages are so thin as to be superficial.  His presentations of evidence regarding Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11 are terribly one-sided; there is no mention of Irenaeus’ use of Mark 16:19 in Against Heresies, and there is no mention of Jerome’s declaration that he had seen the story of the adulteress in may manuscripts, both Greek and Latin.  Jongkind’s treatment of the evidence pertaining to Luke 22:43-44 is even worse; he informs his readers that the passage is found “as early as the fourth century,” as if the abundant patristic support for Luke 22:43-44 does not exist.

            Conscious avoidance of the use of patristic testimony repeatedly mars Jongkind’s comments, just as it mars the apparatus of the Tyndale House GNT.  As Jongkind describes the apparatus of the Tyndale House GNT, one might sense that he is not so much explaining its frugality as apologizing for it.  On page 48, Jongkind acknowledges that the Tyndale GNT does not cite any lectionaries.  On the following page, he states that there is also no versional evidence mentioned in the apparatus.  And there is no patristic evidence in the apparatus either.  Thus three of the four forms of evidence for the text of the New Testament – patristic works, versions, and lectionaries – are withheld from readers of the Tyndale House GNT’s apparatus.  After explaining (on p. 66) that is is useful to detect how evidence is distributed, Jongkind offers an apparatus which is so lightweight that it guarantees that this is impossible for its readers to do.

            In the segment “Some Important Variants,” Jongkind mentions evidence from lectionaries, and evidence from patristic writings, and evidence from versions.  One should pause and wonder, if these forms of evidence do not matter, why are they factors in these arguments, and if they matter, why aren’t they in the apparatus?

            For two chapters, Jongkind detours from his main goal in order to explain why the Tyndale House edition of the GNT is not identical to the Textus Receptus or the Byzantine Text. Regarding the Textus Receptus, his reasoning will persuade the already-persuaded, but it offers very little against the argumentation of what has come to be known as a “Confessional” approach to the subject.  Regarding the Byzantine Text, Jongkind does his readers a disservice when he makes it seem as if “There are two big differences between the Byzantine Text and the Textus Receptus,” minimizing all the differences outside of Acts 8:37 and First John 5:7-8.  In real life, there are oodles of differences.   

            In addition, on pages 98-99, Jongkind seems to contradict himself regarding the date of the earliest evidence for the Byzantine Text:  at first he asserts that in the fourth century (i.e., the 300s), “none of the individual pieces of evidence suggest the existence of anything like the Byzantine Text.”  Yet in the very next paragraph he says, “It is only from the late fourth century onward that the Byzantine Text appears in citations from the church fathers, and from the fifth century onward, we see the first real manuscripts, though limited to the Gospels at first.”  Which is it:  is there “nothing like the Byzantine Text” in the 300s, or does the Byzantine Text appear in patristic writings in the 300s?
            Those familiar with the textual affinities of the text used by Gregory of Nyssa (335-395) need not wonder.  “Virtually all of the evidence,” wrote James Brooks in 1991, “indicates that Gregory’s quotations from the NT have their greatest affinity with the Byzantine type of text” (p. 264, The New Testament Text of Gregory of Nyssa).  Bruce Metzger stated that Wulfilas, in the mid-300s, translated the Gothic version from “the early Koine [i.e., Byzantine] type of text” (p. 82, The Text of the New Testament).  How can this be harmonized with Jongkind’s claim that there is nothing in the 300s to suggest the existence of anything like the Byzantine Text?  

            In addition, while Jongkind’s question about why the Byzantine Text does not appear in second-century and third-century manuscripts is a valid question, there is a valid answer:  papyrus rots.  The manuscripts that circulated throughout Greece, Turkey, and Syria in the 100s and 200s cannot be reasonably expected to do impossible things such as survive in high-humidity locales.  But when patristic writings and copies of Scripture in that territory began to be preserved on parchment (in the mid-late 300s), we see an essentially Byzantine form of the Gospels dominating the landscape there – not because the Byzantine text was new, but because, thanks to the use of parchment codices, the materials on which it was written were suddenly much more durable.       

            Another shortcoming:  the Byzantine Text is not consistently cited in the apparatus.  The expansions and harmonizations in the Byzantine Text that Jongkind briefly describes may justify avoiding the adoption of the Byzantine Text in toto, but the same kind of expansions and harmonizations can be identified in Alexandrian manuscripts (see the post Challenging the Expansion of Piety Theory).   Yet the Alexandrian manuscripts, despite the steady stream of non-original readings they contain, appear in the apparatus constantly.  The Byzantine Text is frequently not mentioned, and this prevents readers from easily discerning how Byzantine or non-Byzantine the text in the Tyndale House GNT tends to be.  Why was the testimony of the Byzantine Text hidden? 

            Also, Jongkind did not adequately impress readers with the minimalistic nature of the apparatus in the Tyndale House GNT.  The apparatus not only avoids telling readers about lectionary evidence and patristic evidence and versional evidence, but very frequently has no entry whatsoever where significant textual variants exist in Greek manuscripts.  Consider Luke 17:36:  this verse is not in the text and there is no entry about it in the apparatus.  Consider Luke 24:53:  instead of addressing the “blessing and praising” variant, famous as one of Hort’s proposed conflations, the apparatus only covers the question of whether “Amen” should be included.  Consider John 7:39:  only part of the textual evidence is covered; the apparatus avoids mentioning B’s testimony.  Consider Acts 13:33:  no textual variant is mentioned.  Many more examples could be supplied in which major translatable variants receive no attention whatsoever in the Tyndale House GNT’s apparatus.    

            When one turns to the Introduction to the Tyndale House GNT that appears as an appendix in the GNT itself, one finds a statement that “the limited apparatus is designed primarily to illustrate the decision-making process.”  Jongkind should have emphasized this point more often and more adamantly than he did, perhaps via repeated statements such as “It should constantly be kept in mind that the apparatus, besides saying absolutely nothing about patristic evidence, versional evidence, and lectionary evidence, is extremely incomplete,” or, “Readers should keep in mind that most textual contests in which the majority of manuscripts disagree with a relatively small cluster of manuscripts are not mentioned at all in the apparatus.”

            Perhaps someday this fault will be repaired by the emergence of a textual commentary which, instead of only covering a sparse representative sample of variant-units, will provide more adequate treatment.  Until then, what one has in Jongkind’s Introduction and the Tyndale House GNT, compared to past Introductions and GNTs, is less, not more.

           

Points of note:

● On p. 18, Jongkind states that the Greek New Testament has been published “since the invention of the printing press.”  However, inasmuch as the printing press was invented in the 1450s and the first GNT to be printed appeared over 50 years later, this is not quite right.

● Jongkind repeatedly states (p. 20, p. 24) that modern chapter and verse-numbers originated in the sixteenth century; however, while this is true of verse-numbers, the chapter-numbers originated in the early 1200s with Stephen Langton.

● A table (2.2, on page 34) states that replacement-pages are given a special sigla:  “Such sections are indicated as coming from a supplement.  However, in Jongkind’s discussion of Mark 16:9-20, when ℵ is mentioned, there is no indication of the fact that its pages containing Mark 15:54-Luke 1:76 are replacement-pages.  Possibly the editors did not consider replacement-pages added in the initial production-process to be truly replacement-pages; if so, however, this should have been mentioned.

● A footnote on page 68 says that “about nine other late manuscripts” have the extra Alexandrian material in Matthew 27:49 (which inexplicably and somewhat shockingly is not mentioned in the apparatus!); a simple consultation of Willker’s Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels would have shown that the number of late Greek manuscripts that support this reading is closer to 34.

Dr. Dirk Jongkind

● Jongkind seems sympathetic to the redating of three important manuscripts: P66 may be as late as the early 300s; P75 may be as late as the early 300s, and Codex W might have been produced in the 500s.  However, as recently as 2017, Jongkind described P66 and P75 as third-century manuscripts.  What is the basis for this shift?  The only evidence or argumentation that Jongkind mentions:  “voices have argued” for the later dates.  That’s all:  voices.  Footnotes should have been provided in order to give readers the means to test the bases for the new proposals.

You can find more materials from Dr. Jongkind online:

A lecture on the GNT delivered by Dr. Jongkind (55 minutes)

Greg Pritchard interviews Dirk Jongkind on New Testament textual criticism (45 minutes)

Dirk Jongkind describes the Tyndale House GNT (under 5 minutes)

Dirk Jongkind describes the earliest evidence for the NT text (21 minutes)

Dirk Jongkind reviews some of the major uncial manuscripts of the NT (23 minutes)

Production Notes for the Tyndale House GNT
Errata List for the Tyndale House GNT

Hand-to-Hand Combat: Sinaiticus vs. Textus Receptus in Rev. 22

            It is often claimed that the text in older manuscripts is more accurate than the text in younger manuscripts.  At first glance, this makes sense:  fewer years implies fewer opportunities for copyists to corrupt the text.  But upon more careful consideration, it does not make sense, except as a general consideration:  what matters is not whether scribes had those opportunities for corruption, but whether they used them. 

            Confirmation that the text of an early manuscript can be more corrupt than the text in a later manuscript has already been provided here in the Hand-to-Hand Combat series of posts.  In each of those twelve posts, the text of an older manuscript was compared to the text of a younger manuscript, using the NA27 compilation as the standard of comparision. 

● In Matthew 24:23-30, minuscule 2474’s text is more accurate than the text in Codex Sinaiticus.  Sinaiticus has 59 letters’ worth of corruption; 25 letters’ worth when itacisms and trivial variants are removed from consideration.  2474 has 14 letters’ worth of corruption; 5 letters’ worth when itacisms and trivial variants are removed from consideration.           

● In Luke 2:1-12, Vaticanus’ text is more accurate than the text in minuscule 1295, but the text in 1295 is more accurate than the text in Sinaiticus.  When itacisms and trivial variants are set aside, B has 18 letters’ worth of corruption, 1295 has 28 letters’ worth of corruption, and À has 44 letters’ worth of corruption.  

● In Colossians 3:1-11, the text of minuscule 6 is more accurate than the texts in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.    The text of minuscule 2401 is more accurate than the text in B.  When itacisms and trivial variants are set aside, B has 25 letters’ worth of corruption; 2401 has 24; Sinaiticus has 31, and minuscule 6 has 15.

● In First Corinthians 15:1-11, the text of minuscule 384 is more accurate than the text of Papyrus 46.  When itacisms and trivial variants are set aside, 384 has 9 letters’ worth of difference from the NA text, the text in P46 has 14 or 15 letters’ worth of corruption.   

● In Luke 8:19-25, the text of Codex Alexandrinus is more accurate than the text of Papyrus 75.  When itacisms and trivial variants are set aside, P75’s text has 29 letters’ worth of corruption; Codex A’s text has 18 letters’ worth of corruption.

● In Luke 8:19-25, the text of minuscule 1324 is far more accurate than the text of Codex Bezae.  When itacisms and trivial variants are set aside, Codex Bezae has 83 letters’ worth of corruption, while the text of 1324 has 39.   

● In Jude, the text of minuscule 6 is more accurate than the text of Papyrus 72.  Minuscule 6 has 157 letters’ worth of corruption, but the text of Papyrus 72 has 399 letters’ worth of corruption.

● In Acts 18:27-19:6, the text of minuscule 2401 is more accurate than the text of Papyrus 38.  2401 has 29 letters’ worth of corruption; Papyrus 38 has 152 letters’ worth of corruption.

● In Mark 4:1-9, the text of minuscule 545 is more accurate than the text of Codex W.    The text in minuscule 545 has 88 letters’ worth of corruption, but Codex W’s text has 258 letters’ worth of corruption.

● In John 15:1-9, the text of minuscule 2222 is more accurate than the text of Codex A.    Both of these manuscripts are very accurate in this passage, but when minor variants are taken into consideration 2222 has 11 letters’ worth of corruption, and Codex A has 30 letters’ worth of corruption.

● In John 6:65-7:16, the text of minuscule 4 is more accurate than the text of Codex Sinaiticus.  Minuscule 4’s text has 106 letters’ worth of corruption, but the text in Sinaiticus has 122 letters’ worth of corruption.   

● In First Peter 5, the text of minuscule 496 is more accurate than the text of Codex Vaticanus.  Minuscule 496 has 75 letters’ worth of corruption, but the text in Vaticanus has 110 letters’ worth of corruption.   

            Today, let’s add one more comparison to those twelve, by comparing the text of Revelation 22:10-21 in the oldest manuscript of this passage – Codex Sinaiticus – to the text of Revelation 22:10-21 in the Textus Receptus.   This particular part of the Textus Receptus is somewhat notorious, because when Erasmus produced the Textus Receptus, he had only one Greek manuscript of Revelation on hand, and it was missing the final six verses of the book.  With nothing to go on except his memory, a revised Vulgate text, and the notes of Lorenzo Valla, Erasmus resorted to retro-translating the text from Latin into Greek, so as to finish the compilation. 

            It ought to be a foregone conclusion, then, that Sinaiticus has a better text of Revelation 22:10-21 than the Textus Receptus has.  But just to make sure, here’s a comparison of both texts to the contents of Revelation 22:10-21 as printed in the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament:

Codex Sinaiticus’ text of Revelation 22:10-21 differs from the text in THEGNT at the following points:

10 - ℵ reads τουτους after λογους (+7)

11 – no variation

12 - ℵ reads αποδοθηναι instead of αποδουναι (+2, -1)

13 – no variation

14 – ℵ reads ως δε η εξουσια before επι το ζυλον (+12)

15 – ℵ transposes so as to read, in the final phrase, ποιων και φιλων ψευδος.

16 – no variation

17 – ℵ reads π before the sacred-name contraction for πνευμα (+1)

17 - ℵ does not read η before νυμφη (-1)

18 – ℵ reads η at the beginning of the verse (+1)

18 – ℵ does not include επιθησει επ’ αυτον (-15)

19 – ℵ reads αν instead of εαν (-1)

19 – ℵ reads τουτων after λόγων (+6)

19 – ℵ reads προφητιας instead of προφητειας (-1)

19 – ℵ reads αφελι instead of αφελει after ταυτης (-1)

20 – ℵ reads λεγι instead of λεγει at the beginning of the verse (-1)

20 – ℵ reads ειναι after ταυτα (+5)

20 – ℵ does not have αμήν after ταχυ (-4)

21 – no variation

            This yields a total of 33 non-original letters present, and 25 original letters absent, for a total of 58 letters’ worth of corruption.

            When itacisms and similar inconsequential corruptions are set aside, the amount of non-trivial corruption in Sinaiticus in Rev. 22:10-21 consists of 32 non-original letters present, and 21 original letters absent, for a total of 53 letters’ worth of corruption.

Now let’s see how the Textus Receptus does (using Scrivener’s edition):

10 – TR reads οτι after τουτου (+3)

10 – TR does not have γαρ after καιρος (-3)

11 – TR reads ρυπων instead of ρυπαρος (+2, -4)

11 – TR reads δικαιωθητω instead of δικαιοσύνην ποιησάτω (+5, -14)

12 – TR reads και at the beginning of the verse (+3)

12 – TR does not have εστιν after εργον (-5)

12 – TR has εσται after αυτου (+5)

13 – TR has ειμι after εγω (+4)

13 – TR has the letter α rather than the word αλφα

13 – TR does not have η before αρχη (-1)

13 – TR transposes the final two phrases

14 – TR reads ποιουντες τας εντολας αυτου instead of πλυνοντες τας στολας αυτων (+9, -8)

15 – TR has δε after εξω (+2)

15 – TR has ο before φιλων (+1)

16 – TR has του after γενος (+3)

16 – TR has Δαβιδ instead of Δαυιδ (+1, -1)

16 – TR has και after λαμπρος (+3)

16 – TR has ορθρινος instead of πρωϊνος (+4, -3)

17 – TR has ελθε instead of ερχου after λεγουσιν (+3, -4)

17 – TR has ελθε instead of ερχου after ειπατω (+3, -4)

17 – TR has ελθε instead of ερχέσθω (+3, -6)

17 – TR has και before ο θελων (+3)

17 – TR has λαμβανετω instead of λαβέτω (+3)

17 = TR has το before υδωρ (+2)

18 – TR has συμμαρτυρουμαι γαρ instead of μαρτυρω εγω (+11, -4)

18 – TR does not have τω after παντι (-2)

18 – TR has επιτιθη instead of επιθη (+2)

18 – TR has προς ταυτα instead of επ’ αυτα (+5, -2)

18 – TR transposes so as to read ο θεος επ αυτον

18 – TR does not have τω before βιβλιω (-2)

19 – TR does not include τις (-3)

19 – TR reads αφαιρη instead of αφέλη (+3, -2)

19 – TR does not include του (-3) before βιβλίου (-3)

19 – TR reads βιβλου instead of βιβλίου (-1)

19 – TR reads αφαιρησει instead of αφελει (+5, -2)

19 – TR reads βιβλου instead of του ξυλου (+4, -6)

19 – TR reads και after αγιας (+3)

19 – TR does not have τω before βιβλιω (-2)

20 – TR reads ναι after αμην (+3)

21 – TR reads ημων after κυριου (+4)

21 – TR reads χριστου after ιησου (+7)

21 – TR reads παντων υμων instead of των αγίων (+10, -8)

            This yields a total of 110 non-original letters present, and 83 original letters absent, for a total of 193 letters’ worth of corruption in the Textus Receptus in Revelation 22:10-21.  Finally, Codex Sinaiticus wins a round of hand-to-hand combat, by the overwhelming score of 58 to 193!

            But Sinaiticus was not really going up against another manuscript in verses 16-21; its opponent was Erasmus’ Greek reconstruction.  What happens when we look at Rev. 22:10-21 in an intact medieval minuscule?  Perhaps we might do exactly that in a future round of hand-to-hand combat.

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

The stewards of the Codex Sinaiticus website are also invited to fix their website.