Today as we conclude this exploration of the evidence about Mark 1:2, let’s consider some
miscellaneous questions.
How diverse is the evidence for “in the prophets”?
The
agreement of Codex Washingtoniensis with Codex Alexandrinus and the Byzantine
Text is sometimes treated casually, but it actually is rather significant,
because although the text of Codex W is primarily Byzantine in Matthew and in
Luke from
8:13 onward, its text of
Mark is very different. Larry Hurtado
describes it in his introduction to the volume
The
Freer Biblical Manuscripts: “In
Mark 1-4 Codex W agrees more closely with Codex Bezae and other “Western”
witnesses. But at some point in Mark 5,
the textual affiliation shifts markedly, and throughout the rest of Mark Codex
W cannot be tied to any of the major text-types. In this main part of Mark, however, W was
later shown to exhibit a very interesting alignment with the Chester Beatty
Gospels codex (P45).”
The
agreement of Codex A and Codex W demonstrates a more widespread range of
attestation than the agreement of ﬡ and B, which were very likely produced in
the same scriptorium, or by copyists trained in the same place. Augmenting the case that Codex A’s
transmission-line is separate from that of Codex W is the observation that they
read differently at the end of Mark 1:2 (A has εμπροσθεν σου; W does not) – not
to mention the insertion in Codex W of several lines of Greek text from Isaiah
40:4-8 between Mark 1:3 and 1:4.
In
addition, sub-groups of manuscripts within the Byzantine transmission-line
consistently support
“in the prophets”
in Mark 1:2. Besides those mentioned
already,
72
(a copy with some Arabic notes),
117,
128,
304
(a manuscript of Matthew and Mark, in which the text is divided into segments
interspersed with commentary),
444,
492,
780,
783, 809 (a deluxe
manuscript from the 1000s, with some marginal commentary), 817 (a manuscript
used by Erasmus; like other manuscripts in which the text of John is accompanied
by Theophylact’s commentary, it does not contain John 7:53-8:11), 826
(considered a strong representative of the
f13 cluster),
389 (a manuscript
with unusual decorations in its Canon-tables),
1216,
1342,
2483,
some Armenian copies, Ethiopic copies, and the Old Slav/Glagolitic version demonstrate
that the reading
“in the prophets”
was read in multiple locales.
Why don’t we see a scribal tendency toward specificity in Matthew
27:35b?
The question
about whether Matthew 27:35b is
original or not may be set aside for the time being (though perhaps it should
be mentioned that this verse-segment is strongly supported by Old Latin
evidence, and that it ends with the same word (κλῆρον) as the verse-segment
that precedes it, which would make it vulnerable to accidental loss). The thing to see is that Matthew 27:35b escaped being the subject of the scribal
tendency toward specificity by being absent from multiple transmission-lines.
What was the text of Mark 1:2 quoted by Victorinus of Pettau?
Victorinus
of Pettau, in the late 200s, cited Mark 1:2 with
“in Isaiah the prophet” in his Latin commentary on Revelation. His text may reveal the kind of liberties
that were taken by Western copyists.
Either Victorinus cited Mark 1:1-2 very loosely, or else his Latin text
was radically altered;
Victorinus quoted
Mark 1:1-2 as follows:
“Mark, therefore, as an Evangelist, who
begins, ‘The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Isaiah
the prophet: ‘The voice of one crying in
the wilderness,’ has the likeness of a lion.” (Notice that Victorinus’ text
not only omits the material from Malachi, but also lacks the phrase
“the Son of God.”)
How do patristic writers of the mid-late 300s – Serapion of Thmuis,
Basil of Caesarea, and
Epiphanius of Salamis –
quote Mark 1:1-2?
I do not
possess critically edited editions of the works of Serapion of Thmuis, or of
Titus of Bostra, or of Basil of Caesarea, or of Epiphanius (who have all been cited
as support for
“in Isaiah the prophet”)
– and so I have resorted to the comments of John Burgon, in the form in which
they were collected by Edward Miller for the book called
The Causes of
Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels, published in
1896. I rephrased some wording and
changed the syntax slightly in the following quasi-quotation from page
113:
“Serapion,
Titus, and Basil merely borrow from Origen; and, with his argument, reproduce
his corrupt text of St. Mark 1:2. Basil,
however, saves his reputation by leaving out the quotation from Malachi,
passing directly from the mention of Isaiah to the actual words of that
prophet. Epiphanius (and Jerome, too, on
one occasion) does the same thing.” Those
who wish to test Burgon’s claims, if they have the resources, may wish to
consult Serapion of Thmuis’
Against the
Manichees, 25, 37, and Basil of Caesarea’s
Against Eunomius, 2:15, and Epiphanius’
Panarion 51:6:4, and see if their compositions run parallel to the
contents of Origen’s comments in Book 2 of
Contra Celsus, which
run as follows:
“Even one of the Evangelists, Mark, says, ‘The
beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in the prophet
Isaiah, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who shall prepare your
way before you.’ This shows that the
beginning of the gospel is connected with the Jewish writings. What, then, is the force in Celsus’ Jew’s
objection [Celsus had pictured a Jew objecting that Christians were
merely a sect of Judaism] seeing that if anyone
was to predict to us that the Son of God would visit mankind, it would be one
of our prophets, and the prophet of our God?
Or how is it a charge against Christianity to point out that John, who
baptized Jesus, was a Jew?”
Similarly,
in Chromatius’ use of Mark 1:2 with
“in
Isaiah the prophet” in
Prologues
to Sermons on Matthew, Chromatius seems to have recycled the material
that one sees in Irenaeus’
Against
Heresies 3:11:9.
Do Byzantine copyists elsewhere display willingness to remove a
prophet’s name from the text if it appears problematic?
Such
willingness is assumed by many commentators, as exemplified by Bruce Terry in
his online
A Student’s Guide to Textual
Variants: “The quotation in
verses 2 and 3 is from two scriptures:
the first part is from Malachi 3:1 and the second part is from Isaiah
40:3. Thus it is likely that copyists
changed the reference to make it more general.”
Robert
Waltz provides another example: “The
quotation is not from Isaiah alone, but from Malachi and Isaiah. The attribution to Isaiah is an error, and
scribes would obviously have been tempted to correct it.”
The same assumption is expressed by
Metzger in
A
Textual Commentary: “The
quotation in verses 2 and 3 is composite, the first part being from Mal 3.1 and
the second part from Is 40.3. It is easy
to see, therefore, why copyists would have altered the words “in Isaiah the
prophet” . . . . to the more comprehensive introductory formula, “in the
prophets.””
However
reasonable that may sound, when we turn to Matthew 27:9 – where readers could
understandably imagine that Matthew attributed to Jeremiah a paraphrase of
Zechariah 11:12-13 – the Byzantine text adamantly reads “Jeremiah”
nevertheless.
Meanwhile,
when we look at representatives of the transmission-lines where
“in Isaiah the prophet” was read in Mark
1:2, it is precisely there that we see a willingness to mess with the text of
Matthew 27:9. A consultation of the
first volume of Willker’s
Textual Commentary on the
Greek Gospels will show that Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome all expressed
a suspicion that there was a scribal error in the manuscripts that read
“Jeremiah” in Matthew 27:9. Augustine
(in
The Harmony of the Gospels,
Book 3, chapter 7, written in A.D. 400), shows that by his time, some Latin
copyists had removed the name “Jeremiah” to relieve readers of the burden of
investigating the text:
“If anyone finds a difficulty in the circumstance
that this passage is not found in the writings of the prophet Jeremiah, and
thinks that this damages the credibility of the Evangelist, let him first take
notice of the fact that the ascription of the passage to Jeremiah is not
contained in all the codices of the Gospels, and that some of them state simply
that it was spoken “by the prophet.”
Augustine,
for his part, proceeded to reject the non-inclusion of Jeremiah’s name –
because, he explained, most of the codices contain Jeremiah’s name, and because
“those critics who have studied the Gospel with more than usual care in the
Greek copies report that they have found that the more ancient Greek exemplars
include it,” and so forth. But not all
copyists shared his insight – which is why, in minuscules 33 and 157 (33 being
one of the few minuscules that read
“in
Isaiah the prophet” in Mark 1:2) – there is no proper name in Matthew 27:9,
and, turning to versional evidence, there is likewise no proper name there in
the Peshitta, nor in VL 3 (both of which support
“in Isaiah the prophet” in Mark 1:2). In minuscule 22 and in the margin of the
Harklean Syriac version, Zechariah’s name is placed there, and in the Old Latin
Codex Rehdigeranus (VL 11, from the first half of the 700s) not only is
Jeremiah’s name absent, but
Isaiah’s
name has been put into the text.
Codex D’s
text also displays scribal willingness to simply delete a proper name that
seemed problematic in Matthew 14:3; Philip’s name is missing. And in Mark 6:3, Codex D does not include
Jairus’ name, apparently merely to bring the Marcan text into closer conformity
to the Matthean parallel.
Codex ﬡ’s
text similarly resolves a perceived difficulty in Matthew 23:35 via the removal of the words υἱοῦ Βαραχίου.
Meanwhile,
the Byzantine Text in these passages retains the proper names which were
considered problematic – so problematic that they were removed or replaced – in
various Western, Caesarean, and Alexandrian manuscripts. This evidence ought to lead one to suspect
that the witnesses which contain a text in which names were inserted or removed
– Codex Bezae (D), Codex Sinaiticus (ﬡ), Codex Koridethi (Θ), the Old Latin
witnesses (especially VL 3), the Peshita, 33, and f1 – should
not be trusted very much where a variant involves the presence or absence of a
name, such as in Mark 1:2. To remove those
witnesses from the picture would be to remove over half of the Greek
manuscript-support cited in the UBS
apparatus for “in Isaiah the prophet”
in Mark 1:2.
Was Mark more likely to write “in Isaiah the prophet,” or “in the
prophets”?
Two other
New Testament authors – Matthew and Paul – occasionally blend together two
citations from the Old Testament, using one as a sort of thematic
cross-reference for the other. Matthew
appears to do this in 21:4-5, focusing on Zechariah 9:9 with a dash of Isaiah
62:11. And in 27:9, Matthew appears to use
verbiage from Zechariah to frame the scene in Jeremiah 32:6-9 – unless, as some
suspect (as Origen and Jerome did), Matthew refers here to an entirely
different and non-canonical composition by Jeremiah, consisting of Hebrew
source-material used in
“The Prophecy
of Jeremiah to Passhur.” (See
Willker, Vol. 1, TVU #377,
for details.) Likewise Paul, in Romans
3, does not meticulously separate his quotations which are united by a common
theme.
Mark,
however, was not like Matthew and Paul.
Matthew repeatedly quotes from the Old Testament, expecting his readers
to know their Scriptures. Paul, trained
as a Pharisee,
quoted
from the Old Testament frequently.
Mark, in contrast, seems to have felt a stronger obligation to explain
coinage-values (cf.
12:42) than to
specify which Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus.
Turning,
then, to the other passages in Mark where material from Isaiah is used – 4:12
(Isaiah 6:9), 7:6-7 (Isaiah 29:13), 9:44, 9:46, 9:48 (Isaiah 66:24 – 9:44 and
9:46 are absent from the Nestle-Aland compilation), 11:17 (Isaiah 56:7), and,
in the Byzantine text, 15:28 (Isaiah 53:12) – what stylistic pattern do we
see? Except for 7:6, it is one of
non-specificity.
The
cumulative weight of these points favors “in
the prophets” as the original reading of Mark 1:2. The reading “in Isaiah the prophet” is likely to have arisen in both the early Alexandrian
and Western transmission streams independently, due to a widespread scribal
tendency to add specificity to the text.
POSTSCRIPT
I do not
intend for this postscript to be considered an integral part of the case for “in the prophets,” but some readers may
enjoy pondering it. The Alexandrian Text
of the Gospels (particularly the text of Codex Vaticanus) is well-aligned with
the earliest stratum of the Sahidic version, and the Western Text of the
Gospels is likewise well-aligned with the Old Latin version. Could translators have introduced proper
names into their local translations?
And, subsequently, could the Greek texts in the locales where these
translations were in use have been adjusted to conform to the translation?
We see a
tendency toward specificity in some modern English paraphrases. In Matthew 1:22,
The
Amplified Bible includes Isaiah’s name, bracketed, in the text; The
Voice
includes it in italics. In Matthew 2:5,
the
Living Bible, the
Voice
translation, and Eugene Peterson’s
“The
Message” all include Micah’s name.
The
Voice
includes Zechariah’s name in Matthew 21:4.
The Message also inserts Amos’
name in Acts
7:42, and Isaiah’s name
in Acts 7:48.
The people
who made these paraphrases did not consider what they did to be reckless and
unnecessary tampering when they inserted proper names into these passages. They regarded this step as a helpful
amplification of the specific meaning of the text. Some translators of early versions (particularly
the Sahidic, Old Latin, and Syriac) – and some early copyists who prepared
Greek manuscripts to be read to congregations – had the same
intention.
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All four posts in this series can be downloaded as a single file at my Academia.edu page, and also among the files on Facebook in the NT Textual Criticism group.
