Aphrahat and the Final Section of the Gospel of Mark

Aphrahat (The Persian Sage)

            Aphrahat the Persian Sage, also known as Aphraates (280-345), was a church leader in Syria who wrote a lengthy series of sermons in acrostic form, called Demonstrations – one composition for each of the 22 letters of the Syriac alphabet. This was completed by A.D. 337,  and was supplemented by a 23rd homily in 345. Aphrahat was a contemporary of Eusebius of Caesarea, and from a distance he heard of the spiritual transition of those in charge of the government of the Roman Empire (from prohibiting Christianity as Diocletian did, to embracing it, as Constantine I ostensibly did).

            Among the implications of this is that neither the Sinaitic Syriac MS, nor the Curetonian Syriac MS, nor the Syriac Peshitta (if its Gospels-text is correctly assigned to the late 300s), constitutes the earliest extant Syriac evidence regarding how the Gospel of Mark concluded, for Aphraates lived before any of those witnesses were produced.  It may be worthwhile to draw attention here to Aphrahat’s testimony regarding the final portion of Mark (which has been utterly ignored by many commentators).

            In the 17th paragraph of Demonstration One: Of Faith, Aphrahat wrote, “And when our Lord gave the sacrament of baptism to His apostles, He said to them, ‘ Whosoever believes and is baptized shall live, and whosoever believes not shall be condemned.’”

            Thus Aphraates used what we know as Mark 16:16 in Syriac in 337.  He expressed no doubts about it whatsoever.  (Non-Syriac-reading English readers may consult, to see the context, John Gwynn’s English translation of Demonstration One, (in Volume 13 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series), which I rely upon for these quotations.)

            At the end of the same paragraph, Aphrahat writes, “He also said thus, ‘This shall be the sign for those who believe; they shall speak with new tongues and shall cast out demons, and they shall place their hands on the sick and they shall be made whole.’”  Although the passage is quoted very imprecisely (notice the absence of any reference to the signs being done “in my name,” and the absence of any reference to serpent-handling and poison-drinking), what Aphrahat quotes here is clearly based on Christ’s words in Mark 16:16-18.

            Aphrahat is regarded as a frequent user of Tatian’s Diatessaron, but his quotation is significantly different from the passage found in the Arabic Diatessaron.  The differences may be very probably attributed to the later conformation of the Arabic Diatessaron to the text of the Syriac Peshitta.  (The Arabic Diatessaron is itself an echo of a Syriac source.)

            Let us accept, for the moment, that Aphrahat was utilizing the Diatessaron when he wrote the 17th paragraph of Demonstration One: Of Faith.  In which case, we have here, embedded in Aphrahat’s writings, a quotation from a source no later than 175 (namely, Tatian’s Diatessaron).  (To put this another way:  Aphrahat quoted from Tatian's Diatessaron, which - if the completion of the Gospel of Mark is correctly assigned to the year 68 - was made by Tatian less than 110 years after the autograph of the Gospel of Mark was written, using copies of the Gospels earlier than any complete copies that have survived to the present day.]

            (Not to detour, but, another neglected author, the Armenian known as Eznik of  Golb (also known as Yesnik Koghbats‘i), also used Mark 16:17-18 in the first half of the 400s, writing in his composition De Deo (a.k.a. “Against the Sects”) 1:25, “And again, ‘Here are signs of believers:  they will dislodge demons, and they will take serpents into their hand, and they will drink a deadly poison and it will not cause harm.’”  This appears to be a citation that Eznik made from memory.  Notice, by the way, Eznik's inclusion of the words "into their hand" in v. 18.)

            Some additional evidence that Aphrahat, writing in Syriac, was using Tatian’s Diatessaron is found in Demonstration 2, paragraph 20, where he states that Jesus “showed the power of his greatness when he was cast down from a high place into a valley, yet was not harmed.”   This statement is not based on anything in the canonical Gospels as we know them; it is based on a quirky rendering of Luke 4:29-30 which recurs when the episode is described by other writers who used the Diatessaron. (It is not in the Arabic Diatessaron; at this point the Arabic Diatessaron’s exemplar has been, again, conformed to the text of the Peshitta).   A few decades after Aphrahat wrote, Ephrem Syrus wrote (I rely on others for the English translation), “When they cast him down from the hill, he flew in the air.”  (More has been written about this interesting detail (by the late William Petersen for instance), but I focus here upon Aphrahat’s testimony.)

            If it is granted that Aphrahat wrote Demonstration 23 in 345 (shortly before he died), then he must have had more than Tatian’s Diatessaron to work with, because (a) it is generally granted that the Diatessaron, as produced by Tatian, did not include Jesus’ genealogies, and (b) in Demonstration 23, paragraph 20, Jesus’ genealogy is quoted as it appears in Matthew 1:13 to 16.

            Whether or not Aphrahat is regarded as the author of Demonstration 23, Aphrahat was definitely the author of Demonstration One: Of Faith and thus, his testimony from 337 (prior to the production of Codex Sinaiticus) provides us with a window on a Syriac text that existed in his lifetime.

             (A good transcript of Aphrahat’s Demonstrations 1-10, produced in 474, exists today as British Museum Add. MS. 17182.  The same MS includes Demonstrations 11-23, written down in 510.)

            Aphrahat has been confused with another Syriac author, Jacob of Nisibis, partly because Aphrahat took the name “Jacob” at his baptism.  (Jacob of Nisibis was among those who attended the Council of Nicea in 325.)  Although John Burgon, in 1871, pointed out that Aphahat’s Demonstrations were wrongly attributed to Jacob of Nisibis (Burgon pointed this out on p. 26 of The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel of Mark, calling Aphrahat “Aphraates”).  Nevertheless Jacob of Nisibis was named in the textual apparatus of the first edition of the UBS Greek New Testament (1966).  This may be an indication of how little attention was paid to John Burgon by the compilers of the Nestle-Aland NTG and the UBS GNT in its first and second editions.

            Rather than replace Jacob of Nisibis’ name with Aphrahat’s name, the textual apparatus for Mark 16:17-18 in the fourth and fifth editions of the UBS GNT features neither.  For those who rely on the textual apparatus of the UBS GNT4 and UBS GNT5, it is as if Aphrahat’s support of Mark 16:16-18 in Demonstration One, instead of being changed from an incorrect identification (as Jacob of Nisibis) to a correct identification (as Aphrahat), has blinked out of existence.   

            No doubt this was merely an editorial oversight; certainly Carlo Martini and Kurt Aland and Bruce Metzger would never have thought of attempting to evade or silence an important voice such as Aphrahat’s.  (I would like to imagine that Aphrahat’s name did not appear in the textual apparatus of NA27 simply because there was not enough room on the page to include it – but, alas, I cannot, because half of the page of NA27 that features Mark 16:17b-20 is entirely blank.  The editors of NA27 found room to include GA 2427 (which has turned out to be a forgery made in the 1800s) in the apparatus for Mark 16:18, and GA 579 (from the 1200s), but somehow they did not find room to include Aphrahat’s name.)  (A novice reader, unfamiliar with the complex nuances of evidence-citation and apparatus-making, could get the impression that the selection of witnesses in the apparatuses of the Nestle-Aland NTG and UBS GNT has been somewhat biased.)  

            The GNT’s current editors are welcome to express their penitence (or serve as proxy-voices for previous editors) by including Aphrahat’s name in the textual apparatus of the yet-to-be-released 6^th edition.  Perhaps someone by then will still dare to rely on such an unreliable source for patristic evidence as the UBS GNT’s textual apparatus has been.

            (A final note about Aphrahat:  he believed strongly that baptism is central in conversion – that is, he did not treat it as an optional afterthought.  In his Demonstration 6, Concerning Monks – in which Aphrahat’s writing seeps with Scripture-references like a dead skunk smells like skunk – he writes, in the 14th paragraph, the following (translated into English from Syriac):  “Remember the warning that the apostle [St. Paul in Ephesians 4:30] gives us:  ‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit whereby ye have been sealed unto the day of redemption.’  For from baptism do we receive the Spirit of Christ.  For in that hour in which the priests invoke the Spirit, the heavens open and it descends and moves upon the waters [cf. Gen. 1:2].  And those that are baptized are clothed in it.  For the Spirit stays aloof from all that are born of the flesh, until they come to the new birth by water, and then they receive the Holy Spirit.  For in the first birth they are born with an animal soul which is created within man and is not thereafter subject to death, as he said, ‘Adam became a living soul.’  [Cf. Gen. 2:7] But in the second birth, that through baptism, they received the Holy Spirit from a particle of the Godhead, and it is not again subject to death.”)

  

  

Matthew 28:19 - Baptism In Whose Name?

Matthew 28:19-20a in Codex F,
beside part of the chapter-list for Mark.

            “This is perhaps a case of late interpolation.”  That was liberal scholar Rudolph Bultmann’s opinion of the words “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” in Matthew 28:19.  

            Earlier, in 1902, Frederick C. Conybeare – who might be considered the Bart Ehrman of his day – claimed in a detailed essay in The Hibbert Journal (and in 1901 in Zeitschrift fur Neutestamentlich Wissenschaft, pp. 275-288) that he had found patristic evidence against the genuineness of this phrase “so weighty that in [the] future the most conservative of divines will shrink from resting on it any dogmatic fabric at all.” 

            At this very moment, there are some in the Oneness Pentecostal denomination who similarly regard the threefold formula “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” as an early scribal corruption.  The theological impetus for this position is not hard to find:  throughout the book of Acts, Luke reports that the early Christians baptized “in the name of Jesus Christ” (2:38), or “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (8:16), or “in the name of the Lord” (10:48); the use of a threefold declaration at baptism is never mentioned by Luke. 

            Some Oneness Pentecostals have attempted to resolve this apparent discrepancy by taking a theological step that is not far from – and perhaps indistinguishable from – the early heresy of modalism:  they baptize without such a threefold formula, and insist that the name “Jesus” is the name of the Father, and the name of the Son, and the name of the Holy Spirit.  Others, while theologically greatly distanced from Bultmann and Conybeare, share with them a rejection of the authority of Matthew 28:19 on the grounds that the phrase “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” is not authentic.  Some Islamic groups similarly reject the genuineness of this phrase.

            Usually when a reading has the support of every Greek manuscript in existence in which a passage is extant – as is the case here at the end of Matthew – there is no text-critical issue and it is accepted as genuine, as a matter of course.  Even Bart Ehrman – who has proposed (like Gordon Fee before him) that First Corinthians 14:34-35, despite having enormous manuscript support, contains a lengthy interpolation – recently wrote, “It is usually thought that Matt. 28:19-20 is referring to the practice in Matthew’s own community, some 50 years after Jesus’ death, not to the words Jesus himself actually spoke.”  (Readers of such comments should understand that when Ehrman employs phrases such as “It is usually thought,” he means, “It is usually thought among my colleagues who deny supernatural events in general.”)  Regarding those who, instead, claim to reject the phrase on text-critical grounds:  what are their grounds? 

            Their go-to source is Eusebius of Caesarea, the influential and not-entirely-orthodox historian of the early 300s, best-known for his composition Ecclesiastical History.  As Conybeare documented, Eusebius utilized Matthew 28:19 seventeen times in ways that indicate that his text of the verse read πορευθέντες μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου, that is, “As you go, make disciples of all nations in My name.”  Part of Conybeare’s argument that this reading should be given exceptional weight is that Eusebius was stationed in Caesarea, where in the previous generation Origen had enlarged the library with his own manuscripts; thus, it may be reasonably thought that among the manuscripts accessible to Eusebius in the early 300s were some copies from the early 200s, earlier than any existing copies of Matthew 28:19.

            Conybeare’s quotations from Eusebius may have initially appeared to justify his confident assertions, but he was quickly answered by J. R. Wilkinson in The Hibbert Journal in 1902, in the second part of an article titled, Mr. Conybeare’s Textual Theories (beginning on p. 96 of the journal issued in October of 1902, and on p. 571 of the digitally archived copy).  Wilkinson granted that Eusebius used a text in which “in My name” was in the first part of Matthew 28:19, referring to disciple-making, but he reasoned that this does not imply that “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” was absent from the second part of the verse, referring to baptism.     The textual critic Frederick Chase also wrote a response against Conybeare’s approach in 1905 in the Journal of Theological Studies (beginning on p. 481). 

            A comprehensive, and decisive, answer against Conybeare’s proposal appeared in 1923 in Bernard Henry Cuneo’s published dissertation, The Lord’s Command to Baptise:  An Historico-Critical Investigation With Special Reference to the Works of Eusebius of Caesarea.  Cuneo systematically scrutinized Conybeare’s quotations from Eusebius, one by one, along with other quotations, and showed that Eusebius, like some other patristic writers, tended to limit his quotations to the segments of Scripture that were relevant to the topic that he was discussing at a given point.  

            For example, Cuneo examples Eusebius’ statement in Ecclesiastical History 3:5 and considers the development of Eusebius’ argument in which the quotation occurs:  Eusebius quoted Matthew 28:19a, not to say something about baptism, but to confirm a parenthetical point; in the course of describing the Roman siege of Jerusalem, he writes:

            “. . . because the Jews continued to persecute His disciples, by stoning Stephen, beheading James the brother of John, and putting to death James the bishop of Jerusalem; and because they afflicted the other apostles so severely that they fled from Palestine and began to preach the Gospel to all the nations – imbued with the power of Christ who had said to them, “Going, make disciples of all the nations in my name” – and when all the Christians had left Jerusalem and fled to Pella, then the divine vengeance visited upon Jerusalem the crimes of which that city had been guilty against Christ and his disciples.”

            In Demonstration of the Gospel 1:6, Eusebius wrote, “Our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Son of God, said to His disciples after His resurrection, ‘Go and make disciples of all the nations,’ and added, ‘Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.’”  Here we do not see the middle of verse 19 because it is not pertinent to Eusebius’ present subject, whereas the beginning and end are pertinent. 

            Although this frugality may seem strange nowadays – that is, modern readers may understandably ask, “Why not just quote the whole verse?” – we ought to remember that nobody quoted from the New Testament in terms of chapter-and-verse divisions as we know them until the mid-1500s.  Quoting only what needed to be quoted in order to support a particular point was common in ancient times; Eusebius shows the same tendency toward brevity in his quotations of Matthew 11:27, 16:18, etc.

            Cuneo’s cumulative case is so effective that I recommend it to everyone who might encounter echoes of Conybeare’s argument; The Lord’s Command to Baptise is available online as a free download at Google Books.  Archive.org also has a copy.  Cuneo reminds readers about other patristic evidence in favor of the inclusion of the words “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  For example:

● Didache, chapter 7 (early 100s):  “Concerning baptism, baptize thus:  having first rehearsed all these things, baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in running water.  But if you have no running water, baptize in other water, and if you cannot in cold, then in warm.  But if you have neither, pour water three times on the head ‘in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’”

● Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 3, part 17 (c. 180):  concluding a series of proof-texts supporting his contention that it was not a Christ-persona, but the Holy Spirit, who descended upon Jesus:  “He said to them, Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

● Tertullian, De Baptismo, ch. 13 (c. 200):  “The law of baptism was enjoined and its ritual prescribed.  ‘Go,’ He says, ‘teach the nations, baptizing them in the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.’  The addition to this law of the regulation: ‘Except one be born again of water and spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,’ bound faith to the necessity of baptism.  Consequently from that time all believers were baptized.”

● Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum ch. 20 (c. 200):  “He commanded the eleven others, on His departure to the Father, to go and teach all nations, who were to be baptized into the Father, and into the Son, and into the Holy Ghost.”  

● Hippolytus, Contra Noetum, ch. 14 (early 200s):  “The Father’s Word, therefore, knowing the economy (i.e., disposition) and the will of the Father, that is, that the Father seeks to be worshipped in no other way than this, gave this charge to the disciples after He rose from the dead:  ‘Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’  And by this He showed that whosoever omitted any one of these, failed in glorifying God perfectly.”

● Acts of Thomas 9:4 (early 200s):  “And the apostle, having taken oil, and poured it over their head, and salved and anointed them, began to say, ‘Come, holy name of Christ, which is above every name; come, power of the Most High . . .  come, Holy Spirit, and purify their reins and heart, and seal them in the name of Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit.’” 

● Participants at the Seventh Council of Carthage (257), which was focused on the subject of baptism, included

            Lucius of Castra Galbae, who quoted Christ’s words from Matthew 28:18-19, including “Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”   

            Munnulus of Girba, who stated, “our Lord says, “Go ye and baptize the nations, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

            Euchratius of Thence, who said that Jesus Christ, teaching the apostles with His own mouth, “has entirely completed our faith, and the grace of baptism, and the rule of the ecclesiastical law, saying, “Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

            Vincentius of Thibaris, who, in addition to alluding to Mark 16:15-18, said that the Lord said, in another place, “Go ye and teach the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

            Cuneo also spent several pages showing that Eusebius of Caesarea was indeed the author of Against Marcellus (336/337) and A Letter to the Caesareans Concerning the Council of Nicea.  In the second composition, Eusebius introduces and repeats his own creed, which, he says, was read at the Council of Nicea in the presence of Emperor Constantine:

            “As we have received from the bishops who preceded us, and in our first catechisms, and when we received the holy laver [i.e., at baptism], and as we have learned from the divine Scriptures, and as we believed and taught in the presbytery, and in the episcopate itself, so believing also at the time present, we report to you our faith, and it is this:

            “We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of all things visible and invisible.  And in One Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God from God, Light from Light, Life from Life, Son Only-begotten, first-born of every creature, before all the ages, begotten from the Father, by Whom also all things were made; Who for our salvation was made flesh, and lived among men, and suffered, and rose again the third day, and ascended to the Father, and will come again in glory to judge the quick and dead. And we believe also in One Holy Ghost.”

            This is followed by an addition affirmation: 

            “Believing each of these to be and to exist, the Father truly Father, and the Son truly Son, and the Holy Ghost truly Holy Ghost, as also our Lord, sending forth His disciples for the preaching, said, ‘Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’  Concerning whom we confidently affirm that so we hold, and so we think, and so we have held previously, and we maintain this faith unto the death, condemning every  godless heresy.”    

            In another composition, the rarely cited Syriac Theophania, Eusebius of Caesarea made a full quotation of Matthew 28:17-20 in Book IV, chapter 8:     “After His resurrection from the dead, all of them [i.e., the eleven apostles], being together as they had been commanded, went to Galilee, as He had said to them. But, when they saw Him, some worshipped Him, but others doubted.  But He drew near to them, spoke with them, and said, ‘All power in heaven and earth, is given to me of my Father.  Go ye and make disciples of all nations, and baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. And teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And, behold!  I am with you always even to the end of the world.’  Observe now, in these things, the consideration and caution evinced by the disciples . . . .”     

            (In the same composition, which its translator, Samuel Lee, translated from a Syriac manuscript which had been obtained by Henry Tattam at the Monastery of the Blessed Virgin in the Nitrian Desert – a manuscript which Lee assigned to a period no later than the 400s – Eusebius explicitly quotes Matthew 28:19a with “in My name” as part of the text, saying in Book 5 chapter 46, “It was not that He commanded them, simply and indiscriminately, to go and make disciples of all nations, but with this excellent addition which He delivered, specifically, ‘in My name.’”)

            In addition to demolishing Conybeare’s case against the phrase “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” Cuneo offered an explanation for the presence of the words “in My name” in Eusebius’ text of Matthew 28:19a:  it is a simple harmonization drawn from Luke 24:47.
            This introduces a fresh subject:  the abundance of alterations, harmonistic or otherwise, that are clustered in the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances.  These passages were among the most-used parts of the Gospels in early church-services, and were thus especially vulnerable to early liturgical influence.  Here are a few examples:
            ● In the Peshitta version of Matthew, Matthew 28:18 features an insertion drawn from John 20:21; after the usual words of the verse, the Peshitta adds, “As the Father sent Me, so also I send you.”  (Codex Θ also has this feature.)

            ● In the Alexandrian text of Luke 24:42, there is no mention of honeycomb.  The words και απο μελσσίου κηριου could have been accidentally skipped due to early scribal inattentiveness; και follows κηριου in the next sentence.  But another possibility is that these words – supported by Tertullian, the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, the Vulgate, the Armenian version, etc.  – were removed intentionally to avoid incorporating honey into annual Easter-time worship-services. 

 

Extra words appear in the text of
Luke 24:43 in Codex K.

           ● In Luke 24:43, after the usual statement that Jesus “took and ate in their presence,” several significant manuscripts – including K, Θ, Π*, and members of f¹³, as well as the Vulgate and, according to Tregelles, the Curetonian Syriac and the Armenian and Ethiopic versions, also say, “and gave the rest to them.”  (Θ does not include “and.”)  This phrase may have been added when and where the passage had been interpreted somewhat mystically – the fish in the narrative being seen as congruent to the presence of Christ, ΙΧΘΥΣ – and when this point was reached in the Scripture-reading in the worship-service, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper commenced.    

            ● In Luke 24:36, after Jesus’ appearance in the midst of the disciples, He says to them, “Peace to you!”  In a small number of Greek manuscripts (including uncials G and P), and in the Vulgate, Jesus says a bit more; He goes on to say, “It is I; do not be afraid.”  These extra words – drawn from John 6:20 – are supported, according to the UBS apparatus, by the Vulgate, the Peshitta, the Harklean Syriac, the Armenian version, and by Ambrose and Augustine (in Contra Felicem Manichaeum).   In addition, in Codex W, “It is I; do not be afraid” appears before “Peace to you.”   

            All these witnesses may echo early Easter-time liturgical arrangements of the blended-together Gospel-accounts.  An early attempt to remove the intruding words appears to have gone too far; in several Old Latin manuscripts and in Codex Bezae, the entire phrase – “and said to them, “Peace to you” – is missing.  (This is one of the “Western Non-interpolations” which appear in Luke 24.)  Another possibility is that the phrase was skipped by accident.

            The worship-services of the early churches had a detectable impact upon the text of the New Testament.  But the impact of the text of the New Testament upon the early churches was far greater.  As far as the use of the words, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” are concerned, there was one reason for the early Christians to use these words:  they were attributed to Christ in every copy of the Gospel of Matthew.

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

Mark 7:3-4: Immerse or Pour, and Other Questions

In Mark 7:3-4, Mark makes a parenthetical remark in which three textual contests occur:

(1)       How did the Pharisees and all the Jews wash their hands:  did they wash often (πυκνά), or did they wash with the fist (πυγμῇ) – a rare term that refers to a particular kind of ceremonial hand-washing? 

(2)       Did Mark describe the Pharisees’ ceremonial washings as if they immersed (βαπτίσωνται) or as if they poured water (ῥαντίσωνται)?

(3)       Did Mark mention, in addition to the washing (βαπτισμοὺς, technically immersing) of cups and pitchers and copper vessels, the washing of beds (καὶ κλινῶν)?

Few passages have received as diverse treatment at the hands of translators as these two verses.  The erudite translators of the KJV considered it fitting to add a note to their rendering, “oft,” stating, “Or, diligently, in the original, with the fist; Theophylact: up to the elbow.”  (Theophylact was a famous commentator; he wrote in the late 1000s.)  Inasmuch as the Greek texts compiled by Erasmus, by Stephanus, and by Beza in the 1500s all read πυγμῇ (as far as I have been able to ascertain), it appears that the rendering in the text of the KJV at this point was derived from the Vulgate’s term crebro.  Before anyone chides the KJV’s translators for this course of action, however, it should be noted that two important uncial manuscripts which were unknown to the KJV’s translators (Codex Sinaiticus – “the world’s oldest Bible” – and Codex Washingtoniensis – “considered to be the third-oldest parchment codex of the Gospels in the world”) confirm the reading πυκνά. 

Mark 7:3-4 in the 1611 KJV.
       Notice the notes in the side-margin.

            In this first contest, internal evidence is a safe guide:  one reading is easy to understand and raises no difficulties; the other one is obscure and invites questions.  It is more likely that a copyist created the easy reading in an attempt to make plain the meaning of the more difficult reading, than that a copyist created the harder reading.  The cogency of the text-critical canon lectio difficilior potior (prefer the more difficult reading), applied in a balanced and realistic way (as all canons should be), is on display here.  In this case, it works against Codex Sinaiticus, the Vulgate, and the KJV’s text, and in favor of the reading which is found in the majority of Greek manuscripts and referred to as “the original” in the KJV’s margin. 

But what does πυγμῇ mean?  That is an interpretive, rather than textual, matter.  Here are a few examples of how modern translations say that that Pharisees washed their hands in Mark 7:3:  “properly,” “ceremonially,” “ritually,” “carefully,” “poured water over their cupped hands,” and “with clenched fist.”  The RSV’s translators gave up on representing the word πυγμῇ, admitting in a footnote, “One Greek word is of uncertain meaning and is not translated.”  Of the various ideas that have been proposed, I think the one that makes the most sense is that πυγμῇ refers to ceremonial hand-washing in which the entire fist is submerged in a wash-basin along with the forearm.  In this case, the NLT’s rendering is wrong and the ESV’s rendering is inaccurate, especially considering that Jesus rebuked the promoters of such meticulous rituals rather than call them “proper.”  

            The second contest, in verse 4, is similar.  Picture a copyist in a historical setting where neighboring Jews practiced a form of hand-washing in which water was poured into one’s hands.  (This is, to this day, the form of hand-washing normally practiced by observant Jews before meals that include bread.)  It would be tempting for a copyist to adjust a detail in the text to make it more relevant, or more precise, to his readers.  Somewhere along the way, a very small number of copyists also adjusted the text so that the hand-washing described in Mark 7:4 referred specifically to washing before eating bread; Codex Bezae and minuscule 71 (Codex Ephesinus) add ἄρτον, and a corrector of Codex M adds τὸν ἄρτον, after ἐσθίουσιν in verse 3.   

(This sort of textual adjustment to make the text applicable to local circumstances might account for an anomaly in the text of Mark 4:21:  most manuscripts record the end of Jesus’ statement about where to place a lighted lamp as. “Should it not be placed upon the lampstand?” but in Codex Vaticanus (B), Codex Macedonianus (Y), and f¹³, it reads, “Should it not be placed under the lampstand?”.  Possibly this is merely the effect of carelessness when a scribe’s line of sight shifted backward to the reference to “placed under a bushel, or under a bed,” earlier in the verse.  Another possibility, however, is that somewhere a copyist was used to suspending lamps from lamp-holders on chandeliers, in which case “below the lampstand” could make sense.) 

In minuscule 692, the text refers to
pouring rather than immersion.

    

            Because water-pouring was the normal method of hand-washing in later times, it would not be difficult for some medieval copyists to imagine that their exemplars had been poorly copied and that the correct reading must be ῥαντίσωνται (washing via water-pouring) rather than βαπτίσωνται (washing via immersion).  Wieland Willker reports that 55 medieval minuscules (which include 71, 692, and 1222) read ῥαντίσωνται.  This reading would be casually dismissed as a case of simplification by medieval scribes if not for the fact that it is also attested by Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus – the second-oldest and third-oldest Greek manuscripts of this part of the Gospel of Mark.  (Papyrus 45, unfortunately, is damaged so thoroughly that it is unclear whether it reads ῥαντίσωνται or βαπτίσωνται.)

            (Sinaiticus does not agree with Vaticanus exactly here; when produced, it read ῥαντίσωντε; a corrector has touched up the spelling.)

            In 1881, Westcott and Hort were so confident in the accuracy of Codex Vaticanus that they adopted the reading ῥαντίσωνται, against all evidence to the contrary.  The Nestle-Aland compilation used to have this reading as well; ῥαντίσωνται was consistently read in Novum Testamentum Graece until the 27th edition, at which point the editors adopted βαπτίσωνται instead.  The decision against ῥαντίσωνται should have been made much sooner, and would have been, if not for an overestimate of Alexandrian copyists’ resistance against simplifying the text.  Βαπτίσωνται is presently read not only in the Nestle-Aland and UBS compilations but is also in the text of the SBL-GNT, the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform, and the Tyndale House GNT.      

           

            On to our third contest:  should verse 4 end with a reference to beds (or, dining couches)?  To put it another way:  do the words καὶ κλινῶν belong in the text?  In many editions of Novum Testamentum Graece, these two words are not included in the text; in the 27th edition, however, the editors included them – bracketed.  Michael Holmes included them in the text of the SBLGNT, without brackets.  The Tyndale House GNT does not have καὶ κλινῶν in the text, and its readers are handicapped by the sparseness of the THEGNT’s textual apparatus, which fails to inform readers about the abundant versional support for the inclusion of καὶ κλινῶν, and although the apparatus reports the testimony of minuscule 69 (from the 1400s), there is never any mention of the testimony of Origen (from the 200s). 

To rectify the unfortunate frugality of the THEGNT’s apparatus, here is what Origen says in Book XI, chapter 11, of his Commentary on Matthew.  In the course of a comment on Matthew 15:9, Origen refers to Matthew’s quotation of Isaiah 29:13, and after briefly referring also to Isaiah 29:14-15, he writes:  “I have thought it right briefly to set forth the prophecy, and to a certain extent elucidate its meaning, seeing that Matthew made mention of it.  And Mark also made mention of it, from whom we may usefully set down the following words in the place, with reference to the transgression of the elders who held that it was necessary to wash hands when the Jews ate bread, ‘For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, unless they wash hands diligently, do not eat, holding the tradition of the elders.  And when they come from the marketplace, unless they wash themselves, they do not eat.  And there are some other things which they have received to hold, washings of cups and pots and brazen vessels and couches.’”

            To verify that this was not some conformation to the Byzantine text on the part of some copyist of Origen’s composition, I checked the Greek text of Book XI of Origen’s Commentary on Matthew as presented in Erich Klostermann’s 1935 edition – Volume 40 of the series Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (printed page 52, digital page 66).  Although Klostermann’s apparatus pointed out some very minor variations in nearby passages (such as καὶ versus δὲ in the preceding sentence), it mentioned nothing about any variation in the text of Origen’s quotation of Mark 7:3-4.  Furthermore, the quotation given by Origen features a distinctly non-Byzantine reading:  instead of πολλά (after καὶ ἄλλα), Origen’s quotation says τινά.  I conclude that there is no basis on which to suspect that scribes have conformed the text of Origen’s quotation of Mark 7:3-4 to a Byzantine standard. 

            Someone might say, “Origen is indeed an important witness, but so is Papyrus 45, and space-considerations eliminate the possibility that P45’s text included καὶ κλινῶν.”  There is a problem, however, with the simple reference to “P45^vid.” 

An examination of the relevant page of P45 shows that not only is there insufficient space for καὶ κλινῶν, but there is also insufficient space for καὶ χαλκίων.  Whether one supposes that P45’s text of verse 5 began with καὶ ἐπερωτῶσιν (agreeing with À B D L et al) or ἔπειτα ἐπερωτῶσιν (agreeing with Byz A K Π), or ἔπειτα ἐρωτῶσιν (agreeing with W), the subsequent six lines of P45 clearly indicate how long the lost text was:  between 13 and 16 letters are missing from each of these lines – casualties of incidental damage.  The damage to the line ending in ποτηρίων καὶ is more severe than the damage to the next six lines; the surviving text on this line is consequently three or four letters shorter.  We may thus expect the lost text to consist of no more than 20 letters.

Mark 7:4ff. in P45
(artificially augmented)

Between ποτηρίων καὶ and –σιν, there were either

(a) 38 letters, if P45’s text matched the Byzantine text exactly, or

(b) 26 letters, if P45’s text matched the text of À and B exactly, or

(c) 36 letters, if P45’s text matched the text of W exactly, or

(d) 32 letters, if P45’s text matched the text of Codex Δ exactly. 

However, even with generous latitude, none of these four readings can be crammed into the available space in P45 between ποτηρίων καὶ and -σιν.

            Another possibility is that the scribe of P45 accidentally omitted καὶ χαλκίων and καὶ κλινῶν.  If he wrote ξεστῶν and immediately skipped (via h.t.) to the beginning of verse 5 and there wrote ἔπειτα ἐρωτῶ-, then the lost text between ποτηρίων καὶ and -σιν totals 17 letters.

If instead he proceeded from ξεστῶν to the beginning of verse 5 and there wrote καὶ ἐπερωτῶ- then the lost text between ποτηρίων καὶ and -σιν totals 16 letters.

If he proceeded from ξεστῶν to the beginning of verse 5 and there wrote ἔπειτα ἐπερωτῶ- then the lost text between ποτηρίων καὶ and -σιν totals 19 letters.

And, if the scribe of P45 made a unique mistake by writing ποτηρίων καὶ κλινῶν (skipping καὶ ξεστῶν καὶ χαλκίων via simple parablepsis) and proceeded to write ἔπειτα ἐρωτῶ- then the lost text between ποτηρίων καὶ and -σιν totals 17 letters.

The thing to see is that P45 does not testify to a simple non-inclusion of καὶ κλινῶν; the text written by the scribe of P45 must involve a lengthier omission, and the evidence is capable of more than one explanation of what was omitted.  The testimony of P45 is unclear.

            Meanwhile the inclusion of καὶ κλινῶν is supported by the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, and by Origen (in the 200s), and by a diverse array of uncials such as Α D Κ Μ W Γ Θ Π, and by the uniform testimony of the Old Latin copies, and by the Peshitta, the Gothic version, and the Armenian version.  The non-inclusion of καὶ κλινῶν can be accounted for as a simple scribal mistake elicited by the recurrence of και.  Wieland Willker reports that minuscules 440, 1053, and 2200 also do not have καὶ κλινῶν.  While this increases the diversity of witnesses for the shorter reading, what this really shows is that the words were vulnerable to accidental omission via parablepsis.  It is appropriate here to express the canon that when the same reading occurs in witnesses that are genealogically distant from one another, it is more likely that a common phenomenon (such as parablepsis) has affected them both independently, rather than that the shared reading is an effect of shared descent.      

            Besides noticing that mere carelessness can account for the non-inclusion of καὶ κλινῶν, we should consider what would be required to account for its addition.  It seems intrinsically unlikely that the idea would pop into a scribe’s head that the list of items being washed in Mark 7:4 would be incomplete unless beds were included in the list, and that such an expansion (involving the immersion of furniture) would be welcomed favorably.  In conclusion, καὶ κλινῶν should be fully accepted, bracketless, as part of the original text.       

             

            Four additional notes may be added about this passage. 

● First, Codex Bezae has an interesting variant in verse 4; its Greek text adds ὅταν ἔλθωσιν, when they come, making explicit what the non-expanded text implies.  This reflects the Old Latin text, cum venerint, and constitutes an example of the passages in Codex Bezae’s text which have been adjusted to conform to the Latin text.   (Another example is nearby in Mark 7:19.)  Because this reading is attested in the Old Latin copies so consistently, it suggests that contrary to the popular idea that many individuals made wholly independent Old Latin translations before the Vulgate came along, at some point there was one Old Latin translation which formed a textual core for all, or most of, the others. 

            ● Second, the entire text of Mark 7:3-4 is missing from the infamous forgery known as minuscule 2427 (which still resides at the University of Chicago).  This is very probably because the forger, using as his exemplar a copy of Philipp Buttmann’s 1860 Greek New Testament, misunderstood the parentheses around these two verses, as if they signified that these verses’ authenticity was in doubt (like double-brackets in NA27), and he omitted them for this reason.  In the event that some manuscript’s genuineness is questioned in the future, its examiners may want to see if its text similarly contains omissions of phrases which some printed compilation contains within parentheses.

● Third, in Vincent’s Word Studies, the author claims that if καὶ κλινῶν belongs in the text, then “we certainly cannot explain βαπτισμοὺς as immersion,” the objection being perhaps that beds are too big to immerse.  However, Vincent is definitely wrong, inasmuch as Jews did ritually immerse beds and other furniture; Willker refers to two references in the Mishnah to this practice, including the statement (in Mishnah Mikvaot 7:7), “If one immerses a bed in it [in a miqveh containing precisely forty se’ah], even if its legs sink into thick mud [at the bottom of the miqveh, which is not counted as part of its waters] it is pure, because the waters precede it.” (Re: “before the waters precede it” – that is, the water in the miqveh touches the bed before the mud does.) 

            ● Fourth, there is a question about just what objects are referred to at the end of Mark 7:4:  are κλινῶν tables, or beds?  Both, one might say, inasmuch as a long rectangular Roman table, topped by a mat or pillows, could be used as a couch or bed.  The rendering “dining couches” captures the sense well. 

            The term ξεστῶν also has an interesting background.  Rendered as “pots” in the KJV, it has become “pitchers” in some versions.  This Greek word is based on the Latin sextarius, which refers to a vessel capable of holding a little more than a fluid pint (1.15 pints to be precise).  “Sextarius” was also the name for this liquid measure; it was one-sixth of a Roman congius, which consisted of what we would today call three and a half quarts.  Mark’s use of this particular term is consistent with a readership familiar with Latin.

Matthew 3:11 in the Byzantine Text

          A textual variant in Matthew 3:11 presents an interesting puzzle.  Although Western and Alexandrian witnesses generally include the words “and fire” (Greek και πυρι) at the end of the verse, the Byzantine Text – the text found in the majority of Greek manuscripts – does not.  Thus a simple question arises:  did the original text of Matthew 3:11 state that John the Baptist said that the Messiah would baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire,” or merely that the Messiah would baptize with the Holy Spirit?

Papyrus 101, recto,
with reconstruction

          The 27^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testament Graecae and the fourth edition of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament offer no guidance on this question whatsoever; they do not mention this variant-unit.  Wieland Willker, however, discussed it in his online Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels.  Edward Miller’s Textual Commentary on Matthew 1-14, published in 1899, is also helpful.  The reading “and fire” is supported by Papyrus 101, codices Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, C, [A is not extant here] [G^e, a.k.a. 011, is not extant here] D^s (that is, a supplement-page of Codex Bezae), K, Π, L, M, Σ [Φ is not extant until 6:3 due to damage], U, W, Γ, Δ, and f¹, f¹³, 22, 33, 565, 892, 1273, and other manuscripts support the inclusion of “and fire.”  That’s a very broad range of support.  Those manuscripts are from diverse locales and represent diverse text-types.   

          Papyrus 101 has undergone damage but its testimony on this point is sufficiently clear:  the first two letters of και (“and”) appear after the reference to the Holy Spirit.  This fragment is from the 200’s. 

PATRISTIC EVIDENCE

          Before further consideration of the manuscript-evidence (and some versional evidence), let’s turn to patristic evidence.  Some patristic evidence is not as clear as one might wish, because the episode in Matthew 3:11 is paralleled in the other Gospels:

Mark 1:8:  “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Luke 3:16:  “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Codex K supports the inclusion of "and fire."

John 1:33:  “this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.”

          Because the parallel-passages are so similar, one cannot trust mere allusions; precise references to Matthew’s Gospel, or distinct quotations of the surrounding Matthean text, are required before a patristic statement can confidently be considered a quotation of Matthew 3:11 instead of one of the other accounts.

          Justin Martyr, sometime before 160, probably used a Gospel-harmony that blended the contents of Matthew, Mark, and Luke into one continuous narrative.  Nevertheless his testimony is helpful.  In Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 49, Justin wrote the following about John the Baptist:  “He cried, as he sat by the river Jordan:  ‘I baptize you with water to repentance; but He that is stronger than I shall come, whose shoes I am not worthy to carry.  He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and will gather the wheat into the barn; but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire.’”  This resembles Matthew 3:11-12 and Luke 3:16-17, but where Luke refers to loosing Jesus’ sandal-strap, Matthew and Justin refer to carrying Jesus’ sandals.  Thus it seems probable that Justin’s Synoptics-Harmony at this point consisted of a selection from Matthew.

Codex L supports the inclusion of "and fire."
Notice the telos symbol.

          Tatian’s Diatessaron, composed around 172 as a continuous narrative consisting of the contents of all four Gospels, was used in the mid-300’s by Ephrem Syrus as the basis for a commentary.  Ephrem stated that John the Baptist was to proclaim “Him who would baptize with fire and with the Holy Spirit,” but it is unclear whether Ephrem was citing Tatian’s Diatessaron or a continuous Gospels-text, either way, it is unclear whether Tatian was drawing from Matthew or from Luke.        

          Irenaeus, in the course of Book Four of Against Heresies, in the 180’s, states in chapter 4 that John the Baptist said of Christ, “He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire, having His fan in His hand [to cleanse His floor;] and He will gather His fruit into the garner, but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire.”  Unfortunately it is not clear if Irenaeus was utilizing Matthew, or Luke.

MS 700 includes "and fire."

           Similarly Tertullian, in chapter 10 of his composition De Baptismo (On Baptism), around 200, stated that John the Baptist stated that “shortly one would come who would baptize in the Spirit and fire,” but does not specify which Gospel he is using.  His full statement is as follows:  John said that “he baptized in repentance only, but that One would shortly come who would baptize in the Spirit and fire; of course because true and stable faith is baptized with water unto salvation; pretended and weak faith is baptized with fire, unto judgment.” 

MS 72 includes "and fire."

          Hippolytus, a contemporary of Tertullian, wrote the following in a composition called  The Discourse on the Holy Theophany, chapter three:   John the Baptist “cried out and spoke to those who came to be baptized of him:  ‘O generation of vipers,’ why look ye so earnestly at me?  ‘I am not the Christ;’ I am the servant, and not the lord . . . but ‘after me there comes One who is before me’ – after me, indeed, in time, but before me by reason of the inaccessible and unutterable light of divinity.  ‘There comes one mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear.  He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.’  I am subject to authority, but He has authority in Himself.  I am bound by sins, but He is the Remover of sins.  I apply the law, but He brings grace to light.  I teach as a slave, but He judges as the Master.  I have the earth as my couch, but He possesses heaven.  I baptize with the baptism of repentance, but He confers the gift of adoption:  ‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.’  Why give ye attention to me?  I am not the Christ.”  The portion in bold print appears to be a quotation from Matthew 3:11. 

In Lectionary 150, "and fire" does not appear
in the lection that consists of Mt. 3:1-11.
(Goodspeed Manuscript Collection
MS 128-294)

          Origen, writing Book Six of his Commentary on John, around 235, made a comparison of the four Gospels’ statements of this particular episode, as follows:        

          “Matthew reports that the Baptist, when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, after the words of rebuke which we have already studied, went on:  “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance; but He that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.”  This agrees with the words in John, in which the Baptist declares himself to those sent by the Pharisees, on the subject of his baptizing with water.  Mark, again, says, “John preached, saying, ‘There comes after me He that is mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.  I baptized you with water, but He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.”  And Luke says that, ‘As the people were in expectation, and all were reasoning in their hearts concerning John, whether haply he were the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I indeed baptize you with water; but there comes one mightier than I, whose sandal-strap I am not worthy to unloose; He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.”’”

          Thus, even though Origen does not describe the statement from the Gospel of John precisely – only enough to show that both passages say that John the Baptist baptized with water – it is evident that in the Gospel of Matthew, Origen read και πυρι at the end of 3:11.  These two words were not in his text of Mark 1:8, but they were in his copies of Luke 3:16.  Origen resided at Caesarea when he wrote this.

In Lectionary 63, "and fire" does not appear
in the lection that consists of Mt. 3:1-11.

          Around 250, Cyprian of Carthage (in north Africa) made a specific reference to Matthew 3:11 in Book One, chapter 12 of his Three Books of Testimonies:  “In the Gospel according to Matthew, John says, ‘I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear.  He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire.’”        

          Around the same time (257 or 258), an anonymous writer composed De Baptismate, and utilized Luke 3:16 (including the part about loosing the sandal-strap, thus ensuring that the quotation was from Luke rather than from Matthew). 

          Hilary of Poitiers wrote his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew in 356 – about the same time when Codex Sinaiticus was made – and quoted and commented on Matthew 3:11 with the words “and fire,” offering the following interpretation:  “It remains only for those baptized in the Holy Spirit to be brought to perfection by the fire of judgment.”  

In MS 2474, Mt. 3:11 has "and fire."
(Goodspeed Manuscript Collection,
MS 1053-10)

          Basil of Caesarea-in-Cappadocia (330-379), in De Spiritu Sancto, chapter 15, part 36, wrote the following:  “John indeed baptized with water, but our Lord Jesus Christ by the Holy Ghost.  ‘I indeed,’ he says, ‘baptize you with water unto repentance; but he that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear.  He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.’”   The content of the first part of the quotation shows that it is from Matthew 3:11. 

          In the composition known as the Opus Imperfectum, composed sometime in the first half of the 400’s, the author commented on the text of Matthew 3:11 with the phrase “and fire,” proposing that baptism in water washes away past sins, the Holy Spirit drives away sinful desires, and fire purges away the source of evil desires, thus ensuring against past, present, and future sins.

         Prosper of Aquitaine quotes Matthew 3:11 with “and fire” – “et igni” in Latin – and specifies that he is quoting from the Gospel of Matthew, in a composition preserved in Volume 51 of Migne’s Patrologia Latina, column 852 (digital page 431). 

         In the year 400, Augustine compared the relevant parallel-passages in Book Two,12:26 of his book, On the Harmony of the Gospels.  The chapter is focused on the subject of the words of John the Baptist.  Augustine begins by specifically stating that he is quoting from the Gospel of Matthew; then he quotes Matthew 3:5-12, and in the course of quoting verse 11, Augustine includes “and fire.”  Augustine proceeds to say the following:  “For as in Matthew, so also in Luke, the words are the same, and they are given in the same order, ‘He shall baptize you in the Spirit and in fire’ with one exception, that Luke has not added the adjective ‘holy,’ while Matthew has given it thus:  “in the Holy Spirit and in fire.”  Not only is this spectacularly detailed, showing that Augustine’s text of Matthew 3:11 included “and fire,” but it is also helpful because it points out that in an Old Latin form of the Gospels-text used in Africa, Luke 3:16 lacked the word “Holy,” giving us a satisfying clue that Tertullian was utilizing Luke, not Matthew, in De Baptismo.

          In addition, in Excerpts from Theodotus (a heretic who was active in 150-180), the writer (as cited by Clement of Alexandria) says that John the Baptist said, “There comes after me He that baptizes with the Spirit and fire.”  The absence of the word “holy” indicates that this is probably drawn from Luke, rather than Matthew).

In MS 551, the words "and fire"
do not appear in Mt. 3:11.

          Eusebius of Caesarea, in the early 300’s (about the time when Codex Vaticanus was produced), in his Commentary on Isaiah, saw a connection between Isaiah 4:4 (which refers to the purification of the blood of Jerusalem “by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning”) and John the Baptist’s statement about Christ baptizing with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  Eusebius does not specify which Gospel he is quoting, but attributes the statement to “the Gospels.”  One may thus make a calculated guess that Eusebius read “and fire” in Matthew 3:11 and Luke 3:16, inasmuch as otherwise he would probably have specified that the statement was found in the Gospel of Luke.  (Jerome, in his commentary on Isaiah, later made the same connection between Isaiah 4:4 and John the Baptist’s statement, having borrowed heavily from Eusebius’ work.)

MS 505 does not have "and fire" in Mt. 3:11.

          Ambrose of Milan, in the late 300’s, in On the Holy Spirit, Book One, 3/42,  quotes Matthew 3:11 (without naming Matthew, but with the wording “whose sandals I am not worthy to bear,” rather than “whose sandal-strap I am not worthy to loosen”).  In chapter 14 of the same composition, and again in his composition Concerning Repentance, Book 1, 8/34 (immediately before quoting Mark 16:17-18), Ambrose says that Christ baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire, but without specifying his source. 

MS 495 does not have "and fire" in Mt. 3:11.

          John Chrysostom, in Homily #11 on Matthew, refers to the phrase “and fire,” and one might naturally assume that we are looking at a quotation from Matthew 3:11, inasmuch as the homily is on Matthew.  However, earlier in the same section of the homily, Chrysostom uses the verbiage of Luke 3:16, about loosing the sandal-strap, rather than the verbiage of Matthew 3:11, about carrying the sandals.  Thus this evidence is not airtight.  However, had Chrysostom’s text of Matthew 3:11 lacked “and fire” it is very likely that he would have said so. 

MS 304 does not have "and fire" in Mt. 3:11.
(The text is interspersed with commentary.)

          Cyril of Alexandria, in his not-entirely-original Commentary on Isaiah (written around 420), specifically quotes Matthew 3:11 with the words “and fire” included. 

  

VERSIONAL EVIDENCE

          Among the early versions there is hardly any support for the non-inclusion of “and fire” in Matthew 3:11.  The Peshitta includes the words.  The Sinaitic Syriac has “he shall baptize you with fire and with the Holy Spirit.”  The Old Latin manuscripts, including the Latin text in Codex Bezae, support the inclusion of the words, with the exception of m (Codex Speculum, from c. 425).  (Old Latin k is not extant at this point; it is missing a leaf which contained Matthew 3:11-4:1.  Likewise Old Latin n is not extant at this point; its text of Matthew begins at 17:1.)  The Vulgate also includes the words.  The Gothic Codex Argenteus, unfortunately, is not extant in Matthew 3.  According to Miller, the Curetonian Syriac, the Harklean Syriac, the Bohairic version, and the Sahidic version all support the inclusion of “and fire” in Matthew 3:11.  Mae-2 (Schoyen 2650) is not extant until Mt. 5:38.

MS 716 does not have "and fire" at the end
of Mt. 3:11.  Notice the lection-related marks.

           The Palestinian Aramaic lectionary is an interesting exception:  not only does it fail to include “and fire” in Matthew 3:11 but it also does not include the text of verse 12.

INTERNAL EVIDENCE AND LECTIONARY EVIDENCE

          Having reviewed the major witnesses, we turn to internal considerations.  If one were to apply the canon, “prefer the shorter reading” – a standard which has been justly challenged and nullified, but which is still employed by some influential textual critics and compilers – then one could explain the longer reading as a natural harmonization to Luke 3:16.  On the other hand, the shorter reading can be accounted for as a harmonization to Mark 1:8 or John 1:33.  Harmonizations tended to emanate from Matthew, rather than onto Matthew, but this tendency is not absolute. 

   

MS 27 does not have "and fire" at the end
of Mt. 3:11.  Notice the lection-related marks.

           As a point in favor of the shorter reading, one might consider that it is supported by the Byzantine Text.  If one were to accept the premise that the Byzantine Text of the Gospels generally has more embellishments than the Alexandrian Text, then – in approximately the same way in which Westcott and Hort argued for the genuineness of shorter Western readings, because the tendency of the Western Text was toward expansion – a shorter reading in the Byzantine Text, in a passage in which harmonization to Luke 3:16 would be a natural expansion, is a point in favor of the shorter reading.

Lectionary 24 does not have "and fire"
at the end of the lection for the Saturday
before Epiphany.  This is the usual
form of the lection in Byzantine lectionaries.

          However, a special factor seems to have been in play that resulted in the loss of και πυρι in the Byzantine text-stream:  the treatment of Matthew 3:11 in the lectionary.  Matthew 3:11 was part of a prominent lection:  Matthew 3:1-11 was read at Christmastime, as the lection for the first hour of the Eve of Epiphany.  As the old lectionaries show, the text of Matthew 3:11, in the lection, stopped with the mention of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, without including the words “and fire.”  This appears to have been a slight liturgical adjustment – probably made for two reasons:  first, to focus on positive aspects of baptism, rather than on the baptism in fire which could be construed (as done by Tertullian and others) as a reference to fiery condemnation rather than to the fires of zeal and of testing, and second, to close the lection at the same point as the lection which followed it (Mark 1:1-8).    

          In manuscript 1273 (the George Grey Gospels), we see a τελος symbol in the text of Matthew 3:11, instructing the lector to stop reading at exactly that point, without pronouncing και πυρι which follows the τελος symbol.  It was a natural adjustment for copyists, when making continuous-text manuscripts intended to be accompanied by a lectionary-apparatus and to be used in church-services for lection-reading, to drop the και πυρι to simplify the lector’s task.  Thus we see in the evidence a natural progression:  

first, the text circulated with και πυρι; 

second, the text circulated with και πυρι accompanied by a τελος symbol before και πυρι; 

MS 1273, on the last line of the page shown here,
has a red telos-symbol between the words
"Holy Spirit" and "and fire" in Matthew 3:11.

third, και πυρι was excised in copies which were intended to be used by lectors, as a simplification; fourth, copies with the simplified text that had been intended for lectors were used as exemplars for ordinary copies.

          Many Byzantine Gospel-manuscripts were not influenced by this lectionary-related excision, but apparently, enough were affected to cause the shorter reading to become the majority reading.  The text without και πυρι was displayed in the Greek text of the Complutensian Polyglot (although the Latin text had et igni) in 1514; later in a 1609 copy of Benito Arias Montano’s Greek-Latin interlinear text, και πυρι was included.  Later still, in C. F. Matthaei’s 1803 compilation, και πυρι was not included in the text; a τελος symbol was placed in the text and the longer reading was mentioned in a footnote.

          The genuineness of και πυρι in Matthew 3:11, and the mechanism that caused its widespread loss in the Byzantine text-stream, illustrate two things:  first, there was mild instability in the Byzantine text at certain points that were simplified for lection-reading.  This effect was felt most forcefully in the later Middle Ages but it began much earlier, at least as early as the time when the Palestinian Aramaic version was made.  It has especially influenced members of the f³⁵ group.  Second, the archetype of the Byzantine Text, which includes και πυρι, cannot be fully reconstructed by appealing to a simple statistical majority of manuscripts; the weight of manuscripts which share a pattern of lectionary-related simplifications, such as the absence of και πυρι in Matthew 3:11, should be boiled down.