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.”)

  

  

Peter Chrysologus (Who?) and the Final Section of the Gospel of Mark

Peter Chrysologus

         Peter Chrysologus is not as famous to most Americans as his contemporaries Augustine and Patrick, but in his day he was highly influential, for Peter was bishop of Ravenna, in Italy, from 433 to 450, when Ravenna was the capital of the Western Roman Empire. (It was in Ravenna that the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire was deposed in 476.)  Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church honor him as a capital-S saint.  He was declared to be a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church in 1729, which seems to have caused generations of modern-day Protestants and American evangelicals to ignore his works.  (The fourth edition of the UBS GNT, at least, fails to mention him.)  His traditional surname “Chrysologus” means “of the Golden-Word,” on account of his many concise yet insightful sermons.  

           A selection of Peter Chrysologus’ sermons were translated into English by George E. Ganss in 1953, and published as Volume 17 in the Fathers of the Church series.   More recently (in 2004-2005), Chrysologus’ sermons were again published in English, having been translated by William B. Palardy, and quite a bit of Palardy’s translation (in three volumes) can be viewed online. 

          Using Ganss’ translation (Copyright 1953, Fathers of the Church, Inc., NY), we may turn to Peter Chrysologus’ 83rd Sermon and observe that his text for this concise composition was Mark 16:14-18.  He began by stating, “Thus the holy Evangelist has told us today that within the very time of the Crucifixion the Apostles were concerned with the table; that they were gazing at foods, concerned about banquets, and forgetful of the Lord’s Passion. He states: ‘He appeared to the eleven as they were reclining at table.’”  (Cf. Mk. 16:14a)

          The implication of this seemingly unremarkable opening should not be overlooked:   Chrysologus clearly was not introducing a new text to his listeners. 

          As Chrysologus continues, he briefly criticizes Peter and the other apostles for seeming to enjoy a meal so shortly after Jesus’ death, inviting his listeners to imagine Jesus returning to the land of the living to find that his followers have already resumed going about their own business.  He then quotes Mark 16:14 in full.

          Then Chrysologus’ portrayal of the apostles takes on a more sympathetic tone:  using John 20:19 to set the stage, he explains that the apostles’ meal was not festive, but mournful and despairing, as if they themselves still tasted the vinegar and gall that had been given to Jesus.   The apostles were locked in.  But when Jesus appeared to them He set their hearts free, Chrysologus explains, and he sent them back into the world via the words, “Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature.”  (Cf. Mark 16:15.  The Latin text:  Ite in mundum universum, praedicate Evangelium universa creaturae.  It should be noted that this is slightly different from the usual Vulgate text, which reads “omni” instead of “universa.” )   

          Chrysologus pictures how these words stirred the apostles, and then resumes quoting the text:  “‘He who believes,’ He continues, ‘and is baptized will be saved.’  Brethren, faith is to baptism what the soul is to the body.  Hence it is that he who is generated from the font lives by faith:  “He who is just lives by faith.”  Therefore everyone who lacks faith dies.”

          He then briefly diverges to emphasize that the convert is to believe correctly; he should not just believe whatever he happens to have already believed, but he should believe in one triune God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, co-equal.  He proceeds to delineate what should be believed in a somewhat creedal sequence – that Christ arose for our sake, that Christ, though already everywhere, will return to rule over the earth, that through Christ sins are forgiven, that man should believe in the resurrection of the body (“that is, that it is the man himself who arises”), and in eternal life (“to keep a second death from occurring”).

          “In addition to this,” writes Chrysologus, as he begins to wrap up, “the greatest indication of firm faith consists in the following signs.  The devils, that is, the ancient foes, get exorcised from human bodies.  One language intelligible in many others comes forth from one mouth.  Serpents grasped in the name of Christ lose the power of their venom.  Through Christ, cups of poison have no power to harm those who drink them.  Bodily diseases are cured at the touch of one who preaches Christ.”  And he then quotes Mark 16:17-18 – “Signa credentes haec sequantur:  in nomine meo daemonia ejicient, linguis loquentur novis, serpentes tollent, et si quid mortiferum biberint, non nocebit eos, super agros manus imponent, et bene habebunt.”

          Lest anyone misunderstand his words as an invitation to recklessness, Chrysologus concludes, “Therefore, O man, be a  physician to yourself through your faith,” and he instructs his listeners to pray so that “we may be free from anxiety and exult because of our good conscience.”

          Very clearly, the final section of the Gospel of Mark was regarded by Peter Chrysologus and his congregation in Ravenna as sacred and inspired Scripture.

 

 

          (The 1750 edition of Peter Chrysologus’ sermons, prepared by Sebastianus Pauli et al,  was used to access the Latin Text.)

 

 

Saint Patrick and Mark 16:15-16

            Saint Patrick was not a leprechaun.  He was a historical person, a missionary in the 400s who was instrumental in the conversion of the Irish people to Christianity.  Two compositions by St. Patrick survive to the present day:  The Letter to Coroticus and Confession.  One interesting detail in both of these compositions is that Patrick makes use of material in Mark 16:9-20.

             In R. P. C. Hanson’s book The Life and Writings of the Historical Saint Patrick, pp. 44-45 (© 1983 R. P. C. Hanson, published by the Seabury Press, New York), the author observed that “There is no clear evidence that Patrick knew or used Jerome’s Vulgate. But he certainly knew the Latin Bible used by the British church supremely well.”   Therefore Patrick’s citations should be regarded as echoes of an Old Latin text which was in use in Ireland in the mid-400s.

            In Letter to Coroticus, paragraph 20, (according to the English translation by John Skinner), in the course of denouncing Coroticus for attacking a group of new Christian converts, Patrick wrote, “I bear witness before God and his angels that it shall be just as he signified to me, unskilled though I am. That which I have set out in Latin is not my words but the words of God and of apostles and prophets, who of course have never lied. He who believes shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be damned. God has spoken.”  Patrick thus quoted Mark 16:16.

            In Confession, paragraph 40, Patrick assembled several Biblical passages as he wrote, “We are strictly bound to spread out our nets, so that an abundant multitude and a crowd should be caught for God and that there should be clergy everywhere who should baptize and preach to the needy and expectant masses, just as the Lord says in the gospel, he warns and teaches in the text, Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things, whatever I have taught you. And in another place he says, Go therefore into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature; whoever believes and is baptized will be saved but whoever does not believe will be damned” (Cf. Matthew 28:19, Mark 16:15-16).

            Just something to remember the next time you read a commentary that tells you that the Old Latin did not include Mark 16:9-20.  Have a happy Saint Patrick's Day!

               

Saint Augustine and Mark 16:18

           Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is known far and wide for his work in theology, and for his book Confessions and City of God.  Less well-known is his interpretation of part of Mark 16:18.  This is not surprising, since although his name appears in the UBS GNT’s textual apparatus for this verse, his composition On the Soul and Its Origin is not often consulted by modern commentators.  Too many modern commentators do not offer any comment on Mark 16:9-20, except to say that it is a late and spurious passage.  (I know not why they might imagine that the verdict of “late and spurious” is supported by the evidence from the 100s, which is earlier than any manuscript of Mark 16 known to exist.  More about that, God willing, in a future post.)

          But unlike the commentators who are chronologically further away from Saint Mark,  Saint Augustine, who was chronologically much closer, expressed no doubt about recognizing Mark 16:9-20 as authoritative Scripture.  Some people might wonder, “We have heard Papias’ report that Justus (Joseph Barsabas) was compelled by unbelievers to drink snake-poison, and we have read Luke’s report that Paul was not harmed when a viper struck him on the island of Malta.  But it is not as if Justus prepared his own goblet of poison, and Paul had been looking for sticks, not a viper.  Christian congregations throughout the world have not become famous for putting the LORD to the test by picking up snakes or by drinking deadly poison, which is done at some congregations in American Appalachia – sometimes with disastrous consequences.  How did Saint Augustine interpret Mark 16:18?”
          To find out, we need only take in hand Augustine’s book and turn to the second chapter (or, book), and read.  Augustine cited Mark 16:15 in the second chapter of his Fourth Homily on First John, To the Parthians, but for now, let’s focus on his interpretation of Mark 16:18.  Each chapter of On the Soul and Its Origin is a letter.  In the first letter, written to Augustine’s colleague Renatus, Augustine identified and diagnosed some doctrinal errors he had found in two books written by an author named Victor, which Augustine had received from Renatus.  In the second letter, written to a presbyter named Peter, Augustine informed Peter of the false teachings he found in Victor’s two books, and he counsels Peter to work with Renatus to guide Victor away from his erroneous beliefs.

          That is the context of Book 2, chapter 23.  As Augustine advised Peter to vocally and openly guide Victor away from the false beliefs he has expressed – and after he pointed out that Peter might find additional falsehoods that Augustine has not covered – Augustine compared Victor’s teachings to a goblet of poisoned wine:  mostly good, but deadly if consumed.

          Just as poisoned wine might be served in a beautiful goblet, Augustine wrote, harmful doctrines can be delivered in well-crafted words.  And if Peter were to keep silent about what he has read, some people, after observing that Peter has read Victor’s books, might read them for themselves, and not know which parts Peter digests, and which parts he leaves in the cup. 

          Here I turn directly to the text of Augustine’s On the Soul and Its Origin, which I have slightly paraphrased (Book 2 of On the Soul and Its Origin can be read in English at the New Advent website):   

          “They do not know what you have drunk, and what you have left untasted, and so, in light of your wholesome character, they assume that whatever is drunk out of this fountain will make them healthy.  For what are hearing, and reading, and memorizing what has been read, than different processes of drinking.  However, the Lord foretold, concerning his faithful followers, that even if they might drink any deadly thing, it would not harm them.
          “And thus, those who filter what they read with discernment may give their approval to what is consistent with the standards of our faith, and they may disapprove of things that should be rejected.  And thus, although they commit to memory statements which are declared to be worthy of disapproval, they receive no harm from the sentences that are by nature poisonous and depraved.” 

           This is a correct way to apply the passage.  Such an interpretation never occurs to many commentators today, I suspect, because either (a) English-speakers mainly think of drinking as something done to a physical liquid (although people still might occasionally say things like, “Soak up this lesson,” or “Savor your victory”), or (b) the commentators fail to interpret all of Mark 16:9-20 because they have not taken a close look at the voluminous evidence in its favor.

          Some people might object, “But brother Snapp, Christ the living Word does not speak in riddles.  And the Holy Spirit does not speak in riddles.” But I  commend to them to perceive the meaning of the parables that Jesus told, to listen again to statements such as Luke 12:49-50 (where Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as a fire, and to his sufferings as a baptism), and to consider that the words of Psalm 78:2 are repeated in Matthew 13:35.  

          While we are on the subject of Augustine’s use of the final portion of the Gospel according to Mark (which was received in the early church as Mark’s presentation of the memoirs of Saint Peter the apostle), let us take a look at another composition by Augustine:  his Harmony of the Gospels, which he composed before the year 400.

          “But brother Snapp,” someone might say, “Those who study the manuscripts scientifically know that the Western Old Latin text is notorious due to its expansions.”  That is true.  It is also true that the most of the changes found in the Western Old Latin text are benign (usually attempting to clarify or specify the authors’ meaning, although occasionally the attempt is very poorly made, like in Mark 1:41) and where the changes are substantial, they tend not to amount to more than a few agrapha.  Also . . . .”  Keep reading. 

           In Book Three of Augustine’s  Harmony of the Gospels, in the 24^th and 25^th chapters, Mark 16 is covered in detail. 

          Before focusing on the Gospel of Mark, though, Augustine comments on Luke 24 (showing the “Western” arrangement of the Gospels, Matthew-John-Luke-Mark), only briefly mentioning that “Mark likewise mentions that He appeared first to Mary Magdalene; as also does John,” thus referring to Mark 16:9) and Augustine quotes the Gospel of Luke 24:13-24.  After offering his explanation of how Luke’s account interlocks with the accounts from Matthew and John, Augustine turns to what Paul wrote in his first letter to the church at Corinth:  “He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve.  After that He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once.” 

          Augustine proceeds to explain why Paul would say “the twelve” rather than “the eleven.”  He noticed a textual variant, saying that some copies of First Corinthians 15:5 read “eleven” rather than “twelve.”  [There are a few Greek-Latin copies, D* F G, which display this reading, which shows how the Old Latin text invaded the “Western” Greek manuscripts.]  Granting that there were just eleven apostles after the death of Judas, Augustine explains that there are three options:  (a) either the reading “eleven” is correct, or (b) Paul was referring to twelve other disciples, or (c) Paul used the term ”the twelve” as a symbolically significant number, the twelve apostles being the counterpart to the twelve tribes of Israel (i.e., the ten sons of Jacob + Jacob’s two grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh). By time time Luke wrote, Judas’ place had been taken by Matthias (as Luke reports in Acts 1:15-26). 

          When Augustine reached the passage known today as Mark 16:12, he stated that Mark reports, “And after that He appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked and went to a country-seat.’” (It should not be overlooked that Augustine does not attribute this to Peter, but to Mark.)  Augustine proceeds to write:  “In the Greek codices, indeed, the reading which we discover is ‘estate’ rather than ‘country-seat.’”  To make sure everyone grasps and understands the significance of the statement from Augustine, I repeat:  Greek copies of the Gospels in North Africa that were used by Augustine in North Africa show that Mark 16:9-20 was included in the text in those Greek copies.

          Also, Augustine’s use of Old Latin copies shows that Mark 16:9-20 was included in Old Latin copies of the Gospels – contrary to what has been claimed by commentators such as Ron Rhodes (see his error on page 31 of The Complete Book of Bible Answers by Ron Rhodes, © 1997 by Ron Rhodes, published by Harvest House Publishers, republished in 2007 as What Does the Bible Say About…?) and James Edwards (see his error on pages 497-498 of his commentary on the Gospel According to Mark in the Pillar Commentary Series, © 2002 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.).

          (I do not wish to depart from the subject of Augustine here, but it should be noted that two Old Latin copies lack Mark 16:9-20:  the copy known as Codex Bobbiensis (VL 1, k), which has a very strange text at the end of Mark – it features an interpolation between Mark 16:3 and 16:4, and its text concludes with a truncated text of verse 8 followed by the “Shorter Ending” – and Codex Vercellensis (VL 3, a), which, due to damage, does not have the pages with text after Mark 15:15 that the codex had before it was damaged.) 

          Augustine’s name appeared in the textual apparatus of the fourth edition of the UBS GNT, but an acknowledgment of the testimony of Augustine’s Greek manuscripts did not.  This oversight should be amended.  Greek copies possessed by Augustine in the year 400 provide substantial early testimony about what Greek text of the Gospels was transmitted in North Africa. 

           Readers who see Augustine’s testimony in favor of the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20, and the testimony of Augustine’s Greek manuscripts in favor of the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 should also observe a beautiful theme that Augustine mentions:  the parallel between the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles.  The children of Israel would have been made of ten tribes eligible to have land (the tribe of Levi had cities, not territory), if Joseph’s two sons had not been added into the picture (in Genesis 48).  Only after Joseph, Jacob’s favorite son, was removed from the picture, and his place was taken by his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, did the number of tribes reach twelve. 

          And a counter-part to that is seen in the twelve apostles:  they were initially twelve in number, but Judas betrayed Jesus (a thematic counterpart to the opposition to Jesus by the high priest Caiaphas, of the priestly tribe of Levi), reducing the number of apostles to eleven.  Then James, the brother of John, was killed by Herod according to Luke’s report in Acts 12:2.  That reduced the number of apostles to ten.

          Matthias took Judas’ place (as Luke reports in Acts 1).  And later on, after Jesus called Paul of Tarsus to be his witness, the number of apostles was restored to twelve.  Thus there is a parallel between Ephraim-and-Manasseh and Matthias-and-Paul:  Manasseh was firstborn and had the right to receive the firstborn son’s blessing (and Joseph, in Genesis 48, said that this was his right).  Yet Jacob insisted that while Manasseh would also be great (see Genesis 48:19), he knew that Ephraim would be greater and that his descendants would become “a multitude of nations.”

          Likewise, although James the son of Zebedee was a great apostle, and was chosen first (cf. Mark 1:19), Saint Paul (the last  apostle to be chosen) was greater, for after he heard Jesus’ call, he shared the good news about Jesus Christ to many nations, and wrote epistles which are included among the books of the New Testament, and his spiritual offspring have grown into a multitude of nations all over the world where the good news of Jesus Christ is proclaimed.

 

Revelation of the Magi: More Support for Mark 16:9-20

          In the Vatican Library, there is a little-known manuscript, Sir. 162, from the 700s, which is the sole surviving copy of a composition called Revelation of the Magi.  Dr. Brent Landau (Th. D., Harvard Divinity School), of the University of Texas at Austin, has studied this text in detail, and translated it into English.  His translation was published in 2010 by HarperCollins as part of the book The Revelation of the Magi – The Lost Tale of the Wise Men’s Journey to Bethlehem. 

          Manuscript Sir. 162 was studied in the mid-1860s by Otto Tullberg, a Swedish scholar, and Revelation of the Magi was described by M.R. James in 1927 under the name Liber de Nativate Salvatoris.

          A similar composition is embedded in the Latin composition known as Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, which was produced in the 400s. 

          When was Revelation of the Magi composed?  Dr. Landau has proposed that Revelation of the Magi was composed in Syriac in the late 100s or early 200s, with a later expansion (mainly consisting of the final episode of the book) made in the 300s or 400s.

 

Dr. Brent Landau

         It is an interesting narrative.  Readers who want to learn more about it may read Dr. Landau’s book, or the summary here (the summary of the translation begins on p. 20 of the PDF) or his dissertation (here).  My focus is on a specific feature:  its use of the contents of Mark 16:9-20.   In Rev. Magi 15:8, there is a reference to Christ as “the one in whose name signs and portents take place through his believers.”  This alone would be a strong allusion to Mark 16:17.  But even clearer is a passage in 31:10 – part of the portion which was added in the 300s – where the apostle Thomas (called “Judas Thomas” in Rev. Magi) is depicted saying ““Therefore, my brethren, let us fulfill the commandment of our Lord, who said to us:  ‘Go out into the entire world and preach my Gospel.’”  This is a plain utilization of Mark 16:15 (although in Landau’s dissertation a footnote treats it as a utilization of Matthew 28:18). 

          None of which you would learn about from the apparatus of the Nestle-Aland NTG, or  the UBS GNT, or the Tyndale House GNT (which breaks from its strange practice of presenting no patristic evidence by inserting, between Mark 16:8 and 16:9, an annotation which is taken from minuscule 1.)  Yet again the apparatus of Nestle-Aland’s NTG and the apparatus of UBS’s GNT and the apparatus of the Tyndale House GNT are silent about a significant piece of early evidence supportive of Mark 16:9-20. 

          It is no wonder that many preachers in Europe and America still reject Mark 16:9-20:  they have been misled for over a century by commentators who relied on selective presentations of the relevant evidence.  But hopefully they will not be so gullible as to continue to trust sources that have demonstrated their untrustworthiness again and again and again.

Meet GA 473

             GA 473 is the same manuscript that was known to F. H. A. Scrivener in 1853 as Lambeth Palace MS 1178 when he collated it (as Gospels-MS “d”) for his book about A Full and Exact Collation of About Twenty Greek Manuscripts of the Holy Gospels.   

            “It is one of the most splendid manuscripts extant,” Scrivener wrote about GA 473.  He also mentioned that GA 473’s text “contains many remarkable variations, such as Scholz would refer to his Alexandrian recension.”  Robert Waltz has briefly updated Scrivener, noting that GA 473 is part of von Soden’s “family I^KC,” and thus an imperfect representative of Family Π, which constitutes, for the most part, the earliest stratum of the Byzantine Text of the Gospels. 

          Scrivener stated that Luke 22:43-44 is obelized, but the passage is accompanied by asterisks, not obeli, in the margin.  And the manuscript features more than what Scrivener shared with his readers:  in the margin of GA 473, alongside Luke 22:43-44, there is also a note referring to part a Maundy Thursday lection.  (This lection begins in Matthew 26; jumps to John 13:1-17, jumps back to Matthew 26, and then jumps to Luke 22:43-44, and then jumps back to Matthew 26:40 (i.e., to Section 296 of Matthew).  The hundreds-unit in the margin of GA 473 is an error; the expected hundreds-unit is 200 (ς) rather than 100 (ρ).  Other than this misprint, or rather, miswriting, the marginalia in GA 473 shows how the text was used at Eastertime in the lectionary.  (The asterisks need not convey scribal doubt.)  (In the core members of family 13, Luke 22:43-44 is embedded within the text of Matthew, which is one of the strongest proofs of lectionary influence upon family 13’s text.)              
            Scrivener listed 32 notable unusual readings attested by GA 473.  Because he collated the entire text, there is no need to go through them all here, but a few may be pointed out as examples:   

            At Matthew 23:27, GA 473 reads τοῖς ἀνθρώποις after φαίνονται, a reading shared by F and 33 (sorta). 
            At Mark 16:19, GA 473 reads ἐν δεξια instead of ἐκ δεξιῶν, a reading shared by C and Δ.

            At Luke 14:32, GA 473 reads εις before πρεσβείαν, yielding a minor tweak of the meaning.

            At Luke 17:17, GA 473 reads ευκοποτερον (relieved) instead of the usual εκαθαρίσθησαν (cleansed).  Perhaps an overly scrupulous scribe did not think that those who did not express thanks for the miraculous healing Jesus had given merited being called clean.

            At John 2:14, GA 473 is missing the words καὶ περιστερὰς (and doves).  This was very extremely probably due to simple parablepsis from the καὶ before περιστερὰς to the καὶ that comes after περιστερὰς.

            At John 13:15, GA 473 reads ποιω instead of ἐποίησα.

            At John 19:21, GA 473 is missing the first occurrence of τῶν Ἰουδαίων.  This is probably not accidental, but a case of stylistic adjustment to remove perceived superfluity.

        Digital page-views of GA 473 at the CSNTM website have been fully indexed.  Readers are invited to look over this manuscript for themselves to view its other interesting features (such as the obeli in the margin alongside John 5:4, as well as the readings within John 5:4 itself).

 

 

Matthew 21:31 - Who Did the Father's Will?

            “Overall this is a very difficult problem.”  Thus wrote Wieland Willker, in his Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels, about the variation-units in Matthew 21:29-31, to which he devoted eight pages of analysis before concluding that “a fully convincing solution is currently not available.”

            “Verses 29-31 involve a rather complex and difficult textual problem.”  Thus begins the NET’s note on the same subject – one of the longest notes in the NET.

            But you wouldn’t know that there is a very tough textual variant here from most of our English Bibles.  The CSB, ESV, NASB, NIV, NLT, EHV, MEV, NRSV, and NKJV all say that the answer to Jesus’ question was “The first,” and they have no footnote here.  (The EOB-NT is a rare exception; the EOB-NT has “The first” in the text and a footnote says, “A few manuscripts, notably D, read “the second” which is unlikely but presents the Jews as spoiling the parable by giving (seemingly deliberately) the wrong answer.”  The EOB’s note could be improved, though, by replacing “the second” with “the last.”)   

            I think one has to go back to J.B. Phillips’ version to find, in English, anything other than “the first” (or, in the CEV, “the older one”) as the answer that was given to Jesus’ question in Matthew 21:31.  (In Phillips’ version, the answer is given as “The second one,” echoing the variant δευτερω.  A different reading, ὁ ὕστερος, was in the text of the 25^th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation, and was also adopted by Westcott & Hort and Tregelles.  (The 1881 Revised Version reads “The first.”  Perhaps the Revision Committee was unimpressed with Westcott and Hort’s divided opinion.)     (The Tyndale House GNT deviates from Tregelles’ compilation, adopting the usual reading ὁ πρῶτος, with an exceptionally thorough apparatus-entry.)    

            Hort, in 1881, devoted over two full pages (in Notes on Select Readings) to Mt. 21:28-31, and mentioned the view of Lachmann that the Jews’ answer to Jesus in Mt. 21:31 is “an early interpolation” (along with the four words which follow it).  Westcott inserted a note of his own into Hort’s analysis, stating, “Considering the difficulty of the Western combination of readings it seems not unlikely that Lachmann is substantially right.”

            The array of readings in this passage is interesting:  first comes a contest in verse 29:  οὐ θέλω, ὔστερον δέ μεταμεληθεὶς ἀπῆλθεν is read by the Byzantine Text, and by C L M W Π 157 565 579; À* has almost the same reading but without the δέ).  Codex Vaticanus has, instead, ἐγώ κε καὶ οὐκ ἀπῆλθεν (“I go, lord, and did not go”).  Third, f¹³ and 700 (Hoskier’s 604) read ὕπαγω κύριε καὶ οὐκ ἀπῆλθεν.  Fourth, Θ (038) has ὕπαγω καὶ οὐκ ἀπῆλθεν.  Fifth, Codex Bezae (05) reads οὐ θέλω ὔστερον δέ μεταμεληθεὶς ἀπῆλθεν but adds εἰς τὸν ἀμπελωνα (repeating the words from v. 28).       

            There are other textual contests (Byzantine witnesses have και before προσελθὼν; Alexandrian witnesses tend to have προσελθὼν δε, and the scribe of À skipped ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς ειπεν in v. 30), but the main contest near the beginning of v. 30 is between ἑτέρω (another) and δευτέρω (second). 

          Δευτέρω (second) is supported by B L M S Ω and by most Greek manuscripts, and by 28 33 700 892 and 1424.  The Byzantine Textform is somewhat split here, though:  δευτέρω is in the text and ἑτέρω is in the margin.  

            Ἡτέρω (the other) is supported by À*, D, Q, K, Π, W, Y, Δ, 157, 565, 579, et al.  In Codex À, someone creatively changed ἑτέρω by putting δ in the left margin and υ between the first  ε and τ, thus producing the variant δευτέρω. 

            Those two textual contests must be kept in mind as we approach the main textual contest in verse 31, where we see (after another variation-unit in v. 31:  after λεγουσιν, most MSS have αυτω but not B À L D Θ 33 f¹³ 788) the answer that Jesus’ listeners gave:

            Codex B and some Ethiopic copies support ὁ ὕστερος (“the later [one]”).

            Almost all manuscripts support ὁ πρῶτος (“the first”).

           Codex D and Θ 700 f¹³ and several Old Latin copies (a, b, d, e, ff², h, l) and the Sinaitic Syriac and the Armenian version support ὁ ἔσχατος (“the last”).    

            Let’s remember one of the canons of textual criticism:  prefer the more difficult reading.  The reading of Codex Bezae is the more difficult reading here – but it also makes Jesus’ hearers appear idiotic; it is obvious that the son who told his father that he would go, but did not go, did not do what the father wanted him to do.

            Jerome’s Vulgate supports ὁ πρῶτος.  But in his Commentary on Matthew, Jerome said something about the variant in verse 31: “one should know that with respect to what follows: ‘Which of the two did the father’s will? And they said, ‘the last,’ the authentic copies do not have ‘the last’ but ‘the first.’”  Jerome proposed that “If we want to read ‘the last,’ the interpretation is plain.  We would say that the Jews indeed understood the truth, but they are evasive and do not want to say what they think.”  In other words, to Jerome, the reading ὁ ἔσχατος (“the last”) makes the Jews seem not stupid, but duplicitous. 

            Bruce Metzger, in his Textual Commentary, rejected the very difficult reading of Codex Bezae, stating that “it is not only difficult, it is nonsensical” – and explained that the UBS committee judged that D’s reading originated “due to copyists who either committed a transcriptional blunder or who were motivated by anti-Pharisaic bias.”  Whatever the mechanism was, the range of its effect must have extended not only to Codex D but to several Latin copies, to the Sinaitic Syriac, and to Jerome’s “authentic” Latin manuscripts – most of which are major representatives of the Western Text.

[But not the Curetonian Syriac.  As Willker notes, the Curetonian Syriac was erroneously cited in NA27 as if it supports ὁ ἔσχατος.  Willker supplies Peter Williams’ rendering of the Curetonian Syriac, which concludes with “The first/former”.] 

[Another oddity in the apparatus of NA27 is that Θ is assigned two readings in v. 31:   ἔσχατος and ὕστερος.] 

[A mistake might have been made by Kurt and Barbara Aland in their Text of the New Testament where they took a close look at this passage (beginning on p. 233), and they zoom in on Mt. 21:31 (beginning on page 235).  The Alands stated that ὁ ὕστερος is supported by Codex Vaticanus “and other Greek manuscripts as well as in some Sahidic manuscripts and the whole Bohairic tradition.”  What are the “other Greek manuscripts” here?  The apparatus of NA27 lists  B Θ f¹³ 700 al; however, this seems to refer to the reading ὕστερον near the end of v. 30; Swanson gives ὁ ἔσχατος as the reading of Θ f¹³ 700 in v. 31 before λέγει.  If there are any other Greek manuscripts that read ὁ ὕστερος other than Codex Vaticanus, I do not know what they are.  If anyone knows of any, please mention them in the comments.]      

            Now let’s apply another canon:  prefer the variant which accounts for its rivals better than they account for it.  The reading in Mt. 21:31 adopted in the UBS compilation – ὁ πρῶτος – does not explain ὁ ὕστερος.  And ὁ ὕστερος can account for ὁ πρῶτος and  ὁ ἔσχατος. 

            As as answer to Jesus’ question, ὁ ὕστερος is a somewhat fluid answer; to someone whose first language was Latin, ὁ ὕστερος might be misunderstood as if it means “the latter.”  And such a misunderstanding explains the origin of the Western reading; there is no need to suppose that an “anti-Pharisaic bias” was involved here.     

            Ὁ ὕστερος also explains ὁ πρῶτος:  The answer “The later one” refers to the first son, not initially (when he said that he would not go), but later (after he changed his mind).  An early scribe who perceived that ὁ ὕστερος could be misunderstood as a reference to the second son could easily avoid the misunderstanding that mars the Western Text by making the wording clearer, and he did so, creating the reading ὁ πρῶτος.

            This internal evidence – (1) ὁ ὕστερος is difficult but not nonsensical, and (2) ὁ ὕστερος accounts for ὁ πρῶτος better than ὁ πρῶτος accounts for ὁ ὕστερος, and (3)  ὁ ὕστερος accounts for ὁ ἔσχατος – compels the adoption of ὁ ὕστερος. 

NA 25

            Whatever other shortcomings Vaticanus’ Gospels-text has, here in Matthew 21:31, it preserves the original wording.   This was the verdict of Tregelles, and it should be the reading in future editions. 

            By the way, I adopted ὁ ὕστερος over a decade ago in my Equitable Eclectic English Edition of the Gospel of Matthew, rendered as “The later one.”   EEEE Matthew, as I call it, is available as a Kindle e-book on Amazon for $1.99.

             In closing, I recommend that that the Armenian and Ethiopic evidence in Matthew 21:31 should be double-checked.