Video Lecture: Mark 16:9-20, the Shorter Ending, and Internal Evidence

 

Lecture 17

Lecture 17 in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism is online at YouTube!  In this lecture, slightly more than 25 minutes long, I focus on the internal evidence pertaining to Mark 16:9-20 - with a lengthy detour about the Shorter Ending.
  Here's an excerpt (from the part about the Shorter Ending):
     The textual variant known as the “Shorter Ending” goes like this:

            “Everything that had been told to them, they related to Peter and those with him.  And after this, Jesus Himself appeared to them and sent forth, through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.  Amen.”

             This is found between verse 8 and verse 9 in six Greek manuscripts:  Codex L, Codex Ψ, 083 – this is the same manuscript as 0112 – 099, and 579.  All six Greek manuscripts that attest to the Shorter Ending also support the inclusion of verses 9-20, although a few of them are damaged.  

                                            

Some of the Greek manuscripts that feature the Shorter Ending between verse 8 and verse 9 also feature notes that introduce each ending.  Codex L has a note that says “In some, there is also this” before the Shorter Ending, and before verses 9-20, Codex L has a note that says, “There is also this, appearing after ephobounto gar.”

This note echoes a situation in which the scribes were aware of some copies in which the Shorter Ending was present after verse 8, and also aware of some copies in which verses 9-20 were present after verse 8.

In Codex Psi, there is no such note between verse 8 and the Shorter Ending, but after the Shorter Ending, Codex Psi has the same note that is seen in Codex L:  “There is also this, appearing after ephobounto gar.”  

083 is a damaged fragment.  After Mark 16:8, 083 has the closing-title of Mark at the end of a column.  In the next column, the Shorter Ending appears, and then before the beginning of verse 9, 083 has the note:  “There is also this, appearing after ephobounto gar.”  It is possible that 083 also had the same note that is found in Codex L before the Shorter Ending, but that part of the page is not extant, so it can only be said that there appears to have been enough room on the page for that note.

083 thus testifies to a situation in which copyists were aware of copies of Mark in which the text of Mark ended at verse 8, copies in which the text ended with the Shorter Ending, and copies in which the text ended with verses 9-20.

099 is another heavily damaged fragment, from the White Monastery in Egypt, assigned to the 600s or 700s.  After Mark 16:8, 099 had a note that is no longer legible.  This is followed by the Shorter Ending.  Then the text of most of 16:8 is rewritten, beginning at the words eichen gar and continuing to the end of the verse.  Verse 8 is followed immediately by verse 9, and verse 9 is followed by the beginning of verse 10, at which point we reach the end of the fragment. 

Greek-Sahidic Lect 1602
(Image from the digital holdings of the 
Albert Ludwig University of Frieburg)

Now we come to the Greek-Sahidic lectionary 1602.  In this witness, assigned to the 700s, the text of Mark 16:8 comes to a close at the end of a page.  At the beginning of the next page, a note introduces the Shorter Ending.  It says, “In other copies this is not written.” 

Then the Shorter Ending appears.  After the Shorter Ending, there is another note – the note also found in Codex L, Codex Psi, and 083:  estin de kai tauta meta feromena.”  Then, like 099, it repeats the second half of verse 8, beginning with the words eichen gar, and verse 8 is followed by verses 9-20.

So:  Codex L, Codex Psi, 083, and the Greek-Sahidic Lectionary 1602 share the same note after the Shorter Ending:  they all introduce verses 9-20 with the note that says, “Estin de kai tauta meta feromena.”

099 and Greek-Sahidic Lectionary 1602 both repeat the same part of verse 8 before verse 9.

Thus, four of the six Greek witnesses to the Shorter Ending are all connected to the same locale, namely, a location in Egypt. 

Greek-Sahidic Lect 1602
(Image from the digital holdings of the 
Albert Ludwig University of Frieburg)

This leaves two minuscules, 579 and 274, as the only remaining Greek witnesses to the Shorter Ending.  The text of Mark in 579 has Alexandrian characteristics, and it is known for featuring a rare method of dividing the Gospels-text into segments that is shared by Codex Vaticanus.  Even though 579 is from the 1200s, its testimony, in which the Shorter Ending follows verse 8, and the Shorter Ending is followed immediately on the next page by verses 9-20, does not take us away from the influence of a very narrow transmission-line. 

   Minuscule 274 has Mark 16:9-20 in its main text.  Mark 16:9 begins on the same line where verse 8 ends.  The Shorter Ending is featured at the bottom of the page, like a footnote, with a column of five asterisks beside it.  An asterisk beside the end of verse 8 conveys that the Shorter Ending was seen in the text at that point. 

Thus, the Greek evidence points to Egypt as the locale where the Shorter Ending originated, and nothing points anywhere else. 

Versional evidence interlocks with this very well.  The Old Latin Codex Bobbiensis, the only manuscript in which only the Shorter Ending is included after verse 8, almost certainly was produced in Egypt, written by a scribe who did not know Latin very well.    

The Bohairic-Arabic MS Huntington 17, made in 1174, has verses 9-20 in the text, and the Shorter Ending is in the margin.

The Ethiopic version was closely considered by Bruce Metzger in 1980, in the course of a detailed essay in which he retracted the claim that some Ethiopic manuscripts of Mark do not have Mark 16:9-20.  Metzger observed that out of 194 Ethiopic manuscripts consulted by himself and another researcher, 131 included both the Shorter Ending and verses 9-20. 

Some copies of the Harklean Syriac version, made in the early 600s on the basis of manuscripts in Egypt, also feature the Shorter Ending as a supplemental reading; verses 9-20 are in the Syriac text.

            According to E. C. Colwell, even a medieval Armenian manuscript, Etchmiadzin 303, which has verses 9-20 at the end of Mark, managed to include the Shorter Ending as the final verse of the Gospel of Luke. 

            The Shorter Ending clearly had wide distribution in versional transmission-lines.  But those lines all echo, in one way or another, a form of the text that began in Egypt, when verses 9-20 were circulating everywhere else.           

Before moving on to the internal evidence, it should be observed that it is misleading to convey that there were “multiple endings” of the Gospel of Mark, as if four or five different endings were written to continue the narrative after verse 8.

Aside from the abrupt non-ending at verse 8, there are two independent endings of the Gospel of Mark:  one is the Shorter Ending, attested in six [2022 update:  eight] Greek manuscripts, all of which also support verses 9-20.  The other one is verses 9-20.     

The Freer Logion, which was mentioned in the previous lecture, is not a different ending.  It is a textual variant.  Its existence depends upon the previous existence of verses 9-20.  It does not turn into a different ending any more than a whale turns into an eagle when a barnacle attaches itself.

   Likewise, the notes in some members of the family-1 cluster of manuscripts do not turn verses 9-20 into something that is not verses 9-20.  

   And, the inclusion of both the Shorter Ending and verses 9-20 is also not a different ending; it is the combination of the two endings that circulated side-by-side in Egypt. 

   And, as far as I can tell, non-annotated Greek manuscripts in which Mark 16:9-20 is accompanied by asterisks or obeli do not really exist.

   So when someone refers to “multiple endings” as a reason to doubt the genuineness of verses 9-20, the first thing to do is to clarify that in terms of independent endings of the Gospel Mark after verse 8, there are exactly two.

P.S. Thanks to Georgi Parpulov and Daniel Buck for help finding those page-views of Gr.-Sah. Lect 1602!

Video Lecture: Mark 16:9-20: External Evidence

 In Lecture 16 in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism, I describe some external evidence pertaining to the ending of Mark (16:9-20.  Subtitles provide a full outline of the lecture.  Here is a sample of part of this 41-minute lecture in which I begin to examine patristic evidence:

            Another part of the evidence has also experienced a high level of misrepresentation:  the patristic evidence.  Two statements from Bruce Metzger’s Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament have been repeated by many other commentators:  first, “Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of the existence of these verses.”

             Those who encounter this statement might conclude that these two writers’ non-use of Mark 16:9-20 implies that the passage was not in their copies of the Gospel of Mark.  But Clement barely made any clear quotations from the Gospel of Mark outside of chapter 10.  Similarly, Origen does not use a 54-verse segment of text in Mark 1:36-3:16, or a 28-verse segment in Mark 3:19 to 4:11, or a 41-verse segment of text in Mark 5:2 to 5:43. 

             If Origen did not quote from Mark 16:9-20, then those 12 verses are just one of many 12-verse segments of Mark from which Origen does not quote.  But, there is a passage in Origen’s composition Philocalia, chapter 5, that may be based on Mark 16:15-20.     

 EUSEBIUS AND JEROME

             Second, Metzger stated that “Eusebius and Jerome attest that the passage was absent from almost all Greek copies of Mark known to them.” 

   This statement needs major clarification, especially because it has been misrepresented by some commentators.  Ben Witherington III  erroneously stated, “Eusebius and Jerome both tell us these verses were absent from all Greek copies known to them.” 

   In real life, in the composition Ad Marinum, Eusebius responds to a question from Marinus about how Matthew 28:2 can be harmonized with Mark 16:9:  Matthew says that Christ arose “late on the Sabbath,” but Mark says “early in the morning on the first day of the week.”  Already, we see that Marinus’ text of Mark, just as old as Eusebius’ testimony, included Mark 16:9-20.

            Eusebius mentions two ways to resolve the apparent discrepancy:  First, a person could say that the relevant passage is not found in all copies of the Gospel according to Mark, and that the text in the accurate copies ends at the end of verse 8.  Almost all copies of the Gospel of Mark end there. 

            That is what one person might say, rejecting the passage and rendering the question superfluous.  But, Eusebius continued, another view is that both passages should be accepted; it is not the job of faithful readers to pick and choose between them. 

            Granting that this second perspective is correct, the proper thing to do is to interpret the meaning of the passage.  If we draw a distinction in the wording, we would not find it in conflict with the words in Matthew’s account.  We should read the words in Mark, “Rising early in the morning on the first day of the week,” with a pause after “Rising,” for that refers to Christ’s resurrection.   The rest, “early in the morning on the first day of the week,” pertains to the time of His appearance to Mary Magdalene. 

             Three things must be noticed whenever Eusebius’ testimony is mentioned:  First, he does not frame the statement about manuscripts as his own observation; he frames it as something that someone might say.  Second, instead of advising Marinus to reject the passage, Eusebius recommends that he should retain the passage, and he even tells him how to pronounce the passage so as to make it clear that it is harmony with the passage in Matthew 28.

            Third, Eusebius himself quotes Mark 16:9 further along in the same composition.  Once he states that “some copies” of Mark say that Jesus had cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene, and once, he says that Jesus cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene “according to Mark.”

            It should also be pointed out that nobody, in the decades after the Diocletian persecution, had the means to survey how many manuscripts existed throughout the Roman Empire to support particular readings.

            What about Jerome?  It should first be acknowledged that Jerome included Mark 16:9-20 in the Vulgate Gospels, which he specifically stated that he prepared on the basis of ancient Greek manuscripts.  Jerome himself was born in the mid-300s, so we may reckon that these Greek manuscripts were older than that.

            Again:  Metzger’s statement is, “Eusebius and Jerome attest that the passage was absent from almost all Greek copies of Mark known to them.”  Let’s test that. 

            The relevant statement from Jerome is found in his composition Ad Hedibiam, from about the year 407, in which, among other things, he responds to a broad question about harmonization-difficulties in the resurrection-accounts in the Gospels.  In the course of his response, he breaks down the question into a series of Questions and Answers, clearly patterned on Eusebius’ earlier work to Marinus.

             Jerome, like Eusebius, says that there are two ways to solve the question.  Jerome, like Eusebius, says that one way is to reject the passage in Mark, on the grounds that it is absent in nearly all of the Greek copies, and because it seems to narrate things that contradict the other accounts.  And Jerome goes on to say that Matthew and Mark have both told the truth, and that when the text is read with a pause after “Jesus arising,” before “on the first day of the week in the morning appeared to Mary Magdalene,” the difficulty goes away.

            Jerome is plainly instructing Hedibia to retain the verses.

            This is how D. C. Parker explained the situation in 1997:  Jerome’s letter to Hedibia “is simply a translation with some slight changes of what Eusebius had written.  It is thus worthless for our purposes.”  And Parker concluded:  “Jerome is no evidence for the Short Ending.”

            John Burgon had said basically the same thing, over a hundred years earlier:  Jerome was saving time and effort by condensing part of Eusebius’ earlier composition in his letter to Hedibia – just as he had acknowledged, in his Epistle 75, that he sometimes dictated to his secretary what he had borrowed from other writers.

             But this is not all:  in 417, in Against the Pelagians, Jerome pictured a champion of orthodoxy explaining where he had seen the interpolation that is now known as the Freer Logion:  he located this interpolation “In certain exemplars, and especially in Greek codices, near the end of the Gospel of Mark” – and then he quotes almost all of Mark 16:14, and then presents the interpolation. 

            How is it that Jerome says that he saw the Freer Logion after Mark 16:14 “especially in Greek codices,” and also say that almost all Greek codices lack Mark 16:9-20?  Because the first statement is drawn from his own experience, while the second one was extracted from Eusebius’ composition, in which it was framed as something that someone might say.

 . 

Video Lecture 15: Numerals in Greek New Testament Manuscripts

         

Lecture 15:  Numerals                 

  In Lecture 15 of my ongoing series of video-lectures on YouTube, I discuss Greek numerals, and describe several textual variants in which numerals are involved, at John 19:14, Luke 24:13, Mark 6:41, Acts 27:37, Luke 10:1 and 10:17, Acts 13:33, and Revelation 13:18.

        

               I also describe the Eusebian Canons, and mention a few points in the text where they indicate what kind of text Eusebius was using when he made them.
                (27 minutes 10 seconds) 

An excerpt:

            Before we focus the next two lectures on two major textual variants, there is one small concern that still needs to be covered:  textual variants that involve Greek numerals.  In Greek, numerals were not always written out in full; in some manuscripts, they were represented by letters of the Greek alphabet that represented specific quantities.        

            This was not some sort of secret code; this was the ordinary way of writing numerals in Greek.  This chart shows the 24 usual letters of the Greek alphabet, expanded by the inclusion of three extra letters stau (or, digamma), koppa,  and sampi.  Arranged in three rows of 9 letters, you can see the numerical value that was assigned to each letter: 

Α = 1          Ι = 10          Ρ = 100

Β = 2          Κ = 20        Σ = 200

Γ = 3          Λ = 30        Τ = 300

Δ = 4          Μ = 40       Υ = 400

Ε = 5          Ν = 50        Φ = 500

Ϝ, ϛ = 6      Ξ = 60        Χ = 600

Ζ = 7          Ο = 70        Ψ = 700

Η = 8          Π = 80        Ω, ω = 800

Θ = 9          Ϙ, Ϟ = 90   ϡ = 900

             A horizontal line was added above these letters to show that they were being used as numerals.  Using these letters to represent quantities, any sum from 1 to 999 could be written using no more than three letters.

            With a mark to the lower left of a letter, it signified an amount of thousands.  In manuscripts, large numbers sometimes appear in colophons, or notes, at the end of a book, where they refer to the year in which the manuscript was made.  The standard dating-method in colophons was not a calculation of the number of years from the birth of Christ, but a calculation of the number of years from the creation of the world, which was believed to have happened in 5,508 B.C.  So if we were to encounter a Greek manuscript with a colophon stating that the manuscript was made in the 6,508^th year of the world, we would probably feel justified if we gave it a production-date around the year 1000.

One of the earliest textual variants mentioned by a patristic writer involves the numerals in Mark 15:25 and John 19:14.  Mark 15:25 says, “Now it was the third hour when they crucified Him,” that is, about 9:00 in the morning.  But in John 19:14, John states that it was “about the sixth hour” when Pilate was yet to deliver a sentence regarding Jesus’ case, before he finally handed Jesus over to be crucified in verse 16. 

            Some interpreters have reckoned that John used a different method of hour-counting, starting at midnight, whereas for Mark,  the day have 12 hours and began at the beginning of hour #1.  Thus Pilate could be making his decision at around the sixth hour – 6:00 a.m. – and after he handed Jesus over to be crucified, some time elapsed, during which Jesus was whipped, given a crown of thorns, beaten, and mocked, and was led through the streets of Jerusalem, until, at about the third hour – 9:00 a.m. – He was crucified. 

            But a different solution was proposed by the early writer Ammonius, whose proposal was later echoed by Eusebius of Caesarea in the early 300s, and by Epiphanius of Salamis in the late 300s, and by Jerome.  Ammonius explained that whereas the letter gamma ought to be written, representing the number “three,” so as to refer to the third hour, a copyist wrote the similar-looking letter “gabex,” or digamma, so as to refer instead to the sixth hour. 

Epiphanius indicates that Clement of Alexandria and Origen endorsed this solution to the harmonization-problem.  It is also attributed to Peter of Alexandria, who was martyred in 311.  In Peter of Alexandria’s testimony, preserved in very late manuscripts as part of the Chronicon Paschale, it is stated that in the text that was written by the hand of the evangelist, which is still preserved at Ephesus, and is adored there by the faithful, the reading in John 19:14 is “about the third hour,” and this is the reading in the correct books.

 We don’t know if Peter of Alexandria was making an informed statement or not, but this is interesting evidence no matter how you slice it.  In a small number of manuscripts, the text in John 19:14 supports the reading “the third hour,” including Codex L, Codex Delta, and minuscule 72.  It is significant that in the vast majority of manuscripts, copyists did not give in to the temptation to alter a single letter, or numeral, and thus remove the apparent difficulty. 

Another interesting textual variant involving a numeral occurs in Luke 24:13:  how far was the distance between Jerusalem and Emmaus?  The reading “60 stadia” has broad and early support, and represents a distance of a little less than seven miles.  Codices Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Bezae, Codex W, and most minuscules support this reading, along with the Vulgate, the Peshitta, and the Sahidic versions.  The copyist of Papyrus 75 wrote “60” as an overlined letter, Ξ (chi). 

But some manuscripts, including Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Π, support the reading “160 stadia.”  This was also initially the reading in Codex N.  It is supported by the Armenian version, by the Palestinian Aramaic version, by  the Latin Codex Fuldensis, from the mid-500s, by a small number of Greek minuscules, and by a significant cluster of Arabic manuscripts, and it is endorsed by a margin-note in minuscule 34.

This reading probably reflects a belief that the city of Nicopolis and the village of Emmaus were the same place.  Nicopolis had been destroyed by forces under the Roman general Quintilius Varus in 4 B.C., and it was rebuilt after a group of citizens, led by the patristic writer Julius Africanus, successfully petitioned for its restoration in the days of the emperors Elaga-balus and Severus Alexander, in the 220s and early 230s. 

            Writing after this restoration of the city, Eusebius of Caesarea advocated the view that Nicopolis and Emmaus are the same place in his composition Onomasticon.  Jerome, who made a Latin translation of Eusebius’ Onomasticon, expressed the same view in his Epistle 108 and in his composition Lives of Illustrious Men.  However, 160 stadia is more than 18 miles.   That is a long distance for two people to cover in an afternoon, walking from Jerusalem, and then cover again in the evening, going back to Jerusalem – but it is possible. 

             The view that Nicopolis and Emmaus were synonymous was not exclusive to Caesarea, but seeing it supported in Codex Sinaiticus augments the case that Codex Sinaiticus was produced in that location.

Another interesting textual variant involving numerals appears in Mark 6:41.  The original text, with very broad support, refers specifically to the five loaves and the two fish.  But in Papyrus 45, for some reason, the copyist did not write “five” and he did not write “two” in this verse, even though his text does include the same numbers in verse 38.  Possibly in his exemplar, these words were written as numbers, and the lines above the numerals were very short, and he misunderstood them as if they were dots, that is, as if they were marks that meant, “do not write this.”

Codex Vaticanus is another important manuscript with an unusual reading involving a numeral.  In Acts 27:37, where most manuscripts state that there were 276 souls on board the ship that was about to be shipwrecked.  Codex Vaticanus, however, has “about seventy-six” written out in full.   This is also supported by the Sahidic version.  What has happened here? 

John Burgon perceived the answer:  basically, after a transposition of the words in this part of the verse, the number 276, written as a numeral, that is, as Sigma, Omicron, Stau, followed the phrase “in the ship.”   The letter omega, and the end of the word for “ship,” ploíw, was misread as if it was part of a word, hōs, meaning, “about,” and this left the overlined letters omicron, 70, and stau, six, creating the reading “about 76.”

Burgon also noted, from a common-sense perspective, “Although one might say, ‘about seventy,’ or ‘about eighty,’ is it not obvious to everyone that ‘about 76’ is an impossible expression?”  Fortunately, although Westcott and Hort adopted Vaticanus’ reading, against all other Greek evidence, Burgon’s cogent case against Vaticanus’ reading was favored by later writers, including F. F. Bruce and Bruce Metzger.

Another textual variant that involves numerals is in Luke chapter 10, in verses 1 and 17:  does the Lord sent out 70 individuals, or 72?  The Byzantine reading, 70, is supported by Codex Alexandrinus, Codex W, and almost all other Greek manuscripts.  The Western reading, 72, is supported by Codex Bezae, most of the Old Latin copies, and probably by the Sinaitic Syriac.  The Alexandrian witnesses are divided:  Sinaiticus and Codex C and Codex L support “70,” but Vaticanus and Papyrus 75 support “72.”

Papyrus 45 is not extant in Luke 10:1, but it is extant in verse 17.  Unfortunately, its testimony was misrepresented when the manuscript was first published, and the first printings of the 28^th edition of the Nestle-Aland text continued to misrepresent it, as if it supports “72.”  This mistake was only recently corrected.  In real life, Papyrus 45 supports “70,” as Bruce Metzger has observed:  the letter Omicron, representing “70,” is not followed by another numeral, but by an ordinary space-filling mark.       

The early writer Tertullian also supports “70,” and he drew a parallel to the numbers in Exodus 15:27, in his composition Against Marcion, at the beginning of chapter 24 of Book 4.  Tertullian says that the 12 springs of water at Elim correspond to the 12 apostles, and the 70 palm trees at Elim correspond to the 70 disciples.

The scope of the support for the reading “70” is sufficient to decide the question.  “72” probably originated as an allegorical representation of the Gentile nations, as listed in the Septuagint in Genesis chapter 10. 

Another textual variation:  In Acts 13:33, where almost all Greek manuscripts say that Paul is quoting from the second Psalm, Codex Bezae says that Paul quoted from the first Psalm.  Somehow this reading survived to the early 1500s in the early editions of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, and was featured in William Tyndale’s English translation in 1526.  It is indirectly supported by some patristic writers.  When Tertullian quoted Psalm 2:7 in Against Marcion, Book 4, chapter 22, he does not describe it as part of the second Psalm; he says that he is quoting from the first Psalm. 

The minority-reading in Codex D may echo the influence of an early tradition that what we know as Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 were considered a single Psalm, with what we know as Psalm 1 being a sort of Preface.  This tradition seems to have had an effect on how the Latin text of Psalms was arranged in the text used by Tertullian in the late 100s, and by Cyprian in the mid-200s, and even as late as the Venerable Bede in the late 600s and early 700s. 

            The best-supported Greek reading is clearly “the second Psalm.”  Some early translators of Acts into Latin probably were comfortable paraphrasing Paul’s reference so as to adopt the arrangement that he expected his readers to recognize.   

Seventh, the most famous textual variant in the New Testament that involves a numeral is without doubt the one that occurs in Revelation 13:18, where the number of the beast is given as 666 in most manuscripts, including Papyrus 47.  But in a few important copies, including Codex C and Papyrus 115, the number in Revelation 13:18 is “616,” written as chi-iota-stau. 

The early patristic writer Irenaeus made a detailed comment on this passage, in what may be the first mention of a textual variant, in Against Heresies, Book Four, chapters 29-30.

            Irenaeus made several guesses about the name that is represented with the numerical value of 666:  Euanthas was one guess, Lateinos was another one, and Teitan was another one.  This last possibility, Teitan, was the option preferred by Irenaeus, but he emphasized that it was only a guess, stating that if it were necessary for people in his time to know the name, it would have been revealed in John’s vision, instead of just the number of the name. 

Irenaeus thus shows that he used the text with “666,” because in each of these names, the value of the letters adds up to a total of six hundred and sixty and six.  And as if more evidence were needed, he also compared this number to Noah’s age before the floor (600 years) and the dimensions of Nebuchadnezzar’s idol in Daniel 3:1:  60 cubits high and 6 cubits wide.

In chapter 30 of Book 5 of Against Heresies, Irenaeus’ statements get even more detailed:  he affirms that 666 is the number that is found “in all the most approved and ancient copies,” and that it is endorsed by “those men who saw John face to face.”  When we consider that when Irenaeus wrote, the book of Revelation was less than 100 years old, this is extremely weighty testimony.

            Irenaeus also stated, “I do not know how it is that some have erred following the ordinary mode of speech, and have reduced the middle number in the name, deducting the amount of fifty from it, so that instead of six tens-units,  they will have it that there is but one.”  To put it another way, Irenaeus refers to approved and ancient copies that support “666,” but he also is aware of copies that have the reading “616.”

He says, “I am inclined to think that this occurred through the fault of the copyists, as it tends to happen, since numbers also are expressed by letters; so that the Greek letter which expresses the number sixty was easily expanded into the letter iota of the Greeks.”

Irenaeus does not say precisely how the letter chi (Xi, Ξ) be accidentally changed by copyists into iota.  Iota is a straight vertical line, like the letter “I,” but chi is very different. 

            It seems unlikely that a copyist could accidentally make 616 out of 666.  It may be more likely that someone believed that John was referring to the concept of “Nero redivivus,” a sort of urban legend that the Emperor Nero, who died in the year 68, was actually still alive and would one day return, leading an army from the east.  There are some references to this belief in the composition that is known as the Sibylline Oracles, and in about the year 420, Saint Augustine, in City of God, Book 20, mentions a belief that he regarded as an audacious conjecture: 

            Commenting on Second Thessalonians 2:7, Augustine stated that some individuals believe that this verse refers to Nero, whose deeds already seemed to be as the deeds of Antichrist.  And thus, he continues, “some suppose that he shall rise again and be Antichrist.  Others, again, suppose that he is not even dead, but that he was concealed that he might be supposed to have been killed, and that he now lives in concealment, in the vigor of the same age which he had reached when he was believed to have perished, and will live until he is revealed in his own time and restored to him kingdom.”

It is unlikely that anyone encountering the text of Revelation in Greek would stray from the reading “666,” which fits a pattern in which the Antichrist mimics the true Christ; the name “Jesus” in Greek has a numerical value of 888.  But someone encountering the text in some other language might look for an alternative explanation.  If one writes “Neron Caesar” in Hebrew consonants, their value adds up to 666.  If one drops the Hebrew letter nun, so as to correspond to a Latin form of Nero’s name, the name’s value thus decreases by 50, yielding the value of 616.

            This is a somewhat complicated theory.  But it might be how the reading “616” was created – via an interpretation that the Antichrist –  either literally or thematically or typologically or some other way – was expected to be the Emperor Nero.

Finally, a consideration of numerals in Greek New Testament manuscripts would be incomplete without a description of the Eusebian Canons and Sections.  Technically, the Eusebian Canons and Sections are part of the para-text, or meta-text – not part of the text itself.  They are a guide to cross-references in the Gospels. 

            At the beginning of many manuscripts of the Gospels, instead of jumping right into the text, and even before a chapter-list appears, there is a composition called “Ad Carpianus,” which is Eusebius’ brief explanation of how to use his cross-reference system for the Gospels.  In a few manuscripts this material is presented within a fairly unusual frame, shaped like a quatrefoil, or a symetrical rounded cross.  The Eusebian Canons and Ad Carpianus are included in the 27^th edition of the Nestle-Aland compilation.

Eusebius began by mentioning that he got the idea for a cross-reference system for the Gospels from Ammonius the Alexandrian, who had arranged the text of the Gospel of Matthew with the parallel-passages from the other Gospels alongside it.  Eusebius wanted to keep each Gospel-account intact, and so instead of dividing up the texts of Mark, Luke, and John, he gave each pericopé its own number, and then made a ten-part chart, in which the parallel-passage were listed, by their numbers, side by side.  

            There are ten parts to this list:
            ● The first one contains the list of passages for which there are parallels in Matthew Mark, Luke, and John.

            ● The second one lists passages, or sections, for which there are parallels in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

            ● The third one lists passages for which there are parallels in Matthew, Luke, and John.

            ● The fourth lists passages for which there are parallels in Matthew, Mark, and John.

            ● The fifth lists passages for which there are parallels in Matthew and Luke.

            ● The sixth lists passages for which there are parallels in Matthew and Mark.

            ● The seventh lists passages for which there are parallels in Matthew and John.

            ● The eighth lists passages for which there are parallels in Mark and Luke.

            ● The ninth lists passages for which there are parallels in Luke and John.

            ● The tenth lists passages that do not have parallels, but which are unique in each Gospel.           

            The same numbers are written in the margin alongside each passage.  Accompanying these numbers, called the Section-numbers, is a Canon-number, written in red, which identifies the list, one through ten, in which the passage is found.  If you see a number from 1-10 in the margin written in red below the Section-number, you will know which list to consult to find the number of the passage. 

 

             So, if you open a Gospels-book to any passage, and want to see what the other Gospel-writers wrote about the same event, then after you find the Canon-number, written in red, you can consult that list, and see the numbers of the parallel-passages in the other Gospels.  Then by finding those numbers in the margins in those Gospels, you can read the parallel-passages themselves.  

 After this introductory guide, the Canon-Tables themselves occupy several pages.  These can be very plain, or in some cases spectacularly ornate, with complex colorful golden designs, and paintings of animals, birds, and other decorations in the margins.  In some cases the artistic effort that was given to the Eusebian Canons resulted in the theft of these pages, as works of ark.  The tradition of decorating the Eusebian Canons is abundantly shown not only in Greek manuscripts but also in Latin, Ethiopic, and, especially, Armenian manuscripts.

             Although Eusebius got the idea for a cross-reference system for the Gospels from the earlier writer Ammonius of Alexandria, he clearly did not closely follow Ammonius’ Matthew-centered system.  As John Burgon pointed out in 1871, in a detailed Appendix to his book about the last 12 verses of Mark, Canon 8 and Canon 9 cannot have been part of a Matthew-centered cross-reference system.  In addition, when it is noticed that Mark has 21 unique sections, Luke has 72 unique sections, John has 97 unique sections, and 24 sections are shared by Mark and Luke, and 21 sections are shared by Luke and John, this makes a total of 225 sections which have no parallel in Matthew and thus could not be part of a Matthew-centered cross-reference system.

The Eusebian Canons also have an impact on the testimony of Eusebius regarding the last 12 verses of Mark.  Eusebius is often quoted as if he said, in the composition Ad Marinum, that Mark 16:9-20 was absent from almost all manuscripts, but in real life, his statement is much more nuanced:  he wrote that that was one of several things that something that someone might say about the passage.  Eusebius himself instructed Marinus to retain the passage, and gave instructions about how Mark 16:9 was to be read, with a pause between “Rising” and “early on the first day of the week.”  And further along in the same composition, Eusebius quoted from Mark 16:9.  So, when he wrote Ad Marinum, Eusebius appears to favor the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20.

             But according to a note that appears in some members of the textual cluster known as family-1, Mark 16:9-20 is not included in the Eusebian Canons.  Specifically, in codices 1 and 1582, although Eusebian Section-numbers appear in the margin alongside verses 9-20, these two manuscripts, along with the manuscripts 205, 2886, and 209, have a prominent note before Mark 16:9, which states, “In some copies, the Gospel comes to a close here, and so do the Canons of Eusebius of Pamphilus.  But in many, this also appears.”

So it is possible that at some point after advising Marinus to keep Mark 16:9-20, Eusebius might have changed his mind, and decided not to include these verses in the text upon which he based the Eusebian Canons.

The Eusebian Canons occasionally have text-critical significance where they testify to the presence or absence of other specific passages.  For example, Luke 22:43-44 is not in Papyrus 75 or Codex Vaticanus or Codex Alexandrinus or Codex W, but in the 100s, Justin and Irenaeus both refer to the passage.  In the Eusebian Canons Luke 22:43-44 is included as Section #283, implying that it was in the text that was used by Eusebius.

            Mark 15:28 is not in Codex Vaticanus, or Sinaiticus, or Codex D, and is also missing in over 100 minuscules – but it is listed as Section #216 in the Eusebian Canons.

            And, by not featuring an entry for Matthew 27:49 and John 19:34 in Canon Nine, Eusebius shows that his text did not contain a parallel-passage between those two passages.  In Codex Vaticanus and in Codex Sinaiticus, Matthew 27:49 is expanded so as to create a parallel between those two verses; the Alexandrian Text of Matthew 27:49 says that before Jesus died, someone came and pierced Him in the side with a spear, and blood and water flowed from the wound. 

            By not including a reference to this reading in his cross-reference system, where it would have belonged in Canon 7, Eusebius shows that his manuscripts did not have this reading.  This is a very strong indication that Eusebius did not supervise the production of Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.

Finally, although a little anecdote about a detail in the early Christian composition The Epistle of Barnabas is not directly related to the New Testament, it might illustrate the kind of figurative interpretations some early Christians could give to some numerals.   The Epistle of Barnabas was probably written in the early second century.  It appears in Codex Sinaiticus, after the book of Revelation. 

            In its ninth chapter, the author refers to Genesis 14:14, emphasizing the exact number of the men under Abraham’s command who went to rescue Lot, who had been captured by a foreign confederation:  three hundred and eighteen.  The number “eighteen” was written as the Greek letters Iota and Eta, the same letters at the beginning of the name “Jesus,” or “Iēsous.”  The remaining amount, 300, was written in Greek as the letter Tau, which looks like the beams of a cross.  And thus, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas implied, even in the days of Abraham, we have an abstract picture of how Jesus, on the cross, accomplished the deliverance of the captive.

Video Lecture: Testing the Tests

Testing the Tests

Now at YouTube: Lecture 14 - Testing the Tests In this 32-minute video, I review some shortcomings of earlier canons, or guidelines, of textual criticism (especially "prefer the shorter reading"), and propose some new ones. (This includes a brief look at twelve textual contests.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgCEc3bjNc0

Video Lecture: Challenging Hort

Lecture 13:  Challenging Hort

Now at YouTube:

In lecture 13 in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism, I describe some discoveries made in the 1900s that posed serious problems for the sustainability of Hort’s theory of the Lucianic recension. (32 minutes)

Here is an excerpt:

In Papyrus 45, in the fragments of chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 of the Gospel of Mark, there are at least 17 readings that are not supported by the leading manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text and Western Text, but which are supported by the Byzantine Text.  I will mention some of them: 

① In the closing phrase of Mark 6:45, Papyrus 45 supports the Byzantine reading, disagreeing with the reading that is supported by the Alexandrian Text and the Western text.

② In Mark 7:5, Papyrus 45 supports the Byzantine reading that means “answering,” which is not supported by the Alexandrian and Western Text.

③ At the beginning of Mark 7:12, Papyrus 45 supports the Byzantine reading “And,” which is not in the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text and Western Text.

④ In Mark 7:30, Papyrus 45 supports the word-order in the Byzantine Text, disagreeing with the word-order in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae.

⑤ In Mark 7:31, after the word “Tyre,” Papyrus 45 supports the Byzantine reading.  Both the form and meaning of this passage are different in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Codex Bezae.

⑥ In Mark 7:32, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text do not have the word “and,” where it appears in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae.

⑦ In Mark 7:35, Papyrus 45 has the word “immediately.” The Byzantine Text has this word here too.  But the Alexandrian Text and the Western Text do not.

⑧ In Mark 7:36, Papyrus 45 is difficult to read but it appears to support a reading that agrees with the Byzantine Text and disagrees with the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text and Western Text.

⑨ In Mark 8:19, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text share the same word-order, disagreeing with the word-order in the Alexandrian Text and also disagreeing with the word-order in Codex D. 

⑩ In Mark 9:6, the wording in Papyrus 45 agrees with the Byzantine Text, disagreeing with Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae.

⑪ In Mark 9:20, the word-order in Papyrus 45 agrees with the Byzantine Text, disagreeing with the reading in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and also disagreeing with a different reading in Codex Bezae.

⑫ And, again in Mark 9:20, the Byzantine Text has a reading that is supported by Papyrus 45 but which is not found in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, or Codex Bezae.

            Now, this is a long way from proving that the fully formed Byzantine Text existed in Egypt in the early 200s.  But Papyrus 45 is from Egypt; it is not from a locale where we would expect the Byzantine Text to be found.  The thing to see is that in the world according to Hort – a world in which the Byzantine Text is a combination of Alexandrian and Western readings –  none of these readings should exist before the late 200s. 

            If Papyrus 45 had been discovered before 1881, nobody would have dreamed of proposing a theory that the non-Alexandrian, non-Western readings found in the Byzantine Text did not exist before the lifetime of Lucian of Antioch.  If anyone had said that, people would look at readings such as the ones I just listed, and say, “What about these?”

            Support for distinctly Byzantine readings in Papyrus 45 does not stop in Mark 6-9.  The fragmentary pages of Papyrus 45 in Luke 10-13 have a dozen distinctly Byzantine readings.  For example:

① In Luke 10:39, Papyrus 45 agrees with the reading “Jesus,” where Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae have the reading “Lord.”  Papyrus 75 also reads “Jesus.” 

            Notice the lack of a conflation in the Byzantine Text here.  It would have been very easy to create the reading “the Lord Jesus” if the Byzantine Text came from someone telling himself, “When it doubt don’t throw it out.”

② In Luke 10:42, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text share the same word-order that is not supported in the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian or Western forms of the text.  In addition, where there is damage to Papyrus 45, Papyrus 75 has the Greek equivalent of the word “from” before “her” at the end of the verse, agreeing with the Byzantine Text.  “From” is not supported by Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, or Bezae.

③ In Luke 11:12, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text share the same word-order at the beginning of the verse.  The Alexandrian Text has a different reading and the Western Text has another different reading.

④ In Luke 11:33, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text have the Greek word  φέγγος instead of the word φως, which is in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae.  I note that in the Society of Biblical Literature’s Greek New Testament, compiled by Michael Holmes, φέγγος has been adopted.

⑤ In Luke 12:5, Papyrus 45 supports the same word-order found in the Byzantine Text.  Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and Bezae have the opposite word-order.

⑥ In Luke 12:22, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text include a word that means “to you.”  Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and Bezae do not.

⑦ In Luke 12:30, Papyrus 45 has a reading that is in the Byzantine Text but Vaticanus and Sinaiticus have a longer reading, and Codex D has a shorter reading. 

⑧ In Luke 12:31, Papyrus 45 and the Byzantine Text refer to the kingdom of God.  Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae refer to “His kingdom,” and Papyrus 75 refers to just the kingdom.

            Also worth mentioning is a reading in Luke 11:13 where the text refers to “good gifts.”  Papyrus 45 and the Textus Receptus share the same word-order here.  Yes; in Luke 11:13, the reading in the Textus Receptus is supported by the oldest manuscript of the passage, against the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian, Western, and Byzantine forms of the text.

            These are the kinds of readings – in manuscripts made before Lucian – that researcher Harry Sturz collected and listed by the dozens in a dissertation in 1967, just a few years after Bruce Metzger had written that it is a fact that Lucian of Antioch made the Byzantine Text. 

            Sturz’s findings were eventually published as a book, The Byzantine Text-type & New Testament Textual Criticism.  Sturz showed that not only  Papyrus 45, but also Papyrus 46, Papyrus 66, Papyrus 75, and others, share some readings with the Byzantine Text that are not supported in the flagship manuscripts that represent the Alexandrian and Western Text. 

            This demonstrates that it is incorrect to assume that readings which only have Byzantine support ought to be set aside as late readings. But this assumption is at the very foundation of the approach used by Westcott and Hort.  Hort did not have any of these papyri.  If he had, he would not have proposed that non-Alexandrian, non-Western readings in the Byzantine Text are no earlier than the lifetime of Lucian of Antioch.