Textual Variants You Never See in Bibles

[patrick457]

At the same time, I think you have to remember that Philo’s and Josephus’ descriptions of Pilate are themselves probably exaggerated, and so must not be taken at face value. (Especially Philo’s.) Both descriptions are essentially that of Pilate as seen through Jewish eyes. While of course the people of Judaea may have seen Pilate as a brutal, meddlesome interferer, that’s not an automatic indication that Pilate is a monster who routinely killed Jews and Samaritans just for laughs.

Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle: it’s hardly likely that Pilate was the weak-willed man people infer from the gospels, but it’s hardly likely that he was the inhuman, sadistic butcher people infer from Philo and Josephus either. I think this webpage here does a nice job of balancing the different portraits of Pilate.

To sum what I wrote: I think there’s a double standard here in how many modern scholars treat Pilate (not all; there are some out there who went beyond the one-liners and have done outstanding work on the man: Warren Carter, Helen Bond). When it comes to the New Testament Pilate, the evangelists simply invented it, it’s unreliable. But when it comes to Philo’s and Josephus’ Pilate, it’s the literal truth. What the heck?

Why can’t it be both? The evangelists had their reasons/motives for portraying Pilate the way they did, and Philo and Josephus had their own reasons/motives for portraying Pilate the way they did.

I think most bibles do give a notation at the end of Mark, noting that the last verses are an addition not found in earlier versions of that gospel that we have…

.

And so I ain’t talkin’ 'bout that ending.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

• I don’t think Christ is supposed to have “harrowed hell” (hell probably meaning hades) until after He was taken down from the Cross and laid in the tomb.
• What is true of all writings is that they are intended to tell us what they are intended to tell us. “Modern critics” can’t get any more “fly on the wall” than the Gospel writers’ compilations, neither for that matter can television cameramen.

 

[patrick457]

• I don’t think Christ is supposed to have “harrowed hell” (hell probably meaning hades) until after He was taken down from the Cross and laid in the tomb.

That’s the common interpretation nowadays (thanks to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus), but whoever wrote The Questions of Bartholomew apparently had a different timeline in mind: Jesus harrows hell during the darkness of the crucifixion. There’s another Bartholomew-related work (the Coptic Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Bartholomew the Apostle, 5th-6th c.), where the timeline is: Jesus is visited by Death in His tomb, He awakes, mounts a chariot of cherubim, descends to Hades, defeats demons, takes all the holy souls (leaving only Judas, Cain, and Herod), comes back to earth, appears to the women at the tomb, then ascends to heaven with the souls He rescued.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

That’s the common interpretation nowadays (thanks to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus), but whoever wrote The Questions of Bartholomew apparently had a different timeline in mind: Jesus harrows hell during the darkness of the crucifixion. There’s another Bartholomew-related work (the Coptic Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Bartholomew the Apostle, 5th-6th c.), where the timeline is: [etc].

1. Do you or other forum members know the role the “Gospel of Nicodemus” in confirming any interpretations? I thought Scriptures were confirmed by the wealth of verbal testimony passed on by Christ and the Apostles.
2. Likewise the two works apparently referring to Bartholomew and why did they prove less influential?

Do those have any real connection with Nicodemus and Bartholomew?

The three books according to what I have read contain at best numerous merely vaguely pious-sounding inventions that don’t seem to chime with other Scriptures in the way that the New Testament does. They would tend to interfere with the development of doctrine.

At any rate He did it between dying (being buried very soon after) and rising. If He took His body with Him when rising wouldn’t it be more typical of Him to take His body with Him when harrowing hell?

 

[patrick457]

3.) The Pre-Mortem Piercing of Jesus

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But another, taking a spear, pierced his side, and water and blood came out. (ἄλλος δὲ λαβὼν λόγχην ἒνυξεν αὐτοῦ τὴν πλευράν, καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ὖδορ καὶ αἳμα / accepta lancea pupugit latus eius et exit aqua et sanguis)

A number of ‘Alexandrian’ manuscripts of Matthew (three of them are the important 4th-5th century manuscripts Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Ephraemi) and a number of other ancient versions - including a few Latin manuscripts (mainly Irish ones), the 6th century Palestinian Syriac version - have an interpolation between verses 49 and 50 that describes the piercing of Jesus’ side. Interestingly, the placement of this interpolation makes it appear as if Jesus was speared before His death, which would contradict the well-known version in John, where the spear thrust was apparently performed post-mortem (John 19:32-34).

You never see this in most Bibles, but there are a handful of Bibles out there which do have this variant - though they’re quite rare. (As for translations which have this interpolation in the text, I know only of two: Ferrar Fenton’s translation and James Moffatt’s translation, both of which are based on Westcott and Hort’s Greek NT, which in turn is based mainly on Codex Vaticanus, which has this variant as noted. I’ve heard some editions of the RSV have it in a footnote.)

(Fenton) Then from mid·day until three o’clock in the afternoon darkness spread over all the land; and about three o’clock Jesus called out with a loud voice, exclaiming, “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?” that is, “O My God! My God! to what have You forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders, on hearing that, remarked, “He seems to call for Elijah.” And at once one from among them ran, and taking a sponge, filled it with sour wine; and placing it upon a cane, gave Him a drink. But the others called out, “Let Him alone! Let us see whether Elijah will come and save Him!” But another taking a spear pierced His side, when blood and water came out. Jesus, however, having again called out with a loud voice, resigned His spirit.

(Moffatt) Now from twelve o’clock to three o’clock darkness covered all the land, and about three o’clock Jesus gave a loud cry, “Eli, eli, lema sabachthani” (that is, My God, my God, why forsake me?). On hearing this, some of the bystanders said, “He is calling for Elijah.” One of them ran off at once and took a sponge, which he soaked in vinegar and put on the end of a stick, to give him a drink. But the others said, “Stop, let us see if Elijah does come to save him!” (Seizing a lance, another pricked his side, and out came water and blood.) Jesus again uttered a loud scream and gave up his spirit.

 

[steve53]

Regarding Pilate, Hagan with his late crucifixion date comes to some interesting conclusions about Pilate that fit in with all the historical narratives. I will post more later.

 

[steve53]

We see a very different Pilate in the Gospels- the reluctant executioner-that is seen in Josephus and Philo, where Pilate is cruel and brutish.

With Philo, remember that Philo was writing for Emperor Caligula in A.D. 40, who was planning on putting a statue of himself in the inner courtyard of the Second Temple.

That would have meant war.

So Philo put Pilate in the worst light possible for his early acts against the Jews, and put Tiberius in best light possible- Tiberius used diplomacy whenever he could- military action was a last resort and Tiberius respected foreign religions.

Pilate’s first Passover as Prefect was A.D 27. Then, Sejanus had great powers over Tiberius, and had just persuaded Tiberius to center out of Capri only a year earlier. Tiberius never would set foot in Rome again. Tiberius essentially let Sejanus run the empire.

It is quite likely that Pilate was Sejanus’ man from the start, and very anti-semitic, like Sejanus. Also, an old politician named Lamia was the President of Syria, who was Pilate’s superior and answered only to Tiberius. Sejanus either knew, or made sure that Lamia spent all of his time in Rome rather than Antioch. Lamia let others run the show in the East while he collected the bribes and pay in Rome.

The point of all this is that Sejanus was planning a revolution, and Pilate was his guy in the East. But the conspiracy failed in the fall of A.D. 31, and Sejanus and thousands of others were executed.

Tiberius probably was close to removing Pilate but did not- Judea was a tricky enough place to rule. But certainly Pilate was kept on as short leash- and Pilate knew it.

Hagan argues that Pilate changed after Sejanus was executed- he had to impress Tiberius to keep his life and position. Before the rebellion, Pilate was antagonistic to the Jews routinely. After Sejanus’ death, Tiberius issued a proclamation in A.D. 32 that the Jews should not be persecuted. Now we see a new Pilate- one who planned civic improvements such as an aqueduct system for Jerusalem. Apparently he had hoped to use part of the Corban for the project- maybe it had been promised by the High Priesthood who wanted a water supply to the Second Temple- but then the Jews protested and there was violence. All this after A.D. 32.

So in A.D. 36 at the Passover, Pilate knew he would benefit little by executing one so harmless as Jesus just to placate the Priests- Tiberius would not like it. But he in the end gave in. The Gospels probably accurately portray his attitude, while Philo and Josephus concern themselves with the earlier Pilate- Sejanus’ man.

 

[Augustine3]

I think it’s important to point out that those hundreds of thousands of variants are not all unique isolated variants. The majority are a group of the same handed down.

What I mean by that is say there is a variant A. The variant A is copied over to the next manuscript. That’s considered 2 variants and that’s copied to the next manuscript and the triangle effect continues with the same error. That’s how these variants are counted, they are not all unique.

 

[patrick457]

I think it’s important to point out that those hundreds of thousands of variants are not all unique isolated variants. The majority are a group of the same handed down.

What I mean by that is say there is a variant A. The variant A is copied over to the next manuscript. That’s considered 2 variants and that’s copied to the next manuscript and the triangle effect continues with the same error. That’s how these variants are counted, they are not all unique.

Actually, this definition of ‘textual variant’ is itself problematic. The “a variant spelling of one letter of one word in one verse in 2000 manuscripts is counted as 2000 variants” line is an oft-repeated argument in popular apologetics ever since Neil R. Lightfoot’s 1963 book How We Got the Bible, but no real textual critic defines ‘textual variants’ that way.

As Daniel Wallace (if you don’t know who he is, he’s the founder of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts) points out in that blog post: “a variant is … the difference in wording found in a single manuscript or a group of manuscripts (either way, it’s still only one variant) that disagrees with a base text.”

Today we know of more than 5600 Greek NT manuscripts. Among these, we know of about 2000–3000 Gospels manuscripts, 800 Pauline manuscripts, 700 manuscripts of Acts and the general letters, and about 325 manuscripts of Revelation. These numbers do not include the lectionaries, over 2000 of them, that are mostly of the Gospels. At the same time, not all the manuscripts are complete copies. The earlier manuscripts are fragmentary, sometimes covering only a few verses. The later manuscripts, however, generally include at least all four Gospels or Acts and the general letters or Paul’s letters or Revelation. But an average estimate is that for any given textual problem (more in the Gospels, less elsewhere), there are a thousand Greek manuscripts (this assumes that less than 20% of all the Greek manuscripts “read” in any given passage, probably a conservative estimate).

Putting all this together, we can assume an average of 1000 Greek manuscripts being involved in any textual problem. Now, assume that we start with the modern critical text of the Greek New Testament (the Nestle-Aland28). Most today would say that that text is based largely on a minority of manuscripts that constitute no more than 20% (a generous estimate) of all manuscripts. So, on average, if there are 1000 manuscripts that have a particular verse, the Nestle-Aland text is supported by 200 of them. This would mean that for every textual problem, the variant(s) is/are found in an average of 800 manuscripts. But, in reality, the wording of the Nestle-Aland text is often found in the majority of manuscripts. So, we need a more precise way to define things. That has been provided for us in The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text by Hodges and Farstad. They listed in the footnotes all the places where the majority of manuscripts disagreed with the Nestle-Aland text. The total came to 6577.

OK, so now we have enough data to make some general estimates. Even if we assumed that these 6577 places were the only textual problems in the New Testament (a demonstrably false assumption, by the way), the definition of Lightfoot could be shown to be palpably false. 6577 x 800 = 5,261,600. That’s more than five million, just in case you didn’t notice all the commas. Based on Lightfoot’s definition of textual variants, this is how many we would actually have, conservatively estimated. Obviously, that’s a far cry from 200,000!

Or, to put this another way: this errant definition requires that there be no more than about 250 textual problems in the whole New Testament (250 textual variants x 800 manuscripts that disagree with the printed text = 200,000). (It should be noted that, for simplicity’s sake, I am counting a textual problem as having only one variant from the base text, even though this is frequently not the case). If that is the case, how can the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament list over 1400 textual problems? And how can the Nestle-Aland text list over 10,000?

And again, this five million is not even close to the actual number. I took a very conservative approach by only looking at the differences from the majority of manuscripts. But if one started as his base text Codex Bezae for the Gospels and Acts and Codex Claromontanus for the letters, the number of variants (counted Lightfoot’s way) from these two would be astronomical. My guess is that it would be well over 20 million. Or if one started with Codex Sinaiticus, the only complete New Testament written with capital (or uncial) letters, the numbers would probably exceed 30 million—largely because Sinaiticus spells words in some strange ways that are not shared by very many other manuscripts. You can see that the definition of a textual variant as a combination of wording differences times manuscripts is rather faulty. Counting this way results in tens of millions of textual variants, when the actual number is miniscule by comparison. And that’s because we only count differences in wording, regardless of how many manuscripts attest to it.

 

[patrick457]

Continuing.

(Fenton) Then from mid·day until three o’clock in the afternoon darkness spread over all the land; and about three o’clock Jesus called out with a loud voice, exclaiming, “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?” that is, “O My God! My God! to what have You forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders, on hearing that, remarked, “He seems to call for Elijah.” And at once one from among them ran, and taking a sponge, filled it with sour wine; and placing it upon a cane, gave Him a drink. But the others called out, “Let Him alone! Let us see whether Elijah will come and save Him!” But another taking a spear pierced His side, when blood and water came out. Jesus, however, having again called out with a loud voice, resigned His spirit.

Now here’s the burning question: is this textual variant ‘authentic’? Most scholars would say no.

The thing is, it is generally agreed that this interpolation isn’t authentic, for a number of reasons. The first and the simplest reason is, this interpolation is only found in a certain segment of manuscripts we have.Even if some of the manuscripts that do contain it are usually considered to be important ones (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), in this case, the fact that the variant with the interpolation is the minority reading weighs against it being authentic.

Now that in itself isn’t a sufficient argument: there are after all cases where ‘minority’ readings have a chance of being more authentic. But one might argue, one might understand why scribes might insert such a familiar tradition into Matthew’s gospel, but why would they omit it? And why would they do so in Matthew, but not in John? (John’s version of the spearing is found in all manuscripts, unlike the Matthaean version.)

Second, the interpolation isn’t very ‘Matthaean’ in its vocabulary. There are two key words involved here: lonchē (λόγχη ‘spear’) and nyssō (νύσσω ‘to pierce’, declined as ἒνυξεν enyxen). There are only two places in the New Testament where these two words occurs: John 19:32-34 and this textual variant. Another important word is the word for ‘side’, pleura (πλευρά). This word occurs four times in John’s gospel (19:34; 20:20, 25, 27), in all cases describing Jesus’ side that was pierced, but not in Matthew (not counting this interpolation). In other words, going by the vocabulary, the ‘piercing’ of Jesus’ ‘side’ with a ‘spear’ shows more affinity with the Johannine account than it does with Matthew’s.

One could also argue the interpolation just doesn’t make logical sense in the narrative context.

But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.”

(But another, having taken a spear, pierced his side, and there came out water and blood.)
But Jesus crying out again with a great voice, yielded up his spirit.

Without the piercing sentence everything flows smoothly: “‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him,’ - but Jesus crying out again with a loud voice…” If the variant is included, the last de (δὲ, ‘and’, ‘but’) is especially awkward. The reading also presents a jarring contradiction to what was just described: while the bystanders were waiting to see if Elijah would come and save Jesus, someone - in complete opposition to this sentiment - kills Him (!)

If this variant is an interpolation, we do not know when or why it was inserted into the text. One suggestion given is that some scribe was inspired by eis ex auton (“one of them”, 27:48) to add an allos (“another”) and/or he remembered the eis tōn stratiōtōn (“one of the soldiers”) from John 19 when he read the eis in Matthew 27.

Another idea is that it was originally a marginal note: someone had originally written the sentence in the margin of a manuscript of Matthew and a later scribe inserted it at this point (however, the diverse support of unrelated manuscripts makes this improbable).

A third idea is that the variant was inserted on purpose to combat docetism (which held that the body of Jesus was not real but is a sort of apparition or mirage): inserting the piercing before Jesus’ death shows that He was a real flesh-and-blood human being who experienced real pain. In other words, it wasn’t a mirage or a phantom that was hanging on the cross.