A NT Text Critic on John 1:18 & 1 Tim. 3:16
In this postI will citefrom Tommy Wasserman’s, “Misquoting Manuscripts? The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture Revisited,” in The Making of Christianity: Conflicts, Contacts, and Constructions: Essays in Honor of Bengt Holmberg, ConBNT 47, edited by Magnus Zetterholm and Samuel Byrskog, and published by Eisenbrauns Winona Lake, IN, 2012, pp. 341-345.
Wasserman is responding to NT textual critic Bart D. Ehrman’s writings where he points to textual variants, which Ehrman believes are cases of orthodox scribes changing the text in order to refute various anti-Trinitarian heresies. Wasserman shows that such is not necessarily the case, since there other valid explanations for the rise of these variants. All emphasis will be mine.
4. Jesus the Divine:
The Orthodox Opposition to a Low Christology
Ehrman suggests that the most common kind of anti-adoptionistic corruption in the New Testament involve “the orthodox denial that Jesus was a ‘mere man’.”52 He thinks these corruptions move in two directions: either they heighten Jesus’ divine character, or they minimize his human limitations.
John 1:18
anti-adoptionistic corruption: monogenes theos (𝔓66 ℵ* B C* L pc syhmg geo2 Orpt Did Cyrpt ΝΑ27) / ho monogenes theos (𝔓75 ℵ1 33 bo Clpt Clex Thdpt Orpt Euspt GrNy Eph)
alternative readings: ho monogenes hyios (A C3 Ws Θ Ψ ƒ1.13 𝔐 a aur b c e f ff2 vg syc.h.pal arm eth geo1 slav Irlat pt Clpt Clex Thdpt Hipp Orlat pt Euspt Ath Baspt Chr Cyrpt Thret Tert Ambst Hilpt Ambrpt Hier Aug) / monogenes hyios theou=(q Irlat pt Ambrpt vid) / ho monogenes (vgms)
The reading theos, with or without the article, has strong support by the best witnesses. On the other hand, the attestation is mainly limited to Alexandrian witnesses, whereas the main rival reading hyios is more widely attested. Ehrman prefers the latter reading on the basis of internal evidence. Firstly, it conforms with Johannine usage; monogenes and hyios are used in conjunction in John 3:16, 18 and 1 John 4:9; and, secondly, monogenes theos is “virtually impossible to understand within a Johannine context.”53 Ehrman suggests that the reading with theos may reflect a harmonization to the context where theos occurs some seven times, hyios never. Under all circumstances, he thinks there was a theological motivation to do so: “The variant was created to support a high Christology in the face of widespread claims . . . that Christ was not God but merely a man, adopted by God.”54 One may well question whether it is at all possible to detect an anti-adoptionistic motivation behind a harmonization within a context where the Logos is understood to be God right at the outset (v. 1).
Ehrman goes on to state that the sense of the reading monogenes theos is impossible, suggesting that Jesus is the unique God, since in John, the Father is also God. At the same time, he rejects the alternative interpretation of the adjective monogenes as substantival, standing in apposition with theos, “(the) unique one, God,” since he thinks that the use of an adjective as a substantive, when it precedes a noun of the same gender, number and case, is impossible: “No Greek reader would construe such a construction as a string of substantives, and no Greek writer would create such an inconcinnity.”55 Apparently, Ehrman is wrong. Daniel Wallace has cited a number of examples of such a construction just from the New Testament (Luke 14:13; 18:11; John 6:70; Acts 2:5; Rom 1:30; Gal 3:9; Eph 2:20; 1 Tim 1:9; 1 Pet 1:1; 2 Pet 2:5).56 Admittedly, this construction is syntactically difficult, but, at the same time, that fact in itself speaks in favor of its originality (lectio difficilior potior). It should also be noted that monogenes is used as a substantive four verses earlier in John 1:14.57
Furthermore, the variation between monogenes theos and ho monogenes theos is, in my opinion, significant for the overall evaluation of the passage. The only comment Ehrman offers in this regard is that “if external support is considered decisive, the article is probably to be preferred” because “𝔓75 is generally understood to be the strongest” and “𝔓66, which supports the shorter text, is notoriously unreliable when it comes to articles and other short words.”58 It is true that 𝔓66 (like 𝔓75) shows a tendency to omit articles,59 but in this case the reading of 𝔓66 is shared by other prominent Alexandrian manuscript witnesses (ℵ* B C* L), so there is a strong reason to believe that there was no article in the exemplar. The anarthrous use of theos is more primitive, and, as the UBS committee observes, “There is no reason why the article should have been deleted, and when hyios supplanted supplanted theos it would certainly have been added.”60 Hence, the reading monogenes theos best explains the rival readings ho monogenes theos and ho monogenes hyios. The latter reading may reflect scribal harmonization to the Johannine collocation monogenes hyios (John 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). In any case, it seems difficult to detect an anti-adoptionistic motivation on the part of the scribes in a passage that already reflects a high Christology, regardless of what textual decision we make.
1 Tim 3:16
anti-adoptionistic corruption: theos ephanerothe en sarki / (ℵc Ac C2 D2 Ψ 1739 1881 𝔐 vgms GrNy Chr Thret)
alternative readings: hos ephanerothe en sarki / (NA27) / ho ephanerothe en sarki / (D* lat Hil Ambst Pel Aug Qu)
There is little doubt that the reading hos ephanerothe en sarki is to be preferred. Witnesses that read the pronoun in the neuter (bringing it in conformity with the antecedent musterion) indirectly support hos. As for the reading theos, it is quite likely that it first arose due to the confusion of ΟC with the nomen sacrum, ΘC̅. Ehrman, however, remarks that the corrections in four uncials show that the change was not an accident; “it did not creep into the tradition unawares.”61 Here I think it is important to make a distinction between the origin of a reading, and its subsequent transmission. I agree with Ehrman insofar as these corrections show that subsequent changes to theos in some MSS were not done by accident; the scribes/correctors knew the reading theos and preferred it, either because it supplied a subject for the six following verbs, or because of dogmatic reasons (or both).62 This does not exclude the possibility that the variant initially arose by accident.
Ehrman goes on to state that the change must have been early, at least from the third century given its widespread attestation in the fourth century.63 In an accompanying footnote he explains that of all witnesses of either variant, only Origen antedates the fourth century. (Origen’s witness is apparently found in a fourth-century Latin translation of his works, reflecting hos. First, it should be pointed out that the earliest attestation of theos in an actual Greek MS is the correction in C (04), probably dating from the sixth century, whereas the earliest attestation of hos is in ℵ* (01) dating from ca. 350 C.E.64 Furthermore, attestations of theos in patristic writers are not found until the last third of the fourth century (Gregory of Nyssa, Apollinaris, John Chrysostom)—half a century after the Council of Nicaea.65 This silence during the first phases of the Christological and Trinitarian controversies is strange, since the reading, if it existed in the third century or earlier, would indeed have been very attractive to use as prime evidence for Jesus’ divinity.
Further Reading
A Text Critic’s Comments on John 1:3-4 & 18
1 Timothy 3:16 and the Deity of Christ [Part 1], [Part 2], [Part 3], [Addendum]