Transcription
Well, good morning again. I'm going to be talking to you about the Son's ignorance in Matthew 24:36, an exercise in textual and redaction criticism. We're gonna get into the weeds a little bit, and that's why I asked an outline to be made up so you can follow along.
What we'll be discussing in the heart of the Olivet discourse, the discourse in which Jesus prophesied the destruction of the temple and his own return, is a surprising admission on the lips of the Lord. In Matthew's version, Jesus says, "Now concerning that day and hour no one knows it, neither the angels of heaven nor the Son but only the Father." The words "nor the Son," who dare, Hockley asks, however, are not found in all the manuscripts, nor even in all the earliest manuscripts. The pedigree of the witnesses that lack the words is sufficient to raise some doubt. "Nor the Son" may well be a later scribal addition. Did scribes omit these words from the text of Matthew, or did they add these words to Matthew?
The great majority of New Testament scholars today would argue that the words "nor the Son" are authentic in Matthew 24:36, and some would even claim that early Orthodox scribes deleted the words in order to safeguard the omniscience of Christ. It is this near consensus that I wish to challenge in this paper.
If we go back in time, starting with the end of the 19th century, we find that no consensus existed on this textual problem. In 1885, M. F. Sadler left the issue open. After "neither the angels of heaven," he said, "several manuscripts insert neither the Son." Judah Hawke, we asked, after Mark 13:32. Now, this sounds as though Sadler did not accept the longer reading, but on the next page, he states, "Neither the Son, according to many authorities, is to be read here in St. Mark."
Or, as in St. Mark, and will it be Allen's 1912 commentary on Matthew in the ICC series? The author argued that the omission is authentic. Judith we asked, he says, "Its omission would be so consonant with Matthew's treatment of Mark in respective statements about the person of Christ that it is difficult to think that he would have retained the clause here."
In 1915, Allen humic Neel wrestled with the question of the authenticity of who de hoc huius without making a decision. "The words are certain in Mark, but in Matthew, though the evidence for them is strong, they may be a scribal addition." He even avoids words which implied limitation of the Lord's knowledge and would be the more likely to avoid a plain statement of it. On the other hand, scribes might equally shun the words. Matthew, and not Mark, suffering from the omission because the former gospel was the more popular and widely used. If Matthew himself omitted the words, his addition of manos after Mark's I'm a hapa ter may have been intentional, suggesting the truth without stating it explicitly.
Alfred Plummer, also writing in 1915, also waffled on the textual problem. "This problem is not easy to decide on," he wrote. "On the one hand, the words might easily be omitted on account of their difficulty. On the other, they may be inserted." In Matthew, we have seen that Matthew nearly always omits or alters anything in Mark which seems to encourage a low conception of the Messiah, and it is not likely that he would have retained this explicit limitation of the Messiah's knowledge. He has struck out statements which imply ignorance on his part. Would he have left standing a confession that the Lord was ignorant? Moreover, the addition of a lone manos after "except the Father" looks like a wish to give the sense of Christ's words without the express admission that the Son, in this manner, shared the ignorance of men and angels. But Plummer then adds, "When Mark and Matthew wrote, no one would have put into the mouth of Christ a confession of ignorance which he had never made."
Zahn holds that both external and internal evidence favor the genuineness of hoc huius in Matthew, and Bellhousing retains them. So, some exegetes sided with his short reading, while others were unsure, and some thought the longer reading was authentic.
James Morrison, writing in 1884, just three years after Westcott and Hort's game-changing *New Testament in the Original Greek* was published, said this: "Nor the Son, who died aqueous. These words are not in the received text or in the great body of the manuscripts, and yet they were probably in the autograph of Matthew." Morrison follows this with a detailed discussion of the external evidence.
Within a couple of decades, Hort's views were gaining momentum, and the pronouncement on the inauthenticity of the shorter reading could be asserted more dogmatically and with less evidence. David Smith, writing in 1908, declared, "The received text omits 'nor the Son' in mistaken zeal for the deity of our Lord." But for many decades, several scholars were more cautious, though siding with the longer reading.
Floyd V. Filson, writing in 1960, is representative. "Jesus confesses that even he, the Son, does not know. Some ancient authorities omit 'or the Son.' Either Matthew omitted these words, not wanting to say, as Mark did, that Jesus did not know the day, and a later scribe supplied them from Mark, or probably they were included by Matthew, and some early scribe left them out to avoid saying that Jesus was ignorant." This early scribe's reasoning would be that certainly the words "only the Father" imply ignorance in the Son.
After the *United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament* appeared in 1966, and especially after Bruce Metzger's *Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament* was published five years later, most exegetes expressed their views in no uncertain terms. We will turn later to the statement by Metzger and think through his argument. For now, I simply want to note the litany of commentaries, including those by F. W. Bear, Robert H. Gundry, Alexander Zant, Donald A. Hanger, W. D. Davies, and L. C. Allison, Ulrich Lutz, Hubert Franco, Mila J. Åland, and David L. Turner, all claimed that the longer reading is authentic, and the issue is settled. With some of them, even citing Metzger's textual commentary as the basis for their statement.
Without further ado, Bart Ehrman, too, is convinced that we Aussies authentic in Matthew. Ehrman was Metzger's last doctoral student at Princeton Seminary, but more than simply affirming with his mentor, said Ehrman takes the discussion to a new level. He is firmly convinced that the words were expunged by proto-Orthodox scribes who bristled at the idea of the Son of God's ignorance. "Not only is the phrase hoc huius," Ehrman writes, "found in our earliest and best manuscripts of Matthew, but it is also necessary on internal grounds."
To some of this brief treatment of the text: In the last 125 years, prior to Westcott and Hort's views taking seed, there was no consensus. And even after their view of the text dominated the guild of New Testament textual criticism, most still heeded their wording. But after Metzger's textual commentary, published 90 years after Hort, the consensus emerged: *Buddha hoc huius* is authentic in Matthew 24:36. And now, 40 years later, the basic reason that most scholars today regard "nor the Son" to be authentic in Matthew is threefold. First of all, is external evidence: earlier and better witnesses have the phrase. Second, intrinsic evidence: the grammar is awkward without the words. And third, is transcriptional evidence: early Orthodox scribes would be more likely to delete the phrase to safeguard the omniscience of Christ than to add the phrase due to the parallel in Mark 13:32.
I will be challenging this consensus and the arguments on its behalf. Before we get into the details, however, I want to discuss a bit more the significance that this textual problem has for omens claim that proto-Orthodox scribes changed the text of Holy Writ to conform it to their theological agenda. For Ehrman, Matthew 24:36 is the key proof text in his magnum opus, *Orthodoxy and Corruption of Scripture*. That proto-Orthodox scribes significantly altered the New Testament for theological reasons. Adam Messer noted that this passage makes it into Ehrman's works so often that it borders on the repetitive. This is his example par excellence. Ehrman discusses it explicitly at least half a dozen times in *Misquoting Jesus* and in an academic monograph, *Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament*, which is volume 33 of the prestigious *New Testament Tools and Studies* series. Ehrman calls it "the most famous instance of doctrinal alteration" in *Misquoting Jesus*. He argues the reason for the omission is not hard to postulate: if Jesus does not know the future, the Christian claim that he is a Divine Being is more than a little compromised. Ehrman does not qualify his words here. He doesn't say that some Christians would have a problem with Jesus' ignorance; no, he says that the Christian claim would have a problem with it. Ehrman suggests that the omission would have arisen in the late second century as a proto-Orthodox response to the adoption as heresy.
While my primary objective in this paper is to resurrect a reading that has long been left for dead, I also want to interact with Ehrman's spin on it. First, I will challenge the status quo on Matthew 24:36, bringing in both textual and redactional criticism. Then, I will discuss some problems in an epilogue with Ehrman's theological arguments against the shorter reading. As a foretaste of where I am heading with this topic, I wish to express my substantial agreement with Ehrman that Matthew 24:36 was indeed changed for doctrinal reasons. Theological motive had a large role in the change, but it was not the scribes' theology.
We begin with the comparison of Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32. As you can see on the slide, bold means that the words are in both texts. Green represents words found only in Matthew, and red indicates words found only in Mark. And finally, what is underlined in the textual variant is the textual variant in question. So we have Matthew 24:36: "Περὶ δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης καὶ ὥρας οὐδεὶς οἶδεν, οὐδὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι τῶν οὐρανῶν, οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, εἰ μὴ ὁ πατήρ μόνος." And Mark 13:32: "Περὶ δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης ἢ τῆς ὥρας οὐδεὶς οἶδεν, οὐδὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι οἱ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, εἰ μὴ ὁ πατήρ." In English, putting both texts together, we have something like this: "Now concerning that day and hour no one knows it, neither the angels of the heavens or neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, except the Father alone."
As you can see, most of the green and red words are only minor differences between Matthew and Mark, but one difference is quite significant: it's the *monos* alone that is found only in Matthew. It should also be added that Mark's text is secure. Only one 10th-century Greek manuscript, Codex X, and one late Vulgate manuscript dropped the *ou de hoc huius* from Mark.
We now turn to arguments for the authenticity of *Buddha hoc huius* in Matthew 24:36. Well, first, we'll look at the external evidence, followed by the internal. External evidence is the hard data that actual manuscripts, early versions, and quotations from Church Fathers provide. But even scholars tend to make the faulty equation between external evidence and objectivity. We do this because we rightfully regard the Scriptures as very precious documents, as the lifeblood of our faith, as that which gives us our most reliable, even inspired, evidence about Jesus. But just as all internal evidence is subjective, so all manuscripts are corrupt. Neither one of these categories of evidence is truly objective. As Günther Zuntz, the father of *The Text of the Epistles*, observed 60 years ago, "At every stage the critic has to use his brains." We're at different. We could put a critical slide-rule into the hands of any fool and leave it to him to settle the problems of the New Testament text.
An examination of the Nestle-Aland 28 apparatus and the UBS Fourth apparatus and the texts and texts of Eric volume on Matthew gives a comprehensive list of external data for this textual problem. I will only list the more important witnesses out of mercy for the audience.
* **א** (Aleph), Sinaiticus, is a fourth-century Alexandrian majuscule, and not just any Alexandrian majuscule; it's one of the two most important witnesses to the Alexandrian text form. The asterisk indicates that the original scribe and the superscript two is a seventh-century scribe who corrected the text. He or she did this because the first corrector deleted the words *Judah Hawkeyes*. The first corrector put eraser dots above the disputed words. The second corrector erased the eraser dots. You can barely make out the dots in these pictures, and we'll leave those up for a while just so you can have fun looking at a manuscript.
* **B**, Vaticanus, is a fourth-century Alexandrian majuscule, considered by most to be the best representative of the Alexandrian text.
* **D**, Codex Bezae, is an early fifth-century Western majuscule and is the standard-bearer of that text type.
* **θ** and Family 13 are ninth-century and later Caesarean witnesses.
* The majority of Old Latin manuscripts, designated as **it**, witness to the longer reading. They are collectively Western witnesses whose roots go back to the second century.
* A late fourth-century translation of Irenaeus into Latin, who was a late second-century Father, also has the phrase. Irenaeus represents the Western text.
* Origen, an early to mid-third-century Alexandrian witness and a careful student of the text of the Bible, reads *helios*.
* Hilary of Poitiers is from the fourth century.
* Jerome, late fourth to early fifth century, knew of manuscripts that had the phrase. He represents the Western text form.
* And finally, Chrysostom, mid-fourth century, is an important representative of the Byzantine text.
But regarding the Fathers, more can be said. Irenaeus, from the late second century; Origen, early to mid-third century; and Chrysostom, mid-fourth century, all apparently have *de hoc huius* and they show no awareness of the shorter reading. Their combined testimony suggests geographical distribution: Western, Alexandrian, and Byzantine regions from an early period.
Irenaeus's comment on this verse is illuminating: "Even the Lord, the very Son of God, allowed that the Father alone knows the very day and hour of judgment. If then the Son was not ashamed to ascribe the knowledge of that day to the Father only, neither let us be ashamed to reserve for God those greater questions which may occur to us, for no man is superior to his master." It's significant that Irenaeus is writing at the very time that Ehrman claims that the proto-Orthodox scribes were deleting *Buddha hoc huius* from their texts. Yet, not only does Irenaeus show no awareness of the omission, he even uses the Son's ignorance as a pattern of humility that we should follow. If Irenaeus did not expunge the offensive words from his text, then who did?
To recap, the evidence for the longer reading includes the earliest Alexandrian witnesses, B and all of the first hand; the earliest Western witness, D, and the Old Latin, as well as some of the best Syrian witnesses. Early Fathers knew of it, and some supported it; some seem to be aware only of this reading. The evidence is thus widespread, early, and found in important witnesses. It has roots deep in the second century with the combined testimony of B, D, Old Latin, and Irenaeus, and it's widely distributed in all the major textual families.
Now, the second category of evidence is internal. A representative and succinct statement for the longer reading as found in Metzger's textual commentary: "The words 'neither the Son' are lacking," he says, "in the majority of the witnesses of Matthew, including the later Byzantine texts. On the other hand, the best representatives of the Alexandrian and the Western types of texts contain the phrase. The omission of the words because of the doctrinal difficulty they present is more probable than their addition by assimilation to Mark 13:32." Furthermore, the presence of *monos* in the cast of the sentence as a whole, *houto* (*houto*) along together as a parenthesis for *eimē ho patēr* (*eimē ho patēr*), goes with *houto*, so it didn't suggest the originality of the phrase.
I have a couple of quibbles with Metzger's presentation of the data. To begin with, first of all, when he speaks of the majority of the witnesses of Matthew, including the later Byzantine text, he's only telling part of the story. As is well known, Metzger was not partial to the Byzantine text. This line looks like guilt by association, but even those who do not think very highly of this text form may recognize the shorter reading as authentic, as we will soon see. Second, Metzger's comment that "the best representatives of the Alexandrian and Western types of texts" also is misleading. It is not all the best witnesses of these textual groups; only some of them. Again, we will look at the external evidence for the shorter reading soon enough.
As for his internal arguments, he makes two basic points: one, grammatical, and the other, theological. What is highlighted in red are those two statements. The theological argument involves transcriptional probability, or what a scribe would be likely to have done. The grammatical argument involves intrinsic probability, or what the author was likely to have written. The theological argument is simply stated: "The omission of the words because of the doctrinal difficulty they present is more probable than their addition by assimilation to Mark 13:32." This is the argument that Ehrman elaborates on, even pinpointing the very time, late second century, and the catalyst, the rise of the adoption of heresy.
For the shorter reading, Metzger's second argument is grammatical in nature: "The presence of *monos* and the cast of the sentence as a whole, *houto* (*houto*) belong together as a parenthesis for *eimē ho patēr* (*eimē ho patēr*), goes with *houto*, so it didn't suggest the originality of the phrase." I will later unpack the grammatical argument, but for now, all I wish to point out is that Ehrman has latched on to this argument by turning Metzger's explicit suggestion into a hard-and-fast grammatical rule. "The phrase *hu da hoc huius*," he writes, "is necessary on internal grounds." We will soon see if that's so.
The external, intrinsic, and transcriptional arguments for the longer reading are thus a three-fold cord which most scholars today would say is not easily broken. We now turn to arguments for the authenticity of the omission of "nor the Son" in Matthew 24:36. And again, I begin with the external evidence.
* **א¹** (Aleph superscript 1) is the first corrector of Codex Sinaiticus, done in the fourth century, probably before the manuscript left the scriptorium. If so, it may have as much weight as the original hand, since it would have been the work of a *diorthōtēs* or official corrector. An analogy may help: if you take a quiz, your answers are the first reading. When you get the quiz back, the professor would have marked up all the places you got wrong and would have written in the correct answers. Which readings are more accurate? One would hope that the professor's are. And so it is where the *diorthōtēs*. The scribe who did this work in the New Testament was the most careful of all the scribes who worked on Sinaiticus. And this means that **א¹** is an important fourth-century Alexandrian witness to the omission.
* **L**, an eighth-century Alexandrian majuscule.
* **W**, Codex Washingtonianus, is a late fourth to early fifth-century majuscule which is Byzantine in Matthew.
* Codex 33 is known as the Queen of the Cursives because it has a very good Alexandrian text, even though it is dated to the ninth century. It is the most important Alexandrian minuscule of the Gospels.
* **892** and **1241** are also Alexandrian minuscules.
* Family 1, like Family 13, is a group of Caesarean minuscules.
* The Byzantine minuscules, **z** and **a**, a group dated to the ninth to sixth century. This is by far the largest group of witnesses in any textual problem, and even though the main scripts themselves are not earlier than the ninth century, the Byzantine text form dates much earlier than this. Most scholars would say that when the Byzantine schools are generally united on a reading, that reading reaches back at least to the fourth century.
* Then **g¹** and **L** are two Old Latin witnesses from the eighth or ninth century, and although they are relatively late, they at least witness to the shorter reading in the West and deviate from the rest of the *a* *t* *t* *a*.
* The Vulgate was produced by Jerome in the late fourth to early fifth century but based on earlier manuscripts, especially of the Western and Alexandrian variety. Almost all the Vulgate manuscripts omit this phrase.
* Virtually all the Syriac witnesses, reaching back to the third century, lack the phrase "nor the Son." The earliest representatives of the Syriac text are also Western.
* All Coptic witnesses, reaching back to the early third century, attest to the shorter reading. Metzger calls the Sahidic Coptic a primary Alexandrian witness, and the Bohairic Coptic a secondary Alexandrian witness. There are only three other primary Alexandrian witnesses that read in this passage: all of B and Origen, and all of א is split between the first hand and the first corrector. So it's kind of one-and-a-half against two-and-a-half primary Alexandrian witnesses here. But the secondary Alexandrian are all on the side of the omission, along with the Latin witnesses. The Coptic and Syriac considered the most important early versions.
Then we have the *Diatessaron* notation, produced in the second half of the second century, and it was the first gospel harmony. Tatian combined the readings of the four gospels, attempting to incorporate as much material as he could. And what's significant about this for our purposes is that the *Diatessaron* apparently lacked the phrase "nor the Son." But if Tatian was attempting to harmonize accounts, why would he leave this out? It certainly had to be lacking in one of his gospel manuscripts. The most likely reason is that it was not in his copy of Matthew.
Then there are the Fathers. All of them are from the fourth century. Athanasius is an Alexandrian witness and the great champion of Orthodoxy. Along with Basil, he was the first to protest the *adagio* *screen* on theological grounds. Didymus the Blind is also Alexandrian. He was aware of both readings but apparently thought the omission to be authentic. Fulgentius is a Western representative. Ambrose, like Fulgentius, follows the Western text. He made a significant comment on this passage: "As far as Ambrose knew, the Greek manuscripts long before his time read with the omission. He declares, 'The ancient Greek manuscripts do not contain the words nor the Son.'" How many manuscripts he knew of and where they came from, however, is unknown. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian Fathers, has the Byzantine text, or the shorter reading. Basil of Caesarea, also known as Basil the Great, was another Cappadocian Father who also followed the Byzantine text form. And finally, we have Jerome. Although he cites manuscripts on both sides, he prefers those that lacked the phrase.
The Fathers who favor the omission are relatively early and represent all the major text forms. And Jerome, Ambrose, and Didymus, representing the Western and Alexandrian regions of the fourth century, all prefer the shorter reading.
Well, to sum up the external evidence for the short reading: the omission of *Judah hoc huius* is the reading found in decent Alexandrian and Western witnesses. The second earliest and most important Alexandrian witness is **א¹**, and that attests to this reading, as does the Sahidic Coptic version, early third century. Both witnesses being primary Alexandrian. All of the secondary Alexandrian Greek manuscripts also lack *luda hoc huius*. The Western text is represented by the Syriac from the third century and from Ambrose of the fourth. The Syriac witnesses are split, as are the Western. The Byzantine text is solidly behind the omission. Thus, the omission is widespread, early, and well-represented in all four text types. Even Ehrman admits that the shorter reading came into being no later than the late second century, but it is not the reading of all the earliest and best Alexandrian Western witnesses. If we were to judge this textual problem solely on external evidence, I would give the palm to the longer reading with a C+ or perhaps a B-minus grade of certainty. But external evidence is not the whole story. The basic principle of textual criticism is to choose the reading that best explains the rise of the others. Sometimes the external evidence is more compelling than the internal; sometimes it is the reverse.
Before we look at the internal arguments for the omission, we should examine some of Hort's approach to the text of the New Testament, an approach that still guides many students of the New Testament texts today. On the slide is a simplified version of Hort's genealogical reconstruction of the transmission of the New Testament. Hort believed that the Alexandrian and Western texts stood behind the Byzantine. He gave many significant proofs for this genealogy, but one key ingredient ingredient was missing: actual manuscripts. He knew that Oliphant VIII, as well as D, were produced after the Byzantine text form was initiated. Consequently, he could not identify any known manuscripts that the Byzantine editor used. We might call this genealogy, in some respects, then, Hort's Achilles' heel, or less elegantly, Hort's heel.
What this means in practical terms is that it is theoretically possible, even assuming that Hort's genealogy is substantially correct, that some Byzantine readings are based on better Alexandrian and Western manuscripts than are extant today. In other words, it's theoretically possible that even when all of B and D agree, they may not represent the original text. If Hort was right that Lucian, before AD 310 (the year of his death), was the first to edit the text that would later grow into the Byzantine text, then what motives would Lucian have in producing his New Testament? We need to consider the historical situation to understand this. Emperor Diocletian had declared war on Christians in 303. His program, which would last nine years, was the worst persecution of Christians in the ancient world. It included three edicts: destroy Christian sacred texts, burn down their meeting places, and imprison and even kill Christian leaders. We know that Diocletian's systematic destruction of the New Testament was widespread and devastating. So what would Lucian's motivations be during this time? He would almost surely have wanted to preserve every drop of the textual tradition, but he didn't always have the luxury of choosing between competing variants. If possible, and if it was agreeable and the sense did not change significantly, he would conflate readings. A conflation is a combination of two earlier readings; by definition, if a reading is a conflation, then it must be secondary to the readings that it combines. This was a staple argument in Hort's proof of the Byzantine text's secondary nature.
Among the conflations that he listed is Luke 9:10. In this verse, the key variants are as follows: "εἰς πόλιν Καλαμείνων Βασίδα" (eis polin Kalameinōn Basida) and "εἰς πόλιν Καλαμείνων Βασιδα" (eis polin Kalameinōn Basida) and "εἰς πόλιν Καλαμείνων Βασίδα" (eis polin Kalameinōn Basida). The variants break down roughly by text forms: the first reading is largely Alexandrian, the second largely Western, and the third largely Byzantine. "Βασίδα" (Basida) had become deserted shortly after the New Testament was composed, most likely prompting scribes to change the first reading into the second to conform it to what was then known about the site. Still later, someone combined both the Alexandrian and Western readings into "a deserted place of a town called Masada." The Byzantine reading has all the earmarks of being a conflation of the Alexandrian and Western readings, in which the redactor attempted to preserve every drop of the textual tradition, even if it resulted in a new reading not found in any earlier manuscripts. Hort noted that every time there was a conflation in the text type, it was always the Byzantine that conflated, never the Alexandrian or Western.
Now, assuming that Hort's genealogy is correct, there still be individual textual problems in which the Byzantine text has a superior reading. The best kind of proofs for this would be Byzantine shorter readings. If Lucian, or whoever added to the Byzantine text, was trying to preserve every drop of the textual tradition, one has to wrestle with why, at times, the Byzantine manuscripts have a shorter reading. One of the more compelling such readings is found in Philippians 1:14: "and most of the brothers dare to speak the word fearlessly." Now, some scribes added "of God" to the word, so they have "dared to speak the Word of God fearlessly." Others added "of the Lord," "dare to speak the word of the Lord fearlessly." It's easy to see why scribes would add either of these phrases. "Τὸν λόγον" (ton logon) - what is the word that most brothers dared to speak fiercely? It begs for clarification, and scribes were only too happy to comply. What's significant is that the shorter reading, that doesn't have "of God" or "of the Lord," is found in the Byzantine text, along with a few other key witnesses. The Alexandrian text, by and large, adds the words "of God," and Western manuscripts F and G add "of the Lord." Here, the UBS Third Edition gave the shorter reading a D rating, the lowest possible level of certainty, presumably because it had, in the editors' minds, a poor pedigree, even though it was compelling on internal grounds.
Two scholars have written on the Byzantine shorter readings at some length: Hon. J. K. A. Care of a thoughtful, established an article in *Delta Unbiblical and Melatonin* entitled "Marrakech Soon Thomas Graf's to that classiest qu Chi many who taste kinase D F a case or some short readings of the ecclesiastical texts of the New Testament." He calls such readings "Eastern non-interpolations," supplying several examples in which the Byzantine text has a superior reading. And Way Ho, who wrote his doctoral dissertation at Dallas Seminary, called *A Systematic Analysis of the Shorter Readings of the Byzantine Text in the Synoptic Gospels*. Wu was not as optimistic as Care of a vocalist, but he does adopt the omission of *hoc huius* in Matthew 24:36 as an authentic Byzantine shorter reading, authentic meaning going back to Matthew. Suffice it to say that even those who canonized Fenton John Anthony Hort's principles may be compelled to see certain Byzantine readings as authentic. The proof is in the pudding, however, and the final arbiter will be internal evidence, to which we now turn.
Neither *de hoc huius* nor its omission can be easily explained as an accidental alteration by some unobservant scribe. Either the omitting or adding of the words is surely intentional. What motives would there be to omit or add these words, and who would be so motivated? As we wrestle with the internal evidence, I first want to challenge Metzger's grammatical and theological arguments, and then I will bring in evidence from redaction criticism.
So, I begin with the argument from grammar. The phrase *hoi angeloi de huios* involves correlative or paired conjunctions. Ehrman argues that the presence of *de* with *oude* demands another *de*, and thus the phrase *de huios*. But are the correlative conjunctions really a grammatical necessity? "But simply does neither demand an or." Although *de* is often used in pairs, it is not at all required to do so. *Oude* by itself means "not" or "not even." The sentence makes perfectly good sense with only one *oude*. Altogether, Matthew has 27 instances of *oude*. The only paired instance, not counting our target text, is in Matthew 12:19, and it's not even Matthew's wording; he's quoting Isaiah 42:2 here. So Ehrman's grammatical necessity turns out not only to be nothing of the sort but, in fact, is against Matthew's style seen everywhere else in his gospel. The paired *oude* therefore is out of sorts with intrinsic evidence. Without *oude* halfway *Austin* Matthew 24:36, the verse would read simply, "But concerning that day and hour no one knows it, not even the angels of heaven, except the Father alone."
The argument for the longer reading from theology is three-pronged. First, early Orthodox scribes excised *hokule'as* from Matthew 24:36 because of the offense that this might cause them concerning the Son's omniscience. Second, this Orthodox excision would have occurred during the adoptionist controversy. Adoptionism thrived between 190 and 275. The anti-adoptionist sentiment was equally vigorous during this time. Thus, late second and early third-century Fathers would most likely be most likely to have altered the text of Matthew that the scribes then copied. And finally, this view has to explain how *a hoc huius* in Mark 13:32 was virtually untouched by the scribes. What is the reason given for this apparent oversight in Mark? That gospel was not nearly as popular as Matthew, and thus would not have been copied as frequently.
I offer seven pieces of evidence against this theological argument. First of all, the time proposed for the rise of the omission will not work. The proto-Orthodox response to adoptionism would have happened long after all four Gospels were considered canonical in Metzger's and Ehrman's view. Irenaeus links the four Gospels to the four principal winds and four zones of the earth, calling the Gospels the four pillars of the church. What seems to be implied in his statement is that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had been accepted by the Orthodox for some time. The Muratorian Canon, also written in the late second century, considered the four Gospels to be authoritative, the kinds of texts that could be read in church in churches. In fact, there is no evidence in Orthodox circles that they were ever regarded as anything other than authoritative for the life of the church. This includes Mark's Gospel, in the least. What this evidence suggests is that although Matthew's gospel may have been favored, Mark was not disregarded, and certainly not by the second half of the second century. So we might expect the same scribes who copied out Matthew to also copy Mark's Gospel.
Second, along these same lines, the codex form of the book, invented sometime toward the end of the first century, was first popularized by Christians. This, in fact, may be the only time in the history of the church when Christians were ahead of the technological curve. Virtually every Greek New Testament manuscript we have today, including several second and third-century papyri, were written on a codex rather than a roll. And those three or four that were written on a roll were written on the verso, or the backside, after the recto on the front side had already been written on with some other text and then discarded. The standard roll was no more than 35 feet long. It would be able to hold only one gospel. Luke would take up about 28 feet, while with Matthew and Luke and John, close to that. But with the invention of the codex, the book could now contain much more text. Some scholars even believe that Christians adopted the codex form precisely because that book form alone could contain all four Gospels.
Third, this raises a significant question: How could the proto-Orthodox scribes alter Matthew's wording in Matthew 24:36 but then neglect to do so in Mark 13:32? The same manuscripts that lacked the phrase in Matthew have it in Mark. If doctrinal considerations were driving the scribes, why didn't they cut out the offensive words in both Gospels? Luke, by the way, doesn't have the verse at all, so they don't have to tamper with that.
Fourth, we have no evidence that any church Father had any theological problems with *de hoc huius* until the fourth century, long after the adoptionist controversy's fire had become but flickering embers. This was one of the fundamental conclusions that Adam Messer came to in his comprehensive study, *Patristic Theology and Recension in Matthew 24:36*.
Fifth, Basil of Caesarea, writing in the fourth century, recognized that the words are definitely in Mark, but his copy of Matthew lacked them. He clearly had a problem with what was the plain meaning of the text, but he appealed to Matthew's version since it was easier to reinterpret and conform to preconceived notions of what the Son's deity must imply. Yet, significantly, even Basil does not alter the passage; instead, he adjusts to the wording of the text, but he alters the meaning as his strategy for dealing with this doctrinal conundrum. If no Father prior to Basil showed concern over the wording in Matthew, and even if Basil demonstrated his concern by reinterpretation rather than rewriting, on what basis can we claim that the Orthodox scribes rewrote the text of Matthew 24:36? Other Fathers who embrace the authenticity of the shorter reading also adopted a similar strategy: reinterpretation, but not rewriting. As Messer states, "We see attempts by church Fathers to deal with problematic passages through a hermeneutical grid," that is, they tended to clarify their theology rather than change their texts.
Sixth, let's assume for sake of argument that Mark's Gospel was not copied by the same scribes who copied Matthew. And even then, Mark was not considered canonical during the adoptionist controversy. Even if that historically improbable scenario were true, the motivation for Matthew scribes can hardly be strongly theological. If they had no qualms about deleting "nor the Son" in Matthew, why did they leave the word alone, alone without "nor the Son"? The passage still implies that the Son does not know the date of his return. But "as for that day or hour, no one knows it, not even the angels of heaven, except the Father alone." *Imma hapa ter* (since the, the God and Father, I'm sorry, since the Father specified in Matthew as the only person who has intimate knowledge of the eschatological calendar), it is difficult to argue that the Son is privy to that knowledge.
Seventh, finally, I would argue that the impulse to harmonize one gospel to another was often greater than the impulse to alter the wording for theological reasons. This is directly counter to what Metzger had said. And about 30% of the time, Matthew's wording is actually harmonized to Mark's by the scribes. An interesting parallel occurs in the story of the rich young ruler. The Alexandrian and Western text forms have the following wording in these two passages, which for sake of time, I'll list only in English:
* **Mark 10:17 and 18:** "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone."
* **Matthew 19:16 and 17:** "Teacher, what good thing must I do to have eternal life?" "Why do you ask me about the good? Only one is good."
By removing "good" from "teacher" and having it stand alone as "good thing," and changing "Why do you call me good?" to "Why do you ask me about the good?", Matthew has effectively lessened suspicions about the deity of Christ that Mark's wording raises. Predictably, the Byzantine scribes changed the wording here and thereby harmonized the two parallel passages. But the wording they changed was not Mark's, but Matthew's, and the harmonization was in the direction of a questionable Christology. The idea that the impulse of Orthodoxy always trumped that of harmonization, that all harmonization was moving toward Orthodoxy, or that all harmonization was toward Matthew's Gospel, is a myth. This text is every bit as problematic as Matthew 24:36, yet the Orthodox scribes changed Matthew rather than Mark, resulting in a questionable Christology in both passages.
In sum, the idea that proto-Orthodox scribes changed the text of Matthew in the late second to the third century in reaction to adoptionism is not based on any real evidence. If the scribes were following the leads of their theological mentors, then the lack of any tension over this passage by second and third-century Fathers suggests that the omission of "nor the Son" was not a reaction to adoptionism. Some other time and some other reason needs to account for the omission, and many of the scribes who omitted "nor the Son" in Matthew wrote it out in Mark in the same codex. This is strong evidence that doctrinal agendas were not driving early Orthodox scribal activity concerning Matthew 24:36, and even later scribes, to the extent that they were influenced by the Fathers, would be generally faithful to record the text, leaving the theological tensions to the preachers to sort out.
Argument from Redaction Criticism. Students of Scripture have noted for a long time that where Mark's Christology often raises questions, Matthew's Christology gives answers. To put this more bluntly, Matthew's Christology is almost always higher than Mark's in the parallel passages. Mark's Gospel is dialogical, while Matthew's is pedagogical. Matthew wants to confirm belief in Jesus as the Messiah, while Mark wants to deepen Jesus' followers' commitment by getting them to own their convictions about Christ in light of persecution. The evangelists' strategies in the presentation of Jesus are thus different because they have different objectives in mind.
We will look at several parallels between Matthew and Mark in which Matthew changed statements about Christ. The right column indicates what issue is involved.
* **Mark 1:12:** "The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness," using the verb *ekballō*, which almost always is driving demons out of a person. And **Matthew 4:1** changes this to, "The Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness." This involves Jesus' volition. Was he forced to go against his will, as Mark sounds like, or was the the Spirit gently leading him, and he was following along, being guided by the Spirit? In that respect.
* **Mark 2:26:** Jesus spoke of David entering the house of God when Abiathar was the high priest. And **Matthew 12:4** when Abiathar was high priest is omitted. The reason is in 1 Samuel 21: it was Ahimelech who was priest when David entered the house of God. And so this Christological issue involves Jesus' knowledge. Matthew does not want to imply in Mark, he sounds like he had the the wrong idea about what 1 Samuel said.
* **Mark 3:10:** "Jesus healed many." **Matthew 12:15** parallel has "Jesus healed them all." Well, this addresses Jesus' power. Was he able to heal all of them? Matthew makes that explicit. Mark raises some questions.
* **Mark 5:30-32:** "Jesus knew that power had gone out from him. 'Who touched me?' he said." **Matthew 9:18-26**, again, the healing of the hemorrhaging woman. Both of those points are omitted, and this deals with Jesus' power, some questions about it would be raised by Mark's text and his knowledge. He knew who touched him.
* **Mark 6:5** says that Jesus was not able to do any miracle in his hometown, except, and then it goes on and lists what's going on. **Matthew 13:58:** "He did not do many miracles." One says he was not able to do any miracle; the other says he did not do many miracles. This again speaks of Jesus' power.
* **Mark 6:6:** "Jesus was amazed at their unbelief," suggesting if he's amazed, then he's learning something and he didn't know it already. **Matthew** omits the line. This deals with Jesus' knowledge.
* **Mark 8:22-26:** Here we have the healing of the blind man with spittle. Twice Jesus spat in the man's face; it didn't really quite heal, and he looked at people walking around, said they looked like trees. He was not the man who was born blind that we have in John 9, but he had sight before, and he knew that people didn't look like trees. So Jesus used spittle on his face again to heal. That sounds as if he couldn't pull it off the first time. Mark has actually got a very fascinating thing that he's trying to get the reader to wrestle with, but the fact is that Matthew omits the pericope entirely because it sounds as if Jesus was not powerful enough to heal him completely the first time.
Now, although I presented only a portion of the evidence, a principle emerges from this comparison: Matthew never has a lower Christology when it comes to Jesus' holiness, his volition, his power, his knowledge, his emotions, the disciples' derived authority from Jesus, or the worship of Jesus, unless Matthew 24:36 is the lone exception. How would Matthew 24:36 exhibit a lower Christology by adding *new Dahak we asked*? This verse almost exactly parallels the wording in Mark 13:32, except in one key point: Matthew adds *monos* to "except the Father," thus giving a doubly secure exclusion of the Father's knowledge concerning the time of certain eschatological events. Without the *monos*, Matthew's Christology would be identical to Mark's here. That, in itself, would be difficult to embrace because Matthew always wants to protect Jesus' reputation when it comes to knowledge, especially. He has a strong tendency not to retain Mark's wording but to change it subtly here and there to safeguard a high Christology. By omitting *haw-haw quiesce* but adding *monos* to his copy of Mark, Matthew's Jesus is implicitly saying what Mark's Jesus says explicitly. It preserves his high Christology while not altering the basic point that the Mark and Jesus was making. Matthew repeatedly demonstrates a desire to soften Mark's harshness but not radically change his meaning. Only the omission of *Buddha helios* in Matthew 24:36 reflects Matthew's redactional strategy, while adding it contradicts all that we know of his editorial work regarding Christology.
Now for the conclusion of the textual problem. I have a few points, and then I'll get to an epilogue on Ehrman. Although the external evidence was on the side of the longer reading, there were several important early and widespread witnesses to render some doubt about the phrase's authenticity in Matthew 24:36. The arguments in support of *Buddha hoc huius* from grammar and theology were shown to be not only quite doubtful on both counts but, in fact, argued more strongly for the omission. Redactional criticism swings decidedly in favor of the shorter reading. Thus, it was Matthew rather than later scribes who omitted *Huda hoc wheels* from his gospel, but it was also Matthew who added *monos*. Matthew, therefore, softened the statement of the Son's ignorance, but he did not eradicate it. For although he deleted *de hoc huius*, he added *monos*, making what was explicit still now implicit. This was in keeping with his overall Christological agenda, and it illustrates his care in handling the data that he found in Mark's Gospel.
Finally, I wish to discuss Ehrman's view briefly of scribal corruption in light of our findings in this paper. Since Matthew 24:36 is Ehrman's chief example of proto-Orthodox corruption of the New Testament, the argument *a fortiori* (that is, from the greater to the lesser) calls into question his claims of extensive and significant scribal corruption. Even if my textual conclusions are completely wrong and "nor the Son" is authentic, theological motives on the part of scribes were almost surely more subtle and less profound than Ehrman supposes. Even if "nor the Son" was deleted by later scribes, the retention of *monos* in Matthew 24:36 shows that they were unwilling to obliterate testimony of the Son's ignorance. Now, this point is not trivial. It cuts to the heart of Ehrman's entire method. In *Orthodox Corruption*, he argues that the reason the same manuscript can vacillate in the kinds of theological changes it makes is due to the individuality of the scribes who, under their own unique circumstances, may have felt inclined to emphasize one component of Christology over another. But he immediately adds, "It strikes me as equally likely, however, that the same scribe may have seen different kinds of problems in different texts and made the requisite changes depending on his perceptions and moods at the moment of transcription." If this kind of logic were applied to Matthew 24:36, we would have to say that the scribe had a major mood swing, because just four words after he deleted *Buddha hoc huius*, he could not bring himself to drop the *monos*. The *monos* is the spoiler for Ehrman's view. Although Ehrman's reconstructions of the reasons for certain textual corruptions are possible, they often reveal more about Ehrman's ingenuity than the scribes' intentions. Regarding his primary proof text, his primary proof text of Matthew 24:36, he has not adequately investigated the patristic writers. He has neglected both the *monos* in Matthew 24:36 and the stability of the *ou da hoc huius* in Mark 13:32. He has assigned the omission to the wrong source, and he has seriously misread even his own preferred reading when he declares that "the Christian claim that Jesus is a divine being is more than a little compromised."
Thank you.