Tag Archives: pharisees

Good Repentant Pharisees in Codex Bezae

In the gospel of Matthew chapter 21, verse 32, Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and scribes, and tells them,

“For John came to you with the way of righteousness, and you did not believe in him.  The revenue agents and prostitutes, however, did believe in him.  And you, when you saw that, did not subsequently have a change of heart and believe in him.”

However, some manuscripts say that the Pharisees DID subsequently have a change of heart and believe in him, that is, they omit the word “not” or “neither”:

21:32 txt ου “not” ℵ C E L W 𝔐 Or Chrys TR RP ‖ ουδε “not even; neither” B Σ Φ 0102 0233 lat syr-c,p,h eth Hil SBL TH NA28 ‖ omit D it-e,ff¹* syr-s ‖ lac A N P Z 0281. 

I looked at the image of Codex D, and found several interesting things, and I made a snip of the manuscript, posted here.

First, the scribe of Codex D appears to have accidentally omitted the negative particle because of the fact that the two words before it and after it were the last word in the line in the column and then the first word in the next line: ιδοντες <> μετεμεληθητε. In this image, EΙΔΟΝΤΕC “when you saw,” is on the 4th line as the last word. Then next is where the negative particle ου was supposed to be. Then the 5th line at the left side of the column picks up with ΜΕΤΕΜΕΛΗΘΗΤΕ. So the scribe overlooked the small word ου because of the line break. This is not an uncommon occurrence in the Greek New Testament. This accidental error is a type of “parablepsis.”

I also noticed that our scribe changed the length of his lines so that he could start 5 lines in a row with the word ΚΑΙ, which you can see on lines 9-13. He also seems to have lengthened a couple lines above that, so that he could end 2 lines with the same words, EPISTEΥCATAIAUTW.

Matthw 21:30-35 approximately

Typos in Mark?

My son Jacob sent me a list of what he thought might be typos in my translation of Mark:

2:16 – “Torah scholars of the Pharisees” instead of “Torah scholars and the Pharisees”

This is a Greek textual variant between the Nestle/Aland, United Bible Societies’ text, versus the Textus Receptus.  The text as I have it is referring to the Torah scholars belonging to the sect of the Pharisees; there were Torah scholars belonging to other sects as well.  This is not the only place we find this variant; it is in other passages and other gospels too.

2:23 – The heading is “Man Over the Sabbath”. I was wondering if you meant “Lord Over the Sabbath”?

Well, I have it purposely ambiguous, because not only is there a man who is Lord over the Sabbath, Jesus Christ, but also it means man is more important than the Sabbath.  Judaism made the Sabbath the most important thing in the Jewish universe, far more important than people, or any other part of the Torah, even more important than an actual walk with God.

5:35 – “Why inconvenience the teacher any farther?” Farther is used for physical distances. If it is figurative, it should be further. I think it’s a stretch to call it a physical distance.

Yes, further is for abstracts, and farther is for physical distance, but in fact, if you look at it, physical distance is actually what is being talking about.  Jesus had not yet traveled all the way to him, so they are saying, why make Jesus come all the way.  Why make the Rabbi go even farther out of his way.  I do remember thinking about that a long time when I translated it. Maybe I will make a footnote about it.  BTW, people are losing that distinction these days, I have heard even news anchors use the words wrongly.

9:23 – Jesus said to him, “‘If I can’?…” First, shouldn’t the single quote mark be after the question mark? Secondly, why is it necessary, since Jesus is paraphrasing the father?

Yeah, the Greek actually says, quoting the father directly “What is this ‘If you can’ you are saying.”  I’ll have to think about what to do there. But you are right, the quotation marks are not necessary for an indirect quotation.

14:22 – “taking a loaf of bread and blessing” Should there be an it after blessing to indicate that the bread was being blessed?

Here, the Greek word for blessing is also the Greek word often used to mean “giving thanks,” or “praising.”  Jesus was actually blessing God, not the food particularly, but blessing in the sense of praising God for it.  The lesson is, you bless the food by praising God for it. I remember making it deliberately ambiguous so that people would stop and think.  Catholics would have an easier time understanding it, since they use those words more interchangeably than Protestants do.  I guess I should make a footnote explaining it.

Dad