tm
eports
EXCHANGE
The Variants in the Gospel Reports
The Alexander Robertson Lectures for 1917
The Variants in the
Gospel Reports
BY
T. H. WEIR, B.D., M.R.A.S.
LECTURER IN ARABIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
WITH PREFATORY NOTE BY
The Rev. Professor MILLIGAN, D.D,
PAISLEY: ALEXANDER GARDNER
Publisher by Appointment to the late Queen Victoria
I92O
" Go, Mill tretise, nakit of eloquence,
Causing simpless and pouertee to wit,
And pray the reder to have pacience
Of thy defaute, and to supporten it,
Of his gudnesse thy brukilnesse to knytt,
And his tung for to ruele and to stere,
That thy defautis helit may bene here"
, % «xcha&iq«
V
z
HUNC LIBELLUM
MAGISTRO DISCIPULUS
Befcfcat
GULIELMO STEWART THOMAS H. WEIR
VIRO ET DOCTRINA ET EGREGIA
IN OMNIA VITAE OFFICIA
FIDE
MEMORABILI
431848
PREFATORY NOTE
My friend, Mr. Weir, has asked me to write a
brief foreword to his Robertson Lectures on The
Variants in the Gospel Reports. Any such intro-
duction seems unnecessary, but I am glad to have
this opportunity of commending to the earnest
attention of Biblical students Mr. Weir's careful
and learned inquiry. The subject with which it
deals is not only full of interest in itself, but is of
great importance for the proper understanding of
what must ever be for us the leading documents of
our Christian Faith; and any light that can be
thrown on the manner of their composition, or upon
the underlying sources of which, in their turn, the
original writers made use, cannot but be welcome.
Mr. Weir's main theme is that the first three
Gospels, at any rate, go back to an original Hebrew
Gospel, and that the variations in their reports are
largely due to their being different translations of
this Hebrew or Aramaic text.
How far Mr. Weir has succeeded in estabhshing
his thesis may well be matter of discussion, but
there can be no doubt that he has provided a large
amount of illustrative material, and in new and
unexpected ways has shown how many of the
7
8 Prefatory Note
'discrepancies; and differences in the Gospel records
may have arisen.
The book comes at a very appropriate time,
when there is undoubted danger lest the romantic
discoveries in the Common Greek of the period,
in which the New Testament has come down to us,
should lead us to forget the Jewish upbringing of
its writers, and the consequently Semitic mode of
thought and imagery of which they made use.
Had Mr. Weir done nothing else than this, he
would have deserved our gratitude. But, as it is,
he has in addition, as already hinted, made a
distinct contribution towards the solution of many
undoubted difficulties, and I cordially wish for his
volume the welcome it deserves.
G. MILLIGAN.
University of Glasgow,
October, 1920.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
My first duty is to express my thanks to the
Principal, Sir Donald MacAlister, K.C.B., and
the Professors of the Divinity Faculty for putting
my name before the University Court as Alexander
Robertson Lecturer, and to the Court for making
the appointment. I have also to thank the
Rev. James Hastings, D.D., the Rev. Sir W.
Robertson Nicoll, M.A., LL.D., and the Rev.
Hewlett Johnson, M.A., B.Sc, B.D., for leave
to reprint material which had appeared in The
Expository Times, The Expositor, and The Inter-
preter, of which permission I have made full use
in the last two lectures.
The text of the Gospels which has been used
in these lectures is that published by Dr. Colin
Campbell, The First Three Gospels in Greek,
arranged in Parallel Columns, first edition,
Glasgow, 1882.
I have also to acknowledge my indebtedness to
the composer of the Dedication, who prefers to
remain unnamed; and, lastly, I must thank the
Printers for the interest they have shown in setting
up an awkward text. I have only to add that,
9
io Introductory Note
without the counsel and encouragement of
Professor Milligan, this little book would not
have been written.
The founder of the present course of lectures was
born in the year 1833. He matriculated in
William Ramsay's Latin Class in 1850 along with
Edward Caird, and is described in the late
Registrar, Mr. Innes Addison's " Matriculation
Albums " as " Alex. Robertson, fil. natu tert.
Davidis Mercatoris Glasguensis." He became a
licentiate of the Free Church, and, never having
been elected to a charge, so remained. He died at
527 Great Western Road in 1899. One of his
hobbies would seem to have been purchasing old
books in the second-hand bookshops or from the
street barrows. In this line, to judge from the
volumes which are preserved in the gallery of the
University Library, he seems to have been for the
most part " a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles."
Mr. Robertson founded the lectures, it is said,
on the advice of the late librarian, Mr. James
Lymburn, and of Mr. Dalgety, a former well-
known minister of the Church of Scotland in
Paisley. The lectures are to be " in defence of the
Christian Religion." It is not necessary to suppose
that Mr. Robertson thought that the Christian
religion needed defending, or that it would be
possible to find anyone who was in a position to
defend it if it did. A curious feature of the
Introductory Note 1 1
Christian faith as contrasted with other faiths is
that its adherents are always ready to accept
everything that can be said against it, for the very
reason that they do not wish to do so. A certain
liking for fairplay and a sporting desire to give
one's opponent every advantage have often led to
the acceptance of views opposed to one's real
convictions. It is difficult otherwise to account for
the widespread acceptance in this country of the
results of modern criticism of the Old Testament.
At the present moment there is going on in
England a considerable Mohammedan propaganda
which is finding adherents, perhaps on the same
principle. The present course of lectures might
have been devoted to either of these topics, and
I cannot help feeling that it is a presumptuous
thing in one who has not, like many, made a life-
long study of the New Testament to venture upon
the present discussion. In a paper, however, which
was read before the Congress of the Society for
Biblical Study, held in this University a few years
ago, one of the speakers mentioned a Jewish friend
who laid it down as a fixed principle that if you
wished to make your fortune, the first thing to do
was always to keep at least £100,000 free on
deposit at your banker's, and he went on to say
that, if you wish to understand the New Testament
in Greek, the thing to do is to keep a Hebrew
Rabbi always at your elbow. It is now becoming
more and more recognized that in order to get at
12 Introductory Note
the exact sense of the sayings of Jesus, or even of
St. Paul, it is necessary first of all to turn them into
Hebrew, because, whatever the New Testament
authors may have written or even spoken in Greek,
they were always thinking in Hebrew, or, to speak
more strictly, in Aramaic, just as it is evident that
those who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek
are always thinking in Aramaic also. From this
point of view, it is hoped that the present course
of lectures, if such they may be called, will be
acceptable as one of those " unconsidered trifles "
which the founder of the lectureship would not
have altogether despised.
T. H. W.
%
CONTENTS
Prefatory Note, ----- 7
Introductory Note, 9
Lecture I., - - - - - - 15
The Four Gospels — their mutual relation — various
theories — Erasmus — revised editions— English Revised Ver-
sion—the Authorised Version — the Codex Bezae — three
types of text — evidence of papyri.
Lecture II., - - - - - - 29
Influence of dogma on MSS. — the oldest MSS. and the
oldest text — the Syriac versions — the Latin versions — scribal
errors negligible variants — influence of lectionaries — vari-
ants that go back to original authors — characteristics of
Mark — date of the first Gospel-parallel case of the Koran
— aims of the first disciples — the question whether the
reports aim at being verbatim — parallel case of the Talmud
— difference between the narrative portions and the sayings
— the parallel case of the Muslim tradition.
Lecture III., - - - - 54
Attempts at harmonizing by the copyists — Old Testament
citations — the parallel of the Greek translations of the Old
Testament — arguments against a Hebrew source for the
Gospels — absence of some Hebrew idioms — un- Hebrew
words in the vocabulary — their dependence for words on
II. Maccabees — arguments for a Hebrew source — statements
of Church Fathers — post-Biblical Hebrew literature — the
Hebrew Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha — internal evidence
of the Gospels — meaning of " Hebrew " in New Testament
— dialects of Hebrew — Galilean — the Hebrew of the Mishnah
— Aramaic — note on the Greek versions to Daniel.
13
1 4 Contents
Lecture IV., 80
Hebraisms giving rise to variants — poverty of Hebrew
and wealth of Greek grammar and vocabulary — variants due
to this — some Hebrew words frequently confused in the Old
Testament and New Testament — strange renderings of the
Greek Old Testament — classes of Gospel variants explicable
through Hebrew — scribal errors — errors of numbers — mis-
translations.
Lecture V., - - - - - - 116
Miscellaneous passages — summary.
The Variants in the Gospel Reports
LECTURE I
The Four Gospels — their mutual relation — various theories — Erasmus
— revised editions — English Revised Version — the Authorised
Version — the Codex Bezse — three types of text — evidence of
papyri.
Our knowledge of the life and words of Jesus of
Nazareth comes almost wholly from four small
books, none of which is longer than an article in
one of the monthly reviews. There are also short
notices and sayings in the Acts of the Apostles and
in St. Paul's epistles, and in the few Logia or
Sayings found in Egypt. The fourth Gospel
stands by itself. It differs from the first three in
its pictures of Jesus much as the Dialogues of Plato
differ from the Memorabilia of Xenophon in their
portraiture of Socrates. It takes up Jesus'
relation to the intellectuals of His time and place,
while the other three deal with His relations with
the common people. Putting aside the last week,
it has only two episodes in common with these — the
feeding of the 5,000 and the walking on the lake
(vi., 1-2 1 ). How far the three cover the same
is
1 6 The Variants in the Gospel Reports
ground will be seen from the following figures : If
we divide the whole of the matter into 88 sections,
43 of these will be found in each one of the first
three Gospels, 14 in both Matthew and Luke but
not in Mark, 12 in Matthew and Mark but not in
Luke, 5 in Mark and Luke but not in Matthew, 5 in
Matthew alone, 9 in Luke alone, and none in Mark
alone. Indeed, of the 661 verses in Mark, 600 are
met with in Matthew or Luke.
But not only is the matter largely the same in
the three Gospels, but it is often expressed in the
same words, as if one writer had copied the other.
The sermon of John the Baptist in Matthew (hi.,
7-10) is almost letter for letter the same as in
Luke (iii., 7-9) ; and this occurs over and over
again in many other places, longer or shorter,
sometimes all three agreeing verbally to a greater
or less extent. Cf. Matthew viii., 9f . and Luke vii.,
8f. : Matthew xi., 21 and Luke x., 13: Matthew
xii., 41L and Luke xi., 3 if. : Matthew xv., 4 and
Mark vii., 10: Matthew xv., 32 and Mark viii., 2,
etc.
On the other hand, there are passages, such as
the healing of the withered hand (Mt. xii., 9: Mk.
hi., 1 : Lk. vi., 6), in which each author tells his
story in his own way. Then, again, the same
events are sometimes told in different order, as the
story of the Temptation in Matthew and Luke.
Sometimes one almost thinks that one of the books
had been let fall and the leaves picked up and put
The Variants in the Gospel Reports 17
together in the wrong places — an accident which
has actually befallen one of the Papyrus books
discovered within recent years. The most interest-
ing cases, however, are those in which a verse
occurs verbatim the same in two gospels with the
exception of a single expression, because then the
divergence can be most readily pronounced soluble
or insoluble. For example, the sentences, " But
if I by Beelzebub . . . come nigh unto you "
occur letter for letter the same in Matthew (xii.,
27L) and Luke (xi., 19L), even down to the phrase
" kingdom of God," but for " spirit " Luke has
" finger."
Such facts show that the three Gospels con-
cerned are not of independent authorship. Two
of them used the third, or else all three used a
fourth lost gospel. The question naturally arose,
Which of the three, if there were only three, was
the first, which second, and which third? Clearly
this question can be answered in six different
ways, and each of these ways has been upheld at
some time by some scholar. Students of this
University who learned their Biblical Criticism a
generation ago from the late Professor William
Stewart, are most familiar with the opinion of
J. J. Griesbach, that Mark used Matthew and
Luke; but to-day the common view is that Mark
and a lost source are the original. The purpose of
the following lectures, if such they can be called,
is to show how some of the variants in the reports
B
1 8 The Variants in the Gospel Reports
of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels may have
arisen, and also to show that the variant reports
are in a way more valuable than those in which the
Gospels are in exact verbal agreement, because by
means of these differences we may hope to get
back behind our present texts to what was the first
Gospel of all.
To most people in this country and America the
Bible means the Authorized English Version. Ex-
cept for small changes in spelling introduced by
the printers, this takes us back to the year 1 6 1 1 .
The English Authorized Version was based, as the
address to the reader states, on " the Hebrew text
of the Old Testament, the Greek of the New/'
The Greek text referred to was that of the only
editions in use at the time and for long after,
which the Elzevirs named in 1633 the Textus
Receptus. All these editions of the Greek New
Testament, from the invention of printing to within
a hundred years ago, we may take to go back to
the first edition of Erasmus of 15 16. In such
haste was this last text issued that, from the
proposal of the publisher, John Froben of Basle,
to its appearance, only four months elapsed.
" Preclpitatus fuit verius quam editus" It con-
tained, it is said, 500 errors, 400 of which were
put right in the second edition and some fresh ones
introduced, but it remained the standard text of the
New Testament for over 300 years. The edition of
Erasmus is based on three MSS. which happened
The Variants in the Gospel Reports 19
to be in the library at Basle, where they may still
be seen. For the Apocalypse, however, Erasmus
used one MS. only, which he borrowed from John
Reuchlin. As it was defective at the end, Erasmus
translated the last six verses for himself from the
Latin. The whole of these MSS. were late cursives
ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.
With all its defects, however, the text of
Erasmus, at least in so far as the Gospels are
concerned, takes us back at once to the beginning
of the fifth century, for it is the same type of text
as is found in one of the old MSS. of the Greek
Bible, the Codex Alexandrinus.
For near three hundred years, however, a certain
dissatisfaction has been felt in regard to the MS.
authority on which the Textus Receptus was based,
but for the first two hundred of these the work
consisted mainly in the accumulation of material,
and the editions of the text printed were largely
re-issues of the Textus Receptus with increased
apparatus criticus. It was not until 1831 that an
edition appeared, edited by Karl Lachmann, which
threw overboard the Textus Receptus altogether,
and brought forth an entirely new text founded
upon the authority of the best MSS. Lachmann
was followed by Tischendorf, who published no
less than eight editions of the New Testament in
Greek, and Tischendorf by Westcott and Hort,
whose text has long held the field in this country.
The latest text, however, is that of H. von Soden,
20 The Variants In the Gospel Reports
published in Goettingen in 191 3. The position in
it does not greatly differ from that of Westcott
and Hort. The attitude taken up by Dr. Hort
in the introduction, written by him and acquiesced
in by Bishop Westcott, was that the Greek Textus
Receptus, upon which our Authorized Version is
based, does not go back beyond St. Chrysostom,
that is, it dates from the close of the fourth
century. From that time on, it is the common
text, but before that it did not exist as a text. It
is founded upon a great mass of late cursive MSS.,
together with a few old copies written in capital
letters. Dr. Hort therefore rejects it and goes back
to the text of the most ancient codices of all.
These are the Codex Sinaiticus (w) and the Codex
Vaticanus (B), belonging to the middle of the
fourth century. Dr. Hort pins his faith to the
latter just as Tischendorf had pinned his to the
Sinaitic. Wherever the Vatican MS. is available,
and there is no reason for suspecting it, its reading
is accepted and that of every other MS. rejected.
This MS. is admitted by almost all scholars to be
the best MS. of the Bible in Greek, outweighing
in authority all others.
The English Revised Version of the New Testa-
ment appeared in May, 1881, its preface being
dated nth November, 1880. The Greek edition
of Westcott and Hort did not appear until the end
of the former year, but the revisers were supplied
with advanced sheets and were largely guided in
The Variants in the Gospel Reports 2 1
their work by the editors of the Greek text. The
Revised Version is in fact practically a translation
of Codex B, just as the Authorized Version may in
the Gospels and Acts be regarded as a translation
of A, as far as it goes. The divergences between
the Textus Receptus and Codex B will be seen by
comparing the English Authorized Version and
Revised Version in the following passages : Mt i.,
25: v., 44: vi., 13: xvii., 21: xviii., 11 (cf. Lk.
xix., 10); xix., 17: xxvii., 49 margin; Mk. vi.,
20: ix., 44, 46, 49: xvi., 9 margin; Lk. ii., 14:
v., 1 : xi., 2-4: xxiii., 45: xxiv., 51 margin; Jn. v.,
3, 4: vi., 69.
The publication of the Revised Version naturally
divided scholars into two camps. The redoubtable
Dean Burgon of Chichester came forward as the
champion of the old version and the text upon
which it was based. The case for the new is stated
in Dr. Hort's introduction to the text of Westcott
and Hort. On reading through this volume, one
cannot help feeling that it is not an absolutely
judicial statement of facts. Even those who accept
Dr. Hort's conclusions remark that he regards the
readings of the Textus Receptus not only with
dislike, but with absolute contempt; and the
absolute supremacy which he assigns to the Vatican
Codex can only be regarded as an extreme
position. It may be said that Dean Burgon's
M Revision Revised " is also biased in the opposite
direction. To Dean Burgon, however, is due the
22 The Variants in the Gospel Reports
credit of having been the first to set about making
an exhaustive collection of the citations from the
New Testament, found in the early Church fathers,
with the view of rebutting Dr. Hort's assertion that
the readings of the Textus Receptas are not to be
found before Chrysostom. The index thus formed
fills sixteen large MS. volumes in the British
Museum. Burgon died in 1888. His labour was
to a certain extent lost, for the reason that the
edition of the fathers which he used, that of Migne,
is based upon late MSS. In fact, critical editions
are only appearing now, the Latin at Vienna and
the Greek at Leipzig. The difficulty about the
appeal to the Fathers is that one never knows
whether they meant their quotations to be verbatim
or not. The earlier the authority, the freer the
quotation. But the general result may be stated
as follows: the Gospel quotations in Clement
of Rome, in the Epistle of Barnabas, in the
" Shepherd " of Hermas, in Ignatius, and in
Polycarp are too free and too slight to point one
way or the other. It is not until we come to Origen
of Caesarea (d., 253 a.d.) that the tide begins to
turn in favour of the Codex Vaticanus ; and, as has
been said, from Chrysostom on, the text used is
the Textus Receptas. But before Origen, that is,
from the middle of the second to the beginning of
the third century, the text met with is neither that
of the Codex Vaticanus nor that of the Textus
Receptus, but a text differing from both, which is
The Variants in the Gospel Reports 23
also found in a sixth century MS. of the Gospels
and Acts called the Codex Bezae (D).
This codex differs from all other copies of the
Gospels known to exist up to the present time.
Perhaps the most notable divergence is the
insertion after Luke vi., 4 of the verse, M The same
day he beheld a man working on the sabbath, and
said to him: Man, if thou knowest what thou art
doing, blessed art thou; but if thou knowest not,
cursed art thou, and a transgressor of the law."
The writer of this codex is fond of putting another
word for that used in the other copies, for example,
" God " for " Lord " and " Lord " for " God," and
so on. This has been explained as due to trans-
lation from a Syriac original ; but as D differs from
the other three MSS. just as the first three Gospels
differ from one another, where we get synonymous
words in parallel passages, both differences are
probably to be explained by the same cause. The
order of the Gospels in this MS. is Matthew, John,
Luke, Mark — the order of the western Church, and
it is accompanied by a Latin version.
There are thus three types of text in the Greek
New Testament — that of the MSS. upon which the
English Authorized Version is based, that is, nearly
all the cursive and late MSS. together with a few
uncials, especially A in the Gospels and Acts : that
on which the English Revised Version is based,
namely, the oldest uncials : and that of which the
representative is the Codex D in the Gospels and
24 The Variants in the Gospel Reports
Acts. To the last type belong also the Old Latin
versions before the Vulgate, and the Old Syriac.
It is this type of text which is found in the
earliest Church fathers whose quotations can be
differentiated, that is, in the middle of the second
century. This preference, if it can be so called,
becomes more decided in Justin Martyr, Tatian,
and Marcion, and still more in Irenaeus and
Clement of Alexandria. Dr. Hort says: "At all
events, when every allowance has been made for
possible individual licence, the text of D presents
a truer image of the form in which the Gospels
and Acts were most widely read in the third, and
probably a great part of the second century than
any other extant Greek MS. [p. 149]: it is to the
best of our belief substantially a Western text of
the Cent. II., with occasional readings probably
due to Cent. IV. [p. 148]: it is remarkable how
frequently the discovery of fresh evidence,
especially Old Latin evidence, supplies a second
authority for readings in which D had hitherto
stood alone [p. 149]."
As the evidence as to the true text of the Gospels
to be obtained from the writings of the Church
Fathers is not what one would expect, one turns
with better hope to the Papyri. These, at any rate,
have the advantage that they are, many of them,
of the nature of autographs, and are in any case
older than our oldest MSS. If we take the
Oxyrhynchus Papyri, edited by Drs. Grenfell and
The Variants in the Gospel Reports 25
Hunt, in No. 2, a, fragment of the oldest known
MS. of the New Testament, containing parts of
the first chapter of Matthew, the type of text is
that which lies behind the English Revised rather
than the Authorized Version (Pt. I., p. 7 top).
No. 3, however, of about 500 A.D. (vellum), con-
taining Mark x., 50, 51, and xi., 11, 12, exhibits
the opposite or A type of text. No. 208, again,
of the third century, containing parts of John,
conforms to the Codex Sinaiticus, as also does
perhaps No. 401 (end of Matthew i. and beginning
of ii.) of about 500 A.D. (vellum). On the other
hand, No. 405, of about the year 200, and so
perhaps the oldest Christian fragment discovered
till then, does not agree with the text of Westcott
and Hort. In Matthew hi., 17, it probably read,
" Thou art " instead of " This is my beloved son."
The former is the reading of the Codex Bezae.
A reading of the same MS. (Luke xi., 52) is found
in No. 655, "Ye have hidden the key of know-
ledge " for "Ye have taken away," but it ends,
" but to those entering ye opened not." No. 845,
Pss. lxviii. and lxx., of about 400 A.D., shows an
" independent text." The text of others is of a
" mixed" type (1075, 2352, 1353), and many have
readings elsewhere found only in late cursive MSS.
(1007, 1 1 66, 1 1 68, 1226, etc.). Others have
readings peculiar to themselves. No. 1007 has
two Z's with a horizontal bar through them to
represent the usual Hebrew contraction for the
26 The Variants in the Gospel Reports
Divine name instead of " the Lord." No. 654,
Logion iv., corresponding to Luke xii., 2, etc., has
" There is nothing hid which shall not be made
manifest, nor buried which shall not be (raised up
or known?)." The Old Latin fragment, No. 1073,
in Genesis vi., 2, for the usual " quod essent
pulchrae" has quia speciosae sunt, a reading
mentioned elsewhere. One may, indeed, say of
these papyri as a whole what Drs. Grenfell and
Hunt say of No. 1007: "As usual, it evinces no
pronounced affinities with any of the chief extant
MSS., but agrees here with one, there with
another. In two passages, again, it sides with
some of the cursives against the earlier MS.
evidence."
In the Catalogue, again, of the Greek Papyri in
the John Rylands Library at Manchester, vol. i.,
edited by Dr. A. S. Hunt: — No. 1, a fragment
of Deuteronomy ii., 37 to iii., 13, of not later than
the year 400 A.D., now agrees with B rather than
with A, now with A against B, and once with
cursives against uncials (iii., 5, M all the cities "
for " all these cities "). No. 2, Job i., 15-21 : v.,
24 to vi., 9, omits the long interpolations of A, and
is much nearer to B than to it, but in i., 16, it puts
" likewise " before " consumed," with the cursive
MS. 147. The fragment is of the sixth or seventh
century. No. 4, Romans xii., 3-8, in verse 8
agrees with the Sinai tic against the other uncials.
No. 5, Titus i., 1 1 to ii., 8, has in ii., 7, the
The Variants in the Gospel Reports 27
reading " unenvyingness " instead of " uncorrupt-
ness," a reading found in no other MS., though it
was known to exist.
Amongst the Amherst Papyri, Part II., edited
by Drs. , Grenfell and Hunt, No. cxc, " The
Shepherd " of Hermas agrees with the Athos MS.
and the corrector of the Sinaitic as against the first
hand of the latter. No. cxciii. (vellum), Proverbs
x., 18-29, shows some variants from both A and
B. No. vi. (in Part I.), containing parts of Psalms
cviii., cxviii., cxxxv., cxxxviii.-cxl., displays an in-
definite type of text, but generally reproduces A
and the second hand of the Sinaitic as against the
original scribe of the latter and against B.
Mitteiss and Wilcken, in their Grundzuege und
Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, vol I., No. 133,
give a Christian Amulet, which includes the whole
of the Lord's Prayer. The text is virtually the
same as that of St. Matthew's Gospel, except that
it omits the words " the kingdom and the power
and " of the doxology. As the gospel papyri seem
to run closer to St. Luke than to the other two,
this would seem to show that the extremely short
form in which that prayer is given in our Revised
Version in the third Gospel is at any rate not
correct. The evidence is all the stronger in this
case because of the extreme freedom with which
the text of the Bible is often quoted in the early,
centuries. For example, in the same collection,
No. 130, a letter to a bishop, of the fourth century,
28 The Variants in the Gospel Reports
cites as Scripture the words, " Blessed are they
that have a posterity in Zion," the only text
approaching which is Isaiah xxxi., 9, " whose fire
is in Zion."
Taken altogether, the verdict of the papyri
seems to be that any reading of any type may be
ancient.
LECTURE II
Influence of dogma on MSS. — the oldest MSS. and the oldest text —
the Syriac versions— the Latin versions — scribal errors — negligible
variants — influence of lectionaries — variants that go back to
original authors— characteristics of Mark — date of the first Gospel
— parallel case of the Koran — aims of the first disciples — the
question whether the reports aim at being verbatim — parallel case
of the Talmud — difference between the narrative portions and the
sayings — the parallel case of the Muslim tradition.
When we remember that all the MSS. which have
come down to us were written in times when
theological dispute ran high within the Church, it
is reasonable to suppose that some of them at least
are tinged in the interest of heresy or orthodoxy
according to the mental bias of the scribes who
wrote them. The two MSS., the Sinaitic and the
Vatican, in particular, omit so many expressions
in which is involved the Godhead of Jesus — for
example, the words " the son of God " in Mark i,
i, in the original text of the former: the word
" Lord " in Luke xxiii., 42 (For " He said to Jesus,
Lord, remember me," they read " He said, Jesus,
remember me.") ; and in John ix., 35, both MSS.,
along with D, for " Son of God " have " son of
man " — that it has been supposed that they were
written in the interest, or under the influence, of
the Arian schism.
29
30 The Variants in the Gospel Reports
It was not until the end of the seventh or the
beginning of the eighth century, partly as a result
of the Mohammedan conquests of Syria, Persia,
and North Africa, that the doctrines of the Church
can be said to have taken their final form, and it
was about the same time that both the canon of
the Bible and its text became fixed. From that
time on, all MSS. are practically identical. They
exhibit the kind of text from which our English
Authorized Version was made; but the problem
which seems to defy solution is, whether that text
already existed in the centuries before the earliest
MSS., or was the original text more like that of
the Codex Vaticanus? In other words, Is the text
of the oldest MSS. the oldest text, or is it not?
A precisely parallel problem presents itself in
regard to one of the oldest versions of the New
Testament, the Syriac. There were two main
Syriac translations of the Gospels, one, that con-
tained in the Syriac version of the whole Bible,
both Old Testament and New Testament, which is
generally known as the Peshitto, and the Old
Testament portion believed to date from the second
century, A.D. The extant MSS. of this translation
of both Old Testament and New Testament date
from about the middle of the fifth century. This
version holds the same place in regard to Syriac
as the Vulgate of Jerome does to the Latin
translations, and it was long regarded as the
authoritative Syriac version. Another version was
The Variants in the Gospel Reports 3 1
known to exist, portions of which were published
in its original and in a revised form by the Dutch
scholar De Dieu and by Pococke, but there was
no mystery connected with its birth. The original
translation of the whole Bible was made for the
Jacobite bishop Philoxenus in the year 508, and
the revision in 616. These versions were made
and used by the Monophysite portion of the Syrian
Church: the Nestorians held to the Peshitto.
In the year 1858, however, a new version of
the Gospels in Syriac was published by Dr.
W. Cureton, and in 1892 the Scots ladies,
Mrs. Lewis and the late Mrs. Gibson, discovered
a similar copy of the Gospels in the monastery of
St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. These two MSS.,
the latter of which, being slightly the older,
belongs to about the year 400, constitute a second
Syriac version in addition to the Peshitto, and the
question immediately arises, Which is the original
Syriac of the Gospels?
About the year 170 A.D., a Syrian Christian,
Tatian, drew up a harmony of the four Gospels,
which was either composed in, or immediately
translated into Syriac. In the third century it was
used in place of the separate Gospels in the
churches of Edessa. Early in the fifth century,
however, this harmony was abolished, and its place
taken by a new Syriac translation of the separate
Gospels. Rabbula, who was Bishop of Edessa
from 412 to 435, was foremost in this movement,
32 The Variants in the Gospel Reports
which was so thoroughly carried out that no copy
of Tatian's harmony in the original has survived.
It is now generally agreed that the translation
which was made by Rabbula was nothing else than
the Peshitto version. The argument for this is that
quotations from the Peshitto are not found before
the date of Rabbula, and that after that nothing
else is quoted. Such is the view of Professor
Burkitt and of those who had a hand in publishing
the Sinai Gospels. On the other hand, Tatian's
harmony was not used throughout the whole
Syrian Church, and the question has to be
answered, What became of the gospels used in the
other Churches? If it be answered that they are
the Old Syriac, it is pointed out that both the
gospels published by Cureton and those discovered
by Mrs. Gibson and Mrs. Lewis are specifically
named " Separate Gospels," in evident contrast to
Tatian's " Mixed Gospels." Moreover the Peshitto
is the version accepted by all Syrian Christians.
Precisely the same phenomenon which meets us
in the problem of the relative age of the two main
types of the Greek MSS., and in the main Syriac
versions, meets us for the third time in the case
of the Latin versions. Only in this case we have
left the realm of conjecture, and stand upon the
solid ground of historical fact. Before the end
of the second Christian century, the New Testa-
ment books had been translated into Latin,
probably in Africa, where the Latin language had
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 33
not yet been displaced by Greek. As one might
almost expect from its place of origin, the texts
which have survived show so much variation that
it is impossible to regard them as MSS. of one
and the same version, and Augustine (354-430)
speaks of the " infinite variety " of the Latin trans-
lations of his day, and of the best of them as being
the " Itala," as if some revision had already been
attempted. But the revised version which dis-
placed all the Old Latin translations, and became
the authorized Bible of the Roman Church, was
that undertaken at the instigation of Pope Damasus
(366-384) by St. Jerome, the Vulgate.
We know that the Vulgate of Jerome was later
than the old Latin translations of which it was a
revision, and it is natural to conclude from analogy
that the Peshitto, or Syriac Vulgate, represents a
later translation than the Sinai Gospels and
Curetonian fragments, and that the Greek MSS.
on which our authorized English version is based
represent a later type of text than the oldest
codices, such as the Vatican and Sinaitic, on which
the revised version is founded. The argument,
however, is not so conclusive as it seems. The
Latin Vulgate was, after all, in the New Testament
books, putting aside the four Gospels, practically
a selected version of the Old Latin, and the
quotations of New Testament texts by the early
Fathers appear to show that the type of text with
which they were familiar was that of the latter,
C
34 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
rather than of the earlier Greek MSS. The Latin
Vulgate and the Syriac Vulgate (supposing the
latter to be the work of Rabbula at the beginning
of the fifth century) did not invent new readings,
but merely made a selection from the old, and the
revisers of those days were in some ways not ill-
fitted to make a wise selection.
In trying to arrive at some firm ground in such
matters, it is necessary to bear in mind that even
editors and critics are human. Each is prone to
exalt the MS. or version with which he himself is
most closely concerned. Dr. Cureton believed
that the Old Syriac text which he discovered and
edited in 1848 contained, in the case of the first
Gospel at any rate, " the identical terms and
expressions which the Apostle himself used "
(Introd., p. xciii). Professor Burkitt notes that
the same claim had been made as long ago as
1555 on behalf of the Syriac Vulgate by Widman-
stadius, who edited the e ditto princeps of that
version. Mrs. Lewis, again, to whom is due the
honour of discovering the other Old Syriac MS.,
the Sinai Palimpsest, would place its text before
even the Diatessaron of Tatian of 170 A.D., and
the Curetonian later than the latter, whilst
Professor Burkitt places the Diatessaron first.
Tischendorf, again, naturally gave preponderating
weight to his discovery, the Codex Sinaiticus, as
is evidenced by the wide divergence between his
seventh and eighth editions: whilst Dr. Hort
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 35
preferred above all the Codex Vaticanus, which he
may be said to have " discovered " in the modern
sense ; and the editor of the new Washington MSS.
(Professor Sanders of Michigan) wishes to date
them in the fourth rather than in the fifth century.
And, considering the front place held among
English people for many years by the Vaticanus,
the decipherers and editors of the Papyri may have
been more apt to notice readings in them agreeing
with it rather than with those of more obscure
copies.
But while many variant readings in the MSS.
are due to the mental bias of the copyist, others
again can be put down only to his indifference or
even carelessness. How careless these copyists of
the Bible MSS. could be comes out much more
clearly in the Old Testament than in the New.
The English reader of the Bible can see, for
instance, that in Leviticus xx., 10, a whole clause
has been repeated by mistake ; that in Joshua xxii.,
34, the name of the altar has dropped out. In
I. Chronicles vi., 28 (13), the sons of Samuel are
Vashni and Abiah; but " Vashni " is really the
Hebrew "and the second." The first-born was
Joel. See the Revised Version. In Psalm xxxv.,
7, the Hebrew reads literally, " They have spread
a pit, their net have they digged." But even more
unintelligible than the presence of such glaring
errors in the text is the fact that Jewish scholars,
such as Rashi, could read their Bibles without
36 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
seeing them. Probably the only one of the sacred
books of the East that surpasses the Hebrew Bible
in its scribal errors is the Koran. Certainly the
New Testament lags far behind in this respect.
The wonder is, when we consider the number of
times that these books were copied, that errors due
to carelessness are so few. We are apt to forget
that even the oldest MS. is a copy of a copy almost
to n terms. Thus the Circular Letter to the
Church at Smyrna on the martyrdom of Polycarp
concludes: "These things Caius rewrote from
those of Irenaeus (a disciple of Polycarp), who also
was a fellow citizen of Irenaeus, and I, Socrates,
wrote in Corinth, copying from those of Caius. . .
And I again, Pionius, wrote them from the before
written copy, having carefully searched into them,
the blessed Polycarp having manifested them to
me through revelation, as I will show below. . ."
Thus Pionius, the scribe of the extant MS. made
his copy from that of Socrates, and Socrates his
from that of Caius, who transcribed his from the
copy belonging to Irenaeus; and the latest copyist
confesses to having made additions to the MS. off
his own bat, these being, as he supposed, revealed
to him by the dead saint. One can understand why
ancient authors call down imprecations upon those
who copy their works amiss (Deuteronomy iv. 2:
xii., 32; Proverbs, xxx., 6; Revelation xxii., 18,
19). Irenaeus concludes one of his works: "I
adjure you that copy this book by our Lord Jesus
The Variants of the Gospel Reports $j
Christ . . . that you collate that which you have
copied and correct it carefully by this your original,
and that you likewise copy this adjuration and
insert it in your copy " (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical
History, V '., 20) . But even the original documents
were not always free from errors due to careless-
ness or ignorance. Some of the Papyri which
contain sayings of our Lord are full of errors, for
example, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, No. 654, is " care-
lessly written in bad Greek," but it may have been
that the scribe was merely illiterate.
Many variants in the Gospels, again, are due to
the fact that the copyists or, it may be, the original
authors were simply indifferent as to the point at
issue. They were not interested. 'Thus, a very
common variation occurs in the mention of those
with whom Jesus conversed, or to whom His
sayings were addressed, whether they were
Pharisees or Sadducees or scribes, His own dis-
ciples or the multitude. The Sermon on the Mount
was spoken, according to one account (Matthew
v., 1), to His disciples, according to another (Luke
vii., 1) to the multitude. Matthew xxvi., 3 has
"elders " where Luke xxii., 2 and Mark xiv., 1
have " scribes ": Matthew ix., 3 and Mark ii., 6
have " certain of the scribes " where Luke v., 21
has M scribes and Pharisees "; and so frequently
(C/. Matthew ix., 11: xii., 24: xvi., 6 with the
parallel places in Mark and Luke: similarly of
John the Baptist, Matthew iii., 7).
38 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
Anyone who reads the three first Gospels in
parallel columns will see at a glance that it is at
the beginnings of sections that the narrative parts
most frequently diverge, even when the remaining
sentences are in agreement. This may be due to
many copies of the Gospels having been in the
form of Church lectionaries. Anyone who will
take the trouble to compare the lessons, for
example, in the Church of England prayer-book
will find that in many cases the opening words
have been altered to make a tetter beginning.
The Diatessaron would naturally be a fruitful
source of such variations.
But, in the last place, many of the variations in
the Gospels no doubt go back to the original
authors themselves. Each had his own point of
view. John was a mystic, Luke a physician, Mark
of a pictorial artistic temperament, Matthew a
Hebrew. Matthew alone uses the phrase " king-
dom of heaven." Luke is obviously writing for
those who are not quite au fait with things
Palestinian, and he constantly changes expressions
in order to make things intelligible to his readers
(C/. iv., 9, 31: xxiii., 51 with the parallel narra-
tives). To express how early the women came to
the sepulchre, he uses a phrase from Plato (xxiv.,
1). As a physician, he adds notes of medical,
botanical, or other interest (iv., 39: viii., 55: xxi.,
29). He accounts for the infatuation of Judas by
mental possession (xxii., 3) just as the Chronicler
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 39
(I. Chron. xxi., 1) does in the case of David, in
which he is followed by John (xiii., 2, 27). On
the other hand, cf. Luke viii., 6, where he omits
details of the seed sprouting on rocky ground, and
viii., 43, where he leaves out some reflections upon
his own calling.
Mark again is specifically the artist evangelist.
Unfortunately, these touches sometimes lead him
into error ; and it is just the question whether these
errors have been put right by the later Matthew
and Luke, or whether he is not by way of
improving upon these two sources. The facts may
be explained in either way, and each hypothesis is
good. It often seems as if Mark were " touching
up " or editing his sources. Thus, in the story of
the feeding of the 5,000, Luke says that Jesus,
taking the five loaves and two fishes "... brake
and gave to his disciples" (ix., 16). Matthew
inserts " the loaves " before " to his disciples ";.
but Mark, noticing apparently that " brake " is
appropriate only of loaves, not of fishes, corrects
V brake the loaves . . . and the two fishes he
divided" (vi., 41). Or, again, in the interview
with the rich youth (Mark x., 176°.), the whole
point of the narrative lies in this, that the youth's
one failing was covetousness, and Jesus, in reciting
to him the commandments, purposely omitted the
tenth (Matthew xix., 18: Luke xviii., 20). Mark,
noticing this, supplies what is lacking, " Defraud
not." Quite often Mark combines the readings of
40 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
Matthew and Luke. Thus, Matthew (xxvi., 34)
has in the warning to Peter " this night ": Luke
(xxii., 34) "to-day"; but Mark (xiv., 30)
"to-day, this night." Further illustrations of
Mark's thus twining together the words of his two
fellow-authors will be found at Mark i., 42, " the
leprosy went out from him and he was cleansed,"
from " his leprosy was cleansed " (Matthew viii.,
3) and "his leprosy went out from him " (Luke
v., 13): Mark xiv., 1, "the passover and the un-
leavened bread " from " the passover " (Matthew
xxvi., 2) : and " the feast of the unleavened bread
which is called the passover " (Luke xxii., 1) ; and
so frequently. No doubt the same thing may be
found in the other two Gospels here and there.
Thus we have " the men wondered " (Matthew
viii., 27) : " they feared with a great fear " (Mark
iv., 41); and "they, being afraid, wondered"
(Luke viii., 25). Or, again, Luke's " Bethphage
and Bethany " (xix., 29) from Matthew xxi., 1
(Bethphage), and Mark xi., 1 (Bethany). But the
point is that such " conflate readings " are almost
the rule in the case of Mark and rare in the other
two. The habit of emending his texts (if such it
be) sometimes leads to a pitfall, as it has done
since. Perhaps Mark's most serious lapses are to
be found at ii., 26 (Abiathar for Ahimelech), vi.,
17 (Philip), and x., 12 (wife divorcing her
husband) .
As to the date at which the, or rather a, gospel
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 41
was first written down, it is clear that at the first
there would be no purpose in drawing up a formal
biography of Jesus. The first Christians, St. Paul
among the rest, lived in daily and hourly hope of
the second coming of Jesus, the last judgment, and
the restitution of all things. Just as the eastern
landowner will not plant trees, because he knows
that he will not live to use their timber, so there
was no motive in setting about a work the
execution of which might be interrupted by the end
of all things. The first Christians had other things
to think about than the handing on of the words
and doings of Jesus to a future which they did not
expect. One of the early Arabs who took part in
the Muslim invasions of Persia, having sold his
share in the loot for 1,000 dirhems, was asked why
he did not demand a larger sum. He answered
that he did not know that there was a number
above 1,000. And the reason why we do not
possess more lives of Jesus by His disciples is that
it never entered their minds that such lives would
be wanted.
Even in the case of Mohammed, whose revela-
tions were firmly believed to be the very words of
God, no attempt was made to gather them together
into a book until, some two years after his death,
a very great slaughter of the Muslims in battle
gave rise to the apprehension that his words might
be irretrievably lost. Then and then only were
they formally committed to writing. But when
42 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
this came to be done, is was found that the bulk
of these sayings had already been scrolled by pious
believers upon shoulder blades, flat stones, and
palm leaves, as well as in the breasts of men. If
this took place among an unlettered people, such
as the Arabs of that time were, to preserve the
words of " the illiterate prophet," we may be sure
that among a well-educated people such as were
the Jews of the first century, and in the case of a
Prophet who could both read and write, many
sayings would be taken down on the spot. The
Liblar (libellarius), or professional letter-writer
(familiar to all who read books about Palestine
and the modern East) is a well-known personage
in the early parts of the Talmud, and we may be
sure that many letters passing between Palestine
and Egypt and the West would contain reports of
the words of the new Prophet who had arisen,
mingled with matters of nearer concern.
We have to recall, moreover, that the first
disciples did not think of the Gospel as destined
to travel beyond the borders of Palestine, or at
any rate of the Jewish faith. And it was only when
it began to break through these narrow bounds,
and when it was no longer possible for those to
whom it made its appeal to come into personal
contact with those who had been the companions
of Jesus and the witnesses of His words and deeds,
that the need for authoritative statements re-
garding His life and teaching came to be felt. As
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 43
in the case of the Koran also, the loss by death at
the hands of the enemy, or in the course of nature,
of those who knew the facts at first hand, would
compel those who survived to commit to some
more permanent form than that of oral tradition
what they themselves knew. But, so much was
there to be told, that well on in the second century
we find Polycarp and Papias gathering much by
word of mouth which has not come down to us.
A further cause why an authoritative life of
Jesus would not be drawn up at once, as is the
custom with us, would be that the central point
of the Christian faith, as taught by St. Peter and
the other apostles, was that Jesus is the Messiah
promised by Moses and the prophets to the Jewish
race. The proof of this doctrine could be attained
only by sheer force of argument. No biography,
however full, could meet a tenth of the objections
and difficulties which each individual enquirer
would bring forward. To such an end a formal
life would be of very little use.
At the same time, when we consider that the
persecution of the Christians began almost
immediately, analogy would lead us to the
conclusion that at most only a few years were
allowed to elapse before at least the utterances of
Jesus were committed to writing. The fact that
St. Luke's Gospel is admittedly early, and that
St. Matthew's is earlier than St. Luke's, and that a
comparison of the reports handed down by these
44 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
two points most naturally to their being based upon
an Aramaic or Hebrew document used, directly or
indirectly, by both, it is plain that this document
must have been very early indeed, earlier, in fact,
than what is usually reckoned our earliest source,
the Letters of St. Paul.
The question naturally presents itself, Did the
evangelists really mean to give us the exact words
of Jesus? Would it not have been enough from
their point of view to give the tenor of His words?
Each of these positions is supported by what we
find in the texts. In defence of the proposition that
the Gospels do not profess to give us the very
words, but merely the substance of the sayings, it
might be pointed out that so many of those sayings
are reported in the four Gospels in different words,
even where the sense remains the same. One
instance is Matthew ix., 16, " No man putteth a
piece of new cloth into an old garment," etc., for
which Luke v., 36 has, " No man putteth a patch
that he hath torn from a new garment upon an
old," etc. Even some of the last words of Jesus
are not reported the same in each Gospel. Thus,
for " Watch and pray " in Matthew xxvi., 41, and
Mark xiv., 38, Luke (xxii., 46) has " Arise and
pray." Similarly, Matthew ix., 4ff., compared with
Mark ii., 8ff. and Luke v., 22fT. (the case of the
paralytic) . The words of other dramatis persona
are also not reported in identical phrase. The
question of the rich youth is in Matthew xix., 16,
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 45
" Master, what good thing shall I do that I may
inherit eternal life?" in Luke xviii., 18, " Good
master, having done what, shall I inherit " etc.
A further reason for believing that the Gospels do
not aim at giving the exact words is that the
Semitic languages do not, except rarely, employ
the indirect speech, and so, when they quote, as
it were, in inverted commas, the words are still
not meant to be a direct quotation. In the parable
of the two sons, " he said, I will not " might be
equally well expressed in English by "he said that
he would not."
On the other hand, much may be said in favour
of the position that the evangelists did mean to
report the sayings of Jesus at least exactly as they
were uttered. The idea of reporting a speech in
any but the words used by the speaker is quite
foreign to the Oriental historian's sense of literary
honesty. The thought of propagating the spirit
by abrogating the letter is one that would never
occur to him. Even when Jesus and St. Paul
infuse a new life into the utterances of Moses and
the Prophets, they keep the old formulae. Jesus
constantly quotes the Old Testament writers in a
sense which they never intended, and would not
have understood, but He does quote the Old
Testament words just as they were written.
The Mosaic institutions being a code of laws,
the theologians and lawyers of Israel were bound
to pay attention to the exact words in which they
46 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
were expressed, just as much as is done in the
drafting of bills in Parliament. The whole of the
dialectics of the Talmud is based upon the letter
of the Law of Moses. The tradition of the elders
was the beginning of a system of casuistry com-
parable only to that of the Jesuits in the time of
Pascal, and it all drew in the last resort upon the
ipsisslma verba of the Hebrew Scriptures. One
of the most curious of its deductions is the proof-
text which Rabban Gamaliel offers to show that
the doctrine of the resurrection is taught in the
Pentateuch. He appeals to Deuteronomy xxxi.,
16: "The Lord said to Moses, Thou shalt sleep
with thy fathers, but shalt arise." The expression
really is, " this people will arise " (Sanhedrin,
90b). Jesus' proof of the truth of this doctrine
from the fact that God is called the God of
Abraham, and that He is not the God of the dead
but of the living, and that therefore Abraham must
be alive, was a piece of Rabbinic logic well suited
to those to whom it was addressed. The whole
of the Christian Scriptures, and especially perhaps
the Epistle to the Hebrews, make constant use of
the literal expressions of the older Scriptures in
order to prove their argument, and we find
St. Paul, when he interprets the name Hagar as a
Mount Sinai in Arabia (Galatians iv., 25), as he
himself says, allegorizing the written word. An
extreme example of this method of interpreting the
ancient text occurs in the Epistle of Barnabas,
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 47
chapter ix., which makes use of the number of
Abraham's fighting men, 318 (Genesis xiv., 14),
because that number is represented in Greek letters
by TIH, to denote Jesus (IH) and the Cross (T).
But if the literary people of the first and second
centuries, both Jews and Christians, set much store
by the letter of their sacred writings, no less did
they by the utterances of the Rabbins themselves.
The sayings of the fathers from the time of Ezra
onwards were treasured up with a care little, if at
all, less than that bestowed upon holy writ itself.
Jesus was one of the Rabbis, even if, like Eleazar
ben Hyrcanus two generations later, He stood
outside the circle of those who were the in-
terpreters of Moses ; and we may be sure that the
words which fell from His lips would be gathered
with no less care than those of the other Rabbis
were. Even the critics of the New Testament who
reject all the Gospels and most of the epistles of
St. Paul do not deny the authenticity of the sayings
of the Rabbis that are transmitted to us in the
Talmud. It is not easy to understand the logic
of this position, if we reflect that nearly the whole
of the New Testament must have been written
down within a century of the death of Jesus,
whereas not a word of the Talmud was committed
to writing for six or seven hundred years after
Christ.
The number of sayings of Jesus which are given
in the same terms, or almost the same, in the first
48 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
three Gospels is very large. Nor is this true of
His more studied utterances alone, but even of His
casual talk. Instances are: — the words to the
Canaanite woman (Matthew xv., 26 and Mark vii.,
27): "How many loaves have you?" (Matthew
xvi., 34 and Mark viii., 5) : the first announcement
of the passion (Matthew xvi., 21 : Mark viii., 31 :
and Luke ix., 22) : the Christian rule (Matthew
xvi., 24: Mark viii., 34: and Luke ix., 23, where
"daily " is of doubtful authority) : the general
principle of the following verse, except that Mark,
improving on the other two, adds to " for my
sake " the words " and the gospel's." The point
to be noted in many of these passages is that while
the words ascribed to Jesus are the same in the
three accounts, the narratives leading up to them
are not so. This would seem to show that the
narrators wished to give at least the words of Jesus
as they w r ere spoken, but dealt freely with their
setting. They were converging streams ; it is the
quotation of a saying that brings them together.
But it is not only the words of Jesus which are
given so carefully in the Gospels. All reports of
what other people had said are given with the same
apparent effort after accuracy. Instances are: —
the disciples' " Why say the scribes that Elias must
first come?" (Matthew xvii., 10 and Mark ix., 11):
the question of John's disciples, " Art thou he that
should come?" etc. (Matthew xi., 3: Luke vii.,
19) : that of the priests, " By what authority," etc.
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 49
(Matthew xxi., 23: Mark xi., 28: Luke xx., 2).
Mark alters slightly in his usual style. Casual
sayings of Jesus also which are found in the fourth
Gospel agree with those of the three: — " It is I,
be not afraid" (John vi., 20: Matthew xiv., 27:
Mark vi., 50) : " The poor ye have with you
always " (John xii., 8 : Matthew xxvi., 1 1 : Mark
xiv., 7) : " One of you shall betray me " (John
xiii., 21 : Matthew xxvi., 21 : Mark xiv., 18). And
of others: — "Blessed is he that cometh in the
name of the Lord " (John xii., 13: Matthew xxi.,
9: Mark xi., 9: Luke xix., 38, D).
Some notion of how far the early Christians
were concerned about handing down, not merely
the purport of Jesus' words, but the very words
themselves, may be gathered from a consideration
of the parallel case of Islam. Mohammed died in
the year 632 A.D., and within two years of his
death the whole of the Koran had been collected
and committed to writing. It underwent a final
revision within twenty years, and the Kordn as it
existed then is as good as the text of to-day. In
addition to the Koran, all the sayings and doings
of Mohammed that were remembered were
gathered together, and the oldest extant collection
of them is that of Malik, son of Anas, a native of
Medinah, where he died in the year 795, or 163
years after Mohammed. Every tradition of the
prophet is traced through a line of witnesses,
stretching from the time of Malik to that of
D
50 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
Mohammed, each having passed on the saying or
reminiscence to the one after him, much like " the
men of the great synagogue." Later, the study
of the Muslim tradition became a science, as did
the tradition of the elders with the Jews. Learned
men would travel all over the Muslim world in
search for traditions of Mohammed and his com-
panions, testing their genuineness according to
their lights, and rejecting those which they con-
sidered spurious. They lived for the most part
in the third century after Mohammed. The best
known of them is the great Bukhari, who spent six-
teen years visiting different countries, during which
he heard of 600,000 traditions of Mohammed,
from which he chose 7,275 as authentic. He died
in the year 869 A.D. He occupies in Islam much
the same position as Origen does in the Christian
Church. Each was concerned about getting at the
very words of the founder of his faith.
Among the first Muslims it was nearness to
Mohammed that counted. On that and the date
of his conversion to Islam hung his social position
and the value of his stipend from the State. A
similar criterion existed in the Christian Church.
St. Paul rested his claim to apostolic rank upon
the vision which he saw on the way to Damascus.
When the generation who had t4 known Christ after
the flesh " had passed away, their place was taken
by the presbyters who had known the apostles.
Papias (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, III., 39)
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 5 1
tells that he made it the business of his life, when-
ever he fell in with any who had spoken with the
apostles, to ask them to repeat to him any sayings
of theirs which they had heard, holding that the
information to be gleaned from written books was
not of so great value as that taken down from the
lips of those who had heard it uttered. The
daughters of Philip (the apostle or the evangelist)
were a main source of this knowledge, much as
Aishah was in the Muslim tradition. Polycarp of
Smyrna also, like Papias of Hierapolis, owes much
of his importance to his link with the apostles.
Irenaeus, again, in his letter to Florinus against
heresies which had appeared at Rome, appeals to
the doctrine handed down by the presbyters who
were the immediate disciples of the apostles
(Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, V., 20). He
mentions the vivid recollection he retained of the
appearance of Polycarp, whose doctrine he had
carefully noted down, not on paper, but on the
tablets of his memory. St. Luke also bases his
narrative on the evidence of eye-witnesses, whether
written or oral. And already in the fourth Gospel
we find the exact words of Jesus being used as a
text on which to base a commentary (John xxi.,
23 : Jesus did not say that he would not die, but
"If I will," etc.).
How deep is the pious oriental's veneration for
the past, especially for the bygone ages of his faith,
is shown by an incident which has some interest
52 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
at the present time. In the year 1 1 1 9, in the reign
of King Baldwin II., a part of the Cave of
Machpelah in Hebron had given way, and a
number of the Crusaders going in saw Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob, their shrouds having fallen
to pieces, lying propped up against a wall, with
their heads uncovered. The King ordered new
shrouds to be provided and the cave built up again <
A certain Ali of Herat, who had written in n 73
a description of the holy places in Palestine, of
which a copy is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford,
speaks of this incident. He says: "The knight
Babun who lived in Bethlehem, and held a high
position among the Franks on account of his
knightly deeds and valour, related to me that he
had entered this cave with his father. And he saw
Abraham, the friend of God, and Isaac and Jacob
— peace be unto them — and their heads were un-
covered. Now I said to him, What was thine age
at that time? and he answered, Thirteen years.
Next he told me that the knight Geofrey, son of
Jarj, was one of those whom the king had com-
missioned to renew the patriarchs' garments, and
to rebuild such of the church as had fallen down,
and that this Geofrey was still alive. So I
enquired after him, but was told that he had died
a short time before. Now I, Ali of Herat, do say,
verily and of a truth, I myself have seen one who
has looked upon Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 53
— peace be upon them all." * The interest taken
in this country in an old person who may have
known some one who knew Sir Walter Scott or
Robert Burns is a small thing compared to the
deep awe with which the pious Eastern comes in
touch with his own religious past.
1 Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, p. 317 f.
LECTURE III
Attempts at harmonising by the copyists — Old Testament citations —
the parallel of the Greek translations of the Old Testament —
arguments against a Hebrew source for the Gospels — absence of
some Hebrew idioms — un-Hebrew words in the vocabulary — their
dependence for words on II. Maccabees — arguments for a Hebrew
source — statements of Church Fathers — post- Biblical Hebrew
literature— the Hebrew Apochrypha and Pseudepigrapha — internal
evidence of the Gospels — meaning of " Hebrew" in New Testa-
ment — dialects of Hebrew — Galilean — the Hebrew of the Mishnah
— Aramaic — note on the Greek versions to Daniel.
In attempting to solve the problem of the inter-
dependence of the first three Gospels one with
another, it is usual to suppose that the later writer
had the earlier Gospel before him in the original
Greek and copied from it. This seems to be the
only hypothesis which will account for those places
in which we find two or more Gospels running
word for word and letter for letter parallel with
one another. Some examples have been given in
the first lecture. Others are: Matthew xi., 23a
and Luke x., 15 (And thou Capernaum, etc.) :
Matthew xi., 10 and Luke vii., 27 (Behold I send
my messenger, etc.). Mark i., 2 is different.
Matthew xiv., 14a and Mark vi., 34a: Matthew
xv., 32 and Mark viii., 2 (I am filled with com-
passion, etc.): Matthew xx., 28 and Mark x., 45
54
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 55
(The son of man came not, etc.) : Matthew xvi., 28
and Luke ix., 27 and Mark ix., 1 (There be some
standing here who shall not taste of death until
they see — and then each narrator goes his own
way) .
It will be seen that there is hardly a single verse
of narrative word for word the same in two
gospels. When we consider the total absence of
various readings from the text of the Hebrew
Bible, and how, when a later author cites an earlier,
he does so for the most part in the words of the
former, as the Chronicler does the Books of Samuel
and Kings, it is difficult to imagine a set of cir-
cumstances which would fit in with what meets us
in the Gospels. The hypothesis of an original
Greek source accounts for the coincidences of
expression in them, but not for the discrepancies.
These latter are the rift in the lute. Moreover,
we have to bear in mind the not inconsiderable
number of readings in the Gospels which are due
to deliberate or unconscious attempts on the part
of the copyists to bring them into agreement with
one another. Thus the proverb, " Wisdom is
justified by her works " in Matthew xi., 1 9 takes
in certain MSS. the form which it has in Luke vii.,
35. It is impossible to say how far this process
was carried; but it is always open to account for
a word for word and letter for letter agreement
between two or more Gospels by it. On the other
hand, that it was not carried out so as to leave
56 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
fewer discrepancies than it has done, is a good
ground of confidence in the text as it stands.
The same remark may apply to the citations
from the Old Testament which are found in the
New. Where these agree, as they generally do,
with the Greek rather than with the Hebrew Bible,
this may quite well be due to the activity of
copyists, whose own language was Greek. The
commandments in Matthew xix., 18, 19 are
identical in wording with the Greek version. But
here again the points of agreement are of less
weight than the points of difference, since the
former do not prove that the authors of the Gospels
used the Greek text; whereas the divergencies
show that they were not using it. M Out of the
mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected
praise," Matthew xxi., 16, does seem a clear
quotation from the LXX., seeing that Psalm viii. 2
is the only place in which it renders the Hebrew
word *oz (strength) by cuvog. The Hebrew word
has, in fact, both meanings, and the Seventy knew
this, for they translate it by " honour " (rifjafj,
" glory " ($6£a), or some word of similar meaning,
as well as by " strength " (&W/x 39)- I* seems quite clear that "righteous
man " and " son of God or of a god " are only
alternative renderings of the Hebrew or Aramaic
" son of God," the first Gospel translating
literally, the third giving the natural Greek
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 85
equivalent. In other words, Matthew is thinking
in Hebrew, whilst Luke is thinking in Greek. The
natural Greek rendering of the Semitic " son of
God " would be M divine man," but to speak of a
divine man, as Plato for instance does of Socrates,
would be to a Hebrew meaningless, seeing that
none can be divine but God. Any other usage
would be poetical, as the fourth book of the
Maccabees speaks of divine philosophy (vii., 10),
or Ecclus. vi., 35, of a "godly discourse."
It is well known that there are strictly speaking
in Hebrew and Aramaic no tenses, and only two
forms of the verb which have to do duty for the
many tenses of Greek or Latin. Hence we are
not surprised to find that the different Gospels
constantly use different tenses in the parallel
passages of the Greek text. Instances are: " Thy
daughter is dead," Mark v., 35, aorist, Luke viii.,
49, perfect: "believe" in next verse, Mark
present, Luke aorist: " What went ye out for to
see?" Matthew xi., 7, aorist, Luke vii., 24, perfect;
so also in " The son of man came," Matthew xi.,
19, Luke vii., 34; and so in the phrases, " He is
risen from the dead," " Elias will come and restore
all," " Elias is come already," and frequently.
Often in the LXX. the Hebrew imperfect is para-
phrased by the Greek verb /meXXeiv "to be about
to," and the same thing occurs frequently in the
Gospels, for instance, Matthew xvii., 22 and Luke
ix., 44, " The son of man is about to be betrayed,"
86 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
but not in Mark ix., 31 ("is being betrayed ") :
Matthew xvi., 27, "about to come in glory," but
otherwise in Mark viii., 38 and Luke ix., 26. The
LXX. does not use OiXeiv " to will " to express the
simple future of the Hebrew, as volo is used in
late Latin, but perhaps an example of this is Luke
xiii., 31, "Herod will {lit. wishes to) kill thee."
In classical Hebrew the Latin pluperfect is ex-
pressed in no other way than by merely putting
the subject at the beginning of the sentence instead
of the verb, which usually begins the sentence.
An example of this construction is II. Samuel
xviii., 18, and so often. In post-classical Hebrew
even this disappears (Ezra vi., 20), as also in
Aramaic (Ezra v., 12). This may account for
three of the most serious discrepancies which are
to be found in the Gospels. The cleansing of the
Temple is placed in the first three Gospels at the
very end of the ministry of Jesus, but in the fourth
Gospel at the beginning. If the author of an
account of this incident, writing in good Hebrew,
had begun by saying, " Now Jesus on a previous
occasion had gone into the Temple," he would
merely have said " Then Jesus went " instead of
the usual "Then went Jesus." A translator
accustomed to the Hebrew of the first century
would not notice the difference, and would
naturally think the author was continuing the
preceding narrative, instead of going back to an
incident before that just mentioned.
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 87
A second narrative which may have met with the
same fate is that of the woman with the alabaster
box, which occurs early in the third Gospel (vii.,
37), late in the others (xxvi., 6: xiv., 3: xii., 3).
The Authorized English Version makes use of this
fact to get over a third difficulty of the same kind
in the eighteenth chapter of the fourth Gospel. In
the first Gospel Jesus is taken before Caiaphas
(xxvi., 57), but in the fourth before Annas (xviii.,
13) ; but, by translating v. 24, " Now Annas had
sent him bound unto Caiaphas," the English
Version makes the examination take place before
the latter. This is not impossible. The Sinai
Palimpsest overcomes the difficulty by placing
v. 24 after v. 13.
The Hebrew imperfect frequently includes the
idea of beginning, and this may explain such
variants as Matthew xx., 24, M the ten were
incensed" and Mark x., 41, "began to be in-
censed ": Luke viii., ^7, " they asked him " and
Mark v., 17, "they began to beseech him.*'
There is no example of this, however, in the LXX.
Collective nouns are in Hebrew construed either
as singulars or as plurals. This would account
for many cases of differences of number as
between the Gospels. Thus in Matthew xiii., 11
and Luke viii., 10 we have "mysteries," but in
Mark iv., n "mystery." In the book of Daniel
the translations of the LXX. and Theodotion have
" mysteries " for " mystery " of the Aramaic only
88 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
at h\, 1 8. Elsewhere they all agree exactly. The
LXX. renders the Hebrew word for " fruit " now
as a singular, now as a plural. The same liberty
is used in the Gospels, Matthew iii., 8, " fruit,"
Luke iii., 8, " fruits," and so on. A number of
words in Hebrew have a plural form but a singular
meaning, such as " face," " water," " heaven." In
Syriac, " heaven " is either masculine or feminine,
singular or plural. Hence Matthew iii., 16 and
Mark i., io speak of the heavens being opened,
Luke iii., 21, of heaven. And similarly we have
in Luke vi., 9, " sabbath day," but in the parallel,
Matthew xii., 12 and Mark iii., 4, "sabbath
days ": so Matthew xxiv., 30 and Mark xiii., 26
"clouds," but Luke xxi., 27 "cloud." Such
minute variants are of no account.
If the first Gospel was written in Hebrew and
translated, as Papias says, by different hands into
Greek, a most fruitful source of variation would
be the use of synonymous words, especially as
Greek is a very much richer language than
Hebrew. The latter has, for one thing, no com-
pound words, so that the number of possible Greek
equivalents for each Hebrew word is almost
indefinite. It is a rare thing to find synonyms in
a Semitic language for a Greek word. Some
examples of Hebrew words which are constantly
rendered by alternative words in Greek are the
following. The Hebrew for —
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 89
" to say " =z\eyeiv and nretV. It is curious how
closely the first three Gospels agree in their use
of these two (Matthew viii., 2: Mark i., 40: Luke
v., 12: also Matthew ix., 5: Mark ii., 9: Luke v.,
23), but the reverse is also common (Matthew ix.,
2: Mark ii., 5, etc.). So the LXX. and Theodo-
tion in Daniel ii., 27.
M to arise " = avicrravaL and eyctpct*: Matthew ix.,
25: Mark v., 42: Luke viii., 55: also Matthew
xvii., 9: Mark ix., 9; and so on.
"to go away" -^airipyea-QaL and iropeveo-Qai : This
variation is very common in the LXX. as between
Codex A and Codex B : Exodus v., 18 : Judges i.,
26: vi., 21: ix., 55, and often, in rendering the
Hebrew halakh. Similar variations in the Gospels
are: Mark i., 35: Luke iv., 42: Matthew xv., 21 :
Mark vii., 24; and frequently.
" man " = aw/jo and avOpwiros: So Mark v., 2:
Luke vii., 27: so also Daniel x., 19 as between
LXX and Theodotion.
" word " =z\6yos and prj/ma: Matthew vii., 28
and Luke vii., 1 : so Daniel i., 20, and often.
" other " = erepos and a\Xo?: Matthew xi., 3:
Luke vii., 19: "Look we for another?" So in
LXX and Theodotion of Daniel vii., 8, and else-
where.
It is needless to multiply examples further. We
have seen that the use of synonymous terms
90 The Variants of the Gospel Reports
instead of those in the ordinary texts is a
characteristic of the Codex Bezae. There is no
apparent motive for this procedure on the part of
the author or copyist of this codex, and the most
natural explanation seems to be that it is partly
due to the original Greek texts having been more
or less independent translations out of another
language.
It is not, however, always the Greek which has
the advantage of richness of vocabulary. Syriac
has two or three words for " resurrection " for
one in Greek. In one of the parables the kingdom
of heaven is compared to " treasure hid in a field
which a man, having found, hid." We would
expect a different word for the second hiding, or
at least " hid again." The Hebrew for the first
44 hid " would no doubt be some derivative of
taman, to hide (cf. Jeremiah xli., 8). For the
second, however, it was probably another word,
namely kachadh. The latter word means M to say
nothing about a thing." So Joshua vii., 19, " Tell
me what you have done, do not keep back any-
thing " (of hid treasure): I. Samuel hi., 17, 18:
Job xx., 12. It is thus the opposite of " to
publish " in Jeremiah 1. (xxvii.), 2: " publish, do
not keep back." Hence the words in the parable
should run: " treasure hid in a field, which a man
having found said nothing about, and went and
bought that field."
One of the features which distinguish Aramaic
The Variants of the Gospel Reports 91
and late Hebrew from classical Hebrew is the
large use which is made of the participle in place
of the finite verb . This is common in the Mishnah,
and still more so perhaps in the Aramaic portions
of Ezra and Daniel. Examples are Ezra iv., 17,
" that dwell in Samaria," literally, " that dwelling
in Samaria": vii., 24, "also we certify you"
literally, " also to you certifying ": Daniel iii., 3,
" gathered " and " stood," literally, * gathering "
and "standing": ii., 7, "they answered and
said," literally, " they answered and saying "; and
so on. A good example of a variation, due to this
construction, resulting in the Greek of the Gospels,
is to be found in Matthew xi., 18, as compared
with Luke vii., 33. The text of the former runs:
" for John came neither eating nor drinking, and
they say, He hath a demon," but the latter, " for
John the baptist has come neither eating bread
nor drinking wine, and you say, he hath a demon."
Both readings, " they say " and " you say " are
equally legitimate renderings of the underlying
Hebrew or Aramaic, which would be the one word
" saying." Another instance of the same thing is
found in Matthew xxi., 26, "we fear the people,"
as compared with Mark xi., 32, " they feared the
people." The Hebrew or Aramaic would be
simply, " fearing the people." A literal transla-
tion of this idiom appears to occur in Matthew
xvii., 26, where the Authorized Version has " Peter
saith unto him," but the Greek merely elirovro