Important Changes in ECM Revelation

The ECM Revelation came out last year and its changes will be included in the new UBS6/NA29. It’s the newest ECM volume to affect these hand editions. Having now spent some time with the edition, and having gone through all the listed changes, I thought I would give a brief report on them for the benefit of those who don’t have access to the print edition.

In all, the edition made 84 changes to the text of NA28 and now has 106 places with a split guiding line. These are places where the editors couldn’t decide between two readings (it is always two) and they are further marked by a diamond in the ECM and in the UBS/NA editions. 

You could roughly compare this to the 35 places in NA28 that used square brackets to mark text the editors weren’t completey convinced was original. In 9 places, the ECM has a split line that matches bracketed text from NA28. In 8 places they adopted the text in brackets (now without brackets) while in 15 places, they now prefer the omission of the bracketed text. (NB: the ECM list of textual changes misses the bracket in Rev 12.12/5.) 

All this means that there is quite a bit more editorial uncertainty in the ECM Revelation than there is in the NA28. Most of the split lines are not of great exegetical import. Sometimes you look at the two readings and wonder why the decision was so hard. It could be something about Revelation or could it be a result of the Rev editorial board being split between two institutions. I don’t know.

One thing that is certainly more robust in this volume is the textual commentary. It runs to over 170 pages! (All in German.) Some discussions span four or five pages. One new feature is that the comments are given labels to mark whether the variation is important for the printed history of Revelation, for the style of Revelation, its textual history, etc. The “SEM” label marks 48 variants of “semantic relevance.” Here are their addresses and the readings in question per the commentary:

1. 1,3/4-12 a/b
2. 1,5/48-52 a/d
3. 1,13/12-16 a/b
4. 1,15/20 a/c
5. 2,7/52-54 a/b
6. 2,9/34-38 a, f
7. 2,13/48 a/d
8. 2,20/17 a/b
9. 3,14/44 a/b
10. 4,3/22 a/b
11. 4,3/30—1,4/2 a/g
12. 4,11/55 a/b
13. 5,10/22 a/b
14. 6,8/40-42 a/c
15. 6,9/47 a/b
16. 6,11/32 a/b
17. 6,14/14 a/b
18. 6,17/18 a/b
19. 9,4/38-40 a/an
20. 11,4/10 a/b
21. 11,12/4 a/b
22. 11,16/12-20 a/b
23. 12,2/9 a/b
24. 12,18/4 a/b
25. 13,3/38-44 a/b/e
26. 13,7/2-22 a/g
27. 13,8/6 a/b
28. 13,10/6-10 a/c/f
29. 13,10/20-30 a/c
30. 13,18/44—48 a bis h
31. 14,4/48 a/b
32. 14,13/32 a/b
33. 14,14/22-28 a/c
34. 14,19/44-54 a
35. 15,3/72 a/b
36. 15,6/30-32
37. 16,5/18-32 a/c/g
38. 17,5/30 a/b
39. 18,2/32-54 a/b/o
40. 19,6/48 a/b
41. 19,13/8 a/b
42. 20,5/1 a/c
43. 20,8/26-32 a/b
44. 21,3/46 a/b
45. 21,6/8-10 a/e
46. 22,14/6-12 a/b
47. 22,21/14-18 a/f
48. 22,21/20 a/c

To give a point of comparison, I counted 44 Revelation variants discussed in Hugh Houghton’s excellent new Textual Commentary for the UBS6. (The two lists overlap, but only a little.)

In addition to the list above, the introduction to the ECM’s textual commentary gives a sample list of changes that are said to be especially relevant to the content of Revelation. I list those here with my summary [followed by my comments]. Text with an asterisk is in the RP2005.

Ref.	Change	Reading(s)	Comments
Rev 1.5	Split line	λύσαντι / λούσαντι*	λούσαντι may reflect early baptismal theology
Rev 1.13	New reading	ὅμοιον ὑιῷ ἀνθρώπου*	Relevant to Christology [I’m not sure I get this one]
Rev 2.13	Split line	ἀντίπας* / ἀντεῖπας	Is it a personal name (Antipas) or a verb? The former has dominated translations in the past. (NB: ECM Mark and Rev do not capitalize proper names.)
Rev 6.17	New reading	αὐτοῦ*	Relevant to Christology since it transfers the day of wrath to Jesus [seems like it does that with the old reading too though]
Rev 12.2	New Reading	Omit καί*	May impact the interpretation of the woman who gives birth [not sure I understand this]
Rev 12.14	Split line	ἐστάθη / ἐστάθην*	Changes who is standing on the shore, John or the dragon
Rev 13.10	New reading	εἴ τις εἰς αἰχμαλωσίαν ὑπάγει, εἴ τις ἐν μαχαίρᾳ ἀποκτενεῖ, δεῖ αὐτὸν ἐν μαχαίρᾳ ἀποκτανθῆναι,	A number of options are possible with this new reading. [I think this one is pretty noteworthy.]
Rev 18.3	New reading	πεπτώκασιν*	People have “fallen” rather than “drunk”
Rev 20.5	New reading	Omit οἱ λοιποὶ τῶν νεκρῶν οὐκ ἔζησαν ἄχρι τελεσθῇ τὰ χίλια ἔτη.	A key line about the millennium is omitted [This may be the most significant change to my mind as it removes what has proven to be a very difficult phrase for Amillennialism]
Rev 21.3	Split line	λαοί / λαός*	How many people groups does God dwell with in the New Jerusalem? One, or more?
Rev 21.6	New reading	γέγονα ἐγώ	Introduces an element of “becoming” into God’s self-description [part of the commentary on this change is quite loaded theologically, and I’m a bit more cautious on its significance]
Rev 22.21	New reading	πάντων τῶν ἁγίων. Ἀμήν.*	The request for grace is more strongly related to the church than in NA28 which just reads πάντων here [I agree]

To my mind, the most important change overall is the significant reduction in solecisms and grammatical oddities. I don’t think I saw a single change that resulted in a more difficult grammatial construction. This has real significance for how we think about the Greek of Revelation. But that topic deserves a post in itself. I’ll leave it here for now.

Gathercole on the Motive for Variants in 1 Cor 15.51

Simon Gathercole has a new open access article out in JSNT that questions the dominant view that 1 Cor 15.51–52 shows that Paul expected to survive until the Parousia. It’s worth your time to read for the main point it’s addressing, but being a blog about textual criticism not Pauline theology, I wanted to highlight one outcome of his against-the-grain reading of these verses. There are a number of variants in v. 51 (at least thirteen per TuT). Gathercole gives the main ones as follows:

These are sometimes expained by later readers/scribes wanting to fix Paul’s theology. Here is Metzger:

Because Paul and his correspondents had died, the statement πάντες οὐ κοιμηθησόμεθα seemed to call for correction. The simplest alteration was to transfer the negative to the following clause (א (A*) C 33 1739 it^g arm eth al). That this was an early modification is shown by the artifical conflation of both readings in 𝔓⁴⁶ A^c Origen...

From his own argument, especially regarding the syntax of v. 51, Gathercole says of this suggestion:

This is of course possible, but there is an alternative explanation, namely that ancient scribes were as perplexed as modern scholars by the wording of 1 Cor. 15.51: as [A.T.] Robertson comments, ‘the variations in 1 Cor. xv: 51 may be also due to … failure to understand Paul’s language’. As we have seen, Paul’s language in 1 Cor. 15.51 is far from straightforward. 

I should add that Gathercole sides with the current concensus about the original text of v. 51 and so follows B Maj. I will say I had never noticed the seemingly odd placement of the negative particle in v. 51 before. 

As a side note, there are some interesting things happening in 02. You can see a small ου added before κοιμηθησόμεθα and you can see where an original οι before παντες has been slightly adjusted to turn the iota into an upsilon to make ου. (Unfortunately, the BL still doesn’t have 02 back online after the hack so these images are from a monochrome facsimile courtsey of CSNTM.)

A/02 (CSNTM)

Textual Commentary on Luke 3:33

In recent years, I have worked through the whole New Testament text for a new Swedish translation to come out next year (NT2026), as I am the textcritical consultant on the project. I have now completed all books apart from the Gospels of Luke and Matthew (I saved Matthew since the ECM edition will soon appear). 

This morning I looked into the complicated variation in Luke 3:33. I thought I would give blogreaders a taste so here is an English translation of my treatment:

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Luke 3:33

TW: reading A

Proposed long footnote:

Amminadab, son of Admin, son of Arni — The manuscripts show considerable variation here. Many read Aram as the father of Amminadab (cf. Matt 1:3–4) and omit his son Arni, sometimes adding Joram, while others have Adam in place of Amminadab (probably via the spelling Amminadam).

Proposed short footnote:

Amminadab, son of Admin, son of Arni — Some witnesses read Adam instead of Amminadab; others have Amminadab, son of Aram or Amminadab, son of Aram, son of Joram.

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Text-critical discussion

A. τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνί – ℵ² L ƒ¹³ bo
B. τοῦ Ἀδὰμ τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνί – 𝔓4vid ℵ* 1241 sa
C. τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνί – B
D. τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ (Αμιναδαμ 1424) τοῦ Ἀράμ – D 33. 565. 1424. ℓ 2211 pm lat syp.h (et om. τοῦ Φαρές A)
E. τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀρὰμ τοῦ Ἰωράμ – K Δ Ψ 700. (892). 2542 pm b e
F. τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ (Αμιναδαμ 1) τοῦ Ἀρὰμ τοῦ Ἀδμὶ (Αλμι 1) τοῦ Ἀρνί – Θ 1
G. τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀρὰμ (Αλμιν Γ) τοῦ Ἀρνί – N Γ
H. τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀράμ – 0102

A large number of variants are listed in NA28 (and many more exist in the broader textual tradition). The Byzantine tradition is divided between readings D (τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀράμ) and E (τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀρὰμ τοῦ Ἰωράμ). The former follows the sequence of the Matt 1:3–4 parallel. As Hugh Houghton notes in his Textual Commentary, it may also have developed from reading E through haplography (omission of τοῦ Ἰωράμ). In these readings, τοῦ Ἀρνί is entirely omitted.

In all the earliest witnesses, the sequence τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνί is present (readings A, B, and C), and this can be taken as virtually certain. Reading A also has the name τοῦ Ἀμιναδάβ, which appears in Matt 1:4, while reading B has the unique τοῦ Ἀδάμ, which may have dropped out through haplography in reading C. As Houghton points out, the appearance of another Adam (other than the first man) is problematic and does not match any king in the Septuagint—reading B seems to be the most difficult reading, and no editors (NA/UBS, SBLGNT, THGNT) have adopted it.

On the other hand, the support for Ἀδάμ is slim and incoherent (minuscule 1241 has a mixed text and numerous scribal errors). When we examine the earliest witness, 𝔓4vid, the names τοῦ Ἀδὰμ τοῦ Ἀδμίν are unclear, as the papyrus clearly has more letters and at least one correction appears to have been made on the two lines in question. Interestingly, the other early witness to reading B, Codex Sinaiticus, has a beta–mu confusion in the same name in Matt 1:4, where two of the lines read ΑΜΙΝΑΔΑΒΑΜΙΝΑ // ΔΑΜΔΕΕΓΕΝΝΗCΕΝ. It is evident that Ἀμιναδάμ was also in circulation in the Lukan textual tradition, since the archetype (a majuscule) of Family 1 clearly had Ἀμιναδάμ (as in 1, 118, 131, 209, and 1582), and it is easier to see how the well-known name Ἀδάμ (reading B) could arise from this spelling.

In sum, the sequence τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνί is virtually certain, while τοῦ Ἀράμ likely entered from the Matthean parallel. The name Ἀδάμ most likely arose from Ἀμιναδάμ at an early stage. Thus, I prefer reading A (=NA28). Finally, I note in Houghton's Textual Commentary that this textual problem has moved from a letter-rating of C in UBS5 to a D-rating in UBS6. For future editions I recommend a B- or C-letter rating.