Why Will the Last Be First? Reconsidering the Longer Reading at Matt 20.16

The parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matt 20.1–16) closes with a repetition of the statement that immediately precedes it and to which it is logically connected (note γάρ in 20.1): “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” Although some see a poor fit between this proverbial statement and the parable, it actually connects very closely at two points.

Not sure what the source of this is.

First, the workers hired last are paid first and the workers hired first are paid last (20.8, 10). Second, if we read the statement not simply as being about reversal (last in place of first) but also as a removal of distinction (the first are the last), then there is an obvious connection in the fact that all the workers were paid the same amount. This, of course, is the point of contention for the first workers since such a procedure makes the last equal (ἴσους) with them. This seems to be an injustice (cf. ἀδικῶ in v. 13 with δίκαιον δώσω ὑμῖν in v. 4). The envious, as Joseph Epstein writes, “have a restless competitiveness, which will not cease nagging away at them until they feel themselves clearly established as the first among unequals.”

The response is well known and despite much debate about the parable’s meaning, it does seem to be about the problem of envy or “the evil eye” (ὁ ὀφθαλμός πονηρός) among Jesus’ disciples. This was part of the problem Peter showcased in the preceding paragraph.

In this, the concluding proverbial statement works as a rebuke to Peter both in its first instance in 19.30 and then again in 20.16 at the end of the parable. The statement works as an inclusio for the parable. The point is that Jesus’ disciples should not begrudge God his generosity; instead they should be grateful when he treats people in ways that can only seem wrong when fairness has been wrapped around ourselves. After all, isn’t God free to do as he wishes with what is his? If so, then he is free to treat those we deem last the same way he treats those we deem first.

This brings us to the longer reading of 20.16 which adds a final justification for all this: “for many are called but few are chosen.” These words are found verbatim in Matt 22.14 and therein lies the problem for them. The recent eclectic texts (NA28, SBLGNT, and THGNT) all omit the words because of the parallel. (Tregelles has them in brackets.) Here is Metzger:

Although it is possible that the words πολλοὶ … ἐκλετοί had been accidentally omitted from an ancestor of א B L Z 085 al owing to homoeoteleuton, the Committee regarded it as much more likely that they were added here by copyists who recollected the close of another parable (22:14, where there is no significant variation of reading).

The problem is that the statement “many are called but few are chosen” makes good sense in Matt 22.14 after a man is thrown out from a wedding feast without proper dress. But here in Matt 20, there is no hint of some people being excluded or not chosen (presumably, all the workers take what is theirs and go). Instead, all receive the same pay just as all were chosen to work in the first place. Exclusion is not really the point here.

Nor is there an obvious reason to harmonize the text here as there is in Luke 14.24 where we also find the saying added by a few manuscripts. There, harmonization is the obvious explanation since that is Luke’s banquet parable. But Matt 20 has little in common with those two passages except for the general reversal of expectations which is found in much of Jesus’ teaching. There is a verbal connection in the use of the word “many” (πολλοί), but even that is only found in Matt 19.30 not here in 20.16. So I find it a bit odd for Westcott and Hort to say that the longer reading comes from “the close of a similar parable” (Appendix, 15; so too Willker).

Both readings have early support: in C D syr for the longer and א and B for the shorter. Given the apparent awkwardness of the longer reading in Matt 20.16 it is, in my opinion, the more difficult reading. As for transcriptional evidence, the lack of a good parallel context weighs against harmonization. On the other side, the -οι endings make homoeoteleuton, as Metzger recognized, the obvious cause for the shorter reading. If external evidence is not against the longer reading and the internal is for it, then it should be preferred.

But what do others think about this one? Is there a good explanation for Matt 22.14 being brought into Matt 20.16 that I’ve missed? If the longer reading is original, how does it fit in the context? What does it add to the meaning?

Maurizio Aceto and Scientific Analysis of Manuscripts

The John Rylands Library is running an exhibit through August 2018 called The Alchemy of Colour. They even have a series of short YouTube videos describing non-invasive ways that multi-spectral analysis can shed new light on manuscripts. The videos are a delight to watch.

One of the videos shows that cow’s urine was used for a particular yellow pigment—demonstrated by a yellow dress glowing under the blacklight. It sounds almost scandalous, but if you are familiar with ancient recipes for making inks and dyes, it really is no surprise. Earle Radcliffe Caley’s 1926 translation of P.Leiden X, for example, has six references to urine as an ingredient. The video that excited me, however, was a short discussion of the colour purple:



In the video, Cheryl Porter gives a great description of some of the ways purple was made and the significance the colour had in antiquity. She mentions specifically that purple was often equated with power. That has led some to suspect that purple Gospel books could have had political significance.

Rather than a discussion of the colour purple, however, I wanted to use the opportunity afforded by the video to point readers to some of the work being done by Maurizio Aceto. You might ask why Aceto appears in a video about the use of purple in manuscripts, especially because he doesn’t say anything about the colour.

Photo credit: John Rylands Library Special Collections Blog,
“Purple is the new black“ (2 November 2017)

The reason is that Aceto has published several articles in recent years on the use of non-invasive scientific testing to learn about ancient artefacts, and purple codices have been subjects of a number of them. In one of his publications (“First Analytical Evidences of Precious Colourants on Mediterranean Illuminated Manuscripts“), he and a team of researchers used Raman spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) and UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectrophotometry with fibre optics (FORS) to identify the inks and colourants in the Vienna Dioscurides and Vienna Genesis manuscripts of the sixth century.

In another study (“Non-Invasive Investigation on a VI Century Purple Codex from Brescia, Italy”), Aceto led a team of researchers who used XRF, FORS and a couple of other non-invasive techniques on Codex Brixianus, a sixth-century Latin purple codex. This second article I mention was especially interesting, as Aceto et al. demonstrate that Tyrian Purple was not the main source of the purple dye, but they suggest that the codex might have been dyed by a process known as top-dyeing. The parchment was first dyed with a cheaper purple substitute, and then a thin layer of more expensive Tyrian purple was added on top of the lesser-quality dye. It was a way to save money without completely losing the colour of the more expensive dye. (Let me add that his suggestion about the possibility of top-dyeing applies only to Codex Brixianus, not necessarily to the Greek purple codices from the same era.)

I give the information for some of Aceto’s publications below. If you like manuscripts and dabble in science (or vice versa), they are interesting reads. Scientists like Aceto have a whole toolbox of equipment that can be used to study manuscripts that easily goes unnoticed by scholars concerned with the texts those manuscripts contain. Besides, science is fun!

Sources 

Aceto, Maurizio, Angelo Agostino, Gaia Fenoglio, Pietro Baraldi, P. Zannini, C. Hofmann, and E. Gamillscheg. “First Analytical Evidences of Precious Colourants on Mediterranean Illuminated Manuscripts.” Spectrochim. Acta A 95 (September 2012): 235–45.

Aceto, Maurizio, Angelo Agostino, Enrico Boccaleri, and Anna Cerutti Garlanda. “The Vercelli Gospels Laid Open: An Investigation into the Inks Used to Write the Oldest Gospels in Latin.” X-Ray Spectrometry 37 (2008): 286–292.

Aceto, Maurizio, Ambra Idone, Angelo Agostino, Gaia Fenoglio, Monica Gulmini, Pietro Baraldi, and Fabrizio Crivello. “Non-Invasive Investigation on a VI Century Purple Codex from Brescia, Italy.” Spectrochim. Acta A 117 (January 3, 2014): 34–41.

Aceto, Maurizio, Angelo Agostino, Gaia Fenoglio, Ambra Idone, Fabrizio Crivello, Martina Griesser, Franz Kirchweger, Katharina Uhlir, and Patricia Roger Puyo. “Analytical Investigations on the Coronation Gospels Manuscript.” Spectrochim. Acta A 171 (January 15, 2017): 213–21.

Visual Proof of the Original Reading at Mark 1.1

In honor of our newest blog member who is an expert in all manuscripts purple, here is something I noticed last week in class.

It’s not uncommon for Gospels manuscripts to feature portraits of the Evangelists writing out the first line or so of their Gospel. Now, look closely at the text Mark is copying in this miniature from Codex Rossanensis/042 (6th cent.). Elijah can tell us more about the dating of the artwork from what is perhaps the earliest illuminated NT manuscript. This is clearly telling us what the original reading is there. We have visual proof!

Okay, I kid. But here is a serious question: should this be cited as an additional witness to the longer reading? Why or why not? (The text of 042 also has the longer reading, with τοῦ.)

Miniature of Mark in 042

New Contributor: Elijah Hixson

When I first started learning about textual criticism at seminary, textual criticism was not much more than one lecture on Romans 5:1 in intermediate Greek, and if you were lucky, an introductory course that was only taught once every few years. I had to wait a few years for the introductory course. My intermediate Greek professor pointed me to Metzger and Ehrman’s Text of the New Testament. After that, I found this blog and never stopped reading it. It was like drinking from a fire hose at first, but I am deeply thankful for all the posts and comments here over the years that have helped make me who I am. It is an honour to be a contributor to this blog.

I recently finished my PhD at the University of Edinburgh under Paul Foster. James Snapp recently interviewed me about this research over at his blog, The Text of the Gospels, but I will give a summary of my research and results here. Like Alan Taylor Farnes, I too decided to test the “singular readings method”. Whereas Farnes did that with Abschriften, I took a closer look at the sixth-century purple codices 022, 023 and 042. Because these three manuscripts were copied from the same exemplar, I reconstructed the text of their exemplar in Matthew’s Gospel where that was possible.

Now, I know that scholars like Royse, Hernández and just about everyone else who uses the method are careful to qualify it—singular readings really tell us about the “complex scribe” not the actual scribe. Still, after a lengthy discussion of the matter, Royse concludes that the singulars are probably due to the actual scribe in most of the cases. His words are:

In what follows, consequently, I will speak of a manuscript’s “scribe” in the ordinary way, that is, meaning the person who actually wrote the manuscript. Discussions of the scribe’s handwriting or corrections, for instance, will obviously refer to this one person. And most of the singulars should, without doubt, be attributed to this person. (p. 55)

In nuce, singular readings hypothetically could be from anyone, but they’re probably the work of the actual person who made the manuscript. If anything, singular readings tell us about the activity of the person who made the manuscript with some contamination from previous scribes in the line of transmission back to the archetype.

But is that really true?

By focusing on singular readings, one could include inherited readings from the exemplar and exclude non-singular readings created by the scribe. Those possibilities allow errors on both sides of the data. I set out to test the method in a three-tiered approach.

First, I went to all the places in Matthew where 022, 023 and 042 are all extant and compared orthography (ει/ι and αι/ε interchanges), unit delimitation, kephalaia and titloi, the Eusebian apparatus and textual changes. This comparison allowed me to build a preliminary profile of each scribe to help resolve issues reconstructing the exemplar later one where only two of the three manuscripts were extant. For example, the scribe of 023 is incredible and makes very few changes, but the scribe of 042 has a noticeable tendency to harmonise Matthew to Markan parallels. Therefore, if only 023 and 042 are extant—and they differ—, and one of the possibilities is that 023 preserves the text of the exemplar and 042 harmonises to Mark, then that is probably what happened (as opposed to 042 preserving the text of the exemplar and 023 making the change).

Second, I analysed the singular and family readings of each manuscript (readings unique to these three manuscripts). I did this to include “inherited singulars”. Of course, the inherited readings aren’t singular in my cases, but that is only because we have more than one copy of the exemplar. Stated alternatively for 022, I studied the singular readings of 022 as we would count them if 023 and 042 never existed. This modification best replicates the situation for any other early manuscript, like the early papyri studied by Royse.

Third, I reconstructed the 022-023-042 exemplar, analysed the changes each scribe made to the text and compared these numbers with what I got from the modified singular readings method.

The results? An analysis of singular (and family) readings of 022, 023 and 042 does not give accurate conclusions about the scribes who made them. In fact, if you add up the total number of singular and family readings from the three manuscripts, about two-thirds of them are inherited readings, not scribal creations. If you add up the total number of scribal changes in all three manuscripts, about two-thirds of them are non-singular. Instead of getting the habits of the actual scribe with a bit of contamination from the complex scribe, with the purple codices, the unique readings tell us more about the “habits” of the complex scribe with a bit of contamination from the person who actually wrote the words. I wonder if even that is accurate because of how many non-singular scribal changes went unnoticed.

Even though the method doesn’t “work” with 022, 023 and 042, it still might tell us something about scribal habits in the early manuscripts. Several of the changes I saw were instances in which scribes aligned the text to what would become the majority reading, and I don’t think that would be the case for the early papyri—certainly not as much. I’m not saying to throw the method out. It still tells us how manuscripts are unique, even if in these three instances it fails to tell us about scribes.

In the end, the project was a lot of fun. I learned a lot about three sixth-century witnesses to Matthew’s Gospel and their scribes. The manuscripts themselves are gorgeous—they were a good choice of manuscripts to spend 3.5 years looking at. I also highly recommend Byzantine manuscripts to people looking for thesis topics. Even though I am not a Byzantine prioritist myself (though I have the highest respect for our Silver-Haired Assassin), it is exciting to notice new things by working with manuscripts that have been largely neglected since their discovery and initial publication.

‘Father Forgive Them’ – The Variant in Luke 23:34a

THGNT Blog: Variants in the Passion Narrative (6)

This is the last of a series of blog post [2018] on some of the textual variants found in the Passion narratives. The series discusses the rationale behind the text adopted in the Greek New Testament as Produced at Tyndale House in (1) Mt 27:16,17, (2) Mt 27:49, (3) Mk 14:30, 49, 72a, 72b, (4) Lk 22:31, (5) Lk 22:43-44, (6) Lk 23:34.

The previous variant that we discussed (Lk 22:43-44) was substantial and important. It makes quite a difference how Jesus is portrayed by Luke whether or not the episode of the strengthening angel and the sweat like drops of blood is present. The final variant of this series is, in my view, even more important and one with considerable theological ramifications. Come to think of it, I am not sure if there are many variants that have a bigger impact on New Testament Christology than Luke 23:34a.

It concerns the presence or absence of the following words

ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἔλεγεν· πάτερ, ἄφες αὐτοῖς· οὐ γὰρ οἴδασιν τί ποιοῦσιν.
And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

None of the other evangelists has any reference to Jesus prayer of forgiveness for those who are crucifying him; the presence of these words make a unique contribution, their omission changes Luke’s narrative considerably. And just to draw the modern battle lines: the THGNT has these words as part of the main text, though signalling the problems with a diamond in the apparatus. NA26-28 has these words in white square brackets, claiming that these words are certainly not part of the original text of the gospel but have been inserted at an early stage.

Here is the Greek evidence, and as far as the omission goes I believe it is complete:

omit P75 ℵ^2a B D* W Θ 070 579 1241
text ℵ* ℵ^2b A C D³ K L N Q Δ Ψ 0211 f¹ f¹³ 33 158 700 713 892 1071 l844 Maj

[IGNTP-Luke mentions 0124, but that witness is now combined with 070.]

There are at least two similarities between this textual variant and Lk 22:43-44, the angel and the sweat like drops of blood.
The first is found in the supporting evidence. This was the evidence for the omission of Lk 22:43-44

omit 22:43-44 P75 ℵ^2a A B N R T W 0211 f¹³(but adds after Mt 26:39, as does a later corrector of C) 158 579 713 1071* l844.

The witnesses that omit at both places are P75 ℵ^2a B W 579. The ones that omit in 22:43-44 and not at 23:34a are A N 0211 f¹³ 158 713 1071 l844 (R and T are only extant at the first place) and those that omit 23:34a but not 22:43-44 are D Θ 1241 (070 only extant at 23:34a). The five witnesses that omit at both places form something of a solid core, it is not remarkable to see P75 B W 579 together (and on their combined testimony alone I am prepared to consider any reading quite seriously).

A second similarity is the nature of the longer reading. Neither in 23:43a or in 22:43-44 is there a clear source of influence. Yet there are plenty of thematic links with the Lukan corpus. Stephen’s words in Acts 7:60 (κύριε, μὴ στήσῃς αὐτοῖς ταύτην τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’) convey a similar sentiment as 23:34a but the wording is quite different. We have a shared theme rather than a source of harmonisation. The same is true for the shared notion of ‘not knowing what they are doing’ in 23:34a and Acts 3:17 (κατὰ ἄγνοιαν πράξατε ‘you acted in ignorance’). One could even argue that Acts 3:17 presupposes something like Luke 23:34a. Yet again, it seems unlikely that Acts 3:17 provided the wording that we find in our passage.

So what are the arguments for or against?

• The main argument against the originality of 23:34a is that it is left out in a part of the earliest evidence.
• If these words were original, there does not seem to be a good motivation for leaving it out.
• A reconstructed background is that the words in question may be an agraphon (Metzger’s Commentary) which is subsequently made part of the gospel-tradition for numerological reasons as it brings the number of sayings on the cross up to seven (Whitlark and Parsons).

The arguments in favour of printing the passage are:

• The shorter text can be explained as a harmonization, this time by omission. And there are parallels elsewhere in the early manuscripts, and especially so in the Passion narratives. We have seen harmonization in the early witnesses in Matthew 27:49, and harmonization by omission in the variants in Mark 14, and I believe also in the two earlier discussed variants in Luke 22. And for those who accept the reading ‘Jesus Barabbas’ in Matthew 27:16, 17 (which I don’t) there is another example of harmonization by omission.
• Thematically and theologically it fits the Lukan writings.
• Metzger in his Textual Commentary mentions the destruction of Jerusalem as an event that seems in contradiction to Jesus’ prayer for forgiveness. One could go one step further and suggest that the omission is an anti-Jewish variant (in the sense that they should not be forgiven). However, as with many attempts to find a social or theological background to a textual variant, such reconstruction is rather speculative and perhaps more indicative of our desire to have a story behind a textual variant than that it provides us with a real argument. Admittedly, anti-judaism is not a strange sentiment in early Christianity (see Eubank who unpacks this line of argument).

For these reasons the Tyndale House Edition presents the text ‘Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’ as part of the original text of Luke. There seems to be enough going on in the P75 B-03 group to throw some doubt over their testimony in the big variants in the Passion narratives. The omission has – what I would call – strong external support. But this is exactly why textual criticism cannot be reduced to choosing an algorithm or preferred group of manuscripts. The reality of historical transmission is more complex and messier than any simple solution.

Some literature

Nathan Eubank, “A Disconcerting Prayer: On the Originality of Luke 23:34a”, Journal of Biblical Literature 129 (2010): 521-36

Jason A. Whitlark, and Mikeal C. Parsons, “The ‘Seven’ Last Words: A Numerical Motivation for the Insertion of Luke 23.34a”, New Testament Studies 52 (2006): 188-204 (see a discussion of this article on the ETC blog here)

Panel on the Christian Biblical Canon at Southeastern

Southeastern Seminary has a series of Library Talks, which apparently take different forms. For this ‘Library Talk’, they asked me to be part of a panel with two of their faculty members, Steve McKinion and Scott Kellum, to discuss the formation of the Christian Canon. The event is free and open to the public. I’m told seating is limited, so register today. If you can't attend the event, it will be recorded, and the video will be posted about two weeks after the event.