Overall, I have been inclined to regard "the son of God" in Mark 1.1 as an insertion ever since reading
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture years ago. Accidental corruption is not impossible in this case, but the variety and geographical diversity of the textual witnesses to the omission, as well as my own perception that such things tended to accumulate in the textual tradition, rather then get eliminated (I think here of what Victor of Antioch later said about appending the longer ending of Mark to copies that lacked it; I also think of Sinaiticus at this very locus; see below), persuade me that the original probably lacked the phrase in question.
I do want to underline all of the nomina sacra in the verse at hand, and not just the ones that would have dropped out; I also want to eliminate the
eta that Ehrman included in the nomen sacrum for "Jesus", since most of the major codices seem to lack it:
ΑΡΧΗΤΟΥΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΥΙΥΧΥΥΥΘΥΚΑΘΩΣΓΕΓΡΑΠΤΑΙ
As you point out, Joe, there would have been four separate lines here, and they would have gone over the letters, not under them.
Sinaiticus lacked "the son of God" the first time through, but the phrase has been added in the space between the lines, as a correction. Copies of this codex would presumably include the extra words as part of the regular text; this is how phrases can get mainstreamed in the manuscript tradition, so to speak:
Alexandrinus contains the whole phrase, but the definite article
τοῦ comes before "God":
Vaticanus has the whole phrase, as well, and does not use a nomen sacrum for "the son":
Bezae has the
eta in "Jesus" that Ehrman included in his representative line of text; it also, however, has a
rho in "Christ". It writes out "the son" in full, just like Vaticanus:
Those images ought to give a good idea of what a line of Greek text with nomina sacra looks like in the raw.
JoeWallack wrote:I disagree with Ehrman's earlier conclusion that in general, due to the specifics of the nomina Sacra, accidental omission has good support as a cause for the following reasons:
- 1) Even with the nomina Sacre and continuous letters, I think omission would be obvious to a native Greek. Let's try it on our English eyes:
THEBEGINNINGOFTHEGOSPELOFJTTSD
The lines would be above JTT and SD. Ehrman points out that in Greek 3 of the 5 letters are the same but still, I think a native Greek would easily recognize the above and therefore omission would be unlikely.
Unfortunately, what an English example will lack is the homeoteleuton (the similar or identical endings of all the words or abbreviations in question). After all, there are five words in a row, four of them (also in a row) candidates for treatment as nomina sacra, which end in
upsilon (or, if not abbreviated, in
omicron and
upsilon): ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟ
ΥΙΥΧΥΥΥΘΥ. Those Greek declensional endings create situations which are difficult to recreate in English.
2) The large CAPITAL letters make it easy to recognize words and therefore offset the problem of continuous letters.
True enough.
3) Use of nomina Sacre creates attention to specific words, not obscurity.
True.
4) The nomina Sacre have lines above giving them even more attention.
5) "Jesus Christ" and "son of God" would normally have separate lines above each.
True. You can see the separate lines in the manuscript clippings above.
6) "Jesus Christ the son of God" is one of the most important phrases for Christianity in general and specifically for GMark.
True.
7) This is a scribe doing the copying. They may have done it before (copied GMark) and would have qualifications a casual reader of Ehrman's blog might lack.
Probably... though not
all scribes were very competent.
8) Instances of nomina Sacre being accidentally omitted seem rarer than Gordon Gecko's interest in Annacott Steel.
Not that I doubt it, but I have no special information on this point.
The point that you repeat from Ehrman about this being at the very beginning of the text probably has some weight to it, as well. And, in his book, Ehrman points out that the phrase comes up missing in texts from Alexandria, from Caesarea, from Origen when he was in each of those locales, and even in a Western example (1555).
It would not break my brain if "the son of God" were original and dropped out by accident, but I definitely favor intentional addition to the text in this case.
Ben.
Textual Criticism issue is the addition/originality of:
