Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Son Control, "Mark's" Second Amendment. Is Mark 1:1 "son of god" an Addition?

JW:
The offending verse:

Mark 1:1

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (ASV)

The Textual Criticism issue is the addition/originality of:

"(the) Son of God"

Bart Ehrman, who I would guess, would be voted the top Textual Critic in the world if a such a poll was taken, and is an Agnostic, has written in The Orthodox Corruption Of Scripture pages 72-75 (be sure and read the related footnotes) that he concludes addition.

The key point of Ehrman's argument is that a combination of a minimum of quality witness evidence for addition and the difficult reading principle make addition more likely than originality. The best online summary I've seen of the related Textual Criticism evidence is Wieland Willker's:

A Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels Vol. 2 Mark TVU 1

Freeloader beware, I have faith that Willker is a Believer as his presentation emphasizes presenting/promoting authority that is for original which understates the Patristic support for addition and the application of the difficult reading principle to such a qualitative phrase.

The objectives of this Thread will be:

• 1) To inventory the evidence for addition and original.
  
  2) To weigh the evidence.
  
  3) To conclude based on the weighted evidence.

Note that I've inventoried a significant amount of related information already at ErrancyWiki Mark 1:1


Joseph

Church Tradition. Noun/Verb. A mysterious entity which unlike Jesus who was only able to incarnate once, can be magically invoked on demand by Apologetic whim as solid contemporary undisputed evidence by a credible institution or just as easily disincarnated by the same as merely the opinion of men and not Scripture.

ErrancyWiki

JW:
Bart Ehrman has as Larry David would say "a pretty, pretty good" Internet post on the Textual Criticism issue of 1:1 son of God here:

A Variant in Mark 1:1 — Accidental or Intentional?

This is just his first of a series of posts on the subject and Ehrancyman does not go into the detail here that he does in The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament.

In this post he discusses whether the variation in 1:1 is likely accidental. His major points:

• 1) Nomina Sacre would have been used here:
  
  • Jesus Christ = ΙΗΥΧΥ
    
    the son of God = ΥΥΘΥ
  2) Nomina Sacre would have had a line above them.
  
  3) This is what the surrounding verse would look like with "son of God" (except that ΙΗΥΧΥ and ΥΥΘΥ would have lines above): ("son of God" underlined)
  
  ΑΡΧΗΤΟΥΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΥΙΗΥΧΥΥΥΘΥΚΑΘΩΣΓΕΓΡΑΠΤΑΙ
  
  4) Ehrman says it would have been easy for a scribe to leave out "ΥΥΘΥ" because the fourth letter "Υ" is the same as the letter before these four letters.

Thus Ehrman concludes that there is support for accidental omission of "son of God". In the next related post Ehrman considers the evidence for intentional addition but at the start also gives reasons to doubt that there was an accidental omission (in effect contradicting his own conclusion in his previous post):

• 1) Scribal errors are less likely at the start of a work.
  
  2) There are relatively unrelated Manuscripts with the omission so as unrelated instances of omission increase, accidental cause as explanation is reduced.

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.
  
  2) The large CAPITAL letters make it easy to recognize words and therefore offset the problem of continuous letters.
  
  3) Use of nomina Sacre creates attention to specific words, not obscurity.
  
  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.
  
  6) "Jesus Christ the son of God" is one of the most important phrases for Christianity in general and specifically for GMark.
  
  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.
  
  8) Instances of nomina Sacre being accidentally omitted seem rarer than Gordon Gecko's interest in Annacott Steel.

I would be especially interested in my younger brother's related comment here.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

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:


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): ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΥΙΥΧΥΥΥΘΥ. 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.

JW:
At ErrancyWiki I am in the process of creating a detailed argument for "the son of God" being an addition to Mark 1:1

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (ASV)

The key evidence for addition is the early Greek Patristic evidence. There is no such evidence supporting the offending phrase until the fifth century. Combined with The Difficult Reading Principle, Higher Textual Criticism prefers addition over original here based on the relative evidence.

I'm especially interested in what Ben/KK think of the likely addition vs. original issue here.

A secondary issue is that traditional Christian Bible scholarship overwhelmingly concludes original. In Peter Head's great related article A Text-Critical Study of Mark 1.1 ‘The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ’ he states that every modern Bible commentary he is aware of concludes original here.


Joseph

The William Of Oz

Ben C. Smith wrote:I also think of Sinaiticus at this very locus; see below

Also an interesting witness is P.Oxy. 76.5073. The wording is

Hurtado wrote

P.Oxy. 76.5073 is a Christian amulet (palaeographically dated to late 3rd or early 4th century CE), containing Mark 1:1-2. It was used as a rolled up strip (25.2 x 4.5 cm) likely worn around the neck. Given the scarcity of extant manuscript evidence for Mark in the first three centuries, even this curious fragment is worth attention for text-critical purposes. The text witnesses to the opening line of Mark as “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (i.e., without “Son of God”). Both “Jesus” and “Christ” are written as nomina sacra (ιηυ and χρυ respectively), and, interestingly, the Greek definite article precedes “Christ”.

JW:
Up and coming Skeptic Michael Kok The Apostles' Memoirs The History and Reception of the New Testament Writings has a, as Larry David would say, pretty, pretty good summary of the Textual Criticism argument for 1:1 located at his e-book The Gospel on the Margins: The Reception of Mark in the Second Century starting at Location 4851.

A few comments (only critical ones of course) regarding Kok's few comments regarding the many comments on the subject:

• 1) Kok questions which is the difficult reading. Intrinsically, "son of God", is a key phrase of GMark but so is the related timing. More important though is the Transcriptional evidence, what was the more difficult reading for scribes.
  
  2) Kok gives Wasserman's abbreviation theory a respect that it does not deserve. You have all and numerous original language witnesses failing to invoke "son of God" (which per Intrinsic claimants was so important to the original author but now can be ignored by all even/way more theologically advanced Patristics) to the fifth century while magically when the Latin subsequently appears with "son of God" abbreviating is no longer in fashion (again the extreme, no one abbreviates).

Joseph

Son Control - Mark's 2nd Amendment. Was "son of God" Added Later to Mark 1:1? The Greek Patristic Evidence.

JoeWallack wrote:The key evidence for addition is the early Greek Patristic evidence. There is no such evidence supporting the offending phrase until the fifth century. Combined with The Difficult Reading Principle, Higher Textual Criticism prefers addition over original here based on the relative evidence.

I agree with you, but I think the problem is, that the decision can be made only with formal criteria, especially weighing the witnesses and the difficult reading principle. It seems to me that other arguments are not persuasive. I assume that Mark 1:1 was the book title or the heading and there could be a few reasons why a title was given.

I don't think there's much more to be said on this one. It looks more likely to be an addition, but who knows...

"surely then the gods themselves have ruined your mind." Iliad 7.360; 12.234

"But Zeus does not accomplish for men all their purposes." Iliad 18.328

"Then indeed would he smash all your fine show" Odyssey 17.244

"Not even if his gifts to one should be as numerous as the grains of sand and particles of dust" Iliad 9.385

"His gifts are hateful to me, and I honor him not a whit" Iliad. 9.378

"How can you propose to render toil useless and ineffectual?" Iliad 4.26

"What’s wrong with you, that you took this wrath into your heart?" Iliad 6.326

"You lunatic, sit still and listen to the word of others," Iliad 2.200

"Keep quiet, friend, and do as I say." Iliad 4.412

"Talk not like this. There’ll be no change before" Iliad 5.218

End transmission.

JW:
Regarding the value of External evidence, I think it is typically overstated. As has been pointed out, Dr. Carrier has a related article here Three Things to Know about New Testament Manuscripts (with a likewise overstated conclusion I think). There may/have been significant consolidation events in the early history of texts which created significant movement towards orthodox and away from difficult readings:

• 1) Lucian Recension
  
  2) Byzantine Church dominance

The following table helps illustrate this:

-	"Son of God" Addition	"Son of God" Original
Before Lucian Recension (c. 300)	P.Oxy. 76.5073 c. 300	-
After Lucian Recension Before Byzantine Control (c. 500)	Codex Sinaiticus c. 350	Codex Vaticanus c. 350 Codex Bezae c. 450 Codex Washingtonianus c. 450 Codex Alexandrinus c. 450

The above is the extent of quality Manuscript evidence for the issue at hand. The witnesses are few but note the coordination between major Textual Criticism events and change in witness:

• 1) GMark has relatively more difficult readings than the other Gospels but relatively less manuscript evidence before the Lucian Recension and Byzantine Control.
  
  2) The one witness around the time of the Lucian Recension has the difficult reading.
  
  3) In between the Lucian Recension and Byzantine dominance we see the movement to the orthodox reading.

We can also make a general comment here regarding difficult readings. In Textual Criticism issues we always see the movement to the orthodox reading. This general observation then, supports the individual difficult reading as more likely original.


Joseph

Son Control - Mark's 2nd Amendment. Was "son of God" Added Later to Mark 1:1? The Greek Patristic Evidence.