The Westcott/Hort Nine
Luke 24:12

Text

24:10. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told this to the apostles,

24:11. but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

24:12. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb, and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves, and he went home wondering at what had happened.

24:13. That very day, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem,

24:14. and talking with each other about all these things that had happened . . .

(several intervening verses omitted)

24:33. And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them,

24:34. who said, The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon! . . .

Commentary

In the absence of 24:12, Lk 24:34 is the first place that an appearance to Peter (Simon) is mentioned in Luke. This makes Peter a rather marginal figure in the Resurrection story. Adding 24:12 to that base narrative somewhat fills that gap: it puts Peter into the story immediately after the women's first discovery, and it makes him alone, of all the disciples, believe in the Resurrection report. The precedence of Peter among the disciples has been emphasized by bringing him onstage, marveling at the evidence of the Lord's rising, and thus in a reverential posture, rather than leaving him to be merely referred to, less dramatically, by the comment of another person.

Metzger Commentary 158 adds that the disputed text, if interpolated, is thought to be derived from John 20:3, 5, 6, 10. He goes on to record that "a majority of the Committee regarded the passage as a natural antecedent to v24, and was inclined to explain the similarity with the verses in John as due to the likelihood that both evangelists had drawn upon a common tradition." But common tradition will not explain the fact that without v12, the surrounding text becomes more consecutive. The phrase "two of them" in v13 refers back easily to the "they" of v11, but it has less than nothing to do with Peter in the intervening v12.

Conclusion

Omit as a later and narratively intrusive Petrine suppletion.

25 May 2006 / Contact The Project / Exit to Biblica Page