The Westcott/Hort Nine
Summary

We have here two subgroups of variants: the Matthean One and the Lukan Eight.

The Matthean case is well analyzed as a scribal inadvertence; an incorporated marginal gloss. It must then come from a time when not only were the Gospels known as a group to the learned faithful, but when the faithful were concerned to note variations between them. This would appear to be a rather advanced stage of Gospel history, and implies some progress toward canonization of the Four Gospels.

All the Lukan passages, on the other hand, appear to be intentional additions to the otherwise "Neutral" text represented by Papyrus 75 and Codex Vaticanus, for reasons of theological or narrative clarification, or to provide a specifically Pauline precedent for the already developed observance of the Lord's Supper. They were probably made as a group in the text of Luke but without reference to any other Gospel, sometime between the completion of Luke (before 100) and the date of P75 (which might be as early as c200). The date of Vaticanus, which is probably more than a century after P75, does not add any additional specificity; we are left with a window of opportunity about a century and a half long. The exact time must also have been after, not before, the Western text line had branched off from the main line of descent, which explains why Codex Bezae lacks any of these changes.

Comment

The Lukan passages, we feel, should be considered together, and, so considered, the theory that they were omitted from a Luke which had originally possessed them would require that some early scribe had gone through the end of Luke and removed from it many of the most explicit references to the Resurrection and the Ascension, leaving behind a curiously muted and reticent account, in which the reality of the Ascension in particular could easily come into doubt. Arguments have been quoted in favor of such a change in one or another of the eight individual passages in the set. We consider that the probability of such a coordinated set of changes in all the passages in the set is virtually nil. We thus prefer the opposite possibility, in which an originally reticent account was later strengthened at precisely the points where later belief most needed to lean on it. We have no hesitation in deciding in favor of that possibility.

Neither did some of the Committee. Here is the end of Metzger's summary of the discussion of the "Western Non-Interpolations:"

. . . In any case, the Bible Societies Committee did not consider it wise to make, as it were, a mechanical or doctrinaire judgement concerning the group of nine Western Non-Interpolations, but sought to evaluate each one separately on its own merits and in the light of fuller attestation and newer methodologies.

During the discussion a sharp difference of opinion emerged. According to the view of a minority of the Committee, apart from other arguments there is discernible in these passages a Christological and theological motivation that accounts for their having been added, while there is no clear reason that accounts for their having been omitted. Accordingly, if the passages are retained in the text at all, it was held that they should be enclosed within square brackets. On the other hand, the majority of the Committee, having evaluated the weight of the evidence differently, regarded the longer readings as part of the original text . . .

Notice the application here, albeit by the minority, of the central principle of text criticism: That reading is original from which the other may most plausibly be derived.

Something may be said in response to the majority arguments as here summarized.

• First, the early branching off of the Western text from the subsequently interpolated mainstream will account for the "attestation" situation. It is not an objection to a hypothesis that it contains the details addressed by the hypothesis. The fact that the new and impressive Papyrus 75 is part of the mainstream text tradition merely helps define the mainstream tradition and to locate the point of divergence chronologically; it does not change the structure of the problem.
• Second, as for "newer methodologies," if they are meant to replace basic methodologies, we are not interested. Nolland 3/1041 n4 (1993) notes that support for the Westcott/Hort treatment of Lk 22:19bf and the other "Western Non-interpolation" passages "has been increasingly eroded, and a new consensus in favor of the longer reading has been emerging." He might have added that support for every other critical emendation ever proposed for the NT text has been eroding over the same century. Zeitgeist is not scholarship.
• Third, and most important: The minority were quite right to consider the Nine as a group, not as separate entities, and to note their common tendency. The fragments of a diamond are not necessarily all diamond shaped, it is only together that they imply an original diamond.

We concur with the minority report.

Conclusion

Our working texts of both Matthew and Luke should not include any of these nine passages or phrases. Their addition belongs to later history, which is in part a history of the mutual influence and cross-contamination of the Gospels themselves, and in part a history of their continued interaction with the developing mind and practice, and above all the developing needs, of the Church.

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