Stephen W. Frary, «Who Was Manifested In The Flesh? A Consideration Of Internal Evidence In Support Of A Variant In 1 Tim 3:16A», Vol. 16 (2003) 3-18
1 Tim 3:16 contains a textual variant in the initial line of what is
considered to be a hymn fragment which is difficult if not impossible to
resolve based on external evidence. This verse thus provides an interesting
test case by which we might examine the differing and often contradictory
ways that the leading schools of textual criticism use the agreed canons
of their trade to arrive at the original reading from the internal evidence.
This paper outlines the difficulties in the external evidence, and considers
how answers to three key questions about the internal readings of the text
result in contradictory findings. The author concludes that thoroughgoing
eclecticism (consideration of internal evidence alone) cannot determine the
original text and thus only a reexamination of external evidence or the likely
transmissional history can resolve the question.
11
Who Was Manifested in the Flesh? A Consideration of Internal Evidence
rule entirely, while Elliott applies it primarily where the cause of the
omission can be identified.29
3. 1 Tim 3:16a: The Internal Evidence
Turning, then, to the first of Elliott’s three questions, which of the
readings is most likely to give rise to the others? Fee flatly states, “the
corruption can have happened only in Greek, and on the basis of the
abbreviation of the nomen sacrum (ΘC); this was easily corrupted from
Ο̅C̅, on the basis of the apparently ungrammatical nature of the latter;
indeed a change in the other direction is nearly impossible to account for
under any circumstances.â€30 Burgon disputes this claim indirectly in his
discussion of MSS F and G:
...that OC (in verse 16) would be Θεός if the delicate horizontal stroke
which distinguishes Θ from Ο, were not away,—no one denies... Are there any
other such substitutions of one letter for another discoverable in these two
codices? And it is notorious that instances of the phenomenon abound. The
letters C, Ε, Ο, Θ are confused throughout.31
While it is not appropriate to confuse the habits of one scribe with
another, what Burgon has shown is that unintentional changes caused by
mistaking letters can account for a change from either of the two main
variants to the other.
What Burgon has not explained is how the Western text’s ὅ could have
arisen unintentionally from Θ̅C̅. It is indeed unlikely that any scribe would
have knowingly replaced a nomen sacrum with a neuter relative pronoun.
Thus to derive the Western reading, a scribe must have had a defective
exemplar which read ΟC and then intentionally changed this pronoun to
Ο to agree in gender with μυστήÏιον. This scenario presents a difficulty
for the Byzantine priorist, for it violates the principle of Occam’s razor,
requiring two consecutive changes in the transmissional stream to arrive
at the reading, one from Θ̅C̅ to ΟC, and a second from ΟC to Ο.
The possibility of intentional corruption moves us to answer Elliott’s
second question: which reading is the likeliest to have been changed by the
Elliott, The Greek Text of the Epistles, 7.
29
G.D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody,
30
MA, 1994) 762 n. 30.
Burgon, Revision Revised, 442.
31
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