108 Timo Flink Internally the evidence is also complex. The reading κύριος ᾽Ιησοῦς is likely a conflation of the two separate readings. It could also be a harmonisation of one of the components to the immediate context, as Jude 4 already has both. If so, either κύριος or ᾽Ιησοῦς lies behind this reading. There are no good transcriptional reasons to drop either κύριος or ᾽Ιησοῦς in light of the author’s usage of the terms. The author of Jude speaks of Jesus as the Lord without variae lectiones in verses 4, 17 and 25, and in verse 21 with all witnesses except L:V, which omits the clause. These references would offer a reason for a scribe to harmonise the texts. It is not likely that the conflated reading would be chopped to pieces and only the pieces would survive in the manuscript tradition to an almost total disappearance of the fuller reading. It is more likely that Didymus or a scribe before him created the reading. Didymus also cites the text reading ᾽Ιησοῦς only. The reading κύριος ᾽Ιησοῦς is therefore hardly the “original” reading. The singular reading θεὸς χριστός in P72 should be rejected as anti- Adoptionistic corruption. It is too hard a reading. The scribe apparently conflated two readings, θεός and ᾽Ιησοῦς as Christological harmonisation to Pauline concept, in which Christ is active in the Old Testament (1 Cor. 10,4). If so, this reading is an interpretation of the reading θεός within the Pauline line of thought48, but turned to serve a theological agenda. This possibility is strengthened by the observation that P72 omits καί in 2 Pet. 1,2. This omission equates God with Christ49. As such it cannot be the original reading. One other possibility for the rise of θεὸς χριστός is a scribal blunder. Albin suggests that the exemplar of P72 read a nomen sac- rum ICXPC, which a scribe inadvertently changed to ΘCXPC. If so, the reading probably derives from the variant reading ᾽Ιησοῦς harmonised to author’s usage (elsewhere he always has Jesus Christ)50. Metzger has suggested that the scribe may even have attempted to write θεοῦ χριστός, which he blundered, though I do not find this convincing51. If θεὸς χριστός was the “original” reading, is it possible that it was changed to ᾽Ιησοῦς as a simplification but there are no good reasons why θεὸς χριστός would be changed to κύριος. The vice versa with Christological interpretation is plausible. All in all, it is unlikely that the other variants derive from Wachtel, Der byzantinische Text, 356. Kubo, P72 and the Codex Vaticanus, 86, 141, 48 argued for a Patripassionistic corruption, but such is less likely the case. B.D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. The Effect of Early Christo- 49 logical Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (Oxford 1993) 87-88; Kelly, The Epistles of Peter and of Jude, 255. Albin, Judasbrevet, 600. Wikgren, “Some Problems in Jude 5”, notes that these two 50 variant readings, ᾽Ιησοῦς and θεὸς χριστός, are related with preference to ᾽Ιησοῦς as more likely the “original” whence the other derives. Metzger, Textual Commentary, 657. 51