Theologically


Motivated Alterations


of the Text


Textual criticism involves more than simply determining the


original text. It also entails seeing how that text came to be


modified over time, both through scribal slips and as scribes made deliberate


modifications. The latter, the intentional changes, can be


highly significant, not because they necessarily help us understand what


the original authors were trying to say, but because they can show us


something about how the authors’ texts came to be interpreted by the


scribes who reproduced them. By seeing how scribes altered their


texts, we can discover clues about what these scribes thought was important


in the text, and so we can learn more about the history of the


texts as they came to be copied and recopied over the centuries.


The thesis of this chapter is that sometimes the texts of the New


Testament were modified for theological reasons. This happened


whenever the scribes copying the texts were concerned to ensure that


the texts said what they wanted them to say; sometimes this was because


of theological disputes raging in the scribes’ own day. To make


sense of this kind of change, we need to understand something about


theological disputes in the early centuries of Christianity—the centuries


in which most alterations of scripture were made, before the widespread


appearance of “professional” scribes.


The Theological Context of


the Transmission of the Texts


We know a good deal about Christianity during the second and third


centuries—the time, say, between the completion of the writing of the


New Testament books and the conversion of the Roman emperor


Constantine to the religion, which, as we have seen, changed everything.


1 These two centuries were particularly rich in theological diversity


among the early Christians. In fact, the theological diversity


was so extensive that groups calling themselves Christian adhered to


beliefs and practices that most Christians today would insist were not


Christian at all.2


In the second and third centuries there were, of course, Christians


who believed that there was only one God, the Creator of all there is.


Other people who called themselves Christian, however, insisted that


there were two different gods—one of the Old Testament (a God of


wrath) and one of the New Testament (a God of love and mercy).


These were not simply two different facets of the same God: they were


actually two different gods. Strikingly, the groups that made these


claims—including the followers of Marcion, whom we have already


met—insisted that their views were the true teachings of Jesus and his


apostles. Other groups, for example, of Gnostic Christians, insisted


that there were not just two gods, but twelve. Others said thirty.


Others still said 365. All these groups claimed to be Christian, insisting


that their views were true and had been taught by Jesus and his


followers.


Why didn’t these other groups simply read their New Testaments


to see that their views were wrong? It is because there was no New


152 Misquoting Jesus


Testament. To be sure, all the books of the New Testament had been


written by this time, but there were lots of other books as well, also


claiming to be by Jesus’s own apostles—other gospels, acts, epistles,


and apocalypses having very different perspectives from those found


in the books that eventually came to be called the New Testament.


The New Testament itself emerged out of these conflicts over God (or


the gods), as one group of believers acquired more converts than all


the others and decided which books should be included in the canon


of scripture. During the second and third centuries, however, there


was no agreed-upon canon—and no agreed-upon theology. Instead,


there was a wide range of diversity: diverse groups asserting diverse


theologies based on diverse written texts, all claiming to be written by


apostles of Jesus.


Some of these Christian groups insisted that God had created


this world; others maintained that the true God had not created this


world (which is, after all, an evil place), but that it was the result of a


cosmic disaster. Some of these groups insisted that the Jewish scriptures


were given by the one true God; others claimed that the Jewish


scriptures belong to the inferior God of the Jews, who was not the one


true God. Some of these groups insisted that Jesus Christ was the


one Son of God who was both completely human and completely divine;


other groups insisted that Christ was completely human and not


at all divine; others maintained that he was completely divine and not


at all human; and yet others asserted that Jesus Christ was two


things—a divine being (Christ) and a human being (Jesus). Some of


these groups believed that Christ’s death brought about the salvation


of the world; others maintained that Christ’s death had nothing to do


with the salvation of this world; yet other groups insisted that Christ


had never actually died.


Each and every one of these viewpoints—and many others besides—


were topics of constant discussion, dialogue, and debate in the


early centuries of the church, while Christians of various persuasions


tried to convince others of the truth of their own claims. Only one


group eventually “won out” in these debates. It was this group that


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 153


decided what the Christian creeds would be: the creeds would affirm


that there is only one God, the Creator; that Jesus his Son is both


human and divine; and that salvation came by his death and resurrection.


This was also the group that decided which books would be included


in the canon of scripture. By the end of the fourth century,


most Christians agreed that the canon was to include the four Gospels,


Acts, the letters of Paul, and a group of other letters such as 1 John


and 1 Peter, along with the Apocalypse of John. And who had been


copying these texts? Christians from the congregations themselves,


Christians who were intimately aware of and even involved in the debates


over the identity of God, the status of the Jewish scriptures, the


nature of Christ, and the effects of his death.


The group that established itself as “orthodox” (meaning that it


held what it considered to be the “right belief”) then determined what


future Christian generations would believe and read as scripture.


What should we call the “orthodox” views before they became the


majority opinion of all Christians? Possibly it is best to call them protoorthodox.


That is to say, they represented the views of the “orthodox”


Christians before this group had won its disputes by the early fourth


century or so.


Did these disputes affect the scribes as they reproduced their scriptures?


In this chapter I will be arguing that they did. To make the


point, I will restrict myself to just one aspect of the ongoing theological


disputes in the second and third centuries, the question over the nature


of Christ. Was he human? Was he divine? Was he both? If he was


both, was he two separate beings, one divine and one human? Or was


he one being who was simultaneously human and divine? These are


questions that were eventually resolved in the creeds that were formulated


and then handed down even till today, creeds that insist that


there is “one Lord Jesus Christ” who is both fully God and fully man.


Before these determinations came to be made, there were widespread


disagreements, and these disputes affected our texts of scripture.3


To illustrate this point I will consider three areas of the dispute


over Christ’s nature, looking at ways in which the texts of the books


154 Misquoting Jesus


that were to become the New Testament came to be changed by (no


doubt) well-meaning scribes, who intentionally altered their texts in


order to make them more amenable to their own theological views,


and less amenable to the views of their theological opponents. The


first area I will consider involves the claim made by some Christians


that Jesus was so fully human that he could not be divine. This was


the view of a group of Christians that scholars today call the adoptionists.


My contention is that Christian scribes who opposed adoptionistic


views of Jesus modified their texts in places in order to stress their


view that Jesus was not just human, but also divine. We might call


these modifications antiadoptionistic alterations of scripture.


Antiadoptionistic Alterations of the Text


Early Christian Adoptionists


We know of a number of Christian groups from the second and third


centuries that had an “adoptionistic” view of Christ. This view is


called adoptionist because its adherents maintained that Jesus was not


divine but a full flesh-and-blood human being whom God had


“adopted” to be his son, usually at his baptism.4


One of the best-known early Christian groups who held to an


adoptionistic Christology was a sect of Jewish-Christians known as


the Ebionites. We aren’t sure why they were given this name. It may


have originated as a self-designation based on the Hebrew term Ebyon,


which means “poor.” These followers of Jesus may have imitated the


original band of Jesus’s disciples in giving up everything because of


their faith, and so taking upon themselves voluntary poverty for the


sake of others.


Wherever their name came from, the views of this group are


clearly reported in our early records, principally written by their enemies


who saw them as heretics. These followers of Jesus were, like


him, Jews; where they differed from other Christians was in their insistence


that to follow Jesus one had to be a Jew. For men, this meant


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 155


becoming circumcised. For men and women, it meant following the


Jewish law given by Moses, including kosher food laws and the observance


of Sabbath and Jewish festivals.


In particular, it was their understanding of Jesus as the Jewish


messiah that set these Christians apart from others. For since they


were strict monotheists—believing that only One could be God—


they insisted that Jesus was not himself divine, but was a human being


no different in “nature” from the rest of us. He was born from the sexual


union of his parents, Joseph and Mary, born like everyone else (his


mother was not a virgin), and reared, then, in a Jewish home. What


made Jesus different from all others was that he was more righteous


in following the Jewish law; and because of his great righteousness,


God adopted him to be his son at his baptism, when a voice came from


heaven announcing that he was God’s son. From that moment on,


Jesus felt called to fulfill the mission God had allotted him—dying on


the cross, as a righteous sacrifice for the sins of others. This he did in


faithful obedience to his calling; God then honored this sacrifice by


raising Jesus from the dead and exalting him up to heaven, where he


still waits before returning as the judge of the earth.


According to the Ebionites, then, Jesus did not preexist; he was not


born of a virgin; he was not himself divine. He was a special, righteous


man, whom God had chosen and placed in a special relationship


to himself.


In response to these adoptionistic views, proto-orthodox Christians


insisted that Jesus was not “merely” human, but that he was actually


divine, in some sense God himself. He was born of a virgin, he


was more righteous than anyone else because he was different by nature,


and at his baptism God did not make him his son (via adoption)


but merely affirmed that he was his son, as he had been from eternity


past.


How did these disputes affect the texts of scripture that were in


circulation in the second and third centuries, texts being copied by


nonprofessional scribes who were themselves involved to a greater or


lesser degree in the controversies? There are very few, if any, variant


156 Misquoting Jesus


readings that appear to have been created by scribes who held to an


adoptionistic point of view. The reason for this lack of evidence


should not be surprising. If an adoptionistic Christian had inserted his


views into the texts of scripture, surely they would have been corrected


by later scribes who took a more orthodox line. What we do


find, however, are instances in which texts have been altered in such a


way as to oppose an adoptionistic Christology. These changes emphasize


that Jesus was born of a virgin, that he was not adopted at his baptism,


and that he was himself God.


Antiadoptionist Changes of the Text


We have, in fact, already seen one textual variation related to this


christological controversy, in our discussion in chapter 4 of the textual


researches of J. J. Wettstein. Wettstein examined the Codex Alexandrinus,


now in the British Library, and determined that in 1 Tim.


3:16, where most later manuscripts speak of Christ as “God made


manifest in the flesh,” this early manuscript originally spoke, instead,


of Christ “who was made manifest in the flesh.” The change is very


slight in Greek—it is the difference between a theta and an omicron,


which look very much alike ( and ). A later scribe had altered


the original reading, so that it no longer read “who” but “God” (made


manifest in the flesh). In other words, this later corrector changed the


text in such a way as to stress Christ’s divinity. It is striking to realize


that the same correction occurred in four of our other early manuscripts


of 1 Timothy, all of which have had correctors change the text


in the same way, so that it now explicitly calls Jesus “God.” This became


the text of the vast majority of later Byzantine (i.e., medieval)


manuscripts—and then became the text of most of the early English


translations.


Our earliest and best manuscripts, however, speak of Christ


“who” was made manifest in the flesh, without calling Jesus, explicitly,


God. The change that came to dominate the medieval manuscripts,


then, was made in order to emphasize Jesus’s divinity in a text


that was ambiguous about it, at best. This would be an example of an


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 157


antiadoptionistic change, a textual alteration made to counter a claim


that Jesus was fully human but not himself divine.


Other antiadoptionistic changes took place in the manuscripts that


record Jesus’s early life in the Gospel of Luke. In one place we are told


that when Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the Temple and the holy


man Simeon blessed him, “his father and mother were marveling at


what was said to him” (Luke 2:33). His father? How could the text


call Joseph Jesus’s father if Jesus had been born of a virgin? Not surprisingly,


a large number of scribes changed the text to eliminate the


potential problem, by saying “Joseph and his mother were marveling.


. . .” Now the text could not be used by an adoptionist Christian


in support of the claim that Joseph was the child’s father.


A similar phenomenon happens a few verses later in the account of


Jesus as a twelve-year-old in the Temple. The story line is familiar:


Joseph, Mary, and Jesus attend a festival in Jerusalem, but then when


the rest of the family heads home in the caravan, Jesus remains behind,


unbeknownst to them. As the text says, “his parents did not know


about it.” But why does the text speak of his parents when Joseph is not


really his father? A number of textual witnesses “correct” the problem


by having the text read, “Joseph and his mother did not know it.” And


again, some verses later, after they return to Jerusalem to hunt high


and low for Jesus, Mary finds him, three days later, in the Temple. She


upbraids him: “Your father and I have been looking for you!” Once


again, some scribes solved the problem—this time by simply altering


the text to read “We have been looking for you!”


One of the most intriguing antiadoptionist variants among our manuscripts


occurs just where one might expect it, in an account of Jesus’s


baptism by John, the point at which many adoptionists insisted Jesus


had been chosen by God to be his adopted son. In Luke’s Gospel, as in


Mark, when Jesus is baptized, the heavens open up, the Spirit descends


upon Jesus in the form of a dove, and a voice comes from


heaven. But the manuscripts of Luke’s Gospel are divided concerning


what exactly the voice said. According to most of our manuscripts, it


158 Misquoting Jesus


spoke the same words one finds in Mark’s account: “You are my


beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11; Luke 3:23). In


one early Greek manuscript and several Latin ones, however, the


voice says something strikingly different: “You are my Son, today I


have begotten you.” Today I have begotten you! Doesn’t that suggest


that his day of baptism is the day on which Jesus has become the Son


of God? Couldn’t this text be used by an adoptionist Christian to


make the point that Jesus became the Son of God at this time? As this


is such an interesting variant, we might do well to give it a more extended


consideration, as a further illustration of the complexities of


the problems that textual critics face.


The first issue to resolve is this: which of these two forms of the text


is original, and which represents the alteration? The vast majority of


Greek manuscripts have the first reading (“You are my beloved Son in


whom I am well pleased”); and so one might be tempted to see the


other reading as the alteration. The problem in this case is that the


verse was quoted a lot by early church fathers in the period before most


of our manuscripts were produced. It is quoted in the second and third


centuries everywhere from Rome, to Alexandria, to North Africa, to


Palestine, to Gaul, to Spain. And in almost every instance, it is the other


form of the text that is quoted (“Today I have begotten you”).


Moreover, this is the form of text that is more unlike what is found


in the parallel passage in Mark. As we have seen, scribes typically try to


harmonize texts rather than take them out of harmony; it is therefore


the form of the text that differs from Mark that is more likely to be


original to Luke. These arguments suggest that the less-attested reading—“


Today I have begotten you”—is indeed the original, and that it


came to be changed by scribes who feared its adoptionistic overtones.


Some scholars have taken the opposite view, however, by arguing


that Luke could not have had the voice at the baptism say “Today I


have begotten you” because it is already clear before this point in


Luke’s narrative that Jesus is the Son of God. Thus, in Luke 1:35, before


Jesus’s birth, the angel Gabriel announces to Jesus’s mother that


“the Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the Power of the Most High


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 159


will overshadow you, therefore the one who is to be born of you shall


be called holy, the Son of God.” For Luke himself, in other words,


Jesus already was the Son of God at his birth. According to this argument,


Jesus could not be said to have become the Son of God at his


baptism—and so the more widely attested reading, “You are my


beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” is probably original.


The difficulty with this line of thinking—as persuasive as it is at


first glance—is that it overlooks how Luke generally uses designations


of Jesus throughout his work (including not just the Gospel but


also the second volume of his writing, the book of Acts). Consider, for


example, what Luke says about Jesus as the “Messiah” (which is the


Hebrew word for the Greek term Christ). According to Luke 2:11,


Jesus was born as the Christ, but in one of the speeches in Acts, Jesus is


said to have become the Christ at his baptism (Acts 10:37–38); in another


passage Luke states that Jesus became the Christ at his resurrection


(Acts 2:38). How can all these things be true? It appears that for


Luke, it was important to emphasize the key moments of Jesus’s existence,


and to stress these as vital for Jesus’s identity (e.g., as Christ).


The same applies to Luke’s understanding of Jesus as the “Lord.” He


is said to have been born the Lord in Luke 2:11; and he is called the


Lord while living, in Luke 10:1; but Acts 2:38 indicates that he became


the Lord at his resurrection.


For Luke, Jesus’s identity as Lord, Christ, and Son of God is important.


But the time at which it happened, evidently, is not. Jesus is


all these things at crucial points of his life—birth, baptism, and resurrection,


for example.


It appears, then, that originally in Luke’s account of Jesus’s baptism,


the voice came from heaven to declare “You are my Son, today I


have begotten you.” Luke probably did not mean that to be interpreted


adoptionistically, since, after all, he had already narrated an account


of Jesus’s virgin birth (in chapters 1–2). But later Christians


reading Luke 3:22 may have been taken aback by its potential implications,


as it seems open to an adoptionistic interpretation. To prevent


anyone from taking the text that way, some proto-orthodox scribes


160 Misquoting Jesus


changed the text to make it stand in complete conformity with the


text of Mark 1:11. Now, rather than being said to have been begotten


by God, Jesus is simply affirmed: “You are my beloved Son in whom I


am well pleased.” This is, in other words, another antiadoptionistic


change of the text.


We will conclude this part of the discussion by looking at one other


such change. Like 1 Tim. 3:16, this one involves a text in which a


scribe has made an alteration to affirm in very strong terms that Jesus


is to be understood completely as God. The text occurs in the Gospel


of John, a Gospel that more than any of the others that made it into


the New Testament already goes a long way toward identifying Jesus


himself as divine (see, e.g., John 8:58; 10:30; 20:28). This identification


is made in a particularly striking way in a passage in which the original


text is hotly disputed.


The first eighteen verses of John are sometimes called its Prologue.


Here is where John speaks of the “Word of God” who was “in


the beginning with God” and who “was God” (vv. 1–3). This Word of


God made all things that exist. Moreover, it is God’s mode of communication


to the world; the Word is how God manifests himself to others.


And we are told that at one point the “Word became flesh and


dwelt among us.” In other words, God’s own Word became a human


being (v. 14). This human being was “Jesus Christ” (v. 17). According


to this understanding of things, then, Jesus Christ represents the “incarnation”


of God’s own Word, who was with God in the beginning


and was himself God, through whom God made all things.


The Prologue then ends with some striking words, which come in


two variant forms: “No one has seen God at any time, but the unique


Son/the unique God who is in the bosom of Father, that one has made


him known” (v. 18).


The textual problem has to do with the identification of this


“unique” one. Is he to be identified as the “unique God in the bosom


of the Father” or as the “unique Son in the bosom of the Father”? It


must be acknowledged that the first reading is the one found in the


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 161


manuscripts that are the oldest and generally considered to be the


best—those of the Alexandrian textual family. But it is striking that it


is rarely found in manuscripts not associated with Alexandria. Could


it be a textual variant created by a scribe in Alexandria and popularized


there? If so, that would explain why the vast majority of manuscripts


from everywhere else have the other reading, in which Jesus is


not called the unique God, but the unique Son.


There are other reasons for thinking that the latter reading is, in


fact, the correct one. The Gospel of John uses this phrase “the unique


Son” (sometimes mistranslated as “only begotten Son”) on several


other occasions (see John 3:16, 18); nowhere else does it speak of Christ


as “the unique God.” Moreover, what would it even mean to call


Christ that? The term unique in Greek means “one of a kind.” There


can be only one who is one of a kind. The term unique God must refer


to God the Father himself—otherwise he is not unique. But if the


term refers to the Father, how can it be used of the Son? Given the


fact that the more common (and understandable) phrase in the Gospel


of John is “the unique Son,” it appears that that was the text originally


written in John 1:18. This itself is still a highly exalted view of Christ—


he is the “unique Son who is in the bosom of the Father.” And he is


the one who explains God to everyone else.


It appears, though, that some scribes—probably located in Alexandria—


were not content even with this exalted view of Christ, and


so they made it even more exalted, by transforming the text. Now


Christ is not merely God’s unique Son, he is the unique God himself!


This too, then, appears to be an antiadoptionistic change of the text


made by proto-orthodox scribes of the second century.


Antidocetic Alterations of the Text


Early Christian Docetists


Standing at the opposite end of the theological spectrum from the


Jewish-Christian Ebionites and their adoptionistic Christology were


162 Misquoting Jesus


groups of Christians known as docetists.5 The name comes from the


Greek word DOKE


–


O, which means “to seem” or “to appear.” Docetists


maintained that Jesus was not a full flesh-and-blood human


being. He was instead completely (and only) divine; he only “seemed”


or “appeared” to be a human being, to feel hunger, thirst, and pain, to


bleed, to die. Since Jesus was God, he could not really be a man. He


simply came to earth in the “appearance” of human flesh.


Probably the best-known docetist from the early centuries of


Christianity was the philosopher-teacher Marcion. We know a good


deal about Marcion because proto-orthodox church fathers such as


Irenaeus and Tertullian considered his views a real threat, and so wrote


extensively about them. In particular, we still have a five-volume work


by Tertullian called Against Marcion in which Marcion’s understanding


of the faith is detailed and attacked. From this polemical tractate


we are able to discern the major features of Marcion’s thought.


As we have seen,6 Marcion appears to have taken his cues from the


apostle Paul, whom he considered to be the one true follower of Jesus.


In some of his letters Paul differentiates between the Law and the


gospel, insisting that a person is made right with God by faith in


Christ (the gospel), not by performing the works of the Jewish law.


For Marcion, this contrast between the gospel of Christ and the Law


of Moses was absolute, so much so that the God who gave the Law obviously


could not be the one who gave the salvation of Christ. They


were, in other words, two different gods. The God of the Old Testament


was the one who created this world, chose Israel to be his people,


and gave them his harsh Law. When they break his Law (as they all


do), he punishes them with death. Jesus came from a greater God,


sent to save people from the wrathful God of the Jews. Since he did


not belong to this other God, who created the material world, Jesus


himself obviously could not be part of this material world. That


means, then, that he could not actually have been born, that he did not


have a material body, that he did not really bleed, that he did not really


die. All these things were an appearance. But since Jesus appeared


to die—an apparently perfect sacrifice—the God of the Jews accepted


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 163


this death as payment for sins. Anyone who believes in it will be saved


from this God.


Proto-orthodox authors such as Tertullian objected strenuously to


this theology, insisting that if Christ was not an actual human being,


he could not save other human beings, that if he did not actually shed


blood, his blood could not bring salvation, that if he did not actually


die, his “apparent” death would do nobody any good. Tertullian and


others, then, took a strong stand that Jesus—while still divine (despite


what the Ebionites and other adoptionists said)—was nonetheless


fully human. He had flesh and blood; he could feel pain; he really


bled; he really died; he really, physically, was raised from the dead;


and he really, physically, ascended to heaven, where he is now waiting


to return, physically, in glory.


Antidocetic Changes of the Text


The debate over docetic Christologies affected the scribes who copied


the books that eventually became the New Testament. To illustrate


this point I will examine four textual variants in the final chapters of


the Gospel of Luke, which, as we have seen, was the one Gospel that


Marcion accepted as canonical scripture.7


The first involves a passage we also considered in chapter 5—the


account of Jesus’s “sweating blood.” As we saw there, the verses in question


were probably not original to Luke’s Gospel. Recall that the passage


describes events that take place immediately before Jesus’s arrest,


when he leaves his disciples to go off by himself to pray, asking that the


cup of his suffering be removed from him, but praying that God’s “will


be done.” Then, in some manuscripts, we read the disputed verses:


“And an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. And


being in agony he began to pray yet more fervently, and his sweat became


like drops of blood falling to the ground” (vv. 43–44).


I argued in chapter 5 that verses 43–44 disrupt the structure of this


passage in Luke, which is otherwise a chiasmus that focuses attention


on Jesus’s prayer for God’s will to be done. I also suggested that the


verses contain a theology completely unlike that otherwise found in


164 Misquoting Jesus


Luke’s Passion narrative. Everywhere else, Jesus is calm and in control


of his situation. Luke, in fact, has gone out of his way to remove


any indication of Jesus’s agony from the account. These verses, then,


not only are missing from important and early witnesses, they also


run counter to the portrayal of Jesus facing his death otherwise found


in Luke’s Gospel.


Why, though, did scribes add them to the account? We are now in


a position to answer that question. It is notable that these verses are alluded


to three times by proto-orthodox authors of the mid to late second


century (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Gaul, and Hippolytus of


Rome); and what is more intriguing still, each time they are mentioned


it is in order to counter the view that Jesus was not a real


human being. That is, the deep anguish that Jesus experiences according


to these verses was taken to show that he really was a human


being, that he really could suffer like the rest of us. Thus, for example,


the early Christian apologist Justin, after observing that “his sweat fell


down like drops of blood while he was praying,” claims that this


showed “that the Father wished his Son really to undergo such sufferings


for our sakes,” so that we “may not say that he, being the Son of


God, did not feel what was happening to him and inflicted on him.”8


In other words, Justin and his proto-orthodox colleagues understood


that the verses showed in graphic form that Jesus did not merely


“appear” to be human: he really was human, in every way. It seems


likely, then, that since, as we have seen, these verses were not originally


part of the Gospel of Luke, they were added for an antidocetic


purpose, because they portrayed so well the real humanity of Jesus.


For proto-orthodox Christians, it was important to emphasize that


Christ was a real man of flesh and blood because it was precisely the


sacrifice of his flesh and the shedding of his blood that brought salvation—


not in appearance but in reality. Another textual variant in


Luke’s account of Jesus’s final hours emphasizes this reality. It occurs in


the account of Jesus’s last supper with his disciples. In one of our oldest


Greek manuscripts, as well as in several Latin witnesses, we are told:


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 165


And taking a cup, giving thanks, he said, “Take this and divide it


among yourselves, for I say to you that I will not drink from the fruit


of the vine from now on, until the kingdom of God comes.” And


taking bread, giving thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying,


“This is my body. But behold, the hand of the one who betrays me is


with me at the table.” (Luke 22:17–19)


In most of our manuscripts, however, there is an addition to the


text, an addition that will sound familiar to many readers of the English


Bible, since it has made its way into most modern translations.


Here, after Jesus says “This is my body,” he continues with the words


“‘which has been given for you; do this in remembrance of me’; And


the cup likewise after supper, saying ‘this cup is the new covenant in


my blood which is shed for you.’”


These are the familiar words of the “institution” of the Lord’s


Supper, known in a very similar form also from Paul’s first letter to


the Corinthians (1 Cor. 11:23–25). Despite the fact that they are familiar,


there are good reasons for thinking that these verses were not


originally in Luke’s Gospel but were added to stress that it was Jesus’s


broken body and shed blood that brought salvation “for you.” For one


thing, it is hard to explain why a scribe would have omitted the verses


if they were original to Luke (there is no homoeoteleuton, for example,


that would explain an omission), especially since they make such


clear and smooth sense when they are added. In fact, when the verses


are taken away, most people find that the text sounds a bit truncated.


The unfamiliarity of the truncated version (without the verses) may


have been what led scribes to add the verses.


Moreover, it should be noted that the verses, as familiar as they


are, do not represent Luke’s own understanding of the death of Jesus.


For it is a striking feature of Luke’s portrayal of Jesus’s death—this


may sound strange at first—that he never, anywhere else, indicates


that the death itself is what brings salvation from sin. Nowhere in


Luke’s entire two-volume work (Luke and Acts), is Jesus’s death said


to be “for you.” In fact, on the two occasions in which Luke’s source


(Mark) indicates that it was by Jesus’s death that salvation came (Mark


166 Misquoting Jesus


10:45; 15:39), Luke changed the wording of the text (or eliminated it).


Luke, in other words, has a different understanding of the way in


which Jesus’s death leads to salvation than does Mark (and Paul, and


other early Christian writers).


It is easy to see Luke’s own distinctive view by considering what


he has to say in the book of Acts, where the apostles give a number


of speeches in order to convert others to the faith. In none of these


speeches, though, do the apostles indicate that Jesus’s death brings


atonement for sins (e.g., in chapters 3, 4, 13). It is not that Jesus’s death


is unimportant. It is extremely important for Luke—but not as an


atonement. Instead, Jesus’s death is what makes people realize their


guilt before God (since he died even though he was innocent). Once


people recognize their guilt, they turn to God in repentance, and then


he forgives their sins.


Jesus’s death for Luke, in other words, drives people to repentance,


and it is this repentance that brings salvation. But not according


to these disputed verses that are missing from some of our early witnesses:


here Jesus’s death is portrayed as an atonement “for you.”


Originally the verses appear not to have been part of Luke’s


Gospel. Why, then, were they added? In a later dispute with Marcion,


Tertullian emphasized:


Jesus declared plainly enough what he meant by the bread, when he


called the bread his own body. He likewise, when mentioning the cup


and making the new testament to be sealed in his blood, affirms the


reality of his body. For no blood can belong to a body which is not a


body of flesh. Thus from the evidence of the flesh we get a proof of


the body, and a proof of the flesh from the evidence of the blood.


(Against Marcion 4, 40)


It appears that the verses were added to stress Jesus’s real body and


flesh, which he really sacrificed for the sake of others. This may not


have been Luke’s own emphasis, but it certainly was the emphasis of


the proto-orthodox scribes who altered their text of Luke in order to


counter docetic Christologies such as that of Marcion.9


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 167


. . .


Another verse that appears to have been added to Luke’s Gospel by


proto-orthodox scribes is Luke 24:12, which occurs just after Jesus has


been raised from the dead. Some of Jesus’s women followers go to the


tomb, find that he is not there, and are told that he has been raised.


They go back to tell the disciples, who refuse to believe them because


it strikes them as a “silly tale.” Then, in many manuscripts, occurs the


account of 24:12: “But Peter, rising up, ran to the tomb, and stooping


down he saw the linen cloths alone, and he returned home marveling


at what had happened.”


There are excellent reasons for thinking that this verse was not


originally part of Luke’s Gospel. It contains a large number of stylistic


features found nowhere else in Luke, including most of the key words


of the text, for example, “stooping down” and “linen cloths” (a different


word was used for Jesus’s burial cloths earlier in the account).


Moreover, it is hard to see why someone would want to remove this


verse, if it actually formed part of the Gospel (again, there is no homoeoteleuton,


etc., to account for an accidental omission). As many


readers have noted, the verse sounds very much like a summary of an


account in the Gospel of John (20:3–10), where Peter and the “beloved


disciple” race to the tomb and find it empty. Could it be that someone


has added a similar account, in summary fashion, to Luke’s Gospel?


If so, it is a striking addition, because it supports so well the protoorthodox


position that Jesus was not simply some kind of phantasm


but had a real, physical body. Moreover, this was recognized by the


chief apostle, Peter, himself. Thus, rather than letting the story of


the empty tomb remain a “silly tale” of some untrustworthy women, the


text now shows that the story was not just believable but true: as verified


by none other than Peter (a trustworthy man, one might suppose).


Even more important, the verse stresses the physical nature of the resurrection,


because the only thing left in the tomb is the physical proof


of the resurrection: the linen cloths that had covered Jesus’s body.


This was a fleshly resurrection of a real person. The importance of


this point is made, once again, by Tertullian:


168 Misquoting Jesus


Now if [Christ’s] death be denied, because of the denial of his flesh,


there will be no certainty of his resurrection. For he rose not, for the


very same reason that he died not, even because he possessed not the


reality of the flesh, to which as death accrues, so does resurrection


likewise. Similarly, if Christ’s resurrection be nullified, ours also is


destroyed. (Against Marcion 3, 8)


Christ must have had a real fleshly body, which was really raised,


physically, from the dead.


Not only did Jesus physically suffer and die, and physically come to be


raised: for the proto-orthodox he was also physically exalted to


heaven. A final textual variant to consider comes at the end of Luke’s


Gospel, after the resurrection has occurred (but on the same day).


Jesus has spoken to his followers for the last time, and then departs


from them:


And it happened that while he was blessing them, he was removed


from them; and they returned into Jerusalem with great joy. (Luke


24:51–52)


It is interesting to note, however, that in some of our earliest witnesses—


including the Alexandrian manuscript Codex Sinaiticus—


there is an addition to the text.10 After it indicates that “he was


removed from them,” in these manuscripts it states “and he was taken


up into heaven.” This is a significant addition because it stresses the


physicality of Jesus’s departure at his ascension (rather than the bland


“he was removed”). In part, this is an intriguing variant because the


same author, Luke, in his second volume, the book of Acts, again narrates


Jesus’s ascension into heaven, but explicitly states that it took


place “forty days” after the resurrection (Acts 1:1–11).


This makes it difficult to believe that Luke wrote the phrase in


question in Luke 24:51—since surely he would not think Jesus ascended


to heaven on the day of his resurrection if he indicates at the


beginning of his second volume that he ascended forty days later. It is


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 169


noteworthy, too, that the key word in question (“was taken up”) never


occurs anywhere else in either the Gospel of Luke or the book of Acts.


Why might someone have added these words? We know that


proto-orthodox Christians wanted to stress the real, physical nature of


Jesus’s departure from earth: Jesus physically left, and will physically


return, bringing with him physical salvation. This they argued


against docetists, who maintained that it was all only an appearance.


It may be that a scribe involved in these controversies modified his text


in order to stress the point.


Antiseparationist Alterations of the Text


Early Christian Separationists


A third area of concern to proto-orthodox Christians of the second


and third centuries involved Christian groups who understood Christ


not as only human (like the adoptionists) and not as only divine (like


the docetists) but as two beings, one completely human and one completely


divine.11We might call this a “separationist” Christology because


it divided Jesus Christ into two: the man Jesus (who was completely


human) and the divine Christ (who was completely divine). According


to most proponents of this view, the man Jesus was temporarily


indwelt by the divine being, Christ, enabling him to perform his miracles


and deliver his teachings; but before Jesus’s death, the Christ


abandoned him, forcing him to face his crucifixion alone.


This separationist Christology was most commonly advocated by


groups of Christians that scholars have called Gnostic.12 The term


Gnosticism comes from the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis. It is


applied to a wide range of groups of early Christians who stressed the


importance of secret knowledge for salvation. According to most of


these groups, the material world we live in was not the creation of the


one true God. It came about as a result of a disaster in the divine


realm, in which one of the (many) divine beings was for some mysterious


reason excluded from the heavenly places; as a result of her fall


170 Misquoting Jesus


from divinity the material world came to be created by a lesser deity,


who captured her and imprisoned her in human bodies here on earth.


Some human beings thus have a spark of the divine within them, and


they need to learn the truth of who they are, where they came from,


how they got here, and how they can return. Learning this truth will


lead to their salvation.


This truth consists of secret teachings, mysterious “knowledge”


(gnosis), which can only be imparted by a divine being from the heavenly


realm. For Christian Gnostics, Christ is this divine revealer of the


truths of salvation; in many Gnostic systems, the Christ came into the


man Jesus at his baptism, empowered him for his ministry, and then


at the end left him to die on the cross. That is why Jesus cried out, “My


God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” For these Gnostics, the


Christ literally had forsaken Jesus (or “left him behind”). After Jesus’s


death, though, he raised him from the dead as a reward for his faithfulness,


and continued through him to teach his disciples the secret


truths that can lead to salvation.


Proto-orthodox Christians found this teaching offensive on just


about every level. For them, the material world is not an evil place


that resulted from a cosmic disaster, but is the good creation of the one


true God. For them, salvation comes by faith in Christ’s death and


resurrection, not by learning the secret gnosis that can illuminate the


truth of the human condition. And most important for our purposes


here, for them, Jesus Christ is not two beings, but one being, both divine


and human, at one and the same time.


Antiseparationist Changes of the Text


The controversies over separationist Christologies played some role in


the transmission of the texts that were to become the New Testament.


We have seen one instance already in a variant we considered in chapter


5, Hebrews 2:9, in which Jesus was said, in the original text of the letter,


to have died “apart from God.” In that discussion, we saw that most


scribes had accepted the variant reading, which indicated that Christ


died “by the grace of God,” even though that was not the text that the


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 171


author originally wrote. But we did not consider at any length the


question of why scribes might have found the original text potentially


dangerous and therefore worth modifying. Now, with this brief background


to Gnostic understandings of Christ, the change makes better


sense. For according to separationist Christologies, Christ really did die


“apart from God,” in that it was at his cross that the divine element that


had indwelt him removed itself, so that Jesus died alone. Aware that the


text could be used to support such a view, Christian scribes made a simple


but profound change. Now rather than indicating that his death


came apart from God, the text affirmed that Christ’s death was “by the


grace of God.” This, then, is an antiseparationist alteration.


A second intriguing example of the phenomenon occurs almost


exactly where one might expect to find it, in a Gospel account of Jesus’s


crucifixion. As I have already indicated, in Mark’s Gospel Jesus is silent


throughout the entire proceeding of his crucifixion. The soldiers crucify


him, the passers-by and Jewish leaders mock him, as do the two


criminals who are crucified with him; and he says not a word—until


the very end, when death is near, and Jesus cries out the words taken


from Psalm 22: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani,” which translated


means ”My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).


It is interesting to note that according to the proto-orthodox writer


Irenaeus, Mark was the Gospel of choice for those “who separated


Jesus from the Christ”—that is, for Gnostics who embraced a separationist


Christology.13 We have solid evidence to suggest that some


Gnostics took this last saying of Jesus literally, to indicate that it was at


this point that the divine Christ departed from Jesus (since divinity


cannot experience mortality and death). The evidence comes from


Gnostic documents that reflect on the significance of this moment in


Jesus’s life. Thus, for example, the apocryphal Gospel of Peter, which


some have suspected of having a separationist Christology, quotes the


words in a slightly different form, “My power, O power, you have left


me!” Even more striking is the Gnostic text known as the Gospel of


Philip, in which the verse is quoted and then given a separationist


interpretation:


172 Misquoting Jesus


“My God, my God, why O Lord have you forsaken me?” For it was


on the cross that he said these words, for it was there that he was


divided.


Proto-orthodox Christians knew of both these Gospels and their


interpretations of this climactic moment of Jesus’s crucifixion. It is


perhaps no great surprise, then, that the text of Mark’s Gospel was


changed by some scribes in a way that would have circumvented this


Gnostic explanation. In one Greek manuscript and several Latin witnesses,


Jesus is said not to call out the traditional “cry of dereliction”


from Psalm 22, but instead to cry out, “My God, my God, why have


you mocked me?”


This change of the text makes for an interesting reading—and


one particularly suited to its literary context. For as already indicated,


nearly everyone else in the story has mocked Jesus at this point—the


Jewish leaders, the passers-by, and both robbers. Now, with this variant


reading, even God himself is said to have mocked Jesus. In despair,


Jesus then utters a loud cry and dies. This is a powerful scene, filled


with pathos.


Nonetheless the reading is not original, as shown by the circumstance


that it is lacking in nearly all our oldest and best witnesses (including


those of the Alexandrian text) as well as by the fact that it does


not correspond to the Aramaic words Jesus actually utters (lema


sabachthani—which mean “why have you forsaken me,” not “why


have you mocked me”).


Why, then, did scribes alter the text? Given its usefulness for those


arguing in favor of a separationist Christology, there can be little


question why. Proto-orthodox scribes were concerned that the text


not be used against them by their Gnostic opponents. They made an


important, and contextually suitable change, so that now rather than


abandoning Jesus, God is said to have mocked him.


As a final example of a variant of this kind, made in order to counter


a separationist Christology, we might consider a passage that occurs in


the Epistle of 1 John. In the oldest form of the text of 4:2–3, we are told:


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 173


By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that


Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does


not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the anti-Christ.


This is a clear, straightforward passage: only those who acknowledge


that Jesus really came in the flesh (as opposed, say, to accepting


the docetist view) belong to God; those who do not acknowledge this


are opposed to Christ (anti-Christs). But there is an interesting textual


variant that occurs in the second half of the passage. Instead of referring


to the one “that does not confess Jesus,” several witnesses refer instead


to the one “that looses Jesus.” What does that mean—looses


Jesus—and why did this textual variant make its way into some manuscripts?


To start with, I should stress that it is not in very many manuscripts.


In fact, among the Greek witnesses it occurs only in the margin


of one tenth-century manuscript (Ms. 1739). But this, as we have


seen, is a remarkable manuscript because it appears to have been


copied from one of the fourth century, and its marginal notes record


the names of church fathers who had different readings for certain


parts of the text. In this particular instance, the marginal note indicates


that the reading “looses Jesus” was known to several latesecond-


and early-third-century church fathers, Irenaeus, Clement,


and Origen. Moreover, it appears in the Latin Vulgate. Among other


things, this shows that the variant was popular during the time in


which proto-orthodox Christians were debating with Gnostics over


matters of Christology.


Still, the variant probably cannot be accepted as the “original” text,


given its sparse attestation—it is not found, for example, in any of our


earliest and best manuscripts (in fact, not in any Greek manuscript except


for this one marginal note). Why, though, would it have been


created by a Christian scribe? It appears to have been created to provide


a “biblical” attack on separationist Christologies, in which Jesus


and Christ are divided from each other into separate entities, or as this


174 Misquoting Jesus


variant would have it, in which Jesus is “loosed” from the Christ.


Anyone who supports such a view, the textual variant suggests, is not


from God, but is in fact an anti-Christ. Once again, then, we have a


variant that was generated in the context of the christological disputes


of the second and third centuries.


Conclusion


One of the factors contributing to scribes’ alterations of their texts was


their own historical context. Christian scribes of the second and third


centuries were involved with the debates and disputes of their day,


and occasionally these disputes affected the reproduction of the texts


over which the debates raged. That is, scribes occasionally altered


their texts to make them say what they were already believed to mean.


This is not necessarily a bad thing, since we can probably assume


that most scribes who changed their texts often did so either semiconsciously


or with good intent. The reality, though, is that once they altered


their texts, the words of the texts quite literally became different


words, and these altered words necessarily affected the interpretations


of the words by later readers. Among the reasons for these alterations


were the theological disputes of the second and third centuries,


as scribes sometimes modified their texts in light of the adoptionistic,


docetic, and separationist Christologies that were vying for attention


in the period.


Other historical factors were also at work, factors relating less to


theological controversy and more to social conflicts of the day, conflicts


involving such things as the role of women in early Christian


churches, the Christian opposition to Jews, and the Christian defense


against attacks by pagan opponents. In the next chapter we will see


how these other social conflicts affected the early scribes who reproduced


the texts of scripture in the centuries before the copying of texts


became the province of professional scribes.


Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text 175