The Social Worlds


of the Text


It is probably safe to say that the copying of early Christian texts was


by and large a “conservative” process. The scribes—whether nonprofessional


scribes in the early centuries or professional scribes of the


Middle Ages—were intent on “conserving” the textual tradition they


were passing on. Their ultimate concern was not to modify the tradition,


but to preserve it for themselves and for those who would follow


them. Most scribes, no doubt, tried to do a faithful job in making sure


that the text they reproduced was the same text they inherited.


Nonetheless, changes came to be made in the early Christian texts.


Scribes would sometimes—lots of times—make accidental mistakes,


by misspelling a word, leaving out a line, or simply bungling the sentences


they were supposed to be copying; and on occasion they changed


the text deliberately, making a “correction” to the text, which in fact


turned out to be an alteration of what the text’s author had originally


written. We examined in the preceding chapter one kind of intentional


change—changes relating to some of the theological controversies


raging in the second and third centuries, when most of the changes


of our textual tradition were made. I do not want to convey the false


impression that this kind of theological change of the text happened


every time a scribe sat down to copy a passage. It happened on occasion.


And when it happened, it had a profound effect on the text.


In this chapter, we will look at other contextual factors that led, on


occasion, to the alteration of the text. In particular, we will be examining


three kinds of disputes that were evident in the early Christian


communities: one internal dispute, about the role of women in the


church, and two external disputes, one with non-Christian Jews and


the other with antagonistic pagans. We will see in each case that, on


scattered occasions, these disputes also played a role in the transmission


of the texts that scribes (themselves involved in the disputes) were


reproducing for their communities.


Women and the Texts of Scripture


Debates over the role of women in the church did not play an enormous


role in the transmission of the texts of the New Testament, but


they did play a role, in interesting and important passages. To make


sense of the kinds of textual changes that were made, we need some


background on the nature of these debates.1


Women in the Early Church


Modern scholars have come to recognize that disputes over the role of


women in the early church occurred precisely because women had a


role—often a significant and publicly high profile role. Moreover, this


was the case from the very beginning, starting with the ministry of


Jesus himself. It is true that Jesus’s closest followers—the twelve disciples—


were all men, as would be expected of a Jewish teacher in firstcentury


Palestine. But our earliest Gospels indicate that Jesus was also


178 Misquoting Jesus


accompanied by women on his travels, and that some of these women


provided for him and his disciples financially, serving as patrons for


his itinerant preaching ministry (see Mark 15:40–51; Luke 8:1–3).


Jesus is said to have engaged in public dialogue with women and to


have ministered to them in public (Mark 7:24–30; John 4:1–42). In


particular, we are told that women accompanied Jesus during his final


trip to Jerusalem, where they were present at his crucifixion and


where they alone remained faithful to him at the end, when the male


disciples had fled (Matt. 27:55; Mark 15:40–41). Most significant of all,


each of our Gospels indicates that it was women—Mary Magdalene


alone, or with several companions—who discovered his empty tomb


and so were the first to know about and testify to Jesus’s resurrection


from the dead (Matt. 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 23:55–24:10; John


20:1–2).


It is intriguing to ask what it was about Jesus’s message that particularly


attracted women. Most scholars remain convinced that Jesus


proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God, in which there would be no


more injustice, suffering, or evil, in which all people, rich and poor,


slave and free, men and women, would be on equal footing. This obviously


proved particularly attractive as a message of hope to those


who in the present age were underprivileged—the poor, the sick, the


outcast. And the women.2


In any event, it is clear that even after his death, Jesus’s message


continued to be attractive to women. Some of Christianity’s early opponents


among the pagans, including, for example, the late-secondcentury


critic Celsus, whom we have met before, denigrated the


religion on the grounds that it was made up largely of children, slaves,


and women (i.e., those of no social standing in society at large). Strikingly,


Origen, who wrote the Christian response to Celsus, did not


deny the charge but tried to turn it against Celsus in an attempt to


show that God can take what is weak and invest it with strength.


But we do not need to wait until the late second century to see that


women played a major role in the early Christian churches. We already


get a clear sense of this from the earliest Christian writer whose


The Social Worlds of the Text 179


works have survived, the apostle Paul. The Pauline letters of the New


Testament provide ample evidence that women held a prominent place


in the emerging Christian communities from the earliest of times. We


might consider, for example, Paul’s letter to the Romans, at the end of


which he sends greetings to various members of the Roman congregation


(chapter 16). Although Paul names more men than women


here, it is clear that women were seen as in no way inferior to their


male counterparts in the church. Paul mentions Phoebe, for example,


who is a deacon (or minister) in the church of Cenchreae, and Paul’s


own patron, whom he entrusts with the task of carrying his letter to


Rome (vv. 1–2). And there is Prisca, who along with her husband,


Aquila, is responsible for missionary work among the Gentiles and


who supports a Christian congregation in her home (vv. 3–4: notice


that she is mentioned first, ahead of her husband). Then there is Mary,


a colleague of Paul’s who works among the Romans (v. 6); there are


also Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis, women whom Paul calls his


“co-workers” in the gospel (vv. 6, 12). And there are Julia and the


mother of Rufus and the sister of Nereus, all of whom appear to have


a high profile in the community (vv. 13, 15). Most impressive of all,


there is Junia, a woman whom Paul calls “foremost among the apostles”


(v. 7). The apostolic band was evidently larger than the list of


twelve men with whom most people are familiar.


Women, in short, appear to have played a significant role in the


churches of Paul’s day. To some extent, this high profile was unusual


in the Greco-Roman world. And it may have been rooted, as I have


argued, in Jesus’s proclamation that in the coming Kingdom there


would be equality of men and women. This appears to have been


Paul’s message as well, as can be seen, for example, in his famous declaration


in Galatians:


For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.


There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free; there is not


male and female; for all of you are one in Jesus Christ. (Gal. 3:27–28)


180 Misquoting Jesus


The equality in Christ may have manifested itself in the actual


worship services of the Pauline communities. Rather than being silent


“hearers of the word,” women appear to have been actively involved


in the weekly fellowship meetings, participating, for example, by


praying and prophesying, much as the men did (1 Corinthians 11).


At the same time, to modern interpreters it may appear that Paul


did not take his view of the relationship of men and women in Christ


to what could be thought of as its logical conclusion. He did require,


for example, that when women prayed and prophesied in church they


do so with their heads covered, to show that they were “under authority”


(1 Cor. 11:3–16, esp. v. 10). In other words, Paul did not urge a social


revolution in the relationship of men and women—just as he did


not urge the abolition of slavery, even though he maintained that in


Christ there “is neither slave nor free.” Instead he insisted that since


“the time is short” (until the coming of the Kingdom), everyone


should be content with the roles they had been given, and that no one


should seek to change their status—whether slave, free, married, single,


male, or female (1 Cor. 7:17–24).


At best, then, this can be seen as an ambivalent attitude toward the


role of women: they were equal in Christ and were allowed to participate


in the life of the community, but as women, not as men (they were,


for example, not to remove their veils and so appear as men, without an


“authority” on their head). This ambivalence on Paul’s part had an interesting


effect on the role of women in the churches after his day. In


some churches it was the equality in Christ that was emphasized; in others


it was the need for women to remain subservient to men. And so in


some churches women played very important, leadership roles; in others,


their roles were diminished and their voices quieted. Reading later


documents associated with Paul’s churches, after his death, we can see


that disputes arose about the roles women should play; eventually there


came an effort to suppress the role of women in the churches altogether.


This becomes evident in a letter that was written in Paul’s name.


Scholars today are by and large convinced that 1 Timothy was not


The Social Worlds of the Text 181


written by Paul but by one of his later, second-generation followers.3


Here, in one of the (in)famous passages dealing with women in the


New Testament, we are told that women must not be allowed to teach


men because they were created inferior, as indicated by God himself


in the Law; God created Eve second, for the sake of man; and a woman


(related to Eve) must not therefore lord it over a man (related to


Adam) through her teaching. Furthermore, according to this author,


everyone knows what happens when a woman does assume the role


of teacher: she is easily duped (by the devil) and leads the man astray.


So, women are to stay at home and maintain the virtues appropriate


to women, bearing children for their husbands and preserving their


modesty. As the passage itself reads:


Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no


woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.


For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but


the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be


saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love


and holiness, with modesty. (1 Tim. 2:11–15)


This seems a long way from Paul’s view that “in Christ there is . . .


not male and female.” As we move into the second century, the battle


lines appear clearly drawn. There are some Christian communities


that stress the importance of women and allow them to play significant


roles in the church, and there are others that believe women must


be silent and subservient to the men of the community.


The scribes who were copying the texts that later became scripture


were obviously involved in these debates. And on occasion the debates


made an impact on the text being copied, as passages were changed to


reflect the views of the scribes who were reproducing them. In almost


every instance in which a change of this sort occurs, the text is changed


in order to limit the role of women and to minimize their importance


to the Christian movement. Here we can consider just a few examples.


182 Misquoting Jesus


Textual Alterations Involving Women


One of the most important passages in the contemporary discussion of


the role of women in the church is found in 1 Corinthians 14. As represented


in most of our modern English translations, the passage reads


as follows.


33For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the


churches of the saints, 34let the women keep silent. For it is not permitted


for them to speak, but to be in subjection, just as the law says.


35But if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands


at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. 36What!


Did the word go forth only from you, or has it reached you alone?


The passage appears to be a clear and straightforward injunction


for women not to speak (let alone teach!) in the church, very much


like the passage from 1 Timothy 2. As we have seen, however, most


scholars are convinced that Paul did not write the 1 Timothy passage,


because it occurs in a letter that appears to have been written instead


by a second-generation follower of Paul in his name. No one doubts,


however, that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. But there are doubts about


this passage. For as it turns out, the verses in question (vv. 34–35) are


shuffled around in some of our important textual witnesses. In three


Greek manuscripts and a couple of Latin witnesses, they are found


not here, after verse 33, but later, after verse 40. That has led some


scholars to surmise that the verses were not written by Paul but originated


as a kind of marginal note added by a scribe, possibly under the


influence of 1 Timothy 2. The note was then inserted in different places


of the text by various scribes—some placing the note after verse 33


and others inserting it after verse 40.


There are good reasons for thinking that Paul did not originally


write these verses. For one thing, they do not fit well into their immediate


context. In this part of 1 Corinthians 14, Paul is addressing the


issue of prophecy in the church, and is giving instructions to Christian


The Social Worlds of the Text 183


prophets concerning how they are to behave during the Christian


services of worship. This is the theme of verses 26–33, and it is the


theme again of verses 36–40. If one removes verses 34–35 from their


context, the passage seems to flow seamlessly as a discussion of the


role of Christian prophets. The discussion of women appears, then, as


intrusive in its immediate context, breaking into instructions that Paul


is giving about a different matter.


Not only do the verses seem intrusive in the context of chapter 14,


they also appear anomalous with what Paul explicitly says elsewhere


in 1 Corinthians. For earlier in the book, as we have already noticed,


Paul gives instructions to women speaking in the church: according


to chapter 11, when they pray and prophesy—activities that were always


done aloud in the Christian services of worship—they are to be


sure to wear veils on their heads (11:2–16). In this passage, which no


one doubts Paul wrote, it is clear that Paul understands that women


both can and do speak in church. In the disputed passage of chapter


14, however, it is equally clear that “Paul” forbids women from speaking


at all. It is difficult to reconcile these two views—either Paul allowed


women to speak (with covered heads, chapter 11) or not


(chapter 14). As it seems unreasonable to think that Paul would flat


out contradict himself within the short space of three chapters, it appears


that the verses in question do not derive from Paul.


And so on the basis of a combination of evidence—several manuscripts


that shuffle the verses around, the immediate literary context,


and the context within 1 Corinthians as a whole—it appears that Paul


did not write 1 Cor. 14:34–35. One would have to assume, then, that


these verses are a scribal alteration of the text, originally made, perhaps,


as a marginal note and then eventually, at an early stage of the


copying of 1 Corinthians, placed in the text itself. The alteration was


no doubt made by a scribe who was concerned to emphasize that


women should have no public role in the church, that they should be


silent and subservient to their husbands. This view then came to be


incorporated into the text itself, by means of a textual alteration.4


184 Misquoting Jesus


We might consider briefly several other textual changes of a similar


sort. One occurs in a passage I have already mentioned, Romans


16, in which Paul speaks of a woman, Junia, and a man who was presumably


her husband, Andronicus, both of whom he calls “foremost


among the apostles” (v. 7). This is a significant verse, because it is the


only place in the New Testament in which a woman is referred to as


an apostle. Interpreters have been so impressed by the passage that a


large number of them have insisted that it cannot mean what it says,


and so have translated the verse as referring not to a woman named


Junia but to a man named Junias, who along with his companion Andronicus


is praised as an apostle. The problem with this translation is


that whereas Junia was a common name for a woman, there is no evidence


in the ancient world for “Junias” as a man’s name. Paul is referring


to a woman named Junia, even though in some modern English


Bibles (you may want to check your own!) translators continue to


refer to this female apostle as if she were a man named Junias.5


Some scribes also had difficulty with ascribing apostleship to this


otherwise unknown woman, and so made a very slight change in the


text to circumvent the problem. In some of our manuscripts, rather


than saying “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and fellow


prisoners, who are foremost among the apostles,” the text is now


changed so as to be more readily translated: “Greet Andronicus and


Junia, my relatives; and also greet my fellow prisoners who are foremost


among the apostles.” With this textual change, no longer does


one need to worry about a woman being cited among the apostolic


band of men!


A similar change was made by some scribes who copied the book


of Acts. In chapter 17 we learn that Paul and his missionary companion


Silas spent time in Thessalonica preaching the gospel of Christ to


the Jews of the local synagogue. We are told in verse 4 that the pair


made some important converts: “And some of them were persuaded


and joined with Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the pious Greeks,


along with a large number of prominent women.”


The Social Worlds of the Text 185


The idea of women being prominent—let alone prominent converts—


was too much for some scribes, and so the text came to be


changed in some manuscripts, so that now we are told: “And some of


them were persuaded and joined with Paul and Silas, as did a great


many of the pious Greeks, along with a large number of wives of


prominent men.” Now it is the men who are prominent, not the wives


who converted.


Among Paul’s companions in the book of Acts were a husband


and wife named Aquila and Priscilla; sometimes when they are mentioned,


the author gives the wife’s name first, as if she had some kind


of special prominence either in the relationship or in the Christian


mission (as happens in Rom. 16:3 as well, where she is called Prisca).


Not surprisingly, scribes occasionally took umbrage at this sequencing


and reversed it, so that the man was given his due by having his


name mentioned first: Aquila and Priscilla rather than Priscilla and


Aquila.6


In short, there were debates in the early centuries of the church


over the role of women, and on occasion these debates spilled over


into the textual transmission of the New Testament itself, as scribes


sometimes changed their texts in order to make them coincide more


closely with the scribes’ own sense of the (limited) role of women in


the church.


Jews and the Texts of Scripture


To this point we have looked at various controversies that were internal


to early Christianity—disputes over christological issues and over


the role of women in the church—and have considered how they affected


the scribes who reproduced their sacred texts. These were not


the only kinds of controversy with which Christians were involved,


however. Just as poignant for those involved, and significant for our


considerations here, were conflicts with those outside the faith, Jews


and pagans who stood in opposition to Christians and engaged in


186 Misquoting Jesus


polemical controversies with them. These controversies also played


some role in the transmission of the texts of scripture. We can begin


by considering the disputes that Christians of the early centuries had


with non-Christian Jews.


Jews and Christians in Conflict


One of the ironies of early Christianity is that Jesus himself was a Jew


who worshiped the Jewish God, kept Jewish customs, interpreted the


Jewish law, and acquired Jewish disciples, who accepted him as the


Jewish messiah. Yet, within just a few decades of his death, Jesus’s followers


had formed a religion that stood over-against Judaism. How


did Christianity move so quickly from being a Jewish sect to being an


anti-Jewish religion?


This is a difficult question, and to provide a satisfying answer


would require a book of its own.7 Here, I can at least provide a historical


sketch of the rise of anti-Judaism within early Christianity as a


way of furnishing a plausible context for Christian scribes who occasionally


altered their texts in anti-Jewish ways.


The last twenty years have seen an explosion of research into the


historical Jesus. As a result, there is now an enormous range of opinion


about how Jesus is best understood—as a rabbi, a social revolutionary,


a political insurgent, a cynic philosopher, an apocalyptic


prophet: the options go on and on. The one thing that nearly all scholars


agree upon, however, is that no matter how one understands the


major thrust of Jesus’s mission, he must be situated in his own context


as a first-century Palestinian Jew. Whatever else he was, Jesus was


thoroughly Jewish, in every way—as were his disciples. At some point—


probably before his death, but certainly afterward—Jesus’s followers


came to think of him as the Jewish messiah. This term messiah was


understood in different ways by different Jews in the first century, but


one thing that all Jews appear to have had in common when thinking


about the messiah was that he was to be a figure of grandeur and


power, who in some way—for example, through raising a Jewish army


or by leading the heavenly angels—would overcome Israel’s enemies


The Social Worlds of the Text 187


and establish Israel as a sovereign state that could be ruled by God


himself (possibly through human agency). Christians who called Jesus


the messiah obviously had a difficult time convincing others of this


claim, since rather than being a powerful warrior or a heavenly judge,


Jesus was widely known to have been an itinerant preacher who had


gotten on the wrong side of the law and had been crucified as a lowlife


criminal.


To call Jesus the messiah was for most Jews completely ludicrous.


Jesus was not the powerful leader of the Jews. He was a weak and


powerless nobody—executed in the most humiliating and painful


way devised by the Romans, the ones with the real power. Christians,


however, insisted that Jesus was the messiah, that his death was not a


miscarriage of justice or an unforeseen event, but an act of God, by


which he brought salvation to the world.


What were Christians to do with the fact that they had trouble


convincing most Jews of their claims about Jesus? They could not, of


course, admit that they themselves were wrong. And if they weren’t


wrong, who was? It had to be the Jews. Early on in their history,


Christians began to insist that Jews who rejected their message were


recalcitrant and blind, that in rejecting the message about Jesus, they


were rejecting the salvation provided by the Jewish God himself.


Some such claims were being made already by our earliest Christian


author, the apostle Paul. In his first surviving letter, written to the


Christians of Thessalonica, Paul says:


For you, our brothers, became imitators of the churches of God that


are in Judea in Christ Jesus, because you suffered the same things from


your own compatriots as they did from the Jews, who killed both the


Lord Jesus and the prophets, and persecuted us, and are not pleasing


to God, and are opposed to all people. (1 Thess. 2:14–15)


Paul came to believe that Jews rejected Jesus because they understood


that their own special standing before God was related to the


fact that they both had and kept the Law that God had given them


188 Misquoting Jesus


(Rom. 10:3–4). For Paul, however, salvation came to the Jews, as well


as to the Gentiles, not through the Law but through faith in the death


and resurrection of Jesus (Rom. 3:21–22). Thus, keeping the Law


could have no role in salvation; Gentiles who became followers of


Jesus were instructed, therefore, not to think they could improve their


standing before God by keeping the Law. They were to remain as


they were—and not convert to become Jews (Gal. 2:15–16).


Other early Christians, of course, had other opinions—as they did


on nearly every issue of the day! Matthew, for example, seems to presuppose


that even though it is the death and resurrection of Jesus that


brings salvation, his followers will naturally keep the Law, just as


Jesus himself did (see Matt. 5:17–20). Eventually, though, it became


widely held that Christians were distinct from Jews, that following


the Jewish law could have no bearing on salvation, and that joining


the Jewish people would mean identifying with the people who had


rejected their own messiah, who had, in fact, rejected their own God.


As we move into the second century we find that Christianity and


Judaism had become two distinct religions, which nonetheless had a


lot to say to each other. Christians, in fact, found themselves in a bit of


a bind. For they acknowledged that Jesus was the messiah anticipated


by the Jewish scriptures; and to gain credibility in a world that cherished


what was ancient but suspected anything “recent” as a dubious


novelty, Christians continued to point to the scriptures—those ancient


texts of the Jews—as the foundation for their own beliefs. This


meant that Christians laid claim to the Jewish Bible as their own. But


was not the Jewish Bible for Jews? Christians began to insist that Jews


had not only spurned their own messiah, and thereby rejected their


own God, they had also misinterpreted their own scriptures. And so


we find Christian writings such as the so-called Letter of Barnabas, a


book that some early Christians considered to be part of the New Testament


canon, which asserts that Judaism is and always has been a


false religion, that Jews were misled by an evil angel into interpreting


the laws given to Moses as literal prescriptions of how to live, when in


fact they were to be interpreted allegorically.8


The Social Worlds of the Text 189


Eventually we find Christians castigating Jews in the harshest


terms possible for rejecting Jesus as the messiah, with authors such as


the second-century Justin Martyr claiming that the reason God commanded


the Jews to be circumcised was to mark them off as a special


people who deserved to be persecuted. We also find authors such as


Tertullian and Origen claiming that Jerusalem was destroyed by the


Roman armies in 70 C.E. as a punishment for the Jews who killed


their messiah, and authors such as Melito of Sardis arguing that in


killing Christ, the Jews were actually guilty of killing God.


Pay attention all families of the nations and observe! An extraordinary


murder has taken place in the center of Jerusalem, in the city devoted


to God’s Law, in the city of the Hebrews, in the city of the prophets, in


the city thought of as just. And who has been murdered? And who is


the murderer? I am ashamed to give the answer, but give it I must. . . .


The one who hung the earth in space, is himself hanged; the one who


fixed the heavens in place is himself impaled; the one who firmly fixed


all things is himself firmly fixed to the tree. The Lord is insulted, God


has been murdered, the King of Israel has been destroyed by the right


hand of Israel. (Paschal Homily, 94–96)9


Clearly we have come a long way from Jesus, a Palestinian Jew


who kept Jewish customs, preached to his Jewish compatriots, and


taught his Jewish disciples the true meaning of the Jewish law. By the


second century, though, when Christian scribes were reproducing the


texts that eventually became part of the New Testament, most Christians


were former pagans, non-Jews who had converted to the faith


and who understood that even though this religion was based, ultimately,


on faith in the Jewish God as described in the Jewish Bible, it


was nonetheless completely anti-Jewish in its orientation.


Anti-Jewish Alterations of the Text


The anti-Jewishness of some second- and third-century Christian


scribes played a role in how the texts of scripture were transmitted. One


190 Misquoting Jesus


of the clearest examples is found in Luke’s account of the crucifixion, in


which Jesus is said to have uttered a prayer for those responsible:


And when they came to the place that is called “The Skull,” they crucified


him there, along with criminals, one on his right and the other


on his left. And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know


what they are doing.” (Luke 23:33–34)


As it turns out, however, this prayer of Jesus cannot be found in all


our manuscripts: it is missing from our earliest Greek witness (a papyrus


called P75, which dates to about 200 C.E.) and several other


high-quality witnesses of the fourth and later centuries; at the same


time, the prayer can be found in Codex Sinaiticus and a large range of


manuscripts, including most of those produced in the Middle Ages.


And so the question is, Did a scribe (or a number of scribes) delete the


prayer from a manuscript that originally included it? Or did a scribe


(or scribes) add it to a manuscript that originally lacked it?


Scholarly opinion has long been divided on the question. Because


the prayer is missing from several early and high-quality witnesses,


there has been no shortage of scholars to claim that it did not originally


belong to the text. Sometimes they appeal to an argument based


on internal evidence. As I have pointed out, the author of the Gospel


of Luke also produced the Acts of the Apostles, and a passage similar


to this one can be found in Acts in the account of the first Christian


martyr, Stephen, the only person whose execution is described at any


length in Acts. Because Stephen was charged with blasphemy, he was


stoned to death by a crowd of angry Jews; and before he expired he


prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60).


Some scholars have argued that a scribe who did not want Jesus to


look any less forgiving than his first martyr, Stephen, added the


prayer to Luke’s Gospel, so that Jesus also asks that his executioners


be forgiven. This is a clever argument, but it is not altogether convincing,


for several reasons. The most compelling is this: whenever scribes


try to bring texts into harmony with each other, they tend to do so by


The Social Worlds of the Text 191


repeating the same words in both passages. In this case, however, we


do not find identical wording, merely a similar kind of prayer. This is


not the kind of “harmonization” that scribes typically make.


Also striking in conjunction with this point is that Luke, the author


himself, on a number of occasions goes out of his way to show the


similarities between what happened to Jesus in the Gospel and what


happened to his followers in Acts: both Jesus and his followers are


baptized, they both receive the Spirit at that point, they both proclaim


the good news, they both come to be rejected for it, they both suffer at


the hands of the Jewish leadership, and so on. What happens to Jesus


in the Gospel happens to his followers in Acts. And so it would be no


surprise—but rather expected—that one of Jesus’s followers, who


like him is executed by angry authorities, should also pray that God


forgive his executioners.


There are other reasons for suspecting that Jesus’s prayer of forgiveness


is original to Luke 23. Throughout both Luke and Acts, for


example, it is emphasized that even though Jesus was innocent (as


were his followers), those who acted against him did so in ignorance.


As Peter says in Acts 3: “I know that you acted in ignorance” (v. 17); or


as Paul says in Acts 17: “God has overlooked the times of ignorance”


(v. 27). And that is precisely the note struck in Jesus’s prayer: “for they


don’t know what they are doing.”


It appears, then, that Luke 23:34 was part of Luke’s original text.


Why, though, would a scribe (or a number of scribes) have wanted to


delete it? Here is where understanding something about the historical


context within which scribes were working becomes crucial. Readers


today may wonder for whom Jesus is praying. Is it for the Romans


who are executing him in ignorance? Or is it for the Jews who are responsible


for turning him over to the Romans in the first place? However


we might answer that question in trying to interpret the passage


today, it is clear how it was interpreted in the early church. In almost


every instance in which the prayer is discussed in the writings of the


church fathers, it is clear that they interpreted the prayer as being ut-


192 Misquoting Jesus


tered not on behalf of the Romans but on behalf of the Jews.10 Jesus


was asking God to forgive the Jewish people (or the Jewish leaders)


who were responsible for his death.


Now it becomes clear why some scribes would have wanted to omit


the verse. Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of the Jews? How could that


be? For early Christians there were, in fact, two problems with the


verse, taken in this way. First, they reasoned, why would Jesus pray


for forgiveness for this recalcitrant people who had willfully rejected


God himself? That was scarcely conceivable to many Christians. Even


more telling, by the second century many Christians were convinced


that God had not forgiven the Jews because, as mentioned earlier, they


believed that he had allowed Jerusalem to be destroyed as a punishment


for the Jews in killing Jesus. As the church father Origen said:


“It was right that the city in which Jesus underwent such sufferings


should be completely destroyed, and that the Jewish nation be overthrown”


(Against Celsus 4, 22).11


The Jews knew full well what they were doing, and God obviously


had not forgiven them. From this point of view, it made little


sense for Jesus to ask for forgiveness for them, when no forgiveness


was forthcoming. What were scribes to do with this text, then, in


which Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what


they are doing”? They dealt with the problem simply by excising the


text, so that Jesus no longer asked that they be forgiven.


There were other passages in which the anti-Jewish sentiment of


early Christian scribes made an impact on the texts they were copying.


One of the most significant passages for the eventual rise of anti-


Semitism is the scene of Jesus’s trial in the Gospel of Matthew.


According to this account, Pilate declares Jesus innocent, washing his


hands to show that “I am innocent of this man’s blood! You see to it!”


The Jewish crowd then utters a cry that was to play such a horrendous


role in the violence manifest against the Jews down through the Middle


Ages, in which they appear to claim responsibility for the death of


Jesus: “His blood be upon us and our children” (Matt. 27:24–25).


The Social Worlds of the Text 193


The textual variant we are concerned with occurs in the next


verse. Pilate is said to have flogged Jesus and then “handed him over


to be crucified.” Anyone reading the text would naturally assume that


he handed Jesus over to his own (Roman) soldiers for crucifixion.


That makes it all the more striking that in some early witnesses—including


one of the scribal corrections in Codex Sinaitius—the text is


changed to heighten even further the Jewish culpability in Jesus’s


death. According to these manuscripts, Pilate “handed him over to


them [i.e., to the Jews] in order that they might crucify him.” Now the


Jewish responsibility for Jesus’s execution is absolute, a change motivated


by anti-Jewish sentiment among the early Christians.


Sometimes anti-Jewish variants are rather slight and do not catch


one’s attention until some thought is given to the matter. For example,


in the birth narrative of the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph is told to call


Mary’s newborn son Jesus (which means “salvation”) “because he will


save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). It is striking that in one


manuscript preserved in Syriac translation, the text instead says “because


he will save the world from its sins.” Here again it appears that a


scribe was uncomfortable with the notion that the Jewish people


would ever be saved.


A comparable change occurs in the Gospel of John. In chapter 4,


Jesus is talking with the woman from Samaria and tells her, “You


worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because


salvation comes from the Jews” (v. 22). In some Syriac and Latin


manuscripts, however, the text has been changed, so that now Jesus


declares that “salvation comes from Judea.” In other words, it is not


the Jewish people who have brought salvation to the world; it is


Jesus’s death in the country of Judea that has done so. Once again we


might suspect that it was anti-Jewish sentiment that prompted the


scribal alteration.


My final example in this brief review comes from the fifth-century


Codex Bezae, a manuscript that arguably contains more interesting


and intriguing variant readings than any other. In Luke 6, where the


194 Misquoting Jesus


Pharisees accuse Jesus and his disciples of breaking the Sabbath


(6:1–4), we find in Codex Bezae an additional story consisting of a single


verse: “On the same day he saw a man working on the Sabbath,


and he said to him, ‘O man, if you know what you are doing, you are


blessed, but if you do not know, you are cursed, and a transgressor of


the Law.’” A full interpretation of this unexpected and unusual passage


would require a good deal of investigation.12 For our purposes


here it is enough to note that Jesus is quite explicit in this passage, in a


way that he never is elsewhere in the Gospels. In other instances,


when Jesus is accused of violating the Sabbath, he defends his activities,


but never does he indicate that the Sabbath laws are to be violated.


In this verse, on the other hand, Jesus plainly states that anyone


who knows why it is legitimate to violate Sabbath is blessed for doing


so; only those who don’t understand why it is legitimate are doing what


is wrong. Again, this is a variant that appears to relate to the rising


tide of anti-Judaism in the early church.


Pagans and the Texts of Scripture


Thus far we have seen that internal disputes over correct doctrine or


church management (the role of women) affected early Christian


scribes, and so too did conflicts between church and synagogue, as the


church’s anti-Jewish sentiment played a role in how those scribes


transmitted the texts that were eventually declared to be the New


Testament. Christians in the early centuries of the church not only


had to contend with heretical insiders and Jewish outsiders, they also


saw themselves embattled in the world at large, a world that was for


the most part made up of pagan outsiders. The word pagan in this


context, when used by historians, does not carry negative connotations.


It simply refers to anyone in the ancient world who subscribed


to any of the numerous polytheistic religions of the day. Since this included


anyone who was neither Jewish nor Christian, we are talking


The Social Worlds of the Text 195


about something like 90–93 percent of the population of the empire.


Christians were sometimes opposed by pagans because of their unusual


form of worship and their acceptance of Jesus as the one Son of


God whose death on the cross brought salvation; and occasionally this


opposition came to affect the Christian scribes who were reproducing


the texts of scripture.


Pagan Opposition to Christianity


Our earliest records indicate that Christians were sometimes violently


opposed by pagan mobs and/or authorities.13 The apostle Paul, for example,


in a listing of his various sufferings for the sake of Christ, recounts


that on three occasions he was “beaten with rods” (1 Cor. 11:25),


a form of punishment used by Roman municipal authorities against


criminals judged to be socially dangerous. And as we have seen, Paul


writes in his first surviving letter that his Gentile-Christian congregation


in Thessalonica had “suffered from your own compatriots what


they [the church of Judea] did from the Jews” (1 Thess. 2:14). In the


latter case, it appears that the persecution was not “official” but the result


of some kind of mob violence.


In fact, most of the pagan opposition to Christians during the


church’s first two centuries happened on the grassroots level rather


than as a result of organized, official Roman persecution. Contrary to


what many people appear to think, there was nothing “illegal” about


Christianity, per se, in those early years. Christianity itself was not


outlawed, and Christians for the most part did not need to go into


hiding. The idea that they had to stay in the Roman catacombs in


order to avoid persecution, and greeted one another through secret


signs such as the symbol of the fish, is nothing but the stuff of legend.


It was not illegal to follow Jesus, it was not illegal to worship the Jewish


God, it was not illegal to call Jesus God, it was not illegal (in most


places) to hold separate meetings of fellowship and worship, it was


not illegal to convince others of one’s faith in Christ as the Son of


God.


And yet Christians were sometimes persecuted. Why was that?


196 Misquoting Jesus


To make sense of Christian persecution, it is important to know


something about pagan religions in the Roman Empire. All these religions—


and there were hundreds of them—were polytheistic, worshiping


many gods; all of them emphasized the need to worship these


gods through acts of prayer and sacrifice. For the most part, the gods


were not worshiped to secure for the worshiper a happy afterlife; by


and large, people were more concerned about the present life, which


for most people was harsh and precarious at best. The gods could provide


what was impossible for people to secure for themselves—for the


crops to grow, for the livestock to be fed, for enough rain to fall, for


personal health and well-being, for the ability to reproduce, for victory


in war, for prosperity in peace. The gods protected the state and


made it great; the gods could intervene in life to make it livable, long,


and happy. And they did this in exchange for simple acts of worship—


worship on the state level during civic ceremonies honoring


the gods, and worship on the local level, in communities and families.


When things did not go well, when there were threats of war, or


drought, or famine, or disease, this could be taken as a sign that the


gods were not satisfied with how they were being honored. At such


times, who would be blamed for this failure to honor the gods? Obviously,


those who refused to worship them. Enter the Christians.


Of course, Jews would not worship the pagan gods either, but they


were widely seen as an exception to the need for all people to worship


the gods, since Jews were a distinctive people with their own ancestral


traditions that they faithfully followed.14 When Christians came on


the scene, however, they were not recognized as a distinctive people—


they were converts from Judaism and from an entire range of pagan


religions, with no blood ties to one another or any other connections


except their peculiar set of religious beliefs and practices. Moreover,


they were known to be antisocial, gathering together in their own


communities, abandoning their own families and deserting their former


friends, not participating in communal festivals of worship.


Christians were persecuted, then, because they were regarded as


detrimental to the health of society, both because they refrained from


The Social Worlds of the Text 197


worshiping the gods who protected society and because they lived together


in ways that seemed antisocial. When disasters hit, or when


people were afraid they might hit, who more likely as the culprits


than the Christians?


Only rarely did the Roman governors of the various provinces, let


alone the emperor himself, get involved in such local affairs. When


they did, however, they simply treated Christians as a dangerous social


group that needed to be stamped out. Christians were usually


given the chance to redeem themselves by worshiping the gods in the


ways demanded of them (for example, by offering some incense to a


god); if they refused, they were seen as recalcitrant troublemakers and


treated accordingly.


By the middle of the second century, pagan intellectuals began taking


note of the Christians and attacking them in tractates written


against them. These works not only portrayed the Christians themselves


in negative ways. They also attacked the Christians’ beliefs as ludicrous


(they claimed to worship the God of the Jews, for example, and


yet refused to follow the Jewish law!) and maligned their practices as


scandalous. On the latter point, it was sometimes noted that Christians


gathered together under the cloak of darkness, calling one another


“brother” and “sister” and greeting one another with kisses; they were


said to worship their god by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of


the Son of God. What was one to make of such practices? If you can


imagine the worst, you won’t be far off. Pagan opponents claimed that


Christians engaged in ritual incest (sexual acts with brothers and sisters),


infanticide (killing the Son), and cannibalism (eating his flesh


and drinking his blood). These charges may seem incredible today, but


in a society that respected decency and openness, they were widely accepted.


Christians were perceived as a nefarious lot.


In the intellectual attacks against Christians, considerable attention


was paid to the founder of this newfangled and socially disreputable


faith, Jesus himself.15 Pagan writers pointed to his impoverished origins


and lower-class status in order to mock Christians for thinking


that he was worthy of worship as a divine being. Christians were said


198 Misquoting Jesus


to worship a crucified criminal, foolishly asserting that he was somehow


divine.


Some of these writers, starting near the end of the second century,


actually read the Christian literature in order better to build their


cases. As the pagan critic Celsus once said, concerning the basis of his


attack on Christian beliefs:


These objections come from your own writings, and we need no


other witnesses: for you provide your own refutation. (Against


Celsus 2, 74)


These writings were sometimes held up to ridicule, as in the words


of the pagan Porphry:


The evangelists were fiction-writers—not observers or eyewitnesses of


the life of Jesus. Each of the four contradicts the other in writing his


account of the events of his suffering and crucifixion. (Against the


Christians 2, 12–15)16


In response to these kinds of attacks, claims the pagan Celsus,


Christian scribes altered their texts in order to rid them of the problems


so obvious to well-trained outsiders:


Some believers, as though from a drinking bout, go so far as to oppose


themselves and alter the original text of the gospel three or four or several


times over, and change its character to enable them to deny difficulties


in the face of criticism. (Against Celsus 2, 27)


As it turns out, we do not need to rely on pagan opponents of


Christianity to find evidence of scribes occasionally changing their


texts in light of pagan opposition to the faith. There are places within


our surviving manuscript tradition of the New Testament that show


this kind of scribal tendency at work.17


Before considering some of the relevant passages, I should point


out that these pagan charges against Christianity and its founder did


not go unanswered from the Christian side. On the contrary, as intellectuals


began to be converted to the faith, starting in the mid-second


The Social Worlds of the Text 199


century, numerous reasoned defenses, called apologies, were forthcoming


from the pens of Christians. Some of these Christian authors


are well known to students of early Christianity, including the likes of


Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Origen; others are lesser known but


nonetheless noteworthy in their defense of the faith, including such


authors as Athenagoras, Aristides, and the anonymous writer of the


Letter to Diognetus.18 As a group, these Christian scholars worked to


show the fallacies in the arguments of their pagan opponents, arguing


that, far from being socially dangerous, Christians were the glue that


held society together; insisting not only that the Christian faith was


reasonable but that it was the only true religion the world had ever


seen; claiming that Jesus was in fact the true Son of God, whose death


brought salvation; and striving to vindicate the nature of the early


Christian writings as inspired and true.


How did this “apologetic” movement in early Christianity affect


the second- and third-century scribes who were copying the texts of


the faith?


Apologetic Alterations of the Text


Although I did not mention it at the time, we have already seen one


text that appears to have been modified by scribes out of apologetic


concerns. As we saw in chapter 5, Mark 1:41 originally indicated that


when Jesus was approached by a leper who wanted to be healed, he


became angry, reached out his hand to touch him, and said “Be


cleansed.” Scribes found it difficult to ascribe the emotion of anger to


Jesus in this context, and so modified the text to say, instead, that Jesus


felt “compassion” for the man.


It is possible that what influenced the scribes to change the text


was something more than a simple desire to make a difficult passage


easier to understand. One of the constant points of debate between


pagan critics of Christianity and its intellectual defenders had to do


with the deportment of Jesus and whether he conducted himself in a


way that was worthy of one who claimed to be the Son of God. I


200 Misquoting Jesus


should emphasize that this was not a dispute over whether it was conceivable


that a human being could also, in some sense, be divine. That


was a point on which pagans and Christians were in complete agreement,


as pagans too knew of stories in which a divine being had become


human and interacted with others here on earth. The question


was whether Jesus behaved in such a way as to justify thinking of him


as someone of that sort, or whether, instead, his attitudes and behaviors


eliminated the possibility that he was actually a son of God.19


By this period it was widely believed among pagans that the gods


were not subject to the petty emotions and whims of mere mortals,


that they were, in fact, above such things.20 How was one to determine,


then, whether or not an individual was a divine being? Obviously,


he would have to display powers (intellectual or physical) that


were superhuman; but he would also need to comport himself in a


way that was compatible with the claim that he originated in the divine


realm.


We have a number of authors from this period who insist that the


gods do not get “angry,” as this is a human emotion induced by frustration


with others, or by a sense of being wronged, or by some other


petty cause. Christians, of course, could claim that God became “angry”


with his people for their misbehavior. But the Christian God, too, was


above any kind of peevishness. In this story about Jesus and the leper,


however, there is no very obvious reason for Jesus to get angry. Given


the circumstance that the text was changed during the period in


which pagans and Christians were arguing over whether Jesus comported


himself in a way that was appropriate to divinity, it is altogether


possible that a scribe changed the text in light of that controversy. This,


in other words, may have been an apologetically driven variation.


Another such alteration comes several chapters later in Mark’s


Gospel, in a well-known account in which Jesus’s own townsfolk


wonder how he could deliver such spectacular teachings and perform


such spectacular deeds. As they put it, in their astonishment, “Isn’t this


the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and


The Social Worlds of the Text 201


Judas and Simon, and aren’t his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3).


How, they wondered, could someone who grew up as one of them,


whose family they all knew, be able to do such things?


This is the one and only passage in the New Testament in which


Jesus is called a carpenter. The word used, TEKT


–


ON, is typically applied


in other Greek texts to anyone who makes things with his


hands; in later Christian writings, for example, Jesus is said to have


made “yokes and gates.”21 We should not think of him as someone


who made fine cabinetry. Probably the best way to get a “feel” for this


term is to liken it to something more in our experience; it would be


like calling Jesus a construction worker. How could someone with


that background be the Son of God?


This was a question that the pagan opponents of Christianity took


quite seriously; in fact, they understood the question to be rhetorical:


Jesus obviously could not be a son of God if he was a mere TEKT


–


ON.


The pagan critic Celsus particularly mocked Christians on this point,


tying the claim that Jesus was a “woodworker” into the fact that he


was crucified (on a stake of wood) and the Christian belief in the


“tree” of life.


And everywhere they speak in their writings of the tree of life . . . I


imagine because their master was nailed to a cross and was a carpenter


by trade. So that if he happened to be thrown off a cliff or pushed into


a pit or suffocated by strangling, or if he had been a cobbler or stonemason


or blacksmith, there would have been a cliff of life above the


heavens, or a pit of resurrection, or a rope of immortality, or a blessed


stone, or an iron of love, or a holy hide of leather. Would not an old


woman who sings a story to lull a little child to sleep have been


ashamed to whisper tales such as these? (Against Celsus 6, 34)


Celsus’s Christian opponent, Origen, had to take seriously this


charge that Jesus was a mere “carpenter,” but oddly enough he dealt


with it not by explaining it away (his normal procedure), but by denying


it altogether: “[Celsus is] blind also to this, that in none of the


202 Misquoting Jesus


Gospels current in the Churches is Jesus himself ever described as


being a carpenter” ( Against Celsus 6, 36).


What are we to make of this denial? Either Origen had forgotten


about Mark 6:3 or else he had a version of the text that did not indicate


that Jesus was a carpenter. And as it turns out, we have manuscripts


with just such an alternative version. In our earliest manuscript of


Mark’s Gospel, called P45, which dates to the early third century (the


time of Origen), and in several later witnesses, the verse reads differently.


Here Jesus’s townsfolk ask, “Is this not the son of the carpenter?”


Now rather than being a carpenter himself, Jesus is merely the


carpenter’s son.22


Just as Origen had apologetically motivated reasons for denying


that Jesus is anywhere called a carpenter, it is conceivable that a scribe


modified the text—making it conform more closely with the parallel


in Matthew 13:55—in order to counteract the pagan charge that Jesus


could not be the Son of God because he was, after all, a mere lowerclass