Why we need the behind-the-translation work of textual critics.
Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.
Need one ask, “Who was?” Believe it or not, the answer is not as conspicuous as it seems. We can assume that in this passage (which is recognized as an early Christian hymn) Paul was referring to Christ. But consulting the same verse in the King James Version (KJV) reveals a different answer: “And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit …”
This verse has been neither “beyond all question” nor “without controversy” in the realm of Bible translation. Some say the first line of the hymn should read, “he appeared” (or better, “he who”), while others say, “God appeared.” Why the discrepancy in translation decisions?
The answer lies in an understanding of the biblical discipline known as textual criticism, the science that compares all known manuscripts of a given work in an effort to locate the reading that best reflects the words of the author. The original biblical autographs (probably written on papyrus) have been lost, and for the subsequent 14 centuries, every copy of the Bible was reproduced by hand.
Today there exist thousands of ancient New Testament manuscripts. The earliest fragments, papyrus uncials (an early style of Greek writing that used all capital letters), date from the second century A.D. Today 98 of these fragments are catalogued. There also exist 301 early uncial manuscripts written on vellum (sheepskin), some of which date from as early as the second century. Of these, the only uncial manuscript that contains the entire New Testament is the fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus. Later manuscripts, known as minuscules (a form of Greek cursive that could be written more rapidly and compactly, saving time and parchment), came to the fore in the eighth and ninth centuries and outnumber the uncials eight to one. The “Versions,” or early translations (Old Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Sahidic, to name a few), also inform the text-critical discussion, as do the biblical references of the early church fathers, known as the Patristic evidence.
Anyone who has copied a recipe or written down a phone number knows how easy it is to make “a mistake in the transmission.” And when it came to the dissemination of the New Testament texts, errors were made, some inadvertent, some intentional. The scribes at the time recognized that these writings were sacred, of course, but they had not yet started to think “canonically.”
As a result, during the first and second centuries they felt a great deal of liberty to enhance the biblical authors’ intent if a particular reading was difficult, or to “help” the readers understand a passage by glossing a discrepancy. It was not until A.D. 400 or thereabouts that a canonical mentality became entrenched and the free-flowing amendations abated. It should be noted, however, that, as Arthur Patzia writes in The Making of the New Testament (IVP): “No significant doctrine of the New Testament hinges on a variant.”
The confusion about the two possible renderings in 1 Timothy 3:16, “God” and “he who,” can be easily understood when one recognizes the similarity between how they would have looked in the early manuscripts: he who, OϹ (or os, the masculine relative pronoun in Greek uncials); God, ΘϹ (the common abbreviation in Greek uncials for theos, or God). A mere two horizontal strokes is all that distinguishes the one from the other.
Defenders of the “God” reading base their argument on the fact that the majority of extant manuscripts reflect this. Writes Wilbur Pickering in his book The Identity of the New Testament Text, “Fully 300 Greek manuscripts read ‘God’ while only eight read something else.… So we judge between 97 percent and 2 percent, ‘God’ versus ‘who.’ ”
Pickering and others would argue that the transmission of the New Testament texts took place under “normal” circumstances and with utmost care, diligence, and faithfulness to the authoritative nature of the original. “Ordinary honesty would require [the scribes] to produce a faithful copy,” writes Pickering.
Where changes occur in the witnesses (and these scholars concede that there are divergent witnesses), these were largely introduced into the text intentionally to alter the theological meaning behind a given reading, usually for heretical purposes. “Are we to assume that everyone who made copies of New Testament books in those early years was a knave? or a fool?” asks Pickering. “We have the Majority Text [today’s KJV] … dominating the stream of transmission with a few individual witnesses going their idiosyncratic ways.”
But other biblical scholars contest this assumption. We err to presume that changes in the text were attributable to heretical tendencies, argues leading text-critical scholar Gordon D. Fee in “The Majority Text and the Original Text of the New Testament” (Westminster Theological Journal, 1979). “For the early Christians,” he writes, “it was precisely because the meaning was so important that they exercised a certain amount of freedom in making the meaning clear.”
Fee and others also argue that to assume the transmission of texts took place under “normal” conditions ignores other important factors that were operative in the transmission process: for example, the literary habits and style of the biblical author, any distinctive proclivities of a given scribe, and the transcriptional probabilities of what the scribe would most likely do in the transmission process. In other words, in each textual decision one must evaluate which variant best reflects (in this case) Paul’s style, conforms to the known tendencies of the scribe working on that manuscript, and is consistent with common scribal habits.
But these factors alone are not sufficient grounds on which to make a sound textual decision. Other evidence must also be brought into the discussion. This includes such data as the date of the witness (is it early or late?), its geography (is this particular reading widespread, found in manuscripts in Egypt as well as in Syria or Rome?), and the quality of corroborating witnesses (is one authentic reading backed up by another independent witness with the same reading?).
Some basic “rules of thumb” apply when it comes to evaluating a variant reading based upon these criteria. It is agreed, for example, that a scribe is more likely to add to a text than to take away from it, and to make an awkward reading more readable. Therefore, a shorter, more difficult reading is usually (though not always) preferred as the one nearer to the autograph. At the same time, an earlier variant with a widespread witness geographically offers strong (though not foolproof) evidence for an authentic reading.
So how does one decide whether or not 1 Timothy 3:16 should read “he [who] appeared in a body” or “God appeared in a body”?
First, one must think in Pauline terms. Remember, this is an early hymn. And hymns, in those days, took two basic forms: that of a doxology followed by an explanatory clause (such as Rom. 11:36: “For from him and to him …”) and that of a hymn that begins with a relative clause where the antecedent is understood to be Christ (such as Phil. 2:6: “Who, being in very nature God …”). That Paul made liberal use of the latter is evident also in Colossians 1:13–15.
One must also ask which makes more sense in terms of scribal habits: to change an overt reference to God into a relative pronoun, or, with two touches of the quill, to transform a lowly relative pronoun to “God”? Given the nature of the debates about the deity of Jesus Christ that took place during the third and fourth centuries, would that the early manuscripts had read “God”! The debate about Christ’s deity would have been resolved like a gavel to the bench. As Fee suggests, “The argument from silence in this case is an extremely telling one.”
The relative “he who” is evident as early as the fourth century in the Codex Sinaiticus, which is given, in the words of Bruce Metzger, “primacy of position” when it comes to New Testament manuscripts. In addition, its witness was widespread, “read everywhere in Egypt, all through the West, and elsewhere in the East until the late fourth century” (Fee).
The earliest Greek manuscript to read “God” dates from the eighth century, according to Fee. So even if the manuscript evidence for “God” outnumbered the readings for “he who” a million to one, if that million originated with a corruption, the sheer volume of copies means nothing in terms of authenticity.
So, given its consistency with Pauline usage of hymns, its being the more difficult reading and therefore most likely to be “corrected,” its corruption being easily explainable, its presence in an early high-quality manuscript, and its wide geographical dissemination, the preferred reading for 1 Timothy 3:16 is what most Bible translations allow it to be: “He [who] appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit”—and so on.
But in making text-critical decisions such as this, we must not lose sight of the overall testimony of the passage. In the end, whether it is “God” or “he who,” the point remains: he appeared, was vindicated, seen by angels, preached among nations, believed on in the world, and taken up in glory. That is good news that is “beyond all question” and “without controversy.”
Frederica Mathewes-Green directed the Real Choices research project and is currently director of communications for the National Women’s Coalition for Life. This article was adapted from her hook Real Choices: Offering Practical, Life-Affirming Alternatives to Abortion (Questar, ©1994).
