TEXTUAL TRANSMISSION AND TRANSLATION
27. Conjectural Emendation New Testament
in the
G E O R G E D . K I L P A T R I C K
I N contributing this paper to Professor B. M. Metzger’s Fest- schrift, I gladly acknowledge our indebtedness to his work over many years on the Bible and in particular on the text of the NT.
His learning and industry have been at the service of many scholars not only in his publications but also in his ready response to any direct request for assistance. In choosing to discuss again the place of conjecture in the textual criticism of the NT, I am treating a subject which has inevitably exercised Professor Metzger and has recently been discussed afresh in a stimulating way.
In his recent ‘Plea for Conjectural Emendation in the New Testament’1 Professor J. Strugnell has dealt so interestingly and instructively with this topic that he has provoked me to look at it again. In 1957 I had given a paper at the Victoria Institute in London on ‘The Transmission of the New Testament and its Reliability’.2 In it I dealt with the place of conjecture in the NT and concluded : ‘We may assume as a rule of thumb that at each point the true text has survived somewhere or other among our manuscripts’.3 This conclusion was stated as probable and as one which cannot be proved from the knowledge we have.
It was, however, a practical rule of such rigour that I admitted no known conjectures into the apparatus of the British and Foreign Bible Society’s Greek Testament of 1958.
Strugnell’s paper can be seen as a reaction against this austerity.
In it we may find ‘a theoretical justification of the use of con- jectural emendation in the NT, and a trumpet-call for a return to more frequent practice of the noble art’.4 In addition, he
* ‘A Plea for Conjectural Emendation in the New Testament, with a Coda on
I Cor. 4: 6’, CBQ36 (Ig74), 543-58.
2 Proceedings ofthe Victoria Institute (rg57), gs-IOI; repr. BT g (1g58), 127-36.
3 Ibid. (BI), 135. 4 ‘A Plea’, 543.
350 GEORGE D. KILPATRICK
devotes much attention to the fact that many scholars, after admitting as a theoretical possibility that there may be passages in the NT where the original form of the text has not survived in any of our witnesses and can be recovered only by conjecture, then go on to allege various reasons why we cannot resort to such emendation in practice. It is this attitude which Strugnell sets out to rebut. Against such faintheartedness his attitude seems to be in line with Luther’s pecca fortiter.
In discussing certain contentions we may agree with him: for example, against the belief that ‘some special Providence’ has watched over the text of the NT to ensure that at every point the original form of our text has survived among some or other of our witnesses. If such were the case, we might wonder why this Providence has not exerted itself a little further to ensure that at each point of variation the original reading would be manifest and immediately demonstrable.
His use of genealogical or stemmatic arguments to suggest that the archetypal reading may sometimes not be the author’s text is reasonable enough. There were bound to be passages where this has happened.
We may support his contention with concrete instances. For example, if I hold that the original text of Acts has survived among witnesses known to us only in Codex Bezae (D) at the following places : 1 : I 5 &zcr&] +o’, 2 : 29 pkjpu] ~w)~ELIoV,
13 : I I ZXPL] &US, 31 rA&ovas, 19 : 2 I &&h, 2 I : 2 6 E~U+L]
&+eov, 3 5 &I] E2S, seven examples in twenty-two chapters, what do I conclude about the following six chapters where D is no longer extant ? On the average I would expect two in- stances where the other witnesses known to us have failed to preserve the original text in these last chapters. D being lost for them, I am forced to conclude that possibly at two places in them the original text has not survived and, failing the dis- covery of other witnesses with the original reading, it can only be recovered by conjecture.
Not everyone may accept this view of the readings of D, but we may discover comparable instances in other MSS. p75 is highly regarded in many quarters. Alone of Greek witnesses known to us, it seems to have preserved the original reading WAE~OV at John 4 : 41. Can we be certain that it had nowhere alone among Greek witnesses preserved the original text in those parts of
Conjectural Emendation in the Jvew Testament 351 John where it is now no longer extant? The same argument can be applied to other MSS like K and B. If the great editors of the past have been right in maintaining that the original reading has on occasion survived in one or other MS alone, we cannot exclude the possibility that in those parts of these MSS that have perished they alone had preserved the true text.
Let us return to the seven readings in Acts peculiar to D. I have suspected that they may be original on grounds of language.
The grounds of language would still apply if the readings were to occur in other witnesses than D, but it is doubtful if anyone would have conjectured any of them if they had not been present in D or some other Greek MS. Let us take one example, the reading pqp &ov at Acts 2 : 29. Mv+jpa is the correct word for tomb ; ,uq+ov is incorrect. Only at Acts 7 : 16 in the NT does
~V+.UC occur without the variant ,uv~),u~~ov. Should we conjecture
,X~#OV at this place ? Neither ~v~~u nor ~V~UEZOV appears in the corresponding passage of the LXX, but it seems probable that in ch. 7 Acts is using other sources as well as the LXX itself and pv+a at 7 : 16 may be an indication of such a source. In this case, if we were to emend it to pvq~i'ov, we might be eliminating a valuable clue to the composition of Acts 7.
Let us now go back to the previous argument. We have supported Strugnell’s argument that there are places in the NT where the original form of the text has been lost to the extent that we regard this as probable. Strugnell would, it seems, want to state this more strongly, but the principle has been readily conceded : we cannot assert that the original form of the text has for certain survived at every point somewhere or other among our witnesses. If we want to go beyond this and argue that in fact there are passages where the original form of the text has been lost, then we must produce convincing examples where this has happened.
This Strugnell sets out to do in an appendix to his paper where he discusses I Cor. 4: 6, &CL 2~ $@v ,xCEBqn d ,u+ d&p 6 ykypa7TTaL i&t Juj/ Kd., for which he would read by conjecture
?~a E)v rj,d'~ prj p$BqTE L"~u Kd. His thesis that in the grouping H M I N M H MAOHTE, p+ has dropped out by accident is plausible, but is consequent upon his omission of 76 ~4 h&p 2
y+panrcu.
We may find this phrase difficult as many have. Others have
352 GEORGE D. KILPATRICK
assumed an ellipse. Against such an assumption it can be pointed out that no adequate parallels are quoted. This is an important consideration ; we must always give particular attention to an unparalleled expression. Where an unparalleled expression is marked by textual variation, there we may give the text a double scrutiny. At I Cor. 4: 6 we do not seem to have any variants which indicate that the scribes found the text difEcult.
This may encourage us in the hope that sooner or later one or more parallels will turn up for our expression. This has hap- pened, for example, for Gal. 2 :
14
6pfl0~0hotitv, where we may compare J. B. Lightfbot’s note with the evidence from the papyri unknown to him. Again, we now have a parallel for I Thess.3 : 3 c&QQ&~~. This last i’s particularly interesting, as variant readings suggest that some copyists found the word difficult.
Let us now assume for the moment, however, that the phrase at I Cor. 4 : 6 is too difficult to stand and let us ask for remedies.
We have Baljon’s conjecture as developed by Strugnell, but we can think of other less drastic emendations, for example, 76 /&7j (h~p/%dVELV) hip d Kd. Or 76 j.L7j (z;~Cp+pOV&) 6&p G KTh. These suggestions have their difficulty, but can we say that they are impossible? If they are not, then we must admit that even if we are agreed that the text of a passage is corrupt it does not follow that we are agreed about the emendation.
We may enlarge this admission. The NT has not a few passages which need either explanation or emendation. Just as it is conceivable that though the text of I Cor. 4 : 6 needs emendation rather than explanation, so it is also conceivable that, though we may recognize that I Cor. 4: 6 has its difficulties, we may not agree that these difficulties are to be resolved by emendation rather than explanation.
We can illustrate this further from Acts 2 : g ‘lov&tluv. This term at this point in the list has caused difficulty, and various conjectures have been made from the second century onward to solve the problem. It is noteworthy that in ancient and modern times no one conjecture has proved generally acceptable. We may now question whether emendation is what is wanted and may turn to explanation. It has been suggested that behind our list lies an older one drawn up not from the standpoint of Jeru- salem but of Rome and ending with ~~OU+UTO~ in 2 : I I. I n such a list 'IOU~U~UV would occur at its rightful place in the
Conjectural Emendation in the .New Testament 353 arrangement of countries in a progression from east to west.
We cannot demonstrate this explanation conclusively, but until it or other explanations are shown to be impossible we cannot describe Acts 2 : g as a passage needing emendation. We have, too, the possibility that emendation may destroy valuable evi- dence for the history of the list.5
Consistency might suggest that we should emend Matt. 6 : 32 :
dl7ni~~~~; 23: 37: ~I~poucmA~~_~, 'IEpouad+; and Luke 2: 22:
’ I~poadAv~a. I do not remember conjectures for any of these words, though conjecture should not prove difficult. Let us look at them.
The difficulty about Matt. 6: 32 &&~Jv is this: 6/m~ is uncommon against ~6s in the NT. Mark and John have no certain instances of &as and Matthew has only this one. In Luke and Acts n&z and &US are both used. If we were to emend
&&WV to nchw in Matt. 6: 32, then Matthew would be consistent in usage and in line with Mark and John. The rule for Greek style is that &is follows a vowel and has a consonant, and &&WV in our texts could be regarded as an accommodation to this rule which has affected all our Greek MSS as far as is known. There is a rule in the NT that '~~6s precedes its noun or pronoun. There are exceptions, particularly outside the gospels, and the rule does not apply to &as. To that extent TO~TWV
&rbvT~v would be in order and 706TWV 7dVTWV would not. How then should we explain TO~TWV &&TWV? We may keep one possibility in mind : the phrase is a survival from Matthew’s source.
This may be the explanation at 23 : 37. Mark, John, and Matthew elsewhere have 'I~poadhpa, and it would be tempting to read 'I~poodh~+a here. We could explain ‘I~povoaXrjp as due to the parallel passage Luke
13 :
34, but this suggestion opens the door to another possibility: Matt. 23 : 37-g and LukeI 3 : 34-5 derive from a common source and this common source had 'IEp~vacdrj~ which has survived in Matthew.
This consideration may apply to John I : 23 : Z&L This is the only certain example of Z&I in John, though MSS have included it at 18
: 29.
A straightforward emendation would be ELT~TEv for &$T as at18 : 29. +-pI
was going out of use and survived only5 See G. D. Kilpatrick, ‘A Jewish Background to Acts 2: g-1 I ?‘, JJS 26( 1g75), 48-g.
354 GEORGE D. KILPATRICK
as a word of high style value, and we could regard it here as an attempt to raise the level of style in the passage and to avoid a repetition, 22 E?YTUV, 23 &XV (2), 25 E&V. There is, however, an occasional use of Z& to introduce a quotation. It begins as an equivalent of P$! as in Jeremiah and then occurs occasion- ally in the Greek Bible and the Apostolic Fathers. At I : 23 it would serve in this way introducing the quotation in a slightly different form from that in the synoptic gospels (cf. Mark I : 3 with a contact with Aquila : EI_WZ%UTE). The clause KU&& &XV KTh. looks like an afterthought, added when it was not realised that Z#q was used to introduce the quotation. If we may follow up these indications, I : 23 : Z#q . . . Kvptou, represents the oldest stage with distinctive features, and d& E&W Kd., the second stage when the quotation is taken into the Gospel. The KC&&
E&W formula recurs at 7: 38. This is speculative but, if we emend Z#q to E?~EV at I : 23, we may destroy valuable evidence for the composition of this part of the Gospel.
What then do we say of Luke 2 : 22 ? Contrary to the other gospels, Luke uses ‘IEpovaahrjp with two certain exceptions, 2 : 22
and 23 : 7. Acts uses both forms, apparently (IEp~&hu~u in Gentile contexts and 'I~povauArj~ in purely Jewish ones. This practice would keep us with Luke 23 : 7, which is in a Gentile context, but not with Luke 2 : 22. Do we conjecture ‘I~p~v&bj~
here or do we seek another explanation? Luke 1-2 owes much to the LXX, but we cannot blame cIp~~dhu~u on the LXX which consistently has 'I~povouhrjp. It is possible that our evangelist was using another source. This suggestion would entail interesting consequences for the making of Luke 1-2. Another possibility to which we shall return is that our evangelist has been inconsistent.
We assume in the NT writers a high degree of consistency and on the whole we seem justified in doing so, but we cannot expect this consistency always to be perfect.
Pursuit of consistency produces some borderline instances.
TE is a word going out of use in the first century A D, but had a high style value. Mark and John do not use it and Luke has it rarely.6 The only example of TE in Matthew without a Greek variant, as far as I know, is at 22 : IO. Latin is quite capable of
6 See G. D. Kilpatrick, ‘Atticism and the Text of the Greek New Testament’, Neutestamentliche Aufssiitze: Festschrift fiir Prof. Josef Schmid (ed. J. Blinzler, 0. Kuss, F. Mussner; Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, rg63), 135.
Conjectural Emendation ill the .New Testament 355 rendering TE and does so in the Latin versions of the Bible, but here ignores the word. Does this mean that r~ was absent from the Greek texts which the Latin renders ? It is not inconceivable, but if it was, then we have an example where all the Greek evidence for the text has gone astray.
Another instance of such a variant is at John 4: 41 : nklovs.
This form of the comparative of TOA& is not in keeping with John’s style, but until a few years ago no Greek variant was
known. Now we have the reading of p75, TT;\ECOV, which gets us out of the difficulty. This discovery enabled us to recognize the relevance of the renderings of the OL e r1 which have amplius and plus. If h7~ E?OV is the right reading, Latin attestation of it was known and ignored for years.
Another example of the original text barely surviving may come at Matt. 8 : 18 &&kvmv cbr&%~v. There is Latin and Syriac evidence for the addition of 70% ,uuB~Tuk UI?TO~^ after E)K&U(TEV, but we do not find in Legg’s apparatus or elsewhere any Greek evidence for this. Recently in a comment ascribed to Cyril of Alexandria (and to Origen), most of the reading has turned up in Greek: K&&L 62 j_bL(;VObS 70;s PU8qTUks.7 We may
now ask : is this reading original ? We notice one consideration in its favour : K&&W with the dative is condemned by the ancient grammarians though it may occur again at Matt. 15 : 35. One way of avoiding this construction would be to omit 70% pdh+k
&ov^, especially as an object to E'K&Icw could be understood from ;;X~OV or noAAo6S t;xXovS earlier in the sentence.* On the
’ other hand, oL( ,!.d$Td c&o~^ at v. 23 (cf. 2 I) suggests that at 8 : 18 TO&C t.db,mx% c.dTOv^ rather than 7~0Mo6s 6xhovs is what is intended. If this suggestion is right, then we have another example of the original text surviving by the skin of its teeth.
Strugnell has called attention to another such survival, Rev.
3 : 7, where we should read T$ for r+js. We may note the same survival at 3 : 14 where T@ survives only in the Harclean Syriac and part of the Armenian evidence, unless there is some Greek evidence in Josef Schmid’s unpublished collections.
A problem of another kind occurs at Col. I : 22 with the three 7 J. Reuss, Matthiius-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche (TU 61; Berlin:
Akademie-Vet-lag, 1 g57), I 83.
8 See my essay, ‘An Eclectic Study of the Text of Acts’, Biblical and Patristic Studies in Memory of Robert Pierce Casey (ed. J. N. Birdsall and R. W. Thomson;
Freiburg: Herder, 1g63), 71.
356 GEORGE D. KILPATRICK
readings cbroKawjMa&v, &oKa$Aclyq~~, and &oKaraMay&w~~.
They all entail difficulties of construction, but we have not con- vincingly diagnosed the trouble. If we were able to point to two of the three readings as attempts to remedy a shortcoming in the third, then we could eliminate these two and concentrate on the third, looking for the exceptionable feature in it which the other two readings would seek to heal. If we f in this, then we have to consider other possibilities.
Among these possibilities would be one in line with Strugnell’s thinking. None of the three readings before us is the archetypal reading and a f0tiim-i none is what the author wrote. In that case we resort to conjecture. We may, for example, assume a lacuna after WV; 82 : VVVi 82 (C%7r~~~?Je~povS. . .) Eli?TOKUmjtiU& KT~,
but such a suggestion, though it does remove our difficulty of construction, does not really explain the other two readings.
Strugnell may then argue that such suggestions are not sufficiently radical and that we should undertake a more thoroughgoing rewriting of the text.
Let us try to envisage what this means. We can imagine three stages : in the first we have the author’s text; in the second we have a damaged text; in the third we have the damaged text and two attempts to remedy it. One difficulty in this is that it does not help us to relate the two readings to the third which lies behind them. We ought to be able to demonstrate that the two readings are attempts to make good a flaw in the third, quite apart from what we may think to be the relation of this third reading to what the author wrote.
Let us beg this question for the time being and consider another possibility. In my first draft of the first paragraph of this paper I referred not, as I should have done, to ‘Professor B. M. Metzger’s Festschrift’ but to ‘Professor B. M. Metzger’s seminar’. Suppose that this slip had remained uncorrected and had appeared in the published text. The incongruous statement could be explained only as what it was, a mistake. Is there a possibility that an author’s mistake may lie behind the variation at Col. I : 22 ?
It would probably not explain all the problems of the passage, but it could explain some at any rate.
This gives us an opportunity to consider Strugnell’s attitude to an author’s mistake which he discusses in part 3 of his article.
The passage is so important that I quote it in full :
Conjectural Emendation in the New Testament 357 Another objection raised is that by emendation one risks correcting the author himself. This must be granted, of course. It is no danger special to the NT but affects all conjectural criticism of all authors;
it is inevitable. If ratio and res ipsa are our tools for the examination of the readings transmitted by the tradition, they cannot be restrained from correcting those accidental blunders or awkwardnesses com- mitted by the author himself. If you are unwilling to correct rationally, all you gain is the possibility that at some places you will be un- wittingly maintaining such of those accidents as have survived in the tradition (though there is no guarantee that they will have survived, and, if they have, purely eclectic criticism will have itself already removed most of them. Of course, even the rational critic will main- tain solecisms and grammatical oddities that occur repeatedly, for part of his examinatio is precisely the consideration of the character- istics of the author’s style.) If, on the other hand, you are willing to correct rationally, you have at least the chance of (a) detecting all subsequent deterioration of the author’s text and (b) also of correcting any irrationalities of the author, or accidents in his autograph, that the author would himself have corrected had his attention been drawn to them. The only disadvantage is that you cannot distinguish between these two groups of errors.9
We may perhaps eliminate one kind of error, the error willed by the author. At Heb. 7 : 7 we have the startling pronounce- ment : ‘Beyond all contradiction the lesser is blessed by the greater’. It is clearly wrong as can be shown from various pas- sages in the Bible, but the context makes it clear that the author has said what he wanted to say. I presume that Strugnell has not such passages in mind when he discusses an author’s mistakes.
As he points out he is thinking of ‘those accidental blunders or awkwardnesses committed by the author himself’.
Let us illustrate this. At I Cor. 2 : 4 : 2v m&ok ao+las A~~oLs, we may suspect that ~L~OL^S is a nonce word written by the Apostle by error. On this showing he ought to have written something like ~~Oavok. If I follow Strugnell’s argument, davoL^s or some such expression should be substituted for
~TEL~OZS even though the meaning will not be affected.
One difficulty about this kind of conjectural correction is that it eliminates evidence about the author. Anyone studying the language of the Pauline Epistles would want to have available any quirks or oddities of expression which the Apostle has
9 ‘A Plea’, 550.
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