Misquoting Jesus (22 page)

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
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:

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:

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 late-second-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
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.

C
ONCLUSION

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.

I
t is probably safe to say that the copying of early Christian texts was by and large a “conservative” process. The scribes—whether non-professional 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.

W
OMEN AND THE
T
EXTS OF
S
CRIPTURE

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 first-century Palestine. But our earliest Gospels indicate that Jesus was also
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-second-century 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
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:

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
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:

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.

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.

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
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.