Textual Considerations

Previous page: Reconstructing Marcion's Gospel

There are various textual issues to consider that do not have anything to do with Tertullian or Epiphanius themselves, but do have some bearing on possible differences between what each of them saw, and also between what they reported and what we see today. In addition, issues relating to the translation from the languages in which Tertullian and Epiphanius wrote into the 'KJV English' as used by many of the commentators on Marcion have an effect on what we believe was in Marcion's Gospel (Mcg).

The Old Latin

It is quite possible that at least some of the perceived differences between what Tertullian and Epiphanius reported are due to Tertullian having in front of him an old Latin copy of Luke when commenting on Mcg, in comparison with the Greek seen by Epiphanius. Evidence for this in Tertullian’s own writings can be found in this quotation from Isa 9:1-2 in Adv. Marcion, Book IV (as translated by Dr. Holmes):

As Isaiah says: "Drink in this first, and be prompt, O region of Zabulon and land of Nephthalim, and ye others who (inhabit) the sea-coast, and that of Jordan, Galilee of the nations, ye people who sit in darkness, behold a great light; upon you, who inhabit (that) land, sitting in the shadow of death, the light hath arisen." [Tertullian's version of Isaiah 9:1-2. The first clause closely follows the LXX. Tertullian's old Latin Bible had the passage thus: "Hoc primum bibito, cito facito, regio Zabulon," etc.]

Dr. Holmes also provided the following introductory notice in ‘The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume III, Latin Christianity: its founder, Tertullian:’

It is an interesting question as to what edition of the Holy Scriptures Tertullian used in his very copious quotations. It may at once be asserted that he did not cite from the Hebrew, although some writers have claimed for him, among his varied learning, a knowledge of the sacred language. Bp. Kaye observes, page 61, n. 1, that "he sometimes speaks as if he was acquainted with Hebrew," and refers to the Anti-Marcion iv. 39, the Adv. Praxeam v., and the Adv. Judaeos ix.

Be this as it may, it is manifest that Tertullian's Scripture passages never resemble the Hebrew, but in nearly every instance the Septuagint, whenever, as is most frequently the case, that version differs from the original. In the New Testament there is, as might be expected, a tolerably close conformity to the Greek. There is, however, it must be allowed, a sufficiently frequent variation from the letter of both the Greek Testaments to justify Semler's suspicion that Tertullian always quoted from the old Latin version, whatever that might have been, which was current in the African church in the second and third centuries.

The most valuable part of Semler's ‘Dissertatio de varia et incerta indole Liororum Q. S. F. Tertulliani’ is his investigation of this very point. In section iv. he endeavours to prove this proposition:

"Hic scriptor non in manibus habuit Graecos libros sacros;"

[This writer did not have the Greek holy scriptures in his hands]

and he states his conclusion thus:

"Certissimum est nec Tertullianum nec Cyprianum nec ullum scriptorem e Latinis illis ecclesiasticis provocare unquam ad Graecorum librorum auctoritatem si vel maxime obscure (sic) aut contraria lectio occurreret;"

[It is most certain that neither Tertullian nor Cyprian nor any writer from among the Latin churchmen ever appealed to the authority of the Greek books, in cases where a highly obscure or contradictory reading should appear]

 and again:

"Ex his satis certum est. Latinos satis diu secutos fuisse auctoritatem quorum (sic) librorum adversus Grcecos, nec concessisse nisi serius, cum Augustini et Hieronymi nova auctoritas juvare videretur."

[From the above it is sufficiently proven that the Latin [ecclesiastical writers] for a long time followed the authority of their own books against the Greeks; nor did they give way, except much later, as the new authority of Augustine and Jerome appeared to support [the Greek readings].

It is not ignorance of Greek which is imputed to Tertullian, for he is said to have well understood that language, and even to have composed in it. He probably followed the Latin, as writers now usually quote the authorized English, as being current and best known among their readers. Independent feeling, also, would have weight with such a temper as Tertullian's, to say nothing of the suspicion which largely prevailed in the African branch of the Latin church, that the Greek copies of the Scriptures were much corrupted by the heretics, who were chiefly, if not wholly, Greeks or Greek-speaking persons.

Unfortunately, we cannot always be sure of what Latin text Tertullian saw. In The Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, Donald K. McKim comments:

Early translations of Scripture from the second and early third century can still be identified by a careful scrutiny of biblical quotations in the words of Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 225) or Cyprian (d. 258). In particular, Tertullian felt free to quote Scripture at his convenience on the basis of different translations, when he did not translate directly himself.

Whether it is true that Tertullian used different translations or not, it is nevertheless the case that we do not know exactly what was in the, presumably, African, old Latin version that Semler suggests that Tertullian used. We also need to consider whether Tertullian was referring to an old Latin or Greek copy of Mcg. If Tertullian was commenting on a Greek copy, then we would expect that his own translation of Marcion would generally follow the mainly African old Latin he uses elsewhere. However, this appears to be not the case, and instead his quotes from and allusions to Mcg have a largely European flavor. In The Latin Text of Luke in Marcion and Tertullian, Higgins concludes the following:

These conclusions agree exactly with those drawn by von Soden from his similar study of Tertullian's quotations from Paul.

The reasonable inference from the above is that Tertullian had access to an old Latin copy of Mcg, and that he was not translating from the Greek. More specific support for this position can be found in some of Tertullian’s quotes. For example, in referring to “the parable of the fig tree,” he quotes:

Reflect, in short, on the picture presented in the parable: "Behold the fig-tree, and all the trees; [21:29] when they produce their fruit, men know that summer is at hand. [21:30] So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is very near." [21:31]

The reference to producing fruit [cum fructum protulerint] in Lk 21:30 is a very strong indication that Tertullian was reading from old Latin text, as fruit (rather than leaves or foliage) is an almost exclusively old Latin variant, being found only in all but one of the extant old Latin mss, plus 157, pc, Sy-S, Sy-C, and Sy-Hmg. In addition, as Tertullian does not suggest that Mcg differed from Luke here, the natural inference is that his copy of Luke had the same (old Latin) text. However, this does not necessarily mean that Marcion was originally written in old Latin, but only that an old Latin version (with similarities to the European old Latin mss) existed prior to the writing of Adv. Marcion.

As well as most likely having an (African) old Latin copy of Luke and a (European) old Latin of Mcg in front of him when commenting on Marcion’s text, we should remember that Adv. Marcion itself was written in Latin. Consequently, when we read (in English) what Tertullian wrote about Mcg, we may be seeing an English translation of a Latin comparison between old Latin copies of Greek originals of both Mcg and Luke. As a result, we can never be quite sure exactly what was in the (presumably) Greek original of the old Latin copy of Mcg seen by Tertullian.

The Western Text-Type and the Non-Interpolations

The Western text-type is the term given to the predominant form of the New Testament text seen in old Latin mss, notably in a, b, d, e, ff2, and l; and also in quotations from some 2nd and 3rd Century Christian writers, including Cyprian, Irenaeus, and, as noted above, Tertullian. The Western text has a large number of characteristic features, which appear in the Gospels, Acts, and in the Pauline epistles. Although this text is generally considered to be secondary, Westcott and Hort identified 27 places in the Gospels where the shorter Western text might well be original. These shorter forms are generally known as the Western Non-Interpolations, as described in The Western Text. 

This is of interest to the Mcg – Luke comparison because the majority of the Western Non-interpolations occur in Luke, and several of these changes match possible shorter readings in Mcg. The significance of this is that we have manuscript evidence that at least some of the text not present in Mcg is also not present in other copies of Luke, with several of these shorter readings being considered original. These cases are considered in detail in the discussions below. Willker makes the following observations:

The main problem is this: Internally the readings are very difficult to evaluate. In this commentary they have almost all been rated "indecisive". Overall, purely on internal considerations, there is often a slight tendency in favor of the shorter readings.

On the other hand, the shorter text is supported (for most of the readings) by D [the Greek side of Codex Bezae] plus the old Latin only, without any other Greek support whatsoever. This is very strange. If original, this would point to a very early change of the text. It would mean that the archetype of the Western text departed earlier than all other texts from the main root, already quite heavily edited, but containing genuine readings not preserved anywhere else. This is of course basically possible and was the opinion of Hort.

The analysis of all variants in this commentary has shown that D has more secondary readings in Lk than any other Greek codex. D has thus to be considered very unreliable in general. To accept that exactly this codex preserved more than 10 important original readings alone in Lk is therefore rather improbable from the outset. It must be admitted that from this consideration it appears more probable that the shorter readings in D have been taken over from the Latin, as it happened elsewhere in the codex. They then never existed in Greek, but only in the Latin version.

J. Rendel Harris agrees with Willker that many readings in D originate in the Latin, ending Chapter 11 of his study of Bezae as follows:

And so we might continue our examination, but the results are sufficiently patent: we may say that the hypothesis of Latinization is shewn conclusively to be the right one for the explanation of the text, since so many readings of D are unsupported in Greek, while almost all are followed by the Latin. Next we see that occasionally whole battalions of later uncials take up the Latinized reading, while a small company remains faithful, usually including B…

The majority of the Latin texts (perhaps all of them) are derivable from a common source, their concurrence in singular errors being inexplicable on any other hypothesis, but whether this source be European or African, Gallican or Roman, remains as yet uncertain. And this being the case, and the authority of D having, for the greater part, been reduced to that of d [the Latin side of Codex Bezae], the practical problem is, to restore the lost Western text in its primitive Vulgar Latin form, and to reason from the single form thus reached, as being the equivalent of a very early Greek MS.

So extensively has the Greek text of Codex Bezae been modified by the process of Latinization that we can no longer regard D as a distinct authority apart from d. In the first instance it may have been such; or, on the other hand, it may have been the original from which the first Latin translation was made. But it is probably safest to regard D + d as representing a single bilingual tradition. The process of Latinization is not a late one consequent on the rapprochement in a bilingual codex of two texts, an old Western Greek and an old Western Latin respectively; for this bilingual tradition goes back to the earliest times. It can be traced in Irenaeus, in the ancestry of אCL, and in the parentage of the Egyptian versions. Any residual divergences between D and d are due to unequal criticism of correcting hands.

Harris here concludes that Bezae originates in one or more early Greek mss that were translated into Latin and began the family of Old Latin documents that we see today, one branch of which led to d (the Latin side of Bezae), and by translation back to Greek, D. The importance of the Old Latin, the Western Text-type, and in particular Bezae, is that as well as containing many unique readings due to problems in translation, D contains differences (mainly omissions) in Luke that are not matched by similar changes in other mss, but in many cases do match differences in Mcg.

This raises the possibility that Marcion may have had access to, even if not a true ‘Western’ version of Luke, at least an early version from the same family that gave rise to Bezae. It also raises the possibility that Mcg was based on an Old Latin text of Luke, and that this accounts for at least some of the differences between what was noted by Tertullian and Epiphanius. Consequently, in the discussions of Marcion’s version of specific verses from Luke that form the bulk of the rest of this analysis, readings in the Western text of Luke (in particular that of Bezae), that support readings in Mcg are identified in the comparisons.

Note: In the rest of this document ‘Bezae’ is used to refer to the whole of Codex Bezae, with ‘D’ and ‘d’ reserved for the Greek and Latin sides respectively.

It's all Greek to Me

That's Greek to me or It's (all) Greek to me is an idiom/dead metaphor in English, claiming that an expression is incomprehensible, either due to complexity or imprecision. The expression may be used with respect to verbal expressions with excessive jargon of dialect, mathematics, or science. The metaphor makes reference to the Greek language and the Greek alphabet (either ancient or modern). (Wikipedia)

Although this expression most commonly refers to something that cannot be understood at all (often due to it being in another language), it is nevertheless true that Greek, and in particular the Ancient Greek used in the New Testament, is very hard (if not impossible) to translate into English with 100% accuracy. Although this is partly because some words in Greek have no exact parallel in English, it is also the case that the structures of the two languages are very different.

English mainly uses syntactic constructions, i.e. order and combinations of words, with many free morphemes (separate words) providing grammatical meaning. In structure English is quite simple, having only three inflectional categories: number in nouns; tense/aspect in verbs, and comparison in adjectives, with very small number of prefixes and suffixes (affixes). English also has very limited simple grammatical concord, mainly number and person agreement, but does have a rich vocabulary, often with more than one word for the same thing as a result of multiple invasions from different countries over the centuries.

In contrast, Greek is a morphophonologically complex inflexional (or fusional) language with extensive concordial agreement, using many bound morphemes (e.g. many variations in affixes) to carry much of the grammatical information. In Ancient Greek nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases, three genders, and three numbers. Verbs have four moods, three voices, and three persons, and they are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect. Most tenses display all moods and voices, and there are infinitives and participles corresponding to the different combinations of tense, aspect and voice (Christopher I. Beckwith, October 11, 2011, slightly rewritten personal communication).

As far as biblical quotations are concerned, this means that any Greek text (except poetry quoted as such), will change its appearance considerably depending on the grammatical environment in which the quotation appears, simply in order to follow Greek grammatical rules, not necessarily because the author wanted to change what the original quotation actually said.

As a result, translators sometimes have to make 'judgment calls' as to exactly which words to use (and how many and in which order) when translating from Greek into English. It also follows that, as long as the overall meaning is the same, two different sentences in English could have been translated from different (but equivalent) words in Greek, or from exactly the same Greek, but interpreted slightly differently. This can most easily be seen simply by comparing the many different English language bibles available today. Even where they originate in identical Greek, perfectly valid translation choices (and the age of the translation) can have a great influence on what we see in the bibles themselves. For example, the King James Version (KJV) has the following for Lk 11:11-13:

If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? [11:11]

Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? [11:12]

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? [11:13] 

In contrast, the New English Translation (NET) has:

What father among you, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead of a fish? [11:11]

Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? [11:12]

If you then, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” [11:13]

Finally, the Lexham English Bible (LEB) has:

But what father from among you, if his son will ask for a fish, instead of a fish will give him a snake? [11:11]

Or also, if he will ask for an egg, will give him a scorpion? [11:12]

Therefore, if you, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father from heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? [11:13]  

These are clearly the same passage, making essentially the same points, but containing several differences. First, it should be noted that the KJV has a reference to "bread" and "stone" that is missing in the other examples. This is due to a difference in the Greek from which the translations were made, but other differences are not:

None of these differences are in any way incorrect. In part they reflect differences in the ages of the translations, in part they show slight differences in US vs. (older) English usage, and in part simply show the flexibility we have in English to express exactly the same thing while using slightly different words and word order. Now, contrast these three different translations with what (in English) Epiphanius is recorded as having noted regarding the same verses.

In his Scholion 24, Epiphanius appears to provide a direct quote from what (we assume) he saw of Mcg:11:11-13 (Note: The text has been aligned into what we see as verses for readability, but, as mentioned below, Epiphanius did not know these verse divisions):

If a son shall ask a fish of any of you that is a father, will he for a fish give him a serpent,

or a scorpion for an egg?

If ye then, being evil, know of good gifts, how much more the Father?

However, directly afterward, in Elenchus 24j, he has:

Which of you, whose son shall ask for a fish, will give him a serpent,

or, for an egg, a scorpion …

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly father?

Here we have an excellent example of how Epiphanius has what, on the basis of this translation, appears to be two quite different direct quotes of the same passage, thus making it impossible from this for us to know just how close either of these “quotes” are to what he actually saw. However, as indicated above, the differences in the English make virtually no difference to the overall meaning of the pair of quotations, although it is easy to see that in both cases there must have been some differences in the underlying Greek, i.e. the bread - stone variant, and the reference to "good gifts" instead of the Holy Spirit, when compared with, for example, the KJV. So, why not simply always go back to the original Greek instead of trying to interpret an English translation? With Epiphanius we can do this, but not so in the case of Tertullian (who wrote in Latin, and may in any case have been reading old Latin copies of Luke and/or Mcg), or where other commentaries on Mcg are written in English (or, in some cases, German) and where the authors do not quote from the Greek.

Finally, I make no excuse for choosing to make this analysis accessible to those who are interested in the topic, whether they have a ‘classical’ education and/or are scholars, or not. Unfortunately, even by writing in English I will not be able make this accessible to everyone, nor will I be always be able to capture all the nuances of the original Greek (or in the case of Tertullian) Latin. In most cases the age of the commentaries make it sufficient to compare their (English) quotes from Epiphanius and Tertullian with the English of the KJV, but where necessary we can (at least with Epiphanius) go back to the Greek of his Panarion 42 for additional detail.

Conjunctions, Common Phrases, etc.

Conjunctions provide particular examples of differences in translation. When looking at possible differences in the Greek it should be noted that verses that in English begin with a conjunction may originally have been part of the last sentence of the preceding verse, or the conjunction (often “And”) may have been included for readability even though it is not strictly required. Alternatively, sometimes conjunctions or whole Greek phrases are not translated because they are simply unnecessary in English. For example, Lk 17:11-17 read as follows in the KJV:

And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?

In the NET these same verses read:

Now on the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten men with leprosy met him. They stood at a distance, raised their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went along, they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He fell with his face to the ground at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. (Now he was a Samaritan.) Then Jesus said, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?

The phrase at the beginning of Lk 17:11 rendered in the KJV as “And it came to pass” (Greek "kai egeneto," which appears 40 times in Luke) does not appear in the NET text, which simply has "Now" instead. Other bibles begin this verse in numerous different ways, for example: "And so it was when," "As Jesus was going," "Now, in traveling," and "A time came when he was on his way."

As well as quite different translations of "kai egeneto," we find that most bibles do not mention Jesus by name in this verse. This is not surprising, because he is not mentioned by name in the Greek until later, in Lk 17:13. Nevertheless, some bibles replace "he" in Lk 17:11 (in either the first or second clause) by "Jesus." The NET, for example, justifies this change with the following note:

Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

Then, in the Greek, Lk 17:12-14, 16 all begin with "kai," while vv.17:15, 17 begin with "de." However, we see that in the KJV these verses all begin with “And,” whereas in the NET none do, although Lk 17:15, 17 both begin with "Then." In some other bibles we find that "kai" is generally translated as "and," while "de" is generally translated as "but," although other conjunctions are sometimes used instead.

These are just a few examples showing how English translations can differ even where there is no difference in the Greek. Sometimes this is for reasons of clarity, or the start of a verse in English may differ purely because of variations in the end of the previous verse, or there may be no reason other than the whim of the translator. None of these are 'wrong,' and different people will vary with regard to which translation they prefer. However, all of these variations need to be considered when looking for possible differences between Mcg and Luke.

Harmonizations

It is generally accepted that scribes copying New Testament mss sometimes altered a phrase so that it looked more like a similar one they had seen elsewhere, either somewhere else earlier in the document they were copying, or in another document with which they were more familiar. These harmonizations often occur within the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), where the text of one is often very close to that of another, and a scribe may have, either accidentally or deliberately, altered a phrase he was copying so that it matched what he saw in another gospel, thus creating a variant. As Gordon Fee states in ‘Modern Textual Criticism and the Synoptic Problem: On the Problem of Harmonization in the Gospels': 

By the very historical fact of the greater use of Matthew in the early Church as compared with Mark or Luke, the manuscript traditions of the latter two have far more variants that could be attributed to harmonization than does Matthew, and between them, Mark far more so than Luke.

In essence, Fee is suggesting that scribes were more likely to make copies of Mark and Luke look like Matthew than the other way round. Because of this it is important to realize that, where either Tertullian or Epiphanius may appear to be quoting Matthew, it is possible that they were quoting from a mss that had been harmonized to Matthew, possibly even a variant for which we have no extant mss today. This applies both to Luke and Marcion, and could explain what are otherwise described as mis-quotes by Tertullian or Epiphanius, or unusual small differences between Luke and Marcion noted by Epiphanius. It is therefore important not to attempt to ‘harmonize’ to Luke what Tertullian or Epiphanius claim to have seen in Marcion, and to accept that “quotes” from them that differ from any extant mss or other church father may accurately reflect what they saw in their sources.

Next: Marcion’s Gospel, Compared Verse by Verse With Luke

If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, etc. regarding this topic or this page please email me at davidinglis2@comcast.net