In the final episode of Conceptions and Misconceptions, Dr. Gurtner and Tyler continue the conversation on textual criticism. They talk about the differences in the Lord's Prayer found in Matthew 6:13 between the ESV and the King James version. The recitation of this prayer goes back hundreds of years in early church history. How does that extra bit not in that passage get added on to the prayer you memorized in Sunday school?
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Host
Dan Gurtner
Professor of New Testament Studies
Host
Tyler Sanders
Director of Communications
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Courtney McCaa
Digital Media Specialist
What is Conceptions and Misconceptions in Studying the Gospels?
Dr. Dan Gurtner takes on challenging passages and common misconceptions in the Gospels.
Tyler Sanders 0:03
This is Conceptions and Misconceptions in Studying the Gospels with Dr. Dan Gurtner. I'm your host, Tyler Sanders, and today we're looking at the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6. Dr. Gurtner, could you tell us a little bit about this passage?
Dan Gurtner 0:16
Well, what we're looking at in this passage is something that sort of continues from our conversation last time, and is not so much about the content of this passage, but more about the issue of textual criticism. That is, why did I learn in Sunday school, to memorize the Lord's Prayer with a little bit of a tail ending on the end of this prayer, that isn't in my Bible? Where'd that come from? And why don't I see it in my study Bible I just got from the bookstore? How does that get there? And why isn't it here? So we're gonna go back to some of that kind of conversation, because this has to do with how manuscripts are passed along. And last time, we talked about the longer ending of the Gospel of Mark. And that was a big issue, because that was a large passage that addressed an issue where it seemed like Mark wasn't quite done yet, and some well-intending people thought, 'Well, I'm gonna sort of fill out this,' and it sort of sounds like Matthew's Great Commission, but we saw how it didn't quite fit. And verses 9 through 20, are not original to Mark. And we discussed some debates about whether Mark intended to leave it like that, and so forth. These are variants of different kinds.
Tyler Sanders 1:54
Yeah.
Dan Gurtner 1:57
Because, as we've talked about, these are all manuscripts that are passed on from one scribe to the next all by hand. So we're going to talk today about how these kinds of variants, these different words and phrases end up in our Bibles, going from one manuscript to the next.
Tyler Sanders 2:23
You know, it's funny when we were talking about this topic-we finished recording last episode and we talked about what we're going to talk about in this episode. And I was like, 'oh, yeah, that'd be really cool.' And then when I looked at it, I was kind of like, 'oh, wait, maybe I'm just looking at the wrong thing'. Because it was so engrained in my head, that last phrase. I was just expecting to read it. And I was like, 'oh, must be looking at the wrong thing' before I even realized that was basically the topic of what we're talking about.
Dan Gurtner 2:52
Because it's not in a lot of our Bibles anymore. But it is in King James. So what I'm looking at is in Matthew 6:13. Matthew 613, in the ESV, says, "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." And it simply ends there. But if you read this, in the King James, it says, "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen." Well, where does that, "for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen." come from? Well, let me step back as we did last time and talk about manuscripts and how they're passed along.
And generally, there are different kinds of manuscripts. The most important ones are the papyri, which are just basically ancient paper. We don't have a lot of those, but they tend to be old and reliable. And they tend to be in bits. The ones that are the largest and have the most, are these big codecies, these big books. And we have three of those called Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Alexandrinus. They're from the fourth and fifth century. And in some cases, I'm working in the Gospel of Matthew right now, these are the most complete parts and the earliest parts, in the Gospel of Matthew, up until chapter five. In some places, this is the only part of Matthew we have have. The earliest parts found in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, If it weren't for these two, we wouldn't even know that Matthew exists until something like the sixth or seventh century. These manuscripts are that important.
So these manuscripts have all kinds of New Testament and Old Testament books in Greek, and some of the church fathers. And there are people who've devoted a large portion-I was emailing with a fella recently who just finished his PhD at Cambridge University, just studying one of these codecies. His whole PhD on Codex Vaticanus. So fourth or fifth century AD. So what do you do a PhD on Codex Vaticanus on? He studied to see how many different scribes worked on this Codex. You can study the handwriting, you can study it to see how they divided up the paragraphs and the thought units. Because the way some of these codecies-and Codex is just a word for book. Instead of scroll, they were in what we consider book form. A lot of these are just all in capital letters. And all squeezed together with no punctuation and no sentence breaks, nothing. And just put into columns. But sometimes they'll break it up into paragraphs, and that tells you how people interpret things. And sometimes, whenever a scribe is working on copying these, there can be two or three scribes working on a manuscript, inevitably, somebody else comes along later on, and finds a mistake.
So this fella has studied this and is able to identify the correctors. How many characters there were, and when they can date from. So if the manuscript comes from the fifth century, maybe one of the characters comes from the seventh century. And another one comes from the 10th century. And another one comes from the 13th century. Well, how do these correctors work? What they do is they make little notes in the margins. They didn't have erasers, so how do you make corrections to manuscripts when all these letters are squeezed together? There's just no room. Sometimes they jot things in the margins, on the sides, sometimes they'd jot things on the top, but sometimes also, these are oftentimes Christian scribes....you know, you and I are in church and we hear something from the preacher and it's really moving and we'd say "Amen". So sometimes a scribe would come across an especially moving portion of a passage, and they'd add some pious comment like, "amen".
Tyler Sanders 8:10
Oh, wow.
Dan Gurtner 8:11
So actually, one of the variants in this passage at Matthew 5:13, at the end says, "Amen." There are four manuscript traditions that have "Amen." So somebody just probably put 'Well, at the end of a prayer, we always have 'Amen'', so maybe a scribe put that in the margin. Now, the next scribe who gets that manuscript, sees "Amen" in the margin, and he doesn't know if the scribe who put that there is just being pious, or if he thinks that's a correction, or maybe there is a correction. And so whenever he makes his copy from the one in front of him, he makes that part of the manuscript that he's copied. Because that's his job, it's just copy what's in front of him. And so the copy that he makes, that he sends off to whoever is paying him to make this copy, for their church or churches or city or country or whoever he's making it for, all of a sudden they have a whole reading, that in the Lord's Prayer suddenly has "Amen" at the end of it.
Now, what we have here in the Lord's Prayer is, at the end of this in several manuscripts beginning around the ninth century, we have this addition; "And to Him be the glory in the power forever and ever amen." Churches-I don't know enough church history to say when-started developing a schedule of when they read certain passages in the church. Why? Because people didn't have their own Bibles at home like you and I do. And many of them didn't know how to read anyhow. So it really wouldn't have done them any good. So if you wanted to get any Bible, you needed to go to church. So the church had a schedule of what they read in public. We call those liturgies. And part of the liturgy was often putting some kind of phrase or statement or doxological statement at the end of a reading. And that's what this is. This is a doxology that's added to the end of a liturgy. Well, where did this come from? It's a paraphrase from another prayer. And that other prayer is actually from King David.
So here's where we go back to First Chronicles. So I'm in First Chronicles 29:11-13. First Chronicles 29:11-13. So this is a prayer from King David, about 1000 BC, said this prayer. So jumping back a little bit, one verse says, First Chronicles 29:10, says, "Therefore, David blessed the Lord in the presence of all the assembly. And David said," now I'm reading the ESV, "'Blessed are You, O Lord, the God of Israel, our Father forever and ever.'" Now I'm gonna read verses 11-13, and see if this sounds familiar. "'Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty. For all that is in the heavens, and in the earth is Yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, You are exalted as head above all, both riches and honor come from You. And You rule over all. In Your hand, our power and might. And in Your hand, it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank You, our God, and praise Your glorious Name.'" So this is an English translation of the Hebrew, and the scribes here are taking from the Greek, but you can see how they paraphrased an added that as a doxology onto the end of the Lord's Prayer. The, in English, "Yours is the glory and the power forever and ever, amen." But what happened here, is somewhere along the line, again, around the ninth century, some Christians had added this in a church liturgy; "and Yours be the glory forever and ever, amen" onto the Lord's Prayer, and some scribe put it in a manuscript in the liturgy somewhere. And somehow, it was probably written in a margin somewhere, and some scribe or scribes, seeing it written in the margin, thought it belonged as part of the actual text and not just sort of a commentary or a liturgy or a doxological statement. And as they copied their text, it sort of got sucked into the body of the text itself, and all of a sudden we have it as part of the manuscripts from which translations like the King James start to be made. And again, these are very late. So this is again, the earliest manuscript evidence is the ninth century. But that's how it ends up coming into our Bible. But this is pretty common in terms of how variations in manuscript readings work.
Tyler Sanders 14:29
Yeah. Now this, I guess, became fairly widespread, right? This kind of addition, this specific one?
Dan Gurtner 14:36
This kind of addition? I don't know if it became fairly widespread. This particular addition is pretty well known. And it becomes pretty traditional, especially in areas where the King James Bible has been used. Simply because-it's the same reason why the Lord's Prayer is largely translated into English the same way, even though it's not the best translation. Largely because it is traditionally...like the the ESV still translates it very similarly to the King James, even though if they could do it completely fresh, they would probably translate it differently, largely because it is still kind of familiar.
Tyler Sanders 15:31
Yeah, there's a familiarity.
Dan Gurtner 15:32
There is a familiarity there. Last time, when we saw like the ESV, sort of said, we really wouldn't do this, but people are used to seeing it so we're gonna keep it. It's more of a cultural familiarity because of the huge influence that the King James has had, that it is familiar. It is not necessarily because it is seen as a viable reading in terms of originality, it is not original. And few see this as an original reading. But it is one that is with which people are very familiar again, simply because it's been part of the King James for so long.
Tyler Sanders 16:23
Yeah, you know, it's interesting, I was looking at it through my ESV Study Bible. And it's not in there. But there's a note, like a footnote, about it that kind of explains a little bit about that. But I did think that's kind of a fascinating difference, really, then with the longer ending of Mark where they have it in there, and then they bracket it and tell you; This is in here but there's an important footnote at the bottom. And this is almost the opposite, where it's kind of dropped out but there's a reference to it, if you're maybe expecting it, you'll kind of come across it.
Dan Gurtner 17:02
And my guess is that the editors, they wouldn't have even put it in a footnote, if it weren't for the fact that people are expecting it. Because there are other variants that are more texturally viable in terms of originality than this one. But this one is one that is so familiar, again, because of the influence of the King James, that people are expecting it. Hey, why is my Lord's Prayer so short? They're gonna be looking for a footnote or some explanation.
Tyler Sanders 17:35
Yeah. And I think it said in the study Bible, the ESV Study Bible, that it's basically not in most modern translations. But I would assume it's probably still in an old King James.
Dan Gurtner 17:44
It would be, simply because the manuscripts on which the King James are based, which are largely late manuscripts, does preserve it.
Tyler Sanders 17:54
Yeah, could you tell me a little bit about why they used those manuscripts for the King James? Is that kind of waht they had available?
Dan Gurtner 18:01
Yeah, because that's simply what they had available as of 1611. So it's simply a case that whenever the King James Bible was made, it was based on a coalition of Greek manuscripts that were available at that time. And since then, we have a lot more diversity of manuscripts, and a lot earlier manuscripts. I mean, it doesn't really matter how many manuscripts, it's not really majority rules, as much as how early they are and how reliable they are. Because as we talked about before, they could be early and they could be based on manuscripts that have errors in them. But if they're early and their diverse, if they're early, and they're copied from other exemplars, other...if you have a copy that's copied from mine, that really doesn't represent two different witnesses. But if you have a copy that's copied from somebody else, and I have a copy that's copied from somebody else, and they've never had any interaction with each other at all, that's good, because they're independent of one another. That represents a kind of diversity of traditions. And they say the same thing. That shows a kind of stability. And so what we have now that they didn't have in 1611, is early and diverse manuscripts. And a kind of sophistication in studying those manuscripts that they simply didn't have then.
Tyler Sanders 19:47
Now, this might be kind of a hard question to answer off the top of your head but there's been a shift, because now we really try to get, like you said, this broad diversity of manuscripts and we're trying to pull information from all them to try to work back to the original text. But in the early church they were using, probably just getting whatever copy they could get their hands on, right? I mean, whatever manuscript you could get. When did that shift start to happen where people started to collect multiple manuscripts and try to pull it together to try to come up with something that's closer to the original?
Dan Gurtner 20:29
That's a difficult question. I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer that. And I'm also not sure....even the question now there's debates as to what really is an original. And it has to do with the writing process in antiquity. Did authors sit down and write one copy of Galatians, for example, and then say, "Okay, go." Or in some circles in the Greco Roman context, they would write drafts and circulate it for discussion and debate, and get it back and get some input, and then circulate it again. And then at what point does sending or publishing count? So when is it set and when is it done? So some people are talking now, not necessarily the original but the earliest, recoverable text. And when did they start collating manuscripts? I think that the notion of collating and collecting manuscripts is something that's probably pretty recent, simply because...by recent, I mean, certainly something that would be post enlightenment I would think. Simply because that kind of thinking, in comparison, seems more like an enlightenment kind of idea. But yeah, I'm not really sure. When that kind of thing would have originated. Certainly, in the early church, even with literacy rates being low and accessibility to books being low, and the circulation of letters being a high priority, but not necessary, but by and large being a luxury. It's difficult to say how, if and when they would compare the wording of one manuscript versus the wording of another manuscript.
There was certainly...one of the concerns, as we see, let's just say for example, in the book of Second Thessalonians, which becomes also an issue later into the second and third century, is the issue not of the wording, but of the authenticity. In other words, I'm thinking of when Paul, talking to the Thessalonians, there's concern in Thessalonica about whether the day of the Lord has already com'e. And Paul tells the Thessalonians, 'do not be concerned about some report or letter "alleged to have come from us, saying that the day the Lord has already come.' So there's somebody who is claiming to come to the Thessalonians saying, 'Hey, the day the Lord is already come. So by the way, you don't have to work anymore.' So now there are these people in Thessalonica who say, 'Hey, the day of the Lord has already come, I don't have to work. You guys do what you want, I'll live off of you.' And so they have this sort of over realized eschatology. And so Paul's whole point in Second Thessalonians, and talking about what to expect in the day of the Lord, is that, 'Look, here's proof that the Second Coming hasn't occurred yet. And don't believe these reports.' So the concern is less about 'compare this manuscript and that manuscript' than 'did Paul really say this?' Or somebody claiming to say this in Paul's name?
Tyler Sanders 24:08
Right. Now, because it's such a familiar passage, how do you think you would respond to someone in your church who comes and kind of asks you this?
Dan Gurtner 24:24
About the Lord's Prayer passage?
Tyler Sanders 24:26
Yeah, they're like, 'I expected, or I grew up with King James and it's in there, and I'm looking at like NIV or ESV or NASB, whatever it is, and it's not in there.'
Dan Gurtner 24:38
I would go back to the thing we talked about the other day with, it's not a question about the trustworthiness of Scripture, or the reliability of Scripture. It's a question about which is the reliable reading. In other words, Scripture is reliable, it's just is this part scripture or is this part not scripture? And what I'm saying is, that extended part is not part of the original Lord's prayer. And ironically, it is drawn from part of Scripture, it's just drawn from another part of Scripture. So it's simply a case of that simply doesn't belong there, and it was added at some point early on in the church. So on the one hand, I understand how people could feel a little rattled that, 'Hey I thought this was scripture, and I memorized this when I was 10. And now you're telling me that's not even scripture.' On the other hand, we can celebrate the fact that what we do recognize is, this is part of a tradition that was drawn from scripture that goes back 1,100 years. So what you've memorized, yeah, that's not from scripture, but you just memorize something that goes back to a heritage of the Christian faith from another side of the planet over 1,000 years ago, of how the Bible was used in church services for people in a part of the world that probably couldn't even read. And I think that's pretty cool.
Tyler Sanders 26:22
Yeah, it's not bad that you know it.
Dan Gurtner 26:25
Right, exactly. That's a good point. It's not bad that you know it, and it doesn't assault the trustworthiness of Scripture. It just helps us to see again, that we build our faith on the trustworthiness of God through His Word, and we recognize that God chose to preserve His word through a human process. And we also recognize that as trustworthy as God's word is, our relationship is to a person, not to a book. I mean, I believe in the full inerrancy of Scripture with all my heart and all the bells and whistles that go with that. I'm about as conservative as you can get with that. But that is not the end. That is a means to the end. And I love the scriptures. I think it was John Piper, who said, "I love scriptures like I love my eyes, because they help me to see beautiful things." And I think it's really helpful. So we got to be careful about where we place our hope, in the way we understood something that was maybe not quite right, and that's okay. We have to be open to learning about the way things are and put our hope in better places.
Tyler Sanders 27:50
Yeah, that's really good. Well, I appreciate that. I think it was a great wrap up actually. That's a good nugget to chew on. So, thank you so much for your time, Dr. Gurtner.
Dan Gurtner 28:03
My pleasure.