Written by Dr. Bart D Erhman.
I have started giving some instances of what appear to be “intentional”
changes made by scribes, as opposed to simple, accidental, slips of the
pen. In my previous post I pointed to an example in Mark 1:2, in which
scribes appear to have altered a text because it seems to embody an
error. If I’m wrong that this is the direction of the change – that
is, if the text that I’m arguing is the “corruption” is in fact the original
text – then there is still almost certainly an intentional change still
involved, but made for some other reason. But either way, the
change does not appear to have been made simply by inattention to detail.
Here I’ll give a second instance from Mark of what appears to be an
intentional change. I stress that these alterations “appear” to be
intentional since, technically speaking, we can never know what a scribe
intended to do. I use the term I simply to mean an alteration to
the text that a scribe appears to have made on purpose because he wanted to
change it for one reason or another. Part of the historical task is
trying to reconstruct what might have been a plausible reason.
One of the most intriguing variations in Mark’s Gospel comes in the
Passion narrative, in the final words attributed to Jesus in the
Gospel. Jesus is being crucified, and he says nothing on the cross
until he cries out his final words, which Mark records in Aramaic: “Eloi,
Eloi, lema sabachthani?” Mark then translates the words into
Greek: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus then
utters a loud cry and dies.
What is striking is that in one early Greek manuscript (the
fifth-century codex Bezae — an erratic manuscript that nonetheless on very rare
occasions preserves an original reading when all other Greek manuscripts say
something else) and several Latin manuscripts, that often agree with it, Jesus’
cry is translated into Greek as: “My God, my God, why have you mocked
me?”
I have long been fascinated by this change. One great scholar,
Adolph von Harnack (arguably the greatest scholar of Christian antiquity of the
20th century), argued that this alternative
reading was in fact original, that scribes changed it from “mocked me” to
“forsaken me” because they did not approve of the theology involved with the
idea of God mocking his son. Moreover, since this “cry of dereliction”
(as it is called) is a quotation of Scripture (Psalm 22:1), and the Hebrew of
Ps. 22:1 (as well as the Greek) is clearly “forsaken” instead of “mocked,” then
it is likely that scribes would have changed the original “mocked” in order to
improve its theology and into line with how the verse is found in the Old
Testament itself (and into line with how Matthew records the cry).
In addition, as Harnack pointed out, the word “mocked” fits the literary
context of Mark very well. In this scene, in Mark’s Gospel, everyone
mocks Jesus: the people passing by his crucifixion, the Jewish leaders,
and even both criminals being crucified with him (15:29-32). Now
even God himself mocks him.
This was a very powerful argument by an unusually insightful and
powerfully intelligent scholar. But it never won very many
adherents. Most scholars simply were never convinced. And for
several reasons. For one thing, if Matthew’s Gospel indicates that Jesus
said “forsaken” and not “mocked” – his source for the passage was Mark!
That would suggest that this word is also what Mark had. Moreover, Mark
first cites the cry in the original Aramaic. The word in Aramaic for
“mocked” is different for the word “forsaken.” The Aramaic word Mark uses
is “forsaken.” So why would he even both giving the Aramaic if what he
wanted to do was to have Jesus cry out “mocked”? He simply would have
given the Greek form of the text.
Moreover, every single Greek manuscript (there are many hundreds) has
“forsaken” rather than “mocked”, as does every manuscript in every other
language (except the few Latin in support of codex Bezae) and every church
father who quotes the verse. All of this is very hard to explain,
especially in combination, if Mark originally said “mocked.”
So probably Mark’s version originally said “Why have you forsaken me?”
Why then would a scribe have changed it? On one hand, one
could argue that it was precisely in order to make the words fit more closely
with their context – everyone else mocks Jesus in the immediately preceding
verses and now, so too, does even God. That was part of what it
meant for Jesus to be crucified for the sake of others.
That would be a strong argument. Another would be that the
text was changed because a scribe was not comfortable with what it might mean
to say that God had “forsaken” Jesus. This, in my view, is an even
stronger argument.
Literally, the Greek word usually translated “forsaken” means “left
behind.” Why would that be a problem? Because there
were Christians in the second century (various “Gnostics”) who believed that on
the cross, the divine element within Jesus – the god residing in him – left him
to return to its heavenly realm whence it came.
In this Gnostic view, Jesus Christ was not one being who was both human
and divine. He was two beings, one human and one divine. The
man Jesus, for these Gnostics, was a real, pure, flesh-and-blood human being, a
righteous man, born from the sexual union of his parents, who was more holy
than all others and who was chosen by a divine being come from heaven, the
Christ, to be his (Christ’s) dwelling place during Jesus’ public ministry up to
the time until his death. The divine Christ came into the man Jesus at
his baptism (when the Spirit came down from heaven and entered into Jesus) and
left him at his death (since the divine cannot suffer or die).
And so, for some Gnostics, Jesus cried out, asking why the divine
element had left him: “My God, my God, why have you left me
behind?” We know that some Gnostics interpreted this passage that way,
because of the surviving Gnostic Gospels. The Gospel of Philip, for
example, a Valentinian Gnostic text, quotes the verse and explains that Jesus
uttered these words because “it was at the cross that he was divided.” That
is to say, the previously unified Jesus Christ again divided into two beings,
when the Christ left Jesus.
The controversy over what these words might mean was raging in the
second century. That is almost certainly when the text was changed in the
ancestor to the text of codex Bezae (that’s widely believed for rather
complicated reasons). Why was it then changed?
Possibly to make it fit better in its literary context in Mark (where
everyone – and now even God – mocks Jesus). But possibly also because now
it cannot be used as easily by Gnostics who want to argue that at the cross the
divine element left Jesus behind to die alone. Now, in the changed text,
Jesus does not wonder why he has been left behind. With the change,
the verse is no longer usable for these Gnostic Christians.
