Matthew 16:13-20 - Revision of the Textus Receptus

The gospel according to Matthew

Chapter 16

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13. Ἐλθὼν δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὰ μέρη Καισαρείας τῆς Φιλίππου ἠρώτα τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ, λέγων, Τίνα με λέγουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου; Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I[1], the Son of Man, am?”

14. Οἱ δὲ εἶπον[2], Οἱ μὲν Ἰωάννην τὸν βαπτιστήν, ἄλλοι δὲ Ἠλίαν, ἕτεροι δὲ Ἰερεμίαν ἢ ἕνα τῶν προφητῶν. And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some, Elijah, and others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

15. Λέγει αὐτοῖς, Ὑμεῖς δὲ τίνα με λέγετε εἶναι; He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

16. Ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ Σίμων Πέτρος εἶπεν, Σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ζῶντος. And answering, Simon Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

17. Καὶ[3] ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Μακάριος εἶ, Σίμων Βαριωνᾶ, ὅτι σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα οὐκ ἀπεκάλυψέν σοι, ἀλλʼ ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. And answering, Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

18. Κἀγὼ δέ σοι λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς. And[4] I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

19. Καὶ δώσω σοι τὰς κλεῖς[5] τῆς βασιλείας τῶν οὐρανῶν, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν δήσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται δεδεμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν λύσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται λελυμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. And[6] I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

20. Τότε διεστείλατο τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ ἵνα μηδενὶ εἴπωσιν ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ χριστός. Then he commanded his[7] disciples that they should tell no one that he was [8] the Christ.

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[1] NA-Text and Vg-St omit “I”. א B 579 700 1582* it^c cop eth syrpal Origen Jerome Cyril of Alexandria Fulgentius of Ruspe Bede | TR: The inclusion is supported by codices C D E F G H K L X W Δ Θ Π Σ ƒ¹ ƒ¹³ 28 33 118 157 180 205 565 597 892 1006 1009 1010 1071 1079 1195 1216 1230 1241 1242 1243 1253 1292 1342 1344 1365 1424 1505 1546 1646 2148 2174 it^a it^b it^e it^aur it^d it^f it^ff1 it^ff2 it^g1 it^l it^q it^r1 eth^mss geo syr^c syr^s syr^p syr^h arm slav Diatessaron Irenaeus Tertullian Origen Hilary Ephraem Ambrose Epiphanius Chrysostom Augustine Cyril of Alexandria John of Damascus Theophylact || The support for the inclusion of the pronoun found in the TR and the Byzantine compilations is overwhelmingly superior and widespread across multiples locales times and found in all text-types. What likely caused the omission was that an Alexandrian scribe felt uneasy with a hard reading involving the first-person pronoun “I”, a qualifier in the third person “Son of Man” and then a verb in the infinitive and thinking that there was an error in his text, removed the pronoun to make the sentence flow more naturally. A scribe noticed the error in minuscule 1582 and corrected it.

[2] NA-Text reads “ειπαν”, same word spelled differently.

[3] NA-Text and Vg-St replaced “και” by “δε” placed after the verb (Latin equivalent: “autem”): א B D Θ ƒ¹ ƒ¹³ 33 1241 1424 | TR: C K L W Γ Δ 565 700 892 Byz it^f it^ff1 it^q syr^h Theophylact || Both are well supported and the meaning is the same.

[4] NA-Text omits “and”.

[5] NA-Text reads “κλειδας”, same word spelled differently.

[6] NA-Text omits “And”.

[7] NA-Text omits “his” and renders “the disciples”.

[8] NA-Text and WPF³⁵ omit “Jesus”: א* B L Δ Θ Π ƒ¹ ƒ¹³ 28 124 174 180 565 598 700 788 1010 1342 1424 1505 1675 it^a it^aur it^b it^e it^ff1 it^g1 syr^c syr^p copsa^(mss) slav^mss arm geo² Diatessaron Origen Hilary Ambrose Chrysostom Bede Theophylact | TR: א² C D E F G H K W Σ 13 157 205 579 828 892 1006 1071 1241 1243 1292 Byz it^d it^f it^l it^q it^r1 syr^h cop^sa(mss) cop^mae copbo eth geo¹ slav^mss Jerome Augustine || Jerome even makes a point in his commentary based on the fact that the proper noun Jesus mentioned in this passage identifies him as the Messiah as opposed to other anointed people. The omission could be the product of scribal harmonization to verse 16 in which Peter says that he is simply “the Christ”. There is no parallel passage for harmonization to justify the addition since this saying of Jesus is unique to Matthew and nothing in the context or anywhere else in the gospel of Matthew from which Jesus the Christ could be imported to this context. Besides, Matthew is the only gospel where Jesus asks the question about the “Son of Man” at the beginning in verse 13. It would have made sense for him especially to add the proper noun “Jesus” with reference to the “Son of man” as opposed to John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets (vs 14). On the other hand, the addition could just be due to scribal familiarity with the apostolic message that taught that Jesus is the Christ, which came to be the very essence of the apostolic preaching (see Jn 20:31, Acts 2:36, Acts 3:20, Acts 5:42, Acts 9:22, Acts 9:34, Acts 17:3 and Acts 18:28). Both readings are widespread across different text-types and equally received by the fathers, but the omission seems to have had an ampler reception among patristic writers with the Antenicene witnesses on its side and the bulk of both Latin and Greek fathers supporting it. Therefore, the proper noun “Jesus” has been dropped from the text. 

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Notes:

1. Text in red letters are places where the original reading in the Textus Receptus has been revised and corrected;

2. The English translation used as a reference is the WEB brought to conformity as literal as possible to the Textus Receptus. The end product though is not the WEB or a revised WEB and it should not be called WEB. The content of this post is freely available to everyone and it is not supposed to be copyrighted;

3. TR: Textus Receptus. This text is not copyrighted;

4. NA-Text: Nestle-Aland text commonly known as critical text;

5. M-Text: Majority Text; 

6. M-Text^RP - Majority Text compiled by Maurice Robinson & William Pierpont;

6. M-Text^HF - Majority Text compiled by Zane Hodges & Arthur Farstad; 

7. Vg-St: Vulgate of Stuttgart;  

8. WPF³⁵: Wilbur Pickering-family 35;

9. P-Text: Patriarchal Text, also known as Patriarchal Greek New Testament, published by the ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

10. The creator of the variant apparatus available in the VarApp kindly gave me permission to freely use the information contained in the material he put together.

 

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To God all the glory for the preservation of the scriptures! He reigns!