Hebrews 11:37

Hebrews 11:37 evpri,sqhsan {C}

The presence in most manuscripts of the rather general statement evpeira,sqhsan (“they were tempted”) amid the author’s enumeration of different kinds of violent death has long been regarded by commentators as strange and unexpected. Many have suggested that evpeira,sqhsan is the corruption of some other word more suitable to the context, or that it entered the text as the result of inadvertent scribal dittography of evpri,sqhsan. Among the conjectural emendations of evpeira,sqhsan the following have been proposed (the name of the scholar who, it appears, first proposed it is enclosed within parentheses): evprh,sqhsan (Gataker), avneprh,sqhsan (Lücke), evpurw,qhsan (Bezae, edd. 3, 4, 5), evpura,sqhsan (Junius and Piscator), evpuri,sqhsan (Sykes), all of which mean “they were burned”; evpa,rqhsan (Bezae, edd. 1, 2), “they were pierced” (cf. Luther’s “zerstochen”); evphrw,qhsan (Faber), “they were mutilated”; evpra,sqhsan (le Moyne), “they were sold”; evspeira,sqhsan or evspeira,qhsan (Alberti), “they were strangled” or “they were broken on the wheel”; evphreia,sqhsan (Reiske), “they were ill-treated”; evpe,rqhsan (Kypke), “they were pierced through”; evpera,qhsan (Bryant), “they were stabbed”; evpeira,qhsan (Wakefield), “they were impaled”; evsfairi,sqhsan (reported by Griesbach), “they were broken on the wheel”; and even evtariceu,qhsan (Matthäi), “they were pickled”!

Several singular readings in individual manuscripts are due to carelessness and/or to itacistic confusion: thus D^gr* reads evpira,sqhsan( evpira,sqhsan (sic), which stands for the aor. pass. ind. of peira,zw, and ms. 1923 reads evprh,sqhsan( evpeira,sqhsan, of which evprh,sqhsan is an itacistic spelling of evpri,sqhsan (“they were burned”).

With some hesitation, but partly on the strength of the uncertain position of evpeira,sqhsan in the witnesses (sometimes standing before evpri,sqhsan, sometimes after it), ¹¹ the Committee decided to adopt the shorter reading preserved in î⁴⁶ 1241 1984 ù^{44, 53} syr^p (cop^sa) eth^{ro, pp} Origen^{gr2/7, lat} Eusebius Acacius Ephraem Jerome Socrates Ps-Augustine Theophylact, and to print only evpri,sqhsan.

¹¹ For a discussion of textual problems in the passage, see G. Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles, 1953, pp. 47 f.