Matthew 1:16

Matthew 1:16 to.n a;ndra Mari,aj( evx h-j evgennh,qh VIhsou/j o` lego,menoj Cristo,j {A}

There are three principal variant readings: (1) “and Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ,” is supported by a wide representation of textual families in early Greek and versional witnesses, including î¹ a B C W vg syr^{p, h, pal} cop^{sa, (bo)} geo.

(2) “and Jacob begot Joseph, to whom being betrothed the virgin Mary bore Jesus, who is called Christ,” is supported by several Greek and Old Latin witnesses (Q ¦¹³ l 547 it^{a, (b), c, (d), g1, (k), q}). Similar to this are the readings of the Curetonian Syriac manuscript, “Jacob begot Joseph, him to whom was betrothed Mary the virgin, she who bore Jesus the Christ,” and of the Armenian version, “Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, to whom was betrothed Mary the virgin, from whom was born Jesus who was called Christ.” In the more complete form of the Liber generationis incorporated by Hippolytus in his Chronicle (completed about A.D. 234), the genealogy from Adam to Christ closes with the words Ioseph, cui disponsata fuit uirgo Maria, quae genuit Iesum Christum ex spiritu sancto (ed. by Rudolf Helm, 1955, p. 126; “Joseph, to whom was betrothed the virgin Mary, who [fem.] bore Jesus Christ from the Holy Spirit”).

(3) “Jacob begot Joseph; Joseph, to whom was betrothed Mary the virgin, begot Jesus who is called the Christ,” is attested by the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript.

Other witnesses have sometimes been supposed to support reading (3). Thus, in the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, an anonymous treatise (dating perhaps from the fifth century) ² that presents a debate between a Christian and a Jew, Matthew 1:16 is referred to three times. The third of these is a loose quotation of the commonly received text, VIakw.b de. evge,nnhsen to.n VIwsh.f to.n mnhsteusa,menon Maria,m( evx h-j evgennh,qh o` Cristo.j o` ui`o.j tou/ qeou/ (“And Jacob begot Joseph, who was betrothed to Mary, from whom was born the Christ the Son of God”). <sup>3</sup> The second quotation, which stands at the close of a rapid recapitulation of the genealogy, is VIakw.b de. to.n VIwsh,f( w|- mnhsteuqei/sa Mari,a\ evx h-j evgennh,qh VIhsou/j o` lego,menoj Cristo,j (“And Jacob [begot] Joseph, to whom was betrothed Mary, from whom was born Jesus who is called Christ”). ⁴ The first time that Matthew 1:16 occurs in the Dialogue, the Jew quotes it in exactly the form given in (1) above and then follows it with his own inference, namely kai. VIwsh.f evge,nnhsen to.n VIhsou/n to.n lego,menon Cristo,n( peri. ou- nu/n o` lo,goj( fhsi,n( evge,nnhsen evk th/j Mari,aj (“And [so] Joseph begot Jesus who is called Christ, about whom we are talking, it says, he begot [him] from Mary”). ⁵ Despite the protestations of Conybeare to the contrary, ⁶ it seems clear that these words are not a second citation added to the first, but are a Jewish interpretation of the commonly received text of Matthew 1:16. ⁷

Another witness that is sometimes thought to support the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac is a twelfth century Jacobite Syrian writer, Dionysius Barsalibi, bishop of Amida. Hermann von Soden, for example, cites in his apparatus for Matthew 1:16 the name of Barsalibi as patristic attestation entirely parallel with that of syr^s. The evidence, however, is far from being so clear-cut, as the following account of the principal points will make obvious.

In his Commentary on the Gospels Barsalibi discusses the syntactical difference between the ways in which the Greek and Syriac languages express “from whom” in Matthew 1:16, but both the Greek and the Syriac, he declares, explicitly attest that Jesus was born of Mary and not from Joseph. ⁸ The critical point concerns Barsalibi’s comment on Matthew 1:18, which reads as follows: “Here the manner of his [Jesus’] corporeal birth [the evangelist] teaches. When therefore you hear [the word] ‘husband’ [i.e., in ver. Matthew 1:19], do not think that he was born according to the law of nature — he who had constituted the law of nature. And when it comes to Joseph , and therefore afterwards it says, ‘Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah was thus,’ that is, not as the rest of men was he born, but a new thing is the manner of his birth, and higher than the nature of those who are born.” ⁹ The words cited in Syriac can be translated either (a) “it says, ‘Who begot the Messiah,’” or (b) “it says that he begot the Messiah.” According to rendering (a), Barsalibi appears to be quoting from some manuscript or author, not identified here or elsewhere, whose text of Matthew 1:16 paralleled the reading of the Sinaitic Syriac. On the other hand, according to rendering (b), Barsalibi is making his own summary exposition of Matthew’s account of Joseph’s relation to the Messiah. In either case, however, it is obvious that so far as Barsalibi is concerned he intends his quotation (if it be a quotation) or his summary exposition to be perfectly in accord with his earlier discussion of ver. Matthew 1:16 and his immediately following declaration that Jesus’ birth was unique. In other words, it appears that Barsalibi fully accepted the Peshitta text of ver. Matthew 1:16 (i.e. the reading designated (1) above).

A third witness that has been thought to support the Sinaitic Syriac reading is one manuscript of the Arabic Diatessaron. Although Theodoret explicitly states that Tatian did not utilize the Matthean and Lukan genealogies in his Diatessaron, the mediaeval Arabic Diatessaron does contain them (ms. A includes the Matthean genealogy after I,81, and the Lukan genealogy after IV,29, but mss. B and E give them as an appendix after the close of the Diatessaron). At Matthew 1:16 ms. A, which dates from the twelfth century, reads
, “Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, who [masc.] of her begot Jesus the Messiah.” ¹⁰ (The other two manuscripts employ the correct feminine form, .) That ms. A should in its special reading somehow reflect the text of a Greek manuscript of Matthew 1:16 is, as Burkitt declares, ¹¹ most unlikely. On the contrary it is altogether likely that the use of the masculine who is either a blunder of a careless copyist or the dialectal usage of the masculine relative for the feminine. ¹² If then the relative is corrected, who of her will become of whom (fem.), and the second instance of the verb will be construed as a passive (was born), agreeing with the reading of the Peshitta version. ¹³

There appears to be, therefore, no substantial evidence to add in support of the singular reading of the Sinaitic Syriac (reading (3) above).

What now are the relative merits of the three principal readings?

The external evidence in support of (1) is extremely good: it is read by all known Greek uncial manuscripts except Q, and by all other manuscripts and versions except the limited number that support (2) and (3). Transcriptional probabilities suggest that reading (2) arose (perhaps at Caesarea) because the expression “the husband of Mary” was thought to be misleading in a genealogical context. Lest the hasty reader assume that Jesus was the physical son of Mary and her husband Joseph, the text was altered to bring it into conformity with ver. Matthew 1:18 where the verb mnhsteu,esqai is used to describe the relationship of Mary to Joseph. On the other hand, if reading (2) be supposed to be original, it is exceedingly difficult to imagine why any scribe would have substituted reading (1) for such a clear and unambiguous declaration of the virginity of Mary.

There is no evidence that reading (3) ever existed in a Greek manuscript of the first Gospel. The Committee judged that it arose either as a paraphrase of reading (2) — this was Burkitt’s view — or as a purely mechanical imitation of the preceding pattern in the genealogy. Since every name in the genealogy up to Joseph is written twice in succession, it may be that the scribe of the Sinaitic Syriac (or an ancestor of this manuscript) carelessly followed the stereotyped pattern and in ver. Matthew 1:16, having made the initial mistake of repeating the word “Joseph,” went on to produce reading (3).

² For the text see F. C. Conybeare, The Dialogues of Athanasius and Zacchaeus and of Timothy and Aquila (Oxford. 1898), pp. 65—104, and E. J. Goodspeed, Journal of Biblical Literature, XXV (1905), pp. 58—78. A. Lukyn Williams (Adversus Judaeos [Cambridge, 1935], pp. 67—78) thinks that the main section of the treatise dates from about A.D. 200.

³ Op. cit., p. 88.

⁴ Op. cit., p. 76.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ F. C. Conybeare, “Three Early Doctrinal Modifications of the Text of the Gospels,” Hibbert Journal, I (1902—03), pp. 96—102.

⁷ See also F. Crawford Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, II (Cambridge, 1904), p. 265, and Theodor Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, II (Edinburgh, 1909), p. 565, who agree in taking the words as a Jewish interpretation, and not as a Greek witness supporting the text of the Sinaitic Syriac.

⁸ Dionysius Bar ‚al£b£, Commentarii in Evangelia, ed. by Sedla™ek and Chabot in Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Series Secunda, Tom. XCVIII (Paris, 1906), p. 46, lines 23 ff. (of the Syriac text), and pp. 35 ff. (of the Latin translation). For a discussion of the passage, see Wm. P. Armstrong, “Critical Note ( Matthew 1:16),” Princeton Theological Review, XIII (1915), pp. 461—468.

⁹ Ibid., p. 70, lines 9 ff. (of the Syriac text), and p. 53 (of the Latin translation).

¹⁰ A.-S. Marmardji, Diatessaron de Tatien (Beyrouth, 1935), p. 532.

¹¹ Op. cit., II, p. 265.

¹² So Marmardji, op. cit., p. 533, note.

¹³ For a fuller discussion of the readings, see B. M. Metzger’s contribution to Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature, ed. by David E. Aune (Leiden, 1972), pp. 16—24.