Why Must You Be Such An Angry Young Man? GMark 1:41 - Was Jesus Angry?

1. Introduction of the Issue

Most Bible translations such as American Standard Version translate Mark 1:41 as follows:

And being moved with compassion, he stretched forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou made clean.

The New International Version though has Mark 1:41:

41 Jesus was indignant.[a] He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 

This difference in using "compassion" vs. "indignant" is due to different Greek words in the supporting evidence. There is actually only one extant Greek Manuscript supporting "indignant". A better translation of the Greek word is "angry". Almost all other Greek Manuscripts have "compassion".

Despite this lopsided Greek Manuscript evidence, Bart Ehrman, generally thought to be one of the top Textual Critics of all time, has argued that "angry" is the more likely original based primarily on The Difficult Reading Principle. This has caused a split in modern Bible scholarship regarding opinion as to which word was more likely original with the majority of modern Bible scholars thinking that both words are serious candidates for originality.

The related issue involves how Jesus' character is described in the Gospels. Overall, Jesus is generally described with positive emotions such as compassion. GMark is different from the other Gospels though in that it is more likely to describe Jesus with negative emotions such as anger. Specifically in GMark though, the narrative always appears to give a plausible reason why Jesus would be angry, except at 1:41.

2. Discussion

                              DJesus Uncrossed


Summary of the argument for Angry:

EXTERNAL =

• Manuscript
  
  • Offensive
    Greek = Bezae. 6th best full witness to GMark. No better witness to GMark for the most difficult readings. 169 505 508 1358 l866 omit.
    
    Latin = ita itd itff2 itr1. itb omit. These are some of the best Latin witnesses.
  • Defensive
    Fits pattern of extremely little quantitative support for very difficult readings. Has the least Manuscript support for perhaps the most difficult reading.

• Patristic
  
  • Offensive
    GMatthew and GLuke omit even though they otherwise copy the story almost word for word. No good reason to exorcise "compassion". GMatthew/GLuke likewise exorcise the closely following two strongly negative emotional words ascribed to Jesus. GMatthew/GLuke only show their Jesus as compassionate and never angry. Diatessaron (Ephraem commentary). Egerton Gospel omit. All of this is the earliest Patristic reaction.

• Authority
  
  • Text Critics
    • Offensive
      Bart Ehrman and other top Textual Critics
      
      Defensive
      Authority is mixed but generally those against are also against other likely original very Difficult Readings

• • Translations
    
    • Offensive
      NIV. NRSV footnote (probably the best translation)
      
      Defensive
      In general most translations have the less likely reading for very Difficult Readings

INTERNAL =

• The Difficult Reading Principle
  
  • Transcriptional
    
    • Offensive
      Very Difficult Reading, especially with the choice between "angry" and "compassion". Possibly the most difficult reading.

• Intrinsic
• Offensive
  The emotion of anger by Jesus frames the Galilean Healing Ministry and is a demonstrated literary technique of "Mark". Undisputed angry Jesus at 3:5. "Mark" never shows Jesus as compassionate during healing. Context also matches as 1:41 & 3:5 both involve the issue of breaking the Ritual Law in order to heal. These stories also frame the six consecutive Conflict stories.

3. Conclusion

While the External evidence quantitatively overwhelmingly supports "compassion", qualitatively its advantage is not overwhelming. The Internal evidence and especially The Difficult Reading Principle strongly favor "anger". Thus from an overall basis "anger" is more likely to be original. This illustrates that a clear manuscript advantage, even if overwhelming, does not necessarily demonstrate a likely original as in the above example where "anger" is only supported by one Greek Manuscript. 

Difficult original readings may have very little Manuscript support and there is likely an inverse relationship between degree of difficulty and Manuscript support and the inverse relationship may be extreme. 

Review of Daniel Wallace Mark 16:8 as the Conclusion to the Second Gospel - Greek Manuscript Evidence

Review of Perspectives on the Ending of Mark
Daniel Wallace - Mark 16:8 as the Conclusion to the Second Gospel - Greek Manuscript Evidence

This review only covers Daniel Wallace's contribution to the book and only his presentation of Greek Manuscript evidence. Wallace is one of two authors in the book who argue that 16:8 is the original ending of GMark. Two other authors in the book argue that 16:20 is the original ending.

I'm only going to review Daniel Wallace because he is considered the top Textual Critic here and I'm also only going to review his presentation of The External evidence category of Manuscripts (and only in the original language Greek) because that is the only category of evidence where supporters of 16:8 as the original ending are traditionally on the defensive. 

Wallace concedes that quantitatively, the overwhelming majority of Manuscripts support 16:9-20 (LE) as original. Most of his related writing then involves the qualitative. Traditional Textual Criticism has the following qualitative attributes for Manuscripts:

1. Age

2. Reputation

3. Independent Confirmation

4. Direction of Change

AGE -
Wallace points out that the two oldest extant manuscripts, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, c. 350, both end at 16:8 (SE). This identifies the advantage of the SE here in absolute terms but Wallace does not go on to measure the advantage in relative terms. GMark was relatively unpopular in the early Church so there are fewer extant early Manuscripts. While Sinaticus and Vaticanus are c. 350, the next earliest relevant Manuscript here is Codex Washingtonianus (W), c. 400. W has an expanded version of the LE so while it does support the LE over the SE it is not absolute support. Next is Codex Alexandrinus, c. 425, Codex Bezae, c. 450 and 3 Codexes c. 550. The next Codex is c. 700. All of these have the LE. 


In comparison then, there are only 2 Manuscripts with the LE that are within 100 years of Sinaticus and Vaticanus and 3 more within 200 years. No others are closer than 350 years. Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were written approximately 250 years after GMark was written while the 3 Codexes written c. 550 were written approximately 450 years after GMark or close to twice as long after compared to Sinaticus and Vaticanus. So while there are thousands of Greek Manuscripts with the LE, there are only 2 of these that compare with Sinaiticus and Vaticanus as to age and only 5 total that are within 350 years. So in terms of Age only, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are a significant percent of the early Greek Manuscripts here.

REPUTATION -
Wallace notes the following qualitative advantages of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus based on reputation:

1) Alexandrian Text-type which Bible scholarship generally thinks is the highest quality Text-type.

2) Earlier papyri support the Alexandrian Text-type over other Text-types. 

Wallace does spend too much time in general trying to establish the Sinaiticus/Vaticanus text as a second century text. The lack of quality evidence to support makes his arguments speculative. Likewise speculative is his attempt to make P75, an early papyri, some type of witness to SE, because even though it lacks the end of GMark it supports Vaticanus in general. He also spends too much effort trying to defend against the spaces after the SE in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. The related scribes may very well have not only been aware of endings to GMark other than the SE since Eusebius famously identified the LE long before and a few Patristics before also appear to have quoted it, but actually intended the blank spaces to be an invitation to add an ending. This is even better evidence against the LE than no space as it is evidence of attitude. An acknowledgement that the exemplars/tradition is SE but it would be acceptable to add an ending. Same as with the Age attribute, Wallace should have spent more time trying to measure the relative advantage of the witness for SE as to Reputation.

Nestle-Aland (NA) is the most popular critical apparatus for Textual Criticism. NA rates Sinaiticus and Vaticanus as Category 1 witnesses in general, the highest rating. No other witness to the end of GMark has a Category 1 rating. For other witness to the end of GMark, the next highest rated witness is Codex Regius, c. 700, with a Category 2 rating. Codex Regius has a separation after 16:8 and indicates that most earlier manuscripts ended at 16:8. It then provides an Intermediate ending followed by the Long Ending. Because of this Text Critical commentary it not only provides better witness for the SE than the LE but since it is referring to multiple known Manuscripts and not just a decision relating to one Manuscript, it is a witness with scope. No other witness to the end of GMark has a Category 2 rating. Thus the top 3 witnesses by reputation all support the SE.

The next highest rated witness, at Category 3, is Codex Washingtonianus, which as previously mentioned, has an expanded version of the LE. The only other Category 3 witness here is Codex Alexandrinus which is the highest rated witness to have absolute support for the LE. There is only 1 witness to the LE with a Category 4 rating and only 3 with a category 5 rating. In summary, the top 4 rated witnesses by reputation all either support SE or lack absolute support for the LE and of the thousands of Manuscripts with the LE only 5 have absolute support and at least a Category 5 rating. So the qualitative advantage for SE by Reputation is even larger than the qualitative advantage for SE by Age.

INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION -
The primary criticism by proponents of the LE against the quality Manuscript evidence for SE is that the Sinaticus and Vaticanus witness lacks independent confirmation because both are the same text-type and similar time period indicating a geographical relationship. While not directly noting that it is a criticism Wallace defends against at the larger Category level by demonstrating that among the Manuscript Versions and Patristic categories there is support for the SE among all text-types. 

Again, Wallace does not directly defend, but does provide a defense even at the Greek manuscript level, without noting as such, by pointing out that some later Greek Manuscripts indicate varying levels of evidential support for the SE by either an explicit note or likely text critical symbol at/by 16:8. Most of these Manuscripts are Byzantine text-type, the bulk of the thousands of Manuscripts with the LE.

DIRECTION OF CHANGE -
The key underlying question when there are two candidates for original, is the Direction of Change question. What is the evidence indicating the direction of change? Direct evidence is especially valuable. Good indirect evidence also has weight. Again, Wallace repeatedly asks this question throughout but does not formally summarize the related evidence in one place.

1) As noted earlier the earliest extant manuscripts, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, both have the SE. Clearly the earlier extant candidate is evidence of change from it and here the measurement is the maximum, not just earlier but earliest. 

2) Regarding the blank space following GMark in Sinaiticus and the blank space following the Gospels in Vaticanus, Wallace is on the defensive arguing that these spaces are unreMarkable and not necessarily evidence that the Copyist was aware of and considered adding the LE. It's reasonable though to think that at a minimum the blank space in Vaticanus was just such evidence as there are only a few such spaces in Vaticanus and the ending of GMark issue was already famously identified by Eusebius about fifty years earlier. So to have such a space exactly there seems like more than a coincidence. 

The blank space then is an invitation to add an ending by the user or at least related notes that there are existing endings. This in fact was Eusebius' attitude. The exemplars, in quality and quantity, had 16:8, but it was acceptable to add/use 16:9-20. Good indirect evidence for Direction of Change. The exemplars, tradition and Scribes had 16:8 as original but it was acceptable to change to the LE.

3) Wallace does a good job identifying another ending to GMark, The Intermediate Ending (IE) and explaing how the related evidence, within the Manuscript category, indicates the IE was generally earlier in the textual tradition than the LE

4) Wallace also does a good job identifying and explaining Scribal notes that indicate either the SE was in earlier Manuscripts or at least there is textual variation for the ending of GMark.

5) Wallace does not formally conclude with the consistency of the evidence for Direction of Change. The above indicate that all related evidence for Direction of Change indicates change from the SE and to the LE. There is no related evidence for change in the other direction.

6) Likewise Wallace does not formally recognize the coordination of the Manuscript evidence with the other categories of evidence:

1. The Difficult Reading Principle makes it more likely at the start that the SE was original.

2. The Patristic category with Eusebius and Jerome provides not only support for SE but evidence of the timing of Change. C. 300-400 the SE dominates in every way, confirmed with Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, the only extant Manuscripts for that time, but Patristic attitude is that it is acceptable or even preferable to change to LE. This also helps explain the rarity of Manuscripts with the SE. They were not wanted by subsequent Christianity.

3. The Manuscript tradition becomes exclusively LE but refers to earlier manuscripts that have SE.

CONCLUSION
Wallace does a very good job of identifying and explaining in detail the basic evidence supporting the SE as likely original. The criticism of Wallace and where he could have done an even better job is:

1) Wallace should have made more of an effort measuring the relative qualitative advantage of the SE.

2) Wallace' presentation of The Direction of Change issue should have been more formal and better summarized.

3) Likewise Wallace could have done a better job regarding the Consistency and Coordination categories. 

Wallace defends well against the huge quantitative advantage of the Manuscript evidence for LE, but the defensive evidence available is even better than what Wallace presents. 

Review of Fundamentals of New Testament Textual Criticism by Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts

Review of Fundamentals of New Testament Textual Criticism

by Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts (PP).

This review is from a Skeptical Textual Criticism standpoint and only covers PP’s coverage of identifying and weighing External evidence which in their Kindle version starts at Location 2250 Chapter 8 Methodology (2) Weighing External Evidence.

PP identifies their related objective as follows:

“In this and the following two chapters, we will outline a (not necessarily the) method for working through variant readings in an attempt to recover the original text of the NT based roughly on the reasoned eclecticism method laid out in the previous chapter.”

As a Skeptic understand that the method PP presents is the method for Traditional Textual Criticism (TTC), the historical and currently dominant position, but not the Skeptical method. As PP presents their methodology the implication is usually that what they are presenting is what they consider to be the most common and what they recommend.

In the big picture PP writes:

“External evidence, most textual critics agree, should take priority in making text-critical judgments, because it is the most objective tangible evidence that we have for the textual history of the NT.”

A fair statement for TTC but Skeptical Textual Criticism (STC) would flip priority to Internal evidence. Specifically, PP lists the following criteria for External evidence:

1) Date combined with Text-type

2) Geographical distribution

3) Genealogical relationship

Another fair description of TTC and this time also a fair description of the current state of STC. But, STC is relatively new and therefore its methodology is relatively undeveloped and informal compared to TTC’s.

A good methodology to compare TTC’s methodology to would be the English legal system. The following criteria should be added: 

1 - Credibility of source

A - General = Considered in TTC for Manuscripts (Age & Text type). Not generally considered for Patristics. Patristics that exhibit Textual Criticism outlook and critical thinking such as Origen, Eusebius and Jerome, should have more credibility (relative to Patristics). Others with more errors per line and more conclusion oriented like Irenaeus should have less.

B - Specific - variation present? = For the Patristic that presents variation in witness, credibility is less for that specific issue.

2 - Explanatory power

A - Direction (of change) = Considered by TTC for Internal evidence but not so much for External evidence even though it is the single most important question of Textual Criticism. When manuscripts/Patristics have extant evidence of editing/related indications this goes beyond "what" to "when", "how" and "why".

B - Coordination/Consistency with other evidence = Again, TTC considers for Internal evidence, not so much for External. Does the specific "what" witness coordinate with the "what", "when", "how" and "why" witness of other categories of evidence.

3 - Applicability (to the Textual Criticism issue)

A - Scope of the evidence. Group versus individual reference. For Patristics, witness with a context of Textual Criticism has exponentially more weight than witness without.

B - Directness. Explicit or implicit. = TTC tends to round up or down with implications. Implications should be weighted in between Explicit and nothing.

Regarding categories of external evidence PP writes:

“Besides the biblical manuscripts, we also have other Greek manuscript evidence that does not play a direct role in textual criticism but that we should at least recognize and take into account as appropriate. The most important of this evidence is some of the quotations found in some of the early church fathers”

By indicating that Patristic evidence is secondary to Manuscript evidence in the external category PP understates the value of Patristic evidence even in TTC as TTC does favor the Manuscript as to quantity but not quality. STC is flipped with Patristic evidence favored over Manuscript when there is a minimum of Patristic evidence.

In summary then, the presentation of External evidence methodology in Fundamentals of New Testament Textual Criticism is a reasonable presentation of Traditional Textual Criticism with the main criticism being that it has improperly identified Patristic evidence as overly secondary to Manuscript evidence. The complaint is that because the scope of the book is only trying to present Traditional Textual Criticism, the Skeptical reader would not know based on the book that:

1   1) In general Skeptical Textual Criticism has a significantly different methodology with a major difference being the priority of Internal evidence.

2   2) Specifically there are good criteria such as Credibility, Explanation and Applicability that are generally not included in Textual Criticism leading to over emphasis of quantity of Manuscripts.