I am about ready to wrap up my discussion of the textual problem of 1 Thessalonians 2:7. When recalling his time with the Thessalonians, when he had worked hard not to be a burden with any of them, did Paul indicate that he and his missionary companions had become “as infants, as a nurse tending her children” or that they had become “gentle, as a nurse tending her children.” It is not an obvious decision, whether you think the change was made accidentally or on purpose. (If you think it *is* obvious, look at the preceding two posts). It seems like it might go either way. I myself have an opinion on the matter (textual scholars tend to have opinions); but I”ll hold off on that for a minute.
First: some of you might be wondering: which of these readings do the best surviving manuscripts actually suggest? Is one of the readings (“infants” or “gentle”) better attested than the other? Which reading do our oldest and best manuscripts have?
Here, as it turns out, the answer is fairly straightforward and clear, and the irony (at least for me) is that the reading with the best manuscript support happens to be the one that I think is less likely to be original. Without a doubt, the reading “infants” (NhPIOI — pronounced nape-ioi) is the better attested reading. We have five manuscripts of this passage that date from around the year 400 or earlier. (These are our five earliest manuscripts. And they include all of our very best manuscripts.) All of them read “infants.” One of these is the only papyrus manuscript we have, P65, from the third century, along with the fourth century manuscripts Vaticanus and Sinaiticus (all in all, our two best complete manuscripts). On the other hand, the first attestation of “gentle” is from the fifth century (codex Alexandrinus).
This is important evidence. Even more interesting, though, is…
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Ah, fun. Now we get the meat of the matter–the textual variants that involve Christ. I was reading The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture last night. I fell asleep–had a difficult physical day doing yard work, cleaning out the garage, etc. But the book is amazing. I cannot believe what you have done! Awesome!
Dr. Ehrman.
First of all, thanks for going in depth with topics like this. This is precisely what makes me appreciate your blog. I appreciate you sharing academic discussions like this with us Internet junkies(ha ha).
I have developed a theory of myself that Christology is a kind of Midrash or Pesher from the OT (yes I’m a Internet junkie). But surprisingly enough, it appears that this latest information complies surprisingly well with my thesis.
I think Paul originally wrote “infants”. Why? Well, first of all look at the name “Paul”. “Paul” meant “small” or “humble” in Latin. His name has the same meaning as the property he gives himself in Tess. 2.7. It is true that Paul gives the term “child” a negative connotation, but he also has a negative view of his own past – The time when he persecuted Christians. “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”
What remains is to identify this Paul as one of the prophets. And I think I know who he is.
Look what the patriarch Benjamin writes in his testament( From The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs)
11 1 And I shall no longer be called a ravening wolf on account of your ravages, but [a worker of the Lord, distributing food to them that work what is good. 2 And there shall rise up from my seed in the latter times one] beloved of the Lord, [hearing upon the earth His voice] and a doer of the good pleasure of His will, [enlightening with new knowledge all the Gentiles, even the light of knowledge, bursting in upon Israel for salvation and tearing away from them like a wolf, and giving to the synagogue of the Gentiles. 3 Until the consummation of the age shall he be in the synagogues of the Gentiles, and among their 4 rulers, as a strain of music in the mouth of all. And he shall be inscribed in the holy books, both 5 his work and his word, and he shall be a chosen one of God for ever. And through them he shall go to and from as Jacob my father, saying: He shall fill up that which lacketh of thy tribe].
This, I think, is a reference to this later coming Paul of Benjamin tribe in OT.
I guess it is only fair to clarify whom in the OT I believe “Paul” is supposed to be synonymous with. My guess is that “Paul”, in a form of Pesher, was Micah – the prophet.
From Micah 7:
8 Do not gloat over me(Micah), my enemy!
Though I have fallen, I will rise.
Though I sit in darkness,
the Lord will be my light.
9 Because I have sinned against him,
I will bear the Lord’s wrath,
until he pleads my case
and upholds my cause.
He will bring me out into the light;
I will see his righteousness.
This was Micah complaining about his fate, but it sounds familiar. It could equally well have been Paul.
Was Micah of Benjamin tribe? It depends on how one reads the Bible. Mephibosheth had a young son(an infant?) named Micah. Mephibosheth was son of Jonathan, who again was a son of Saul – and Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin. Everything depends on reading with Pesher glasses.
Paul becomes an adult in the meeting with Ananias. This is a theological development(Pesher) of Micah meeting with King Ahab in 1 kings 22 / 2 Chron 18.
Ananias is Ahab
Sapphira is Jezebel
Tertullus is Zedekiah
OK, so how exactly did they “erase” a letter in a hand-written manuscript? Put a line through it? Scrape it off? Blot it out with some early WhiteOut equivalent?
Yes, normally by scraping/rubbing it out.
“On the other hand, there are NO early corrections in the other direction, no early instances in which a text read hPIOI (gentle) and a later scribe “corrected” it to NhPIOI (gentile).”
you mean infants?
Yup!
Given the evidence that Paul intended gentle and also the external evidence in favor of infant and the scribal preference to change infant to gentle, why do you conclude that the original text read gentle instead of concluding that the amanuensis misheard Paul? That seems to me to be the theory that best matches the evidence.
If he misheard Paul, it is not clear which way he misheard him!
Yes it is! As you argue in this post the evidence is strong that Paul *said* hPIOI. All of your points 1-3 are about what Paul would have intended, and none of them are about what was actually written. Conversely, all the arguments for NhPIOI are about the written texts and their history and not about what Paul would have intended.
Yes, that’s because I think it’s unlikely he would have called himself an infant, given the negative connotations to the term in the other places he uses it.
Another extraneous question … do you receive “hate” mail? Given all of the bullying I sometimes see online, I was wondering.
Yes, on occasion!
Hi!
Is it right that there was no punctuation in ancient Greek writings? Wouldn’t the lack of punctuation make everything even harder to be elucidated given the fact the a period (.) may change completely the meaning of a passage? If this is so, how do scholars decide where one sentence ends and another one begins?
Thanks!
Yes indeed! And there are some passages where it really matters. Maybe I’ll say something on this in a later post.