hatsoff

The editors of the NET Bible, among them Dan Wallace, write in their notes to Matt 28:19:

Although some scholars have denied that the trinitarian baptismal formula in the Great Commission was a part of the original text of Matthew, there is no ms support for their contention. F. C. Conybeare, "The Eusebian Form of the Text of Mt. 28:19," ZNW 2 (1901): 275-88, based his view on a faulty reading of Eusebius’ quotations of this text. The shorter reading has also been accepted, on other grounds, by a few other scholars. For discussion (and refutation of the conjecture that removes this baptismal formula), see B. J. Hubbard, The Matthean Redaction of a Primitive Apostolic Commissioning (SBLDS 19), 163-64, 167-75; and Jane Schaberg, The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (SBLDS 61), 27-29.

The immediate question, of course, is, what was the faulty reading, and why was it faulty? Unfortunately, I do not have access to the two books recommended. Further, I do not know what "ZNW 2" stands for, and no search of "Conybeare" yields helpful results. So I took to searching JSTOR, and the first hit on the subject, G.H. Gilbert, had this to say:

There is a court of last appeal before which the genuineness of the baptismal formula in Matt. 28:19 has not yet been brought. Mr. Conybeare showed in the Hibbert Journal for I903, pp. I02-8, that there is important external evidence against the existence of this formula in manuscripts current before the time of Eusebius...

What is this "important external evidence," exactly? Is it just the quotations of Matt 28:19 in Eusebius' volumes?

I found a few more relevant comments in the scholarly literature casting doubt on the authenticity of the formula. However, my university server decided to flake out during the writing of this post, so I cannot quote them at the moment. For now, suffice it to say that the majority of the discussions I found concluded that the baptismal formula is a later addition to the text of Matthew.

Yet this seems extremely strange. If there are no extant manuscripts of Mt 28:19 lacking the formula, certainly its authenticity is at best uncertain! Moreover, the Didache and Tertullian both quote this formula, I am told, which improves the case for its genuineness all the more.

Any thoughts?

God Fearing Atheist

ZNW = Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft.

I'll try to ILL a PDF of the paper for you.

Toto

This religious essay quotes Conybeare and the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics:

The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Paul F. Bradshaw on google books page 60: Of course, for most of us at this site, the "risen Lord" is a myth and did not say anything, so this passage is inauthentic to start off with.

ETA: There is more discussion at The Lord’s Command to Baptize: Part II A Disputed Ending of a Gospel

DCHindley

When you simply see initials like that in a source citation, especially followed by a number, it is usually a Journal of some kind. Z = "Zeitschrift."

The reasoning behind the suspicion that a phrase or sentence/paragraph is later than the rest of a text is generally the same as that used to question the Pauline pastoral letters on the basis that the church organization seems more developed than it "should be" for Paul's time. Other books of the NT and early Christian literature doesn't use trinitarian formulae or attribute universalist missionary language to Jesus until the late 2nd century AD.

Of course, one is free to question whether these ideas weren't known in early Christian circles but simply unexpressed in the early published literature of the sect.

There is also the issue of how the NT books came to be published. The process may involve a certain amount of editing or redacting, either to polish something up or update it to reflect the theology or historical understandings current at time of publication.

Not only can things get added, but things get deleted as well, for any number of reasons.

Dan Wallace is an extreme Christian conservative, but he knows his Greek NT like the back of his hand. See for yourself:
http://www.bible.org/author.php?author_id=1

DCH

andrewcriddle

For Conybeare's Article see
Conybeare

Andrew Criddle

hatsoff

Thanks very much for the replies, guys. Thanks especially to the fellow who sent me a pdf of the Conybeare article.

It looks to me like Conybeare and others have simply exaggerated the importance of the quotations in Eusebius.

I would like to verify that the trinitarian formula is present in Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and P67, the oldest Greek mss. of the passage known to me. Hopefully I can track down facsimilies and/or translations of these mss.

show_no_mercy

It does seem weird that at one point in that gospel, Jesus would say that he only came to the "lost sheep of Israel" and when he sends out his disciples to preach the coming of the kingdom of heaven, he says not go into any Gentile/Samaritan towns - and then at the end of this same gospel he does a 180 and tells his disciples to make disciples of "all nations".