Steven Carr

Nowhere in the OT does it suggest that David may have had a small escort with him. Presumably his escort was also hiding in a field with him, before he fled.

And why would the leader of a small group of men have to feign madness as David did? That must have embarrassed his followers.

http://www.theskepticalreview.com/men/withdavid.html has more on this if you are interested

Peter Kirby

Yuri,

Thank you for this thoughtful post. It is unfortunate that noone has engaged you on the textual criticism of this passage.

It's a little late, so I'll dedicate this post to the evidence of Bezae alone.

I noticed with interest that D (Bezae) contains the phrase, since it is a manuscript that I value considerably. Unfortunately, when I looked into the matter a bit more, it looks to me as though the manuscript of Bezae is "defective" (though not physically) at this point--that Bezae does not preserve a different reading but rather has omitted the phrase from its ancestor.

It appears from independent evidence that the exemplar (or ancestor) of Bezae is a manuscript with an 10 to 12 letter column width. This explains the many omissions at the end of a stichos in Bezae (manuscript line based on sense or verse) that fall into the range of 10-11, 20-22, 30-32, 40-42, etc. For example:

10 letters in Mt 5:11
11 letters in Jn 8:34
20 letters in Mt 11:5
20 letters in Lk 24:6
21 letters in Mt 12:20
31 letters in Mt 19:9
42 letters in Mt 10:37
60 letters in Mt 11:34
70 letters in Mk 9:35

These are all easily explained by the scribe omitting a line or several lines by skipping over them when being read.

Here is Mark 2:26 in UBS3:

πῶς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ θεοῦ á¼?πὶ ἈβιαθὰÏ? á¼€Ï?χιεÏ?έωσ καὶ τοὺς ἄÏ?τους τῆς Ï€Ï?οθέσεωσ ἔφαγεν οὓς οὔκ ἔξεστιν φαγεῖν εἴ μὴ τοὺς ἱεÏ?εῖς καὶ ἔδωκεν καὶ τοῖς σὺν αá½?Ï„á¿· οὖσιν

Here is part of Mark 2:26 as it is found in Bezae (compared against the photographs, spaces not in the original, and spelling corrected):

ΚΑΙ ΤΟΥΣ ΑΡΤΟΥΣ ΤΗΣ âˆ?ΡΟΘΕΣΕΩΣ ΕΦΑΓΕÎ?
ΚΑΙ ΕΔΩΚΕÎ? ΤΟΙΣ MET ΑΥΤΟ ΟΥΣΙÎ?
ΟΥΣ ΟΥΚ ΕΞΕΣΤΙÎ? ΦΑΓΕΙÎ? ΕΙ ΜΗ ΤΟΙÎ?
ΙΕΡΕΥΣΙ

Note that Bezae has META (MET') rather than ΣΥÎ?, but they are both prepositions meaning "along with."

Here's what that looks like when broken into lines of 10-12 letters. Note that a suspension bar is used for the final nu, such as at the end of a word or, more often, a line.

(10) ΚΑΙΤΟΥΣΑΡT
(10) ΟΥΣΤΗΣ�ΡΟΣ
(11) ΘΕΣΕΩΣΕΦΑΓΕ
(12) ΚΑΙΕΔΩΚΕΤΟΙΣ
(11) METΑΥΤΟΟΥΣΙ
(12) ΟΥΣΟΥΚΕΞΕΣΤΙ
(10) ΦΑΓΕΙÎ?ΕΙΜΗ
(11) ΤΟΙÎ?ΙΕΡΕΥΣΙ

That this division is correct is suggested, not only by the following, but also by the misspelling �ΡΟΘΕΣΕΩΣ in Bezae as �ΡΟΣΘΕΣΕΩΣ. The extra sigma in the exemplar (copied over into Bezae) brings the count of each line above 10. (What possibly happened in the exemplar is an accidental addition of the letter at the end of the line because of its similarity to the very common word �ΡΟΣ.)

From the sense of the words, one knows that there has clearly been a collocation that is wrong. Bezae puts ΚΑΙΕΔΩΚΕ...ΟΥΣΙ before ΟΥΣ...ΙΕΡΕΥΣΙ, while it should be the reverse, as follows:

(10) ΚΑΙΤΟΥΣΑΡT
(10) ΟΥΣΤΗΣ�ΡΟΣ
(11) ΘΕΣΕΩΣΕΦΑΓΕ
(12) ΟΥΣΟΥΚΕΞΕΣΤΙ
(10) ΦΑΓΕΙÎ?ΕΙΜΗ
(11) ΤΟΙÎ?ΙΕΡΕΥΣΙ
(12) ΚΑΙΕΔΩΚΕΤΟΙΣ
(11) ΣΥÎ?ΑΥΤΟΟΥΣΙ

That the collocation falls along the proposed line divisions of the exemplar is even better evidence that the division is correct.

Now looking also at the earlier part of the verse, with which we are more concerned:

(11) AUTOUPOSΕΙΣ
(11) ΗΛΘΕÎ?ΕΙΣΤΟΥ
(10) ΟΙΚΟÎ?ΤΟΥΘΥ
(10) ΚΑΙΤΟΥΣΑΡT
(10) ΟΥΣΤΗΣ�ΡΟΣ
(11) ΘΕΣΕΩΣΕΦΑΓΕ
(12) ΟΥΣΟΥΚΕΞΕΣΤΙ
(10) ΦΑΓΕΙÎ?ΕΙΜΗ
(11) ΤΟΙÎ?ΙΕΡΕΥΣΙ
(12) ΚΑΙΕΔΩΚΕΤΟΙΣ
(11) ΣΥÎ?ΑΥΤΟΟΥΣΙ

Notice that the line ends with ΘΥ (Theo, God) in both Bezae (at the end of a stichos) and in the proposed line division of the exemplar. Notice that the line division used for discerning the collocation is the same as that used in the first part of the verse. Notice that the Abiathar phrase comes right between these lines. And notice that the Abiathar phrase is exactly 22 characters long:

(11) Ε�ΙΑΒΙΑΘΑΡΤ
(11) ΟΥΑΡΧΙΕΡΕΩΣ

So we find that the following is the exemplar:

(11) AUTOUPOSΕΙΣ
(11) ΗΛΘΕÎ?ΕΙΣΤΟΥ
(10) ΟΙΚΟÎ?ΤΟΥΘΥ
(11) Ε�ΙΑΒΙΑΘΑΡΤ
(11) ΟΥΑΡΧΙΕΡΕΩΣ
(10) ΚΑΙΤΟΥΣΑΡT
(10) ΟΥΣΤΗΣ�ΡΟΣ
(11) ΘΕΣΕΩΣΕΦΑΓΕ
(12) ΟΥΣΟΥΚΕΞΕΣΤΙ
(10) ΦΑΓΕΙÎ?ΕΙΜΗ
(11) ΤΟΙÎ?ΙΕΡΕΥΣΙ
(12) ΚΑΙΕΔΩΚΕΤΟΙΣ
(11) ΣΥÎ?ΑΥΤΟΟΥΣΙ

Notice one more thing, which I didn't notice until just now. The easiest explanation for the two skipped lines is that the third line (ΚΑΙΤΟΥΣΑΡT) ends with exactly the same three letters as the first line (Ε�ΙΑΒΙΑΘΑΡΤ). The scribe of Bezae most evidently came to the end of his own stichos, looked away remembering that the next line ended with ART, and then looked back and picked up two lines down, which elso ends with ART.

The last of the cinchers comes in the following verse. After 11 characters in place of verse 27 (and the first word of 28) comes kurios estin.... The omitted letters add up to 55. So, at the end of the above reconstruction of the exemplar, comes eleven characters, then a jump of 55 characters (omitted verse 27 and first word of 28), and then "Lord" in verse 28. This shows a consistent average of 11 letters per line in the exemplar. This coheres with everything we've discovered above about verse 26 and Bezae.

So, Bezae has omitted the Abiathar phrase by accident. Q.E.D.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

For "I noticed with interest that D (Bezae) contains the phrase," read "I noticed with interest that D (Bezae) does not contain the phrase."

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

StaticAge

Its suggested right there when David says he has men with him. Is there any scripture in the OT that confirms your suspicion that he was lying?

David had one sword and what must have been a very small group of men- perhaps 3-5 from the amount of bread he asked for. The Phillistines had created a weapons shortage in Isreal for some time (1Sam 13:19-22). So maybe embarrassment was better suited for David than death?

I am, but the site just keeps "loading..." until it says it timed out.

S.C.Carlson

I'm not sure I would agree as to where the phrase was omitted, but the reason is plausible enough. On your Christian Origins blog you've noted that the phrase is missing from D W 1009 1546*, a b d e ff2 i r1 t (Old Latins), and syr(s) some syr(pal).

These, especially, the Old Latins, are the closest relatives to D. If they are missing the phrase and D is missing the phrase, the most parsimonious explanation is that their most recent common archetype was also missing the phrase.

In my SBL 2004 paper, "The Origin(s) of the 'Caesarean' Text" I present a stemma (a proposed genealogy) for manuscripts of Mark based on the section 6:45-8:26. If this stemma holds up for the rest of Mark, I would suggest that the omission for the phrase in the lineage that led to D probably occurred in the archetype of the Western text (node [42] in FIG. 6, labeled δ), not by D's scribe.

Peter Kirby

Stephen, do you know whether any of the other witnesses that omit the Abiathar phrase also have the same collocation as that found in the latter part of Bezae's Mk 2:26? Or, how could I find out?

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Steven Carr

He was lying. He was not on a mission from Saul.

And when David sees the King of Gath, the king only talks about him, apparently unaware that there are quite a few men being led by this seeming madman.

But perhaps you can find a text which implies that David had men with him.

Later , David really does meet some people and after that the Bible talks a lot about the men with David.

But nowhere during the episode from David hiding in a field , lying about being on a mission from Saul with some men, fleeing etc, is there a hint that David had some men with him and was not altogether lying to the priest.

S.C.Carlson

If you want to know what the Old Latins read, then Jülicher's Itala is a good place to start. But, if you want to know how the letters are arranged in columns, I suppose that you'll have to look at the individual editions of them.

At any rate, D. C. Parker's study of Codex Bezae indicates that D's immediate exemplar used short sense lines. Since your collocations are not sense lines (because they break in the middle of word), your reconstructions would have to go back further than D's immediate parent.

John Kesler

The server is down, but you can view the cached version of the article here.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Thank you, StaticAge.

Do you mean that "The New World Translation" does note this Western/Peripheral variant for Mk 2:26 in a footnote?

If so, I stand corrected on this point.

"The New World Translation" is produced by the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Well, I guess such a translation is possible, although there seems to be a bit of a stretch...

Regards,

Yuri.