andrewcriddle

Apart from the textual uncertainty in Mark 9:19 (where the Caesarean text harmonizes Mark to the other synoptics) it may be worth noting that Merk lists weak Old Latin and Western Diatessaronic support for omitting 'perverse' in Luke 9:41 (e and the Venetian Diatessaron)

Andrew Criddle

hatsoff

Please note I'm having trouble with Greek fonts in Ubuntu, so please bear with me...

Matthew 17:17a
apokriqeiv de o Ihsouv eipen, W genea apistov kai diestrammenh, ewv pote meq' umwn esomai?

Luke 9:41a
apokriqeiv de o Ihsouv eipen, W genea apistov kai diestrammenh, ewv pote esomai prov umav kai anecomai umwn?

Mark 9:19a
o de apokriqeiv autoiv legei, W genea apistov, ewv pote prov umav esomai?

Part of the problem here is that the agreement against Mark is in two adjacent places, as shown in the text above. In Adv. Marc. IV.XXIII, Tertullian only gives us the last half of the passage in question, but it does not match with the text of Luke:

“O faithless generation! how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?”
--Marcion/Tertullian, tr. Peter Holmes

“O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you and bear with you?”
--Luke, NKJV

“O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?”
--Matthew, NKJV

“O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?”
--Mark, NKJV

We'd obviously need to look at the original Greek to be sure, but it seems that either Tertullian or Marcion through Tertullian was quoting Mark, not Luke. Supposedly the passage appears also in Epiphanius' Panarion 42, and it may, unlike Adv. Marc., contain the preface, "apokriqeiv de o Ihsouv eipen." Yet I have no access to the work in question, either in Greek or English.

If Adv. Marc. IV.XXIII was quoting Marcion accurately, who in turn quoted Luke accurately, and if the English translations given above are sufficiently reflective of the original Greek, then it means that "O faithless generation" was changed by scribes to "O faithless and perverse generation" to harmonize with Matthew, and that "how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear with you?" was changed to "how long shall I be with you and bear with you?" for an entirely unknown reason. Or it could be that Marcion or Tertullian altered Luke or Marcion to read as Mark did. It seems to me that the latter is much more likely than the former, and that the agreements by Matthew and Luke against Mark were present in the autographs.

Another strike against 2SH.

andrewcriddle

There is quite a bit of manuscript evidence (mostly Caesarean) for reading EWS POTE for the 2nd KAI in Luke 9 :41a maybe Marcion was using a text of Luke like that as the basis of his edition of Luke.

Andrew Criddle

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Andrew!

Yes, there's some textual uncertainty in Mark 9:19, as you noted. And it's interesting that Marcion here seems to cite Mk rather than Lk. But, in my view, he actually cites an earlier version of Lk, that is still preserved in Mk 9:19, as well as in some old MSS of Lk (as you note below).

Aland's SQE actually also adds Old Latin MS 'a' here. So it's two important Old Latin MSS, rather than one!

And the testimony of the Venetian Diatessaron is certainly quite remarkable here, because we may assume that its editor didn't see 'perverse' in _any_ of the Synoptics in this passage!

I wouldn't be surprised if a perusal of more Diatessarons may reveal some additional support for this reading (Merk often omits a lot of such stuff)...

This passage confirms my earlier work on the 'Gentle Jesus' theme (the thesis that, in the earliest gospels, Jesus was generally a gentler and kinder figure).

In fact, I believe that this whole brief outburst by Jesus, which seems entirely unprovoked, was added later -- but in stages, rather than all in one piece. And we can still see various stages of this accretion in the old manuscripts of Lk and Mk.

All the best,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Yes, it seems that Lk was later changed to harmonize with Matthew.

Just general embellishment...

Not so likely IMHO.

Well, agreements by Matthew and Luke against Mark are dime a dozen... But in this case, the situation seems a lot more complicated than usual. See my reply to Andrew.

Best,

Yuri.