In a previous post, I interacted with, and refuted, Matt Slick’s claim that 1 Cor 4:6 is biblical support for the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. In this post, I will discuss briefly the textual issues relating to this verse.
In his translation of the Bible, James Moffatt rendered the verse thusly:
Now I have applied what has been said and above to myself and Apollos, to teach you . . .
In the corresponding footnote, we read:
The text and the meaning of the phrase between μαθητε and ινα μη are beyond recovery.
Commenting on this verse, Catholic scholar Louis Alonso Schökel wrote:
In St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter IV, Verse 6, we come upon a confusing sentence: “I have applied these things to myself . . . by way of illustration . . .that . . .you may learn not to be puffed up . . . transgressing what is written.” The biblical commentators cannot agree in explaining this sentence and many conjecture that the text was poorly transmitted. In detective-story fashion, they suspect a slight “crime” against the text, a crime of which only vague clues remain . . .The present text reads:
ινα εν υηιμ μαθητε “that in our case you may learn”
το μη υπερ του ενος φυσιουσθε “that no one may be puffed up at another’s expense.”
The scribe neglected to copy the negative, so in his revised text he wrote the negative between lines:
Ινα μαθητε φρονειν “that you may learn to be prudent”
Μη “not”
Ινα εις φυσιουσθε “that one may be puffed up . . .”
The next scribe copied this down correctly, but because he wanted to be perfectly accurate, he noted in the margin that the “not” had been written between the lines over the letter “a” in the word “that”;
Ινα μαθητε φρονειν “that you may learn to be prudent”
Ινα μη εις . . .φυσιουσθε “that no one may be puffed up”
(το μη υπερ α γεγραπται)
(the “no” is written above the “a”)
The next copyist took the marginal note as a genuine addition and incorporated it into the text. In Greek, however, the letter “a” can be the neutral relative pronoun, meaning “that which.” Thus by incorporating the marginal note into the text he effected a change in its meaning:
Ινα μαθητε “that you may learn”
Το μη υπερ α γεγραπται φρονειν “not to know more than what is written”
Ινα μη εις υπερ του ενος φυσιουσθε “that no one may be puffed up at another’s expense.”
Source: Louis Alonso Schökel, Understanding Biblical Research (London: Burns & Oates Limited, 1968), 66-68.
In light of the textual issues about this verse, it is a very slender thread to hang a doctrine such as sola scriptura on. Protestant apologists who attempt to support sola scriptura should be cautious in appealing to this verse, not just in light of the exegetical difficulties, but textual also.
