In Mark
13:32, we read:
But of that day or hour no one knows, not
even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone (οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, εἰ μὴ
ὁ πατήρ). (NASB)
The parallel
in Matt 24:36 reads, in certain manuscripts, a bit differently:
But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no,
not the angels of heaven, but my Father only (εἰ μὴ ὁ πατὴρ μόνος). (KJV)
Some (e.g.,
Bart Ehrman) have argued that the change in Matthew was made by proto-Orthodox
scribes to answer early Christological heresies which downplayed the deity of
Jesus due to his not knowing something (i.e., the time of his coming in glory [Parousia]). Daniel Wallace has
challenged this, arguing that this is original to Matthew himself.
Notwithstanding , even accepting for the evidence he presents, such a text
proves to be problematic to Trinitarian Christologies, as Matthew has the
person of the Father alone (μονος) knowing, at the time of Jesus’
mortal ministry, of knowing this. As Wallace writes:
It is well known that where Mark’s
Christology raises questions, Matthew’s gives answers. The reason for such
revisions are often assumed to be out of concern that Mark’s Christology was
defective and not in keeping with the church’s high view of Christ in the late
first century. But, as Moule has pointed out, “it still seems a plausible
assumption that successive redactors should tend (however dangerously docetic
it may be) to show Christ as in full control of circumstances and without
weakness or ignorance (Moule, “Review of Peter Head, Christology and the Synoptic Problem,” 741) . . . An examination of
all the parallels between Matthew and Mark reveals that Matthew never seems to
display a lower Christology when it comes to Jesus’s holiness, volition, power,
knowledge, emotions, the disciples’ derived authority from Jesus or worship of
Jesus—unless Matthew 24:36 is the lone
exception.
How would it be the lone exception? By adding
“not the son,” this verse is almost verbatim what Jesus says in Mark 13:32 except in one significant point: Matthew adds
μονος to “except the Father,” thus doubly underscoring the Father’s
exclusive knowledge of the time of these eschatological events. Without the μονος, Matthew’s Christology would be
identical to Mark’s in this place. By omitting ουδε ο υιος but adding μονος to his revision of Mark, Matthew’s Jesus is implicitly stating what
Mark’s Jesus explicitly says. The μονος preserves Matthew’s high Christology without
altering the basic point that Markan Jesus is making. Only the omission of “nor the Son” in Matthew
24:36 reflects Matthew’s editorial strategy, while adding it is contrary to all
that we know of his Christological redactions . . .Although most exegetes today
would argue that early copyists excised “nor the Son” from Matthew 24:36, an
examination of the internal evidence and redactional motifs paints a different
picture. It is Matthew rather than the scribes who eliminates the phrase while adding μονος to the Father’s knowledge. (Daniel B. Wallace, “Textual
Criticism and the Criterion of Embarrassment” in Darrell L. Bock and J. Ed
Komoszewski, eds. Jesus, Skepticism and
the Problem of History: Criteria and Context in the Study of Christian Origins
[Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Academic, 2019], 93-124, here, pp. 114-15, emphasis
in bold added; see pp. 112-15 for Wallace’s summary of the evidence supporting
his thesis. See his longer article on this issue, “The Son’s Ignorance in
Matthew 24:36: An Exercise in Textual and Redaction Criticism” in Studies on the Text of the New Testament and
Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Michael W. Holmes, eds. Daniel
Gurtner, Paul Foster, and Juan Hernández [Leiden: Brill, 2015])
