Thursday, March 10, 2022

Scribal Changes Reflecting then-contemporary Christological Controversies in the text of Revelation in Codex Sinaiticus (א)

  

Jesus Was Not Created

 

The first singular that offers the clearest example of a Christological in 3.14. Here our scribes alter the universality attested title for Jesus as the 'beginning of the creation of God' (κτισεως του θεου) to the otherwise unattested 'beginning of the church of God' (εκκλησιας του θεου)—a move that eliminates the possibility of placing Jesus within the created order. What makes this change so conspicuous is the fact that it occurs in a fourth-century manuscript—a manuscript produced during a period that was defined by its pitched theological battles over the precise nature of the Son. Moreover, it is remarkable how dangerously close the original language of the Apocalypse is to Arius's own musings about the Son. In the fragments of the Thalia, one of the few primary sources judged by Rowan Williams to contain direct quotations from Arius, the putative arch-heretic declares: 'The one without beginning (i.e. God) established the Son as the beginning of all creatures . . . (Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, rev. edn., 2001], p. 102). This Arian formulation is nearly indistinguishable from the original text of the Apocalypse. The fact that our scribes eradicated such language from the manuscript appears to indicate that the Apocalypse's wording was perceived to be pregnant with heterodox possibilities. In response, our scribes harmonized this passage in the direction of the higher Christology of Colossians 1, where Jesus is the head of the church (For a full discussion see Hernández, Scribal Habits and Theological Influences in the Apocalypse, pp. 90, 172-78).

 

The Lamb Receives the Blessing, Honor, and Glory 'of the Almighty'

In 5.13, we encounter an interesting change to the doxology offered to both the One who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. Here the majority of the Greek tradition reads: 'To the One who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing, honor, glory, and power (και το κρατος).' Our scribes, however, rewrite και το κρατος as παντοκρατορος, so that the doxology now asserts that both God and the Lamb receive 'the blessing, honor, and glory of the Almighty . . . ' What the singular reading does is to transform four individual qualities into three and unites all of them under the banner 'of the Almighty'. In other words, the singular reading appears to indicate that the qualities attributed to both the One who sits on the throne and to the Lamb proceed from the Almighty (παντοκρατορος), possibly without distinction.

 

It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of such a change. Turing to Arius's own words in the Thalia fragments, we find that he differentiates between the degrees of glory ascribed to each member of the Godhead. Without equivocation Arius states: 'there exists a trinity in unequal glories, for their subsistences [sic] are not mixed with each other. In their glories, one is more glorious than another in infinite degree' (Williams, Arius, p. 102). In contrast the language of our singular reading clearly precludes such distinctions with the Godhead. The fact that formulations like Arius's were circulating in the fourth century may have prompted our scribes to inoculate their text from similar Christological misapprehension (Hernández, Scribal Hants and Theological Influences in the Apocalypse, pp. 180-82). (Juan Hernández Jr., “Scribal Tendencies in the Apocalypse: Starting the Conversation,” in Jewish and Christian Scripture As Artifact and Canon, ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias [Library of Second Temple Studies 70; London: T&T Clark, 2009], 256, 257)

 

Other theological singulars that can only be mentioned in passing include readings that reflect an aversion to ascribing material corporeality to God (7.15; 10.1), as well as the denial that anyone can actually hear God’s voice (21.3a) (Ibid., pp. 93-94, 183-85). Such singular readings are perfectly at home in a fourth-century context that spoke of God as αθανατος, αορατος, αψηλαφητος, and αχωρητος (‘immoral’, ‘invisible’, ‘untouchable’, and ‘incomprehensible’). . . . Could it be that the changes found here represent an early, although incomplete, attempt to make the Apocalypse theologically palatable for a wider audience, especially in light of fourth-century concerns about its usefulness for the church? (Ibid., 257, 258, emphasis in bold added)