John 6:23
One look at the critical apparatus of UBS4 and the reader
will be overwhelmed by the number of variants in this verse. The first set of
variants involves the expression αλλα ηλθεν πλοια εκ Τιβεριαδος (“but boats came from Tiberias”), a
reading found in 𝔓75 and B (which adds της
before Τιβεριαδος). The other
readings most likely diverged from this one. Other manuscripts (A W Θ f) read αλλα δε ηλθεν πλοιαρια εκ Τιβεριαδος (“but other boats came from Tiberias”)—in
this instance αλλα is
taken to mean “other,” not “but.” And there are other textual variations, all
of which show that various scribes were trying to make sense of a difficult
passage—namely 6:22–25. The crux of the problem has to do with the location of
where Jesus performed the miracle of feeding the five thousand. According to
the reading of some manuscripts in 6:1, Jesus performed the miracle on the east
side of Galilee near Tiberias. But this reading is probably a scribal
emendation attempting to harmonize 6:1 with 6:23, which says the boats came
from Tiberias.
The most likely scenario is as follows: Jesus performed the miracle of
feeding the five thousand somewhere on the eastern shore of the Galilean sea.
That evening his disciples had boarded a boat headed west toward Capernaum.
Jesus came to them during the storm and together they arrived at Capernaum
(presumably before dawn). The crowd had noticed that the disciples—without
Jesus—boarded the one boat that was there. The next morning they saw that the
boat was gone and that Jesus was gone; they knew he had not gone in that one
boat. During the evening either the storm had blown in some boats from Tiberias
(on the western shore) or manned boats had come there from Tiberias. The people
in the crowd used these boats to cross the sea to Capernaum, searching after
Jesus. When they found him in Capernaum in the synagogue (6:59), they did not
ask him “how did you get here?” (which seems to be the right question)—but ωδε γεγονας (“when did you get here?”), for they
would not have thought that he came any other way than by boat. Thus, when the
variant text says “other boats,” it is trying to distinguish these boats from
the one boat the disciples used.
In the last part of 6:23 there is another significant variant. The
expression ευχαριστησαντος του κυριου (“after the Lord had given thanks”) does
not appear in D 091 ita, syr,s. In view of the fact that
John rarely referred to Jesus as “the Lord” in his gospel and that this phrase
is absent in several “Western” manuscripts, it is thought by some textual
scholars that this phrase may not have been written by John but was introduced
later as a liturgical edition. The words are omitted from njb and noted in nebmg
and netmg. However, the documentary evidence (𝔓 א
A B L W Δ Θ f13 33 syr,pal cop)
supporting the inclusion of these words attests to its early and widespread
presence in the Gospel of John. Furthermore, it can be argued that the words
were omitted because they appeared to be a cumbersome addition to an already
difficult text. (Philip W. Comfort, New Testament Text and
Translation Commentary: Commentary on the Variant Readings of the Ancient New
Testament Manuscripts and How They Relate to the Major English Translations
[Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2008], 276-77)
