Question Corner by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 1, 1905

Question Corner

By Editor

1626.—Rev. 20: 5.—Is It Spurious?

Please let me know if Rev. 20: 5 is found in the old manuscripts. F. C. C.

It is so stated by a class of people who deny the two resurrections, so clearly taught in the Bible. We repeat reply No. 1552 given to a similar question:

The earliest New Testament manuscripts are as follows: (1) The Codex Sinaiticus, now in St. Petersburg. It contains the whole of the New Testament. It was discovered by Tischendorf in the monastery of St. Catherine, on Mount Sinai in 1859. It was written in all probability in the Fourth Century, not later than the Fifth. It once included the whole Bible.

2. The Codex Alexandrinus, now in the British Museum, written in the Fifth Century. It contains the whole Bible.

3. The Codex Vaticanus, now in the Vatican, known also as Vatican MS. No. 1209. It was probably written in the latter part of the Fourth Century or in the Fifth. It contains the whole Bible, excepting parts of the New Testament including the Apocalypse (The Revelation).

4. The Codex Ephræmi Rescriptus. This is what is called a palimpsest, the original writing of which has been erased in order to use the parchment for another. In this MS. part of a Greek Bible was used on which to write some of the works of Ephraim, a Syrian “father.” So have the “fathers” in other instances obliterated the Word. But by chemical re-agents the old writing has been partially restored. It was written in the Fifth Century, and contains about two thirds of the New Testament.

5. Then we have the Peshitto-Syriac Version, but the “Oxford Helps” assures us that “there are no [Syriac] copies extant which were written so early as the oldest of the Greek MSS.

Now of the above, Rev. 20: 5 is found in the first, second, and fourth. The third does not contain the Revelation at all. The Syriac omits the passage, as does Vatican MS. No. 1160, of the Eleventh Century. Thus the three oldest Greek copies which contain the Revelation at all have the text. Wilson is correct when he says in a foot-note on the first part of Rev. 20: 5, in the Emphatic Diaglott, based on Griesbach’s Greek text: “The words were probably omitted by oversight in Vatican MS. [No. 1160] as they are found in A, B, C, tho not in the Syriac. By “A” is meant Codex Alexandrinus; by “B,” Codex Vaticanus, No. 2066 of the Seventh or Eighth Century; by “C” Codex Ephræmi Rescriptus.

Finally, the best Greek text, that edited by Wescott & Hort, contains the passage in question, and neither of the Revised Versions, nor any of the critics, so far as we know, even questioned it. The Revisers adopted for their revision the text “for which the evidence is decidedly preponderating,” and when that differed from the Greek text “from which the Authorized Version was made, the alteration be expressed in the margin.” (See Preface to Revised N. T. Division II., ¶ 4.) But there is not even an indication of question over Rev. 20: 5. The clause is considered spurious only by those who have a doctrine to prove which the text condemns.

1627.—Record of Moses’ Death. Deut. 34: 5-7.

Who wrote the record of Moses’ death? Deut. 34: 5-7. L. J.

Some suppose that it was written by Joshua, and attached to the books of Moses, because pertaining to that.