'Be Baptized With the Baptism that I am Baptized" is Not Present in a Number of Manuscripts

I have just stumbled across evidence from John Albert Broadus' Commentary on Matthew that the business about a future baptism WAS NOT PRESENT in a number of manuscripts of Matthew (the text related to the Gospel of the Hebrews) and represents what the author says was a late addition "from Mark 10:38 and was added to Matthew here (verse 20:22) and the next verse by many copies. It is wanting here in both verses in Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Bezae, Regius, Z two cursives the Old Syriac, most copies of the Old Latin, Vulgate, Memph, Theb, Aeth and the difference between Matthew and Mark is expressly mentioned by Origen."

I have already noted that it is obvious when you scrutinize Origen's testimony in Commentary on Matthew that he is actually citing from a Diatessaron-like text. More proof coming for that. Yet for the moment when you start looking at matters the argument that Ephrem's Diatessaron lacked these words is now highly probable based on the evidence already cited.

It is noted in another place that "others of the fathers likewise beside Origen omit [these words] such as Epiphanius, Damascene, Hilary, Jerome ... Matthew's narrative in this case being in some respects an abridgment of Mark's."

And again elsewhere "In Mark x 38, 39 none of the MSS or versions omit them. But in Matthew C alone contains them among our MSS of the oldest class; they are found in thirteen of the later uncials (all but one of them belonging to the ninth or tenth century), in the great mass of cursives, in three MSS of the Old Latin, in the Peshito, Harclean Syriac, and Armenian versions, and in the quotations of Chrysostom and Basil of Seleucia."

I will try and track down Origen's reference. I am sure there is more there than meets the eye ... or at least the eye of other scholars who looked at it before me!

If you are interested in reading how this observation fits within my greater understanding of the workings of Secret Mark WITHIN the contemporary Alexandrian Church please go here

If you want to read more about how Alexandrian Christianity was rooted in the Jewish traditions of Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria and more feel free to purchase my new book here