Thursday, November 20, 2014

61. the gospel of Marcion had Matthew 5:43, 44

Megethius: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt 5:43) [Pretty p. 35]  See Theodore of Cyrrhus Matthew 5:22 aboveAlso from David Inglis:

Tertullian begins his chapter 16 by quoting from most of vv. 6:27-29. Although the sense of these verses is the same as in Lk, he gives a shorter version of vv. 6:27-28: "But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, and bless those which hate you, [6:27], and pray for them which calumniate [Latin ‘calumniantur’: falsely accuse or speak evil of] you. [6:28]" These two verses have a parallel at Mt 5:44, which in the KJV reads: But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. In the NET this verse in Mt is much shorter, reading just: “But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.” The NET adds this note: Most mss ([D] L [W] Θ Ë13 33 Ï lat) read “bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you,” before “those who persecute you.” ... The shorter text is found in א B Ë1 pc sa, as well as several fathers and versional witnesses. In Lk the text is similar to the longer variant in Mt, except that “bless them that curse you” is swapped with “do good to them that hate you,” and Lk does not have: “and persecute you.” The longer variant in Mt is taken to be an assimilation to Lk, but this does not explain why anyone would swap the two phrases instead of just adding the text from Lk unchanged. Assuming that Marcion edited Lk we have a hard to explain omission plus a change of order, from: “do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you” to just ”bless those which hate you,” but it is also hard to see why aLk would make the reverse change if Lk is an expanded version of Mcg. However, if Mcg was earlier than Mt, then it is possible to see how two independent changes could occur: an expansion from Mcg (without a change of order) by aMt; and a later change of order by aLk."


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