Bible contradictions? (between translations)

[WhiteWings]

Molly:

But even with the King James, you can look up the word, 'Hell,' and come to your own conclusions.

The remark that the KJV is the only true Bible was meant sarcasticly.
Yes, I can lookup Hell. I can lookup every word. But personally I like a translation that is as accurate as possible.

Pierac

You have to look at the distinctions between  "translations" and "Text."  The KJV is nothing more than a translation of the Textus Receptus.(Greek Text).  It is only the translation that reads "Hell", as the actual text itself does not.

The same answer as I gave to Molly. I prefer a starting point that has the highest percentage of 'correctness' That includes translation of words and promoting doctrines.
And that is what every post in this thread (and many other threads) is about for me personally. I may frequently mix up words and defenitions; I won't even start to argue against that; but my goal is finding the correct meaning of verses. No more no less.

Molly

LOL!  Then what Bible do you suggest?

Rotherham 's Emphasized Version, Concordant Literal Version and Emphatic Diaglott are the only 3 e-Sword Bibles Gary has put on his site. For me that means those versions express the UR message the best. I'm no Bible scholar so it's just a matter of trust (+feeling + some study)
The program suggested by Paul Hazelwood is an extra tool for verification.
6 billion people, 6 billion preferances for Bible study tools...


Molly

But, it seems to me that if the word is there, you can just look at the word definition and interpret it according to context and with the Holy Spirit as witness.

It's great for you to have help from the HS. I haven't.  And every thing that seems wrong, like the contradictions this thread is about, is a real roadblock for me. If I would find a contradiction in Gen 1:1 and ignore it; it would keep distracting me from every other verse in the Bible. For me a main proof of the Bible inspired by God is that it's without flaws. When I find a flaw I have to debunk that before moving on. That's just 100% fact for me.

[WhiteWings]

Some 50 scholars or so collaborated on the King James.  Did they have an agenda other than to correctly translate the Bible into English?  Were they trying to prove something, and therefore perverting the translation to their own ends?  Did they translate from the wrong original?  Says who?  And, does that person have an agenda?

It is a published fact that, as brilliant as these men may have been, they were forced to conform to the prevailing doctrines of the church of England.

According to Garys "The Hell test" not much has changed since then

If 150 Bible scholars swear to a statement of faith that there is a Hell of everlasting
punishment before that are allowed to work on a translation which they will be paid to produce,
what are the odds that the translation they produce will contain a Hell of everlasting
punishment? (That is the case with the NIV, and most other Bible translations produced by
committees.)

[WhiteWings]

Is that the program that you gave to download on the first page?  I took a look at it and couldn't figure out how to download but I'll go spend some more time on it.

Also, is the Greek the original language of the New Testament?

Yes it has the original Greek of the NT

The latest version: http://www.scripture4all.org/download/download_ISA20.php
This is a (slighly) improved version but not yet fully tested for bugs.

A slighly older version without bugs: http://www.scripture4all.org/download/download_ISA20.php
Click the first green button to download the main program plus the AV translation. Install that one.
When clicking the green button another screen opens with a grey button. Click the grey button.

Then optionally download extra translations CLV and YLT (the 3rd one is in Dutch and likely of no use to you)

[Molly]

Exodus 31:13
Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.


Leviticus 26:2
Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD.


Luke 6:5
And he said unto them, That the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.

[Pierac]

Pierac

You have to look at the distinctions between  "translations" and "Text."  The KJV is nothing more than a translation of the Textus Receptus.(Greek Text).  It is only the translation that reads "Hell", as the actual text itself does not.

The same answer as I gave to Molly. I prefer a starting point that has the highest percentage of 'correctness' That includes translation of words and promoting doctrines.
And that is what every post in this thread (and many other threads) is about for me personally. I may frequently mix up words and defenitions; I won't even start to argue against that; but my goal is finding the correct meaning of verses. No more no less.

What you ask for requires serious research and study. Then at the end you will only find scholars with equal background disagreeing!   This is the REALITY and it sucks! For example let me post this small study into Luke 3:21

Mat 3:16  And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17  and behold, a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

Mar 1:10  And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11  And a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased."

Luk 3:21  Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, 22  and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased."

I'd like to offer a little study in textual criticism on these verses.  In Bart Ehrman's book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture The Effect of Early Christolological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament.  We begin on page 141.

"Here again one should not anticipate an abundance of corruptions: only three brief passages of the New Testament actually record the event. It is all the more striking to find that each of these passages has been modified in ways that appear amenable to the Orthodox cause.

Mark's account is the earliest, and because of its particular mode of expression, it proved to be the most susceptible to corruption. When Jesus comes up from the waters, the Spirit descends to him as a dove, and a voice from heaven proclaims, "You are my beloved son; and in you I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11). Marks narrative as a whole does little to discourage the Gnostic understanding of the event, that the dove represents the divine Christ who descended from the heavenly realm and entered into Jesus, empowering him for his Ministry.  As I have repeatedly observed, Jesus is not said to have experienced a miraculous birth in this Gospel, nor to have done anything extraordinary before receiving the Spirit at his baptism. In fact, the gospel says nothing at all about his life prior to the appearance of the baptism in the wilderness. It is only after he is baptized and received the Spirit that Jesus begins to perform miracles and to convey his teachings.  It comes then as no surprise that, as Irenaeus informs us, heretics "who separate Jesus from the Christ" used Mark's Gospel to the exclusion of all others (Adv. Haer. III, 11,7).

In this circumstance makes the textual problem of Mark 1:11 all the more interesting. There is a virtual unanimity among textual scholars that Mark originally spoke of  "the Spirit as a dove descending unto him" (το πνευμα ως περιστεραν καταβαινον εις αυτον). This is the text found in the earliest and best representatives of the Alexandrian and Western traditions, and it is nearly impossible to explain its provenance if the variant tradition found in the bulk of the Byzantine manuscripts is original. In these latter witnesses, the Spirit is said to descend as a dove "upon" (επί) Jesus rather than "unto" (εις) Him.  The difficulty of this reading is fairly obvious. The preposition εις;  Commonly means "into," so with that the text as Mark originally wrote is especially vulnerable to the Gnostic claim that Jesus' baptism a divine being entered into him.  Whether Mark himself understood the event in this way is not the question I am concerned to address here.  It is worth noting, however, that both Matthew and Luke changed the preposition to επί ("Upon").

The existence of this variant expression within the Synoptic tradition provide scribes of the second century with just the opportunity they needed to circumvent a possible "misuse" of the account and Mark.  It would thus be a mistake to see the change reflected in the Byzantine tradition as a simple harmonization; as in all such cases, one must ask why scribes would have wanted to modify a reading particular to one of the Gospels. In this instant the reason is not at all difficult to locate. The text as originally written could be used by Gnostic Christians who, as Irenaeus informs us, appealed to this Gospel in particular to support their separationist Christologies.

Nor was Mark's the only accounts applicable to such changes. Not even the preposition επι;  could escape a Gnostic construal, because the Spirit "coming upon" Jesus could well be taken to mean that it "empowered" him.  And so it is not surprising to find that a number of the early witnesses change the preposition in Matthew 3:16 to the still less ambiguous προς. Now the spirit simply comes "to" Jesus.
 
One other change that Matthew made when redacting his Marcan source concerns the intriguing compared to article ωσεί; . Although the terms appear to have been interchangeable throughout the manuscript tradition of the New Testament, is difficult to maintain that there is absolutely no difference in nuance.  Outside the writings of the New Testament, at least, ωσεί is generally to be construed as the less definite and more hypothetical of the two, and if the New Testament authors themselves saw the words as identical, it is somewhat difficult to explain why Matthew made a change in the first place.  By using ωσεί, Matthew may be distancing himself from the possible understanding that the spirit actually assumed the form of a dove when he descended upon Jesus.  Now the Spirit descends "if" it were a dove.  This understanding of the change leads to an important question for the textual tradition: when later scribes changed the ως́ of Mark 1:11 and Luke 3:22 to make it conformed with Matthew's ωσεί, were they motivated in part by a comparable interest, especially in light of a Gnostic construal will of the event.

There is some evidence to suggest that the actual manifestation of the Spirit "as a dove" provided amenable to certain groups of Gnostic's, who used to text to authorize their separationist construal of the event.  We are best informed of the Marcosians, a group of Valentinian Gnostics attuned to the numerological significance of the divinity inspired words of the biblical text.

In a passage filled with invective and wit, Iraenaeus details the Marcosian exegesis of the descent of the dove.  When the letters in the Greek word for dove ( π ε ρ ι σ τ ε ρ ά ) are given their numerical equivalents, they add up to 801.  This, remarkably, is also the number of deity, which comprises the alpha and the Omega (α and ω, representing the Greek numerals one and eight hundred).  Therefore, in the Marcosians? view, the descent of the dove shows that Jesus received into himself the fullness of deity at his baptism.

We have no way of knowing how many other Christians of the second and third centuries subscribe to this construal of the event.  What is clear is that both Mark and Luke are susceptible to it.  And so the change of the phrase ως́ περιστεραν to ωσει περιστεραν in numerous witnesses of both Gospels, may reflect something more than the linguistic predilection or harmonistic tendencies of the scribes.  It may reflect the strategy detected to route Gnostic construals by means of slight literary modifications.  Now rather than descending "as a dove" the Spirit descends "as if it were a dove."

In this connection, finally, we do well to observed that Luke's account of the baptism is the least ambiguous concerning the physical nature of the "Holy Spirit." For here the spirit is said to descend upon Jesus "in bodily form, as a dove." The changes in this description that are scattered throughout the textual tradition may have been accidental, but when they appear to serve theological ends as well, one is surely justified in harboring some doubt.  Particularly striking is the complete inversion of the sense by the earliest manuscript P4, where the Spirit is said to descend upon Jesus in "spiritual" rather than "bodily" form.  This early Alexandrian witness thus undercuts a potentially Gnostic construal of the texts because there is now no "real" or "bodily" descent of a divine being upon Jesus.  A similar result obtains in the later Alexandrian witness, manuscript 579.  Here the phrase is omitted altogether, making the text say that "something like a dove descended" upon Jesus.  There is no mention of God's Spirit at all, obviating the interpretation that his Spirit was in fact of the divine Christ who entered into Jesus.

Once again we turn to Bart Ehrman's book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture The Effect of Early Christolological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. Page 62. to continue our look at when Jesus was anointed

"A place to begin is with textual corruptions that appear to suppress adoptionistic understandings of Jesus baptism. One of the most intriguing occurs in early witnesses of Luke's account, in which the voice from heaven is said to proclaim "You are my Son, today I have begotten you" (Luke 3:22).  This is the reading of codex Bezae and a number of ecclesiastical writers from the second century onward.  I will argue that it is in fact the original text of Luke, and that Orthodox scribes who could not abide its adoptionistic overtones "corrected" it into conformity with the parallel and Mark, "You are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11).  Because of this particular variant is so central to our discussion, and because most scholars have, in my opinion, wrongly evaluated the competing virtues of the two readings, I will devote a comparatively lengthy discussion to the problem.

External Attestation

The strongest support for the reading of codex Bezae derives from transcriptional and intrinsic probabilities, about which I will be speaking momentarily.  But it's external attestation should not be discounted, as has frequently happened in earlier treatments.  Granting that the reading does not occur extensively after the fifth century, they cannot be overlooked that in witnesses of the second and third centuries, centuries that to be sure have not provided us with any superfluity of Greek manuscripts, it is virtually the only reading that survives.  Not only was it the reading of the ancestor of codex Bezae and the old Latin texts of Luke, it appears also to have been the text known to Justin, Clement of Alexandria, and the authors of the Gospels according to the Hebrews and the Diodascalia.  It is certainly the text attested by the Gospel according to the Ebionites, Oregon, and Methodius.  Somewhat later it is found in Lactantius, Juvencus, Hilary, Tyconius, Augustine, and several of the later apocryphal Acts.  Here I should stress that except for the third century manuscript P4, there is no certain attestation of the other reading, the reading of our later manuscripts, in this early period.  The reading of codex Bezae, then, is not an error introduced by an unusually aberrant witness.  This manuscript is, in fact, one of the last witnesses to preserve it.  Nor is it a "Western" variant without adequate attestation.  Among sources of the second and third centuries, is virtually only reading to be found; down to the six century it occurs in witnesses as far-flung as Asia minor, Palestine, Alexandria, North Africa, Rome, Gaul, and Spain.

How can we account for textual situation of this sort?  The best attested reading of the early period, a reading known throughout the entire Christian world, virtually disappears from sight, displaced by a reading that he is, as we shall see, both harmonized to that of another Gospel and less offensive doctrinally.  Given what we have seen so far concerning scribal proclivities-and, of course, I have just begun to amass the data-there is every reason to suspect that here we are dealing with an original reading that has been displaced for theological reasons.

Transcriptional probabilities

This preliminary judgment is rendered more plausible by several pieces of internal evidence the transcriptional issues are clear and straightforward.  One of the two readings harmonize is with the text of Mark and is inoffensive; the other cannot be harmonized with Mark and his doctrinally suspicious. Even patristic witnesses that attest the reading sometimes reveal their embarrassment over it, explaining it away by interpretation that strike modern readers as particular in the extreme.  If we asked which reading is more likely to have been changed by Christian scribes, how can there be any doubt?

There has been doubt, however, only because both readings can be construed it as scribal harmonizations: one to Mark's Gospel, the other two the LXX text of Psalms 2:7. This circumstance alone appears to have saved the more widely attested text from the scalpel of commentators and editors.  According to the common view, the more difficult reading ("Today I have you gotten you") represents a harmonization to the second Psalms.

There are formidable problems with this view, however, as can be seen by probing the transcriptional probabilities through a series of difficult questions: (1) which is more likely, that a scribal harmonize a Gospel text to a parallel in another Gospel or to a passage in the Old Testament?  Gospel harmonization is virtually ubiquitous in the manuscript tradition of the Syn-optics, occurring in nearly every periscope of the double or triple tradition.  Furthermore, a scribal copies Luke will likely have Matthew and Mark on the brain, so to speak, in most cases having recently transcribed them.  All things being equal, harmonization to the closest parallel is to be preferred, so that on this score the earliest attested reading appears to be original.  (2) Which is more likely-that ascribe will create a reading that his doctrinally offensive, or that he will ameliorate a theological problem?  To call the words of the Psalm text and Luke 3:22 the more difficult reading is, of course, and accurate kind of shorthand.  But we must not lose sight of the compelling logic of the principal, simply because there is a convenient phrase to describe it.  The variant reading preserved by the majority of earlier witnesses the one that has no parallel in the other Gospel accounts, also appears to support a christological view that became anathema in the early Christian centuries.  Is it likely that ascribe would have created it?  Although this argument might appear circular in the context of the present discussion (which is concerned with establishing the presence of theological oriented corruptions), the same cannot be said of the third question concerning transcriptional probabilities, a question that proves, to my mind at least, to be decisive: If Luke 3:22 was changed by scribes in order to conform its text to the wording of Psalms 2, how is it that the same motivation was never at work in the transmission of the text of the other Gospels?  As common as this explanation of the textual situation might be, no one has ever been able to explain why this particular harmonization occurred in the transcription of Luke, but never and that of Matthew or Mark.

Part 1 of 2

[Pierac]

Part 2

Intrinsic probabilities

These transcriptional probabilities become particularly compelling when we recognize how well the reading attested in codex Bezae coincides with the theological agenda of Luke himself, even though his agenda may not have been shared by later proto-Orthodox scribes.  Here there is a powerful confluence of factors, for the reading that proved such an obvious embarrassment for Orthodox Christians of later times shows remarkable affinities with Luke's own view of Jesus' baptism.

This is not to say that the intrinsic suitability of the reading has been widely recognized.  Just to the contrary, in the view of many scholars, it makes little sense for Luke's divine voice to declare that Jesus has become the son of God at his baptism when he had already been born the son of God (from a Virgin Mother) two chapters earlier. And so, given the angelic pronouncement of Luke's Annunciation seen ("the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Highest will overshadow you, so that the one who was born will be called the son of God," 1:35) it is virtually inconceivable in this view, that Jesus would later be told "Today I have begotten you."

Unfortunately, as happens so frequently with arguments of this kind, it is difficult to see which way the night is more likely to cut.  For any perceived discrepancy between Luke chapter 1 and 3 could just as easily have lead earlier scribes to harmonize the text of Luke 3:22 to its parallel and Mark 1:11, thereby circumventing the problem.  On this level, it would appear that arguments of intrinsic probabilities (which reading Luke was more likely to have written) and transcriptional probabilities (which reading scribes were more likely to have created) grind to a standstill.

This is not, however, and an inevitable outcome of weighing different kinds of probability.  It results here only when intrinsic probabilities are evaluated according to the dubious premise that Luke has been (logically) consistent in his use of christological titles and conceptions.  The arguments assumes, that is, that Luke would not predicate the same Christological title to Jesus on the basis of different critical moments, or junctures, of his existence.  In fact, the assumption is demonstratably false.  When one looks beyond the relationship of Luke 3:22 to 1:32-35 and takes more panoramic view of this two volume work, it becomes evident that the words of Psalm 2:7 at Jesus baptism do not so much create an inadmissible inconsistency as highlight tensions otherwise found-indeed, consistently found-throughout Luke's portrayal of Jesus.

An obvious example comes in Luke's depiction of Jesus as the Messiah.  According to Luke's infancy narrative, Jesus was born to Christ (2:11).  But in at least one of the speeches of Acts he is understood to have become the Christ at his baptism (10:37-38; possibly 4:27); whereas in another Luke explicitly states that he became the Christ at his resurrection (2:38).  It may be that in yet another speech (3:20) Jesus is thought to be the Christ only in his parousia.  Similarly "inconsistent" are Luke's predications of the titles Lord and Savior to Jesus.  Thus, Jesus is born the Lord in Luke 2:11, and in Luke 10:1 he is designated Lord while living; but in Acts 2:38 he is said to have been become Lord at his resurrection.  So too, and Luke 2:11 he is born Savior, and in Acts 13:23-24 he is designated Savior while living; but according to Acts 5:31 he is said to have been made Savior at the resurrection.  Nor does the title Son of God, the title that is directly germane to our present deliberation, escape this seemingly erratic kind of treatment: Jesus is born the son of God in Luke 1:32-35, descended son of God according to the genealogy of 3: 23-38, and declared to be son of God while living (e.g., Luke 8:28; 9:35); but Acts 13:33 states that he became the son of God and his resurrection.  This kind of titular ambiguity does not inspire confidence in claims that certain readings cannot be Lukan because they stand in tension with Luke's use of christological titles elsewhere.

This is not mean that the broad scope of Luke's narrative is irrelevant to the textual problem of 3:22.  It is relevant, but not through an appeal to a consistent used of christological notions.  More fruitful is an assessment of the other references to Jesus' baptism throughout Luke's work, "backward glances," as it were, that provide clues concerning what happened at that point of the narrative.  What is striking is that these other references to Jesus' baptism do not appear to presuppose a simple "identification formula" by which Jesus is acknowledged to be the son of God ("You are my beloved Son").  They instead assume that God actually did something at that moment, that he actually conferred a special status upon Jesus ("Today I have begotten you").

A reasonable place to begin is with the second occurrence of a voice from heaven, that on the Mount of Transfiguration.  It is commonly known that for Luke's source, the Gospel of Mark, the heavenly voices at the Transfiguration echoes the heavenly voices at the baptism.  But whereas the first makes its pronouncement in the second person, apparently addressing only Jesus ("You are my beloved son," Mark 1:11), the latter occurs in the third person, confirming this to disclosure to the disciples ("This is my beloved son," Mark 9:7).  Luke of course used marks account in creating his own, and no attempt to reconstruct the heavenly words of Luke's baptism scene can afford to overlook the voice at the Transfiguration.  Here the textual situation is much clearer.  Luke has changed marks heavenly voice in the second instance, so that now rather than confirming to the disciples that Jesus is the "beloved" Son, it confirms that Jesus is the "elect" Son: (This is my Son, My chosen one" (ï õéïò ìïõ ï  åêëåëåãìåíïò; Luke 9:35).  If the voice in Luke's Transfiguration scene refers back to the scene of Jesus baptism and confirms to the disciples what was there revealed to Jesus, that he "has been chosen" (perfect tense), one is hard-pressed to see how the more commonly attested text of Luke 3:22 could be original.  For this reading ("You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased") constitutes a mere identification formula in which Jesus is recognized as the son of God.  It is only in the variant reading, the one that is attested in virtually all the earliest witnesses, that God is actually said to confer a new status upon Jesus ("Today I have begotten you").  Only in the theologically difficult reading is God said to "elect" Jesus in a manner presupposed in 9:35, that is, through a quotation of the royal adoption formula drawn from the second Psalm.

In further support of this view is Luke's only other reference to Jesus as God's elect.  Although Luke never again applies the verbal form åêëåëåãìåíïò  to Jesus, he does use the synonymous adjective åêëåêôïò.  In the crucifixion scene, in a verse unique to the third Gospel, the crucified Jesus is mocked by the rulers of Israel: "He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!"  (ï  ÷ñéóôïò  ôïõ  èåïõ  ï  åêëåêôïò, 23:35).  Here, interesting, the title åêëåêôïò  Is placed in apposition to ÷ñéóôïò; it is as God's "Christ" that Jesus is his "chosen" one.  To this extent, Luke's use corresponds rather closely to the common application of these words to the King of Israel as God 's "chosen," his "anointed" throughout the Old Testament.  It would not be at all surprising then, to find the clearest expression of an Old Testament "election formula for Kings"-namely, Psalm 2:7-applied to Jesus at the point at which he becomes God's elect.

Is this point his baptism?  The other Lukan references looking back to the event suggest that it is.  One of Luke's striking changes of Mark's narrative sequence occurs in his transference of the sermon and rejection at Nazareth to the very outset of Jesus Ministry (Mark 6:1-6; Luke 4:16-30).  As is well known, Luke not only change the narrative context for the account, but he also made a considerable number of internal changes in order to present the scene as a kind of paradigmatic foreshadowing of what was to happen to Jesus in the Gospel and to his followers in Acts.  In the preceding context, the Spirit of God comes upon Jesus at his baptism (3:22), then leads him in the wilderness for 40 days (4:1).  When Jesus returns into Galilee, "in the power of the Spirit" (4:14), he preaches his first sermon.  This sermon begins with Jesus' self-declaration in the words of Isaiah 61:1: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed (åêñéóåí) me...".  Granting that these words are quoted from the Scriptures, one is still left to ask what would be the significance of this aorist (åêñéóåí)  for Luke.  That is to say, just when (prior to Luke 4) did God "anoint" Jesus?  The reading that proved more difficult for later scribes provides a clear answer: it was in the preceding chapter when God declared, "today I have begotten you."

Luke's to other uses of the verb êñéù  confirm the point.  In Acts 4, Peter refers to Jesus as the one whom God had "anointed" (4:27; åêñéóáò, again aorist tense), after explicitly quoting Psalm 2 with references to Jesus, the "êñéóôïò"  Against whom the rulers of the earth were gathered together (Psalm 2:1-2).  Then in Acts 10 Peter states that God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and power, and this time clearly links the event with  "the baptism of John" (10:37-38).

Together, these text presuppose that at the baptism God actually did something to Jesus.  This something is sometimes described as an act to of anointing, sometimes as an election.  In either case, the action of God is taken to signify his "making" Jesus the Christ. These text, therefore, show that Luke did not conceive of the baptism as the point at which Jesus was simply "declared" or "identified" or "affirmed" to be the Son of God.  The baptism was the point in which Jesus was anointed as the Christ, chosen to be the Son of God

This understanding of the significance of Jesus' baptism cannot, of course, be unrelated to the words pronounced by the voice in Luke's account.  The more commonly attested reading, which happens to be harmonized with Mark's account, involves a declaration or recognition of Jesus' sonship ("You are my son").  This hardly squares with the significance that Luke attaches to Jesus' baptism elsewhere.  The other reading, however, consist of an election formula, in which a King is actually chosen by God upon his anointing ("Today I have begotten you").  Given Luke's indignation elsewhere (Acts 4:25-26) that the text of Psalm 2 particularly applies to Jesus of anointing, it should now be clear that the voice in his account actually quoted these words as a proclamation of the momentous election of Jesus as the begotten Son of God at this, the beginning of his Ministry.

Orthodox Christians such as Justin recognize the use to which such a view could be made by later adoptionists who denied (now in opposition to Luke) that Jesus had been born of a virgin and claimed that he had been a "mere man."  The options open to such Orthodox believers were to argue for a nonadoptionistic interpretation of Luke 3:22 or to modify it into conformity with its Synoptic parallel.  The latter option seems to have been widely exercise by the anonymous scribes whose handiwork has survived down to the present day.

Let me add at this point that Bart Ehrman is not the only biblical scholar that believes the older witnesses widely current during the first three centuries have the correct reading. So due to this information, I too believe our Bibles today have the incorrect reading at Luke 3:22.

Is clear to me, from this study and several others that Luke 3:22 originally stated "Today I have begotten you" I believe it is at this time that Jesus was anointed and received his title "the Christ," from his God and Father.

2Co 1:3  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,


Peace
Paul

[WhiteWings]

Birds and insects with 4 legs.
And other errors in the Bible.
Or not???