In your opinion, what is the best English bible translation available today? I own the DHE and consider the ESV my first choice in study and reading. However, I would appreciate your opinion.

Also, on a separate note do you ever read N.T. Wright? I find his work fascinating. I’ve been a reformed thinker for a while and find it somewhat small in view what the whole story of God is portraying. More curious than anything.

Thank you!
Jared

Thanks for the opinion. If the trinitarian formula is not a scribal edit, I still think it is a rather large leap from the words of that passage (found nowhere else in the Bible) to the fully mature Christian doctrine that the Godhead comprises three unique and equal “persons”.

Derek Leman

This might be a case of my having a bias, and then searching the Internet for confirmation until I hit an agreeable biased webpage that doesn’t cite its sources well, and assuming that I haven’t been duped when in fact I don’t know that THEY haven’t been duped themselves. I looked up the Baptism article in the Catholic Encyclopedia myself and, behold, it only defends trinitarian baptism. And the fact that they never mentioned where Ratzinger ever wrote that quotation is an obvious indication that it’s a dupe. I mean, why omit that? But as for the Eusebius quote, I went ahead and looked up the text (http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eusebius_de_05_book3.htm). Indeed, it says “in my Name.” He repeats that phrase several times and discusses it at length. Eusebius’s manuscript predated Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, so why is this not good evidence that earlier (and thus more pristine) non-extant manuscripts lacked the trinitarian formula?

I certainly don’t doubt that you are telling it to me straight. You are being sincere, that I know.

Please provide documentation that the Catholic Encyclopedia and/or the Pope say the trinitarian formula in Matthew is a late addition. I think someone duped you.

If you get a Greek text such as the UBS or Nestle-Aland, you can just look in the apparatus and see if there are textual variants. The only variant in that verse concerns one letter in the spelling of Βαπιζοντες.

No manuscript we possess is missing the trinitarian formula. I don’t make this stuff up. I promise.

Derek Leman

First of all, thanks for that correction about scribal variances. Another sacred cow bites the dust. :P

As for the trinitarian formula, various scholarly voices have come out against its authenticity. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia and the current Pope have stated that it was a later addition. In a couple of other places in the NT (can’t recall which passages), baptism was done or called for in the name of the Son alone, begging the question of which baptismal formula is the “right” one. As for Eusebius, he actually an earlier manuscript of Matthew in his library, and the text said: “Go, and make disciples of all nations in MY NAME, teaching them to observe all things whatsover I have commanded you.” See: http://www.onenesspentecostal.com/matt2819-willis.htm

You can probably tell at this point that I’m no trinitarian, but of course we all have strong biases.

I appreciate the sentiment, but there are a few inaccuracies in your comment and I’d be remiss not to point them out. The customs involved in copying a Torah scroll today have nothing to do with the practices of Jewish scribes in ancient times. You see, the textual variants in Hebrew manuscripts are every bit as common an in New Testament manuscripts. In fact, even after Jewish Bibles started being printed on presses there were variations. Roughly speaking, the theory in text criticism of the Hebrew Bible is that three families of Hebrew text existed (that we know of): the proto-Septuagint text, the proto-Masoretic, and a third category which differs from both but has not survived in a text family (just some readings here and there in the DSS, if I remember correctly).

The Hebrew Bible has major variants in the manuscript tradition.

Also, there is no truth to the idea that Matthew’s trinitarian formula shows evidence of being a later addition. It is in the early manuscripts (and I think in all manuscripts). It was missing in a citation by Eusebius, but this in no way is evidence that it is a scribal addition.

Now, depending on what you believe about how the gospels were composed, it is possible to argue that Matthew 28:18-20 is secondary material, but no evidence suggests it is a late, pious, scribal fiction.

Christos is almost certainly used as a synonym for Mashiakh. The apparent usage of Christos as part of Yeshua’s name is an unusual example of how ideas develop, I guess. Yeshua the Messiah became Yeshua Messiah in the parlance of the early movement. But even if they used it as a name, it originated as a title.

Derek Leman

The mindset of the early Christian copyist was not like that of the traditional Jewish sofer stam, whose halachic duty is to precisely re-copy letter for letter, or it’s posul. While making his copy, he saw a passage that could be rendered more holy-sounding and/or theologically correct were he to add a few choice words, and went for it. Siniaticus and Vaticanus are the earliest extant New Testament manuscripts, but they’re fourth century. Think of how many additions and redactions might have been made between the first and fourth centuries. The trinitarian formula at the end of the Book of Matthew certainly wasn’t in the original manuscript (and is contradicted elsewhere in the NT), but whole theologies have been spun from it. Then you try to argue with fundamentalists who say “it’s in my KJV Bible, and that’s that”, and you can’t win.

Very interesting info about the name/title issue. I’ve wondered a great deal about this myself. Some ignorant (and/or nominal) Christians are even wont to think it’s his last name, as if he were the kid of Joseph and Mary Christ! But I wonder what you think: was Christos simply the Greek way to say “Messiah”, or did Paul have something loftier than the Jewish Moshiach in mind?