Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 171:681 (Jan 2014)
Article: The Text Of Hebrews 2:9 In Its Patristic Reception
Author: Paul A. Hartog

BSac 171:681 (January-March 2014) p. 52

The Text Of Hebrews 2:9 In Its Patristic Reception

Paul A. Hartog

Paul A. Hartog is Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies, Faith Baptist Theological Seminary, Ankeny, Iowa.

Hebrews 2:9 states, “But we see Jesus, the one having been made for a little while lower than the angels, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God [or ‘apart from God’] he might taste death for everyone [or ‘everything’].” This verse follows a lengthy quotation from Psalm 8 in Hebrews 2:6b–8a. The manuscript tradition of Hebrews 2:9 seemingly supports the reading “by the grace of God [χάριτι θεοῦ], he tasted death for everyone.” Multiple early church writers, however, cited the variant “apart from God [χωρὶς θεοῦ], he tasted death for everyone.”1

Theodore of Mopsuestia (a so-called Nestorian) used the variant to argue that Jesus died “distinct from his deity.” Philoxenus (a Miaphysite), Oecumenius, and Theophylact maintained that such Nestorians had introduced this alteration for their own Christological purposes, but the evidence refutes that allegation.2 First, χωρὶς θεοῦ appears long before such fifth-century Christological controversies. Second, various patristic authors (including Origen and Ambrose) had accepted the χωρὶς θεοῦ variant but had interpreted

BSac 171:681 (January-March 2014) p. 53

it differently (either as a limitation of “cosmic salvation” or as a reference to Jesus’ distinctly human suffering). More recently Bart Ehrman has insisted on χωρὶς θεοῦ as the original reading, contending that χάριτι θεοῦ is an “orthodox corruption of Scripture.”

Intentional variants did arise in New Testament manuscripts, sometimes for Christological purposes (and existent variants were sometimes transmitted for similar reasons).3 The evidence regarding Hebrews 2:9, however, demonstrates that the connection between “orthodoxy” and textual variants is more complex than an expansive program of “orthodox corruptions” might imply. Variants could antecede the Christologic...