Introduction

The study of the New Testament offers a field, well populated by practitioners and embracing a body of work, ranging from the investigation of minute textual variations to expositions of the narratives, philosophies and intentions of scribes and their interpreters.

I do not intend to describe the bulk or even a fraction of this. What I will outline here are studies which have significantly advanced understanding of the way Christianity evolved and has been modified.

I will introduce a number of major landmarks. One of these arose after an epoch of stagnation, during which religious dogma determined the interpretation of texts. There was then a century of so characterised by reasoning and more effective critical analysis. The outcome is a widely accepted understanding that the gospel attributed to Mark is the prime source for the Jesus narrative, and not Matthew.

Other advances have by contrast occurred through moments of inspiration, found then to be backed up by the evidence. In many instances, it took a long period of investigation, with frequent returns to the data, and then detailed analysis to discover what most probably is the case.

We all depend to a varying degree on the work of our predecessors. The establishment of Markan priority, with Matthew originating as an early copy, has helped considerably in my own analysis. I have been able, for example, to demonstrate that the one reference to Nazareth in Mark, not present in Matthew, must have been interpolated later. (note)

It would not have been possible for me to have identified doctrinally-motivated changes to Codex Sinaiticus, without the efforts of previous investigators who determined who the scribes were and what they did: among others Constantin Tischendorf, Theodore Skeat, Herbert Milne and Dirk Jongkind. Though I might have got to the right point, given time, I am grateful that these people were there putting in work which I would later need.

I am also obligated to Robert Eisenman for his groundwork in demonstrating many of the mistakes made by the early writers, including the conflation and corruption of names, and the reuse of material out of context.

Having said all this, and allowing for acknowledgements that I may inadvertently have missed, the remaining significant landmark advances here described – covering some investigation of Paul’s epistles, Mark’s gospel, the other synoptics, and the two earliest almost complete Greek bibles, Codes Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, – are the product of my own analysis.

It is not an accident that I have been able to make several significant discoveries in relation to the creation of Christian texts. It was in part the outcome of an apologetic establishment that for long years effectively suppressed independent critical analysis, ultimately leaving the field free for others to undertake what it had failed to do.

I am a critical thinker and, when I make mistakes and become aware that this has happened, I make corrections. When new evidence is presented, I take this into account and amend my analysis accordingly.

I follow method based on probabilities. Though we disagree on some issues, I admire the approach adopted by Richard Carrier.

Very little is certain, except for the invalidity of certain non-naturalistic explanations. But many propositions can be shown to have a very high probability of being valid. This is what I strive to achieve, though sometimes what is available is just the best possible explanation, on the evidence.

The priority of Mark

There are four canonical gospels which, taken together and along with letters attributed to Paul, provide the source material for the gospel story and thereby Christian doctrine. Three of the gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – have a vast amount of material in common and for this reason are categorised as synoptics. The fourth gospel, John, has very much less content in common with the other three. Its style is theological and promotional, with the author making a case for the divinity of Jesus as actually, and from the beginning, the son of God. This contrasts with the narrative approach in the synoptics, which offer an outline of the life and teachings of Jesus.

There are features indicating that John was generated a little later, for example the author’s tendency to refer to the apostles and John the Baptist as if readers would already have known (so, largely from the other gospels as sources) who these characters were. It is hard, on the other hand, to find material in the gospel of John that could have been used as source material for the synoptics. I have followed a consensus in leaving aside John as a candidate for priority.

In no case, do we have any clear idea of who wrote these gospels or their very early history. The names that have been assigned to them are arbitrary, though now retained for the sake of convenience.

From as early as the second century, Christian exegists have accorded priority to Matthew and to an extent Luke, over and above Mark. It was believed that Mark, much shorter than either of the other two, provided a distillation of Matthew. Clearly, there had to be some sort of direct link since about 90 percent of Mark is found in Matthew and 55 percent in Luke. At many points, the wording is identical. But which way round was it? Did the author of Mark condense Mattthew and/or Luke, or did these latter gospels use and elaborate on Mark?

It was certainly convenient for the Church to have regarded Matthew as more original, since this gospel has (in common with Luke) more features that are in accordance with Christian doctrine. So much so, that belief in the priority of Matthew persisted, with very little challenge, for over sixteen hundred years before it began to be questioned.

Why did and does Matthew have such apologetic appeal? Well, for a start, it has a miraculous infancy story for Jesus, with Mary as a virgin mother and God as the father, in parallel with pagan myths, so making Jesus an actual son of God. Then, secondly it has an, albeit brief and sketchy, reference at the end to Jesus being resurrected from the dead and appearing on a mountain in Galilee, to which Jesus had directed the disciples. This is in contrast with Mark which terminates, apparently cut short, with the key women in the story fleeing from an empty tomb. Twelve verses, universally regarded as inconsistent in style and content, were however subsequently added in some manuscripts to make up for the deficit.

Matthew, and likewise Luke, has other more miraculous content. The young man in Mark, dressed in white, posted at the tomb to tell the apostles that Jesus has journeyed on to Galilee is, in Matthew, an angel (messenger) of the Lord, with clothing white as snow and an appearance like lightning, descending from heaven to roll back the entrance stone. Luke expands the number of heavenly messengers to two, likewise arrayed in dazzling apparel.

Among other differences crucial to doctrine, Mark never has any of Jesus’ followers referring him as ‘Lord’. He is referred to instead sometimes as ‘teacher’ or ‘rabbi’. The other synoptics are by contrast replete with references to Jesus as Lord or master, though Jews at the time, and presumably Jesus also, believed in ‘no Lord but God’. While there are descriptions in all of the synoptics of Jesus as son of God, it is only in Matthew that one of his followers (Simon ‘Peter’) is given to acknowledge Jesus in this manner.

Jesus needed to be portrayed directly as divine, for the purposes of doctrine, and also as free from non-Godly characteristics. In Mark, Jesus is portrayed as a zealot, Jewish leader. The other synoptics seek to present this as an indication of origin, so not Nazarene but someone from Nazareth.

In the light of all these differences, it is understandable why the Church preferred to accord Matthew priority and thereby give credence to many elements of Christian doctrine. It is the reason for the failure over many centuries to examine critically this assumption.

This is one reason why the question of Markan priority is important and needs to be settled. Notwithstanding supernatural elements (such as virgin birth, resurrection and angels from heaven), I will for the moment present the evaluation which has simply been made from content.

A number of criteria have been used in the attempt to evaluate precedence. Some of these, including considerations of language (Mark’s Greek is more error-prone and basic) and the order of presentation, can be argued either way.

Although it is not a conclusive argument, the fact that there are a number of quotations in Aramaic in Mark is indicative that the author may have been closer to an Aramaic source.

There are however three crucial ways in which Mark differs from the other synoptic gospels which indicate, with a high degree of probability, that Mark was written first and then used by the others as a source.

One of these relates to the kind of text that is absent in Mark, though present in Matthew and Luke. Mark has no account of Jesus’ miraculous birth and childhood, no sermon on the mount and no description of a resurrection in its surviving, unredacted version, that is without the added twelve verses.

Why would the author have excluded such significant material had it been available to him? Why are the vast majority of the parables in Matthew and Luke also missing when these would have helped in Mark’s portrayal of Jeus as a prominent teacher?

It is clear, because of the amount of text which in common, that there has been copying between the gospels. But it looks very much from this evidence as if Matthew and Luke added to and embroidered Mark. This is rather than the author Mark being so keen to condense these gospels that he was prepared to leave out an enormous amount of significant material.

Even more compelling evidence comes from passages in Matthew or Luke rendered less comprehensible by omissions. For example, in the story of the paralytic man lowered down on a stretcher through the roof to be healed, Matthew omits this detail, while still retaining Jesus’ acknowledgement of the faith of those bringing the man. This is thereby unexplained in Matthew but clear in Mark: Jesus marvelled at the lengths to which the helpers were prepared to go.

Similarly, Luke relates the story of release of Barabbas, demanded by the crowd, but omits to say, as Mark claims in his text, that it was the custom (unlikely, of course) for the Romans to release one prisoner chosen by the people at Passover. So, there is no reason in Luke’s account why the demand should have been made or why Pilate might have acceded to it.

The omissions (of which there are several other examples) can logically only have happened by copying in one direction, that is from Mark. There are no instances of this happening the other way round.

As well as such mistakes, arguably the product of ‘editorial fatigue’, there are cases where the narratives vary in the light in which Jesus or his disciples are cast. So, in a storm-stricken boat, Mark has the disciples strongly reproaching Jesus, ‘Teacher, does it not matter to you that we are perishing? In a parallel passage, Luke omits the first part; the disciples just call out that they are perishing. In Matthew, they ask to be saved. It is easier to explain the versions which show the disciples in a better light as arising from later redaction, than the ‘harder’ reading as having been deliberately introduced in spite of more amenable representations. At two other points, Mark indicates that the disciples’ hearts were ‘hardened’, Matthew and Luke simply leave this detail out.

The examples summarised here by no means cover all of the evidence. I have provided a sample to indicate the basis on which most analysts now regard Mark as the first of the synoptics to have been written.ⁱ

The precedence of Codex Sinaiticus and its role as a master copy

The two earliest surviving copies of a largely complete bible, Codex Sinaiticus, discovered during the nineteenth century in a Sinai monastery, and Codex Vaticanus, held for centuries in the Vatican library, can be dated by handwriting and other aspects of style to the mid fourth century. In terms of content, they are more similar to each other than to any other subsequent biblical Greek manuscripts. Many common features demonstrate a strong association: these include the omission of the story of the woman taken in adultery, a truncated end to the gospel of Mark and a chapter division for Acts found in no other Greek manuscript.

Nearly all the passages omitted in Codex Sinaiticus, though included in some later documents, are also excluded in Codex Vaticanus. Some unconscious harmonisations and footnotes in Mark indicate that Sinaiticus was produced in the scriptorium in Caesarea, where Pamphilus had established a great library. Similarities in scribal style, extending to the possibility that one scribe had worked on both manuscripts, indicate that both may have produced in the same scriptorium and at about the same time.

I decided that I would investigate these manuscripts, to explore further their inter-relation, taking advantage of the fact that Codex Sinaiticus had been reunited from its dispersed parts, to become freely available in electronic form online and that Codex Vaticanus had become available to study through facsimiles housed in some libraries.

I began with Codex Sinaiticus. It is written in small capitals (uncials) in densely packed columns. It is littered with corrections and amendments, over 24,000 throughout the manuscript. Theordore Skeat’s theory was that Codex Sinaiticus was an abandoned prototype for an order, placed with Eusebius by the Roman Emperor Constantine in CE 330 or 331, for 50 copies of the ‘scriptures’ for his new capital Constantinople. Codex Vaticanus, Skeat argued, could have been one of the bibles, prepared for the order but not subsequently rejected.

There are many drawbacks to these ideas. In the first place, the production of Sinaiticus was an immense undertaking, which would have involved the preparation of hundreds of animal skins and probably months of labour by a team of scribes and correctors. It is doubtful whether 50 full bibles would have been required or ordered for one place at this early time, or could have produced in a timely manner.

There is also no reason for supposing that the work was then suspended for a long period before being salvaged through the later attentions of a series of correctors. Indeed, the first of these, denoted as Ca, was carrying out the work which would customarily have been carried out by the scriptorium corrector. This corrector identified and remedied the vast majority of the mistakes made in the production of the manuscript. Some of the changes made later were not to rectify mistakes but to harmonise with other text, conform with later views on spelling or grammar or to introduce new material. The codex was effectively a completed manuscript, when Ca had finished his work.

It is my view, on the evidence, that Ca was actually the scriptorium corrector, contemporary with and working alongside the scribes.

So, what then was the role and function of Codex Sinaiticus, if it were not abandoned? The lack of page wear or candle wax stains indicate that it was not a bible used for daily church readings. It is likely then that it was kept as some form of reference copy.

The sheer number of mistakes, and particularly the prevalence of errors caused by the scribe’s eye skipping forward to a repeated group of characters at the beginning (homioarcton) or end (homeoteleuton) of a line, is indicative of speed and an urgent need for it. The comprehensive correction which was then carried out by the scriptorium corrector, Ca, following on behind the scribes, shows that accuracy remained a vital consideration.

That this was achieved at the expense of presentation reinforces the conclusion that the bible was produced for reference, as opposed to public readings. It could be that the practice adopted, combining both speed and accuracy (through correction in tandem), was the most effective means of generating what was required.

In the mid fourth century, prohibitions were lifted and Christianity was adopted as one of the religions of the Roman Empire. There was at this time suddenly the need to produce and distribute more Christian texts.

The manner and timing of the production of Codex Sinaiticus argues strongly for its intended purpose. It was to be a master copy (perhaps the master copy), both to serve the purpose of making new copies of the bible and to ensure that an authorised Christian narrative was sustained in the future.

Codex Sinaiticus was preserved over the centuries, as a resource and then later as a religious relic. It was probably kept initially in the scriptorium where it was produced, which the evidence suggests was Caesarea. It was ultimately removed, under the advance of Islam, to the fortified monastery where it was rediscovered centuries later on Mount Sinai.

Sinaiticus was superseded by a Latin Version, commissioned by Pope Damasus later in the fourth century, initially for the four gospels. This version was undertaken by Jerome, who checked against older Latin versions and their Greek sources. The two closely related codices, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, older than the Vulgate, provide the basis for the current New Testament text.

Having established Codex Sinaiticus’ purpose as a master copy, I analysed the errors of homeoteleuton and homioarcton (which for convenience I call ‘skip errors’) throughout the New Testament. I found that the skips came in clusters, in terms of length, reflecting omissions of multiples of one or more lines. These clusters indicated that this part of Sinaiticus was copied from one or more exemplars of between an average line length of 11 to 13 characters. So, at least one could have had the same average line length (13 characters) as Sinaiticus

Westcott and Hort long ago postulated that, given the amount of common content, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus could have had a common ancestorⁱⁱ.

But could either have been copied chiefly from the other? Given that it has an average line length of 17 characters, Codex Vaticanus could not have been the source for the skip errors in Codex Sinaiticus, as these are not multiples of 17 characters. Thus, Codex Vaticanus did not act as a source for the Sinaiticus scribes.

Although few in number, the skip errors in Codex Vaticanus were consistent with an exemplar of around 13 characters, the same as the average line length for Codex Sinaiticus. More detailed examination uncovered an astonishing correspondence with the text of Codex Sinaiticus, for skips either in one or two stages, vastly exceeding anything that might have occurred by chance.

The skipped text in a number of cases matched the exact positions of omitted whole lines, down to the detail of the repeated characters at the beginning or ends of lines. In looking at Sinaiticus (albeit as an electronic facsimile) I was looking at what the Vaticanus scribes were actually seeing some 1,600 years ago.

It is theoretically possible that, at these points, the scribes were looking at a common exemplar that exactly matched Codex Sinaiticus and made their mistakes from this. But a number of unique common errors, including two cases where an uncorrected skip which the Sinaiticus scribes made was likewise omitted in Vaticanus, establish that the Vaticanus scribes must have been using Codex Sinaiticus itself. These scribes also, as would be expected, followed the corrections made by the scriptorium corrector Ca. This is even in cases where it is clear that this corrector was creating a de novo text, as for example in the bodged description in Mark of the women who went to the tombⁱⁱⁱ.

It is, of course, also likely that the Vaticanus scribes, working a relatively short time later in the mid fourth century, also had access to the sources used by the Sinaiticus scribes. But, while Codex Sinaiticus was, as I have concluded, intended as a master copy for future productions, Codex Vaticanus was just in large parts a copy made from it.

Allowing for the fact that some errors were inevitable in transcribing by hand and that there could have been a degree of leeway in transcription, the Codex arguably provided in the New Testament a reasonable fair copy.

It was produced more carefully and thus probably more slowly, with far fewer omissions from skipping forward and proportionately more repetitions (dittographies) from looking back. It could have been, especially since it ended up in the Vatican library, a copy made specifically in the fourth century for the Church at Rome.^iv

Changes made to Codex Sinaiticus for reasons of doctrine or expediency

Though we have no idea of their names, a number of scribes have been identified for Codex Sinaiticus on the basis of their writing style and other related characteristics. In the nineteenth century, Tischendorf thought that there were four. This was later reduced to three by Milne and Skeat, who found that a distinguishing characteristic of style, for the poetic works of the Old Testament, was rather a reflection of the source material. Jongkind identified a pattern of cooperation for the Old Testament, whereby one scribe worked on book or part of a book, leaving the other to go on ahead to write the next part of the bible.

This meant that an amount of space had to be calculated and left for the first scribe to complete his work. Quite often, the scribes got their calculations wrong, such that material had either to be bunched up (with more lines and/or more characters per line) or stretched out with fewer characters per line.

In the New Testament, there was not the same pattern of cooperation, since one scribe (denoted as A) did the vast majority of the work. However, another scribe (denoted as D), who had worked as part of the team on the Old Testament, did make three characteristic and curious interventions, in each case for a single bifolium of text.

To appreciate what was happening requires some initial clarification. As a book, Codex Sinaiticus was written on parchment sheets divided for the most part into four pages, two on each side. Each page had four columns with lines of an average 13 characters width, without any spacing between characters, and around 48 lines per column. When completed, four sheets (bifolia) were laid on top of each other and stitched together to make a quire of 16 pages. When all the quires were completed, these were then bound together to generate the final format.

It can be seen that, in working on a quire, a scribe would begin on a right-hand page of a sheet, turn the sheet over and then write on the back of this page. The second folio of the bifolium was then left temporarily blank. The scribe moved on to the next sheet, doing the same and continued until he reached the fourth sheet, which comprised the inner sheet of the quire. Here, he would continue writing on the second folio, beginning with recto and then writing on the back, the verso.

Now the blank folios could be completed, reversing the order, continuing until the scribe reached the second folio of his initial sheet, completing the recto and then verso. The use of quires, comprising a number of double sheets ultimately stitched together, helped in sustaining the physical integrity of the book. Once the quires were assembled, the text ran on. But none of the bifolia in a quire had continuous text, except for the one in the middle.

This is very much a material consideration in looking at the work undertaken by scribe D. One of his three sheets was in the middle of a quire, encompassing the last part of the gospel attributed to Mark and running through to the beginning of Luke. The others consisted of folios that were separated in the quire.

The alternation of work involved would have required a lot of effort and calculation. In the Old Testament, it was a means of speeding production through the scribes sharing out and working simultaneously on large chunks of text. But the arrangement for just three single sheets could scarcely have saved time and moreover invited miscalculation. Unless there were a pressing reason for it, this would not have been worthwhile.

The conventional view taken in respect of the mid quire sheet for Mark and Luke, and also presumed for the other two sheets, is that scribe A had made a colossal error. Correcting it, within the confines of the sheet, would have been impractical either for reasons of space or for being unsightly or both. So, the theory has it, a second scribe was brought in to make a ‘correction’ sheet.

The early analysts Milne and Sheat suggested that scribe A had committed a massive dittography (repetition of text) which Scribe D dealt with by starting Luke a column later and stretching out Mark to fill the gap. Jongkind argued that there had instead been a major error of omission, the restoration of which would account for the major compression in Luke.

There are several flaws with the theory of corrections sheets. In the first place, it presumes uncharacteristic massive errors which are not specifically identified and for which there is no direct evidence. The analysis is for only one sheet; no one has previously explained what happened with the other sheets, internal with separated text within a quire, covering in the one case parts of Matthew and in the other parts of 1 Thessalonians and Hebrews.

The errors required are unusual in their scale, unlikely and uncharacteristic of scribe A’s work in the New Testament. The explanations, partial as these are, do not cover all of the evidence, particularly the major compression of the first page of the Mark – Luke bifolium, suddenly turning to stretching out for the remainder of Mark. There are also significant indications that scribe A was aware of the second scribe’s impending contributions, which would not have been the case if these were merely correction sheets.

Most damaging of all is the evidence of highly unusual compression not just in the two halves of the Mark – Luke bifolium but for both halves of the other two bifolia which are separated within a quire. It is just improbable that the main scribe could have happened to make his postulated massive, unique and infrequent blunders at just the right intervals such that these would all happen to fall in the separated folios of sheets within the same quire.

The correction theory fails to work. What does, still work, however is the idea of the scribes cooperating in a division of labour, with scribe D in each case writing just one sheet. The explanation for an unusual arrangement, on so limited a scale, comes from a parallel examination of the behaviour of scribe A and the content of the three sheets set aside for the second scribe.

As happened with the Old Testament, some of the compression will have resulted from scribe A failing to allow sufficient space for his fellow worker, scribe D. Some could have resulted from additions made by this second scribe. The three sheets either contain, or deal with, what are arguably the most contentious matters of doctrine in the gospel narrative.

In Matthew, scribe A made a flurry of unusual errors of iotacism/departures from agreed spelling before, between and after the bifolium by scribe D. He also made a significant error of omission just before each folio. He neglected to sign off Matthew, as was customary at the end, with his usual decorative coronis.

The suggestion is that scribe A was either preoccupied by the problem of having twice to calculate where to stop off and restart the text from his exemplar, to allow space for a bifolium of separated text by another scribe, or that he was concerned about the provenance of what was going to be substituted for his text, or possibly both.

Codex Sinaiticus ends with the truncated version of Mark at verse 16, 8. Scribe A stopped at the end of a folio, allowing scribe D to complete Mark. He had, in this instance only one calculation to consider, how much text in Matthrew to allow scribe D and consequently where to resume his own text in Luke for the following folio of his own sheet.

There is a known problem with the ending of Mark: the lack of any agreed text following verse 16.8 when the women fled from an empty tomb.

At the end of the recto of the first folio, scribe D compressed text on a substantial scale. This was I suggest to provide space for the longer ending comprising, 12 verses which some versions now have but which are universally regarded as inauthentic, not part of an original text.

There must then have been a reconsideration and a decision then made to ditch the inauthentic ending to give, what is now in Sinaiticus, truncated Mark.

Scribe A’s text did, however, have had some sort of ending. So, Scribe D, estimating that there would now be too much space allowed from scribe A’s calculations, abruptly switched to drastically stretching out the text right up to the end of Mark.

This is a strategy which would have worked, but for the fact that one or other (or both) of the scribes failed to take into account the fact that a new chapter always started at the top of a new column. This unfortunately ate up some of space that scribe A had allowed, with the consequence that the columns of Luke at the end of the bifolium had in any case to be substantially compressed.

Some assumptions have been made. But, as a theory, this does cover the evidence.

So, what was the pressing reason that a second scribe was involved in a cumbersome arrangement of alternating work for just three sheets? The sheets all contain passages that are highly contentious and contested. Given this, I suggest that scribe D was providing material from a second source, later than scribe A’s less doctrinally developed text, and more in accordance with what the Church wished then to establish and promote.

In the case of the bifolium of separated text within Matthew, the first folio contains Simon Peter’s attributed recognition of Jesus as the Son of God and Peter’s consequent elevation by Jesus as head of a church. The passage is lacking in Mark and so must have been generated in the creation or revision of Matthew. This folio also contains the transfiguration narrative with a number of non-natural elements: God speaking from a cloud, reaffirming Jesus as his Son and Jesus speaking to the spirits of the long-dead Moses and Elijah.

Scribe D was, on this theory, entrusted to put in to the text what the Church Rome required, notwithstanding what may have been in the main scribe’s earlier exemplar, closer to source and in that sense more authentic. The proposition is that it did not have the son of God attribution and the establishment of Simon as a Christian leader (thus, first Pope) and may have been missing some of the miraculous elements in the transfiguration narrative. This latter, of course, is there in Mark – but what was the source? The evidence is that scribe A switched to a second exemplar when he reached the passage in Mark, to conform with what had already been inserted through the second scribe, that is scribe D, in Matthew.^v

In the Mark – Luke bifolium, what is clearly controversial is the ending of the gospel of Mark. Here scribe D was, I’ve argued, deployed first of all to substitute an ending that scribe A had in his exemplar, with the longer ending with twelve added verses. But, because, these were even at the time widely regarded as bogus, there was then a switch to having no ending at all.

It is possible that, at the same time, the second scribe (D) substituted, for what was in scribe A’s exemplar, the text that has Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses and Salome present at the Cross. The reason to think this is that, in the corresponding passage in Matthew (derived from Mark), scribe A had the women described differently as Mary the [ ] of James and Mary the [ ] of Joseph and the [as written ‘Mary’, but ’mother’] of the sons of Zebedee. The scriptorium corrector Ca heavily corrected this to harmonise with what Scribe D would provide further on for Mark.

In the bifolium comprising parts of 1Thessalonians and Hebrews, the passage which shouts out as being outrageous, untrue to itself and to the text, is the accusation put in the mouth of Paul, that ‘the Jews killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets.’ Paul would certainly have known that Jesus, if historical, had been captured and executed by the Romans as an insurrectionist. Scribe A did his very best to stretch out his text such that he would not have to write this. He began I Thessalonians on his last page writing, against an average of 635 characters per column, a column of 613 characters, following this with 607 characters for the next column and 589 characters for the third column. He realised then that it could not be done; in the last column he would have needed to stretch his copy to only around 510 characters to push the point of insertion of the offending text into scribe D’s bifolium. The outcome would have looked very odd.

So, what I suggest scribe A did do instead was contrive a substantial and unprecedented dittography, repeating ten lines of text, which did achieve the required effect. With the added repeated ten lines, the final column is in terms of characters back to the average column length. The egregious accusation, that the Jews killed Jesus, is pushed into Scribe D’s allocated text.

In the circumstances, it is improbable that the dittography was just a convenient accident that happened to come to the rescue.

All three of scribe D’s interventions were associated with crucial matters of doctrine and expediency, for which this scribe was brought in to convey the message the Church wanted.

There needed to be an end to Mark with a miraculous resurrection. Failing that, at least an ending that did not have a very human and mortal Jesus, struggling back to rendezvous with his backers and followers in Judea. The women present at the Cross had to reflect Christian preoccupations rather than what may have been a Jewish reality. So, no mother Mary having other children besides Jesus and no Mary, wife of the Jewish Jesus.

Jesus had to be recognised as ‘Son of God’, though he was not acknowledged as such in Mark by his own followers. Simon, (wrongly) called Peter, had to be appointed by Jesus as the first Pope.

Finally, blame for the death of the Jesus, even though the Romans were clearly responsible, had to be shifted on to the Jews themselves. Once as persecutor, and now more so as patron, Rome needed to be appeased.^vi

The Jewish family that Mark recycled

Early Christian writers had limited access to Jewish sources and reused material extensively. The evidence indicates that an author of Mark, or a prototype Jewish storyteller, borrowed members of a prominent Jewish family. He used some as brothers for the rebel leader Jesus (James, Judas, and Joses – alternatively Joseph in Matthew). These characters separately take little part in the gospel action.

Three of the brothers reappear as apostles listed in Mark and the other synoptic gospels: James the [son] of Alphaeus, Simon, described as ‘the Cananean’ in Mark and Matthew and as ‘the zealot’ in Luke, and Judas the [son or brother] of James in Luke, paralleled by Thaddeus in Mark and Lebbaeus called Thaddeus in Matthew. The Aramaic for zealot is cana, while Thaddeus appears to be a variation of Judas.

The borrowed brothers are linked to an Aramaic title, Clopas/Cleophas. John, if the Greek is correctly read, describes the women standing by the cross of Jesus as his mother Mary (the wife of Clopas) and his Mother’s sister and Mary Magdalene. A medieval Greek lexicon has it that ‘Mary, the wife of Cleophas or Alphaeus, was the mother James the bishop (see note below for episcopos) and apostle and of Simon and Thaddeus and of one Joseph’.

The association of names, recognised by the lexicographer, appears to stem from a corruption at an early point in transcribing Greek, with the letter kappa becoming a similar-looking alpha. Thereby, Cleophas becomes Alphaeus.

Clopas and Cleophas are equivalents, given that there are alternative Greek letters pi and phi for Aramaic peh, and that vowels need to be provided in transliterating from Aramaic.

So, now there is not just a group of borrowed brothers but a borrowed Jewish family. The mother was called Mary, then the most common female name, and the family also held what was not an ordinary forename but a title. The father’s forename may, however, have been Joseph, so corresponding with the birth accounts provided by Matthew and Luke.

James is described as an ‘episcopos’; at such an early time this term would likely have denoted a Jewish leader of some standing. He appears as James the Just or Righteous in a number of accounts. In Acts, he is recorded as making a judgement on the rules that should be followed by Gentile ‘god-fearers’ and then later as disciplining Paul for teaching against Jewish Law.

Hegesippus (second century) is quoted as stating that Simon was the son of Clopas and witnessed the stoning of James. Eusebius claims that Simon succeeded James as episcopos in Jerusalem, in the aftermath of the failed Jewish uprising. Like James, probably his brother but according to Hegesippus his cousin, Simon would have been a Jewish leader looking after the interests of Jews.

Hegesippus is also quoted as indicating that James entered the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. Not registered among the listed High Priests, James must therefore have been acting in that capacity, most probably as deputy/temple captain.

It is extremely unlikely, given his leading priestly role, that James could also have been brother to a rebel leader, crucified after leading an uprising against the Roman and Jewish authorities. From the many mistakes in his account, it is evident that the author of Mark had poor access to accurate information on Jewish society at the time.

This helps explain how members of a prominent, titled Jewish priestly family, were assigned as brothers or as followers of the rebel Jesus.^vii

Paul’s interactions with the High Priest Joseph’s family

The character Paul, self-identifying as Saul, is recorded in his own accounts as coming into conflict with James (as is also described in Acts) and another character identified as Cephas, accountable to James. Cephas is recorded eight times in Galatians and 1 Corinthians. The name is, like Clopas/Cleopas, not a usual Aramaic forename but a title or conceivably a nickname.

Strangely, no forenames are assigned to Cephas, as would have been expected to identify more precisely the person (or persons) with whom Paul was interacting. It may be that these have been redacted in the transmission of the text of Paul’s letters.

Paul was very keen to relate to, and be seen at least on a par with, James. He sought to go over the heads of those (Nazarene Jews) who were followers of Jesus. He had dealings with significant persons including Herod Agrippa II and his sister Bernice. His interactions with James are associated with Cephas: the latter along with James is described as one of the ‘pillars’ (sarcastically, as persons of ‘seeming’ importance) in Jerusalem. Surprisingly, Paul makes it his first priority, in what appears as a garbled reference, to visit not James but Cephas.

What helps is the recognition that Cephas is, in transliteration from Aramaic into Greek, the same as Caiphas, the short version of the former High Priest Joseph’s family title. Since vowels are not directly indicated in written Aramaic, these have to be added, either chosen or guessed. The difference in the use of vowels between Cephas and Caiphas is thus not a matter of consequence. The longer Greek version, Caiaphas, can be explained as an early mistake in transliteration, with the vowel-carrying Aramaic letter yodh, mistakenly taken as a letter in its own right.

In the family tomb, likely to have been that of the Joseph family, there are several inscriptions with the name Cephas; one ossuary offers the alternative versions, קפא and קיפא, the latter including the vowel-carrying yodh.

There is now a reason for Paul’s interest in engaging with a person or persons called Cephas. That this is, in its Aramaic origin, the same as the title for the High Priest, is not the outcome of an unlikely coincidence – that is, two different groups happening to have the same, unique name. There was one only extended, patrilineal family group.

There would likely have been others members of this family besides Joseph, contemporary with Paul, and he would likely have dealt with them, as is recorded in Paul’s letters.

This is the best explanation for the persons or persons identified by the title Cephas, that is as a titled member of an important Jewish priestly family. This is as against a person with a nickname which happens (see ‘Mark’s misinterpretation’ below) when rendered into Greek to look the same.^viii

The equivalence of Clopas/Cleophas and Cephas/Caiphas

It is evident that the titles Clopas/Cleophas and Cephas are close, the latter name lacking the letter lamadh. Titles were rare, even among priestly families. So, how come there were two families, in very close association at the same time in Jerusalem with titles that were so similar? An improbable eventuality, and there is a better explanation. This can be derived from examining Paul’s declaration in respect of his early visit to Jerusalem:

Then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles, except (or, only) James, the brother of the Lord.

The first point is that, as previously noted, James (the Just) could not, given his status, have been a brother to the rebel Jesus. The brothers, as such, were in any case borrowed. The phrase ‘the brother of the Lord’ is then highly likely to have originated as a later Christian interpolation.

It is puzzling why Paul would have sought to meet Cephas first, when he was very keen to deal with James. With James mentioned apparently only as an afterthought, the sentence construction is clunky. It is also odd that James appears to be bracketed with the apostles, when he was evidently a prominent priestly Jewish leader.

All becomes clear when the likely forename, eliminated from the title, is reinstated:

Then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with [James] Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles, only James.

This certainly does make clear Paul’s position. The Nazarene Jews, who knew Jesus, were beneath him. He went only to see James.

With this understanding, it is possible to make sense of other references. The ‘pillars’ in Jerusalem were originally not ‘James and Cephas and John’, but either ‘James Cephas and John’ or ‘James and Simon Cephas and John’. Those depicted in 1 Corinthians, with the right to take a woman with them on their travels could have been, besides the rest of the apostles, James and Simon Cephas. This I suggest was altered by a later editor, based on a huge misunderstanding, to ‘the brothers of the Lord and Cephas’!

The general import of all this is that James the Just and Simon were related, probably as brothers, Simon took over from James after the latter had been killed, both were members of the High Priest Joseph’s extended family, both thereby held the title Cephas and – finally – the title Clopas/Cleophas originated as a corruption of Cephas, with the vowel-carrying yodh, this time mistaken as a lamadh. There were not two, but just one prominent priestly family at the time with these attributes.^ix

This family was thus also the one borrowed to provide followers and family, including some named brothers, for the messianic rebel Jesus

This is not the only possible explanation. But it is an interpretation that covers the evidence, better than anything previously attempted.

If the identification is correct, it provides an indication of a priestly family, likely to have existed, borrowed by Mark for his narrative, with members interacting with Saul/Paul but missing (except for the High Priest Joseph] from the record provided by Josephus.

Mark’s misinterpretation of Paul’s antagonist, Cephas

There were two important characters called Simon in the narrative of Acts. The first was Jesus’ main Gospel companion, featuring also in Acts as a fierce Nazarene leader clashing with the Jewish authorities and Herod Agrippa I (as also in the pages of Josephus). This Simon was forced into exile around CE 43. The second Simon was operating a decade or so later, first assisting and then taking over from James.

The author of Mark has Jesus assign Simon the nickname Petros, πϵτροϛ, which is Greek for stone. There is no external corroboration for this, no recorded precedent for the name and no explanation given in Mark. The nicknamed character Petros appears to have arisen from nowhere in Mark’s narrative.

The Aramaic for stone is כפא or כיפא. Later Christian writers have suggested this would have transliterated into Greek as Κηϕας (Cephas) and that consequently Simon or Simon Peter was the same person as the Cephas who, recorded ss such Paul’s letters, was engaged in altercations with Paul. But these characters are distinct in vital ways, with Cephas coming on to the scene in Acts some years after the original Simon had fled into exile. The second (possibly Simon) Cephas was moreover part of the Jewish establishment, assistant and then successor to James. The first was a fundamentalist Nazarene Jew who clashed with the Herodian authorities and also that establishment.

Beginning with a kaph, stone (כיפא) would however, if this were needed, have likely transliterated beginning with a chi, as opposed to a kappa. But there was no need to transliterate, given that there was a perfectly good Greek word, πϵτροϛ, for stone. Paul, writing in Greek, would have used πϵτροϛ (Petros) if he had wanted to indicate that one of his characters had a nickname meaning stone.

What is known is that the High Priest Joseph’s title קיפא beginning with a qoph would have, and did, transliterate as Cephas/Caiphas beginning with a kappa. There was not a readily recognised equivalent word for this in Greek – which is likely the reason that Paul did not provide one.

The close association of the Nazarene Simon with a word Cephas, which is the short version of the High Priest’s title, is neither an accident nor entirely coincidental. Like other early Christian writers, Mark was looking in his sources for confirmation of his characters. He found in Paul’s letters a character with a name/title that sounded like the Aramaic for stone.

Whereas Aramaic speakers distinguished two ‘k’ sounds, one represented by the hard-edged qoph and the other by a more guttural kaph, Greek speakers had just the letter kappa. This reflects the fact that these speakers did not use the variation in sounds to generate a distinction in letters and from that in words.

Mark did not refer to Joseph Caiphas by name in his narrative, and so possibly did not know who was the Jewish High Priest at the time. Either way, his lack of awareness may have made a mis-association more likely.

Mark converted the word Cephas, sounding like the Aramaic for stone, into the sobriquet Petros for his fiery Nazarene leader Simon.

The name stuck. But Mark had blundered into converting a member of a priestly family into an associate of the rebel Jesus. The outcome, a person with the nickname stone, was a fiction.^x

Transfiguration as the relocated ending of Mark

The transfiguration appears in Mark and the other gospels, as well as a number of non-canonical sources. It is an account laden with metaphorical meaning. In Mark and the other synoptics, Jesus is described as making a journey northwards from Bethsaida in Galilee to villages in the regions of Caesarea Philippi. He takes his followers Simon (Peter), James and John with him up a high mountain.

There, his face and/or clothes are transfigured (as with Moses on Mount Sinai in the Old Testament) and the spirits of the long-dead Moses and Elijah appear and talk with Jesus. God speaks from a cloud, announcing Jesus as his ‘Son, the beloved’ and ‘to listen to him’. This is clearly a Christian overlay or invention on a more original Jewish narrative. The message is that Jesus has come in place of the old order of Jewish law (represented by Moses) and prophecy (represented by Elijah).

There are several elements to the story that are difficult to explain. While there is a high mountain in the vicinity, Mount Hermon, it is only about 24 miles from Bethsaida to its base near Caesarae Philippi. It would not have taken six days (as described in Mark and Matthew) or eight days (as in Luke) to travel there. Moreover, when Jesus comes down the mountain, the rest of the disciples are – inexplicably – ‘amazed’ to see him. These disciples are arguing with the scribes; their presence and what the argument is about is not properly explained.

In Luke, there is a reference in the conversation between the two men and Jesus, to his forthcoming ‘exile’ (exodon) in Jerusalem. Exodon was not generally taken as a euphemism for death. So this information, perhaps something Luke took from an early version of Mark, is puzzling at this point in the narrative.

The situation becomes clearer when it is recognised that the transfiguration narrative in Mark, the earliest source from which the other gospel accounts are derived, has the classic hallmarks of an interpolation. There is a dislocation at the beginning, the reference to a duration of six days which does not relate to the previous text, and a dislocation at the end, when a man ‘answered’ Jesus, who at that point is not even asking a question! The text reads well or even better without the intervening text. Jesus is speaking to a crowd, together with his disciples, in the region of Caesarea Philippi (verses 8, 34 – 9, 1) and a man from the crowd answers him (verse 9, 17), asking why his disciples have not been able to cure his son.

If Mark 9, 2 – 9, 16, is an interpolation, then where has it come from? Where indeed might it have been, such that the issues to which I have alluded are resolved and the text makes sense. The answer is that it most likely provided a continuation of the gospel of Mark from where it now ends at verse 16, 8.

The disciples are told that with (KAI) Simon (Peter), Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee. The journey of around 100 miles from Jerusalem, on foot or on the back of a mule, with Jesus in a weakened state, could well have taken six to eight days. The crowd would have been amazed to Jesus, because they believed he had died from the effects of crucifixion. Jesus might well have wanted to discuss privately what to do next with his supporters or backers, with some form of internal exile as a possible solution.

The argument with the scribes? Now that provides the elegant culmination to Mark’s Jewish narrative in its more original form. At the Gospel’s outset, Malachi is quoted (3, 1) as saying that the Lord of hosts will send a messenger to prepare his way for the coming of the Last Days and that (4, 5) this would happen through the return of Elijah. Isaiah (40, 3) references this as a ‘voice crying in the wilderness’. Mark then begins by describing John the Baptist’s sudden appearance in the wilderness. What could be clearer?

John the Baptist is symbolically or in spirit a manifestation of Elijah.

The narrative as a whole is however about Jesus, whose story parallels that of the ‘suffering servant’ described in Isaiah. His triumph over ill-treatment (like that of the suffering servant) is the last great sign of the End Times. But with the text properly arranged (Mark 9, 14-16 coming before Mark 11-13), it can be seen that the waiting Scribes were arguing that Jesus’ reappearance (if this should prove to be the case) could not herald the End Times because Elijah had not returned as prophesised. But Jesus’ counter to this, on coming down from the mountain, is that Elijah had indeed come back in the form of John the Baptist.

Jesus, in Mark’s story, did reappear, scarred but triumphant to amaze the crowd and silence the carping scribes. The End Times, it was believed, were at hand.^xi

Footnote

As my research and analysis has progressed, I have developed a critical appreciation of past conventional positions taken in respect of the character James, with whom Saul/Paul is described as interacting in Acts and Galatians, and also Simon, called ‘Peter’ in Mark and Acts.

I now take the position that the James, who wielded considerable authority as a Jewish leader, cannot also have been either the brother of a crucified messianic rebel Jesus or a member of the Nazarene sect, to which Paul/Saul was accused of belonging and of which Jesus and then his follower Simon (in the gospel narrative) were apparently leaders.

The evidence from Acts and other sources indicates that the Nazarenes looked up to the priestly Jewish leader James and that, in return, James may have looked out for their interests.

My understanding in respect of Simon (follower of Jesus in the gospel narrative) is that he is distinct from another Simon who assisted James and that he was also wrongly attributed the Greek name ‘Petros’, as a result of Mark’s misunderstanding (or, possibly, conscious misrepresentation) of an Aramaic title, Cephas/Caiphas.

i^ Cresswell P A, ‘The Primacy of Mark’, in The Invention of Jesus, Watkins, 2013, pp 132 -145.

Kirby P, The Priority of Mark, online, earlychristrianwritings.com.

Bellinzoni J R, The Two-Source Hypothesis, Mercer University Press, 1985.

ii^ Westcott B F and Hort F J A, The New Testament in the Original Greek, New York Harper & brothers, 1881.

iii^ Cresswell P A, The Women Who Went to the Tomb, The Heretic, vol 3, 2013.

Cresswell P A, The Invention of Jesus, op cit, pp 224 – 226.

iv^ Cresswell P A, ‘Secrets of Sinaiticus’ in The Invention of Jesus op cit, pp 60 – 89, 293 -313.

Cresswell P A, ‘Vaticanus Unveiled’, in The Invention of Jesus op cit, pp 90 – 119, 314.

v^ Cresswell P A, ‘Another Scribe or Another Exemplar’, JGRChJ, vol 13, 2017, pp 112 – 128.

vi^ Cresswell P A, ‘The Lost Ending of Mark’, ‘The Reluctant Scribe’ & ‘Rome and Church’ in The Invention of Jesus, op cit, pp 196 – 284.

vii^ Cresswell P A, Who was Cephas?, Blue Cedar Publishing, 2022 pp 86 – 87.

Cresswell P A, The Textual Time Traveller, forthcoming, pp 29 – 30.

viii^ Cresswell P A, Who was Cephas?, op cit, pp 54 – 83.

ix^ Cresswell P A, Who was Cephas? op cit, pp 83 – 85.

x^ Cresswell P A, Who was Cephas? op cit, pp 17- 28.

Cresswell P A, Simon Peter and Cephas, Two Persons and One Fiction? online, theinventionofjesus.com, 2023, revised 2024.

Cresswell P A, God’s Wrath and the Brother of the Lord, online, the inventionofjesus.com, 2024.

Cresswell P A, The Textual Time Traveller, op cit, pp 32 – 36.

xi^ Cresswell P A, The Lost Narrative of Jesus, John Hunt Publishing, 2016.