Matthew 12:47

What’s In Your Bible Matthew 12:47

Homoioteleuton is a common issue when scribes accidentally omit a verse. Two verses end with the same words and the scribe thinks it is the verse they just wrote so they skip over it.

Try handwriting the Bible and see how easy it is to accidentally skip over a verse. You will also notice that adding a verse is next to impossible. Then you can see how homoioteleuton works in real life.

This entire verse is found in the Majority of all Greek manuscripts, including C, D, Sinaiticus correction, the Old Latin, and the Syriac Peshitta.

It’s missing from Vaticanus

The Revised Standard Version of 1952 was the first version to omit the whole verse, but then in 1989 the New Revised Standard put the verse back in their New Testament.

2001 the English Standard Version removed it again.

ESV jumps from Matthew 12:46 to 12:48.

Goodspeed omitted in 1942 from his translation

1998 Complete Jewish Bible omits the entire verse jumping from 12:46 to 12:48.

The Douay-Rheims contains the verse.

1968 The Jerusalem Bible removed it.

St. Joseph New American Bible of 1970 contains it

1985 the New Jerusalem Bible removed it

Westcott and Hort originally omitted the entire verse from their Greek text, all on the basis of the Vaticanus manuscript. Yet the Revised Version of 1881 and the ASV of 1901 include it.

Newer editors of the Nestle-Aland text decided to put it back in without brackets;

It is in the Nestle's 4th edition 1934 with NO brackets.

Nestle's 21st edition 1975 put [brackets] around it.

Other modern versions still include the whole verse. NASB, NIV, NET, ISV, NKJV, and the Holman Christian Standard.

Though Vaticanus omits the entire verse, even Dan Wallace comments: "early scribes probably omitted the verse through homoioteleuton. The following verses make little sense without verse. 47; its omission is too hard a reading. Thus verse. 47 was most likely part of the original text."

Special thanks to Will Kinney for his scholarship.

Dr. Steven A. Hite