Debates about the manuscript evidence of the New Testament texts are an intriguing, if serpentine, study. The study of the ancient manuscripts has as its goal to gain a complete text that best reflects the content of the text written by the original author. This study is not a question of whether or not scholars accept the inspiration of the texts under their scrutiny; they may believe it or not. The outcome of their study would be largely the same in either case. The first systematic vernacular translations; Luther's German and the King James Version, were dependent on a Greek text that was not based on the oldest texts, that is, texts closest to their original authorship. This means that inclusions that might not have reflected the best manuscript tradition had crept into those manuscripts. The majority of these changes to the texts seldom were anything more than variations in spelling or word order. Occasionally, the copyists would transfer from memory to their text some variation that was to be found in the church's liturgical practice, such as the conclusion to the Lord's Prayer: "for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. Amen," which had its origin in the service of the church. Suffice it to say, all the manuscript errors of which we are aware would not make a single difference to the faith of the church. It isn't like there is some manuscript somewhere that says, "The Word did NOT become flesh and dwell among us." No matter what the conspiracy theorists might want you to think.

One of those manuscript inclusions crops up in today's reading from Athanasius of Alexandria. His Four Discourses Against the Arians was written about the mid-fourth century A.D. He was quoting a biblical text that was already well-known in Alexandria, Egypt where he was the bishop, and perhaps elsewhere in the ancient world. He is quoting from 1 Peter 4:1, which includes the words "Christ suffered in the flesh" in the ESV text known to us. The KJV, reflecting a manuscript tradition that was not so carefully sorted out, includes the words, "for us." That is how Athanasius quoted the text that was known to him. I have no doubt that those words do not belong in that verse because the older manuscripts now known to us do not include them. However, the question remains how did those words find their way into the text used in Alexandria in the fourth century?

While I am not an expert on the New Testament manuscripts (far from it!), I do have a speculation about how it was that the Alexandrines had a text that read (in Greek word order): "Christ suffered for us in the flesh." It came about as a clear confession of the substitutionary atonement worked by our Lord Jesus through His suffering; all was done "for us." So when it was added it was added as a theological reflection on the purpose of the suffering of Christ. The larger point is that this error slipped into the text for entirely good reasons; and it witnesses to the early church's steadfast belief that the suffering of Christ was substitutionary. He suffered "for us" in the sense that he suffered in our place. Whoever slipped in these two words also had good reason to do so based on the rest of the letter, in which Peter elsewhere said, "For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps" (1Pt 2:21). Perhaps it is true that this clarity about the substitutionary nature of the suffering of Christ, the God-man, was obscured later in the history of the church. But the earlier testimony of the church was clear even in the mistake it made by adding these two glorious words, found elsewhere in the Scripture, into their text of 1 Peter 4:1.

Even the literary structure of the inclusion is instructive. The Greek word order (see above) showed that between Christ's suffering and His flesh we are kept safe, incorporated as we are between Christ's suffering and His flesh which bore such suffering. There is no better place to be: between Christ's suffering and His flesh.