Watch Matthew’s Nativity (and More) in Koine

Ben Kantor and the team at koinegreek.com has produced another stellar video of the Gospels in koine. Before they did Mark and this time they’ve done all of Matthew with a twist—the dubbing is all from the text of Codex Vaticanus. Even the closed captions are in majuscule-ish! This means you can now watch and listen to the Christmas story in koine Greek! You can learn more here. Congrats to the entire team who did this. Their plan is to release these up until Easter, one chapter at a time.

In the spirit of Christmas time, KoineGreek.com is releasing Matthew Chapter 1 right now, so that students and scholars of Greek everywhere can appreciate the story of the nativity in the original language of the New Testament. Later this week—by Christmas Eve—KoineGreek.com plans to release Matthew Chapter 2. After this, the plan is to release one or two chapters per week until the week of Palm Sunday, Passover, and Resurrection Sunday (or Easter), during which the plan is to release more or less one chapter per day, beginning with Matthew 21 on Palm Sunday and concluding with Matthew 28 on Resurrection Sunday.

You can watch Matthew 1 here.

Merry Christmas!

Thankfully, you don’t have to have gold, Frankenstein, or myrrh to celebrate the birth of Jesus. To all our blog readers, merry Christmas and a happy 2018!

Variants affecting carols

Can anyone cite instances where unusual variant readings have affected Christmas carols?

More on Christmas variants.

The Christmas Story through the Centuries

In time for your Christmas Eve service, here is the text of the Christmas story in Matthew and Luke from a selection of 3rd-11th century Greek manuscripts. (Links will take you to larger versions.) 

Merry Christmas!

Matthew

Matt 1:1-11 (P1) - 3rd cent.

Matt 1:1-22 (03 Vaticanus) - 4th cent.

Matt 1:20-25; Matt 2:1-4 (05 Bezae) - 5th cent.

The Christmas Story (Part 3)

The Christmas Story (Part 2)

The Christmas Story (Part 1)

Christmas variants (3)

In Matthew 1:20 should we read Μαριαμ or Μαριαν? Is it possible to explain the form with ν as an assimilation to the declension of the genitive in 1:18? NA27 records inconsistency of spelling for the name of Mary Magdalene between 27:56 and 27:61/28:1. Luke 1:41, contrasted with Luke 1:30, 34, 38, 39, 46, etc. allows us to assume that the first declension genitive can be used suppletively alongside the Semitic nominative and accusative (Luke 2:16). What should we make of the first declension variant in Luke 2:19?

Christmas variants (2)

NA27 records that in Matthew 1:21 the Curetonian Syriac supports κοσμον ‘world’ as opposed to λαον ‘people’ plus the possessive. The Curetonian Syriac indeed reads ܥܠܡܐ ‘world’ rather than ܥܡܐ ‘people’. However, since the two Syriac words look very similar (even more so in the script of many manuscripts) is it not far more likely that the Syriac reading ‘world’ arose as an inner-Syriac development? In this case there is no basis for the retroversion into Greek. Consequently, there is no support for a universalistic reading of this part of the Christmas narrative.

Christmas variants

As we are in Advent it seems rather appropriate to consider variants from some of the famous Christmas passages. IMHO the earliest text of Matthew 1:16 is not in significant doubt (so the Nativity plays can go on). Yet there is an interesting variant in Θ f13 it (the peculiarities of the Old Syriac recorded in NA27 do not reflect any real Greek Vorlage). Would anyone like to make suggestions as to how and when this variant arose?