Q. T.C.J. (N.Y.) sends Zion's Watch Tower, Vol. iv. No. 12, and asks whether the following paragraph (p. 2, col. 2) is true. “It is an important scripture; and a line on the subject would be appreciated by many of us.”
“Rev. 20:55But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. (Revelation 20:5), first clause, which reads, 'But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished is the subject of dispute. We showed conclusively that the above text has no support from any authority older than 'the middle of the fifth century.' It is not found in any of the older MSS.—it is not in the Syriac—and the confessedly oldest, most complete, and best of all Greek MSS. of the New Testament, the Sinaitic—does not contain those words. It is wanting too in several of the more recent MSS., among which is the Vatican, No. 1160, a MS. of special clearness and harmony with the most ancient ones.”
The criticism, there need be no hesitation in saying, is unfounded; of which there can scarce be conceived a better proof than the fact that out of more than 500 editions of the Greek New Testament not one known to me exhibits the text desired. All present the clause which these manuscripts and the Syriac V. omit. Every editor of the most ordinary information knew of the various reading in question; yet not a single man of judgment has ever doubted that the omission is an error owing to one of the most fertile sources of variants, homeoteleuton, as it is technically called. The clause before (end of ver. 4) closed with the words χιλια ἔτη; and so does the first clause of ver. 5. This naturally misled the eyes of weary scribes. So the critical editors in all lands and times have judged.
But it “has no support from any authority older than the middle of the fifth century”! Can the Ed. of Z.W.T. have weighed his own words? There is but one MS. of the Revelation older, the Sinaitic; which is often and notoriously faulty, and nowhere more so than in this Book. Thus in Rev. 20 only, ἐκ τοῦ οὐρ. in ver. 1 is omitted; the precisely same sort of error as in 5 occurs in its form of ver. 2, 3, from αὐτόν to αὐτόν being omitted. In ver. 6 it adds καί in error. In ver. 8 it omits wrongly τῆς γῆς τόν; and it wrongly adds πάντα, and καί after M. In 9 there is the corrected insertion in error of ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ and in 10 ὅπου is falsely repeated. In 11 there is the mistake of ἐπανω for ἐπ’, as the article is wrongly dropt from 12, with ἐπί for ἐνώπιον, with the absurd correction of both inserted later. In 13 is the misreading against all authorities of κατεκρίθησαν. In 14 καί added wrongly and δ as wrongly left out. In 15 the future supplants the aorist. Now large as this list is, all the blemishes of the Sinaitic text of this one chapter are not here registered, but enough surely to prove how little the real character of that document is known, and how precarious it would be to demand support from authority older than the middle of the fifth century.
Next, though the Peschito Syriac was made in very early days, we have no MS. of any great antiquity; and even if we had, 2 Peter 2 and 3 John, with Jude, are supplied from a later version, and the Revelation from a copy in the Leyden library, whose age is so uncertain, and character of text so doubtful, that it ranges very low indeed in a critical point of view.
The Alexandrian Uncial (A) is a capital authority as to the Revelation; and so is the Ephr. Reser. of Paris (C), but here we do not hear its voice after 19:5. But the Alex. is, like it, of the fifth century and is supported by the Basilian Vat. 2066, a MS. of far greater weight than the cursive 40 (=Vat. 1160), by an adequate number of cursives of which more than twenty have the same defect here as à. All the ancient versions, save de Dieu's Syriac, confirm the clause, as well as the early commentators, Greek and Latin.
Further, the clause is so entirely in keeping with the context that, if we had not these words at the opening of ver. 5, the same truth is conveyed, or supposed, by the first resurrection of the righteous who reign with Christ for a thousand years (ver. 4-6), followed by the little while of Satan's last deceit and war of the external nations, and the standing before the great white throne for eternal judgment of the dead, who had had no part in the resurrection of life and glory.