I continue my discussion of the variants of Hebrews 2:9 and its impact on Christology and soteriology: HEBREWS 2:9 & SYRIAC CHRISTOLOGY.

One of the most interesting, in fact remarkable, variants of Hebrews 2:9 is found in the Syriac translation known as the Peshitta.

According to this version, Jesus is said to be the God who chose to die for everyone out of his grace for mankind:

“But we see that he is Yeshua, who became a little lower than the Angels for the suffering of his death, and glory and honor are placed upon his head, for God himself, by his grace, tasted death (hu ger bətaybuteh alaha… ṭəᶜem mawta) in the place of every person.” Hebrews 2:9 Peshitta Holy Bible Translated (HPBT https://biblehub.com/hpbt/hebrews/2.htm)

“But him who was humbled to be less than the angels, we see to be JESHU himself, for the sake of the passion of his death; and glory and honour set upon his head; for He Aloha, [Hu ger Aloho.] in his grace, for every man hath tasted death!” Etheridge‘s Peschito Syriac NT

“But we see him, who was depressed somewhat lower than the angels, to be this Jesus, because of the passion of his death; and glory and honor are placed on his head; for God himself, in his grace, tasted death for all men.” Murdock‘s Syriac Peshitta NT

However, there is another reading which is reflected in the following rendering of the Peshitta:

“We see that he is Jesus who humbled himself to be a little lower than the angels, through his suffering and his death, but now he is crowned with glory and honor; for he tasted death for the sake of every one but God.” George Lamsa Bible (LAMSA https://biblehub.com/lamsa/hebrews/2.htm)

The world-renowned scholar on Syriac Christianity Sebastian P. Brock is worth quoting at length since he explains how these different readings may have been the result of the two main variants of Heb. 2:9 in the Greek copies, which the Syriac speaking Christians would have been aware of:

Although numerous points in this excerpt call for comment, here we must confine ourselves to a single passage, that concerning Heb. 2:9b. As is well known, the vast majority of Greek manuscripts provides the following text in the second half of Heb. 2:9. All emphasis is mine:

… hopos chariti theou hyper pantos geusetai thanatou,

while the variant choris theou, in place of chariti theou, is found only in 0121b, 424c, 1739*”, in the margin of one Vulgate manuscript and in some Peshitta manuscripts (the other Peshitta manuscripts imply a Greek text reading chariti theos). The reading  choris theou is definitely older than the Nestorian controversy, seeing that it is already known to several third and fourth-century writers;⁴ a number of modern scholars have argued that it actually represents the original text of the Letter.⁵ Whatever the original reading may have been (and this is not of concern here), it is clear that the poor attestation of choris theou in the extant manuscript tradition is the result of its adoption by writers of the strict Antiochene christological tradition and consequent rejection by all who preferred the Alexandrine christology of Cyril–and in the sixth century this would have meant the vast majority of the Greek speaking church. We can even see something of the process by which attitudes became polarized: whereas Diodore is still happy to accept either reading,⁶ Theodore regards chariti theou as a deliberate alteration which he ridicules.⁷ By Philoxenus’ time, nearly a century later, the reading choris theou has come to be seen as a characteristic feature of theologians in the Antiochene christological tradition, having been dropped by all others: since the reading is by then only found among ‘Nestorians’, it is an easy step to go on to accuse them of inventing it. Nor is Philoxenus the only person to make this accusation, for the later Greek Chalcedonian writers Oikumenios⁸ and Theophylact⁹ do exactly the same.

Syriac writers from the mid fifth-century onwards were sharply divided in the positions they took on Christology, and it will come as no surprise that writers belonging to the Church of the East regularly quote Heb. 2:9 with the reading “apart from God”,¹⁰ while Syrian Orthodox authors equally regularly provide either “in his grace, God” (the other reading found in Peshitta manuscripts) or “by the grace of God”, an exact translation of the Greek which would be known to them from the Philoxenian and Harklean versions and from Syriac translations of Greek writers.¹¹ It is accordingly a matter of some interest to see what is the situation at Heb. 2:9b in actual manuscripts of the Peshitta. That the witness of Peshitta manuscripts at this point is divided has not escaped the notice of scholars, among whom Wescott has so far probably provided the most detailed information;² Wescott, however, only made use of a small proportion of the readily accessible early manuscripts of the Peshitta, and so a more extensive enquiry may not be out of place here. (Brock, “Hebrews 2:9b in Syriac Tradition,” in Novum Testamentum, Volume XXVII (27), 3 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 237-239)

To highlight Brock’s points, the reading choris theou (“apart from/without God”) was already known among 3^rd-4^th century AD Christian writers, and was later adapted by the Antiochene or the so-called Nestorian Christians who disagreed with the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria.

The former group were careful to distinguish the human nature of Christ from his divine nature to the extent that they were accused of dividing the Son into two Persons, namely, a divine and a human Person. They did this for the express purpose of defending the Son’s divine nature against any charge of it having morphed into a human nature and/or its having adapted human qualities such as mutability, passions etc.

As such, these Christians would not say that God was born of Mary, or that God died, since the divine nature knows of no beginning or end. I.e., God qua God can never be born, grow, hunger, become weary, or die. Rather, it was the Man who was born, hungered, grew, died and was raised to life. They even refused to call the holy Mother Theotokos (“God-bearer,” “Mother of God”), and chose to instead address her as Christotokos (“Christ-bearer,” “Mother of Christ”).

This explains why the Antiochene school of Christology adopted the reading choris theou into their Syriac copies of Hebrews 2:9, since this affirmed to them that Christ died not as God, but as a mere human being.    

The Alexandrian school, on the other hand, insisted on emphasizing the inseparable union of the two natures of the one Son so as to avoid the charge of positing two different Persons, namely a divine Son and a Man who then became united together at the conception of that Man in the consecrated womb of the holy Virgin. They, therefore, chose to speak of God being born, God dying on the cross, God rising from the dead, etc.

It, therefore, only makes sense that those Syriac speaking Christians that agreed with the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria would have adopted a reading of Hebrews 2:9 that emphasized the fact that it was God himself who, in his grace, died for all mankind.  

Brock goes on to list the variant Syriac readings among the extant Peshitta MSS:

For the present purpose 31 Peshitta New Testament manuscripts dating between the fifth and thirteenth centuries (inclusive) have been sampled; this represents a high proportion of the extant Peshitta manuscripts in western libraries belonging to this time scale that preserve the passage.’³ With the manuscripts belonging to the later part of this period it is possible to tell their ecclesiastical allegiance on grounds of script, but for the earlier centuries this is not normally possible.

Besides the two basic Peshitta readings, “in his grace, God” (= a, below), and “apart from God” (= d), there also occur two small variants of the former reading, “God in his grace” ( = b), and “in grace, God” (= c). Thus in Peshitta manuscripts we have the following four possible readings:

hu ger b-taybuteh alaha hlap t‘em kulnas’ mawta = a

‘for he in his grace God for the sake of everyone tasted death’

hu ger alaha b-taybuteh … = b

‘for he, God, in his grace …’

‘ hu ger b-taybuta alaha … = c

‘for he in grace God …’

ha ger star men alahi … = d

‘for he apart from God …’

All these of course conflict with the more exact translation of the Greek that is found in the Philoxenian (as quoted by Philoxenus in the passage translated above), in the Harklean and in quotations of the passage found in Syriac translations of Greek writers, all of which have “by the grace of God”. (Brock, pp. 239-240)

Note that three of the four variants basically say the same thing, namely, it was God himself who tasted death for all men.

Brock then concludes by presenting some compelling arguments for why he thinks that the original Peshitta actually read that it was God who tasted death for everyone:

It will be convenient first of all to set out the evidence of the Peshitta manuscripts consulted in tabular form. The witnesses are given in chronological order, by century,¹⁴ and where the ecclesiastical allegiance of the manuscript is evident the symbol W (Western, i.e. Syrian Orthodox or Maronite) or E (Eastern, i.e. Church of the East) is prefixed to the manuscript number. In the first column the reading can be assumed to be a unless otherwise stated. An asterisk denotes the reading of the first hand, before correction. Unless otherwise specified all Add. ( = Additional) and Or. (= Oriental) manuscripts cited belong to the British Library. From this table it will be apparent that from at least the eleventh century onwards it can be safely predicted that East Syrian manuscripts will contain the reading d (‘apart from God’), while West Syrian ones will have readings a, b or c. It is no surprise to find this state of affairs reflected in the printed editions: those in East Syrian script, based on East Syrian manuscripts have d,¹⁵ while those in serto script, based on West Syrian manuscripts, have a, or b.¹⁶ (Brock, pp. 240-241; emphasis mine)

What was the original Peshitta reading? At first sight the fact that we have at least four manuscripts altered from d to a, and only one doubtful one from a to d, might lead one to suggest that d is the original and that the reading a, already in several fifth to seventh century manuscripts, is due to anti-Nestorian bias, once d had become established (already by Theodore of Mopsuestia’s time) as a key text for the Antiochene christological tradition.

This is certainly a possible hypothesis, but I am inclined to think that the situation was more complex and that the evidence would be better interpreted somewhat differently.

Up to its closure in 489 the Persian School at Edessa served as the channel by which Antiochene theology (especially that of Theodore) reached the Syriac world. If, as must have been the case, the teachers at the School were aware of Theodore’s views on the correct reading at Heb. 2:9, they would hardly have tolerated a Peshitta reading which explicitly went against his opinion;’ and at this date no objection would have been felt to ‘correcting’ the Peshitta (supposing it originally had reading a) to concur with the Greek text advocated by the ‘Exegete’ par excellence, seeing that the Peshitta (at least as far as the Gospels were concerned) was already the outcome of a revision which aimed at a closer correspondence to the Greek.

On this second hypothesis, then, that the original reading of the Peshitta was b-taybuteh alaha, and not star men alaha, we would have two series of changes: (1) The first stage would take place at the Persian School of Edessa, from the 430’s onwards, propagating Theodore’s reading (i.e. our d) in Peshitta manuscripts. Since the School was extremely influential (even on West Syrian writers like Philoxenus and Jacob of Serugh in matters of exegesis), it would not be surprising if manuscripts copied there, with reading d, reached circles which disliked the School’s Christological teaching. We thus have the background set for the second set of changes: (2) From the late fifth century onwards manuscripts which were descended from Peshitta texts ‘corrected’ to Theodore’s reading at the Persian School were now ‘corrected’ back to reading a. This is the stage which we actually witness in Add. 14480 and 14479 (the latter indeed written in Edessa in 533/4).

The choice between these two hypotheses could be settled once for all if we had a quotation of Heb. 2:9 in a Syriac author writing before the 430’s. Unfortunately, however, neither Aphrahat nor the Liber Graduum obliges, but we do have Ephrem’s Commentary on the Pauline Epistles, preserved only in Armenian. Molitor’s retroversion into Greek of Ephrem’s quotations of Paul suggests that Ephrem tantalizingly omitted the key words of interest to us when he commented on the passage;¹⁹ reference to the Armenian,²⁰ however, suggests that this is in fact not quite the case:

Ayl p‘arawk‘ ew patuov zor asac‘ Dawit‘ etei psakeac‘vasn zi astuac vasn amenayn mardkan zmah casekeac‘.

But (he) whom David said that ‘He crowned with glory and honour’: (this is) because ‘God, for the sake of all mankind, tasted death’.²¹

Both the Latin translation of the Commentary and Molitor failed to observe that ‘God’ was part of the quotation; this was presumably because they had the Greek reading ‘by the grace of God’ in mind, rather than the Peshitta ‘in his grace, God’. But even if ‘God’ is not strictly part of the quotation, Ephrem could not possibly have written this sentence if his Syriac New Testament text had star men alaha (reading d); on the other hand his words reflect very closely reading a, with God as subject of the verb ‘tasted’: all he has done is to abbreviate the text slightly by omitting ‘in his grace’.

We may accordingly safely conclude that the second hypothesis is to be preferred, and that the original Peshitta version of Heb. 2:9b read hu ger b-taybuteh alaha hlap kulnas’ t‘em mawta, ‘for he in his grace, God, tasted death on behalf of everyone’. (Brock, pp. 243-244)

We, thus, have a very ancient witness from the Syriac stream for the widespread belief in the divinity of Christ. These early versions and Christological disputes all point in one direction, namely, the Christians worldwide held to the fact of Jesus Christ being God in an absolute, essential sense who then became Man for the salvation of the world.

FURTHER READING

MORE ANCIENT WITNESSES TO CHRIST’S DEITY

Ante-Nicene Witness to Jesus’ Deity

IRENAEUS AND THE DEITY OF CHRIST

MORE FROM IRENAEUS ON THE DEITY OF CHRIST

Justin Martyr’s Witness to Christ’s essential and eternal Deity

Ignatius of Antioch’s Proclamation of the Essential Deity of Christ

Tertullian and the Doctrine of the Trinity

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