According to the underlying Greek text of Hebrews 2:9, Jesus is described as tasting death for every man by the grace of God:
“But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels—Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God (chariti theou) He might taste death for everyone.” Legacy Standard Bible (LSB)
The meaning here in the context is that God in his favor sent Jesus to become a flesh and blood human being for the express purpose of saving the children of God by making atonement for them in order crown them with glory:
“For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings. For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of One; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will recount Your name to My brothers, In the midst of the assembly I will sing Your praise.’ And again, ‘I will put My trust in Him.’ And again, ‘Behold, I and the children whom God has given Me.’ Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, He had to be made like His brothers in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to help those who are tempted.” Hebrews 2:10-18 LSB
There is, however, a minor variant attested by a few extant manuscripts and early Christians, which is drastically different:
“but we see Jesus, for a short time made lower than the angels, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that apart from God (choris theou) he might taste death on behalf of everyone.” Lexham English bible (LEB)
But yet, we are continuously seeing Jesus – having been made inferior for a brief time beside agents – having been encompassed with glory (or: crowned by a good reputation) and with honor (or: in value) on account of (or: through) the effect of the experience of death (or: Now in this certain short bit of time, we keep on observing Jesus – having been made less because of the result of the suffering from, and which was, death – now having been encircled with the Victor’s wreath in a manifestation which calls forth praise and with esteemed respect, at the side of the folks with the message), so that by the grace of and from God (or: for God’s grace; in the favor which is God; [note: MSS 0243 & 1739, plus a Vulgate MS and in the works of Origen, Ambrose and Jerome and quoted by various writers down to the 11th century, the reading is: APART FROM GOD]) He might taste of death over [the situation and condition of] all mankind (or: for and on behalf of everyone). Jonathan Mitchell New Testament (JMNT; capital and italicized emphasis mine)
In this reading Christ died apart from God, not because of God’s grace. Presumably, the meaning is that God permitted Jesus to undergo suffering and humiliation without any divine intervention, without God stepping in to prevent his beloved Son from undergoing severe torture and death.
Noted liberal NT textual critic Bart D. Ehrman discusses this variant reading at some length, and explains it’s significance:
HEBREWS AND A FORSAKEN JESUS
Luke’s portrayal of Jesus stands in contrast not only to that of Mark, but also to that of other New Testament authors, including the unknown author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who appears to presuppose knowledge of passion traditions in which Jesus was terrified in the face of death and died with no divine succor or support, as can be seen in the resolution of one of the most interesting textual problems of the New Testament.12
The problem occurs in a context that describes the eventual subjugation of all things to Jesus, the Son of Man. Again, I have placed in brackets the textual variants in question.
For when [God] subjects to him all things, he leaves nothing that is not subjected to him. But we do not yet see all things subjected to him. But we do see Jesus, who, having been made for a little while lower than the angels, was crowned with glory and honor on account of his suffering of death, so that [by the grace of God/apart from God] he might taste death for everyone. (Heb. 2:89)
Although almost all the surviving manuscripts state that Jesus died for all people “by the grace of God” (CHARITI THEOU), a couple of others state, instead, that he died “apart from God” (CHORIS THEOU). There are good reasons for thinking that the latter, however, was the original reading of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
I don’t need to go into the intricacies of the manuscript support for the reading “apart from God” except to say that even though it occurs in only two documents of the tenth century, one of these (Ms. 1739) is known to have been produced from a copy that was at least as ancient as our earliest manuscripts. Of yet greater interest, the earlythird century scholar Origen tells us that this was the reading of the majority of manuscripts of his own day. Other evidence also suggests its early popularity: it was found in manuscripts known to Ambrose and Jerome in the Latin West, and it is quoted by a range of church writers down to the eleventh century. And so, despite the fact that it is not widely attested among our surviving manuscripts, the reading was at one time supported by strong external evidence.
When one turns from external to internal evidence, there can be no doubt concerning the superiority of this poorly attested variant. We have already seen that scribes were far more likely to make a reading that was hard to understand easier, rather than make an easy reading harder. This variant provides a textbook case of the phenomenon. Christians in the early centuries commonly regarded Jesus’s death as the supreme manifestation of God’s grace. To say, though, that Jesus died “apart from God” could be taken to mean any number of things, most of them unpalatable. Since scribes must have created one of these readings out of the other, there is little question concerning which of the two is more likely the corruption.
But was the alteration deliberate? Advocates of the more commonly attested text (“grace of God”) have naturally had to claim that the change was not made on purpose (otherwise their favored text would almost certainly be the modification). By virtue of necessity, then, they have devised alternative scenarios to explain the accidental origin of the more difficult reading. Most commonly, it is simply supposed that because the words in question are similar in appearance (CHARITI/ CHORIS), a scribe inadvertently mistook the word grace for the preposition apart from.
This view, however, seems a shade unlikely. Is a negligent or absentminded scribe likely to have changed his text by writing a word used less frequently in the New Testament (“apart from”) or one used more frequently (“grace,” four times as common)? Is he likely to have created a phrase that occurs nowhere else in the New Testament (“apart from God”) or one that occurs more than twenty times (“by the grace of God”)? Is he likely to have produced a statement, even by accident, that is bizarre and troubling or one that is familiar and easy? Surely, it’s the latter: readers typically mistake unusual words for common ones and simplify what is complex, especially when their minds have partially strayed. Thus, even a theory of carelessness supports the lessattested reading (“apart from God”) as original.
The most popular theory among those who think that the phrase apart from God is not original is that the reading was created as a marginal note: a scribe read in Heb. 2:8 that “all things” are to be subjected to the lordship of Christ, and immediately thought of 1 Cor. 15:27:
“For all things will be subjected under his [Christ’s] feet.” But when it says that “all things will be subjected,” it is clear that it means all things except for the one who subjected them [i.e., God himself is not among the things subjected to Christ at the end].
According to this theory, the scribe copying Hebrews 2 wanted it to be clear here as well that when the text indicates that everything is to be subjected to Christ, this does not include God the Father. To protect the text from misconstrual, the scribe then inserted an explanatory note in the margin of Heb. 2:8 (as a kind of crossreference to 1 Cor. 15:27), pointing out that nothing is left unsubjected to Christ, “except for God.” This note was subsequently transferred by a later, inattentive, scribe into the text of the next verse, Heb. 2:9, where he thought it belonged.
Despite the popularity of the solution, it is probably too clever by half, and requires too many dubious steps to work. There is no manuscript that attests both readings in the text (i.e., the correction in the margin or text of verse 8, where it would belong, and the original text of verse 9). Moreover, if a scribe thought that the note was a marginal correction, why did he find it in the margin next to verse 8 rather than verse 9? Finally, if the scribe who created the note had done so in reference to 1 Corinthians, would he not have written “except for God” (EKTOS THEOU—the phrase that actually occurs in the 1 Corinthians passage) rather than “apart from God” (CHORIS THEOU—a phrase not found in 1 Corinthians)?
In sum, it is extremely difficult to account for the phrase apart from God if the phrase by the grace of God was the original reading of Heb. 2:9. At the same time, whereas a scribe could scarcely be expected to have said that Christ died “apart from God,” there is every reason to think that this is precisely what the author of Hebrews said. For this lessattested reading is also more consistent with the theology of Hebrews (“intrinsic probabilities”). Never in this entire Epistle does the word grace (CHARIS) refer to Jesus’s death or to the benefits of salvation that accrue as a result of it. Instead, it is consistently connected with the gift of salvation that is yet to be bestowed upon the believer by the goodness of God (see especially Heb. 4:16; also 10:29; 12:15; 13:25). To be sure, Christians historically have been more influenced by other New Testament authors, notably Paul, who saw Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross as the supreme manifestation of the grace of God. But Hebrews does not use the term in this way, even though scribes who thought that this author was Paul may not have realized that.
On the other hand, the statement that Jesus died “apart from God”—enigmatic when taken in isolation—makes compelling sense in its broader literary context in the book of Hebrews. Whereas this author never refers to Jesus’s death as a manifestation of divine “grace,” he repeatedly emphasizes that Jesus died a fully human, shameful death, totally removed from the realm whence he came, the realm of God; his sacrifice, as a result, was accepted as the perfect expiation for sin. Moreover, God did not intervene in Jesus’s passion and did nothing to minimize his pain. Thus, for example, Heb. 5:7 speaks of Jesus, in the face of death, beseeching God with loud cries and tears. In 12:2 he is said to endure the “shame” of his death, not because God sustained him, but because he hoped for vindication. Throughout this Epistle, Jesus is said to experience human pain and death, like other human beings “in every respect.” His was not an agony attenuated by special dispensation.
Yet more significant, this is a major theme of the immediate context of Heb. 2:9, which emphasizes that Christ lowered himself below the angels to share fully in blood and flesh, experience human sufferings, and die a human death. To be sure, his death is known to bring salvation, but the passage says not a word about God’s grace as manifest in Christ’s work of atonement. It focuses instead on Christology, on Christ’s condescension into the transitory realm of suffering and death. It is as a full human being that Jesus experiences his passion, apart from any succor that might have been his as an exalted being. The work he began at his condescension he completes in his death, a death that had to be “apart from God.”
How is it that the reading “apart from God,” which can scarcely be explained as a scribal alteration, conforms to the linguistic preferences, style, and theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews, while the alternative reading “by the grace of God,” which would have caused scribes no difficulties at all, stands at odds both with what Hebrews says about the death of Christ and with the way it says it? Heb. 2:9 appears originally to have said that Jesus died “apart from God,” forsaken, much as he is portrayed in the Passion narrative of Mark’s Gospel.
CONCLUSION
In each of the three cases we have considered, there is an important textual variant that plays a significant role in how the passage in question is interpreted. It is obviously important to know whether Jesus was said to feel compassion or anger in Mark 1:41; whether he was calm and collected or in deep distress in Luke 22:4344; and whether he was said to die by God’s grace or “apart from God” in Heb. 2:9. We could easily look at other passages as well, to get the sense of how important it is to know the words of an author if we want to interpret his message. (Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why [HarperSanFrancisco, 2005], 5. Originals That Matter, pp. 144-149; emphasis mine)
With this in the background I am ready to explore how these variants affected the Syriac versions of Hebrews 2:9, and the impact this made on Christ’s Deity: HEBREWS 2:9 & SYRIAC CHRISTOLOGY PT. 2.
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