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ΒΑΛΑΑΚ in the 72 Text of Jude 11: A Proposal*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Thomas Scott Caulley
Thomas Scott Caulley
Affiliation:
Institut zur Erforschung des UrchristentumsWilhelmstrasse 100, D-72074 Tübingen, Germany
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Abstract

This article proposes that the variant Βαλαάκ in the 72 text of Jude 11 be read in light of theological tendency in the Bodmer codex, especially as evidenced in the christological variants of 72. Initially, scholarly opinion dismissed the ‘Balaak’ reading as nothing more than an inexperienced copyist's careless mistake. Though recognizing the older view to be unsatisfactory, recent explanations are also inadequate. Given neutral or positive traditions about Balaam in Judaism, and in the context of the early Christian belief that the Spirit of Christ inspired the OT Prophets (including Balaam), the article makes a case for reevaluation of the variant.

Keywords

BalaamBalak72Bodmer CodexJude 11Text Criticism
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 73 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 The 72 text of 2 Pet 2.15 reads Βαλλαὰμ τοῦ Βοσόρ. 2 Pet 2.15-16 expands upon the Jude material, including the addition of the identification of Balaam with the place name. While the copyist inadvertently doubled the lambda in Βαλαάμ, there is no doubt as to who is intended.

2 Jude 11 NA27 reads…τῃ̑ πλάνῃ τοῦ Βαλαὰμ μισθοῦ ἐξεχύθησαν.

3 Testuz, Michel, ed., P.Bodm. VII-IX, L’Épître de Jude, les deux Épîtres de Pierre, les Psaumes 33 et 34 (Cologny-Genève: Bibliothèque Bodmer, 1959) 22Google Scholar. 72 is the designation given to 1-2 Peter and Jude as published in P.Bodm. VII and VIII. See Bircher, Martin, ed., Bibliotheca Bodmeriana. La collection des Papyrus Bodmer/Die Sammlung der Bodmer-Papyri/The collection of the Bodmer Papyri. 8. Planches de toutes les pages originales/Abbildungen sämtlicher originaler Manuskriptseiten/Reproductions of all the original pages 1-400 (München: K. G. Saur, 2000) 271–86, esp. 274Google Scholar.

4 Novum Testamentum Graece Editio Critica Maior, IV Die Katholischen Briefe, Teil I, Text. 4. Lieferung: Der Zweite und Dritte Johannesbrief; der Judasbrief (ed. Barbara Aland et al.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2005). Wasserman, Tommy, The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission (ConBNT 43; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wicksell, 2006) 108, 167, 283Google Scholar. Wasserman lists the fifteenth-century MS. 432* as the only other witness which reads ΒΑΛΑΑΚ. Such late copies are excluded from consideration by NA27 and the Editio Critica Maior as insignificant for the reconstruction of the text.

5 ‘…le copiste écrit volontiers ει pour ι, ou ι pour ει; ε pour αι et plus rarement αι pour ε…on trouve aussi ʋ à la place du groupe οι…’ (Testuz, Papyrus Bodmer VII–IX, 16); see Kubo, Sakae, 72 and the Codex Vaticanus (SD 27; Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1965) 9Google Scholar.

6 Massaux labeled 72 ‘wild’, and analogous to the Western or Bezan text of the Gospels and Acts; Massaux, Edouard, ‘Le texte de l'Epitre de Jude du Papyrus Bodmer VII (72)’, Scrinium Lovaniense. Melanges historiques. Etienne Van Cauwenberg (Louvain: Université de Louvain, 1961) 108–25Google Scholar; King, Marchant A., ‘Jude and 1 and 2 Peter: Notes on the Bodmer Manuscript’, BSac 121(1964) 54–7Google Scholar; Quinn, Jerome D., ‘Notes on the Text of the 72 1 Pet 2.3; 5.14; and 5.9’, CBQ 27 (1965) 241–9Google Scholar, here, 242: ‘…[the scribe's] quite inconsistent orthography…scarcely [disposes] one to consider his work careful’.

7 Birdsall, J. Neville, ‘The Text of Jude in 72’, JTS 14 (1963) 394–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 395; Kubo, 72, 152, in which Kubo challenged the previously held assumption of the superiority of B; cf. Kubo, Sakae, ‘Textual Relationships in Jude’, Studies in the New Testament Language and Text: Essays in Honor of George D. Kilpatrick on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday (ed. Elliott, J. K.; Leiden: Brill, 1976) 276–82Google Scholar, here 280. See Grunewald, Winfried, ed., Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus I. Die Katholischen Briefe (ANTF 6; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1986)Google Scholar.

8 See Caragounis, Chrys C., The Development of Greek and the New Testament (WUNT 167; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004) 502Google Scholar: while the percentage of such orthographic errors is higher in 72, similar errors are also found in Codex Sinaiticus, and in 46, 66, and 75.

9 See esp. Landon, Charles, A Text-Critical Study of the Epistle of Jude (JSNTSup 135; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996) 100–101Google Scholar; Wasserman, Epistle of Jude, 283; Nicklas, Tobias, ‘Der “lebendige Text” des Neuen Testaments: Der Judasbrief in 72 (P.Bodmer VII)’, ASE 22 (2005) 203–22Google Scholar, esp. 204-5.

10 Landon, Jude, 100-101.

11 Landon, Jude, 100: ‘According to Philo Mos. 1.295-300; Josephus Ant. 4.126-30; Tg. Ps.-J. Num 24.14,25; y. Sanh. 10.28d; b. Sanh. 106a; and Rev 2.14; Balaam persuaded Balak to lead Israel into idolatry and sins of a sexual nature. [But] these references are contradicted by a post-biblical Jewish tradition, for example, Philo Mos. 1.266-9 which provides the opposite impression’. Landon here summarizes the position of Watson, Duane Frederick, Invention, Arrangement and Style: Rhetorical Criticism of Jude and 2 Peter (SBLDS 104; Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1988) 59Google Scholar.

12 Landon, Jude, 101.

13 The fifteenth-century manuscript cited in Wasserman, Epistle of Jude (108, 167, 283) is not significant for this study.

14 With the exception of Balaam in 2 Pet 2.15.

15 While the double alpha is attested in Homer and a few others, it is rare (e.g. LSJ, 1). The vowel alpha was not subject to the substitution problems mentioned, as is shown by Caragounis’ discussion of ‘pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs’ (Development, 365-77), and ‘similarly spelled but identically pronounced variants’ (Development, 517-46).

16 King, ‘Notes’, 56.

17 Wasserman, Epistle of Jude, 283.

18 Bircher, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, 274; also reproduced in Wasserman, Epistle of Jude, Plate IV.

19 Though not so indicated in Testuz, P.Bodm. VIII, the supralinear addition of εἰς in 2 Pet 2.6 occurs above a letter or letters which have been crossed out.

20 Βαλάκ is usual in the LXX; cf. Βαλάκος in Jos. Ant. 4.107.

21 Wasserman, Epistle of Jude, 283 n. 201.

22 Nicklas, ‘Der “lebendige Text” ’, 215-16.

23 ‘Gegen die Idee eines Schreiberfehlers spricht die Tatsache, dass er einen sinnvollen Text ergibt’, so Nicklas (‘Der “lebendige Text”’) 216 n. 44.

24 Nicklas, ‘Der “lebendige Text”’, 216.

25 ‘Rehabilitation’ and ‘positive treatment’ are admittedly relative concepts.

26 A tradition of positive assessment of Balaam has continued into recent times. For example, note the inclusion of ‘Balaam Propheta’ among the Hebrew prophets in the ceiling frescoes of Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Luxembourg.

27 Ant. 4.105; ET is based throughout on Thackeray, LCL.

28 Compare the rejection by Moses of Balaam's prophetic status in Philo Migr. 114.

29 ET in Harrington, Daniel J., ‘Pseudo-Philo’, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2 (ed. Charlesworth, James; New York: Doubleday, 1985), 297–377Google Scholar, here 324-6.

30 Consider the argument in 2 Pet 1.19-21; see my article, ‘“They Promise Them Freedom”: Once again, the ψευδοδιδάσκαλοι in 2 Peter’, ZNW 99 (2008) 129-38.

31 See Coats, George W., ‘Balaam: Sinner or Saint?’, Saga, Legend, Tale, Novella, Fable: Narrative Forms in Old Testament Literature (ed. Coats, G. W., JSOTSup 35; Sheffield: JSOT, 1985) 56–62Google Scholar; Greene, John T., Balaam and His Interpreters: A Hermeneutical History of the Balaam Traditions (BJS 244; Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1992) 18–20Google Scholar; etc.

32 Most scholars accept M. Testuz’ judgment that there was a single scribe for all three documents of 72. A single scribe for 72 is consistent with the case for taking the theological variants together, which in turn is amenable to the assertion that ‘Balaak’ in Jude 11 is an ideological variant. See Kubo, 72, 9; Quinn, ‘Notes’, 241; King ‘Notes’, 56; Floyd Filson, ‘More Bodmer Papyri’, BA 25 (1962) 52.

33 Beare, F. W., ‘The Text of I Peter in Papyrus 72’, JBL 80 (1961) 255Google Scholar; cf. Kubo, 72, 12; King, ‘Notes’, 57. See also Nicklas, T. and Wasserman, T., ‘Theologische Linien im Codex Bodmer Miscellani?’, New Testament Manuscripts: Their Texts and Their World (ed. Kraus, T. and Nicklas, T., TENT 2; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 161–88Google Scholar, here 177-9, 183-5.

34 Kubo, 72, 12. Cf. Ehrman, Bart D., Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (New York/Oxford: Oxford University, 1993) 262–9Google Scholar.

35 In addition to the ‘drei hochtheologisch motivierte Varianten des 72’ (Jude 5; 1 Pet 1.5; 2 Pet 1.2), B. Aland considers the variant in 2 Pet 1.20 theologically significant; Aland, Barbara, ‘Welche Rolle spielen Textkritik und Textgeschichte für das Verständnis des Neuen Testaments? Frühe Leserpespektiven’, NTS 52 (2006) 303–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 307-8.

36 The discussion of tendentious textual variants linked to specific ideology is well known; see Epp, Eldon J., The Theological Tendency of Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis in Acts (SNTSMS 3; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1966)Google Scholar esp. 1–40; cf. Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption, esp. 3-46; see Ehrman, Bart D., ‘Text and Transmission: The Historical Significance of the “Altered” Text’, Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (NTTS 33; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 325–42Google Scholar [= TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 5 (2000) electronic journal, http://purl.org/TC].

37 ‘The Bodmer codex’ is a designation given to this miscellaneous codex; Wasserman, ‘Papyrus 72’, 137; see 142. This article takes the view that the codex is a miscellany, a group of manuscripts consciously collected together, as opposed to a random assemblage of heterogeneous materials.

38 The codex is now disassembled. One can still observe pagination from earlier arrangements, showing the codex was comprised of recombined earlier codices. Remnants of earlier bindings support this judgment. Such a recombined codex is consistent with a collection made for ideological (theological) reasons.

39 P.Bodm. X (= 3rd Corinthians 1 and 3); the designation ‘3rd Corinthians’ is used for convenience. Testuz, Michel, Correspondance apocryphe des Corinthiens et de l'apôtre Paul (P.Bodm. X–XII; Cologny-Genève: Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, 1959) 38, 40Google Scholar; see Elliott, J. K., The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 380–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ET of P.Bodm. X in Ehrman, Bart D., Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It Into the New Testament (New York/Oxford: Oxford University, 2003) 158–9Google Scholar.

40 On Pascha presents the pre-existent Christ as active in creation and proclaimed through the law and prophets; Melito of Sardis, On Pascha and Fragments: Texts and Translations (ed. Stuart George Hall; OECT; Oxford: Clarendon, 1979) 59-60, 104. Testuz, Michel, Melito Sardianus, Homélie sur la Pâque: Manuscrit du IIIe siècle (P.Bodm. XIII; Cologny-Genève: Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, 1960)Google Scholar.

41 Martin, Victor, Apologie de Philéas, évêque de Thmouis (P.Bodm. XX; Cologny-Genève: Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, 1964)Google Scholar.

42 See Apology of Phileas 3-4; see Albert Pietersma, The Acts of Phileas Bishop of Thmuis. P. Chester Beatty XV, with a new edition of P.Bodm. XX, and Latin, Halkin'sActa (COr VII; Geneva/Dublin: Patrick Cramer/Chester Beatty Library, 1984) 94Google Scholar; cf. 62-3.

43 My paraphrase.