A comparable corruption appears in the prologue of the Fourth Gospel, although here the issues are far more complicated and have generated substantially more debate and indecision. I will not give an exhaustive study of all the issues surrounding the text of John 1:18; these are competently handled in the commentaries and in several recent studies.¹⁵⁷ I will instead develop my reasons for thinking that the majority of manuscripts are right in ending the prologue with the words: “No one has seen God at any time, but the unique Son (ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός ) who is in the bosom of the Father, that one has made him known.” The variant reading of the Alexandrian tradition, which substitutes “God” for “Son,” represents an orthodox corruption of the text: “the unique God [(ό) μονογενὴς θεός ] who is in the bosom of the Father, that one has made him known.”¹⁵⁸
It must be acknowledged at the outset that the Alexandrian reading is more commonly preferred by textual critics, in no small measure because of its external support. Not only is it the reading of the great Alexandrian uncials (א B C), it is also attested by the earliest available witnesses, the Bodmer papyri p⁶⁶ and p⁷⁵, discovered in the middle of the present century. It would be a mistake, however, to consider this external evidence compelling in itself. For in actual fact, contrary to widely held opinion,¹⁵⁹ the discovery of the early papyri has done very little (in this instance) to change the character of the documentary alignments. This is due to the peculiar character of the verses’ attestation: even before the discovery of the papyri, scholars realized that the bulk of the Alexandrian tradition attested the reading, including witnesses that date back to the beginning of the third century.¹⁶⁰ This means that we already knew that it must have been preserved in early Greek manuscripts of Alexandria—even before we had access to any of them. The chance discovery of two such witnesses has consequently done nothing to change the picture, but has simply demonstrated that our theories about transmission are essentially correct.¹⁶¹
Here it must be emphasized that outside of the Alexandrian tradition, the reading μονογενὴς θεός has not fared well at all. Virtually every other representative of every other textual grouping—Western, Caesarean, Byzantine—attests ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός. And the reading even occurs in several of the secondary Alexandrian witnesses (e.g., C³ Ψ 892 1241 Ath Alex). This is not simply a case of one reading supported by the earliest and best manuscripts and another supported by late and inferior ones, but of one reading found almost exclusively in the Alexandrian tradition and another found sporadically there and virtually everywhere else. And although the witnesses supporting ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός cannot individually match the antiquity of the Alexandrian papyri, there can be little doubt that this reading must also be dated at least to the time of their production. There is virtually no other way to explain its predominance in the Greek, Latin, and Syriac traditions, not to mention its occurrence in fathers such as Irenaeus, Clement, and Tertullian, who were writing before our earliest surviving manuscripts were produced.¹⁶² Thus, both readings are ancient; one is fairly localized, the other is almost ubiquitous. This in itself does not demonstrate that ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός is original, but it does show the error of automatically accepting the external attestation of the Alexandrian reading as superior.
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Author: Bart D. Ehrman
Keywords: Monogenes, Only son, God the Son, Only begotten, Only begotten son, Begotten, Begotten son, Eternally begotten, Eternally begotten son, Eternal son, Trinity, Triune, Deity of Christ, Deity of Jesus, Triad, Jesus is God, Christ is God, I and my father are one
Bible reference(s): John 1:18, 1 John 4:9, Acts 13:33, Genesis 22:2, Hebrews 1:5, Hebrews 11:17, Hebrews 5:5, Jeremiah 6:26, John 1:14, John 1:18, John 3:16, Judges 11:34, Luke 7:12, Luke 8:42, Luke 9:38, Proverbs 4:3, Psalms 2:7
Source: The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 78-82.
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