“As it is written in Isaiah the prophet…”
You expect immediately after this statement a quote from a prophet named Isaiah. But you don’t get that. The verses immediately after are from another prophet; namely, Malachi.
“Behold, I send my messengers before your face, who will prepare your way…”
He then proceeds to actually quote Isaiah:
“the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight…”
Why does Mark ignore Malachi and give all the credit to Isaiah? Can we really claim an inerrant Bible if we’ve got a gospel writer misattributing a source? That’s basic level scholarship. As I set about answering these questions we will also learn a little about textual variants.
My Bible Doesn’t Say “Isaiah the Prophet”
Some of my readers will grab their trusted KJV to check these verses and you won’t find “Isaiah the prophet” It will simply read “As it is written in the prophets…” No problem, then. Some may even go so far as to argue that this is part of the modern translations—they bring more confusion than help. The only problem is that it’s quite likely that “Isaiah the prophet” is the original. How do we know this?
Have you ever heard the phrase “textual variant”? It’s what happens when the many biblical manuscripts we possess conflict with one another. In this instance there are some manuscripts which read “as it is written in the prophets” and others have “as it is written in Isaiah the prophet”. Only one of these (or I suppose neither is a possibility) is original. What is inspired is what Mark actually wrote. So how can we figure that out. At times it is difficult, but the general rule of thumb is that “the reading that best explains the origin of the other readings is probably original.”
Those who have given their lives to figuring these things out have given us five specific rules (or maybe strong suggestions—because sometimes we break those rules):
- Prefer the shorter reading because scribes don’t add words
- Prefer the more difficult reading because nobody changes something to make it more difficult
- Prefer the reading that is most similar to the author’s typical vocabulary.
- Prefer the reading that accords best with the context and author’s theology.
- If dealing with parallel passages prefer the one that is less harmonious because a scribe wouldn’t change something to create less harmony between the texts.
There are also rules for weighing external evidence. We typically prefer the older manuscripts, the ones that have the most widely separated geographical areas, and the greater number of texts types which support that reading. Scholars differ on which text types to prefer, but the basic rules still apply here.
So what do we do with Mark 1:1-2? There are two possibilities with this text. Some manuscripts read “as it is written in Isaiah the prophet” (reading one). Other manuscripts read “as it is written in the prophets” (reading two). Which one is original?
First consider the external evidence. For reading one the evidence is both early and widespread. Evidence for the second reading is limited to only one text family (the Byzantine—that which was solely used for the KJV). The external evidence would cause us to lean towards accepting the first reading.
Now consider the internal evidence. The shorter reading is the second one. But which is more difficult? The first one is obviously more difficult. Consider that which is cited in Mark 1:2. It is not only Isaiah the prophet but also Malachi 3 and a little influence from Exodus. So by changing the text to “as it is written in the prophets” this little problem was solved. There would be little reason for a scribe to change the wording to “Isaiah the prophet” since this would create a difficulty and not alleviate one.
By weighing the external evidence and considering the internal evidence we can be almost absolutely certain that “as it is written in Isaiah the prophet” is the original.
So Does This Mean Mark Made an Error?
If I was writing a term paper and misquoted as Mark did here I would likely lose points for making such an error. So how can we say that the Bible is inerrant if it has within it an error of attribution?
If we were to weigh Mark by our standards of scholarship, Mark made an error. But inerrancy respects not only authorial intent of a passage but also the literary conventions under which that author wrote. It was typical for an author in Mark’s day to merge together quotes and then give credit to the more well known.
If that sits poorly with you think about the last time you watched a football game. Did you call foul whenever a quarterback threw a pass at the line of scrimmage instead of five yards behind it? Of course not. But you did get up in arms when a defender grabbed your quarterback’s facemask and pulled him to the ground. You expect a 15-yard penalty for that infraction.
Rewind 100 years and your expectation of penalties would have been reversed. One hundred years ago a QB couldn’t throw the ball unless he was five yards behind the line of scrimmage, and a defender could pull down a runner doing whatever it took—including grabbing the facemask (that wouldn’t exist for a couple more decades).
We only balk at Mark’s “infraction” because we have been trained in a different set of rules for attribution. But for Mark he wasn’t breaking a single rule. He was doing what you did in that day. This was how you wrote.
Sorry, Malachi. You should have written a longer book, then Mark might have given you props instead of Isaiah.
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I have taught on this material for so long and so many times that I do not know what is mine and what belongs to others. I can tell you that I was heavily influenced by Dr. Plummer’s 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible. And, yes, I realize the irony of kind of botching any attribution here on an article on the different rules of citing. Let’s just say I’m going old school.
Photo source: here
