Editorial dilemma: the interpolation of 1 Cor 14:34-35 in the western manuscripts of D, G and 88

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Summer, 2000 by D.W. Odell-Scott

Unlike Murphy-O'Connor's inept interpolator, I propose that the editors of manuscripts D, G, and 88 were capable, if not shrewd, translators and interpreters who understood all too clearly the grammatical significance of verse 36 relative to verses 34 and 35, and the power of associating verse 40 with the subordination and silencing of women in verses 34 and 35. So skillful was the slicing and splicing of the lines that the manipulation is only visible when manuscripts D, G, and 88 are compared to other manuscripts. And yet, the traditional interpretation of verses 34 and 35 so dominates ecclesiastical and academic readings of the text, that I judge that the editorial changes of manuscripts D, G, and 88 have been inconsequential with respect to the interpretation of the final verses of the chapter. In other words, the skillful reconstruction in D, G, and 88 mimics the standard readings of 14:34-40 so closely, that readers see no difference in the content or intent of the divergent manuscripts. Nothing is amiss, afoot, at hand.

We might judge the editions of these western manuscripts to be forgeries. To do so would imply that originals were intentionally falsified and that the forgeries were then passed off as the original. Perhaps we might judge the editors to be crooked "bookkeepers" who in producing a second set of "books," hoped to manipulate the value of their forgeries to their own benefit.

The difficulties we encounter in such assessments are far too many to account for in this brief study. For while the order of the lines of the editions of D, G, and 88 are not in keeping with the common, as we have seen, the interpretation their manipulations produces does not differ from the common or traditional readings of the text. The common, uncritical reading of the final verses in chapter 14, and the reconstruction of the final verses in the western manuscripts, are the same.

If the vast collection of other manuscripts of the text had not survived, this act of textual manipulation would have successfully rewritten the final verses of chapter 14 almost without a trace of the erasure. Of course, contemporary critical biblical scholars might question the dysfunction between verses 33 and 36 (see Odell-Scott 1987:100; Talbert: 93).

(33) For God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.

(36) What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached?

Against the interpolation interpretation of 14:34 and 35 put forward by Murphy-O'Connor, I argued that verse 36 does not work as a reply to verse 33, because verse 33 is itself Paul's concluding comment to the unbridled individualist at Corinth who disrupts the worship. And if it should be suggested that verse 36 is Paul's reply to some other verse or phrase which proceeds the negative rhetorical questions of verse 36, then I am perplexed because I can not find a verse to which verse 36 would make sense as a negative reply (Odell-Scott 1987:101). Only verses 34 and 35 serve as the target of Paul negative rhetorical query at verse 36. However, except for these critical considerations concerned about the coherence of the text, the grammatical dysfunction between verses 33 and 36 might pass unnoticed.