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To deal adequately with the evidence for I Tim. 3: 16, we must first say something
about the Alexandrian Manuscript. This manuscript is now in the British Museum, but it
has been so much handled that the passage in question can no longer be read with
sufficient clearness to settle the point. Bishop Ellicott is supposed to have satisfied
himself that the bar that turns "O" into "Th" in the word for "God" is really a bar from
the letter epsilon which stands on the back page. But, as Dean Burgon rightly insists,
unless we start with the major premiss that "Theta cannot exist on one side of a page, if
epsilon stands immediately behind it on the other side", this proves nothing with
certainty. Moreover, Tregelles, Scrivener and others also held the same leaf up to the
light, and discovered that the sagitta of the epsilon on fol. 145b does not cover much
more than a third of the area of the Theta on fol. 145a, and further, that it cuts the circle
too high.
We quote below an extract, in connection with this passage, from the writings of
Dean Burgon:
"How is it, my Lord Bishop, that you do not perceive that the way to ascertain the
reading of Codex A and I Tim. 3: 16 is (1) To investigate, not what is found at the
back of the leaf, but what is written on the front of it? and (2) Not so much to enquire
what can be deciphered of the original writing by the aid of a powerful lens now, as to
ascertain what was apparent to the eye of competent observers when the codex was first
brought into this country, viz. 250 years ago? That Patrick Young, the first custodian and
collator of the Codex (1628-1652) read Theos, is certain. Young communicated the
`various readings' of A to Abp. Ussher: and the latter, prior to 1653, communicated them
to Hammond, who clearly knew nothing of OS. It is plain that Theos was the reading
seen by Huish--when he sent his collation (made, according to Bentley, with great
exactness) to Brian Walton, who published the fifth volume of his Polyglott in 1657.
Bp. Pearson, who was very curious in such matters, says, `We find not OS in any copy'--
a sufficient proof of how he read the place in 1659. Bp. Fell, who published an edition
of the N.T. in 1675 certainly considered Theos the reading of Cod. A. Mill, who was at
work on the text of the N.T. from 1677 to 1707, expressly declares that he saw the
remains of Theos in this place. Bentley, who had himself collated the MS with utmost
accuracy, knew nothing of any other reading. Emphatic testimony on the subject is borne
by Wotton in 1718: `There can be no doubt' (he says) `that this MS always exhibited
Theos'. Of this, any one may easily convince himself who will be at the pains to examine
the place with attention. Two years earlier (we have it on the testimony of Mr. John
Creyk of S. John's Coll., Cambridge) `the old line in the letter Th was plainly to be seen'.
It was much about the same time also (viz. about 1716) that Wetstein acknowledged to
the Rev. John Kippax,--`who took it down in writing from his own mouth, that though the
middle stroke of the Theta has been evidently retouched, yet the fine stroke which was
originally in the body of the Theta is discoverable at each end of the fuller stroke of the
corrector'.
And Berriman himself (who delivered a course of Lectures on the true reading of
I Tim. 3: 16 in 1737-8) attests emphatically that he had seen it also.
`If therefore', (he adds) `at any time hereafter the old line should become altogether
undiscoverable, there will never be just cause to doubt but that the genuine and original
reading of the MS was Theos: and that the new strokes, added to the top and in the
middle by the corrector were not designed to counter and falsify (indeed they were
clumsily drawn in common black ink) but to preserve and perpetuate the true reading,
which was in danger of being lost by the decay of time'.