by Kyle Pope
In discussions with a Muslim man from Saudi Arabia who sought to discredit the reliability of the New Testament the question above was posed motivating the following study.
In Luke’s account of Jesus’ life and work, near the beginning of his gospel he records an incident in which Jesus “went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and was teaching them on the Sabbaths” (Luke 4:31 NKJV). While there the evangelist tells us about Jesus casting out a demon from a man in the synagogue (Luke 4:32-36), healing Peter’s mother-in-law (Luke 4:38-39), leading others to come to Peter’s house to be healed (Luke 4:40-42). At the conclusion of this account he records: “And He was preaching in the synagogues of Galilee” (Luke 4:44). These simple words have motivated controversy and accusation among those seeking to challenge the reliability of the Bible.
The controversy rests on a textual variant present in some manuscripts. While the majority of extant manuscripts and a few English translations such as the KJV, ASV, NKJV, and HCSB read as above, instead of “Galilee” some read “Judea.” This reading has been adopted by many modern English translations such as RSV, NASB, NIV, ESV, and NLT. Is this a contradiction? Was Luke mistaken? Critics of faith say “yes,” but what is the answer, and what is the evidence regarding this?
The earliest extant manuscript of this text is a papyrus housed in Geneva, Switzerland among the Bodmer collection of papyri classified as P75. This manuscript is believed to date to around 175 A.D. and reads “Judea.” Manuscripts after P75 are somewhat evenly divided. The fourth century Vatican manuscript and some ancient Syriac and Coptic translations also read “Judea,” but the fifth century Alexandrian manuscript and other Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Gothic translations read “Galillee.” What could explain such a difference?
The fact that there is a textual variant here may not be as sinister as some would contend. Philip Comfort in his New Testament Text and Translation Commentary (Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House, 2008) suggests that this reflects Luke’s occasional use of the term “Judea” to include Palestine as a whole. Comfort cites the following texts where Luke appears to do this (Luke 1:5; 6:17; 7:17; 23:5 and Acts 10:37). Let’s note two of these examples. First in a charge the Jews made about Jesus they declared, “He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee to this place” (Luke 23:5). The second, much like it, came when Peter taught Cornelius. After declaring that God preached “peace through Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:36), he said to him, “that word you know, which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee after the baptism which John preached” (Acts 10:37). In these examples Luke may include Galilee within what he calls “Judea.”
It is clear that ancient writers used the term “Judea” in two ways. Thayer tells us the word can refer, “1) in a narrower sense, to the southern portion of Palestine lying on this side of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, to distinguish it from Samaria, Galilee, Peraea, and Idumaea. 2) in a broader sense, referring to all Palestine” (Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament). Ancient Gentile writers reflect this same broad application of the word. The Greek geographer Strabo (ca. 64 B.C- A.D. 24), for example, described “Judea” as spanning from Gaza to the Anti-Lebanon mountain range on the east side of the Jordan (Geography 16.2.21). The Alexandrian geographer Claudius Ptolemy (ca. A.D. 90-168) used the terms “Judea” and “Palestine” synonymously (Geography 5.16.1). If Luke wrote to Gentiles, as most scholars believe, it would make sense to occasionally use the more broad definition. If this tendency was widespread, scribes copying Luke’s text might easily have alternated between the terms “Galilee” or “Judea” with no intention to alter or contradict but as two ways to refer to the same territory.
One final possibility comes from some issues of spelling. The Greek spelling of the words for “Jews (ioudaioi)” and the region of “Judea (ioudaia)” was very similar. A Gentile audience would likely think of Palestine as “the region of the Jews”and be less concerned with the territorial differences between Samaria, Galilee, and the specific southern region that natives identified more narrowly as “Judea.” If this was the case, and “Judea” was the original reading, it would not constitute a contradiction or a mistake but once again, a different way of describing the same place. Whatever the case, there is no doubt that Jesus also taught in the synagogues of Judea (see John 18:20), so this is not a contradiction or mistake. Mostly likely Luke’s use of a broader term allowed for a textual variant to develop quite innocently.