Discovery Box1 Thessalonians 5:23-28
Context5:23 Now may the God of peace himself make you completely holy and may your spirit and soul and body be kept entirely blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 5:24 He who calls you is trustworthy, and he will in fact do this. 1 5:25 Brothers and sisters, 2 pray for us too. 5:26 Greet all the brothers and sisters 3 with a holy kiss. 5:27 I call on you solemnly in the Lord 4 to have this letter read to all the brothers and sisters. 5 5:28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. 6
[5:24] 1 tn Grk “who will also do,” with the object understood from v. 23.
[5:25] 2 tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:4.
[5:26] 3 tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:4.
[5:27] 4 tn Grk “I adjure you by the Lord,” “I put you under oath before the Lord.”
[5:27] 5 tc Most witnesses, including some important ones (א2 A Ψ [33] 1739 1881 Ï ar vg sy bo), read “holy” before “brothers [and sisters]” (ἁγίοις ἀδελφοῖς, Jagioi" adelfoi"). It is possible that ἁγίοις dropped out by way of homoioteleuton (in uncial script the words would be written agioisadelfois), but it is equally possible that the adjective was added because of the influence of ἁγίῳ (Jagiw) in v. 26. Another internal consideration is that the expression ἅγιοι ἀδελφοί ({agioi adelfoi, “holy brothers”) is not found elsewhere in the corpus Paulinum, though Col 1:2 comes close. But this fact could be argued either way: It may suggest that such an expression is not Pauline; on the other hand, the unusualness of the expression could have resulted in an alteration by some scribes. At the same time, since 1 Thessalonians is one of the earliest of Paul’s letters, and written well before he addresses Christians as saints (ἅγιοι) in 1 Corinthians for the first time, one might argue that Paul’s own forms of expression were going through something of a metamorphosis. Scribes insensitive to this fact could well impute later Pauline collocations onto his earlier letters. The internal evidence seems to support, albeit slightly, the omission of ἁγίοις here. Externally, most of the better witnesses of the Alexandrian and Western texts (א* B D F G 0278 it sa) combine in having the shorter reading. Although the rating of “A” in UBS4 for the omission seems too generous, this reading is still to be preferred.
[5:28] 6 tc Most witnesses, including a few important ones (א A D1 Ψ 1739c Ï lat sy bo), conclude this letter with ἀμήν (amhn, “amen”). Such a conclusion is routinely added by scribes to NT books because a few of these books originally had such an ending (cf. Rom 16:27; Gal 6:18; Jude 25). A majority of Greek witnesses have the concluding ἀμήν in every NT book except Acts, James, and 3 John (and even in these books, ἀμήν is found in some witnesses). It is thus a predictable variant. Further, the witnesses for the omission are sufficiently early and diffuse (B D* F G 0278 6 33 1739* 1881 it sa) to render the verdict against the particle here.
