The Evangelical Textual Criticism blog lately tried to defend biblical-inerrancy, those poor dears. But through the whataboutism we do at least get Dirk Jongkind, dealing with some commonly-flagged variants. Among these is Luke 23:34a.
It's my thought that Luke was late and tendentious. Luke might overall even be ripping off Hegesippus, or at least that one's James tradition. (Saint James has his feast-day today.) This to me, however, suggests that the verse is authentic, at least inasmuch as Luke himself (or herself) is the one who planted these words into Jesus' mouth. If I am to bolster Jongkind.
But then comes the question... how come Luke's tradents removed these words?
Jongkind argues for a theologic solution: Luke intended to portray Christ as Leviticus 4-5's sin-offering, with a nod to Galatians. Christ is Luke's Ox of God (and not, as John, the Lamb). Luke will go on to cast Peter (Acts 3:17) and Stephen (Acts 7:60) similarly. Also Farrer and Goodacre might suggest that, here, Luke is lifting Matthew's insistence that Jews own the bloodguilt of Christ forever. If the Jews ever did claim Jesus' blood, hereby Christ lifts that guilt from them near-immediately.
I have rechecked and do not find where Marcion or Tertullian objected to this comment in Luke 23:34ab; instead they bicker over the casting of lots 34c. Marcion rejected Matthew wholesale so should have been fine with this earlier verselet abrogating Matthew. Tertullian and his Claromontaine Apostolikon weren't particularly antiJewish so, likewise, wouldn't mind this bit of Luke. Washington (W) and Vatican (B) agree to omit it, along with Sahidic and the Sinai-Syriac. Bezae, which is Evangel-/Acts-only, omits it too - I think; it's asterisked as "D*". Looks like Alexandrine adoption of an already-extant minus.
The absence of forgiveness would agree with Donatist thought... except that Donatists should also object to the subordinationist Christology in the Alexandrine corpus, for instance over the Johannine Comma, which the Alexandrine text also omitted but the Western church included (early). As aimed specifically at Jews, copyists aware of the discrepancy would interpret this minus a harmonisation against the Jews. Bezae is notorious for both harmonisation and for antiJudaism elsewhere, beyond the call of Marcionite duty (Bezae accepts 23:34c by the way). The minus further downplays Luke's soteriology inasmuch as this contradicts John's.
Overall I think Jongkind has a point. His point is ineptus for his stance, here on Inerrancy.
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