J. J. Wettstein and the Divinity of Jesus

Already in the second century, the pagan critic Celsus had argued that Christians changed the text at will, as if drunk from a drinking bout; his opponent Origen speaks of the "great" number of differences among the manuscripts of the Gospels; more than a century later Pope Damasus was so concerned about the varieties of Latin manuscripts that he commissioned Jerome to produced a standardised translation; and Jerome himself had to compare numerous copies of the text, both Greek and Latin, to decide on the text that he thought was originally penned by its authors.
The problem lay dormant, however, through the Middle Ages and down to the seventeenth century, when Biblical scholars started to deal with it seriously....


One of the most controversial figures in the ranks of biblical scholarship in the eighteenth century was J. J. Wettstein (1693­-1754). At a young age Wettstein became enthralled with the question of the text of the New Testament and its manifold variations, and pursued the subject in his early studies. The day after his twentieth birthday, on March 17, 1713, he presented a thesis at the University of Basel on "The Variety of Readings in the Text of the New Testament." Among other things, the Protestant Wettstein argued that variant readings "can have no weakening effect on the trustworthiness or integrity of the Scriptures." The reason: God has "bestowed this book once and for all on the world as an instrument for the perfection of human character. It contains all that is necessary to salvation both for belief and conduct." Thus, variant readings may affect minor points in scripture, but the basic message remains intact no matter which readings one notices. 

In 1715 Wettstein went to England (as part of a literary tour) and was given full access to the Codex Alexandrinus. One portion of the manuscript particularly caught Wettstein's attention: it was one of those tiny matters with enormous implications. It involved the text of a key passage in the book of 1 Timothy.

The passage in question, 1 Tim. 3:16, had long been used by advocates of orthodox theology to support the view that the New Testament itself calls Jesus God. For the text, in most manuscripts, refers to Christ as "God made manifest in the flesh, and justified in the Spirit." Most manuscripts abbreviate sacred names (the so­-called nomina sacra), and that is the case here as well, where the Greek word God (theos)is abbreviated in two letters, theta and sigma, with a line drawn over the top to indicate that it is an abbreviation  What Wettstein noticed in examining Codex Alexandri­nus was that the line over the top had been drawn in a different ink from the surrounding words, and so appeared to be from a later hand (i.e., written by a later scribe). Moreover, the horizontal line in the middle of the first letter, theta, was not actually a part of the letter but was a line that had bled through from the other side of the old vellum. In other words, rather than being the abbreviation (theta­ sigma) for "God", the word was actually an omicron and a sigma, a different word altogether, which simply means "who." The original reading of the manuscript thus did not speak of Christ as "God made manifest in the flesh" but of Christ "who was made manifest in the flesh." According to the ancient testimony of the Codex Alexandri­nus, Christ is no longer explicitly called God in this passage.

As Wettstein continued his investigations, he found other passages typically used to affirm the doctrine of the divinity of Christ that in fact represented textual problems; when these problems are resolved on text­-critical grounds, in most instances references to Jesus's divinity are taken away. This happens, for example, when the famous Johannine Comma (1 John 5:7-­8) is removed from the text. And it happens in a passage in Acts 20:28, which in many manuscripts speaks of "the Church of God, which he obtained by his own blood." Here again, Jesus appears to be spoken of as God. But in Codex Alexandrinus and some other manuscripts, the text instead speaks of "the Church of the Lord, which he obtained by his own blood." Now Jesus is called the Lord, but he is not explicitly identified as God.

Alerted to such difficulties, Wettstein began thinking seriously about his own theological convictions, and became attuned to the problem that the New Testament rarely, if ever, actually calls Jesus God. And he began to be annoyed with his fellow pastors and teachers in his home city of Basel, who would sometimes confuse language about God and Christ—for example, when talking of the Son of God as if he were the Father, or addressing God the Father in prayer and speaking of "your sacred wounds." Wettstein thought that more precision was needed when speaking about the Father and the Son, since they were not the same.

Wettstein's emphasis on such matters started raising suspicions among his colleagues, suspicions that were confirmed for them when, in 1730, Wettstein published a discussion of the problems of the Greek New Testament in anticipation of a new edition that he was preparing. Included among the specimen passages in his discussion were some of these disputed texts that had been used by theologians to establish the biblical basis for the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. For Wettstein, these texts in fact had been altered precisely in order to incorporate that perspective: the original texts could not be used in support of it.

This raised quite a furore among Wettstein's colleagues, many of whom became his opponents. They insisted to the Basel city council that Wettstein not be allowed to publish his Greek New Testament, which they labeled "useless, uncalled for, and even dangerous work"; and they maintained that "Deacon Wettstein is preaching what is un­ orthodox, is making statements in his lectures opposed to the teaching of the Reformed Church, and has in hand the printing of a Greek New Testament in which some dangerous innovations very suspect of
Socinianism [a doctrine that denied the divinity of Christ] will appear." Called to account for his views before the university senate, he was found to have "rationalistic" views that denied the plenary inspiration of scripture and the existence of the devil and demons, and that focused attention on scriptural obscurities.

He was removed from the Christian diaconate and compelled to leave Basel; and so he set up residence in Amsterdam, where he continued his work. He later claimed that all the controversy had forced a delay of twenty years in the publication of his edition of the Greek New Testament (1751­-52).

- From chapter 4 of MISQUOTING JESUS - The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by BART D. EHRMAN