One or other is also the reading of the Old Latin (d, e, g, harl.**), of the Memphitic, the two Syriac (Peshito and Harclean), the Æthiopic, and the Arabic (Erpenius, Bedwell, Leipzig) Versions; and of Augustine (de Unit. Eccl. 45, IX. p. 368) and Cassiodorus (II. p. 1351, Migne).
(3) τῷ θεῷ καὶ πατρί א A C2 Dc K L P and apparently all the other MSS; the Vulgate and Armenian Versions; Euthalius (Tischendorf’s MS), Theodore of Mopsuestia (transl.), Theodoret, the Ambrosian Hilary, and others.
A comparison of these authorities seems to show pretty clearly that τῷ θεῷ πατρί was the original reading. The other two were expedients for getting rid of a very unusual collocation of words. |compared with iii. 17,|The scribes have felt the same difficulty again in iii. 17 εὐχαριστοῦντες τῷ θεῷ πατρὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ, and there again we find καί inserted before πατρί. In this latter instance however the great preponderance of ancient authority is in favour of the unusual form τῷ θεῷ πατρί.
and i. 12.
It is worth observing also that in i. 12, where τῷ πατρί has the highest support, there is sufficient authority for τῷ θεῷ πατρί to create a suspicion that there too it may be possibly the correct reading. Thus τῷ θεῷ πατρί is read in א 37, while θεῷ τῷ πατρί stands in F G. One or other must have been the reading of some Old Latin and Vulgate texts (f, g, m, fuld.), of the Peshito Syriac, of the Memphitic (in some texts; for others read τῷ πατρί simply), of the Arabic (Bedwell), of the Armenian (Uscan), and of Origen (II. p. 451, the Latin translator); while several other authorities, Greek and Latin, read τῷ θεῷ καὶ πατρί.
Unique collocation.
There is no other instance of this collocation of words, ὁ Θεὸς πατήρ, in the Greek Testament, so far as I remember; and it must be regarded as peculiar to this epistle.
i. 4 τὴν ἀγάπην [ἣν ἔχετε].
i. 4 τὴν ἀγάπην [ἣν ἔχετε].
Here the various readings are;