Variant Exceptions

The UPDV Bible generally follows the recommendations of the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project (HOTTP), Critique textuelle de l'Ancien Testament (CTAT), and the United Bible Societies (UBS) apparatus. The following entries document some of the instances where the UPDV has followed a different reading than the primary recommendation of these critical projects. Each entry is organized by book. Additional departures are documented only in the footnotes at the relevant verses.

For Gospel decisions that cite the reconstructed baseline gospel text as *Ev, see The Reconstructed Baseline Gospel Text (*Ev).

🔗Gospel Variant Exceptions

Source-history note: for Gospel entries that invoke *Ev or the reconstructed baseline/source-history policy, the UPDV distinguishes direct patristic attestation, modern reconstruction, and source-critical inference. Harnack's verse-by-verse data, BeDuhn's and Roth's cautious reconstructions, and Klinghardt's and Vinzent's broader source-history models are weighed as related but not identical kinds of evidence. This matters especially where Mark is involved: Mark is not treated as an untouchable primitive bedrock, but a Markan exclusion must still be labeled as source-composition inference when no surviving Greek or versional witness omits the unit.

Matthew 1:16: See footnote at this verse. The Greek followed is based on the textual apparatus mentioned there. However it is styled to NA28 for conjunctions and omits the intervening dialog by the speaker. See The Book of Matthew for full discussion.

Synoptic Temptation Narrative: Canonical Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, and Luke 4:1-13 are excluded under the reconstructed baseline gospel text (*Ev) policy. Klinghardt reports that the whole Luke 3:1b-4:13 block was missing in *Ev, including the temptation story in all three Synoptic forms; Roth likewise lists Luke 4:1-13 among attested verses not present in the reconstructed text. John's opening day-chain (John 1:29, 1:35, 1:43; 2:1) supplies the convergence control: it moves from the Baptist's testimony to disciples already following Jesus and the Cana wedding without room for a forty-day wilderness interval. This is a Tier A override of the entire surviving canonical manuscript tradition. See The Reconstructed Baseline Gospel Text (*Ev).

Matthew 4:12 timing clause and 4:18-22: In reconstructed Matthew, the UPDV no longer prints the phrase "when he heard that John was delivered up" from canonical Matthew 4:12 or the shoreline call scene in canonical Matthew 4:18-22. This is a reconstructed-Matthew/source-history decision, not a claim that surviving Matthew manuscripts directly omit those words. The decision follows the same chronology control as Mark 1:14, 16-20: John 1:35-42 places Andrew and Simon's first encounter with Jesus during John the Baptist's public ministry, and John 3:24 says John had not yet been cast into prison while Jesus and John were both active. See Matthew Chapter 3, Matthew Chapter 4, and The Calling of the Disciples.

Synoptic Temple Action: The UPDV prints the temple action in John 2:13-22 and does not print the Synoptic passion-week placements: Mark 11:15-19, Luke 19:45-46, and the corresponding reconstructed Matthew passion-week block (canonical Matthew 21:12-13 plus the Mark 11:19 departure seam). This is a source-history judgment about narrative placement, not a claim that surviving Greek or versional witnesses directly omit these units.

The issue is the real John/Synoptic placement collision: Daise notes that the Synoptics place the incident near the end of Jesus' ministry while John places it at the beginning, treats placement and source pedigree as the controlling questions for Jesus research, and ultimately argues that John moved the episode forward by reworking a Synoptic source; Culpepper surveys the beginning/end/two-cleansing options, judges two historical temple scenes unlikely, and ultimately concludes that the Temple cleansing more likely occurred late in Jesus' ministry and was moved to the beginning by John for thematic reasons; Murphy-O'Connor supplies a published case for early placement, arguing that if his hypothesis is correct Jesus' action against the money changers "must be placed very early in his career" and that confidence in the Synoptic final-week placement rests on an "unproven assumption"; and Kierspel shows how John 2:13-22 is integrated into John 2-4 with the Samaritan-woman scene around the replacement of physical worship centers by Jesus himself.

On that evidentiary balance, John's structurally integral placement, Murphy-O'Connor's published case against simply assuming the Synoptic final-week placement, and the Synoptic chronological unevenness that Mark places the action on the next day while Matthew and Luke move directly from the entry or city lament into the temple action (Mark 11:11-15; Matthew 21:10-12; Luke 19:41-45), the UPDV retains John's early temple action and treats the Synoptic passion-week placements as secondary narrative/source placement of the same temple-action tradition. See Murphy-O'Connor, "Jesus and the Money Changers (Mark 11:15-17; John 2:13-17)," Revue Biblique 107.1 (2000): 53, 55; Daise, "Jesus and the Historical Implications of John's Temple Cleansing," in Jesus Research: The Gospel of John in Historical Inquiry (2019), ch. 10; Culpepper, "John 2:20, 'Forty-Six Years,'" in the same volume, ch. 6; and Kierspel, "'Dematerializing' Religion: Reading John 2-4 as a Chiasm," Biblica 89.4 (2008): 526-54.

Mark 1:14, 16-20: Excluded under the reconstructed baseline/source-history policy as a source-composition bundle, not as a direct Greek manuscript or versional omission. The surviving Greek witnesses preserve the shoreline call scene, and NA28 prints the full sequence. The UPDV treats John's chronology as controlling here: John 1:35-42 places Andrew and Simon's first encounter with Jesus during John the Baptist's public ministry, and John 3:24 explicitly says John had not yet been cast into prison while Jesus and John were both active. The phrase "after John was delivered up" in Mark 1:14, the shoreline call in 1:16-20, and the dependent plural seams in 1:21 and 1:29 are therefore treated together. The text resumes at Jesus' Capernaum synagogue entry in 1:21. See The Calling of the Disciples and The Reconstructed Baseline Gospel Text (*Ev).

Mark 1:41: The Critical Text is almost certain (Level B) that σπλαγχνισθείς ("moved with compassion") is original. The UPDV follows the minority reading ὀργισθείς, directly attested in Codex Bezae and several Old Latin manuscripts. The Old Syriac S and the Peshitta (as represented by the Leiden edition) instead read ethraham 'alawhi, "he had compassion on him," while C is not extant here. The Old Syriac manuscript Sinai F, which Taylor provisionally dates to the late fifth century, directly preserves both emotions in a conflated reading, "had compassion on him and, being angered, stretched out his hand," and Ephrem's fourth-century Diatessaron commentary provides indirect reception evidence for a text containing both compassion and anger (David G. K. Taylor, "New Developments in the Textual Study of the Old Syriac Gospels," 2020). Taylor argues that F and Ephrem weigh against a solely Latin or Italian origin for the anger element, but neither supplies a clean Syriac anger-only reading. The UPDV renders this as "deeply moved" rather than the surface Greek "being angry," reflecting the broader range of the underlying Aramaic regaz (רגז), which carries senses of trembling, agitation, and profound emotional disturbance alongside anger (Jastrow; Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, 2010, pp. 63–64, 267: "In Mark's mind, the Greek word for being angry also meant 'tremble' or 'be deeply moved,' because this was the range of meaning of the normally equivalent Aramaic word"). The LXX translators split on the same root: Exodus 15:14 renders it with ὀργίζω ("were angry") while Habakkuk 3:16 uses ταράσσω ("was troubled"), confirming the interference pattern is a known translation phenomenon. Gzella (TDOT 16, s.v. חמה) notes that in the pre-70 literary Aramaic corpora regaz means 'to rage' and that the broader 'tremble/agitated' range, while attested in Hebrew, 'finds no concrete moorings in the contexts in which the related verbs and nouns appear in Aramaic.' (The wider semantic range is, however, well attested in the Targumic and Rabbinic Aramaic corpora surveyed by Jastrow.)

On internal grounds, the lectio difficilior (the principle that the harder reading is more likely original) favors the minority Greek reading, and the stern language of Mark 1:43 flows naturally from the emotional intensity of verse 41. Both Matthew and Luke omit the emotion entirely — consistent with finding the reading offensive. The primary counter-argument, noted by Houghton (TCGNT, UBS6), is that the similarity between the Latin words miseratus ("moved with pity") and iratus ("moved with anger") may have introduced "anger" into the Greek column of the bilingual Codex Bezae (compare the parallel at Mark 15:34).

Mark 6:17-29: Excluded under the reconstructed baseline/source-history policy as a source-composition decision, not as an extant Greek-manuscript or versional omission claim. The UPDV treats the Herodias imprisonment, banquet, dance, oath, platter, execution, and burial flashback as a pre-canonical Markan expansion from the shorter baseline notice preserved in Mark 6:14-16: Herod hears of Jesus' fame and says, "John, whom I beheaded, he is risen." Klinghardt reports that *Ev knows John's name, that he was a baptizer, that he had disciples, and that he "was beheaded by 'King' Herod," but that "all further information about him is missing in *Ev"; he then says pre-canonical Mark extracted both John's detention and the Herodias execution account from that brief beheading notice (Oldest Gospel, Part I, p. 388). The UPDV therefore prints 6:17 as an omitted block and resumes at the apostles' return in 6:30. See The Reconstructed Baseline Gospel Text (*Ev).

Luke 3:19-20: Excluded under the reconstructed baseline/source-history policy as a source-composition seam, not as an extant Greek-manuscript or versional omission claim. Luke 3:19-20 front-loads John's detention by Herod before Jesus' baptism; the UPDV treats that notice as dependent on the same expanded Herodias/detention tradition excluded at Mark 6:17-29. The running text therefore moves from John's preaching summary in 3:18 to the baptism scene in 3:21. The brief beheading notice remains later in Luke 9:7-9, where Herod says, "John I beheaded." See The Reconstructed Baseline Gospel Text (*Ev).

Mark 7:19: The Greek text ends with the nominative masculine singular participle καθαρίζων ("making clean"), a grammatically unanchored modifier traditionally read as a narrator's editorial aside declaring all foods clean. The UPDV follows the Sinaitic Syriac (S) reading at this verse, which renders the clause as a finite passive verb (ethpaal of ܕܟܐ, "all food is made clean") in a coordinate clause within Jesus's speech, with "outside" (ܠܒܪ) instead of "into the latrine" (εἰς τὸν ἀφεδρῶνα). The Peshitta (5th c.) has a related but expanded reading: "through excretion that purifies all food." Both Syriac traditions agree that the clause belongs to Jesus's digestive explanation rather than to a narrator or redactor. This digestive-process reading may be grounded in a principle of Jewish purity halakhah: excrement cannot contract or transmit ritual impurity. Mishnah Makhshirin 6:7 lists excretion among substances that "cause neither uncleanness nor susceptibility to uncleanness"; Mishnah Oholot 5:5 rules that vessels made of dung are impervious to impurity. Since excrement is ritually inert, food that passes through the stomach and is eliminated cannot transmit impurity.

The Vulgate uses the participle purgans, which is formally ambiguous between masculine and neuter nominative (Latin -ans does not distinguish gender), so the Latin tradition does not force the masculine-participle reading either. The UPDV renders the sense interpretively (the supplied "[considered]" is bracketed per UPDV convention) rather than literally; the literal Syriac S wording is preserved in the footnote.

Burkitt's edition of the Sinaitic Syriac preserves this reading at Mark 7:19 (Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, Vol. I, 1904); Burkitt notes that "it is clear that the Old Syriac did not read καθαρίζων" (Vol. II, Notes on Mark, s.v. 7:19). Matthew Black first identified the passive reading of the Syriac tradition (An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, 3rd ed., Oxford: Clarendon, 1967, 217–18). Logan Williams independently argues from the Greek text that the clause belongs to Jesus's speech and concerns digestive purification rather than a declaration about food laws (Williams, "The Stomach Purifies All Foods: Jesus' Anatomical Argument in Mark 7.18–19," New Testament Studies 70.3 (2024): 371–391). See footnotes at Mark 7:19.

Mark 14:12-16: Excluded under the reconstructed baseline/source-history policy as a critically inferred structural absence at the source-composition layer, not as a direct manuscript or versional omission. The surviving Greek and versional witnesses preserve the unit, so this decision works upstream of the extant manuscript tradition. Under this source-history decision, canonical Mark is not treated as automatically prior to the baseline gospel tradition; the Passover preparation scene is treated as a redactional expansion that supplies an explicit day/sacrifice preparation anchor parallel to Luke 22:7-13, and the UPDV resumes Mark at the evening meal in verse 17. See The Reconstructed Baseline Gospel Text (*Ev).

Mark 14:28: Excluded as a secondary insertion. Bultmann calls this verse ("But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee"), like 16:7, a "footnote put by Mark into the passage from the tradition" to prepare for a Galilean appearance (The History of the Synoptic Tradition, "The Easter Narratives," p. 285), while Lohmeyer treats it as a displaced dominical saying inserted by Mark to prepare 16:7 and notes that v. 29 joins v. 27 smoothly without it (Das Evangelium des Markus, 11th ed. [1951], pp. 311–12). The UPDV treats it as a Greek composition intended to provide a preceding prophecy for the prospective reading of 16:7. Under the UPDV’s conjectural Aramaic retroversion for Mark 16:7 (see below), that prospective reading is treated as a translation branch rather than the original sense, so 14:28 is treated as having no basis in the original narrative.

Mark 16:7: The standard Greek text reads prospectively: "he goes before you into Galilee" (προάγει ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν). The UPDV adopts the retrospective reading ("Remember what he told you while he was still in Galilee") on the basis of a conjectural Aramaic retroversion linking Mark 16:7 and Luke 24:6.

The Aramaic root qdm (קדם) has both spatial ("to go before, precede") and temporal ("previously, beforehand") uses, both attested in Targumic Aramaic. The UPDV treats Mark 16:7 (prospective: "he goes before you into Galilee") and Luke 24:6 (retrospective: "remember how he spoke to you when he was yet in Galilee") as possibly reflecting two Greek renderings of a common Aramaic tradition. On this hypothesis, the Greek contrast between Mark’s goal phrase "to Galilee" and Luke’s locative "in Galilee" is retroverted as Aramaic l- versus b-: l- coheres with spatial qdm, while b- supplies the setting for a retrospective reading. Neither proposed pre-Greek source formulation is extant, so the l- / b- contrast is itself retroversion, not witness evidence; Luke is then taken to preserve the retrospective branch.

The Syriac Peshitta, translated from Greek and here following the Greek readings preserved in extant witnesses, illustrates the lexical compatibility of this proposal but does not independently confirm the retroversion. At Mark 14:28 and 16:7 it renders Greek προάγω with the Peal active participle ܩܳܕ݂ܶܡ (qadem, "goes before") in spatial, prospective contexts. At Mark 14:8 it renders Greek προέλαβεν with the Peal perfect 3fs ܩܰܕ݁ܡܰܬ݂ (qadmat, "she did beforehand"), using the same root temporally. These renderings show that Syriac qdm can express both spatial precedence and temporal priority; because the Peshitta follows the Greek at each locus, they cannot establish the wording or meaning of a lost pre-Greek Aramaic source.

The prospective reading also creates significant historical, narrative, and logistical difficulties:

• No text in the earliest sources narrates the disciples obeying a command to travel to Galilee. Matthew 28:16-20 and John 21, which do place appearances in Galilee, are later additions not included in the UPDV. No church father references the journey.
• Paul’s appearance tradition (1 Cor 15:5-8) contains no Galilee geography despite being received directly from the eyewitnesses. The early church was Jerusalem-centered from the beginning (Gal 1-2).
• The prospective reading requires the scattered disciples and grieving women to walk 80-90 miles to Galilee two days after an execution. The pilgrimage calendar (Passover to Pentecost, 50 days) would require three crossings of that distance in under seven weeks.
• Paul’s "500 at once" (1 Cor 15:6) is far easier to explain in Jerusalem during Passover, when thousands of Galilean pilgrims were already gathered, than in scattered Galilee villages after the festival.
• Mark’s own narrative arc — three passion predictions in Galilee (8:31, 9:31, 10:33), each met with explicit misunderstanding — is completed by the retrospective reading ("now you understand what he told you") rather than broken by a new unfulfilled promise.

Luke 3:23: Two Critical Text expressions are absent from the UPDV, but for different reasons. The Peshitta and Old Syriac S do not represent ἀρχόμενος ("beginning"), and the Ebionite Gospel fragment has the same shorter age formula. By contrast, every complete Greek and versional witness checked retains ὡς ἐνομίζετο ("as was supposed/considered"). The UPDV removes that phrase conjecturally as a coordinating qualification associated with Luke 1-2, leaving the reconstructed source layer to name Jesus directly as "the son of Joseph, the [son] of Eli." See The Gospel of Luke for the evidence and source-critical discussion.

Luke 10:41-42: The Critical Text reads "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things, but one thing is needful" (μεριμνᾷς καὶ θορυβάζῃ περὶ πολλά, ἑνὸς δέ ἐστιν χρεία), and UBS6 retains a form of that longer reading with a {C} rating. The UPDV omits both clauses, following Old Syriac S and part of the Old Latin tradition (it-a, b, e, ff², i, l, r¹); Codex Bezae (05) retains only θορυβάζῃ, "you are troubled," between the doubled name and Mary. Burkitt judged that S gives the true reading of the Evangelion da-Mepharreshe here, and that the Curetonian form of verse 41 is a patch — "an unnecessarily awkward rendering of μεριμνᾶς καί τυρβάζῃ" whose ܛܘܪܒܐ is "a mere transliteration of τυρβά(ζειν): it is not a Syriac word" (Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe II, CH5.6.3; see also CH5.5.2.1; CH5.5.3.3). The longer material itself divides three ways in the Greek tradition — "one thing" (P45 P75 04 032 038), the expanded "few things, or one" (P3 012 01 03 042 019 ƒ1 33 and others), and the majority form with τυρβάζῃ (02 037 038c ƒ13 and many others) — and Houghton records that Lukan internal usage is inconclusive. J. Weiss read the three longer forms as successive exegetical expansions and printed the short text (Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments I, 2nd ed., Göttingen 1907, 464–65), while judging that the first insertion, "eins aber ist not," best captures Jesus' sense (465). Under the reconstructed-baseline gospel (*Ev) policy the pericope is unattested in the primary sources — Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Adamantius neither quote nor discuss it — and the modern reconstructions divide: Roth (The Text of Marcion's Gospel, 88) and BeDuhn (The First New Testament: Marcion's Scriptural Canon, 170) classify Luke 10:29-42 as unattested, Harnack (Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, 44) calls the episode uncertain but probably present, and Klinghardt labels it "unattested; likely present in *Ev; revised by the Lukan redaction," reconstructing the reply in the complete short form with the long material and the γάρ bracketed as Lukan addition (The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels, Part II, 829–31, 1322). That reconstruction is a text-historical inference from the D and Old Latin and Old Syriac interference pattern, not attestation of the short form in *Ev. Ephrem's recovered Syriac Commentary on the Diatessaron treats the episode without either disputed clause and praises Martha's love as "more fervent than Mary's" (McCarthy 1993, 153) — compatible with, but not proof of, the short form in the Diatessaron, and a reason to qualify Burkitt's older classification of this locus as one "where the reading of the Diatessaron is not known." Metzger accounts for the omission as deliberate excision of a difficult passage or accidental loss by homoeoarcton (Μάρθα … Μαριάμ), treating it as secondary to a longer reading (A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed.). The Vulgate, Sahidic, Bohairic, Armenian, and the Peshitta and Harklean Syriac retain a longer form. At verse 41 the UPDV reads "Jesus answered and said," following Old Syriac S (ܥܢܐ ܝܫܘܥ܂ ܘܐܡܪ ܠܗ), with D, the majority Greek tradition, much of the Old Latin tradition, and the Peshitta, against the Critical Text's "the Lord" (P45 P75 01 03 33 L 157 579 892, part of the Old Latin, and the Vulgate). Burkitt's study of S's renderings of Ἰησοῦς and κύριος notes that S's "Jesus" here runs against the version's own tendency to render Ἰησοῦς by "our Lord," so that the reading looks more primitive on his reconstruction of the version's layers; his caveat that S's later restoration of "Jesus" was indiscriminate limits the weight (Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe II, CH2.15).

Luke 11:13: The reading "good things" is restored in place of "Holy Spirit," based on the parallel in Matthew. The Greek word for "good" (ἀγαθόν) was likely misread as "holy" (ἅγιον), after which "spirit" was added to complete the phrase. See The Gospel of Luke.

Luke 11:42: The UPDV reads "dill" instead of "rue," correcting a likely misread of the original Aramaic (שברא for שבתא). Rue was not subject to tithing according to the Mishnah. See Arndt, Danker, and Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, p. 810. Casey 2010, pp. 82–83, independently argues the same Aramaic letter confusion. Casey identifies sh-b-r-a as Peganum harmala (rue), and cites Dioscorides III, 46, who records that some called it harmala while Syrians called it besasa, confirming the equivalence with Greek πήγανον. Casey further notes that rue would not be eaten, making its inclusion in a tithing list improbable. See The Gospel of Luke.

Luke 22:7-13: Excluded under the reconstructed baseline gospel text (*Ev) policy as a critically inferred structural absence. This is not a claim that the whole block is directly attested absent. Epiphanius Scholion 61 supplies a single late, loose notice at verse 8, with "Peter and the rest" rather than Luke's "Peter and John," and is discounted as a secure unit-presence anchor. Roth and BeDuhn classify the surrounding material as unattested while preserving the 22:8 notice; Klinghardt cautiously reconstructs the unit as probably present, so the modern reconstructions are weighed rather than treated as agreement on absence. Qualified silence in Tertullian's Against Marcion 4.40, source-critical tethering to the canonical Markan preparation scene, and the chronological pressure created by Luke's explicit day/sacrifice preparation anchor support removal under the case-by-case policy. The corresponding Markan preparation scene is now also excluded at Mark 14:12-16 under a separate Mark source-history decision. See The Reconstructed Baseline Gospel Text (*Ev) and The Gospel of Luke.

Luke 22:15: The clause identifying the Last Supper as a Passover meal ("With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer") is excluded. The chronological conflict is well-established: John places the crucifixion on the Preparation of the Passover before the meal is eaten (John 18:28; 19:14), while Luke 22:15 identifies the Last Supper itself as a Passover meal. Brown notes that scholars favoring John's chronology "probably constitute a majority" (Brown, The Death of the Messiah, Appendix 2.2.2; see also Marcus, "Passover and Last Supper Revisited," New Testament Studies 59.3 [2013]: 303–324).

The verse contains a Greek-only wordplay — the Aramaic-derived Πάσχα (Passover) is juxtaposed with παθεῖν (to suffer, aorist of πάσχω), creating a phonetic link that only works in Greek, not in the Aramaic Jesus would have spoken. The closest English analogue would be "Passover" and "Passion" — not etymologically connected, but the homophony asserts a theological connection between the festival and Jesus's suffering. Reece argues that Luke 22:15 "is not an attempt to convey Jesus' actual words to his twelve Jewish disciples in the upper room; it is Luke's own addition, in his own words, to his source material" (Reece, "Passover as 'Passion': A Folk Etymology in Luke 22,15," Biblica 100.4 [2019]: 605). James demonstrates that Luke used Mark and 1 Corinthians as sources for the Last Supper institution (vv. 19–20); neither source contains a Passover identification, suggesting Luke took a non-Passover meal tradition and added v. 15 as his own narrative framing (James, "Variant Readings of Luke 22:15–20 and the Relationship of Codex Bezae to Curetonian Syriac," Journal of Theological Studies 75.2 [2024]: 336–355).

The critical commentaries treat the Passover identification as originating from a pre-Lukan source (Fitzmyer, AYB 28A; Nolland, WBC 35C; Marshall, NIGTC). Fitzmyer in particular defends the Lukan Passover identification against the Johannine chronology, calling the harmonization "unacceptable" as a reading of Luke's text. The underlying chronological impossibility remains regardless of which source layer the identification entered at: Jesus cannot have eaten the Passover meal on the night before his death if he died on the Preparation day before that meal was eaten. The surrounding verses show significant disturbance in the manuscript and source tradition: verses 7–13 (Passover preparation) and 16–18 (the cup sayings) are already excluded under the *Ev policy, leaving verse 15 as an isolated Passover identification between two excluded blocks. The Passover identification is also absent from the Pauline Last Supper tradition (1 Corinthians 11:23–25) and from John's structurally simpler account.

Luke 22:16-18: Excluded under the reconstructed baseline gospel text (*Ev) policy. Epiphanius directly attests verse 16 as absent from Marcion's Gospel (Pan. 42.11, Scholion/Elenchus 63), and Roth and Klinghardt accordingly mark it not present in their reconstructions; verses 17-18 are removed with it under the policy's composite-seam rule, not because they are directly attested absent word-for-word. Early witnesses show incompatible repairs at the Last Supper cup/bread sequence: Codex Bezae and some Old Latin witnesses omit verses 19b-20, Old Syriac witnesses relocate or redistribute the cup sayings, and apparatus/secondary reports include witnesses with only verses 19-20. These repairs converge on the existence and location of the seam while disagreeing about the exact repair. Removing verses 16-18 leaves Luke's bread-then-cup institution sequence (22:19-20) aligned with Mark 14:22-24 and the Pauline tradition in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25. See The Reconstructed Baseline Gospel Text (*Ev) and The Gospel of Luke.

Luke 22:43-44: See The Angel in Gethsemane.

John 1:1: The UPDV translates λόγος as "Speech" rather than "Word," reflecting the Targumic Aramaic מימרא (memra) background. See The Gospel of John and The Speech of God: John 1:1 and the Aramaic Memra.

John 1:34: The Critical Text reads "the Son of God," and UBS6 retains ὁ υἱός with a C rating: the Committee is doubtful about this reconstruction of the text. The UPDV follows ὁ ἐκλεκτός, "the chosen," attested by the original hand of Codex Sinaiticus, part of the Old Latin tradition, and the Curetonian and Sinaitic Old Syriac.

John 3:3, 7: The Greek text uses ἄνωθεν with "be born" in both verses. In Greek the word can mean either "again/anew" or "from above," and Nicodemus's reply in verse 4 hears the temporal sense: "Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb?" Syriac Sinaiticus and the Peshitta both render verse 3 with ܡܢ ܕܪܫ / ܡܢ ܕܪܝܫ, "from the beginning/anew"; this supports the UPDV's verse 3 wording, "born all over again." The same Peshitta idiom is echoed in Galatians 4:9 (ܘܡܢ ܕܪܝܫ, "and from the beginning/anew"), Titus 3:5 (ܕܡܘܠܕܐ ܕܡܢ ܕܪܝܫ, "of birth from the beginning/anew"), and 1 Peter 1:3 and 1:23 with birth/begetting verbs (ܐܘܠܕܢ ܡܢ ܕܪܝܫ / ܕܡܢ ܕܪܝܫ ܐܬܝܠܕܬܘܢ); the UPDV mirrors that idiom with "all over again" / "born all over again" in those verses.

Diognetus 2:1 gives a related Greek Christian reception parallel; the UPDV renders the phrase "be born, as it were, a new man all over again" (καὶ γενόμενος ὥσπερ ἐξ ἀρχῆς καινὸς ἄνθρωπος), making the γενόμενος word-family and the temporal ἐξ ἀρχῆς frame visible without using ἄνωθεν. This is not a direct quotation of John and uses γίνομαι rather than γεννάω, but it supports the same new-beginning frame for Christian renewal.

The decisive verse 7 exception is narrower: the UPDV follows Syriac Sinaiticus, which lacks the repeated adverb. The Peshitta does not support that omission, since it repeats ܡܢ ܕܪܝܫ in verse 7; other Syriac witnesses use ܡܢ ܠܥܠ, "from above," there. This is an Aramaic/Syriac retroversion decision, not a Greek-manuscript omission claim or a Peshitta-omission claim. The Syriac witnesses use the spatial idiom in John 3:31. Pierre-Marin Boucher documents the Syriac reception split and cites Lagrange's observation that one cannot assign to ἄνωθεν "un mot araméen qui aurait deux sens" — an Aramaic word with both meanings ("ΓΕΝΗΘΗΝΑΙ ἌΝΩΘΕΝ: La valeur de l'adverbe ἄνωθεν en Jn 3,3 et 7. Ire partie: La réception chrétienne," Revue Biblique 115.2 [2008]: 198). See footnotes at John 3:3 and 3:7.

John 3:16: The Critical Text reads "he gave his only Son" (edoken, "gave"); the UPDV prints "he sent his only begotten Son," following Sinaitic Syriac (S) shaddar, "sent." Burkitt's Curetonian Syriac (C) text has yahb, "gave," while his note records: "In reading 'to send' instead of 'to give' S agrees with e ff aur" (Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, Vol. II, 311). Agnes Smith Lewis's authoritative 1910 edition likewise prints shaddar in the main text at John 3:16 (p. 214), and its apparatus records "e ff2 aur. mitteret." The current Kiraz-based digital transcription of Sinaitic Syriac also has "sent," as does E. Jan Wilson's comparative translation (The Old Syriac Gospels: Studies and Comparative Translations, Eastern Christian Studies 1-2 [Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2002], 2:690). Ephrem's verbless clause in the Commentary on the Diatessaron (XXI §7, ed. Leloir, Chester Beatty Monographs 8 [Dublin: Hodges Figgis, 1963], 212) can be read as a complete comparative sentence — "God loved the world, as [he loved] his only Son" (Nöldeke, Compendious Syriac Grammar, §§332, 364 D) — though its editors, Leloir and McCarthy, print it as a quotation broken off before the verb; under either analysis Ephrem supplies no verb at this locus, so his text neither attests nor omits the reading.

The factors favoring "sent": "God sent his Son" is the regular Johannine formulation (John 3:17; 1 John 4:9–14), while "God gave the Son" with the plain verb δίδωμι appears nowhere else in the Johannine writings; and with "sent," 3:16–17 takes the shape of the resumptive "X / for not X" pattern of John 12:46–47. The anonymous Latin Arian Fragment IX quotes the verse expanded — ut Filium suum unicum mitteret, ut det animam suam pro saeculi vita, "that he might send his only Son, that he might give his life for the life of the world" — an explanatory give-life clause embedded in a sending clause. Burkitt, who printed the send-verb, still thought ἔδωκεν "no doubt genuine" (Vol. II, 311): "gave" invites the question "to whom?", so a scribe could have smoothed it to "sent." The reading is attested in more than one language — in the send-reading reported for Sinaitic Syriac and in two early Old Latin strata — while the Curetonian and Peshitta witnesses and the extant Greek tradition read "gave," and here the UPDV follows that Sinaitic Syriac reading. See The Gospel of John.

The Epistle to the Greeks (Diognetus), in wording closely corresponding to John 3:16–17 and 1 John 4:9–10, reads at 10:2, "For God loved men … To them he sent his only begotten Son" (ἀπέστειλε τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ). In that same sentence it uses δίδωμι, "give," for God’s giving reason (λόγον ἔδωκεν) and future gift of the kingdom (δώσει), but ἀποστέλλω, "send," for the Son; the contrast documents the wording without deciding how the "sent" form arose.

John 4:14: Conjecturally reconstructed. The phrase "eternal life" is restored to "living water" based on the Liège Diatessaron's combined "living water" and "eternal life" reading, the immediate context (4:10–11), and a conjectural Aramaic resegmentation. Curetonian Old Syriac omits the equivalent of "springing," while Sinaitic Old Syriac has "flowing"; both retain "to eternal life," so neither directly attests the reconstruction. Liège's combined reading is compatible with conflation, but does not prove it. See The Gospel of John.

John 6:27: Conjecturally reconstructed on similar grounds to John 4:14. See The Gospel of John.

John 7:37–39: Excluded. Traditional saying in an editorial frame with a Spirit gloss. See The Gospel of John.

John 8:57: The Critical Text reads "and have you seen Abraham?" (Ἀβραὰμ ἑώρακας), and UBS6 prints that reading. The UPDV prints "and has Abraham seen you?", following the reading of Papyrus 75 (3rd c.), the original hand of Codex Sinaiticus, 0124, Old Syriac S, the Sahidic with one Bohairic manuscript and Achmimic 2, and the Syriac text of Ephrem's Commentary on the Diatessaron in Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709, which means, "You are not fifty years old, and Abraham has seen you?" (L. Leloir, ed., Commentaire de l'Évangile concordant: texte syriaque (Manuscrit Chester Beatty 709), Chester Beatty Monographs 8 [Dublin: Hodges Figgis, 1963], 186, §XVI.27). Leloir's Latin rendering of the same clause, quoted from his earlier study, is Quinquaginta annos non habes, et Abraham vidit te? (Baarda 1996, p. 341). McCarthy's English translation of the same commentary prints the clause in the ordinary direction (McCarthy 1993, p. 257); Leloir's edition of the Syriac base and Baarda's independent transcription of it both give the question in this direction.

The chief objection is that this reading is the smoother continuation of its context: verse 56 has Abraham as the subject of both seeing verbs ("Your⁺ father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad"), so a copyist had an exact stimulus to recast the question in that direction. Metzger calls it "doubtless a scribal assimilation" to verse 56 and rates the received reading {B} (Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., at John 8:57), and the UBS Handbook on John gives the same harmonization account. The versions are divided as well: the printed Bohairic, the Armenian, the Peshitta, the Vulgate, and the broad Old Latin evidence including Codex Bezae's Latin read "have you seen Abraham?", while the Sahidic, one Bohairic manuscript, Achmimic 2, Old Syriac S, and Ephrem's Syriac read it as the UPDV does. The UPDV weighs against the majority account this reading's early and geographically divided attestation — a third-century Egyptian papyrus and the early Syriac tradition together — and the correction history in Codex Sinaiticus, which carries this reading in the original hand and was corrected to the received form.

The ICC commentary favors the same reading. Bernard writes that "the true reading seems to be" the question in this form, and reads it as the objectors' own inference from verse 56, understanding Jesus to mean "that Abraham, while alive on earth, had seen Him." He argues that under the received text "there is no reason to suppose that the Jews are represented as misquoting His words, as we must assume if the received text be followed," and accounts for the received form as a copying accident: written continuously in uncials, ἑώρακέ σε· εἶπεν loses one ε to become ἑώρακες· εἶπεν, and ἑώρακες was then corrected into ἑώρακας, "the rec. reading." That path begins from a ν-less ἑώρακέ σε, whereas the direct transcriptions in P75 and the original hand of Sinaiticus read ἑώρακεν σε, so it requires an otherwise unattested local intermediary (Bernard, ICC John, 2:321).

Baarda conjectures that Ephrem's commentary may carry the reading back through Tatian's Diatessaron and perhaps to a Greek copy of John known before ca. 170, and concludes that it is "a variant reading, dating possibly to the middle of the second century, a reading which may probably lay claim to originality" (Baarda, "John 8:57B: The Contribution of the Diatessaron of Tatian," Novum Testamentum 38.4 [1996]: 336–343, at 343). He also records earlier judgments in the same direction from J. H. Bernard, A. S. Lewis, A. Merx, and F. Blass, who printed it in his 1902 Greek John (342–343). Burkitt groups S with Sinaiticus and the Sahidic at this verse, and reports that B "halts between" the two variants; that form is nonetheless second-person singular, so B retains the received direction, "have you seen Abraham?" (Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, Vol. II, 228). Monier and Taylor treat the locus as a standing case in Diatessaron research — Baarda had noticed that Ephrem's commentary "provided a reading found in a number of early gospel manuscripts," and such study "leads scholars on towards exploring thorny questions of originality in gospel readings" — while cautioning that the lost Diatessaron cannot be reconstructed in full and that its extant versions "all show idiosyncratic modifications and tendencies to accommodate the text to Gospel manuscripts with which copyists were familiar" (Monier and Taylor, "Tatian's Diatessaron: The Arabic Version, the Dura Europos Fragment, and the Women Witnesses," Journal of Theological Studies 72.1 [2021]: 192–230, at 199, 201). The reading's reception continues in Arabic witnesses that Baarda says may have been indebted to Syriac sources (Baarda, "'Abraham has seen you?' John 8:56–59 in a Letter of al-Ḥasan b. Ayyūb," Novum Testamentum 53.4 [2011]: 390–402, at 400).

John 10:11: The Critical Text reads “the good shepherd lays down his soul for the sheep” (τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ τίθησιν ὑπὲρ τῶν προβάτων); the UPDV follows the early Greek variant δίδωσιν and prints “the good shepherd gives his soul for the sheep.” “Gives” is directly attested in P45, the original hand of Sinaiticus, and Codex Bezae, with support from Old Syriac S, the Vulgate, part of the Old Latin tradition, and Coptic witnesses. The broader Greek tradition, including P66, P75, and Vaticanus, reads τίθησιν; the Peshitta/Leiden Syriac likewise uses SWM, “lays/places.” UBS6 retains τίθησιν with a B rating and argues that δίδωσιν may reflect assimilation to the Synoptic expression δοῦναι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ, “to give his life” (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45).

Old Syriac S reads YHB, “gives,” at John 10:11 against Peshitta/Leiden SWM, “lays/places.” Aphrahat (Demonstration 10: On Shepherds, sections 1 and 4) and Ephrem (Commentary on the Diatessaron XV.10–11) preserve the same YHB wording in early Syriac reception; Leloir’s facing Latin for Ephrem reads Pastor bonus dat animam suam pro grege suo, “the good shepherd gives his life for his flock” (Leloir 1963, pp. 148–151). This reception evidence does not independently prove a Greek δίδωσιν exemplar, but it shows that S’s wording was not an isolated later rendering and corroborates a reading already extant in early Greek witnesses. S returns to SWM at John 10:15 and thereafter, so its evidence is locus-specific rather than a wholesale rendering habit.

The direction of change remains contested. The Synoptic parallel and John’s repeated τίθημι + ψυχή wording provide real grounds for explaining δίδωσιν as harmonization. In the opposite direction, Sinaiticus directly witnesses δίδωσιν in the original hand followed by correction to τίθησιν. The correction from “gives” to “lays down” is manuscript evidence; interpreting its motive as normalization to Johannine usage is an inference. A targeted harmonization toward “gives” at verse 11 also remains possible. On balance, the convergence of early Greek δίδωσιν, S’s selective YHB reading, and the Aphrahat/Ephrem reception tips this locus toward “gives.” John 10:15 and the remaining τίθημι passages are unchanged.

John 11:25: The Critical Text reads “I am the resurrection and the life” (ἡ ἀνάστασις καὶ ἡ ζωή), and UBS6 retains the phrase with an {A} rating. The UPDV omits “and the life,” following the shorter reading attested by Papyrus 45, Old Syriac S, part of the Old Latin tradition including Cyprian (De mortalitate 21: ego sum resurrectio …), and some Christian Palestinian Aramaic manuscripts; other Christian Palestinian Aramaic manuscripts retain the phrase. P45's text here is partly a bracketed restoration — the article and most of ἀνάστασις are restored, and the surviving text runs from the ending of ἀνάστασις directly to ὁ πιστεύων with no καὶ ἡ ζωή between them — and it is the only Greek witness that omits the phrase. Ephrem's Syriac Commentary on the Diatessaron preserves the same short form — “I am the resurrection. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, yet shall he live” — in Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 (McCarthy 1993); this is indirect patristic/Diatessaronic evidence, not another Gospel manuscript. The broad Greek tradition, Coptic, Vulgate, and Peshitta and Harklean Syriac retain it. UBS6 rates the longer reading {A} and retains it, judging the shorter attestation “not sufficiently strong”; Metzger's committee likewise preferred the longer reading on the age, weight, and diversification of the witnesses. The Anchor Bible translation prints the phrase but marks it as doubtful — “I am the resurrection [and the life]” — its abbreviation guide stating that “Brackets in the translation indicate a textually dubious word or passage”; its note lists the omission in P45, some Old Latin, Old Syriac Sinaiticus, and sometimes Origen and Cyprian, and reasons that “Omission is really harder to explain than addition, unless the mention of resurrection alone in vs. 24 would have had some influence,” while allowing that the phrase “does fit in logically with the flow of ideas” (Brown, AYB 29). On internal evidence the shorter form is the more direct reply: its predicate closes on “the resurrection,” the term Martha had just used in John 11:24, and leaves the following clauses to carry the life theme.

John 14:26: The Greek CT reads "the Supporter, [even] the Holy Spirit" (τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον); the UPDV follows the Syriac Sinaiticus, which lacks "holy" and reads "that Spirit" first: "But that Spirit, the Supporter." Johnston proposes that τὸ ἅγιον was added by a scribe harmonizing the text to other New Testament passages and the creeds (Johnston, The Spirit-Paraclete in the Gospel of John, SNTSMS 12 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970], 31–32).

🔗Revelation

Revelation 11:1: See footnote at this verse. This change was made due to the likelihood of an original Aramaic text being slightly misread. For more information see: Jastrow pages 955–956; Payne Smith p. 361.

Revelation 19:13: See footnote at this verse. The Greek title is "the Word of God" (ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ). UPDV renders this personal title "The Speech of God" for consistency with John's Logos/Memra usage (John 1:1; 1 John 1:1). The divine-warrior setting fits the Memra background rather than counting against it: Aune (WBC 52C on Revelation 19:13) notes Hayward's argument that Targumic Memra theology is probably reflected here, and Ronning connects Revelation 19:13 with Targum Isaiah's warrior/Memra passages (Tg. Isa. 59:17, 19; 63:5; WTJ 69 [2007]: 263-64). See The Speech of God: John 1:1 and the Aramaic Memra.

🔗Old Testament

Exodus 34:24: See footnote at this verse. See also the note at Deuteronomy 31:11 for the pattern followed.

Deuteronomy 31:11: See footnote at Exodus 34:24.

Joshua 19:7: The UPDV Bible follows CTAT's reconstruction of the original text.

Judges 5:30: The UPDV Bible follows a conjectural restoration noted in Keil and Delitzsch to read "the neck of the queen" instead of "the neck(s) of the spoil."

2 Samuel 4:6: CTAT prefers the Masoretic reading with C-level confidence. However, due to similar reading in Ezekiel 23:40 along with witnesses of the Greek, Syriac, and Targum, and only a vocalization change required, the UPDV Bible has followed: "and, look, they."

2 Samuel 12:31: This verse and the parallel passage at 1 Chronicles 20:3 are sometimes translated as the captured inhabitants being subject to various types of torture, such as being hacked with saws and axes or made to pass through a brickkiln. The ancient Greek, Latin, and Targumic witnesses generally read or interpret the passages in this severe direction, while the Syriac tradition is paraphrastic and in 1 Chronicles 20:3 explicitly says that David killed none of them. The UPDV Bible follows a reconstruction in which the captives were assigned to corvée labor with tools. This reconstruction is not directly attested by all ancient witnesses; it rests on re-evaluating the Hebrew parallels, the context, and similar vocabulary elsewhere in the Bible. There are three main parts of these verses which directed the translation:

a) There is a one letter difference between the Hebrew word in 2 Samuel "put [them]" (וישם) and 1 Chronicles "sawed [them]" (וישר). HOTTP rates the Masoretic reading of 1 Chronicles 20:3 (וישר, "and he sawed") with A-level confidence and suggests "and he sawed (them)." HOTTP also notes that Chronicles may reflect a misunderstanding of the 2 Samuel idiom "he placed them in/at the saw," that is, "he forced them to work with saws." The UPDV follows the non-torture sense represented by 2 Samuel, marking the supplied idea with brackets.

b) There is a one letter difference between the Hebrew word in 2 Samuel "axes of iron" (במגזרות הברזל) and 1 Chronicles "saws" (ובמגרות). The UPDV follows the more comprehensive parallel in 2 Samuel and renders "axes" in 1 Chronicles, understanding the repeated "saws" in 1 Chronicles as likely arising from the difficulty of the passage. HOTTP rates the 1 Chronicles reading with C-level confidence and suggests "stone-cutter's saws"; CTAT notes that the textual tradition does not remove the difficulty of the repeated instrument name.

c) Only the passage in 2 Samuel contains "made them serve making bricks." This is sometimes translated as "made them pass through the brickkiln." The difference is due to the verb in Hebrew currently reading העביר (passed through, made to pass). HOTTP rates the Masoretic reading with A-level confidence and suggests "and he sent them to the brickkiln," while noting that העביד (made to serve) may probably represent the original text but is not attested by old textual witnesses. The UPDV follows the conjectural reading because it fits the context and matches similar wording and vocabulary about being made to serve making bricks at Exodus 1:13. Making captives serve in a particular function is similar to that found at Joshua 9:21.

2 Samuel 21:8: The Masoretic Text reads "Michal"; the UPDV reads "Merab." Every other detail in the verse fits Merab, not Michal: it was Merab, Saul's elder daughter, who was given to Adriel the Meholathite (1 Sam 18:19), whereas Michal was childless to the day of her death (2 Sam 6:23) and was never married to Adriel. "Michal" is the harder reading, retained as original by the principal critical projects; the panel found the ancient witnesses reading "Merab" are best explained as harmonizations to 1 Samuel 18:19, not a separately preserved "Merab" text — so the UPDV does not claim "Merab" is the better-attested reading. It reads "Merab" because the UPDV works upstream of the surviving manuscripts and prints the name the rest of the verse points to — the daughter of Saul married to Adriel — recording the Masoretic "Michal" in the footnote.

Evidence reviewed:

• HOTTP and CTAT both rate this reading {D} (the highest level of uncertainty). CTAT (Barthélemy, vol. 1, pp. 300–301, entry 2 S 21,8B) records the committee's divided vote: "Michal" received one "C" and two "D," "Merab" two "D." Scholarship is genuinely split on which reading is original: Barthélemy, Glück (ZAW 77 [1965]: 73), and Hays ("A Problematic Spouse," ZAW 129 [2017]: 220–233) hold "Michal" the original, harder reading and "Merab" a harmonization to 1 Samuel 18:19, while Driver, McCarter, and Halpern judge "Michal" a copyist's error for an original "Merab." The two camps reconstruct opposite Old Greek readings — CTAT an Old Greek "Michal" (ms B Μιχολ, a recension of Μελχολ), Hays and McCarter an Old Greek "Merab" (Μεροβ), ms B's Μιχολ being a later correction toward the Masoretic in this kaige stretch (where the Antiochene text is the better Old-Greek witness) — but the UPDV's reading does not turn on that question.
• BHS apparatus (note 8b): two Hebrew manuscripts, several Greek manuscripts, the Syriac, and the Targum read "Merab," marked as an assimilation to 1 Samuel 18:19 ("ex 1 S 18,19").
• 4QSamᵃ (DJD XVII, frg. 152) does not preserve the name: only "…[five] sons of" survives on the leather (and only the upper tips of the last two letters). The editors reconstructed "[Merab]" on the stated assumption that the scroll follows the Old Greek, while noting "we cannot be certain of the reading of 4QSamᵃ here." It is therefore not an independent witness for "Merab."
• Targum Jonathan is conflate: "the five sons of Merab whom Michal raised" — combining both names; it reflects an interpretive harmonization, not a "Merab" text.
• Peshitta reads ndb (its form of Merab; the same form stands at 1 Samuel 18:19, where the Hebrew is Merab) yet keeps Michal childless at 2 Samuel 6:23. It was translated from a Hebrew text close to the Masoretic, so its "Merab" is a harmonizing correction.
• Vulgate reads "Michol" (Michal) in Jerome's text and the oldest manuscripts; only a later Spanish manuscript group reads "Merob." The Armenian reads "Merob" but was translated from a Lucianic-type Greek text (it also reads "Esdriel," the Greek form, for Adriel), so it echoes the Lucianic correction rather than witnessing independently.

For the text-critical discussion, see Rebecca Poe Hays, "A Problematic Spouse: A Text-Critical Examination of Merab's Place in 1 Samuel 18:17–19 and 2 Samuel 21:8," ZAW 129.2 (2017): 220–233; Dominique Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de l'Ancien Testament, vol. 1 (OBO 50/1; Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 300–301; P. Kyle McCarter Jr., II Samuel (AB 9; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 439; J. J. Glück, "Merab or Michal," ZAW 77 (1965): 72–81; and Frank Moore Cross, Donald W. Parry, Richard J. Saley, and Eugene Ulrich, Qumran Cave 4.XII: 1–2 Samuel (DJD XVII; Oxford: Clarendon, 2005), 178 (frg. 152).

For related literary and redaction-critical readings that treat "Michal" as a deliberate or developing feature of the text rather than a copyist's slip, see Stanley D. Walters, "Childless Michal, Mother of Five," in The Tablet and the Scroll: Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William W. Hallo, ed. M. E. Cohen, D. C. Snell, and D. B. Weisberg (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1993), 290–296; Robert Rezetko, "Source and Revision in the Narratives of David's Transfer of the Ark: Text, Language and Story in 2 Samuel 6 and 1 Chronicles 13, 15–16" (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2004), 272; and Jeremy M. Hutton, "The Nameless Daughter of Saul," ZAW 135.4 (2023): 531–546. On the portrayal and reception of Michal, see Ellen White, "Michal the Misinterpreted," JSOT 31.4 (2007): 451–464; Michael Avioz, "Josephus' Portrait of Michal," JSQ 18.1 (2011): 1–18; and Robert B. Lawton, "1 Samuel 18: David, Merob, and Michal," CBQ 51 (1989), JSTOR 43717893. And for a modern translation that, like the UPDV, prints "Merab" in the text and footnotes the Masoretic "Michal," see Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019), note at 2 Samuel 21:8.

2 Samuel 21:19: The Masoretic Text reads that Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim the Beth-lehemite slew Goliath. The UPDV follows HOTTP/CTAT in treating "oregim" ("weavers") in the patronymic as a dittography from the spear description later in the verse and reads "Jari"; it also prints "the brother of Goliath" as a further reconstruction, while preserving "Beth-lehemite" and not inserting the name "Lahmi" from 1 Chronicles 20:5.

This second move goes beyond the ordinary committee recommendation. The extant Samuel witnesses checked for this issue, including the MT/BHS, LXX, Peshitta, and Vulgate, read "Goliath" rather than "the brother of Goliath." The UBS Handbook on 2 Samuel notes that 1 Chronicles 20:5 reads "the brother of Goliath" and that some interpreters explain the Samuel text as defective, but cautions that no such Samuel manuscript has been discovered and that an explanatory footnote is acceptable while the evidence is insufficient for ordinary translation committees to harmonize the verse. The UPDV treats this as a variant exception rather than a simple committee-following reading.

Kaspars Ozolins argues that the difficulty is best explained by accidental scribal oversight, not deliberate harmonization. In his reconstruction, "Beth-lehemite" is original in Samuel, "Lahmi" in Chronicles is a secondary name arising from the similar gentilic, and the key loss in Samuel is "brother of": the complementary distribution of את (the direct object marker) and אחי ("brother of"), plus their visual similarity, makes it plausible that Samuel's present text replaced an original "brother of Goliath" with direct-object "Goliath." Ozolins concludes that this should be seriously considered as a proximate reconstruction of the original text of 2 Samuel 21:19 and the basis for the parallel in 1 Chronicles 20:5. See Kaspars Ozolins, "Killing Goliath? Elhanan the Bethlehemite and the Text of 2 Samuel 21:19," Vetus Testamentum 72, no. 4–5 (2022): 716–733, especially 731–732.

1 Chronicles 4:32: The UPDV Bible follows CTAT's reconstruction of the original text. The same note as above regarding 2 Samuel 12:31 applies to 1 Chronicles 20:3.

1 Chronicles 20:3: See note above at 2 Samuel 12:31.

Psalm 2:9: See footnote at this verse. The UPDV Bible has followed the Hebrew text with different vowel pointing in accordance with the LXX reading.

Psalm 106:20: See footnote at this verse. Also see Jeremiah 2:11. This verse is on ancient rabbinical lists of euphemisms in the Bible. "Their glory" appears to be a euphemism to avoid directly referencing God in this context. See the discussion in CTAT at Psalm 106:20.

Jeremiah 2:11: See footnote at this verse. Also see Psalm 106:20. This verse is on ancient rabbinical lists of euphemisms in the Bible. A translation such as "their glory" appears to be a euphemism to avoid directly saying that God could be exchanged for something. "His glory" also seems out of place given the first person surrounding context. See the discussion in CTAT at Psalm 106:20 and the footnote in the text of the Word Biblical Commentary at Jeremiah 2:11.

Jeremiah 22:18: See footnote at this verse. This reading was followed for reasons which include the following:

a) The Hebrew word for "sister" is similar to one meaning "brotherhood" as in Zechariah 11:14.

b) A lament in this form is nearly always addressed to the person who would be dead. There is no dead woman in the context who would be called "sister."

c) When two phrases are next to each other in a lament, generally the second phrase is either a duplication of the first; a further identification of the first; or an emphasis of the first. In this verse, "my brother" is emphasized as "best brother." And, "lord" is emphasized as "his excellence."

For further reference, see Theodor H. Gaster, Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament, page 604. For the Sumerian/Akkadian city-lament tradition, see "Mesopotamian City Laments" in the Lexham Bible Dictionary. And also see the Syriac at this verse.

Jeremiah 27:1: See footnote at this verse. The UPDV Bible has followed an optional recommendation in HOTTP.

Jeremiah 28:1: CTAT indicates the LXX is nearly certain to have the earlier reading, and that the MT appears to have text inserted in this verse at a later time by a secondary source. CTAT still recommends the MT based on textual criticism. However, based on all factors, the UPDV Bible has followed the LXX. See footnote at this verse. See also CTAT.

Ezekiel 27:19: The UPDV Bible follows CTAT's conjectural restoration of the original text.

Ezekiel 18:17: The UPDV follows the LXX reading "from iniquity" (עָוֶל) instead of the MT "from the poor" (עָנִי). The two precept catalogs in the chapter (vv. 5–9 and vv. 14–17) are parallel in structure — most items correspond between them. The hand-idiom object here is the only item whose counterpart uses a different Hebrew word (v.8 reads עָוֶל "iniquity"). The MT's "from the poor" creates a construction (השיב יד מן + person) with zero OT parallel; every ancient non-LXX version had to intervene to make sense of it (Peshitta added a negation, Vulgate supplied the word "injury"). HALOT and BHS both emend to עָוֶל. How the error arose is uncertain; the two words share their first letter, and the remaining letters are known confusable pairs in the transmission scripts, so a visual slip during copying is a possible explanation. See footnote at this verse; CTAT at Ezek 18:17 {B}; Van Rooy, OTE 22/1 (2013).