“Dismissing the distinction between God’s permission and God’s doing as an “evasion,” Calvin insists that God does as he pleases, including in his dealings with Ahab: “Whatever men or Satan himself may instigate, God nevertheless holds the key, so that he turns their efforts to carry out his judgments. God wills that the false King Ahab be deceived; the devil offers his services to this end; he is sent, with a definite command, to be a lying spirit in the mouth of all the prophets.” This cannot be reduced to a bare permission: “It would be ridiculous for the Judge only to permit what he wills to be done, and not also to decree it and to command its execution by his ministers” (Calvin 1960, 1.18.1). Calvin’s suggestion that the volunteer deceiver is the devil cannot be sustained; but Calvin is right to insist that Yahweh wills to deceive Ahab. Yahweh does not merely step aside to permit the spirit to deceive Ahab, but actively solicits a volunteer and orders him to follow through with his plan. The deception of Ahab is an expression of God’s purpose, not mere allowance.“ [19] (emphasis added)
In the above we see that the great protestant father John Calvin strongly believed that God Himself instructed the spirit to lie and deceive to fulfill His judgment. Though the identification of the spirit may be questionable the interpretation is spot on as Leithart makes clear.
Even the conservative apologetic work Hard Sayings of the Bible whose goal is to clear up difficulties found in the Bible authored by such scholars as F.F. Bruce is forced to concede that the biblical God did indeed deceive Ahab and the plain meaning of the text shows that He did more than just permit the lying spirit’s mission:
“God can be described as deceiving Ahab only because the biblical writer does not discriminate between what someone does and what he permits. It is true, of course, that in 1 Kings 22 God seems to do more than permit the deception. Without saying that God does evil that good may come, we can say that God overrules the full tendencies of preexisting evil so that the evil promotes God’s eternal plan, contrary to its own tendency and goals.” [20]
Notable biblical commentators Jerome T. Walsh and Christopher T. Begg in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary comments on the verse:
“Micaiah’s third speech is unsolicited; he recounts a scene he witnessed in Yahweh’s heavenly court to explain the disagreement between his oracle and that of Ahab’s court prophets. The prophets are truly inspired; but the spirit sent by Yahweh is a deceiver. It is Yahweh’s purpose to mislead Ahab and so lure him to destruction. Yahweh’s opening question to the heavenly court is already duplicitous: “Who will lure Ahab to fall upon [i.e., both "attack" and "die upon"] Gilead Heights?” The prophets’ ambiguous oracle ( v 6) is due to the “misleading spirit” whom Yahweh commissions to the deed.” [21] (emphasis added)
Walsh and Begg are even more explicit in their recognition that the text says that Yahweh was duplicitous (deceiving) and commanded an entity to commit deception so that His plan can come to fulfillment.
Other examples of deception by God’s elect include 2 Kings 8:10, Jeremiah 38:24-27, 1 Samuel 16:1-5, 1 Samuel 21:1-3 and 1 Samuel 27:8-12. In all of these instances God did not condemn what they did in any way. The Christian now will be vexing and say, “But you see those are all in the Old Testament! We are now under the New Covenant and we follow the New Testament!” This is the kind of response one often gets from Christians when they are cornered by their own Bible which includes the Old Testament. However, we have saved the best for the last. We do in fact have an example from the New Testament as well. It comes from none other than Jesus himself in John 7.
“Go to the feast yourselves; I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” So saying, he remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly but in private.” (John 7:8-10)
One does not have to be a biblical scholar to easily discern from the above narrative that Jesus tells his companions that he is not going with them, but immediately after they go he follows suit but does so quietly away from prying eyes. If this is not lying what is? The difficulty posed by the narrative was felt early on by Christian scribes and writers. If you were to compare the above verses which are taken from the New Revised Standard Version to other versions of the Bible you will see that there is a minor yet significant difference. While the above has Jesus saying “I am not going up to this feast” other versions add “not yet” to it hence dissolving the apparent difficulty and exonerating Jesus from deception. Admittedly there are very ancient manuscripts that attest the reading “not yet,” but they are not beyond suspect. Many scholars in fact dismiss them as later scribal alteration. Wayne Campbell Kannaday who is Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Newberry College, Newberry, South Carolina has an excellent detailed treatment on the subject. To objectively weigh the value of variant readings let us turn to Kannaday’s careful scrutiny.
“Not to go” or “Not yet to go“? That is the question broached by the variant reading located at John 7:8. Does Jesus flatly deny that he is going to Jerusalem, or does he merely indicate a delay in his travels? Response to this question assumes some urgency when the reader notices in verse 10 that Jesus does, in fact, travel “in secret” to Jerusalem and arrives there shortly after his brothers. Of course, no problem exists if the reading is regarded as “original,” as is indicated by several of our most reliable manuscripts; but if issued from the writer’s pen, the inconsistency between his words and deeds in verses 8 and 10 makes Jesus vulnerable to accusations of deceit, duplicity, or indecisiveness.” [22]
What we learn from the above is that if indeed Jesus did not say “I am not going yet” and simply said “I am not going” then Jesus can be construed as having deceived his brothers. In fact, the vast majority of scholars believe that “not yet” is a later addition of scribes who wanted to reconcile the clear difficulty that the verses pose. Kannaday continues:
“Substituting in place of in verse 8, of course, resolves this problem, which is why the majority of scholars believe this to be the product of a concerned scribe. Yet, not everyone concurs. The UBSGNT Committee, in spite of Metzger’s confident assertion that was early on introduced by a scribe seeking to ameliorate the conflict between verse 8 and 10, still assigns it to only a {C} rating.” [23]
Though a minority of scholars disagree with the conclusion that “not yet” is a later addition, the preeminent textual critic Metzger makes it plain that:
“The reading was introduced at an early date (it is attested by P, ) in order to alleviate the inconsistency between ver. 8 and ver. 10.” [24]
His conclusion as stated by Kannaday is held by most scholars. Let us proceed with Kannaday’s evaluation of the external manuscript evidence.
“With regard to external evidence, Ernst Haenchen points out that boasts an impressive set of credentials, among them P66 p75 B L T W. Other apparatus in addition marshal 070 0105 0250 1.13 Maj f g q syp.h ac pbo in support of as “original.” Supporting in its claim to priority are some similarly reliable witnesses: D K 1241 lat sy&c bo. Here, as is often the case, mainly “Western” witnesses (reading ) oppose the remaining lines of transmission. Still, the most striking sources in support of are the two ancient papyri, p66 and p75. The weight of their testimony requires closer scrutiny.
P66 is generally ascribed a date around 200 C.E.; the editors of P75 place it between 175-225 C.E. Both stand as ancient and important witnesses to the textual tradition. Scholars some time ago became mindful of the unparalleled excellence of the testimony shared by the pair of manuscripts, p75 and Codex Vaticanus (B), and frequently view it as representing the best type of the third-century texts. Some scholars even regard P75 as the de facto exemplar of Vaticanus. Perhaps, though, the p75—Vaticanus line of tradition is best understood as the quintessential representative of the “Alexandrian” text, which, it should be recalled, bears characteristics of a highly polished, skillfully edited text. P66, similarly, has been described as the product of a scriptorium, a composite recension manufactured by a “careless” scribe who was evidently correcting his own work against at least two other manuscripts. This copyist frequently abandoned Johannine style in an effort to impose on the text a more vernacular Greek, “thereby revealing at a very early period a scribal attitude that removes difficulties and seeks the best sense of the text rather than showing a rigid concern for the preservation of the ‘original text.’” Therefore, both P66 and P75 report a text that is both very old, on the one hand, but that bears marks of intentional shaping or polishing, on the other. Both papyri reflect the concern of their scribes to produce an improved (in their view) text, not just preserve an “original” one. This statement is not intended to diminish the importance of these papyri as witnesses. I simply mean to specify that no pair of manuscripts, even ones as old and reliable as these papyri, can be assumed to harbor the “original” text.
So we are left, as stated earlier with a familiar plight: a “Western” reading standing virtually alone against the rest of the corpus. Textual criticism, though, is not a numbers game; variants must be evaluated on the basis of the quality of witnesses and not their quantity. A Johaninne reading that locates its lineage in Sinaiticus, Bezae, and the Old Latin tradition bears a reasonable claim to antiquity, and a “Western” reading that does not reflect expansion or embellishment must be taken particularly seriously. In short, external evidence will not decide this case.” [25]
The above shows that just because there are very old manuscripts that contain attestation for “not yet” () that does not mean that they are original. The two manuscripts that are often used to propel the idea of the originality of “not yet” are evidently unreliable. It should be reiterated that most scholars affirm that “not yet” is an addition to the original text. Kannaday goes on to cite R. H. Lightfoot who favours as the original word of the evangelist based on intrinsic probabilities. In opposition to Lightfoot, Kannaday cites Rudolf Schnackenburg who “finds this approach untenable…” Later, Kannaday cites C. K. Barret who agrees that is not original and is a later insertion: “C. K. Barret on the basis of transcriptional probabilities expresses certainty that represents the modification, one grounded in the efforts of early copyists to reconcile the “superficial contradiction” between verse 8 and 10.” [26] Kannaday also cites Raymond Brown who agrees with Barret and the others on the originality of over . Though neither Barret nor Brown see the absence of as proof of Jesus’ deception, they nevertheless agree that it is something that was added later.
Kannaday continues:
“Apart from the v. l. under dispute, is employed in the Fourth Gospel ten times. Of those instances, a full half of them are associated with prophetic allusion to the hour/time of Jesus, and two others are related to things that occur when his hour does come (the giving of the Spirit and his ascension). Moreover, three of the four times the evangelist places the term on the lips of Jesus it is in the declaration, “My hour/time has not yet come.” Thus, the majority of the occurrences of in the fourth Gospel refer to the hour of Jesus.
In terms of informing intrinsic probabilities, these data seem compelling. The writer-editor of the Fourth Gospel appears to have been very deliberate in his use of the term, , incorporating it into his pronouncements about the hour of Jesus almost as a formula. This much seems evidence: the author of the Fourth Gospel consistently used whenever he wished to signal that the arrival of the was still pending; and, when the writer placed it on the lips of Jesus, the term is used exclusively in the sense of a prophetic formula.
Unless, of course, the occurrence in John 7:8 (first occurrence) is taken to be “original.” If this is so [rather than ] , stands as the singular exception to John’s otherwise careful and reserved use of this term. Presumably, one could argue that it is the entire sentence that constitutes the prophetic formula, so that the Johannine pattern actually consists of a doublet form of . No such doublet appears, however, in John 2:4 or John 20:17, to cite just two examples. John’s pattern is that the prophetic formula punctuates the second half of a sentence; nowhere else does invade the prefacing remarks of Jesus.
So the question remains. Is this the only instance in John’s narrative where he violates an otherwise carefully prescribes and consistent use of the term ? Is this the conclusion best drawn from the data that has been presented? Or is it more likely that is not “original” in the first instance of 7:8, and that its entry into this verse us the result of a scribe’s perspicacity rather than the author’s lassitude? In my judgment, the latter appears more likely.” [27] (emphasis added)
Kannaday expertly shows that John methodologically uses “not yet” in specific cases that deal with prophetic pronouncements and that John 7:8 with (not yet) singularly departs from John’s consistent use of the term. As Kannaday points out this is indicative of the fact that the evangelist most probably did not depart from his consistent method and that the use of “yet” in John 7:8 is a later scribal addition.
Further more, Kannaday makes an exceptionally important point in the following:
“On the other hand, ample reason to motivate an informed scribe to the effect this particular change in the text did exist in the form of a pagan intellectual who drew attention to this verse to the detriment of the Jesus movement. Among the extant fragments of his work that are most clearly attributable to Porphyry is one that called attention to his very verse, and called into question the Jesus described there. Here Porphyry noted that Jesus first denied that he would visit Jerusalem, but then proceeded to arrive there (John 7:8-10). His words have survived in Jerome’s Adv. Pelag. (II.17), and read as follows:
Jesus iturum se negavit, et fecit quod prius negaverat. Latrat Porphyrius; inconstantiae ac mutationis accusat, nescius omnia scandala ad carnem esse referenda.
Judging from these remarks, it is easily ascertained that Porphyry’s text read in verse 8. Moreover, he percieved between verses 8 and 10 either a breech of etiquette or an act of erratic vacillation (inconstantiae ac mutationis). In either case, Jesus’ behavior as recorded in this rendering of John’s narrative hardly reflected that of a holy figure boldly and decisively executing a foreordained, divine plan. This passage, then, is a text that was specifically elisted by a pagan critic to denounce either the wavering disposition of Jesus or the historical infelicities of the gospel accounts. In any event, Porphyry adduced this text to the detriment of Christians.
The simple change of (not) to (not yet), however, effectively quelled any impression of inconsistent action on the part of Jesus as seen in the comparison of verses 8 and 10. No longer, then, did the text present Jesus one moment asserting his decision not to journey to Jerusalem, only to change his mind and go there; rather, through the technology of scribal revision, John’s narrative stated without equivocation that Jesus would not yet go up to Jerusalem along with his disciples, suggesting that he would, as he did, find his way there later. That move would have rendered impotent efforts on the part of pagan critics like Porphyry to adduce this text for antagonistic purposes.” [28]
It would seem that the preponderance of data rule in favour of Metzger. Kannaday as it appears concludes that it is indeed a scribal addition where is concerned in John 7:8. The fact that someone as early on as the philosopher Porphyry could have picked up on the problem posed by John 7:8 without the addition of shows that early scribes most probably reacted by substituting “not” with “not yet” to resolve the difficulty. Taking into consideration the historical propensity of early scribes to edit biblical texts to suit their agenda it becomes even more probable that John 7:8 with is certainly a scribal addition. Without the saving value of (not yet) in John 7:8 as Kannaday rightly points out, “the inconsistency between his words and deeds in verses 8 and 10 makes Jesus vulnerable to accusations of deceit, duplicity, or indecisiveness.”James Ronald Royse cites the biblical scholar Comfort:
“Comfort, Encountering the Manuscripts, 286, states: “In John 7:8, the scribe added ‘yet’ to Jesus’ statement, ‘I am not [yet] going to this feast,’ in order to avoid any misconception about Jesus’ character.” [29]
Biblical scholars Keith Elliott and Ian Moir write:
“At John 7:8 do we read ‘I am not going to this festival’ or ‘I am not yet going to this festival’? The manuscripts divide between ouk (not) oupo (not yet). ‘Not’ (in Sinaiticus and Bezae) makes Jesus contradict himself – see verse 10- and thus might be the original, although many critics would prefer the alternative reading oupo in Papyri 66 and 75, Vaticanus and the Majority Text.” [30] (emphasis added)
As we have seen in Kannaday’s detailed treatment on the textual evidence for John 7:8, papyri 66 and 75 are suspect and cannot be used as definitive proof for the originality of . In the absence of substantive backing for “not yet” and the retention of “not” we are reduced to Elliott and Moir’s recognition of Jesus contradicting himself which paves way for deception on his part. The plain meaning of the text does show that Jesus was being dishonest and deceptive which is what the early scribes noticed and that motivated them to change the text. Catholic author Stephen K. Ray recognises this as well as he writes:
“In fact, some of the Greek New Testament manuscripts appear to have been tampered with to “cover” for Jesus’ apparent dishonesty, by adding the word “yet”, as in, “I do not go up to the destival yet”.” [31]
New Testament scholars Eugene Boring and Fred Craddock in their The People’s New Testament Commentary plainly state that “yet” is a later scribal addition and having the verse with only “not” is the original:
“7:8 (yet): Some manuscripts reflect scribal efforts to keep Jesus from contradicting himself or changing his mind, by inserting “yet” (see v. 10 and NRSV note) but the original text read simply “not.” As in 2:4-7 and 11:5-11, the point is not duplicity or pettiness, but the divine initiative so important to Johannine theology. Jesus never does anything at the behest of others but, as the one who represents God, acts only unilaterally.” [32] (emphasis added)
The reconciliatory excuse proposed above that “Jesus never does anything at the behest of others” is simply not true. In Matthew 15:22-28 Jesus after some prodding by the woman and his disciples gives in and responds to the woman’s petition. In Mark 5:22-23, Luke 8:41 and Matthew 9:18-19 we have Jesus answering the call of Jairus and agrees to do as he asks. In Mark 12:29-30 Jesus responds to a challenge levelled against him by a scribe. These and many other such examples indicate that Jesus did indeed perform deeds at the behest of others. Thus the amelioratory tact is untenable and duplicity on Jesus’ part according to John 7:8 remains strongly viable.
The late minister and Bible translator Jay P. Green says without any ambiguity that the verse as it stands without the addition of “yet” makes Jesus out to be a liar:
“Besides the instance of an omitted word making Jesus to be a sinner liable to Judgment (Matt. 5:22), there is another verse where six of the new versions make Jesus to be a liar. In John 7:8, in the NASK, NRSV, REB, NAB, GNB, CEV, by rejecting the little word yet (ouro – # 3768), Jesus is reported as telling a lie… The NASB, NRSV, REB, NAB, GNB, CEV, AND JWV all also have Jesus saying flatly: ‘I am not going up to this feast.’ By leaving out the word yet these versions make Jesus to tell a lie, as is proven by the fact that shortly thereafter He did go up to the feast.” [33]