Footnotes

1.

See Kenneth V. Mull and Carolyn Sandquist Mull, “Biblical Leprosy—Is It Really?” BR 08:02.

Endnotes

1.

See Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effects of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993).

2.

For an argument that there is no evidence of scriptoria in the earlier centuries, see Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), pp. 83–91.

3.

See Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), chapter 6.

4.

On only two other occasions in Mark’s gospel is Jesus explicitly described as compassionate: in Mark 6:34, at the feeding of the five thousand, and in Mark 8:2, at the feeding of the four thousand. Luke tells the first story completely differently, and he does not include the second. Matthew, however, has both stories and retains Mark’s description of Jesus’ being compassionate on both occasions (Matthew 14:14 [and 9:30], 15:32). On three additional occasions in Matthew, and yet one other occasion in Luke, Jesus is explicitly described as compassionate, with this term (SPLANGNIZO) used. It is difficult to imagine, then, why they both independently of each other would have omitted the term from the account we are discussing if they had found it in Mark.

5.

For these various interpretations, see Ehrman, “A Sinner in the Hands of an Angry Jesus,” in New Testmanet Greek and Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Gerald F. Hawthorne, ed. Amy M. Donaldson and Timothy Sailors (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003).

6.

For a fuller discussion of this variant, see Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, pp. 187–194. My first treatment of this passage was cowritten with Mark Plunkett.

7.

For a full discussion, see Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.

8.

The quotations come from Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, 103.