John 1:13

John 1:13 oi] ouvk … evgennh,qhsan {A}

Several ancient witnesses, chiefly Latin (it^b Irenaeus^lat Tertullian Origen^lat Ambrose Augustine Ps-Athanasius), read the singular number, “[He] who was born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (the Curetonian Syriac and six manuscripts of the Peshitta Syriac read the plural “those who” and the singular verb “was born”).

All Greek manuscripts, as well as the other versional and patristic witnesses, attest the plural number. (Several minor variant readings occur within the verse: D* and it^a omit oi[, thus leaving the verse without grammatical connection with the preceding sentence; other variants in the verse are mentioned in the following entry.)

Although a number of modern scholars (including Zahn, Resch, Blass, Loisy, R. Seeburg, Burney, Büchsel, Boismard, Dupont, and F. M. Braun) ³ have argued for the originality of the singular number, it appeared to the Committee that, on the basis of the overwhelming consensus of all Greek manuscripts, the plural must be adopted, a reading, moreover, that is in accord with the characteristic teaching of John. The singular number may have arisen either from a desire to make the Fourth Gospel allude explicitly to the virgin birth or from the influence of the singular number of the immediately preceding auvtou/.

³ For literature, see Josef Schmid in Biblische Zeitschrift, N. F., I (I957), pp. 118 f. The singular number is adopted in the Jerusalem Bible (1966), but not in the New Jerusalem Bible (1985).