Luke 10:1

Luke 10:1 @du,o# (1) {C}

Was it seventy or seventy-two whom Jesus appointed and sent on ahead of him? The external evidence is almost evenly divided. On the one hand, the chief representatives of the Alexandrian and the Western groups, with most of the Old Latin and the Sinaitic Syriac, support the numeral “seventy-two.” On the other hand, other Alexandrian witnesses of relatively great weight (a L D L X), as well as other noteworthy evidence (¦¹ and ¦¹³), join in support of the numeral “seventy.”

The factors that bear on the evaluation of internal evidence are singularly elusive. Does the account of the sending of 70 or 72 disciples have a symbolic import, and, if so, which number seems to be better suited to express that symbolism? The answers to this question are almost without number, depending upon what one assumes to be the symbolism intended by Jesus and/or the evangelist and/or those who transmitted the account. ⁹ In order to represent the balance of external evidence and the indecisiveness of internal considerations, a majority of the Committee decided to include the word du,o in the text, but to enclose it within square brackets to indicate a certain doubt that it has a right to stand there. ¹⁰

[The concept of “70” is an established entity in the Septuagint and in Christian tradition. The number of examples of “70” in the Old Testament is overwhelming: there are always 70 souls in the house of Jacob, 70 elders, sons, priests, and 70 years that are mentioned in chronological references to important events. The number 72 appears only once, where, amid many other numbers, 72 cattle are set aside for a sacrificial offering ( Numbers 31:38). If 72 occurs in the Letter of Aristeas (as the number of translators of the Septuagint) as well as in III Enoch, these sporadic instances are not to be compared in significance with the tradition involving 70.

Consequently it is astonishing that the reading e`bdomh,konta du,o occurs at all in Luke 10:1 and Luke 10:17, and that it has such strong support. A reading that in the Gospels has in its support î<sup>75</sup> B D, the Old Syriac, the Old Latin, etc., etc. is ordinarily regarded at once as the original reading. If in addition the opposing reading lies under the suspicion of ecclesiastical “normalizing,” the testimony becomes irrefutable. The opposing witnesses represent entirely an ecclesiastical normalizing. That they are in the majority is altogether understandable; if they are ancient, this only proves how early the normalizing process began to operate. For these reasons e`bdomh,konta du,o should be printed without square brackets. K.A.]

⁹ It is often assumed, for example, that the symbolism is intended to allude to the future proclamation of the gospel to all of the countries of the world. But even in this case there is uncertainty, for in the Hebrew text of Genesis 11:1 the several nations of earth total seventy, whereas in the Greek Septuagint the enumeration comes to seventy-two.

¹⁰ For a fuller discussion of the external evidence and internal probabilities, as well as a list of about twenty instances from ancient Jewish literature involving either 70 or 72, see the chapter entitled, “Seventy or Seventy-two Disciples?” in Metzger’s Historical and Literary Studies, Pagan, Jewish, and Christian (Leiden and Grand Rapids, 1968), pp. 67—76.