"Nor the Son" , Missing from Some Manuscripts
“Jesus says no one knows the day or hour , "not even the Son." Some early manuscripts omit "nor the Son." Was this phrase added or removed by scribes?”
"But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." , Matthew 24:36 (NIV) / Some manuscripts read: "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, but only the Father."
Matthew 24:36 contains one of the most theologically sensitive textual variants in the New Testament. The phrase "nor the Son" (οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, oude ho huios) appears in most modern critical texts of Matthew, but it is absent from a significant group of manuscripts. In the parallel passage Mark 13:32, "nor the Son" is present in virtually all manuscripts, making the Markan parallel the more secure anchor.
The question is whether scribes who worked with Matthew deleted the phrase because it appeared to limit Jesus's divine omniscience, or whether scribes working from memory or under Markan influence added the phrase to Matthew.
Hard verses are where our biases and assumptions do the most damage. Before diving into scholarly perspectives, consider which thinking patterns might be shaping how you read this passage.
The text-critical majority holds that "nor the Son" is original in Matthew, for several reasons. The Alexandrian manuscript tradition (Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus) and early versions include it. The external parallel in Mark 13:32 includes it in virtually every manuscript, and it would be inexplicable for Mark to add such a theologically difficult phrase if Matthew lacked it.
Most importantly, the lectio difficilior principle strongly applies: scribes had powerful theological motivation to remove a phrase that appeared to deny Jesus's omniscience, but no clear motivation to add it to a manuscript tradition that lacked it.
Some conservative scholars argue the phrase was added to Matthew under the influence of the Markan parallel by scribes who wanted to harmonize the two accounts. The Byzantine manuscript tradition, which is numerically large, omits the phrase from Matthew, and these manuscripts reflect the usage of the majority of churches in antiquity. Several church fathers who quote Matthew 24:36 omit "nor the Son." On this view, Matthew deliberately left the phrase out for theological or compositional reasons, and its absence in a substantial portion of the tradition reflects the authentic text.
Most theologians who accept the phrase's authenticity resolve the apparent contradiction with divine omniscience through kenosis theology, drawn from Philippians 2:7 ("he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant"). The incarnate Son voluntarily limited certain divine attributes, including the knowledge of eschatological timing, as part of his genuine humanity. This reading is consistent with the full range of NT teaching about Christ: fully divine, yet experiencing human limitations including hunger, fatigue, emotional distress, and, on this reading, incomplete knowledge of the Father's eschatological schedule.
Bart Ehrman and others have highlighted Matthew 24:36 as a textbook example of theologically motivated textual change. The Arian controversy of the 4th century made Jesus's limited knowledge a particularly live issue: Arians cited texts like this to argue Jesus was a lesser being inferior to the Father. Orthodox scribes had obvious motivation to remove passages suggesting the Son's ignorance.
The presence of the phrase in Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and the earliest papyri, combined with its consistent appearance in Mark, makes the case for deliberate removal stronger than for accidental omission or harmonistic addition.
The Greek οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός (oude ho huios, "nor the Son") is a clear, unambiguous phrase using the definite article with "Son," the same construction used throughout John and the Synoptics for christological statements. The verb οἶδεν (oiden, "knows") is a perfect active form implying settled, present knowledge rather than acquired knowledge, making the negation "not even the Son knows" particularly striking theologically. In Mark 13:32 the phrase appears as "οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, εἰ μὴ ὁ πατήρ" ("nor the Son, except the Father"), the same structure.
The UBS4 text committee included "nor the Son" in Matthew with a {C} rating, indicating considerable uncertainty, which is unusual and reflects the genuine difficulty of the evidence.
Matthew 24 is the Olivet Discourse, Jesus's extended teaching about the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the coming of the Son of Man, delivered shortly before the crucifixion. " The answer in verse 36 explicitly limits all knowledge of the timing to the Father alone, not even angels or the Son. This setting, in which Jesus is speaking about his own parousia, makes the claim of his own ignorance especially striking.
The verse has been pivotal in arguments about Christ's two natures, divine foreknowledge, and the scope of the incarnate Son's self-limitation. The history of its manuscript transmission shows the pressure of precisely those controversies on the process of scribal copying.
Sources: Published scholarship View all →
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