“Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils.” — Matthew 10:8
The words “raise the dead” have an unsettled place in the manuscript record. Many witnesses omit them. Others set them at different points in the four commands. Yet the Textus Receptus and the leading modern critical editions agree on the chief question: Christ did give this command.
The difference between them is order. The received text places “raise the dead” after “cleanse the lepers”; the critical text places it before. English readers who compare only the Authorized Version with a recent translation may never see the dispute.
Four commands, several orders
The moving pieces share similar endings in Greek. That makes a skipped line or a shifted phrase easy to imagine. Some copies put “raise the dead” after the lepers, some after the casting out of devils, and one Latin line sets it before the sick. A large later group drops it.
Variation in position can mark an added gloss, but it can also arise when a short clause is lost and then restored from the margin. Here the clause has early and varied support. It appears in witnesses usually placed in the Alexandrian, Western, and Caesarean streams. The United Bible Societies committee therefore judged the omission accidental and printed the words.
That judgment matters. “The oldest manuscripts remove ‘raise the dead’” would be false. Some old copies contain it, and modern editors retain it.
Why the command fits
Matthew has already recorded Jesus raising the ruler’s daughter. The Twelve are now sent as his heralds and servants, with authority that displays the nearness of the kingdom. Healing, cleansing, raising, and casting out are not four independent techniques. They are signs of the King’s mercy and dominion.
Some critics have noted Matthew’s liking for groups of three and suggested that a fourth command is secondary. But a scribe intent on making a neat triad would be more likely to remove a clause than invent the most startling command in the list. Nor is “raise the dead” an easy devotional gloss. It raises practical questions about when and upon whom such authority was to be exercised.
The received order also has a natural rise: ordinary sickness, the social and ceremonial ruin of leprosy, death itself, and then the hostile spiritual powers behind much misery. The critical order can also be read coherently, so cadence alone cannot decide the text. The continuous ecclesiastical reading and its place in Scrivener’s Greek text support the order behind the Authorized Version.
Christ said “raise the dead.” The main modern text agrees. The narrower issue is where Matthew placed the phrase, and the received order remains a sound and well-attested form of the commission.
The command also belongs under the sentence that follows: “freely ye have received, freely give.” The Twelve did not acquire healing power as a craft, and resurrection could never become a marketable technique. Every sign was a received gift serving the announcement that the kingdom had drawn near.
The varying positions are exactly what a marginal restoration can produce. If a scribe loses a short imperative among imperatives and another reader writes it beside the line, the next copyist must decide where to return it. Different decisions preserve the clause at different points. That pattern does not prove restoration, but it answers the claim that movement must mean invention.
Matthew’s love of triads should likewise be used with care. Authors have habits, not cages. A critic may notice threefold patterns; he may not delete a fourth command merely to make the Evangelist more regular than the surviving text.
Sources and further reading
- Matthew 9:18–26; 10:1–15.
- Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, note on Matthew 10:8.
- Frederick H. A. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version.