Complete textual-variant dossier
No adverse entailment · agrees with the received text
Sections distinguish readings, edition history, evidence, theological consequences, and the Research Center's evaluation. CBGM is an analytical tool; editorial committees—not the software—make textual decisions.
1Passage and issue
Passage
Issue
The received text and most current critical editions include “the Lord Jesus.” Westcott and Hort omitted both titles, creating an important example of a later critical reversal rather than a continuing modern omission.
Variant class
Omission / addition
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
“They found not the body of the Lord Jesus.”
Authorized Version
“They entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.” — Luke 24:3
Edition note
The Research Center uses the received Greek text underlying the Authorized Version as its baseline; edition-specific differences are recorded when the variation unit requires them.
3NA28 baseline and critical-text rationale
NA28 baseline reading
“They did not find the body,” without “of the Lord Jesus,” in a historically influential shorter form.
Translation or explanation
“They did not find the body,” without “of the Lord Jesus,” in a historically influential shorter form.
Metzger’s report of the UBS committee
Metzger reports the UBS4 committee's treatment of the variation unit. The note grounds the relevant decision in the weight and distribution of external attestation, a proposed mechanism of accidental omission, scribal harmonization to a parallel passage; the printed confidence rating represented here is {D}. This is a controlled synopsis rather than a quotation.
Locator: Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., note on Luke 24:3
ECM / CBGM evidence and editors
No passage-specific ECM/CBGM editorial explanation is attached to this record. Official method sources describe the CBGM as a set of coherence procedures, not a decision-maker: editors define variation units and local stemmata and evaluate pre-genealogical, genealogical, and stemmatic coherence together with transcriptional, intrinsic, and other philological evidence.
4UBS6 and intended NA29 revision
UBS6 retains the NA28 / UBS5 Greek main-text wording in Luke, so no main-text change is shown for this passage. The separate project ledger covers Acts, Mark, and Revelation.
No change row is attached to this passage.
UBS6 is published, and the German Bible Society identifies its Greek main text as identical to the intended NA29 main text. The complete NA29 volume and its apparatus remain forthcoming. Project-ledger rows retain their source and verification statements until they are checked against the published UBS6 text and, when available, the NA29 apparatus.
5Doctrinal and four-point analysis
Effect class
Weakening of explicit biblical testimony
Exact proposition affected
The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Doctrinal analysis
“Lord Jesus” may be expanded from early Christian confession, especially after the resurrection. Calling him Lord before the discovery does not depend upon the women already understanding the resurrection. Resurrection concerns the body laid in Joseph’s tomb, not the survival of an idea.
Bahnsen four-point examination
Arbitrariness
At Luke 24:3, the critical choice avoids arbitrariness only to the extent that it states public manuscript, transcriptional, and intrinsic grounds. Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending. That full phrase stands in the Textus Receptus and in the principal contemporary critical editions. It is false to take a nineteenth-century critical decision and report it as though NA28 necessarily repeats it.
Inconsistency
The criteria used at Luke 24:3 must be applied to comparable readings as well. A principle such as age, difficulty, brevity, or coherence cannot be decisive here and quietly reversed elsewhere merely to escape a historical, grammatical, or theological difficulty.
Consequences
Weakening of explicit biblical testimony: “Lord Jesus” may be expanded from early Christian confession, especially after the resurrection. Calling him Lord before the discovery does not depend upon the women already understanding the resurrection. Resurrection concerns the body laid in Joseph’s tomb, not the survival of an idea.
Preconditions of intelligibility
The argument presupposes stable authorship, meaningful language, objective logical norms, transmissible evidence, and a coherent account of how Scripture can be received and identified by the church. The analysis tests whether the method can make those conditions intelligible without reducing the text to an indefinitely revisable editorial construct.
This framework examines an argument and its conditions; it does not claim to read an editor's private motives.
6Argument for the received reading
External and historical evidence
A source-level external-evidence synopsis remains open; consult the full essay and cited apparatus.
Internal and transcriptional evidence
It may also be lost after the common word “body” through abbreviation or because a scribe regarded the referent as obvious. Its broad and early support, Lukan usage, and restoration in leading critical editions outweigh the once-influential omission.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
That full phrase stands in the Textus Receptus and in the principal contemporary critical editions. Tregelles, the Byzantine text, and modern translation bases support the titles; the critical tradition reconsidered the evidence. Luke’s phrase joins a corpse-designation to the church’s confession.
Providential-preservation analysis
Providential preservation is not used as a substitute for evidence at Luke 24:3. It supplies the confessional context in which manuscript transmission, broad reception, and the church's actual possession of Scripture are evaluated together.
Canonical coherence with the rest of Scripture
Canonical coherence remains an explicit test: a proposed reading must make grammatical and theological sense within the immediate context and the rest of Scripture. No conflict is asserted merely because two editions differ; the claimed incoherence must be demonstrated at this passage.
Canonical-coherence verdict
The Authorized Version is retained where its representation of the TR forms a coherent reading within the immediate context and the rest of Scripture. Any competing form must demonstrate an equal or better canonical fit rather than merely invoke an edition or method label.
Response to the principal critical argument
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending. That full phrase stands in the Textus Receptus and in the principal contemporary critical editions. It is false to take a nineteenth-century critical decision and report it as though NA28 necessarily repeats it.
Conclusion
The shorter form is not a denial that the body belongs to Jesus. Verse 1 has supplied the antecedent through the burial narrative, and subsequent verses name him. Its loss is still real; inspired titles need not be repeated everywhere, but where received they should not be discarded as pious decoration.
The wording guards two truths at once. Resurrection concerns the body laid in Joseph’s tomb, not the survival of an idea. Yet the body is the body of the Lord Jesus, the living person whose identity continues through death. The women find no corpse because the Lord has acted, not because his humanity was abandoned.
Logical entailment
The Authorized Version serves as the faithful English representation. The preservation claim applies immediately to the authentic Hebrew and Greek texts—not to an English translation as though it were the inspired source.
No adverse entailment: agrees with the received text.
Necessary reasoning chain
- The current critical main-text reading assessed at Luke 24:3 agrees with the received Hebrew/Greek reading at the variation unit governed by this card.
- An adverse preservation entailment at this locus would require the current critical form to displace a different received reading.
- Because no such displacement occurs at the assessed locus, no adverse preservation consequence follows here.
Sources
- Westminster Confession of Faith (1647)Chapter 1, section 8 — Governing confessional preservation claim
- F. H. A. Scrivener, The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text followed in the Authorized VersionReceived Greek reading
- German Bible Society — UBS6 publications and relation to NA29Current critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
- German Bible Society — The Sixth Edition of the Greek New TestamentCurrent critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
- INTF — Online Tools for the ECMCurrent critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
Read the full research essay and its sources
Passage: Luke 24:3
Received reading: “They found not the body of the Lord Jesus.”
Principal competing reading: “They did not find the body,” without “of the Lord Jesus,” in a historically influential shorter form.
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending.
The women enter the tomb and do not find “the body of the Lord Jesus.” That full phrase stands in the Textus Receptus and in the principal contemporary critical editions. Westcott and Hort printed the shorter “the body,” influencing an older generation of discussion.
“They entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.” — Luke 24:3
The edition history matters. It is false to take a nineteenth-century critical decision and report it as though NA28 necessarily repeats it. Tregelles, the Byzantine text, and modern translation bases support the titles; the critical tradition reconsidered the evidence.
Sacred names are vulnerable in both directions. “Lord Jesus” may be expanded from early Christian confession, especially after the resurrection. It may also be lost after the common word “body” through abbreviation or because a scribe regarded the referent as obvious.
Luke’s phrase joins a corpse-designation to the church’s confession. The women seek a body belonging to the Lord Jesus; the next announcement explains why it is absent: he has risen. Calling him Lord before the discovery does not depend upon the women already understanding the resurrection. It is the narrator’s identification.
The full title should remain. Its broad and early support, Lukan usage, and restoration in leading critical editions outweigh the once-influential omission. It also demonstrates why textual articles must identify editions by name and date where their texts differ.
The shorter form is not a denial that the body belongs to Jesus. Verse 1 has supplied the antecedent through the burial narrative, and subsequent verses name him. Its loss is still real; inspired titles need not be repeated everywhere, but where received they should not be discarded as pious decoration.
The wording guards two truths at once. Resurrection concerns the body laid in Joseph’s tomb, not the survival of an idea. Yet the body is the body of the Lord Jesus, the living person whose identity continues through death. The women find no corpse because the Lord has acted, not because his humanity was abandoned.
Sources and further reading
- Luke 23:50–24:12; Acts 1:21; 4:33; 7:59; 8:16.
- Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek, Luke 24:3.
7Related materials
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- Record
- VAR-2126
- Status
- Preliminary
- Version
- 1.1-dossier
- Review
- Level B — Editorial synthesis
- Editor
- Chris Thomas
- Reviewer
- Independent reviewer pending assignment
- First date
- 1st century · Date Range
- Last revised
- 2026-07-22
Evidence and editorial controls
- Verification
- Passage, principal readings, and stated editorial comparison checked against Scrivener’s received Greek text and the SBLGNT text and apparatus; exhaustive manuscript collation remains open. Metzger commentary entries were matched by exact passage where present; ECM/CBGM rationale is passage-specific only when an official editorial explanation is cited. Ledger rows are identified as UBS6 / intended NA29 data but retain their row-level verification caveats pending direct collation.
- Rights and access
- Original editorial synthesis. Biblical readings are short scholarly quotations; cited editions and digital witnesses retain their stated rights and access conditions.
- Known limitations
- The phrase illustrates historical change among critical editions; claims should specify Westcott–Hort versus current editions.
Links from this record
No public outgoing links are recorded.
Records that cite or connect here
No public backlinks are recorded.
Corrections and evidence submissions
No correction submission is presently attached to this record. Submit evidence or read the correction policy.
Chris Thomas, “Luke 24:3 — “The Body of the Lord Jesus”: Do Both Titles Belong?,” VAR-2126, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.0-staging, last revised 2026-07-22.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas