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 and critical texts move directly to Christ’s lordship over the Sabbath. Codex Bezae adds a separate story about a man working on the Sabbath, blessing him if he understands his act and condemning him if he does not.
Variant class
Omission / addition
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
The saying ends with “the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.”
Authorized Version
“And he said unto them, That the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.” — Luke 6:5
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.
Historical annotation witness
Erasmus’s Annotationes
Erasmus’s printed Greek text, his Latin annotation, and the Research Center’s evaluation are distinct evidence. Each edition remains separately identified because Erasmus revised the Annotationes across his five editions.
Not yet assessed. No inference about Erasmus’s silence has been made. A Latin annotation and translation will appear here only after an edition and exact locus have been verified.
The Erasmus annotation audit has not yet been completed for this locus. Do not infer from this status that Erasmus was silent.
Westminster and Dutch annotation witnesses
Westminster Annotations
Not yet assessed. No inference from silence is made.
Dutch Annotations
Not yet assessed. No inference from silence is made.
3NA28 baseline and critical-text rationale
NA28 baseline reading
A Western addition in Codex Bezae inserts a Sabbath-worker episode before the received conclusion.
Translation or explanation
A Western addition in Codex Bezae inserts a Sabbath-worker episode before the received conclusion.
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 scribal harmonization to a parallel passage; the printed confidence rating represented here is {C}. 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 6:5
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
Exegetical or interpretive consequence
Exact proposition affected
No single doctrinal proposition is directly changed; the principal consequence is exegetical, historical, or cumulative.
Doctrinal analysis
Exegetical or interpretive consequence. The record does not establish that the variant by itself removes an entire Christian doctrine; explicit wording, exegesis, and cumulative testimony must be distinguished.
Bahnsen four-point examination
Arbitrariness
At Luke 6:5, 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. — Luke 6:5 Neither the Textus Receptus nor the standard modern critical text includes the episode. This judgment is shared by received-text and critical-text editors, showing that antiquity and narrative vividness do not by themselves establish canonicity.
Inconsistency
The criteria used at Luke 6:5 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
Exegetical or interpretive consequence: No single doctrinal proposition is directly changed; the principal consequence is exegetical, historical, or cumulative.
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
An old saying is not automatically Luke’s text The story may contain ancient tradition. A manuscript can preserve valuable extra-canonical memory without that memory having stood in the Gospel’s archetype. The episode should remain outside Luke’s text while being cataloged as an ancient Western addition.
Internal and transcriptional evidence
Principal competing reading: A Western addition in Codex Bezae inserts a Sabbath-worker episode before the received conclusion. The episode should remain outside Luke’s text while being cataloged as an ancient Western addition.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
— Luke 6:5 Neither the Textus Receptus nor the standard modern critical text includes the episode. An old saying is not automatically Luke’s text The story may contain ancient tradition. If authentic as a free tradition, it may contrast informed recognition of Christ’s Sabbath authority with heedless transgression.
Providential-preservation analysis
Providential preservation is not used as a substitute for evidence at Luke 6:5. 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. — Luke 6:5 Neither the Textus Receptus nor the standard modern critical text includes the episode. This judgment is shared by received-text and critical-text editors, showing that antiquity and narrative vividness do not by themselves establish canonicity.
Conclusion
The episode should remain outside Luke’s text while being cataloged as an ancient Western addition. This judgment is shared by received-text and critical-text editors, showing that antiquity and narrative vividness do not by themselves establish canonicity.
Luke’s transmitted sequence is stronger without it. David’s case leads to Christ’s claim; the next Sabbath scene then shows the Lord restoring a withered hand. Authority is revealed not through a cryptic worker’s self-knowledge but through the merciful Son who interprets and fulfills the Sabbath before hostile eyes.
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.
Canonical-status rule: Physical printing is not canonical inclusion. If an edition prints a passage in double brackets while judging it secondary or non-original, it disagrees with the received text concerning the identity and extent of inspired Scripture.
No adverse entailment: agrees with the received text.
Necessary reasoning chain
- The current critical main-text reading assessed at Luke 6:5 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 6:5
Received reading: The saying ends with “the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.”
Principal competing reading: A Western addition in Codex Bezae inserts a Sabbath-worker episode before the received conclusion.
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending.
Codex Bezae preserves one of Luke’s most arresting expansions. Before the declaration that the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath, its Greek and Latin text tells of Jesus seeing a man working that day. Jesus says, in substance: if the man knows what he is doing, he is blessed; if he does not know, he is cursed and a transgressor of the law.
“And he said unto them, That the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.” — Luke 6:5
Neither the Textus Receptus nor the standard modern critical text includes the episode. It survives principally in this bilingual codex. Its wording sounds memorable and its moral distinction is subtle, which has led some readers to wonder whether it preserves an independent saying of Jesus.
An old saying is not automatically Luke’s text
The story may contain ancient tradition. That is a historical question different from whether it belongs at Luke 6:5. A manuscript can preserve valuable extra-canonical memory without that memory having stood in the Gospel’s archetype. The episode’s extreme documentary isolation and its interruption of the Synoptic sequence weigh heavily against inclusion.
Its location is understandable. Luke has just narrated grain-plucking on the Sabbath and is about to record the Lord’s authority over that day. A marginal anecdote about knowing the law could be copied beside the passage and eventually enter the text. Codex Bezae is well known for distinctive expansions and freer forms in Luke and Acts; the Sabbath worker fits that profile.
The saying also demands care in interpretation. Knowledge does not grant private permission to violate God’s law. If authentic as a free tradition, it may contrast informed recognition of Christ’s Sabbath authority with heedless transgression. Detached from that setting, it can sound like moral autonomy—the opposite of biblical obedience.
The episode should remain outside Luke’s text while being cataloged as an ancient Western addition. This judgment is shared by received-text and critical-text editors, showing that antiquity and narrative vividness do not by themselves establish canonicity.
Luke’s transmitted sequence is stronger without it. David’s case leads to Christ’s claim; the next Sabbath scene then shows the Lord restoring a withered hand. Authority is revealed not through a cryptic worker’s self-knowledge but through the merciful Son who interprets and fulfills the Sabbath before hostile eyes.
Sources and further reading
- Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis (GA 05), Luke 6:5, Cambridge University Library Digital Library, https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-NN-00002-00041/7.
- Matthew 12:1–14; Mark 2:23–3:6; Luke 6:1–11.
7Related materials
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- Record
- VAR-2083
- 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 addition may preserve an ancient independent tradition, but its value as tradition is distinct from its claim to the Gospel text.
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 6:5 — The Bezan Sabbath Story: How an Ancient Expansion Entered the Record,” VAR-2083, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.0-staging, last revised 2026-07-22.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas