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
Scrivener’s received text and the principal critical text both include “daily.” The reconstructed Byzantine majority commonly omits it, so this is not a simple received-versus-critical contest.
Variant class
Omission / addition
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
“Let him take up his cross daily and follow me.”
Authorized Version
“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” — Luke 9:23
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
“Let him take up his cross and follow me,” without “daily,” in much of the Byzantine tradition.
Translation or explanation
“Let him take up his cross and follow me,” without “daily,” in much of the Byzantine tradition.
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. 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 9:23
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 saving and atoning work of Jesus Christ.
Doctrinal analysis
“Daily” does not mean that atonement is repeated.
Bahnsen four-point examination
Arbitrariness
At Luke 9:23, 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. Scrivener’s Textus Receptus includes the word, and so do the leading modern critical editions. Its support crosses the received and critical editorial lines, it accords with Luke’s vocabulary, and its absence is well explained by parallel influence.
Inconsistency
The criteria used at Luke 9:23 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: “Daily” does not mean that atonement is repeated.
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
The Authorized Version agrees with NA28 against the reconstructed Byzantine majority.
Internal and transcriptional evidence
A method that treats “received,” “Byzantine,” and “majority” as interchangeable cannot describe the evidence. The addition theory is readily available. Luke emphasizes daily prayer, daily teaching, and continuing faithfulness; a scribe may have made the call more explicitly habitual.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
Principal competing reading: “Let him take up his cross and follow me,” without “daily,” in much of the Byzantine tradition. Scrivener’s Textus Receptus includes the word, and so do the leading modern critical editions.
Providential-preservation analysis
Providential preservation is not used as a substitute for evidence at Luke 9:23. 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. Scrivener’s Textus Receptus includes the word, and so do the leading modern critical editions. Its support crosses the received and critical editorial lines, it accords with Luke’s vocabulary, and its absence is well explained by parallel influence.
Conclusion
The word belongs in Luke. Its support crosses the received and critical editorial lines, it accords with Luke’s vocabulary, and its absence is well explained by parallel influence. The Byzantine omission deserves explicit notice, but numerical appeal alone does not overcome the combined evidence.
The verse also refuses heroic self-invention. Jesus says “follow me.” Ascetic pain, political defeat, or chosen hardship is not automatically a cross. The cross is borne where loyalty to Christ requires the self to say no to mastery over its own life. Luke’s “daily” brings that obedience into every morning without making salvation depend upon the disciple’s suffering.
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 9:23 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 9:23
Received reading: “Let him take up his cross daily and follow me.”
Principal competing reading: “Let him take up his cross and follow me,” without “daily,” in much of the Byzantine tradition.
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending.
The word “daily” is one of Luke’s distinctive contributions to the call to carry the cross. Matthew and Mark record self-denial and cross-bearing without it. Scrivener’s Textus Receptus includes the word, and so do the leading modern critical editions. The Robinson–Pierpont Byzantine text omits it.
“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” — Luke 9:23
That distribution breaks a popular binary. The Authorized Version agrees with NA28 against the reconstructed Byzantine majority. A method that treats “received,” “Byzantine,” and “majority” as interchangeable cannot describe the evidence.
The addition theory is readily available. Luke emphasizes daily prayer, daily teaching, and continuing faithfulness; a scribe may have made the call more explicitly habitual. The omission theory is equally concrete: copyists familiar with Matthew 16:24 or Mark 8:34 could conform Luke to the shorter Synoptic wording. One small adverb is easily lost in a well-known saying recited from memory.
Jesus speaks before his own death. His hearers knew the cross as Rome’s instrument of shame, coercion, and public execution, not as jewelry or a generalized metaphor for inconvenience. To take it up was to accept the death of self-rule and the cost of following the rejected Messiah.
“Daily” does not mean that atonement is repeated. Christ’s cross alone reconciles sinners to God. The disciple’s cross is responsive: a continuing renunciation of claims that compete with obedience. Luke’s adverb prevents cross-bearing from being confined to one dramatic crisis. The path is renewed in ordinary decisions.
The word belongs in Luke. Its support crosses the received and critical editorial lines, it accords with Luke’s vocabulary, and its absence is well explained by parallel influence. The Byzantine omission deserves explicit notice, but numerical appeal alone does not overcome the combined evidence.
The verse also refuses heroic self-invention. Jesus says “follow me.” Ascetic pain, political defeat, or chosen hardship is not automatically a cross. The cross is borne where loyalty to Christ requires the self to say no to mastery over its own life. Luke’s “daily” brings that obedience into every morning without making salvation depend upon the disciple’s suffering.
Sources and further reading
- Matthew 16:24–26; Mark 8:34–37; Luke 9:18–27; 14:26–33; 1 Corinthians 15:31.
7Related materials
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- Record
- VAR-2090
- 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
- This is a three-way editorial distribution: the Textus Receptus and major critical editions include the word, while much of the Byzantine tradition omits it.
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 9:23 — “Take Up His Cross Daily”: Does “Daily” Belong?,” VAR-2090, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.0-staging, last revised 2026-07-22.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas