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 main received and critical texts agree that Jesus called Levi the son of Alphaeus. Variants substitute James, adjust the article, or smooth the name, but they do not overturn the narrative identity.
Variant class
Punctuation
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
“Levi the son of Alphaeus” (Λευὶν τὸν τοῦ Ἀλφαίου).
Authorized Version
“He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom.” — Mark 2:14
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
Secondary forms including “James the son of Alphaeus,” with minor variation in the name and article.
Translation or explanation
Secondary forms including “James the son of Alphaeus,” with minor variation in the name and article.
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 balance of external and internal evidence described in the entry; the printed confidence rating represented here is {A}. 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 Mark 2:14
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
No UBS6 / intended NA29 main-text change is recorded for this passage in the controlled 169-change ledger.
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
That is why a parallel-word search is often more revealing than speculation about a copyist’s theology.
Bahnsen four-point examination
Arbitrariness
At Mark 2:14, 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. The principal received and modern critical texts agree on that wording. This is worth recording precisely because not every apparatus entry divides the Textus Receptus from the critical text.
Inconsistency
The criteria used at Mark 2:14 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: That is why a parallel-word search is often more revealing than speculation about a copyist’s theology.
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 variation appears in secondary witnesses: some substitute James, some alter the spelling of Levi, and some handle the article differently. , The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge, 1894).
Internal and transcriptional evidence
A copyist remembering that list could replace the less familiar Levi here with James. That is why a parallel-word search is often more revealing than speculation about a copyist’s theology.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
This is worth recording precisely because not every apparatus entry divides the Textus Receptus from the critical text.
Providential-preservation analysis
Providential preservation is not used as a substitute for evidence at Mark 2:14. 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. The principal received and modern critical texts agree on that wording. This is worth recording precisely because not every apparatus entry divides the Textus Receptus from the critical text.
Conclusion
The naming question has a useful methodological result. A variant can arise from a true fact remembered in the wrong place: James really is called the son of Alphaeus in the next chapter. Scribal memory need not invent false names from nothing. It can relocate a genuine biblical phrase. That is why a parallel-word search is often more revealing than speculation about a copyist’s theology.
Levi should remain in the text. It is the reading that explains the rise of James through memory of the apostolic list, while the reverse change has no comparable attraction. More importantly, the calling scene does not depend on resolving every later name question. Jesus sees a man at a toll booth, commands him to follow, and the man rises. The stable reading keeps that sharply personal call intact.
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 Mark 2:14 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
- Digital ECM — Mark 2:14Current critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
- 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
Read the full research essay and its sources
Passage: Mark 2:14
Received reading: “Levi the son of Alphaeus” (Λευὶν τὸν τοῦ Ἀλφαίου).
Principal competing reading: Secondary forms including “James the son of Alphaeus,” with minor variation in the name and article.
Editorial status: Preliminary record accepted for staging; independent review remains pending.
“He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom.” — Mark 2:14
Jesus passes the customs station and calls “Levi the son of Alphaeus.” The principal received and modern critical texts agree on that wording. The variation appears in secondary witnesses: some substitute James, some alter the spelling of Levi, and some handle the article differently.
This is worth recording precisely because not every apparatus entry divides the Textus Receptus from the critical text. A book-wide survey that reports only confrontations would make the evidence look tidier—and more partisan—than it is.
Why “James” appeared
Mark 3:18 names “James the son of Alphaeus” among the Twelve. A copyist remembering that list could replace the less familiar Levi here with James. The patronymic does most of the work: once “son of Alphaeus” is seen, a known apostolic name presents itself. The change also seems to solve the later question of how Levi relates to Matthew, though it actually creates another identification problem.
The received construction does not say that Levi and James were the same man. Alphaeus was not a unique name, and Scripture does not require every person who shares a father’s name to be one individual. Nor does the passage explicitly state whether Levi is another name for Matthew. Matthew’s parallel calls the tax collector Matthew; Mark and Luke call him Levi. Double names are common in the New Testament world, but the identification rests on narrative comparison rather than on a variant in Mark 2:14.
The article before the patronymic is ordinary Greek: literally, “Levi, the [son] of Alphaeus.” English supplies “son” because the relationship is understood. A missing or altered article in a copy does not turn Alphaeus into a place or office.
The naming question has a useful methodological result. A variant can arise from a true fact remembered in the wrong place: James really is called the son of Alphaeus in the next chapter. Scribal memory need not invent false names from nothing. It can relocate a genuine biblical phrase. That is why a parallel-word search is often more revealing than speculation about a copyist’s theology.
Levi should remain in the text. It is the reading that explains the rise of James through memory of the apostolic list, while the reverse change has no comparable attraction. More importantly, the calling scene does not depend on resolving every later name question. Jesus sees a man at a toll booth, commands him to follow, and the man rises. The stable reading keeps that sharply personal call intact.
Sources and further reading
- F. H. A. Scrivener, ed., The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge, 1894).
- Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software, 2010), text and apparatus.
- Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., notes on the stated passage.
- Matthew 9:9; Mark 2:13–17; 3:18; Luke 5:27–32.
7Related materials
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- Record
- VAR-2006
- 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 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 staging record summarizes the principal variation unit and representative evidence. It is not a fresh collation of every extant manuscript, version, lectionary, or patristic citation.
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, “Mark 2:14 — Levi the Son of Alphaeus: Name, Article, and Calling,” VAR-2006, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.0-staging, last revised 2026-07-22.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas