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
Matthew does not name the prophet here.
Variant class
Spelling / name
2Textus Receptus
Greek reading
The Textus Receptus and the modern critical text both retain the anonymous formula.
Authorized Version
“That it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet.” — Matthew 1:22
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
No distinct NA28 reading has been entered; the received and NA28 texts may agree at this unit.
Translation or explanation
The received and current critical texts may agree at this unit; consult the full essay for any versional or apparatus-only variation.
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. 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 Matthew 1:22
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 Matthew, 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
A teacher writes “Isaiah” beside “Behold, a virgin shall be with child,” and the note helps the next reader. The prophecy’s force remains: the virgin conceives, bears a son, and his name is Emmanuel. The anonymous formula has a theological strength of its own.
Bahnsen four-point examination
Arbitrariness
At Matthew 1:22, the critical choice avoids arbitrariness only to the extent that it states public manuscript, transcriptional, and intrinsic grounds. The Textus Receptus and the modern critical text both retain the anonymous formula. The verse also shows why no printed edition should be treated as a contest in which every critical choice is shorter and every received choice longer. Ministerial textual criticism serves the text when it refuses even a true gloss.
Inconsistency
The criteria used at Matthew 1:22 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: A teacher writes “Isaiah” beside “Behold, a virgin shall be with child,” and the note helps the next reader. The prophecy’s force remains: the virgin conceives, bears a son, and his name is Emmanuel. The anonymous formula has a theological strength of its own.
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 quotation comes from Isaiah 7:14, and a small line of witnesses supplies Isaiah’s name. The manuscript history confirms the danger of filling empty places. An ancient marginal note could serve the same honest purpose before a later copy blurred the boundary.
Internal and transcriptional evidence
Here both leading forms agree against an addition.
Reception and ecclesiastical use
The Textus Receptus and the modern critical text both retain the anonymous formula. The Textus Receptus and Nestle–Aland agree, and both reject a reading that is factually correct outside the verse. John William Burgon, The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels.
Providential-preservation analysis
Providential preservation is not used as a substitute for evidence at Matthew 1:22. 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
The Textus Receptus and the modern critical text both retain the anonymous formula. The verse also shows why no printed edition should be treated as a contest in which every critical choice is shorter and every received choice longer. Ministerial textual criticism serves the text when it refuses even a true gloss.
Conclusion
The anonymous formula has a theological strength of its own. Matthew begins with the Lord who spoke, not with the fame of the human messenger. The prophet is a true instrument; the prophecy is the Lord’s speech. Naming Isaiah in exposition honors the instrument, while retaining “the prophet” honors the form in which Matthew places him.
Cases like this should lower the temperature of textual debate. The Textus Receptus and Nestle–Aland agree, and both reject a reading that is factually correct outside the verse. Preservation is not the accumulation of true comments around Scripture. It is the keeping of the words that belong to Scripture where they belong.
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 Matthew 1:22 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
- 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
- German Bible Society — Interview with Hugh HoughtonCurrent critical-edition, ECM, or editorial documentation
Read the full research essay and its sources
Matthew does not name the prophet here. The quotation comes from Isaiah 7:14, and a small line of witnesses supplies Isaiah’s name. The Textus Receptus and the modern critical text both retain the anonymous formula.
“That it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet.” — Matthew 1:22
The right name in a margin can still be the wrong word in the text.
Readers identify quotations. A teacher writes “Isaiah” beside “Behold, a virgin shall be with child,” and the note helps the next reader. In a later copy the name can move into the sentence. Nothing deceitful is required.
Matthew sometimes names a prophet and sometimes writes only “the prophet.” His anonymous formulas are complete. “Spoken of the Lord by the prophet” puts the source and instrument in order: the Lord speaks; the prophet carries his word.
The manuscript history confirms the danger of filling empty places. At Matthew 2:5, copies that name the prophet offer both Micah and Isaiah. At 13:35, a few name Isaiah where the quotation comes from a Psalm of Asaph. When an anonymous formula attracts different names, the disagreement points back to no name.
Keeping Matthew’s wording does not hide the Old Testament. Isaiah 7 is the source, and responsible exposition should say so. The distinction is between identifying a quotation in commentary and claiming that Matthew wrote the identifying noun.
The verse also shows why no printed edition should be treated as a contest in which every critical choice is shorter and every received choice longer. Here both leading forms agree against an addition. Ministerial textual criticism serves the text when it refuses even a true gloss.
The prophecy’s force remains: the virgin conceives, bears a son, and his name is Emmanuel. Matthew sees the birth of Christ as the fulfillment of the Lord’s word. The prophet’s identity comes from the canonical source; the Gospel’s exact sentence remains anonymous.
This difference also marks the boundary between text and apparatus. A modern editor may print a footnote, cross-reference, or section heading that says Isaiah. Those helps do not claim to be Matthew’s words. An ancient marginal note could serve the same honest purpose before a later copy blurred the boundary. The usefulness of the note does not decide the history of the sentence.
The anonymous formula has a theological strength of its own. Matthew begins with the Lord who spoke, not with the fame of the human messenger. The prophet is a true instrument; the prophecy is the Lord’s speech. Naming Isaiah in exposition honors the instrument, while retaining “the prophet” honors the form in which Matthew places him.
Cases like this should lower the temperature of textual debate. The Textus Receptus and Nestle–Aland agree, and both reject a reading that is factually correct outside the verse. Preservation is not the accumulation of true comments around Scripture. It is the keeping of the words that belong to Scripture where they belong.
Sources and further reading
- Isaiah 7:10–16; Matthew 1:18–25; 2:5; 13:35.
- Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, note on Matthew 1:22.
- John William Burgon, The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels.
7Related materials
Open a group to follow connected articles, books, biographies, media, research notes, variants, or downloads. Research Center relationships use permanent record IDs; external items retain their actual link.
- Record
- VAR-1006
- Status
- Preliminary
- Version
- 1.1-dossier
- Review
- Level B — Editorial synthesis
- Editor
- Chris Thomas
- Reviewer
- Independent reviewer pending assignment
- First date
- 2026-07-22 · Exact Day
- Last revised
- 2026-07-22
Evidence and editorial controls
- Verification
- Recovered project data; bibliographic and source-level verification remains record-specific. 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; cited sources retain their stated rights.
- Known limitations
- Staging record; independent review remains open.
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, “Matthew 1:22 — Did a Copyist Name Isaiah in Matthew’s Prophetic Formula?,” VAR-1006, Confessional Bibliology Research Center, version 1.0-staging.
Revision history
- — Chris Thomas
- — Chris Thomas