Text Note: Luke 4:18: "to heal the brokenhearted"

 

Image: North Garden, Virginia. March 19, 2022.

From my twitter (@Riddle1689) (3/17/22):

Devotional reading today in Luke 4 on Christ's Nazareth sermon. Sad to see that the modern text omits the phrase "to heal the brokenhearted [ιασασθαι τους συντετριμμενους την καρδιαν]" (v. 18).

The phrase is there in the source of the quotation at Isaiah 61:1, but modern scholars would see its omission as the supposedly "more difficult" reading.

The phrase appears in the early uncial Codex Alexandrinus, and it is the consensus reading of the Majority Text. It's also there in early versions like the Syriac Peshitta.

It's there in all the old Protestant translations (cf. in English: Tyndale, Geneva, KJV) based on the Received Text.

The phrase is missing, however, in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. Wescott and Hort, therefore, omitted it from their Greek NT (1881).

It was then omitted from the English Revised Version (1881) and from the other modern translations that flowed from that stream (ASV, RSV, ESV).

JTR