61 Markan Christology and the Omission Of υἱοῦ θεοῦ in Mark 1:1 The best explanation for the textual corruption is an accidental omis- sion in some documents because of periblepsis (an “eye-skip”) occasioned by homoioteleuton (the “same endings”). This type of accidental error is extremely frequent60. Jack Finegan61 reports that P66 contains 76 exam- ples of homoioteleuton, P75 includes 37 and P45 has 18. Textual critics have discovered that omissions are far more common in documents than additions. This has been verified for P45, P46, P47, P66, P72, and P75 by E. C. Colwell and James Royse62 and for 14 smaller fragments of the gospels by Peter Head himself63. Royse discovered that P46 excised material on 167 occasions while only adding 55 readings and P47 evidenced 18 omissions but only five insertions. This evidence substantially reduces the probabi- lity that υἱοῦ θεοῦ was added at Mk. 1:1. An omission is especially understandable with the presence of no- mina sacra as Bruce Metzger emphasizes in his Textual Commentary64. The eye of the copyist could have moved easily from the ου endings of ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ and skipped over υἱοῦ θεοῦ, especially if the nomina sacra were employed (ΙΥΧΥΥΥθΥ). The fact that manuscript 28 only reads “Jesus” while the corrector adds “Christ” appears to be another example of periblepsis65. On the other hand, if the title “Son of God” was added, “one would expect the scribe to have modeled the phrase on the Attic grammatical standard, with one or two articles”66 which is certainly not the original reading. A few textual critics argue that omission by homoioteleuton is un- likely because 1) the use of nomina sacra draws attention to and thus protects the highlighted terms and 2) the omission occurs in the very first verse of the gospel where the scribe would be expected to be alert Kurt and Barbara Aland, Text of the New Testament, 237 advise that “when an 60 omission occurs, one of the first questions to be raised by textual criticism is whether homoioteleuton is involved”. Jack Finegan, Encountering New Testament Manuscripts: A Working Introduction to 61 Textual Criticism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1974) 184. See James A. Royse, “Scribal Tendencies in the Transmission of the New Testament 62 Texts”, in The Critical Study of Sacred Texts. ed. Wendy D. O’Flaherty (Berkeley: Graduate Theological Union 1979) 246 for a chart and Ernest C. Colwell, “Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of P45, P66, P75.” in Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament. (Leiden: Brill 1969) 117-118. Cf. also James R. Royse, Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri, Th.D. diss. (Graduate Theological Union 1981) 602. Cf. Peter M. Head, “Observations on Early Papyri of the Synoptic Gospels, especially 63 on the ‘Scribal Habits’”, Bib 71 (1990): 246. Bruce M. Metzger, The Textual Commentary of the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. 64 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft 1998) 62, “The absence of υἱοῦ θεοῦ in θ 28c al may be due to an oversight in copying, occasioned by the similarity of the endings of the nomina sacra”. Globe, “Caesarean Omission”, 216-217. 65 Ibid., 217. 66