Matthew 28:19
“Go ye and make disciples of all the nations in my name, teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I commanded you” (Matthew 28:19).
Following is the seminal article frequently quoted in scholarly studies on the modifications of Christian doctrine after the Apostles slept. Published in 1902, the Hibbert Journal article by Conybeare draws together the scholarship for the close of Matthew’s Gospel to show that the original wording, “go forth to all nations baptizing in my name,” was re written after the Nicean council (325 AD) into the familiar “baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” In the 1970’s Bro. Charles Thornton (Detroit, Michigan) tracked down the original article and provided offprints to the brethren in “Zion’s Tower of the Morning.” It is a marvelous blessing to pass this article along in clean form to the readers of “Beauties of the Truth.” The original article presumed fluency in Greek and Latin and here a translation has been supplied. Also, the original article used Roman numerals and abbreviations which are here rendered in standard notation. The English spelling of the original has been maintained.
F.C. Conybeare, “Doctrinal Modifications – Matthew 28:19,” The Hibbert Journal, London, England (Volume 1, October 1902) pages 102-108.
No other text has counted for so much in the dogmatic development of the Church as the text at the end of Matthew 28:19, “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you.”
Professor Swete, in the work already referred to, page 18, points out that the triple formula “forms the framework” of the so-called Apostle’s creed. He writes: “Thus the Baptismal creed is seen to rest on the Baptismal words. It was the answer of the Church to the Lord’s final revelation of the Name of God.”1
And Professor Moberly of Oxford in a recent work refers to this verse as “a solemn precept to baptise in the name of the holy Trinity, which fell from the divine lips of the newly risen Lord.” I quote his words from memory.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century the text of the three witnesses of 1 John 5:7, 8 shared with Matthew 28:19 the onerous task of furnishing scriptural evidence of the doctrine of the Trinity. This text ran thus: “Three there are that bear witness in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. And these three are one. And three are there that bear witness on earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood, and the three are in the one.”
The words italicized are now abandoned by all authorities except the Pope of Rome, and are not admitted even marginally into the English revised version. By consequence the entire weight of proving the Trinity has of late come to rest on Matthew 28:19. This is also the sole saying of the Lord in which the duty of baptizing is enforced; and divines have also found in it scriptural authority for the innovation of infant baptism.
Thus the late Dean Alford wrote in his Commentary as follows: “It will be observed that in our Lord’s words, as in the church, the process of ordinary discipleship is from baptism to instruction – i.e., admission in infancy to the covenant and growing up into τηρεῖν πάντα κ.τ.λ. [obeying in all things, etc.] – the exception being, what circumstances rendered so frequent in the early church, instruction before baptism in the case of adults.
GARDNER, MARTINEAU, HARNACK
“There has been no general inclination on the part of divines to inquire soberly into the authenticity of a text on which they builded superstructures so huge. Nevertheless, an enlightened minority had their doubts. Professor Gardner, in his Exploratio Evangelica, chapter 35, wrote that they were, “little in the manner of Jesus.”
James Martineau, in his Seat of Authority, remarks that, “the very account which tells us that at last, after His resurrection, he commissioned his apostles to go and baptize among all nations, betrays itself by speaking in the Trinitarian language of the next century, and compels us to see in it the ecclesiastical editor, and not the evangelist, much less the founder himself.”
Harnack, in his History of Dogma (German edition, 1.68) dismisses the text almost contemptuously as being “no word of the Lord.” Lastly, Canon Armitage Robinson, a cautious critic, in his article on Baptism in the Encyclopedia Biblica, inclines to the view that Matthew “does not here report the ipsissima verba [the actual words] of Jesus, but transfers to him the familiar language of the church of the Evangelist’s own time and locality.”
In the course of my reading I have been able to substantiate these doubts of the authenticity of the text, Matthew 28:19, by adducing patristic evidence against it so weighty that in future the most conservative of divines will shrink from resting on it any dogmatic fabric at all, while the more enlightened will discard it as completely as they have its fellow-text of the three witnesses.
EUSEBIUS
Of the patristic witnesses to the text of the New Testament as it stood in the Greek manuscripts from about 300- 340 AD, none is so important as Eusebius of Caesarea, for he lived in the greatest Christian library of that age, that namely which Origen and Pamphilus had collected. It is no exaggeration to say that from this single collection of manuscripts at Caesarea derives the larger part of the surviving ante-Nicene literature. In his library, Eusebius must have habitually handled codices of the gospels older by two hundred years than the earliest of the great uncials than we have now in our libraries. He was also familiar with the exegesis of Origen, of Clement of Alexandria, of Pantaenus, and of many another ancient exegete whose works have only come down to us in fragments or in uncertain Latin versions.
It therefore imports to ask how Eusebius read this text. He cites it again and again in works written between 300 and 336, namely in his long commentaries on the Psalms, on Isaiah, his Demonstratio Evangelica [Description of the Gospels], his Theophany [God’s manifestation] only preserved in an old Syriac version in a Nitrian codex in the British Museum written in AD 411, in his famous history of the Church and in his panegyric of the emperor Constantine. I have, after a moderate search in these works of Eusebius, found eighteen citations of Matthew 28:19, and always in the following form: “Go ye and make disciples of all the nations in my name, teaching them to observe all things, what soever I commanded you.”
Christ with two disciples after his resurrection.
I have collected all these passages except one which is in a catena published by Mai in a German magazine, the Zeitschrijt fur die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Uournal for the Exegesis of the New Testament] edited by Dr. Erwin Preuschen in Darmstadt in 1901.
And Eusebius is not content merely to cite the verse in this form, but he more than once comments on it in such a way as to show how much he set store by the words “in my name.” Thus in his Demonstratio Evangelica he writes thus (col. 240, page 186):
“For he (i.e., Jesus Christ) did not enjoin them ‘to make disciples of all the nations’ simply and without qualifications, but with the essential addition ‘in his name.’ For so great was the virtue attaching to his appellation that the Apostle says, God bestowed on him the name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth. It was right there fore that he should emphasize the virtue of the power re siding in his name but hidden from the many, and therefore say to his Apostles, Go ye and make disciples of all the nations in my name.”
The Greek words are: πορευθέντες μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου [Go ye and make disciples of all the nations in my name].
It is evident that this was the text found by Eusebius in the very ancient codices collected fifty to one hundred and fifty years before his birth by his great predecessors. Of any other form of text he had never heard, and knew nothing until he had visited Constantinople and attended the Council of Nice. Then in two controversial works written in his extreme old age, and entitled, the one ”Against Marcellus of Ancyra,” the other ”About the Theology of the Church,” he used the common reading. One other writing of his also contains it, namely a letter written after the Council of Nicea was over to his see of Caesarea. Socrates the historian pre serves this letter, but the portion of it in which the citation of Matthew 28:19 is made does not seem above suspicion.
ORIGEN AND CLEMENT
In the writings of Origen and Clement of Alexandria there is no certain instance of Matthew 28:19 being cited in its usual form. In Origen’s works, as preserved in Greek, the first part of the verse is thrice adduced, but his citation al ways stops short at the words τὰ έθνη, “the nations;” and that in itself suggests that his text has been censured, and the words which followed “in my name” struck out. In the pages of Clement of Alexandria a text somewhat similar to Matthew 28:19 is once cited; but as from a Gnostic heretic named Theodotus, and not as from the canonical text, as follows (Excerpts, Chapter 76, Syllabus edition, page 987): ”And to the Apostles he gives the command. Going around preach ye and baptize those who believe in the name of father and son and holy spirit.”
In Eusebius’ citations there is also some trace of πЄριιοντες “going around” having been read for πορευθέντες [going “Go ye”]. And the word explains the title given to the early Gnostic romances in which the lives and activity of the Apostles were decked out with miracles and absurd legends. For these romances were called περίοδοι or “periods,” i.e., “going around” of the Apostles, or “circuits.”
An Angel at the empty tomb.
In Justin Martyr, who wrote between AD 130 and 140, there is a passage which has been regarded as a citation or echo of Matthew 28:19 by various scholars, i.e., Resch in Ausser Canonishche Parallelstellen, [From the Canon Parallels] who sees in it an abridgment of the ordinary text. The passage is in Justin’s dialogue with Trypho 39, page 258:
“God hath not yet inflicted nor inflicts the judgment, as knowing of some that still even today are being made disciples in the name of his Christ, and are abandoning the path of error, who also do receive gifts each as they be worthy, being illumined by the name of this Christ.” The words italicized are in the Greek: μαθητευομενος εις τὸ ὄνομα του χριστου [being made disciples in the name of “his” Christ].
The objection hitherto to these words being recognized as a citation of our text was that they ignored the formula “baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit.” But the discovery of the Eusebian form of text re moves this difficulty; and Justin is seen to have had the same text as early as the year 140, which Eusebius regularly found in his manuscripts from 300-340.
THE ORDINARY TEXT
That the ordinary text is of great antiquity no one will deny. We find it twice in Tertullian, in slightly divergent forms, in the treatise on Baptism, chapter 13, thus: “Jte, inquit, docete nationes, tinguentes eas in nomen Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti” [Go, says he, disciple the nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, “Son,” and Holy Spirit].2
And in the De Praescriptione Haereticorum [About He retical Objections], chapter 20, thus: “Undecim digrediens ad patrem post resurrectionem iussit ne et docere nations tinguendas in Patrem et in /ilium et in Spiritum Sanctum” [The eleven were commanded that they should not depart for their homeland after the resurrection; and that they should disciple the nations baptizing them in (the) Father, and in (the) Son, and in (the) Holy Spirit].
Here he omits the words in nomen [in the name], also in his work against Praxeas, chapter 26: “Novissime mandans ut tinguerent in Patrem et /ilium et Spiritum Sanctum” [Finally, they were given charge for the manner of baptism in Father and Son and Holy Spirit].
We may infer that the text was not quite fixed when Tertullian was writing early in the third century. In the middle of that century Cyprian could insist on the use of the triple formula as essential in the baptism even in the orthodox. Pope Stephen answered him that the baptisms even of heretics were valid, if the name of Jesus alone was invoked. However, this decision did not prevent popes of the seventh century from excommunicating the entire Celtic Church for its adhesion to the old use of invoking the one name.
MACEDONIUS
In the last half of the fourth century the text “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Ghost” was used as a battle-cry by the orthodox against the adherents of Macedonius, who were called pneumato-machi or “Fighters against the Holy Spirit,” because they declined to include the Spirit in a trinity of persons as co-equal, consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father and Son. They also stoutly denied that any text in the New Testament authorized such a co-ordination of the Spirit with the Father and Son. Whence we infer that their texts agreed with that of Eusebius.
APHRAATES
There is one other witness whose testimony we must consider. He is Aphraates, the Syriac father who wrote between 337 and 345. He cites our text in a formal manner as follows: “Make disciples of all nations, and they shall believe in me.”
The last words appear to be a gloss on the Eusebian reading “in my name.” But in any case they preclude the textus receptus [received text] with its injunction to baptize in the triune name. Were the reading of Aphraates an isolated fact we might regard it as a loose citation, but in presence of the Eusebian and Justinian texts this is impossible.
ORIGINAL ENDING
It is worth considering, however, whether the original text of the gospel did not end at the word “nations,” and whether the three rival endings of the text were not developed independently, namely:
(i) “in my name,” in Justin, Eusebius, and perhaps Pope Stephen of Rome and the Pneumato-machi.
(ii) “and they shall believe in me,” in Aphraates, representing the older Syriac version.
(iii) “Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the holy Ghost,” or similar in the Greek gnostic Theodotus, Tertullian, Latin version of Irenaeus, and the surviving Greek manuscripts.
The exclusive survival of (iii) in all manuscripts, both Greek and Latin, need not cause surprise. In the only cod ices which would be even likely to preserve an older reading, namely the Sinaitic Syriac and the oldest Latin manuscripts, the pages are gone which contained the end of Matthew.
But in any case the conversion of Eusebius to the longer text after the Council of Nicea indicates that it was at that time being introduced as a Shibboleth of orthodoxy into all codices. We have no codex older than the year 400, if so old; and long before that time the question of the inclusion of the holy Spirit on equal terms in the Trinity had been threshed out, and a text so invaluable to the dominant party could not but make its way into every codex, irrespectively of its textual affinities.
(1) Swete, Regis Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, in his book on the “Apostle’s Creed,” (London, 1894).
(2) While the Greek “baptize” means “to dip,” all three quotations use the Latin “tingo” meaning “bathing, wetting, or moistening.” This verb itself is a transliteration of the Greek τέγγω.