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That Text Doesn’t Count
People say, Mark 16:16 is not part of the original text. 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is an interpolation. 1 Timothy 2:11-12 is not an authentic Pauline text.
That is what many say. But why? Two reasons, I suggest.
The first deals with manuscripts:
1) The earliest manuscripts don’t have Mark 16:8ff. And yet, in the curiously the oldest manuscripts (i.e. Codex Sinaiticus or “Sinai Bible”) the scribes left room for them as if they knew the section belonged.
2) The various manuscripts include it 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 in different locations, including after v.40. And yet, every manuscript includes it.
3) The ecclesiastical structure if Paul is not found in his other letters. And yet, it was accepted early on, and Acts shows Paul establishing this order.
The second deals with something personal:
Those passages clearly teach some things people don’t want to believe. So what is the tactic used? It’s an old scheme, as old as the Garden of Eden:
• “The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden. But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’” “No! You will not die,” the serpent said to the woman. “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”” (CSB’17 Genesis 3:2-5)
What did the serpent do that is common to how people handle those three passages? They question the veracity of inspiration. Satan hisses, “God did not tell you the truth.” Modern people say, “God did not say that.”
What people say will always contrast with what God says when what we want is not what God has said.
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