Sibyls and Sibylline oracles. 1. The Sibyls

The Sistine Chapel ceiling at the Vatican has paintings of seven ancient Hebrew prophets, but also of five Sibyls — non-Christian prophetic figures. How and why did pagan prophets came to have such a place of honour in the centre of western Christianity?

Central part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling (Michelangelo, 1508–1512)

The full answer is surprisingly long. We have to cover genres of ancient Greek poetry; Roman myth and ritual; ancient Jewish and Christian poems about the end of the world; and also music by a 16th century Dutch composer.

The short answer

An answer that focuses just on the Sistine Chapel looks like this. A 4th century Christian writer, Lactantius, wrote about a canon of ten Sibyls: ancient seers lost in the mists of time. They were pagan, Lactantius says, but they accurately predicted the coming of Christ, so you could say they were ‘virtuous pagans’.

Lactantius’ virtuous Sibyls became influential in 15th century Italy, the so-called Quattrocento, around the time of the introduction of the printing press. They appeared in many artworks and books: they’re a major feature of the floor decorations in Siena Cathedral, for example (1480s). They were a well established motif by the time Michelangelo came to his own fresco painting in the first decade of the 1500s. This is why he included Sibyls alongside Hebrew prophets: they were all considered to be pre-Christian prophets of Christ.

And if that’s all you came here for, great! You’re done now. But there’s a lot more to it ...

The start of a longer answer

We have to distinguish four distinct meanings of ‘Sibyls’. A difficulty with Sibylline things is that when people talk about any of these four meanings, they tend to mix them up. One is just a list of names; one refers to a group of texts that is now lost; two of them refer to real texts that still exist today.

1. The Sibyls themselves: originally there was one mythical woman named Sibylla, but more Sibyls appeared as time went on. In the 1st century BCE Varro drew up a canon of ten Sibyls: the Erythraian Sibyl, the Persian Sibyl, the Cumaean Sibyl, and so on.
2. The Sibylline books. These were real sacred texts in pagan Rome, now lost except for two long quotations. They were used for rituals by an important body of priests, the decemviri, or later the quindecimviri.
3. The Sibylline oracles. These texts still exist today, but they’re not pagan. They’re two collections of Jewish and Christian poems, ranging from the 1st century BCE to the 7th century CE, on a range of religious themes, in ancient Greek hexameter verse.
4. The prophetiae Sibyllarum (‘prophecies of the Sibyls’). This is a set of twelve neo-Latin epigrams written in the Sibyls’ wave of popularity in the Quattrocento, possibly for a theatrical production. They’d be forgotten today if not for a stunning musical setting by Roland de Lassus, for an unaccompanied four-part choir (ca. 1558).

There’s some overlap, so for clarity I’ll consistently use the labels in bold.

Lactantius mixed up the first three meanings. He had a copy of nine of the Sibylline oracles (the Jewish and Christian poems); he thought they must be the same thing as the Sibylline books (the Roman ritual texts); and he attributed each poem to one of the Sibyls in Varro’s canon. This is how he came to the conclusion that the ‘real’ Sibyls genuinely foretold the coming of Christ.

Modern scholars sometimes make similar mistakes. But in terms of origins, these four meanings are quite distinct.

The Erythraian Sibyl as she appears on the pavimento of Siena Cathedral (ca. 1480)

1. The ten Sibyls (or one, or three, or eleven)

Once upon a time, in sixth century BCE Greece, there was a genre of oracular poems that dealt with things like directions on performing rituals, enigmatic animal imagery, and foretelling the future. These are the so-called ‘oracle collectors’, or chresmologoi (χρησμολόγοι).

The poems were real, but the oracle collectors were fictional personas. Real poets would adopt a persona, ‘becoming’ Abaris or Orpheus or Epimenides, and incorporate the character and their fictional biography into real poems. Think of them as stage acts, a bit like Ziggy Stardust or Slim Shady. Except a persona wasn’t the personal property of a specific real poet: different poets in different periods could ‘be’ Orpheus or Linos. We hear of one poet, Onomakritos, getting into trouble for adopting the persona of Mousaios. The personas were both men and women — men like Bakis, Epimenides, and Euklos; women like Phemonoe, Boio, and Sibylla.

Herodotos 7.6. Herodotos doesn’t understand that Onomakritos is taking on the role of Mousaios: he represents him as adding an interpolation into the text of Mousaios.

That is, ‘Sibylla’ started out as a specific person. A fictional person, but still, a single individual. References to Sibylla — as a name, not ‘the’ Sibyl — appear in Herakleitos (500s BCE), Aristophanes (400s), and Plato (300s).

But a few decades after Plato, Philitas of Kos wrote that there were three Sibyls: one from Delphi (central Greece), one from Erythrai (East Ionia, in Anatolia), and one from Sardeis (Lydia).

There were three Sibyls. One of them was Apollo’s sister, as she says in her own poem. The second was the Erythraian. The third was from Sardeis. In the same way there were three Bakises: one from Eleon in Boiotia, one Athenian, and one Arkadian.

From this point on, Sibylla was no longer a specific person. Instead, Sibyls were a class of prophetic women.

Herakleitos, 22 B 92 Diels-Kranz (= Plutarch, Moralia 397a); Aristophanes, Knights 61, Peace 1095, 1115–1116; Plato, Phaidros 244b; (pseudo-?)Plato, Theages 124d; Philitas of Kos reported in schol. Aristophanes, Birds 962 (cited as ‘Philetas of Ephesos’).

The next we hear of Sibyls is in the 1st century BCE. At some point between 64 and 49 BCE, the great Roman scholar Varro wrote a book called Ancient matters concerning the gods (Antiquitates rerum divinarum). The text is lost, but a few hundred fragments survive.

Edition: Cardauns 1976. For the date: Varro dedicated the book to Julius Caesar as pontifex maximus: so it is later than Caesar’s appointment to that role in 64 BCE, and most likely before his appointment as dictator and the outbreak of civil war in 49 BCE.

Fragments 56a–60 deal with a canon of ten Sibyls, distinguished by where they were based. Varro’s interest wasn’t purely antiquarian: he was writing not long after the loss of the so-called ‘Sibylline books’ in a fire in 83 BCE — we’ll come back to them in Part 2 — and the Romans farmed out the job of replacing the burnt books to a number of oracular institutions all over the place.

In that context, it makes sense that a canon of Sibyls would be quite important to real religious practice. It also explains why Varro’s canon is organised by where each Sibyl was based. Varro cited his sources too — though the sources are all lost, just like Varro’s own book, and our source doesn’t repeat all of Varro’s citations.

The fact that he cited a different source for each Sibyl indicates that they each had a distinct backstory — they started out as independent characters. They weren’t all named ‘Sibylla’: Varro reports personal names for several of them, and we hear of other names elsewhere. So Varro says the Cumaean Sibyl was named either Amaltheia, Herophile, or Demophile; another list of the ten calls her Taraxandra, Vergil calls her Deiphobe, pseudo-Aristotle calls her Melankraira. Take your pick.

Several later sources report Varro’s canon of ten Sibyls. The following is a synopsis.

1. Persian Sibyl (or Chaldaian, or in two lists, Hebrew); recorded by Nikanor (= FGrHist 146 F 1b). Most reports (not Lactantius) give her name as Sambethe.
2. Libyan Sibyl; mentioned in the prologue of Euripides’ play Lamia (= play description w/o no. ed. Kannicht). In this usage, ‘Libya’ refers to the whole of the Maghreb from Morocco to modern Libya.
3. Delphic Sibyl; recorded by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippos in his book On Divination (= Stoicorum veterum fragmenta ii.1216).
4. Cimmerian Sibyl (in Italy); recorded in Naevius’ Punic War (= fr. 17 ed. Warmington) and Calpurnius Piso’s Annals (= FRomHist 9 F 2). ‘Cimmerian’ in this context means a priestly group attached to the nekyomanteion of Lake Avernus in Campania, near Cumae. We don’t know whether Varro imagined this to imply a connection to the Cumaean Sibyl. The Cimmerian Sibyl is stated to be the mother of Evander in two lists.
5. Erythraian Sibyl (in Asia Minor); recorded by Apollodoros of Erythrai (= FGrHist 422 F 1).
6. Samian Sibyl; named Phoito (spelled Phyto in most sources, but Phoito is the older spelling: see Tibullus 2.5.68. Note that these spellings were homophonous by the 1st century BCE); recorded by Eratosthenes (= FGrHist 241 F 26a).
7. Cumaean Sibyl; named either Amaltheia (or Amalthia), Herophile (or Hierophile), Demophile (only in Lactantius), or Taraxandra; alternatively Deiphobe (Vergil) or Melankraira (ps.-Aristotle). This is reputedly the Sibyl that sold the Sibylline books to the king of Rome (see Part 2).
8. Hellespontian Sibyl (or Gergithian); recorded by Herakleides of Pontos (= fr. 131a ed. Wehrli). She allegedly lived at the time of Solon and Cyrus.
9. Phrygian Sibyl.
10. Tiburtine Sibyl (at Tibur, now Tivoli); named Albunea or Abounaia.

The lists: Lactantius, Institutiones divinae 1.6.7–12 (= Varro, Antiquitates rerum divinarum fr. 56a ed. Cardauns); Souda σ.361; Sibylline oracles prolegomena 32–50 ed. Geffcken; schol. Plato Phaidros 244b; Theosophia 3.A.1.3 ed. Beatrice (≈ Tubingensis epitome 75–77 ed. Erbse); John Lydus, De mensibus 4.47.3 (Lydus adds an eleventh Judaean Sibyl, named Chaldis). Various Souda articles deal with individual Sibyls or alternative lists: β.354 (Delphic and Chaldaian); γ.355 (Erythraian, Sicilian, Leukanian, Sardinian, Gergithian, Rhodian, Libyan, and Samian); ε.357 (Kolophonian, apparently identified with Herophile in Pausanias 10.12.5); ζ.358 (Thessalian, named Manto, another famous chresmologic persona); η.359 (Phrygian, named Sarysis, Kassandra, or Taraxandra); and θ.360 (Cumaean and Thesprotian). Cf. also Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 1.21.108.1–3, referring to Phrygian/Delphic, Erythraian, Egyptian, and Italian Sibyls (the first two = Herakleides of Pontos fr. 130 ed. Wehrli); and 1.21.132.3, with a list of nine: Samian Sibyl, Kolophonian Sibyl, Cumaean Sibyl, Erythraian Sibyl, Phyto, Taraxandra, Macedonian Sibyl, Thessalian Sibyl, Thesprotian Sibyl. Pseudo-Aristotle, Mirabilia 838a,5–10, states that Sibylla (or ‘the’ Sibyl?) was a chresmologos at Cumae, and that she was also called Melankraira; pseudo-Aristotle, Problemata 954a,34–38 refers to ‘Bakises’ and ‘Sibyls’ collectively.

If you read all of the note in the textbox above, you’ll see that there’s a mass of material: it isn’t very consistent, and over time there were major shifts in how people described the Sibyls.

One important thing to emphasise is that there are no stories or myths about the Sibyls collectively. A couple of them have stories about them. The Cumaean Sibyl is important in the origin story of the Sibylline books (see Part 2); some like Phoito have an independent existence to an extent.

The confusion of names probably comes from attempts to harmonise multiple disparate traditions. The separate listing of the Cimmerian and Cumaean Sibyls is always going to be a bit puzzling, given that they’re both based at Cumae.

One source, Pausanias (10.12.1–6), tries to resolve some of the multiplicity of Sibyls by identifying Herophile as the Sibyl, and saying that she moved around — from Samos to Kolophon, Delos, Delphi, and the Troad — and that Erythrai also laid claim to her. As a result, in Pausanias, Herophile accounts for four of Varro’s Sibyls (Samian, Delphic, Hellespontian or Phrygian, and Erythraian).

The only ones that seem to have an irresolvably separate existence are the Persian, Libyan, and Tiburtine Sibyls — and there are probably sources out there that I haven’t found who identify them with someone else. The Tiburtine Sibyl seems to be the safest: her name looks suspiciously Latin — Abunaea or Albunea or something of the sort — which tends to shield her from the harmonising we see in sources written in Greek.

In Part 2 we’ll turn to the Sibylline books, and what’s known about them. In the meantime, for further reading on chresmologoi and the Sibyls, Parke’s (1988) book on Sibyls is excellent (if a bit overwhelming).

References

• Beatrice, P. F. 2001. Anonymi monophysitae Theosophia. An attempt at reconstruction. Leiden.
• Cardauns, B. 1976. M. Terentius Varro. Antiquitates rerum divinarum. Teil I: die Fragmente. Wiesbaden.
• Diels, H.; Kranz, W. 1960 [1903]. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th ed.), 3 vols. Berlin. [Internet Archive]
• Geffcken, J. 1902. Die oracula Sibyllina. Leipzig. [Internet Archive]
• Parke, H. W. 1988. Sibyls and sibylline prophecy in classical antiquity. London/New York.
• Warmington, E. H. 1936. Remains of old Latin, vol. 2. Cambridge (MA). [Internet Archive]
• Wehrli, F. 1953. Die Schule von Aristoteles. Texte und Kommentar. Herakleides Pontikos. Basel.

And the word was God (John 1.1)

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was an attribute of God, and the word was God.

John 1.1 (my translation)

This isn’t a topic I’d normally write about, because it’s so basic: it seems like low-hanging fruit. But I was a little staggered today to be directed to a Youtube video where a biblical scholar, with a PhD, who ostensibly knows Greek, spends 45 minutes discussing theological reasons why the phrase θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (‘the word was God’) doesn’t have a definite article before the word ‘God’.

The opening of John in the codex Sinaiticus, fol. 247r. (Image source: Codex Sinaiticus website)

The video is sensationalised, to be sure — the title has an emoji! But the reason ‘God’ doesn’t have an article is a very simple grammar rule. When you’re learning ancient Greek, it’s covered in week 1. ‘God’ can’t have an article. Because it’s a complement.

Articles in ancient Greek

Ancient Greek had a definite article, ὁ ἡ τό (and other inflected forms), corresponding to English ‘the’. It started out as a demonstrative pronoun, and acquired its role as an article in the Archaic period, ca. 600 BCE. It has hung around to the present day. If an ancient Greek-speaker wanted to refer to a specific individual thing, or person, they normally put an article before it: ὁ ἄνθρωπος ‘the person’, ἡ ἀγορά ‘the agora’, τὸ δένδρον ‘the tree’, and of course ὁ θεός ‘the god’.

The article is common (but not used invariably) in some situations where English doesn’t use an article, particularly with names. It’s perfectly normal to refer to Sokrates as ὁ Σωκράτης. In the Bible it’s perfectly normal to refer to God as ὁ θεός. So you have to rely on context to tell whether ὁ θεός should be translated as ‘the god’ or ‘God’.

Strictly speaking it might be best to refer to the article not as ‘definite’, but as ‘definitive’, since it often plays a deictic role: Sokrates, that guy right there. Modern German has a loose parallel, in the use of the definite article before personal names: the difference between saying die Ulrike and just Ulrike is subtle, but the first one carries a reminder of which Ulrike we’re talking about.

For details of when names do and don’t have articles in Greek, see Smyth 1916: 211–213 (§768–779).

Ancient Greek didn’t have an indefinite article, corresponding to English ‘a, an, some’. (Modern Demotic Greek does, but it’s a much later arrival.) So when a noun appears in ancient Greek without an article — δένδρον instead of τὸ δένδρον — it will generally be because it’s indefinite: ‘a tree’. There are cases where the article can be optional, as with personal names.

There are also situations where an article is invariably used, and situations where an article is invariably omitted. And one of those situations is a sentence of the form ‘A is B’.

The confusion

C. J. Cornthwaite starts with the question of whether θεός is substantival (‘the word was God’) or adjectival (‘the word was divine’). That is technically a legitimate question — though there’s no reason to prefer reading a noun as adjectival when it works perfectly well as a noun. Anyway, in thinking about that, he spends a great deal of time questioning why it’s θεός instead of ὁ θεός, and what the significance of that is.

That tells me there’s a serious problem with how Greek is being taught. But just as importantly, because he’s a very popular para-academic, he’s going to be leading a lot of people astray. So it seems like it’d be wise to address the matter.

Here’s the bit where he states the options as he sees them:

So, the way I see it, there are three different ways to read this text based on Greek grammatical rules.

So. The first is just reading this as saying ‘the Word was God’. Basically like, we're talking about God, you know, ... the one true God. ...

The second way to read this would be to say that θεός here is actually functioning as a way to signify that the Word was ‘divine’ or ‘godlike in quality’. ...

And the third way that you could translate this is the way that the Jehovah's Witness Bible translated it, as ‘the Word was a god.’ So, this kind of sounds like you're saying it was, like, one of many, because it's indefinite.

In terms of understanding this problem, those are the three options. And all of them come from the difficulty of knowing why John left the article off here, and what that is supposed to mean — why it says, basically, ‘god’ instead of ‘the God’. That’s the question.

Cornthwaite 2025, 6:03–7:30

and then he spends several minutes talking about how the Septuagint, an ancient Greek form of the Jewish scriptures, sometimes refers to God without an article, and why that might be. His discussion involves logos theology, construct chains in Hebrew syntax, and why translators ‘chose’ to omit an article in some situations.

What the discussion doesn’t involve is Greek syntax. The answer is so much more basic. It has nothing to do with theology, and it isn’t a choice.

The ancient Greek complement: an introduction

A sentence of the form ‘A is B’ has three elements: A, also called the ‘subject’; a copulative verb, like ‘is’ or ‘was’; and B, also called a ‘complement’.

It’ll always be obvious which bit is the verb. But A and B are the same part of speech: they’ll both be nouns, or names, or some other kind of substantive. Yet they have distinct syntactical roles. So how do you tell which is which?

In English, it’s done by word order. The sequence of the three elements is fixed: A, verb, B. (Unless you’re Yoda, in which case it’s A, B, verb.) You always know that the thing that appears first is the subject, and the thing that appears later is the complement.

But in ancient Greek, the three elements can be placed in any order. Word order doesn’t tell you which is A and which is B. So the way Greek tells you which is the subject and which is the complement is by using ... (drumroll) ... an article.

The rule is very simple and universal:

• The subject, A, is indicated by the presence of an article.
• The complement, B, is indicated by the absence of an article.

Actually the rule is more general than this: it applies to all kinds of predicate substantives, not just in ‘is’ sentences, e.g. θεὸς Ἰσραὴλ πάσῃ τῇ γῇ κληθήσεται ‘he will be called the God of Israel over the whole earth’ (LXX Isaiah 54.5).

As a result, the following all mean the same thing, just with slight shifts in emphasis:

ὁ Ὅμηρος ἦν ῥαψῳδός.
ῥαψῳδός ἦν ὁ Ὅμηρος.
ὁ Ὅμηρος ῥαψῳδός ἦν.
ἦν ῥαψῳδός ὁ Ὅμηρος.
ἦν ὁ Ὅμηρος ῥαψῳδός.
ῥαψῳδός ὁ Ὅμηρος ἦν.

Homer was the rhapsode or Homer was a rhapsode.

But they swap around if you just move the article:

Ὅμηρος ἦν ὁ ῥαψῳδός.
ἦν ὁ ῥαψῳδός Ὅμηρος.

The rhapsode was Homer.

And this is all that’s going on in John 1.1 θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. λόγος has an article to show that it’s the subject; θεός has no article, to show that it’s the complement.

There’s no deep theology going on there. Well, nothing deep about the article at least — this still doesn’t tell you whether to translate θεός as ‘God’ or ‘divine’ — but that question has nothing at all to do with articles. θεός will still be a complement, so either way it won’t have an article.

Don’t believe me? Fine: here’s a standard textbook, Reading Greek, 2nd edition, published by the Joint Association of Classical Teachers. Here’s a snippet from the introductory chapter, Section I.

§47 in Reading Greek, JACT 2001, page 37.

Athenaze covers this too, but only by example: it doesn’t state it as an explicit general rule. It’s also explained explicitly in Smyth’s Greek grammar (Smyth 1916: 214, §784–786) and the Cambridge grammar of classical Greek (Van Emde Boas et al. 2019: 330, §28.9), but because they list some exceptions where both A and B have articles, that may give a false impression that the rule is somehow optional. (There are no exceptions about the absence of an article, which is the situation in John 1.1.) Reading Greek is refreshing because it focuses on telling the beginner the thing that they need to know.

It boggles my mind that actual scholars could have any uncertainty over this. It makes me wonder what Greek textbook is being used in Religious Studies departments.

By the way, my translation at the start isn’t ideal: a first century reader would certainly understand the metaphysical language in John 1.1 in Stoic terms, as I explained here a couple of years ago. It’s just that that would be a bit too unfamiliar to hit modern readers with right away. Someone living in the philosophical framework of the time would most naturally interpret John 1.1 as

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

In the beginning was the principle of intelligibility, and the principle of intelligibility was an attribute of God, and the principle of intelligibility was God.

John 1.1 (my preferred translation)

References

• Cornthwaite, C. J. 2025. ‘The Origins of John 1:1 will BLOW YOUR MIND! 🤯 - WARNING! Greek & Hebrew DEEP DIVE.’ ‘C. J. Cornthwaite’ channel, 3 April 2025. [Youtube]
• van Emde Boas, E.; Rijksbaron, A.; Huitink, L.; de Bakker, M. 2019. Cambridge grammar of classical Greek. Cambridge.
• JACT 2001. Reading Greek: grammar and exercises, 2nd edition. Cambridge.
• Smyth, H. W. 1916. A Greek grammar for schools and colleges. New York. [Internet Archive]

Gospel citations of scripture

A catalogue of citations of scripture in the canonical Christian gospels, by way of a note to myself. Some caveats, terms, and conditions:

1. The gospels don’t quote the Hebrew Bible. They quote Greek texts. They don’t exactly quote the Septuagint either, because there were multiple ‘Septuagint’ recensions, but we can call it ‘Septuagint’ so long as we’re clear that it’s a Septuagint and not the Septuagint.
2. There was no Bible at the time. Just lots of texts. Some of them were considered sacred or sacred-ish, but there was no canon. That’s why New Testament authors are happy to quote texts like Enoch, 1 Maccabees, and the Psalms of Solomon, which are omitted in some modern canons.
3. Only citations, not echoes. You can’t enumerate or quantify echoes of every kind: I’m only listing places where the texts directly quote older texts, or where they explicitly state that they’re citing an older text.

An illustration, to show why we can’t catalogue or count inexplicit echoes. In Luke 2.22–24, Joseph and Mary present Jesus at the Temple. The narrator makes it sound like this is a well established unified custom, but it’s nothing of the kind. In fact it’s a mash-up. The author grabs three unrelated scriptural passages, and presses the purée button. The sources are: Hannah dedicating Samuel (1 Samuel 1.22–28); the offering of two turtle-doves as part of a ritual purification (Leviticus 12.2–8); and the consecration of first-born animals and children (Exodus 13.11–14). Is this one citation or three citations? None, of course: the passage doesn’t mention any of these three passages, it just echoes them.

That’s why we’re not counting echoes. The list below is just the explicit citations.

Key:

• LXX : Septuagint
• Bold type : passage with direct quotation or explicit citation
• ^Q : quotation, either verbatim or approximate
• ^Q_M : misquotation with major divergence from source
• ^C : citation of named source
• ^C_M : misattributed citation — a source is named, but incorrectly
• ^G : generic citation of unnamed ‘prophet’ or ‘writings’
• small italics : no LXX citation/quotation, but parallel to another gospel which does have a citation
• MT : Masoretic Text (Hebrew Bible), where different from LXX

LXX passage cited	Matthew	Mark	Luke	John
Isaiah 7.14	1.22–23QG		2.1–7
Micah 5.1 + 2 Kingdoms 5.2 (MT 2 Samuel 5.2)	2.5–6QMG		2.8–20
Hosea 11.1	2.15QG
?Judges 16.17 ?Isaiah 4.3	2.23G		2.39–40
Exodus 13.12 (≈ Exodus 13.2)			2.23G (2.24 goes on to allude to Lev 5.11, 12.8)
Malachi 3.1	11.10QG	1.2QCM (joined to following)	7.27QG
Isaiah 40.3–5	3.3QC	1.3QC	3.4–6QC
Deuteronomy 8.3	4.4QG		4.4QG
Psalm 90.11–12 (MT 91.11–12)	4.5–6QG		4.9–11QG
Deuteronomy 6.16	4.7QG		4.12QG
Deuteronomy 6.13	4.10QG		4.8QG
Isaiah 8.23–9.1	4.13–16QC	1.14	4.14	4.43
Isaiah 61.1 + 58.6 + 61.2			4.17–21QC
Isaiah 53.4	8.17QC (MT only)	1.32–34	4.40–41
Isaiah 42.1–4	12.17–21QC	3.7–12	6.17–19
‘it is written’ (≈ MT Psalm 78.24, Exodus 16.4–5)				6.31G
Isaiah 54.13				6.45QG
Deuteronomy 19.15				6.45QG
Isaiah 6.9–10	13.14–15QC	4.10–12Q		12.39–41QC
Psalm 77.2 (MT 78.2)	13.35QG	4.34
Isaiah 29.13		7.6–7QC (LXX only)
‘as it is written’	11.14	9.13G
unnamed ‘prophets’	20.17–19	10.32–34	18.31G
Isaiah 53.12		15.28 (spurious verse)	22.37G
Isaiah 62.11 + Zechariah 9.9	21.4–5QMG (LXX only)	11.1–7	19.29–35	12.14–15QG
Psalm of Solomon 7.1 (≈ Psalm 34.19, 68.5 / MT 35.19, 69.5)				15.24–25QG
Isaiah 56.7 + Jeremiah 7.11	21.13QG	11.17QG	19.46QG
Psalm 8.3	21.16QG (LXX only)
unnamed ‘writings’ (e.g. Enoch 104.4–6)	22.29–30G
Daniel 9.27 and/or 1 Maccabees 1.54	24.15–16QC (Daniel)	13.14Q	21.20
Hosea 9.7 (cf. Isaiah 63.4, Jeremiah 5.29)			21.22QG
Zechariah 13.7	26.31QMG	14.27QMG
unnamed ‘writings’	26.56G	14.49G	22.47–53	18.2–12
Zechariah 11.12–13	27.5–10QCM
Psalm 68.22 (MT 69.21)	27.34Q (one word)	15.23		19.28–29QG (one word)
Psalm 21.2 / MT 22.1	27.46Q (Aramaic only)	15.34Q (Aramaic only)
Psalm 30.6 (MT 31.5)	27.50	15.37	23.46Q (LXX only)	19.30
unnamed prophets, psalms			24.44G
?Hosea 6.2			24.46–47QG

Notes

1. Matthew cites scripture and names his sources more than the other gospels. There are 25 quotations/citations in Matthew, almost twice as many as in the runner-up, Luke. Perhaps that’s one reason why Papias thought Matthew was originally written in Hebrew (it wasn’t), and why Matthew was imagined in antiquity to be the earliest of the canonical gospels (it isn’t). The nativity story is especially densely packed with quotations; also notable is the string of unattributed quotations from Psalm 90 and Deuteronomy 6–8 in Satan’s testing of Jesus in Matthew 4 (largely copied in Luke 4).

2. Isaiah is the only scriptural source regularly mentioned by name. Isaiah is cited by name 6× in Matthew, 2× Mark, 2× Luke, 1× John. Two other sources get isolated citations: (1) A reference to Daniel in Matthew 24.15; but the text is a little odd (see the next point). (2) Two references to Jeremiah in Matthew 2.17 and 27.9; of these, the latter is a misattribution — the quotation is actually Zechariah.

3. The citation of Daniel in Matthew 24.15. The source for this quotation would be ambiguous, if not for the explicit citation of Daniel. The form used, βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως (‘sacrilege of desolation’), matches 1 Maccabees 1.54; Daniel uses the plural ἐρημώσεων (‘sacrilege of desolations’). And it turns out textual support for the citation of Daniel is less consistent than we might prefer. The modern text διὰ Δανιὴλ τοῦ προφήτου is the reading in the codex Vaticanus (δανιηλ) and the codex Bezae (δανιηλου), and the Latin version of Origen’s Commentary on Matthew includes the Daniel reference. However, the Sinaiticus instead has διὰ ιηλ τοῦ προφήτου, ‘through the prophet (of) Israel’, a fact omitted in the Nestle-Aland apparatus: δαν appears as a supplement above the line in a second hand. The part of Matthew 24.15 that cites Daniel is not extant in any ancient papyri, the codex Alexandrinus, or the Ephrem palimpsest.

Some factors make me hesitate over the Daniel attribution: (1) ιηλ in the Sinaiticus; (2) the fact that the wording is that of 1 Maccabees; (3) the fact that the gospels do not usually cite sources other than Isaiah by name.

LXX Daniel’s plural ἐρημώσεων is presumably intended to convery the MT reading šiqqūṣîm mešōmêm, a plural noun with a singular participle. The Sinaiticus reading ιηλ would most normally be read as a nomen sacrum for Ἰσραήλ (‘the prophet (of) Israel’). I wonder if it could be meant to invoke the anonymous author of 1 Maccabees. The Hebrew title of 1 Maccabees is not certainly known; Eusebius gives it as Σαρβηθ Σαβαναιελ (Ecclesiastical history 6.25).

By itself this isn’t enough to overturn the combined testimony of the Vaticanus and the Bezae. At the same time, the Sinaiticus reading ιηλ doesn’t look like a mistake. There’s something odd going on behind the scenes here.

4. Spliced quotations. In some quotations the gospels combine passages from multiple sources as if they’re a single quotation.

Sources (LXX, my translation)	Gospel (NRSVue)
Micah 5.1 (MT Micah 5.2) And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephratha: you are the least that is to be among the throngs of Judah; from you shall come forth for me someone who is to be ruler in Israel: their exoduses are of old, from ancient days. 2 Kingdoms 5.2 (MT 2 Samuel 5.2) And once upon a time, when Saul was king over us, you were the one who led Israel out and led in Israel, and the Lord said to you, ‘You shall shepherd my people Israel, and you are to be leader over Israel.’	Matthew 2.5–6 5 They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet: 6 “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”’
Malachi 3.1 See, I am sending out my messenger, and he will attend to a way ahead of me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly arrive in his temple, and the messenger of the covenant whom you desire. See, he is coming, says the Lord Almighty. Isaiah 40.3 A voice of one crying out in the desert: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God.’	Mark 1.2–3 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way, 3 the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight” ’...
Isaiah 62.11 For see, the Lord made it to be heard to the end of the earth: ‘Tell the daughter of Sion, Look, the saviour is at hand for you. He has received his payment, and his work is in his past.’ Zechariah 9.9 Rejoice greatly, daughter of Sion! Announce it, daughter of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you, just and rescuing, humble and mounted on a donkey and on a young colt.	Matthew 21.4–5 This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet: 5 ‘Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’

Each of these is an egregious misquotation, even aside from the splicing. Matthew 2.6 adds in a ‘not’ that reverses the meaning of Micah 5.1 (you are by no means the least); Mark 1.2 changes the identity of the one coming behind the messenger (I am sending my messenger ahead of you).

The third is the most notorious. The Septuagint has an erroneous ‘and’ added into the text, with the result that Matthew has Jesus riding on two animals simultaneously. The Hebrew text reads:

Behold: your king is coming to you, a just savior is he, humble, and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Zechariah 9.9 (NABRE)

In the Hebrew, the ‘donkey’ and the ‘colt’ are a case of parallelism: one animal is mentioned twice, phrased differently. This is a standard Hebrew poetic device. But the Septuagint (and so also Matthew) misunderstands that, and treats them as two separate animals.

Mark 11.1–7, Luke 19.29–35, and John 12.12–15 have Jesus riding a single colt (and John quotes a version of Zechariah 9.9, more correctly than Matthew’s version), so the oddity here comes solely from the Greek text used by Matthew. (The Marcionic Evangelion omitted this episode altogether.)

5. Quotations of Isaiah 40.3. This is one of the handful of scriptural passages that get quoted in all three synoptic gospels. As noted above, Mark joins it to Malachi 3.1 and attributes the whole thing to Isaiah. Matthew and Luke do use the Malachi quotation as well, but in completely separate contexts: evidently they corrected Mark, aware that the attribution to Isaiah was wrong.

(For reference, the scriptural passages that do appear in all three synoptics are: Malachi 3.1; Isaiah 40.3; Isaiah 56.7 + Jeremiah 7.11. Also notable is Isaiah 6.9–10, which appears in Mark, Matthew and John, but not Luke.)

Luke goes further, though, and provides a longer Isaiah quotation. Here’s how it lines up against the LXX text that we have today; the highlighting indicates places where the match is exact.

LXX Isaiah 40.3–5	Luke 3.4–6
3 φωνὴ βοῶντος ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ ῾Ετοιμάσατε τὴν ὁδὸν κυρίου, εὐθείας ποιεῖτε τὰς τρίβους τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν·	4 ὡς γέγραπται ἐν βίβλῳ λόγων Ἡσαΐου τοῦ προφήτου· φωνὴ βοῶντος ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ ἑτοιμάσατε τὴν ὁδὸν κυρίου, εὐθείας ποιεῖτε τὰς τρίβους αὐτοῦ.
4 πᾶσα φάραγξ πληρωθήσεται καὶ πᾶν ὄρος καὶ βουνὸς ταπεινωθήσεται, καὶ ἔσται πάντα τὰ σκολιὰ εἰς εὐθεῖαν καὶ ἡ τραχεῖα εἰς πεδία·	5 πᾶσα φάραγξ πληρωθήσεται καὶ πᾶν ὄρος καὶ βουνὸς ταπεινωθήσεται· καὶ ἔσται τὰ σκολιὰ εἰς εὐθείαν καὶ αἱ τραχεῖαι εἰς ὁδοὺς λείας·
5 καὶ ὀφθήσεται ἡ δόξα κυρίου, καὶ ὄψεται πᾶσα σὰρξ τὸ σωτήριον τοῦ θεοῦ· ὅτι κύριος ἐλάλησεν.	6 καὶ ὄψεται πᾶσα σὰρξ τὸ σωτήριον τοῦ θεοῦ.

Notably, Luke 3.4 preserves αὐτοῦ from Mark 1.3: that word doesn’t appear in our LXX text of Isaiah 40.3.

6. Luke and the Evangelion. How many of Luke’s citations appeared in the Evangelion, the gospel that appeared in Marcion’s canon?

Background: the Evangelion and Luke are variant recensions of one another. The Evangelion was lost in antiquity, but is moderately well-attested because of its inclusion in Marcion’s canon. Marcion made the earliest effort to compile a canon of Christian texts in the early second century, and included ten Pauline letters and the Evangelion. Later anti-Marcionite writers claimed polemically that Marcion concocted the Evangelion by trimming bits out of Luke. However, we now know that Marcion compiled the texts, he didn’t write them; and in recent years it’s become standard to conclude that it was exactly the other way round — the Evangelion was the older recension (but not necessarily the ‘original’), and Luke is a later expanded form.

Remarkably, we know that most of Luke’s quotations/citations were not present in the Evangelion. Here’s a tabulation, primarily based on the work of Dieter T. Roth (2015: 49–78): this means some inconsistency with other recent work on the Evangelion, but Roth’s presentation of the evidence is by far the clearest currently available.

Luke	Source	Present in Evangelion?	Testimony
2.23	Exod 13.12	not present	Tertullian, Epiphanius, Origen
3.4–6	Isa 40.3–5	probably not present	Tertullian, Epiphanius
4.4, 4.8, 4.9–11, 4.12	Deut 8.3, 6.13; Ps 90.11–12; Deut 6.16	not present	Tertullian
4.17–21	Isa 61.1 + 58.6 + 61.2	unknown
7.27	Mal 3.1	present	Tertullian, Epiphanius, Adamantius Dialogue
18.31	(generic)	not present	Tertullian, Epiphanius
19.46	Isa 56.7 + Jer 7.11	not present	Tertullian, Epiphanius
21.22	Hos 9.7	not present	Tertullian, Epiphanius
22.37	Isa 62.11 + Zech 9.9	not present	Tertullian, Epiphanius
23.46	Ps 30.6	present	Tertullian, Epiphanius
24.44	generic	unknown
24.46–47	Hos 6.2	46 unknown, 47 present	Tertullian

A couple of notes on this tabulation:

• 3.4–6: see Roth 2015: 76 n. 69; Klinghardt 2021: 519–520. Roth thinks Tertullian’s comments on John the Baptist’s arrival, Against Marcion 4.11.4, implies the absence of the Johannine narrative in Luke 3; Klinghardt thinks Epiphanius’ statement, Panarion 42.11.4–6, that the genealogy and the baptism were absent implies the absence of the whole of Luke 3.1b onwards. A given scholar’s verdict on this point is likely to be linked to their view on whether the Evangelion was pre-Mark or post-Mark. If it were post-Mark, and 3.4–6 were absent, then we would have to suppose that the Evangelion copied Mark but excised the quotation, then later on Luke restored it. Conversely, my opinion is that the timeline Evangelion > Mark > Luke involves some crazy textual acrobatics; then again, no one has to take my opinion seriously.
• 22.37: it is striking that, although Luke 22.37 was definitely not present in the Evangelion, it was considered important enough to copy it and interpolate it into the text of Mark (the spurious verse Mark 15.28).

7. Matthew and John. Some of John’s citations/quotations are striking for the fact that they have counterparts in Matthew: Mt 13.14–15 ≈ Jn 12.39–41 (both adding an explicit citation not present in Mark); Mt 21.4–5 ≈ Jn 12.14–15; Mt 27.34 ≈ Jn. 19.28–29 (both quoting just a single word). I find this supports the case that John knew Matthew.

Matthew and John are uneven in how faithfully they reproduce the older texts.

• Matthew 13.14–15 ≈ John 12.39–41. Matthew quotes the Septuagint text very exactly; John has only a few keywords in common. Both of them explicitly cite Isaiah. Mark echoes Isaiah, but only faintly, and doesn’t name the source.
• Matthew 21.4–5 ≈ John 12.14–15. This is the ‘riding on a donkey and a colt’ passage that we looked at above, where the Septuagint and Matthew distort the meaning. Mark, Luke, and John have Jesus riding on a single animal, as in the Hebrew text. Only Matthew and John include a citation of Isaiah alongside the quotation.
• Matthew 27.34 ≈ John 19.28–29. Offering a drink to Jesus on the cross: wine, bile, myrrh, and/or vinegar? This one needs some explanation.

On the last item: Mark, Matthew, and John all take different approaches to interpreting the Septuagint text of the relevant passage. In the Masoretic Text, Psalm 69.21 reads (NABRE):

they gave me poison [rōš] for my food; and for my thirst they gave me vinegar [ḥōmeṣ].

The Septuagint changes this to (my translation):

For food they gave me bile [χολή], and for my thirst they watered me with vinegar [ὄξος].

Devouring bile makes no sense, of course. That’s probably why Mark 15.23 removes ‘bile’ altogether, and replaces it with ‘wine mixed with myrrh’. That disconnects the passage from the Psalm altogether (my catalogue at the start doesn’t count Mark 15.23 as a quotation/citation).

Note. Why does Mark choose myrrh? Difficult to say. Certainly not as a painkiller, as the Oxford Annotated Bible weirdly alleges. In ancient sources wine perfumed with myrrh is normally a symbol of luxuriousness. Another possibility is to do with the medicinal use of myrrh to aid digestion and stimulate bile production.

Matthew abandons Mark’s invention and brings it back a bit closer to the Psalm: ‘wine mixed with bile [χολή]’. Bible translations traditionally obfuscate this by using ‘gall’, an archaic word for bile.

John instead fixes the problem by going back to the other unpleasant foodstuff, the ὄξος ‘vinegar’. Modern translations usually mistranslate this word, probably self-consciously, as ‘sour wine’ (e.g. ESV, NRSV, NASB) or ‘cheap wine’ (GNB; NABRE: ‘common wine’). This is very strange, given that the same translations have no hesitation in translating Psalm 69.21 ḥōmeṣ/ὄξος as ‘vinegar’. A corrected translation of John 19.21 reads:

A jar full of vinegar [ὄξος] was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the vinegar [ὄξος] on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth.

When the chain of mistranslations and paraphrases is already hard to work out, modern Bible translations do us no favours by actively obfuscating the relationships between the texts with inconsistent or archaic translation choices. This is one of those rare cases where the NIV (‘wine vinegar’) is more accurate than the NRSV!

References

• Klinghardt, M. 2021. The oldest gospel and the formation of the canonical gospels (2 vols.). Leuven/Paris/Bristol (CT).
• Roth, D. T. 2015. The text of Marcion’s gospel. Leiden/Boston.

The Stoics and the Holy Spirit

Stoicism, the ancient school of philosophy, had some excellent ideas. Here’s their explanation of how sound works.

We hear when the air between the sound-emitter and the listener is struck. Then it emits a wave in a spherical shape which spreads and arrives at the ears, in the same way that water in a tank forms waves in circles when a stone is thrown in.

Diogenes Laertios 7.158

Visualisation of a Stoic vision cone made of pneuma. (AI generated)

This is terrific. It’s practically what you’ll hear in a modern classroom. But some Stoic ideas were ... well, less excellent. Here’s their theory of vision.

We see when the light between the viewer and the object is stretched tight, in a conical shape. ... The tip of the conical shape is located at the eye, and its base in the direction of the thing seen. Information about the observed object is conveyed by the stretched air, similarly to a cane.

Diogenes Laertios 7.158

That is, they thought there are vision cones extending out of our eyes. Modern readers sometimes call them ‘vision rays’. Ancient theories of vision came in two main varieties, ‘extramissive’ and ‘intramissive’: stuff either comes out of your eye or enters it. The Stoics were firmly in the extramissive camp. As you move your eye around, it moves the vision cone, like a hand moving a cane. You sense the other end of the cone the same way that you can sense things at the end of the cane.

The Stoics thought of the vision cone as physical but intangible, like air, or light. It was made of a substance that they called pneuma: literally, ‘breath’.

In philosophical contexts, the custom is to translate pneuma as ‘spirit’.

Pneuma and logos

Among the concepts that the Stoics used to talk about how the universe works are two influential words that don’t translate straightforwardly: pneuma, πνεῦμα, literally ‘breath’; and logos, λόγος, literally ‘word’ or ‘utterance’.

Pneuma is the physical medium for interactions that aren’t tangible. Light, vision cones, life force, and the soul are all made of pneuma. Pneuma is a material that’s perceptible, and physically real, but incorporeal.

The word has a heritage in Greek mystic and natural philosophy. In Orphic religion, pneuma refers to a physical manifestation of fate. Here’s a schema in the Orphic Derveni treatise (5th century BCE), as tabulated by Gábor Betegh (2004: 202):

Mythological name	Zeus	Moira [‘Fate’]
Intellectual aspect	mind (nous)	wisdom (phronesis)
Physical aspect	air (aer)	breath (pneuma)

In later centuries the Stoics adopted similar terminologies, while dropping the ‘mythological’ names. So did Philo of Alexandria, a 1st century Jewish Bible interpreter who was heavily influenced by the Stoics. Nous becomes logos, phronesis becomes sophia, aer gets sidetracked into the theory of the elements, pneuma holds on to its place.

The traditional English translation ‘spirit’ comes from the fact that the Latin for ‘breath’ is spiritus. For Stoic thought, a better English translation would be ‘force’ — force in the modern sense of an energy field, like magnetism, or classical gravity. Here’s a precisely accurate description of what the Stoics meant by pneuma:

It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star wars (1977)

χρῶ τῷ πνεύματι, ὦ Λουκᾶ. (Star wars, 1977)

The ancients didn’t think of gravity and magnetism in terms of ‘forces’. Aristotle, for example, imagined gravity as an intrinsic property, not an interaction: objects with the ‘heaviness’ property have a natural motion towards the centre of the cosmos.

But if you could go back in time and teach Zeno or Chrysippos about classical gravitational or magnetic fields, they’d definitely treat them as species of pneuma.

Then there’s logos. To the Stoics, logos was the principle that the world is rational and behaves in an intelligible way. Logic and maths work, sex causes pregnancy, stuff falls downwards, the sun moves around the ecliptic. That’s logos. It’s their word for what the Orphics and Plato called the cosmic nous, ‘mind’: a template for the self-consistency of the physical world.

In the Orphic Derveni treatise, ‘mind’ is a primordial creative force. Elementary matter is made to coalesce into tangible objects by the ‘colliding mind’: in Greek, krou- + nous, a retcon for ‘Kronos’. Zeus absorbs the primordial forces — ‘colliding mind’, time, the forces of life and creation — so that they become his personal attributes. As a result he acquires the persona of Protogonos, ‘first born’.

In Philo, logos is a personal attribute of God, just as Orphic nous is an attribute of the Protogonos.

And if it happens that someone is not yet worthy of being called ‘son of God’, let them hasten to adorn themselves with his protogonos logos, the eldest of angels, an archangel as it were. It possesses many names. For it is called ‘beginning’, and ‘name of God’, and logos, and ‘human in image’, and ‘the one that sees Israel’. ... for logos, the eldest, is an image of God.

Philo, On the confusion of tongues 146–147 (my translation)

The piling-up of alternate names is in much the same vein as the Derveni treatise.

Modern interpretations of logos in the Christian New Testament regularly take Philo as their starting point — most notably in John 1.1, where logos is a cosmic primordial force that shapes the tangible world.

In the beginning there was the logos, and the logos was an attribute of God, and the logos was God. This was God’s attribute in the beginning. All things came into existence through it, and nothing that exists came into existence without it.

John 1.1–3 (my translation)

Imagine a translation using Philo’s analogies: ‘In the beginning was divine reason’; ‘In the beginning was the noetic realm of incorporeal Forms’. The text could easily be read that way in the 1st century. It echoes earlier Greek thought too: ‘nothing that exists came into existence without it’ sounds almost like it’s from Parmenides.

But does early Christian thought have more in common with Philo, or with the Stoics? Modern scholars normally opt for Philo. I agree that holds true for Paul’s letters. But in the narrative books of the New Testament, pneuma isn’t just an attribute of God. It pops up in other ways too. There, we’re looking at an adaptation of Stoic language.

New Testament pneuma isn’t supernatural: it’s precisely non-supernatural. It’s an attempt to rationalise the supernatural in naturalistic terms. In the present day, believers sometimes try to rationalise a miraculous healing as a logical medical event; in antiquity, pneuma is exactly the same.

Note. On logos in Philo see Hannah 1999: 77–85; Robertson 2018: 9–28. On reading logos in the New Testament in light of Philo, see Boyarin 2017 (but cast as exclusively Jewish, with no mention of Stoicism). On nous in Plato see especially the Timaios, with discussion by e.g. Menn 1995; Mason 2013. On krou- + nous as Orphic creative force, see Derveni papyrus cols. xiv–xvi (cf. Plato Kratylos 396b), with discussion by Betegh 2004: 185–193.

Pneuma in the Bible

The Hebrew Bible often refers to the rūaḥ or ‘wind’ of God. From around the 3rd century BCE onwards, the Bible used in the Diaspora was in Greek: the Septuagint. And the Septuagint instead talks about God’s pneuma.

כי־כל־עוֹד נשמתי בי ורוח אלוֹה באפי׃

ἦ μὴν ἔτι τῆς πνοῆς μου ἐνούσης πνεῦμα δὲ θεῖον τὸ περιόν μοι ἐν ῥισίν.

... as long as my breath [Hb. nishmā, Gr. pnoë] is in me and the spirit [Hb. rūaḥ, Gr. pneuma] of God is in my nostrils, ...

Job 27.3 (MT, LXX, NRSVue)

Note. πνοή and πνεῦμα could both be translated as ‘breath’, given the right context. Philo, Allegory of the holy laws 1.42, discusses the distinction between them in Genesis 1.2 and 2.7.

So when Hellenistic Jews talked about the ‘wind of God’ in Greek, they were using language that already had a naturalistic sense. The dual senses of pneuma, as the rūaḥ of God and as a Stoic physical ‘force’, could be conflated or distinguished as needed.

Visible pneuma and extramissive vision: ‘there stabbed northward a flame of red, the flicker of a piercing Eye ...’ (Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 1955; still from The Return of the King, 2003)

Pneuma appears frequently in the New Testament. The earliest gospel, Mark, envisages it as a physical substance. You can immerse people in pneuma.

ὁ Ἰωάννης ... ἐκήρυσσεν ... ἐγὼ ἐβάπτισα ὑμᾶς ἐν ὕδατι, αὐτὸς δὲ βαπτίσει ὑμᾶς ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ.

John [the Baptist] ... proclaimed ..., ‘I baptised you with water, but he will baptise you with holy pneuma.’

Mark 1.8 (my translation)

Notice that the Greek doesn’t refer to ‘the’ Holy Spirit — there’s no article. This is an uncountable noun, a substance, not a specified entity.

When Jesus casts out demons, he doesn’t do it by praying: he uses pneuma as a physical instrument.

‘If I cast out demons with Beelzebul, what do your own sons use to cast them out? They will be your judges, then. But if it is with God’s pneuma that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God is already upon you.’

Matthew 12.27–28 (my translation)

The original version of this passage, Mark 3.22–25, doesn’t mention pneuma. The introduction of pneuma makes the statement more physical, more tangible. Luke 11.15–20 makes the imagery more tactile still, writing ‘God’s finger’ instead of ‘God’s pneuma’.

All modern Bibles beg the question in passages like these by personifying pneuma as ‘the (Holy) Spirit’. That choice anticipates the doctrine of the Trinity. It excludes the meanings that the word had when these passages were written.

Occasionally, pneuma is paired with logos. (And notice that pneuma here is emphatically not an attribute of God!)

Once it became evening they brought to [Jesus] many people who were afflicted by demons, and he cast out the pneumata with logos [ἐξέβαλεν τὰ πνεύματα λόγῳ].

Matthew 8.16 (my translation)

The choice of words makes the subtext extremely clear: we’re firmly in Stoic territory. Again, you have to think about what these words meant at the time. A well informed 1st century reader might very well read it like this:

Jesus cast out the intangible physical phenomena by using a noetic template.

You can’t translate this kind of passage neutrally. Because of course these terms aren’t just Stoic terms: pneuma also means rūaḥ, logos also means ‘word’. If you look at Paul’s letters, it’s much harder to see any hint of Stoicism. There, ‘spirit’ usually is going to be the right translation.

Pneuma in Acts

Inspecting every mention of pneuma in the New Testament would be overkill for a short essay like this, but I have checked every occurrence in Acts. Out of the narrative books, Acts mentions pneuma the most — 35 times per 10,000 words, as compared with 10 to 19 in the gospels. (Among Paul’s letters, Galatians and 1 Corinthians both use it over 80 times per 10,000 words.)

Here’s how Acts uses the word pneuma:

• 24× (in 19 distinct episodes) physically, as something visible, a fluid substance (normally without a definite article), or a body part: 1.2, 1.5, 2.2–4, 4.8, 4.25, 6.3–5, 6.10, 7.55, 8.15–19, 9.17, 10.38, 11.16, 11.24, 11.28, 13.9, 13.52, 17.16, 18.25, 20.22.
• 12× (in 11 episodes) as an entity with personhood which speaks: 1.16, 5.32, 8.29, 9.31, 10.19, 11.12, 13.2–4, 15.28, 20.28, 21.11, 28.25.
• 11× ambiguous, with definite article (perhaps as an attribute of God): 1.8, 2.33, 2.38, 4.31, 5.3 (ambiguous syntax), 5.9, 10.44–47, 11.15, 15.8, 16.6, 19.6.
• 9× (in 4 episodes) as a supernatural entity other than God: 5.16, 16.16–18, 19.11–16, 23.8–9.
• 2× in a quotation from the Septuagint: 2.17–18 (≈ Joel 2.28–29).

Pneuma often has the epithet ‘holy’ (ἅγιον πνεῦμα). But even in a text as late as Acts it’s hard to be confident that that isn’t simply meant to be an antithesis to pneumata that are ‘wicked’ or ‘unclean’ (Acts 5.16, 19.11–16). Two passages juxtapose pneuma with logos, both in the third ‘ambiguous’ category (4.31, 16.6).

Some of the passages in the first category — pneuma as a physical substance — clearly envisage it as a fluid:

• a person can be immersed in pneuma (1.5, 11.16)
• a person can be anointed with pneuma (10.38)
• a person can be filled with pneuma (2.4, 4.8, 6.3–5, 7.55, 9.17, 11.24, 13.9, 13.52)
• pneuma can boil (18.25 ζέων τῷ πνεύματι)
• pneuma can be transmitted by physical contact (8.15–19, 19.6)
• pneuma can act as a medium for action at a distance when someone speaks ‘by means of pneuma’ (1.2, 4.25, 11.28)

Modern English-language Bibles can sometimes bring themselves to translate Hebrew rūaḥ as the ‘wind’ of God, instead of ‘Spirit’ with a capital S. And that’s great. It’s reasonable to make an effort with Greek pneuma and logos too!

References

• Betegh, G. 2004. The Derveni papyrus. Cosmology, theology and interpretation. Cambridge.
• Boyarin, D. 2017 [2011]. ‘Logos, a Jewish word. John’s prologue as Midrash.’ In: Levine, A.-J.; Brettler, M. Z. (eds.) The Jewish annotated New Testament, 2nd edition. Oxford. 688–691.
• Hannah, D. D. 1999. Michael and Christ: Michael traditions and angel christology in early Christianity. Tübingen.
• Mason, A. 2013. ‘The nous doctrine in Plato’s thought.’ Apeiron 46: 201–228. [DOI]
• Menn, S. 1995. Plato on God as nous. Carbondale/Edwardsville (IL).
• Robertson, D. 2018. Word and meaning in ancient Alexandria. Theories of language from Philo to Plotinus. Aldershot/Burlington (VT).

The camel, the rope, and the needle's eye

There’s no good evidence that kamilos — supposedly meaning ‘rope’ — was ever even a real word in ancient Greek.

The myth we’re looking at is to do with the following passage in the Bible.

εὐκοπώτερόν ἐστιν κάμηλον διὰ τῆς τρυμαλιᾶς τῆς ῥαφίδος διελθεῖν ἢ πλούσιον εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ εἰσελθεῖν.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Mark 10.25 (~ Matthew 19.24, Luke 18.25)

According to the myth, ‘camel’ is a misreading: originally, it was a ‘rope’ going through a needle. Still impossible, but not surreal like ‘camel’. Supposedly, the text originally had kamilos, but kamēlos ‘camel’ and kamilos ‘rope’ sounded the same in imperial-era Greek, so they got mixed up.

A Roman needle and a camel. Not to scale.

The ‘rope’ theory is one of a couple of tactics for softening Jesus’ condemnation of wealth-hoarding. There’s another one about an imaginary gate in Jerusalem called ‘the eye of the needle’: that one was made up in the 11th century. But some religious groups have a strong motivation for reading this passage as being about something other than a literal camel going through a literal needle’s eye. So fake explanations tend to stick around.

This review is a resource for anyone who’s in doubt about what the evidence for the ‘rope’ interpretation looks like. The executive summary is this: the word supposedly meaning ‘rope’ is a made-up word. It was made up in the 5th century or shortly beforehand, and it was made up specifically to weaken Jesus’ condemnation of wealth. It’s older than the ‘eye of the needle’ gate, but it’s just as bogus.

Note. This isn’t the first debunking of its kind. My aim is to make the evidence as accessible as possible. Zahn 1922: 601–602 n. 71 cites most of the ancient evidence in German; Khalil 1978 cites much of it in French; Henry 2022 disposes of purported arguments from Aramaic, but without delving into the Greek use of kamilos. For the origins of the bogus ‘gate’ theory, see Ziemińska 2022. The gate first pops up in a fragment of Anselm of Canterbury quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena aurea on on Matthew 19.24. My translation: ‘Gloss. Alternatively: because there was a certain gate in Jerusalem called ‘the eye of the needle’, and a camel could not pass through it unless it laid down its burden and bent its knees. So this means that a rich person cannot travel the confined way to (eternal) life unless they lay down their uncleanness of sin and their wealth, that is, or at least by not loving (wealth).’

A review of κάμιλος

I’ll carry on spelling kamēlos (‘camel’) and kamilos (supposedly ‘rope’) differently, for clarity. Ancient and mediaeval sources often spell them both kamēlos.

The earliest authentic appearance of kamilos is in Cyril of Alexandria (1st half of 5th century). In nearly all cases where it appears in ancient and mediaeval sources, it’s only mentioned because someone is giving it as a textual variant for ‘camel’ in the gospels. In other contexts it appears only twice, and even those are still as annotations to the word ‘camel’, and they repeat Cyril’s exact phrasing.

So there’s no independent evidence to corroborate Cyril’s claim that kamilos was even a real word, let alone that it was the original text in the gospels. There’s just one possible exception: one possible candidate for an independent use of the word — a 5th century inscription from southern Anatolia — but the interpretation of the inscription is very doubtful.

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1. Sources that cite kamilos as a textual variant in the gospels

As I said, nearly all uses of kamilos ‘rope’ belong to this category. These are no use at all as corroboration. They don’t show that the word could ever be used in any other context.

Cyril’s definitions (sources a, b) are echoed in most post-Cyril sources.

1. Cyril of Alexandria, commentary on Matthew fr. 219 Reuss (1957: 226; ~ Patrologia graeca 72 429d–431a)
2. Cyril of Alexandria, commentary on Luke, Patrologia graeca 72 857c
3. Cyril of Alexandria, Against Julian the apostate fr. 21 Neumann (Syriac: Neumann 1880: 56; Latin translation: Neumann 1880: 75, fr. 29; French translation: Khalil 1978: 91 n. 1)
4. Tractatus de divitiis 18.2 (Kessler 1999: 306 = Caspari 1890: 55)
5. pseudo-Origen, commentary on Matthew fr. 390 Klostermann (1941: 166)
6. Photios, commentary on Matthew fr. 77 Reuss (Reuss 1957: 318)
7. Theophylact, Enarratio in Evangelium Matthaei, Patrologia graeca 123 356d

I stop at the 11th century. (Zahn goes on further, to include a 12th century citation of Cyril in Bar Hebraeus: Zahn 1922: 602 n. 71.)

I’ll just quote the first two, sources a and b, from Cyril. They’re both fragments preserved in catena commentaries. First, Cyril on Matthew 19.24:

κάμηλον δὲ ἐνταῦθά φησιν οὐ τὸ ζῷον τὸ ἀχθοφόρον, ἀλλὰ τὸ παχὺ σχοινίον, ἐν ᾧ δεσμεύουσι τὰς ἀγκύρας οἱ ναῦται. οὐκ ἀνήνυτον παντελῶς τοῦτο δείκνυσιν ὄν, τῷ δὲ ἄγαν δυσχερὴ λοιπὸν ἤδη πως ἐγγὺς καὶ ἀγχίθυρον τοῦ ἀδυνάτου τὸ χρῆμα τιθείς.

‘camel’: he doesn’t mean the pack animal here, but the thick rope, with which sailors bind anchors. He shows that the situation isn’t absolutely permanent, but makes the matter extremely difficult for him in future, and for the present, close to and neighbouring on impossibility.

Note. Reuss’ text fills in a chunk that’s missing in the Patrologia text, based on a manuscript at Mt Athos, Great Lavra cod. B 113 (11th cent.), fol. 97r. Reuss silently alters δυσχερή to δυσχερεῖ: I restore the manuscript reading here.

And Cyril on Luke 18.25. This one is very bald-faced, selecting the contrived word for the express purpose of allowing rich people to go to heaven.

κάμηλον· οὐ τὸ ζῶον, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐν τοῖς πλοίοις παχὺ σχοινίον. ἔξεστι γὰρ αὐτοῖς, εἰ μὴ εἰσάπαν ἕλοιντο τὸ τῶν ὅλων ὄντων ἀπολισθεῖν, ἑτέρως εὐδοκιμεῖν, ποιῆσαι φίλους ἐκ τοῦ ἀδίκου μαμωνᾶ, ἵνα ὅταν ἐπιλίπωσε, δέξωνται αὐτοὺς εἰς τὰς αἰωνίους σκηνάς.

‘camel’: not the animal, but the thick rope used on ships. For it is possible for them to arrive at blessedness in a different way, even if they don’t choose to lose all their property completely, if they use their unjust Mammon to make friends, so that when it runs out, the friends invite them into the eternal tabernacles.

Note (added some time later). Cyril’s line about buying friends is based on Luke 16.9: ‘make friends for yourselves by means of the Mammon of injustice so that when it is gone they may invite you into the eternal tabernacles.’

If you’re thinking of investigating all the sources listed here, take notice of Cyril’s phrasing: τὸ παχὺ σχοινίον (‘the thick rope’), and the bit about binding anchors. You’ll see these pop up routinely in later sources, including the sources in category 3, below. That shows that they aren’t independent.

The only post-Cyril source worth noticing is source e, the spurious Origen fragment. If authentic, it would put kamilos back to the 3rd century. But as Theodor Zahn points out, Origen’s authentic discussions of the gospel passages are entirely unaware of the ‘rope’ interpretation (Zahn 1922: 601 n. 71).

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2. Manuscripts of the New Testament with kamilos

A handful of the thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament — none earlier than the 9th century — give the variant reading kamilos in one or more of the three gospel passages. Like the sources in category 1, these have no corroborative value, because they do not show the word being used in any other context.

Even when New Testament manuscripts include the kamilos variant, they don’t use it consistently. Top: minuscule 13 (Paris.gr. 50, 13th cent.), ff. 26r and 59v (Matthew 19.24, Mark 10.25); bottom: uncial S (Vat.gr. 354, 949 CE), ff. 55r and 162r (Matthew 19.24, Luke 18.25). The readings in the left column have kamēlos, the ones on the right have kamilos.

Many of the kamilos manuscripts belong to ‘family 13’, a group of 10th–15th century manuscripts with affinities to minuscule 13, that is, Paris.gr. 50 (11th cent.). Even in ‘family 13’, kamilos only appears in Mark 10.25 and Luke 18.25; in Matthew 19.24, it’s always kamēlos.

Note. On ‘family 13’ see Metzger and Ehrman 2005: 87. On the Armenian and Georgian translations that have affinities to ‘family 13’, and which translate using a word meaning ‘rope’, see Metzger and Ehrman 2005: 117–119; McCollum 2015; Pirtea 2021: 331. McCollum shows that ‘camel’ is standard in the Greek, Syriac, and Athonite Georgian versions, while ‘rope’ is standard in the Armenian and pre-Athonite Georgian evidence. (He doesn’t notice that the pseudo-Origen, here source e, is spurious — but it’s no discredit to miss something so obscure.)

Here are the manuscripts that are not in ‘family 13’ but which have the kamilos variant.

• Mark 10.25: minuscules 28 and 579 (Paris.gr. 379, 11th cent.; Paris.gr. 59, 13th cent.).
• Matthew 19.24: minuscules 579 and 1424 (Paris.gr. 97, 13th cent.; Chicago Gruber 152, 9th/10th cent.).
• Luke 18.25: uncial S (Vat.gr. 354, 949 CE); minuscule 1424 (Chicago Gruber 152, 9th/10th cent.); possibly minuscule 579 (Paris.gr. 97; illegible).

All older manuscripts — including the ancient ones, like the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus manuscripts — invariably use kamēlos.

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3. Sources that cite kamilos as an annotation to ‘camel’

There are two sources in this category:

8. Scholion on Aristophanes, Wasps 1035
9. Souda κ.282 κάμηλος (Suda on line)

These are both mediaeval. The Aristophanes scholia may go back to the early Byzantine period; the Souda encyclopaedia is 10th century.

I’ll quote the first one in full. The background is that in 422 BCE, the comic playwright Aristophanes made a joke about camels, describing a contemporary politician as having the smell of a seal, the testicles of a bogeyman, and the arsehole of a camel. About a millennium later, an anonymous scholar explains the joke as follows:

πρωκτὸν δὲ καμήλου· θερμόπρωκτος γὰρ ἡ κάμηλος καὶ λάγνος. κάμιλος δὲ τὸ παχὺ σχοινίον διὰ τοῦ ι.

‘(and he had) a camel’s arsehole’: the joke is that camels are hot-arsed and lewd. And a kamilos is the thick rope, with an i.

Neither h nor i uses kamilos in a sentence. They only cite it lexicographically — as a footnote to talking about camels. In both sources, the commentator explains what the word means. That is, the word is rare enough that a scholarly reader cannot be expected to know it. And both definitions use Cyril’s exact phrase τὸ παχὺ σχοινίον (‘the thick rope’).

So these sources have no corroborative value either. Kamilos doesn’t get used in its own right, it’s purely an appendage to ‘camel’, and even more importantly, neither source is independent of Cyril.

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4. Sources that use kamilos independently

Finally we get to the one category of evidence that could in principle corroborate that kamilos is a real word. However, there’s only one source that might potentially fall into this category, and it’s really shaky:

10. Inscriptions de Cilicie 108, col. ii line 5 (Dagron and Feissel 1987: 170–185)

This is a 5th or 6th century CE inscription found near Anazarbos (Anavarza) and held at the Adana Archaeology Museum. The inscription is a list of tariffs for various freight goods. Here’s the start of column ii, with my translation:

[ . . . κ'] β
[ ]ι̣ο̣υ̣ γο' κ' α
κρόκου γο' κ' δ
γάρου γο' κ' α
μασσίνων καμηλ( ) κ' αγ'

[ . . . ] 2 keratia
[ ] — per load — 1 keration
saffron — per load — 4 keratia
garum — per load — 1 keration
massinoi — per camel load — 1⅓ keratia

The fifth line is the relevant one. For discussion, see Dagron and Feissel (1987: 176–177). They supplement the text as μασσίνων καμήλ(ων), which they interpret as ‘thick ropes’.

The meaning of both massin- and kamēl- is questionable. Dagron and Feissel think massinos is an adjective relating to ropes, partly because of Cyril’s interpretation of kamilos (source a above); partly because of the Syrian author John Malalas (6th century), who refers to someone being tied up with a σχοῖνος μάσσινος or ‘massinos rope’; and the Life of Symeon Stylites the Younger (7th century?), which has the 6th century Syrian saint winding a μάσ(σ)ινον σχοινίον (‘mas(s)inos rope’) around his body. So in this inscription they regard massinōn as an adjective, modifying kamēl(ōn) ‘ropes’.

Note. Malalas, Chronographia 7.12, p. 142,35 ed. Thurn (= p. 186,19–20 ed. Dindorf); Life of Symeon Stylites the Younger 26 ed. van den Ven. For the latter I rely on Dagron and Feissel’s report.

They might be right. However, first, the context doesn’t favour ‘rope’: lines 3 to 11 of the inscription appear to be foodstuffs — saffron, garum, possibly gourds, possibly fenugreek, garlic, wine, and so on.

Second, every other line gives the freight good in the genitive case, and an indication of quantity. So line 3 gives the tariff for a γόμος of saffron, line 4 for a γόμος of garum, and so on. In lines 16–17, the price is given per unit: the tariff per slave, per bovine. Why, then, is μασσίνων genitive plural? Where’s the indication of quantity? The most intuitive answer is that that’s what καμηλ( ) is doing there. The correct supplement is μασσίνων καμηλ(ικός), ‘a camel load of massinoi’. The camel was the most commonly used beast of burden in Anatolia until the 20th century (Potts 2004; İnal 2020: 71), and Dagron and Feissel themselves point out that γόμος καμηλικός is standard phrasing in the famous Palmyra tariff inscription, alongside γόμος καρρικός ‘wagon load’ and γόμος ὀνικός ‘ass load’, and with a conversion rate of 1 wagon load = 4 camel loads. As for massinoi, its meaning is doubtful. Even if it really is an adjective, it’s completely normal for Greek to use an adjective as a substantive.

The argument for κάμηλος ‘rope’ in the Anarbazos inscription isn’t intuitive, it neglects the format of the tariff list, and it relies on Cyril’s testimony — so it begs the question of whether kamilos is even a real word.

Can we be certain that this isn’t an instance of kamilos ‘rope’? Not 100% certain, no — but this inscription certainly can’t take the weight of being the sole independent use of the word.

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Summary

The word kamilos ‘rope’ —

• first appears in the 400s CE, more than three centuries after the gospels
• is vanishingly rare even after that date
• is never, ever used in a sentence by any ancient or mediaeval writer
• appears only in lexicographical contexts
• is always cited as an annotation either to camels, or to Matthew 19.24
• is always defined, because no reader can be expected to know its meaning
• is usually defined using Cyril of Alexandria’s phrasing

The fact that kamilos normally appears in the context of camels or the gospel passages makes it look very much like that is its primary context.

That is: kamilos was coined specifically to contrive a variant interpretaion of the gospels.

And, by the way, that’s exactly what the Liddell & Scott Lexicon suggested all along.

Perh(aps) coined as an emendation of the phrase εὐκοπώτερόν ἐστι κάμηλον διὰ τρυπήματος ῥαφίδος διελθεῖν ... Ev.Matt. 19.24

LSJ s.v. κάμιλος

(The Greek quotation is the ‘eye of a needle’ line in Matthew.)

The upshot is that kamilos is just like the ‘eye of the needle’ gate: it’s a fabrication, contrived specifically to make wealthy people happy about hoarding their wealth.

The only potential corroboration for its existence is source j, the Anarbazos inscription. There it’s part of a collocation where, at best, both words are unclear. I’ve argued above that καμηλ( ) is a quantity, a καμηλ(ικός) or ‘camel load’, not a rope. Even if you disagree, still, the most the inscription can show is that kamilos existed as a hyper-rare word in 5th century Anatolia. Does it show anything about the 1st century? Absolutely not. The inscription is an obscure speculative possibility, not a corroboration for anything.

What is it about camels, anyway?

A rope through the eye of a needle would have been a striking choice of image. A camel is ... surreal.

As Zahn and many others have pointed out, it isn’t unique. It’s not a common expression, and the Christian gospels are its earliest appearance, but there are parallels in Rabbinic sources and in the Quran. The Rabbinic sources involve elephants, not camels, but still.

These parallels are late, like Cyril’s made-up word, so they’re not exactly overwhelming evidence. But they have one thing going for them that kamilos doesn’t: they use the expression in the same way as the gospels, not as an annotation to the gospels.

How will you know the thoughts of your heart? By their being revealed to you in a dream. Rava said: Know that this is the case, for one is neither shown a golden palm tree nor an elephant going through the eye of a needle in a dream. In other words, dreams only contain images that enter a person’s mind.

Berakhot 55b.21

Rav Sheshet said mockingly to him, employing a similar style: Perhaps you are from Pumbedita, where people pass an elephant through the eye of a needle, i.e., they engage in specious reasoning.

Bava Metzia 38b.16

Surely those who receive our revelations with denial and arrogance, the gates of heaven will not be opened for them, nor will they enter Paradise until a camel passes through the eye of a needle.

Quran 7.40

Of these, the Rabbinic texts look like decent candidates for independent testimony. The Quran, less so: its version of the aphorism is almost identical to that in the gospels. The word used in Quran 7.40 is جمل jamal (‘camel’).

Arabic dictionaries do record an alternate reading, with the word jummal, ‘rope’. But don’t get excited. The only locus for jummal in the Arabic corpus is ... this exact verse in Sura 7.

Some lexicographers wondered if jummal is a genuine Arabic word, and indeed it is used principally in speculation around Q 7:40. It is possible that Christian exegetical speculation surrounding the Greek word kamēlos influenced Muslim exegetical speculation surrounding the Arabic word jamal and led lexicographers to develop jummal, an equivalent of kamilos, as an alternative reading of jamal. What seems to confirm [this] ... is that, like Christian commentators, Muslim commentators report that the rope (jummal) in question is the sort used for seafaring.

Reynolds 2020: 49–50

Cyril strikes again. Everything to do with ropes in this context — Greek *kamilos, Aramaic *gml, and Arabic *jummal — goes back to Cyril inventing a fake word to keep rich people happy.

References

• Caspari, C. P. 1890. Briefe, Abhandlungen und Predigten aus den zwei letzten Jahrhunderten des kirchlichen Alterthums und dem Anfang des Mittelalters. Oslo [‘Christiania’]. [Internet Archive: 1 2 3]
• Dagron, G.; Feissel, D. 1987. Inscriptions de Cilicie. Paris.
• Henry, A. M. 2022. ‘The camel and needle: did scholars mistranslate Jesus’s famous saying?’ ReligionForBreakfast. [YouTube]
• İnal, O. 2020. ‘One-humped history: the camel as historical actor in the late Ottoman Empire.’ International Jounal of Middle East Studies 53: 57–73. [DOI]
• Kessler, A. 1999. Reichtumskritik und Pelagianismus. Die pelagianische Diatribe de divitiis: Situierung, Lesetext, Übersetzung, Kommentar. Freiburg/Fribourg (Switzerland).
• Khalil, S. 1978. ‘Note sur le fonds sémitique commun de l’expression “un chameau passant par le trou d’une aiguille”.’ Arabica 25: 89–94. [JSTOR]
• Klostermann, E. 1941. Origenes Werke. Zwölfter Band. Origenes Matthäuserklärung iii. Fragmente und Indices. Erste Hälfte. (Griechischen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte). Leipzig. [Internet Archive]
• McCollum, A. C. 2015. ‘A camel or a rope in the eye of a needle? The Old Georgian witness.’ hmmlorientalia (23 Jul 2015).
• Metzger, B. M.; Ehrman, B. D. 2005. The text of the New Testament. Its transmission, corruption, and restoration, 4th ed. Oxford.
• Neumann, K. J. 1880. Iuliani imperatoris librorum contra Christianos quae supersunt. Leipzig. [Internet Archive]
• Pirtea, A. C. 2021. ‘To pass a rope through the eye of a needle: the influence of Byzantine catenae and homiliaries on the Greek, Church Slavonic, and Old Romanian readings of Matthew 19,24.’ In: Jouravel, A.; Mathys, A. (eds.) Wort- und Formenvielfalt. Festschrift für Christoph Koch zum 80. Geburtstag. Berlin. 327–352. [Academia.edu]
• Potts, D. T. 2004. ‘Camel hybridization and the role of Camelus bactrianus in the ancient Near East.’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 47.2: 143–165. [JSTOR]
• Reuss, J. 1957. Matthäus-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche. Berlin. [Internet Archive]
• Reynolds, G. S. 2020. ‘Biblical turns of phrase in the Quran.’ In: Elias, J. J.; Orfali, B. (eds.) Light upon light. Essays in Islamic thought and history in honor of Gerhard Böwering. Leiden/Boston. 45–69.
• Zahn, Th. 1922. Kommentar zur Neuen Testament. Band I: das Evangelium des Matthäus, 4th ed. Leipzig/Erlangen. [Internet Archive]
• Ziemińska, A. 2022. ‘The origin of the “Needle’s Eye Gate” myth: Theophylact or Anselm?’ New Testament Studies 68: 358–361. [DOI]

Image sources: camel, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; needle, www.ancientresource.com; facsimiles of Paris.gr. 50, CSNTM; Vat.gr. 354, Apostolic Library.