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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
2. The verse presents a complicated and difficult problem:
(a) τον αδελφον ημων και διακονον του θεου is the reading of אAP 67** 71 and several other minn., vg cop basm syrhel txt, Bas Euthal Pelag; the sah and the Harleian* copy of the vg omit dei.
(b) τον αδελφον ημων κ. συνεργον του θεου: so D*d e, Ambrst—clearly the Western reading. B gives, barely, τον αδελφον ημων κ. συνεργον (minus του θεου). C is wanting here.
(c) G contains a conflate text: τον αδελφον ημων κ. διακονον κ. συνεργον του θεου; while the T.R. (Syrian) furnishes another combination, τον αδελφον ημων κ. διακονον του θεου κ. συνεργον ημων—so in DcKL, most minn., syrr, Chr Thdrt, &c.
Manifestly (a) and (b) are the parents of the two forms of (c). Which of the former is the original, it is hard to say. The substitution of συνεργον for the smooth and unexceptionable διακονον in conjunction with του θεου is not transcriptionally likely; and אAP (אBP in Tischendorf8 is a misprint), with the cop, have the look of an Alexandrian group. 1Co 3:9 may have suggested the added genitive, του θεου after συνεργον (as in D), which is less relevant here (see Expository Note); and the Syrian reading points to an earlier συνεργον unqualified by του θεου; observe also the absence of dei in sah and harl*, under (a) above. It is noticeable that in the other ten Pauline instances of συνεργος, the συν- refers to the writer himself (see the Concordance); cf. also 1Co 16:16, συνεργουντι. The history of the text may thus be construed: B preserves the original reading, that intrinsically probable here, viz. Τιμοθεον τον αδελφον ημων κ. συνεργον. The Western scribe, or editor, added του θεου, recalling 1Co 3:9. The Alexandrian editor, reasonably stumbling at this, smoothed down συνεργον του θεου into διακονον του θεου. The copyist of G combined the 3rd and 2nd, the Syrian editors the 3rd and 1st of the above readings. See on this passage B. Weiss, Textkritik der Paulinischen Briefe, p. 13.