Matt. 15:8

Matt. 15:8 (h.a.)

εγγιζει μοι ο λαος ουτος
ΤΩ ΣΤΟΜΑΤΙ αυτων και
ΤΟΙΣ χειλεσιν με τιμα η
δε καρδια αυτων πορρω
απεχει απ εμου

This people draws near Me (with)
the mouth of them and (with)
the lips honours Me,
but their heart is far
away from Me!

---

INCLUDE LINE: C, W, Δ 0106, f13-part, Byz Maj (Majority of MSS), f, q, Sy-H etc.

OMIT:  א  B  D  L Θ 073, 124, 788(=f13-part), 33, 579, 700, 892, 1424, pc, Lat, Sy-S/C/P, Copt(+ mae-2), Egerton 2, Clement, Origen, Didymus

Special Note::
B: has an umlaut : (a text-critical marking at line 39 A, p. 1255 : λαος ουτος ...ΤΟΙΣ χειλεσιν )

---

In the old UNCIAL (capital letter) style of writing, many letters appeared similar which do not appear the same in modern printed (small letter) texts of the New Testament. This is one of those cases where the Haplography features are quite obvious in an UNCIAL text, but difficult to spot using a modern cursive font.

The Letter Omicron (short "o" O) and Omega (long "o" Ω) in UNCIAL letters are very similar, as close as a capitol O and Q would be in English block letters. Uncial manuscripts were most often written without large spaces between words, in an effort to fit more on the page, and small strokes like "I" could often be faded or lost or taken for part of another adjacent letter.

Here a similar stretch of letters at the beginning of two lines resulted in the accidental loss of the first line.

This omission/variant is left undocumented in both Nestle and UBS-2/3, although it was noted in Westcott/Hort's original notes and Introduction.

The text-critical umlaut found in Codex Vaticanus (B, ms#1209) shows that the copyist of this manuscript was well aware of the dropped line, but faithfully copied the exemplar he was instructed to copy. In this manuscript, many hundreds of umlauts mark text-critical variants, and Codex B carefully notes the many places his exemplar departs from the common text using this technique.

Again, "modern" versions almost universally drop the half-line, because they are following the UBS text without much concern for its many undocumented differences from the Traditional text of the NT used by Christians for over a thousand years. One more time, an ancient error long abandoned has been allowed to creep back into the Biblical text undocumented.