Hebrews 11:10. Possible scribe error caused a missing detail? [closed]

Question

Can anybody find another Bible verse that contains the exact order of words την τους as Hebrews 11:10 does?

If this was a common grammar technique in Greek at the time it should be found in other verses.

ἐξεδέχετο γὰρ τὴν τοὺς θεμελίους ἔχουσαν πόλιν, ἧς τεχνίτης καὶ δημιουργὸς ὁ Θεός.

The word in bold THN την is where the mistranslated is. That is the specific word I say is mistranslated. It should be ΓΗΝ γην.

Correction: the responses are getting confusing. I meant to refer to THN. I wrote the wrong case ending. It should be THN should be ΓΗN

A scribe mistook a Γ as a T. It’s been written as T ever since because it doesn’t change the meaning of the verse much. The error then leaves the detail “in the land”. This explains why the modern Greek translation in lowercase has two the(s) and one the is left untranslated in the verse. τῆς in Koine Greek would be spelled ΤΗC.

ΓΗC means in the land.

Hebrews 11:10 (KJV):

For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

Corrected translation:

For he was looking in the land for the foundation of a city, whose builder and maker is God.

Greek New Testament 2016:

Πίστει παρῴκησεν εἰς γῆν τῆς ἐπαγγελίας ὡς ἀλλοτρίαν, ἐν σκηναῖς κατοικήσας, μετὰ Ἰσαὰκ καὶ Ἰακὼβ τῶν συνκληρονόμων τῆς ἐπαγγελίας τῆς αὐτῆς·

https://biblescan.com/searchstrongs.php?q=%CE%B3%CE%B7%CE%BD

COUNTERARGUMENT

The sentence structure of Greek does not apply to the English language. Of the Greek, a noun,verb, indirect object, adjective, may be written in a much different order than English. An exception being that the definitive article is written before its noun. There is nothing forbidding the placement of any word at the beginnings of a Greek sentence. That the English translation later decided where a comma or period was placed was not always an absolute in order to maintain the idea presented in the verse. It’s quite possible for an idea to be expressed in multiple sequential sentences, or to keep it as one complete sentence by using commas. The meaning stays the same. All three variations of the sentence have the same meaning because commas and periods did not exist yet when the text was written.

(1) ἐξεδέχετο γὰρ γην. (2) Τους θεμελίους ἔχουσαν πόλιν. (3) Ης τεχνίτης καὶ δημιουργὸς ὁ Θεός.

(1) Verb with pronoun. Conjunction. Noun. (2) Definite article. Noun. Verb. Noun. (3) Pronoun. Noun. Conjunction. Noun. Definite article. Noun.

ἐξεδέχετο γὰρ γην, τους θεμελίους ἔχουσαν πόλιν, ης Ης τεχνίτης καὶ δημιουργὸς ὁ Θεός.

ἐξεδέχετο γὰρ γην τους θεμελίους ἔχουσαν πόλιν, ης τεχνίτης καὶ δημιουργὸς ὁ Θεός.

ἐξεδέχετο γὰρ γην. Τους θεμελίους ἔχουσαν πόλιν, ης τεχνίτης καὶ δημιουργὸς ὁ Θεός.

NEWTRANSLATION

For the earth contained the foundations of the city of whom the architect and builder is the great God.

Thereby providing linguistic evidence that Abraham was not inside a UFO searching the heavens for the city and land, because such was on the earth.

Answer 1

It is not a scribal error.

THC is supported by: Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus, Codex Claromontanus and Papyrus 13

God bless!

Answer 2

From the OP's explanation, they find on the Codex Sinaiticus for Hebrews 11:10:-

https://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx?__VIEWSTATEGENERATOR=01FB804F&book=46&chapter=11&lid=en&side=r&verse=10&zoomSlider=0#46-11-10-3

(Hebrews 11:10)

εξεδεχετο γαρ την τουϲ θεμελιουϲ εχουϲαν πολιν ηϲ τεχνιτηϲ και δημιουργοϲ ο θϲ

And on biblehub etc there is:-

(Hebrews 11:10)

ἐξεδέχετο γὰρ τὴν τοὺς θεμελίους ἔχουσαν πόλιν, ἧς τεχνίτης καὶ δημιουργὸς ὁ Θεός. (Berean Greek New Testament 2016)

The website showing the manuscript lets this τὴν be selected, and rightly or wrongly the scribe's tau matches what's in our versions.

Christus_Rex finds the same in other MSS witnesses. The critical apparatus doesn't tell us of any known variants. The commentaries don't mention any problems.

Really this ends there.

Textual criticism doesn't start from "what else might this have said?" and look to see if the manuscripts support it. When manuscripts have problems, the scholarship starts from the hole in a manuscript, or the trail of rat-footprints and then tries to work out what words were lost. It's very directional, and comes to translators and exegetes from qualified papyrologists. Of course there is fertile discussion and interdisciplinary work back the other way - but in that direction it's a very high bar.

However, it may assist the OP to know whether or not the Greek could still make sense if the scribal error they are anxious about was corrected.

=================================

What if the manuscript had a Γ :-

εξεδεχετο γαρ γην τουϲ θεμελιουϲ εχουϲαν πολιν ηϲ τεχνιτηϲ και δημιουργοϲ ο θϲ (hypothetical)

And thence the reading-copies:-

ἐξεδέχετο γὰρ γὴν τοὺς θεμελίους ἔχουσαν πόλιν, ἧς τεχνίτης καὶ δημιουργὸς ὁ Θεός. (hypothetical)

The city now has no definite article, and there are two indefinite nouns competing to agree with ἔχουσαν.

With την, it parses as "the foundations-having city," or as YLT renders it "the city having the foundations"

But with γὴν we'd have little choice but to try and take one of γὴν or πόλιν as an adjectival noun. And the resulting problem in the Greek starts to become felt in English.

  He was looking for the earth foundations-having city

  He was looking for the city foundations-having earth

UFOs have been mentioned, so I should make clear: that might sound alright when Indiana Jones is reading a wall-carving, perhaps even a little poetic and ominous, but the OP's contention amounts to saying the author of Hebrews' natural prose is like this.

To avoid this Greek tends to put in more syntactic markers when it adjectivizes a noun, not fewer. And being quite hefty as nouns go, these aren't nouns that it's done with. For a proposal like this, you'd need to find other places where Greek has cities or the earth as an adjectival noun.

And "in the land" isn't here. We'd then be missing other bits of ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, or κατὰ γὴν, or whichever idiom is sought.

Have I missed something? Is γὴν a locative? Well it's for the OP to bring that - but that ain't in the lexicon.

=================================

I hope the OP will not be disappointed, and if I have misunderstood or made errors I'm happy to edit

=========================

EDIT (08/10/2024)

The OP has clarified that their contention is:-

ἐξεδέχετο γὰρ γην. τοὺς θεμελίους ἔχουσαν πόλιν, ἧς τεχνίτης καὶ δημιουργὸς ὁ Θεός.

The second sentence is now missing a main verb. The OP contends the participle can stand for the verb. For this, Jay (1958) on NT Greek doesn't have it (Chapter 14, point b):-

The participle presents us with the bare idea of the verb as it may be applied, like an adjective, to a suitable noun or pronouns as a description: e.g. esthiwn eating, presents the idea of the verb "eat" in a general way as it can be applied to any suitable noun or pronoun, boy, horse, etc.

There is a more detailed explanation in Chapter 20, but nothing about participles for the verb.

Cambridge Greek Grammar (requires login) - not here either (or please show me)

https://archive.org/details/greekgrammarofne0000blas/page/174/mode/2up

Lastly in case it was an idiom:-

CFD Moule - Idiom Book of New Testament Greek (requires login)

https://archive.org/details/idiombookofnewte0000moul_c1o8/page/98/mode/2up

=============

People do do unusual things with words, but if we're lucky enough to have a reading the manuscript sources agree on, and that parses in-line with the other 800+ years of written Greek in the corpus, then the onus is on the OP to show evidence for their correction to the tradition.