Luke 23:17: Why Modern Bibles Leave It Out, and the Evidence

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Luke 23:17

“For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast” is the reading of the great majority of Greek manuscripts and of Codex Sinaiticus of the fourth century, the oldest complete New Testament, and of Codex Bezae and Codex Washingtonianus of the fifth. The Vulgate has it, and so do some Bohairic manuscripts.

The King James Bible

17 (For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.) Read Luke 23

ἀνάγκην δέ εἶχεν ἀπολύειν αὐτοῖς κατὰ ἑορτὴν ἕνα. anagkēn de eichen apoluein autois kata he'ortēn hena

Greek Manuscripts

Byzantine manuscripts 𝔐 9th–16th centuries

Checked against: TAGNT (Robinson–Pierpont)
Codex Sinaiticus ℵ 01 4th century

Checked against: CNTR transcription
Codex Washingtonianus W 032 4th–5th century

Checked against: CNTR transcription
Codex Bezae D 05 5th century

Checked against: CNTR transcription

Early Translations

Bohairic Coptic cop bo translation 3rd–4th century

Some of its manuscripts: Scrivener found it in two at the Bodleian, Huntington 20 and Marshall 5.

Checked against: Scrivener 1894
Latin Vulgate vg Jerome, c. 400

Checked against: Clementine Vulgate (1592)

Printed Greek Texts with This Reading

Textus Receptus · The Greek text the KJV was translated from, as Scrivener printed it (1894)
Majority Text · The Byzantine text, read by the great majority of Greek manuscripts (Robinson and Pierpont, 2005)

Edition data from the Translators Amalgamated Greek NT, STEPBible.org (CC BY). About these texts and witnesses.