wow

Most manuscripts abbreviate sacred names (the so-called nomina sacra), and that is the case here as well, where the Greek word God (theta-epsilon-omicron-sigma) is abbreviated by two letters, theta and sigma, with a line drawn over the top to indicate that it is an abbreviation. What Wettstein (an early bible researcher) noticed in examining Codex Alexandrinus (an ancient biblical text) was the line over the top had been drawn in a different ink from the surrounding words, and so appeared to be from a later hand (i.e., written by a later scribe). Moreover, the horizontal line in the middle of the first letter, theta, was not actually a part of the letter but was a line that had bled through from the other side of the old vellum. In other words, rather than being the abbreviation for “God” (theta-sigma), the word was actually an omicron and a sigma, a different word altogether, which simply means “who.” The original reading of the manuscript thus did not speak of Christ as “God made manifest in flesh” but of Christ “who was made manifest in the flesh.” According to the ancient testimony of the Codex Alexandrinus, Christ is no longer explicitly called God in this passage.