Throughout much of the history of political thought in the West, the Bible was at once a constitutional document and a kind of case book, putatively setting limits to speculation as well as to conduct. Theologians and political theorists were forced to be judges interpreting a text or, more often, lawyers defending a particular interpretation before the constituted powers in church and state or before the less authoritative court of opinion. The Bible became, like other such texts, a dissociated collection of precedents, examples and citations, each of which meant what the lawyers and judges said it meant.

The textual problems involved in the parable of the two sons (Matt. 21:28–32) are well known and extraordinarily complex. The parable has been handed down in the manuscript tradition in three forms.

There is no more prominent atheist today than Jean-Paul Sartre. Yet serious students of Sartre's philosophy are struck by his unabashed use of theological idiom. This use is so extensive that Professor Hazel Barnes in her translator's introduction to Being and Nothingness comments:

Many people who consider themselves religious could quite comfortably accept Sartre's philosophy if he did not embarrass them by making his pronouncement, “There is no God,” quite so specific.

It is urgent that the critical apparatus of the Greek NT be modernized and corrected. My review of Aland's Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum indicates that its apparatus could be improved. It repeats some errors of long standing; the present number of readings could be reduced by eliminating unimportant variants and substantially enlarged by adding others of greater significance. In this note I wish to demonstrate this my contention by an analysis and evaluation of Aland's citation of three sources — the Chester Beatty papyrus (P45), Codex Sinaiticus (ℵ)4, and Clement of Alexandria. The changes suggested are of three kinds: corrections, citation from these sources in support of readings given, and the addition of noteworthy readings.