John 9:35

[gbausc]

Akhi Dean,

I believe the reason for the variant reading lies in Greek and not in Aramaic. Greek Uncial mss. sometimes used abbreviations for common phrases: "US AU" - would stand for "Uios Anthropou"-"Son of Man" ; "US YU" - would be "Uios Theou"- (Son of God); The Capital Greek letter Apha and the Capital Theta (Uncials are all capital letters) would be very similar looking if poorly written . Theta looks like an O with a horizontal bar through its middle; Capital Alpha looks exactly like "A". If those two were confused by a Greek scribe, he might have read "Son of Man" instead of "Son of God".
This kind of error may explain how the Majority text came to read "God was manifest in the flesh" in 1 Tim. 3:16.
In this case, some uncials follow The Peshitta , reading "OS" ephanerothay
- "Who, Which was manifested..."
The Byz. text in Codex Alexandrinus (5th cent.) has "YS ephanerothay"- Abbrev. for "God ..." ;
Vaticanus (4th cent.) has "OS ephanerothay..."
The Theta (O with - inside) and Omicron (O) being the only difference.
Early Greek was written this way; all caps and no spaces, at least for NT and LXX mss.

Blessings,

Dave Bauscher