Does it matter ...? Does Matthew 17.21 belong in your Bible?

AV/KJV: Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

ESV: [verse missing]

It does matter … Because every word of God matters (cf.  Proverbs 30.5). But also because there is overwhelming documentary evidence since the earliest times for this reading. The verse is in the majority of manuscripts, and quoted by Early Christian writers from the second century onwards. This omission in the ESV is serious since it also deletes all other references to fasting and prayer on the basis of certain manuscripts ( Mark 9.29 and  Acts 10.30). 

Background

This verse is universally found in the Byzantine Text and therefore the overwhelming majority of extant manuscripts. The inclusion of this verse is supported the Diatessaron of Tatian in the second century A.D.,¹ and by Origen in the third century in his commentary on Matthew.² These words were also cited by the third century Latin Father Tertullian.³ The omission of this verse by the modern critical text, e.g. Nestle-Aland 28 is supported by Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus and therefore many modern versions omit it altogether. The ESV adds a footnote: ‘Some manuscripts insert verse 21: But this kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting’.

Doctrinal Difference

The modern critical text also deletes references to fasting in Mark 9.29 and Acts 10.30. The modern critical text has thus eliminated all references by our Lord and Saviour Himself to prayer and fasting, and it has eliminated from our purview the fact that Cornelius the centurion was also fasting when in prayer, when the angel appeared to him, commanding him to summon Peter to bring the Gospel to his house. These deletions of fasting from the Holy Writ would appear to be systematic. Given the antinomian trends that were rampant in Egypt in the second and third centuries A.D. as detailed above, along with the unspeakable moral licentiousness of the Egyptian Gnostics as related in great detail by the early Father Epiphaniusiv, it is impossible not to suspect the mischief of heretics also in this deletion.

Endnotes

1. Tatian, ANF09, Diatessaron, Section XXIV, line 45.

2. Origen, ANF09, Commentary on Matthew, Book 1, chapter 7.

3. Tertullian, ANF04, Part Fourth, 'On Fasting'. iv Epiphanius, The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salmis (translated by Frank Williams) (Leiden, the Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 2009), pp 90 – 109. Epiphanius on these pages explicitly mentions the most wicked sexual immoralities of the Gnostics who proliferated in Egypt in his time, and with whom he had come in contact while in Egypt.