To make the story consistent, we would have to change one verse or the other. It would clearly make more sense to change "five" in verse 17 to "two," and so it always is in canonical Matthew (my Matthew III). But all nine of the manuscripts examined by George Howard say "five." One of them (his ms. "E") retains "five" but has a supralinear correction to "two."
This aroused my curiosity. Checking the parallel in Luke (Lk. 19:12-27), I found a completely different version of the story, one in which the "talents" have become "minas" (one mina = 1/60 of a talent), the "man going on a far journey" has become a "nobleman" who "went to a distant country to receive a kingdom for himself," and where the "servants" are instead "slaves." Instead of the wealthy man giving five, two, and one "according to what was suitable for him," Luke has him give ten slaves one mina each. The first has used the one mina to make ten more minas; the second (verse 18) has made five more minas. In both stories, the last servant/slave mentioned has hidden the money away and made nothing.
The "five" in Mt. 25:17 is an error, but it is not a random error. It is a reflection of the Lukan version, that is to say an alternate version, of the story.
There are several possibilities here. It is possible that Matthew may have been familiar with Luke's work. It may be a quasi-harmonistic error by a well intentioned copyist, or it simply may have resulted from mental conflation of the two versions.
The two versions of the story are very different. Where two versions are similar but one is much more elaborate, the principles of textual criticism would tell us that the more elaborate one is probably the later, and the simpler one the more original. These two versions are, I think, too different to reflect a common, written document. It is likely that both versions circulated independently at the oral transmission stage, and that Matthew chose one of them for inclusion, while Luke chose the other. Matthew may have known both versions and mentally conflated them. Alternatively, he may have been familiar with Luke's work.
Mark, who used an early version of Matthew (my Matthew I) does not have this story at all. Luke has it in a very different form, which may be independent. The error in Hebrew Matthew (my Matthew IIb) had already been corrected in canonical Matthew (Matthew III) but it was still present (and not only sporadically) in Hebrew Matthew (Matthew IIb).
This Hebrew Matthew has survived in twenty-eight manuscripts that we know of. George Howard examined nine of them, and gave the variant readings in a small apparatus at the bottom of each page of the Hebrew. According to that apparatus, all nine of the mss. that Howard examined have "five" in Mt. 25:17, although one does also have a supralinear correction to "two." To my mind, the Rabbis took extreme care to protect the integrity of this text, just as they would have with one of their own sacred texts. This speaks very well for them and for their honesty, and their extreme care has preserved for us a possible clue to the mystery of the Synoptic Problem.
There is one small loose end here, which I must tie up. Where canonical (Greek) Matthew has "talents," and Luke has "minas," Hebrew Matthew has זהובים (z'huvim, literally "goldens," from the Hebrew word זָהָב, meaning "gold." The translation is "coins of gold." These gold coins would have been closer to a talent than to a mina, which was only 1/60 or 1/50 of a talent. All in all, the Matthaean version seems to me to be more original than the Lukan one.
Text © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.
