Translation errata?

[chuckd]

We were discussing the parable of the two sons in Matt. 21:28-32 last week.

All translations have v29 as the son who said he wouldn't go work, but repented. And v30 as the son who said he would go, but didn't.

One person in our group, who has an NASB translation had the opposite. The lip service son was in v29 and the one who eventually worked in v30.

When I look up NASB online, it agrees with the other translations. So I snapped a picture of her physical Bible. Is this errata or some weird manuscript issue?

 

[Polanus1561]

https://biblehub.com/nasb77/matthew/21.htm seems like an issue with the NASB 1977. Interesting.

 

[chuckd]

https://biblehub.com/nasb77/matthew/21.htm seems like an issue with the NASB 1977. Interesting.

Thanks. I was on biblegateway that just had NASB and NASB 1995 as options.

Do you think it was a mistake or they were dealing with a different manuscript that had it backwards?

 

[Polanus1561]

Metzger has this :

21:29–31 οὐ θέλω, ὕστερον δὲ μεταμεληθεὶς ἀπῆλθεν … ἑτέρῳ … ἐγώ, κύριε· καὶ οὐκ ἀπῆλθεν … ὁ πρῶτος {C}

The textual transmission of the parable of the two sons is very much confused (see also the comment on 21.32). Is the recusant but subsequently obedient son mentioned first or second (ver. 29)? Which of the two sons did the Jews intend to assert had done the father’s bidding (ver. 31), and what word did they use in their reply to Jesus’ question (πρῶτος or ἔσχατος or ὕστερος or δεύτερος)? There are three principal forms of text:
(a) According to א C* K W Δ Π itc, vg syrc, , al, the first son says “No” but afterwards repents. The second son says “Yes” but does nothing. Which one did the will of the father? Answer: ὁ πρῶτος.
(b) According to D ita, , , , , , syrs al, the first son says “No” but afterwards repents. The second son says “Yes” but does nothing. Which one did the will of the father? Answer: ὁ ἔσχατος.
(c) According to B Θ f 700 syrpal arm geo al, the first son says “Yes” but does nothing. The second says “No” but afterwards repents. Which one did the will of the father? Answer: ὁ ὕστερος (B), or ὁ ἔσχατος (Θ f 700 arm), or ὁ δεύτερος (4 273), or ὁ πρῶτος (geoA).
Because (b) is the most difficult of the three forms of text, several scholars (Lachmann, Merx, Wellhausen, Hirsch) have thought that it must be preferred as readily accounting for the rise of the other two as improvements of it. But (b) is not only difficult, it is nonsensical—the son who said “Yes” but does nothing obeys his father’s will! Jerome, who knew of manuscripts in his day that read the nonsensical answer, suggested that through perversity the Jews intentionally gave an absurd reply in order to spoil the point of the parable. But this explanation requires the further supposition that the Jews not only recognized that the parable was directed against themselves but chose to make a nonsensical reply rather than merely remain silent. Because such explanations attribute to the Jews, or to Matthew, farfetched psychological or overly-subtle literary motives, the Committee judged that the origin of reading (b) is due to copyists who either committed a transcriptional blunder or who were motivated by anti-Pharisaic bias (i.e., since Jesus had characterized the Pharisees as those that say but do not practice (cf. Mt 23:3), they must be represented as approving the son who said “I go,” but did not go).
As between forms (a) and (c) the former is more probably the original. Not only are the witnesses that support (a) slightly better than those that read (c), but there would be a natural tendency to transpose the order of (a) to that of (c) because:
(1) it could be argued that if the first son obeyed, there was no reason to summon the second; and
(2) it was natural to identify the disobedient son with either the Jews in general or with the chief priests and elders (ver. 23) and the obedient son with either the Gentiles or the tax collectors and the prostitutes (ver. 31)—and in accord with either line of interpretation, the obedient son should come last in chronological sequence. It may also be remarked that the inferiority of form (c) is shown by the wide diversity of readings at the close of the parable.

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Just pasting the above, no time to decipher it myself.