1 Timothy 3:16, “God was manifested”, or “he who was manifested”?
1 Timothy 3:16 says God was manifest in the flesh in the KJV; the competing reading says who was manifested in the flesh. The difference involves two small strokes in Greek uncial script.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB is translated by a committee of language models that works blind. The translators are never told they are translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and never shown the witnesses listed above. Where the manuscripts disagree, the choice between readings is made before translation by the same kind of translator working the same way: it sees the competing readings and the witnesses by age and class, but never a reference or a manuscript name. There are 14,877 such places. For APB 4.0 every one was decided again in October 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol decided every one first. Claude Fable 5.1, from another model family, decided 2,483 of them second, including every place where the first translator left the base text. A departure from the base text needs both translators to agree and the first to be at least 0.8 confident. There is no third translator, so the base text stands when the two disagree. APB 4.0 is translated over those decisions. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
“The base text reads ὃς. The copies also carry the omission [later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. Early support and the harder transition strongly favor the default.”
“The base text reads Ὃς. The copies also carry θεὸς [later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. Both the earlier evidence and the direction of clarification favor the default.”
The committee's APB 4.0 decision kept the pronoun as the base text: “The copies also carry θεὸς [later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text.” GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI), the first translator, kept that text; the unit did not go to a second translator. The committee's printed translation expresses the reading as “he was revealed in flesh” and retains the rest of the verse.
The argument for each reading
If “who”
The case for ΟΣ, meaning who, rests on the editions that print the pronoun and the examination of Codex Alexandrinus. WH, Tregelles, and NA28 all print the pronoun. In Codex Alexandrinus, the original ink reads ΟΣ; the strokes that turn it into the abbreviation for God are later touch-ups. That distinction matters because a manuscript's present appearance can include changes made after its first inscription. With the pronoun, the sentence moves from the mystery of godliness into a description of someone revealed in flesh. The subject is expressed without the explicit noun God at this point.
If “God”
The case for ΘΣ, meaning God, rests on its place in the Byzantine textual tradition. Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform prints θεὸς, and the KJV renders the phrase as “God was manifest in the flesh.” This reading gives the following statements an explicit subject: God. Its support in the Byzantine majority tradition gives it a substantial place in the variant's transmission. The later touch-ups in Codex Alexandrinus also show the pronoun being changed to this reading, though those strokes do not establish God as that manuscript's original wording.
The examination of Codex Alexandrinus distinguishes its original ink from later changes. It does not by itself settle the wording across the whole textual tradition. The variant changes whether this clause names God explicitly or begins with a pronoun. The statement about being revealed in flesh remains in either reading. The doctrinal significance of that difference requires interpretation; this wording alone does not settle a doctrine.
Related entries
Witness readings for critical editions are quoted from the SBLGNT apparatus (CC BY 4.0); Hebrew text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). Readings of ancient manuscripts and versions are cited from the sources linked above.