Matthew 21:44 — the stone that crushes: original, or from Luke?
Matthew 21:44 is transmitted both with the verse standing and with the parable ending without it. The question is whether its close wording with Luke 20:18 reflects Matthew's text or later arrival from Luke.
What the APB prints.
Every witness, on the record.
What a blind committee did here.
The APB's translation committee works blind: it is never told it is translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and it never sees the witnesses above. Whatever it did at this verse, it did on the language alone — and its record is public.
The blind committee's record contains no verse-specific rationale: "no rationale note matches this crux." The APB nevertheless prints Matthew 21:44 between Matthew 21:43 and 21:45. For the pericope, the audit verdict is 'clean'.
The case for each reading.
If Matthew wrote it
The verse is present in almost every manuscript and is printed by Nestle-Aland 28. The apparatus line gives the full verse as the reading printed by WH, Treg, NA28, and RP. This wide printed and manuscript support makes the standing verse a substantial part of the transmitted form of Matthew 21:44. In the APB, it also forms a direct continuation after Matthew 21:43: the one who falls on the stone is broken, and the one on whom it falls is crushed. On this reading, the parable moves from the kingdom being given to a fruit-producing nation to the stone's twofold effect before the chief priests and Pharisees recognize that the parables concern them.
If it arrived from Luke
The omission has limited but weighty support: Papyrus 104, Bezae, and Old Latin end the parable without the verse. The packet identifies Papyrus 104 as the earliest papyrus of this passage and says that it appears to lack the verse, alongside the Western tradition. The apparatus also records omission in the Westcott-Hort margin, even though the verse is printed in the main text. The wording reads exactly like Luke 20:18, which creates the specific question of whether the sentence entered Matthew from Luke. On the omission reading, Matthew 21:43 is followed directly by Matthew 21:45, without the stone saying in between.
What remains uncertain is whether the standing verse belonged between Matthew 21:43 and 21:45 or arrived from Luke 20:18. The packet supplies no basis for a verdict beyond the listed witnesses and apparatus. This variant changes the presence or absence of one saying in this parable; it does not by itself settle doctrine, since doctrines rest on many passages.
More places where the manuscripts argue.
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 as published scholarly fact with their sources linked above. Nothing on this page declares a winner — the evidence is the point.
Weigh it yourself.
The registry doesn't tell you which reading is true. It puts every witness on one page, shows what a blind committee did with the same language, and leaves the verdict where it belongs — with the reader.