THE PROLOGUE
OUTLINE
53
IN
believed `Who was begotten' to be the true reading. It is too late now
for any one to express more than an opinion on this point. It would
seem, however, that every word in verse 13 would apply more
appropriately to Christ as `made flesh' than to `believers', for it would
hardly seem necessary to say that a believer was not `born of the will
of the flesh'. In any case, no doctrinal truth is modified in the slightest
degree, whichever reading we adopt. All we can say is that the
proximity of the incarnation in verse 14, and the way in which verse 13
leads up to it, is an argument in favour of the reading found by
Griesbach and adopted in The Companion Bible.