1God, having in the past spoken to the fathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2has at the end of these days spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds. 3His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, who, when he had by himself purified us of our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4having become as much better than the angels as the more excellent name he has inherited is better than theirs. 5For to which of the angels did he say at any time,
“You are my Son.
Today I have become your father?”
and again,
“I will be to him a Father,
and he will be to me a Son?”
6When he again brings in the firstborn into the world he says, “Let all the angels of God worship him.” 7Of the angels he says,
“He makes his angels winds,
and his servants a flame of fire.”
8But of the Son he says,
“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your Kingdom.
9You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity;
therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.”
10And,
“You, Lord, in the beginning, laid the foundation of the earth.
The heavens are the works of your hands.
11They will perish, but you continue.
They all will grow old like a garment does.
12You will roll them up like a mantle,
and they will be changed;
but you are the same.
Your years won’t fail.”
13But which of the angels has he told at any time,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet?”
14Aren’t they all serving spirits, sent out to do service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?
1 Timothy 3:16 “God was revealed in the flesh"
“And we all agree, our religion contains amazing revelation:
He was revealed in the flesh,
vindicated by the Spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among Gentiles,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory.” (NET)
The line “He was revealed in the flesh,” however, is not found in all ancient manuscripts. Most of the later ones have instead “God was revealed in the flesh.”
The evidence that ‘he’ instead of ‘God’ is authentic, however, is compelling. First, the oldest and best manuscripts have ‘he’ here. In fact, no original wording of any manuscript before the 8th/9th century had ‘God.’ In Greek, the difference between ‘he’ and ‘God’ is a single letter: ‘he’ would be written ΟΣ; ‘God’ as ΘΣ (ancient mss often use abbreviated ΘΕΟΣ as ΘΣ, with a line above ΘΣ). One can easily imagine a scribe adding a stroke in the middle of the omicron to turn ‘he’ into ‘God.’ None of the ancient versions have ‘God’ and no church father testifies to ‘God’ here until the end of the 4th century.
Second, on the surface the grammar of ‘he’ is awkward. It is actually the relative pronoun ‘who,’ a reading that scribes would naturally want to change to something more suitable (the harder reading is usually the original reading, and is one that scribes routinely altered to an easier, more palatable reading). Significantly, the Latin manuscripts virtually all have ‘which,’ a reading that could not have come from ‘God’ but only from ‘who.’ They testify to a second-century Greek manuscript as their ancestor.
Is the word ‘he’ (or ‘who’) so difficult that it should be considered spurious? No. In reality, the line “He was revealed in the flesh” is the first line of a six-strophe hymn. Many hymns in the Greek New Testament started with the relative pronoun ‘who’ (e.g., Rom 4:25; Phil 2:6; Col 1:15; Heb 1:3). Once the genre is taken into account, the relative pronoun fits well in the passage and should be considered authentic.