Last week we introduced you to the idea of “textual criticism.” The phrase refers to the scientific reconstruction of works of literature primarily from the ancient world. None of the original writings of Homer, Tacitus, or Plato exist. In fact, the earliest, known copy of Plato’s Dialogues is 1,200-years removed from time of its writing. How can any of us know whether we are reading the Iliad, Annals, or the Republic? More importantly, what does this say about the Bible!
[Editor’s note: When the word “text” is used, it refers to a completed Greek New Testament from which an English version is translated. A manuscript is a section, book, or even complete New Testament used to put together a text.-JS]
This is where the textual critic steps onto the stage. They gather all available copies of a work and begin sorting through the various misspellings, accidental inclusions or exclusions of words, and differences in names of people and places. Most of these variants in the text are easily resolved.
However, a skeptic might look at these differences and say, “There are 200,000 mistakes in your Bible!” This may seem shocking and it is a deliberate attempt to weaken your faith (and insulate their own unbelief). What they are hoping you never realize about that big number is how it is derived. With 5,800 manuscripts of the New Testament, there are occasional mistakes. If one error in spelling is copied into 500 of those manuscripts, the skeptic declares that to be 500 mistakes. No, it is one mistake faithfully repeated 500-times. Bible scholar Neil R. Lightfoot, in his book How We Got The Bible, summarizes this strategy of counting variants as mistakes this way, “A person is either unlearned or of a skeptical mind who tries to take this large number of variations and use it in such a way as to undermine someone’s faith in the word of God.”
This is not to say there are no difficulties in determining the exact text of the New Testament. Well-intentioned scribes have tried to harmonize the statements of Jesus from the gospels. If Luke has a phrase that is not in Mark, the copyist might assume the missing words were in the original and supply them. For instance, in Luke 4:4, Jesus’ temptation is recorded and our Lord quotes from Deuteronomy 8:3. Matthew 4:4 records the entire passage to rebuke Satan while Luke has just a portion. In the third gospel, Jesus says, “Man shall not live by bread alone.” The first book of the New Testament includes “but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” The scholars working on the Greek text realized the additional part of the quote was not in the oldest manuscripts. It is in the text of Matthew, but it is unknown in the earliest copies of the New Testament. Those working to translate the gospel of Luke could not in good conscience retain what they believe is an addition to the text. So, it is not in verse four despite the 400-year tradition of the KJV which includes it.
So what happened here? Several possibilities are available to answer that question. Matthew quotes more of the passage. But that does not mean Luke is mistaken. It is entirely possible, Jesus quoted the entire verse, but Luke either did not have the full quote or just decided the shorter section was all that was needed. We know Jesus said things which went unrecorded (John 20:30-31; 21:25). Are the sections used by both writers accurate and identical? Yes. Is true doctrine compromised? Absolutely not! If Luke never wrote a page, we would still have this phrase recorded in the gospels and the Law of Moses.
There are admittedly a few places in the New Testament where scholars differ on how the text should be rendered. Of the 800,000 words in the New Testament, there are 12-to-16 passages over which there is debate. Some of these contain treasured passages (Mark 16:9-20, John 7:53-8:11) that are included in the modern texts but in brackets. While others are excluded in the newer translations because they are unknown to the earliest manuscripts (Acts 8:37; I John 5:7-8).
If all I have ever read is a KJV or NKJV, there will be times when other translations will seem to strike an unfamiliar note. This can be just as true if someone reads from a more loosely translated text. So what is to be done?
Believe in your Bible as the inspired word of God! In the introduction to their ground-breaking Greek text, Brooke Westcott and Fenton Hort write, “the amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation…can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text.” Do we have the word of God as originally delivered by inspiration? Yes! Almost every scholar in the last 500-years has agreed on 999 words of the text and disagreed on just one.
Purchase and read from a reliable English translation of the Bible. Nearly all Bible students agree that the King James, New King James, New American Standard, and English Standard versions of the Bible are faithful, “word-for-word” Bibles1. Will there be occasional differences in wording between Bibles? Yes. The KJV and NKJV were produced using a Greek text compiled in AD 1550. The ASV, NASB, ESV, and all major translations of the past 100-years use the Westcott-Hort style of critical Greek text. If you notice differences, this is almost certainly the underlying reason.
If you have questions, pursue the answers. Don’t be afraid of the truth. The word of God stands as the truth and always will.
1 The American Standard Version (1901) is highly regarded. It was the first major work to use the Westcott-Hort text.
[Editor’s Note: All quotes and references to manuscript evidence can be found in the following works: How We Got the Bible by Neil R. Lightfoot; The New Testament Documents (are they reliable?); and The Books And The Parchments both by F.F. Bruce; and Mind Your Faith by Doy Moyer-JS]
https://www.north2ndcofc.org/the-importance-of-a-word-part-i/
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