Variants by Mark d. Roberts
The Quantity and Quality of Textual Variants
Skeptics who try to cast doubt upon the reliability of the New Testament manuscripts point to the apparently large number of variants they contain. Bart Ehrman, for example, in Misquoting Jesus, suggests that there are 200,000 to 400,000 variants among the New Testament manuscripts. He adds, dramatically, "There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament." That sounds ominous, doesn't it? But, in fact, the data give us no reason to doubt the reliability of the manuscripts. Let me explain why.
A thought experiment will help here. The four gospels comprise over 64,000 words. We have over 2,000 manuscripts that contain all or part of these gospels. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that each word represents one potential variant. (In fact each word represents many potential variants, owing to misspelling, omission, word order, etc.) Further, let's suppose that each manuscript contains half of the gospel material, or 32,000 words. Using these conservative numbers, there are 64,000,000 possible variants in the gospel manuscripts. If there are, in fact, 200,000 variants (a high estimate for the gospels alone), then this means that we have .3% of the possible variants. To put it positively, the accuracy score for the gospel manuscripts is 99.7%. Not a bad grade.
We have such a large number of variants because there are so many extant manuscripts. But, as I've already shown, having many manuscripts actually increases the likelihood of our getting back to the original text. It also adds to the number of variants, however, which can sound negative to one who isn't familiar with text critical issues.
This is p66, which is called the Bodmer Papyrus. It dates from around 200 A.D. The text is John 1:1-13, plus the first word of verse 14.
Let's me suggest one more hypothetical that might make clear what I'm saying. This book contains about 40,000 words. Suppose I asked two people to make copies of this book by hand. Suppose, further, that they made one mistake every 1,000 words (99.9% accuracy). When they finished, each of their manuscripts would have 40 mistakes, for a total of 80. This doesn't sound too bad, does it? But suppose I asked 2,000 people to make copies of my book. And suppose they also made a mistake every 1,000 words. When they finished, the total of mistakes in their manuscripts would be 80,000. This sounds like a lot of variants – more variants than words in my book! But in fact the large number of variants is a simple product of the large number of manuscripts.
Moreover, if text critics were going to try and determine what the autograph of this book said, they'd be in a much stronger position if they had 2,000 copies to work from, even though they'd be dealing with 80,000 variants. With 2,000 manuscripts, the text critics would be able to evaluate the variants more astutely and come up with something very close to what I originally wrote. If they only had two manuscripts, however, even though these included only 80 variants, they'd often be unable to determine what the original manuscript said.
So, the fact "there are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament" isn't surprising. Nor it is bad news. It's a reflection of the wealth of the manuscript evidence we have available to us. The actual number of variants represents a tiny percentage of possible variants among the manuscripts.
The vast majority of variants in the New Testament manuscripts are insignificant, either because they appear so rarely that they are obviously not original, or because they don't appear in the older manuscripts, or because they don't impact the meaning of the text. In fact, the majority of variants that show up in enough older manuscripts to impact our reading of the text are spelling variations or errors. Text critic Daniel Wallace concludes that "only about 1% of the textual variants" make any substantive difference. And few, if any, of these have any bearing on theologically important matters. If, for example, you simply took out of the gospels every word that was text-critically uncertain, the impact on your understanding of Jesus would be negligible.
This, by the way, is exactly what most modern translations do with the two most obvious and significant textual variants in the gospels. One of these appears in John 7:53-8:11, the story of the woman caught in adultery. Virtually all translations put this story in brackets, adding a note that says something like: "The earliest manuscripts do not include this passage." It's likely that this story is true, but that it was added to John well after the evangelist finished his task. Similarly, the ending of Mark includes a bracketed passage because the old manuscripts do not include anything after Mark 16:8. These two disputed passages, though significant in some ways, do not substantially alter our understanding of Jesus.
This Bible you have is reliable, trustworthy and true. Read it, live by it, and support it!
“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,…”
1 Corinthians 15:3
2 comments:
Jamie,
You make some great points concerning biblical accuracy. To date, there are approxiamately 5338manuscripts. And, there are quite a few textual variances. However, if one were to study, as every student of the scriptures should, they would discover that most of the textual variances do not effect the translation at all or, for that matter, alter any theology.
The important thing for your readers to rememember is when there seems to be a textual issue, always interpret it with other scriptures. Allow scripture to interpret scripture. The revelation of God, through His people, will continually illuminate our hearts and minds, helping us to interpret His word in the correct way. The problem with textual criticism is it mostly majors on the minors. What they seem to forget is God does not need spell check or grammar lessons. His words are supreme. Powerful enough to say "let there be", and the universe pops into existence. They are full of superiority in that when he speaks but "a" word, the demons flee. They contain finality, never to repeated again when He says, "It is finished" and no matter how the enemy interprets that one, it is over! His task is done, completed in such a way that He now sits at the right of the throne of God the father until he makes His enemies His footstool. May God continue to bless the reading of His word!!
Greg,
You are alive, alive, alive!!!!!!
I thought you were on mission somewhere like Hawaii or Thailand.
Great point.
PS.
Doesn't Phil look a lot like Mark Marshall!
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