Survey of How We Got the Bible (Class 05: Textual Variants)

Everyone, it's Keith and we are in class 5 of Sovereign Grace Academy's survey of how we got the Bible.

Now, this was supposed to be an in-person class, but the class ended up falling on Mother's Day, so I sent out a message to everyone and said I was going to pre-record the class, which I am doing in my studio, and I'll be sending out the class and everyone will be able to do the class online.

Those of you who have this class and do it online, it's going to be pretty much the same as always, except for I'm not standing behind the megadesk.

I'm sitting here at my home office studio, but for those of you who are used to being in class, this will be a little bit different.

You'll have to take the class via video this week, and I do apologize for that, but I do hope that everyone understands it's Mother's Day.

Many of us have events and things going on with our moms and didn't want to have to change plans regarding that, and when I was coming up with the calendar at the beginning of the season, I didn't even think about this being Mother's Day.

I did plan for next week, though.

Next week I will be out of town.

Brother Andy and I are going to the National Conference for the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals.

While we are gone, Brother Mike Collier is going to be teaching next week's class.

Next week's class is the history of the English Bible, and it is a very important class, especially for the English-speaking world, knowing how the Bible went from the original languages of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic into the English language, and the processes that went into that.

And I definitely recommend that you pay attention next week, because a lot of what is going to be said in these classes will probably end up on the final.

So if you're planning to earn a certificate in this class from Sovereign Grace Academy, you have to show that you've taken notes from every class.

That's part of how you receive your grade, but you also have to take the final, and you have to pass it.

So if you have questions about the class, you can look up the syllabus, and if you have any questions about what the syllabus has to say, please send me an email at foskeyjacks at gmail.com.

So in our class discussions, we have already gone through the first two parts of what we say are the four steps of the revelatory process.

We're talking about how we got the Bible, and the four steps of the revelatory process are inspiration, that is God breathing out His Word, God giving His Word through the medium of the men that He chose to write down His Word, that is inspiration.

And the next is what we call canonization, that is where the church recognizes what God has inspired.

So inspiration is God giving His Word, canonization is the church recognizing His Word.

And the third step in the process is the step that I said takes the most time of study in this class, because this is a study of how we got the Bible.

So this is the class on the question of transmission.

Transmission means how it went from Moses to me, essentially.

How does it go from the hands of the original writer, down through the ages, down to us.

And this is our third class on the subject of transmission.

The first class was our Old Testament class.

We talked about Old Testament manuscripts.

The last class last week was our New Testament class.

We talked about New Testament manuscripts.

And tonight we are going to deal with the subject of textual variation within the manuscript tradition.

This is a very important subject because this deals with the question of why do some Bibles have certain verses and why do other Bibles not have those verses.

Recently there was a video that sort of went viral.

I saw it both on Facebook and I saw somebody shared it on another media platform.

It was either TikTok or Twitter.

I don't remember where.

But it was a man who opened up his King James Bible and he read a verse and he then went to another Bible, probably the NIV, and he opened it up and the verse wasn't there.

Then he went to the NASB and the verse wasn't there.

Then he went to the ESV and the verse wasn't there.

And he turned to the camera, very sinister looking, and he said, see what they're trying to hide from us.

See what they're they've taken things out of the Bible.

And such a accusation does get the conspiracy theorists and all of us awakened a little.

Makes us think, well maybe they have taken things out of the Bible.

Maybe, maybe there are things that are being hidden.

And so that begins the conversation of textual variation.

And so tonight's class is on the subject of transmission of the Scripture and particularly textual variation.

So with that being said, I want to ask this question as a starting point.

And again, I know I'm not in a classroom full of people so nobody can answer this question, but I want you to answer this question in your own mind.

What do we do with the fact that we have over 5,000 hand-copied New Testament manuscripts and no two of them are absolutely identical? That is the question that we have to ask in regard to textual variation.

It's the question of the variety of manuscripts, and every manuscript has at least some part that doesn't read exactly as the other parts.

And simply stated, this question could be, should the variations in the manuscripts cause us to jettison our confidence in the accuracy of the Bible? And that is what some people do claim.

Bart Ehrman, who I have mentioned in previous classes, serves as the James A.

Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Ehrman believes that because variations exist in the New Testament manuscripts, that should cause us to conclude that they are not reliable and therefore not inspired.

Hear that again.

Because variations exist, according to Ehrman, who is an unbeliever, because variations exist, that should cause us to believe the manuscripts are unreliable, therefore not inspired.

Now, in our last two classes, we have discussed the copying processes being different between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

We pointed out that there were no copy machines up until the middle of the last century, and up until the time of the printing press, all documents in history were hand copied.

That is simply how manuscripts went down through the ages.

That's the transmission process, handwritten copied.

And with anything that is handwritten, there is the potential for differences and variations.

And so we call those differences variants.

You'll hear sometimes when I'm preaching, or I'll say there is a textual variant at this verse, or this verse represents a variant in the manuscript tradition.

And here's the key, guys.

The more manuscripts we have, the more variants we have.

If we only had one manuscript, there wouldn't be any variants.

That is part of the reason why we have to deal with this, particularly in regard to the New Testament, is because we have so many manuscripts, such a large variety of manuscripts.

And when I say manuscripts, that doesn't mean whole manuscripts.

We have so many manuscript pieces and fragments and portions of manuscripts.

We have so many of them that it creates a number of variants because of how many manuscripts we possess.

And textual criticism, you may want to write this down.

This is a note that's important.

Textual criticism is the process of attempting to ascertain the original wording of a text based upon the available manuscript evidence.

When we use the term textual criticism, some people automatically get very uncomfortable and are automatically give a negative response because they think what we mean is we're criticizing the Bible.

But that's not what textual criticism actually means, because they'll say, well, who are you to criticize the Bible? We're not criticizing the Bible, we are criticizing the texts of where the manuscripts differ, where the texts are different within the manuscripts.

We have to scrutinize, we have to criticize or look at it critically to come to a conclusion as to what is the right reading.

Lower and higher criticism is a good way to think of this.

Lower criticism is an honest attempt to determine the original text of biblical books.

That's lower criticism.

That's what we should engage in.

Higher criticism involves judgments on the genuineness of the biblical text in regard to authorship, dating, and accuracy.

The findings are often subjective and normally present a very low view of Scripture.

So when you talk about higher critical thinking, I think about men like John Dominic Crossom, who was part of the Jesus Seminar.

He's a man who I heard say that he didn't believe Jesus rose from the dead, he believed that he was buried in a shallow grave, and that his bones were eaten by dogs.

He believed some very critical things about what the story of the Bible tells us, the message of the Bible.

And so that is not what we're engaging in.

That is higher criticism, and that is not what we're talking about when we talk about text criticism.

Text criticism is lower criticism which is in an honest attempt to determine the original text of biblical books.

And we are engaging in that.

We're not judging what the Bible says in regard to the truthfulness of it.

We're trying to determine what was originally written, you know.

And oftentimes you'll hear me say this, and I'm parroting Dr.

White at this point, Dr.

James White, I want to know what Paul wrote.

I want to know what John wrote.

That's what textual criticism is about, trying to ascertain what was originally written.

Because remember, we don't have the original documents anymore.

In fact, I want to remind you why textual criticism is necessary.

Three reasons why textual criticism is necessary.

Number one, the original manuscripts of the Bible no longer exist.

They don't.

That's simply the case.

The original manuscripts of the Bible no longer exist.

We only have copies.

Number two, there are variations within the 5,000 plus copies we possess from the first of the 15th centuries.

We have manuscript fragments going all the way back to, well, we say the second centuries and forward, and there are variations within those manuscripts and fragments.

And these variations, number three, these variations have to be examined to determine the original reading.

So again, why is textual criticism necessary? Number one, the original manuscripts of the Bible no longer exist.

Number two, there are variations within the 5,000 copies we possess.

And number three, the variations have to be examined to determine the original reading.

That is why we do textual criticism.

Now, by studying textual criticism, we're also preparing ourselves for the objections which will inevitably be raised regarding the Scripture by those who oppose the Scripture.

One of the most common objections to the Bible is the accusation of corruption.

In fact, think of the the Mormons.

The Mormons argue that the reason why we should believe Mormon teaching is because the Bible itself has been subject to corruption.

I'll give you a quote.

This quote is, The eighth of Mormonism's thirteen articles of faith found at the end of the Pearl of Great Price says this, See, they're leaving it open to the idea that it has been corrupted somehow, it has been mistranslated or miscommunicated.

Another quote, this is from the Gospel Coalition, it says this, See, the the Mormons believe the Bible has been corrupted.

So does the Muslim people, the Islamic people.

The Islamic view of the Christian Bible, which Christians hold to be revelations from God, is based on the belief that the Quran says that parts of the Bible are a revelation from Allah.

But they believe that some of it became distorted or corrupted, and that a lot of the text has been added, which was not part of genuine revelation.

So again, what are we saying? We're saying that the Mormons claim the Bible's been corrupted, the Muslims claim the Bible has been corrupted, and even just flat-out skeptics and unbelievers claim this.

Here's a quote from an online person called The Skeptical Teacher, All right, so right there, that's three different sources of groups that would argue that the Bible has gone through wholesale corruption, that the Bible is unreliable, and therefore not to be completely trusted.

And so if we are not students of textual criticism, we will not be able to answer the questions when these questions arise, because the questions that we're going to be dealing with tonight are many of the questions that come up in these conversations with these groups.

So this is a vital apologetics issue.

So let's begin with understanding the variants.

We're going to look at understanding the variants.

A textual variant is any place where there are differences between the handwritten manuscripts.

According to some scholarly estimates, there are approximately 400,000 variants in the New Testament manuscripts.

400,000 variants.

Now that's amazing when you consider that the New Testament is only made up of 138,162 Greek words.

So hear that again.

400,000 variants exist within 138,162 Greek words.

Taken alone, this would lead one to believe that there are at least three variants for every one word of the New Testament.

How could anything with such statistics be considered reliable? Well, here's the part that must be kept in mind, and this is hugely important.

99% of the variants have no impact on the meaning of the word or phrase in any way.

99% of the variants have no impact at all on the meaning.

They are either spelling errors, grammar issues, punctuation, or word order issues.

That's the vast majority.

In fact, one of the ones, and I mentioned this in class last week for those who were in class, is the movable nu.

Nu is the letter N in the English language.

In the Greek, it's the letter nu.

And in English, we would say an apple, but we would say a banana.

And the reason why is because when there is a word that begins with a vowel sound, then we put the N after the indefinite article, which is a, and we make it an apple versus a banana.

Well, this same thing happens in Greek.

The Greek language has that same phonetic change that happens, and it is called the movable nu.

Now, the meaning doesn't change between a apple and an apple, but that is textually different, and therefore it does represent a textual variant.

If 99% of the variants have no impact, well, we still have 1% to deal with.

And if there are 400,000 variants, then 1% is still 4,000 variants.

So that still means that of the 138,162 words and 4,000 variants, that constitutes a 2.9% variation within the text that we have to deal with.

So again, if we're looking at 138,162 words, we're looking at 4,000 variants within those words that actually have some meaningful difference.

That constitutes a 2.9% amount of variants that we have to deal with.

Now, that's a far cry from those who would say we have three variants for every word.

No, that's not actually true, and you know, that's not even, and when somebody says that, they are just shouting rhetoric.

That's not the case.

And if you ever hear someone shouting that, if you ever hear someone saying, well, we have 400,000 variants and only 138,000 words, that means, you know, almost three variants for every word.

Just know that that person is not being intellectually honest with the data.

But we do have to deal with the remaining variants.

2.9% is still about 4,000 variants, as we noted, and that doesn't mean that there are 4,000 places where the Bible has potential errors or confusions, but it does mean that there are variants that have to be dealt with, and some of these variants are more important than others, as we're going to see.

Some of these variants, even though they may change something, it doesn't really affect much, and we'll see what I mean as we go through this.

In your notes, if you would, I want you to write down two different categories.

I don't know if you want to make like a chart or something.

I don't have my board with me, so I can't write it down for you, but I want you to write down viable and non-viable, and then I want you to write down intentional and unintentional, because that's the two categories that we need to consider when we're considering textual variation.

We need to first consider viable versus non-viable, and then we have to consider intentional versus unintentional, and so what do those mean? Viable means this is genuinely possibly what was originally written.

Sometimes it's obviously not a viable variant.

There are times where all the manuscripts read one way, and then one manuscript has this strange reading that doesn't represent anything close to what the others are saying, and that one we would say is probably not a viable variant.

So viability means it's possibly the original, and many variants are just not viable.

They just don't fall into that category, and the other is intentional versus unintentional.

Now, unintentional is the vast majority of instances where there is simply a scribal error.

A slip of the eye as the hand is copying a sentence, and it reads the two words are very similar, and they omit something in between those words, and we see that variant, and we can see what happened, and how that mistake is introduced.

There's something I mentioned in class, homoio...

I have a hard time saying this, homoio-teluton, which simply means similar endings, and again, where words have similar endings, you might see, and this happened to me the other day, I was writing something down, and I saw the end of a word that said ing, you know, a lot of English words end with ing.

I saw the ing, and so I wrote it, I wrote the ing down, and I kept, I went, looked back, wrote, wrote again, and I went, and when I finished what I was writing, I noticed I left out an entire portion of a sentence, and the reason why I left it out is because there was two words that ended in ing.

My eye went to the end of that ing on the second word, not the first, and I ended up leaving out a section, and that is an unintentional error.

This also happens, the slip of the eye in omitting a double-letter word or phrase, that's called haplography.

A slip of the mind in repeating a phrase or line of a Greek text, a dittography.

There is a slip of the ear in copying an oral dictation where a misspelling occurs.

This is something, if somebody hears something different than what was said, in fact, I want to just take a digression.

One of the ways that there is a study of how the original language was supposed to sound, because we don't speak Koine Greek anymore, we have modern Greek, but we know that there's some differences, so when we study how those words were supposed to sound, sometimes what is studied to determine that, is what letters were accidentally put in place of other letters when someone was copying something that they were hearing.

And so if you know that that letter was used where another letter was supposed to be, you know that those letters probably have a similar sound, and there are people who study language and study the speech and sounds of original languages, and they've come to some conclusions about how the original language probably was pronounced based upon some of the times where certain letters are used in place of other letters in misspellings, and it gives an example of what most likely was the use of that, or what was most likely the letter sound, or what was most likely the sound of that letter.

Sorry, I went off on a little digression there.

So those are unintentional variations, and we see those.

We also see intentional variation.

Now, somebody might see intentional variation, hear that word, and immediately have a problem with that, and say, wait a minute, you're saying that there were scribes who changed the manuscripts intentionally? Well, yes, and there are times where I think we can see this evidence in the tradition.

For instance, changes were made to improve the grammatical form of the text that was copied, just grammar changes we see.

Changes were made to bring the text into conformity with other biblical texts.

We call this harmonization.

I talked about this in my class on Mark.

I'm teaching Mark on Wednesday nights at the Sovereign Grace Family Church, and I talked about how we see times where there are harmonization, and like in Mark chapter 6, it mentions that when Jesus says it's better in Sodom and Gomorrah than on the Day of Judgment for this city, that phrase is not in many manuscripts in Mark, but it is in Matthew's gospel.

And so what is possibly what has happened is that a well-meaning scribe, a well-meaning person, in an attempt to harmonize Matthew and Mark, introduced that line into Mark, and it became part of a transmission textual line.

We mentioned this when we studied the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I don't know how many of you will remember this, but when we did the Dead Sea Scrolls, we talked about how there were two different versions of the Ten Commandments.

One was from Exodus and one was from Deuteronomy, and in the Deuteronomy version, it gave a slightly different reason for the Sabbath than was given in the Exodus version.

Not that either one is wrong, it was just a difference.

Well, in one of the manuscripts in the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is a harmonization where you have both things in one, and I believe it's a Deuteronomy scroll that contains both, and it's obviously a scribal amendation, meaning an amendment or a change that was made to the manuscript to try to harmonize these things that were not at odds with one another, but there was a difference, and the scribe is trying to bring the difference back and harmonize that change.

Now, another change we see is changes were made by combining two or more variant readings into one long combined reading.

We call that conflation, where you'll get multiple readings in one text.

There's also times where there's a perceived problem in the text, where there maybe seems like a disagreement, and a scribe will come and try to correct that perceived problem in the text, and so that, again, is an intentional change.

Some additional information as to the historical setting or proper interpretation of the text was placed in the margin by one scribe, and then a later scribe, not knowing if what's in the margin was meant to be extra or was meant because it was left out accidentally.

The next scribe doesn't know, so he includes it in the text.

A good example of this, if you have your Bible, I want you to open it now.

If you're listening to this, if you're taking notes or whatever, I want you to take note of John chapter 5, verse 4.

John chapter 5, verse 4.

This is one of those times when you'll hear people say, here's a place where the NIV took out a part of the Bible, or where the ESV took out a part of the Bible.

If you type...

I'll go right here in my Bible software.

If I go to John chapter 5, verse 4, it doesn't even exist.

Let me see if I can pull up verse 3.

I can.

I can go to verse 3, and then I can go to verse 5, but I can't go to verse 4.

And if you notice, if you're looking at an ESV, it has a little superscript there, and the superscript brings you back to a line at the bottom, and the line at the bottom says this.

It says, some manuscripts insert, holy or in part, waiting for the moving of the water, for an angel the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred the water.

Whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had.

So that's what's at the bottom of the ESV.

So it's in the margin, but it's not in the text.

And the reason why it's not in the text is because this is a place where there's a textual variation, and the translators of the ESV came to the conclusion that the veracity of this particular verse does not hold the weight to be included along with the whole passage, but it is included in the textual notes at the bottom of the page in case someone wanted to see what it said.

So again, if you have John 5 and verse 4, if you're looking at a King James Bible, then it's there.

Everything I just read is there, but if you're looking at an NIV or an ESV, it's not there.

What's interesting is it is there in the NAS, I believe.

I believe the NASB, the New American Standard Bible, does have it.

And so the big question people say, well why would anyone take something out of the Bible? But that question has an inherent assumption.

The inherent assumption is that this was supposed to be there, and therefore someone took it out.

And that's what the issue of the debate is.

Is this something that was supposed to be there and was taken out, or is this something that never should have been there to begin with because it wasn't part of what John wrote? That's the big issue.

People get very worked up by saying something's been removed from the Bible, and we shouldn't do that because the Bible says don't take anything away from this book in Revelation.

That's true, but you know what else it says? It says don't add anything to this book either.

And so the textual, the study of textual criticism is about trying to determine the right reading, whether something has been added or subtracted.

We want to know.

Bruce Metzger is a Bible scholar and professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, and he provides insight into the reason for this passage.

John chapter 5, verse 4, insights into this verse.

He states that verse 4 is a gloss whose secondary character is clear from, one, its absence from the earliest and best manuscripts.

And we talked about in our last class what those are.

Those are the manuscripts that have been discovered, full manuscripts, some that go back to the 4th century, and portions of manuscripts, papyri manuscripts, that go even further back than that, and it's absent in those manuscripts.

Number two, there is the presence of asterisks or obole to mark these words as spurious in more than 20 Greek witnesses.

So even outside of the older manuscripts, even in the later manuscripts, there are marks to indicate that this passage is in question.

Number three, this is again from Bruce Metzger, he says the presence of non-Yohanin words or expressions are used.

So even the words being used here are not the words that are normally used by John, so this is an internal debate, internal evidence, looking at what the text actually says.

And then the fourth thing is, Metzger says, the rather wide diversity of variant forms in which this verse has been transmitted.

And what that means is when you look at this verse, it's not only, is there manuscripts that have it with asterisks and markings to indicate that it's likely not original, but also its variations within the manuscript tradition.

So it's most likely, based upon those four things, not a part of what John originally wrote.

So if it's not a part of the original, then why was it included? Well, Dr.

James White proposes a simple answer.

He says that it's possible that this was a textual note that was included to explain the reason why people gathered at that pool at that time, but would not be well known to the later scribes, and the later scribes saw this textual note and included it as part of the text, and it made its way into the textual tradition.

So think about it this way, how many of you actually make notes in your Bible? Now, in your Bible, it would be easy because you have the printed text, and then you have your handwritten text, and there's obviously a big difference between a printed text and a handwritten text.

But imagine, going back to the time where everything was handwritten, and you had a handwritten note that was also a part of a page that was also a handwritten manuscript.

How would the later people be able to distinguish the difference between what was the original writing and what was your handwritten note? Certainly there would be ways for you to try to identify what was text and what was note, but this is how we see expansion over time.

Expansion happens as a result of these, again, unintentional errors of allowing notes to become part of the text, and this is how the text expands over time.

You'll often hear advocates of the longer readings, they'll say, well, you know, there are this many hundreds of words that are in the King James Bible that are not in other Bibles, or that are in the Texas Receptus that are not in the eclectic text.

And basically, I'll talk about that later, but the Texas Receptus is the Greek manuscript that the King James is based upon, and we're going to talk about that a little bit later in our King James Only class, and then the eclectic text is based upon a wider variety of Greek manuscripts which have been discovered since the 17th century.

So people will say, well, why does this have more words? Well, it has more words primarily because of expansion.

We see this happening over time, the text expands over time.

All right, so John 5-4 would seem to be an example of an unintentional insertion, which later unintentionally became part of the manuscript line of transmission.

But this leads us to compare viable and non- viable variants.

Many scholars do not consider John 5-4 to be viable because of all the things I read earlier, what Bruce Metzger said, those four things mean it's probably not a viable inclusion.

It is not to be included, and that's why many Bibles don't even have it in it, because it's not considered a viable variant.

In fact, some put it in brackets, some like the ESV don't have it at all, and some only have it in the textual notes.

So that wouldn't be a variant.

If we're thinking of, okay, it's unintentional, it's non-viable.

Now, what is a viable variant? Well, a viable variant is one that has a possibility of being the original reading.

And when it comes down to it, there are relatively few passages where there is a viable variant which is up for discussion.

Really relatively few.

And of those that do exist, none of them, this is key, none of them fundamentally alter the message of the gospel.

None of them change any historic Christian doctrine.

So let me say this again.

When it comes down to it, there are relatively few passages where there are viable variants, and of those viable variants, none of them change the doctrine of Scripture at all.

So, and I'll just give you a couple quotes here.

Ezra Abbott said, according to his estimates, the text is 99.75% pure.

A.T.

Robertson said he believed that only 1,000th part of the entire text was of any real concern.

That would make the New Testament 99.9% free from real concern for the textual critic.

And Sir Frederick Kenyon said this, quote, "...the Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries." So yes, there are textual variants.

Yes, there are some that are viable variants, but the vast majority of them are meaningless or unviable.

So as we begin to consider what we've learned tonight, I want you to think about eight things that you need to put in your mind.

These are, and once we go through these eight things, I'm going to move then to what would normally be the second part of class, and that is our after the break, but we're not going to take a break tonight because obviously we're not in class.

So here are eight things to consider, and hopefully you'll take notes on these.

If I was at the church, I may write some of these on the board, but here we go.

Eight reasons why we can remain confident in the accuracy of our Bible, even in light of the existence of textual variation.

Number one, the scriptures are without error in the original manuscripts.

We believe that because God gave them to us, and God is perfect.

So God gives us His Word, and His Word was without error in the original manuscripts.

That's number one.

Number two, we no longer have the original manuscripts, but what we do have is a text that represents the result of critical study of a vast manuscript tradition.

We have a text which represents a studied historical document.

This has not been haphazardly done.

Number three, variants do exist in these manuscripts, yet because of the vast amount of copies, these variants are easily recognizable.

I want you to think just for a moment on number three.

Imagine if we only had two manuscripts.

I said earlier, if we only had one manuscript, we wouldn't have any variants.

If we had two manuscripts, we would have variants, but we would have no way of knowing which one represented the original, but we don't have that.

We have so many manuscripts that we're able to actually see when variations are introduced into the text based upon historical studies, and based upon looking at the text in the history of certain variants, it's an amazing wealth that we've been given.

So variants do exist, but because of the vast amount of copies, they are easily recognizable.

Number four, the overwhelming majority of these variants are either non-viable or meaningless.

That's key to keep in mind.

When somebody brings up the variants, the vast majority of them are non-viable or meaningless.

Number five, no one variant changes or distorts any doctrine as no doctrine is based upon any single text.

No doctrine is based upon any single text, therefore no variant has the ability to destroy the message of the gospel or any essential doctrine of the faith.

Number six, the New Testament is the single best documented work of antiquity.

I've said this before, the New Testament is the single best documented work of antiquity by far and away, so that should give us great confidence that what we have in our hand represents what, with almost complete accuracy, what was originally written.

Number seven, the New Testament is the most open religious document in the world, readily acknowledging the textual critical issues in its footnotes.

That's key.

The New Testament has books written about the textual variants.

I have books on my shelf about the textual variants, Philip Comfort's book on the subject of textual variants.

You can go and look at almost every single textual variant, see what the history of that variant is.

We even have a Bible translation, the New English Translation, which gives us a historical answer for the variants that are in the text.

You can look at them, you can look down at the notes, you can see what the history of the variants are.

And here's what's interesting about that, if you have that, that doesn't exist in Islam.

You can't go and look up the variants in the manuscripts of the Quran, even though they do exist.

Those things are not readily made available, but Christian literature, our documents are open to criticism and that makes them, at least should, give us greater confidence.

Number eight, God's providential preservation of the New Testament differs from his preservation of the Old Testament, but both have been miraculously preserved.

Hear that again.

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament have been preserved differently, but they've both been miraculously preserved.

So think about how the difference is.

In the Old Testament, you had meticulous copying by a small community, and rigorously passed down in such a way that the integrity of the text was maintained from generation to generation.

But you end up with less copies, because as each generation came, the older copies were often done away with, and so there's less of a manuscript tradition, but we still have reliability because of the methods that were used to bring about those copies.

With the New Testament, it's different.

With the New Testament, you had, instead of a small community, you have the much wider world community that's sending out the gospel message and copying these books, and what you end up with is a vast amount of manuscripts, because of how many people are copying and sending out these messages to other churches.

And so it's a different method, but both of them demonstrate God's miraculous preservation of His Word.

Some people get upset with textual notes or discussion of textual criticism, and think that the easiest way to settle this would be to simply not talk about it, settle on one version of the Bible, and stick with that version, and it's usually the King James Version that is the one that they say we ought to settle on, we ought to trust this one and jettison the rest, or at least focus on this one as being the standard, and everything that deviates from this is wrong.

Well, in a later class we're going to deal with King James Onlyism, we're going to do an entire class on that subject, we're going to see that there are different versions of King James Onlyism, they're what's called King James Preferred, there are those who believe that the Greek text underlying the King James is the superior Greek text, and there are some people who believe that the King James itself is an object of God's revelation, that God actually, in a sense, brought about a new work of inspiration in giving the King James Bible.

So there's different views of King James Onlyism, we're going to talk about those in two weeks, because next week is going to be Brother Mike giving the history of the English Bible.

Now, we have a little bit of time left in class, and this is going to be shorter than our normal class.

Normally a class goes for an hour and 20, hour and 25 minutes, but because I don't, because I'm not interacting, because I'm doing this via video, it's going to be naturally shorter, but let me just add a thought before we get to the second part here.

The things that I want you to do while you're studying, listening to this audio, or watching the video, the things that I want you to do is, I want you to write down any questions that you have on textual variation, and I want you to go to sovereigngraceacademy.org and you're going to see a forum.

I'm going to create a forum, it'll be on the page, it'll have the link to this video, and it will say this video has been produced for this week's class, week five of Survey of How We Got the Bible.

If you have questions about textual variation, I want you to put them in the thread.

There's a, there's a, you'll see the thread of conversation.

I want you to put them in the thread and go down the list and, and, and, and, and I will try to answer them.

Or it might create discussion in the forum, and that's fine.

You can engage with one another.

My only rule is, always engage with compassion, kindness, and humility, and patience.

Put on those things that the scripture tells us to put on, you know, compassionate hearts, kindness, meekness, gentleness, patience.

Do it in that way.

If I see anyone in the comment section being rude or ugly, I'm gonna take you out, take you out of the forum, and may have a conversation with you.

Maybe that you can't continue in the class, because we can't have that kind of, we can't have people berating each other in, in, in the forums on our, our, our site.

So please keep that in mind, that we want to be kind to one another as we do that, as we engage with one another online.

I know we have a lot of students now, maybe more as the, as the weeks go on.

I keep getting messages from people who want to take the class, which is great.

It just means that we have to keep up more, and more, and more with people, and, and, and I'm thankful.

All right, so what I want to do in this last portion of the class is, I want to look at some other textual variants.

The only textual variant we looked at so far is John 5-4, and I like John 5-4, because if I'm ever in a group of people, and I just want to start a discussion about textual variation, I just say, everybody open your Bible to John 5-4, and then you see the people with NIV or with the ESV get real confused, because they go to verse 3, and then they go to verse 5, and they can't see verse 4, and it's like, this is really weird.

But that's not the only place where we see textual variants.

As we said, there's, there's several others.

There are what is known as the big three textual variants, and I'm gonna get, I'll get to those in a minute, but I'm gonna give you a couple of smaller ones to think on, and I want you to maybe spend some time looking these up.

This will be part of your, part of what I want to see in your notes this week, if you are, if you're taking notes in the class, and you should be if you want to earn their certificate.

So the first one is 1st Timothy chapter 3 verse 16.

It says this in the King James Version, without controversy great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh.

The New American Standard Bible, however, says this, by common confession great is the mystery of godliness, he who was manifest, or excuse me, he who was revealed in the flesh.

So in the English, the difference is God versus he who.

God is in King James, God was manifest in the flesh, and in the NASB it says he who was manifested, or revealed in the flesh.

But I mentioned this in class last week, and I drew it on the board, in the Greek language, this, the difference between these two readings is literally one horizontal line.

If you imagine an O, that would be an omicron.

If you imagine a O with a line through it, that would be what's known as a theta.

And this is brought about as a result of what's called the Nomina Sacra, or what is known as the sacred name.

The Nomina Sacra were abbreviations which were used for Jesus and for God in New Testament manuscripts.

Remember, Christians are writing by hand these manuscripts, and sometimes they would use, instead of writing the whole word theos, they would just use the theta and the place of God.

Instead of writing Christos, sometimes they would just write the the key, which looks like the X.

And a lot of people argue that that's the reason for Christmas, with the X instead of the the word Christ, because the X represented Christ as the Nomina Sacra.

I think that that's possible.

I don't make that argument, I just point out that that's a possibility.

But this is one of those times where whenever you see the Nomina Sacra, or when you see the variant, you can see how this variant could be introduced accidentally, or could be left out unintentionally, because this is a place where it's obviously saying something very important.

God was manifest in the flesh versus he who was manifest in the flesh.

Obviously we want it, I mean, I want to say want it, from a Christian perspective, I like the word God was manifest in the flesh.

I like the King James reading here, but it doesn't matter what I like, what matters is whether or not it's what John wrote.

I'm sorry, Paul wrote, because this is 1st Timothy.

And again, this is a place where oftentimes advocates of the King James will argue that the newer versions are trying to eliminate the doctrine of the divinity of Christ.

But that's not fair, that's not a fair representation to the translators.

That's not what we see, that's not the way we should understand this.

This isn't a conspiracy, this is a place where there are legitimate differences in manuscripts, and the variations do matter, and therefore we have to seek to come to a conclusion about whether or not this is a Nomina Sacra Theta, meaning God, or simply the word Has, which would mean he who.

And Has being Omicron Sigma.

So if you would, in your studies, if you desire to, I encourage you to look up the history of this particular textual variant, 1st Timothy chapter 3 verse 16.

You can go to the New English translation, it's available online, and it has the history of this text in its notes.

In fact, very quickly, I'm just going to pull it up just to see 1st Timothy 3 verse 16.

Let's see, if we go to reference materials, commentaries, Net Bible.

All right, so it says here, the Byzantine text, along with a few other witnesses, read Theos for Has.

Most significant among these witnesses is 1739, that's just a number of a manuscript.

And the second correctors of some of the other manuscripts tend to conform to the medieval standard, the Byzantine text, and add no independent voice to the textual problem.

So this is just, this is giving a history, and it's a rather long, I mean, there's a few paragraphs here on this one particular variant that's found in the notes of the New English translation.

So again, Net Bible online is available for free.

Look up the notes, not just the text, but look up the notes along with the text, and you'll find the information here which will tell you more about this variant.

Another variant that is very important is John 1.18.

John 1.18 in the King James Version says, "...no man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." The ESV says, "...no one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known." So again, this is the difference.

So the doctrine of the divinity of Christ is in this, and the question is there, is John saying the only begotten Son, or is he calling Jesus the monogamous Theos, the only begotten God? And most of us are familiar with hearing the phrase only begotten Son, and that makes sense because we see that phrase in other places, John 3.16 for instance.

But in this particular verse, John 1.18, the manuscripts seem to favor, or certain manuscripts seem to favor, the only begotten God, monogamous Theos.

In fact, I'll read my notes here, it says, "...the earliest manuscripts of John, P66 and P75, which are both papyri manuscripts..." Remember when I said the earliest manuscripts we have are the papyri fragments? "...they both date around AD 200, as well as two of the earliest unsealed manuscripts, A and B, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus..." We talked about those last week.

"...all read the same, which is the unique God, the monogamous Theos, the only begotten God, or the unique God, the only Son who is God.

The bulk of the later manuscripts read monogamous Huyas, which is the only begotten Son, and the King James obviously follows those later manuscripts." I'll quote from Dr.

James White, "...but some insist that the literal rendering, only begotten God, actually undercuts the deity of Christ, hence it can't be right.

Allegations of Gnostic corruption abound in King James only books, but this is determining the text of Scripture not on the basis of the best evidence available, but on the basis of one's ideas of theology.

In point of fact, the phrase does not necessitate any idea of inferiority regarding Christ.

In fact, while the phrase only begotten Son was prevalent in Gnostic writings, the phrase unique God does not appear in the extant Gnostic literature from the time period." So anyone who says this is a Gnostic inclusion, they have to prove that by showing that the Gnostics actually used the term monogamous Theos, and they didn't.

So it doesn't hold water when people want to make that argument.

Alright, a couple more.

You can look these up.

I'm just going to give you the references because I'm running low on time.

I do want to try to finish this up soon.

Revelation 118, I'm sorry, Revelation 1.8, King James Version says, I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.

The New American Standard Bible says, I am the Alpha and Omega, says the Lord who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

So the reference, the Lord God, is an example of where the TR departs from the entirety of the Byzantine manuscript tradition.

The vast majority of texts, including the later ones, contain this reading.

The TR in the Book of Revelation is particularly suspect.

This is due to the fact that Erasmus rushed his work on the book and utilized only one manuscript of Revelation.

As a result, entire words exist in the TR that are not found in any other manuscript, or not found anywhere else.

So this is one of those times where we see a good example of where it's not really a viable variant, but it's there, it exists, and we need to, you know, at least be able to address it and address its history.

Another one, 1 John chapter 3 verse 1, King James Version says, Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.

ESV says, See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God, and so we are.

And that is the phrase kai esmen, and we are.

And it is omitted in certain manuscripts, and there seems to be no theological basis to omit the words, and this has all the earmarks of a classic example of homeotelioton, which is again that idea of similar endings, because the preceding word has the same ending as another word in the sentence, and so it's likely that that was simply removed or unintentionally, it was an unintentional variant.

And again, you can look up the notes on these, please go to the Net Bible and look this up, it's 1 John chapter 3 verse 1.

Alright, so there are others here, I'm just again trying to move through these rather quickly.

Colossians 1 14, In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.

ESV says, In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

This has led some people to call the ESV and other modern translations the bloodless Bible, because it doesn't mention the blood of Christ at Colossians 1 14.

However, they do mention the blood of Christ in the parallel passage from the book of Ephesians.

So the idea that they were trying to hide the blood of Jesus or remove the blood of Jesus, again, those types of conspiracy arguments don't do anything to further the real argument or the real question of whether or not this is what Paul originally wrote.

And so this is one of those times where, is through his blood true? Yes, it's true.

Is it in another place in the Bible? Yes, it's in another place in the Bible.

But is this what Paul wrote here? And the evidence seems to suggest that it is not.

Again, I'll quote Dr.

White, In reality the King James Version here contains a reading that goes against not only the ancient manuscripts, but goes against the vast majority of all manuscripts.

So this is a time where the King James is actually not in agreement with the vast majority of manuscripts, including the Byzantine manuscripts, which usually do represent the majority text.

The earliest manuscript to contain the added phrase is from the 9th century, and all of four manuscripts all dating long after the original writing contain the reading.

So this, again, is not really a viable version.

And again, it's in Ephesians 1 7, and it's in Ephesians 1 7 in the modern Bible.

So no one is trying to hide the blood of Jesus.

Mark 9 29, King James Version says, And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing but prayer and fasting.

New American Standard Bible, And he said to them, This kind can come by nothing but by anything but prayer.

But what's left out there is the word fasting.

And I've heard people make the argument, The new Bibles are against fasting.

See, they took out fasting here.

Again, those types of conspiratorial arguments is not based upon the evidence that we see, it's based upon someone's assumption as to why this was omitted when it's in the King James and it's not in other translations.

So let's just for a moment, I want to read a quote.

This is in the introduction to his second edition of the Greek New Testament.

This, hold on just a second, let me get my notes right.

I'm sorry, I want to start over.

Most witnesses, even early and excellent ones, have and fasting after prayer here.

But this seems to be a motivated reading due to the early church's emphasis on fasting.

That the most important witnesses, as well as a few others, lack the phrase and fasting when a good reason for the omission is difficult to find, argue strongly for the shorter reading.

This is one of the times where often scholars will favor the shorter reading.

The logic is that it is much more likely that someone would add something than to remove something.

And then I have a quote here.

The shorter reading, if not wholly lacking the support of old and weighty witnesses, is to be preferred over the more verbose.

For scribes were much more prone to add than to omit.

They hardly ever leave out anything on purpose, but they added much.

That is a quote from the introduction to the second edition of the Greek New Testament by Hall in 1796.

Greisbach set forth the following list of critical rules by which the intrinsic probabilities may be weighed by various readings of the manuscript.

So that's just something to consider that there are actually some rules that we see basically being followed, and one of the rules is the shorter reading is likely the right one because it's more likely that something would be expanded than something would be left out.

So let's now look at the last thing for today's class, and this is the big three textual variants.

The big three textual variants, and these are common knowledge among scholars, skeptics, and atheists, but oftentimes virtually unknown by Christians, and so this is one of the things I think you should know about, you should study, you should understand, because these are important, and these are the three that will often be blindsided.

In fact, I'll read a quote from Melissa Childers.

She said this, "...these variants are common knowledge among skeptics, scholars, and atheists, but virtually unknown to many Christians outside the academic world.

Often this information is used to blindside believers in an attempt to sabotage their faith and undermine their confidence in the Bible." That's from Melissa Childers' blog.

The three variants are known as the Kama Johanium.

This is 1st John chapter 5, verse 7.

The second one is the Pericope Adultery.

That is the story of the woman caught in adultery.

That is from John 7, 53 through 8, 11.

And the last one is the longer ending of Mark, which is Mark 16, 9 through 20.

So those three variants are big in the sense that not all of them are big lengthwise, because 1st John 5, 7 is only a few words, but they're big in regard to the argument that goes into them.

I recently interviewed Thomas Ross, who debated Dr.

James White on the reliability and textual history of the King James, and we talked about 1st John 5, 7.

I asked him why 1st John 5, 7 wasn't cited by the early church fathers in defense of the Trinity in their apologetics, and he had sort of an interesting answer to that.

You can go to my podcast page and find that interview if you're interested in hearing what he had to say on that.

But ultimately, the difference is this.

In 1st John 5, 7 in the King James, it says, "...for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one." 1st John 5, 7 in the ESV simply says, "...there are three that testify," and goes right into verse 8, and it omits completely the portion which says, "...the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one." For those who want a verse to give the doctrine of the Trinity, this is often seen as, this is the one.

But again, in all of the early church writings, when they were defending the doctrine of the Trinity, this verse was not cited, and it wasn't used at Nicaea, it wasn't used in these early writing defenses.

It doesn't seem to come into the manuscript tradition until much, much later, and there's a story about it in regard to the inclusion of it in what became known as the Textus Receptus, the Textus Receptus, of course, is the product of Erasmus' work in the 16th century.

So, this particular text, I find very little reason to believe that it has any legitimacy as the original text.

The textual evidence is just not there, and I've had this conversation with several people, and I am not convinced at all in the veracity of it.

But that is one, if you want to look up, you can look up, there's a lot of information about it.

Again, a lot of people making claims of corruption and intentional diminishing of doctrines and things like that.

We have the evidence.

We don't need conspiracy theories.

We don't need arguments as to the why.

We have the documents we can look at ourselves, unmotivated by those things.

We just look at the documents and see what's there and what's not.

I have so much here I want to read in just time.

I need to finish up this video, but I'll read this one quote.

The longer reading, which includes the Father, Son, and the Spirit, and these three are one.

The longer reading is found only in nine late manuscripts, four of which have the words in a marginal note, so it's not even in the text.

And with minor variations, they originate from the 16th century.

The earliest manuscript, Codex 221, in the 10th century, includes the reading in a marginal note, added sometime after the original composition.

So it wasn't written in the original, it was written as a marginal note later.

The oldest manuscript with the comma in the text is from the 14th century, but that wording of that one departs from the other manuscripts.

See as the evidence begins to pile up here? The next oldest manuscript on behalf of the comma is in the 12th century, 429, 14th, 636, and I'm sorry, let me back up, I'm reading that wrong.

The oldest manuscript with the comma in its text from the 14th century, the next oldest on behalf of the comma is, you have the manuscript 88 from the 12th century, manuscript 429 from the 14th century, manuscript 636 from the 15th century, and they also have the reading only as a marginal note.

It's not in the text, it's in the margin.

And the remaining manuscripts are from the 16th to the 18th centuries, thus there is no sure evidence of this reading in any Greek manuscript until the 14th century.

So again, while this is a big debate because of what it says, there's really not a lot of debate as to the manuscript tradition behind it.

A lot of people say, well it's in the Latin, therefore it must have been in the Greek.

Not necessarily, and that's a weak argument.

So the next one is the Percopaea Adulterae, John 753 through 811.

I love this story, but the evidence that it should not be a part of John's Gospel is pretty overwhelming.

Again, that it's actually not part of the original text, and it should be considered.

One of the things that gets my attention is that this is a floating text, because it's in John in some manuscripts, but in another manuscript it's in Luke, and another manuscript it's in a different place, so in John.

So we have this story sort of moves around.

It doesn't seem to be originally Johannine, or from the pen of John.

I'll read a quote.

The evidence could be summarized by saying that almost all early manuscripts of the Alexandrian text type omit this story, while most manuscripts of the Western and Byzantine text types include it, but it must be remembered that the Western manuscripts here refer only to D, a single witness, as far as the Greek manuscripts are concerned.

Thus, it can be seen that practically all of the earliest and best manuscripts extent omit this pericope, or this story.

It is found only in manuscripts of secondary importance, later manuscripts, not earlier ones.

So there is evidence on both sides.

I have some of my notes here.

I'm happy to share that with anyone who's interested, or I encourage you to look up what you can find on this particular thing.

Don't just go to the Internet and type in, you know, John 753 through 811.

You can come with all kinds of crazy stuff.

Look up sources.

Look up, you know, go to the Net Bible.

I've already told you that it at least has documentation about where the information is coming from.

Philip Comfort's book is good, and if you're looking into textual variation...

hold on, I want to get the title of that.

Let me see.

Philip Comfort Textual...

it is...

let's see...

yeah, it's the New Testament Text and Translation Commentary.

That's what it's called.

New Testament Text and Translation Commentary by Philip Comfort.

I have it on my desk at the church.

If I can find it, I'll bring it to class next time, let people see it.

You can look up any of the textual data that you want.

It's going to be in there, and you'll be able to come to some conclusions based upon that.

Now the last one that we're going to talk about, then we're going to end the class.

Hey, we didn't end early.

I said we're going to end it...

I said the class usually lasts about 1.20, and we're at 1.15.

So the longer ending of Mark...

Mark 16, 9 through 20 is a debated text, and in most of your Bibles, if you have a modern Bible, it's going to be bracketed right before you get to verse 9.

Right after verse 8, it will say something to the effect of this...

the rest of this text is not found in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts, certainly referring then to the the older unsealed manuscripts where this text is not found.

Now this one is debated more than the other two in regard to whether or not it has historic veracity, primarily because without the ending, the longer ending of Mark, it would seem as if Mark ends somewhat abruptly with just a resurrection and no appearances, and that causes a lot of issues for people who feel like that means that Mark perhaps is not giving us the whole story if that's all we have.

Other people have argued that that is in line with Mark's style of sometimes leaving the reader to make conclusions for himself.

The tomb was empty, we know that, Mark tells us that, so what's the conclusion? Well, Jesus has risen.

So there's a couple of reasons, again, why do we call this the longer ending of Mark? Well, there's other manuscripts that have a short ending, and then there's other manuscripts that have no ending, that end at verse 8.

And the biggest issue I have with the longer ending of Mark is that the language does not seem to be Markian.

It doesn't seem to flow like the rest of the book.

It strongly reads almost anachronistically, where things are said about drinking poison and being bitten by serpents, which seems to be a reference to something that happened later with the Apostle Paul, where he was bitten by a snake and he didn't die.

There's just so many reasons and thoughts behind this, and causes a lot of questions and consternation about the history of the text of Mark.

But this one here is still debatable, and if you are interested in learning more about it, I would recommend Dr.

James White and Dr.

Jeffrey Riddle debated just this text and the history of just this text on YouTube.

You can go look up James White, Jeff Riddle, the longer ending of Mark, and in fact I'll pull it up real quick just to show you.

You can go to YouTube, go to...

just make sure I'm right...

James White, Jeffrey Riddle, longer ending of Mark.

Yeah, right here.

It was published by Explain International.

It streamed two years ago, and it's a good debate.

It deals with the history of Mark 16, 9 through 20, and it's two hours long, so if you want to...

two hours and 25 minutes, it is worthy of your time.

Let me just say that.

If you want to know more about the longer ending of Mark, and to hear both sides of the argument, somebody's arguing for its inclusion, someone's who's arguing against its inclusion, I would say go and listen to that.

Alright, so let me finish the class.

First of all, I want to thank you for paying attention.

I don't know how many of you actually watched a video of my face just talking this whole time.

I'm sorry I didn't have a whiteboard behind me.

It would have been probably more interesting to see me drawing and writing and different things, but I decided to record this class again because it's Mother's Day, and I want to say Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers at Sovereign Grace Academy.

I appreciate you all being patient and taking the class online this way this week, rather than meeting in person, and I hope it's still been helpful.

I know there was a lot to go through here.

Feel free to rewind and go back and listen to it again, or listen to the parts maybe you didn't catch the first time.

Please make sure to take your notes, and I said last week I was going to put out a pop quiz, but I didn't get to it.

I apologize.

Some things came up.

I ended up taking my wife out of town for a few days for the holiday and for Mother's Day holiday, so I am going to put together a pop quiz.

I am going to try to get it out this week, and I would like for everyone to take the pop quiz, and I'm working on the final.

If you're interested in this certificate, then you have to take and pass the final.

So please, please go on to the forum.

Please interact with the forum this week.

If you have questions about textual variation, again, be kind, be courteous, be patient with one another, don't be mean or harsh with your words, and one last thing, please, please, please, if you disagree on something like textual variation, if you disagree on a particular textual variant, please know that I do believe this is a place where good Christians can have disagreements, and we need to be patient and loving with one another, and be kind with those who differ from us.

So again, I want to thank you again for being a part of Sovereign Grace Academy, and I look forward to seeing you in class in two weeks.

Brother Michael, have you next week on the history of the English Bible.

Thank you for watching, and God bless.