The History and Reliability of the Bible 2

Textual Criticism and the Difference Between Criticizing the Bible and Criticizing the Text

Thank you. And then we'll get to the lesson, so let's pray together. Our Father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity to again be in your house to be about the business of looking into your word.

And Lord, being as it is the subject of this conference, the word of God and the belief in the reliability and history of the text of Scripture, we pray, O Lord, that you would keep us focused on it. Remind us, Lord, not just to study about the Bible, but to actually study what the Bible says and to have faith that you have through your apostles and through your prophets down the ages have seen fit to bring about a word that we can trust has come directly from you.

And Lord, as we examine the more difficult aspects of scholarship, the more difficult aspects of history and reliability in regard to textual criticism, we pray, O Lord, that you would. Keep me as the instructor, keep me from error, fill me with your Holy Spirit, give me the strength to teach and preach correctly.

I pray that you would open the hearts of the congregation to hear and understand what is taught. And we ask all this, Lord, in Jesus name and for his sake. Amen. Most of the time when we hear the word criticism or critical, we tend to think of that in a very negative way.

Nobody likes to be criticized. No one likes it when someone is critical against them. So when you hear or see that tonight we're talking about textual critical issues that can automatically put you on the defense because you think about what does this mean?

We're going to be criticizing the Bible. Well, there are two forms of criticism that we need to understand before even launching into this, and that is what we would call textual criticism, which is what we're going to be looking into.

And then there's what is called higher criticism of the Bible. Textual criticism simply is this. In looking at the vast amount of manuscripts that we have of the New Testament, that's going to be the primary focus of the New Testament.

Being that we have vast amount of handwritten manuscripts within those manuscripts, there are variations, places where things are spelled differently, things where different words are used. And we have many of those.

And because of that, scholarship is required. Well, scholarship is not the best. It is required to study, to seek, to find what the original said, since we no longer have any copies of the original. And that's the study of what is called textual criticism or the criticizing of the manuscript tradition, bringing it down to what it actually said when it was originally written.

There is another form of criticism, which is called the higher criticism of the Bible, and that is much more liberal in its approach. And those people attempt to not just do textual criticism, even though that is part of what they do, more so their attempt is to criticize what the Bible says.

And they spend time repudiating miracles and repudiating the fact that Jesus was God in the flesh and repudiating the resurrection. And as such, you end up with a very liberal form of, quote unquote, Christianity.

And that's the difference. So when you think about when you hear someone talk about textual criticism, know that there are really two forms and we're not engaging in the higher criticism where we're going to be saying, well, if the Bible says there was a burning bush, we have to consider that burning bushes can't be or something like that.

And that's the way liberals would approach it. They approach it from a very naturalistic, materialistic point of view. Our study, on the other hand, is simply to say there are a vast amount of manuscripts and we want to find out, well, how do we determine what the original text actually said?

Most churches of the evangelical variety have a statement of faith that includes a statement of biblical inerrancy. This simply means that they state in their statement of faith somewhere that they believe that the Bible is true.

Usually the statement looks something like this. And click through, please. This is just an example of one. This is not the one we use at our church, but I use this as an example because I think it's worded in a very specific way.

And I think it's worded in a way that would probably be best example. It says, we teach that the Bible is the word of God, supernaturally inspired, without error in the original manuscripts and preserved by God in its verbal plenary inspiration.

And it is a divinely authoritative standard for every age and every life. Now, the key part that I want to focus on in this statement of faith is just this part here, without error in the original manuscripts.

Almost every statement of faith that I've ever seen, including the one in our own church, uses some form of the statement, the original manuscript. Sometimes they're called the autographs. That's another way of saying original manuscripts.

But almost every statement of faith in evangelical churches will have something in accord with that statement. That it will say it's the original manuscripts that we are saying actually came from God.

But what many people are failing to see in our modern world is that this is not really where Satan is attacking. In fact, I've heard people say, well, it's fine if you want to believe God inspired Paul or God inspired the writing of the book of Romans.

Or it's fine if you want to believe that God inspired the writing of the book of 1 Corinthians. The problem is we don't know what it actually originally said, because all we have are copies. That's their argument.

That's the attack that's being used. So it becomes not an attack against inspiration. It becomes an attack against what we would call transmission, how the text went from the Apostle Paul to where it is today in our hands.

That's where the attack is. As they say, we don't. In fact, I heard it doesn't matter if God gave it to Paul or whatever, because we don't know what originally said. This is the argument that is often being used recently.

I say recently now it's been a few years, but I had the privilege of sitting in on a debate between two scholars on this subject. And I brought pictures, not that they really needed it, but just wanted to show you this is Dr. Bart Ehrman.

Dr. Bart Ehrman is in every sense a distinguished scholar on the subject of historical languages and the biblical text. This is Dr. James White. And these two men debated on the subject of whether or not the history and reliability of the scripture was to be trusted.

This was a three hour, very intense debate in which both men at times showed obvious signs of frustration. Dr. White was standing for scripture. He was standing for the belief that the Bible is the word of God and that it can be trusted.

Dr. Ehrman was saying that it couldn't be trusted. And they were really frustrated with each other throughout the debate because it seemed as if Dr. White was frustrated because it didn't seem as if Dr. Ehrman was understanding his arguments.

And Dr. Ehrman seemed frustrated that any Christian could actually believe the views that Dr. White was espousing. So there was this sort of just a back and forth that really didn't have a lot of progress, except for to to have one or the other say a few things that I thought were were important.

But really, when the dust settled and the smoke was clear, there was a clear picture that many Christians really don't know the history of the Bible. And a lot of what Dr. Ehrman was saying in the debate, I think, would have been massively harmful to people's faith in the Bible if Dr. White had not been there to propose the counter understanding.

If it had just been Dr. Bart Ehrman standing up, giving a three hour presentation of only his position and he did not have the the counter statements of Dr. White, I think it could have been very detrimental to people's faith.

And the sad thing is, it is men like Ehrman who have been given the stages of the world to stand on and proclaim their version. Dr. White is he's known among reformed Christians, but he's not really known even even outside of reformed theology.

A lot of a lot of people don't know who he is, even though he's a very brilliant man. He makes very strong arguments for the history and reliability of the Bible. A lot of people don't know who he is.

But Bart Ehrman has been on The Daily Show. He's been on the History Channel. He's been on everything you can imagine, you know, all types of television shows. And the thing is, he's also Ehrman is the head of religious studies at North Carolina University, University, North Carolina.

He's the head of their religious department. So here he is not believing in the text of the Bible, not believing in its history and reliability, and he has the podium and the ear of thousands, if not millions.

And very few are standing against what he's saying, because very few, quite frankly, would even know where to start. Very few would even know how to how to understand or even interact with his objections.

And this means that our children are now growing up in a society where men like Ehrman have this great voice in the community and men like Dr. White do not. And I can tell you that he has sent home many young people who went to to their college experience, believing he has sent many of them home as atheists.

And we could obviously make the argument about, you know, perseverance of the saints and their faith being really genuine or whatnot. But the truth of the matter is many children go away to college, at least having some understanding and belief in what mom and dad told them about the Bible and about Jesus Christ, only to come home being totally derailed.

And it's men like Bart Ehrman who make it their business to to do that very thing. So because of this, I've made it my goal in this lesson tonight to tell as many people as I can in an attempt to prepare them for the disputes that they and likely their children will face regarding this issue.

And it is an important issue. In fact, it is foundational. If the Bible we have is unreliable, then our faith has no foundation. And where do we go from there? Yet, I hope to show by the end of this message that not only is the Bible reliable, but that it is truly supernaturally preserved.

And we're going to see how that actually came about. Now, before we begin, as well as we as we begin, I want to actually dispel some myths. Now, this first one might really be somewhat difficult for certain people.

The King James Only Claim and the Comma Johanneum

But this first myth, I think, needs to be immediately dealt with, and that is myth number one. God has preserved his word in English through a perfect translation called the King James Bible. That is believed by many people that is believed to be the truth.

And as I said Wednesday night, I'm going to deal with what we call King James only ism. People who say that's the only English Bible. And in fact, there are some who say that it's the only Bible that anyone should use and and that the world should have to learn English because this is the Bible.

I've heard that argument made. They've said that because English is the standard language for business and it's the standard. They even use the argument that because air traffic controllers all have to speak English, because they have to have a universal language and English has become the universal language.

That because of that now, that's why the Bible in English and the King James Version is is the Bible that everyone should be using. And it really is. I think it's a it's a it's a horrible argument. We're going to talk about that more on Wednesday night.

But the key is just asking this question. This this is a way to get around the issue. The issue is we have a ton of Greek manuscripts. Not any one of them read exactly the same as any of the rest. So we have to deal with textual criticism.

We have to deal with that issue. So they say, well, we don't have an issue anymore. We've got the perfect Bible. We made it, it's done. And that's the problem is they produce this new doctrine that in 1611, God in his mercy reached down from the from the throne of heaven.

And he gave us a new, totally perfect, totally inspired, without error text that from then on would be the total perfect text. And would no longer have to be studied in light of textual criticism. The problem is.

There are issues about the King James, which. A lot of people don't even realize. I want to show you something. If you have a King James Bible, which I don't know how many of you brought one tonight, but if you have a King James Bible and you went to 1 John 5 7, some of you may not be able to see this.

I didn't realize the text was this small. In the King James Bible, it says in 1 John 5 7, for there are three that testify or excuse me, there are three that bear record in heaven, the father, the word and the Holy Ghost.

And these three are one. But if you have a New American Standard Bible, it will say, for there are three that testify. It adds a colon and then it begins in verse eight. Now, if you notice, I marked in red the passage that the words that are missing.

I've heard people say, well, the NIV and the NAS, these are just updated language of the King James Bible. That's not true. The New American Standard Bible, the English Standard Bible, the New International Version are based on an entirely different family of manuscripts.

Let me say that again. They are based on an entirely different family of manuscripts. Then the King James Bible. And that is why there are places and this is one of the few, there are only a few, but this is one of the major ones where there are words, there are entire sentences that have made it into the King James.

That are not a part of other translations, and the question becomes, well, should it be there? Should that statement be in there? I mean, obviously this is a true statement because all it's saying is that there are three that bear record in heaven.

We believe that. We believe that it's the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We believe that. Obviously, this is a true statement. These three are one. That is a very true statement. We believe in the doctrine of the Trinity that God is one in essence and three in person.

This is this is all very true. But whether or not it be true, the question still remains, should it be in the text? Well, I'm going to deal with this more tomorrow because I'm actually going to look at this very deeply.

But I just want to give you the sort of the Cliff Notes version tonight, if I could, because I have a lot more to get to. The text that underlies the King James version comes from an edition of the Greek New Testament that was put together by a man by the name of Desiderius Erasmus.

This text, after a few other editions, became known as the Textus Receptus or what is commonly called the Received Text. When compiling the manuscripts for this text, Erasmus could not find any Greek sources that included this sentence.

I say that again. When he was compiling the manuscripts and he was doing the work of textual criticism, he could not find any manuscripts, any Greek manuscripts that included this sentence. So in his first edition, he produced a manuscript that did not include that.

In fact, he did not include it in his second edition, yet the text still existed, but it didn't exist in the Greek manuscripts. Where did it exist? In the Latin. Now, when did the Latin come about? Well, the Latin was one of the first translations of the Bible into another language.

The New Testament was written in Greek, but the New Testament was almost immediately, within the first century, translated into Latin. Latin was the language of learning. It was very erudite. And by the fourth century, Jerome had translated the Vulgate and that became the Bible for a thousand years, up to the time of the Reformation almost.

The Latin was the Bible. So here comes Erasmus and Erasmus is trying to produce a Greek, going back to the original language, because Latin is obviously not the original language. And he's looking for Greek manuscripts and he's not finding anything that would support this reading.

But yet. There was the influence of the hierarchy. And they were saying, no, this text is in the Latin, it's in the Bible because. Erasmus, the Latin was the Bible, it's been the Bible for a thousand years, who are you, Erasmus, to question?

And Erasmus, I want to say from here and I'll tell you what, from here on this, this is story that is argued by some, but according to traditional history, Erasmus said, if you can produce one Greek testament, one Greek, that's only one in the Greek that has this reading, I will include it in my third edition.

And according to the way the story goes, one was produced and he had to do it because he had promised that he would. But the issue is. That one dates at the same time. As when he was writing, so it was it was likely produced for that reason, it dates to the same time as Erasmus, the history of it is that there is no preceding Greek text from the time of Erasmus that had this reading in it.

Ultimately, I think we have to say this, if we're honest, and tomorrow I'm going to make a better case for this, but if we're honest, we have to say that this reading is not original. That's why the New American Standard Bible, the NIV, the ESV, none of them include it because from a scholarship level, there's no doubt.

This is called the Kama Johanium. If you want to look it up, I encourage you to. Might not be able to spell that, but the Kama Johanium it's or John's Kama, it's just a sentence that we believe was included in the text of the Latin translation that was not a part of the original.

And people ask the question, well, wait a minute now. How did the whole sentence get added into the scripture? Well, let's very quickly, let's just talk about how that could happen. How many of you write in your Bibles?

OK, you didn't invent that. That's something that has actually gone on for a long time. In fact, in ancient manuscripts, they were actually the side of the pages were used and they would put notes. Well, let's just say, for instance, you were reading 1 John 5 7 and it says there are three that testify and it goes on to say there are three that testify.

And on earth, it is the the the word, the spirit and the blood. And these three, you know, testify. It goes on to talk about three. If you saw that in your Bible, you might make a note off to the side that said what?

Well, hey, there's three that testify on earth. There's also three that testify in heaven, the father, the word and the spirit. You know, you might add that in a textual note. Well, guess what? If the next guy who comes along who's looking at your manuscript is going to make a copy of what you wrote, guess what he might include?

In the text, it's very easy to understand how that could happen and how over time that gets introduced into the text. Oh, that's a dangerous thing. That means there are other things that could be introduced into the text.

Yeah, that's what this whole subject is about. How do we recognize the history of things like this? Because this hasn't gone unnoticed. The issue that's been around for a thousand years, the discussion of this has been around since the time of Erasmus.

It's not gone unnoticed, but we need to deal with it. I mean, how would you how would you like it if you were holding a NASB and you went into a church and everybody's reading from the King James Version?

They tell you to turn to first time five, seven and they start reading. And you say, wait a minute, a whole whole sentence that I don't have. You want to know why? As I said, it's been a little longer with that than I wanted to, because tomorrow I'm going to deal with what I call the big three.

There are three textual variations that I think are very important and they all have interesting names. There's the Kami Ohanian, the Pericope Adulterae and the longer ending of Mark. Mark's not so fancy, but there's three parts of the New Testament text which are major textual variations that have to be dealt with.

Scribal Errors, Manuscript Traditions, and the Missing Originals

But anyhow, that's you can click through now. I think the argument that the King James Bible is the perfect translation falls apart under scrutiny. Myth number two. Myth number two is that scribes never made mistakes.

I find this myth often I find people make that argument a lot of times they'll say, well, hey, man, the Bible was translated and and they'll tell the story like this. I talked about this in Sunday school this morning.

So if you were here, you're going to hear it again. They'll say, well, when the Bible was being copied, one copy to the next, they would take extreme precaution to make sure that all of the words were exactly right and that they would count the letters and that they had a mathematical paradigm that they would use that allowed them to know what middle letters should be.

If they put a if they put two strings on the paper, they could see the where the whatever the middle letter was. They had this perfect way of maintaining the text. And I call that a myth because because even though that story is true as far as it goes for certain manuscripts, because there were scriptoriums and there were scriptoriums that had very specific rules set up for how things were to go.

And if they found a mistake, they would destroy a copy. You can imagine being at the end of it and right there, they're going to destroy a whole copy. You know, that did happen, but that rarely happened in the Christian scriptures.

That happened more in the Jewish scriptures. The Jews had professional scribes who were scribes by trade. The early church did not have that. The early church, the New Testament, was copied by hand by church members and it was dispersed through the church by church members.

We didn't have professional scribes until after the time of Constantine, when the church began to be part of the state run organization that was allowed to flourish. Before Constantine, Christians were burned.

Christians were fed to lions. Christians were persecuted. Along comes Constantine, Christianity becomes the religion of the of the of the nation and it's legally allowed. So now the Bible begins to be manuscripts begin to be produced in scriptorium.

So after the time of Erasmus, we see less of some of the problems, some of the variations that were in the earlier manuscripts. But let me just quickly show you something. If you want to pull up the screen, even though the Bible, by the way, this is what a scriptorium looks like.

Forgot I had this picture. This is what a scriptorium looks like. If you look at this picture here, you'll notice there are desks that are set up. And one of the there will be one of two ways which a copy would be translated or copy would be copied.

They would either bring the original or the the the exemplar, the one that they're working from. And they would literally copy one to the next, or they would have somebody stand at the front and read it as everyone copied what he was reading.

And imagine how easy it would be to make a mistake with that. And I've heard people say, well, scribes never made mistakes. Yes, they did. In fact, the next picture will demonstrate this. This is a copy of Codex Sinaiticus.

Now you can get Codex Sinaiticus on your computer. It's available. You can get I forget the website address. I think it's Sinaiticus .org or something. But you can actually go and they have really clear pictures of it.

But you'll see right there, right there, right there. What is that? That's where they made a mistake and they did the same thing you do. They put a line through it and they added a word or they added a text.

They added a little bit because they didn't have enough room. This is a picture of it is what it looks like. They did make mistakes. It happens. All right. Click through. So the idea that scribes never made mistakes is not true.

There were no Christian scriptorians in the early church and Christians were under severe persecution. The first Christian scriptorians came years later and early Christians copied by hand, sometimes on the run.

And because of this, early manuscripts are peppered with things like spelling errors, misspelled words, grammatical errors. Even things that are too difficult to read, some people just have bad handwriting.

There's one text I talked about this morning in Sunday school class. There's one text that was a scrape that we found. This literally where somebody had written the scripture on it, had written the Bible portion of the Bible on this this this piece of vellum.

And later they needed the paper for something else. So they scraped off the ink and they wrote something else on it. And now through technology and the use of light, they can actually make a copy of the Bible and actually shine a light on it and show what was written on it before.

And they can tell what copy this actually that's actually a manuscript. They call that a biblical manuscript because they can read what was on it before. But you can't do it with the naked eye because they literally they scraped the ink away.

As I told my class this morning, Christians were most likely the ones who invented writing on two sides of the paper because we were poor. And papyrus plants, when they were laid one on top of the other like this and they were flattened down, one side was very smooth, one side was very rough and affluent people did not write on both sides because the other side was rough.

It wasn't made for writing on it was there was one side that was made for writing on. But earliest the earliest manuscript that we have, I believe it's called P52, papyri fragment 52. It's only about the size of a credit card.

And it's this little maybe postcard size little scrap. But it's from the Gospel of John. It dates somewhere between 100 and 120. And that little manuscript is written on both sides. And it's one of the earliest forms that we find of people writing on both sides of the paper, because, again, Christians are having to write what they can, when they can, how they can so that they can get that gospel out to as many people as possible and get that get that out to as many as they can.

So myth number three, we said we said scribes never make mistakes. That's a myth. Myth number three, this one is very popular. If ever a Christian about a man, if ever a question about a manuscript comes up, all we need to do is consult the original documents.

Well, that would be wonderful. But we don't have. I don't have the original manuscripts no longer exist, even I mean, it would be wonderful, however. We just don't have them. And barring some miraculous Dead Sea Scroll like find, and I don't know if you know much about the Dead Sea Scrolls, I talked about this in Sunday School this morning, too, but the Dead Sea Scrolls up until the time of 1948, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, up until that time, our earliest Old Testament manuscript was dated at one thousand around there, around one thousand.

That's that's fifteen hundred years after it was written. That was our earliest Old Testament manuscript, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, bam, it jumps back a thousand years because Dead Sea Scrolls were written before Christ.

So, I mean, tomorrow they could unearth a massive tomb of New Testament documents and it would be wonderful if they did. We and they could all be closer to the original than we've ever had. That would be great.

You're going to ask me another question. Was that going to make any changes to the New Testament? Here's what happened when they unearthed the Dead Sea Scrolls. It didn't make any changes. It just verified that what they had was what they were supposed to have the whole time.

The Dead Sea Scrolls was a great find in the sense of faith because it encouraged what we had is what we should have had. So I don't mind if they find a great big stock of Old Testament or New Testament documents tomorrow.

I think it'd be wonderful. To find such a thing. But again, reminding ourselves always that every time a new manuscript is added to the mix, there comes the opportunity for variation, there comes the opportunity for misspellings and changes and little things like that that we have to recognize.

So myth number three, if there was ever a question about a manuscript coming up, all we have to do is consult the original documents. That's a myth. We can't. We don't have them anymore. And as I said this morning in my sermon, could you imagine if we did?

Could you imagine what people would do if they had an original copy of the Gospel of Mark, if they really had what Mark wrote, they would worship that faster than a fried, like I said, a fried picture of Mary's face on a piece of bread.

You see them. They do that. See Mary's picture on a piece of toast and they think that's something worthy of worship. You can imagine if they had the original copy of Mark. All right. So the myths are clear.

The King James is not the perfect translation and click through. King James is not the perfect English translation. The scribes did make errors and we no longer have the original autographs. We don't have them anymore.

So and you can click through. The question becomes, then why do we believe what we have is accurate? If all those things are true, why do we believe what we have is accurate? Well, I want to give you eight reasons, eight propositions tonight as to why the Bible in the form that we have it today can be trusted.

Here's all that all up until this point has been somewhat maybe discouraging. Here's eight things that maybe will help re-encourage you. Number one, I think it's the most obvious one. The scriptures are without errors in their original manuscripts.

This is what all of our statement of faith say. And this is what we believe. The Bible claims itself to be the word of God. It says in the New Testament, Paul wrote, all scripture is found in sauce. It's breathed out by God.

Thus, the claim is that the scripture is the very word of God. And if God is perfect and if God is all powerful and if God is truth, then we can be confident that what he breathes out is perfectly true.

Thus, we know that when Paul and Mark and Matthew and Isaiah and Moses put their pen to the paper or to the vellum or to the papyri, that that person wrote what God had inspired to be written. And it was without error.

That, again, is a statement of faith. That's why it's called a statement of faith. We believe that. But if we believe what was originally written is from God. As a theological deduction, that if God is perfect, what he says is right and can be trusted, then that's the firm foundation upon which we begin our step.

So that's number one. Number two, we no longer have the original manuscripts. What we do have is a text that represents the result of a critical study of a vast manuscript tradition. Now, I first did this in 2008.

I haven't updated my. Slide, so I don't know if this is as of November 2008, there were fifty seven hundred and fifty two. Greek manuscripts. Fifty seven hundred and fifty two Greek manuscripts. Now, these manuscripts can be broken up into three different types.

First, what we call unsealed manuscripts on papyrus, these date back to the early second century, when the second century, that's the 100s. When did Jesus live in the before 100s, prior to 100 up until around 30 to 33 AD.

Jerusalem fell in 70 AD. We believe the scripture, the New Testament scripture is written sometime between the death of Christ and the fall of Jerusalem. So we're looking at a 40 year period approximately.

We have manuscripts, even though there might only be fragments of manuscripts that go all the way back to the earliest part of the second century, which would put them within one or two generations of the original.

P52 is believed by some to be an actual copy of the original because of its such early date. So we have manuscripts that date all the way back to the second century. We have unsealed manuscripts on vellum and part or parchment that date back to the fourth all the way to the ninth centuries.

And then we have many school manuscripts which date from the ninth to the 15th centuries. So even though we don't have the originals, we have mountains of copies, each one attesting to the tenacity of the text.

And that's important because, again, even though we don't have the originals anymore, what we have is we have a text that represents a result of a vast manuscript tradition. Now, moving to the third point, variants do exist in these manuscripts.

Yet because of the vast amount of copies, these variants are easily recognizable. Variants fall into two different types of categories, if you will. There are unintentional variations and then there are intentional variations.

What would be an example of an unintentional variation? Well, misspelling of a word, changing the order of words. Let me ask you a question. If I said the Lord Jesus Christ or if I said Jesus Christ, the Lord, do those sentences both say effectively the same thing?

Would it be easy, though, to get those words out of order if I'm copying one to the next? Absolutely. And that's that's we see that type of variant more than any other. There's another variant that I think is interesting to see it.

It's called homily atelioton and that basically just means similar endings. It'll be where in a text you'll have at the end of a row two words that are the same and they both at the end of a row and a person will finish this sentence and then he'll he'll his eye will look down and look back up and see the end of this and he'll begin on this sentence and leave out an entire sentence.

That's called homily atelioton, similar endings cause us to do that. You've done that. You read a book, you get to the end of the line and you jump to the next line without thinking, well, that happens to scribes.

And guess what? It's easy to recognize. You've got one one line of manuscripts that are missing an entire sentence or another line of manuscripts that are not. And you can see where the sentence didn't make sense without that section.

So we understand that that happens. That's an unintentional error. There are also intentional errors that scribes that are attempting to make changes where they felt changes were necessary. One of the most interesting changes that I think is easy to recognize as a scribal amendation is the Lord's Prayer.

How do you know Lord's Prayer? Everybody, our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. We know the Lord's Prayer, right? That's how it reads in Matthew. If you have a King James version, the way it reads in Luke is exactly the same as it reads in Matthew.