It is common to hear people say there are errors in the New Testament. They argue that in the centuries before the printing press (invented AD 1438), those who copied the scriptures by hand made many mistakes. First, a person would copy, say, the book of Matthew from an earlier copy and make mistakes in the process. Later, when someone else used the second copy to make another copy, not only would the previous mistakes be copied, but new mistakes would be added. Then a third copy would multiply these mistakes even further, and so on. This process, some say, was multiplied so many times during the long centuries that the New Testament is completely full of mistakes and cannot be trusted.

It is true that our New Testament is based on thousands of handwritten Greek copies (technically called “manuscripts”). The original “paper and ink” letters from the apostles’ hands are long gone.  Copies, or manuscripts, are all that remain. It is undeniable that there are indeed variations among the manuscripts (technically called “variants”). However, the issue is not that these variants exist. The issue is to what extent have they affected the New Testament and what, if anything, can be done about it?

The branch of study that deals in these matters is called “Textual Criticism.” Textual criticism as applied to the New Testament is not unique; it is also applied to any work of literature of which copies were made prior to the invention of printing. Many of the great Greek, Roman, and English classics from ancient times are included. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the writings of Plato and Aristotle, Virgil’s Aeneid, and the Old English poem, Beowulf are just a few of the works to which the science of textual criticism is applied.

The methods and techniques of textual criticism are not new. They have been in a constant process of development and improvement for five centuries – basically since the invention of the printing press! Thus, textual criticism as applied to the New Testament is not a fledgling effort recently invented to answer the supposed savvy and sophisticated charges of 21st century Bible critics.  Rather, it is a highly-refined discipline with a long history.

After evaluating thousands of manuscripts, the textual critics can compile a “standard text,” published from the printing press (not hand-copied, of course!). The first such text was printed in the year 1516, nearly a century before the King James Version.  Textual criticism, and the standard texts therefrom, have come a long way since those days. It is the “standard texts” of more recent efforts which serve as the basis for today’s translations into numerous languages.

To illustrate the fact that the question of variants in the Greek copies has been addressed time and again over the decades and centuries, I will cite sample discussions on New Testament criticism from over a century ago. In 1886, J.W. McGarvey pointed out that the variants in the manuscripts known in his time consisted mostly of variations in the spelling of words, variations in the grammatical form of words that do not affect the meaning, variations due to an insertion or omission of a word that do not impact the sense, variations in the use of one synonym for another, and cases where the word order has been inverted in a phrase or sentence (p. 14). The discovery of more manuscripts in the 130 years since McGarvey’s day has not materially affected McGarvey’s assessment of the nature of these variants.

In 1882, Westcott and Hort published, Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek. In the introduction to this work, these scholars discuss the degree of impact that the variants have on the New Testament. They state that for most of the New Testament (about 87%), there are no variations in the copies! In other words, most of the New Testament has been transmitted by hand through the centuries unimpacted by copying errors! The totality of variants, say Westcott and Hort, affect only 1/8^th of the whole (or the other 13%). They add that after excluding variants involving differences of spelling which are easily resolved, only 1/60^th of the New Testament is affected (or 2% of the whole). Then once all other variants are discounted that are no more significant than spelling errors, the part of the New Testament affected by what Westcott and Hort call “substantial variation” is only about 1/1000^th of the whole, or 0.1%. Thus, variations in the copies that have any important impact on meaning affect only one tenth of one percent of the entire New Testament! (introduction p. 2) Every passage in the New Testament that falls into this category involves doctrines that are clearly taught elsewhere in the New Testament. In other words, even in this 1/1000^th part no doctrine of Christ and the apostles has been destroyed, deleted, corrupted, or lost beyond recovery. Incidentally, anyone interested in studying these affected passages may simply consult any modern standard translation, including the New King James Version, all of which provide marginal notes identifying what these “substantial variants” are. There are thus no “hidden mistakes” or “lost truths” of the New Testament.

Therefore, we may trust our English New Testaments and the Greek texts that lie behind them. The integrity of the Old Testament will be discussed in a later article.

 

Article by: David Griffin

 

Works Cited

McGarvey, John William, Evidences of Christianity, Faith and Facts (reprint, originally published 1886).

Westcott, B. F. and Hort, F.J. H., Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek, Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, OR, 2003, Previously published 1882. Accessed on Google Books:

https://books.google.com/books?id=_uZKAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA234&dq=Introduction+to+Greek+New+Testament+Hort&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjH1OHRj4jRAhUk7oMKHYMyCrsQ6AEIODAE#v=onepage&q=Introduction%20to%20Greek%20New%20Testament%20Hort&f=false