An Overview of Textual Variants in the Bible
In previous video entitled, “How was the Bible Passed Down Through Time?”
I gave an overview of what the process of the transmission of biblical manuscripts looked
like over the course of history.
I made mention that during this process, discrepancies and, in some cases, errors were written among
this pool of manuscripts.
These phenomena are referred to as textual variants.
Skeptics of the Bible’s reliability and/or the Christian faith in general will often
use the reality of these variants as substance to cast doubt on our ability to understand
what the Bible originally said.
Using the New Testament as our example, there are approximately 140,000 words in the 27
books that comprise this corpus of literature.
To illustrate the issue, there are approximately 400,000 textual variants in the body of New
Testament manuscripts.
This means that, for every word in the New Testament, there are nearly 3 variants.
This is often how textual variants are presented by those who’ve adopted a skeptical posture
toward the Bible and/or Christianity.
Of course, it easy to see how this one point of data could cause a lot of people to question
their beliefs.
However, this is not the end of the story.
Recall from my previous video that I mentioned that there are roughly 6,000 New Testament
manuscripts in the original Greek language that we are in possession of today.
The average length of these manuscripts is roughly 450 pages.
This means that there are over 2,500,000 pages of text that Bible scholars have access to
from the history of the Christian faith.
It is across these 2,500,000+ pages of text that the 400,000 New Testament textual variants
are spread.
If we do the math, that means that there is a little bit less than 1 textual variant for
every 6 pages of text.
In other words, if you were to read these manuscripts for yourself, 5 out of every 6
pages would be without variation, while there would be only 1 variation on the 6th page.
Understanding this textual context takes what many skeptics try to use as ammunition to
refute the New Testament’s witness and shows that it is really a piece of data that should
give the Christian a great deal of confidence about the preservation of what the New Testament
originally said.
Before going any further though, we should ask the question, “just what is a textual
variant?”
A textual variant is any place among the body of manuscripts in which there is variation
in wording, including: word order, omission or addition of words and differences in spelling.
Further there are four categories that textual variants are assigned into: meaningful & viable,
viable – not meaningful, meaningful – not viable, and neither meaningful nor viable.
If a textual variant is meaningful, it means that this variant actually influences the
meaning of the narrative.
If a textual variant is viable, it means that this variant could be the original reading
of a particular verse or passage in the New Testament.
Thus, these four categories of variants can be understood in this fashion…
Meaningful & Viable variants are ones that alter a narrative with a plausible claim to
being the original form of the text.
Viable – not meaningful variants are ones that may well be original, but they do not
affect the text’s meaning.
(In other words, these variants are saying the same thing in spite of whatever the difference
may be.)
Many of these variants can be chalked up to differences in spelling and/or word order.
The Greek language is not dependent upon word order like English is.
This means that a given phrase in English has multiple translational equivalents in
Greek.
Consider this clip from New Testament scholar Dr. Dan Wallace.
“Greek is a highly-inflected language, which means that if I say something like, ‘John
loves Mary,’ I can say it in any order I want: John loves Mary, Mary loves John, John
Mary loves, Mary John loves, etc.
Every single time it means John loves Mary, not by the word order, but by the endings
of these words; one’s always the subject, one’s always the direct object.
Thinking about these issues – these spelling differences, the use of the article – I
asked myself a year ago, ‘How many ways are there to say, “John loves Mary,” in
Greek?’
Well…this is my anal side coming out…here’s the 8 ways you can say, ‘John loves Mary,’
in Greek.
Every single line is translated, ‘John loves Mary.’
Oh, there’s another 8 ways.
Sorry…there’s more.
All of these, every single line, says, ‘John loves Mary.’
There’s more, sorry.
Ninety six ways you can say, ‘John loves Mary,’ in Greek.
Ninety six ways.
If you hear that there’s 400,000 textual variants among our New Testament manuscripts,
that tells me, ‘Really?
That’s it?
When we’ve got so many manuscripts?’
There could be tens of millions of variants that would never affect a darn thing.
400,000 (variants) means nothing.
Oh…I’m sorry.
This is not all there are.
If we add conjunctions that are often untranslated, there’s a whole lot more ways…you need
to really appreciate this; this took me 8 hours to put all of this together.
And at this point, I said, ‘I give up.
I’m too tired.
That’s enough.’
These are only a few of the ways to say, ‘John loves Mary,’ in Greek.
(Don’t worry – I won’t bore you with more of these details.)
There’s other legitimate word orders that swell the numbers to over 500.
And, if you use a different verb for, ‘love,’ it mushrooms to nearly 1,200 ways to say,
‘John loves Mary,’ in Greek.”
In all of these instances, the meaning of the text is unaltered, even though the form
of the text is different (whether intentionally or unintentionally).
These variants can be ruled out in our efforts to accurately transmit the New Testament’s
text.
Meaningful – not viable variants are ones that do affect the meaning of a passage, but
they have no chance of being original.
To give an example of this type variant, suppose we found a manuscript that said, “Jesus
got down off the cross.”
This would be a meaningful variant because it would alter the narrative of the book that
it was found in.
However, this manuscript is dated to the year 1,000AD and there are no other manuscripts
from an earlier time to corroborate this reading.
Even though this variant is highly meaningful, it has little-to-no chance of being the original
reading because it only shows up 900 years after the New Testament was first completed.
Likewise, these variants can also be ruled out.
Variants that are neither meaningful nor viable are ones that do not affect the text’s meaning
and they have little-to-no chance of being original.
For example, a scribe writing a manuscript around 1,000AD who misspells John’s name.
This is a legitimate textual variant, but it does absolutely nothing to affect our understanding
of the New Testament.
99% of all of the 400,000 textual variants in the New Testament manuscript pool fall
into one of these three latter categories.
So, again, if you were to read these manuscripts for yourself, 5 out of every 6 pages would
be without variation, while there would be only 1 variation on the 6th page…and that
variation is most likely to be either a spelling error or a difference in word order that dates
to a time long after the first century.
You would not be left in any doubt about the integrity of the New Testament.
Those variants that deserve our attention are those that are both meaningful & viable.
These comprise less than 1% of the 400,000 variants.
If we do some more math, we see that this results in less than 1 variant for every 600
pages of text.
These variants are rare.
An example of a meaningful-viable textual variant is actually the number of the beast
in Revelation 13.
The majority of manuscripts say, “666.”
However, two of the oldest manuscripts of Revelation say, “616.”
This variant alters the meaning of the text and it has a good chance of originality.
Yet, no essential point of Christian doctrine is affected by this.
Truth be told, of those variants that are both meaningful & viable, NONE of them relate
to any essential Christian doctrine.
These variants are interesting, but they do not give credence to the charges of skeptics
that Christianity in its original form was doctrinally different from today.
As I’ve said before, the greater context of the manuscript pool allows us to identify
a variant manuscript in contrast to other manuscripts in its, “neighborhood,” or,
“family.”
All of this means that our ability to produce the Bible is based upon an abundance of data
and resources over and above any other work of antiquity.
The Bible on your shelf is one of the best-preserved ancient documents you could ever find.
The issue is not, “what did the Bible say then?”
The issue is, “do YOU believe what it has always said?”