Dear Alumni,
I attended a professional society meeting recently and heard two
or three speakers mention that when they had attended seminary
they learned that the New Testament has quite a number of
variant readings, and that this fact had seriously shaken their
faith in an inerrant Bible. We affirm that the Scriptures are
inerrant in the autographs, meaning the actual documents of the
original writers. What we have are ancient copies, since none of
the autographs have survived today. But this view is regarded by
some critical authors today as a convenient dodge on our part.
Since we don’t have the autographs, how can we trust that the
Bibles we read today are without error? Indeed, some claim that
they are filled with serious errors and contradictions,
especially because there exist so many variant readings in the
various ancient manuscripts.
Now before I address this objection and others to inerrancy
based on textual criticism, let me define a few terms and
describe the situation in general. I should also add that I will
only be addressing the New Testament (NT) situation. Old
Testament textual criticism is similar but involves a few
specialized issues like the role of the old Greek translations
which we will not cover.
First, a “variant reading,” or simply “variant,” refers to
different readings in the ancient copies of any one NT passage
where a word, phrase, or even larger units might be different or
be missing in some manuscripts. For example, in Eph 1:7 most
ancient and medieval Greek manuscripts read the phrase
“according to the riches of his grace” but a small handful read
“riches of his kindness.” In this instance “grace” and
“kindness” are spelled similarly in Greek, and the variant is
thought to have arisen because of a similar phrase in Rom 2:4.
Manuscripts were all tediously copied by hand back then, and the
errors of a tired copyist like this are perfectly understandable
and appear from time to time. Even still, there is certainly no
heresy introduced into the Bible when certain copies of the
letter to the Ephesians say that
God has forgiven our transgressions out of kindness rather than
by grace. God is both kind and gracious. The fact is that no NT
variant reading introduces insoluble heresy.
Secondly, the “problem” of textual variants of the NT is caused
by the wonderful wealth of extant ancient manuscripts. Let us
imagine that only one ancient copy of Hebrews had survived into
our time. There would obviously be no variants because we would
have only the one manuscript. But the fact is, we have well over
5,000 ancient and Byzantine copies of the Greek NT, not to
mention dozens of ancient translations into other languages like
Latin, Syriac, Coptic, or Georgic which are used to deduce
ancient readings. Furthermore, the writings of the early church
fathers are often filled with verbatim quotations of NT passages
which show us the early readings available to them. And early
fathers like Clement or Ignatius were writing at around AD 95
and 115 respectively, so they represent very early testimony to
the readings of the autographs.
The marvel of possessing such an incredible number of ancient
copies of the NT is best appreciated when we compare this with
the state of the ancient Greek, comic playwright, Menander
(342–291 BC). Like Shakespeare, Menander became hugely popular
only after his death. His plays enjoyed quite a long and
widespread popularity well past the NT period as evidenced by a
number of sources including the Menander House in Pompeii, a
fresco from a scene in a Menander play found in a private villa
at second century AD Ephesus, or a third century AD mosaic
depicting Menander from a suburb of Antioch in Syria. Many of
the pithy, moral sayings from his plays entered the popular
culture and were often written up in collections of such things
including one which Paul quotes in 1 Cor 15:33: “Bad company
corrupts good morals.”
Now we would expect to have a fair number of copies of the works
of such a popular author, but the fact is that until the early
20th century, only fragments of his plays were known and even
now we have only one complete play of Menander filled out from
one papyrus manuscript copied roughly 500+ years after the
playwright’s death, and that was not published until 1958.
Granted, this may seem to be an extreme case, but the number of
ancient copies of many other Greek authors may only be in the
dozens at best. Clearly, the NT enjoys an embarrassment of
riches in ancient Greek manuscripts and translations in
comparison!
Along with such a high number of ancient manuscripts of the NT
naturally come thousands of differences in these hand-written
copies. Copyist errors account for a large number of these
differences. Imagine if you were to sit down and copy the NT
(over 405 single-column pages in one modern English version).
How many errors do you think you would unwittingly make,
especially writing hour after hour in a cold dark room? For
example, one set of errors are known to occur as the copyist’s
eye jumped from the exemplar to his copy and back hundreds of
thousands of times. This is particularly exacerbated by the
ancient practice of writing in letters of one size with no
spacing between words and only minimal punctuation at best. Let
us say you were to copy these opening lines from the Gospel of
John:
INTHEBEGINNINGWASTHEWORDANDTHEWORDWASWITHGODAN
DTHEWORDWASGODHEWASINTHEBEGINNINGWITHGODALLTHIN
GSWEREMADETHROUGHHIMANDWITHOUTHIMWASNOTANYTHIN
GMADETHATWASMADE
One common copy error occurred when the scribe looked to his
copy to write “and,” but in putting his eye back to the exemplar
he unwittingly jumped to a later occurrence of “and,” skipping
the material in between. These kinds of copy errors in the
manuscripts are fairly easy to spot with a little imagination
and experience.
Now when you hear about thousands of variants in the NT, it may
seem plausible that more weighty variants would arise than these
kind of copy errors, which is indeed the case. These more
significant variants, however, never make our Bibles suspect of
grave error. To show this, I would like to look fairly closely
at a substantive sampling of variants rather than to discuss
them in a general way. I’ve selected the variants in Eph 1:1—14,
which typify the kind one finds in the NT manuscripts.
The variant readings discussed below are reported in the Nestle-Aland
27th edition of the Greek NT (NA27). There are other variants in
the manuscripts, but these are mostly trivial differences of
spellings, of word order, and the like; the NA27 gives all the
variants of any real interest.
There are 14 variant readings given in the NA27 for Eph 1:1–14,
averaging one per verse. Here is the breakdown:
Four verses with no variant readings (vv. 2, 5, 8, 12)
Four verses with one variant reading (vv. 3, 4, 10, 14)
Four verses with two variant readings (vv. 6, 7, 11, 13)
Two verses with three variant readings (vv. 1 and 9)
Ten of the 14 variants are trivial, meaning that the meaning of
the text is not impacted in any significant way. For example, v.
1 has the variation in word order “of Jesus Christ” or “of
Christ Jesus” divided among the ancient manuscripts. A few early
and later manuscripts insert “all” in the phrase “to (all) the
saints who are” in v. 1. Twice (vv. 4 and 9) there is a
variation in the spelling of “in him” to “in himself” (with the
addition of one Greek letter), but this simply makes the pronoun
more explicitly reflexive—a meaning the personal pronoun may
already carry in Greek. In v. 6 the phrase “in the Beloved” is
filled out with the words “in his beloved Son,” which simply
makes the identity of the Son here more explicit. This last
example illustrates the tendency in later scribes to clarify
what the text they were copying already implied. In some cases
these later copies act like ancient commentaries on the text and
can be quite helpful for understanding the grammar and meaning
of the Greek. Obviously, the meaning of Paul’s teaching in
Ephesians 1 is not changed in any way by these variant readings.
In some cases, the trivial variant readings involve the change
of one character in a word. In v. 13, for example, “we” and
“our” is found in later manuscripts for “you” and “your”
respectively through the change of one character in each word
(an eta for an upsilon), which were pronounced the same in some
locales and thereby prone to confusion. This is actually a
variation found in a number of places in the NT manuscripts, and
while the difference of meaning may be interesting, it in no way
moves the text into erroneous teaching.
Some of the other trivial variants are merely stylistic. For
example, in v. 10 some scribes used a more common, synonymous
preposition for “in” in the phrase “things in heaven” while a
few manuscripts further added a nice untranslated conjunction in
keeping with a more literary convention in the Greek of their
day. Furthermore, there are some variants in Eph 1:1–14 that
appear in only a few manuscripts. For example, “and Father” in
the phrase “the God and Father of our Lord” in v. 3 is missing
in one manuscript according to the NA27. It is obvious one
scribe simply made a mistake for some reason. If others had used
this copy as an exemplar, the “error” would have been passed on
down through more and more copies. But again, this may simply be
a copy error; it introduces no doctrinal error into the
Scriptures. The difference between a copy error and a doctrinal
error here should be underlined.
So far, 10 of the 14 textual variations found in Eph 1:1–14 have
been trivial. However, there are four that are worthy of more
careful consideration. What should be emphasized at this point is one key observation. The opponents of inerrancy
speak about an error-ridden Bible because of the variations in
the copies. But the vast majority of these variants—as we
have seen—make no difference whatsoever in the meaning of the
biblical text, and those that may (like the omission of “and
Father” in v. 3) do not impact our understanding of biblical
truth. The relation of God as the Father of the incarnate Lord
Jesus does not depend on Eph 1:3. Because of the complete
clarity and widespread redundancy in Scripture, no essential
doctrine of our faith is based on any doubtful text. Indeed,
notice the teaching contained in Eph 1:2–6, 8–10, and 12–13
where there are either no textual variants at all or only
trivial ones given in the NA27—there is no reason to question
the reading of these verses in any way, even in their most
subtle nuances, because of textual variants. So even if there
are four significant variants, the general flow of the discourse
in Eph 1:1–14 is perfectly clear and without serious doubt. It
is the nature of human communication that we can leave out or
change individual words in statements without changing the
essential meaning. One has only to read Lewis Carroll’s
“Jabberwocky” to find a delightful example of this phenomenon!
Now let’s look at the four weighty variants from Eph 1:1–14 and
see what they look like. The first is the change of the word
“riches of grace” (charitos) to “riches of kindness” (chrêstotêtos)
in v. 7 found in a handful of Greek manuscripts—including the
important Alexandrinus—and at least one ancient translation. The
word kindness here is probably not the original reading, and
even if it were, the text would not say anything substantively
different as already noted. I call it a weighty variant only
because it seems not to be a mechanical scribal mistake and it
does appear in the important early witness Alexandrinus.
In the second variant the Greek verb eklêrôthêmen at the
beginning of v. 11 is changed. This verb is rendered as “we have
obtained an inheritance” in the KJV, NASB (with “we were made a
heritage” in the margin) and ESV, but as “we were chosen” in NIV.
The different renderings represents the difficulty of
understanding the verb here, since it usually refers to
appointing or receiving something by casting lots. When ancient
scribes encountered a difficult reading like this, they
sometimes substituted a clearer word either intentionally or
not. In this case, eklêrôthêmen was replaced by eklêthêmen “we
were called” (deleting the two letters “rô” in the middle) in a
minority of manuscripts, including important Alexandrinus again,
according to NA27. This smooths out the reading. Since scribes
tended to make things easier to understand, text critics point
out that the more difficult reading (lectio difficilior) is
probably the original as is probably the case here.
The third variant is an interesting one theologically. In order
to understand this variant you have to know that Greek nouns and
pronouns have gender forms like some modern languages besides
English. In Greek, the word for “spirit” (pneuma), used to refer
to the Holy Spirit, is neuter in gender form. In v. 14, the
opening relative pronoun “which” refers back to “the Holy Spirit
of promise” in v. 13 and is properly neuter in gender form in
the text of NA27. However, some early (and most later) manuscripts
substitute the masculine gender form of the relative pronoun
“who” here, acknowledging the personal character of the Holy
Spirit. This is not the only place this occurs in the NT and it
is even grammatically acceptable in Greek (and Latin) to
substitute a natural gender form for a grammatical one. In
either case, we hardly have to rely on this variant to prove the
personal nature of the Holy Spirit. As an interesting study,
look at what the Holy Spirit does in the NT: baptizes, leads,
empowers, causes people to prophesy, bears witness, comforts,
guides into truth, groans, intercedes, speaks, raises from the
dead, etc.—these are not the actions of an impersonal force, so
the gender form of the pronoun in Eph 1:14 is hardly needed to
establish this.
The final variant in Eph 1:1–14 is the most interesting and
the most difficult. In v. 1 the words “in Ephesus” are missing in several
(though not all) early manuscripts. The implication of this is
that the letter to the Ephesians may not have been sent originally to Ephesus
after all but to some other unknown destination. Now the first
thing to note is that this should come as no surprise to you if
you read your Bible closely, since all major translations have
a footnote mentioning this variant reading in the manuscripts.
You don’t have to go to seminary to learn that there are
variations in the manuscript tradition since our English
versions report quite a few of them as well.
But what do we do with the missing reference to Ephesus in v. 1?
In fact, this is one of the more difficult variants in Ephesians
to untangle. The manuscripts that omit “in Ephesus” are among
the earliest and best witnesses to the early reading of the
text. This could mean that the omission occurred very early in
the copying process, but it is usually taken to indicate the
reading of the autograph manuscript. If “in Ephesus”
is not original, the problem is twofold. First, Paul normally identifies the
city of his recipients at this place in his epistles. Consider
these three letter openings, for example:
Rom 1:7 “To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to
be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the
Lord Jesus Christ.”
Phil 1:1–2 “To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at
Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
2 Cor 1:1–2 “To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all
the saints who are in the whole of Achaia: Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Now compare Ephesians:
Eph 1:1–2 “To the saints who are [in Ephesus], and are faithful
in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ.”
There is certainly an expectation that “in Ephesus” or some
other location would be expressed in Eph 1:1.
Secondly, when “in Ephesus” is omitted it is possible to still
make sense of the phrase to mean something like: “to the saints
who are also faithful in Christ Jesus.” However, this is very
clumsy in Greek and seems to be unduly repetitious since the
saints are faithful by definition. This is such a problem that
many scholars including myself believe for these and other
reasons that “in Ephesus” is the reading of the autograph and
that it was omitted from early manuscripts for some unknown
reason, though many plausible suggestions have been offered. We
should also note that the traditional heading of the letter as
“to the Ephesians” is found in the early manuscripts.
Let us say, though, that we are wrong here and “in Ephesus” is
not the original reading. Then Paul would have written the
unusual and awkward “to the saints who are also faithful in
Christ Jesus.” The result would be that we would know with no
certainty who the original recipients were beyond members of an early Christian congregation. In this case we would have
to regard Ephesians to be like Hebrews, 1 John, or Jude, which
are epistles sent to unknown destinations. I fail to see how our
interpretation of Ephesians is impacted by this beyond a nuance
or two here and there. No doctrine of our faith rests on the
destination of this epistle!
The case of this last textual variation in Eph 1:1 brings out
something that we should emphasize in conclusion. Paul addressed
his epistle either “to the saints who are in Ephesus and are
faithful in Christ Jesus” or “to the saints who are also
faithful in Christ Jesus.” These are the two options witnessed
in the manuscript tradition. What this means cannot be stressed
enough: we know without any serious doubt that one of these two
readings is what Paul wrote on the autograph document. Yes, it
is true we do not have the papyrus (or parchment) scroll Paul
wrote upon, but we do undoubtedly have the very inerrant words
he wrote evidenced in the thousands of manuscript witnesses. All
the autograph readings have indeed most assuredly survived, so
that the task of text criticism is to discern through careful
study what the original reading most likely may be. Generations
of dedicated, immensely talented Christian scholars have devoted
their lives to the study of textual variations in the NT at
least since the days of Erasmus in the early 16th century, in
order to discern the reading of the autographs. As fruit of
their selfless labors, we undoubtedly do have the reading of the
autographs either in the texts or the variants given in the
footnotes of our Greek editions.
Yes, there are places where we have real doubts about what the
original reading of the biblical text might be. Yet in no case
can anyone responsibly assert that our Bible is full of errors
which could undermine anyone’s faith in the inerrant Word of
God. If they do have doubts, it is not because of the facts of
the case, and so perhaps we should keep Menander’s Old Cantankerous
in mind.
S. M. Baugh
Professor of New Testament
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