The Bible in English, Part 1: Recovering the Original Text

This is the first of a four-part series I’m teaching at Farmville Baptist Church.

The Bible was originally written in three languages: Hebrew (most of the Old Testament), Aramaic (parts of Daniel and Ezra), and Greek (all of the New Testament, and parts of the Old Testament accepted in the Catholic and Orthodox churches). To translate the Bible into English, we need the original text. But we don’t possess the original documents, the autographs. They’re probably lost forever. For the New Testament, the focal point of this series, we possess approximately 5,500 hand-written copies in Greek, and approximately 10,000 hand-written translations into Latin. We also have ancient manuscripts in other languages such as Syriac and Coptic, and quotations of the New Testament written by early Christian scholars. All of these sources provide an opportunity to recover the original text of the New Testament.

The 5,500 Greek manuscripts do not all contain the entire New Testament. Some contain only a few books, or perhaps only portions of a book. No two of the manuscripts are in perfect agreement, when compared letter-for-letter. The process of copying a manuscript was laborious, and many mistakes crept into the copies over the centuries. In many cases scribes made accidental changes that scholars can easily spot. In other cases, scribes made intentional changes where they thought the text they were copying was in some way deficient. Again, in many cases, these changes are easy to detect.

Origen, a third-century Christian scholar, lamented the state of the New Testament manuscripts in his day:

“The differences among the manuscripts have become great, either through negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others; they either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they make additions or deletions as they please.” (Quoted from Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus.)

Origen was not alone. Many of his contemporaries complained about the lack of consistency among their copies of the New Testament books. This is not a situation we are accustomed to today. When you read a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, you assume the text is identical to all other copies of The Grapes of Wrath ever published. Except for very minor typographical errors here and there, all copies of any modern novel are very likely identical. But in the ancient world, this was not the case.

Until the 15th century, when Gutenberg introduced movable type printing, the only way to publish a book for wide distribution was to copy the text by hand. This process lends itself to mistakes. You can demonstrate this with a simple experiment. Select a magazine article that’s a few pages long, and copy it by hand, word-for-word. Then make a copy of the copy. Then make a copy of that copy, and so on until you’ve made six or seven copies. Each copy should be made by hand, and copied not from the original article but from the previous hand-written copy. To make the experiment more similar to what happened with NT manuscripts, have some friends participate, making hand-written copies from the copies you’ve made. Along the way, number each copy so you can date its “age” relative to the others. When you’re finished, and you’ve got anywhere from seven to twenty hand-written copies, compare them to the text of the original magazine article. You’ll find there are several mistakes, and that the mistakes become more numerous in the later copies, i.e., the ones farther removed from the original text. You’ll also find that the later copies tend to disagree with each other more often than earlier (younger) copies.

This is essentially what happened with the New Testament text, and as a result no existing Greek manuscript contains a letter-for-letter perfect copy of the original text. Should this fact concern Christians? Yes and no.

Yes, because the Bible occupies a central position in our worship and daily lives. It is our primary source of information about God and ethics. For all Christians, the Bible is sacred text, whatever theory of inspiration one may hold. So it’s important to know what the authors actually wrote. It’s also important that Christians live up to their responsibility to read the Bible intelligently, and that means being aware of the textual issues scholars must deal with as they prepare the translations we depend on. But on the other hand, the nature of the variations we find in the New Testament manuscripts do not affect core Christian beliefs. And while it’s true the original text of the Bible is not contained in any one of the thousands of ancient copies, the original text (or 99% of it) is present in the cumulative textual tradition. The “trick,” if you will, is to recover that text by carefully comparing the Greek manuscripts in an effort to identify which readings best represent the original text, and which ones are most-likely copying errors.

The science of recovering the original text is called textual criticism. It’s ironic that textual critics are virtually unknown to Christians, since they play an extraordinarily important role in providing accurate English translations of the Bible. While nearly everyone can name famous (and infamous!) present-day Christian personalities, very few Christians can identify a textual critic. If you are one, or know one, please write a comment!

The effort to recover the original text of the Bible may seem overwhelming, especially given the sheer number of manuscripts one must sift through, not to mention the fact that one must be fluent in an ancient language. But textual criticism is a peer-reviewed process, with methods and standards that have been refined for several centuries. Textual critics have a very good understanding of the different types of manuscripts, such as different writing surfaces (papyrus or parchment, for example), and the different styles of handwriting they exhibit. These and other features help them date the manuscripts, a critically important clue in determining the likely accuracy of the text. They also have a good understanding of the habits and tendencies of the scribes who copied the text, which helps them understand the types of accidental and intentional changes scribes introduced into the manuscripts.

To put it simply, professional textual critics are very good at what they do. Going to back to the experiment I described earlier, a professional would be able to examine your hand-written copies and produce an extremely accurate reconstruction of the original magazine article, if not a perfect reconstruction. In fact, even non-professionals might do better than one would think. If you would like to try your hand at textual criticism, and get a feel for the kind of work textual critics are engaged in, follow this link.

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Let’s look at some examples of the kinds of copying errors that exist in the New Testament manuscripts. These are taken from Ehrmen’s Misquoting Jesus. You can find other examples in my other references at the end of this article. First, we’ll look at accidental changes.

Words that look alike gave scribes some trouble. For example, 1 Corinthians 5:8 reads, “Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (NRSV).

The Greek work translated “evil” is pornoras. A similar-looking word is porneias, which translates to “sexual immorality.” In the Greek alphabet these words look even more similar: πονηριας and πορνειας. It’s easy to imagine a scribe seeing πονηριας in a long line of the text he’s copying from, and accidentally changing it to πορνειας in the text he’s copy to. The meaning of the verse isn’t changed much by this substitution, but only one of these two words can be the word Paul actually wrote. Where πορνειας appears in some manuscripts, πονηριας appears in the majority of manuscripts, including the earliest ones. So scholars have concluded that’s the word Paul actually wrote.

Scribes were sometimes tripped up when two lines of text ended with the same letters or words. Consider Luke 12:8,9: “⁸And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; ⁹but whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God.”

The twin “before the angels of God” led to a problem called eye-skip. The scribe reads verse 8, his eyes move to the copy he’s preparing, and he writes verse 8. Then his eyes return to the text and land on the phrase “before the angles of God” at the end of verse 9. Without realizing it, he skips verse 9 and reads verse 10, copies it, and moves on. As a result, verse 9 gets omitted altogether. In fact, this is exactly what happened to the oldest known copy of Luke’s gospel! Verse 9 is simply missing from that copy. Is it possible verse 9 was not part of the original text? Yes, but it’s easier to explain its absence due to eye-skip than to explain why it appears in later manuscripts if wasn’t in the original text.

Several centuries into Christian era, Christians utilized a simple procedure to “mass produce” copies of the Bible. Several scribes would be assembled in a room in which a person at the front would read the text of a copy of the New Testament. As he slowly read the text, the scribes would copy down what they heard. With this method, instead of one person making one copy, several people can make several copies at one time, thus making the process faster and cheaper. But it also introduced a new kind of problem: words that sound alike.

In Revelation 1:5, the King James Version reads: “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, . . .” But the New Revised Standard Version reads: “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, . . .”

To be sure, the sense of this verse is the same in both translations, but the author of Revelation either wrote “washed us” or he wrote “freed us.” It’s easy to see (or hear!) what happened when we look at the underlying Greek texts. The Greek word translated “washed us” is lousanti. The Greek word translated “freed us” is lusanti. As you might guess, these words sound exactly alike. Any number of scribes heard and copied the wrong word, which wound up in the New Testament manuscripts available to King James translators. The oldest and best manuscripts, which predate the error, have lusanti, so modern translations use that word to translate the text into English.

In addition to the accidental copying errors are the ones made intentionally. Almost no one intentionally makes an error, of course. But in the New Testament manuscripts we find variant readings that are best explained as an intentional change on the part of a scribe who apparently believed he was correcting a faulty text.

A good example is Mark 1:2. The KJV reads: “As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee . . .” But the NRSV reads “As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way . . .”

Mark’s Old Testament quotation is drawn from Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3, so “in the prophets” certainly makes sense. But the oldest and best manuscripts read “in the prophet Isaiah.” And only one of these phrases is the one Mark actually wrote. It’s easy to understand that a scribe, probably during the medieval period, convinced himself that his copy of Mark’s gospel was faulty at this verse, since Mark quotes two prophets instead of one. So he “corrected” the error by substituting “in the prophets” for “the prophet Isaiah.” But in fact, that scribe probably introduced a copying error into the manuscript tradition. It’s much more difficult to understand how “in the prophets” could have accidentally or intentionally been changed into “in the prophet Isaiah.” Because “in the prophet Isaiah” appears in the oldest manuscripts (closer in time to the original text), and because it better explains the presence of “in the prophets” in the later manuscripts, scholars have concluded “in the prophet Isaiah” is more likely to be the original text. (The KJV translators worked with what they had. I don’t think any of their manuscripts read “in the prophet Isaiah.” I haven’t been able to confirm this.)

At Matthew 24:36, the KJV reads, “”But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” The NRSV reads “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

The phrase “nor the Son” is simply missing from the later, medieval manuscripts on which KJV is based. But the oldest and best manuscripts of Matthew’s gospel include this phrase. Either Matthew wrote the words translated “nor the Son,” or he didn’t. So which variant reading better explains the other? It’s difficult to understand how a scribe would accidentally add these words, and very difficult to understand why he would do so intentionally. But it’s easy to imagine a medieval scribe convincing himself that the phrase “nor the Son” is theologically erroneous, since the Son of God is surely omniscient. Thus, he convinces himself that his copy of Matthew is faulty, and he “corrects” it by omitting this phrase when he copies the text. His omission is then transmitted to all the copies made from his copy, and all the copies made from those copies.

Because it’s easier to understand how the phrase “nor the Son” was dropped from the text than to understand how it was added, and it because it appears in the oldest and best manuscripts, modern scholars have concluded that it’s more likely than not that Matthew wrote that phrase in his original text. Thus it appears in our modern translations.

Note that where all of the examples we’ve looked at are somewhat inconsequential where Christian doctrine is concerned, that’s not quite the case with Matthew 24:36. It makes a substantive, if somewhat technical, difference in our understand of Jesus as the Son of God if, during his earthly ministry at least, he did not know when the final judgment would come.

As a final example, consider John 5:4. The KJV reads “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”

This verse does not appear in the earliest, best copies of John’s gospel. It’s very difficult to understand how so much text could have been accidentally dropped from early copies. Since verse 4 raises no theological or contextual problems, it’s also very hard to imagine why a scribe would have intentionally omitted it. But it’s easy to imagine that a scribe, perhaps working from a commentary or oral tradition, added this sentence in an effort to explain the text in verse 3. He may not have intended that later copyists understand his addition as part of the biblical text, but apparently that’s what happened. Before long, verse 4 was being copied as though it had been in the original text all along. Very likely, it was never there. Thus, modern translations relegate these words to the margin, and the main text moves from verse 3 to verse 5.

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Hopefully the above examples have given you a sense of the kinds of issues textual critics must deal with in reconstructing the original text of the Bible. In comparing the manuscripts, textual critics follow a set of well-understood rules. Some of the important ones, which have been reflected in the examples above, include the following:

1. More weight is given to the older manuscript or manuscript group. The older a manuscript, the closer it is to the original text. The later manuscripts suffer from several centuries of accumulated copying errors.
2. No weight is given to the mere number of manuscripts in which a variant reading appears. Copying a mistake thousands of times does not magically transform it into a part of the original text.
3. More weight is given to the “harder” reading. Scribes were much more likely to simplify and harmonize than to introduce a text that would obfuscate or create contradictions with other texts.
4. More weight is given to the reading that explains the others.

By consistently applying these rules in a peer-reviewed process, textual critics create a very accurate reconstruction of the Greek New Testament called the critical text. The critical text is not a copy of the New Testament. It’s an edited text that reflects the choices made by textual critics in comparing variant readings. It represents the most-likely form of the actual, original text of the New Testament, as does the critical text of the Old Testament. Indeed, modern textual criticism has achieved a remarkable result. We probably know the text of the New Testament more accurately than anyone has known it in approximately 1,900 years.

The “official” Greek New Testament exists in two forms, the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek text (NA-27), and the 4th edition of the United Bible Society’s Greek text (UBS-4). These texts were prepared by the same scholars using the same methods, so the main bodies of these works are word-for-word identical, except for a small number of spelling and punctuation differences. The major difference between them are the critical apparatuses is used to record textual variants among manuscripts. The UBS-4 is designed for translators who wish to carry the Greek text into some other language, such as English. The NA-27 is designed for scholars who wish to directly study the Greek text. Follow this link for information about how these critical texts compare. The critical Greek text reconstructed in these editions is the basis for virtually all modern English translations of the Bible.

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Next: Part 2, Translating the Bible into English.

SOURCES:

1. Ehrman, Bart D., Misquoting Jesus, The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2005. (Ehrman is less than enthusiastic about the accuracy of the critical text vis-a-vis the original text, but his scholarship is sound and accessible.)
2. Fee, Gordan D. and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 2nd edition. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993.
3. Metzger, Bruce M., The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 3rd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. (The link is for the new fourth edition.)

LINKS:

1. Institute for New Testament Textual Research
2. Amazon.com: Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (NA-27)
3. Amazon.com: Greek New Testament (UBS-4)
4. Religion Facts: New Testament Manuscripts
5. Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism
6. Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament
7. An Online Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels
8. Wikipedia: Textual Criticism
9. Theopedia: New Testament Textual Criticism
10. Is Today’s Bible the Real Bible?