What is Textual Criticism?
Biblical Exegesis: Step One Part One
The first step in studying the Bible is to determine what the text is for the passage you are going to study. I don’t mean picking what book of the Bible to study, but once you’ve picked a book of the Bible you need to determine the text of that book you are going to study.
Determining the original text of a piece of literature is a highly technical discipline called textual criticism. It requires knowledge of multiple languages, knowledge of ancient manuscripts, knowledge of ancient writing conventions and spelling habits, knowledge of translation techniques, knowledge of the transmission of the text, etc. And for these reasons, it is appropriate that the work of textual criticism is largely left to the experts.
And yet, a working knowledge of textual criticism is beneficial to all students of the Bible and all followers of Christ. With this knowledge, it is (and should be!) unlikely you will come to a different conclusion than the experts, but you will at least have a working knowledge to engage and understand the decisions of textual criticism scholars.
Wrong View of Inspiration
There is often an initial fear from Christians when they think about textual criticism. Christians stake their entire life, even unto death, upon following the teachings of Scripture. So, to suggest that there are variants in the text of Scripture, debated passages, can cause an initial trembling from Christians. God inspired the Bible and God never lies, so how could there even be a debate over what the Scriptures say?
When this fear takes place, Christian often go down one of two paths.
One is the path of the ostrich, put your head in the ground and ignore the evidence and call anyone who suggests that the Bible has variants a liberal and a heretic. It’s an overstatement—as there are good scholars with their own theological reasons for believing the King James Version is the right English version of the Bible—but most people in churches who are “KJV-only” take this ostrich approach and are fueled by fear. All variants are by heretics, and the KJV is the right Bible in their view. To believe this feels safer, but it overlooks the real evidence.
The other path is to fall away from the faith. Faced with all the variants, Christians lose their confidence in the Bible as the authoritative Word of God. They conclude (wrongly) that the existence of variants must indicate error and if the Bible has error then God didn’t write it.
However, the fear of textual errors is often built upon a false view of how God inspired the Bible and how the text was then transmitted.
God inspired men to write the Bible. We often think this means that God overcame the human individuals, placing them in a trance-like state, and controlled their brain and limbs to write exactly what he desired. This view is called the dictation view of inspiration. This is not unlike how it is reported that Muhammad got his “revelations” for the Quran and how Joseph Smith got his “revelations” for the Mormon Bible.
But Scripture reveals that, while God inspired the human authors so that every word of Scripture is inspired by God (2 Tim 3:16), the human authors also used their own abilities to write. Luke tells us he did research before writing Luke–Acts (Lk 1:1–4), the author of Chronicles tells us repeatedly the sources he used to write his account of Israel’s history (e.g. 2 Chron 16:11, 20:34, 32:32), and Paul dictated to a scribe (Rom 16:22).
I’m not at all suggesting that through this process of inspiration that errors crept into the text of Scripture through the human authors. But I am suggesting that each book of the Bible bears marks of divine inspiration and the style and vocabulary of the human author. This reality can help us we when we are doing textual criticism to recognize what the original author wrote.
So when did errors creep into the text?
Transmission of the Text
We have to remember that the printing press was not created until the 16th century, and so before that every text was copied by hand. (And even with the printing press we continue to print errors!) So after Paul wrote his letter, say to the Romans, it would have been copied by hand multiple times so it could be spread to many churches. During this time, mistakes could—and did—occur in the copying process.
Note, errors did not happen when God inspired the authors to write, errors crept in when humans copied the text.
While we have no original copy of any book of the Bible—sometimes these are called the autographs—we have a plethora of copies of each book of the Bible. A comparison is helpful at this point and is not original to me. Few people doubt that the wars of Julius Caesar actually happened around 50 BC, but we only have 10 copies of the texts witnessing to these events, the earliest of which was written around AD 900. Similarly, Herodotus, often called the first historian, wrote about the Persian wars with Greece around 430 BC, but we only have eight copies of Herodotus again from around AD 900, which is over 1,300 years after the fact! But historians do not doubt these accounts relate accurate history.
For the New Testament, we have over 6,000 Greek witnesses to the text of the New Testament! This does not mean full copies of the New Testament, some are mere scraps of papyri containing only a few words but still, the number is staggering compared to other ancient documents. And substantial copies of the New Testament text exist from AD 200–350, and some scraps of papyri are even earlier. Thus, not only do we have extremely more witnesses to the New Testament than any other ancient document, but these witnesses are also incredibly closer to the time of original writing. So if we believe in the historical existence of Julius Caesar and Xerxes, how much more should we believe we have an accurate transmission of Scripture.
The situation for the Old Testament is a little different. Before the Qumran discoveries in 1947, the majority of Hebrew (the language of the Old Testament) manuscripts of the Old Testament were from the middle ages. That being said, we had numerous translations, primarily Greek, of the Old Testament that were much earlier. And then with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew copies of the Old Testament much closer to original writing, from around 200BC–150AD, were discovered. While variants were also found among these scrolls—which should not be surprising—the significant discovery was that the majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls contained the same text as the medieval Hebrew manuscripts indicating an extremely careful and accurate transmission of the Holy Scriptures by the scribes.
If nothing else, the sheer number of manuscripts, the relative date of the manuscripts, and the large amount of agreement between the manuscripts shows God’s providential care over the process of textual transmission to ensure that the text of Holy Scripture was transmitted accurately. That being said, there are variants in the text that need to be discussed.
Textual Variants
I can’t remember the source, but I remember D.A. Carson making the claim that for the New Testament we have determined, by textual criticism, 99% of the original text of the New Testament and 97% of the Old Testament. Initially this might be alarming because we want 100% to be determined if it’s God’s Word and we are to stake our life upon it.
However, it’s worth noting what we are talking about when we are talking about variants.
Sometimes we are talking about spelling differences which make no difference to the meaning of the text. Sometimes these spelling differences were due to the different pronunciations of scribes copying manuscripts in different regions.1 Other times the spelling mistakes were due to the confusion of letters, for example confusing the Hebrew ר (“r”) and ד (“d”).2
Sometimes variants occur because of the use of synonyms (did the author say “God” or “Lord”), which also make no substantial difference to the meaning of a text.
Sometimes words are left out or words are added in by accident because they look similar. This happens when a scribe keeps moving his head to look at the text he is copying and the text he is writing. In that process, the scribe might skip over words because they have the same ending thinking he already wrote that word. (This mistake is called “parablepsis due to homoioteleuton,” drop that phrase at your next dinner party).
Sometimes, due to parallel passages for example in the gospels, a scribe might add something from Mark into Matthew that wasn’t originally in Matthew. For example, look up Matthew 17:21. Can’t find it? Most modern Bibles do not contain this verse because the earliest manuscripts of Matthew do not contain it. (The versification was not changed so that referencing texts can remain consistent). But clearly this verse was added from the parallel passage occurring in Mark 9:29. So again, while a genuine variant, whether this passage should be or should not be in Matthew changes little about the overall message of the Bible, and major doctrines of the Bible such as who God is, how we can be saved etc.
Even the longer ending of Mark—Mark 16:9–16, if you look it up in your Bible there are probably brackets around it saying that the original manuscripts do not contain this text—contains nothing new and appears to be drawn largely from the book of Acts (e.g. Mark 16:17 and Acts 2:4 mention speaking in tongues and the protection from snakes mentioned in Mark 16:18 likely is drawing from the incident in Acts 28:3–5 where Paul was bitten by a snake). Just as Matthew 17:21 has been removed from most English Bibles, I believe Mark 16:9–16 should also be removed. It is my hunch that it is not removed because removing that much Scripture would be much more noticeable and cause much greater stir among the churches than slipping out a single text in the middle of Matthew.
We also have variants in translations such as the Septuagint which translates the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek and the Vulgate which translates the New Testament (and Old Testament) into Latin. Variants in these translations might exist because the translator did not understand the original word, confused the original word, misunderstood the vowel-pointing of the Hebrew word, or sought to change the syntax of the original language to fit better with the target language. Other variants may simply be stylistic or theological and generated by the translator (e.g. see here). In all of these instances, variants can be explained as not genuine errors in the text, or if errors, recognizable as errors and thus removed.
Now, there are places that do contain theological variants, places where scribes have entered their own theology. For example, 1 John 5:7 in the KJV reads: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one,” whereas in most recent English translations the passage reads: “For there are three that testify” (1 John 5:7 ESV). Again, a whole verse was not removed, but part of a verse was removed because of textual criticism. You can see why people want to keep this verse in the Bible, it is the clearest statement of the trinity! But the problem is the earliest manuscripts do not contain these words, and so John did not write them, but an (opportunist!) scribe added them. But even in this instance, removing words from our Bible even words that speak about the trinity(!), does not affect the doctrine of the trinity because the trinity is taught elsewhere (e.g. Matt 28:19, 2 Cor 13:14).
So even Carson’s remaining 1% in the New Testament and 3% in the Old Testament that we are unsure what the original said, much of this is insubstantial and if/when we determined the original text of these few remaining places no theological doctrine would have to be changed.
Be Informed and Be Prepared
The reason Christians should be familiar with textual criticism is that being informed about textual criticism will better prepare you to interact with individuals who may present the information in such a way as to promote doubt among Christians over the Word of God. Bart Ehrman is one such figure, no doubt a scholar and academic in textual criticism who knows the facts in great detail. In addition to his scholarly work, he has written popular level books that have been widely received and read by Christians who have subsequently had their faith negatively impacted because they were not better informed before they read his books.
However, evangelical Christians are not unaware of the issues. For example, Peter Williams at Tyndale House and Evangelical Textual Criticism, Dan Wallace at The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, and Peter Gurry and John Meade at the Text & Canon Institute are all excellent resources for scholars and churchmen to learn more. I would encourage you to learn more from these individuals.
For example, see Benjamin Kantor, The Pronunciation of New Testament Greek: Judeo-Palestinian Greek Phonology and Orthography from Alexander to Islam (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2023).
Even within Scripture, names are spelled differently at different times, possibly because of the similarity of letters. For example, 1 Chronicles 1:6, drawing from Genesis 10:3, in the Hebrew names one of Gomer’s sons “Diphath” whereas Genesis 10:3 has “Riphath” indicating the confusion of Hebrew ד and ר.