In my last blog, I noted that there were about 400,000 textual variants among the existing handwritten manuscripts of the New Testament. I also noted that in some evangelical circles, the way in which a variant was defined was by the wording that differs from a particular text times the manuscripts that have that wording. That is a demonstrably false definition, however. A variant is simply a difference in wording, spelling, or word order—including additional text, omitted text, rearranged text, etc. If we were to count out the variants by multiplying them by the manuscripts that have them, the total number would be in the millions, probably tens of millions. Thus, we need to retire the false notion (which has influenced evangelicals for more than four decades!) that a variant is different wording multiplied by the manuscripts that contain it.

In this blog I want to break down the number of variants into their nature. That is, we are moving from quantity to quality. The c. 400,000 textual variants (or readings) can be broken down into four classes of variants:

• Spelling and nonsense readings
• Minor differences that do not affect translation or that involve synonyms
• Differences that are meaningful but not viable
• Differences that are both meaningful and viable

I won’t get into a detailed explanation of these four categories, but I do want to give some parameters. First, the vast majority of textual variants belong to the first category. Something like 75% of all variants are here. Probably the most common variant is what is called a “movable nu”—that’s when an ‘n’ is put on the end of a word when the following word begins with a vowel. The principle is exactly the same as ‘a book,’ ‘an apple’: we put an ‘n’ on the indefinite article when the word that follows starts with a vowel so that we can hear the difference between the two words. But, just like the indefinite article’s spelling, the movable nu affects nothing beyond euphony.

The second largest category is readings that do not affect translation or that involve synonyms. Some subcategories would be word order changes (Greek is a highly inflected language, so the word order is much more flexible than it is in English), the use of the article with proper names (such as ‘the Jesus,’ ‘the Mary,’ etc.), or ‘Lord’ for ‘Jesus,’ ‘Jesus Christ’ for ‘Christ Jesus’ and the like. To be sure, the synonyms have their own value, and exegetes contest them in various places. But the bottom line is that no cardinal truth that Christians embrace is affected by these variants or the first category of variants.

The third category are those variants that can affect the meaning in a significant way but have a very poor pedigree. A classic example is 1 John 5.7 in the King James Bible (“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”). This reading is not found in any manuscripts prior to the 12th century, and even then it is found as a marginal reading written by a scribe several centuries later than the original scribe wrote. The earliest that this reading is found in the text of a manuscript is the 16th century. It was, in fact, created ad hoc so that Erasmus (the first editor to publish a Greek New Testament on a printing press) would be pressured into putting it into his published text (more on that story later). What’s significant is that this particular reading is very meaningful (it seems to summarize belief in the Trinity in a formulaic way), but it is not viable (i.e., it lacks the sufficient pedigree to reach back to the original document). The ancient church nevertheless clearly embraced the Trinity (in the Council of Constantinople of AD 381 and the Chalcedonian Definition of AD 451). This should be evidence in itself that the church figured out that the New Testament clearly taught the Trinity apart from having the KJV’s wording of 1 John 5.7 in front of them. No modern translation except for the NKJV has this variant in the text, yet a hallmark of orthodoxy and of those conservative scholars who worked on Bible translations is a belief in the Trinity—and one that is squarely rooted in the Bible. So, omission of this reading does not alter anything.

These three categories combined amount to more than 99% of all textual variants. The smallest category by far is those variants that are meaningful and viable. Less than 1% of all of them! That, by itself, should be good news to all who embrace the Bible as the Word of God. When you hear that there are hundreds of thousands of variants, that in itself can be quite startling. It’s good to know that the vast majority of these are inconsequential.

But what about the minority, the meaningful and viable variants? What do these affect? Are any core beliefs of Christians impacted by them? What are some examples of these meaningful and viable variants? That’s what we’ll discuss next time.

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