GLEANINGS — July 13, A.D. 2014                                                                                                              Some Manuscripts Say...

Among God's servants are those called to be Bible scholars. They are mighty in the Scriptures as was Apollos (Acts 18:24). The word of Christ dwells in them richly; they are treasure troves of godly wisdom and knowledge for God's people. 

Others, professing to be wise, have become merely educated fools; they are Bible scholars in name only. They often trot out the VARIANTS in the ancient Greek manuscripts in an attempt to justify their unbelieving response to God's holy, infallible, inerrant, and fully authoritative written word.

Variants are alternate readings of portions of Scripture. 5,700 ancient manuscript fragments or portions of the New Testament have survived to the present. The word manuscript means "hand written." Before the printing press, Scripture and other literature could be copied only by hand. These alternate readings of Scripture passages were made accidentally or deliberately by copyists (scribes). English translations of the Bible often include footnotes about variants. 

Matthew, Mark, and Luke – with no variation – all record that the Lord Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away." Those skeptical of this precious promise from the lips of the Son of God attempt to make their case this way: "We can't deny that variants exist, so how can we regard Scripture as the infallible word of God?"

Faith does not deny that variants exist, but it denies that they can destroy the word of God. Faith has confidence that the God Who inspired Scripture has acted to preserve Scripture...and amazingly, we find that the history of the transmission of Scripture over many centuries, even with the variants, makes a powerful case for God's providential preservation of His Word!

There is an abundance of faithful teaching by true Bible scholars on this subject, and disciples who are fascinated or even troubled by this issue can readily find sound books and other resources on it that will edify and satisfy. For now, let's articulate a few basic principles:

1. Spelling "Doesn't Count" – The impact of the vast majority of the variants could be called insubstantial or it could be called unsubstantial. Use either form of that word, and the meaning remains the same: of no consequence. Correct spelling standards were even weaker in the days of manual copyists. If two manuscript fragments of the same Bible passage have two different spellings of a clearly recognizable word (a name, for instance) there is really no issue. Again, this is the case with the vast majority of all variants.

2. Multiple Choice, not Fill in the Blank – Variants present us with a choice, NOT a complete unknown. In other words, our question is, "was the original reading A or B?" We don't have cases in which the question is, "was the original A, B, or neither?" By comparing manuscripts from different lines of transmission, we can come to a reasonable conclusion that honors the whole Bible. And in the cases where the original reading still remains uncertain, we find that regardless of whether it was A or B, the accurate preservation of the passage overall IS certain.

3. Older is Not Necessarily Better – When multiple, more recent manuscripts from different "family lines" of transmission give us the same reading, and one very old manuscript gives a reading that was not passed down over the centuries, this can indicate that the very old manuscript was not copied for the very reason that it was known to be corrupt!

This can be illustrated by this writer's copy of the "New World Translation," a deliberately altered (for example, at Colossians chapter one) version of the Bible. It is kept for reference, i.e. when interacting with those trapped in the major cult which produced this book. It is never used for devotional purposes, or in teaching. It remains on a shelf...in mint condition as a volume, but worthless for other than apologetic purposes. So can be the case with old manuscripts. Perhaps they survived for many centuries because they were not used! Meanwhile, trustworthy manuscripts were used, wore out, and were replaced by newer copies.

To sum up, the Christian disciple need have no fear in trusting faithful English translations of the Bible. There is far more certainty for the Bible's conformity to the autographs (original manuscripts) than for that of any other ancient writing. Let the current generation of educated fools try to cast aspersions on the Bible! Their skeptical theories will eventually disintegrate, as have all previous ones. As orthodox Bible scholar Dr. James White said, "The burden of proof lies upon the skeptic who asserts corruption of the primitive New Testament text."