Manuscripts and Variants

Two lessons elsewhere in this course have already done the groundwork, and you should not expect it to be done again here. The Apologetics lesson Has the Text Been Changed? answers the charge that the copies are so corrupt we cannot know what the apostles wrote, from the sceptic and from the Muslim neighbour, and it is honest about what Isaiah 40:8 promises and what it does not. The Hermeneutics lesson Which Bible Are You Reading, in the module called The Toolbox, describes the kinds of manuscript, how variants arise, the famous cases, and the two honest positions on the majority text and the critical text. If you have not read those two lessons, read them first. This lesson assumes them.

What this lesson adds is the Greek. Until now you have met the text-critical question through English footnotes: a line at the foot of the page saying some manuscripts add this or omit that. A footnote of that kind is a report, written by a translation committee, of evidence you cannot see. The aim of this module is to let you see it. By the end of this lesson you should be able to open a Greek New Testament on a phone, find the small marks that say the editors had to make a decision, read the note that goes with the mark, and say in plain English what the disagreement is, which editions or manuscripts are on each side, and whether it makes any difference to a sentence you might preach.

That is a modest skill and a real one. It will not make you a textual critic, any more than reading a blood-test report makes a man a doctor. Textual critics spend years learning the hands of scribes, the habits of particular manuscripts and the history of the early translations. But it will mean that when a preacher, a sceptic or a video tells you that the Greek manuscripts say something, you can go and look, and you will know what you are looking at. In a church where nobody else owns a Greek New Testament, that is a ministry in itself.

One more word before the work begins. The anchor for this lesson is chosen on purpose. Peter tells his readers that 'the word of the Lord stands forever', and in the three verses around that sentence the manuscripts differ in three places. If that unsettles you, notice what it does not touch: no copy anywhere has Peter saying that the word fails. The variants are about whether the glory belongs to flesh or to man, and whether the phrase 'for ever' appears once or twice. The promise is about God keeping what he has said. The variants are about scribes copying what Peter wrote. Both are true at the same time, and the rest of this lesson is about learning to see the second without losing hold of the first.

Here is what the SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT) prints at 1 Peter 1:24: πᾶσα σὰρξ ὡς χόρτος (pasa sarx hōs chortos, all flesh is like grass), καὶ πᾶσα δόξα αὐτῆς (kai pasa doxa autēs, and all its glory) ὡς ἄνθος χόρτου (hōs anthos chortou, like the flower of grass). Look at the small word αὐτῆς (autēs). It is the genitive feminine singular of the pronoun, and it is feminine because the noun it points back to, σάρξ (sarx, flesh), is feminine. All flesh is like grass, and all its glory, the glory of flesh, is like a flower. That is the reading of the Westcott and Hort edition, of Tregelles, and of the Greek text behind the NIV, and it is the reading the BSB translates.

The Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine text reads ἀνθρώπου (anthrōpou, of man) instead of αὐτῆς: all the glory of man. That is the reading behind the KJV's 'all the glory of man as the flower of grass'. Now look at where the line comes from. Peter is quoting Isaiah 40:6, and the Greek translation of Isaiah, the Septuagint, which Peter's readers knew, reads πᾶσα δόξα ἀνθρώπου (pasa doxa anthrōpou, all the glory of man) at that point. The usual explanation is easy to picture. A scribe who knew Isaiah in Greek by heart reached this familiar line in 1 Peter and wrote what he knew, so that 1 Peter came to match the Isaiah it was quoting. Textual critics call this harmonisation: a scribe making one passage agree with another he knows well. It is one of the commonest causes of variation in the Gospels, where a scribe's memory of Matthew would creep into his copy of Mark.

The other two variants work the same way. At verse 23 the Byzantine text adds εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα (eis ton aiōna, for ever) after μένοντος (menontos, enduring), giving the KJV's 'which liveth and abideth for ever'. Two lines later, in verse 25, every edition reads μένει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα (menei eis ton aiōna, stands forever). A phrase that appears once in a passage has a way of appearing twice in later copies. And at verse 24 the Byzantine text adds αὐτοῦ (autou, its) after τὸ ἄνθος (to anthos, the flower), which the KJV renders 'the flower thereof'. That one changes nothing at all in meaning; it is the kind of small natural filler a copyist adds without thinking.

Be fair to the other side before you settle anything. A defender of the Byzantine text would say that the explanation runs just as well in reverse: perhaps Peter wrote 'for ever' twice, and an early scribe in Egypt dropped the first as repetitive; perhaps Peter wrote 'of man', following his Greek Isaiah, and a scribe changed it to 'its' to match the flesh at the start of the line. Those are not foolish suggestions, and the next lesson will teach you how textual critics weigh exactly this kind of question, with the manuscripts on one side of the scale and the habits of scribes on the other. For now the point is simpler. You have just found three variants, read them in Greek, traced each to an English translation, and seen a reasonable account of how each arose. That is the whole skill in miniature.

Now look again at the difference you found in the second inquiry question, because it is a different kind of thing. Isaiah 40:8 in the BSB ends 'the word of our God stands forever', and the Greek Isaiah has the same: the word of our God. Peter has τὸ δὲ ῥῆμα κυρίου (to de rhēma kyriou, but the word of the Lord). This is not a variant. The SBLGNT apparatus has no note at 1 Peter 1:25, which tells you that the four editions it compares all agree that Peter wrote κυρίου (kyriou, of the Lord). The difference is between Peter and Isaiah, not between one copy of Peter and another. Many commentators think the change is deliberate, since in 1:3 the Lord is the Lord Jesus Christ, so that the enduring word becomes the word about Jesus, which Peter says in the next breath was proclaimed to you. Whether or not that is the reason, keep the two kinds of difference apart. A New Testament writer quoting the Old Testament freely is part of what he wrote. A scribe changing what he wrote is a variant. Confusing the two produces a great deal of muddle in sermons and in arguments.

Start with a distinction that most people never learn. A manuscript is a single handwritten copy: a papyrus page, a parchment codex, a medieval volume. An edition is a printed text that an editor has built by comparing manuscripts and deciding, at every place where they differ, which reading he thinks is original. Nobody reads 'the Greek New Testament' in the sense of a single ancient book. Everyone reads an edition, and every edition is a long series of judgments. That is not a scandal; it is what you would expect when thousands of copies survive. But it means that when someone says 'the Greek says', the honest follow-up question is which Greek, in whose edition.

The SBLGNT was edited by Michael W. Holmes and published in 2010 by the Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software, and it is free to read and to use. Holmes did not start from nothing. He took four earlier editions, compared them, and wherever they disagreed he weighed the manuscript evidence and made his own decision. Those four editions are the ones named in his notes. WH is the edition of B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, published in Cambridge in 1881, the most influential critical text of the nineteenth century. Treg is the edition of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, published in parts between 1857 and 1872. NIV is not the English translation but the Greek text that the NIV translators are judged to have followed, as reconstructed by Richard J. Goodrich and Albert L. Lukaszewski in A Reader's Greek New Testament (2003). RP is the Byzantine Textform of Maurice A. Robinson and William G. Pierpont (2005), which represents the majority of later Greek manuscripts and stands close to the Greek behind the KJV.

On a phone the easiest place to read it is Bible Gateway, which offers the SBLGNT as one of its versions and shows the notes as small footnote letters in the Greek. Each note follows a simple pattern. First comes the word or phrase as the SBLGNT prints it, then the editions that agree with it, then a square bracket, then what the other editions read. So the note at 1 Peter 1:24 reads: αὐτῆς WH Treg NIV] ἀνθρώπου RP. Read it aloud as a sentence: the SBLGNT prints αὐτῆς, and so do Westcott-Hort, Tregelles and the NIV's Greek; the Robinson-Pierpont text reads ἀνθρώπου instead. A plus sign means the edition after it adds something, so the note at 1:23, which ends + εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα RP, means the Robinson-Pierpont text adds 'for ever'. Where an edition leaves something out, the note uses a dash for the omission. Where two editions differ from the SBLGNT in different ways, their readings are separated by a semicolon, as at 2 Corinthians 4:2. If several notes fall in one verse, Bible Gateway gives each its own footnote letter; in the printed edition they are separated by a small dot.

STEP Bible offers the same SBLGNT apparatus as a separate resource that you can display beside a Bible. STEP's own guide says it is found in the version menu under the commentaries tab, where it is listed as SBLGNTApp, alongside a second resource listed as VarApp that sets out main variants with the manuscripts supporting each. Websites rearrange their menus from time to time, so if those names have moved, look for the word apparatus. Either way the content of the SBLGNT notes is the same: four editions compared with Holmes's own text.

Know the limit of what this apparatus tells you, because it is the commonest mistake students make with it. The SBLGNT notes compare editions, not manuscripts. When the note at 1 Peter 1:24 says RP reads ἀνθρώπου, it does not tell you which manuscripts read ἀνθρώπου, how old they are, or where they were copied. It tells you that one respected modern edition chose that reading. That is still very useful, because it shows you in a second where the serious editors disagree, and the place where four careful editors disagree is almost always a place worth looking at. But to see the manuscripts themselves you need a different kind of note, and for that you go to the Tyndale House edition.

One more mark in the SBLGNT text itself is worth knowing. At Mark 16:9-20 the SBLGNT prints the passage inside double square brackets, and the short ending before it too. That mark says the editor judges the passage was not part of the earliest recoverable text, but keeps it on the page because of its age and its long place in the church's reading. It is not a mark of contempt, and it is not a verdict that the events did not happen. John 7:53-8:11 is handled differently depending on where you read it. The SBLGNT as Bible Gateway shows it, the edition of 2010, leaves the passage out of the running text and prints it in full in the note at 7:52 as the reading of RP; the free downloadable files were updated in 2023 to print it in the text inside double brackets. So do not be surprised if two copies of the same edition look different here. The next lesson weighs both passages carefully.

The Greek New Testament produced at Tyndale House in Cambridge, edited by Dirk Jongkind with Peter J. Williams and others and published in 2017, is usually called the Tyndale House Greek New Testament, or THGNT. Its editors worked afresh from the manuscripts, giving special attention to the earliest ones and to how scribes actually wrote, and their text differs from the other critical editions in a good number of places, most of them small. It too can be read on Bible Gateway, as the version called THGNT, and its notes appear as footnote letters in the same way. The difference is in what the notes contain. Where the SBLGNT names editions, the THGNT names manuscripts.

So the THGNT note at Mark 1:1, on the words υἱοῦ θεοῦ (huiou theou, Son of God), lists the manuscripts that have the words, the manuscripts that have them in a slightly longer form, and the manuscripts that leave them out. You will need a small key to read such notes, and it is worth copying into the back of your notebook. A capital P followed by a number is a papyrus: P66 and P75, both containing large parts of John and dated around AD 200 or a little later, are two of the most important. The Hebrew letter א (aleph) is Codex Sinaiticus, a fourth-century Greek Bible. B is Codex Vaticanus, also fourth century. A is Codex Alexandrinus and C is Codex Ephraemi, both fifth century. In the Gospels and Acts D is Codex Bezae, around the fifth century, a manuscript with many unusual readings. W is the Freer manuscript of the Gospels, from about the fourth or fifth century. Plain numbers such as 1, 69 or 1424 are minuscules, the later manuscripts in small cursive script.

Three further marks complete the key. An asterisk after a manuscript, as in א*, means the reading of the original scribe, the first hand, before anyone corrected it. A small number or letter after it, as in א1, means a corrector, someone who later went over the manuscript and changed it. And 'marg' means a reading written in the margin. One caution: the capital letters are reused in different parts of the New Testament, so D in Paul's letters is a different manuscript from D in the Gospels. If you ever cite a manuscript by letter in a sermon or a study group, look it up first.

The THGNT apparatus is selective. Its editors included the variants they judged significant for translation or interpretation, and left the rest out. At 1 Peter 1:23-25, for instance, Bible Gateway shows no THGNT notes at all, even though the SBLGNT notes three differences there. That is not a contradiction. It tells you that the Tyndale House editors did not think the Byzantine readings at those points needed to be set before every reader. The two tools do different jobs: the SBLGNT shows you quickly where the editions part company, and the THGNT shows you, at the places that matter most, which manuscripts stand where.

Two more free tools fill out the picture. The NET Bible, which can be read free at netbible.org, carries a very large set of translators' notes, and the ones marked tc are text-critical notes that explain in English which manuscripts read what and why the translators chose as they did. For a student who cannot yet read a Greek apparatus fluently, a NET tc note is the best plain-English explanation of a variant available anywhere without paying. And Bible Hub, at biblehub.com, has a page for every verse, reached through its Texts link, that sets the Greek of several printed editions side by side: the SBLGNT, Westcott-Hort, Nestle's 1904 edition, Tischendorf, the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine text, two editions of the Textus Receptus and others. Where they all agree you will see the same Greek line again and again. Where they differ, the difference leaps off the screen. Bible Hub also shows the BSB's own footnotes, which use the same kind of abbreviations: SBL, WH, BYZ for the Byzantine text, TR for the Textus Receptus, NE for Nestle 1904, and ECM for the Editio Critica Maior, the large new edition being produced in Germany.

None of these sites will tell you what to believe about a variant, and you should be suspicious of any that does without showing the evidence. What they give you is the evidence itself, which only a generation ago was locked inside printed books that cost more than most pastors in the world earn in a month.

Once you start tapping footnote letters you will find a great many notes, and the first discipline is to sort them before you worry about any of them. Most variants fall into a few kinds, and a student who can name the kind has already done half the work.

Spelling. At 2 Corinthians 4:2 the SBLGNT prints συνιστάνοντες (synistanontes, commending), and its note shows that Tregelles and the Robinson-Pierpont text spell the same participle of the same verb differently. The meaning is identical and no English translation could show the difference. A very large share of all variants are of this kind: different spellings of the same word, which matter to the historian of Greek and to nobody else.

Word order. At Romans 12:1 the SBLGNT prints εὐάρεστον τῷ θεῷ (euareston tō theō, pleasing to God), and Westcott-Hort has the same words in the other order. Because Greek shows a word's job by its ending rather than by its position, a change in word order often changes nothing that English can carry. Occasionally it shifts an emphasis, and the module on sentences taught you to be cautious about how much weight emphasis will bear.

The article and other small words. At Romans 3:25 the SBLGNT reads διὰ πίστεως (dia pisteōs, through faith), while the Tyndale House edition reads διὰ τῆς πίστεως (dia tēs pisteōs), with the article. Whether Paul wrote 'through faith' or 'through the faith' here is a real question for a grammarian, and a translator will almost certainly render both as 'through faith'.

Additions and substitutions. These are the kind you met in 1 Peter 1:23-24: a phrase added, often by harmonisation with a nearby verse or a familiar parallel, or one word put for another. They are the variants most likely to show up as a difference between the KJV and a modern translation, and most of them, like the three you found, change the English without changing what the passage teaches.

Meaningful single readings. A small number of variants change the meaning of a sentence in a way that matters, even though the doctrine concerned stands on other texts too. Mark 1:1, the anchor of the next lesson, is one: whether Mark's first line calls Jesus the Son of God. The SBLGNT and the THGNT disagree there, which is the clearest possible sign that it is a real question.

Whole passages. Two passages of more than a few verses are in serious doubt: the longer ending of Mark, 16:9-20, and the account of the woman caught in adultery, John 7:53-8:11. The editions print them in different ways, and the next lesson weighs them.

For every note you find, ask three questions in order. Does this change the English? Most do not. If it does, does it change the meaning of the sentence? Fewer do. If it does, does it change anything the church teaches, or does that teaching stand on other texts whose wording is not in question? You will find, as every textual critic finds, that the third question almost always has the same answer. But you will have found it yourself, which is a different thing from being told it.

This module's exercises build toward the capstone at the end of the track, a full study of one passage of your own choice. If you have not chosen your passage yet, choose it now: eight to twelve verses from the New Testament that you expect to preach or teach in the coming months. Write the reference at the top of a fresh page in your notebook and head the page Text.

First, on your phone, open your passage on Bible Gateway in the SBLGNT. Go through it verse by verse and tap every footnote letter. For each note write down the verse, the Greek word or phrase the SBLGNT prints, what the other editions read, and which editions are on each side. Copy the Greek carefully, accents and all; you are training your eye as well as gathering data.

Second, sort each note into one of the kinds in section 5: spelling, word order, small words, addition or substitution, meaningful reading, or whole passage. Most of your notes will fall into the first three. That is normal, and it is worth noticing.

Third, open the same passage in the THGNT on Bible Gateway and note any footnotes there. For each one, write down which manuscripts are named on each side, using the key from section 4. Then look at the passage on Bible Hub, both the BSB footnotes and the Texts page for any verse that had a note, and see whether the BSB mentions the variant.

Finally, choose the one note on your page that makes the most difference to the English, and write two sentences about it: what the disagreement is, and whether it changes anything you would say from the pulpit. If your passage has no note that changes the English at all, write that down too. It is not a wasted exercise. It is a fact about your passage that you now know first-hand, and you will be able to tell your congregation, if anyone ever asks, that you have checked.