Greek Manuscripts
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3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
4 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.
End of v. 3 and v. 4 textual issue:
Why did these people choose this place to congregate?
If you have a KJV or a NKJV, you will read at the end of v. 3 that this multitude was waiting for the moving of the water.
If you have a NASB this will also be in the main body of the text, but there will be brackets around it with a footnote. And if you have the ESV or the NIV this text will be omitted in the main body of the text, but you will find a footnote with it included in the margin. Why?
This is what is called a textual variant. The end of v. 3 and all of v. 4 are textual variants- that is not all of the manuscripts that we have available agree with each other.
Now the easy thing to do would be to keep preaching and ignore this issue. But, I think that this is a necessary issue to tackle.
I want to say a few things before we get into the facts of the manuscripts. First of all, my goal is not to cause strife or division or to step on anyone’s toes. I do not have an agenda nor do I want to prove anyone wrong or right. All I want to do this afternoon is provide you with honest facts that you may have never been made aware of before. In other words I would like to be able to have a family discussion about the elephant in the room and do so keeping in mind Ephesians 4.2-3, here we are commanded to walk...
Ephesians 4:2–3 ESV2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
We need to be able to talk about things like textual variants as a church family and we need to do it in humility and gentleness, with patience- putting up with one another in love, eagerly seeking to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. This is my goal.
Second, one of the reasons that preachers do not spend much time talking about textual variants is we are afraid to undermine your confidence in the Word of God. I believe the exact opposite. I think if we are honest with one another about the facts they are actually a marvelous testimony to how well God has preserved His Word and how certain we can be that we have the very Words of God.
Really listen to these words- this is a quote by John Anthony Hort back in 1881. Hort and Westcott studied the Greek manuscripts for 28 years of their life. After a lifetime of study Hort wrote these words,
“In this second estimate the proportion of comparatively trivial variations is beyond measure larger than in the former; so that the amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation is but a small fraction of the whole residuary variation, and can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text.”
To put this quote in perspective most of the variations in the manuscripts do not effect the meaning of the text in any significant way. That means that 999 words out of 1000 are accurate. Of the variants that do effect the meaning in a significant way, the “thousandth part of the entire text” you could fit all of it on less than one page of a Greek NT! And of those small variants none of them change any theology any doctrine at all. None of it effects our doctrine. What does all that mean? God has wonderfully and overwhelmingly preserved His Word for us today. When we read our bibles we can be confident that we have the very Word of God. To me this is awesome!
This leads me to my main question- why are there variants at all? Why didn’t God perfectly preserve the original documents as penned by Paul or Luke or John? I don’t know! I’m not God. But the facts are that God chose not to do it that way. How did God choose to preserve His Word? And here I am talking about the NT only.
God preserved His word in over 5,000 copies of the original Greek manuscripts. Some whole copies of the entire NT, some whole books, some fragments of books. But, we have preserved for us the very Word of God in the NT in this multitude of manuscripts.
But pastor, don’t we believe in Inspiration and Inerrancy? Absolutely! The doctrine of Inspiration is that all Scripture is God breathed. The words were penned by men’s hands and in their own unique form and style, but they were supernaturally blown/moved along by the Holy Spirit so that every word of the Bible is the exact word that God intended. And His word is inerrant, that is without error of any kind because it comes from God Himself. Then why do we have textual variants? The answer is that we believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of the original Greek manuscripts. In other words when John finished his gospel and the last pen stroke touched the page and he set down his writing on the table in front of him it contained the inspired inerrant Word of God.
We don’t have those documents. We have copies of those documents, and the copies are only inspired and inerrant so long as they faithfully and accurately represent the original documents. But, remember- 999 out of 1000 words are preserved in over 5000 manuscripts- and of the small percentage of variants that effect the meaning none of them change our doctrine! Meaning we have the Word of God.
Look at vv. 3-4 again:
John 5:3–4 KJV 19003 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. 4 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.
Does the end of v. 3 and all of v. 4 change the doctrine of the Bible in any way?
So why do we have differences in our English translations?
Textual Criticism. Huhhh, pastor people are critical of the Bible? That is not what textual criticism means. Remember God chose to preserve his Word in over 5,000 copies of the Greek originals. There are some variants or differences in those copies. Textual criticism is the task of sorting through all 5000 plus manuscripts to determine as accurately as possible what the original said. The bible that you hold in your lap this afternoon exists because of textual criticism. At some point in our history men labored to sift through all of the copies to determine what the originals said.
The differences in our English translations are due to the Greek texts that were used when men translated the Greek into English. If you are using the KJV or NKJV the Greek text is based off of the Textus Receptus.
The first edition, if you will, of the Textus Receptus was compiled by a man named Erasmus in 1516. While in Basle, Switzerland- Erasmus gathered all of the Greek manuscripts he could find.
John E. Ashbrook in The History of the Textus Receptus summarizes Erasmus’ efforts, “Erasmus gathered all the Greek manuscripts he could find in Basle. He found no more than five manuscripts, no one of which contained the entire Greek Testament and no two of which were perfectly agreed. The manuscripts were of about the twelfth century origin. (Some writers credit them with being as early as the eighth or ninth centuries.) He had no manuscript of Revelation until he was loaned one by his friend, the Hebrew scholar Reuchlin. This manuscript, however, lacked the last sheet. Erasmus met that lack by translating the last few verses of Revelation from Latin into Greek, allowing himself to present a complete New Testament. Thus the Greek New Testament was first published in 1516.”
From there the TR underwent numerous revisions up until 1633. Some additional Greek manuscripts were used in those subsequent revisions bringing the total manuscript count up to 15 Greek documents. This finalized version of the Textus Receptus was the basis of all of our English translations until the appearance of the English Revised Version in 1881.
What Greek text lies behind some of our other English translations?
To answer that question we have to understand the two major families of Greek Texts and the two major families are the Majority (Antioch of Syria or Byzantium) and the Critical (Alexandrian) texts.
These two families represent the two major theories of textual criticism:
Majority view-
Critical view-
All of the major modern English translations are based on the Critical view of the text- thus why there are differences in the English versions. But these English translations will include major alternate readings in the footnotes of the printed text.
Mark Minnick- Let’s Meet the Manuscripts
“But doesn’t the existence of those variants undermine our confidence that we have the very words that God inspired? No! The fact is that because we know of them and are careful to preserve the readings of every one of them, not one word of God’s Word has been lost to us. And in the cases where we may not be sure which variant most accurately repeats the original wording, not one doctrine is affected. Not one truth is compromised. Every doctrine and truth of God’s Word is taught in so many other places, in synonymous or verbatim wording, that no variant obscures it.”
“Only the autographa were inspired, that no manuscript or manuscript family is inerrant, and that no translation is perfect. They have also agreed that, in spite of these limitations, we still have in our King James Version, or other accurate translations, the very Word of God.”