Variations in NT

Due to the New Testament Manuscripts being written by unofficial people as well as scribes, there were thousands of copies made and we have thousands of variations. This is different to the Old Testament because those copies were only copied by official scribes. To this date there are about 200,000 variations between New Testament manuscripts, there will possibly be more in the future as we find more manuscripts. There is an ambiguity in saying there are 200,000 variations in the manuscripts we have today because those variations only represent about 10,000 places in the New Testament. For example if one word is misspelled in 3,000 different manuscripts it is counted as 3,000 variations or readings. Once we understand how the variations are counted there is really not many variations at all.

Students of textual criticism have categorized two ways these variations have occurred throughout the manuscripts of the New Testament these are intentional and unintentional changes. To understand fully the variations we must take a look at how they have entered into the texts:

This group is by far the most variations and errors found in the New Testament.

1. Early manuscripts were not punctuated and letters did not get separated into words by spaces so what occurred was wrong divisions of words that resulted in new words.

2. Then we have the problem of the omission of letters when the eye had problems and it mistook groups of letters for another line of groups of letters.

3. The repeating of words in a sentence, this is called dittography.

3. Confusion of spelling account for quite a few scribal errors.

4. When manuscripts were copied while listening to someone read them this created a very small amount of variation.

Most variations and errors were the result of unintentional changes due to the human limitation but there were some intentional changes in the New Testament manuscripts, the scribes probably had good intentions but they are still changes none the less.

1. Grammatical and linguistically changes occurred, this includes the changes of the spelling of names and places to suit the linguistic styles of the time or area, the changing of grammar to make it smoother to read, the changing of genders to agree with their referents.

2. Then we have liturgical changes, for example instead of saying His parents it was changed to Joseph and Mary.

It is easy to start to be concerned when you hear of 200,000 changes or variations in the New Testament alone, even I was first concerned myself. However when you consider these changes only occur in 10,000 places out of the 24,000 manuscripts we have, you begin to see the changes are not of great significance. Textual critics and scholars have attempted to put it into perspective for us. Westcott and Hort estimated that only one-eighth of all variants had any weight due to the variants only being in spelling and style. They then state that out of the rest of the variations only about one-sixtieth were just above "trivialities" or can be called of any significant change. Mathematically that would mean that the text is about 99.33 percent pure, whether one uses the Textus Receptus, Nestle Aland text or some eclectic text of the New Testament. Another scholar by the name of Ezra Abbott gave roughly the same figures, he said the degree of purity would be about 99.75 percent, and there are many more scholars I can quote but will leave it for my book.

If we then compare the bible to other works of religion and history like the Quran and the Iliad, the biblical record proves far superior. Less than one tenth of the biblical text is even in question but the accuracy of the Quran and the works of Iliad fail miserably in regards to thousands upon thousands of New Testament manuscripts and the Iliad and the Quran do not even come close to the amount of manuscripts we have on the New Testament.

It should also be noted that the changes and variations within the New Testament manuscripts do not affect any doctrinal teachings of Jesus or the Apostles.

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