What if I were to tell you that there are textual errors in the New Testament? Most New Testament scholars already know this. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of manuscripts of New Testament writings in Greek, with many different textual variants. We are able to reconstruct most of the original text of the New Testament from these manuscripts by comparing them with each other for the most part (as well as comparing them with later ancient translations such as the Syriac Peshitta or the Latin Vulgate), but there are things that most textual scholars would or should admit that may not always reflect what the original authors wrote either from grammatical anomalies which suggest missing or added words, or from drastic change in voice, use of language, and out of character statements which suggests larger insertions into the text by later hands.
The more I do my devotions in Koine Greek, the better my Greek gets and the more used to the voice of each author I become, the more I notice these anomalies, edits, and insertions. To be fair, I don’t think all of them were intentional. First century Greek was written in all capital letters with no spaces between the words. Professional scribes and copyists had methods to ensure their transcriptions were accurate, but how many professional scribes and copyists did the first century churches employ? How many of them could they trust to not turn them in to either the authorities or the mobs who wanted to tear them apart? How many of them could they trust with Paul’s words? Or John’s? Or Peter’s? I read somewhere a while back that the literacy rate within the Roman empire was around 50% or so. There were doubtless folks who could themselves read and write and were capable of copying out the letters and Gospels themselves, doing the best that they could, but they weren’t professionals. It’s not hard to imagine their eyes wandering and skipping text, mistaking one word for another, and leaving out small words or even prepositional phrases as their eyes became tired and they didn’t know to count the letters, or didn’t know how to count the letters to make sure they got every one.
But this doesn’t explain the insertions of text where the voice and usage of language is completely different from the rest of the work. One such well known place regards the shorter and longer endings of Mark in chapter 16 of that Gospel. I translated through Mark oh, about a year ago now before we left California for Kentucky. I got used to how he worded things, and the vocabulary and phrases he commonly used. Then I reached these two endings. It became clear to me quickly that neither was written by the Mark who penned everything that came before them. Another, more controversial and more disturbing passage is 1 Corinthians 14:33b-35 where the Greek used doesn’t match Paul’s speech in any of his other writings, doesn’t follow the train of thought of the text, and is out of character with Paul’s distancing Christian practice and behavior from the Torah. It became very clear to me that this was inserted long after the letter to Corinth was written, and by someone who wanted to put words in Paul’s mouth that he never said. It also doesn’t explain the omission of John 7:53-8:11 from several otherwise complete ancient manuscripts when it is clearly John’s voice and work, and is internally consistent with the rest of the Gospel.
These edits, omissions, and errors are the reason why the doctrine of Sola Scriptura is a dangerous one when taken to the extreme. If we had the autographs which the New Testament writers originally penned or had someone else pen for them, then it wouldn’t be a question, because we would know exactly what they originally said, and could trust each word written. But we don’t. We have copies of copies, each with known deviations from the autographs. What we have is probably on average about 83% of what the original authors wrote when these deviations are taken into account. To put that into perspective this is a similar percentage of Tyndale’s verbage from his original English translation (published in 1534) which is found in the King James Version of the New Testament (published in 1611) by one estimate. The rest of it are edits and changes made by the KJV translators and editors. Does the KJV reflect the text which Tyndale translated? Yes, to a high degree. Is it all exactly as Tyndale wrote it down? Nope. The danger where this comparison translates to the Greek text is that some of the deviations appear to change the meaning of a few certain texts from the author’s original intent. Not all of them to be sure, not even most, but a few and this has led in some cases to folks being hurt from it. And this doesn’t even take into account the variant readings found in translations into English by translators of different theological backgrounds.
But wasn’t God capable of keeping His Scripture from being altered or messed with at all and kept pristine? Yes, it’s true that He could have. But it’s clear just from comparison of the Greek texts that He chose not to. This begs the question, “why?” One answer which I would submit is because “Sola Scriptura” can be taken to such an extreme as to exclude all other interaction and conversation with Him, which some groups currently do. “If it’s not in the Bible, God didn’t say it!” and “God only speaks to us in His word!” are common refrains heard in American churches especially. And the Scriptures which were meant to point us to Jesus Christ and the life He gives suddenly get twisted into an idol of their own imagination and understanding, only able to be correctly interpreted by those groups, and used to hurt and beat others, ultimately bringing death. There’s a reason why many now are talking about how such groups hurting and abusing them as the reasons why they left those churches, if not Christianity altogether. God never meant for the writings of the Apostles and Prophets to become an idol for people to worship any more than He meant for the bronze snake he told the people to make in the desert to become one, and yet the latter clearly did, and the former is treated like one among some churches and groups.
There is a reason why these same Scriptures call Him, “The Living God.” He is not some mythological figure in a book. He is not confined to the pages of a translation of an ancient religious text. He is just as capable of speaking to us now with and through His Spirit through various means as He was to those folks when those words were written, and it is the Spirit of Christ who is to be our chief teacher and interpreter in all of these things, and Him to whom we are to listen first, and the Scriptures themselves record Jesus Himself saying that this Holy Spirit, this Advocate who proceeded from the Father and was sent by the Son, would teach us and guide us into all truth, even teaching us what to say and how to respond in times of crisis. More to the point, He wants us to talk to Him and ask Him these things. He wants us to interact and converse with Him. He wants us to get to know Him as much as or better than we know and are familiar with anyone. The Scriptures are a tool for this, yes, but they are not the only tool, nor should they be set upon the altar of worship in His place.
God surrounds us, our very existence is founded and predicated on His own as sound waves are to the existence of air, or ripples in a pond to the existence of the water. His is the deepest and most foundational reality. He isn’t a character fictional or otherwise in a book to be speculated over, but is a Living Reality and Being who wants us to pull our heads out of the sand and know Him for the real, living Person that He is.
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