Skip to content

Course 4 · Lesson 3.3

Kinds of variants and how they arise

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 4 outline

Module 1: How the Canon Formed

  1. What a canon is, and what canonical means
  2. The Old Testament canon: Law, Prophets and Writings
  3. The New Testament canon: from gospels and letters to a list
  4. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant canons compared

Module 2: The Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint

  1. The Hebrew Bible and the work of the Masoretes
  2. Origin and character of the Septuagint
  3. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the state of the Old Testament text
  4. How New Testament writers quote the Old Testament

Module 3: Transmission of the New Testament Text

  1. Copying by hand: papyri, codices and scribes
  2. Manuscript traditions: Alexandrian, Western and Byzantine texts
  3. Kinds of variants and how they arise
  4. The principles of textual criticism
  5. Reading a critical apparatus and a translation footnote

Module 4: Reading Responsibly: Exegesis and Method

  1. Exegesis and eisegesis with worked examples
  2. Source, form and redaction criticism: what each asks
  3. Strengths and limits of the historical method
  4. Literary and canonical reading

Module 5: Meaning Beyond the Surface: Typology, Allegory and Genre

  1. Typology in the New Testament and the fathers
  2. Allegory and its critics: Alexandria and Antioch
  3. Reading by genre: narrative, law, poetry, prophecy, gospel and letter
  4. Setting, authorship and audience as questions to ask of any passage

Module 6: Christian Approaches to Interpretation

  1. The fourfold sense of Scripture in the medieval church
  2. Reformation principles: Scripture, clarity and the grammatical and historical sense
  3. Orthodox and Catholic approaches: Scripture within Tradition
  4. Historical scholarship and theological interpretation in conversation

Module 7: Writing an Exegesis

  1. Choosing a passage and framing a question
  2. Observation and context: what the text says and where it stands
  3. Using commentaries and reference works without being led by them
  4. Writing up, checking conclusions and revising

All courses

Program / Course 4: Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics / Lesson 3.3

What you will learn

  • Define a textual variant and distinguish a meaningful variant from a trivial one.
  • Name the common kinds of unintentional scribal error.
  • Name the common kinds of intentional change.
  • Place a given variant in a category and say what it would change, if anything.

The big idea

A variant is a place where manuscripts read differently. The New Testament has hundreds of thousands of them, which sounds alarming until you notice that they are counted by every difference in every manuscript. Most are spelling or word order and make no difference to meaning. A small number change the sense. Variants arise in two ways: by accident, when a scribe sees or hears wrongly, and by intention, when a scribe tries to clarify, harmonize or improve the text. Knowing the kinds helps you judge them.

Key terms

Variant reading
A place in the text where manuscripts differ in wording.
Haplography
A scribal error in which a letter or word that should be written twice is written once. From Greek words for single writing.
Dittography
A scribal error in which something is written twice that should be written once.
Homoeoteleuton
A Greek word meaning same ending. The scribe’s eye jumps from one line to a later line that ends the same way, and the words between are lost.
Itacism
A spelling confusion in Greek among vowels and diphthongs that were pronounced alike, such as the sounds of eta and iota.
Harmonization
Changing a passage so that it agrees with a parallel passage elsewhere, often in another gospel.
Conflation
Combining two different readings into one longer reading.
Gloss
A note or explanation written beside a text that a later copyist may take into the main text.

Background

Scholars have counted the variants in the Greek New Testament and the estimates run to several hundred thousand. The number is large because it counts each place where each manuscript differs, so one change copied into a thousand manuscripts is counted many times. The number also grows with the number of manuscripts. A smaller number of manuscripts would give fewer counted variants, which shows that the large figure reflects the abundance of evidence more than the instability of the text.

Most variants are of little consequence. They include spelling differences, changes in the order of words, the use or omission of the definite article, and the addition of a name where another manuscript has a pronoun. Greek allows a flexible word order, so many of these differences do not change the sense at all. A very small portion are both meaningful, in that they change the sense, and viable, in that they have a real claim to be the original reading.

To judge a variant fairly, it helps to ask how it could have arisen. A scribe can make a mistake without meaning to. A scribe can also make a choice. The categories below are the ones textual critics use most often.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Unintentional changes from the eye

Many errors arise because the eye of the scribe slips. In homoeoteleuton, the eye jumps from one phrase to a later one with the same ending and skips what lies between. In haplography, a repeated letter or word is written once, and in dittography a word is written twice. Letters that look alike can be confused. These errors usually produce shorter or longer texts that scholars can recognize because the omitted section fits neatly between two similar endings.

Step 2: Unintentional changes from the ear and the mind

When a text was read aloud and copied from dictation, similar sounds could be confused. In Greek, several vowels came to be pronounced alike, and this is called itacism. A well known case is Romans 5:1, where one reading says we have peace with God and another says let us have peace with God. The two Greek forms differ by a single vowel that sounded the same. English translations differ, and many print have peace with a footnote that gives the other. Memory also played a part, since a scribe holding a phrase in mind might write a familiar form of words from a parallel passage.

Step 3: Intentional changes

Some changes were deliberate and usually well meant. Scribes smoothed awkward grammar, replaced rare words with common ones, and clarified who is speaking. They harmonized passages: where one gospel has fuller wording of a saying, a scribe might bring the parallel into line. The Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11:2-4 is shorter in the earliest manuscripts than in Matthew 6, and many later scribes brought Luke closer to Matthew. Scribes also added liturgical endings. The words For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory at the end of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:13 in the King James Version are absent from the earliest manuscripts, and probably grew from the church’s worship.

A few changes may have been theological. A scribe might adjust a phrase to guard against a misreading or to make a point about Christ clearer. These are less common than is sometimes claimed, and they are discussed carefully by scholars. Where the doctrine in question is taught clearly in other passages, the variant rarely affects what the church believes.

Step 4: Put the variants in proportion

A useful way to keep proportion is to sort a given variant by the question: does it change the meaning? Spelling and word order seldom do. A name added for clarity usually does not. A longer ending or a whole verse is a different order of matter, and the lessons that follow show how scholars weigh such cases. Even the most discussed variants, such as the ending of Mark, do not affect the central teaching of the Gospel, but they matter for the history of the text and for the way a passage is read.

Keep in mind also that scholars do not agree on every case. Some hold that a shorter reading is more likely original, and others that the longer reading should be preferred. The disagreement is part of the discipline.

  1. Could this difference come from a slip of the eye?
  2. Could it come from the sound of the words?
  3. Does one reading look like a smoother or more familiar version of the other?
  4. Does a parallel passage explain the change?
  5. Would the difference change the meaning, or only the wording?
  6. Which reading would a scribe be more likely to create from the other?

Examples

Moved with compassion or with anger

In Mark 1:41, most manuscripts say that Jesus, moved with compassion, touched the leper. A few early witnesses say that he was angry. Which is original? Scholars argue that a scribe would be more likely to change anger to compassion than the reverse, since anger seems harder to explain. Others think that anger arose by an error. The case shows how the same principle can be weighed differently.

Let us have peace

Romans 5:1 turns on one vowel. The two readings sound alike in Greek and differ in meaning: one states a fact and the other makes an appeal. The reading let us have has strong early manuscript support and appears in major critical editions, while many translators print the statement we have because it fits the flow of Paul’s argument. Both fit the wider teaching of the letter.

The doxology of the Lord’s Prayer

The ending For thine is the kingdom is in the King James Version and in many Protestant liturgies, and it is missing from most modern translations in the text and given in a footnote. The ending is old and widely loved. Its history is a case of a text that grew in worship and was written into the manuscripts afterward.

Different perspectives

Evangelical Protestant

Many evangelical scholars stress that the number of variants reflects the number of manuscripts, that no major doctrine depends on a doubtful reading, and that the work of textual critics strengthens confidence in the text. They also acknowledge real uncertainty in a few places.

Catholic

Catholic teaching accepts the work of textual criticism as a service to understanding the Scriptures. Catholic scholars take part in critical editions, and Catholic Bibles note disputed readings in the same way as other modern Bibles.

Orthodox

Orthodox use of the liturgical Greek text means that readings such as the Lord’s Prayer ending are part of the received worship of the church. Orthodox readers can hold this together with an understanding of how the text came to be.

Critical scholarship

Scholars such as Bart Ehrman have argued that scribal changes sometimes reflect theological concerns and that this complicates any simple picture of preservation. Others, such as Daniel Wallace and Bruce Metzger in different ways, reply that these cases are few and well understood. The debate is about emphasis and interpretation as much as about the facts.

Why it matters

A footnote that says some manuscripts read differently can seem unsettling. Knowing the kinds of variants lets you see most of them as ordinary products of copying by hand. It also gives you a basis for recognizing the few that matter and for asking good questions about them. This is the skill the next lesson builds on, the principles by which scholars decide.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Hundreds of thousands of variants means the text is hopelessly corrupt.

Correction: The count is large because it records every difference in every manuscript. Most differences are trivial, and the large number of manuscripts allows scholars to compare and recover the text with confidence in most places.

Misunderstanding: Scribes changed the text mainly for theological reasons.

Correction: Most changes were accidental, and many intentional ones were stylistic or harmonizing. Some had theological motives, but these are a minority.

Misunderstanding: A variant shows that someone is trying to hide the truth.

Correction: A variant is a difference in copies. Most come from ordinary human error or well meant improvement.

Misunderstanding: If one reading is right then the other must have been a bad intention.

Correction: Neither scribe need have been careless or deceitful. A scribe who adds a clarification may think he is helping the reader.

Knowledge check

Why is the number of variants so large?

Variants are counted by every place where every manuscript differs. A single change copied into many manuscripts is counted many times, and the number grows with the number of manuscripts. Most are spelling or word order and do not change the meaning.

Name two kinds of unintentional error and describe one.

Examples are homoeoteleuton, where the eye jumps to a later line with the same ending and skips the words between, haplography, where something written twice is written once, dittography, and itacism, a confusion of similarly pronounced vowels. Any two, with a description, are correct.

What is harmonization and where might you see it?

Harmonization is changing a passage so it agrees with a parallel. It is common in the gospels, where a scribe might bring the wording of one gospel into line with another, as in the Lord’s Prayer in Luke, which many later manuscripts conform to Matthew.

What is the difference between a meaningful variant and a viable one?

A meaningful variant changes the sense of the passage. A viable variant has a real chance of being the original reading. Only a very small number of variants are both, and these are where textual critics focus their attention.

Think it through

  1. If a scribe added a clarifying word with good intentions, how would you tell his addition from the original?
  2. How might copying by ear differ from copying by eye in the kinds of errors it makes?
  3. Why might a believer find it easier to accept scribal variation than a critic might expect?
  4. Why do you think the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer has remained in worship although it is not in the earliest manuscripts?

Independent assignment

Sort ten variants

Use the footnotes in a study Bible to find ten places where the text notes that some manuscripts read differently. In your notebook, write down each reference and the variant. For each, guess whether it arose from the eye, the ear, harmonization, smoothing, liturgy or something else, and say whether it changes the meaning. Write a short paragraph of 150 words on what the whole set shows. Keep your work in your notebook.

Further study