Is What We Have Now What Was Written Then?

THE BIBLE ALONE IS THE WORD OF GOD.


Those eight words are profound and worthy of much meditation. The Bible is God’s inspired word and nothing else is. No other book carries the weight of Divine authorship in order to bind the human conscience. None of my thoughts… nothing that happens between my ears or yours rises to the level of Scripture. The Bible alone is the word of God. The Bible is the necessary and SUFFICIENT resource for all we need for life and godliness – it equips the man of God for every good work (2 Tim. 3:17).


Before I read the Scripture passage in a sermon you will hear me say these familiar words, “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the word of God.” When we speak of the Bible as God breathed Scripture, we speak of the inspiration of the original manuscripts – what men such as Moses, Isaiah, Paul and John wrote as they were “carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). The Scripture is “theopneustos” – Greek for “God breathed” found in 2 Tim. 3:16.


God has inspired His word and preserved it for us, just as He promised. However, He did not do so by sending a gold edged, leather bound 66 book canon of the Bible down from heaven on a parachute one Tuesday afternoon. No! There was a long and lengthy process involved, all of which was overseen, I believe, by the kind Providence of God.


God promised to give us His word and He has done so. However, He made no promise to bring supernatural aid to everyone who would make a copy of the Scriptures. We therefore do not contend for the inspiration of scribes. That’s an important and vital distinction. Scribes can and do make mistakes in copying, just as you and I can make mistakes when copying a poem or book.


Does that mean we have a corrupted Bible text? Can we not know for sure what was originally written (as some claim)? Not at all! Why? Because of the scholarly work of what is called “Textual Criticism” we can come to know what was originally written by the writers of the Bible. It is a science and a fascinating one, though for sure, some find it more fascinating that others.


Why would this be of interest to us? Well, because Gospel conversations we have with people today, issues of the text of the Bible come up regularly (unlike in decades past). There is so much mis-information out there that is freely available on the internet. It is therefore good for us to be armed with the truth as it prepares us to give a defense of the faith we profess to those who ask us for the reason of our hope, as 1 Peter 3:15 states.


It is important, and I would say “vital” to know WHAT we believe and WHY we believe it.

“IS WHAT WE HAVE NOW WHAT WAS WRITTEN THEN?”


Many have the opinion (me included) that Dr. Wallace is the leading scholar in the field of textual criticism in the world today. He is the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) and Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is a past president of the Evangelical Theological Society, a consultant for several Bible translations, and the author of numerous journal articles and books including Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. As you will see, he also has a particularly dry sense of humor.


In just less than an hour, Dr. Wallace explains the copying of the New Testament books and shows the reliability of our English translations. I believe it will do us much spiritual good to be aware of these things.

How We Got the Bible

Article by Dirk Jongkind, academic vice principal and senior research fellow in New Testament text and language at Tyndale House, Cambridge. He is also the author of An Introduction to the Greek New Testament. (source: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-we-got-the-bible)

Countless lives are changed by the preaching of the word of God. Since human beings tend to look at the outside and not at the inside, we often attribute the power of this transformative teaching to the preacher. We all know on reflection, though, that the real power does not rest in humans but in God’s word itself.

Reading Scripture is the most immediate exposure to the word of God. In practice, this means picking up a physical book and opening it to a specific page, or opening up an app on our phones and scrolling to a specific location. In either case, we trust that the word has not been corrupted and that the message of the Bible we hold in our hands was not changed or lost altogether. We believe that we are reading the actual words that God spoke.

In what follows, we will think about what has gone before that moment when we open Scripture and read it. What happened to the Bible between the earliest times and the twenty-first century? How did God bring his word to us? The reverse of this question — how he brought us to his word — is part of our individual testimony. But the way in which God brought about the Bible is the story of his providence in history, played out over thousands of years. And by understanding what God had done over the ages, we will see that it is reasonable and justified to trust that the Bible in our hands is a translation of the trustworthy words of Scripture. We could talk about ten reasons why to trust the Bible. But it may be more effective if we understand the larger narrative of the history of the Bible.

From God’s Breath to Israel’s Books

Because the Bible is the word of God, it naturally starts with God speaking, both in practice, as in Genesis 1:3 (“And God said, let there be light”), as well as logically, as in John 1:1 (“In the beginning was the Word”). And since we are talking about an infinite God, it should not surprise us that he uses an array of ways to communicate with his creatures.

God spoke directly to Moses from a burning bush (Exodus 3:2), and immediately after the exodus to the whole people from a burning mountain (Exodus 19:18). God speaks through the inspired recording of the history of his people, and through his prophets who heard his word — sometimes directly, but also through visions and dreams. We find personal reflections on the futility of life under the sun (Ecclesiastes), which is also part of God speaking to his people. And this in addition to the book of Proverbs, a collection of divinely crafted wisdom. In the New Testament, we have the records of how the apostles taught about Jesus and about what Jesus himself taught (the four Gospels). And we find the responses by the apostles to various situations within the churches, as well as positive teaching about the salvation that Jesus brought about.

There are many ways in which God spoke his word, and there are many ways in which it was written down. God shows his character even in the diverse ways that he used to form the Scriptures. And the Scriptures themselves testify to their formation.

‘Write This in a Book’

Of all the named authors in the Bible, Moses is the first. Immediately after the exodus, and still before the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, God tells Moses to start writing God’s words down (Exodus 17:14). Amalek had come out to fight Israel, and Moses commanded Joshua to lead the army while Moses would lift up the staff of God. It is after this fight that God speaks to Moses (the text does not tell us how) and commands him to write down what God’s ultimate judgment over Amalek will be as a memorial. The first command to record God’s words in a book comes in order that this book would become a memorial, a testimony, to the acts of God and the fulfilment of his promises. An interesting detail is that already this first Scripture is to be recited to Joshua. The future leader is to be formed by the word of God from its very beginning.

Soon after the fight with Amalek, Israel arrives at Mount Sinai. Here God speaks directly from the mountain, but the people cannot bear it (Exodus 20:19–21). Therefore, Moses goes up the mountain alone and receives the two tablets (Exodus 31:1832:15–16). The first set is made and written by God himself, but Moses breaks them in anger because of the idolatry of the people (Exodus 32:19). Moses then brings up a second set so that these can be inscribed with the same words of the covenant (Exodus 34:128Deuteronomy 10:4). It is also at this occasion that Moses is commanded to write down all the words, “for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel” (Exodus 34:27).

Numbers 33:2 teaches that Moses did not just write down the laws God gave to the people, but also the historical account of the journey of Israel.

In the book of Deuteronomy, at the end of Israel’s time in the wilderness and just before the entrance into the Promised Land, Moses addresses the people and reminds them of what had happened, what God had told them, and what it meant to be the covenant people of God. As expected, the written basis of the covenant is again mentioned. In Deuteronomy 10:5 we learn that the two tablets are kept in the ark. Deuteronomy 31:9 adds that the whole law is given to the Levites who carry the ark, but that it is also given to the elders of the people. The actual book that Moses wrote is to be kept near the ark “for a witness against you” (Deuteronomy 31:26). This is the beginning of the tabernacle, later replaced by the temple, as the place where the word of God is kept and preserved.

Deuteronomy gives us one unexpected insight into the actual practice of copying the law. We read about the stipulations for the future kings in Deuteronomy 17. Once the king sits on his throne, he has to write for himself a copy of the law “from before” the Levitical priests in order that he may read in it all the days of his life (Deuteronomy 17:18–19). The expression “from before” has been interpreted as meaning “approved by,” which is certainly possible. However, there is a more direct interpretation. It seems likely to me that the king is allowed to make his personal copy from the master scroll that Moses deposited with the Levites. This was a true privilege for the king, but also a serious responsibility. The king is supposed to be a faithful scribe. And as with Joshua, the leader of the people is supposed to be formed by the written word of God.

Authors and Compilers

Many of the books in the Old Testament remain without a named author, which is significant in itself. Apparently, the circumstances of their production are not necessary for their interpretation. We also read about books that were in existence but have not been preserved — for example, the book of the rights and duties of the king, written by Samuel and “laid . . . up before the Lord” (1 Samuel 10:25) — that is, put in the tabernacle together with the Scriptures.

We know David mainly as king, yet he was also the author of many psalms. He is called a “prophet” (Acts 2:30), and he calls himself “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1). Other authors of Psalms are named too — Moses, Solomon, Asaph, Heman, and Ethan. When considering the book of Psalms as a whole, however, we hit another boundary to our knowledge. Who collected all the individual psalms into their canonical order? Was this a gradual process that happened over time? When did this book gets its final shape?

The same questions are raised by the book of Proverbs. Solomon is presented as the source for the wisdom tradition in the book (Proverbs 1:1), but the final two chapters name two other persons, Agur and Lemuel (Proverbs 30:1 and 31:1). In addition, Proverbs 25:1 adds a fascinating detail, as it says that the men of Hezekiah brought together the content of the following chapters — several hundred years after Solomon! Like the book of Psalms, we do not know who gave the book of Proverbs its final shape. But in this case, Scripture tells us that it was centuries after the oldest parts were produced.

Books such as Proverbs seem to be the exception, though. Most books do not give us explicit information about how they came into being. Scripture tells us, however, that later authors were often very much aware of what had been written before. Psalm 119 assumes the presence of the law, the prophet Hosea refers back to Genesis (Hosea 12:3–5), Zechariah alludes to prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, and Daniel reads the prophet Jeremiah (Daniel 9:2). Throughout most of this period, the tabernacle or the temple would be the central location for the preservation of Scripture. It is not without reason that when Josiah restored the proper worship of the true God, it was the temple where the Book of the Law was rediscovered (2 Kings 22:8–11). But as would be expected, it was not just the temple that was active in the preservation of Scripture, but also faithful kings such as Hezekiah, and possibly the schools of prophets, which were not necessarily connected closely to the central sanctuary, played a role in the transmission of God’s word.

Israel’s Book Culture

If, however, the temple is of such great importance, what happened when the temple was destroyed and the people went into exile? Interestingly, around this time we see more and more signs of the book culture that we know must have existed. Jeremiah writes a letter to the Babylonian exiles (Jeremiah 29), and dictates his prophecies again to Baruch the scribe after the king burnt the first copy (Jeremiah 36:1–4). Only a little later, Daniel had a copy of Jeremiah’s prophecy in exile (Daniel 9:2). The prophet Ezekiel is ordered to eat a scroll (Ezekiel 3:1–3), and just after the exile Zechariah sees a flying scroll (Zechariah 5:1–2). Texts, scrolls, and scribes are part of the religious world and religious imagery.

Perhaps the capstone of this development is found in Ezra and Nehemiah. Here we find the scribe Ezra repeatedly expounding the Law that Moses had written. (See the expression “as it is written” in Ezra 3:246:18Neh. 8:1410:343613:1.) Nehemiah 8 especially is a glorious description how the people of Israel have now become a people gathered around the written word of God.

The biblical history is by and large silent about the period between Ezra and the New Testament. But when the New Testament tells us about the birth of Jesus, it mentions faithful believers who were expecting the salvation of Israel (Luke 1–2). The only story about the growing up of Jesus tells us about him questioning and answering the teachers of the law in the temple (Luke 2:41–51). Later, Jesus would say of these teachers that “they sit on the seat of Moses” and that the people were to do what they said, but not do as they do (Matthew 23:2–3). Throughout Jesus’s ministry, not only does he teach from the Scriptures (Luke 4:16–30), which were available in the synagogues, but he also fulfills prophecy by his actions (Matthew 21:4). Even when the evangelists record what Jesus had done, they use language directly derived from the Old Testament (compare, e.g., Luke 2:52 with Proverbs 3:4). Yet now we have arrived at the finale phase in writing God’s word, because all of the New Testament was written after the death and resurrection of Jesus, even though it extensively deals with the ministry of Jesus before the arrival of the new covenant.

Stewards of the Gospel Story

The four Gospels teach us about Jesus: what he said, what he did, what he taught. Each of the Gospels helps us also to see the significance of the One who died and rose again. Matthew does this openly by explaining how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament. John teaches the eternal and divine truth about the Word who came down from heaven and returned to the Father. Mark shows the depth of Jesus’s obedience by not even mentioning the name Jesus as he is mocked, stripped, spit upon, and crucified (Mark 15:16–33), until his final moments and last words (Mark 15:34). The Gospels teach us about Jesus, but told from after the resurrection (John 2:22), from after the moment that the witnesses had received the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who enabled the apostles to be his witnesses (Acts 1:8), and who reminded them of everything Jesus had said (John 14:26). The apostles had two powerful impulses at their disposal: the Spirit-sharpened memory of Jesus’s teaching and the Spirit-taught understanding of the existing Scriptures (Luke 24:44–45).

In the time immediately after Pentecost, the apostles started their teaching ministry (see Acts 4:25:214211:2615:3518:1128:31). There are some differences but also some similarities with how the old covenant started. At Pentecost, there was a loud sound (Acts 2:2), as in Exodus 19, but this time it did not strike fear into the hearts of the listeners. There were also flames, not on top of the mountain but on the gathered believers. The words of the law, the first covenant, were inscribed on stone tablets. But, just as Jeremiah 31:33 foretold, the new covenant was written directly on the hearts of people. The primary place of God’s word was now internal, written on hearts by the Spirit.

So what was happening to the teachings and events recorded in the Gospels between Pentecost and their writing down? When were the Gospels written? Scripture is not silent about this time, but we have to read carefully. In short, the apostles taught the content of the Gospels, the life and ministry of Jesus. And this teaching was remembered and shared among the churches. Therefore, initially the main source for knowledge of Jesus was found in the oral teaching of the apostles, rather than in a written record of this teaching.

We find a good example of this in 1 Corinthians 11. At the beginning of this chapter, Paul commends the church in Corinth for maintaining “the traditions just as I delivered them to you” (1 Corinthians 11:2). Both the words tradition and to deliver have the same root in Greek, having everything to do with handing down. Paul comes back to this language a little later: “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you” (1 Corinthians 11:23). The words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper are a “tradition” that Paul received and had taught to the Corinthians. Later, these words would be written down almost word for word in Luke’s Gospel.

In fact, Luke at the beginning of his Gospel tells Theophilus that his book is “just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us” (Luke 1:2). The resemblance to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11:2 is striking.

There are other references to the teaching of Jesus in 1 Corinthians. That Greeks seek wisdom and Jews seek signs goes at least partly back to Jesus’s words later written down in Mark 8:12. Jesus’s teaching about divorce is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 7:10–11, distinguished from the apostolic teaching in the next verse. That is, there was no explicit teaching of Jesus on the situation described in 1 Corinthians 7:12, and the Corinthians should not think that there was some saying they had missed somehow. And elsewhere in the New Testament, it pays off to read the letter of James side by side with the Sermon on the Mount. The similarities are clear, and it is not difficult to see how James’s teaching has started out from the words of Jesus himself.

Tradition Becomes Scripture

The apostles had a special ministry and authority. The traditions they had taught and the letters they had written, combined with their physical presence, contained all the guidance the churches needed. However, apostles would not be around forever (John 21:22–23), and they were faced with the question of whether the traditions they had taught would be remembered “just as they had delivered them.” In 2 Peter 1:15, Peter shares that this consideration was a real concern. This brings us to the closing stages of the formation of the New Testament, the writing down of the Gospels.

Luke knew about many others who had attempted to write a Gospel (Luke 1:1). Likewise, John wrote his testimony down after having preached its content for a long time. He had the benefit of looking back and being able to select those parts of the story that are sufficient for a saving knowledge of Jesus (John 20:30–31). For each of the four Gospels, the church retained the tradition of how they were linked to apostolic authority, directly (Matthew, John) or indirectly (Mark to Peter, Luke to Paul).

Entry into the new covenant remained an inward work, the word of God written on hearts by the Holy Spirit, yet the written accounts of Jesus’s life and ministry, and the teaching of how his salvation shapes the life of his people, were now entrusted to paper and ink — sometimes almost reluctantly (2 John 12), yet ultimately in the expectation that the apostolic writings were sufficient to make our joy complete (1 John 1:4).

This transition from remembered traditions to written accounts is reflected in Paul’s letters. As we have seen, Paul praises the Corinthians for keeping the traditions as he had delivered them. Later, however, in 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul introduces a double citation with the phrase “for the Scripture says.” The first of these, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” comes from Deuteronomy 25:4. The second citation from Scripture is “the laborer deserves his wages.” These exact words are found only in Luke 10:7, with a less exact parallel in Matthew 10:10. Therefore, by the time 1 Timothy was written, the Gospel tradition as written down by Luke was used — and approved — by Paul as being Scripture. (Alternatively, it is possible to read “for the Scripture says” as covering only the first of the two citations. But this reading is somewhat forced; the most natural reading is to apply the phrase to both citations.)

The implications of 1 Timothy 5:18 and its use of Luke are considerable. Just as in 1 Corinthians 11, again we have a link between the preaching of Paul and Luke’s Gospel. Moreover, though Paul must have taught the content of Luke 10:7 as part of the “Jesus tradition,” he decides to appeal to the written form, the Gospel, and by doing so Paul signals that there has been a transition from the remembered tradition to the written form. Scripture now includes the gospel and is part of all Scripture that is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). Also, the use of Luke in 1 Timothy seems to indicate that the Gospels were written earlier rather than later, and mostly before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Scripture Copied and Translated

When the time of the apostles was over, scriptural revelation was also complete. Because of the wide acknowledgement that the apostles, brothers of Jesus (James, Jude; see also 1 Corinthians 9:4), and those who recorded their teaching were a special gift to the church, their writings were rightly accepted as the word of God, in the same way the Old Testament was. There are some indications that certain memories from the time of the preaching of the first generation lasted well into the second half of the second century, but more and more the writings of the New Testament became the sole authoritative link to the apostles. In the absence of special revelation, our knowledge of what happened in the transmission of the New Testament text after its completion can only be inferred from the surviving manuscript evidence and from what is said by church fathers.

Some things had changed in comparison to the situation under the old covenant. No longer was there a central sanctuary. The apostles may have formed the figurative pillars of the spiritual temple that is the church, yet after their passing away there was no authoritative central location that could function in the way the temple in Jerusalem did. Jerusalem functioned as the center where approved copies of the Scriptures could be obtained (compare Acts 7:27–28). Yet the early church was spread out all over the Roman Empire and beyond, and everywhere the Scripture was copied. It is telling that in these early centuries no church claimed to have an original letter or Gospel in their possession, even though it is clear such originals must have been sent at some point.

Comparing Manuscripts

Printed Bibles have been in existence for a little over five hundred years. For the preceding centuries (1,400 years for the New Testament, and much longer for the Old), the original Hebrew and Greek were copied by hand. For those who are used to a printing culture, the idea that a copy is not necessarily identical to the original is somewhat disturbing. Yet for the early church, this was part of everyday reality. We have examples from every century of church fathers who discussed the difference in wording that existed between manuscripts.

It is important to distinguish between the transmission of the text of the Hebrew Old Testament and that of the Greek New Testament. Quite early on in church history, the main text used for the Old Testament was a Greek or Latin translation (or further translations made from these versions). The transmission of the Hebrew text was carried out in rabbinic circles. The Masoretic text of the Middle Ages reflects the text preserved in the temple in great detail and accurately records not only how the text was pronounced but also differences that existed between the major scrolls kept in the temple before its destruction.

As we have seen, the Greek New Testament does not go back to a temple text or to a single, central location. And manuscripts of the New Testament differ in their wording of the text. Sometimes these are big differences, sometimes small. Already in the late second century, the church father Irenaeus discussed the issue of some manuscripts of Revelation giving the number of the beast as 616 instead of 666. These discussions give us insight into how the problem of differences in wording was dealt with at the time. One important argument for Irenaeus was that 666 was used in the “oldest and approved” manuscripts (even though “oldest” could not mean more than 100–120 years or so). The term “approved” suggests that, already by the end of the second century, some places or some churches were in possession of manuscripts that functioned as normative. But most of these normative manuscripts have perished, either because of age or violent destruction. So what sort of manuscript do we have left?

There are about four hundred manuscripts that come from before the big transition in Greek writing from individual capital letters to a joined-up cursive script in the ninth century (majuscule script and minuscule script, respectively). The majority of these manuscripts are incomplete or even fragmentary. The three manuscripts that are often dated to the second century are all single fragments from a single page from one of the Gospels. We would need hundreds of these to form one complete book. However, we do have manuscripts that are more extensive, and from the fourth and fifth century we even have manuscripts that have a near-complete New Testament in Greek. What we learn from these manuscripts is that in the early centuries the copies were not always made very carefully, to the extent that sometimes one wonders if some of these were written from memory rather than copied from an existing master copy. What we also learn is that the vast majority of differences are easily resolved because they are obvious errors. The more difficult problems require deeper consideration.

Here it helps that we have so many manuscripts, because now we can look for the type of thing that can go wrong (and likewise the type of error that is rarely made). So it is much more common to make the wording of one Gospel similar to that of another, than to do the reverse. For example, Luke tends to abbreviate citations from the Old Testament, while Matthew gives the longer version. As a result, later manuscripts of Luke often have expanded citations that resemble the longer versions found in Matthew. The King James Version is based on such later manuscripts, so its longer wording in Luke 4:45, and 8 (compared to, for example, the ESV) is all due to influence from Matthew.

The discussions of church fathers of some of textual differences shows that most of the important differences have been talked about over the last sixteen or seventeen centuries. It also shows that the existence of such differences was never a reason to give up trust in the Scriptures.

Evaluating Variants

There seems to be a tension between God preserving his word and the existence of differences between manuscripts. How can we trust our English Bibles if they are the result of comparing the manuscripts that have, in places, a different wording of Scripture?

First, the existence of textual variants often makes little or no difference to the wider meaning of the text. For example, in Romans 1:1, there is a question whether Paul wrote “a servant of Jesus Christ” or “a servant of Christ Jesus.” If someone specializes in particular details of Paul’s language, he or she may be very much interested in solving the problem. Yet on a wider scale, say if we look at Romans 1:1–7 as a whole, the issue has no effect on our understanding of what is going on. In general, this is true of all communication. We can cope with noise in the room and still understand perfectly well what our conversation partner is saying.

Second, of all the textual variants in existence, the vast majority can be resolved with relative ease. It is clear how the error came into being and also why it managed to survive in the textual transmission.

Translating the Word of God

The final step in that long journey from the moment that God inspired his word to us reading his word is that of translation. Translation is not easy. One language (English, for example) tends to use grammar and syntax differently than Hebrew or Greek, which are also quite different languages from one another. It is good to realize that any translation has made choices as to which features of the original to represent and which to leave out. For example, it is traditional to represent the Greek name Iakobos (the Greek form of the Old Testament name Jacob) with James, and as a result we lose something of the feel of this name (Iakobos writes his letter “to the 12 tribes” [James 1:1]!).

Also on a sentence level a translator needs to make difficult choices. How we do present the focus of a sentence in Greek into English, which uses different techniques to show which part of the sentence is prominent? How do we represent the repetition of the same word but used in different shades of meaning? To what extent is the translation intended to be understood the first time of hearing, and to what extent do we expect the reader to make considerable effort to dig deeper into the text? And how do we present some of the bigger issues in the different manuscripts? Do we simply ignore them and choose one text to translate, or do we add the occasional footnote? Translations have to make difficult choices, and different translations make different choices.

How can we trust our translations if a single translation cannot give us the full glory of the original? We may fall into the trap of thinking that because we do not have all the knowledge and insight into what God exactly said, we have nothing at all.

Yet we should not be sucked into such a false opposition. It is important to distinguish carefully between two different words: being accurate and being exhaustive. For example, if we look at a map that gives us only the capital cities of each state, we can learn a lot. This map can be of great benefit in learning the lay of the land. It is accurate, but not exhaustive; there is more to tell. We need a map with more information when we are planning a car journey, also accurate but with more information. And think also of the different map we need when preparing for a long hike; a road map will not get us very far. Each of these maps is accurate, but each also gives a different level of detail.

A good translation will render the Scriptures in the original language accurately into English, and will therefore be the word of God, able to teach, to rebuke, to correct, to build the church up. But the level of detail will be different from translation to translation, and will again be different when we read Scripture in the original languages.

For almost all purposes, our translations give us all that we need to study God’s words and to meet him in his word. Yet it is good to know that many of our pastors and other scholars are also reading Scripture in Greek and Hebrew, as it helps them to understand God’s word more precisely. It is as if they are zooming in with a higher magnification and resolution. As we have seen, sometimes the circumstances prevent us from zooming in as far as we would like. This happens when there are some remaining problems in the wording of the Greek and Hebrew originals. We can see the lay of the land, but the fine detail is less clear. But again, these textual problems are mostly small, and none of them influences what Scripture teaches as a whole.

The Word About the Word

The story of how the Bible came into being is largely told in the Bible itself. Perhaps we would like to know things that are not revealed. There are limitations to our knowledge. Yet the Bible is God’s revelation that tells us in great detail about the whole of salvation history, about the coming of the Messiah and his death and resurrection, and about the great hope of glory that is revealed in the Word who became flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ. And this word is fully trustworthy.

Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then? (Updated)

Dr. Dan Wallace is the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) and Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is a past president of the Evangelical Theological Society, a consultant for several Bible translations, and the author of numerous journal articles and books including Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics.

Dr. Wallace explains the copying of the New Testament books and shows the reliability of the scribal processes. Video from the Sacred Words History of the Bible Conference, February 21–22, 2020. Hosted by the Text & Canon Institute. This video is followed by a Q&A with the plenary speakers, the directors, and pastor Josh Vincent.

Why I Do Not Think the King James Bible Is the Best Translation Available Today

by Daniel B. Wallace – source – https://bible.org/users/daniel-b-wallace

Dr. Dan Wallace has taught Greek and New Testament courses on a graduate school level since 1979. He has a Ph.D. from Dallas Theological Seminary, and is currently professor of New Testament Studies at his alma mater. His Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Zondervan, 1996) has become a standard textbook in colleges and seminaries. He is the senior New Testament editor of the NET Bible. Dr. Wallace is also the Executive Director for the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.

First, I want to affirm with all evangelical Christians that the Bible is the Word of God, inerrant, inspired, and our final authority for faith and life. However, nowhere in the Bible am I told that only one translation of it is the correct one. Nowhere am I told that the King James Bible is the best or only ‘holy’ Bible. There is no verse that tells me how God will preserve his word, so I can have no scriptural warrant for arguing that the King James has exclusive rights to the throne. The arguments must proceed on other bases.

Second, the Greek text which stands behind the King James Bible is demonstrably inferior in certain places. The man who edited the text was a Roman Catholic priest and humanist named Erasmus.1 He was under pressure to get it to the press as soon as possible since (a) no edition of the Greek New Testament had yet been published, and (b) he had heard that Cardinal Ximenes and his associates were just about to publish an edition of the Greek New Testament and he was in a race to beat them. Consequently, his edition has been called the most poorly edited volume in all of literature! It is filled with hundreds of typographical errors which even Erasmus would acknowledge. Two places deserve special mention. In the last six verses of Revelation, Erasmus had no Greek manuscript (=MS) (he only used half a dozen, very late MSS for the whole New Testament any way). He was therefore forced to ‘back-translate’ the Latin into Greek and by so doing he created seventeen variants which have never been found in any other Greek MS of Revelation! He merely guessed at what the Greek might have been. Secondly, for 1 John 5:7-8, Erasmus followed the majority of MSS in reading “there are three witnesses in heaven, the Spirit and the water and the blood.” However, there was an uproar in some Roman Catholic circles because his text did not read “there are three witnesses in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.” Erasmus said that he did not put that in the text because he found no Greek MSS which had that reading. This implicit challenge—viz., that if he found such a reading in any Greek MS, he would put it in his text—did not go unnoticed. In 1520, a scribe at Oxford named Roy made such a Greek MS (codex 61, now in Dublin). Erasmus’ third edition had the second reading because such a Greek MS was ‘made to order’ to fill the challenge! To date, only a handful of Greek MSS have been discovered which have the Trinitarian formula in 1 John 5:7-8, though none of them is demonstrably earlier than the sixteenth century.

That is a very important point. It illustrates something quite significant with regard to the textual tradition which stands behind the King James. Probably most textual critics today fully embrace the doctrine of the Trinity (and, of course, all evangelical textual critics do). And most would like to see the Trinity explicitly taught in 1 John 5:7-8. But most reject this reading as an invention of some overly zealous scribe. The problem is that the King James Bible is filled with readings which have been created by overly zealous scribes! Very few of the distinctive King James readings are demonstrably ancient. And most textual critics just happen to embrace the reasonable proposition that the most ancient MSS tend to be more reliable since they stand closer to the date of the autographs. I myself would love to see many of the King James readings retained. The story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) has always been a favorite of mine about the grace of our savior, Jesus Christ. That Jesus is called God in 1 Timothy 3:16 affirms my view of him. Cf. also John 3:131 John 5:7-8, etc. But when the textual evidence shows me both that scribes had a strong tendency to add, rather than subtract, and that most of these additions are found in the more recent MSS, rather than the more ancient, I find it difficult to accept intellectually the very passages which I have always embraced emotionally. In other words, those scholars who seem to be excising many of your favorite passages from the New Testament are not doing so out of spite, but because such passages are not found in the better and more ancient MSS. It must be emphatically stressed, however, that this does not mean that the doctrines contained in those verses have been jeopardized. My belief in the deity of Christ, for example, does not live or die with 1 Timothy 3:16. In fact, it has been repeatedly affirmed that no doctrine of Scripture has been affected by these textual differences. If that is true, then the ‘King James only’ advocates might be crying wolf where none exists, rather than occupying themselves with the more important aspects of advancing the gospel.2

Third, the King James Bible has undergone three revisions since its inception in 1611, incorporating more than 100,000 changes. Which King James Bible is inspired, therefore?

Fourth, 300 words found in the KJV no longer bear the same meaning—e.g., “Suffer little children…to come unto me” (Matt 19:14). “Study to shew thyself approved unto God” (2 Tim 2:15). Should we really embrace a Bible as the best translation when it uses language that not only is not clearly understood any more, but in fact has been at times perverted and twisted?3

Fifth, the KJV includes one very definite error in translation, which even KJV advocates would admit. In Matthew 23:24 the KJV has ‘strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.’ But the Greek has ‘strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.’ In the least, this illustrates not only that no translation is infallible but also that scribal corruptions can and do take place-even in a volume which has been worked over by so many different hands (for the KJV was the product of a very large committee of over 50 scholars).4

Sixth, when the KJV was first published, it was heavily resisted for being too easy to understand! Some people revere it today because it is difficult to understand. I fear that part of their response is due to pride: they feel as though they are able to discern something that other, less spiritual folks cannot. Often 1 Corinthians 2:13-16 is quoted with reference to the KJV (to the effect that ‘you would understand it if you were spiritual’). Such a use of that text, however, is a gross distortion of the Scriptures. The words in the New Testament, the grammar, the style, etc.—in short, the language—comprised the common language of the first century. We do God a great disservice when we make the gospel more difficult to understand than he intended it. The reason unspiritual people do not understand the scriptures is because they have a volitional problem, not an intellectual problem (cf. 1 Cor. 2:14 where ‘receive,’ ‘welcome’ shows clearly that the thing which blocks understanding is the sinful will of man).

Seventh, those who advocate that the KJV has exclusive rights to being called the Holy Bible are always, curiously, English-speaking people (normally isolated Americans). Yet, Martin Luther’s fine translation of the Bible into German predated the KJV by almost 100 years. Are we so arrogant to say that God has spoken only in English? And where there are substantial discrepancies between Luther’s Bible and the KJV (such as in 1 John 5:7-8), are we going to say that God has inspired both? Is he the author of lies? Our faith does not rest in a singular tradition, nor is it provincial. Vibrant, biblical Christianity must never unite itself with provincialism. Otherwise, missionary endeavor, among other things, would die.

Eighth, again, let me repeat an earlier point: Most evangelicals—who embrace all the cardinal doctrines of the faith—prefer a different translation and textual basis than that found in the KJV. In fact, even the editors of the New Scofield Reference Bible (which is based on the KJV) prefer a different text/translation!

Finally, though it is true that the modern translations ‘omit’ certain words and verses (or conversely, the KJV adds to the Word of God, depending on how you look at it), the issue is not black-or-white. In fact, the most recent edition of a Greek New Testament which is based on the majority of MSS, rather than the most ancient ones (and thus stands firmly behind the King James tradition), when compared to the standard Greek New Testament used in most modern translations, excises over six hundred and fifty words or phrases! Thus, it is not proper to suggest that only modern translations omit; the Greek text behind the KJV omits, too! The question, then, is not whether modern translations have deleted portions of the Word of God, but rather whether either the KJV or modern translations have altered the Word of God. I contend that the KJV has far more drastically altered the scriptures than have modern translations. Nevertheless, I repeat: most textual critics for the past two hundred and fifty years would say that no doctrine is affected by these changes. One can get saved reading the KJV and one can get saved reading the NIV, NASB, etc.

I trust that this brief survey of reasons I have for thinking that the King James Bible is not the best available translation will not be discarded quickly. All of us have a tendency to make mountains out of molehills and then to set up fortresses in those ‘mountains.’ We often cling to things out of emotion, rather than out of true piety. And as such we do a great disservice to a dying world that is desperately in need of a clear, strong voice proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. Soli Deo gloria!

Addendum

One further point is necessary. With the recent publication of several different books vilifying modern translations, asserting that they were borne out of conspiratorial motives, a word should be mentioned about this concocted theory. First, many of these books are written by people who have little or no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, and are, further, a great distortion of the facts. I have read books on textual criticism for more than a quarter of a century, but never have I seen such illogic, out-of-context quotations, and downright deceptions about the situation as in these recent books. Second, although it is often asserted that heretics produced some of the New Testament MSS we now have in our possession, there is only one group of MSS known to be produced by heretics: certain Byzantine MSS of the book of Revelation. This is significant because the Byzantine text stands behind the KJV! These MSS formed part of a mystery cult textbook used by various early cults. But KJV advocates constantly make the charge that the earliest MSS (the Alexandrian MSS) were produced by heretics. The sole basis they have for this charge is that certain readings in these MSS are disagreeable to them! Third, when one examines the variations between the Greek text behind the KJV (the Textus Receptus) and the Greek text behind modern translations, it is discovered that the vast majority of variations are so trivial as to not even be translatable (the most common is the moveable nu, which is akin to the difference between ‘who’ and ‘whom’!). Fourth, when one compares the number of variations that are found in the various MSS with the actual variations between the Textus Receptus and the best Greek witnesses, it is found that these two are remarkably similar. There are over 400,000 textual variants among NT MSS. But the differences between the Textus Receptus and texts based on the best Greek witnesses number about 5000—and most of these are untranslatable differences! In other words, over 98% of the time, the Textus Receptus and the standard critical editions agree. Those who vilify the modern translations and the Greek texts behind them have evidently never really investigated the data. Their appeals are based largely on emotion, not evidence. As such, they do an injustice to historic Christianity as well as to the men who stood behind the King James Bible. These scholars, who admitted that their work was provisional and not final (as can be seen by their preface and by their more than 8000 marginal notes indicating alternate renderings), would wholeheartedly welcome the great finds in MSS that have occurred in the past one hundred and fifty years.


1 Now a humanist in the sixteenth century is not the same as a humanist today. Erasmus was generally tolerant of other viewpoints, and was particularly interested in the humanities. Although he was a friend of Melanchthon, Luther’s right-hand man, Luther did not care for him.

2 It is significant that Erasmus himself was quite progressive in his thinking, and would hardly be in favor of how the KJV Only advocates have embraced him as their champion. For example, every one of his editions of the Greek NT was a diglot—Latin on one side and Greek on the other. The Latin was his own translation, and was meant to improve upon Jerome’s Latin Vulgate—a translation which the Catholic church had declared to be inspired. For this reason, Cambridge University immediately banned Erasmus’ New Testament, and others followed suit. Elsewhere, Erasmus questioned whether the pericope adulterae (the story of the woman caught in adultery [John 7:53-8:11]), the longer ending of Mark (16:9-20), etc., were authentic.

3 “Suffer” in Matt 19:14 means “permit”; “study” in 2 Tim 2:15 means “be eager, be diligent.” See the Oxford English Dictionary (the largest unabridged dictionary of the English language) for help here: it traces the uses of words through their history, pinpointing the year in which a new meaning came into vogue.

4 There are other mistakes in the KJV which persist to this day, even though this translation has gone through several editions. For example, the KJV in Heb 4:8 reads: “For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day.” This sounds as though Jesus could not provide the eternal rest that we all long for! However, the Greek word for Jesus is the same as the word for Joshua. And in the context of Heb 4, Joshua is obviously meant. There is no textual problem here; it is rather simply a mistake on the part of the translators, perpetuated for the last 400 years in all editions of the KJV.

The Pericope Adulterae

Article: My Favorite Passage that’s Not in the Bible by Daniel B. Wallace

(original source – https://bible.org/article/my-favorite-passage-thats-not-bible)

Daniel B. Wallace has taught Greek and New Testament courses on a graduate school level since 1979. He has a Ph.D. from Dallas Theological Seminary, and is currently professor of New Testament Studies at his alma mater.

His Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Zondervan, 1996) has become a standard textbook in colleges and seminaries. He is the senior New Testament editor of the NET Bible. Dr. Wallace is also the Executive Director for the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.

One hundred and forty years ago, conservative biblical scholar and Dean of Canterbury, Henry Alford, advocated a new translation to replace the King James Bible. One of his reasons was the inferior textual basis of the KJV. Alford argued that “a translator of Holy Scripture must be…ready to sacrifice the choicest text, and the plainest proof of doctrine, if the words are not those of what he is constrained in his conscience to receive as God’s testimony.” He was speaking about the Trinitarian formula found in the KJV rendering of 1 John 5:7–8. Twenty years later, two Cambridge scholars came to the firm conclusion that John 7:53–8:11 also was not part of the original text of scripture. But Westcott and Hort’s view has not had nearly the impact that Alford’s did.

For a long time, biblical scholars have recognized the poor textual credentials of the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11). The evidence against its authenticity is overwhelming: The earliest manuscripts with substantial portions of John’s Gospel (P66 and P75) lack these verses. They skip from John 7:52 to 8:12. The oldest large codices of the Bible also lack these verses: codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, both from the fourth century, are normally considered to be the most important biblical manuscripts of the NT extant today. Neither of them has these verses. Codex Alexandrinus, from the fifth century, lacks several leaves in the middle of John. But because of the consistency of the letter size, width of lines, and lines per page, the evidence is conclusive that this manuscript also lacked the pericope adulterae. Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, also from the fifth century, apparently lacked these verses as well (it is similar to Alexandrinus in that some leaves are missing). The earliest extant manuscript to have these verses is codex Bezae, an eccentric text once in the possession of Theodore Beza. He gave this manuscript to the University of Cambridge in 1581 as a gift, telling the school that he was confident that the scholars there would be able to figure out its significance. He washed his hands of the document. Bezae is indeed the most eccentric NT manuscript extant today, yet it is the chief representative of the Western text-type (the text-form that became dominant in Rome and the Latin West).

When P66, P75, Sinaiticus, and Vaticanus agree, their combined testimony is overwhelmingly strong that a particular reading is not authentic. But it is not only the early Greek manuscripts that lack this text. The great majority of Greek manuscripts through the first eight centuries lack this pericope. And except for Bezae (or codex D), virtually all of the most important Greek witnesses through the first eight centuries do not have the verses. Of the three most important early versions of the New Testament (Coptic, Latin, Syriac), two of them lack the story in their earliest and best witnesses. The Latin alone has the story in its best early witnesses.

Even patristic writers seemed to overlook this text. Bruce Metzger, arguably the greatest textual critic of the twentieth century, argued that “No Greek Church Father prior to Euthymius Zigabenus (twelfth century) comments on the passage, and Euthymius declares that the accurate copies of the Gospel do not contain it” (Textual Commentary, 2nd ed., loc. cit.).

It is an important point to note that although the story of the woman caught in adultery is found in most of our printed Bibles today, the evidence suggests that the majority of Bibles during the first eight centuries of the Christian faith did not contain the story. Externally, most scholars would say that the evidence for it not being an authentic part of John’s Gospel is rock solid.

But textual criticism is not based on external evidence alone; there is also the internal evidence to consider. This is comprised of two parts: intrinsic evidence has to do with what an author is likely to have written; transcriptional evidence has to do with how and why a scribe would have changed the text.

Intrinsically, the vocabulary, syntax, and style look far more like Luke than they do John. There is almost nothing in these twelve verses that has a Johannine flavor. And transcriptionally, scribes were almost always prone to add material rather than omit it—especially a big block of text such as this, rich in its description of Jesus’ mercy. One of the remarkable things about this passage, in fact, is that it is found in multiple locations. Most manuscripts that have it place it in its now traditional location: between John 7:52 and 8:12. But an entire family of manuscripts has the passage at the end of Luke 21, while another family places it at the end of John’s Gospel. Other manuscripts place it at the end of Luke or in various places in John 7.

The pericope adulterae has all the earmarks of a pericope that was looking for a home. It took up permanent residence, in the ninth century, in the middle of the fourth gospel.

If the question of its literary authenticity (i.e., whether it was penned by John) is settled, the question of its historical authenticity is not. It is indeed possible that these verses describe an actual incident in the life of Jesus and found their way into our Bibles because of having the ring of truth. On one level, if this is the case, then one might be forgiven for preaching the text on a Sunday morning. But to regard it as scripture if John did not write it is another matter. The problem is this: If John wrote his gospel as a tightly woven argument, with everything meeting a crescendo in the resurrection, would he be disturbed that some scribes started monkeying with his text? If we don’t respect the human author, then we could discount this issue. But if the Bible is both the Word of God and the words of men, then we are playing fast and loose with the human author’s purpose by adding anything—especially something as long as this passage—that takes a detour from his intentions. What preacher would be happy with someone adding a couple hundred words in the middle of his printed sermon as though such were from him? On another level, there is evidence that this story is a conflation from two different stories, one circulating in the east and the other circulating in the west. In other words, even the historicity of this pericope is called into question.

Yet, remarkably, even though most translators would probably deny John 7:53–8:11 a place in the canon, virtually every translation of the Bible has this text in its traditional location. There is, of course, a marginal note in modern translations that says something like, “Most ancient authorities lack these verses.” But such a weak and ambiguous statement is generally ignored by readers of Holy Writ. (It’s ambiguous because many readers might assume that in spite of the ‘ancient authorities’ that lack the passage, the translators felt it must be authentic.)

How, then, has this passage made it into modern translations? In a word, there has been a longstanding tradition of timidity among translators. One twentieth-century Bible relegated the passage to the footnotes, but when the sales were rather lackluster, it again found its place in John’s Gospel. Even the NET Bible (available at www.bible.org), for which I am the senior New Testament editor, has put the text in its traditional place. But the NET Bible also has a lengthy footnote, explaining the textual complications and doubts about its authenticity. And the font size is smaller than normal so that it will be harder to read from the pulpit! But we nevertheless made the same concession that other translators have about this text by leaving it in situ.

The climate has changed recently, however. In Bart Ehrman’s 2005 bestseller, Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, the author discounts the authenticity of this pericope. What is remarkable is not that he does this, but that thousands of Bible-believing Christians have become disturbed by his assertions. Ehrman—a former evangelical and alum of Moody and Wheaton—is one of America’s leading textual critics. He has been on television and radio, in newspapers and magazines, and on the Internet. He has lectured at universities from sea to shining sea. What he wrote in his blockbuster book sent shockwaves through the Christian public.

I wrote a critique of Ehrman’s book that was published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. There I said, “keeping [John 7:53–8:11 and Mark 16:9–20] in our Bibles rather than relegating them to the footnotes seems to have been a bomb just waiting to explode. All Ehrman did was to light the fuse. One lesson we must learn from Misquoting Jesusis that those in ministry need to close the gap between the church and the academy. We have to educate believers. Instead of trying to isolate laypeople from critical scholarship, we need to insulate them. They need to be ready for the barrage, because it is coming. The intentional dumbing down of the church for the sake of filling more pews will ultimately lead to defection from Christ. Ehrman is to be thanked for giving us a wake-up call.”

I believe it’s time for us to own up to our tradition of timidity and recognize that this has not helped the Church in the long haul. It’s time to close the gap. I am calling for translators to remove this text from the Gospel of John and relegate it to the footnotes. Although this will be painful and will cause initial confusion, it is far better that laypeople hear the truth about scripture from their friends than from their enemies. They need to know that Christ-honoring, Bible-believing scholars also do not think that this text is authentic, and that such a stance has not shaken their faith one iota. No cardinal truth is lost if these verses go bye-bye; no essential doctrine is disturbed if they are cut from the pages of the Word of God. (Of course, if it is objected that since scholars are not absolutely sure that this text is inauthentic they therefore need to retain it in the text, it need only be said that such a policy practiced across the board would wreak havoc on our printed Bibles and would mushroom their size beyond recognizable proportions. In Acts alone, one textual tradition has 8.5% more material than has been traditionally printed in our Bibles, yet very few object to such variants being denied a place in the canon. Thus, to insist on having the pericope adulterae in a footnote is a nod toward its longstanding tradition in Bibles from the second millennium AD on.)

Of course, King James Only advocates will see things differently. Their claim is that modern translations are butchering the Bible by cutting out major texts. Not only is that quite an overstatement (since only two lengthy passages in the KJV NT are considered spurious by modern scholars—John 7:53–8:11 and Mark 16:9–20), but it also assumes what it needs to prove. Is it not possible that the KJV, based on half a dozen late manuscripts, has added to the Word of God rather than that modern translations, based on far more and much earlier manuscripts, have cut out portions of scripture? It is demonstrable that over time, the New Testament text has grown. The latest manuscripts have approximately 2% more material than the earliest ones. The problem is not that we have 98% of the Word of God; the problem is that we have 102%! Modern scholars are trying to burn off the dross to get to the gold. And one text that must go, in spite of our emotional attachment to it, is John 7:53–8:11.

One of the practical implications of this is as follows: When Christians are asked whether this beloved story should be cut out of their Bibles, they overwhelmingly and emphatically say no. The reason given: It’s always been in the Bible and scholars have no right to tamper with the text. The problem with this view is manifold. First, it is historically naïve because it assumes that this passage has always been in the Bible. Second, it is anti-intellectual by assuming that scholars are involved in some sort of conspiracy and that they have no basis for excising verses that exist in the printed text of the Bible. Without the slightest shred of evidence, many laypeople (and not a few pastors!) have a knee-jerk reaction to scholars who believe that these twelve verses are not authentic. What they don’t realize is that every Bible translation has to be reconstructed from the extant Greek New Testament manuscripts. No one follows just a single manuscript, because all manuscripts are riddled with errors. The manuscripts need to be examined, weighed, sifted, and eventually translated. Every textual decision requires someone to think through which reading is authentic and which is not. In the best tradition of solid Christian scholarship, textual critics are actually producing a Bible for Christians to read. Without biblical scholars, we would have no Bibles in our own languages. When laymen claim that scholars are tampering with the text, they are biting the hand that feeds them. Now, to be sure, there are biblical scholars who are attempting to destroy the Christian faith. And there are textual critics who are not Christians. But the great translations of our time have largely been done by honest scholars. Some of them are Christians, and some of them are not. But their integrity as scholars cannot be called into question when it comes to passages such as the pericope adulterae, since they are simply following in the train of Henry Alford by subjecting their conscience to the historical data.

The best of biblical scholarship pursues truth at all costs. And it bases its conclusions on real evidence, not on wishes, emotion, or blind faith. This is in line with the key tenets of historic Christianity: If God became man in time-space history, then we ought to link our faith to history. It must not be a leap of faith, but it should be a step of faith. The religion of the Bible is the only major religion in the world that subjects itself to historical inquiry. The Incarnation has forever put God’s stamp of approval on pursuing truth, wrestling with data, and changing our minds based on evidence. When we deny evidence its place and appeal to emotion instead, we are methodologically denying the significance of the Incarnation. Much is thus at stake when it comes to a text such as the story of the woman caught in adultery. What is at stake is not, as some might think, the mercy of God; rather, what is at stake is how we view the very Incarnation itself. Ironically, if we allow passages into the Gospels that do not have the best credentials, we are in fact tacitly questioning whether the Lord of the Gospels, Jesus Christ himself, became man, for we jettison historicity in favor of personal preference. By affirming a spurious passage about him we may be losing a whole lot more than we gain.

It is the duty of pastors for the sake of their faith to study the data, to know the evidence, to have firm convictions rooted in history. And we dare not serve up anything less than the same kind of meal for our congregations. We do not serve the church of Jesus Christ faithfully when we hide evidence from laypeople; we need to learn to insulate our congregations, but not isolate them. The Incarnation of Christ demands nothing less than this.

Do Modern Bible Translations Leave Some Verses Out?

17 Missing Verses in the NIV?

One of the questions out there is why are there 17 verses missing from the NIV, and were they left out for theological reasons? The answer is that while the verses references are not in the text, these verses are in the footnotes. Here is why this is true not only for the NIV but for all modern translations (other than the NKJV).

Bill Mounce explains: