p. 187 | Various Readings in the New Testament

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 14, 1865

Various Readings in the New Testament.

By Watchman and Reflector

It is well known that the various Greek manuscripts of the New Testament differ in many places. These differences are called "various readings." Infidels have sometimes taken advantage of this fact, to throw discredit upon the Scriptures; and Christians, who are not fully informed as to the facts, are sometimes perplexed and disquieted by the exaggerated statements of the former class. The following particulars, the result of a careful examination of the matter, will show how little occasion the former have for triumph, and the latter for uneasiness.

The edition of the New Testament used in this examination was the well known one of Prof. G. C. Knapp, of Halle. Prof. K. is not sparing in his criticism, and rejects as spurious many passages which later editors, of fully equal competency, receive as genuine. He has marked those passages, in the commonly received text, which he regards as unquestionably interpolations, by enclosing them in double brackets; and those which he only regards as doubtful, by enclosing them in single brackets. I find that he has used the first of these signs in one hundred and forty-four places. Of the part thus adjudged by him to be spurious, sixty-seven are such as do not affect the sense, being merely the insertion or omission of a pronoun, or a proper name; thirty-eight are such as are found unquestionably genuine in some other part of Scripture, for example, in the parallel passage of another gospel; and seventeen are merely the word, Amen, at the end of the Gospels and epistles. These all deduced, leave twenty-two. Of this number, fifteen are of no real importance to the sense, consisting mostly of single words. The remaining seven are somewhat more noticeable. One of the doxology, at the close of the Lord's prayer in Matt. vii, 13. But the only one of any doctrinal importance is that in 1 John v, 7, 8, where he omits all between the words "records," and "the Spirit."

Of the second class of passages, which he marks as doubtful, there are in all one hundred and seven. Of these eighty do not at all affect the sense; twelve are found elsewhere in the New Testament; three are only the word Amen; and three are but the repetition of the word translated forever in such passages as "forever and ever." Of the remaining nine, seven consist only of single words, are of no real importance. The other two are, John v, 3, 4, and John viii.

To sum up, of the two hundred and fifty-one passages which Knapp has marked as either certainly spurious, or at least of doubtful genuineness, only three can be considered as of any consequence, and only one of these is ever quoted as a proof-text in support of any important doctrine.

So trifling are the variations in the more than six hundred manuscripts of the Greek Testament that have been examined. It is proper to say, however, that the whole number of various readings is much greater than that given in the above account. But those not reckoned here are as a whole of no greater importance, and have for the most part less claim to be substituted for the commonly received text, than those above noticed. So if any one who does not happen to read the Greek Testament should hear some flippant sciolist, who measures his own wisdom by the number of things which he does not believe, proclaiming that the original manuscripts of the New Testament Scripture vary in more than a thousand places, he need not thereupon incontinently give up his faith in Divine revelation, nor feel any other emotion than that of pity for his shallow-minded and deluded informer.—Watchman and Reflector.