Articles
How Significant Are Manuscript Variants?
The speculative numbers of variants suggested by Bart Ehrman and other critics of the Bible are grossly misleading and inflated. Distinguished New Testament professor Craig Blomberg offers valuable insights into various points of this deception by means of uninterpreted and misrepresented statistics. He explains that these numbers are a cumulative representation across well over 25,000 different manuscripts, averaging only 8-16 variants per manuscript.
Furthermore, the numbers shrink even further when one realizes that one variant, even if it is the same variant as in other manuscripts, is counted per manuscript! That means if the same error is copied 500x, it will be counted as 500 variants! Blomberg goes on to deftly detail a variety of variants, showing that only two in the entire New Testament, John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20, bear significant weight on the text and even then these are easily explained.
All other variants worth examination amount to a single verse, phrase, or word. This includes 1 John 5:7-8 and Acts 8:37, whose variants contain information otherwise indisputably taught in other passages. These are often only the presence or absence of an article, conjunction, particle, or adverb, with little to no measurable effect on the text. Blomberg concludes with this telling assessment of the textual evidence specific to the New Testament:
“Despite frequent claims to the contrary, the books of the New Testament were copied with extraordinary care. Because of the sheer volume of manuscripts, both in Greek and in various other ancient languages into which the Scriptures were translated, there are an enormous number of textual variants. But the vast majority of these are extremely minor, and the size of the manuscript tradition also makes it possible to determine beyond any reasonable doubt what the original reading would have been upwards of 99 percent of the text of the New Testament. Where there still is uncertainty, we can at least know that the original text is represented by one of the variant readings of a given passage…Certainly no theological doctrine or ethical practice of the Christian faith relies solely or even primarily on any textually disputed passage or passages.” (Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament: Countering the Challenges to Evangelical Christian Beliefs (Nashville: B & H Academic, 2016), 659)
Neil Lightfoot concurs,
“A large number of variations do exist in the manuscripts, but this number is ascertained by counting all variants in all the manuscripts. When this is understood, the large figure of textual differences does not seem frightening. Most variations are made up of minute details, either obvious scribal blunders or slight changes in spelling, grammar, and word order. These are of no consequence to our text. Other variations might have considerable weight on our text, but they are not supported by the early textual authorities. A few variations present problems for our text, but they are not impossible to solve. Even if they were, since the number of them is so few, these should not be stumbling blocks to our faith.” (Neil R. Lightfoot, How We Got the Bible, 3rd edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2010, 103)
