By Mike Leno

Codex Sinaiticus is a fourth century manuscript of the Bible and contains the oldest known copy of the New Testament. The part shown here is 1 John 5:7 : “There are three that testify.”

Today, however, in spite of my respect and long history with the KJV, I rarely regard it as a first choice for public presentations or for in-depth study of the text. The reason is simple. There are better options for textual accuracy and readability. Because we stand on the shoulders of great textual scholars from several centuries we know more about the biblical text than ever before. That combined with relatively recent manuscript discoveries, means we can have even more confidence in the authenticity of “The Word of God.” This does not diminish the value of the KJV. But it does mean that some of our modern English translations more accurately reflect the original writings of scripture. The bottom line is we have more and better Bibles than we have ever had in history.

It is not my purpose here to rehearse all the arguments involved in a “King James only” position. The narrowness of such of view remains self-evident. But I would like to assure my fellow Bible students that we need not be distracted by cries of “if it aint the King James, it aint the Bible.” Contrary to the militantly ignorant, modern translations are real Bibles and offer some advantages over the traditional KJV. So in that regard, I want to give recognition to the meaning and value of textual criticism.

To many, Textual Criticism (TC) sounds like a bad thing; as if scholars were setting themselves up as superior to the Word of God. But that assumption reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the term. TC is actually based on a very simple premise: a manuscript that is the result of fewer generations of copying is likely to be closer to the original than one that is later in the history of copying. It reminds me of the gossip game of my childhood in which everyone sat in a line. The first person whispered something to the second, who whispered it to the third and so on until the message came to the last person who then had to say out loud what he or she heard. The results were always hilarious because the final version bore little resemblance to the original. Of course the copying of ancient biblical manuscripts was a great deal more accurate than a game of gossip. For one thing, copyists did not have to rely on whispers. They had the text right in front of them. So a comparison was relatively easy and mistakes could be corrected.

But mistakes did occur. The vast majority of these are of little or no consequence. In fact, I would emphasize that none of the variations in the biblical text have changed the message of scripture or given cause for any serious doubt regarding vital doctrines. But a small minority of variants creates differing shades of meaning that may or may not reflect the intent of the authors. A very small number of these have been significant enough to be spark controversy, especially when corrected. The most obvious example is 1 John 5:7, the famous trinity text. When Erasmus published a third edition of his Greek text (1532), he bowed to pressure from one of his editors to include a sentence from the Latin Vulgate. That sentence is rendered by the King James: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” Erasmus objected to that verse because no available Greek manuscript supported it. When he promised to include it if someone could find just one Greek manuscript in support, one mysteriously showed up! Modern translations such as the NRSV, however, follow better manuscripts and render verse 7 as: “There are three that testify.”

So because of a prominent Latin manuscript and one Greek manuscript of suspicious origin, we have a verse in the King James that never should have been there. Interestingly, in subsequent editions of his Greek text, Erasmus made sure that the offending words in verse 7 did not appear. We can ask why verse 7 was changed. And the answer probably has something to do with a scribe wanting to make the meaning clearer (according to his own interpretation of course). It could even have been a comment written in the margin of a manuscript that was accidentally incorporated into the text of a later copy. In any case it became a tradition that was hard to break. Nevertheless, the evidence clearly shows that the variant in verse 7 reflected in the wording of the KJV was not part of John’s original thought in that particular passage. Naming God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit remains supported elsewhere in Scripture (See Matt. 28:19); but not explicitly in 1 John 5:7.

It remains a naïve assumption that TC scholars simply accept the oldest manuscripts as the most accurate in every detail. For one thing, age does not solve the problem of variations between manuscripts of the same time period. But more importantly, scholars must utilize principles of internal evidence to determine which readings are closer to the original, regardless of the relative age of the manuscripts. For example, a variant reading may have been created because a scribe attempted to improve on the text being copied. One type of such a change occurred in texts that have parallel passages such as the gospels where word for word parallelism often exists. The tendency of a copyist making changes intentionally was almost always in the direction of orthodoxy and consistency. So if a passage did not match exactly the wording of a parallel passage, a scribe might change it in order to harmonize it. In other words, if two or more readings exist for a passage that is similar to a passage by another writer, the reading that is closest to the other writer is likely to be an intentional change. An example of that is Mark 10:18.

“ And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” (Mk. 10:18 RSV).

The KJV and RSV give essentially the same reading although the KJV retains the archaic expression, “callest thou me good?” But in the parallel passage of Matthew 19:17 there appear some minor differences. Notice the subtle contrast between the RSV and the KJV:

“ And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments” (Mt. 19:17 RSV).

“And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Mt. 19:17 KJV).

This is not just a difference between two English translations. The differences come from the underlying Greek texts. In this instance, the manuscripts from which the KJV was translated tried to harmonize Matthew with the reading of Mark. So the KJV version of Matthew 19:17 refers to the action of calling rather than asking and adds the word “God” as the one who is good. Certainly the meaning has not changed. But it remains an example of how an ancient copyist tried to preserve harmony by putting the same words in Jesus’ mouth in both gospels. As is often the case today, ancient copyists may have had a problem with two versions of the same quote. A belief in verbal inspiration or in what is often called “inerrancy” often leads to unrealistic conclusions. Inspiration is not dictation. According to an honest analysis of the texts, the preferred reading is the one that retains differences rather than forces an exact harmonization. We need not be distressed by this. After all, if Matthew and Mark were identical in all respects one of them would be unnecessary. As it is, we can be confident that in these gospels we have two individual witnesses to Jesus life instead of just one.

Scribes and copyist are human beings. And human beings, no matter how careful, make mistakes. One type of mistake ancient scribes made appears related to the problem of looking at a text, writing, and then looking back at the text. This back and forth motion of the eyes assured for accuracy except in a few cases where the eyes of the scribe went back to the wrong place. This could happen if the text contained a similar sequence of letters in two places within the same passage. Since ancient manuscripts did not contain spaces between words or punctuation to clarify sentence structure, such mistakes were bound to occur.

A hypothetical example in English could be the famous sentence, “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Suppose an author other than Shakespeare, M. Leno for example, wrote a sentence with only the words, “To be, that is the question.” It would be awkward and certainly not very poetic but this author is no Shakespeare! Because Shakespeare’s version is so familiar someone copying Leno might think there had been a mistake and supply the words “or not to be” in order to harmonize with Shakespeare. But now, suppose someone unfamiliar with Shakespeare was copying Shakespeare. The copyist might write the first “to be” then look back at the original and accidentally find the second “to be” and assume the next words to copy were “that is the question,” thus shortening the sentence. In a crude way this illustrates the principle that in the copying of ancient manuscripts, leaving out words often indicates an unintentional change. And this mistake can be the result of similar sequences that fool the eye of the copyist.

Much more could be explained regarding the principles of Textual Criticism. But this will suffice for now if only to illustrate the complex but logical way in which scholars handle the ancient manuscripts. Their goal is not to rewrite the Bible but to arrive at conclusions regarding the original reading. It is not a matter of imposing one’s biases or presuppositions on the text. It is a matter of allowing the evidence of the text to speak for itself. Those who advocate only one group of texts and hold it up as the standard have to ignore a lot of evidence. And they sometimes have to make wild assumptions regarding which group of texts God prefers. A better approach is the one of TC scholars who take all the ancient texts into account and follow the evidence where it leads. We must always be careful not reason in reverse. We cannot start with an assumption of what we think the Bible should say, and then choose which texts support our assumption. We must start with the evidence of the texts themselves.

My knowledge and fascination with this topic was recently enlarged by a wonderful scholar and pastor, Bernard Taylor. He allowed me to sit in on his second year Greek class at La Sierra University this last year. I felt a little like a College sophomore again, which is rather exhilarating for an old guy like me. Dr. Taylor is the Scholar in Residence at the Loma Linda University Church. He is a true scholar and a gentleman who exemplifies the fact that good biblical scholars are honest, sincere students of the word providing valuable tools with which we can better understand the word of God.

If you are interested in this topic I recommend the following. First is the book Taylor used as our textbook, Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism by J. Harold Greenlee. Also, Bruce M. Metzger, a giant in the field wrote a book called, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration. And for an interesting discussion of translation issues related to Septuagint Greek go to Bernard Taylor’s chapter in Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography: Essays in Honor of Frederick W. Danker , a book Taylor also edited. For information on the Codex Sinaiticus go to http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/codex/.

As fascinating as these issues are, it remains more important for us to actually read the Bible than to argue about which translation or group of manuscripts to use. But for those who want to dig into the nature and formation of the biblical text it should be gratifying to know that we have more and better tools than ever with which to explore God’s word.