Illuminating the History of the Bible

Old Testament

The Most Important Bible Translation You’ve Never Heard of

Used by the Apostles and the early church, the Greek translations of the Old Testament may be the most important ever made.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of the Septuagint for the textual history of Scripture in both Hebrew and Greek and in both the Old and New Testament. It constituted a major part of the textual environment of second temple Judaism and early Christianity both in terms of number of copies and in the influence of those copies on other writers and scribes.  

Like most important things, the Septuagint is also complicated. It is notoriously difficult to define and has been the object of steady and strident debate since its inception right up to the present. The complexity explains why, even now, there is still no complete critical scholarly edition of the entire corpus. More than just establishing the text of the Septuagint itself, specialists continue to grapple with numerous parallel questions related, for example, to postclassical Greek, diaspora Judaism, and the history of Ptolemaic Egypt, among other areas.

This article will briefly introduce the Septuagint, beginning with the matter of origins before looking at translation style, textual development, and various ways in which the Septuagint weighs upon other areas of biblical scholarship.

Approaching Definition and Origins

It is helpful to keep in mind that—although one can purchase a physical or electronic copy today—in antiquity, the Septuagint was not actually one thing that existed as a distinct physical entity. In fact, it can be helpful to think of the term “Septuagint” as a catch-all label for a broad area of research in biblical texts and languages. But perhaps we can be a bit more specific.

Thinking About a Definition

The term “Septuagint” is typically used to refer to a collection of ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible along with other texts usually called the Apocrypha.

At a basic level, the term “Septuagint” is typically used to refer to a collection of ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible along with various other Jewish Greek texts that are now usually called the Apocrypha. The latter include writings such as Tobit, 1 Esdras, and Sirach, some of which were translations while others were originally written in Greek by Jewish authors. There are certainly worthy questions wrapped up with the Apocrypha—particularly related to the question of canon—but this article will focus instead upon the Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible.

It is important to notice that the word “translations” in the last sentence is plural. It is all too easy to conceptualize the Septuagint as a standalone, single-volume hardback produced in its entirety by a single translation committee working with a shared philosophy, much like in the case of modern Bible translations. But doing so, intentionally or not, is a serious mistake. The variegated corpus of Greek texts (and their textual traditions) that make up what we now call the Septuagint were translated by different people, in different locations, at different times, for different purposes, often with different Hebrew texts, and in many cases more than once for a particular book.

At no point in antiquity, that we know of, was there any term used to identify those texts as a unified corpus distinct from the Hebrew “scriptures” (graphai, γραφαί) in general. Pinning down the details of each of those factors and considering how they affected the Bible’s production and development are ongoing tasks of Septuagint scholarship today.

Thinking About Origins

That being said, there is some consensus as to the origins of the earliest translation initiative. Scholars agree that the Pentateuch (Genesis through Deuteronomy) was the first part of the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek by Jews living in Hellenistic Egypt, probably in the middle or early part of the third century BC. Consensus on this point has become possible in part thanks to Patristic testimony, but even more so owing to scholarship that has managed to date the linguistic features of the Greek Pentateuch to that period.

Scholars are far less agreed about why the Greek Pentateuch was produced in the first place. To be sure, the centrality of the Pentateuch in Jewish life can explain why it was the first portion translated. An equally obvious factor was that, by the third century, the Jewish community in Egypt was fully Greek-speaking, and so naturally had a need for their Scripture in the language they used in everyday life, including their religious life.

It may have been in Jewish liturgical practice that the earliest translation from Hebrew occurred orally, gradually leading to certain generally accepted practices that were used later in the written versions. Translation itself was certainly not an unusual part of life in the multilingual context of Hellenistic Egypt, and there is good evidence that those who produced the Greek Pentateuch were either professional translators in the Ptolemaic administration themselves or consulted with those who were.

Although the main impetus for translating the Hebrew Bible was probably internal to the Jewish community, it is very possible that some external motivation also helped. One ancient account of external motivation appears in the Letter of Aristeas, a second-century document framed as an eyewitness account of why and how the Jews had produced the Greek Pentateuch. The Letter is now widely regarded as fictitious (and rightly so), but some scholars do find parts of the story credible. Any official government involvement in the project was probably not as grand as the royal invitation and fanfare portrayed in the Letter of Aristeas. But, given the kind of status the Jews enjoyed in Hellenistic society, Ptolemaic sponsorship of the translation project of some sort is possible, even if it was indirect.

Aside from the Pentateuch, there is little certainty as to when the rest of the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek. Scholars generally recognize that most of the Historical Books and the Prophets, along with the Psalms, were translated by the mid-second century BC (see the Prologue to Sirach). Other books like Ecclesiastes, however, may not have been translated at all until well after the turn of the era.

Translation Styles and Development

To attempt to describe the translation style of the Septuagint as a whole is similar to trying to describe the climate of the entire North American continent. Saying anything useful really depends on what part you are looking at. Even so, to press the metaphor, there are some regions of the Septuagint that can be grouped together given the similarity of translational climate. We can identify three.

Three Main Translation Styles

First, scholars agree that the style of the Greek Pentateuch set a benchmark for later translation activity. As a general rule, the translation is conventional Greek that matches each Hebrew word in order. Not infrequently, however, a translator departed from Hebrew word order in favor of maintaining Greek conventions. But occasionally, representing the Hebrew source text was more important, though it is not always clear why.

The translators were native Greek speakers with a standard Hellenistic education and clear familiarity with the Hebrew Bible. So it’s rarely appropriate to attribute translation choices that seem odd to us to some lack of competency in Greek or familiarity with Scripture on the part of the translators. Numerous factors were involved simultaneously. The result in the Greek Pentateuch was an eclectic translation that was unpretentious but not without formality, creativity, and the occasional literary flair. The details of that style set a standard to which many later translators aspired, for example, in the Psalms and the Minor Prophets, and even in non-translated Jewish Greek works like Ezekiel the Tragedian.

Not all translators followed the tradition of the Greek Pentateuch. As early as the second century BC, another, more paraphrastic style emerged that was much less concerned to represent each Hebrew word in order with a close Greek equivalent. Books translated in this style include Job, Proverbs, and Isaiah, and their texts often differ from what we find in the Masoretic Text (MT) tradition of the Hebrew Bible known today.

Related

Shifts in word order and even relocation, omission, or addition of entire sentences are not uncommon, making it difficult to know whether the translator was working from a text like the MT and going his own way or translating basically word-for-word but with a Hebrew text different from anything we now know.

A third translation style also appeared, at least by the first century BC, with somewhat reversed tendencies that strove instead to represent every Hebrew word in order even more stringently than in the Greek Pentateuch. This tradition seems to have been part of a revision movement in which existing translations were modified in certain ways. Despite the more exacting approach, even this translation tradition was not entirely devoid of Greek linguistic style, and in time some books like Lamentations and Ruth were not revised with this mindset but actually translated that way from the start.

The Transmission and Development of the Corpus

Because the Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible emerged gradually over three centuries rather than all at once, the copying and transmission of the written texts themselves influenced the production of later books as misunderstanding or disagreement occurred.

Of course, as texts were used and copied over time, unintentional changes appeared in the Greek manuscript traditions. These variants were introduced in several ways that will be familiar to those acquainted with New Testament textual criticism. Inadvertently skipping over part of the text in the copying process (known as parablepsis) occurred, as did simple misreading or mishearing, among other unwitting missteps.

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More significantly for the Septuagint corpus, however, are the intentional textual changes that occurred over time. This phenomenon was noted already as part of a translation style that grew out of textual revision often oriented towards a (proto-Masoretic) Hebrew text, the rationale for which is not always obvious. Some revision occurred at the level of wording. When that happened, the resulting text may or may not have differed significantly from the old Greek version, depending on how that original version itself was translated. The Old Greek version of Daniel was fairly paraphrastic, so its later revision involved substantial reworking. But the Old Greek version of Judges was closer to the style of the Greek Pentateuch, so its later revision was not nearly as thoroughgoing.

Other kinds of intentional revision involved broader changes in what might be called textual shape. In these cases, existing translations were expanded, abridged, or rearranged at a discourse level with minimal or even no reference to any known Hebrew source text. The book of Esther is a good example of this phenomenon, with two Greek versions that differ from each other, yet both contain six chapters additional to those found in the MT. Apart from the revisions already mentioned, the Greek tradition of Daniel also has significant additions compared with the MT. In these cases, at least, the additions to Esther and Daniel are now grouped with the Apocrypha.

The Importance of the Septuagint

Dr. Ross’s new book offers a beginner’s guide to the Septuagint and its importance.

To be sure, much more detail about the Septuagint could be (and elsewhere has been) spelled out. But it is more helpful at this point instead to broaden the scope and consider the importance of the Septuagint for biblical scholarship as a whole.

In keeping with the theme of the aims of this website and its institute, one of the major ways in which the Septuagint is of paramount importance is in establishing the text of Scripture. As already noted, one particularly important aspect of that discussion is the matter of Old Testament canon. For some time, there has been a tendency to situate the Apocrypha within a purported “Septuagint canon” that was larger and later informed the books found in Christian codices like Vaticanus. The issues involved are complex, but this approach is at odds with ancient testimony and lists (e.g., Josephus, Against Apion 1.37–42), none of which seem to recognize a canon broader than that of the Hebrew Bible.

Of course, in addition to informing the boundaries of the Old Testament, the Septuagint is also of paramount importance for establishing the text itself. Attentive Bible readers may have noticed the marginal comments or footnotes at various points stating that a modern translation of the Hebrew Bible has in fact adopted something from the Septuagint. At 1 Samuel 1:24, for example, modern translations like the ESV and NIV follow the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls in the main text so that Hannah takes young Samuel to the house of the Lord with a “three-year-old bull.” The footnotes alert the reader to the MT’s reading which has Hannah take “three bulls” instead. The Septuagint reading certainly makes better sense with the next verse.

In such cases, the Septuagint is judged by various means to have preserved a better reading. Making that judgment can be very difficult and involves something of an interpretive circle: Does the Septuagint differ from the MT at a particular point because the translator’s source text said something different there, or because the translator chose on that occasion not to represent his source text word for word? To arrive at an answer, we must have some understanding of how a given translator usually approaches his task. But, of course, to know what to expect of a translator assumes we can derive that expectation from a comparison of the Greek and Hebrew texts as we have them. These are difficult issues to settle and require great skill.

Last but certainly not least, the Septuagint also influenced the authors of the New Testament, who themselves read and knew Scripture in Greek (and often in Hebrew as well). As already noted, we should avoid thinking that the Septuagint existed in a way that Paul, for example, could have taken it off his shelf to look up a passage as he wrote. There was no “it”—no “Septuagint pew Bible” in any simplistic way.

There was Scripture, preserved in better or worse forms, in Greek. For that reason, the textual, linguistic, and even theological implications of the Septuagint for New Testament studies constitute a dense and important scholarly field of research. For example, there is ongoing debate within Septuagint scholarship as to the prevalence of theological tendencies manifested in the Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible themselves.

The textual, linguistic, and even theological implications of the Septuagint for New Testament studies constitute an important field of research.

The same can be said about the nature and meaning of innumerable features of the language of the Septuagint. But, aside from grappling with such issues directly, New Testament scholars have the added complexity of asking whether and how the New Testament authors themselves might have read and understood the Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible, and what kind of influence that might have had—in textual form or vocabulary choice, for example—upon their interpretive posture and scriptural reasoning.

Conclusion

It should be clear by this point that the Septuagint is a broad and complex area of study. We should avoid oversimplifying it as we think about the textual history of the Bible, lest we come to unwarranted conclusions. Yet even so, with some guidance understanding, the Septuagint is not beyond the grasp of the typical person in the pew who wants to know more about the origins of Scripture. Alongside the Text & Canon Institute website, good resources exist to help people do just that.

Did Nicaea Really Create the Bible?

Debunking the popular myth that a Roman emperor and a fourth-century church council decided the canon

Ideas have consequences. One idea that has yielded dangerous consequences is the notion that the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), under the authority of Roman emperor Constantine, established the Christian biblical canon.

Did the Bible originate from a few elite bishops selecting which books to include? Should we credit a Roman emperor with creating the Bible? No. This falsehood has been used to cast suspicion on the origins of the canon, which undermines the Bible’s authority.

Dan Brown’s 2003 bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, planted this idea in our culture, and many now think Constantine or Nicaea established the Bible. But Brown didn’t invent this story. He only perpetuated it through his fiction. (Same goes for popular spy novelist Daniel Silva’s latest book, The Order. He admits in an author’s note: “Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy will no doubt take issue with my description of who the evangelists were and how their Gospels came to be written.”)

There is no historical basis for the idea that Nicaea established the canon and created the Bible.

Nicaea and the Canon in History

There is no historical basis for the idea that Nicaea established the canon and created the Bible. The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity and other early evidence show that Christians disputed the boundaries of the biblical canon before and after Nicaea. For example, even lists from pro-Nicaean fathers such as Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. AD 350) and Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. AD 367) don’t agree on the inclusion of Revelation. None of the early records from the council, nor eyewitness attendees (Eusebius or Athanasius, for example), mentions any conciliar decision that established the canon.

In the preface to his Latin translation of Judith, Jerome wrote:

But since the Nicene Council is considered (legitur lit. “is read”) to have counted this book among the number of sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request (or should I say demand!).

Could Jerome be referring to a formal decision to include Judith in the canon? That’s unlikely.

The earliest adopters of Nicene orthodoxy—from Athanasius to Gregory of Nazianzus to Hilary of Poitiers to Jerome himself—don’t include Judith in their canon lists. If a decision was made at Nicaea on the canonicity of Judith, the earliest adopters would’ve listed it among the canonical books. But they don’t. Rather, Jerome is probably describing discussions in which some fathers may have referred to Judith as scriptural. In any case, these discussions didn’t end in a formal conciliar decision on the canon’s boundaries. It seems Jerome’s statement, though, was later misunderstood to say that Nicaea decided on the canon, which leads us to the rest of the story.

Nicaea and the Canon in Legend

The source of this idea appears in a late-ninth-century Greek manuscript called the Synodicon Vetus, which purports to summarize the decisions of Greek councils up to that time (see pages 2–4 here). Andreas Darmasius brought this manuscript from Morea in the 16th century. John Pappus edited and published it in 1601 in Strasburg. Here’s the relevant section:

The council made manifest the canonical and apocryphal books in the following manner: placing them by the side of the divine table in the house of God, they prayed, entreating the Lord that the divinely inspired books might be found upon the table, and the spurious ones underneath; and it so happened.

According to this source, the church has its canon because of a miracle that occurred at Nicaea in which the Lord caused the canonical books to stay on the table and the apocryphal or spurious ones to be found underneath.

From Pappus’s edition of the Synodicon Vetus, this quotation circulated and was cited (sometimes as coming from Pappus himself, not the Greek manuscript he edited!), and eventually found its way into the work of prominent thinkers such as Voltaire (1694–1778). In volume 3 of his Philosophical Dictionary (English translation here) under “Councils” (sec. I), he writes:

It was by an expedient nearly similar, that the fathers of the same council distinguished the authentic from the apocryphal books of Scripture. Having placed them altogether upon the altar, the apocryphal books fell to the ground of themselves.

A little later in section III, Voltaire adds:

We have already said, that in the supplement to the Council of Nice it is related that the fathers, being much perplexed to find out which were the authentic and which the apocryphal books of the Old and the New Testament, laid them all upon an altar, and the books which they were to reject fell to the ground. What a pity that so fine an ordeal has been lost!

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Voltaire earlier mentions that Constantine convened the council. At Nicaea, then, the fathers distinguished the canonical from the apocryphal books by prayer and a miracle. The publication of Pappus’s 1601 edition of Synodicon Vetus—and the subsequent citing of the miracle at Nicaea, especially by Voltaire in his Dictionary—appears to be the reason Dan Brown could narrate the events so colorfully and why many others continue to perpetuate this legend.

Matter of Authority

The church no more gave us [the] canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.

As our culture becomes increasingly secular, many will continue to cast doubt on the Bible’s origins and especially on early Christianity’s role in the canon’s formation. Although the history of the canon is a bit messy at junctures, there is no evidence it was established by a few Christian bishops and churches convened at Nicaea in 325.

Christians need to prepare their minds for action in this age and confidently assert that the biblical canon is the work of God, recognized by churches over many years’ time. In the vivid words of J. I. Packer, “The church no more gave us [the] canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.”

This article was originally published at The Gospel Coalition.

Borrowing from the KJV Bank and Trust

Why we must steward and protect the trust people have in prominent Bible translations.

I want all good evangelical English Bible translations to be trusted and used by all good English-speaking evangelicals. And I think you should want this, too. It makes sense, then, to look to the most popular English Bible of all time for lessons in how a translation might win and keep Bible readers’ trust. That is, of course, the King James Version.

The KJV is the one ring to rule them all. There is no escaping its influence—on church history, on Bible translation, on the English language itself. But Rings of Power often get shrouded in hagiographic mist over time. According to a recent poll, 103% of English-speaking Christians believe that the KJV was created on the sixth day and brought over to America on the Mayflower on the seventh.

A huge number of English-speaking Christians still use and trust the King James.

Okay, that isn’t true. But this is: the most recent reliable poll found that 55% of American Bible readers are still reading the KJV. A huge number of English-speaking Christians still use and trust the King James.

And yet, there was when the King James was not. It had to be made by humans, just like today’s translations. There were no angel choirs singing in the sky at its birth (and the Pilgrims carried the Geneva Bible, not the KJV). The KJV had to achieve its status.

There are therefore a number of useful lessons we can learn about public trust in Bible translations from the human history of the excellent King James Version.

1. Plan for cavils and parles.

First, those who love good English Bible translations today—the ESV, CSB, NIV, NET, NLT, LEB, NKJV, and others—should take heart: even the venerable KJV once faced vituperative opposition.

It’s odd, actually, to read the KJV preface, “The Translators to the Reader,” because it opens in what might seem to us to be an unnecessarily defensive crouch. Its author, Myles Smith, is certain people will attack his and his fellow translators’ work. There isn’t much space to read between Smith’s rather dense lines, but I see there a resigned, elite-academic sigh. Smith has no idea he has helped forge the one ring. By sentence two, he is offering this biting prediction:

Cavil, if it do not find a hole, will make one.1David Norton, ed., The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with the Apocrypha: King James Version, Revised edition, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), xxvii–xxviii. Page numbers for future quotations of the preface will be given in parentheses.

The KJV translators foresaw the inane criticisms (“cavils”) they were about to face, and yet I can’t exactly point to them as examples of how to respond with grace—I don’t hear in Smith much noblesse oblige. He calls out his critics’ “absurdity,” “wickedness,” “envy,” and “malignity.” And listen to this cynical complaint:

He that meddleth with men’s religion in any part meddleth with their custom, nay, with their freehold [money-producing land]; and though they find no content in that which they have, yet they cannot abide to hear of altering [it]. (xix)

But I actually take some consolation from the mere fact that Smith felt he had to defend the KJV. The malicious treatment that current English Bible translators often get today is not an invention of the social media era. Apparently, it can be overcome.

The KJV translators do offer this constructive tip:

Being brought together to a parle [conference] face to face, we sooner compose our differences than by writings, which are endless. (xvii)

New Bible translations, if they are to be trusted, have to be ready to suffer slings and arrows from outraged Bible readers. And they have to win some of those people over with parles.

2. The KJV is the Septuagint of today.

A second lesson we can learn from the KJV translators comes from the insightful comments they make about one of the only Bible translations in history that is more famous than the KJV. This is the Septuagint, the pre-Christian Greek translation of the (Hebrew) Old Testament.

The lesson might go something like this: the trust people have in a prominent Bible translation must be carefully stewarded and protected.

The KJV translators were not overly enamored with the accuracy and quality of the Septuagint:

It is certain that that translation was not so sound and so perfect but that it needed in many places correction. (xxii)

They noted that the coming of the New Testament was a perfect time for God to fix the Septuagint’s problems. Whenever Jesus and the apostles quoted it, they could have adjusted it. But they often didn’t.

It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to them to take that which they found (the same being for the greatest part true and sufficient), rather than by making a new, in that new world and green age of the Church, to expose themselves to many exceptions and cavillations, as though they made a translation to serve their own turn. (xxii)

The KJV is the Septuagint of today. In general, the safest path to widespread trust is through it. The KJV established a tradition (begun by William Tyndale) of basically literal and beautifully literary translation choices, a tradition that has proven its utility over time.

In general, the safest path to widespread trust is through it.

While I happen to think that the New International Version is a fine work by fine scholars, and while I use the NIV frequently, it hasn’t hewed as closely to the KJV tradition as a few of the other major modern evangelical English Bible translations. I don’t think there is any kind of biblical requirement that we stick with precedent here; if Christians in your context trust the New International Version, then you have a new and useful tradition worth holding on to. But when it came time for a choice in my own congregation, I found that I was a member of the if-it-ain’t-broke school of Bible translation selection. We now use an English translation that is a more direct heir of the KJV—it was simply an easier sell in my circumstances to borrow from the KJV Bank & Trust.

3. Make the KJV translators thank you.

That, in fact, is very like what the KJV translators did in their day. Hence a third lesson: the KJV translators successfully replaced the work of their forebears without disdaining it.

I said earlier that Myles Smith wasn’t exactly gentle with his imagined critics. But he was nothing but gracious toward those who went before him in the work of English Bible translation.

As nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the latter thoughts are thought to be the wiser: so, if we building upon their foundation that went before us, and being helped by their labours, do endeavour to make that better which they left so good, no man, we are sure, hath cause to mislike us; they, we persuade ourselves, if they were alive, would thank us. (xxvii)

There are defenders of exclusive use of the King James Version who take even the gentlest question (Hasn’t English changed enough by now to make portions of the KJV unnecessarily difficult for today’s readers to understand?) as an affront. But it seems to me that if indeed it is time for the English-speaking church to replace the KJV in pulpits and other institutional contexts, pastors and others who must make this change would do well to speak well of the KJV—to refuse to let those defenders lay sole claim to its legacy.

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The KJV translators were not KJV-Only. It is actually those who wish to see the venerable King James revised who are most honoring the KJV tradition. The KJV itself wasn’t a fresh translation; it was a revision of the Bishop’s Bible, first released in 1568. The edition of the KJV that is now in the most common use was produced in 1769 (not 1611).

The KJV translators were revisers, and they were sensitive to the charge that revising a translation meant rejecting or even disrespecting that earlier work. They loaded up the metaphors to explain their revision work to non-specialists:

  • It took the work of both Gideon and of the men Ephraim to destroy Midian in Judges 8: both were called for. Likewise, translation and revision are both necessary. (xxvii)
  • Joash struck the ground three times in 2 Kings 13; he should have struck it more. (xxvii)
  • “Books of profane learning” such as Aristotle’s Ethics get translated and then revised—even multiple times. (xxvii)
  • Gold doesn’t stop being gold because it needs at times to be “rubbed and polished.” (xxvii)

They did not disdain the work of their forebears. We should not disdain theirs even as we the church begin to use KJV revisions and replacements.

Conclusion

Some aspects of the KJV’s rise to prominence are unrepeatable, especially 1) the tiny size of the English-speaking world at the time and 2) the fact that pretty well all of it was subject to the king who commissioned the translation. That will never happen again. I am convinced that there will never again be one ring to rule them all.

Instead we’ve got something not quite so stirring, though you can still try using a movie-trailer announcer voice to say it: multiple rings with complementary and overlapping powers.

It’s a bad idea, then, to take a Bible translation that people trust such as the KJV and cast it into Mount Doom. There is room for many rings. And we can have and use them if we learn some lessons about trust from the wise KJV translators.

Notes

  • 1
    David Norton, ed., The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with the Apocrypha: King James Version, Revised edition, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), xxvii–xxviii. Page numbers for future quotations of the preface will be given in parentheses.

Appreciating the Diverse Evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls

Taking the evidence of the Dead Sea Scroll seriously means putting the differences—and the similarities—in proper context.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have fascinated a broad audience of Bible scholars, lay Christians, and the general public for nearly a century. This discovery’s timing adds a level of intrigue since they were discovered in the tremulous days immediately after World War II in a place undergoing great transition. The recent announcement of Greek fragments of the Minor Prophets from Naḥal Ḥever and the thought that technology such as drones may yet yield more manuscripts further stokes our imagination and excitement about these caves in the Judean Desert. Few discoveries from the ancient world have captivated our imagination like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of these manuscripts, especially for those interested in the history of Old Testament text, not simply because of the timing and place of the discovery or because the future may still unlock more manuscripts for us, but because of four important characteristics of these manuscripts: 1) These manuscripts are the oldest biblical manuscripts we possess; 2) many of the biblical manuscripts were written in the Old Testament’s original languages; 3) many of these manuscripts align closely with the canonical Jewish text known as the Masoretic Text or MT, and 4) many others do not. Focusing on these four characteristics helps us better appreciate how important they are for the history of the Old Testament text.

The Age of the Dead Sea Scrolls    

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest biblical manuscripts that we possess, dating from 250 BC to 115 AD.1See TCHB3, 99. Before this discovery, we possessed some Hebrew texts from this era and some from even earlier, but these were not biblical scrolls. We did possess numerous biblical manuscripts, but these dated to a much later time. The biblical manuscripts from Qumran have changed this reality. We now possess over two hundred biblical manuscripts from the Second Temple period (c. 500 BC–70 AD). The age of these manuscripts makes them especially important.

The Language of the Scrolls

Although some of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls are translations, the vast majority are written in Hebrew and Aramaic, the Old Testament’s original languages. When scholars approach the ancient translations like the Greek translation, popularly referred to as the Septuagint, the Targumim, the Old Latin and Vulgate, and Peshitta, scholars have to judge carefully about whether a difference between these texts is a genuine variant. That is, scholars first have to decide if this difference arose from the translator (i.e., translation technique or scribal error) or the difference was in the text he was translating. What makes the Dead Sea Scrolls so important is that translation technique is not an issue for most of them because they are not translations.

The value of this fact, however, can be overstated. These manuscripts have not passed into a new language, but many were still copied according to updated standards of spelling and grammar. Thus, some of the tendencies involved in translation technique must be accounted for when analyzing these manuscripts. Of course, the fact that these were mainly written in the original languages means fewer such factors need to be considered.

What the Scrolls tell us about the history of the Old Testament text

Many scholars and apologists have highlighted those Scrolls that preserve a high level of unity with the Masoretic Text which is largely behind our English bibles. The codex known as Codex Leningrad is the best-preserved manuscript preserving this textual tradition. This fact comes into focus, especially when one analyzes the manuscripts discovered in sites other than Qumran.

Qumran is only one site in the Judean Desert where Bedouin and scholars discovered manuscripts. Other locations include Masada, Wadi Murabba’at, Wadi Sdeir, Naḥal Ḥever, Naḥal Arugot, and Naḥal Ṣe’elim (wadi and naḥal both refer to streams). The manuscripts from these sites date from 50 BC to 115 AD and preserve the same tradition as preserved in codex Leningrad which was copied in 1008 AD. Unity among these manuscripts is, at times, remarkable, as illustrated by a Leviticus manuscript discovered at Masada dating from 30 BC to 30 AD. This Leviticus manuscript agrees with codex Leningrad even regarding peculiar spelling. This unity illustrates that this tradition was copied with precision since at least the turn of the era.2See TCHB3, 29–31.

Nearly half of the manuscripts discovered at Qumran also demonstrate this unity, although not to the degree as the manuscripts from the other sites. For example, 1QIsaa has traditionally been cited as clear evidence of proof of the antiquity and high-quality of the Masoretic tradition, and this notion is correct. Yet, this manuscript preserves thousands of differences when compared to Leningrad, and these differences led Emanuel Tov, the world’s preeminent Scrolls scholar, to label it as “non-aligned,” meaning it does not agree closely with the text of the MT.

A portion of the Great Isaiah Scroll
A portion of the Great Isaiah scroll (1QIsaa). Image credit.

We should note that the majority of these differences are minor; they often concern a different spelling practice.3Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Qumran, Septuagint: Collected Essays (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 303). Of course, that is not to say there are not important variants preserved in this manuscript; instead, my point is that, overall, it preserves a text close to the one preserved in Leningrad. Another Isaiah scroll discovered at Qumran, known as 1QIsab, preserves an even higher degree of unity with Leningrad than 1QIsaa. This manuscript, however, is less popular because it preserves less content.

To give us a bird’s eye view of the evidence from Qumran, we can observe how Emanuel Tov classifies these texts: he classifies 56 as MT-like, 57 as non-aligned, five as close to the Samaritan Pentateuch, and seven as close to the Septuagint.4N. David and A. Lange, eds., Qumran and the Bible: Studying the Jewish and Christian Scriptures in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 49–50).

Overall, the Dead Sea Scrolls show that the Masoretic Text has been copied with precision for over a millennium and that a sizable amount of manuscripts reflect this text.

Overall, the Dead Sea Scrolls show that the Masoretic Text has been copied with precision for over a millennium.

The Scrolls that don’t agree with the Masoretic Text

Tov, and many other scholars, have pointed out that half of the Hebrew manuscripts discovered at Qumran preserve textual diversity never before seen in Hebrew biblical manuscripts. This is true, strictly speaking. However, when one analyzes the nature of the variants preserved in these manuscripts, one can see that most of these differences result from common scribal tendencies such as interpretation, harmonization, updating, and normalizing a text’s grammar.

How to reference the Dead Sea Scrolls

Moreover, many of these manuscripts can be adequately described as scribal innovations. For example, 4QGenk, in my opinion, tends to normalize the grammar found in the Masoretic Text, and thus, can be understood as a normalized manuscript; 4QPsx is likely a writing exercise; 4QDeutn is an excerpted text; and 4QQoha is an updated text. Therefore, although half of the manuscripts preserve a level of textual diversity, this diversity is often minor.

Some manuscripts that Tov and others label as non-aligned are more challenging to explain. Tov identifies seven of these manuscripts with an exclamation mark in appendix 8 of his book Scribal Practices. Remember that Tov classifies 56 Scrolls as MT-like, 57 as non-aligned, five as close to the Samaritan Pentateuch, and seven as close to the Septuagint.5N. David and A. Lange, eds., Qumran and the Bible: Studying the Jewish and Christian Scriptures in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 49–50).

However, only seven of these 57 manuscripts are identified with an exclamation mark. This confirms, in my mind, that the other 50 non-aligned texts are non-aligned only in minor details.6For more on this topic, you can see my doctoral dissertation. Space prohibits a description of these manuscripts, but suffice it to say that the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls do contain a level of textual diversity. Most of this diversity, though, is relatively minor, and, although some of it is more extensive, none of it calls into question the trustworthiness of the Old Testament as God’s word.

Related

Making sense of all the evidence

Scholars have long understood scribes as approaching their task of copying the Old Testament from two general perspectives: some scribes came to their text with a desire to reproduce it precisely, while others approached their task with the desire to resignify it. Moreover, some scribes took their biblical text and used it to make a new document that was not understood as biblical. An example of this would be a liturgical text. This new document was not understood as “biblical” but contained only an excerpt of the Bible.

We make these types of changes today. For example, some translations are incredibly literal, while others tend to be more dynamic. Both approaches seek to communicate the word of God to a people far removed from the original audience. Similarly, when the Bible is used in liturgical contexts, we make all types of changes to it.

I am the pastor of a local church. When I stand before God’s people with God’s word, it is not uncommon for me to change it. For example, I might stop mid-verse and explain something briefly to the church; I might repeat a word for emphasis; I might even substitute a word for clarity. An example of this last category may be me replacing a pronoun, like “he,” with the proper noun, “Moses.” In my mind, the textual diversity preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls parallels the practices of many pastors.

We should certainly take the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls seriously while being confident that the word of the Lord is trustworthy and true.

Notes

Why Are Protestant and Catholic Bibles Different?

Knowledge of the Bible’s history clears away the caricatures and misinformation swirling around this common question.

Why do Catholic Bibles contain more books than Protestant ones? Few questions provoke more curiosity (and angst) about the history of the Bible than why and how the two major western branches of Christianity have different books in the Book. The Roman Catholic Bible has 73 books, while the Protestant Bible contains 66.

Both groups claim the Bible functions as their authority for doctrine, though admittedly in different ways. That is, Protestants and Catholics claim the Bible is their canon or authority for faith and morals. Before we can understand how each group reads their Bible, we need to learn the differences between the bibles they read. To do that, we will detail the major differences, describe the history of the canon, and then show why the question matters.

The Differences

Catholics and Protestants have the same 27-book New Testament. Thus, the differences between their Bibles concerns the boundaries of the Old Testament canon. In short, Catholics have 46 books, while Protestants have 39. Thus, Catholics have seven more books and also some additions within shared books: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus / Sirach / Ben Sira, 1–2 Maccabees, Baruch, and the additions to Daniel and Esther.

Protestants call these books collectively, “the Apocrypha,” while Catholics refer to them as “the Deuterocanon.” Here, “Deuterocanon” does not mean second in authority but second only in reception in time. The Protestant Old Testament agrees with the narrower contents of the Hebrew canon (though not the ordering and numbering of books), while the Catholic Old Testament contains these same books plus the deuterocanonical books.

How the Different Canons Arose

At the start, several simplistic answers need to be avoided. These include the notion that Protestants removed books from the Bible or that Roman Catholics finally published their Bible pure and simple at the Council of Trent. As we will see, the Old Testament’s history from the beginning of the Christian era to the 16th century was quite complex. One must understand the early history of the relationship of the canon to these other books before making sweeping statements about what happened in the 16th century.

Early Christian History (100–400 AD)

Early Christians answered the question “What is the Old Testament?” differently as they recognized the voice of their Shepherd in the Jewish writings that remained. Jesus and the Apostles did not leave behind a list of authoritative books for the earliest church, and there were various spiritually significant books and different opinions about them. The complete Greek Bible codices of the fourth century (Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus) contained many of the deuterocanonical books alongside the others. They were integrated alongside the rest of the Old Testament.

Christians were clearly copying and reading these books. Whether they considered them as having authority or not is a separate question, as we will see. Furthermore, in the third century, Christians began to cite the deuterocanonical books as “scripture.” Clearly, they considered these works important. Although the New Testament and second-century authors never cite the deuterocanonical books as scripture, they do allude to them, showing awareness of them. (See, for example, the allusion to the Jewish martyrs of 2 Maccabees 6–7 in Heb. 11:35.)

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But Paul’s statement in Romans 3:2, “the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God,” probably led many early Christians to conclude that the church’s Old Testament canon should match the Jewish canon. The earliest, second- and third-century lists of Melito of Sardis, Bryennios list, Origen of Alexandria, and the fourth-century Greek lists (e.g., Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus) omitted almost all of the deuterocanonical books (e.g., some still included Baruch as part of Jeremiah).1For these lists and more in original languages and English translation see Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

These Christians and others beside did not outright reject the deuterocanonical books. Rather, they considered them useful for believers to read for edification, but not authoritative for doctrine. That is, their first-tier-canonical books established doctrine for the church, while second-tier-readable books illustrated piety for believers. That is a crucial distinction that is sometimes lost today.

First-tier books established doctrine while second-tier books illustrated piety for believers.

However, in the Latin West, another development was underway. Instead of asking whether a book was part of the Jewish canon, some early Christians accepted a book into the canon if the churches read and received that book. Augustine of Hippo and Pope Innocent I, for example, clearly accepted the deuterocanonical books based on this consideration. But other Latin Christians such as Jerome of Stridon and Rufinus of Aquileia continued to promote the narrower canon, placing the deuterocanonical books in a secondary list of edificatory books that did not establish church doctrine.

Related

What this short survey shows is that fourth-century Christians were divided over the criteria for the Old Testament canon. Based on the canon lists, most Christians would have followed the Hebrew canon criterion for determining what belonged in their own. But others determined the Christian Old Testament by looking at what books the churches were reading in public and accepting. The two views agreed on the Hebrew canon but disagreed on the status of the deuterocanonical books with some relegating them to a secondary, edificatory status and others integrating them with the rest of the books. The issue was still debated in the early Reformation period and into the period of the Roman Catholic response in the Council of Trent (1546).

Reformation Period and Council of Trent

Although the Council of Florence around 1445 included a list of Old Testament books that incorporated the deuterocanonical books, the list did not have dogmatic definition. This means that Catholics before the Council of Trent were still debating the Old Testament canon in different ways. For example, Cardinal Ximénes (best known for his role as Grand Inquisitor), Cardinal Cajetan (known for his role as reviewer of Martin Luther’s teachings at the Diet of Augsburg in 1518), and the great Catholic scholar Erasmus would have probably agreed with the early Protestants on the contents of the Old Testament and the distinction between the canonical books and the edificatory deuterocanonical books. But other Catholic theologians were persuaded that Pope Innocent, Pope Eugenius, and the Council of Florence among others included the deuterocanonical books in the canon.

When the Council of Trent convened in 1546 to discuss the matter of the canon of scripture, they committed to printing the list of books of the Council of Florence, but they did not believe they were settling once and for all the debate between Augustine and Jerome—a live debate at the time between Humanist and Protestant scholars on the one hand and Catholics on the other.

But when the council published its decree on the canon, the text did not clearly reflect this live debate. Instead, it came with an unqualified list of books that included the deuterocanonical books on the same tier as the other books. But the minutes and papers of the Council of Trent’s meetings suggest a different story. They show that the theologians and church leaders believed they were not settling the long-held debate over the deuterocanonical books despite the fact that their decree published the wider list of books without any qualification or explanation. As one recent Catholic historian says, “In this case at least, the council itself must be held responsible for the misunderstanding.”2John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 92.

From this point forward, Catholic apologists, who should have known better, began to defend this canon as part of Roman Catholic identity. For their part, Protestants also understood Trent’s decision as a way to include the deuterocanonical books that supported some of their doctrinal positions.

In 1566, Roman Catholic theologian, Sixtus of Sienna, coined the term “Deuterocanonical” to describe these books together with a few others that Christians would not call Deuterocanonical today (e.g., Revelation). By “Deuterocanonical,” Sixtus means second in time of reception—not second in authority and dignity. These books were slower to be received into the church’s canon of scripture, and therefore he called them deuterocanonical, while Protestants continued to call these books “Apocrypha,” clearly preserving the ancient distinction between them and the canonical books.

Do the Differences Matter?

As early as 1519, the differences between these canons could be felt. At a debate in Leipzig, Martin Luther and Catholic Johann Maier von Eck debated the doctrine of purgatory and the role of indulgences among other issues. As Luther questioned the scriptural authority for purgatory, he noted that 2 Maccabees 12:43–45 might offer some opinion, but “since Maccabees is not in the canon,” it is only effective for the faithful and does not furnish such authority. Only books in the canon could establish doctrine. If a book’s canonical status was disputed, as all the deuterocanonical books were, then it was not a sufficient authority. In this, Luther was appealing to Jerome’s view.

In 1547, one year after Trent’s decree on the canon, John Calvin in his Antidote argued that the leaders at Trent “provide themselves with new supports when they give full authority to the Apocryphal books. Out of the second of the Maccabees they will prove Purgatory and the worship of saints; out of Tobit satisfactions, exorcisms, and what not. From Ecclesiasticus they will borrow not a little. For from whence could they better draw their dregs?”3From Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters: Volume 3: Tracts, Part 3, ed. Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet (Edinburgh; Calvin Translation Society, 1851; repr. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 68.

These early Protestants understood clearly that the Apocryphal books taught different doctrines than the canonical books, and once the Roman Catholic Church lent full authority to them, many of their teachings could then find full support too. Clearly, the differences between the two canons are not trivial. Canon means authority, and thus, an authoritative support for the church’s teachings.

Clearly, the differences between the two canons are not trivial. Canon means authority, and thus, an authoritative support for the church’s teachings.

Conclusion

Today, because of the different canons, Catholics and Protestants have different scriptural authorities. Opening up the history of the matter shows that Catholics at Trent did not think they were solving the canon debate or publishing the Catholic Bible once and for all, even if the decree had that effect.

Similarly, the history of the matter shows that Protestants were not removing books from the Bible, for their canon was not only traditional but, in so far as it cohered with the Hebrew canon, actually had the more ancient precedent. Knowledge of the Bible’s history clears away the caricatures and misinformation swirling around this question.

This article is also available in Polish.

Notes

  • 1
    For these lists and more in original languages and English translation see Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
  • 2
    John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 92.
  • 3
    From Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters: Volume 3: Tracts, Part 3, ed. Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet (Edinburgh; Calvin Translation Society, 1851; repr. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 68.

Two Reasons There Are Variants in Our Copies of the Bible

For historical and theological reasons, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Bible’s manuscripts have differences.

To err is human; to forgive, divine” is surely the most famous line of the English poet Alexander Pope. Written when he was only 23, the first line presents a truism that explains why our English Bibles have notes about differences in our copies of the Bible.

We can take an example from the venerable King James Bible. At James 2:18, the text says, “shew me thy faith without thy works” but the margin records that “some copies read, by thy works.”1Thanks to the discovery and study of older manuscripts than were available in 1611, most translations today print “without works” with enough confidence not to give a note. For more textual notes in the KJV, see here. These same types of textual notes were found before the King James and, of course, they have been used by all major translations since.

But why do we have variants at all? There are essentially two answers to this question. The first answer is historical and tends to be one that Bible translators need to think the most about. The second is theological and tends to be one that regular Bible readers are most interested in.

Historical

The historical reason for variants goes back to Pope’s quote. Humans make mistakes. And, until the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, all copies of the Bible had to be made by human hands.

Copying by hand is hard. It takes not just hand-eye coordination but something more like hand-eye-mind-finger-pen-ink-and-parchment coordination. And the Bible is a BIG book. In the original languages, it consists of about 300,000 words in the Old Testament and 140,000 in the New Testament. New Testament scribes were sometimes paid by the line and one early copy of Paul’s letters required 1,000 lines just for Romans. With so much to copy, it’s no wonder scribes made mistakes.

We might be tempted to think that the printing press eliminated human error in Bible production. But it didn’t. The “Wicked Bible,” for example, is a printing of the King James Bible from 1631 where a typesetter’s error changed the sixth commandment to “thou shalt commit adultery.” (The result did not go over well with the powers-that-be.) The arrival of the printing press did mean, however, that, for the first time, you could have hundreds of copies that all preserved the same mistakes at exactly the same place on the page. In this way, mistakes were easier to contain.

Two things are important to know about the mistakes that scribes made. The first is that the majority were accidental—a slip of the pen, a confusion of letters, an accidental omission—things like that. Not all were, of course. Some differences show clear signs of deliberation. Certainly, in the case of larger differences like the longer ending of Mark or the additions to the book of Esther, we are dealing with something much different than a slip of the pen. But many mistakes are ordinary and easy enough to find and fix.

The second thing to know is that the copying of the Bible was not a long process of introducing more and more errors so that by the end we couldn’t hope to get back to the original. In other words, it was not like the telephone game we played as kids. The reason is that scribes not only made mistakes, they also corrected them. They knew firsthand that copying was hard, and they could check their own work and even the work of their predecessors. This is why some of our most important Bible manuscripts—especially on the New Testament side of things—often have corrections.

Near the start of Romans 4, the original scribe of Codex Vaticanus (4th c.) accidentally wrote verses 4b–5a twice because of the repetition of words. A later scribe caught the problem and fixed it by not re-inking the duplicated text. (Image: Vat.gr.1209, f. 1448)

They didn’t always get it right, of course. Sometimes a scribe’s “fix” made the problem worse. One scribe using Codex Vaticanus certainly thought so. The exasperated note he left at Hebrews 1:3 reads, “You untrained and unskilled man—leave the old reading, don’t change it!”2ἀμαθέστατε καὶ κακέ, ἂφες τὸν παλαιόν, μὴ μεταποίει. The note is found on folio 1512. But, overall, scribes worked hard to do a faithful job with the task at hand—even if they didn’t always succeed.

So, the first reason we have differences in our manuscripts is because copying by hand is hard.

Theological

This historical answer is simple enough. It’s also true of all works published before the printing press, not just the Bible. But Christians often wonder if the Bible shouldn’t be different. After all, if God violated Alexander Pope’s famous principle with the Bible’s authors (so they didn’t err) why didn’t he do it with the scribes who copied them (so that they too didn’t err)?

The answer can’t be because he wasn’t able to. Surely God could have if he had wanted to. (Although we should admit that keeping thousands of copyists from error over thousands of years would be an even more impressive miracle than keeping the authors from them.)

The simple answer is that we have errors in our manuscripts because God never promised to keep them out. The Bible teaches that its authors were inspired (e.g., 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21); it nowhere teaches that scribes who copied them were. This is actually right in line with God’s normal way of working. He usually seems to follow up his extraordinary acts (what we call miracles) with his ordinary ones (what we call providence).

Take the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus miraculously feeds thousands of people from just five loaves and a few fish. That’s extraordinary. But we can be confident that the way that this miraculous food was ingested and then digested was anything but miraculous. Likewise, Mary’s conception of Jesus was certainly extraordinary; her actual pregnancy and delivery of the baby were presumably ordinary. In the same way, we shouldn’t be surprised that God’s extraordinary work of inspiring the Scriptures was followed by the ordinary process of copying it—variants and all.3This point comes from C.S. Lewis who writes, “Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern.” Miracles (New York: HarperCollins, 1974), 95; emphasis added.

What about when Jesus says, in Matthew 5:18, that “not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished”? Isn’t that a promise that the text would be perfectly preserved even down to the letterstroke? From the context, the answer is clearly no. We know the metaphor is about Scripture’s full authority and not about copying because the next thing he says is a rebuke, not to scribes, but to anyone who “relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same” (Matt. 5:19; cf. Luke 16:17). The authority of Scripture is certainly one reason why Christians care about differences in the manuscripts, but that doesn’t mean the differences invalidate Scripture’s authority.

The authority of Scripture is certainly one reason why Christians care about differences in the manuscripts, but that doesn’t mean the differences invalidate Scripture’s authority.

One reason they don’t is because, despite our use of the term “error” when talking about scribes, we should not confuse scribal error with theological error. It is rare that scribal error results in something approaching a theological error. In James 2:18, for example, the difference in the KJV text and the KJV margin affects how James makes his point about faith and works but it doesn’t change his point that faith without works is dead. As Christians, we certainly care about Scripture even in the details, but we would be wrong to conclude that because there are variants in some details, the Scriptures have no authority as a result.

In fact, because scribes did such a faithful job overall; because they left us so many manuscripts; and because we have careful principles for identifying scribal mistakes, our confidence in the text as we have it is remarkably high. That’s why the differences in modern English translations are far more often due to differences in translation philosophy than they are to textual differences. Many important variants can be found in the notes of our modern Bibles—just like they were in the King James Bible.

Conclusion

In the end, we have two reasons why there are differences in the manuscripts of the Bible, one historical and one theological. The historical reason is the same as for all other ancient literature: copying by hand is hard and scribes made mistakes. The theological reason is because God never promised to keep scribes completely free from error. We should not commit God to promises he never made.

In the end, we can be extremely thankful for the countless unnamed scribes who did their work—not always perfectly—but, overall, faithfully. We can also be thankful for God’s ordinary providence at work in their copying so that we can have confidence in God’s enduring word.

Notes

  • 1
    Thanks to the discovery and study of older manuscripts than were available in 1611, most translations today print “without works” with enough confidence not to give a note. For more textual notes in the KJV, see here.
  • 2
    ἀμαθέστατε καὶ κακέ, ἂφες τὸν παλαιόν, μὴ μεταποίει. The note is found on folio 1512.
  • 3
    This point comes from C.S. Lewis who writes, “Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern.” Miracles (New York: HarperCollins, 1974), 95; emphasis added.

The Text & Canon Institute illuminates the history of the Bible through church resources, research, and mentoring.

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