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JONES, TIMOTHY PAUL, (2007) Why Trust the Bible, Rose Publishing, MA.
Text numbers for the New Testament May 2018
Old Testament Apocrypha May 2008
New Testament Manuscripts May 2008
Canon non-exhaustive September 2017
Manuscript evidence August 2008
ELWELL, WALTER AND YARBROUGH, ROBERT W., Third Edition (2013) Encountering The New Testament, Grand Rapids, Baker Academic.
Daniel B. Wallace
Ancient scribes who copied the handwritten texts of the New Testament frequently changed the text intentionally. Although unintentional changes account for the vast majority of textual corruption, intentional alterations also account for thousands of corruptions. In some cases, to be sure, it does seem that the scribes were being malicious. But these instances are few and far between. The majority of the intentional changes to the text were done by scribes who either thought that the text they were copying had errors in it or by scribes who were clarifying the meaning, especially for liturgical reasons.
Some of the commonest intentional changes involve parallel passages. This is where the passage that the scribe is copying out has a parallel to it of which the scribe is aware. For example, about 90% of the pericopes (or stories) in Mark’s Gospel are found in Matthew. When a scribe was copying Mark, after he had just finished copying Matthew, he would frequently remember the parallel in Matthew and make adjustments to the wording of Mark so that it would conform to the wording of Matthew. This alteration is known as harmonization. Occasionally, the wording in Matthew would be conformed to that of Mark or Luke. Or when the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament, especially when the quotation is from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament abbreviated LXX), scribes tended to conform the wording in the NT to the LXX. Parallels between letters of Paul also suffer from this kind of alteration. But when certain manuscripts disagree with such parallels, they are usually considered to reflect the wording of the original text better. A part of the reason for this is that virtually all manuscripts harmonize passages. This shows that there was a concern for the wording of the text and the historical reliability of the text. Consequently, when a manuscript does not harmonize while most others do, it is usually considered to reflect the original wording.
Scribes also were prone to clarify passages, especially for liturgical reasons. For example, 89 successive verses in Mark do not mention the name of Jesus once nor refer to him by any noun at all. But in the lectionary cycle, a portion of Mark’s Gospel would be read for the assigned day. It would be a bit confusing if the passage began with, “And he went out from Galilee.” Who is the ‘he’? The lectionaries would add the name of Jesus (and they did so in three well-placed locations in these 89 verses) to give a little context to the reader. The lectionaries exercised a great influence on the later manuscripts especially. What was part of the prescribed reading of scripture became so ingrained in the scribes’ minds that they naturally added the words that they knew from such recitations.
Scribes also were prone to clarify what they thought the text meant. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong. There could be theological issues involved, or issues of mere orthopraxy (proper conduct in the church)...
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Even this strong motive to alter the text was never done systematically and was never done completely. For this reason, we can have a great deal of confidence that the essential message of the original text can be recovered, for there is always a witness to it.
