Faith Works 5-30-2025
Jeff Gill
Are there missing verses in my Bible?
Jeff Gill
Are there missing verses in my Bible?
___
Apparently, there's a social media post going around on clips and reels and memes and such, talking excitedly about "missing verses" in someone's Bible, and that "they" (we all know about "Them!" of course) are making scriptural verses disappear.
After answering a couple of direct questions, this sounded like a definite item for this column, but I ask your forgiveness in advance: it will take two weeks. So this one won't resolve the whole issue!
On "missing" verses, it's true up to a point; many if not most modern translations have had to deal with new information about ancient texts in Greek and Hebrew. As for "missing," any translation I know has moved them into footnotes, so they're on the page, but not in the main body of the text.
To keep it as brief as I can, there is in the textual history of Scripture a number of verses which are "problematic." In the hundreds of Greek and Syriac and other early (pre-Latin) manuscripts (because the Bible is translated into Vulgate Latin by St. Jerome in about 400 AD, well after the first manuscripts in Greek script were written down), there are variations. Small variations, but unmistakable ones.
You can have ten versions of a New Testament book, like Matthew or John or Ephesians, all from before 300 AD, and within those ten texts three or four different phrases at the end of a line, or as a section transition into the next. Scholars for millennia have had to pick and choose WHICH reading of a verse or line to use in creating the new translation -- as Jerome did in Bethlehem making his Latin translation.
Luther is kind of his own thing (largely influenced by Erasmus, whom we'll come back to) in German, but when the English Reformation got rolling, influenced by Luther's translation and Calvin's work in Geneva, King James organized around 60 scholars to give English a good translation; before the Reformation, Wycliffe and Tyndale (and Coverdale) had already done versions in English, which the Roman Church condemned, as they used exclusively the Vulgate Latin. King James's translation team in 1604 used Wycliffe & Tyndale & Coverdale's work as a starting, but they wanted to go back to Hebrew & Greek originals themselves -- so they had to wrestle with which Greek text?
They chose the 1516 "Textus Receptus" which just means "Received Text," the brilliant Erasmus's best shot in the early 1500s to assemble a reliable consensus Greek text from the ancient manuscripts available -- at that time. The King James committee also chose the Masoretic text of the Hebrew scriptures (and used the Vulgate for the Apocrypa because they were running out of time by 1610, but that's not an issue for most American Protestants, so I'll skip that), which was a translation of a translation, but it would do until the Dead Sea Scrolls appeared in 1946.
The final "Authorized Version" of 1611 for the King, known today as the "King James Version" made a number of different choices than Erasmus in the New Testament reading of variant texts; some good choices, some because they suited the king's needs in the politics of the day. Puritans, who end up in large numbers coming to America in the next few decades, weren't thrilled with the AV, or KJV, because of those variations, but quickly it dominates in English over the "Geneva Bible" though many copies of it would make their way to the Colonies with the Puritan emigrants . . .
So there's already in 1611 a history of variant readings in different translations. This is all because Erasmus didn't have ALL the Greek manuscripts available to him when he assembled the "Textus Receptus," plus more very old manuscripts were yet to be found in the monastic libraries of the Far East.
That's part one on "missing verses" in today's Bibles; come back next week for part two!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he wishes he read Syriac, but textual studies requires more patience than he possesses. Tell him what you've always wondered about at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
Apparently, there's a social media post going around on clips and reels and memes and such, talking excitedly about "missing verses" in someone's Bible, and that "they" (we all know about "Them!" of course) are making scriptural verses disappear.
After answering a couple of direct questions, this sounded like a definite item for this column, but I ask your forgiveness in advance: it will take two weeks. So this one won't resolve the whole issue!
On "missing" verses, it's true up to a point; many if not most modern translations have had to deal with new information about ancient texts in Greek and Hebrew. As for "missing," any translation I know has moved them into footnotes, so they're on the page, but not in the main body of the text.
To keep it as brief as I can, there is in the textual history of Scripture a number of verses which are "problematic." In the hundreds of Greek and Syriac and other early (pre-Latin) manuscripts (because the Bible is translated into Vulgate Latin by St. Jerome in about 400 AD, well after the first manuscripts in Greek script were written down), there are variations. Small variations, but unmistakable ones.
You can have ten versions of a New Testament book, like Matthew or John or Ephesians, all from before 300 AD, and within those ten texts three or four different phrases at the end of a line, or as a section transition into the next. Scholars for millennia have had to pick and choose WHICH reading of a verse or line to use in creating the new translation -- as Jerome did in Bethlehem making his Latin translation.
Luther is kind of his own thing (largely influenced by Erasmus, whom we'll come back to) in German, but when the English Reformation got rolling, influenced by Luther's translation and Calvin's work in Geneva, King James organized around 60 scholars to give English a good translation; before the Reformation, Wycliffe and Tyndale (and Coverdale) had already done versions in English, which the Roman Church condemned, as they used exclusively the Vulgate Latin. King James's translation team in 1604 used Wycliffe & Tyndale & Coverdale's work as a starting, but they wanted to go back to Hebrew & Greek originals themselves -- so they had to wrestle with which Greek text?
They chose the 1516 "Textus Receptus" which just means "Received Text," the brilliant Erasmus's best shot in the early 1500s to assemble a reliable consensus Greek text from the ancient manuscripts available -- at that time. The King James committee also chose the Masoretic text of the Hebrew scriptures (and used the Vulgate for the Apocrypa because they were running out of time by 1610, but that's not an issue for most American Protestants, so I'll skip that), which was a translation of a translation, but it would do until the Dead Sea Scrolls appeared in 1946.
The final "Authorized Version" of 1611 for the King, known today as the "King James Version" made a number of different choices than Erasmus in the New Testament reading of variant texts; some good choices, some because they suited the king's needs in the politics of the day. Puritans, who end up in large numbers coming to America in the next few decades, weren't thrilled with the AV, or KJV, because of those variations, but quickly it dominates in English over the "Geneva Bible" though many copies of it would make their way to the Colonies with the Puritan emigrants . . .
So there's already in 1611 a history of variant readings in different translations. This is all because Erasmus didn't have ALL the Greek manuscripts available to him when he assembled the "Textus Receptus," plus more very old manuscripts were yet to be found in the monastic libraries of the Far East.
That's part one on "missing verses" in today's Bibles; come back next week for part two!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he wishes he read Syriac, but textual studies requires more patience than he possesses. Tell him what you've always wondered about at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
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