8. The Question of the Original Text
Chapter 8: The Question of the Original Text
One might well assume that the first task of translators is to determine the meaning of the words in the original language, so that they can be transferred into words with comparable meaning in the receptor language. But in fact the first task is to know which words are to be translated. Before the invention of the printing press, all documents were hand-copied by copyists or “scribes.” A hand-copied document is known as a “manuscript” (meaning “written by hand”). Since such copying inevitably resulted in errors, the translators’ first task is to be sure that the words being translated are the words that the original authors actually wrote.
It is of some historical interest in this regard that when the Revised Standard Version (RSV) was published in 1952, it set off an enormous storm of protest. While this antagonism focused in part on some questionable renditions, such as “young woman” for “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14, the major point of contention had to do with “all the words they left out of the Bible.” But did the RSV translators “leave words out,” or had the KJV included extra words — hundreds of words — that were not a part of the original biblical writings? The answer to these questions has to do with the historical discipline known as textual criticism. By definition this is the scholarly discipline that sorts through the manuscript evidence for the Bible and tries to determine on scientific grounds which readings (or “variants”) are most likely to be original.
The Need for Textual Criticism
The need for textual criticism differs between the Old Testament and the New, mostly because of the two considerably different ways handwritten copies of the two were transmitted in antiquity. The Hebrew Bible as it has come down to us had a long history of hand-copying within a carefully controlled environment, which Old Testament scholars generally consider to be one of great care. The “standard” Hebrew text is the Masoretic Text, named after the Jewish scribes known as the Masoretes, who meticulously copied it. The best evidence for the accuracy of the Masoretic text comes from a magnificent scroll of Isaiah, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered near Khirbet Qumran in Israel in the late 1940s. The Isaiah scroll, which preceded the earliest known Hebrew manuscript by nearly ten centuries, turned out to have a Hebrew text that, given the time distance between them, was remarkably similar to the traditional (Masoretic) text.
But this is only part of the story of the Old Testament text. Old Testament textual critics compare the Masoretic Text not only with copies of the Hebrew Bible found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but also with other ancient texts, such as the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Greek Old Testament known as the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX). The Septuagint is particularly important in this regard. As early as three hundred years before Christ, the Hebrew Bible had been translated into Greek for Jews in the Diaspora (i.e., those living outside of Palestine) whose only language was Greek. The Septuagint was in fact the only version available to the majority of the people who first received the documents that became our New Testament.
Because of the antiquity of the Septuagint, translators will occasionally follow its readings over those of the Masoretic Text. This is especially so when a reading from the Septuagint agrees with one found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. These cases are exceptional, however, and the Masoretic text is generally considered highly reliable. All contemporary English versions use it as their primary source text for the Old Testament. The standard edition used in colleges, universities, and seminaries is the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (5th edition).
The copying history (transmission) of the New Testament is considerably more complex; and since most of the difficulties people have regarding the original text of the Bible are found in the New Testament, we will illustrate the problems faced by translators from this part of the Bible. First, a few words about the “need” and the “sources” for the task at hand.
The need for textual criticism can be found in the fact that for the New Testament we are aware of approximately 5,400 handwritten copies (manuscripts) in Greek alone. These include copies of the whole New Testament, shorter collections of books (such as the Gospels or the Pauline letters), single books, and even very small fragments of only a sentence or two. A few of these latter (single books and fragments) date from as early as the second century AD, while the great majority of the former date from a much later period (from the years 1000 to 1540). Although these diverse manuscripts are found in libraries all over the world, they have all been named and numbered, and many of them are available to be viewed by whoever might be interested.
Important for our present discussion is the fact that there are no two manuscripts of the New Testament that are exactly alike — even when we know that one of them is a copy of the other. The reason is that copyists made mistakes, mostly careless, but sometimes deliberate, as they tried to clarify or harmonize to a companion passage the sacred text they were copying.
Here is a case, then, where quantity counts for very little, and quality (and age) count for everything. Indeed, the great majority of manuscripts (known collectively as the Majority Text) reflect an accumulation of centuries of copying errors, which have made their way into these later manuscripts. So the greater value lies with the manuscripts that are demonstrably earlier; and this is especially so when the same reading is found in a cross-section of early witnesses that are widely dispersed geographically. For example, when a reading (variant) is found in early manuscripts that come from the western part of the Roman empire as well as early manuscripts that come from the eastern churches, we can assume that both readings independently go back to an even earlier common source.
The science and art of textual criticism is a highly developed discipline. In addition to evaluating the age and geographical dispersion of manuscripts (“external evidence”), textual critics have developed principles for evaluating variant readings among manuscripts (“internal evi-dence”) to identify and eliminate copyist errors. The net result is that there is near unanimous agreement among biblical scholars that the Greek text used to translate our contemporary English versions is very close to the original text of the New Testament. In the small percentage of passages that remain uncertain, one can be sure that the original is either in the text or is the alternative found in the footnote. So at this point the modern reader is well served.
The only contemporary translation that differs in this matter is the New King James Version (NKJV), a modern revision of the King James Version (KJV). The KJV and the NKJV were both translated from the Greek text known as the Textus Receptus (“Received Text”), which was compiled using a small number of very late manuscripts available to the KJV translators in the early 1600s. The Textus Receptus agrees in most cases with the Majority Text (the text reflecting the majority of manuscripts — most of which are also very late).
While readers should be aware of this significant deficiency in both the KJV and the NKJV, we hasten to add that the sum total of manuscript differences still make up a relatively small percentage of the biblical text and seldom affect important points of doctrine. Furthermore, the NKJV includes footnotes that provide variant readings from both the Majority Text and the critical text (see next paragraph). Readers of the NKJV should therefore be cautioned that the original reading more often appears in its footnotes than in its text.
In contrast to the KJV and NKJV, all other modern versions follow the critical text. Critical is not a negative term but simply denotes the Greek text achieved by using the method of textual criticism to identify and eliminate copyist errors. Critical texts also provide footnotes identifying variant readings and their manuscript support so that students who know Greek can evaluate variants for themselves. The standard critical editions of the Greek New Testament are the Nestle-Aland 27th edition (NA27) and the United Bible Societies’ 4th edition (USB4 ). These two contain essentially the same Greek text, with only minor differences of format and punctuation. Both editions note variant readings in their “apparatus” (footnotes), although Nestle-Aland lists many more variants. The UBS text was especially designed for translators and so includes only variants that are significant for the interpretation and translation of the text.
In summary, because of the wealth of manuscript evidence for both the Old and New Testaments and the reliable methods of textual criticism, readers of the English Bible can be confident that behind their translation lies a Hebrew and Greek text close to what the original authors actually wrote.
Some Illustrations of Textual Differences in English Translations
The great majority of differences among the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are of three basic kinds:
1. A letter, word, or words have been either added to or omitted from the original text.
2. A word or words have been substituted for those in the original text.
3. A word or words (sentences only rarely) have been transposed, either in immediate proximity or to different places in a sentence or clause.
Most translational difficulties occur in the first and second categories, places where the actual wording of the manuscripts differ — because one word has been substituted for another, or because a letter or word or phrase has been added (usually) or omitted (less frequently) by the scribes copying manuscripts. The reason for the greater frequency of addition over omission is that omission is usually accidental, while addition requires at least some awareness on the part of the scribe. Sometimes scribes tried to “help out” an author by clarifying what was unclear or by “correcting” what appeared to them to be difficult. The majority of such “corrections” and clarifications took the form of adding words or rearranging them. Rarely did scribes deliberately omit words from the sacred text they were copying.
In what follows we offer several types of variants that made their way into the manuscript tradition.
Harmonization
One of the more common adjustments to the text was the scribal tendency to harmonize passages. Harmonization sometimes occurred within a given passage, sometimes with the wording of similar passages, and especially between similar passages or sayings of Jesus among the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke). One may assume that scribes more often conformed passages to one another than disharmonized them, and therefore a harmonized reading is usually not the original reading.
We begin with an example that is not found in the majority of manuscripts (the Majority Text) and thus is not in the KJV, but which illustrates a common phenomenon. Matthew’s version of Peter’s confession (Matt. 16:16) reads, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” while Mark has only, “You are the Christ” (8:29) and Luke has, “[You are] the Christ of God” (9:20). Given Matthew’s pride of place in the canon, it comes as no surprise that later scribes conformed both Mark and Luke to Matthew’s version.
A similar harmonization that did make its way into the majority of later manuscripts is Luke’s version of the cry of the demon, “[You are] the Son of God!” (Luke 4:41). This was frequently conformed to Matthew 16:16, so that in the KJV (cf. NKJV) Luke 4:41 reads, “Thou art Christ the Son of God.”
Such harmonizations happen in Paul’s letters as well, but much less frequently. This can be illustrated from the opening words in his two Thessalonian letters. In the first letter, his salutation reads simply: “Grace to you and peace.” In the second letter Paul added the source of such grace and peace: “from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Since some form of this phrase occurs in the salutation of all the rest of Paul’s preserved letters, it is not surprising that by the fourth century scribes began to add it in 1 Thessalonians 1:1 as well. The fact that the earliest and best copies, both East and West, do not have these words makes it certain that they did not originate with Paul but with some later scribes. The words are found in the KJV and the NKJV, but not in other contemporary versions.
The reality of harmonization among manuscripts is one of the two primary reasons (along with the problem of archaic language) for people to choose something other than the KJV as their primary Bible. By every criterion of historical probability, copyists did not deliberately disharmonize the Gospel records. Rather, familiarity with these texts often caused these scribes to bring the first three Gospels into conformity with one another.
Conformity
Closely related to the scribal tendency to harmonize passages was a tendency to conform passages to more common expressions. For example, in 2 Thessalonians 3:3 Paul tells the Thessalonian believers that “the Lord is faithful,” referring clearly to Christ, who had just been called “the Lord” in two preceding sentences (2:16 and 3:1). But because Paul more often ascribes faithfulness to God the Father (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:9; 10:13, etc.), many early scribes changed the passage to “God is faithful,” a reading still found in the Latin Bible. Since in the Greek text the word “faithful” comes first in Paul’s sentence (“faithful is the Lord”), here is a simple case of later scribes anticipating the familiar (“God”) and changing it accordingly.
The same thing happens to Paul’s use of the apostle Peter’s Aramaic name, Kephas (traditionally, Cephas), which occurs four times in both 1 Co rinthi ans and Galatians. For reasons that are not certain, scribes kept the Aramaic name in its occurrences in 1 Co rinthi ans. In the four instances in Galatians, however, they regularly changed it to “Peter,” three of which eventually found their way into the Majority Text (1:18; 2:11, 14). Thus only in 2:9, where the threesome of James, Kephas, and John are mentioned together, does “Cephas” make the KJV. That scribes would have gone the other way — changing the well-known Greek name “Peter” to the Aramaic “Kephas” — would be nearly impossible to account for.
Clarification
Although the phenomenon of clarification does not occur as often as one might expect, there are enough examples to suggest that later scribes were interested in making the Bible understandable to their church. In a few instances they removed what might have appeared to them to be mistakes on the part of either the inspired author or of a copyist before them.
Thus in Mark 1:2, according to the better early manuscripts, Mark referred to “what was written in Isaiah the prophet,” but then he begins the citation with words from Malachi 3:1. Later scribes clarified this by changing “Isaiah the prophet” to “the prophets.” Another way of eliminating what scribes perceived as a problem in the text can be found in 1 Thes-salo nians 3:2, whose difficult genitive we noted above (pp. 79 – 80). The majority of manuscripts got out of the difficulty of Paul’s appearing to have called Timothy “God’s co-worker” by adding another noun between “brother” and “co-worker.” So instead of “our brother and co-worker of God,” the majority of manuscripts read “our brother, God’s servant, and our co-worker.” Since something similar to this was certainly Paul’s intent, scribes “helped Paul out” by adding a second noun and letting the genitive “of God” modify that noun.
A similar kind of “addition” can be found in several manuscripts of Acts, so that Acts 15:33 is followed by a verse 34, which Luke himself did not write. The addition reads, “however, it seemed good to Silas to remain there.” Some scribe added these words so that Silas would still be in Antioch in verse 40, when Paul “chose Silas and departed.” Although this verse 34 is found in only a small number of manuscripts, one of these happened to serve as the basis of the Textus Receptus on which the KJV was based; and that is how it got its number.
Another example of a scribe “helping the author out” can be found in John 6:11. In John’s somewhat abbreviated narrative, he says that “after giving thanks, Jesus distributed the loaves to those who were seated.” After the word “distributed” some early scribes added that he gave the bread “to the disciples, and the disciples to those who were seated” — which according to the Synoptic Gospels is what happened, but was simply not mentioned by John.
A final example of clarification of yet another kind, which affects nothing but Greek grammar, can be found in 2 Co rinthi ans 3:17, where Paul says simply, and without verbs, “where the Spirit of the Lord, freedom.” A scribe (or scribes) added “there” before freedom, to turn the sentence into more normal Greek (= “where . . . there”). And for the sake of English, translators must also add the verb “is” to the sentence. There are many examples of this kind in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament, but they seldom affect our English translations, which must add the words, in any case, in order to make sense of Paul’s abbreviated Greek.
Theologically Motivated Changes
Here we offer two examples from among the many that could be assigned to this category. The first one, from 1 Corin thians 6:20, is probably the result of the ascetic worldview that emerged in the church in the third and fourth centuries. At this point in the letter Paul has been arguing against the practice of Corinthian men going to prostitutes, which they apparently justified with the belief that what happened in the body did not really affect one’s spiritual nature. At the end of his argument, Paul concludes: “therefore honor God with your bodies” (TNIV). By the fourth century scribes had added: “and with your spirit, which belongs to God.” It is not that this is untrue; rather it is irrelevant to the present argument, which has to do with men using their bodies for sexually immoral purposes.
Similarly, in John 7:39, John interprets something Jesus had just said in verse 37. John explains that what Jesus said was pointing to the future coming of the Spirit. But John concluded with the abbreviated clause, “for the Spirit was not yet.” Since this could be understood to mean that the Spirit did not yet exist, early scribes, besides often adding the word “Holy” to “Spirit,” made two independent changes to make sure John was not misunderstood. One set of manuscripts has, “the Spirit was not yet on them,” while others have, “the Spirit had not yet been given.” It should be noted that most English translations, including formal equivalent ones, have done the same thing, translating John’s abbreviated phrase idiomatically as “for the Spirit was not yet given” (NASB, NASU; cf. RSV, ESV; but see NRSV: “for as yet there was no Spirit”).
Conclusion
Biblical translation involves the transfer of the meaning of words originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into functionally equivalent words in English. But because the Bible was transmitted for centuries by handwritten copies (manuscripts), the first task of the translator is to determine which words are to be put into English when there are differences in these copies.
For Further Reading
Metzger, Bruce. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration. 3rd ed. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Tov, Emmanuel. Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. 2nd ed. Minne-apolis: Fortress, 2001.