Every so often, I’ll see claims made about missing verses in new translations. There are a few memes on Facebook that travel around every couple of years that make this very claim.
Some claim that The NIV, ESV, and other versions have also now removed 45 complete verses.
They’ll also offer a challenge to look up these Bible verses in your modern translations: Matthew 17:21, 18:11, 23:14; Mark 7:16, 9:44, 9:46; Luke 17:36, 23:17; John 5:4; Acts 8:37.
If you do this, you’ll find that the claims are accurate. You won’t find these verses in the New Testament of your modern translations.
So, what gives? Why aren’t these verses there? Is there some vast conspiracy to take verses out of God’s Word?
Why Are Some of the Verses Missing?
If you look closer, you’ll notice a little footnote for these verses. Most of them will tell you that these “missing verses” were not part of the original manuscripts.
And when we talk about inspiration and inerrancy and such the historic position is that we’re only talking about the original manuscripts. If a verse wasn’t written by Matthew, but a later editor, do you want it in your Bible?
Take Mark 7:16 as an example. It’s true that my trusty NIV Study Bible doesn’t have a Mark 7:16. But there is a little footnote after verse 15 that says, “Some early manuscripts, ‘If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.’”
If you read in the KJV, it’s there in the text and not the footnotes: “If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.”
What’s going on here?
The simple answer is that our translations are based on different text families. In 1881, when Westcott and Hort published a Greek New Testament, they had way more manuscripts available to them than the original translators of the KJV had at their disposal.
When these other manuscripts were discovered, we found that some of them didn’t square up with the existing manuscripts that we had in our possession.
This can get a little confusing because we use a word like “newer manuscripts,” but we really mean older manuscripts that are new to us. It’d be like if you were collecting coins and had a goal of owning a coin from as close to the founding of our nation as possible.
At present, your oldest coin is a 1804 silver dollar. But at a coin show, you finally score a silver dollar from 1797. The coin is new to you, but it’s older in that it's closer to your goal of finding a coin as close to 1776 as possible.
But the dating of manuscripts isn’t the only factor. There are some text families which are more trusted than others. There are several factors to this — location being one of them, known corruption being another.
Thus, when attempting to determine the original, there are several factors in play. And on the whole, one group of scholars believes that Mark 7:16 isn’t original. Another group either thinks that it is or, for other reasons, decides to keep the text as it appears in the KJV.
How Do We Try to Find the Original?
Let’s say that you’re a Bible translator and you have 35 manuscripts to choose from (that number is likely much greater). Some of these manuscripts differ from one another.
How would you go about determining which of them is the original (or at least closest to the original)? There are quite a few rules that textual critics follow.
Here are five big ones:
- Prefer the shorter reading (scribes are more likely to add than omit).
- Prefer the more difficult reading (because a scribe would not change it to a more difficult reading).
- Prefer the reading that is most similar to the author’s typical vocabulary.
- Prefer the reading that accords best with the context and author’s theology.
- If dealing with parallel passages, prefer the one that is less harmonious (because a scribe would not change something to create a lack of harmony).
Let’s take our text in Mark 7:16. The KJV reading is found in many early sources. It’s also found in a wide range of manuscripts. Those two facts would typically cause us to believe that it’s original. But it’s missing in a few really important early manuscripts. As Bruce Metzger tells us:
“This verse, though present in the majority of witnesses, is absent from important Alexandrian witnesses (א B L Δ* al). It appears to be a scribal gloss (derived perhaps from 4.9 or 4.23), introduced as an appropriate sequel to ver. 14” (Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd Edition).
The external evidence, then, leads us to believe that it might not be part of the original. However, the sheer number of manuscripts that have the text would give us pause. We now have to figure out why there is a difference in the manuscripts.
Either a scribe carelessly omitted the text in some of the manuscripts, or they added a scribal gloss to the text, and it squirmed its way into all those other manuscripts.
You’ll notice that rule #1 tells us to prefer the shorter reading. Sometimes, a scribe might unintentionally add to a text. Ever get distracted and type or write the same word twice?
But there are other times when they would intentionally add something. Perhaps writing in the margin, giving a study note, or a cross-reference.
It’s possible that this is what happened with Mark 7:16. If you’ll notice, Mark 4:23 and Mark 4:29 have this exact saying. (As a side note, if there is a vast conspiracy to omit Bible verses, they did a poor job by leaving these in there).
It’s entirely plausible, then, that a scribe is simply making a cross-reference to a previous passage in Mark. With the text already appearing earlier in Mark we can come up with several reasons why a scribe might have included it here — either intentionally or accidentally.
On the other side of the equation, can we find any compelling reason why a scribe would omit this verse? Certainly, accidents happen, but these manuscripts were looked over by more than one set of eyes.
It would have been very difficult for an omission to happen. And with no explanation for intentionally omitting the verse, this leads scholars to believe that this verse is likely not original.
The little exercise we engaged in here is what happens with many of these textual variants. It’s not an exact science, as you can see.
There are still debates about what might and might not have happened. Even still, this might cause some to begin to question whether or not we can trust our Bible.
When you hear that there are so many textual variants, and you see all of these footnotes in your Bible, you might be tempted to throw up your hands and think that the Bible can’t be trusted. Is that true?
Can We Trust Our Bible?
In my estimation, understanding textual variants actually increases my confidence in the Bible. It ought to encourage our faith instead of discouraging us. There are many good, Jesus-loving, scholars who are used to translate our Bibles. They are careful in these translations.
Yes, there are differences of opinion — sometimes big differences. But at the end of the day, we can trust the Bible that we hold in our hands. As Greek scholar, David Alan Black has noted:
“No biblical doctrine would go unsupported if a favorite reading was abandoned in favor of a more valid variant…a doctrine that is affected by textual variation will always be adequately supported by other passages” (Black, 25).
Personally, I think we benefit from having these footnotes in our Bibles. Rather, it takes the position of leaving a text or omitting a text, and it’s helpful for us to know all the facts. The number of textual variants actually increases our confidence in the reliability of Scripture.
Why Does This Matter?
There is no reason to worry when someone tells you that modern translations are taking verses out of your Bible. It’s dishonest. There is a process whereby scholars are attempting to be closer to the original and not further away.
You might end up disagreeing with some of their conclusions — but the very existence of this process should give us confidence.
There are different manuscripts. We must deal with that reality. In some instances, through this process, you’ll have a few “missing” verses in your modern translation.
But I’d prefer that we flip the script and say that some older translations have a few added verses in their translation.
It’s not intentional. It’s likely not even harmful. It simply is. And we must face this reality — and as we do, it actually increases our confidence in God’s Word.
For further reading:
Are There Bible Translations Christians Should Avoid?
Why Are There So Many English Translations of the Bible?
Why Do Modern Translations of the Bible Have a Copyright?
Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/fcscafeine
Mike Leake is husband to Nikki and father to Isaiah and Hannah. He is also the lead pastor at Calvary of Neosho, MO. Mike is the author of Torn to Heal and Jesus Is All You Need. His writing home is http://mikeleake.net and you can connect with him on Twitter @mikeleake. Mike has a new writing project at Proverbs4Today.
