Textual variants in the Greek New Testament, ranging from minor spelling shifts to significant doctrinal insertions, stem from the fragile process of hand-copying manuscripts across centuries. Mechanical errors like homoioteleuton and dittography mingled with intentional changes such as harmonization, theological clarification, and liturgical adaptation. Scribes sometimes copied flawed exemplars, compounding mistakes through vertical transmission, while marginal notes and bilingual interference further muddied the text. Yet textual criticism, blending art and science, sifts through thousands of manuscripts, translations, and patristic citations to reconstruct the original with striking precision. Amid the chaos of scribal history, the enduring clarity of the New Testament emerges—not despite its variants, but because of them.
Understanding the Origin of Textual Variants
If we exclude oral transmission, all manuscripts of a given work derive from a single original through hand-copying. Even the most careful writers introduce errors due to lapses in attention, memory, or concentration. Today, printed texts undergo proofreading, but before the printing press, hand-copied documents frequently preserved these errors permanently.
What Are “Various Readings”?
“Various readings” (or textual variants) are the differences found between any two or more copies of the same ancient text. These may be tiny, like the omission of a single letter, or large, like whole phrases being added or removed. All copies of ancient documents differ in some way. Every departure from the original is technically a “variant.”
Types of Variants
Textual variants fall into four main categories:
1. Substitutions
Replacing one word with another, either by accident or by deliberate choice.
2. Transpositions
Swapping the order of words or phrases, often due to confusion in copying or attempts to improve readability.
3. Additions
Inserting extra words, lines, or phrases into the text, intentionally or accidentally.
4. Omissions
Leaving out words, phrases, or even entire lines, either through carelessness or misunderstanding.
Common Mechanical and Mental Causes of Errors
Homoioteleuton and Homoioarcton
Homoioteleuton refers to skipping a portion of text when two lines end similarly. Homoioarcton involves skipping between similar line beginnings. These visual mistakes often lead to unintentional omissions.
Dittography
When a scribe accidentally writes a word, letter, or phrase twice, this is known as dittography. It often results from the eye returning to the wrong part of the exemplar.
Marginal Notes Entering the Text
Scribes sometimes copied marginal glosses, explanatory notes, into the main body of the text, mistaking them as part of the original. This unintentionally introduced foreign content into the scripture.
Eye Movement Errors
Scribes may skip lines (called parablepsis) or misread words with similar shapes. A misplaced glance can cause entire phrases to vanish or be relocated.
Errors in Punctuation and Spelling
With little to no standardized punctuation in ancient manuscripts, scribes introduced syntactical confusion. Likewise, orthographic inconsistencies led to multiple spellings of names and terms.
Intentional Alterations and Human Motives
Harmonization
Scribes often attempted to harmonize parallel passages in the Gospels. For example, they might modify a verse in Luke to resemble its counterpart in Matthew, believing they were restoring consistency.
Liturgical Additions
Passages were sometimes altered to suit public worship. These include inserted doxologies, liturgical responses, or adjustments to fit the lectionary calendar.
Attempts at Correction
Well-meaning scribes often corrected what they thought were errors, sometimes introducing further corruption. These “corrections” could reflect interpretation more than restoration.
Doctrinal Alteration
Some scribes may have introduced changes to align the text more closely with prevailing theological views. While it is difficult to prove doctrinal intent with certainty in most cases, scholars have long debated whether certain readings, especially those involving Christology or Trinitarian language, reflect efforts to clarify or reinforce orthodox interpretations. Rather than deliberate manipulation, such changes may reflect subconscious tendencies to harmonize the text with theological assumptions held by the scribe or their community.
Influence from Other Languages
Bilingual scribes might unconsciously adjust the Greek text based on Latin, Syriac, or Coptic translations. This often occurred in regions where the vernacular differed from the language of the manuscript being copied.
The Problem of Copying from Faulty Manuscripts
If a flawed manuscript was not corrected and was copied again, its errors would multiply. Each new scribe would potentially add his own mistakes. Over time, as copies were copied again and again, entire families of manuscripts developed distinctive variants.
Sometimes, a manuscript contained both good and bad portions; some copied from accurate exemplars, others from corrupt ones. This inconsistency challenges modern critics to assess each passage individually.
Older Isn’t Always Better
It’s tempting to assume that the oldest manuscript is the best. But this isn’t necessarily true. A 4th-century copy could be based on a recent and corrupt exemplar, while an 11th-century manuscript might have preserved a very ancient reading by copying from a much older text.
What matters most is the age of the text within the manuscript—not the parchment date. This subtle distinction is vital in textual criticism.
Vertical vs. Lateral Transmission of Errors
Errors propagate vertically: once a scribe introduces an error, all future manuscripts based on that copy will inherit it—unless a later scribe notices and corrects it. There’s no lateral consistency across manuscripts unless they share a common ancestor.
The individuality of any manuscript lies in the unique combination of errors it carries from previous generations of scribes.
The Function and Task of Textual Criticism
Textual criticism is both an art and a science. It seeks to reverse the course of scribal corruption and reconstruct the original text of the New Testament by comparing manuscripts, early translations, and patristic citations.
Critics examine the number, age, quality, and geographic spread of manuscripts. The best readings are often those supported by the earliest and most independent witnesses.
Misleading Power of Numbers and Age
Simply counting manuscripts is a misleading approach. While later manuscripts, particularly those of the Byzantine tradition, are numerous, they are sometimes assumed to be inferior purely because of their date. This assumption overlooks the possibility that later copies may preserve earlier readings through a stable line of transmission.
Likewise, the notion that “older is always better” can be equally misleading. A 4th-century manuscript may have already undergone several generations of corruption, while a 12th-century manuscript might reflect a carefully preserved and earlier textual form. Age alone does not guarantee textual purity.
Therefore, the strength of a variant depends not merely on the number of manuscripts or their antiquity, but on the quality, independence, and textual character of the witnesses in that specific passage. Both older and later manuscripts must be weighed on their individual merits without prejudice toward any particular text-type or tradition.
From Chaos to Clarity
The New Testament, like all ancient literature, has suffered from the frailties of hand-copying. Yet, thanks to thousands of manuscripts, early versions, and historical testimonies, textual criticism has the tools to recover the original text with remarkable accuracy.
The abundance of sources is not a curse, but a blessing. Though variants abound, they allow scholars to triangulate and refine the wording of the New Testament with greater confidence than for any other ancient book. In the chaos of scribal transmission, a clear text still shines through.