Weighing the Discrepancies
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Lesson
The vast majority of NT Variants are minor, easily explained scribal errors that don’t affect the meaning of the text. Among 400,000 textual variants of the NT, over 99% make no difference to the meaning, and less than 1% are both meaningful and viable.
Outline
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Four groupings
B. Over 99% of all variants fall into the first three categories
II. VIABLE BUT NOT MEANINGFUL
A. Differences in Spelling
1. Most common (over 70%)
2. Movable nu
3. Spelling of John’s name
B. Differences in Word Order
C. Differences in use of the Definite Article (“the”) with a proper name
D. Example of “John loves Mary” (384x)
III. MEANINGFUL BUT NOT VIABLE
A. Easy to detect, especially the unintentional mistakes made by early scribes
B. Examples
1. 1 Thessalonians 2:7
2. John 1:30
IV. NOT MEANINGFUL AND NOT VIABLE
Skipped discussion
V. MEANINGFUL AND VIABLE
A. Smallest group of variants and less than 1% of all textual variants
B. Romans 8:2
C. Philippians 1:14
VI. TO SUM UP
A. Among the 400,000 textual variants in NT MSS and over 99% make virtually no difference at all
B. Less than 1% are both meaningful and viable (about one-fourth of one percent)
C. How meaningful are they?
