Have Christians corrupted the Bible?

In those days there was perhaps no copy of the scriptures in an assembly but that which was publicly read; and from a good motive these alterations were made to render the sense more intelligible to the hearers. Still they are alterations, and have to be corrected in order to be exact.

Another source of many vexatious variations is the attempt to make the Gospels harmonize, as it is called. Thus, if a scribe in copying one of the Gospels had noticed a particular passage, and in copying a second Gospel he noticed a passage similar, but different, he would perhaps think that they ought to be both alike and so would alter the second. Some persons may have compared the Gospels one with another in a more systematic manner and made alterations; and some of the alterations may originally have been marginal notes. In some way or another many such alterations have been made in the Gospels. Of course they are only in some of the Greek copies; and we have other Greek copies by which to correct them. We need point out only one or two of such alterations that have crept into the Authorized version.

Our object, in the present paper, is to give such a sample as our narrow limits may permit, of some remarkable changes which it has been proposed to make in the common text of the Greek Testament. For though God, in His providence, has not failed to watch over His word, yet was it entrusted to the responsibility of man, who has broken down here, as everywhere else. Man has not known how to keep the holy deposit as became him. There were accidental slips of the copyists, as even yet there are, spite of extreme care, not a few errors of the press. Words, clauses, sentences might be, and often were, omitted by oversight. Interchanges of words that bore some resemblance occurred now and then. Then, again, it was not uncommon for marginal notes, originally meant as explanations, etc., to creep into the text through the ignorance or negligence of some after-scribe. Finally, it can hardly be doubted that there are traces of intentional tampering with the copies, occasionally in the way of wholly unfounded additions; more frequently attempts at correcting terms and expressions, grammatical or other supposed errors; and, last of all, assimilations of scripture statements, as, for instance, in the corresponding parts of the four gospels. To these and other kindred causes are due the various readings of the ancient MSS. Numerous as they are, they are not out of proportion to the vast body of the copies.

Other Versions. As soon as one is fairly familiar with the text of our authorized version, it is very desirable to get one or more versions. The original Greek or Hebrew can be rendered of course in different ways, and yet the translation be faithful. It is this diversity of translation which proves so helpful as one advances in Bible knowledge. The way a sentence is translated, the different words used, or their arrangement, often prove a very suggestive help. Back of this is the question of the text, particularly of the New Testament which, as is well known, has been more or less improved by the discovery of ancient manuscripts since the time our admirable "Authorized" version was made. As we have already said, none need be disturbed at the thought that the text has been altered in certain places. If we remember that our Bibles were, for many centuries before the discovery of printing, copied by the slow and laborious means of handwriting, we may be sure that many little slips occurred, no matter how careful the copyist might be. It is worthy of note, however, that amongst the hundreds of manuscripts which are in existence, in the most faulty of these, not a single doctrine of divine truth has been affected, if we take the Bible as a whole. The vast majority of these errors are so manifest and of such unimportant character that their correction raises no question.

A number of passages in Scripture, however, have been rendered obscure by this faulty copying. Occasionally, too, the copyist has dropped out a word, phrase, or even a sentence which is found in other manuscripts; and occasionally what was evidently a marginal note or explanation has been incorporated into the text by a succession of copyists who have apparently thought it helpful to the understanding of the passage. Thus, the familiar passage which found its way into our version (1 John 5:7-8) is an interpolation which was probably introduced by some monk copyist more than a thousand years after Christ, and does not exist in any manuscript that can be considered for a moment as authoritative on such matters. There are very few passages so glaring as this, but quite a few where the text has been more or less affected, and where a judicious and reverent scholarship has, by faithful research, found out the more ancient reading and the exact original wording.

The occasional amplification from the New Testament of passages in the LXX must not be neglected; cf. Ps. 14 in the Vatican Text with Rom. 3 and the Hebrew, where we have plain evidence of Christians having tampered with the Greek Text of the Old Testament.

— We must now turn for a few moments to St. Luke's report of the prayer, which differs in several respects from St. Matthew's, though both I hold to be of equal (i.e. divine) authority, and the points of distinction therefore to be not the slips of the evangelists, but the result of a different object in the mind of Him who inspired them. Difference there is unquestionably even in our common and excellent English version; but that difference is considerably greater if we adopt the text which flows from the combined testimony of the most ancient and best witnesses (manuscripts, versions, and Fathers). It is notorious that there has always been a tendency on the part of copyists to assimilate the language of the various portions of scripture as much as possible; and clearly from their nature we might expect, as we find in fact, that no part has suffered so much in this way as the synoptic Gospels. These copyists seem sometimes to have assumed that, if they found the same truth or fact variously represented in Matthew and Luke, there must needs be an error: and then they sought, by marginal glasses and even by textual changes, to make the corresponding passages almost a verbal repetition of one another. This of course has entailed trouble on those of our day who desire in all cases to know the very words of the Holy Ghost; for if they, resting on the weightiest authorities, recur to a better text than the vulgar one, they are open to the charge of innovation — at least from the ignorant or the prejudiced. Most groundless charge! for they are in truth those who alone vindicate the oldest vouchers for the word of God against comparatively modern change and corruption.

Before saying more, perhaps one ought to explain why the last clause of the first verse is quite ignored. Here it is not scripture. The same clause is scripture in the fourth verse, but not in the first. It is as perfect and divine in the one case, as it is wrong and human in the other. But the monastic scribes who copied for us the writings of the apostle seemed to have thought the first verse as it stood meagre, and rather dangerous too, and so did their best to improve and guard it by additions. Was not this rationalistic? Rationalism does not mean conscience judging what is wrong, but man presuming to judge where he should believe and learn of God. Any attempt to mend the scriptures is about as bold and bad rationalism as can be. You may find it in a monk just as much as in a monkey-loving professor. No doubt the monks included many a rationalist of the middle ages; I leave you to judge who are such now. In the first verse there cannot be a question that the words referred to are a mere human accretion. Ask any one entitled to speak: Mill, Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, Tischendorf or Tregelles, will tell you that the clause is an interpolation. They rejected it, not because all, or any of them, liked the truth resulting from the true text, but because they were honest men, and competent scholars, who stuck to the best witnesses. In the Catholic Greek Testaments of Munich, 1847, and of Dublin, 1860, you will find the same thing; the clause is omitted, and quite correctly, spite of the Vulgate. So also Bishop Wordsworth and Dean Alford, in their editions of the Greek New Testament, omit it.

People who want to find discrepancies here will find plenty; those who want food will get it. God has permitted it that there have been faults of transcribers, and the Revisers had 30,000 various readings to choose from. People might think such a task almost hopeless, but God had been watching over it, and in the great bulk of it they could easily see how the mistakes had come in. A copyist might leave out a word, or skip a verse; or sometimes someone put a note in the margin; the next one who makes a copy from that roll, perhaps 100 years after, sees this note in the margin, and embodies it in the text. In this way we can easily see how a vast number of these readings occur.

While upon the subject of the infallible inspiration of Scripture, I will say a few words upon the texts, versions, etc. To be very simple, you know that until a late date all copies were made by pen. The accuracy of these copies depended, of course, upon the care of the copyist. But, even with the greatest care, it was impossible, humanly speaking, to keep out all errors. We find, therefore, that among the hundreds of manuscripts there are a large number of small variations. Most of these scarcely affect the meaning at all, being slight omissions or insertions of letters, small words, etc. Other cases occur where the meaning of a certain verse may be altered; but I think I am safe in saying that in no one manuscript is there embodied a false doctrine, or a true one eliminated. It is certainly a great mercy of God that He has preserved His truth uncontaminated through all these centuries.

The version ordinarily in use was made from a text based chiefly on manuscripts of a late date. Since that time much earlier manuscripts have been discovered or examined. Other things being equal, the earlier the date of the manuscript, the greater its accuracy. Careful study examines all the manuscripts and reaches a text which is best supported by the oldest and most reliable authorities. Our knowledge of the text has therefore improved since the King James version was made.

As the word of God spread, many translations in many languages have appeared. Up to the present time these translations, in whole or in part, number over a thousand languages. Translations, however, cannot claim inspiration as the original Scriptures do. Yet the godly and learned scholars, who in the time of King James I produced The Authorised Version of the Holy Scriptures, besought prayerfully the Lord’s guidance, support, and help in their very responsible task. Surely we can see that God has answered their prayers abundantly, when we examine the Scriptures we hold in our hands, and which we can receive with assurance as being indeed the word of God.

Seeing that copyists of the original Scriptures were not inspired, as the Scriptures themselves are, it follows that with all the possible care taken to make a perfectly correct copy, mistakes and errors might creep in. These copyists however were so very careful in their work, that these errors and variations between the many copies are only very slight, and do not in the least degree diminish or weaken the testimony to the great fundamentals of the Christian faith. The proportion of important variations to the whole of the Scriptures is likened to a handful of corn compared with a field of wheat. Or again, if you look into a mirror in which a speck or two of quicksilver has got scratched, you would have no doubt as to what you see in the glass. So it is with the Holy Scriptures, over which God has so manifestly put His powerful and preserving hand.

One great difficulty the translators had to contend with was how best to convey the niceties, the delicate shades of meaning of the Hebrew and Greek languages into plain English. We purpose in this article to furnish a very few examples of this from the New Testament, it may lead others to further searching of the Word of God in that direction.

When we remember that, for many hundreds of years after the days of our Lord, the sacred scriptures were only made known by written copies, and how difficult it is to copy anything with perfect accuracy, and then, as before noticed, add to this the possibility of errors in translation, and also the mistaken zeal of the most upright adding or erasing what they could not but think desirable from their meagre or incorrect view of a passage, it is marvellous that we have the Bible so kept and preserved from the tampering of infidelity as it has been. Difficulties we all experience as to portions of the scriptures here and there, but to upright souls God still fulfils His own word, "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye." (Ps. 32:8.)