October 14
John 7:1-9; Luke 9:51-56; Matthew 8:18-22; Luke 9:57-62; John 7:10-8:20
In our reading you may have seen something like, “The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.” We may find ourselves scratching our heads and wondering what we should do with this passage. The reason for the statement and italics is because of the field of textual criticism which is the pursuit of trying to decipher the original text of each book of the Bible. We have thousands upon thousands of ancient copies of each book of the Bible. Since we do not have original copies, scholars compare all these manuscripts to try to determine the original words. This may seem frightening that we do not have absolute certainty what the original text of Scripture was, but the reality is none of the differences affect any major beliefs. Nearly all the differences are issues like plural versus singular, the inclusion of an article before a word, or the addition of a word or not.
So, whether these verses are in the original copy of Mark, they do not impact the gospel, the historical reality of Jesus, or anything else of eternal significance. We are blessed with so many ancient manuscripts of all books of the Bible that we can have great confidence that we are reading God’s Scriptures and can therefore not only seek to understand but live out what he has told us.
Father God, thank you for your Scriptures. Amen.
How would you respond to someone who says that they cannot trust the Bible?
In our reading you may have seen something like, “The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.” We may find ourselves scratching our heads and wondering what we should do with this passage. The reason for the statement and italics is because of the field of textual criticism which is the pursuit of trying to decipher the original text of each book of the Bible. We have thousands upon thousands of ancient copies of each book of the Bible. Since we do not have original copies, scholars compare all these manuscripts to try to determine the original words. This may seem frightening that we do not have absolute certainty what the original text of Scripture was, but the reality is none of the differences affect any major beliefs. Nearly all the differences are issues like plural versus singular, the inclusion of an article before a word, or the addition of a word or not.
So, whether these verses are in the original copy of Mark, they do not impact the gospel, the historical reality of Jesus, or anything else of eternal significance. We are blessed with so many ancient manuscripts of all books of the Bible that we can have great confidence that we are reading God’s Scriptures and can therefore not only seek to understand but live out what he has told us.
Father God, thank you for your Scriptures. Amen.
How would you respond to someone who says that they cannot trust the Bible?
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