Textual variants in the New Testament
Textual variants in the New Testament manuscripts arise when a copyist makes deliberate or inadvertent alterations to the text that is being reproduced.
If their eye skips to an earlier word, they may create a repetition (error of dittography).
They may resort to performing a rearranging of words to retain the overall meaning without compromising the context.
Origen, writing in the 3rd century, was one of the first who made remarks about differences between manuscripts of texts that were eventually collected as the New Testament.
[9] In 2005, Bart D. Ehrman reported estimates from 200,000 to 400,000 variants based on 5,700 Greek and 10,000 Latin manuscripts, various other ancient translations, and quotations by the Church Fathers.
[11] Peter J. Gurry puts the number of non-spelling variants among New Testament manuscripts around 500,000, though he acknowledges his estimate is higher than all previous ones.
A guide to the sigla (symbols and abbreviations) most frequently used in the body of this article.
[13][14] This running list of textual variants is nonexhaustive, and is continually being updated in accordance with the modern critical publications of the Greek New Testament — United Bible Societies' Fifth Revised Edition (UBS5) published in 2014, Novum Testamentum Graece: Nestle-Aland 28th Revised Edition of the Greek New Testament (NA28) published in 2012, and Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior (ECM) last published in 2017 — and supplemented by nonmodern publications wherever applicable, including those of Hodges & Farstad, Greeven, Lachmann, Legg, Merk, Nestle-Aland editions 25–27, Aland's Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum (SQE), Souter, Swanson, Tischendorf, Tregelles, von Soden, and Westcott & Hort.
Textual variants in manuscripts arise when a copyist makes deliberate or inadvertent alterations to a text that is being reproduced.
Most of the variations are not significant and some common alterations include the deletion, rearrangement, repetition, or replacement of one or more words when the copyist's eye returns to a similar word in the wrong location of the original text.
If their eye skips to an earlier word, they may create a repetition (error of dittography).
They may resort to performing a rearranging of words to retain the overall meaning without compromising the context.
"[134] Peter J. Gurry puts the number of non-spelling variants among New Testament manuscripts around 500,000, though he acknowledges his estimate is higher than all previous ones.
[135] A guide to the sigla (symbols and abbreviations) most frequently used in the body of this article.
