Textual variants in the Gospel of Matthew

Textual variants in manuscripts arise when a copyist makes deliberate or inadvertent alterations to a text that is being reproduced.

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.

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.

"[2] 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.

[4] Note: 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.