Textual Variants Appendix

Textual Variants Appendix

How variant readings arise, and how they are handled

No book of Scripture survives in the author's own hand. Every text was copied by hand for centuries, and in copying, differences arose. These differences — variant readings — are the proper study of the textual witness, and this appendix explains how they come about and how the restored text deals with them.

How variants arise

Slips of the eye: a scribe's eye jumps from one word to a like word further on, and the words between are lost; or a line is written twice.

Slips of the ear: where a text was copied from dictation, words that sound alike were confused.

Confusion of letters: in each script, certain letters resemble one another and were exchanged.

Deliberate change: a scribe smooths a hard reading, harmonizes one passage to another, or adjusts a word thought to be irreverent or mistaken.

Glosses: a note written in the margin to explain a word is later copied into the text itself.

How variants are weighed

In choosing among readings, the older and more difficult reading is generally to be preferred, for scribes tended to make the text easier rather than harder, and longer rather than shorter. The agreement of independent witnesses — for example, the Scrolls with the Septuagint against the Masoretic Text — carries weight. But each case is judged on its own, by the witnesses and by the sense.

How variants are handled in this project

The restored text follows the earliest recoverable reading. Where the witnesses differ in a way that cannot be resolved, this is noted honestly rather than hidden. The famous example is Isaiah 7:14, where the Hebrew almah means a young woman; the restored text follows the historical and linguistic meaning, and does not silently substitute the later reading virgin to protect a doctrine. The principle is everywhere the same: restore the witness, mark the uncertainty, and do not bend the text to a later belief.