Bible Manuscripts

Manuscripts• Are hand written

documents, as opposed to mechanically printed documents

• Biblical manuscripts are handwritten documents in Biblical languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek

• There are about 5000 of them

• Handwritten Bibles in any other language are still called “versions”

Bible manuscripts vary in appearance

1. They are made of different materials.

A. PapyrusB. Parchment

2. They are made in different ways

A. ScrollsB. Book like—called a codex.

Started around 2nd century

3. They vary in amount of writing

A. About 1500 have only the Gospels, or parts of Gospels

B. One has parts of 5 verses from John 18

C. About 200 contain all or most of the NT

D. A few contain almost the entire Bible

4. They vary in style of writingA. Uncial. “All capitals.” Up

through 1100 A.D.B. Minuscule. “Cursive”

But the real problem is that they vary in content

The variations are called “variants.”

1. They range from things like proper word order: as in I Corinthians 6.11

A. Lord Jesus? (KJV)B. Lord Jesus Christ?(ESV,

NASB)C. Jesus Christ?D. Christ Jesus?E. Jesus?F. Our Jesus?

2. To where Mark’s Gospel actually ends

A. 16.8?B. 16.20, as in the KJVC. As our KJV, plus 2 sentences

between 16.8-9 (found in a variety of manuscripts)

D. As our KJV, plus 4 sentences between 16.14-15 (found in 1 Greek codex)

The people who study these variants are called textual critics: specialists in literature1. Like Jerome, who

produced the Latin Vulgate

2. And Erasmus, who produced the first printed Greek text

3. And our King James translators

Textual critics are primarily concerned with 3 issues

1. The age of the texts: how old is the manuscript?

2. The geographical origin of the manuscripts: where did they come from?

3. The relationship of the texts to other texts: if manuscript “B” reads like manuscript “A” we assume that it came from “A”