Why Are Our Bibles Different? Part 1: Our Bibles' Sources

Why Are Our Bibles Different?

Wait a minute… why does your Bible have lowercased lord while mine has capitalized Lord?

That was a question one of my small group members asked as we studied Genesis 18:3. It was a good catch—perhaps you've never noticed it yourself—in Genesis 18:3, the ESV, KJV, NASB and NKJV read Lord, while the CSB, NET, NIV, and NLT read lord.

This question triggered a several-months-long discussion of where our English Bible came from and why we have so many translations.

Our ongoing discussions have introduced things that were brand new to my group, even to men and women in their 40s to 60s who are strong in their faith and who have been followers of Jesus for decades. It has been stretching for them at times, but it's been good for them.

The idea that not all English translations agree on capitalization, wording, and even what verses are present is understandably troubling, especially for people who for decades have been taught that the Bible is reliable.

It is of course, amazingly so. But we also need to be fair; there are indeed a handful of troubling verses, and translating isn’t an exact science. As leaders, we have a choice. We can either ignore these issues and hope our people never notice them, or we can address them. I think doing the latter is best.

To be a people of the Book, we need to be a people who know the Book. If we base our entire faith and indeed our entire lives on the Bible (as we should), then it’s important that we understand as much about that Book as possible. We should know how to read it, we should know how to study it, we should know how to live it, but we should also know where it came from.

That journey might be rocky at times, but the destination is well worth it. In the end, we’ll have a people who trust God’s Word not because they’ve been told they should, but because it’s been proven to be trustworthy. They will live with greater confidence and they will proclaim the truths of Scripture with greater confidence. That’s a win worth chasing down.

This is the first post in a two-part series designed to be one tool in your ministry tool belt to help you do just that. Much of what we will cover might be familiar to you, but the hope is that this will serve as a refresher and even as a quick reference for when you need it.

In Part 1, we’ll look at the biblical manuscripts and how they inform our translations, and then in Part 2, we’ll dive into the waters of translation philosophy.

Old Testament Source Materials

The manuscript basis for our Old Testament is primarily the Masoretic Text, Hebrew copies dating from roughly AD 700–1000. While the Masoretic Text is the primary basis for our English Old Testament translations, that doesn’t mean it’s the default. Other sources such as the Dead Sea Scrolls (300 BC–AD 100), the Greek Septuagint (286 BC–AD 100), the Latin Vulgate (AD 390–405), and to a lesser degree, the Samaritan Pentateuch (AD 850–1500), the Aramaic Targums (AD 150–500), and the Syriac Peshitta (AD 100–200) all inform our English translations.

New Testament Source Materials

As the early church grew and expanded, copies of the New Testament materials were made in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and other languages. In time, three geographic translation centers developed: Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria. Each of these centers produced a “family” of manuscripts, often sharing similar characteristics: Western (Latin), Byzantine (Greek), and Alexandrian (Greek) respectively.

While the roughly 10,000 Western manuscripts have more limited use in translation work today, the Byzantine and Alexandrian manuscripts form the basis of our two major New Testament apparatuses. In 1500, Erasmus used a handful of Byzantine manuscripts from about AD 900–1400 to produce a Greek New Testament. In time, this work became known as the Textus Receptus, or “received text.” This work was the primary basis for New Testament translations well into the 1900s.

In the 1900s, the Majority Text was produced, using all the roughly 4,000 Byzantine texts. This text is about 99% in agreement with the Textus Receptus, and the differences are mostly minor. Few English translations use the Majority Text.

Meanwhile, in the nineteenth century, archaeologists began discovering additional manuscripts and extrabiblical materials that used the same Greek as the New Testament, considerably advancing translation scholarship. In 1881, B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort published The New Testament in the Original Greek, which relied mostly on the Alexandrian texts. This text has become known as the Critical Text. It has become the basis for most English New Testament translations, with the KJV and NKJV being the two most popular translations that use the Textus Receptus. 

Textual Differences

Translating the New Testament based on the Textus Receptus or the Critical Text accounts for many of the more obvious translation differences in our English translations, although these apparatuses are still roughly 90–93% in agreement. The so-called “missing verses” are often at the center of this discussion.

Acts 8:37 is one of the more well-known of these:

Then Philip said, "If you believe with all your heart, you may." And he answered and said, "believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." (NKJV)

Most English translations based on the Critical Text will simply omit verse 37, and the versification will jump from verse 36 to verse 38. Usually, a translator note will be provided explaining this exclusion, as the NKJV provides one explaining its inclusion. The ending of Mark 16, the pericope of the woman caught in adultery in John 7:53—8:11 (although most translations include this text, but put it in brackets), and the Trinitarian inclusion in 1 John 5:7–8 are among the twenty to thirty instances of textual discrepancies.

While this discussion is often broached from the perspective of why English translations have omitted these verses and parts of verses, a fairer perspective is asking whether they should be included or excluded. In other words, the default should not be that they are original to the Scripture text.

Instead, translators examine the external and internal evidence related to these verses (as well as all others).

The external manuscript evidence considers the frequency a verse or part of a verse is included or excluded, the age of the manuscripts of each, and the geographic distribution of each. The more often a text in question appears in older manuscripts from a variety of regions the better.

The internal evidence looks at the vocabulary, style, and doctrine of the text in question to see if it is consistent with the book in question, other writings by that author, and the New Testament as a whole. Shorter, more difficult readings are preferred, based on the belief that a scribe would have been more prone to simplify and expand an unclear text rather than do the opposite. In Acts 8:37, for example, the argument can be made that a scribe might have found it odd that no profession of faith preceded this baptism, assumed it had been mistakenly omitted, and added it “back” in. That seems to make more sense than another scribe intentionally omitting it.

Three final words need to be shared concerning these textual differences. This issue threw my small group members a troubling curve ball, probably a typical response. When this topic is broached, it’s important to provide the greater context of the Bible’s reliability.

• First, nearly all English translations will provide a translator’s note concerning these texts. For the most detailed explanations, see the NET Full Notes Edition.

• Second, while these textual differences seem like a lot, they account for an exceedingly small percentage of the overall Scripture text: about 50 verses of 31,102 total verses in the KJV/NKJV are in question, or 0.17%.

• Third, no significant doctrine is at stake in these textual variations, whether they are included or excluded. [1]

Versification Differences

A lesser-known variation between English translations is three passages that number verses differently. This is different from translations that skip over verse numbers such as Acts 8:37. Instead, these are three instances where verses are simply numbered differently. Here, it is important to remember that verse numbers are not part of the inspired text. These three passages are 2 Corinthians 13:12–14 (where the CSB and NET pull what is verse 13 into verse 12 and number verse 14 as verse 13), 2 John v. 15 (which is included in verse 14 in the KJV and NKJV), and Revelation 12:17—13:1 (where in the CSB, NET, and NLT, the beginning of 13:1 is pulled back into chapter 12 as verse 18 instead of that chapter ending in verse 17).

Conclusion

What we’ve covered so far explains some of the reasons for our different English translations, but that’s mainly just the broader two “buckets” of Textus Receptus based translations and Critical Text based translations. Next time, we will explore why we see differences within the Critical Text family of Bible translations.

[1] The weightiest issue likely at stake is found in Mark’s longer ending that mentions handling serpents and safely drinking deadly drinks (Mark 16:18).

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