By: Denis Salgado
How Did Variants Arise?
As I write this—I mean, as I type this—I realize how much computers have simplified the writing process. No need for drippy feather quills or smudgy ink. And copying a text? That’s even easier, right? That’s what copy machines and scanners are for! We can easily create exact duplicate documents in a matter of seconds. Even our phones can do that.
Before these advances in technology, copying a long text was extremely time-consuming and strenuous. Imagine that you live in ancient times and your son will turn 16 in a few months. For his birthday, you decide that the Iliad, Homer’s epic poem, is a brilliant gift idea. That is until you realize someone will have to find a copy and replicate that document—by hand, letter by letter. You look at your spouse and hear: “That was your idea, hon!” This work is over 700 pages long with more than 170,000 words. How many hours would you have to invest to make sure your copy accurately reflects the model or “exemplar?”
I think I would just run to the local blacksmith and buy him a nice bow and arrow set!
When we think about ancient and medieval scribes, we tend to forget that they were humans just like us. They struggled with distractions. They became tired, and their minds, eyes, and hands would not function as sharply. They may have skipped words or sentences, misspelled words, or mixed up the order of words. They worked with imperfect materials, and some scribes may have worked even when they felt unwell. Every copy has some mistakes. Indeed, many factors outside the scribe’s control directly affected the quality of the copy produced. They unwittingly created textual differences in the New Testament tradition.
Other scribes may have been motivated to make edits to the text to help resolve ongoing doctrinal debates. While copying a given book of the New Testament, they would come across a text that could—though not necessarily did—resolve the theological dispute if written in a different way. Some scribes smoothed apparent discrepancies or inaccuracies in the text, updated geographical information they saw as necessary, harmonized the text based on a similar version with which they and their community were more familiar, and blatantly added details to the passage. Thus, some scribes intentionally created textual variants in the tradition.
What Kind of Variants Do We Find in the Manuscripts?
Scribes created variants in the New Testament tradition, but not all differences are the same. however. Variants could be intentional or unintentional. Some make sense in the context and others are nonsense. Some are simple orthographical differences. It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish between significant and insignificant differences. Only significant differences are regarded as genuine textual variants for further study.
Because of the mechanical challenges of copying long texts by hand, most differences are insignificant. The most common mistakes often produced readings that are grammatically incorrect or make no sense at all in their context. There are several types of mistakes that fit this category.
When scribes accidentally skipped content because in the nearby context had similar spellings, the resulting omissions are often called haplography. Haplography can take a few different forms.
Let’s say you are copying the following dialogue:
| Exemplar “Tomorrow is your daughter’s birthday, right? Do you want to stop by the store to buy her a cake?” “No! I decided I’ll make her favorite cake.” | Scribe A (You) “Tomorrow is your daughter’s birthday, right? Do you want to stop by the store to buy her a cake?” “No! I decided I’ll make.” |
In this silly example, you (Scribe A) copied everything correctly until the last line. After copying the word “make,” you looked aside to the exemplar in the left column and your eyes tricked you. (Miscopies caused by looking to the side are called “parablepsis.”) Because “make” and “cake” end the same way, you thought you had finished the line when you saw the “-ake” at the end. The resulting reading is grammatically incorrect and lacks details of the original version of the dialogue. In this case, the type of haplography is caused by “homoioteleuton,” that is, “similar ending.”
Now let’s say you are not the only person copying this dialogue. Your cousin and her friend want a copy for themselves! This is what they produce:
| Exemplar “Tomorrow is your daughter’s birthday, right? Do you want to stop by the store to buy her a cake?” “No! I decided I’ll make her favorite cake.” | Scribe B (The Cousin) “Tomorrow is your daughter’s birthday, right? Do you want to store to buy her a cake?” “No! I decided I’ll make her favorite cake.” |
| Exemplar “Tomorrow is your daughter’s birthday, right? Do you want to stop by the store to buy her a cake?” “No! I decided I’ll make her favorite cake.” | Scribe C (The Friend) “Tomorrow is your daughter’s birthday, right? Do you want to stop by the store to buy her a cake?” |
In general, the cousin (Scribe B) did a decent job at copying the dialogue. However, she made a common mistake in line 3. Again, similarities in words close to one another led her to skip content. This time, the identical beginning of two words — “stop” and “store”—caused the mistake. When she looked back to the exemplar, her eyes fell on the word “store” instead of “stop.” The result makes no sense. This haplography was caused by what is called “homoioarchton,” that is, “similar beginning.”
The friend (Scribe C) omitted some material, and you probably know why. The friend skipped from “cake” in line 4 to “cake” in the last line, apparently ending the dialogue prematurely and leaving the poor birthday girl without a cake. We call this type of haplography a “leap from the same to the same.”
Not all scribal mistakes result in shorter text. Additions also occur. For example, this is the version your brother copied last night:
| Exemplar “Tomorrow is your daughter’s birthday, right? Do you want to stop by the store to buy her a cake?” “No! I decided I’ll make her favorite cake.” | Scribe D (The Brother) “Tomorrow is your daughter’s birthday, right? Do you want to stop by the store to buy her a cake?” “No! I decided I’ll make her favorite cake?” “No! I decided I’ll make her favorite cake.” |
After copying the last “cake” in line 7, his eyes went back to the “cake” of line 4 (parablepsis again!), so he copied the same content twice. This repetition of content is called “dittography,” that is, “double writing.”
Now imagine if other people were interested in copying the precious dialogue but only had the copies and not the original. Those subsequent copyists would likely want to correct a few things. Their versions, in turn, would be passed on for others to copy, and the textual tradition of the dialogue would increase along with the number of variants. For the most part, these different readings are either grammatically incorrect, nonsense, or can be explained as most likely resulting from a scribal lapse. Thus, they can be regarded as insignificant.
Sometimes, scribes were fooled by words that sound alike. For example, “there” and “their” sound the same in English but have distinct meanings. In cases like this, scribes might create differences that make no sense, like a text message that says, “Sorry… running late. I’ll be their in 5 minutes.” This type of difference is a mistake so it is not regarded as a true or significant textual variant.
On the other hand, some scribes may have altered the text intentionally for various reasons, such as to provide more detail, to remove superfluous information; to reword things to “sound better,” etc. Sticking with the example of our little dialogue, some scribes would perhaps change the text to say:
“Your daughter’s third birthday.”
or
“I decided I’ll make her favorite cake—chocolate.”
or
“I decided I’ll make her favorite cake and fruit salad.”
Or perhaps they deleted information they thought was implicit in the text: “Do you want to buy her a cake?” (in this case, no need to include “stop by the store”). These versions would then be subsequently copied by other scribes. These examples of variant readings our fictional scribes created (and which subsequent scribes might copy) make sense in their contexts. Therefore, they are considered significant readings and deserve careful scholarly attention.
Additionally, over time, Greek, supported different spellings for the same word. Going back again to our example, let’s say one scribe wrote: “I’ll make her favourite cake.” Although this spelling is not correct in American English, it is the correct British spelling. For the most part, orthographical (or spelling) differences are considered insignificant. Finally, we need to remember that New Testament manuscripts were used by real people in real places. These users sometimes highlighted the text with symbols and made notes in the margins of their New Testament. When being used as an exemplar, the annotated copy could cause confusion. Scribes may think: “What should I do here? Is this part of the text or not?” A scribe seeking to faithfully represent his exemplar may produce a copy including the marginal text. We can see how unpretentious notes caused unintended problems for scribes and inadvertently precipitated changes that crept into the New Testament textual transmission. Scribes were not the only culprits, after all!
How Do Variants Affect the New Testament Text?
I have highlighted some examples to show how variants can arise in the transmission of a given text. The phenomena I mentioned can all be identified in New Testament manuscripts. However, there are about 5,800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. This means two things: one, there are thousands of differences among the manuscripts; and two, because there are so many manuscripts or “witnesses,” we can carefully compare their texts and draw solid conclusions about the textual form of the New Testament.
Therefore, we need the arduous work of text critics. Since the early ages of the church, scholars have been practicing the discipline of New Testament Textual Criticism, painstakingly comparing manuscripts, developing scientific methods, and learning other disciplines to make sure we transmit a text that is as faithful as possible to what the biblical authors wrote. Moreover, scholars—especially at CSNTM–are also interested in how Christian communities used, interpreted, and transmitted the New Testament throughout the last two millennia. The work of text critics is socio-historical and extends far beyond the early form of the New Testament text. Textual studies offer us unique glimpses into the history of Christianity in places where manuscripts were copied and used.
For all of this important work to happen, scholars need access to manuscripts. Undoubtedly, scholars of the past took giant steps and made immense contributions to New Testament textual studies. Nonetheless, with the assistance of computers, we can compare the texts of manuscripts much faster and more accurately than previous generations were able to. Whereas earlier scholars had to travel to multiple places—some of them dangerous—to analyze these documents, nowadays much of this study can be done remotely from our own offices—thanks to you! You are helping CSNTM preserve these precious documents and bring these manuscripts to scholars’ desks via the Internet. And, in this way, you are continuing the time-honored tradition of textual scholarship.
Denis Salgado is the Digital Collection Research Fellow at CSNTM and a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, where he is currently investigating the textual tradition of Romans as transmitted in the Greek lectionaries. Besides analyzing NT Greek manuscripts, Denis really enjoys exploring local parks and restaurants, and travelling with his wife and three kids.
Appendix: Definitions of Text-Critical Terms
Click on the word to return to its position in the post.
Exemplar – the manuscript that served as the example for a new copy being produced by a scribe
Harmonization – when a scribe harmonized or adjusted a text to match a similar text from another passage
Orthographical difference – a difference in spelling
Haplography – an omission in the text due to a scribe skipping over a text for a variety of reasons
Parablepsis – copying error caused by looking up from the copy and back at the exemplar
Homoioteleuton – when a word or phrase has a similar ending to another which can cause an error like parablepsis or dittography
Homoioarchton – when a word or phrase has a similar beginning to another which can cause an error like parablepsis or dittography
Dittography – “double writing,” or copying a word or phrase again