John 5:3-4 and Acts 24:6-8 are just some of the disputed verses within the Bible. There are many translations that believe these, along with many others, do not belong in the Bible. Verses such as these were not disputed as part of scripture really until two men published the critical revision of the Greek New Testament. The two men were Brooke Westcott and Fenton Hort.
They published “The New Testament in the Original Greek”, in the year 1881. This was the critical text that all revisions of the Bible would be based on and the foundation for modern translations. This revision of the New Testament is often just referred to as “Westcott and Hort”. To develop their critical text, the two men created a set of rules to follow:
Number 1- Older readings and manuscripts should be preferred.
Is the oldest actually best? This ignores the geographic locations of the manuscripts, weather conditions, and methods of transcription. Also, who decides what is oldest?
Number 2- Readings are approved or rejected by reason of the quality, and not the number, of their supporting witnesses.
Who decides what is quality? How is that defined? This allowed Westcott and Hort to dismiss thousands of manuscripts because their “quality” wasn’t good enough, regardless that they all said the same thing.
Number 4- The reading that best conforms to the context of the sentence is preferred.
What if their understanding of the context is mistaken? They may have rejected parts of the Bible simply because it didn’t fit with their opinions.
Number 5- The reading that best fits the style and content of the author is preferred.
“Who cares if thousands of manuscripts say the same thing? We don’t think Paul would have said that.” This gave them the freedom to throw out parts of the Bible.
These rules, decided by two men, omitted verses from the Bible. Their version of the New Testament also changed and altered Greek words. They heavily relied on the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus to make the alterations to the Received Text.
The following are some differences between the Received Text and the Critical Text
1 John 5:7, the critical text omits the majority of the verse because it is not found in the Codex Sinaiticus or other Alexandrian texts. The Received Text, from which the majority were written in the Byzantine regions, includes it.
Colossians 1:14, the critical text omits “through his blood”. The handful of Alexandrian texts did not have it, nor did the Codex Sinaiticus. The Alexandrians had a great level of mystic and gnostic influence that caused them to doubt that Christ was truly manifested in the flesh as a man.
1 Timothy 3:16, the critical text swapped “God” for “he”. This fit much better with the gnostics of Alexandria. The Codex Sinaiticus also made the substitution.
Romans 5:1, the critical text swapped the Greek word, ἔχομεν, with the variation, εχωμεν. The Received Text has the indicative verb, meaning a statement of fact. (Being justified by faith means peace with God.) The Codex Sinaiticus used the subjunctive verb, meaning a conditional statement. (Being justified by faith, you might have peace with God.)
Ephesians 3:9, the critical text and Codex Sinaiticus omitted the Greek word, πάντας. This word meant “all”. Interestingly, the NASB admits that even some of the early manuscripts include this word. Yet, they opted for the Codex Sinaiticus, because everyone said it was the oldest and best. This omission makes it unclear that Paul received a mystery that was unknown by men in previous ages.
The minor changes make BIG impacts.
