Ancient Scribes and Modern Translators - and the Bible

What one reads in one’s New Testament (NT) is largely determined by these two groups, ancient scribes and modern translators. An ancient scribe is a literate person who makes a living by copying manuscripts. They, of course, were, at one time, living, breathing people with opinions and prone to errors. A modern translator is a person linguistically skilled in the ancient form of the Greek language called koine (the common dialect of the Hellenistic and Roman periods) and in the target language of the translation—in this case English. They too are living, breathing people with opinions and prone to errors. And both groups in their time contribute to what a NT text says.

            The original author of a text produces an “autograph,” which is an author’s original, first-copy of a text. When completed, the autograph determined what the text originally said. Alas, at that point the author loses control of the written text. Scribes will make copies of the autograph and in so doing will introduce errors and make other deliberate changes in the copies they produce. And still other scribes will make further copies of the text from the first copies and introduce further errors and changes.

At this point a third group becomes involved in a text’s transition from koine Greek into English: the textual critic. There are over 5000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Alas, the original autographs no longer survive and existing copies differ from one another.¹ Textual critics aim to restore the readings of the original autograph, and periodically publish a koine Greek edition of the NT, showing in an apparatus at the bottom of pages the numbers of significant differences existing among the manuscripts of the Greek NT. Text critics decide the most probable readings, which are published in the text above the apparatus. The 28^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek NT is the current edition from which translators work.

The judgments of text critics as to the readings of the original author’s copy of a NT text are not always accepted by translators of the text, resulting in different readings between translations. In other words, each translated version of the NT differs in some degree. Here is one example. One finds in Mark 1:41 different readings between the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and The Revised English Bible (REB). The NRSV follows the text critical judgment that Mark’s autograph originally read in Mark 1:41 “moved with pity” (splagxnistheis), while the REB follows a lesser supported reading “moved to anger” (orgistheis). Text critics selected the reading “pity” as the original reading because they could easily understand why an ancient scribe would change anger to pity but could not so easy understand why a scribe would change pity to anger. In the end the committee was more impressed with the superior support of manuscripts that read pity rather than the less impressive manuscript support for anger.²

I noted fourteen other instances where scribal changes contributed to different readings in the translation of the Gospel of Mark between the NRSV and REB.³ While these changes are not particularly significant, they are enough to make the point that the NT read in the church today is as much a human book as a divine book. The autographs were written by imperfect human beings, prone to error, and, in any case, the autographs no longer exist. Virtually all the over five thousand manuscripts of the Greek NT come from the third century and later. Scribes have introduced innumerable new readings into their copies, both deliberate and accidental. And translators decide what readings they will translate. Hence, it is misleading to refer to the NT as the “Word of God.” If the texts were initially divinely inspired, their words, both Greek and English, were, and still are, decided by human beings.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (3^rd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University, 1992), v.

²Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2^nd ed., 3^rd printing; Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1998), 65. Note that one other reading in Mark attributes anger to Jesus but without a scribal change to pity: Mark 3:5.

³Here are the other fourteen instances in Mark: 3:14, 32; 6:22, 41, 47; 7:4, 35; 9:42; 10:2; 11:19; 12:23; 14:39, 68; 15:10.