A lens on the whole Bible
Where the manuscripts differ
Your Bible already tells you about these places: in a footnote, in brackets, in small type at the bottom of the page. This is the same information, given room to breathe.
- 15Places with a textual note
- 2Not seriously disputed
- 10Most scholars agree
- 3Genuinely contested
Not seriously disputed
Text critics of every school read these the same way.
2 places confidence1 John 5:7-8
The Three Heavenly Witnesses
The clearest case on this site: the words about the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost entered the Greek New Testament in 1522, out of Latin, and the doctrine of the Trinity never needed them.
8 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
Revelation 22:19
"Book of life" or "tree of life" — and the missing last page
The KJV's "book of life" at the very end of Revelation is not found in any Greek manuscript; it entered the printed Bible because Erasmus's only copy of Revelation was missing its final leaves and he translated the ending back from Latin.
4 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
Most scholars agree
A strong majority judgment with a real, named minority.
10 places confidenceMark 16:9-20
The Ending of Mark
The last twelve verses of Mark are in the great majority of Greek manuscripts and are quoted by Irenaeus around AD 180, and they are missing from the two oldest complete Bibles we have.
9 manuscripts namedstructural case attachedthe case both ways →
John 7:53 - 8:11
The Woman Caught in Adultery
One of the most beloved stories about Jesus is missing from the earliest copies of John, and in the later copies that have it, it does not stay in one place.
9 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
Matthew 17:21
Prayer and fasting, a verse that is missing from Matthew
Matthew's verse 21, "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting" — is absent from the earliest manuscripts and looks like a copy of Mark 9:29 that a scribe wrote into the margin.
4 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
Matthew 18:11
"The Son of man is come to save that which was lost"
A much-loved sentence that the earliest manuscripts of Matthew do not contain, because it belongs, word for word, to Luke 19:10.
4 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
Acts 8:37
The Ethiopian's confession, "If thou believest with all thine heart"
The eunuch's confession of faith before baptism is missing from the earliest Greek manuscripts, though it was already known and quoted in the second century, most likely as a line from the church's baptism service that found its way into the text.
4 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
Matthew 6:13
"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory"
The ending everyone says out loud is missing from the earliest manuscripts of Matthew, but it is not a modern flourish either: the church was already praying a doxology at the end of the Lord's Prayer by around AD 100.
5 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
John 5:4
The angel who troubled the water at Bethesda
The explanation that an angel stirred the pool and healed the first one in is missing from the earliest manuscripts of John, and looks like a note explaining local belief that a copyist folded into the text.
4 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
Romans 8:1
"No condemnation" — with a condition, or without one?
Some manuscripts add "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" to the end of Romans 8:1; the earliest do not, and the words are Paul's own, from three verses later.
4 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
1 Timothy 3:16
"God was manifest in the flesh" — two letters apart
Older Bibles read "God was manifest in the flesh"; newer ones read "He who was manifested." In ancient Greek capitals the difference is two small strokes, and the deity of Christ does not rest on this verse.
4 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
Isaiah 53:11
"He shall see light" — a word the Dead Sea Scrolls restored
The Hebrew text copied through the Middle Ages says the Servant "shall see and be satisfied"; the Isaiah scroll from Qumran and the ancient Greek translation both say he shall see *light*, and modern Bibles now print it.
4 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
Genuinely contested
Serious scholars land on both sides: the case each way is printed in full.
3 places confidenceLuke 22:43-44
The angel in Gethsemane and the sweat like drops of blood
Two of the most intense verses in the Gospels are missing from some of the earliest manuscripts and present in others, and there is a serious argument that they were removed rather than added, because they show Jesus in anguish.
5 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
Mark 1:41
Compassion or anger? Jesus and the leper
Nearly every manuscript says Jesus was moved with compassion toward the leper; a few say he was moved with anger, and the rule that the harder reading is usually original points, uncomfortably, toward anger.
4 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
Psalm 22:16
"They pierced my hands and my feet" — or "like a lion"?
One Hebrew letter separates "they pierced" from "like a lion." The Greek Old Testament read "pierced" centuries before the crucifixion, and a scroll fragment supports it, but the medieval Hebrew reads "lion," and the case deserves to be heard at full strength.
4 manuscripts namedthe case both ways →
The witnesses themselves
The names in the evidence above are real documents, photographed page by page. Here is what each one is, where it sits today, and what it contains.
c. 285 BC
Septuagint
The Greek translation tradition of the Hebrew Bible, begun in the 3rd century BCE; a textual family rather than a single manuscript.
c. 150 BC
Great Isaiah Scroll
The oldest substantially complete Hebrew manuscript of the book of Isaiah; found at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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c. AD 175
Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (P75)
Luke and John in a single early book — the copy that proved Codex Vaticanus was preserving an old text, not inventing one.
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c. AD 200
Papyrus Bodmer II (P66)
A nearly complete Gospel of John, with a working scribe's corrections still visible on the page.
c. AD 300
Codex Vaticanus
A 4th-century Greek manuscript of the Christian Bible held at the Vatican Library; the other principal Alexandrian witness alongside Sinaiticus.
c. AD 330
Codex Sinaiticus
A 4th-century Greek manuscript of the Christian Bible, one of the two earliest substantially complete witnesses to the Septuagint and New Testament.
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c. AD 350
Codex Vercellensis
The oldest surviving Gospels in Latin — from before Jerome, in the rough translation the Latin churches were already using.
c. AD 380
Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis
Greek on the left page, Latin on the right — and a book of Acts noticeably longer than anyone else's.
c. AD 400
Codex Alexandrinus
A fifth-century Greek Bible in four volumes — with two letters of Clement bound in at the end, and a lost book still listed in its own index.
c. AD 400
Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus
A fifth-century Bible that somebody scrubbed off and wrote over — and that scholars read anyway.
c. AD 692
Codex Amiatinus
The oldest complete Latin Bible in Jerome's translation — made in the north of England and carried toward Rome.
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c. AD 1000
The Samaritan Pentateuch
The first five books, kept by a community that split from Judaism long ago, in their own alphabet — and differing from the Jewish text in thousands of places.