Praise God Pastor, Why are these verses: Matthew 17:21, 18:11, 23:14; Mark 7:16, 9:44, 9:46; Luke 17:36, 23:17; John 5:4; and Acts 8:37 missing in some versions of the Bible? Thanks, Maria.
While it is important as Christians to raise concern on the nature of the Bible, I don’t think that concern should be about the apparent missing words, verses and passages before it is a concern of whether the translation is accurate or at least close to what the primary recipients of the word of God recorded.
There is no way you can claim that something is missing if you did not know it, in the first place. To base on a translation and argue that there are missing verses in comparison to another translation is absurd, unless if we restrict the matter to translations.
As a Bible teacher, I don’t think I would be asking too much from all Bible readers to at least appreciate the fact that the Bible has original languages and all the rest (English inclusive) are vernaculars in which our Bible versions are. Therefore, let all of us always consult the Hebrew and Greek before we conclude on what has been removed and what hasn’t.
If you don’t know these languages you can consult your Pastor (if he is educated and not just anointed) or the theologians you can access. This was the key point we established in the first part of this answer besides other important issues we addressed like what the Bible is, How we got our Bible and the source language in relation to the receptor language. In case you missed the first part of the answer, please get yourself a copy of the January 2020 Good News Issue.
Textual Criticism
Another important thing that you need to understand about the Bible is that even with the original text, you need to consider the sourcemanuscripts that formulate the original text as well if you are to deal fairly with the variations in the original text as well.
This is where the God-given academic discipline of “textual criticism” comes in. Textual Criticism is the science of studying ancient manuscripts (what the primary recipients and their contemporaries recorded) to determine the authentic text of the Bible. In all honesty, we might all agree that the recorder might not have recorded ipsissma Verba (word by word, intonations and expressions) of the speaker perhaps as today’s modern gadgets would suffice, but we appreciate the record (Manuscripts) still.
It is therefore essential to note that whenever one is reading any Bible version (KJV, GND, RSV, NIV, etc) that its individual books underwent periods and centuries of hand-copying that resulted in that ‘specific’ product. This might sound alarming but it is the truth: no original manuscripts (autographs) of any of the biblical books have been recovered in whole.
Since no extant manuscripts agree with each other in every detail, what we (theologians) call ‘textual criticism’ is necessary to resolve questions of variations in the Original text as well. The reality of this gap and the consistency and coherence of the message of the Bible proves it as the word of God.
Translations and Versions
Now that we know how wrong it is to conclude what is missing based on a translation, it still is not a problem to understand how Bible Versions come about. I have so far indicted why what is missing is missing and the two reasons I have given so far are:
1-they are missing because you don’t know the content of the Source Language and 2-They are missing because your version draws from a particular manuscript different from the one another version draws from. Here is another reason as to why the Versions are not the same and the words, verses and passages are missing in some while in other versions are added.
In the practice of Biblical translations, there are categorically two ways of Translating. The first is when the translator translates FORM and the other is when the translator focuses on function. so what distinguishes these bible versions is that some are form-driven while others are function-driven.
The form-driven give in a receptor language a formal equivalence of the Source Language while the Function driven versions give a dynamic equivalence. The two general types of Bible translations have their challenges but that will be for another day. For now, it matters that we settle to the fact that the issue of whether missing or added, is a matter of translation and not necessarily a theological one.
Conclusion
It doesn’t matter what Bible version you have, it only matters why you have that particular version and who you are. God, not man, has a prerogative of preserving his word through the literature piece known as the Bible and he has done this since Old Testament days to to-date (Deuteronomy 4:2; Proverbs 30:5-6; Revelation 22:18 -19). However, the preservation of his word comes with a mission-obligation of communicating to all kinds of people his message as well in the language possible.
The missing words, verses and passages are a problem to those who have no clue of the revelation of God, what the Bible is, its Language dynamics and how we received it. We have a generation of Christians who are informed of the word-count, those who recite and prescribe verses to every situation and good Bible passage preachers but who are ignorant of SCRIPTURE (Mathew 22:29).
Missing or added words, verses and passages are not what saves you but it is the WORD that was from the beginning that saves and that word is Jesus Christ (John 1:1-3). Scripture is not a record but rather it is scripture whether recorded or not (Isaiah 28:16, Romans 10:11). We are not commissioned to record the word of God and preserve it in ink on paper but rather we are called to record it on our hearts (Psalm 119:11, Proverbs 7:3).
If all the Bibles were burnt today and all the soft-copies online deleted, I would still be a Christian for scripture would still be present with me. Belief in the right God is older than the right Bible. We have to be careful, not to run into the cult of Bibliology. See you next month.
Answered by Pr Isaiah White Send your questions to: editor@goodnewskla.co
