John's Rewritten Gospel: What Did Scribes Change?

Summary

Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

Episode: John's Rewritten Gospel: What Did Scribes Change?
Date: June 30, 2026
Hosts: Bart Ehrman and Megan Lewis

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Bart Ehrman and Megan Lewis take a deep dive into the Gospel of John to explore how scribes copied—and sometimes deliberately altered—its text over the centuries, shaping our understanding of Jesus and early Christian theology. They discuss the oldest and most important manuscript evidence, famous and subtle textual variants, and the profound impact even a single letter can have on doctrine and meaning. The conversation closes with considerations over what truly belongs in the canon, highlighted by the case of the famous story of the woman taken in adultery. The episode ends with Bart Ehrman’s “Soapbox” segment, addressing common but questionable apologetic arguments about textual certainty.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Detective Work of Textual Criticism

• Textual Variants: Exciting or Unsettling?
  • Bart reflects on his early days as a Christian, viewing textual variants not as threats, but as thrilling mysteries to solve in pursuit of God's inspired words.
  • “For me... this is like a detective story... God had inspired these words and I'm going to figure out what they are.” (Bart, 01:20)
• Growth of the Field:
  • Textual criticism was once a niche interest but is now a dynamic field.
    • “Now it's exploded, though. The field has really taken off.” (Bart, 02:12)

The Oldest Manuscripts of John

• Earliest Evidence (P52 Fragment):
  • The oldest known piece of the New Testament (P52), a credit-card-sized Greek papyrus from John 18, discovered in Egypt and dated to the early 2nd century (possibly just decades after the Gospel's composition).
    • “It’s our oldest manuscript of any part of the New Testament.” (Bart, 03:16)
• Complete Manuscripts:
  • The first full copies of John date from around 375 CE.

Reconstructing John’s Text Beyond Manuscripts

• Ancient Translations:
  • Early Greek was translated into Latin, Syriac, and Coptic, each with their own transmission quirks.
• Church Fathers’ Quotations:
  • Scholars can partially reconstruct John's text through extensive quotations by early theologians like Origen, though inconsistencies and paraphrases undercut perfect reconstruction.
    • “He’ll quote the same verse in different ways... preachers... will kind of get a word wrong or they’ll change it for their reasons.” (Bart, 06:38)

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Notable Textual Variants in John: Meaningful Changes

1. John 1:18 – “Son” or “God”?

[07:55 – 14:36]

• The verse’s conclusion varies:
  • Some manuscripts: “the unique Son... has made [God] known.”
  • Others: “the unique God... has made [God] known.”
• Significance:
  • “Son” (most likely original) subtly distinguishes Jesus from God—the Father is greater (cf. John 14:28).
  • “God” supports high Christology, fueling later doctrinal controversies (e.g., the Council of Nicaea).
• Scribal Motivations:
  • Scribes with elevated views of Christ seemed to alter the text to reinforce his divinity.
  • “I’m completely convinced it’s ‘Son.’ ...But many, many, many scholars... disagree.” (Bart, 10:43)
• Translators’ Strategies:
  • Modern translations often try to bypass the issue, blending meanings or inserting explanatory glosses.
    • “They add the word ‘son’...just making stuff up, basically, to get around the problem.” (Bart, 13:12)

2. John 19:5 – “Behold the man” or “a man”?

[15:13 – 17:39]

• Textual Change:
  • Earliest complete manuscript reads: “Behold, a man.”
  • Later manuscripts change it to: “Behold, the man."
• Theological Stakes:
  • “A man” could imply Jesus is just human, troubling to later scribes; the change supports traditional interpretations.
    • “Scribes don’t want Jesus identified even by his enemies as merely a human being.” (Bart, 15:52)
• Result:
  • Nearly all translations now read “the man”.

3. John 7:46 – Affirming Both Humanity and Divinity

[20:04 – 23:15]

• Officers state: “No one has ever spoken like this man.”
  • Original Greek: “No one who is human has ever spoken like this” (ambiguity over Jesus' nature).
  • Scribes clarify to: “No human has ever spoken like this human,” securing both his humanity and uniqueness.
• Tension:
  • Some variants amplify Jesus’ humanity to balance claims of his divinity.
  • “That was the theology that came: he’s both human and divine, 100% each... mind blower.” (Bart, 20:22)

4. John 14:9 – “Have you seen the Father also?”

[24:57 – 27:22]

• Jesus says, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”
• Some later scribes insert “also" to differentiate Jesus and the Father, responding to debates over modalism vs. the Trinity.
  • “Why would somebody put that word ‘also’ in there? You realize... Because of these controversies going on.” (Bart, 24:57)
• Bart’s Take:
  • Modern evangelicals may conflate Jesus with Yahweh, but “Jesus is not the Father. Yahweh’s the Father.” (27:41)

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The Story of the Woman Taken in Adultery

John 7:53–8:11 – Is It Original?

[27:47 – 34:27]

• Famous Passage:
  • “Let the one who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.”
  • Iconic, but almost certainly not in the earliest manuscripts of John—or any New Testament book.
• Evidence Against Originality:
  • Oldest manuscripts lack it.
  • Church Fathers ignore it for nearly a millennium; style and vocabulary distinct from John.
    • “There’s no commentary on John that mentions this passage until the 12th century.” (Bart, 32:18)
• How Did It Get In?
  • Likely added as a marginal note by a scribe which was later inserted into the main text.
• Canon Status:
  • Raises the question: Should later additions be accepted as Scripture, given centuries of tradition?
  • Scholarly debate continues; theological judgments vary.
    • “Is it part of Scripture or not? Good question.” (Bart, 28:15)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On scribal change and its challenge to certainty:
  • “Just tiny changes. Sometimes just changing a letter can change what something means—either in terms of what the passage is talking about or what it can mean theologically. And that’s why... detailed work is so important, because it actually does affect meaning.” (Bart, 36:00)
• On certainty claims by apologists:
  • “When William Lane Craig says 99% [of the NT is certain], what’s he thinking?... I think that what they’ve done is they’ve just kind of said, yeah, yeah, it’s virtually all, that’s 97%, you know. So what... are they saying?... There are lots of differences and we have no idea how many there are now, but we certainly have no idea how many are there before our first manuscripts.” (Bart, 39:13–42:08)
• On the fluidity of Scripture:
  • “The idea of having an inspired canon is a theological idea. There’s nothing that makes these books inherently scripture. It’s a theological judgment the Christians have. And since it’s a theological judgment, there’s no answer. There’s no correct answer.” (Bart, 34:44)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Detective Story of Textual Criticism: 01:20–02:21
• P52 Fragment & Earliest Manuscripts: 02:34–04:57
• Church Fathers and Textual Reconstruction: 05:02–07:38
• John 1:18 Variant (“Son” or “God”): 07:55–14:36
• John 19:5 (“the man” vs. “a man”): 15:13–17:52
• John 7:46 (affirming humanity/divinity): 20:04–23:33
• John 14:9 (“the Father” or “the Father also”): 24:57–27:22
• Woman Taken in Adultery & Canonicity: 27:47–34:27
• Skepticism about Certainty Claims (Soapbox): 37:04–42:08

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Bart’s Soapbox: On Dubious Claims of Textual Certainty

[37:04 – 42:08]

• Responds to apologetic claims that 97% or 99% of the NT text is certain.
• Critiques the lack of empirical support for these numbers.
• Explains that the major unknowns lie before our earliest surviving manuscripts, and so high certainty claims are at best misleading.
  • “I just don’t like it. ...Don’t cite non-evidence and try and convince people with it.” (Bart, 42:08)

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Conclusion

This episode underscores that the Gospel of John (like all New Testament books) was shaped by centuries of copying and editing, often driven by intense theological debates. Even tiny changes—a single letter, a definite article, a word—can reverberate through Christian doctrine and collective memory. The story of the woman taken in adultery exemplifies how beloved traditions may rest on later innovations rather than original texts. Ultimately, Bart and Megan show that the process of establishing what John (or any NT author) truly wrote is complex, uncertain, and both more fascinating and fraught than many traditions admit.

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Next week’s topic: Why were certain books included in the Christian canon?
For course discounts: Use code mjpodcast at www.bartehrman.com

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Summary by an expert podcast summarizer. If you found this useful, subscribe for next week’s in-depth exploration of canon formation!

Transcript

[A]

Ahora mascolos hilliente niver ahora quince porciento nuna selection de puertas personalizadas.

[B]

Escrita. Sigues. Did you know that scribes made changes to all of the books of the New Testament? Some of them were accidental, but some of them were very deliberate. And the Gospel of John is no exception. But what was changed and why? Today we're talking about how scribes rewrote the Book of John and the impact those changes have on what the Gospel says. We also have our bonus segment at the end, which this week is Bart's Soapbox, where Bart tells us what is getting on his nerves this week. Welcome to the Misquoting Jesus Podcast with Bart Ehrman. Bart, since we're talking about scribal changes in this episode, as a Christian or when you were a Christian, did scribal or did textual variants ever feel personally unsettling or were they exciting because it meant you could start to open up the history behind the text?

[A]

Yeah, no, they were. They were exciting. And for me, because I believed. I think I said this in a recent episode, I believed Bible. The very words were from. Given. Given from God. But I knew that we had these different manuscripts that had, like, changes in them. And so somebody who wanted to know what the words were, this is like a detective story for me, because God had inspired these words and I'm going to figure out what they are. And there's a whole discipline for that. Of course, this is the oldest field of biblical studies in the modern period since the Enlightenment. It's the first one that came along. And I found early on that most scholars, most New Testament scholars are simply not interested in it. Particularly, like, they don't. They don't really dig into it. And I wanted to dig into it. And for me, this, this is what, this is what got me really excited about doing scholarship in the first place.

[B]

And because no one else is doing it, there's plenty of room for you to.

[A]

There was. And now, now it's exploded, though. The field has really taken off. It's really quite amazing. But back then, man, there's nobody wanted to do it

[B]

now. We've spoken about the other gospels, the fact that we don't original manuscripts for really any of them or any of the books of the New Testament. What are the oldest manuscripts we have for the Gospel of John?

[A]

Well, as it turns out, we have. We have one manuscript that is our old. Probably our oldest manuscript of any book of the New Testament. But when I say we have a copy of it, this Copy is a little fragment that is the size of a credit card and it's written on both sides. It, it's, it's kind of an interesting story because it was discovered in the early 20th century in an archaeological dig. Oxa, Rhynchus, Egypt, where they were digging for manuscripts and they found this little piece. They didn't know what it was. They, you know, they read a few lines. They found thousands of these things. They stuck it in some envelope or something and they sent it off to. They send these things off to libraries and museums. And so about 25 years later, 1934, a scholar from England was going through some of these fragments that were in the basement of the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England. And he came across this, this little fragment he's looking at, trying to figure out what is it. And he came across the word signifying, which is not a common word. People don't say it much in English and they don't say it much in Greek. And it struck a chord with him because he remembered that in the Gospel of John, Jesus says something signifying what kind of death he would die. And so he looked it up and in fact, the words matched up with what's in the, in. In the Gospel of John, chapter 18. And on the back is if you actually. So it's a little fragment. So you just have parts of, parts of letters on a few lines. And then you turn over, there's parts of letters on both lines. But you look at the text that, that we thought, we think is the original. And really it lines up. And so this is, this is John's trial before Pontius Pilate, Jesus, trial before Pontius Pilate and John. This is called P52, papyrus number 52. It's the 52nd one that was discovered and cataloged. And it's our old. It appears to be our oldest manuscript of any part of the New Testament. Most scholars date it to the early second century. And so possibly within 30 or 40 years of when John was first composed. After that, we don't get. We get, we get fragmentary manuscripts, a couple pretty good ones around the year 200 or the early third century. Our first complete manuscript of John comes to us from about the year 375, where we have a complete, we have a couple complete manuscripts of John.

[B]

Apart from these manuscripts, do we have other ways of knowing what John wrote?

[A]

Yeah, you know, one, we have a number of translations of John into other languages from the ancient world. And so people translated it, the Greek into, into Latin for the Latin speaking part of the Empire and into Syriac and into Coptic. And so we have, we have these versions, these ancient translations, but we don't have the original text of those translations either. We have manuscripts of those that have been changed as well. But we can pretty well reconstruct what the Latin, Greek and Latin, Coptic and Syriac were. And we have quotations of church fathers. So my second book ever was a book on the writings of Origin. And what I and two colleagues of mine did is we extracted every quotation from every book that Origen wrote, Origin wrote, allegedly wrote 2,000 books. I mean, it's like he was really prolific. So we didn't have all that, but we had a bunch of them that were in Greek or in Latin. And we, we went through every one of these things and found every quotation of John. And we then compared his quotations of John with other Greek and Latin manuscripts to see how the text was being transmitted in his day and age. He was in the early third century in Alexandria, Egypt. And we could show what the manuscripts in early Alexandria, Egypt look like in the third century before we have any manuscripts. So that was good. So you can look at church fathers too, writings of church fathers, to collect their quotations.

[B]

And how much of the Gospel of John is preserved in the writings of church fathers? Is it a substantial amount?

[A]

You're not able. What we really wanted to do was to construct the entire Gospel of John from origin because he quotes it more than anyone else. He's a very big fan of the Gospel of John and he'll quote a number of verses a number of times. One of the big issues is that he'll quote the same verse in different ways in different times. Well, it's striking and, and just like today preachers, you know, they'll quote something, they'll kind of get a word wrong or they'll change it for their reasons. And he does that. Every church father does that. You can't really reconst the entire manuscript, but you can figure out like if he quotes a verse that otherwise we have manuscripts that have differences in them and he quotes it in a certain way. Then you know which kinds of ones of these manuscripts he, what text form from those manuscripts he has. And so it's extremely valuable, but it's not. Yeah, it's not a piece of work I recommend people doing on the weekends. It's pretty tough.

[B]

Not light reading or light assessment, I guess.

[A]

No, it's not.

[B]

Now, if we're looking at specific changes in the Gospel of John, we may as well start in the beginning, could you tell us why there is a debate over John 1:18?

[A]

Yeah. So, right, so you know John throughout every page. If I've got. I've got a Greek New Testament here sitting in front of me, and I'll just show it to people. So here's the page. This is the Greek side of it. And down here is a list of different. Re. Different differences between manuscripts. And so the list takes up not quite half the page, but nearly half the page. And this list is nowhere near exhaustive. These are the changes. These are the differences that the scholars who put together this edition thought were. Were worth noting and important. There are. There are thousands of changes in our manuscripts of John, but most of them don't matter for anything. Even the ones at the bottom of this page don't matter for a whole lot. Most. Most of them. Most of them don't matter, but some of them do. And so one of the early ones that really matters is John, chapter one, verse 18. This is at the end of what scholars call the prologue to John. The first 18 verses, chapter one, verse one through 18, is a kind of a poem that is celebrating the exalted character of Christ. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God, it says in John 1:1. And then it goes on to explain that it's talking about Jesus. He's talking about the Word of God that became Jesus Christ when he became an incarnate being. And at the end, the very last verse says, no one has seen God at any time. The unique Son who is in the bosom of the Father, that one has made him known. Okay, the unique son. S O N. In older translations, it'll say the only begotten Son. That's a mistranslation. It's a misunderstanding of the word monokines. It means the. The unique one, the one, the only one. The only one. The one and only one. The Son who's in the bosom of the Father, who's. And so closely connected with God that one has made him known. In other words, Christ has made known the Father. Okay, but in some of our oldest manuscripts, including the ones known to origin, as it turns out way back then, some of them don't say the unique God, the unique Son has made him known. They say the unique God who is in the bosom of the Father has made him known. Whoa. Jesus isn't like just the Son of God. He's. He's the. He's the unique God himself. Wow. Okay. So scholars have to Decide which is it.

[B]

There's quite a substantial difference.

[A]

Yeah, well, you know, I'll tell you what, though. The interesting thing is that translators into English try to get around the difference. And it's really interesting when you look at English translations. Almost every translator has to figure some way to get around this. And it's because. It's because. Yeah, well, okay, so let me explain. Let me explain what the problem is. It's kind of. So in the Gospel of John, Jesus is definitely understood to be God who's become a human, a divine being who's become a human being. And he pre existed with God, and in some sense he was with God, but he wasn't like, he's not the same as God, right? And in places in the Gospel of John, he says that the Father is greater than I, you know, and so he's. He's not like Yahweh, God, God, God, that kind of God. But in this verse, if he says he's the unique God, then it sounds like he is that God, but then it says he's in the bosom of the Father. How can it be God? Like, how can he be that God and in his own bosom? How does that work? And part of the problem is that in early Christianity, when scribes are copying these texts, they had their own theological views about who Christ was. And they wanted to make sure that their theological views were represented in the text and that somebody couldn't use a text like this to make it say something other than what it says. And one of the things, especially in the fourth century, starting in the fourth century, there are all these controversies about whether Christ is equal with God or whether he's a subordinate divinity. Some people will have heard of the Aryan controversy that led to the Council of Nicaea. It was all about this. Is he really. Is he like God? God, or is he subordinate divinity? People who thought he was God, God really wanted to emphasize that. And it looks like they changed this text so that it says the unique God who's in the bosom of the Father. This is hotly debated among scholars, though. This one word, is it God or is it Son? S O N. And I actually, I'm. I'm completely convinced it's Son. But many, many, many scholars, including translators, disagree. But they try to get around the problem by how they translate it.

[B]

So how. How do they try and not make a decision? How do they sit on the fence?

[A]

It's. They. They do something that's completely weird, but they don't think it's weird. So the word before this that I said is the unique God that used to be translated only begotten. What they do is they say, so the word is monogenes, which means, like the only one of its kind. Okay, the only one of its kind. What they say is that monogenes normally refers to Christ as the Son of God. He's the monogeneous Son, the unique Son. And so that here when it says monogones, it's referring to the unique Son. And so what they translate it by saying, no one has seen God at any time, but the unique Son, who is also God, has made him in the bosom of the Father, has made him known. So they add the word, the unique son. They add the word son because they say that's normally what the word is referring to. What monogenesis? Yeah, but whenever it refers to that it has the word son, it never gets used as a noun to refer to the sun. So they're just making stuff up, basically, to get around the problem. Originally, this said son, I think, and it got changed to God because church fathers had an exalted view of Christ as God himself in some sense. Not that he was Yahweh, but he was God. God. And they. So the scribes change the text.

[B]

And we're going to see more instances of this confusion or people being uncomfortable with whether Jesus is God or human later on in the episode, because there are a couple of other changes that kind of speak to this. That was a really small change. And actually the next change I've got to ask you about is. Is a really small one as well, but again, changes the whole sense of the passage. That's John 19:5. What is changed and what's the result?

[A]

So when you say that first one was a small change, you're absolutely right. In fact, it's a change of one letter. Is it what looks like a U or a theta? It's a theta. Or it's like, which one is it? This other one in 1905 is less significant. So, but it's, you know. But it's probably less significant, but it's really interesting. Again, so 19:5 is when Jesus is on trial before Pontius Pilate and Pilate and God. In the Gospel of John, Pilate has found Jesus innocent of crimes, and he's Three times. He's pronounced three times that he. He hasn't committed anything to deserve to be crucified. But the Jewish leaders and the Jewish crowd cry out for him to be crucified. And so Pilate brings out. Brings him out and he's, he's wearing a crown of thorns and a purple road robe. And this is where Pilate has this famous line, and some people might know it in Greek, ecce homo. Behold the man. Okay, Behold the man. And so pilots bringing him out to show that he's been flogged. He's like, he's like, this is the one that you think is like worthy. Look at him, you know, and they say, no, crucify him anyway. In the Greek, when you read this, in the Greek, when Pilate says behold the man, there's a problem because the earliest manuscript, the earliest complete manuscript we have of this passage, one of the two earliest, doesn't say behold the man. He says, behold a man. It leaves off the definite article, the behold a human. And it looks like scribes found that disturbing because it would suggest that Jesus is only a human. And so what they did is they simply added one letter to make it a definite arrow. Behold the man. You're talking about here, as opposed to behold a human. He's just a human. And so scribes don't want, don't want Jesus identified even by his enemies as merely a human being. So they change the text. And the change is found in almost all the manuscripts except for our, one of our earliest and best interesting.

[B]

So it's a man in the earliest manuscript tradition and is changed later on. And that's the change that, that we have in most translations, I assume.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they all say behold the man. And it's, it's understandable that they, they would do that. But probably it probably originally said behold a human. And you think, well, who cares? Well, you know, do you want to know what the words are or not? You know, and, and is Pilate identifying as a mere mortal or, or not? And it affects the interpretation and, but you know, textual scholars have to look through and they, they have to look at every letter to figure out if it's been changed or not. And so that's, yeah, so, but it ends up mattering, I think.

[B]

I, I completely agree. We're going to take a very brief break and when we come back, we have some more textual variants. Again, the first one dealing with whether or not Jesus is human. I'm excited to announce our newest semester long course coming this fall. Most people hear end times and think of the end of the world. But ancient Jews and early Christians often imagined something very different. The end of one age and the beginning of another. The renewed world where God's justice would be restored and his promises would be fulfilled. If you've ever wondered what Jesus, Paul and the earliest Christians actually believed about the future, you'll want to check out our newest course, Visions of the Early Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism, taught by scholar Dr. Jason Staples. In this 28 lecture course, Jason explores the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient texts to uncover the ideas about the end times that shaped the rise of early Christianity and the message of Jesus himself. We're offering early bird pricing through August 1st, so visit bart erman.com visions to learn more and enrol. As always, use the code mjpodcast at checkout for a special discount. So before the break, Bart, we saw a change that was one single letter that was speaking to whether or not Jesus is being emphasized as being human. Something similar in John 7:46. What's going on there?

[A]

Yeah, so in this case, it's kind of the opposite tendency among scribes. It's a, it's a textual variant that, that reflects the scribes concern not only to show that Jesus is God, but also to show that he's really a human, because that's what people, that's what the theology ended up being. Right? He's, he's human and divine. And for, for listeners who don't, don't know this, in the fourth century when they, when they decided what Jesus was human or divine, it's not that he's 50% human and 50% divine, he's both human and divine, but he's 100% each. And so. Which is a mind blower. And people say, yeah, that don't make sense. Yeah, it does not make, it's not mathematical sense, that's for sure. But, but that was the theology that came. So he's, they have to affirm he is fully human, but he's also fully divine at the same time. Okay, with that in mind, this is a passage where Jesus is in a controversy with his opponents, the Jewish leaders whom Jesus really trashes in this chapter. This is the chapter where the Jewish leaders are pointing out that they're descendants of the father of the Jews, Abraham. And Jesus says, abraham's not your father, your father's the devil. It's just like, wow. Yeah. And he says this to the group that is called the Jews. He says the Jews are the sons of the devil. Wow, this is a really, really tricky passage. But the, the, the church, the, the Jewish leaders send officers off to interrogate Jesus and they come back and, and the, the people who've just been interrogating say, look, they're pretty Impressed the chief priests and the Pharisees. No one has, how do I say this in English? No one has ever spoken like this one. Okay. No one has ever spoken like this before. And so, okay, so. But when you read it in the Greek, it says, no, no one who is human has ever spoken like this. And that seems to suggest he's not human. Right. So scribes change it by adding a little bit where they say, where in this case, they say no human has ever spoken like this human. And they, they throw it like this human. And so it's the term anthropos, which I think often in older translations was translated as man. No man is spoken like this, but it's the generic term for men and women. And so no human has ever spoken like this human. Okay, so there it's clear. Okay. We're not just saying, yeah, we're not denying his humanity. So, so some, some places they change, they change the text because it seems to be compromising his divinity. And in other places they try to be changed things because it seems to be compromising his humanity. And so that's, you know, that's the tension in early theology and it's represented by these scribes.

[B]

Does that end up giving us quite a confused picture in the Book of John or the Gospel of John that we end up with? If they're changing it in one direction in some places and another direction in other places, does that confuse John's original theological point?

[A]

No, it adds to the confusion because the confusion is already there because John is quite insistent that Jesus is an incarnation of a divine being. He's also quite insistent that he's a human being. He's, you know, he gets hungry and he gets thirsty and he bleeds and he's, you know, he can be killed and so he's immortal, but he's also an incarnation of a divine being. And so that's, that's hard enough to get your mind around when you start getting scribes changing. It's because some, some. Okay, let me put it like this. It's not that every scribe had the orthodox 4th century theology that he's fully human and fully divine. Some scribes thought he was more human than divine and they might change the text in light of their views. Some thought that he's more divine than human, and they, they wanted to change their text from those views. And some had other views of Christ. And so every scribe has their, each scribe has their own theological views. So, you know, I actually devoted a lot of my early research to this question. I Have this book called the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture where I try to show you get all these arguments on different sides and it's changing the text. And so how do you figure out what John really wrote? It's a tricky thing.

[B]

We have one more small change to talk about and then I've got a much more substantial one to close out the episode. So John 49, again, very small change, substantially alters the meaning of what's being said. Could you tell us about that?

[A]

Let me say even most textual scholars have not really noticed the theological significance of some of these changes. I mean they're really interesting, they seem like little things, but no, they're really, they. And so this is another one. This is another one. So in John 14, Jesus is talking to his disciples at the Last Supper. John has this extended discourse that's called the farewell discourse. It's only in John where Jesus In John chapter 13 washes his disciples feet and then starts into a talk to them. He talks to the disciples, he talks through all the rest of chapter 13, all of 14, all of 15, all of 16, and then launches into a prayer in chapter 17. So it's like this massive chomp where Jesus is talking every now and then with a disciple in, you know, asking a question or something. And that's what happens in John 14:9. Jesus is, is talking about God and talking about himself. And Philip, his disciple Philip says, lord, show us the Father. And Jesus says, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. Now there were early Christians who argued that Jesus actually was God the Father on earth. And they could use this verse to prove it that he. It's not, it's not that. You've got three persons in the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, who are distinct beings, as in the doctrine of the Trinity, where each one is a separate distinct being. And they're not the same being, they're different beings, but they're all equally God. That's the doctrine, the Trinity, they're all equally God of the same essence. But there are three of them. There were Christians who said, no, there's one being, there's only one God. And sometimes he appears like the Father, sometimes he appears like the Son, and sometimes he appears like the Spirit. And they could turn to this verse, if you've seen me, you have seen the Father. And so some scribes added just one word, you have seen the Father also, or you have also seen the Father, so that he's differentiating. And so that's. So you know, a textual scholar reads something like that and they try. Why would somebody change that? You know, why would somebody put that word also in there? You realize. Oh, yeah, well, that's why. Because of these controversies going on.

[B]

Because it's a problem and we need to try and fix problems.

[A]

Yeah. Well, I'll point out today, may my reader listeners, our listeners here will know there are Christians, especially evangelicals, who are insistent that Jesus is Yahweh in the Bible. And man, they are just. That is not, that's not right. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm, Look, I'm not saying this because of my personal theology. I don't have a personal theology. I'm saying it's not in the New Testament. Jesus is not the Father. Yahweh's the Father.

[B]

All right, we're going to finish up with one slightly bigger change, I'd say. Slightly. It's quite substantial. John contains one of Jesus most well known sayings. Let the one who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her. And it's the story of the woman taken in adultery, which scholars think was not actually in John's original gospel. Why is it that, that you think it wasn't there to begin with?

[A]

This is, I think this is arguably the best known story about Jesus. It's in every Hollywood movie. It has to be in every Hollywood movie because if you're doing a movie about Jesus, you got to have this passage because it's, it's not Jesus. If it doesn't there, it's got to be there. Even Mel Gibson, who's, who's, you know, the Passion of the Christ was about Jesus. Last hours, he had to include a flashback where Jesus remembers this episode because you got to have this episode in there. And so there's a woman who's taken, who Jesus is teaching by the temple and the Jewish authorities drag this woman in front of her, in front of him and say, we caught this woman in the act of adultery and, and according to the law of Moses, we're supposed to stone her to death. What do you say we should do? And it's setting a trap for Jesus because if Jesus says, no, let her go. Let's not do that. Then he's, then he's violating the law, the law of Moses. But if he says, yeah, stoner, then he's violating his teachings of love and mercy. So, like, he can't. He's, you know, he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. And so what's he supposed to do? Well, Jesus always has a way of getting out of these things in the Gospels. And this time what he does is he stoops down and he starts writing something on the ground. We're not told what he's written. People have all sorts of theories. He writing something on the ground. Then he looks up and says, let the one without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her. And then he stoops back down and starts writing some more. And one by one, they start realizing they too have committed sins. And they. And they leave until she's left alone. And he stands up and says, is there no one here to condemn you? She says, no, Lord, no one. He says, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. So that's it. So but let the first, the one without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at hers. The heart of this thing. And this passage was not in the Gospel of John originally and in any other book of the New Testament. This was not an original part of the New Testament. It was added later by scribes. This is hardly ever debated by scholars. It is the, the, the evidence for it is completely overwhelming. So much so that when I was a fundamentalist Bible Moody Bible Institute, getting interested in these things, this was one of the passages. I knew this was not in the New Testament, so I wanted to know how it got there. But it means it wasn't there originally. And it leads. This one leads to a very interesting question. Because it's a large chunk, right? We don't have that many large chunks that are left out or put in to the New Testament. This is, this is one of the two major. Two of the major one. One of the two major ones. And, and the question is, since it's been in all Bibles that have ever been written in English since the King James and today, they'll often just put brackets around it and say, yeah, not in many manuscripts, which is a euphemism. It's. It's not original. The question is, is it part of the Christian canon or not? Is it part of Scripture? Because it's in, it's in later manuscripts in the Middle Ages, it becomes, becomes part. And once printing started, it's in millions and millions of Bibles. Is it part of Scripture or not? Good question.

[B]

Excellent question. And I have another follow up in a second. But I wanted to ask what is, what is some of the evidence for this not being original? Is it simply that it's not in most of our oldest manuscripts?

[A]

Well, that's one of, that's. That's the first clue. I mean, when you get the oldest manuscripts, none of them have it going back to the year 200. On first centuries. We had, I mentioned that Origen a comment in the Gospel of John, he actually wrote a commentary on John. And we have church fathers who wrote commentaries on the Gospel of John where they go verse by verse and explain what they meant. Church fathers from the third century up, you know, so we have, we have lots of these commentaries. There's no commentary on John that mentions this passage until the 12th century century.

[B]

Wow, that is really late.

[A]

And so, and so, yeah. And so there are also, there are. The, the writing style is noticeably different. It like once the story starts, the writing style changes significantly. And there's all sorts of words in this passage that are not found anywhere else in John. And it's just so. It is, it's quite clear what scholars think Pro. I think what most scholars think about this is that at some point there was a scribe who knew the story, had heard the story and thought it fit really well into this, like into what was going on in this chapter at this point. And so he, he wrote it in a margin kind of as kind of a marginal illustration of what's being said in this chapter. And the next scribe came along and thought, oh, this guy left out the story, put it in the margins, and he stuck it in there. And after that it just started being copied as part of the, part of the text.

[B]

So I realize that this is, you might be the wrong person to ask, is this now canon?

[A]

It really, it's, it's not that I'm the wrong person to ask. It's that people will have different opinions. My, my mentor, Bruce Metzger was one of the great textual scholars of the 20th century. And he was, he would always ask this question, you know, about, about this and other relevant passages. Do we consider it scripture or not? And it's a theological judg that Christians have to make. If it wasn't original, is it part of inspired scripture? Because it's maybe not original, but it's function to scripture within the church for centuries. And so is, is it, is it inspired or not? Metzger had a way of kind of getting out of the problem that I, I never really much liked. I mean, he, look, he was brilliant. He was, he's a brilliant textual scholar, but he was also a fairly conservative Christian. And the way he got around the problem was by saying, well, it wasn't originally John, but it was, it has all the earmarks of an actual story that happened in the life of Jesus. And so he thought, well, it really happened, so it's okay to keep it. I think there's no way this originally happened. I mean, I just. We disagree on that one.

[B]

That opens a whole barrel of worms as well. Because if we're discussing changes that we know were made to manuscripts that are still in current translations of the New Testament, are those changes also canonical or. Or should we be taking them out?

[A]

It does. So the. The idea of having an inspired canon is a theological idea. It's a religious idea. There's nothing that makes these books inherently scripture. It's a theological judgment the Christians have. And since it's a theological judgment, there's no answer. There's no correct answer. So you can't prove one thing or the other. Christians have to think in their minds, well, what do I consider to be inspired Scripture? And what about the changes? Origen. Origen is a very interesting figure for lots of reasons. He was the best. He was the most important theologian before St. Augustine, and his view was he knew all about textual changes and textual variants. He talks about textual variants a lot where, you know, you have different manuscripts with different readings. His view was that the Holy Spirit inspired the differences. The Spirit inspired the scribes to change it, because then it adds a different kind of a. Kind of a different meaning that you could consider now, but it's all driven by the Spirit. Wow. Okay. That's faith.

[B]

I like it. Interesting. Thank you. I don't have any more variants that I wanted to ask you about specifically. Were there any that you wanted to talk about that we didn't cover today?

[A]

No, I think those. Those are some of the main ones. The woman taking adultery is like, the one people ought to know about. These other ones people wouldn't know about. But part of the point of this is that they're little, just tiny changes. Sometimes just changing a letter can change what something means, either in terms of what the passage is talking about or what it can mean theologically. And that's why this kind of detailed work is so important, because it actually does affect meaning.

[B]

It really does and always makes me laugh and cry slightly internally when someone so very proudly declares that the Bible does or does not say X. And, well, it might do.

[A]

It might do.

[B]

Greek manuscripts, There is no way for

[A]

you to know that, and it might have done. We don't have the manuscript support.

[B]

All right, well, that is all for today's interview. Thank you all for listening. We are going to. To move on to this week's bonus segment, which is Bart's soapbox. So, Bart, what are you soapboxing about today?

[A]

This is complete serendipity. I did not plan this. I had planned what the soapbox was going to be before I knew what this episode is. And as it turns out, it is like it is target for this episode. It's because of an email I got this week from somebody who pointed out to me that a lot of conservative evangelical apologists who really do not like the things I say get upset with me for talking about how many textual variants there are in the New Testament. And one line that, that this person quoted to me from a evangelical scholar is that we are certain about 97% of the words of the New Testament where there's no dispute. And then the person added that another evangelical apologist opponent of mine, this one I'll name William Lane Craig, who says a lot of things about me, claims that 99 of the new Testament is certain. And so what are you talking about? And when I, when I got this email, I thought, you know, the guys on the guy just want to know, you know, what do you think about that? I said, well, I don't think much of it. I'll tell you why. Where do they come up with these numbers? 97%. What if they, you know, we know how many words are in the New Testament and they know exactly how many words were just. Are under dispute. Where they get 97 from? They're just picking a number out of a hat. And when, when William Lynn Craig says 99, what's he thinking? I mean, I actually know what they're thinking and it's bogus. What they're thinking is what they, I mean, they actually don't even have statistics. They, I don't think these guys have added it up. They're all guys, by the way. The way, I don't think they've added it up. I think that what they've done is they've just kind of said, yeah, yeah, it's virtually all that's 97%, you know, that kind of thing. So what they're. If you were to make a case like that, the only viable case that you could make would be to look at all the textual variants that we, that we have recorded in our manuscripts. And as I said, you know, our only, our first complete manuscripts come from 300 years after the originals. But we have thousands of manuscripts after that. You find all the, all the variants among our manuscripts, which, by the way, have never been tabulated. We don't know how many differences there are. We have Even with computer technology, we don't know yet. The latest estimates put it at about 500,000 differences among our manuscripts. So, okay, you take, you take all those and you ask how many of those are really actively question marks among scholars? And you say, yeah, not very many of them, you know, so maybe like 3%. You know, you just pick a number out of a hat and say 3%. So that means. That would mean for sure, about 97%. That's what they're saying. But they don't, they don't quite get the problem with that. The problem with that is if our first complete manuscript of John dates from 375, suppose John was written around the year 95. So say it's 300 years later. What they're saying is the manuscripts after that manuscript till the invention of printing, basically the differences we find in those manuscripts are only about 3% of the words. So apart from the fact that they have no grounds for saying 3%, but just suppose it is 3% they're saying, therefore we know what John actually wrote 97% of the time. That's not actually true. How many changes were made before our first manuscript? Our earliest manuscripts tend to be at odds with each other more than the later manuscripts. Like if you compare two later manuscripts, like two manuscripts from the 14th century or something, I used to have to do this kind of thing where you compare them word for word for word. They hardly ever differ in place. Every now and then there'll be some difference or something. But you compare two manuscripts from like the, the, the fourth century and oh my God, there'll be lots of differences. The earlier, the more. Well, how many changes were made before we have manuscripts? None. If you say none, what's your grounds for that? If you say, well, probably the laws, because that's the trajectory we're on. Then. Then how do you know what the. It's 97. We're not that we're sure about. You don't. We just don't have manuscript evidence for that, am I? My. And people say, well, you're not being reasonable. If you want early, lots of earlier manuscripts. I'm not talking about being reasonable. I'm talking about what is evidence. If I'm not being unreasonable to point out there's no evidence for your claim. And so, so, yeah, and I'm not making a claim. Like, I'm not saying, oh, yeah, 62% is uncertain. I'm not making claims like that. I'm just saying there are lots of differences and we have no idea how many There are now, but we certainly have no idea how many are there before our first manuscripts. And so that kind of thing gets me a little bit ticked off because people just manipulate statistics and they manipulate. And they say this to people who have no way of evaluating their arguments. And, you know, and so I just, I don't like that. I think, I think they're, I think on the one level it's just dishonest. It's, it's either being dishonest or ignorant. They either haven't thought of that or they, they know it's true and they're dishonest. So either one isn't good. And so, you know, I just don't, I don't like it. You know, I don't mind if there's evidence against a view I have, but don't cite non evidence and try and convince people with it.

[B]

Thank you very much. Bart, before we finish for the week, could you remind us what we spoke about today?

[A]

Yeah, we're just talking about differences in the manuscripts of the Gospel of John. And we, we picked a handful of them, ones that I, I kind of like that. I think are interesting partly because they're just, most of them are just a little thing, change a little thing and it changes the meaning. And so, so I think that's, that's interesting. We could have obviously a number of episodes just on the Gospel of John or any of these, any of these books. But I think it's worth realizing that as valuable as the Gospel of John is to people and as important as it is that we're not, we cannot be 100 certain about all the words.

[B]

Audience thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we talking about next time?

[A]

I think we're talking about why the books in the canon are in the canon. How'd that get in there? Issues connected with that.

[B]

Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquot Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday. So please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favourite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out from Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis. Thank you for joining us.