Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Textual Criticism

  • When Should You Talk about Textual Criticism?

    I’ve posted a question that originates with Thomas Hudgins over on the Energion Discussion blog. Here are my comments to go with that post.

    The question has quite a number of implications. For example, if your listeners do not normally look at the textual notes in their Bible translation, they might not be aware of the issues. Not mentioning a difficulty might be an issue of honesty. (“Pastor, you never gave me any idea how many variants there are in the New Testament text. You lied to me!”) On the other hand, constantly mentioning textual variants, most of which are fairly minor (though translations normally mention only a very small minority, NET excepted, and thus only ones that impact meaning more significantly), and discussing the text all the time can be very distracting.

    I resonate with much of what Thomas says in his post. It’s very easy, as a pastor or teacher, to leave the wrong impression. You can leave your listeners thinking they can’t study the Bible at all unless they’ve spent time with textual criticism as you have. You can make them think no translation is at all trustworthy.

    There are always at least two types of tension here.

    First, there’s the issue of what skill is needed in order to study the Bible. I took a Biblical Languages major as an undergraduate, rather than religion or theology, because I wanted to understand the Bible better. I don’t think I wasted my time. I can get more out of a passage using what I learned, including a quarter each in New Testament and Old Testament textual criticism, than I could if I was limited to English translations. On the other hand, it is not impossible to understand the vast majority of scripture using an English translation, especially considering the number we have available and the wonderful resources we have in addition.

    Second, there’s the issue of the trustworthiness of the Bible. Many pastors avoid issues in the text because they’re afraid people will get the idea that they cannot trust the text of scripture. (“If major translations don’t even agree, how can I be sure?”) I think this is a questionable approach, because the vast majority of the text of the New Testament is not in dispute. It’s much more convincing to mention that before, rather than after, someone discovers textual variants. If you haven’t mentioned it, you’ll sound like you’re on defense, and you’ll sound like you’re making it up as you go along.

    Some may ask why I’m concerned this much about the reliability of the text when I don’t accept the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. There are three answers to this:

    1) It is a matter of historical fact that we have very strong evidence for the text of the New Testament, and that variations are, on the average, minor. Are there significant variants? Yes, but the disputed texts are not that numerous. In fact, a great deal of debate in this area centers around the vocabulary used to describe the situation. Numbers always need to be kept in perpsective.

    2) I do believe in the providential preservation of God’s message. (Vocabulary alert: What is meant by “providential preservation” differs from person to person.)

    3) I believe we need to be honest at all times.

  • Should Pastors Learn Textual Criticism?

    I’ve been watching one discussion and participating in another that converge in this post.

    The first discussion is via blogs, David Alan Black (extracted to The Jesus Paradigm for a permanent link) and Thomas Hudgins both posting significant numbers of entries recently regarding textual criticism. The second is one I’ve had personally, and it regards the ways in which people lose their faith.

    Let’s look at the second first. It’s hard to find a mainline Christian community where the discussion of how and why people are dropping out of church and/or losing their faith. There are many groups and ideas that get the blame. Some blame liberal university and seminary professors. The idea here is that being told about these ideas by people with some academic authority drives people out of the church. Often the proposed solution is to pull back from advanced education, lest one be led astray by the notions of the excessively educated.

    On the other side, the blame often is placed on excessively conservative church leaders and parents. Many believe that those who have been pushed into too narrow of a mold will tend to break out when they get the opportunity, or the first time they have a chance, for that matter. The solution suggested is usually that we loosen up and be more open about questioning and re-examining our doctrinal beliefs so that young people don’t feel excessively constrained. In addition, they can come up with different answers in many cases and still remain in the community.

    I haven’t done any scientific studies, and I have some doubts about those studies I have seen (question design is interesting, and helps drive results), but my observation is that both of the scenarios I have mentioned are possible, as are many others. The stories of faith, loss of faith, return to faith, and struggles with faith are as diverse as are the people who live them.

    My own experience led me from a rather fundamentalist upbringing in the Seventh-day Adventist Church to a relatively moderate theology as a member of a United Methodist congregation. I experienced the various players in these stories. There were the overbearing and oh-so-superior professors, though frankly not many of them. Most of my professors were quite helpful. Some were more liberal than my upbringing, but by the standards of the general Christian community, all would be considered conservative. My father, whose beliefs were doubtless fundamentalist, was at the same time one of the influences in my life that allowed me to explore. He had a practical, living approach to faith that carries over to my practice today, even though I don’t hold all the same doctrines that he did.

    I have also seen many people who are strongly influenced by college, graduate school, or seminary. I observe a “seminary effect” in newly graduated pastors. They tend to hold views that were taught by the professors at their seminary. Sometimes they dismiss views held by professors at other seminaries. It’s not a surprising thing. One lives in a particular community and one absorbs its values, unless one is recalcitrant or perhaps just independent. In my case, I held closer to the values of the theology department at my undergraduate school (Walla Walla University) than to those at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, though in the end I left the SDA community entirely.

    The positive side of my education was the ability to look at serious issues of theology and Scripture as part of a community of faith. One of the greatest difficulties involved was the simple fact that I was unable, in the end, to remain part of the community in which I grew up. I simply came to disagree with them on too many issues. I was able to maintain respect for them, and for many individuals who helped—and still help—me in my spiritual walk.

    The result of my observations of my own experience and that of others, including many who were raised as Christians but no longer are, is that a key component to maintaining one’s faith while learning new things is the ability to explore these issues inside a community of faith. I think that even if your community maintains boundaries, if they can bless you as you move on to explore with another community, the result will frequently be positive. If you’re extremely sectarian, and equate leaving your existing community with “leaving Christ” or becoming an apostate, then you’re likely to drive someone away from faith entirely.

    A friend of mine once noted that the greatest problem with the King James Version Only movement, especially as represented in this area by Peter Ruckman, is that it ruins people for the rest of Christianity. They have heard other Christians vilified so much that if they find they can no longer support their movement and its leader, it is impossible to move into a mainstream Christian community. There are those SDAs who still regard me as an apostate. I recall one meeting where I was working with an SDA author, and I was approached by a young man who quickly informed me that he could not comprehend how someone could possibly leave the SDA church because of doctrinal differences. I was prepared to discuss with him, but he wasn’t interested. He just wanted to inform me as to how wrong I was and move on. Fortunately, the majority of my SDA associates had a much more open attitude. They may disagree, but it’s a disagreement we can live with.

    So my view is that exploration in community is an essential to keeping one’s faith. In the age of the internet, a congregation will not remain unaware of other positions on major topics. A pastor used to be able to figure on the majority of the congregation getting all their information from him. Not now. There is no “ignorant congregation” option. The only question is where the discussion will take place. I think pastors who try to avoid all the hard issues would have been wrong in the old days, but they’re both wrong and in serious danger now. They need to discuss the major issues of the day with their congregations, recognize that people will read and study books which the leadership doesn’t approve, and learn to work with this.

    Note especially that I’m not saying what the position of the congregation needs to be. The key is that the congregation cannot be deceived. The pastors and teachers in the church need to openly discuss the issues, give their views and their reason for holding them, and then work with the congregation. If people find that they are no longer within the boundaries of a congregation, do your best to find a way to bless them as they seek elsewhere. I’m not suggesting that you change your beliefs or the doctrinal statement of your church in order to keep people. There are times to change and times not to change, and that is a process of discernment for a congregation. But if an individual or group needs to move on, that should be facilitated with a loving attitude. “Truth with love” is a difficult standard to meet, but I think it must be our goal, even as we recognize that we may fall short of the truth ourselves.

    Which brings me back around to the discussion of textual criticism. How much textual criticism does a pastor need to know? One of the problems I have with this discussion is that we keep piling things onto the pastor’s plate. Who else is going to handle this issue? But my experience is that often pastors barely have a working knowledge of their English Bibles while people who read the biblical languages are trying to get them to learn more advanced things. I recall one continuing education event in which one of my authors, an Old Testament scholar, was teaching a group of United Methodist pastors. A number of the pastors couldn’t keep up with finding the Old Testament texts referenced. I had been concerned they might not have studied the Old Testament enough to even have the questions the speaker was answering. I was unprepared to find that they couldn’t find the texts.

    In that context, what is the most important thing to pursue in terms of pastoral education? Is it textual criticism or basic biblical knowledge? And then what about the range of things we want pastors to be able to do? I recall sitting with a pastor while planning an event and somehow our discussion turned to my education. He remarked that he was “in awe of” my ability to pick up my Greek New Testament or my Hebrew Bible and just read. I was shocked by the phrase “in awe of.” I’m kind of in awe as well. I’m in awe of the experience. There is nothing like sitting down to my devotional reading with the text in the original languages. But I am in awe of the power of the word and thankful that I can experience it in that particular way.

    After a moment, I simply responded that I was in awe of his ability to sit down with a couple, and through counseling, restore a marriage. The point was simply that God gives different gifts to different people. I cannot imagine being a marriage counselor. If I didn’t have many other reasons not to want to become a pastor (quite apart from not being called by God), the idea of people coming to me to share problems with their marriages would drive me away.

    So how long does it take one to train to be an effective marriage counselor? A church administrator? A human resources director? A theologian? A biblical scholar? A textual critic? The problem is simply that we have too many things that we expect pastors to be. I think this is where we need to share the functions of the church more. The ideal can be the enemy of the good, in that we ask so much of pastors in their education that they simply can’t make it. But it’s more important that we ask all these things of a single person. Most of the pastors I’ve met simply would not have time to maintain a high level of proficiency with their biblical languages. They’re too busy with other things.

    Which brings us full circle. How can a church sponsor a community where exploration can take place on serious issues of theology and biblical studies, not to mention social issues, when there is no way the pastor can be an expert in all these things? Believe me, the number of things I’ve been told “every pastor should know” is quite astonishing and beyond the ability of a super-genius.

    Divide and work together.

    Huh?

    We need to divide the tasks between members of the church. Unlike some, I don’t have a problem with paid staff, provided the staff is paid for the right things. We should be paying the staff to do the work or ministry of the church. I suspect practically any church out there has people in it with business experience. Most have people with training in counseling, teaching, and various other academic subjects. Not all churches have all of these things, however.

    So first, divide the work of the church amongst the members. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been invited to teach about biblical studies by a pastor who didn’t have my knowledge of biblical languages but knew there was something that needed to be taught. There are lots of people with the right sort of knowledge. Don’t try to force them into the boxes created by planned curriculum. Let them bring their experience and knowledge into action.

    Second, work together. Not all churches will have people with expertise in biblical languages, for example. Find the churches that do. Work together. Share your educational time so the congregation can hear from other people with different expertise. Will they hear some things you consider wrong? Doubtless they will. Get over it. They’re going to hear such things in any case.

    I think we have tremendous resources in the church. The problem is that we aren’t making the necessary effort to use them.

  • Majority Text vs. Eclectic

    There’s a very brief summary on The Good Book blog, For and Against: The Majority Text Approach to Textual Criticism. I agree that the Byzantine needs to be given more consideration, though I support an eclectic approach.

  • Nice Note on the Johannine Comma

    This article by Daniel B. Wallace includes some nice material about how the groundwork for textual criticism is done.

  • Isaiah 49:5 – An Insignificant Variant

    So why do I want to talk about an insignificant variant? The answer is simple. In many cases the reliability of Biblical texts is stated simply in terms of the number of variants that exist in the manuscripts. This number is quite high, but most of these variants are not significant. They may involve identical meanings, orthography or spelling, or be so unlikely to be the original text that nobody would claim they were.

    I’m sometimes asked just what such insignificant variants might look like. This is an example. First, however, let me mention the range of variants, in this case working from Hebrew scripture.

    1. Variant spellings; no matter what text you choose the meaning is the same.
    2. Variants in vowel pointing only. At least most Christian scholars place less emphasis on the vocalization than on the consonantal text. Some translations will alter the vocalization without a footnote, but require a note if they use something other than the Hebrew Masoretic consonantal text.
    3. Ketib / Qere variants. The Masoretes included notes in some cases indicating that a word included in the consonantal text (ketib) should be read (qere) as something else. Different scholars judge the value of these variants differently.
    4. Variants in the consonantal text over one or two words.
    5. Variants in whole passages.

    At some later date I may provide examples of each of these, but right now I just want to establish the range. Examples of each one do exist.

    Once someone hears that the vast majority of the textual variants are insignificant, they are sometimes tempted to believe that textual variants really aren’t important. But some of the variants are very significant.

    In this case, we have the Hebrew phrase, consonants only, WYSR’L L’ Y’SF,* in Isaiah 49:5. Now if I rendered this literally, without other considerations, it would read “and Israel not will-be-gathered.” A glance at the context will indicate that this is precisely the opposite of the intended meaning. If I then look in the margin, where the Masoretes provided me with a very useful note, I will find LW instead of L’. (For those not used to transliteration that’s lamedh-waw insteand of lamedh-aleph.)

    Now generally first year Hebrew students could translate the two words. LW means “to him,” and L’ means “not.” What is less clear, unless you know Hebrew, is that both are pronounced the same. The probability is so high that the intended meaning is “to him” (And Israel will be gathered to him), that normally that is simply translated without any note. I checked all the translations in which I expect to find notes, and there was none. And that is as it should be.

    Nobody makes a case for the alternate rendering because the evidence is so strong. Besides the logic of the passage, ancient versions also translated this as do modern versions. Translators should not convey every such instance, and they don’t.

    *I am not distinguishing samekh from sin, as that does not impact this point.

  • Textual Emendation in Isaiah 49:7

    The JPS Tanakh of Isaiah 49:7 reads, in part:

    Thus said the LORD,
    The Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One,
    b-To the despised one,
    To the abhorred nations,-b . . .

    Note b reads: Meaning of Heb. uncertain. Emendation yields “Whose being is despised / Whose body is detested”; cf. 51.23.

    I noticed this first when I read this in Hebrew, and found that I was not able to produce a translation that I found satisfactory. I remained in doubt. So I looked it up in a few translations. Note also that the reading adopted in the JPS text is itself an emendation.

    (more…)

  • RUSETAI in 2 Corinthians 1:10

    This is not a seriously doubtful textual issue, but I wanted to make a brief summary and comment on it, because it can help illustrate the interaction between internal and external evidence in a case where the two point in the same direction. For a very brief outline of textual criticism, see Textual Criticism-Briefly. In addition, this is discussed briefly in the Anchor Bible commentary on 2 Corinthians I’m currently reading, so I’m doing something to fulfill my promise to blog my reading.

    The text, very literally translated, reads thus:

    He who from such a death [peril of death] saved us (aorist of ruomai), and will save (future of ruomai), [that is] the one on whom we have hoped, will also yet save (future of ruomai) us.

    Now let me present the ESV, which is very literal, but a bit more readable:

    He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

    You can probably see a number of translation issues, such as where in the translation does “on him we have set our hope” belong. It can equally be translated with the final “rusetai” as with the second one. These three repetitions of the same word have created a bit of a textual jumble, but in this case we have good external attestation for a single reading, and the internal evidence backs it up.

    One key textual rule is that the more difficult text, if one can make any sense of it, is to be preferred. Why is this? Well, scribes tended to correct in order to clarify. On the other hand, the rule is not absolute, because scribes would make errors that created nonsense. So everything has to be used with care.

    Furnish (AB) simply comments that “[t]he text translated has the best attestation, however (P46 [aleph] B C et al.), and the variants doubtless originated as attempts to deal with the fact that the kai rysetai appears twice, . . .” (pp. 114-115)

    Metzger makes a similar note, but points out further that a number of slightly later manuscripts (A D* [psi] itd,61 syrp ethpp) simply omit it, and some even later ones correct the second instance of ruomai to the present tense.

    I’m not going to try to cite all this external evidence in detail. The external evidence seems pretty convincing to me, even though Metzger’s textual commentary only rates the reading a C. (I’m working from the companion to the 3rd edition, not the current one to which I linked.) The internal evidence is strong, however. The later readings are simply explained by the earlier.

    1. There is no reason why a scribe who encountered the verse with only two repetitions would add another.
    2. There is no reason to alter the second instance to present, unless one is making a sequence of aorist, present, future.
    3. There is every reason to make either alteration if one is presented with all three together, including two repetitions of the future.

    Thus the internal evidence seems compelling to me combined with the good external evidence.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus – Summary and Conclusion

    This is the conclusion of my multi-part series responding to Bart Ehrman’s book, Misquoting Jesus. Here are links to the earlier portions of this series:

    In chapter 7, The Social Worlds of the Text, Ehrman discusses how the social situation in the early church shaped changes that were made to the text. In particular he discusses the status of women, and mentions several instances of textual change that relate to it. Amongst these are Junia/Junias in Romans 16:7, and the prohibition for women teaching in 1 Corinthians 14:33-36.

    Next he discusses the relationship of Christians and Jews. Some alterations in the text make the Jews look bad. By the 2nd century, Christians were a separate religion, and often engaged in polemic against Judaism.

    Finally he discusses paganism and apologetic alterations to the text. He provides numerous illustrations in each case.

    One of his major points in this section is to show how the scribes were human beings whose world shaped the way in which they transmitted the text, and thus to some extent the text itself. When you hold a Bible in your hands, you hold the complex product of numerous people, each of whom have had a small part in shaping the text you will read.

    Conclusion

    It is in the conclusion that a differ significantly from Ehrman’s view. In technical terms, he is certainly expert, and he displays that expertise throughout the book. As a popularizer, he is clearly one of the best. I have not seen a clearer explanation of the basics of New Testament textual criticism for the non-scholar.

    The fundamental difference in our conclusions results not from the content, but from our starting points. I begin with the view that inspiration is something that happens to people, and that people express that inspiration in various forms, including text. While a person experiences God, individually or in community, the expression of that experience is distinctly human.

    Ehrman seems to accept the standard evangelical view of Biblical inspiration that assumes that God’s breathing of scripture is essentially the impartation of data to be expressed in words.

    How radical are the changes?

    If you see inspiration as involving the impartation of data to be accurately expressed in words, and expect those words themselves to be divine, then the alteration of such words must come as a shock. This is the experience expressed by Bart Ehrman in his conclusion. He sees the changes as radical and important because they alter the words, and to him the words are the vehicle of inspiration, or in the end of the lack of it.

    For me these changes are not nearly so radical, because I assume that the writers chose their own words, and in most cases their own facts. Thus alterations are interesting, but neither shocking nor dismaying. If one studies a broad enough basis of the text, one can get to who Matthew, Luke, John, or Paul really were, and to me that is the key to inspiration. God spoke to the community through these people in a special way and I want to get to know them.

    One quotation will illustrate this point:

    In particular, as I said at the outset, I began seeing the New Testament as a very human book. The New Testament as we actually have it, I knew, was the product of human hands, the hands of the scribes who transmitted it. Then I began to see that not just the scribal text but the original text itself was a very human book. This stood very much at odds with how I had regarded the text in my late teens as a newly minted “born-again” Christian, convinced that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God and that the biblical words themselves had come to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As I realized already in graduate school, even if God had inspired the original words, we don’t have the original words. So the doctrine of inspiration was in a sense irrelevant to the Bible as we have it, since the words God reputedly inspired had been changed and, in some cases, lost. . . . (p. 211)

    I would like to point out one other thing, however, and that is that those who argue Biblical inerrancy, with or without verbal plenary inspiration, as it applies to the autographs do need to respond to the issue of the relevance of such inspiration. What is the importance of the inerrancy of a document we do not possess? If we can deal with 98% accuracy in the Bibles we actually have, why would the discovery that the autographs were also only 98% accurate suddenly be a devastating blow to the authority of the Bible?

    This is why it seems to me that the doctrine of inerrancy of the autographs is more a doctrine about God than about the accuracy or authority of God’s communication. What the doctrine says is that God is perfect. Certainly, I can agree with that. But that still seems irrelevant, because the issue is how well did human authors comprehend what God revealed to them?

    Dependence on Scholars

    On one last issue I think that Ehrman makes a particularly good point. I have heard many people express either the desire to be completely independent of Biblical scholarship or even the feeling that they are independent. Sometimes these are people who do not even read the source languages, much less work with the manuscripts to determine the text. When we consider context, the history and culture that stands behind the text, many more specialized fields come into play, and nobody is able to be proficient in all of those areas. All of us are dependent at some point on the scholarship of others.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus VII

    . . . in which, of course, I respond to chapter 6. I will post a directory to the whole series of responses, with the final entry, but in the meantime you will get the series by choosing category “Textual Criticism” in the right sidebar. There are other entries in that category, but all the most recent ones are in this series.

    In chapter 6, Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text, Ehrman looks at some specific points of theology and the way in which scribes altered, or tried to alter the text in opposition to those viewpoints. In our surviving texts, he notes, we don’t have many non-orthodox alterations, because it was the orthodox who won the day, and their texts were the ones that were preserved.

    He discusses three theological points which engendered theologically motivated changes: Adoptionist christology (Adoptionism in Wikipedia), docetic christology (Docetism in Wikipedia), and separationist christology. Adoptionism holds that Jesus was not born the son of God but was adopted, docetic christology holds that Jesus merely appeared to be human and to suffer as a human, but in fact, it was all just an illusion, while separationism suggested that Jesus was completely separated from God when he died, i.e. his divinity did not suffer death with his humanity.

    In each case, these anti-orthodox positions resulted in changes. These alterations to the text did not change the theology in a major way, but in the likely view of the scribes who made the changes they prevented people from interpreting a passage in an unorthodox way.

    I would simply make two notes on this chapter. First, it’s easy to make too much of such changes. The defense, as I frequently like to say, is never to base theology on a single text, but rather on an overall message an author is trying to present. Second, the abundance of Greek manuscripts lets us get behind this type of changes.

    I do agree with Ehrman that these types of alterations should be of concern if one holds a verbal plenary view of inspiration. If the individual words are so critical, as opposed to the overall message, then how could God allow the inspired words to be replaced wholesale? It’s easy to say that the abundance of manuscripts means that we can get at the original texts with a high degree of accuracy, but what about all those believers who used the various flawed manuscripts? What about the English speaking church before the ERV? (Note that the ERV used the Westcott and Hort text, and thus corrected numerous inaccuracies in the KJV.)

    I am absolutely comfortable saying that one can access God’s message via scripture, but when that message is reduced to the word by word level, i.e. if every word is important, then the state of the manuscripts is problematic.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus VI

    . . . in which, quite logically, I discuss chapter 5. 🙂

    In Chapter 5, originals that matter, Ehrman first introduces the basics of textual criticism and tells us how textual decisions are made. This good overview, as he notes, will not prepare you to make textual decisions for yourself, but it will let you know how scholars function as they decide which variant to use in an eclectic text, and similarly which variant to translate in a Bible version.

    Ehrman then discusses three textual variants with theological significance and in each case he disagrees the the general consensus on the appropriate text. These texts are:

    • Mark 1:41
    • Luke 22:43-44
    • Hebrews 2:8-9

    I have surveyed modern versions on these with some interesting results. I’m going to survey just a few translations, and then give my own opinion on each one. Ehrman deals with the theological and interpretive issues quite well in his discussion on each of these. My interest in this section is whether the non-scholar has ready access to this information. Please note that where I list translations supporting each option, I am not being exhaustive. Each list is a subset of the subset of translations I am using for this quick comparison. In each case a subscript f indicates that the translation in question indicates the alternate choice in a footnote.

    Mark 1:41

    The issue here is whether Jesus “had compassion” on the leper or “was angry/indignant.” The evidence for this variant is presented in the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, 4th Edition (UBSIV), which is a common starting point for Bible translations, though note that most English versions make their own specific textual decisions and do not follow a particular Greek edition. UBSIV places “compassion” in the text and gives it a “B” rating.

    The following translations support “compassion”: CEVf, ESV, KJV, NLTf, NRSVf, NETf, NKJV.

    The following support “angry”: TNIVf, REBf

    The best note here is in the NET. A strong case can be made for “angry” but the dominant reading in English translations is “compassion.”

    Luke 22:43-44

    Here the issue is the presence or absence of verses 43 and 44. Ehrman argues that the original text probably did not include those verses.

    Versions including 43-44: ESVf, NKJV, KJV, CEVf, NLTf, REBf, TNIVf

    Versions marking 43-44 in some way: NRSVf, NETf

    Versions excluding 43-44: None

    Again, the NET is to be congratulated on an excellent footnote. I would suggest that those who do not know Biblical languages but want to go deep into the text should access that version. It is available in an excellent online edition at NEXT Bible.

    Hebrews 2:8-9

    In this case the question is whether in verse nine it should say that Jesus tasted death “by the grace of God” or “apart from God.”

    Versions supporting “by the grace of God”: REBf, TNIV, NKJV, KJV, ESV, NRSVf, CEV, NLT, NET.

    No version supports “without God.” UBSIV rates “by the grace of God” as an A reading.

    In this last case, the NET does not include a footnote.

    Conclusions

    I would conclude two things from this. First, in most cases, one can access significant textual differences through various English versions. While the NET has the best notes for the first two examples, it has none for the last, which is only noted by the NRSV and the REB. This is a good argument for using multiple versions and reading the footnotes.

    In addition, if people paid more attention to the resources available to them things that Ehrman points out in his book would be much less shocking to them.

    Discussed in study notes (Learning Bible, Oxford Annotated, Oxford Study)