I always thought the fact that the NIV has 49 blank verses just made it easier to win a memory verse competition by saying, “Matthew 23:14″ then pausing, “Mark 7:16″ then pausing, until you have quoted 49 memory verses without having to say a word. Go figure. On a serious note, there have been accusations that the NIV has deleted verses in the New Testament. The insinuation is that the NIV committee did not have a proper respect for the text and that earlier versions of the English Bible are more accurate and faithful to God’s word because they contain these verses. The first thing that we have to understand when coming to this issue is that translation is a difficult job. There are over 3000 Greek manuscripts and fragments of the New Testament of varying age. Each one was hand copied, which leaves room for mistakes and even practical decisions of what to do with what the previous copyist has done. John 5:4 is one of the verses in contention. Here it is in the NIV and KJV.
John 5:3-5 (NIV)
“3Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 5One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.”
John 5:3-5 (KJV)
“In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. 4For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. 5And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.” (italics mine).
What happened to verse 4? The KJV decided to include it because it was in the manuscripts they had at their disposal. The NIV decided to omit it because in the 400 years since the KJV was translated much older manuscripts had surfaced that did not have that verse. Remember, the KJV was translated largely from the Textus Receptus which was a compilation of manuscripts that did not even date prior to 1100 AD. The NIV translation committee had access to manuscripts dating back within 150 years of the original documents of the New Testament.
What happened in the 800 years between the texts the NIV is based on and the texts the KJV is based on? Copying, copying, and more copying. Often a copyist would write an explanation in the margin and some times that explanation would end up in the text. Bruce Metzger (Text of the New Testament, 194) thinks that is exactly what happened in the case of John 5:4. Why? For several reasons (listed in Metzger’s textual commentary 3rd ed, 209):
1 – Because the earliest manuscripts don’t contain it. Why not? Did they omit this verse just like the NIV? Of course not. They don’t contain the verse because the manuscripts they were copied from didn’t have it and the ones before them didn’t have it because the original didn’t have it. It doesn’t start appearing in manuscripts for at least 500 years When no manuscript before 500 AD has a verse you can be fairly certain that it was added in from a marginal note, from a copying error, or due to the copyist remembering that verse in another gospel and accidentally harmonizing them in his head and copying it wrong (such is the case of a few other “missing verses”). But once it is added it then gets copied over and over and from that point on may appear original to the next copyist
2 – Multiple Greek manuscripts copied after 900 AD have a mark showing that they thought the verse was questionable but they included it because it was in the manuscript they were copying from.
3 – This verse has multiple words that John doesn’t use anywhere else = out of character
4 – This verse has a larger number of textual variants = there are many versions of this text in many different Greek manuscripts which points to it being very questionable as to what was original if it even was original.
With all that weight against it the NIV decided not to include that verse in its translation. Did the NIV delete the verse from the inspired word of God? They didn’t delete it if it wasn’t there to begin with. It may seem like a verse was removed because previous English versions like the KJV included it because it was in the manuscripts they used to translate from. People read it for 400 years in English and became accustomed to it. So when they spot it missing from the NIV eyebrows go up and accusations begin to fly. So it probably wasn’t so much that the NIV deleted something or that the KJV added something. The problem was the texts the KJV was translated from were simply not ideal.
Filed under: Bible, Bible Translations, Christianity, New Testament, Religion, Thoughts | Tagged: KJV, manuscript, NIV, textual criticism, translation
good info that most Bible readers have never heard, and some actually have questions, especially in the “which version?” debate.
The NIV and NLT also Deleted Act 8:37
I’m glad to find a good explanation of this from a
non-KJV bias source. I accept the explaination, but
I don’t understand why the NIV doesn’t explain this.
Some verses are explained in footnotes or included in
footnotes, but some have no footnotes at all.
I think each copy should have an article that explains the
issue as clearly as this. This way people won’t be confused
by such accusations.
Glad that was helpful to you. There is so much misinformation and accusation out there that is totally uninformed.
I have been going to a “KJV only” church, and the pastor there delivered a sermon in which he read the verse and then said that it was not an angel but an underwater spring which caused the water to roil and heal.
I asked him where he got that from, and he said that the bible stated that people believed that it was an angel.
I am confused. I don’t see that. I only see a preacher who says that the bible was wrong in this case and he is right.
Where can I find a discussion of this particular item?
The verse is John 5:4. You will find it in the KJV but in some newer translations you will see it goes from John 5:3 to John 5:5 and the verse is put in a footnote about the angel stirring the water.
There are thousands of manuscripts dating from 150 AD to 1300 AD or so. The older manuscripts lack this verse across the board. As you get more recent manuscripts this verse starts showing up but usually with a mark to show that the scribe copied it but did not believe it was original. So this may have been a later addition to a text that eventually ended up in what the translators of the KJV had at their disposal. That is why you find it in the KJV and not other places.
It was probably added as an editorial comment to make sense of 5:7 – it would explain why he thought he needed to be the first one in the water. Hope that helps. Let me know if you need more explanation.
Thank you for the explanation. However, it seems to me that if you leave out verse 4, the rest of the passage doesn’t make sense. So I find it difficult to suppose that John’s original manuscript did not contain something at the position of verse 4 to explain to his readers why the lame man said what he said in verse 7. Verses 2 and 3 indicate that John assumed that at least some of his readers did not have any background knowledge about this pool with its alleged angelic phenomenon.
Hi Phil,
That is probably why it was added – to give continuity to an awkward verse. So you can look at it either way – either it seems awkward without it so it must have been original or a scribe added in an oral tradition as an aside to make the passage seem less awkward. I know I have written things only to go back and notice something could have been a little clearer or given more explanation.
If you read it without the verse just like it wasn’t there I think it still reads pretty well we just don’t know exactly why it is important that he is first and why he can’t be healed if others go in before him.
Hi Matt,
I strongly believe that the King James Bible is the inerrant Word of God. I believe that the way you look at holy scripture throughout time, lacks some reverence to the author. The men who wrote, copied and translated the scriptures where pensmen, but the word came from God. Do you not believe that God would preserve, and make sure that His word would reach all people exactly as it was written. Would you not agree that if non- believer read your article, he would be confused as to which Bible holds the truth?
Would it not cause confusion even among Christians? Would it not make them ask, well if thats not in the original scriptures then what else does not belong here? The Bible states that God is not the author of confusion. See, God did not leave the scriptures in our hands to do what we may with them. Believing that troughout time scribes added things or re arranged things, insinuates that the word of God was at the mercy of these men. God has been and will always be in control of his word. There were no mistakes. Not even in centuries of copying.
But i have a question. I have not read the NIV Bible so it’s why i’m asking. So, the NIV Bible leaves out verse 4 of John chapter 5 right? So it skips from 3 to 5. Then verse 4 is in the footnotes? So the NIV Bible still shows verse 4 as verse 4, just not in the text?
Hi David,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments and questions. I can see your concern over what a non-Christian might think about my post. The facts are we don’t have original manuscripts. We have copies of copies. The good news is those copies are extremely accurate and rarely ever have any bearing on any major doctrine or core belief of the Christian faith.
But let’s start at the beginning of your comment. You believe that the KJV Bible is the inerrant word of God. Which one? There have been many revisions with tens of thousands of changes. The 1611 even had typos and spelling errors. Translation is a process and involves human beings to get it done. Therefore, it is done imperfectly…otherwise you have to say God inspired those men to make typos and spelling errors. Right?
You seem to deny the very existence of textual variants. That is just not an optional path to go down. They exist and we have to have means to deal with them. I can give you all kinds of examples from manuscripts all over the map. Even the 1611 KJV translators had to deal with textual variants in the manuscripts they had at hand. They dealt with them because they existed then and they exist now. They exist because mankind has had to hand copy these texts for hundreds and hundreds of years producing variants in the text that have to be dealt with. That doesn’t shake my faith in the least. They exist and we have to deal with them. We have to be honest about that.
It cannot be transmitted into English “exactly as it was written” as you stated above because it was not written in English. It was written in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. When people wrestle with translating those languages (which are from copies of copies and therefore contain textual variants) into English there will always be problems but we do the best we can. I believe the KJV translators did the very best job they could but I do not believe it is a perfect translation…otherwise those same men would not have seen the need to make over 300 corrections to their own translation by 1613 (See Lewis, Questions You Have Had About Bible Translations, p.254).
I hope you hear this comment with the greatest degree of love and respect possible. I also hope you understand that I believe in the inspiration of scriptures. I am not sure what I think about the inspiration of translators.
Last, by the same standard – that God would make sure his word would reach all people and be preserved across generations…why pick out the KJV as the only translation that God could do this with? Why not some before it like Tyndale’s? Why not some after it like the NASB or NIV? The same logic could be applied to any number of translations from different generations and say God continued to work in the process but somehow proponents of the KJV never come to that conclusion.
To answer your last question – John 5:4 is translated in full in the footnotes.
I hope this has been helpful and I would love to hear back from you on it. God bless
Great post. The fact that you site your sources is unblog-like of you
Thanks.
Hi Matt
I don’t agree with David’s views about the inerrancy of the KJV. I think your reply to him adequately shows the falsehood of such a view. You used an empirical method to refute him. However, David made a very interesting philosophical point that I would like to hear you address also please. He said that because God is perfect and infallible, he would ensure that his revelation to mankind would not be corrupted by fallible men, and that since he is not the author of confusion he would not allow anything false or misleading to infect his message. Would you like to comment on that from a philosophical point of view please?
Many thanks.
Hey Phil,
Great question. I believe that David’s concern for how this comes across to non-believers and even Christians is a valid concern. However, we cannot deny, ignore, or manipulate the truth in order to alleviate people’s concerns. The truth is that there are lots and lots of minor textual variants in the thousands of manuscripts we have on hand. The vast majority of them are extremely minor.
We have variants because these texts were copied over and over again by real people over a long period of time. The copies we have even show that this process was not an exact science as many of the copyists left notes in the margin questioning what they were copying. Why? Say you are copying Mark 9 and you get to Jesus’ words “This kind can only come out by prayer.” Some Greek texts say “prayer” and others say “prayer and fasting.” So which do you choose? The older manuscripts don’t have “and fasting” so it is assumed that over time someone copied that into a text because that is a common biblical concept that prayer is often combined with fasting.” The KJV used newer manuscripts which had “prayer and fasting” while the NIV had access to older manuscripts which only had “prayer.” Another thing you run into is when a copyist is copying from the synoptic gospels they may, from memory, accidentally add in a line from another gospel into a parallel account. So the next guy who copies that manuscript sees something in the verse he didn’t think was supposed to be there…what does he do? He either copies it and moves on (which results in more copies having the miscopy or he checks it against other texts, and changes it in his copy to reflect other texts. Usually when this is done the copyist will leave a note that a change was made.These notes in the margin are not uncommon. I say all this to say – I am not making this up. These changes took place but they should not rattle our faith! This does not make the scriptures any less valid as these things are few, far between, and never have major doctrinal significance.
So here is the deal, the original texts of the New Testament as written by the apostles, early Christians and amanuensis were infallible. They were without mistake and communicated exactly what God wanted them to communicate. But once those texts began to get copied…and even moreso, translated into entirely new languages! there is bound to be room for some questions. Notice there are only 50 or so of these that have any significant impact on portions of verses in the New Testament out of 7958 verses in the New Testament
Anytime anyone translates something, interpretation takes place. There is no getting around that. There is no perfect process where one takes an ancient language, finds the perfect English word-for-word equivalent and then just switches all the words to English. Anyone who has studied Greek or English or any other language would agree with that statement.
So, here is the problem. In order to say that any translation is inerrant means that God would have had to directly inspire the translators to make a perfect translation into the new language. Why? Because translators have to interpret what they are translating into the new language. So in order to get a perfect translation, God would have to inspire those doing the translation to get it perfect. Here is a problem – the original KJV had typos, misspellings, and many other mistakes in it. Does that mean God inspired the intended meaning of the work of those translators but didn’t help them get the spelling right? What does that mean? It means when people get involved in the process of God expressing himself to us there are going to be hiccups in the process.
Then you have this question – how do you know the KJV is THE English translation God chose to inspire the translators to translate? Why not Tyndale’s version or any of the other dozens of early English translations contemporary with the KJV? Then, who is to say he didn’t continue to inspire translations all the way to today? That would make the NIV, NLT, etc all potentially inspired by God with their same logic, right? But they would never say they. They assume that only they know which one God inspired the translation of and that can, to them, only be the KJV. But that just doesn’t work in my book. We cannot say God inspired the translation of the KJV but never, ever any other translation…how would we know that?
Thanks Matt. I agree with what you said in your last post. There is no denying that the autographs don’t exist any more and that the copies contain variants. We can make a pretty good stab at reconstructing the original text but we can’t be 100% dogmatic about every jot and tittle. And also it cannot be denied that it is impossible to translate from one language to another with mechanical precision because each language has its own idiosyncrasies and no two words share an identical semantic range.
But David presented an intriguing argument which, although it is demonstrably false in practice, raises an important question about how God relates to mankind. David said that since God is infallible and everything he does is perfect, he would have chosen to communicate his rational truth to mankind in such a way that we would receive it in its pure unadulterated form. God would want us to have a record of his revelation that was as reliable and perfect as he is because it is not God’s nature to be chaotic, inexact, confusing, or inaccurate. Even though some men would tamper with his revelation, God would providentially ensure that his unspotted truth was still available for those who earnestly sought it (just like muslims regard the Qur’an in Arabic).
Clearly the facts on the ground show that God hasn’t done it that way. He chose to communicate to us through the medium of human language despite its ambiguities, and we know he didn’t preserve the autographs or accurate copies of the autographs. And the compilation of the canon was, on the surface, very slipshod and haphazard. We don’t have a checklist from heaven telling us which books to include in the canon.
So why do you think God chose to communicate to us in this rather messy way, where undeniably there are some grey areas and fuzzy edges (even though no fundamental doctrine is at stake)?
I think the stab we can make at reconstructing the original text is very good. Without the autographs we cannot be certain that we have 100% accuracy but I do believe that we can still ascertain, based on what we have, what God’s will is and what he was trying to communicate. When I read my Bible, a translation, I feel very adequate that I am getting at what God was trying to communicate with me. I don’t have a cloud of doubts hanging over my head wondering, “Is this what he said?” or “What if all this is mistaken!?!” Why? Because the vast majority of manuscript evidence we have corroborates itself and shows that there is indeed a high level of accuracy with the texts we do have.
I wholeheartedly agree that God does not want there to be chaos and misunderstanding and that it is in his nature to have order and clarity. God inspired the biblical writers to write down what he wanted to be recorded. God then allowed that word to be passed down through generation after generation. That required copy after copy.
Here is the deal…It is one thing to say God had to have every word copied perfectly every time in order to ensure that his will was clearly communicated. That I cannot agree with based on the fact that we don’t have that but we know God’s will is done. It is another thing to say that God can communicate his will perfectly even though some of the copies have very minor and mostly insignificant issues. So yes, God has communicated clearly to us exactly what he wanted, it just so happens that he did not do so by inspiring the copyists to copy perfectly.
I would have to disagree with your statement that we do not have preserved accurate copies of the autographs. Of course we don’t have perfect copies but I believe we have copies accurate enough to communicate God’s will and truth to us today.
Why did God choose to communicate this way? Well, if I was God I could certainly tell you with some certainty! God has revealed himself in a particular day and time. Faithful men wrote it down so that they and the generations after could have the benefit of hearing what God revealed to mankind. Ever since then, faithful people have done their best to ensure that the process continues.
Are there fuzzy edges? Yes. But I would liken it to a masterpiece painting where the main focus of the painting is still vibrantly visible while some of the edges, even out of view due to the frame, have some wear and tear. The truth of what the artist intended to capture and communicate is plain to all but the wear and tear of time and transportation have put some wear on some places that are non-essential to understanding what the artist painted. Hope that helps.
Hey Matt ,
Just wanted to say that you have done a wonderful job of explaining these things. You’ve certainly cleared up a lot of questions I’ve had, since I’m reading from the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ bible. The missing texts being an error makes the most sense, I mean, if the translators were trying to alter the text, they wouldn’t acknowledge the presence of the text at all, would they? Anyways, great site, you definitely get a thumbs up in my book =D
Alejandro,
Thank you for the kind words. I hope you can find some things here that are helpful to you and your walk with God.
This was extremely helpful. Thanks
[...] A friend of mine wrote an article about times when different translations might choose to include or not include a verse that I think explains this really well. So if you’re wondering about what is involved in this aspect of Bible translating, why not stop by and read it?The Case of the Missing Verse: John 5:4 [...]