Read part 1 here
Read part 2 here
Read part 3 here
Read part 4 here
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•Try and find these scriptures in NIV and ESV on your computer, phone or device right now if you are in doubt:
Matthew 17:21, 18:11, 23:14;
Mark 7:16, 9:44, 9:46;
Luke 17:36, 23:17;
John 5:4; Acts 8:37.
(We must keep in mind, of course, that chapter and verse
numbers do not even exist in these ancient manuscripts—the biblical text was
first divided into chapters in a twelfth century copy of the Latin Vulgate, and
verse divisions were added in the mid-1500s.[1])
Matthew 17:21
Matthew 17:21 in the KJV says:
21 Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer
and fasting.
If you look for Matt 17:21 in the NIV, you will not find the verse text there, but you will find a footnote: Some manuscripts include here words similar to Mark 9:29. The footnote in the ESV reads: Some manuscripts insert verse 21: But this kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting. And if you go to Mark 9:29 in the NIV, you will find:
29 He replied, “This kind can come out only by
prayer.”
The ESV for Mark 9:29 reads:
29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven
out by anything but prayer.”
While this is not exactly the same as the wording from Matt. 17:21 in the King James Version (which mentions both (prayer and fasting), it is very close. Let’s tackle this verse in two steps. First, why is this verse missing from Matthew’s Gospel in the NIV and ESV, and second, why does the Mark passage in the NIV not include “and fasting”?
As the footnote in the NIV (and ESV) point out, there are
differences in the Greek manuscripts of Matthew at this point in the text, with
the older manuscripts such as Codex
Vaticanus not including this verse. The simplest explanation for how this
difference came to exist in the Greek manuscripts of Matthew is this:
A scribe is making a copy of
Matthew. When he gets to this passage, he remembers having copied the parallel
passage from Mark 9 at some previous time (or he remembers Mark’s version of
the event from having heard it read in church services). He thinks, “But the
way I know this story, Jesus here says something about prayer and fasting.” So
he looks at a copy of Mark he has available, and sure enough, there’s another
sentence in Mark’s account. So the scribe assumes that the previous scribe, who
produced the manuscript he is working from to make a new copy, must have
accidentally left that sentence out. So to fix what he believes to be an error
in the copy from which he is working, he adds that sentence into his copy of
Matthew. Now, any future copies made from the new copy he is making (and any
copies made from them, and so on), include this sentence from Mark inserted
into Matthew. (Remember: chapter and
verse numbers did not yet exist at this point in history, so he couldn’t tell
whether the sentence was missing or not just by looking for a skipped number,
like critics of modern translations do.)
“But what about ‘and fasting’ being left off Mark 9:29 in
the NIV, ESV, and other modern translations?” you may ask. Both Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, two of the oldest Greek
manuscripts we have access to, omit “and fasting.” Scholars debate the reasons
as to why the great majority of manuscripts include these words, yet the oldest
ones do not. Perhaps some copyists thought that prayer alone was too simple.[2]
Many scholars believe that the practice of regular fast days that developed in
the early church following the first century may have led to the insertion of
these words. James A. Brooks, in his New American Commentary series volume on
Mark, writes:
All
except the two earliest and generally regarded best Greek manuscripts, two
early versions, and one early Christian writer add “and fasting” (KJV, NKJV),
no doubt because of the prevalence of fasting in the early and medieval church
(a similar addition is in Acts 10:30; 1 Cor 7:5). The idea is completely out of
place, however, in a passage that stresses the necessity of dependence on God
instead of human resources of any kind.[3]
The key point here is that casting out demons depends on reliance on God, not on our own power or innate authority, and should not be approached lightly.
So, the truth taught in Matthew 17:21 as the KJV has it has
not been removed from the Bible in modern English translations. It is still
there in Mark 9:29; it has just been omitted from Matthew 17, where it likely
did not exist in the first place.
Matthew 18:11
This is one of the verses actually mentioned in the meme itself. In the King James Version, it reads:
11 For the Son of Man has come to save that which
was lost.
The NIV and ESV do not include this verse in Matthew, but do
have a footnote pointing out that some manuscripts at this point insert the
words of Luke 19:10. And if we look at Luke 19:10 in these modern translations,
we see:
10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the
lost. (NIV and ESV have identical
wording)
In this particular instance, it doesn’t seem to be that the
copyist was trying to fill in what he considered to be “missing,” as the
surrounding passage (which has to do with the punishment of offenders) does not
match the context of the verse in Luke (which is the story of Zacchaeus). Craig
Blomberg thinks that a later scribe may have added these words here to connect
this parable more closely with Matthew 9:13 (“for
I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” KJV,
or in the NIV, “For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners”).[4]
Again, the truth of this verse has not been removed from the Bible. Modern translations simply
don’t include these words at this location in Matthew, because the manuscript
evidence indicates it was probably not originally part of Matthew’s Gospel.
Matthew 23:14
In the King James Version, this verse reads:
14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye
shall receive the greater damnation.
The ESV and NIV do not include verse 14, but have a
footnote: Some
manuscripts include here words similar to Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47.
In the NIV, Mark 12:40 says:
40They devour widows’ houses and for a show make
lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.
while Luke 20:47 says:
They
devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be
punished most severely.
In Matthew 23, Jesus is pronouncing woes against the scribes
(teachers of the law in the NIV) and Pharisees, speaking directly to them in
the second person. In Mark 12 and Luke 20, Jesus is warning his disciples to
beware of the scribes and Pharisees, speaking of them in the third person.
The case with this “missing verse” is very similar to the instance
of Matt. 17:21 discussed above. A copyist working from a manuscript of Matthew
and noting the similarity between the “woes” Jesus is pronouncing in this passage
and the warnings to the disciples in Mark and Luke may have decided to insert
this verse to harmonize Matthew with the other two. Not only is this verse not
present in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, it is also
missing from the oldest translations into Syriac and Coptic.[5]
Bottom line: the material about the scribes and Pharisees
devouring widows’ houses and making a pretense of long prayers is still in the modern English translations,
just not in Matthew, where it probably didn’t exist in the original and the
earliest copies.
In the next installment of this series, we will address the
alleged missing verses from Mark’s Gospel listed in the post.
[2]
Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Mark:
A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 2001), 268.
[3]
James A. Brooks, Mark, vol. 23, The
New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1991),
148.
[4]
Craig Blomberg, Matthew, vol. 22, The
New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992),
276.
[5] Craig
Blomberg, Matthew, vol. 22, The New
American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 344
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