400,000 Textual Variants? What They Actually Are
0:51 Short
About this video
400,000 textual variants in the New Testament. Sounds devastating - until a top textual scholar tells you what they actually are.
Daniel B. Wallace, one of the leading New Testament textual scholars in the world, has said for years: of those roughly 400,000 variants, over 99% make no difference to the meaning of the text. About 70% are spelling differences. Less than 1% are both meaningful and viable - his own estimate is closer to one quarter of 1%.
And here is what every textual scholar, Christian and skeptical, has agreed on since the 1700s: no essential Christian doctrine depends on any disputed variant. Not one.
Full episode - "Can I Trust the Bible?": https://youtu.be/6v4F2WbPUbg
Transcript (show)
400,000 textual variants in the New Testament sounds devastating until a top textual scholar tells you what they actually are. Daniel B. Wallace, one of the leading New Testament textual scholars in the world, has said for years of those roughly 400,000 variants, over 99% make no difference to the meaning of the text. About 70% are spelling differences. less than 1% are both meaningful and viable and his own estimate is closer to one quarter of 1%.
And here is what every textual scholar, Christian and skeptical, has agreed on since the 1700s. No essential Christian doctrine depends on any disputed variant. Not one.
Transcript from the video's captions on YouTube.
