Textual variants in the Gospel of Mark

Textual variants in the Gospel of Mark are the subject of the study called textual criticism of the New Testament. Textual variants in manuscripts arise when a copyist makes deliberate or inadvertent alterations to a text that is being reproduced.^{: 251–271} An abbreviated list of textual variants in this particular book is given in this article below.

Origen, writing in the 3rd century, was one of the first who made remarks about differences between manuscripts of texts that were eventually collected as the New Testament.^: 200 He declared his preferences among variant readings. For example, in Matthew 27:16–17, he favored "Barabbas" against "Jesus Barabbas" (In Matt. Comm. ser. 121).^: 201 In John 1:28, he preferred "Bethabara" over "Bethany" as the location where John was baptizing (Commentary on John VI.40 (24)).^: 201 "Gergeza" was preferred over "Geraza" or "Gadara" (Commentary on John VI.40 (24) – see Matthew 8:28).^: 201

Most of the variations are not significant and some common alterations include the deletion, rearrangement, repetition, or replacement of one or more words when the copyist's eye returns to a similar word in the wrong location of the original text.^: 253 If their eye skips to an earlier word, they may create a repetition (error of dittography).^: 254 If their eye skips to a later word, they may create an omission.^{: 253–254} They may resort to performing a rearranging of words to retain the overall meaning without compromising the context.^: 257 In other instances, the copyist may add text from memory from a similar or parallel text in another location.^: 257 Otherwise, they may also replace some text of the original with an alternative reading.^: 257 Spellings occasionally change. Synonyms may be substituted. A pronoun may be changed into a proper noun (such as "he said" becoming "Jesus said").^{: 254–257} John Mill's 1707 Greek New Testament was estimated to contain some 30,000 variants in its accompanying textual apparatus which was based on "nearly 100 [Greek] manuscripts."^: 154 Peter J. Gurry puts the number of non-spelling variants among New Testament manuscripts around 500,000, though he acknowledges his estimate is higher than all previous ones.

Legend

A guide to the sigla (symbols and abbreviations) most frequently used in the body of this article.

Textual variants

For a list of many variants not noted here, see the ECM of Mark.

See also

• Alexandrian text-type
• Biblical inerrancy
• Byzantine text-type
• Caesarean text-type
• Categories of New Testament manuscripts
• Comparison of codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus
• List of New Testament verses not included in modern English translations
• Textual variants in the New Testament
  • Textual variants in the Gospel of Matthew
  • Textual variants in the Gospel of Luke
  • Textual variants in the Gospel of John
• Western text-type

References

Further reading

• Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine, ed. E. Nestle, K. Aland, Stuttgart 1981.
• Metzger, Bruce Manning; Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516667-1.
• Ehrman, Bart D. (1996). The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 223–227.
• Metzger, Bruce Manning (1994). A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament: A Companion Volume to the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament. London, New York: United Bible Societies.

External links

• The Comparative Critical Greek New Testament
• Variantes textuais (in Portuguese)
• Varianten Textus receptus versus Nestle-Aland
• The Gospel of Mark part of the Holy Bible