Textual Criticism 🌟*

About the science of Textual Criticism and a few related notes...

There are three major competing Greek sources to use for translating the New Testament: the Critical Text, the Majority Text, and the Textus Receptus.  There are also Texts for the Hebrew Old Testament. The science of assembling these manuscripts is called “Textual Criticism”.

Among them we had all that was available of ancient manuscripts of the Bible when Early translations incl Geneva & KJV were written. Then much later along came the Dead Sea Scrolls (which gave us much earlier manuscripts), and early 1st & 2nd  Century fragments of the NT manuscripts were uncovered. And then through Textual Criticism it was found that certian verses were not part of the earlier manuscripts, so they are now listed in brackets in current Bibles, or omitted in others with a foot note added, and notes from translation team/publishers added to the from of the Scriptures, so you know which source or sources they used to translate this version.

1. The verses omitted were simply a light guide by a few scribes to bring context to a passage based on the culture, for the reader to be aware of, or were a known story at that time that someone passed down, or that summarized a ending of a book or chapter because it appeared unfinished (but was actually on purpose 😉).

2. These verses omitted do Not add to or change teachings or doctrines in Scripture at all, and in fact with the summary ending noted, the scribe collected certian verses already in NT to piece together a quick ending.

3. Scripture is reliable up to 99.9%, you can absolutely trust it.

4. The best versions all say the same thing if you compare them in a paralell Bible, like using the online Bible tool at BibleGateway.com , as noted in other articles with examples. Even though they had hundreds of different translators working on the different versions. It is because the manuscripts are is reliable and translatable from Hebrew/Greek to English. 

Watch this video discussing this interesting topical information on the verses and manuscripts; it is worth a watch.

Hope this helps 😊