The Bible underneath it
Verses Added Later
Three of the most important passages are not in the earliest manuscripts. Your own Bible says so.
The point in one sentence
Three of the most theologically important passages in the New Testament were not written by the original authors, modern translators print that fact in a footnote, and the King James Bible the Church uses prints all three as plain scripture with no note at all.
Three passages, flagged by the translators themselves
Open any modern translation and read the note beneath each of these.
| Passage | What it contains | The footnote in a modern translation |
|---|---|---|
| Mark 16:9-20 | The resurrection appearances, snake handling, drinking poison | "The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9 to 20" |
| John 7:53-8:11 | The woman caught in adultery, "let he who is without sin" | "The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53 to 8:11" |
| 1 John 5:7-8 | The clearest Trinity proof text in the King James Bible | "Not found in any Greek manuscript before the fourteenth century" |
Source: the footnotes printed in modern translations, viewable free at biblegateway.com. The King James prints none of these notes.
Every quotation elsewhere on this site is King James, because that is the Bible the Church publishes and preaches from. This page is the one place a modern translation has to be cited, and the reason is the point: the footnotes only exist there. Open the King James at Mark 16, John 8, or 1 John 5 and the disputed passages are simply there, unmarked, indistinguishable from the rest. 1 John 5:7 in particular, the one explicit Trinity proof text in Christian scripture, survives in the King James and in almost no modern Bible.
The evidence
- Read the Mark 16 footnote in a modern translation, then read the same verses in the King James
- Read the John 8 footnote
- Read the 1 John 5 footnote
- We have zero original manuscripts of any New Testament book. The earliest complete New Testament is Codex Sinaiticus, mid fourth century.
- There are roughly 400,000 textual variants across the Greek manuscripts, more variations than there are words in the New Testament.
The vast majority of those variants are trivial: spelling, word order, obvious slips of the pen. That belongs first, because it is what makes the next point matter.
The common rebuttals
"99 percent of the variants are just spelling." True. But the significant ones are not randomly scattered. They cluster on exactly the load bearing passages: the only explicit Trinity proof text, the resurrection ending of the earliest gospel, and the one story of Jesus forgiving without requiring repentance.
"We can reconstruct the original text with confidence." For most of the text, yes. For these three, no, and the proof is that the translation committees flag them. That is not an atheist's claim about the Bible. That is the Bible's own publishers.