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The first two words of 5:20, the third-person imperative and the demonstrative pronoun (γινωσκέτω ὅτι ginōsketō hoti) would seem to be the original reading and were altered to the second-person plural imperative (γινώσκετε ginōskete).
"Copyists were perplexed, not knowing whether ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ (his soul) referred to the soul of the person converted or to the soul of the person who converted someone else."
Variant Reading(s): differing versions of a word or phrase found in two or more manuscripts within a variation unit (see below). Variant readings are also called alternate readings.
This textual variant would be listed as a significant one. Textual scholar Daniel Wallace writes, “A textual variant is simply any difference from a standard text (e.g., a printed text, a particular manuscript, etc.) that involves spelling, word order, omission, addition, substitution, or a total rewrite of the text.”
Daniel Baird Wallace (born June 5, 1952) is an American professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is also the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, the purpose of which is digitizing all known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament via digital photographs.
In the New Testament, we have numerous instances where the missing verse(s) evidently have come from other NT books or other parts of the same book itself.
P11 (a copy of a part of the NT in Greek) was the first Papyrus codex brought to light. Tischendorf saw it in 1862 and dated it as 'late fourth or early fifth century.' It is part of the same codex as P14.
There are many textual variants in the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. What are textual variants? And how well do our modern translations inform their readers about these variants?
Whose fault is it that the churchgoer for decades has been less informed about the Bible that they carry than the atheists, Muslims, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Skeptics?
Philip Wesley Comfort (born October 28, 1950) is a professor, writer, editor, and expert on the Bible who specializes in textual studies of the Greek New Testament.