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MAINSTREAM MESSENGER Vol. 1, No. 3 November 1998USE THE BEST GREEK TEXTS The letter to the Ephesians was probably written on papyrus. In the Apostle Paul’s day they wove and pressed papyrus reeds to form a writing material. If a church or an individual wanted a copy of Paul’s letter for themselves, they had to make their own copy by hand or have someone make it for them by hand. It was 15 centuries before the invention of the printing press and 20 centuries before the advent of photocopiers.Over the course of fifteen hundred years, a lot of handwritten copies of Paul’s letter were made. Almost all of those that still exist are copies of copies of copies of copies that have been handed down through the ages. When so much material was copied so many times by hand, it was inevitable that inadvertent errors in transcription and mistakes in copying were made. In 1611, when King James had the Bible translated into English, scholars used the best Hebrew and Greek manuscripts that were available. Those texts dated from 900-1100 A.D. Since that time, modern archaeologists have uncovered numerous fragments of ancient papyrus copies of the Greek New Testament. Some of these papyri date as early as 100-200 A.D. One of those recently discovered papyri contains Ephesians 5:21-22. P46 dates from around 200 A.D. and is preserved in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, Ireland. That papyrus copy does not include the word for "submit" in the phrase that comprises verse 22. The earliest manuscripts we have that do contain the word for "submit" date from 400 A.D. Modern textual scholars generally give the greatest weight of authenticity and originality to the earliest copy of a text. That is why the word for "submit" is omitted from the current Nestle and UBS Greek text of Ephesians 5:22. If all of this seems like Greek to you, it would be wise to be thankful for the men and women who have devoted their lives to the study of Greek and Hebrew and to the science that determines which ancient manuscripts are the best and most authentic. Among those who have done this are Dan Kent and Alan Brehm -- the Southwestern seminary professors who resigned rather than sign the SBC’s family amendment. They certainly do not deserve to be forced to forfeit their jobs for being faithful to the Bible and their calling. |
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