I’m a train driver, and to help me concentrate on keeping several hundred tonnes of train and human cargo safe, I listen to audiobooks. And sermons. And the Bible.
Listening to God’s Word — as opposed to reading it from a printed Bible — reaches you via different senses. I have often suggested for some Bible readings at church that we suspend our tradition’s habit of reading along and just listen – the way the first recipients did. You take in different cadences. Different details.
I was struck the other day listening to Mark chapter 1 that Jesus got cranky when a man asked to be healed. That’s the subject of Word Matters #3.
So before we get to angry Jesus in Mark 1:41, we need to start with the night textual criticism made my neighbour cry.
When confidence collapses
I was a second-year student at Moore College. I already knew that there were different Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and that clever people argued about them. And at the beginning of second-year, they start to teach you about it. At first it felt exciting and grown up. Then it started to unravel my confidence in Scripture.
A few months later there was a knock on my door in the dorm. My neighbour Steve came in, sat down, put his head in his hands and said:
“I do not believe any more. I cannot.”
Same issue. Same subject. Same sinking feeling.
This series — Word Matters — is meant to help people like me and Steve, who love the Bible, start to learn how the words got to us, and suddenly wonder if the whole thing has fallen apart.
The first wobble
When I started college, the Bible Society gave every Moore student a copy of UBS4, the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament. It is a slim little volume with two important bits:
the main Greek text, which the editors believe is the best reconstruction of the originals the apparatus at the bottom, which lists the main alternative readings and the manuscripts that support them
Later I found a matching-binding commentary on those decisions, edited by Bruce Metzger. It is basically the committee minutes:
“Most of us went with this reading because…” “A strong minority wanted that reading because…” And sometimes one stubborn dissenter: “You’re all wrong and here’s why.”
At first that transparency terrified me. I had grown up thinking “the Greek text” was a single, settled thing. Instead I discovered arguments, probabilities and letter-by-letter debates.
My first reaction was simple:
If they’re still arguing about the wording, how can I trust anything?
So while my confidence wobbled, I borrowed the trust of people who knew more than I did — Don Carson, Philip Jensen, Sandy Grant, Peter Bolt, Peter Jensen, Mark Thompson. People whose ministries I respected. They knew all this… and still trusted the Bible.
Eventually the panic eased. And I came out the other side convinced of two things:
textual criticism does not undermine confidence in Scripture done properly, it actually strengthens it
So when Steve arrived in pieces a few months later, I knew exactly what he was feeling — and I could say to him, “This is scary… but it is not the end of your faith.”
What textual criticism is (and is not)
Very simply: textual criticism compares the many handwritten copies of the New Testament to work out, as carefully as possible, what the apostles actually wrote.
Because scribes made mistakes:
skipped lines doubled phrases smoothed bumps harmonised passages
And sometimes scribes made conscious changes — usually small clarifications.
The good news?
We have thousands of Greek manuscripts, plus early translations, plus quotations in church fathers.
Meaning: we can see the differences, line them up, and make reasoned decisions.
Most variants are boring: spelling, word order, obvious slips.
A tiny handful are interesting.
None of them change the gospel.
“But the Qur’an only has one text…”
If you talk Bible with Muslim friends, you’ll hear:
“We have one perfect Qur’an; you Christians have dozens of corrupt Bibles.”
It sounds powerful until you learn the history. Islam also had multiple reading traditions, collections, and recognised variants.
My point isn’t to score points.
It’s simply that no religious text floats down from heaven without history.
The question is whether that history is visible and testable.
Christian textual criticism is out in the open.
That’s not a bug — it’s a feature.
Why the apparatus built my confidence
Reading UBS and Metzger showed me the editors aren’t magicians — just scholars doing homework in public.
For each variant they weigh:
external evidence — which manuscripts support which reading internal evidence — which reading best explains the others context — what best fits the writer’s style
Transparency kills conspiracy theories.
And it shows how little is actually at stake.
God didn’t inspire Scripture and then hide its transmission in a murky black box.
He gave us evidence piled high enough to study.
A pastoral word for people in the wobble
If this subject makes your stomach drop:
you’re not weak — you’re paying attention borrow trust from someone older and wiser for a bit remember what is and is not at stake use the tools — the apparatus isn’t the enemy
Where Word Matters is heading next
Next up: Mark 1:41
Was Jesus moved with compassion… or with anger?
We’ll walk through that textual decision and show what actually changes — and what doesn’t.
Because in the end, words matter.
They matter enough that the church has spent centuries counting, comparing and arguing over them — so that when you open your Bible in English, you can be confident that what you are reading is what God actually breathed out.