ACTS 15:34 TEXTUAL CRITICISM

Q: Why is this verse missing from my Bible?

It is obvious from the fact that you caught the problem with the missing verse in Acts that you are reading your Bible very carefully and not just skimming through it as so many Christians do. You will really get a lot more out of the Scriptures that way, but inevitable questions will also arise that must be wrestled with.

Unfortunately, we do not have any of the original documents in the New Testament in the actual handwriting of the authors. However, we do have over 10,000 different Greek manuscripts (handwritten copies of copies) of New Testament writings, some dating to relatively soon after the originals were first written. Because of this, we can be much more certain of the wording of the New Testament books than of any other ancient document.

It is the first job of translators to have the best Greek text in front of them before they begin to translate it into English. They reconstruct this text by carefully comparing all the manuscripts available with one another. Where there are differences in wording between any of the manuscripts, they must make a judgment call as to which one has the most likely wording. Of the many differences in wording that they have found, most can be discounted immediately as either (1) obvious mistakes in copying (i.e. typos) or (2) places where one copyist probably added an explanatory note into his copy and a later copyist mistakenly thought that the note was part of the original writing. Of the remaining cases where the translators are not sure of the exact wording in the original Greek document, only a handful make any real difference in our understanding of the text, and none affects any basic belief of Christianity.

When the translators of the King James Bible began their work around 1600 AD, they decided to go with the “majority rule” to determine the Greek text they would work with. In other words, they went with whatever reading was present in most of the manuscripts they had available to them. The words “But it seemed good to Silas to remain there” in Acts 15 were present in most of the Greek manuscripts so they included them and assigned them the verse number 34. [Of course, there is nothing special about verse divisions since they were only first added to the Bible as a convenience in the year 1555 AD.]

The Greek text used for most modern translations differs from the text used for the King James Bible for at least two reasons. In the first place, we now have access to many more manuscripts than they did. In the second place, few modern translations rely on a “Majority Text” since it is felt that more weight should be given to the earlier manuscripts than to later copies.

It turns out that the words “But it seemed good to Silas to remain there” are not present in the earliest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and therefore they are not included in most modern translations. Also it was felt to be more likely that (a) a copyist at some time had added these words to make the account more consistent with Silas' appearance in verse 40 than that (b) other copyists had purposely or accidentally omitted those words from the original text. However, in adding these “explanatory” words, the copyist created a clear contradiction to verse 33.

If you are still uncomfortable with the fact that some group of scholars has made the decision for you as to which Greek words they chose to translate, I strongly suggest that you get (if you haven't already) a good study Bible to read. Besides a wealth of useful background information, they will contain translator's footnotes for each word or phrase in the Bible where there is a sizeable difference of opinion regarding the original Greek wording and/or its translation. Thus, you will be given possible alternative readings to consider for yourself, wherever they happen to exist.