Textual variants in the Gospel of John are the subject of the study calledtextual criticism of theNew Testament. Textual variants inmanuscripts arise when a copyist makes deliberate or inadvertent alterations to a text that is being reproduced. An abbreviated list of textual variants in this particular book is given in this article below.
Origen, writing in the 3rd century, was one of the first who made remarks about differences between manuscripts of texts that were eventually collected as theNew Testament. InJohn 1:28, he preferred "Bethabara" over "Bethany" as the location where John was baptizing (Commentary on John VI.40 (24)). "Gergeza" was preferred over "Geraza" or "Gadara" (Commentary on John VI.40 (24) – seeMatthew 8:28).
Some common alterations include the deletion, rearrangement, repetition, or replacement of one or more words when the copyist's eye returns to a similar word in the wrong location of the original text. If their eye skips to an earlier word, they may create a repetition (error ofdittography). If their eye skips to a later word, they may create an omission. They may resort to performing a rearranging of words to retain the overall meaning without compromising the context. In other instances, the copyist may add text from memory from a similar or parallel text in another location. Otherwise, they may also replace some text of the original with an alternative reading. Spellings occasionally change. Synonyms may be substituted. A pronoun may be changed into a proper noun (such as "he said" becoming "Jesus said").John Mill's 1707 Greek New Testament was estimated to contain some 30,000 variants in its accompanying textual apparatus[1] which was based on "nearly 100 [Greek] manuscripts."[2] Peter J. Gurry puts the number of non-spelling variants among New Testament manuscripts around 500,000, though he acknowledges his estimate is higher than all previous ones.[3]
ο εκλεκτος του υιος (the elect Son) – ita,ff2c syrpalmss copsa
ο υιος (the Son) –rell
1Textual variants in John 2
John 2:3
οινον ουκ ειχον οτι συνετελεσθη ο οινος του γαμου, ειτα (they did not have wine because the wine of the wedding reception was finished, then) – א* itmss syrhmg
υστερησαντος οινου (they were running short of wine) –rell
ζωην αιωνιον (life eternal) – א C(*) D L Ψ0100f13 33 it vgmss syrp, h copsa,bo Irenaeuslat
ζωην (life) –rell
1Textual variants in John 21
John 21:7
οι δε ειπον δι οληϲ (τηϲ) νυκτοϲ εκοπιαϲαμεν και (κοπιαϲαντεϲ) ουδεν ελαβομεν επι δε τω ϲω ρηματι (ονοματι) βαλουμεν (and they said: we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word we will let down) –𝔓66, א1, Ψ, some mss of Vulgate, copbo
^Adam Fox,John Mill and Richard Bentley: A Study of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament 1675–1729 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), pp. 105–115; John Mill,Novum Testamentum Graecum, cum lectionibus variantibus MSS (Oxford 1707)
Bruce M. Metzger &Bart D. Ehrman, "The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration",OUP New York, Oxford, 4 edition, 2005
Bart D. Ehrman, "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament",Oxford University Press, New York - Oxford, 1996, pp. 223–227.
Bruce M. Metzger, "A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament: A Companion Volume to the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament", 1994,United Bible Societies, London & New York.
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