WHY DOES MY BIBLE HAVE MISSING VERSES?

QUESTION:
“WHY DOES MY BIBLE SKIP FROM MATTHEW 17:20 to 22? WHAT HAPPENED TO MATTHEW 17:21?”

ANSWER: GETTING TO THE ORIGINAL
Matthew 17:21 is omitted from most modern translations because it isn’t found in the earliest texts. Specifically, it’s missing from the two almost complete versions of the New Testament we have from very early – the 4th century (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus). Since the verse is only found in 5th century manuscripts or later, scholars assume that it was added by a later scribe, thus not original to Matthew. 

This is critical to understand. When someone says “they’ve changed the Bible!” and they point to these verses omitted in modern translations, the correct response is “yes!” But understand the “they” is not the modern translators. The “they” is all the scribes (thousands of them) through 2000 years of church history that often altered the received text.

“PIOUS ERROR”
However, equally critical to understand is this: these alterations to the text are not a result of a scribe seeking to pervert or overturn the received Apostolic tradition. Rather these are almost universally cases of “pious error”; when a scribe altered the text to bring greater clarity or to be helpful to the reader. Scribes generally revered the texts they were copying.

In the case of Matthew 17:21, we can confidently surmise this is what happened. The content of that verse is not found in any early versions of Matthew, but it IS found in all versions of Mark’s account of the same story. You can read it in Mark 9:29; “this kind can only come out by prayer.” A scribe lifted it from there where it was original to Mark and placed it in his copy of Matthew where it is not Matthew’s original writing.

WHY SCRIBAL ERRORS HAPPENED
If scribes believed they were copying holy Scripture, how could such a thing happen? (And it happened a lot, there are 100’s of thousands of alternate readings in the New Testament manuscripts!) Well, scribes copied texts for a living, so they would be aware of most if not all of the New Testament material. If you are copying a story from one Gospel and you are aware of the same story recorded slightly differently in another gospel, some scribes would put the missing material from one and put it in the other.

The goal was harmonization of two or more gospel accounts or clarification. And since in those centuries it was VERY rare for individuals or even churches to have a whole, bound Bible, scribes would be motivated to give the reader ALL the material they were aware of.

OTHER CASES OF HARMONIZATION
We have many cases of this kind of attempt at harmonization by scribes in later manuscripts.

See for example, Matthew 8:28, some texts change the name of the region to fit Mark’s spelling (Gerasenes) Mark 5:1;
or Luke 7:35, some manuscripts inserted Matthew’s rendition of the line, “wisdom is proved right by all her children” instead of “wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”
Also, Matthew 18:11 is missing for the same reason. Its content, “and I, the Son of Man, have come to save the lost” is a late insertion from a Scribe who lifted it from Luke 19:10.
Also, Mark 11:26 is missing because its content, “But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your sins” was lifted from Matthew 6:15.
Luke 17:36, also missing because its content, “two men will be working in the field, one will be taken, the other left” was a harmonization with Matthew 24:40.
Even the long ending of the Lord’s Prayer is pious error and not original to Matthew – a later scribe lifted a doxology from David in 1 Chronicles 29:11-13 which serves as the Old Testament foundation for the closing, “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” (Matthew 6:13).
HOW TO KNOW WHAT’S ORIGINAL?
One might ask, how we can know we have an attempt at harmonization and not simply the gospel writers using common sources, accounting for their agreement? The Synoptic Gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, Luke) did in fact use common sources and their wording is often close to identical. We can identify the (rare) cases of scribal harmonization by finding which common verses do not appear in the earliest, and most reliable manuscripts.

Since we’ve found many older manuscripts than the ones used in the “Received Tradition” (KJV), we’ve grown in our ability to identify which readings are non-original. Thus, it’s the best (oldest) manuscripts that form the basis for translators pulling out parts of the text deemed to be non-original.

CONFIDENCE IN THE TEXT
Some people may be troubled by these changes to the text over centuries. Three things to say about this:

1. ROOTING OUT CHANGES
First, this process of refining the text is not about changing the bible, it’s about removing changes from the Bible. Everyone who believes in the idea of inspiration should want to know exactly what these originally inspired authors actually wrote, without any amendments or alterations, to the best of our ability. A passage may have come to us that we assumed was original because it got embedded in a certain tradition (like the KJV). Just as we cling to the inspired word, we dare not cling to words as inspired once it has become clear they do not deserve that status.

2. CHANGES ARE RARE
Second, cases of harmonization or pious error are rare. Very rare given the age of the Biblical manuscripts and their sheer number. When you total ALL the lines of text in the New Testament where scribal errors and alternate readings make it unclear as to what the original reading was, you get a number that amounts to less than 1% of the total.

But skeptics will tell you that there are 100’s of thousands of errors in the manuscripts! They are right. Around 400,000 to be more prescise. But this number is only possible because of how many manuscripts we have – far more than any other ancient document (and it’s not close). Think of that huge number of errors in relationship to the huge number of manuscripts (5,300). They count every variant, including all spelling changes as errors. Which means you must stack up the variants, not against the total number manuscripts, but the total number of words from from ALL the manuscripts.

I can’t find a calculation for the total number of words in all the manuscripts, but it’s well over 10 million, since there’s over 7 million in just 60 complete copies of the New Testament and there are ~135,000 words in the N.T. Let’s assume with all the other 1000’s of partial manuscripts the total number of words is 16 million. Now, put 400,000 errors over 16,000,000 words and your rate of error is 2.5%.

Given that so many of these errors do not affect meaning in the slightest, our confidence in the purity of the text is even higher than this 97.5% figure – ~99.5% is commonly cited as indisputably original.

3. NO CHANGE IN IDEAS
Third, the substantive changes in the text over time, show no corruption or alteration of any major Christian idea. Take one example, Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch from Acts 8. Verse 37 is not in the earliest manuscripts in which the Eunuch says, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” Again, this is probably a result of pious error, a scribe wanting to clarify the basis of a proper baptismal confession on the Messiahship and Deity of Jesus. So this line is not in the best translations.

Now, does this scribal insertion introduce these ideas? If so, does this mean the errors literally changed Christian theology?? No and no! In the rest of Acts, we already had all this doctrine spelled out in other uncontroversial passages. We knew:

that one must believe in Jesus to be baptized (Acts 8:12, 18:8),
that Jesus was known as “Christ” (Acts 2:38)
that Jesus was the “Son of God” (Acts 9:20).
So, this clarification of a scribe, while it does alter Luke’s original words, did not add or hide doctrine. A scribe merely felt that Luke’s account left too much unsaid, so he felt the need to spell it out. Was this an error? Yes. Should we then remove it from the text? Yes. Should we see the insertion as divinely inspired scripture even if it agrees with other scripture? No.

You’ll find this article very helpful:

https://embracethetruth.org/blog/terrified-of-400000-errors-in-the-new-testament/