Every so often a reader following a reference finds that it leads nowhere. Matthew 17 jumps from verse 20 to verse 22. Acts 8 goes from 36 to 38. John 5 skips verse 4. Open the King James Version and the missing verses are all there. Online, lists circulate of “verses removed from modern Bibles”, sometimes with the suggestion that something is being taken away from readers.
What has happened is simpler and more interesting. The verses were added to the text by copyists over the centuries. The verse numbers were added later still, by a printer, to a Greek text that included them. When modern editors went back to older manuscripts and found the verses missing there, they took out the words but could not take out the numbers, because the whole world already used them. So the numbers remain, with nothing to number.
This article goes through those verses one by one, with the reasons Open Word Bible’s records give for each, and explains how the translation shows them. For the method behind the decisions, see How textual criticism recovers the text and When the manuscripts disagree.
Why the numbers outlived the words
The New Testament’s verse numbers come from Robert Estienne, a Paris printer, who added them to his Greek New Testament of 1551. See Chapter and verse numbers. Estienne’s Greek text was the one that, with small changes, became the Textus Receptus, the “received text” behind the King James Version. It rested mainly on Erasmus’s editions, which used a small number of late manuscripts, and it had all of these verses.
Over the following three centuries, older manuscripts became available to scholars: Codex Alexandrinus, then Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, then the papyri. See Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. Again and again, these older copies were shorter. Editors concluded that in most of these places the shorter text was the earlier one, and that scribes had added words, often for good reasons.
Open Word Bible translates the SBL Greek New Testament, edited by Michael Holmes. Like the other major modern critical editions, it leaves most of these verses out and keeps the traditional numbering, so verse 22 of Matthew 17 is still called verse 22.
What a reader sees in Open Word Bible
In the reader, the verse number is simply skipped. Matthew 17:20 is followed by 17:22. Nothing is hidden, though: the sentence just before the gap carries a footnote, and behind the footnote is a meaning decision in the category text variant. It gives the reading followed, quotes the missing words in English as an alternative, and explains the evidence in plain language. Like other text variant decisions, most of these end by asking a reviewer to check the account against the scholarly apparatus of the edition, and all of them remain drafts until a named reviewer approves them.
Here is Matthew 17:20 in the Balanced level, the sentence that carries the note for the missing verse 21:
He told them, “It is because your faith is so small. Truly I tell you, if you have faith even the size of a mustard seed, you can tell this mountain, ‘Go from here to over there,’ and it will go. There will be nothing you cannot do.”
The note says that the SBL edition has no verse 21, and gives it: “But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” Then it gives the reasons.
The reader’s settings never bring a missing verse back. In Open Word Bible, settings change wording, never meaning. Whether a verse belongs in the text is a question about meaning and evidence, so it is answered by a decision and a footnote, the same at every level. See Settings change wording, never meaning.
Words borrowed from another Gospel
Most of the missing verses in the Gospels have a clear source: the same words, or nearly the same, appear in another place. Scribes knew the Gospels well, often by heart. When a passage in one Gospel seemed shorter than its parallel in another, it was natural to fill it out, sometimes deliberately and sometimes from memory. Scholars call this harmonization. See How scribes made mistakes.
Matthew 17:21. “But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” The record notes that the first hand of Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus and some early translations lack the verse. It is found in many later manuscripts and was probably added from Mark 9:29, the parallel story, where many manuscripts also add “and fasting”.
Matthew 18:11. “For the Son of Man came to save the lost.” Early manuscripts go straight from verse 10 to verse 12. The record notes that many later ones add a verse very like Luke 19:10, probably taken from there to lead into the parable of the lost sheep.
Matthew 23:14. A woe against those who devour widows’ houses and make long prayers for show. The earliest manuscripts and several early versions lack it. Many later manuscripts have it, but the record points out that some put it before verse 13 and some after, in words that match Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47. A verse that moves about like this is usually a later addition looking for a place.
Mark 7:16. “If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.” It is missing from the earliest manuscripts, and the record suggests it was copied from Mark 4:9 and 4:23, where Jesus says the same after a parable.
Mark 9:44 and 9:46. “Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” These words belong to Mark 9:48, where they quote Isaiah 66:24. Many later manuscripts repeat them after verses 43 and 45 as well, so that all three sayings about cutting off a hand, a foot and an eye end the same way. The records note that the earliest manuscripts lack the repetitions.
Mark 11:26. “But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in the heavens forgive your trespasses.” The earliest manuscripts lack it, and the record notes that it is almost the same as Matthew 6:15, from which scribes likely copied it to round out the saying.
Mark 15:28. “And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, And he was counted with the lawless.” The words quote Isaiah 53:12, which Jesus quotes in Luke 22:37. The record notes that the earliest manuscripts lack the verse, and that Mark rarely quotes Scripture this way himself, so it is likely taken from Luke.
Luke 17:36. “Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.” The record notes that Codex Bezae and some early translations have it, but the oldest Greek manuscripts, including Papyrus 75, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, do not. It is probably copied from Matthew 24:40.
Luke 23:17. “Now he was obliged to release one man to them at the feast.” Many manuscripts have it, but the early papyrus P75, Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus do not. Codex Bezae has it in a different place, after 23:19. The record concludes that its changing position suggests it was added from Mark 15:6 or Matthew 27:15.
None of these borrowed verses adds anything new. In every case the words are still in the Bible, in the place they were borrowed from.
Words that explain
A second group of additions fills a gap in the story, answering a question a careful reader might ask.
John 5:4. At the pool of Bethesda, a sick man tells Jesus that he has no one to put him into the pool when the water is stirred (John 5:7). Why would that matter? Many later manuscripts explain: the sick were waiting for the moving of the water, for an angel went down at certain times into the pool and stirred it, and whoever stepped in first afterwards was made well. In Open Word Bible the sentence ends without it:
Many sick people used to lie in these porticoes: the blind, the lame and the paralyzed.
The record notes that the oldest manuscripts, among them two early papyri and the codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, lack these words. Some manuscripts have only part of them, others mark them as doubtful, and their wording varies a good deal from copy to copy. That variation is itself a clue: a passage copied from the start tends to be copied fairly consistently, while a later explanation gets told in several ways. The words seem to have been added to explain the sick man’s words in verse 7. Since the end of verse 3 is also missing, the note covers “verses 3b–4”, and a footnote gives the added words in full.
Acts 15:34. “But it seemed good to Silas to stay there.” In 15:33 Judas and Silas are sent back to Jerusalem, yet in 15:40 Paul chooses Silas in Antioch. The record notes that some manuscripts explain this with verse 34, and that Codex Bezae goes further: “and Judas went alone”. But Paul could have sent for Silas, and the verse is not in the early manuscripts that the SBL edition follows here.
Acts 28:29. After Paul’s last words to the Jewish leaders in Rome, many later manuscripts add that the Jews left, arguing hotly among themselves. The record notes that the verse is missing from the earliest manuscripts, so the translation goes from verse 28 to verse 30.
Words from the life of the church
Acts 8:37 is perhaps the best-known missing verse. The Ethiopian official sees water and asks what prevents him from being baptized. In the longer text, Philip answers that he may if he believes with all his heart, and the eunuch replies that he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
The record notes that the verse is missing from the earliest and most important manuscripts, and is found in later manuscripts, in some forms of the Old Latin translation, and in the King James Version. It looks like an early baptismal confession added to the story. That makes good sense. In the early church, a person being baptized was asked to confess faith before entering the water, and a scribe or reader who found no such confession here may have supplied the one familiar from the church’s own practice. The confession may be very old even if it was not part of Luke’s account.
Without it, the story moves directly from the eunuch’s question to the chariot stopping and the two of them going down into the water. Luke leaves the answer to the question in the action.
A longer sentence
Acts 24:7 is a little different, because it is part of a sentence rather than a whole one. The orator Tertullus is accusing Paul before the governor Felix. In the longer text, he complains that the Jewish leaders had wanted to judge Paul by their own law, but the commander Lysias came and took him out of their hands by force. In Open Word Bible, Tertullus goes straight from saying that they seized Paul to telling Felix to examine him:
This man, we have found, is a public menace. He causes unrest among the Jews in every part of the world, and he is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. He even attempted to defile the temple, and we took hold of him. Question him yourself, and you will learn from him all about the things we accuse him of.”
The record explains that the longer reading, traditionally numbered 24:6b–8a, is found in many later manuscripts and was followed by the King James Version, but is missing from the oldest manuscripts. So the sentence runs from verse 6 to verse 8, and verse 7 has nothing in it. Because the record is one sentence that spans the verses, the verse numbers fall inside it.
An ending that moved
Romans 16:24 is the hardest case on this list, and the one where Open Word Bible’s draft is least settled. Paul’s letter to the Romans ends in different ways in different manuscripts. Many later manuscripts repeat the blessing of 16:20, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you”, as verse 24. The great closing doxology traditionally numbered 16:25–27 stands after 16:23 in the oldest manuscripts, but after 14:23 in many later ones, after 15:33 in the oldest papyrus, in two places in some, and nowhere in a few.
Most modern critical editions leave verse 24 out and print the doxology at the end. The Greek data that Open Word Bible pins, however, prints verse 24, marked as a place where manuscripts differ, and has no 16:25–27. The translation follows that data for now:
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you. Amen.
The record does not pretend this is settled. Its text variant decision is marked uncertain, carries a footnote, and asks reviewers to check against the printed SBL edition and its apparatus whether verse 24 belongs in the text and whether the doxology must be added as a record of its own. It also notes that its account of the manuscripts comes from general knowledge and needs checking. This is exactly the kind of question the project leaves open for a human scholar to close.
Not only missing verses
These empty verse numbers are only the most visible cases. Far more often, the difference between older and newer Bibles is a word or a phrase inside a verse, and the records handle those the same way. In Mark 9:45, for example, some later manuscripts add “into the unquenchable fire”; the record notes it.
Two longer passages are a different matter. The story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) and the endings of Mark (after 16:8) are missing from the oldest manuscripts too. But they are long, much loved and very old, and the SBL edition prints them in double brackets. Open Word Bible prints them in square brackets with full notes. See The woman caught in adultery and How does Mark end?. The words of 1 John 5:7 known as the Johannine Comma have their own story; see The Johannine Comma.
Has anything been lost?
It is worth asking plainly what difference these verses make. Look back over the list. The saying of Matthew 17:21 is in Mark 9:29, with “and fasting” in many manuscripts. The Son of Man who came to save the lost is in Luke 19:10. The woe on those who devour widows’ houses is in Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47. The command to forgive in Mark 11:26 is in Matthew 6:15. The undying worm is still in Mark 9:48. The fulfilment of Isaiah 53:12 is still in Luke 22:37. Elsewhere in Acts, people still hear the message, believe and are baptized (Acts 2:41; 16:31–33).
The one thing that has gone is the angel at the pool of Bethesda, and even there the story itself, and the healing at its centre, remains untouched.
No teaching of the Christian faith depends on any of these verses. What modern editions have done is not to remove truths from the Bible, but to try to give each book as its author wrote it, and to say openly where copyists later added to it. Open Word Bible tries to do the same, and to show the reasoning in every place, so that a reader who wants to know where a verse went can find out. In the King James Version these verses are part of the text; in Open Word Bible, they are a footnote away.
Open Matthew 17, Acts 8 or John 5 to see the notes for yourself.
Sources
- Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software, 2010).
- Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994).
- Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2005).