My late Greek Professor, Dr Basil Brown, used the following illustration to explain variant readings to the class. He asked, “If you were attending university or technical institute or teacher’s college and you missed a particular lecture, what’s the best way to get the notes?” We answered, “Get a friend’s notes.”
He then said, “Is there a better way? Is there a better way than getting your friend’s notes?”
“Get your notes Prof!”
To which he replied, “No, you can’t have my notes. My notes would not necessarily give you everything that was said in class. What would be the best thing to do? You’re not allowed to use audio or video tapes. There wasn’t any possibility of recordings in the New Testament period! What would be the best thing to do?”
Prof’s Answer: “To secure not only one or two friend’s notes but the notes of everybody in the class. Get everybody’s notes in the class and I will guarantee you, you could work from those notes using the processes of the textual experts to get back to the very words that the lecturer said. Because what you need to do is work your way through the documents to see where you find verbatim statements recorded. Where this document and that document and that document agree exactly word for word, you’ve got the words that I said. And the more you work with that the more you can build back behind the scenes to exactly what was said. That is the process that lies behind the New Testament. It’s perfectly valid and very, very strong.“
He went on to explain that if we were given his notes for the lecture we would not necessarily be assured that we gained everything that was said in that lecture that we missed. Even the lecturer makes variation to the content of the lecture he gives year by year. That is certainly true of me in presenting material in God’s Awesome Book or in Deeper Bible. There are times when I don’t stick to the script so to speak. Times when I will insert a different example or expand on an example more fully than I have done in the past because I have more time available. Getting the lecturer’s notes won’t necessarily ensure that you pick up on the lecturer’s additions and changes. That is exactly the situation we have for the transmission of the text of the New Testament.