James M. Gray
1851—1935

Of course, a comparison of all these manuscripts and versions reveals a number of different readings, hundreds of thousands of them, in fact, for it could not be otherwise unless a perpetual miracle were wrought in the case of every scribe, editor and printer engaged in making a copy. But as a matter of fact, these "various readings" as they are known, need cause us no anxiety whatever.

So far as the New Testament is concerned, Westcott and Hort are good witnesses to the truth of this statement. Those English divines are considered by many scholars as the highest and latest authority on the Greek text. …they assure us that the proportion of words in our present Greek text which are raised above doubt is about seven-eighths of the whole, and that the remaining one-eighth consists merely of changes in the order of words and other "trivialities" as they express it. To quote their exact language, "the amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text." That is, as Dr. John Urquhart says, "the comparison of the manuscripts assures us that every 999 words are absolutely the words placed on record by the sacred penman, and that there is doubt only upon one word in every thousand."

Gray, James M., How to Master the English Bible. 1951, Chicago: IL, Moody Press, pp. 82, 83.

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This Page Last Updated: 12/09/98 A. Allison Lewis aalewis@christianbeliefs.org