Before the invention of the printing press, the Bible, like other written material, had to be copied in order to expand its physical reach. As the Bible and its contents were copied over the centuries, it was done so with remarkable faithfulness. The roughly 900 AD copy of Isaiah 53, which details the suffering servant of the LORD fulfilled later by Christ, overwhelmingly agrees with the Isaiah 53 copy discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls and dated around 100 BC. The Isaiah 53 copy found and dated 1,000 years prior was an encouraging reminder of God’s grace in the preservation process of His word. However, there are some variants within these two copies; that is, some words are not an exact match. We need not be alarmed as these variants are minuscule and do not impact our main doctrinal beliefs. And this goes for other variants within the copies of Scripture. Nevertheless, it is good to be aware of some and how we handle them in discerning the original meaning of biblical texts.

This Sunday we are beginning the book of John and will encounter a variant in John 1:18 that deserves more attention than the setting may permit. Thus, we will tackle it here and be ready for it in the sermon together.

John 1:18 reads (NASB), “No one has seen God at any time; God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him.” The variant occurs in the words “God the only Son.” We can find manuscripts with five different readings:

1. one and only God;
2. the one and only God;
3. the one and only Son;
4. one and only Son; and
5. one and only.

How shall we go about deciphering God’s original intended meaning?

There are two basic things to know when engaging in this kind of textual criticism. First, how many manuscripts and quality of manuscripts support each reading, and second, what is the harder, or more difficult reading. The reason we ask the second question is that a scribe, when copying a biblical manuscript, is more likely to clarify a harder reading, rather than make a clear reading more difficult to read.

When we examine these two basic questions, we can see that first there is a good amount of manuscript evidence for the first three readings: (1) one and only God; (2) the one and only God; (3) the one and only Son. Second, the readings “one and only God” and “the one and only God” are a harder reading. A scribe is more likely to clarify “one and only God” into “one and only Son” rather than the other way around. Therefore, when we read John 1:18, there is a high chance that the reading should speak of Jesus as the one and only God, rather than Son.

Whatever reading one may adopt does not change our doctrinal belief about Jesus. He is proclaimed both as the Son of God and divine in the New Testament. The question becomes what is John emphasizing here?