The Lexham Textual Notes on the Bible

First Edition

Old Testament

Israel Loken

New Testament

Rick Brannan

Lexham Press, 2014

The Lexham Textual Notes on the Bible, First Edition

Copyright 2014 Lexham Press

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Authors: Rick Brannan, Israel Loken

Editor: Joel Wilcox

To Ronald B. Allen, who communicated to me his love for the Hebrew Scriptures (Israel Loken)

For Amy, Ella, and Lucas (Rick Brannan)

Acknowledgments

I’d like to gratefully acknowledge the following organizations that have made this study possible. I am most deeply indebted to the faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary for providing me with the training necessary to accomplish this task. I am likewise deeply indebted to the administration of the College of Biblical Studies for providing an environment in which I am able to study the Word of God.

Israel Loken

I’d like to thank my colleagues at Logos Bible Software for encouragement and support they provide. I’d especially like to thank Steve Runge, Eli Evans, Mike Heiser, Vincent Setterholm, and Isaiah Hoogendyk for challenging me and pushing me to understand more, to learn more, and to do more.

Rick Brannan

Both Israel and Rick would like to thank Joel Wilcox for his careful and diligent work in copy editing this volume.

Preface

When anything is copied multiple times, errors of omission and commission creep in. Anyone who has ever played the “telephone game” can tell you that. But when the material being copied is revered, as the Bible is, identifying and understanding the effect of those differences becomes an important step in studying the material.

It is our hope that this brief work, intended to help those with little or no knowledge of the original language texts, will help bring to light these areas of textual difference. It is not our purpose to create doubt on the part of those who may not be aware of these sorts of discrepancies, instead it is our hope that the reader embrace and wrestle with these textual issues so that better understanding and stronger faith may result.

The Editors

October, 2014

Introduction

Bruce Metzger begins the introduction to his now classic and still very useful A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament with this:

Most commentaries on the Bible seek to explain the meaning of words, phrases, and ideas of the scriptural text in their nearer and wider context; a textual commentary, however, is concerned with the prior question, What is the original text of the passage? That such a question must be asked—and answered!—before one explains the meaning of the text arises from two circumstances: (a) none of the original documents of the Bible is extant today, and (b) the existing copies differ from one another.1

Arriving at an understanding of the original text of the ...