Slide 14 of 22
Notes:
Thus it is also clear that the Christian community has not seen the word of God to be dependent on correct decisions about individual readings.
On the other hand, as a comparison between the King James Versions and more recent translations such as the NIV or NRSV will show, decisions about textual variants can and do alter what kind of message we hear from and individual text. Choosing one variant or another does shape our hearing just as differing translations do in their own way (cf. the textual critical judgment that Mark 16:9-20 was not part of the original; or that I John 4:7-8 was expanded in the interests of Trinitarian Confessional concerns).
What the textual transmission of the New Testament and considerations of textual variation do keep before us is the way in which Word of God for us from the very beginning has constantly bound up with the history of the church, with interpreters and interpretations, with the people of God. The Word of God has been linked to and has taken its particular shape within a community of faith and we cannot remove from it that character.
