Textual variants in the First Epistle to the Corinthians are the subject of the study called textual criticism of the New Testament. Textual variants in manuscripts arise when a copyist makes deliberate or inadvertent alterations to a text that is being reproduced. An abbreviated list of textual variants in this particular book is given in this article below.
Most of the variations are not significant and some common alterations include the deletion, rearrangement, repetition, or replacement of one or more words when the copyist's eye returns to a similar word in the wrong location of the original text. If their eye skips to an earlier word, they may create a repetition (error of dittography). If their eye skips to a later word, they may create an omission. They may resort to performing a rearranging of words to retain the overall meaning without compromising the context. In other instances, the copyist may add text from memory from a similar or parallel text in another location. Otherwise, they may also replace some text of the original with an alternative reading. Spellings occasionally change. Synonyms may be substituted. A pronoun may be changed into a proper noun (such as "he said" becoming "Jesus said"). John Mill's 1707 Greek New Testament was estimated to contain some 30,000 variants in its accompanying textual apparatus[1] which was based on "nearly 100 [Greek] manuscripts."[2] Peter J. Gurry puts the number of non-spelling variants among New Testament manuscripts around 500,000, though he acknowledges his estimate is higher than all previous ones.[3]
Legend
A guide to the sigla (symbols and abbreviations) most frequently used in the body of this article.[4][5]
μεθιστάναι (to (re)move/(ex)change)– Alexandrian text-type, Tischendorf 8th Edition, Nestle 1904, Westcott and Hort / [NA27 and UBS4 variants][10]
μεθιστάνειν – Byz., Westcott and Hort 1881, Westcott and Hort / [NA27 and UBS4 variants][10]
1 Corinthians 13:3
καυχήσωμαι (I may boast) – Alexandrian text-type. By 2009, many translators and scholars had come to favour this variant as the original reading on the grounds that is probably the oldest.[11]
καυθήσωμαι (I may be burnt/burned) – Mostly Western and Byzantine text-type MSS and "a majority of patristic writers". In 1989, this was the most commonly favoured variant by translators and scholars, but because it is probably not the oldest variant, and may be grammatically incorrect, a large amount of translators and scholars had abandoned it by 2009. Malone (2009) objected that it would be somewhat unlikely that a supposedly correct original (καυχήσωμαι) would have been deliberately 'corrected' by a scribe, resulting in a supposedly incorrect variant (καυθήσωμαι).[11]
καυθήσομαι (I will be burnt/burned) – As of 2009, a minority of scholars favoured this reading as the original.[11]
verses 14:34-35 included after 14:40 – D F G 88[14]
4Textual variants in 1 Corinthians 15
1 Corinthians 15:3
ὃ καὶ παρέλαβον (I received) – omitted by b, Ambrosiaster, Irenaeuslat, Tertullian?
1 Corinthians 15:15
εἴπερ ἄρα νεκροὶ οὐκ ἐγείρονται (if in fact the dead do not rise) – omitted by D, a, b, r, bam, ful**, harl*, kar, mon, reg, val*, pesh, Ambrosiaster, Irenaeus (lat), Tertullian?
^Adam Fox, John Mill and Richard Bentley: A Study of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament 1675–1729 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), pp. 105–115; John Mill, Novum Testamentum Graecum, cum lectionibus variantibus MSS (Oxford 1707)
Bruce M. Metzger & Bart D. Ehrman, "The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration", OUP New York, Oxford, 4 edition, 2005
Bart D. Ehrman, "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament", Oxford University Press, New York - Oxford, 1996, pp. 223–227.
Bruce M. Metzger, "A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament: A Companion Volume to the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament", 1994, United Bible Societies, London & New York.
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