Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
The objective of a textual scholar should be to ascertain the original words that were in the original text. He is like a detective looking for clues and evidence that can be held up in the highest court there is, before the throne of God. His goal is not to please men.
There is a bewildering variety of variant readings here. The number of variants is evidence that the scribes had some serious difficulties. There can only be one reading, which is the original reading. The reading that the other readings most likely came from is
Theodore Beza was a French Reformed Protestant theologian, a scholar of the Greek New Testament. He was a close associate and successor of the Protestant reformer John Calvin. In the year 1562, Beza, as he is more commonly known, made known this unusual ancient manuscript.
Papyrus 108 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), designated by P108, is a copy of the New Testament in Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Gospel of John, containing verses 17:23-24 & 18:1-5 in a fragmentary condition. The manuscript has been paleographically assigned to “late second/early third century (ca. 200).”
It is Deja Vu all over again. Matthew 1:10 is almost an exact repeat of Matthew 1:7-8. There the earliest and best Greek manuscripts ...
P66 Papyrus 66 [150 C.E.] is of the Alexandrian text-type (more trusted). P66 comes to us by way of a professional scribe (practiced calligraphic hand, pagination numbers), a major corrector and a minor corrector.
Papyrus 66 (also referred to as P66) is a near-complete codex of the Gospel of John, and part of the collection known as the Bodmer Papyri.
Papyrus 1 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering) designated by "P1", "ε 01 (von Soden)", is an early copy of the New Testament in Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew dating palaeographically to the middle of the 3rd century (c. 175 - 225 C.E.).
The chief characteristic of Western readings is fondness for paraphrase. Words, clauses, and even whole sentences are freely changed, omitted, or inserted. Sometimes the motive appears to have been harmonization, while at other times it was the enrichment of the narrative by the inclusion of traditional or apocryphal material. (Bruce M. Metzger)
The Alexandrian text ... is usually considered to be the best text and the most faithful in preserving the original. Characteristics of the Alexandrian text are brevity and austerity. That is, it is generally shorter than the text of other forms, and it does not exhibit the degree of grammatical and stylistic polishing that is characteristic of the Byzantine type of text (Bruce M. Metzger)