Missing Verses In The Bible?

At some point when studying the Bible you might have noticed verses are missing from some newer translations. When I first noticed this I was shocked and thought the Bible I had was a misprint or maybe the translation was just bad.

Using the KJV as a baseline we can see that it has a number of verses that are not in other translations like the NIV or ESV.

Missing Verses

Here is a list so you can look for yourself.
Matthew 17:21
Matthew 18:11
Matthew 23:14
Mark 7:16
Mark 9:44
Mark 9:46
Mark 11:26
Mark 15:28
Luke 17:36
Luke 23:17
John 5:3-4
Acts 8:37
Acts 15:34
Acts 24:6-8
Acts 28:29
Romans 16:24
1 John 5:7-8

Why are they missing?

When the KJV was commissioned way back in 1604 the ancient manuscripts they had available for translating the Bible into English contained these versus. Since that time some older manuscripts have been found that do not contain these verses.

So we are left with a question. Were these versus added or removed since the original? That’s not an easy question to answer and I’m no were near qualified to try to answer that. Some bible publishers think they should be put in and some do not. But there is usually a footnote at the bottom of the page about these verses.

The real question I think we should ask is does the inclusion or removal of these verses change the message? My opinion is no. And in most cases similar wording can be found in other books of the bible. But that is something I think you should decide for yourself.

Beyond that I think it is simply amazing that the Bible almost matches up perfectly with the oldest known manuscripts. Considering that it was copied by hand over and over for thousands of years. This all without the aid of computers! That sounds like a real miracle to me.

So I think we can be confident with high accuracy that we know what the original manuscripts stated. Ancient New Testament documents are more numerous and in better shape than any other ancient documents. And with so many available copies they have been cross-checked for accuracy and have proved to be very consistent.

I encourage you to do your own research on the topic. I’m sure you will learn something interesting!

Some sources and other reading.

https://carm.org/about-the-bible/manuscript-evidence-for-superior-new-testament-reliability/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_verses_not_included_in_modern_English_translations

https://www.mikeleake.net/2015/07/on-those-missing-verses-in-your-esv-and-niv-bible.html

https://carm.org/king-james-onlyism/was-matthew-1721-removed-from-modern-bibles/

https://www.neverthirsty.org/bible-qa/qa-archives/question/why-is-verse-11-missing-in-matthew-18/

https://carm.org/king-james-onlyism/was-matthew-2314-removed-from-modern-bibles/