Blog (1) Stewart Freeman

When thinking about the thousands of different manuscripts of the New Testament, it's interesting to look also at the Septuagint as how the Old Testament and the Jewish Bible were formed. The New and Old Testaments seem to have taken inverted courses while being written. The writing of the Old Testament begins during the formation of the kingdom of Judea, before the diaspora and takes place largely within that time period. So Jewish traditions were well established in most respects before the destruction of the temples. Therefore, the amount of discrepancy between different groups separated for long periods of time is very low.
When you look at how the New Testament was written, the followers of early Christianity were dispersed to begin with and it wouldn't be until the 4th or 5th centuries that they were actually widely accepted. So the beginnings of Christianity were far more subjective than in Judaism. Most of the ministry would've been done without a Bible to reference, being told to a small congregation in the countryside or in a home. Inevitably, there will be changes as this story spreads along the Mediterranean coast and the long period of time before a version of the Bible can actually be called official means that the different accounts of the life of Jesus will be significant to a large number of people. People, who will undoubtedly resist others telling them that they were given the wrong story.
One interesting account that Ehrman brings up is the last 12 verses of the Gospel of Mark where the end is not chapter 12, verse 8: when the women hear Jesus has come back to life, but "they did not tell anyone, for they were afraid". Instead there are another 12 verses about how they did tell the disciples and they see Jesus and he talks to them before he ascends into Heaven. Ehrman says it best when he says "the ending comes as a surprise to many modern readers, who think that the women must have told somebody!" 1. Some of the changes made to translations and manuscripts of the Bible may not be just theological or social bias tarnishing the word of God. Sometimes, or maybe most of the time, it is simply a way of telling a better and more compelling story, thus making it easier to spread the core beliefs.

1. B.D Ehrmann, New Testament, New York Oxford, 4 2008. p.491