I’m reading through ** you do not have permission to see this link ** by William Walker Jr., and I found this passage that I thought was worth sharing. It’s a nice summary of the extent to which the text of the Bible was a continually changing amalgam, not a static compilation of books written by individual authors. Walker nicely points out how common it was to change the text of holy scripture.

Quite apart from Marcion’s controversial claims, however, both Munro and O’Neill point out that various forms of textual expansion can be detected in many-perhaps even most-of the writings that are now regarded as Jewish and/or Christian Scripture. Munro observes that both the Pentateuch and the New Testament Gospels are now widely viewed as consisting of multiple strata of tradition and redaction, and O’Neill asserts that ‘outside the New Testament epistles, we should all agree that every book of the Bible is either a compilation of various pieces, or a basic document to which additions have been made’. Specific examples cited by Munro and O’Neill include the book of Genesis (‘probably based on a double tradition, JE, to which has been added another tradition, P’), Jeremiah (‘the prophet’s oracles with many subsequent additions’), Proverbs (‘a collection, but a collection of at least two sorts of material’), the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (‘the enlarging of Mark, or a body of material remarkably like it’), the Gospel of John (an expansion ‘of the so-called “Gospel of Signs” ’), 2 Peter (an expansion of Jude), and ‘the longer recension’ of the Epistles of Ignatius (an expansion of an earlier version). Indeed, as has already been suggested in the case of the Synoptic Gospels, expansion of existing documents could result in the creation of entirely new works that survived alongside the earlier writings. Thus, for example, Ephesians has often been viewed as a redactional expansion of Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians shows such remarkable similarities to 1 Thessalonians not only in structure but also in ‘sequence of thought, clauses, turns of phrase and expressions’ as to suggest literary dependence.

Numerous other likely examples of textual expansion could be cited. For example, the ‘adulterous woman’ pericope in most manuscripts of John’s Gospel (7:53–8:11) is almost certainly a later interpolation, and the same is probably true regarding the ‘longer ending’ of Mark (16:9–20) and perhaps also the final chapter of John (ch. 21).

 

Also of clear relevance at this point are the numerous distinctive readings appearing in the so-called ‘Western Text’ of the Gospels, Acts, and (to a lesser extent) the Pauline letters. This text ‘is usually longer and more expansive in its language than the Alexandrian text (one-eighth longer in Acts)’ and contains a number of what most scholars regard as ‘substantial additions’ that is, ‘interpolations’). At the same time, however, there are also ‘some celebrated instances where the ‘Western’ text is shorter and lacks certain phrases or clauses which do occur in the otherwise shorter Alexandrian text’ (the so-called ‘Western Non-Interpolations’). A few scholars have argued that these ‘non-interpolations’ represent the original readings (that is, that the ‘non-Western texts’ contain interpolations at these points). In any case, the variant readings (whether additions or deletions) make it clear that materials were sometimes added to and/or deleted from the texts of the New Testament writings. Richard I. Pervo has suggested that the type of Christianity reflected in the distinctive readings of the Western Text ‘has many affinities to right-wing Deutero-Paulinism of second century C.E. Asia Minor’. Moreover, in his view, these readings demonstrate that one technique used by representatives of this type of Christianity was ‘the revision of texts through addition and deletion’; indeed, they ‘show that there were people quite willing to attempt such modifications’ of early Christian writings.’

 

As a final testimony to the practices of both redactional expansion and editorial excision in the early church, Munro cites Rev. 22:18–19: 

 

I warn every one who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if any one adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if any one takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

 

Although debate continues regarding specific passages, the basic point made by Munro and O’Neill would appear to be incontrovertible: there is clear evidence that both Jewish and early Christian writings (including those that eventually attained the status of ‘Scripture’) were subject to various types of editorial expansion.