Bluefalcon
Member
If the verse is present only in later texts, it is incorrect to say that they "omit" the verse. The only conclusion one can make is that later manuscripts have inserted the verse.
Interestingly, the Dead Sea Scrolls support very closely the OT of the MSS over the TR. That lends credence to the claim that the NT portion of the MSS is likewise as reliable. </font>[/QUOTE]I've already posted several h.t. errors (out of hundreds) of Codex Sinaiticus, which proves that the scribe was not the most accurate. Doing this with other ancient Egyptian documents has already been done by scholars, and the consensus is that they all were far more prone to omitting text than to any other error. It has yet to be proven that the Byzantines were prone to adding text, because the Consensus of Greek documents is relatively consistent within itself in not adding to the text. Only when one compares this Consensus to the shorter and earlier Egyptian texts (which everyone admits to being prone to errors of omission) does one come up with the idea that the Consensus is guilty of adding text. But the more sensible conclusion is that the far-ranging Consensus that covers the earliest and widest geographic areas of Christianity actually represents an accurate depiction of the original documents from which all others eminated, not the few recovered from the localized area of Egypt where cults dominated from early times and where the established church is not even documented until around A.D. 180.
Yours,
Bluefalcon