Across all those manuscripts, scholars count something like 400,000 textual variants — famously, more differences than there are words in the Greek New Testament. The skeptic Bart Ehrman made that number widely known. But Ehrman and his conservative critics, such as Daniel Wallace, agree on the crucial next fact: the overwhelming majority of those variants are utterly trivial — spelling, word order, obvious slips. The real disagreement is over what remains.
- ~400,000 variants across the manuscripts — more than the ~138,000 words of the Greek NT.
- All sides agree the great majority are trivial; they disagree over how much the rest matters.
What the evidence showsThe scale of variation is real and openly acknowledged by all sides — and the vast majority of the differences change nothing of meaning.
Where it stopsHere scholars genuinely part ways. Ehrman stresses that real uncertainty remains at some points; the mainstream and conservative reply is that under 1% of variants are both meaningful and viable, and that no core Christian doctrine hangs on a disputed reading. We leave both on the table.
Meet Bart Ehrman, who left the faith over this →
Sources & further reading