3. Various readings have arisen in the manuscripts of the New Testament, as elsewhere, from the mistakes, and sometimes from the unskilful corrections of the copyists and those subsequently employed to compare and correct the copies.  They are commonly divided into the three classes of substitutions, insertions, and omissions.

Substitutions from similarity of sound would naturally arise among the vowels when, as was sometimes the case, the copyist wrote from dictation, being guided by the ear instead of the eye.  Most of these, however, are mere matters of orthography.  It is only when they affect the sense that they come under the head of various readings.  Synonymous words, or those of kindred meaning, are frequently put for one another, or the order of words is altered; sometimes a different word is made through inadvertence by the change of a single letter or a couple of letters; compound words are interchanged with simple; contracted words are confounded with each other; plainer or more grammatical readings are substituted for those that are difficult or less grammatical, etc.  Especially are parallel passages in one writer altered, so as to be brought into conformity with the same in another.

Insertions are the most frequent mode of variation.  The copyist fills out the text of his author from a parallel passage, inserts marginal notations in the text, repeats clauses through inadvertence, etc.

Of amplification from parallel passages many undoubted examples could be given.  A single one must suffice.  In Acts 9:5, the words, It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks, have been added from Acts 26:14.

The most fruitful source of omissions is the similar termination of two adjacent words, lines, or sentences, causing the eye of the copyist to overlook the word, line, or sentence intervening between the two similar endings.  The same error may be caused by the circumstance of two sentences beginning in the same way.  It should be remembered that in the ancient manuscripts the text was written continuously in uncial—­that is, capital—­letters, without any division between the words, which made it more difficult for the copyist to follow the manuscript before him, and for both the copyist and collater to discover the errors made in transcription.

By far the greatest number of various readings had their origin in simple inadvertence.  Some of them, however, are due to unskilful criticism; as when the copyist or the corrector sought to bring a passage in one writer into more exact agreement with the corresponding passage in another, to supply supposed deficiencies or correct supposed errors in his copy, or to substitute smoother and more grammatical forms of expression.  Wilful falsifications in the interest of a particular sect or party cannot with any show of justice be imputed to the men who have perpetuated to us the text of the New Testament.