Why are some words or phrases missing from modern Bible Translations?

Jan 30
2 min read

Q: I recently read the Gospel of Matthew again using the King James Version and the ESV and I found that Matthew 17:21 is not in the ESV and several other translations. Why is that? Why did the ESV remove Matthew 17:21?

A: Hello and thanks for your note.

As you might imagine, I get notes on this topic quite often. And each time someone notices a slight difference in wording between the King James Version and one of the modern translations, it is always assumed that the modern translations "left out" a word or phrase simply because it can be seen in the KJV. I'm not sure, but I think some people assume that the modern translations simply took the King James version of the Bible and tried to make it more readable. That is actually not the case.

When the translators set out to make a modern language version of the Bible such as the ESV, they did not consult the King James version at all. Instead, they went back to the original language manuscripts that are written in both Hebrew and Greek. (It is required that Bible translators know how to read and understand ancient Hebrew and Greek.)

That means, the issue you've discovered is not a difference between the KJV and the ESV (or any other modern language Bible). It's the difference between the original language manuscripts that were used to guide those two translations of the Bible.

As you may know, the original King James version was first published in 1611AD and relied on New Testament manuscripts called "The Textus Receptus." (That’s Latin and means "received text.") The ESV Bible, on the other hand, along with several other modern English translations, are primarily based on older and more highly-regarded manuscripts such as the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, (again, Latin names based on where those manuscripts were discovered) rather than the manuscripts used by the KJV translators.

So, when the ESV translators were rendering Matthew chapter 17, the verse that appears in the King James as verse 21 simply was not there! So you see, nothing was removed. It's a matter of slightly differing Greek manuscripts, NOT an issue of words or phrases being left out. These slight differences are referred to as "textual variations" and what you need to know is that they are VERY MINOR and no doctrines are affected by these differences.

Although I teach from the ESV, I very much enjoy consulting several Bible translations when I study. I can tell you as someone who has taught through the entire Bible multiple times, the textual variations between manuscripts do NOT affect the message at all.