Do the textual variants in our Bible copies ever change a Catholic doctrine?
A viewer from Poland, following up on his earlier Bible-inerrancy question, asks whether the roughly one percent of textual variants in our copies of Scripture could ever introduce an ambiguity that would alter a Catholic doctrine.
Answer
This has already been settled by those who deal with this topic, the copyists and translators. Even the roughly one percent of the text that we are not fully certain of touches no doctrine that we would have to look at again and reconsider. There is not a single case like that. Yes, there are discrepancies, one or two or three or four on every page of the New Testament, but they are just a letter here or a letter there, nothing big. Scholars have cataloged every one of them, and when you add up all the letters and words across all twenty-seven books, the total amount of discrepancy is less than one percent. With those odds the chance of a variant affecting a doctrine is slim to begin with. If it were fifty percent, sure, there might be an occasion, but not at less than one percent. They have gone through this with a fine-tooth comb and not one variant affects a major or even a minor doctrine of the Church. So you can sleep peacefully.