This is Week Forty Five of Giford's Bible Study Programme.

But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.

- Heb 2:9

Length: 1/5

Controversy: 5/5

This sounds like an uncontroversial piece of Christian doctrine - and indeed it is. But there is an alternate reading known from a very small number of manuscripts - that Jesus died 'apart from God', rather than 'by the grace of God'.

Bart Ehrman uses this as another example of how deliberate alterations were made to harmonise scripture. So how do we know that the minority variant is (most likely) the original in this case?

1. The majority counts for little. Sheer number of manuscripts only show which variants were most widely copied, not which were original.
2. Age is important, but not a 'killer blow'. In this case, both the manuscripts showing the 'apart' reading are comparatively late - but one of them was copied directly from a very early (Third Century) manuscript.
3. The hardest reading is to be preferred. This sounds counter-intuitive, but it makes more sense that a scribe would see a difficult reading like 'apart from God' and change it to match his beliefs than that the reverse would happen.
4. The 'apart' reading fits with Hebrews' theology¹.
5. This is unikely to have been an accidental error. The best explanation along these lines is that this was originally inserted as a note referring to Hebrews 2:8 and meaning that God was not subject to Jesus, but this phrasing would be highly unusual.

If Ehrman's conclusion is correct, the author of Hebrews did not seem to hold Trinitarian views, unlike most modern Christians.