Strata: Jesus’ Anger Rewritten as Compassion

Textual variants among ancient manuscripts aren’t always this controversial. One scribe might have spelled a word differently on his manuscript, while another might have accidentally skipped or repeated some of the text he was copying. These cases are minor variants and don’t really change the meaning of the text. Other times, however, scribes added or even changed text to clarify a passage or suit the theological preferences of their communities. That’s when things get interesting, and Mark 1:41 is an especially intriguing example.