Scholarly apparatus: sources and flags

How this was checked (2026-10-27). Mike's order was that every claim in the walk, the tree and the tracer be checked against real sources before it stays. Each claim was read against the page named below. Publishers' and translators' own prefaces, the Bible texts and footnotes themselves, and scholarly articles came first; Wikipedia and blog pages were used only to find leads, and where a claim rests on one of them it is marked as secondary. Where a claim could not be confirmed it was either corrected to what could be, or kept and listed under "Not confirmed" at the end of this page. The raw research is in the project's source folder (btb/verification_2026-10-27); only the 40 cells in the tracer's lower four rows have a full line-by-line table there, and the other findings are recorded here in summary.

What was corrected. The Hebrew copies' date range on the tree was AD 8th to 10th century; it is now AD 9th to 11th, with the oldest complete copy at about AD 1008. The earliest papyri were "about AD 125 to 200"; they are now AD 125 to 250. Jerome's Latin Bible was dated 390 to 405 and is now about 383 to 405. The Amharic Bible's year (1986) was removed because it was not confirmed. The Ethiopian Old Testament is no longer described as "later nudged toward Hebrew" on the tree, and Stop 4 now says only that it was revised later, most likely in the 1300s and against Arabic Bibles. The eleven daggers on the tree, which marked lines recalled from general knowledge, are gone, because each of those lines was checked. The Douay-Rheims label carries an asterisk and a footnote instead. "King James line" became "Received Text line", because the Reina-Valera is in it and is not a KJV revision. The Revised line is labelled "from the ASV, 1901". The tree's last line now says the KJV never saw the oldest Greek codices (1844 and later), where it said "copies". At Stop 8 the translators are "more than twenty-five", and the claim that the Second Edition of 2019 added the Scrolls to the Psalm 22:16 note was removed (see Stop 8 below). On the tracer, 1 John 5:7 to 8 now reads "before the 14th c." where it said "16th c."; the NRSV's cell there changed from "no note" to flagged; all 80 cells are now checked, and 36 of them changed from the v2 chart.

Stops 0 to 2: the Scroll dates and the Great Isaiah Scroll come from the project corpus (From Silence to Certainty); the 2025 re-dating (30 scrolls carbon-dated and 135 more dated by a program) from the University of Groningen and PLOS One; the Isaiah 53:11 witnesses from textandcanon.org and the UBS Handbook on Isaiah; the Deuteronomy 32:8 readings by translation from each translation's own text and footnote. Stop 3: Athanasius AD 367, the North African councils at Hippo 393 and Carthage 397 and 419 (regional councils, with a few books still debated), Jerome's Latin Bible about 383 to 405, and the Jerome and Augustine disagreement (project volume What Isn't in Your Bible; Bible Gateway, "Why Are Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Bibles Different?"). Stop 4: Ethiopian canon and Geʿez Bible (Asale, 2016, The Bible Translator); Orthodox counts and the absence of an official list (Bible Gateway; Orthodox Study Bible introduction); Trent 1546 and Luther's seven books (project volume); Catholic American Bible date (ECPA reports; Ascension Press; USCCB announcement). Stop 5: Erasmus's Greek published in 1516 and the 47 KJV scholars (The Words That Were Added, Bible Gateway); the lineage of the Revised line from the 1881 Revised Version and the 1901 American Standard Version. Stop 6, case 1: the tracer, the Liberty University paper, textandcanon.org (about 1,650 of the Greek copies include the verses); case 2: Bill Mounce (Zondervan Academic, 2020), The Words That Were Added; case 3: the tracer, the Septuagint's "dug" and the Nahal Hever scroll (Wikipedia on Psalm 22:16 and the isthatinthebible blog, both secondary).

The box on the tree, line by line. The Received Text line's Old Testament is the Bomberg Second Rabbinic Bible, a Masoretic text (Trinitarian Bible Society, "The Bomberg Bible"); the NKJV's New Testament is the Textus Receptus and its Old Testament the Stuttgart Biblia Hebraica (Wikipedia, "New King James Version", secondary); the original Reina-Valera of 1569 and 1602 used Stephanus's 1550 Greek and Bomberg's 1525 Hebrew (Wikipedia, "Reina-Valera", secondary), and the 1960 revision's own base was not found, which is why Stop 4 says so. Revised and fresh Bibles: the ESV states the Masoretic Text in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia with the Scrolls, Septuagint, Samaritan Pentateuch, Peshitta and Vulgate consulted in difficult cases, and UBS5 and Nestle-Aland 28 for the New Testament; the NLT uses the Masoretic Text and the UBS and Nestle-Aland Greek editions (Wikipedia, secondary); the CEB uses Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and Quinta, Nestle-Aland 27, and the Göttingen Septuagint for the longer-list books (Wikipedia, secondary); the NASB's Old Testament from Kittel's Hebrew Bible with help from the Scrolls, and its New Testament mostly Nestle, from its preface. The NET: Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia with corrections, and a Greek text that departs in places from Nestle-Aland 27 and the UBS fourth edition, from its preface. Douay-Rheims and Jerome: the Vulgate's Old Testament is mostly from Hebrew, Tobit and Judith from Aramaic, the Psalter used in Vulgate Bibles is the Gallican Psalter from the Greek, the other longer-list books come from older Latin made from Greek, and the Gospels were revised against Greek, work from about 383 to 405 (Wikipedia, "Vulgate", secondary); the Rheims New Testament is 1582, the Douay Old Testament 1609, and Challoner's revision 1749 to 1752 (drbo.org). NABRE: the Masoretic Text with the Scrolls and some Septuagint corrections for the Old Testament, the Greek Old Testament and the Scrolls for the longer-list books, and the UBS Greek New Testament (3rd edition) with Novum Testamentum Graece (26th edition) consulted (Wikipedia, "New American Bible Revised Edition", secondary; the USCCB's own preface is the one to cite before posting). Orthodox: the Patriarchal Text, published by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1904, a Byzantine text, with no one Greek New Testament accepted by all churches (Wikipedia, "Patriarchal text", secondary; the Orthodox use of the Septuagint and the Byzantine text is also stated at saintjohnchurch.org). Ethiopian: the New Testament "was likewise rendered from a Greek text," the Old Testament most likely from the Septuagint, begun in the 4th century and completed by the second half of the 6th, and a 14th-century revision most likely from an Arabic Bible, with a revision on the Hebrew disputed (G. A. Mikre-Sellassie, "The Early Translation of the Bible into Ethiopic/Geez," The Bible Translator 51:3, 2000); the 1915 International Standard Bible Encyclopedia says the Old Testament was revised about the 14th century and corrected by the Masoretic Text, which is the disagreement the tree no longer takes a side on. Stop 5, the other leaves: Wikipedia pages for the Living Bible, the Amplified Bible, the New Living Translation, the Contemporary English Version, the Good News Bible, The Message, the New International Reader's Version, the Common English Bible, the New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Orthodox Study Bible (all secondary); Brenton's 1844 translation from the Vatican text (University of Pennsylvania IOSCS page).

Not confirmed (these stay open, and the walk is worded so that it does not depend on them). The base of the 1960 Reina-Valera revision, which was found only in secondary pages. The Amharic Bible's date. The NET's year on the tree is 2005, the date of the first printing; the Second Edition's preface says 2006. The New Testament base of the NET's Second Edition. The ESV and NABRE bases rest on the publishers' prefaces only as far as those were read, and on secondary summaries otherwise; the NASB and NIV prefaces were read only in part. That no one Greek New Testament is accepted by every Orthodox church rests on Wikipedia alone. The Patriarchal Text's manuscript count: one scholar says 116, other sources say about 20. At Isaiah 53:11 the ESV footnote says one Scroll has "light" and scholars count three. The Esther and Daniel additions as the Vulgate carries them. The NIV 1984 text at Matthew 3:2 and 16:18, and the NASB 1971 at 1 John 5:7 to 8. And "that nothing Christian teaching rests on" the disputed words alone: the stops say only that the core teaching does not change.

The tracer (v3, all 80 cells). Every cell was read on 2026-10-27 in the translation's own text and footnotes: the KJV and NKJV on Bible Gateway; the NASB 2020 (and the NASB 1995, which differs from it at three verses: at Deuteronomy 32:8 and 1 Samuel 10:27 the 1995 has no note on the variant, and at Acts 8:37 it brackets the verse where the 2020 omits it; the chart uses the 2020); the ESV at esv.org (2016 text); the NIV 2011, CSB 2017 and NLT 2015 on Bible Gateway; the NRSV 1989 text, read as the NRSV Catholic Edition because Bible Gateway's "NRSV" now serves the 2021 revision (checked at Mark 16 and 1 John 5:7, where the two agree); the NABRE at bible.usccb.org; and the NET (version 2.1) on Bible Gateway, with its own tc, tn and sn notes. netbible.org could not be read because it is a script-driven site and returned the wrong chapter. The 40 cells for Mark 16:9 to 20, John 7:53 to 8:11, 1 John 5:7 to 8 and Acts 8:37 are recorded line by line in the verification folder; there, 29 cells matched the v2 chart and 10 changed (all but one of them from "not checked" to a checked note status; the NRSV at 1 John 5:7 changed from "no note" to flagged). "No note" means the translation carries no footnote on the variant. The one "neither reading" cell is the NRSV at Psalm 22:16, which prints "shriveled" and not either of the two readings the chart compares. For the NET at Isaiah 53:11 and Psalm 22:16 the note counts are from the local database described under Stop 8.

Stop 7: texts were read side by side on Bible Hub (Genesis 3:15 on its parallel page; Matthew 3:2 and Matthew 16:18 on the verse pages, which list the NIV, KJV, NET, Douay-Rheims and the NABRE as "New American Bible"). The NABRE at Genesis 3:15 was read on the USCCB's own site. The NABRE at Isaiah 7:14 is from YouVersion's page labeled NABRE, not the USCCB site. The NIV text and its "Or young woman" footnote at Isaiah 7:14 are from Biblia and Bible Gateway; the NET text and note are from Bible Gateway. For Genesis 3:15, the Hebrew pronoun is masculine, the Douay-Rheims "she" follows the Latin Vulgate (ipsa), the revised Vatican Latin Bible (the Nova Vulgata) has the neuter ipsum, and the NAB's footnote explains "they" (Wikipedia, "Seed of the woman", secondary; replace it with a primary source). The Latin "paenitentiam agite" at Matthew 3:2 is from the Vulgate text on islamawakened.com; the Greek word's meaning is from Ellicott's commentary on Bible Hub. The Septuagint's "parthenos" at Isaiah 7:14 is from kjvstudy.org and Matthew 1:23. The "Catholic" column is the NABRE. The Douay-Rheims row appears where its text was pulled (Genesis 3:15, Matthew 3:2, Matthew 16:18, Mark 9:29); it was not pulled at Isaiah 7:14. The 73 and 66 book counts are from Stop 4. The "where the copies differ" paragraph repeats the tracer, whose NABRE column is now checked.

Mark 9:29 and Matthew 17:21: the NIV, NET, NABRE and Douay-Rheims readings at Mark 9:29 are from Bible Hub's verse page, and the Douay-Rheims verse number there is 9:28; the KJV is from kingjamesbibleonline.org. That Sinaiticus and Vaticanus lack "and fasting," and that the Vulgate and later Greek copies have it, comes from secondary pages (dustoffthebible.com, spiritandtruth.org, and a Trinitarian Bible Society page that disputes the omission); replace them with the NA28 apparatus or the NET's own text-critical note. At Matthew 17:21 the KJV text and the NIV's omission are confirmed (dustoffthebible.com, the Accordance forum). Not yet checked: whether the NET and the NABRE omit Matthew 17:21, and the NABRE's note on Mark 9:29. The same dispute is reported at Acts 10:30 and 1 Corinthians 7:5, and those are not checked. Matthew 6:16 to 18 was not pulled for each Bible; it is the standard text. The tradition that older copies are shorter is the "earlier reading" principle from Stop 1.

Latin flag (from Mike): the Douay-Rheims is a translation of the Latin Vulgate, which is itself a translation of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek (Wikipedia, "Douay–Rheims Bible"); the 1582 and 1609 to 1610 title pages say "out of the authentic Latin, diligently conferred with the Hebrew, Greek and other editions" (Wikipedia; bible-researcher.com), and the translators' avowed aim was a strongly literal rendering of the Latin. The text found online is normally the Challoner revision (1749 to 1752), which Wikipedia says took the KJV as its base and was adjusted toward the Vulgate, so the Douay-Rheims rows here may carry KJV wording as well as Latin wording; the Genesis 3:15 "she" and the Matthew 3:2 "do penance" are the Latin-driven readings. The claim that the NABRE was translated from the original languages was not confirmed from the NABRE's own preface. "Around the year 400" for Jerome's Vulgate is standard history.

Before any public posting: the NIV and NABRE phrases here are short comparison quotations, and each publisher's copyright line should be added (NIV by Biblica; NABRE by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, used with the USCCB's permission terms). Not yet pulled, and candidates for the next round: Luke 1:28 ("full of grace"), Romans 5:12 (the Latin "in whom"), Revelation 22:19 (book or tree of life, connected to Erasmus's back-translation), John 3:16 ("only begotten"), and 1 Timothy 3:16 ("God" or "He").

Stop 8: the NET's make-up (more than 25 scholars, Hebrew base Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia with Septuagint influence, Greek base Nestle-Aland 27th edition, with departures) comes from the NET's own preface and YouVersion's NET page; the NET's published description as summarized on Wikipedia is secondary. The note counts and mentions come from a local database built in Cowork from a NET Bible 2.1 full-notes ePub (Biblical Studies Press / Thomas Nelson, 1996 to 2019): Isaiah 53:11 has 4 notes and 451 words, with no mention of Qumran, the LXX, the MT or "light"; Psalm 22:16 has one note of about 507 words that mentions Qumran, Nahal Hever, the LXX, the Syriac and the MT; Isaiah 53:8 cites the Qumran scroll 1QIsa-a. The Bible Gateway text of the NET read on 2026-10-27 agrees with those mentions. The older version of the note, read on YouVersion (copyright 1996 to 2007), had five notes and 448 words at Isaiah 53:11 and a 257-word note at Psalm 22:16 that named the LXX and Symmachus but not Qumran; the walk says "about 260 words" for it. An earlier draft said the Second Edition of 2019 added the Scrolls; the pages read do not date the change, so the walk now says only "an older version." The database holds 57,961 distinct notes (the ePub lists 60,595, of which 2,634 are exact duplicates), so "close to 60,000" is the publisher's figure and the distinct count is about 58,000. These database figures could not be pulled again on 2026-10-27. ESV and NIV footnote lengths are from the retrieved wording (ESV Isaiah 53:11, nine words). The NET quotation of John 17:3 is as quoted in the project corpus.

Open items: the provenance of the ePub file is unconfirmed; the local-database figures for the NET are from an earlier session and were not re-pulled; and "the NET does not tell you everything" is limited to the verses compared.