Question/insight #90:

What did Mary Baker Eddy meaning by the word "readings" when she wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (S&H 139:15):

The decisions by vote of Church Councils as to what should and should not be considered Holy Writ; the manifest mistakes in the ancient versions; the thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament, and the three hundred thousand in the New, --these facts show how a mortal and material sense stole into the divine record, with its own hue darkening to some extent the inspired pages. But mistakes could neither wholly obscure the divine Science of the Scriptures seen from Genesis to Revelation, mar the demonstration of Jesus, nor annul the healing by the prophets, who foresaw that "the stone which the builders rejected" would become "the head of the corner."

Response #90:

You can obtain a detailed answer to your question by reading Bruce Metzger's The Texts of the New Testament, Second Edition. As an additional aid, below is a definition of "reading" from Webster's 1828 Dictionary, which is the English dictionary standard that Mary Baker Eddy used.

READING… 5. In criticism, the manner of reading the manuscripts of ancient authors, where words or letters are obscure. No small part of the business of critics is to settle the true reading, or real words used by the author; and the various readings of different critics are often perplexing.

Additional listings and explanations of the various "readings" can be found in the following:

• George Ricker Berry's The Interlinear Literal Translation of the Greek New Testament (Zondervan, no date: approximately 1890, pages i-ii)
• Bruce Metzger's A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second Edition (United Bible Society, 1994, pages v-ix)
• Nestle-Aland Greek-English New Testament, Edition XXVII (United Bible Society, 1994, pages 1*-46*),
• The Greek New Testament, Fourth Revised Edition (United Bible Society, 1994, pages 1*-52*)
• Dr. Metzger's HarperCollins Bible Dictionary article on "Texts, Versions, Manuscripts, Editions" (HarperCollins, 1996, pages 1113-1130)
• Dr. Metzger's Oxford Companion to the Bible article on "Manuscripts" (Oxford University Press, 1993, pages 486-490).

In his Oxford Companion to the Bible article, Dr. Metzger mentions that as of 1989 there were 5488 manuscripts representing parts of the Greek New Testament. This does not include early manuscripts in other ancient languages. No mention is made of the number of Hebrew or Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament.