Each time an older manuscript of the Bible is discovered, many changes
are required in the Bible to bring it in line with the ancient
manuscripts. Mark 1:1 reads as follows:

"The beginning of the Gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.b"
(Mark 1:1, New International Version).

At the end of that verse, there is a small letter directing us to look
at the footnote at the bottom of the page. There we find that some
manuscripts do not have "the Son of God." And those were ancient,
reliable manuscripts. The evidence was so compelling that the editors
of one Bible just simply removed the title Son of God from the verse
altogether. Thus in the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
the verse reads:

"The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ" (Mark 1:1).

The title 'Son of God' is no longer in that verse.

Another such change had to be made in the Acts of the Apostles 8:37 in
every honest translation of the Bible prepared in this century.
Evidence from old manuscripts demanded that the verse be removed from
all present Bibles. If you go to your New International Version Bible
and look for Acts 8:37 you will not find it in the text. You will find
verse number 36, and then verse 38, but not 37. If you wish to know
what verse 37 used to say, you need to check the footnote at the bottom
of the page. This verse used to contain a confession that Jesus is the
Son of God. It had to be removed because its absence from the most
ancient manuscripts meant that someone added it to the later
manuscripts.

Some changes become evident just by comparing one Gospel with another
in the present Bibles. You can do this investigation yourself. One
example of this is the centurion's confession that Jesus is the Son
of God as reported in Mark's Gospel as follows:

"Truly this man was the Son of God" (Mark 15:39).

The same confession of the same centurion at the same scene, at the
very moment, is reported in Luke also. But in Luke the Centurion is
reported as saying:

"Certainly this man was innocent" (Luke 23:47).

In Luke the title Son of God is missing. Mark and Luke cannot both be
right here. The confession is reported incorrectly in at least one
Gospel.

In the next part we will look at other such changes, especially in the
Gospel of Matthew.