Matthew 18:11 Did Jesus come to save the lost?

The Son of Man came to save that which was lost... or did he?

The entire verse is found in the Majority of all manuscripts, including D, E, F, G, H, I, K, M, N, S, U, V, W, X, Y, Sigma, Phi, and Omega. It is the reading in the Old Latin copies a, aur, b, d, f, ff2, g1, l, n, q, r1, and r2.

It’s also found in the Latin Vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta, Curetonian, Herclean, Coptic Boharic, Armenian, Georgian, the Ethiopian ancient versions, and the Greek Diatessaron 160-175 A.D.

It’s quoted by early church writers such as Hilary, Chrysostom, Chromatius and Augustine.

Westcott and Hort completely omitted the entire verse from their critical Greek text.

The evidence for the inspiration of this verse is simply overwhelming, yet many modern Vaticanus based versions like the ESV, NIV, NASB 2020 edition [NASB 1995 edition], [Holman Standard], [Legacy Standard], NET, Jehovah Witness New World Translation, New Jerusalem Bible 1968, St. Joseph New American bible 1970, the New Jerusalem bible 1985 and most modern Catholic versions simply omit the verse from their text or put it in [brackets] indicating doubt.

The NASBs 1972 to 1995 editions contained the whole verse but put it in [brackets] The NASB 2020 edition completely removed it, but the Legacy Standard Bible of 2021 includes it.

The NIV English and Spanish version omit the verse but the NIV Portuguese version contains the verse without brackets and reads: - 11 “O Filho do homem veio para salvar o que se havia perdido.”.

It’s in the earlier Catholic versions like the Douay-Rheims 1582 and the Douay Version 1950, 2009, and 2012, and the Sacred Scriptures Catholic Public Domain Version.

The entire verse is found in the following Bibles - the Anglo-Saxon Gospels circa 1000 A.D. - Mat 18:11 Soðlice mannes sunu cóm to gehælenne þt forwearð,

Wycliffe 1395

Tyndale 1534

Coverdale 1535

the Great Bible 1540

Matthew’s Bible 1549

Bishops’ Bible 1568

Douay-Rheims 1582

Geneva Bible 1587

Beza N.T. 1599

Mace N.T. 1729

Wesley’s N.T. 1755

Haweis N.T. 1795

the Living Oracles 1835

The Revised N.T. 1862

The Emphatic Diaglott 1865

The Revised English Bible 1877

Darby 1898

Young’s 1898

Clarke N.T. 1913

Lamsa's Translation of the Syriac Peshitta 1933

The New Berkeley Version 1969

the Living Bible 1971

New Century Version

and the NKJV 1982.

In more modern times Matthew 18:11 is found in:

The Word of Yah 1993

The Third Millennium Bible 1998

Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Greek N.T.

Koster Messianic Scriptures 1998

Lawrie Version 1998, The Last Days N.T. 1999

Tomson N.T. 2002

Apostolic Bible Polyglot Greek 2003

A Conservative Version Interlinear 2005

Resurrection Life N.T. 2005

Pickering N.T. 2005

New Century Version 2005

Bond Slave Version 2009

The Faithful N.T. 2009

The World English Bible 2000

Conservative Bible 2010

Hebraic Transliteration Scripture 2010

The Easy English Bible 2010

The New European Version 2010

The Online Interlinear 2010 (André de Mol)

The Aramaic New Testament 2011

Orthodox Jewish Bible 2011

The Far Above All Translation 2011

The Work of God’s Children Illustrated Bible 2011

The Interlinear Hebrew-Greek Scriptures 2012 (Mebust)

The Biblos Interlinear Bible 2013

The Hebrew Names Version 2014

Modern English Version 2014

The Modern Literal New Testament 2014

New Matthew Bible 2016

The Passion Translation 2017

and the Evangelical Heritage Version 2017.

Foreign Language Bibles that have the whole verse in their text are:

Spanish: Enzinas 1543, Pineda 1556, Reina 1569, Cipriano de Valera 1602, the Reina-Valera 1909 - 2011,

Italian Diodati 1569, La Nuova Diodati 1991 and the Nuova Riveduta 2006,

French Martin 1744, Ostervald 1998 and French Louis Second 2007

Luther’s German bible 1545 and the German Schlachter bible 2000

Portuguese Almeida 1671 and 2009 and O Livro 2000

Finnish Bible 1776,

Chinese Traditional Standard Bible 2011 and Chinese Contemporary Bible 2011

Bulgarian Protestant Bible 2000

Hungarian Karoli Bible

Norwegian Det Norsk Bibleselskap

Smith & van Dyck’s Arabic bible - لان ابن الانسان قد جاء لكي يخلّص ما قد هلك.,

Czeck Bible Kralicka,

Afrikaans Bible 1953

Romanian Fidela bible and Cornilescu 2014

Norwegian En Leavened Bok 1988

Lithuanian Bible

Latvian N.T.

Polish Updated Gdansk Bible 2013

Dutch Staten-Vertaling bible

Hatian-Creole Bible

Korean bible

Russian Synodal Version

Tagalog Ang Salita ng Diyos 1998,

Georgian Bible,

Amharic N.T.,

Albanian Bible,

Danish Dansk Bible,

Ukrainian Easy to Read Version 2007,

Basque Navarro-Labourdin N.T.,

Estonian bible,

Veren’s Contemporary Bulgarian Bible,

Western Armenian N.T.,

Indonesian Basaha Seharihari,

The Vietnamese Ban Dich 2011.

The Modern Greek New Testament - Επειδη ο Υιος του ανθρωπου ηλθε δια να σωση το απολωλος, and The Modern Hebrew New Testament - כי בא בן האדם להושיע את האבד׃

The verse is not found in Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and only a handful of other manuscripts.

Special thanks to Will Kinney and his painstakingly thorough documentation! #kingjamesbible