1 Samuel 13:1 — the king who was one year old
1 Samuel 13:1 says Saul was one year old because Reading A translates בן שנה as written, while Reading B holds that the age number has fallen out. The verse’s regnal formula preserves words where an age would normally stand.
What the APB prints.
Every witness, on the record.
What a blind committee did here.
The APB's translation committee works blind: it is never told it is translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and it never sees the witnesses above. Whatever it did at this verse, it did on the language alone — and its record is public.
The blind committee’s printed text renders the verse: Saul was a year old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years over Israel. The available record gives the pericope audit verdict as "clean" and supplies no verse-specific rationale note.
The case for each reading.
If you translate what is written
Reading A follows the Hebrew words that are present. The Masoretic Text reads בן שנה שאול במלכו, rendered as Saul was a year old when he became king. That approach does not supply an age from elsewhere; it leaves the striking result visible in translation. The difficulty is already apparent within the witness’s own description: the wording resembles a formula for Saul’s age at accession, yet the number the formula should carry is missing. The next clause, saying that he reigned two years, remains part of the verse. Translating what stands therefore preserves both the regnal formula and its apparent gap, rather than concealing the problem by inserting a number.
If you patch the number
Reading B treats the phrase as a damaged regnal formula in which the age number has fallen out. Its case begins with the form of the Hebrew: the formula reads like Saul was a stated number of years old, but the expected number is not there. Greek evidence shows two different responses to that difficulty. LXXᴮ omits the verse entirely. Later Greek tradition instead gives τριάκοντα, thirty, which lies behind Saul was thirty years old in modern Bibles. This approach makes the sentence read as an ordinary accession notice, but it also requires a decision about how to handle what the Hebrew text actually preserves: omission, a supplied number, or an explicit indication of the hole.
The surviving evidence does not settle why the Hebrew formula lacks the age number, or whether thirty represents a recovered number or a later patch. The immediate issue is how a translation should represent that gap. This variant concerns Saul’s stated age at accession and the wording of his reign notice; no doctrine is decided by choosing how to translate it.
More places where the manuscripts argue.
Witness readings for critical editions are quoted from the SBLGNT apparatus (CC BY 4.0); Hebrew text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). Readings of ancient manuscripts and versions are cited as published scholarly fact with their sources linked above. Nothing on this page declares a winner — the evidence is the point.
Weigh it yourself.
The registry doesn't tell you which reading is true. It puts every witness on one page, shows what a blind committee did with the same language, and leaves the verdict where it belongs — with the reader.