Matthew 18:11, “for the Son of Man came to save the lost”
Matthew 18:11 is missing from some modern Bibles because the earliest witnesses omit the sentence about the Son of Man saving the lost; later manuscripts include it. The difference concerns whether that sentence belongs at this point in Matthew.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB is translated by a committee of language models that works blind. The translators are never told they are translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and never shown the witnesses listed above. Where the manuscripts disagree, the choice between readings is made before translation by the same kind of translator working the same way: it sees the competing readings and the witnesses by age and class, but never a reference or a manuscript name. There are 14,877 such places. For APB 4.0 every one was decided again in October 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol decided every one first. Claude Fable 5.1, from another model family, decided 2,483 of them second, including every place where the first translator left the base text. A departure from the base text needs both translators to agree and the first to be at least 0.8 confident. There is no third translator, so the base text stands when the two disagree. APB 4.0 is translated over those decisions. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
Matthew 18:11: set in brackets as a disputed passage, wording kept.
“The base text reads οὐρανοῖς. The copies also carry οὐρανοῖς 11 Ἦλθεν γὰρ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου σῶσαι τὸ ἀπολωλός. [later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The evidence supports retaining the default.”
“This passage is not in the earliest copies of the text. The committee judged it a later addition and keeps it in brackets rather than removing it. The earliest copies lack the sentence and copyists add more often than they omit. It reads as a connective supplied later.”
The committee's decision was to retain Matthew 18:11 in brackets with its wording kept. Its textual note says: "This passage is not in the earliest copies of the text. The committee judged it a later addition and keeps it in brackets rather than removing it." GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI) served as the first translator; Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic) served as the second translator. The committee's printed text reads: "[For the Son of Man came to save what is lost.]"
The argument for each reading
If borrowed from Luke
The case for leaving out the sentence rests on its absence from the earliest witnesses and its absence from Westcott-Hort (1881). In this reading, the parable of the lost sheep follows directly after Matthew 18:10. The sentence resembles wording in Luke 19:10, which provides a possible explanation for its appearance in Matthew: a copyist could have added a familiar saying to connect the surrounding material. If the sentence was borrowed from Luke, its inclusion would make the connection explicit. Its absence still leaves the parable of the lost sheep in place.
If Matthew wrote it
The case for including the sentence rests on its presence in Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform and the later manuscripts of Matthew. The sentence connects the Son of Man's purpose of saving the lost with the parable that follows. If Matthew wrote it, the shorter reading would lose an explicit statement of that purpose at this point. Its resemblance to Luke 19:10 raises the possibility of borrowing, but resemblance alone does not establish how the sentence entered or disappeared from Matthew. The later attestation supports taking the longer reading seriously while leaving its relationship to the earliest witnesses unresolved.
The uncertainty concerns whether Matthew included this sentence or whether it entered through copying influenced by Luke 19:10. Its absence from the earliest witnesses and its presence in later manuscripts establish a difference without revealing every step in its history. The variant changes whether Matthew states the Son of Man's saving purpose explicitly here. The surrounding parable remains in both readings, and no doctrine needs to be settled by this sentence alone.
Related entries
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 from the sources linked above.