Is Jesus "the unique god"? Is Bart Ehrman correct with his assertion? Is the variants of John 1:18 affects the original reading and the nature of the Son?

Note: The Greek New Testament, as we know it today, has approximately one hundred thirty-eight thousand words.
There are thousands upon thousands of textual variants. A textual variant is any place among the manuscripts of the New Testament where there is not uniformity of wording. The best estimate is that there are between three hundred thousand and four hundred thousand textual variants among the manuscripts.

In the introductory statements of Dr. Peter Gurry's essay on his edited book with Elijah Hixon entitled "MYTHS AND MISTAKES IN NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM", He write:

The New Testament text has come down to us in thousands of copies with many more thousands of textual differences between them. No one disputes this basic fact. It presents an apparent problem, however, for those of us who believe that the New Testament is foundational for faith in Jesus Christ. After all, what we know of Jesus we know primarily through the New Testament writings. If we cannot know something as basic as what those writings say about Jesus, then there is little point in further debating whether what they say is true. Because of this, the textual differences between our witnesses to the New Testament text have been a recurring concern in debates about Christianity’s viability. Reading the recent literature, however, brings one into contact with two very different opinions of how many and how important the differences between our New Testament manuscripts are. On the other hand, it is common to fi nd Christian authors who believe that textual variation poses no threat to Christian belief in the inspiration of Scripture since “for over 99 percent of the words of the Bible, we know what the original manuscripts said” and “for most practical purposes, then, the current published scholarly texts of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament are the same as the original manuscripts.” Sometimes this near-perfect percentage is applied in the reverse so that it is 99 percent of all the variants that are unimportant rather than 99 percent of the original words that are known accurately, a slightly different metric. Either way, the impression is that, despite Ehrman’s doubts, textual variants present no real challenge at all to Christian confidence in the Bible. In the words of Matthew Barrett, any textual uncertainties raised by our disparate manuscripts are “always in matters insignif i cant, never having to do with Christian doctrine or the credibility of the biblical text.” On the other hand, when thinking about the significance of textual variants, it is helpful to keep two categories in mind. Th e first is whether the variant is important for interpretation. By all accounts, most variants do not affect the meaning of the text. Th is obviously applies to spelling differences (does it change the meaning if we spell John’s name with one or two nus in Greek?), but it also applies to many other smaller variants, which merely make the implicit explicit or the ambiguous clear. These types of variants occur throughout our manuscripts, and any major edition of the Greek New Testament will bear this out on page after page. These types of variants pose no threat to the Christian faith or to the Bible’s inspiration. They merely show that scribes or readers were at times willing to make the text read more clearly.
An example may help. In Acts 13:33, there is a knotty problem in Paul’s speech at Pisidian Antioch. There Paul refers to the fulf i llment of God’s promises in Jesus by saying that “what God promised to the fathers” has now been fulf i lled in the resurrection. But the people to whom that promise is fulf i lled is not so clear. It is either “to us, their children,” or “to our children,” or perhaps “to us, the children.” Th e first and last of these make the most sense in context. The second is altogether awkward since we wouldn’t expect the fulf i llment of this promise to be among the children of Paul’s audience. Th e problem is that the fi rst reading is the latest attested, the second is the earliest, and the third is not attested at all—it’s a conjecture. Regardless of how we resolve this particular issue, this variant is one that does affect Paul’s precise meaning, but also one that in no way affects the importance of the resurrection, still less the fact of the resurrection. No one would be foolish enough to suggest that because this verse has a variant, the truth of the resurrection itself is in peril.
(One could consult Constantin von Tischendorf’s famed eighth edition (Novum Testamentum graece, editio octava critica maior, 2 vols. [Leipzig: Giesecke & Devrient, 1869–1872]) to see this in practice, or the volumes of the more recent ECM, published by the German Bible Society. The Greek readings are, respectively, τοῖς τέκνοις αὐτῶν ἡμῖν (tois teknois autōn hēmin), τοῖς τέκνοις ἡμῶν (tois teknois hēmōn), and the conjecture τοῖς τέκνοις ἡμῖν (tois teknois hēmin).For discussion of this variant, see B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek: Introduction, Appendix, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1896), 65; Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 362; Klaus Wachtel, “Text-Critical Commentary,” in Novum Testamentum Grae-cum: Editio Critica Maior III: The Acts of the Apostles, Part 3; Studies, ed. Holger Strutwolf et al. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaf t , 2017), 20.). ) As Dr. Gurry's noted, What we are interested in, then, is variants that are genuinely difficult to resolve and that have some level of bearing on the text in a way that might affect Christian claims.

Let us now turn to the textual variants of John 1:18 to address the fallacies of Bart D. Ehrman.

John 1:18. Having discussed two difficult and important variants, perhaps we might balance our discussion with the less interesting—but, just for that reason, important—places where no difficult variants are found in the New Testament. Take, for instance, the famous beginning of John’s Gospel, where the deity of Christ is set forth with unique clarity and power. In this passage, we get one famous textual variant in John 1:18 concerning whether Jesus is called the “only-begotten God” (μονογενὴς θεός, monogenēs theos) or the “only-begotten Son” (μονογενὴς υἱός, monogenēs huios) who is at the Father’s side. Th e dif f erence is one letter when written as nomina sacra (ΘΣ vs.
ΥΣ). In isolation, this variant is quite significant, as it seems to be a choice between Jesus’ divinity and his unique sonship. But, of course, this variant does not occur in isolation. It comes only after John’s rich theological introduction, in which he makes clear that the preexistent Logos is divine (Jn 1:1) and became incarnate (Jn 1:14).
In none of these fi rst fourteen verses is there a theologically significant variant. In fact, these verses are so textually stable that they agree word-for-word between the very fi rst published Greek New Testament (Erasmus’s, published in 1516) right up to the most recent (the Tyndale House edition published in 2017). There is not even a single letter different between them. These two editions span hundreds of years and are based on very different manuscripts and editorial principles. Whichever reading is original, then, Jesus is clearly divine in the introduction to John’s Gospel. Numerous other nonvariant passages that we might call theologically loadbearing could be cited.
These three variants are certainly not the only ones in the Gospels, but they are illustrative. It is important to stress that most books of the New Testament have only a handful of variants that combine this level of importance and difficulty. Others we could mention in the Gospels occur at Matthew 12:47; 19:9; 21:29-31; 24:36; 26:28; Mark 1:2;16:9-20; Luke 2:14; 10:1, 17; 11:1-4; 22:43-44; and John 5:3-4; 7:53–8:11. Moving outside the Gospels, we fi nd such variants in Acts 20:28; Romans 5:1; 14:23/16:25-27; Ephesians 1:1; 2 Th essalonians 2:7; 1 Timothy 3:16;Hebrews 2.9; 2 Peter 3:10; and Jude 5. It is worth noting that there is no attempt to hide these variants. They are plainly visible right in the footnotes of most any modern English translation of the Bible. Additionally, their merits are discussed in places such as Bruce Metzger’s textual commentary cited above, the “TC” notes of the NET Bible, and, of course, in the more detailed Bible commentaries. In other words, there is no conspiracy of silence about them; they are well known.
(Many of these are helpfully given in Eubank, “Luke 23:34a,” 528-35.Contra Eric W. Scherbenske (Canonizing Paul:
Ancient Editorial Practice and the Corpus Paulinum [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013], 229, 231, 236)) The two early papyri (P66 and P75), the earliest uncials ( אB C*), and some early versions (Coptic and Syriac) support the word θέος, and many church fathers (Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, Eusebius, Serapion, Basil, Didymus, Gregory-Nyssa, Epiphanius, Valentinians(according to Irenaeus), Clement) knew of this reading. The second variant with υιος was known by many early church fathers (Irenaeus, Clement, Hippolytus, Alexander, Eusebius, Eastathius, Serapion, Julian, Basil, and Gregory-Nazianzus) and was translated in some early versions (Old Latin and Syriac). However, the discovery of two second-century papyri, P66 and P75, both of which read θέος ("God"), tipped the balance. It is now clear that |iovoyevr\s Ocog is the earlier—and pre ferred—reading. This was changed as early as the beginning of the third century, if not earlier, to the more ordinary reading, μονογενὴς θεὸς⸃ ("the only begotten Son").

Even without the knowledge of the two papyri (which were discovered in the 1950s and 1960s), Hort (1876,1 -26) argued extensively and convincingly for the reading μονογενὴς θεὸς⸃ ("the only begotten Son"). He argued that gnostics (such as Valentinus, the fi rst known writer to have used this phrase) did not invent this phrase; rather, they simply quoted it. And he argued that this phrase is very suitable for the closing verse of the prologue, in which Christ has been called "God" (θεὸς-in 1:1) and "an only one" (μονογενὴςi-n 1:14), and fi nally, "an only one, God" (μονογενὴς θεὸς), which combines the two titles into one. This masterfully concludes the prologue, for 1:18 then mirrors 1:1.
Both verses have the following three corresponding phrases: (1) Christ as God's expression (the "Word" and "he has explained him"), (2) Christ as God ("the Word was God" and "an only one, God"), and (3) Christ as the one close to God ("the Word was face to face with God" [WILLIAMS] and "in the bosom of the Father").

After the discovery of the papyri, English translators started to adopt the reading "God." However, the entire phrase, μονογενὴς θεὸς, is very dif f i cult to render, so translators have not known whether to treat μονογενὴς as an adjective alone or as an adjective function ing as a substantive. Should this be rendered, "an only begotten God" or "an only one, God" or "unique God'? Since the term μονογενὴς more likely speaks of "uniqueness" than "only one born," it probably functions as a substantive indicating Jesus' unique identity as being both God and near to God, as a Son in the bosom of his Father. This is made somewhat clear in NET: "the only one, himself God" or NIVmg—"God the Only Begotten." But note that even these trans lations add an article, and thereby follow the fi rst variant. A literal translation as found in the NASB ("the only begotten God") could lead readers to think mistakenly that the Son is a begotten God. Other translations offer conf l ated readings, which include both "God" and "Son"—as in the fi rst edition of the NIV and the NRSV which both read "God the only Son," and the TNIV which reads, "the one and only Son, who is himself God." Of course, these translations are rendering μονογενὴς as "only Son," but this rendering ends up ref l ecting the inferior textual variant. Several modern translations still follow the third reading: "the only Son" (NJB HCSB) and "God's only Son" (REB). To accurately ref l ect what John wrote, an English translation could read, "No one has see God at any time; a very unique one, who is God and who is in the bosom of the Father, has explained him." Bruce M. Metzger on his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, he write:

With the acquisition of P66 and P75, both of which read θεὸς, the external support of this reading has been notably strengthened.A majority of the Committee μονογενὴς υιος egarded the reading which undoubtedly is easier than μονογενὴς θεὸς, to be the result of scribal assimilation to Jn 3.16, 18; 1 Jn 4.9. The anarthrous use of θεὸς (cf. 1.1) appears to be more primitive. There is no reason why the article should have been deleted, and when υιος supplanted θεὸς it would certainly have been added.

Conclusion:

Daniel Wallace is even more precise, admitting that some “non-central” beliefs or practices seem to be affected by viable variants but that “no viable variant affects any cardinal truth of the New Testament.”Both qualiffications (“viable” and “cardinal”) are important and match what we have here called difficult and important variants. In this sense, Wallace is surely right that no core Christian doctrine (e.g., the resurrection, the deity of Christ, salvation, the Trinity) is based solely on a textually difficult passage. Even Bart Ehrman grants that his own view is not a problem for this conclusion. He has said publicly that his view is not at odds with that of his mentor, Bruce Metzger, which is that “essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.” Variants really do have some bearing on some doctrines and ethical practices of the Christian faith, but none of these doctrines or ethical practices is established from these disputed texts.

For further readings see:

Philip Comfort, New Testament Text and Translation Commentary, (2008) 255-257 Daniel B. Wallace, Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture(2006) Peter J. Gurry and Elijah Hixon, Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism(2019), 191-210.

(Quality of Variants Among New Testament Manuscripts)