Manuscripts - Part 3 (New Testament)

People get really hung up on the manuscripts that are the basis of the New Testament (NT). People hear the terms “Received Text”, “Critical Text”, “Textus Receptus”, “Majority Text”, “Alexandrian and Byzantine text families” and their eyes “gaze over” thinking that this is all some sort of secret business or deep magic. Hopefully, I can help you to get the big picture.

Different Bible versions are based off a particular “manuscript type (or family), people become wedded to using only ONE Bible version to the exclusion of all others. Different Bible versions typically, are based primarily on only ONE manuscript “type” or “family”. Some people even going so far as to say that your “eternal salvation” depends on using one particular version. This is silly. If you think back to my previous article or post about Old Testament (OT) manuscripts, it’s pretty obvious that Jesus and the Apostles used the LXX OT just as much (if not more so), than the Hebrew OT. Different versions are fine if they assist in explaining or making clear a point.

The King James Version did not fall out of heaven. Neither did the manuscripts that the KJV is based on or other versions that came after the KJV. As Christians we accept the inspiration of scripture and that God has miraculously preserved the Good News about Jesus and God’s love to us. The wealth of Bible manuscripts, especially for the NT supports the preservation of God’s Word.

How many Manuscripts are there?

Don’t get hung up on the exact number as the count is constantly changing as manuscripts are either found or found to have been counted twice. There is an official NT manuscript record keeping “ledger” kept in Munster, Germany. By current counts there are something like between 5,500-5,900 Greek manuscripts of the NT. There is something like 60 full text manuscripts of the whole of the NT. Many of the other manuscripts are of various books, the Gospels, Paul’s writings or simply papyrus fragments. The high 5,000 number is everything just in Greek of the NT. Clearly whole NT manuscripts are important, but older fragments can often confirm or correct later manuscripts, so all are considered.

In addition to the Greek manuscripts there are about 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and thousands more in languages such as Aramaic, Syriac and Coptic. All up, there are something like 20,000 manuscripts of the NT.

It is also not just the number of manuscripts but how close we have copies of them from the original written documents. The following chart gives some idea.

Basically, as far as the NT is concerned, there is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the reliability of NT manuscripts compared to any other historical documents.

Why is Greek so special?

A quick comment on why it turns out that Greek was such a wonderful language to have the NT written in. I’m sure you have all heard how critics of the Bible and especially the NT like to make much of “errors” in the Bible and discrepancies between manuscripts. They like to say things like, we have copies of copies of copies of manuscripts. How can we be sure that what we have today is anything like what was originally written as we have lost the original written manuscripts (these are called “autographs”), done by the Apostles. It just becomes a way to try and dismiss the accuracy of scripture.

Well, there are three things that negate or minimise this.

1. The science of “textual criticism” allows you to trace manuscripts and see what a correct Greek word could be by examining scribal errors and corrections or wear or even words that have been written over. Yes, these things happened to manuscripts. Scribes were human. Something to research.

2. The second is that Greek was special in that word order in a Greek sentence is often not critical at all. If I wrote in English, “John loves Mary”. We know that “loves” is the verb AND that John is the one who is doing the “Loving”. “John” is the subject of the sentence and that “Mary” is the object “receiving” the love. So in English, word order is critical for meaning. In Greek it is not that way. Have a look at this Youtube video by Dan Wallace where he shows that there are hundreds of ways to write “John loves Mary” in Greek and they would all mean exactly the same. In Greek, prepositions can be added or left out and every Noun (such as John or Mary), will have a specific word ending that indicates whether the Name is the Subject or Object in the sentence. This is referred to as “Case” endings. Greek has a number of cases and word order doesn’t matter anywhere near like English. The vast majority of so called “manuscript discrepancies” fall into this category and are essentially meaningless issues.

3. All NT manuscripts agree completely between 94-96% of the time. There are only about 5% of cases where manuscripts differ. In the same video by Dan Wallace, he talks of the number of discrepancies between manuscripts, which when totaled add up to hundreds of thousands of variations. However, most variants are of no effect in changing meaning. Wallace indicates that less than 1/5 of 1% of any textual variant has a potential effect on meaning. (For the mathematicians among you, 1/5 of 1% of 5% is only 0.01% meaningful variations between all manuscripts).

Families of Manuscripts

Greek manuscripts of the NT are classified into “families” or “types”, based on their style of writing and how much they agree with each other. They are given names that correspond to localities, but that convention is “just that”. Just because a particular manuscript is labelled as a particular type, it does not necessarily mean the manuscript was written in that locality. Here is a great video that simply explains Manuscript types.

There are 3 main Families or types of manuscripts. Don’t get hung up if you see other family types listed. These three are the most common. They are:

Byzantine Family

This is named after Byzantium, the old name for Constantinople or Istanbul, which was the centre of the Eastern Orthodox Greek speaking culture. Of the (about) 5,500 Greek Manuscripts about 5,200 are in the Byzantine family. They have a high agreement in how they are written, however, the oldest complete NT manuscript from this family is about 450AD but there are manuscript fragments that are older up to about 250AD and in addition, some Byzantine readings are quoted in writing of the early Church Fathers from a couple of hundred years previously. Because of the preponderance of this text or family type it is also referred to as the “Majority Text”.

Alexandrian Family

Alexandria was the capital of Egypt. There are two major manuscripts that are classified as this type. Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. The word “Codex” simply means “Book”. Prior to the Codex form being used for manuscripts, a Scroll was the more common format. Codex Vaticanus was found in the Vatican Library at about 1500AD, however, it wasn’t until about 1800 when it was recognised for it’s antiquity. Vaticanus is the oldest almost complete manuscript of the whole Bible, dating from somewhere just after 300AD. It contains the Greek Septuagint Old Testament and a Greek NT (most of it anyway). Codex Sinaiticus was discovered in a Monastery in Arabia in the mid 1800’s. It also is a complete Greek Bible similar to Vaticanus, but not quite as old, being dated to about 350AD. There are other smaller manuscripts, but these are the significant two. The only trouble is, is that these two Oldest manuscripts don’t agree with each other anywhere near as well as the Byzantine (or Majority) agree with each other. Hence, the HUGE debate that has been on-going for nearly 150 years. Do we use Bible versions that are mostly based on the Oldest Manuscripts that are possibly “closer to the originals” OR do we go with the overwhelming Majority? I will write about this later when talking about Bible versions.

Western Family

This is a much smaller group and the main manuscript is called the Codex Bezae. This is an interesting type to keep in mind for a few reasons.

1. It is pretty old, about 400AD

2. It is not a strictly “word for word” manuscript copy but more of a paraphrase at time with words sometimes added or omitted in an attempt to enhance the meaning.

3. The Codex Bezae was used as one of the source manuscripts for the manuscript that became known as the Textus Receptus, upon which the King James Bible is based.

Textus Receptus

In about 1516 AD, a Dutch scholar (often referred to as a “humanist”) named Erasmus wanted to create the first printed (on a printing press) Greek New Testament. Part of Erasmus’ aim was to show that a Greek New Testament would be near identical to the Latin Vulgate that had been in use in the Catholic Church for over 1000 years.

Erasmus only used between 6-8 Greek manuscripts that he had access to, and he used predominantly only about two of them. What he did was to create a “combined” Greek text based on the most common readings in all the manuscripts he had available. This is what we call a “critical text”. Most of the manuscripts he used were Byzantine (or Majority) Type, as well as the Western Codex Bezae type.

The text he created was written in two parallel columns, Greek on one side and his Latin Translation on the other. His aim being to show that his Latin translation was compatible with the Vulgate and thereby prove that his Greek “combination” text was accurate.

Erasmus created about five editions of his Greek text. From memory, I think it was his third edition that was later used as the Greek Source text for the King James Bible in 1611. Despite what one of the videos above inaccurately states, Erasmus did not call his Greek text the “"Textus Receptus”. Textus Receptus is just Latin for “Received Text, and it was given this name just before the publication of the King James Bible, when another scholar writing, referred to Erasmus’s work as “The text that you have received”. So, Textus Receptus” (TR) or “Received Text” became the label given to Erasmus’s source document.

Issues with the TR include:

1. Erasmus only has access to a minute number of manuscripts and the oldest was only from about the 11th Century.

2. About 8 verses were totally missing in all of the Greek manuscripts he had available, so he had to “make them up” by back translating the verses that were already in the Latin Vulgate to allow him to complete all Greek verses that were needed for his text. So basically 8 verses in the TR did not come from any original or older Greek manuscript.

3. There were some doctrinal issues that were not in Erasmus’ text (such as to suggest the Trinity). Even though, Erasmus had these verses in his Greek manuscripts, his Greek manuscripts did not agree doctrinally with some aspects in the Vulgate. He received some “blow-back” as his text disagreed with how the verses were worded in the Vulgate. By the time of Erasmus’ later editions, these extra bits found their way into the TR, although they had no backing from any of the Greek manuscripts.

Majority Text

As written earlier, the Majority Text (or Byzantine Type), comprises the majority of extant Greek manuscripts. Many people refer to the TR as a Majority Text, so although this is mostly correct because most of the TR manuscripts are from the Majority Family, I wouldn’t call the TR a prime example of the Majority readings.

In 1982 a combined (or Critical) Majority Text manuscript was compiled. It is referred to as the Hodges/Farstad Text. There are some Bible versions based on this Majority text such as this Majority Text Interlinear available from Amazon and elsewhere that looks like a worthwhile study tool.

In 2005 a further Majority text Critical edition was compiled known as the Robinson and Pierpont edition.

Critical Text

With the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus in about 1850 and the earlier realisation of the Codex Vaticanis as being extremely old, it became imperative in some circles to create a more critical or combined Greek Text, that relied most heavily on the oldest manuscripts.

In 1881 the first edition of the Critical Text was published. The Editors were Westcott and Hort. The various Westcott/ Hort editions of the Critical Greek NT were published. In 1898 another Critical Text of the NT was published. In terms of actual Greek text, it is not much different than the Westcott Hort edition. This “new” edition is called the “Novum Testamentum Graece” which means “New Testament in Greek”. The editors are Nestle and Aland. This critical Greek text is usually abbreviated “NA”. Currently the NA is up to the 28th Edition (NA28). The United Bible Societies also has a Critical Greek Edition of the NT (currently called UBS5). The actual Greek text is identical to the NA28. The NA28 and UBS5 differ in how they link and refer to variant manuscript readings located in the footnotes.

Basically, EVERY English translation of the Bible available today is based off the Critical Text of the NA28 and UBS5. The only exceptions to this are the King James Version and New King James Version, which are based off the Textus Receptus. Majority Text New Testament’s are available but are not commonly used.

What is the current situation between Text Types

There are good arguments on both sides as to whether a Critical or Majority Text type should be the basis of our modern translations. This is something you will need to research and make up your own mind.

The bottom line is that there is 95% (or so) agreement between the Majority and Critical Texts (NA28 vs Robinson/Pierpont). I grew up with the King James and appreciate its language and influence over the years, however, the TR does have its limitations. I am of the mind (at present), that using versions that come from both Critical and Majority types are of benefit. The doctrinal issues that arise from using either as the basis are minimal. In fact, if you are reading this, unless your Bible is either the KVJ or NKJV, you will be using a Bible where the New Testament is based on the Critical NA28/UBS5 text.

To me it would be wise to use not just New Testaments based on both the Critical and Majority text types, but also consider using multiple translations. I suspect there is just as much variance supplied to scripture readings by different translations than there is by whether you are using a Bible based on Critical or Majority Text. Let’s face it, there are not a lot of Majority text translations going around.

After the publication of both the Westcott/ Hort and NA editions, it seems like Bible seminaries around the world tended to prefer and emphasise the Critical Text type as being “superior” to the Majority. In my study and reading between the lines, it seems like a pendulum, “swung too far” in support of the Critical text as a push back against the Textus Receptus and KJV. Each side of the debate tended to become more adamant about “their text type being better in some way”. I have noticed a slight swing back with support for the Majority Text gaining influence in some quarters and by some scholars against the Critical Text.

This is something you will need to study for yourself. As for me I read and study, not only the KJV but also various Critical text translations and Majority readings. Be a good Berean.