Sources and Further Reading;xNLx;;xNLx;Aland, Kurt & Barbara Aland. The Text of the New Testament. 2nd Revised Edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.;xNLx;;xNLx;Comfort, Philip W. and David P. Barrett. The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale, 2001.;xNLx;;xNLx;Gamble, Harry Y. Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.;xNLx;;xNLx;Hull, Robert F., Jr. The Story of the New Testament Text: Movers, Materials, Motives, Methods, and Models. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010. ;xNLx;;xNLx;Metzger, Bruce M. Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Palaeography. Corrected Edition. New York: 1991.;xNLx;;xNLx;Metzger, Bruce M. The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001.;xNLx;;xNLx;Metzger, Bruce M. and Bart D. Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. 4th Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.;xNLx;;xNLx;Parker, David C. An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and their Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ;xNLx;;xNLx;Parker, David C. Codex Sinaiticus: The Story of the World’s Oldest Bible. London: British Library and Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010.;xNLx;;xNLx;
During the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, books were made primarily of papyrus. Papyrus comes from the reeds of the papyrus plant, which flourished in the Nile Valley of ancient Egypt. To make a sheet of papyrus, one would put down a layer of papyrus reed overlapped by a second layer of reed at a perpendicular angle (the pith functions as an adhesive). The alternative writing material to papyrus was parchment, which is an animal skin that has been prepared as a writing surface. To make parchment, one would soak the skin in lime, scrape it, then set it to dry on a stretcher. Parchment was much more durable than papyrus and could more easily be written on both sides, though each of the sides differed in appearance. The process of making parchment was more involved than making papyrus, though it eventually beat out papyrus as the leading writing surface. (For more information on papyrus and parchment, see Gamble, 44-46).
The exact dates that the books of the New Testament were written is unknown, but most of them were likely written between 50 and 125 C.E.
At the time that the New Testament was written, the primary book format was the roll book, or scroll (in Greek it was called a biblos or biblion). Roll books were typically made of papyrus sheets that were glued together to make one long sheet of upwards to 10 meters long. This long piece would serve as a durable writing surface that can be rolled up for easy storage. The length of the book of Acts is said to fit on an average papyrus roll. Though most roll books were made of papyrus, some, especially later were constructed out of parchment. The scroll format found much favor in ancient Judaism and still plays a role in Judaism today. Early Christians, however, overwhelmingly favored a different format, that of the codex (pl. codices). A codex is the ancestor of today’s book; it has pages bound together by stitches on one side. Codices have their origin in the Roman wax writing tablet, since it was common to connect multiple tablets together by stitching them on one side, thus resembling a very short book. Tablets and early codices were considered more suitable for use as notebooks, rather than a fitting medium for published material. Advantages of codices were that they were less expensive than papyrus rolls because one could write on both sides of the page, and they could hold more text in a more convenient size. From early on Christians were associated with the codex. (For more information on ancient books, see Gamble, 42-81).
Although the New Testament was originally written in Greek, it was not long before people began translating it into other languages in the ancient world, such as Syriac, Coptic, and Latin. Still other versions of the New Testament (e.g., Georgian, Ethiopic, Gothic, Old Church Slavonic) are helpful for scholars to understand the transmission of the text throughout history.
The earliest manuscripts of the New Testament exist in fragmentary forms. P52 is a very small (3.5” x 2.5”) fragment, which contains the text of John 18:31-33, 37-38. It is the oldest fragment of the Greek New Testament, traditionally dated to c. 125, which puts it within a half-century after the book of John was written.
According to the book of Acts, the term “Christian” was first used in Antioch of Syria (Acts 11:26), which was an important center in the early church. Early Syrian Christianity also flourished in cities such as Edessa and Arbela as well as the countryside in the Tigris-Euphrates region. Since many people in those regions spoke Syriac, there was a need for a version of the New Testament in that language.
Tatian, the second-century theologian, wrote a harmony of the Gospels in Syraic. He took the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and combined them into one super Gospel that removes the distinctive characteristics of each of the Gospels. Tatian’s Diatessaron gives us access to an early version of the Gospels and demonstrates the early prominence of the four Gospels in Syrian Church. The Diatessaron sheds clues on certain text-critical issues in the New Testament. For instance, it does not contain the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53—8:11), which is missing from some important Greek manuscripts. The word dia tessaron literally means “through the four [Gospels].”
There were a number of early translations of the New Testament into Latin and the term “Old Latin” does not refer to one specific translation made by one translator. The dates of the earliest Latin translations are uncertain, but the data indicates that there was likely a version by 180 CE used by the churches in North Africa and shortly afterward by the churches in Rome.
Though only thirty of the original 220 leaves of this manuscript are extant today, P45 remains an important, early witness to the Gospels and Acts. This manuscript, which dates to around the late second or early third century CE, contains parts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and a significant portion of Acts.
P46 is the earliest collection of Paul’s writings, dating to c. 200 CE. This manuscript includes the letters commonly attributed to Paul, except for the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus). The manuscript also contains the book of Hebrews (thought to have been written by Paul). Both parts of Romans, 1 Thessalonians, and parts of 2 Thessalonians are missing from the manuscript since only 86 of the original 104 leaves are preserved. Today, the manuscript is split up into two collections, one at the University of Michigan and the other at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.
P66 is an early (c. 200) manuscript of John’s Gospel (1:1—6:11 and 6:35—14:26, and fragments of the remaining section of John). This manuscript does not contain the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53—8:11), which was likely not included in the original version of the Gospel of John.
P75 is an important early witness to the Gospel of Luke (covering chapters 3—24) and the first part of John (1—15). This manuscript is traditionally dated to the early third century. This manuscript, along with other early copies of John, omits the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53--8:11).
The earliest securely-dated Coptic New Testament texts are from the fourth century, and reflect a diverse group of dialectal translations from Greek including Achmimic, Fayumic, Lycopolitan and Oxyrhynchite. Most Coptic manuscripts into the early Islamic period preserve the Sahidic dialect, a phonetically-neutral option selected or designed to support monastic literacy. From the thirteenth century onward, the Bohairic dialect, which can be associated with the Nile Delta region rose to prominence through the influence of a group of monasteries in Scetis (Wadi El Natrun). The translational origin of the Coptic translations remains an enigma, but may be associated in its extant form with the rapid rise of Egyptian monasticism in the last decades of the third century C.E.
Codex Vaticanus is another whole-Bible manuscript, dating to the middle of the fourth century CE, similar to Codex Sinaiticus. Vaticanus is named after the Vatican Library, which housed the manuscript since the fifteenth century. It remains an excellent source for what the text of the Greek Bible looked like in the fourth century, although it is missing a some key sections of the New Testament (Heb 9:14 to the end of Hebrews; the Pastoral Epistles; Philemon; Revelation). Like Sinaiticus, Vaticanus is the other exemplary manuscript which shows how the New Testament took shape in ancient Egypt. It also contains markings from later correctors. The importance of Vaticanus remained relatively unknown mostly due to the restrictions that the Vatican Library put on the book until its contents were fully published in the 1860s. The text of Vaticanus in Luke and John is almost identical to that found in the much earlier P75. The textual critics Westcott and Hort believed that Vaticanus represented a pure line of transmission, even prior to the discovery of P75. Codex Vaticanus remains one of the most important witnesses to the Bible in Greek.
Codex Sinaiticus is the crown jewel of ancient Greek manuscripts. It contains a collection of Greek texts from both the Old and New Testaments. Dating to the mid fourth century CE, Codex Sinaiticus is, along with Codex Vaticanus, one of the oldest Bibles. The manuscript was in the care of St Catherine's monastery in Sinai, Egypt, which is where it gets its name. In 1844, Constantin von Tischendorf, a German scholar, "rediscovered" the manuscript in the monastery. According to Tischendorf, the manuscript was sitting in a basket, waiting to be burned, although there are many questions with Tischendorf's account. The manuscript is a key example of how the New Testament took shape in Egypt. It also displays evidence of at multiple scribes who contributed to the manuscript and correctors. It was written on animal skin (calf and sheep skin) with black and red ink. Originally there were 1486 pages (743 leaves) of which only 822 survive. Today, most of Codex Sinaiticus is located at the British Library in London, although the University Library in Leipzig, the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg, and Saint Catherine's Monastery contain smaller sections of the manuscript. (For more information on Codex Sinaiticus, see Parker's book and the website codexsinaiticus.org).
Because of the numerous different translations of the New Testament into Latin the fourth century church in the West saw a need for a single, standardized version. In 382 CE, Pope Damasus (366-84 CE) recruited the learned theologian and philologist Jerome (347-420 CE) for the task of making a uniformed translation of the Latin Bible (both Old and New Testaments). Jerome revised the Latin New Testament to conform better to the Greek Manuscripts. He also made new translations of Old Testament books from the Hebrew Scriptures, rather than the traditionally-used Greek version (Septuagint). Jerome’s translations initially added to the multiplicity of Latin translations, but were later included what became known as the “Vulgate.” As the Vulgate’s prominence increased it influenced the language of the Church in the West, and was even influential on the later development of the Latin language itself. There are possibly more than ten-thousand extant manuscripts of the Vulgate today.
Codex Alexandrinus is a fifth century manuscript that contains the entire Greek Bible (along with 1 and 2 Clement). Its text of the Gospels is very similar to the later Byzantine text, but its text for the book of Revelation is very early and valuable. It currently resides at the British Library in London.
This manuscript, written in the fifth or sixth century CE, belonged to Theodore Beza, a prominent Greek and Hebrew scholar and successor of John Calvin in Geneva. It is a diglot, having Greek and Latin versions on facing pages. The manuscript is incomplete, containing the Gospels and Acts and parts of 3 John. Unlike the other big codices which present the text in multiple columns in the page, Codex Bezae only has one wide column per page. The Codex also contains some unique readings, especially in the book of Acts where the text is 8 to 10 percent longer than the traditional text. Scholars have also identified and discussed various theological emphases in Codex Bezae such as an anti-Jewish tendency, a special interest in the Holy Spirit, and the diminishing of the role of women in the early Christian movement. It is a prime representative of what is sometimes called the “Western Text” or the D-Text. The Codex currently resides at the University of Cambridge.
The Peshitta version of the New Testament was an early fifth-century Syriac translation that revised the Old Syriac text to be more closely aligned with the Greek. It included the entire New Testament except for 2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude, and Revelation, which reflects the state of the canon in the Antiochan church of the fourth and fifth centuries. The name Peshitta signifies what is simple or clear. This text also does not contain the pericope of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53—8:11).
The Lindisfarne Gospels is a manuscripts of the four Gospels that is most notable for its highly decorative content. It employs what is called Insular art or Hiberno-Saxon art, which was a popular art form in the British isles from about 600 CE to 900 CE. Insular art is known for its detailed or complex designs and its use of colors. The manuscript is written in Latin and has a later (10th century) Old English translation between the lines of the Latin text. Its historical value resides more in its artistic value than for reconstructing the earlier Greek text of the Gospels.
Like its predecessor, the Linidisfarne Gospels, the Book of Kells is another key example of illuminated Latin manuscripts in the Insular style. It mostly follows the text of the Latin Vulgate but diverges in some places in favor of earlier Vetus Latina (Old Latin) readings. It was produced in Ireland around 800 CE although the exact circumstances of its composition remain unknown.
In the middle of the fifteenth century, Johannes Gutenberg (1398-1468) developed a moveable-type printing press and became the first to print a book in Europe. The importance of Gutenberg’s invention is paramount. Prior to Gutenberg, books were copied by scribes who would have to hand-write out the contents. After Gutenberg, books could be printed en mass and distributed more widely and more cost-effectively. In 1455, Gutenberg produced the first printed edition of the Bible; it was an elaborate Latin version known as the Mazarin Bible, but often called the Gutenberg Bible. This edition is often praised for its beauty and value. With the development of the printing press, editions of the New Testament in Greek and Latin would now be printed from plates rather than handwritten by scribes.
The honor of the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament belongs to the Complutensian Polyglot which was completed under the direction of Cardinal Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros (1436-1517). It took roughly sixty years from invention of the printing press to the first printed Greek bible, partly due to the technical difficulty of printing Greek type and partly due to the lack of interest in the Greek text in comparison to the Latin version. Though the Complutensian Polyglot completed the first printing of the Greek New Testament in 1514, the Old Testament counterpart was not printed until 1517, and the entire project was not published until Pope Leo X sanctioned it in 1520.This delay caused it to give up the honors of being the first “published” Greek New Testament.
The first published edition of the Greek New Testament was compiled by the Dutch scholar and humanist, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536). Erasmus utilized two main manuscripts dating from the 12th century (one on the Gospels, and the other on Acts and Epistles), which he compared with a few others. He did not have a complete text for the book of Revelation and so translated the last six verses of the book from the Latin Vulgate into Greek, which introduced new readings. It was a rushed job that contained hundreds of typographical errors. The second edition was published in 1519 and became the basis for Luther’s translation of the New Testament into German. The term Textus Receptus (“received text”) was later ascribed to it. This version and its various editions held prominent place for 400 years as it was the basis of the King James Version and other translations of the New Testament.
The Parisian Printer, Robert Estienne (Stephanus) published four editions of the Greek New Testament (1546, 1549, 1550, 1551). His edition was based on the Complutensian edition as well as Erasmus’s editions. The third edition (1550) is notable because it was the first to include a critical apparatus of variant readings. The fourth edition (1551) was the first New Testament to have verse numbers. The Stephanus texts were very influential on later printed editions that fit into the category of “Textus Receptus” texts.
Mill’s work advanced the scholarship on the text of the New Testament, not because he published a unique text, but his text included an apparatus that made variant readings more accessible. His edition reprinted the Stephanus 1550 text, but displayed the evidence of 30,000 textual variants from Greek manuscripts, church fathers, and other early versions. The sheer number of variants was rather unsettling to some traditionalists.
Bengel, as a student in Tübingen, was disturbed by the number of variants that were published in Mills text and decided to focus his scholarly pursuits on the transmission of the New Testament text. He suggests that rather than simply counting out the variant readings, it is better to classify the manuscripts in terms of “companies, families, tribes, [and] nations.” (Metzger, Text, 159). He contended that there were two main groupings of manuscripts: Asiatic (Constantinople) and African (Alexandrinus and Old Latin). He published an edition of the Textus Receptus (1734), but added his own grading system in the marginal notes. He was severely criticized for calling into question the reliability of the Textus Receptus text.
Griesbach’s contribution to the field of New Testament textual criticism was the division of manuscripts into three main groups: Alexandrian, Western, and Byzantine. These categories became very influential among textual scholars for the following two hundred years. Griesbach also published his own “canons” of textual criticism which were general guidelines for determining if one manuscript reading should be preferred over another reading. He eventually published his own edition of the Greek New Testament (1774-75) which challenged the Textus Receptus.
Tischendorf is remembered for the rediscovery of Codex Sinaiticus and the deciphering of the palimpsest Codex Ephraemi (C4). Between the years 1841 and 1872 Tischendorf prepared eight critical editions of the Greek New Testament and twenty-two volumes of the text of biblical manuscripts. He was also a very prolific writer, authoring over 150 volumes, most of which were related to biblical criticism. He discovered Codex Sinaiticus between the seventh and eighth edition of his Greek New Testament. Codex Sinaiticus had such a profound impact on his view of the text and thus he was accused by Eberhard Nestle for giving too much weight to Codex Sinaiticus in over 3,500 places.
Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901) and Fenton John Hort (1828-92) worked together to develop their own version of the Greek New Testament, published in two volumes: The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881). They argued that there were four different text types of Greek NT manuscripts, and that the Alexandrian type was the most accurate. Thus, their edition relied heavily on the two fourth century Alexandrian manuscripts (Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus). Although others had published alternative versions of the New Testament in Greek, Westcott and Hort were the first to successfully garner wide support from scholars.
Nestle helped promote the use of the Greek New Testament by creating a pocket edition of it. The first edition of the Novum Testamentum Graece was published in 1898. This edition was based on a comparison of Tischendorf’s text, the Westcott and Hort text, and the Weymouth (1886) text. The third edition (1901) replaced Weymouth with Weiss’s text. Whenever one of the readings disagreed with the other two, Nestle chose the reading supported by the two and recorded the variant reading in the apparatus below.
Von Sodon was a Berlin pastor who sought to catalog as many textual variants as possible and thus received funding to employ about forty colleaques to collate manuscripts from across Europe and elsewhere. He came up with his own system of cataloging manuscripts, but it was ultimately too complicated to be used widespread.
Weiss used internal evidence of the Greek manuscripts (that is, he decided on readings that made the best sense in terms of their context in the writings). Based on this methodology, he judged Codex Vaticanus on these grounds to be the best. Thus, his edition did not stray much from the readings found in Codex Vaticanus and looked a lot like the edition of Westcott and Hort.
Erwin Nestle continued the work of his father Eberhard Nestle and continued to issue editions of the Novum Testamentum Graece. The thirteenth edition of 1927 was particularly important because it introduced a separate critical apparatus so that students could evaluate variant readings on their own.
Kurt Aland joined Erwin Nestle as an associate editor and assisted with the expanding and correcting the critical apparatus. Also, with Aland on board, a complete revision of the text was begun. In the 1950s the Nestle-Aland text joined forces with the editorial board of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament and published the 26th edition, which featured these new revisions. The third and fourth editions of the UBS Greek New Testament paralleled the same basic text as the 26th and 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland text. Yet the two versions had different aims. The UBS GNT project was designed for translators, thus it only lists the variant readings which are exegetically significant. The Nestle-Aland text gives a wider picture of the variant readings in the text for academic purposes.
An international committee published the Greek New Testament with Bible students and translators in mind. It contained a critical apparatus with 1440 variant readings which were selected for their exegetical significance. This version of the Greek New Testament has gone through four editions: 1966, 1968, 1975, and 1993. The committee of the UBS GNT at various times has included: Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Bruce Metzger, Allen Wikgren, Carlo Maria Martini, Barbara Aland, and Johannes Karavidopoulos. Bruce Metzger published a companion volume called The Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament which discusses significant variants and why the committee preferred the readings that were incorporated into the text of the GNT. The third edition of the UBS GNT (1975) features the same basic text as the Nestle-Aland 26th edition (1979). This parallel between the UBS and Nestle-Aland continued through the fourth edition of UBS (1993) and the 27th edition of Nestle-Aland (1994).
UBS Greek New Testament 3 Published
Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece 26 Published
UBS Greek New Testament 4 Published
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