New Testament Manuscripts

The number of New Testament manuscript available for study is far greater than for the Old Testament and they date from a time much closer to the original authors.

In total there are thousands of manuscripts – the number usually cited is 5000 originating from the 2nd to 16th century, when the production of manuscripts abated with the advent of printing.  The majority of these are lectionaries from the Greek-speaking Eastern church after the 5^th century when Western church adopted the Latin Vulgate as their official Bible. These later manuscripts are important because these were largely the ones available to Erasmus and other early scholars. The number of variants appears, at first, to be huge – over eleven thousand have been catalogued in detail – but only about 6% of them make any difference to the meaning of the text.

Which manuscript is best?

There are two main approaches to evaluating variant readings. Some scholars count up the number of manuscripts which contain a variant to find the “majority” text. Other scholars give greater consideration to the older manuscripts and try to consider the reasons for changes. For example it is more likely that a scribe would change an uncommon spelling into a more ‘correct’ one, or change a difficult word into an easier one.

Attempts to build a family tree of manuscripts back to a single original have been recently aided by powerful computer analysis. The present consensus is that this project is impossible for two main reasons. First, we have too few of the manuscripts from the earliest centuries, so that the gaps are too large and critical branch-points in the tree have been lost. Second, the copiers did not work unthinkingly, but were corrected errors as they found them.

Augustine, in whose day there were hardly two completely identical manuscripts, said that it was usually obvious which reading was correct, and in cases of doubt one could consult a copy which was known to be good.[1] This implies that even by the 5^th century there were still many poorly made copies, probably written by people for their own use, and that there were also professionally copied exemplars which were used to correct poor copies. 

Families of Manuscripts

After the 5^th century manuscripts tended to follow local traditions. This is perhaps because Christian scribes had become a disciplined profession so there were fewer personal copies and fewer accidental variants. Gradually some changes were sanctioned by local church custom, so that three (or four) families of manuscripts emerged.

• Alexandrian family (sometimes known as Neutral). Produced mainly by churches in North Africa and perhaps Palestine. They tend to contain fairly rough Greek and a larger number of difficult or obscure passages.
• Western family. Produced mainly in Italy and Western Europe. They often contain additional phrases which help to explain difficulties.
• Byzantine family. Produced mainly in Eastern Europe. They have generally smoother Greek and fewer obscure phrases.
• Caesarian family. Based on the text of Origen and produced by some Palestinian churches. This is a small group and most scholars do not regard it as a true family of texts.

The Western text became the traditional version of the Catholic church, while the Orthodox church followed the Byzantine text tradition. After the 5^th century, most Catholic Bibles were produced in Latin, translated from the Western text, though the Orthodox churches continued to read the Bible in Greek. Therefore the vast majority of surviving Greek New Testaments from the 6^th century onwards were produced by the Orthodox church and follow the Byzantine text. The demise of the North African churches meant that few copies of the Alexandrian family were made, though some important exemplar copies have survived, such as Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus which are named after the libraries where they were rediscovered in the 19^th century.

Which family is best?

Traditionally the Western family of manuscripts has been preferred by Catholic scholars and the Byzantine by Orthodox scholars. Most modern scholars prefer Alexandrian texts which are generally earlier, with rougher and more problematic Greek. This family appears to be close to the texts which were edited in separate ways by the Western and Byzantine churches.

Therefore modern editions of the Greek New Testament (since the edition of Westcott & Hort) follow mainly Alexandrian manuscripts while older editions tended to rely on a mixture of Byzantine and Western manuscripts. For example, Erasmus’s first edition was based on a small number of manuscripts, though his notes indicate that he was aware of many others, including Vaticanus. There has been a recent revival of interest in the Byzantine family as the source of a “Majority” edition because this is closer to the text of Erasmus which has enjoyed great popularity since the King James version was based on it.

Which variant is best?

No single family of manuscripts and no single manuscript can be said to be the most reliable or contain the earliest version. Scholars attempt to discern the earliest reading by examining all the available variants in each instance, on a case-by-case basis. They try to find a reason why the variants might have arisen. If words which occur between two similar-sounding words are missing in some manuscripts, it is likely that one or more scribes accidentally omitted them. If words which explain a difficulty are absent from some manuscripts, it is likely that they were added by scribes in order to help the reader. If some manuscripts have perfect Greek where other have slightly ungrammatical Greek, this is probably due to scribal correction. 

Often it is difficult to decide why a specific change has occurred. The decision depends on the evidence of the sources on each side – their age, their relative trustworthiness (whether they are generally known to be careful copies or sloppy ones) and the geographical spread of the readings – because a variant which is found in only one area is likely to be due to a late change. Most modern editions of the Greek text are produced by this type of reasoning, and there has been very little disagreement about these broad conclusions in the last century. The resultant text published as the Nestlé-Aland edition and the United Bible Society (UBS) edition are virtually identical, differing only in their punctuation and the amount information they give concerning manuscript evidence.[2] 

Information recorded about variants

All variants which may  result in a different translation are recorded. Most variants result in no difference in translation or in translations which have the same meaning. For example, in Mark 1:16 where Jesus saw Simon and Andrew “casting a net into the lake”, many manuscripts omit “a net”, but the word is clearly implied.

Sometimes such variant are important are important because they help us understanding the reason for differences between translations. In such cases, instead of listing all the sources these variants are merely recorded as Maj (as found in the Majority text which is followed by most older translations) or as UBS (as found in the UBS/NA editions which are followed by most modern translations).

Variants which result in a different meaning are given with a full list of sources. This list consists of all manuscripts, ancient translations and quotations by ancient authors before originating before about 600 AD. After this time the manuscripts started to coalesce into families. These sources are:

New Testament Manuscripts 

• Papyri (p1, p2 etc.) – written on papyrus and preserved mainly in the dry soil of Egypt, often written by ordinary believers for their own use. They contain a lot of accidental errors, and include the oldest copies of NT manuscripts. They are therefore very valuable for finding the earliest text, but must be used with care. From a total of 122, 85 papyri can be dated before the 6^th century. The most important are the third century p45, p46, & p47 which cover most of the NT between them.
• Uncials (01, 02 etc.) – written completely in upper case (‘uncial’ letters) mainly on parchment. These are mostly produced by experienced or professional scribes. Occasionally a manuscript has been corrected at an early date – this is marked as 01a while the main manuscript is marked as 01. From a total of 352, 74 uncials can be dated before the 6^th century. The most important are the fourth century Codex Sinaiticus (01) and Codex Vaticanus (03) which contain all or most of the NT. One 6^th C manuscript has been included – number 06 known as D or Claromontanus – because it is very closely related to Codex Bezae (also known as D but numbered 05) and because it is the best early witness to the Greek Western text of the Epistles.
• Miniscules (1, 2 etc.) – written mostly in lower case (‘miniscule’ letters). These were written mainly by professional scribes in Eastern churches. None of the 2900 miniscules are early enough to be included in the options.
• Lectionaries (L1, L2 etc.) – i.e. sets of daily readings. These were written mainly by professional scribes for use in Eastern churches and for daily devotions by those rich enough to afford one. From a total of 273, only two can be dated before the 6^th century.

Ancient Translations of the New Testament

Those translated before the 6^th century are:

• Old Latin (Lt) – translated into the common language of Italy, which was also the official language of the Western church. They were often translated and copied by ordinary believers for their own use, so they are of mixed quality. From a total of 74 manuscripts, 15 can be dated before the 6^th century.

• Vulgate (Vg) – Jerome’s 4^th century translation into Latin, which became the official Bible for the Western church. He carefully followed the Western Greek texts (except perhaps in Acts and James to Revelation).

• Coptic (Cp) – a third or fourth century translation into the native language of Egypt.

• Gothic (Gt) – a fourth century translation into the native language of Germany.

• Old Syriac (Sy) – a first to third century translation into the native language of Syria, as found in Curetonian Gospels (Syr^C)

• Peshitta (Pe) - an official translation by the Syriac church (sometimes abbreviated as Syr^P)

• Armenian (Ar) – a fifth century translation into the native language ofArmenia, probably based on the Syriac.

• Georgian (Gg) – a fifth century translation into the native language ofGeorgia, probably based on the Armenian.

Each ancient translation is likely to represent one Greek source of the whole New Testament,[3] so they are very important. However, when different versions of the same translation disagree with each other, their evidence at that point is discarded because we cannot be sure what the original Greek was that they translated from. An exception to this is the Latin translations which consist of a large number of separate translations of different Greek sources. This means that “Lt” may be cited as evidence for two different readings of the same text. 

Ancient Quotations from the New Testament

• Quotations (Q1, Q2 etc.) – mainly from the writings of church Fathers and a few ancient works of unknown authorship which quote the NT text.

There are about 215 such sources which can be dated before the 6^th century, some of which have just one or two quotes while others are commentaries on large portions of the text. The abbreviations are chronological, so that the lowest number (Q1) is the earliest. They should be used with care because the same author may quote different versions at different times, and they may quote inaccurately from memory. Many of these are not written in Greek, so the text is cited in translation.

The Diatessaron is an important member of this group, though it is difficult to classify because it more like an ancient version. The Diatessaron is a harmony of the Gospels which was compiled by Tatian in the second century in Greek or possibly in Syriac. His ingenious interweaving of gospel stories employed all but a few verses of all four gospels with little overlap. This was so popular that it was translated into several languages and copied widely, though most of the copies were destroyed when Tatian was declared a heretic in the fifth century.

Later Manuscripts and Modern Editions 

Almost all manuscripts later than the 5^th century conform to the Byzantine family, and even when early manuscripts and later manuscripts are counted together, the larger number of later manuscripts means that the majority of manuscripts always follow Byzantine readings. This is recorded as:

• Maj – the edition based on the majority of manuscripts. 

The modern edition called the “Majority Text” is based on the readings in this largest number of manuscripts, though very occasionally it uses readings from earlier manuscripts which are not found in the majority.

The other important modern edition is that produced by the United Bible Society text and the identical Nestle-Aland text. This edition is very similar to the previous scholarly editions of Westcott & Hort, Tischendorf and Weiss, who all followed broadly similar principles. It is used as the basis of most modern translations, and is noted as:

• UBS – the edition based on the earliest manuscripts.  (This includes text marked with [single brackets] but not text marked with [[double brackets]] in USB editions) 

Abbreviating the Abbreviations: 

The arcane and confusing abbreviations for these sources which are found in a normal scholarly critical apparatus cannot be completely avoided, because there are so many sources. However the options present this in a relatively straight-forward manner. For example:

Mark 1:1 the Messiah (01 Ar Gg Q19 Q141 Q175 Q197 Q211 Q235 Q241 Q331 Q347 Q385).
Prob. the Messiah, the Son of God (01a 02 03 05 032 Lt Vg, Sy, Cp Gt Q77 Q131 Q259 Q285 Q327 Q347 Q355 Maj [UBS]).

In this case, some manuscripts read “the Messiah” while others add “the Son of God”. The sources which provide the evidence are listed for both sides. Although the abbreviations appear a little daunting, they are simple to understand. The numbers which do not start with a letter are manuscripts; the two-letter abbreviations are ancient translations; and the Q numbers are quotations in ancient works. Hovering over them gives more information about each one.

The abbreviations in the options encapsulate a large amount of information which would normally be presented in a much more complex and confusing way. Even if the late sources were edited out (as in the options), the normal presentation of this same information would look like this:

Mark 1:1 Χριστοῦ – א* cop^sa(ms) arm geo¹ Origen^gr Origen^lat Victorinus-Pettau Asterius Serapion Titus-Bostra Basil Cyril-Jerusalem Severian Jerome^3/6 Hesychius. Χριστοῦ υἱοῦ θεοῦ – א^a A B D W geo² it^a it^b it^d it^ff2 vg syr^p cop^sa(mss) cop^bo goth Diatessaron^p Irenaeus^lat2/3 Faustus-Milevis Ambrose Chromatius Jerome^3/6 Augustine

Abbreviations for Sources of the New Testament

The following abbreviations are based on standard ones used in other works, with a few differences. Uncials are normally known by their old abbreviations of single letters (A, B etc) but these have been officially replaced by numbers starting with zero (01, 02 etc) because too many have been discovered. Lectionaries normally have a lower case ‘l” but this is indistinct, so upper case is used. The sources of quotations have no official form of abbreviation, and are normally written out in full. The abbreviations used here (Q1, Q3 etc) are based on a combined chronological and alphabetical order of these Fathers and anonymous documents. Only odd numbers have been used because this will allow newly discovered entries to be inserted in their correct position. 

Papyri from the 5^th century or earlier

Uncial Manuscripts from the 5^th century or earlier

Lectionaries from the 5^th century or earlier

Ancient Translations from the 5^th century or earlier

Quotations by Church Fathers and other writings
from the 5^th century or earlier