Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
Bible critics, be they atheists, agnostics, Muslims, and so on, want to tell us that there are mistakes, errors, and contradictions in the Bible, not to mention hundreds of thousands of scribal errors. In fact, they would like us to believe that the Bible is filled with such things. They make this claim because ...
P66 Papyrus 66 [150 C.E.] is of the Alexandrian text-type (more trusted). P66 comes to us by way of a professional scribe (practiced calligraphic hand, pagination numbers), a major corrector and a minor corrector.
Papyrus 66 (also referred to as P66) is a near-complete codex of the Gospel of John, and part of the collection known as the Bodmer Papyri.
The Majority Text is nearly synonymous with the Byzantine Text because it was in Byzantium (and surrounds) that the Lucian text was copied again and again until it was standardized in thousands of manuscripts. (Phillip Comfort)
The Alexandrian text ... is usually considered to be the best text and the most faithful in preserving the original. Characteristics of the Alexandrian text are brevity and austerity. That is, it is generally shorter than the text of other forms, and it does not exhibit the degree of grammatical and stylistic polishing that is characteristic of the Byzantine type of text (Bruce M. Metzger)
Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, two of the great uncial codices, representatives of the Alexandrian text-type, are considered excellent manuscript witnesses of the text of the New Testament. Most critical editions of the Greek New Testament give precedence to these two chief uncial manuscripts, and the majority of translations are based on their text.
Codex Sinaiticus (01, א) alone has a complete text of the New Testament. It is dated to c. 330–360 C.E. The codex is an Alexandrian text-type manuscript written in uncial letters on parchment in the 4th century. Scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus to be one of the best Greek texts of the New Testament, along with the Codex Vaticanus.
Codex Vaticanus (03, B) contains the Gospels, Acts, the General Epistles, the Pauline Epistles, the Epistle to the Hebrews (up to Hebrews 9:14, καθα[ριει); it lacks 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Revelation. It is written on 759 leaves of vellum and is dated to c. 300–325 C.E.
The discovery of P75 proved to be the catalyst for correcting the misconception that early copyists were predominately unskilled. As we elsewhere on our blog earlier, either literate or semi-professional copyist produced the vast majority of the early papyri, and some copied by professionals.
P75 contains most of Luke and John, known as Bodmer 14, 15 (P75), dating from 175 C.E. to 225 C.E. It is textually very close to Codex Vaticanus. A handful from the 19th and early 20th centuries argued that Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus manuscripts removed the Byzantine text readings. However, if this were true and the corrupt Byzantine readings were early as some claim, we would have those readings in P75 to prove it, as well as the other 60+ papyrus manuscripts dating from 100-300 A.D.