The Printed Text of the Greek New Testament

Before printing from movable type became common (from the 15th century C.E. onward), the original Bible writings and also copies of them were handwritten. Therefore, they are called manuscripts (Latin, manu scriptus, “written by hand”). This is an Account of the history of the Greek text up to the time of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament. It, of course, covers Desiderius Erasmus, his life and the Greek Text he produced that attained wide acceptance for centuries until 1881.

25 Feb 2022 4

What Do We Know About the History of the Text of the Greek New Testament?

We have textual traditions, or families of texts, which grew up in a certain region. For example, we have the Alexandrian text-type, which Westcott and Hort called the Neutral text that came from Egypt. Then, there is the Western text-type, which came from Italy and Gaul as well as North Africa and elsewhere. There was also the Caesarean text-type, which came from Caesarea and is characterized by a mixture of Western and Alexandrian readings. The Byzantine text-type, also called the Majority Text, came from Constantinople (i.e., Byzantium).

28 Jan 2022 0

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