Documents of the Bible

Transcription

1 Documents of the Bible Some helpful definitions The Tanakh (also Tenakh or Tenak) is the Bible used in Judaism. The name "Tanakh" is a Hebrew acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Tanakh's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah ("Teaching," also known as the Five Books of Moses), Nevi'im("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings") - hence TaNaKh. The elements of the Tanakh are incorporated in various forms in Christian Bibles, in which, with some variations, it is called the "Old Testament." According to the Talmud, much of the contents of the Tanakh were compiled by the "Men of the Great Assembly" by 450 BCE, and have since remained unchanged. Novum Testamentum Graece is the Latin name of the Greek language version of the New Testament. The first printed edition was produced by Erasmus. Today the designation Novum Testamentum Graece normally refers to the Nestle-Aland editions, named after the scholars who led the critical editing work. The text, edited by the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung (Institute for New Testament Textual Research) is currently in its 27th edition, abbreviated NA27. NA27 is used as the basis of most contemporary New Testament translations, as well as being the standard for academic work in New Testament studies. Textus Receptus (Latin: "received text") is the name subsequently given to the succession of printed Greek texts of the New Testament which constituted the translation base for the original German Luther Bible, for the translation of the New Testament into English by William Tyndale, the King James Version, and for most other Reformation-era New Testament translations throughout Western and Central Europe. The Septuagint or simply "LXX", is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC in Alexandria. It is the oldest of several ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean from the time of Alexander the Great ( BC). The word septuaginta means "seventy" in Latin and derives from a tradition that seventy (or seventy-two) Jewish scholars translated the Pentateuch (Torah) from Hebrew into Greek for Ptolemy II Philadelphus, BC. The Peshitta (Syriac: simple, common) is the standard version of the Christian Bible in thesyriac language. The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated from the Hebrew, probably in the second century. The New Testament of the Peshitta, which originally excluded certain disputed books, had become the standard by the early 5th century, replacing two early Syriac versions of the gospels. A Codex (Latin for block of wood, book; plural codices) is a book in the format used for modern books, with separate pages bound together and given a cover. It was a Roman invention that replaced the scroll. The term is now used only for manuscripts (hand-written), produced from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages. A New Testament papyrus is a copy of a portion of the New Testament made on papyrus. To date, over one hundred and twenty such papyri are known. In general, they are considered the earliest and best witnesses to the original text of the New Testament. A New Testament uncial is a copy of a portion of the New Testament in Greek or Latin capital (or majuscule) letters, written on parchment or vellum. The style of writing called Biblical Uncial orbiblical Majuscule. A New Testament minuscule is a copy of a portion of the New Testament written in a small, cursive Greek script (developed from Uncial). Most of the minuscules are still written on parchment. Paper was used since the 12th century. A Lectionary is a book or listing that contains a collection of scripture readings appointed for Christian or Judaic worship on a given day or occasion. Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pithof the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus,[1] a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta. Parchment is a thin material made from calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin. Its most common use is as the pages of a book, codex or manuscript. It is distinct from leather in that parchment is not tanned, but stretched, scraped, and dried under tension, creating a stiff white, yellowish or translucent animal skin. The finer qualities of parchment are called vellum. It is very reactive with changes in relative humidity and is not waterproof.

2 A basic timeline ~443 B.C. ~285 B.C. ~70 A.D. 400 A.D. Completion of all the books of the original Hebrew manuscripts which make up the 39 books of the Old Testament The Septuagint Pentateuch was written. It is the oldest written Greek version of the Pentateuch. Completion of the Greek manuscripts which make up the 27 books of the New Testament Jerome converts the Greek and Hebrew texts into the Latin Vulgate, which is used by Roman Catholic church. It became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. In the 13th century it came to be called versio vulgata, which means "common translation". There are 76 books in the Clementine edition of the Vulgate Bible: 46 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, and three in the Apocrypha Best known (Codex Leningradensis) Masoretic text of complete Old Testament is copied by the Ben Asher family. This test will be used by all future versions of the Bible. Despite how old these texts were, they were still written from one to two thousand years after the original autographs of the Old Testament King James Version (known in England as The Authorized Version) is published. King James I (formerly King James VI of Scotland) authorized a new Bible to be created from the Bishop's Bible, The Great Bible, Tyndale's Bible, Coverdale's Bible and Geneva Bible. 50 scholars began in 1607 using the Hebrew Masoretic Text (900 AD) and the Greek Textus Receptus by Erasmus Codex Alexandrinus, a 5th century completed Greek New Testament manuscript was brought to England. 1830s 1850s Early 1900s Constanin von Tischendorf finds Codex Sinaiticus Greek text in monastery. Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important hand-written ancient copies of the Greek Bible. It was written in the 4th century, in uncial letters. It came to the attention of scholars in the 19th century at the Greek Monastery of Mount Sinai, with further material discovered in the 20th century, and most of it is today in the British Library. Originally it contained the whole of both Testaments. The Greek Old Testament survived almost complete, along with a complete New Testament, plus the Epistle of Barnabas, and portions of The Shepherd of Hermas. Codex Vaticanus of Greek text dated 325 AD was found in The Vatican's library, where it had been since 1481, but not made available until now. It is written in Greek, on vellum, with uncial letters. It is one of the best manuscripts of Greek Bible. Codex Sinaiticus is its only one competitor. Until the discovery by Tischendorf of the Codex Sinaiticus, it was without a rival in the world. Discovery of thousands of papyri in Egypt showed that most documents written between AD were written in Koine (common) Greek vs. the poetic form of Greek used by poets. This was the language of the people. This prompted scholars to translate from the Elizabethan English to the current language of the people Discovery of Dead Sea Scrolls gives 1000 yr older translations of major part of Old Testament. These were written between 250 BC and 70 AD. The scrolls are very similar to the Masoretic text, which confirms that the Masoretes took great care in its development. Other discoveries throughout the 20th century improve knowledge about the New Testament. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus. These manuscripts generally date between 150 BC to 70 AD. The scrolls are most commonly identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes. The Dead Sea Scrolls are traditionally divided into three groups: "Biblical" manuscripts (copies of texts from the Hebrew Bible), which comprise roughly 40% of the identified scrolls; "Apocryphal" or "Pseudepigraphical" manuscripts (known documents from the Second Temple Period like Enoch, Jubilees, Tobit, Sirach, non-canonical psalms, etc., that were not ultimately canonized in the Hebrew Bible), which comprise roughly 30% of the identified scrolls; and "Sectarian" manuscripts (previously unknown documents that speak to the rules and beliefs of a particular group or groups within greater Judaism) like the Community Rule, War Scroll, Pesher ("Commentary") on Habakkuk, and the Rule of the Blessing, which comprise roughly 30% of the identified scrolls.

3 Accuracy of the New Testament In "The Text Of The New Testament", Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland compare the total number of variantfree verses, and the number of variants per page among the seven major editions of the Greek NT (Tischendorf, Westcott-Hort, von Soden, Vogels, Merk, Bover and Nestle-Aland) concluding 62.9%, or 4999/7947, agreement. [9] They concluded, "Thus in nearly two-thirds of the New Testament text, the seven editions of the Greek New Testament which we have reviewed are in complete accord, with no differences other than in orthographical details (e.g., the spelling of names, etc.). Verses in which any one of the seven editions differs by a single word are not counted. This result is quite amazing, demonstrating a far greater agreement among the Greek texts of the New Testament during the past century than textual scholars would have suspected [ ]. Book Total Number Of Verses Variant- Free Verses- Variants Percentage per page Matthew % 6.8 Mark % 10.3 Luke % 6.9 John % 8.5 Acts % 4.2 Romans % Corinth % Corinth % 2.8 Galatians % 3.3 Ephesians % 2.9 Philippians % 2.5 Colossians % Thess % Thess % Timothy % Timothy % 2.8 Titus % 2.3 Philemon % 5.1 Hebrews % 2.9 James % Peter % Peter % John % 2.8 Influence Earlier translations of the Bible, including the Authorized King James Version, tended to rely on the Byzantine text-type, also known as the Majority Text. A number of translations began to use critical Greek editions, beginning with the translation of the Revised Version in England in (using Westcott and Hort's Greek Text). A comparison of twenty translations with 15,000 variant readings shows the following percentages of agreement with the Nestle-Aland 27th edition (NA27): Abbrev. Name Agreement with NA27 NAS New American Standard 84% ASV American Standard Version 84% NAU New American Standard 1995 Update 83% NAB New American Bible 83% ESV English Standard Version 83% HCS NRS Holman Christian Standard Bible New Revised Standard Version 82% 82% NET New English Translation 80% RSV Revised Standard Version 80% NIV New International Version 74% NJB New Jerusalem Bible 73% REB Revised English Bible 71% JNT Jewish New Testament 70% GNB Good News Bible 69% NLT New Living Translation 68% DRA Douay-Rheims American edition 61% TLB The Living Bible 55% MRD Murdock Peshitta translation 51% NKJ New King James Bible 49% KJV King James Version 47% 2 John % John % 3.2 Jude % 4.2 Revelation % 5.1 Total %

4 Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) manuscripts The Aleppo Codex (c. 920 CE) and Leningrad Codex (c CE) are the oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts of the Tanakh. The 1947 find at Qumran of the Dead Sea scrolls pushed the manuscript history of the Tanakh back a millennium from the two earliest complete codices (see Tanakh at Qumran). Before this discovery, the earliest extant manuscripts of the Old Testament were in Greek in manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. Out of the roughly 800 manuscripts found at Qumran, 220 are from the Tanakh. Every book of the Tanakh is represented except for the Book of Esther; however, most are fragmentary. Notably, there are two scrolls of the Book of Isaiah, one complete and one around 75% complete. These manuscripts generally date between 150 BCE to 70 CE. The Aleppo Codex is the most complete extant version of the Hebrew Bible. The codex was written in the 10th century CE. It is considered the most authoritative document in the masorah ("transmission"), the tradition by which the Hebrew Scriptures have been preserved from generation to generation. Surviving examples of response literature show that the Aleppo Codex was consulted by far-flung Jewish scholars throughout the Middle Ages, and modern studies have shown it to be the most accurate representation of Masoretic principles in any extant manuscript, containing very few errors among the millions of orthographic details that make up the Masoretic text. Thus, the Aleppo Codex is seen as the most authoritative source document for both the original biblical text and its vocalization. The Leningrad Codex (or Codex Leningradensis) is one of the oldest manuscripts of the complete Hebrew Bible produced according to the Tiberian mesorah; it is dated 1008 according to its colophon. The Aleppo Codex, against which the Leningrad Codex was corrected, was the first such manuscript and is several decades older, but parts of it have been missing since 1947, making the Leningrad Codex the oldest complete codex of the Tiberian mesorah that has survived intact to this day. In modern times, the Leningrad Codex is most important as the Hebrew text reproduced in Biblia Hebraica (1937) and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1977). It also serves scholars as a primary source for the recovery of details in the missing parts of the Aleppo Codex. Extant Tanakh manuscripts Manuscript Examples Language Date Hebrew, Paleo Hebrewand Dead Sea Scrolls Tanakh at Qumran c. 150 BCE - 70 CE Greek (Septuagint) Septuagint Codex Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and other earlier papyri Greek 4th century CE Peshitta Syriac early 5th century CE Vulgate Latin early 5th century CE Masoretic Aleppo Codex, Leningrad Codex and other incomplete mss Hebrew 10th century CE Samaritan Pentateuch Samaritan alphabet Oldest extant mss c.11th century CE, oldest mss available to scholars 16th century CE Targum Aramaic 11th century CE The Masoretic Text (MT) is the Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh). It defines not just the books of the Jewish canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their vocalization and accentuation. The MT is also widely used as the basis for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles, and in recent decades also for Catholic Bibles. The oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the ninth century AD, and the Aleppo Codex (once the oldest complete copy of the Masoretic Text, but now missing its Torah section) dates from the tenth century.

5 Manuscript construction An important issue with manuscripts is preservation. The earliest New Testament manuscripts were written on papyrus, a plant that grew abundantly in the Egyptian Nile Delta. This tradition continued on to as late as the 8th century. Papyrus becomes brittle and deteriorates with age. The dry climate of Egypt allowed for some papyrus manuscripts to be partially preserved, but, with the exception of P77, no New Testament papyrus manuscript is complete, with many consisting only of a single fragmented page. However, beginning in the 4th century, parchment (also called vellum) began to be the common medium used for New Testament manuscripts. It wasn't until the 12th century that paper, which was invented in 1st century China, began to gain popularity in biblical manuscripts. Script and other features The handwriting found in New Testament manuscripts varies. One way of classifying handwriting is by formality: book-hand vs. cursive. More formal, literary Greek works were often written in a distinctive style of even, capital letters called book-hand. Less formal writing consisted of cursive letters which could be written quickly. Another way of dividing handwriting is between uncial (or majuscule) and minuscule. The uncial letters were a consistent height between the baseline and the cap height, while the minuscule letters had ascenders and descenders that moved past the baseline and cap height. Generally speaking, the majuscules are earlier than the minuscules, with a dividing line roughly in the 11th century. The earliest manuscripts had hardly, if any, punctuation or breathing marks. The manuscripts also lacked word spacing, so words, sentences, and paragraphs would be a continuous string of letters (scriptio continua), often with line breaks in the middle of words. Bookmaking was an expensive endeavor, and one way to reduce the number of pages used was to save space. Another method employed was to abbreviate frequent words, such as the nomina sacra. Yet another method involved the palimpsest, a manuscript which recycled an older manuscript. Scholars using careful examination can sometimes determine what was originally written on the material of a document before it was erased to make way for a new text (for example Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus and the Sinaitic Palimpsest). Distribution of Greek manuscripts by century [10] New Testament Manuscripts Lectionaries Century Papyri Uncials Minuscules Uncials Minuscules 2nd c nd/3rd rd rd/4th th th/5th th th/6th th th/7th th th/8th th th/9th th th/10th th th/11th th th/12th th th/13th th th/14th th th/15th th th/16th th

6 Dating the New Testament manuscripts Earliest extant manuscripts The earliest manuscript of a New Testament text is a business card sized fragment from the Gospel of John, Rylands Library Papyrus P52, which dates to the first half of the 2nd century. The first complete copies of single New Testament books appear around 200, and the earliest complete copy of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus dates to the 4th century.[26] The following table lists the earliest extant manuscript witnesses for the books of the New Testament. Book Manuscript Date Condition Matthew c. 200 Fragments Mark c. 250 Large Fragments Luke c. 200 Fragment John c Fragment Acts early 3rd cent. [27] Fragment Romans c Fragments 1 Corinthians c Fragments 2 Corinthians c Fragments Galatians c Fragments Ephesians c Fragments Philippians c Fragments Colossians c Fragments 1 Thessalonians 2 Thessalonians c Fragments 3rd/4th cent. Fragment 1 Timothy c. 350 Complete 2 Timothy c. 350 Complete Titus c. 200 Fragment Philemon 3rd cent. Fragment Hebrews c Fragments James 3rd cent. Fragment 1 Peter 3rd/4th cent. Fragments 2 Peter 3rd/4th cent. Fragments 1 John 3rd cent. Fragment 2 John 3rd/4th cent. Fragment 3 John c. 350 Complete Jude 3rd/4th cent. Fragments Revelation c. 275 Fragment The Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the St John's fragment, measures only 3.5 by 2.5 inches at its widest. The front contains lines from the Gospel of John 18:31 33, in Greek, and the back (verso) contains lines from verses Gospel of John 18:31-33 (recto) ΕΙΠΟΝ ΑΥΤΩ ΟΙ ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΙ ΗΜΙΝ ΟΥΚ ΕΞΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΠΟΚΤΕΙΝΑΙ OYΔΕΝΑ ΙΝΑ Ο ΛΟΓΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΙΗΣΟΥ ΠΛΗΡΩΘΗ ΟΝ ΕΙΠΕΝ ΣΕΜΑΙΝΩΝ ΠΟΙΩ ΘΑΝΑΤΩ ΗΜΕΛΛΕΝ ΑΠΟΘΝΕΣΚΕΙΝ ΕΙΣΗΛΘΕΝ ΟΥΝ ΠΑΛΙΝ ΕΙΣ ΤΟ ΠΡΑΙΤΩΡΙΟΝ Ο ΠΙΛΑΤΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΕΦΩΝΗΣΕΝ ΤΟΝ ΙΗΣΟΥΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΙΠΕΝ ΑΥΤΩ ΣΥ ΕΙ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΤΩΝ ΙΟΥΔΑΙΩN Gospel of John 18:37-38 (verso) ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΕΙΜΙ ΕΓΩ ΕΙΣ ΤΟΥΤΟ ΓΕΓΕΝΝΗΜΑΙ ΚΑΙ (ΕΙΣ ΤΟΥΤΟ) ΕΛΗΛΥΘΑ ΕΙΣ ΤΟΝ ΚΟΣΜΟΝ ΙΝΑ ΜΑΡΤΥΡΗΣΩ ΤΗ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ ΠΑΣ Ο ΩΝ ΕΚ ΤΗΣ ΑΛΗΘΕIΑΣ ΑΚΟΥΕΙ ΜΟΥ ΤΗΣ ΦΩΝΗΣ ΛΕΓΕΙ ΑΥΤΩ Ο ΠΙΛΑΤΟΣ ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΟΥΤΟ ΕΙΠΩΝ ΠΑΛΙΝ ΕΞΗΛΘΕΝ ΠΡΟΣ ΤΟΥΣ ΙΟΥΔΑΙΟΥΣ ΚΑΙ ΛΕΓΕΙ ΑΥΤΟΙΣ ΕΓΩ ΟΥΔΕΜΙΑΝ ΕΥΡΙΣΚΩ ΕΝ ΑΥΤΩ ΑΙΤΙΑΝ

7 The Bible comprises 24 books for Jews, 66 for Protestants, 73 for Catholics, and 78 for most OrthodoxChristians. These books vary in length from a single page of modern type to dozens of pages. All but the shortest are divided into chapters, generally a page or two in length. Each is further divided into verses of a few short lines or sentences. Pasuk (plural pesukim) is the Hebrew term for verse. The Jewish divisions of the Hebrew text differ at various points from those used by Christians. For instance, in Jewish tradition, the ascriptions to many Psalms are regarded as independent verses, making 116 more verses, whereas the established Christian practice is to count and number each Psalm ascription together with the first verse following it. Some chapter divisions also occur in different places, e.g. 1 Chronicles 5:27-41 in Hebrew Bibles is numbered as 1 Chron 6:1-15 in Christian translations. Chapters The original manuscripts did not contain the chapter and verse divisions in the numbered form familiar to modern readers. Some portions of the original texts were logically divided into parts following the Hebrew alphabet; for instance, the earliest known copies of the book of Isaiah use Hebrew letters for paragraph divisions. (This was different from the acrostic structure of certain texts following the Hebrew alphabet, such as Psalm 119 and the book of Lamentations.) There are other divisions from various sources which are different from what we use today. The Old Testament began to be put into sections before the Babylonian Captivity (586 BC) with the five books of Moses being put into a 154-section reading program to be used in a three-year cycle. Later (before 536 BC) the Law was put into 54 sections and 669 sub-divisions for reading. By the time of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, the New Testament had been divided into paragraphs, although the divisions were different from the modern Bible. An important canon of the New Testament was proclaimed by Pope Damasus I in the Roman synod of 374. Pope Damasus also induced Jerome, a priest from Antioch, to undertake his famous translation of the entire Bible, both Old and New Testaments, from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, the official language of the time. This translation is known as the Vulgate. The Church continued to finance the very expensive process of copying and providing copies of the Bible to local churches and communities from that point up to and beyond the invention of the printing press, which greatly reduced the cost of producing copies of the Scriptures. Churchmen Archbishop Stephen Langton and Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro determined different schemas for systematic division of the Bible between 1227 and It is the system of Archbishop Langton on which the modern chapter divisions are based. [1][2] Verses It is presently unknown how early the Hebrew verse divisions were incorporated into the books that comprise the Biblical canon. However, it is beyond dispute that for at least a thousand years the Tanakhhas contained an extensive system of multiple levels of section, paragraph, and phrasal divisions that were indicated in Masoretic vocalization and cantillation markings. One of the most frequent of these was a special type of punctuation, the sof passuq, symbol for a full stop or sentence break, resembling the colon mark (:) of English and Latin orthography. With the advent of the printing press and the translation of thebible into English, Old Testament versifications were made that correspond predominantly with the existing Hebrew full stops, with a few isolated exceptions. A product of meticulous labour and unwearying attention, the Old Testament verse divisions stand today in essentially the same places as they have been passed down since antiquity. Most attribute these to Rabbi Isaac Nathan around [2] The first person to divide New Testament chapters into verses was Italian Dominican biblical scholar Santi Pagnini ( ), a system that was never widely adopted. [3] Robert Estienne created an alternate numbering in his 1551 edition of the Greek New Testament. The first English New Testament to use the verse divisions was a 1557 translation by William Whittingham (c ). The first Bible in English to use both chapters and verses was the Geneva Bible published shortly afterwards in These verse divisions soon gained acceptance as a standard way to notate verses, and have since been used in nearly all English Bibles.

8 Statistics The following apply to the King James Version of Bible in its modern Protestant form, i.e. including the New Testament but none of thedeuterocanonical books. Chapters There are 929 chapters in the Old Testament and 260 chapters in the New Testament. This gives a total of 1,189 chapters (on average, 18 per book). Psalm 117 is the middle chapter of the Bible, being the 595th Chapter. [4] Psalm 117 is also the shortest chapter of the Bible. Psalm 119 is the longest chapter of the Bible. Verses There are 23,145 verses in the Old Testament and 7,957 verses in the New Testament. This gives a total of 31,102 verses, [5] which is an average of a little more than 26 verses per chapter. Contrary to popular belief, Psalm 118 does not contain the middle verse of the Bible. The King James Version has an even number of verses (31,102), with the two middle verses being Psalm 103:1-2. [6] 1 Chronicles 1:25 ("Eber, Peleg, Reu") is the shortest verse in the Old Testament. 1 Thessalonians 5:16 ("παντοτε χαιρετε", "Rejoice always") is the shortest verse in the original Greek of the New Testament. [7] Isaiah 10:8 ("Dicet enim") is the shortest verse in the Latin Vulgate. [8] John 11:35 ("Jesus wept") is the shortest verse in most English translations. Some translations including the New International Version, New Living Translation, New Life Version, Holman Christian Standard Bible and New International Reader's Version render Job 3:2 as "He said". However, this is a translators' condensation of the Hebrew which literally translated is "And Job answered and said." Esther 8:9 is the longest verse in the Masoretic Text. The discovery of several manuscripts at Qumran (in the Dead Sea Scrolls) has reopened what is considered the most original text of 1 Samuel 11; if one believes that those manuscripts better preserve the text, several verses in 1 Samuel 11 surpass Esther 8:9 in length.

9 The Old Testament Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible compares manuscript versions of the following sources (dates refer to the oldest extant manuscripts in each family): Manuscript Examples Language Date Dead Sea Scrolls Septuagint Tanakh at Qumran Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and other earlier papyri Hebrew, Paleo Hebrew and Greek(Septuagint) Greek c. 150 BCE - 70 CE 4th century CE Peshitta Syriac early 5th century CE Vulgate Latin early 5th century CE Masoretic Samaritan Pentateuch Aleppo Codex, Leningrad Codex and other incomplete mss Hebrew Samaritan alphabet 10th century CE Oldest extant mss c.11 th century CE, oldest mss available to scholars 16th century CE Targum Aramaic 11th century CE The New Testament The New Testament has been preserved in more than 5,300 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Ethiopic and Armenian. New Testament textual critics have sorted the witnesses into three major groups, called text-types. The most common division today is: Text type Date Characteristics Bible version The Alexandrian text-type (also called Minority Text) The Western texttype The Byzantine texttype (also called Majority Text) 2nd-4th century CE 3rd-9th century CE 5th-16th century CE This family constitutes a group of early and well-regarded texts, including Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. Most of this tradition appear to come from around Alexandria, Egypt. It contains readings that are often terse, shorter, somewhat rough, less harmonised, and generally more difficult. The family was once thought to be a very carefully edited third century recension but now is believed to be merely the result of a carefully controlled and supervised process of copying and transmission. It underlies most modern translations of the New Testament. This is also very early and comes from a wide geographical area stretching from North Africa to Italy from Gaul to Syria. It is found in Greek manuscripts and in the Latin translations used by the Western church. It is much less controlled than the Alexandrian family and its witnesses are seen to be more prone to paraphrase and other corruptions. This is a group of around 80% of all manuscripts, the majority of which are comparatively very late in the tradition. It had become dominant at Constantinople from the 5th century on and was used throughout the Byzantine church. It contains the most harmonistic readings, paraphrasing and significant additions, most of which are believed to be secondary readings. It underlies the Textus Receptus used for most Reformation-era translations of the New Testament. NIV, NAB, TNIV, NASB, RSV, ESV, EBR, NWT, LB, ASV,NC, GNB Vetus Latina KJV, NKJV, Tyndale, Coverdale, Geneva, Bishops' Bible, Douay-Rheims, JB, NJB, OSB

10 Minority Text versus Majority Text The New Testament portion of the English translation known as the King James Version was based on thetextus Receptus, a Greek text prepared by Erasmus based on a few late medieval Greek manuscripts of the Byzantine texttype. However, following Westcott and Hort, most modern New Testament textual critics have concluded that the Byzantine text-type was formalised at a later date than the Alexandrian and Western text-types. Among the other types, the Alexandrian text-type (Minority Text) is viewed as more pure than the Western and Byzantine text-types, and so one of the central tenets of current New Testament textual criticism is that one should follow the readings of the Alexandrian texts unless those of the other types are clearly superior. Most modern New Testament translations now use an Eclectic Greek text that is closest to the Alexandrian text-type. The United Bible Societies's Greek New Testament (UBS4) and Nestle Aland (NA 27) are accepted by most of the academic community as the best attempt at reconstructing the original texts of the Greek NT. A minority position represented by The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text edition by Zane C. Hodges and Arthur L. Farstad argues that the Byzantine text-type (Majority Text) represents an earlier text-type than the surviving Alexandrian texts. The argument states that the far greater number of surviving later Byzantine manuscripts implies an equivalent preponderance of Byzantine texts amongst lost earlier manuscripts; and hence that a critical reconstruction of the predominant text of the Byzantine tradition would have a superior claim to being closest to the autographs. Luke 11:2 in Codex Sinaiticus A page from Codex Vaticanus shows a medieval scribe (the marginal note between columns one and two) criticizing a predecessor for changing the text: "Fool and knave, leave the old reading, don't change it!" From the Aleppo Codex, Deuteronomy. Codex Ebnerianus, Minuscule 105, (12th), John 1:5b-10 John 1:1-7 Codex Alexandrinus

11 Byzantine illuminated manuscript, 1020

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14 A Brief Schematic History of the English Bible

15 Bible Translation Amplified Bible (AMP) English Standard Version (ESV) Good News Translation (GNT) Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) King James Version (KJV) New American Bible (NAB) New American Standard, Updated (NASB) New International Reader's Version (NIrV) Bible Sample Verse 2 Corinthians 10:13 We, on the other hand, will not boast beyond our legitimate province and proper limit, but will keep within the limits [of our commission which] God has allotted us as our measuring line and which reaches and includes even you. But we will not boast beyond limits, but will boast only with regard to the area of influence God assigned to us, to reach even you. As for us, however, our boasting will not go beyond certain limits; it will stay within the limits of the work which God has set for us, and this includes our work among you. We, however, will not boast beyond measure, but according to the measure of the area of ministry that God has assigned to us, which reaches even you. But we will not boast of things without our measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed to us, a measure to reach even unto you. But we will not boast beyond measure but will keep to the limits God has apportioned us, namely to reach even to you. But we will not boast beyond our measure, but within the measure of the sphere which God apportioned to us as a measure, to reach even as far as you. But I won't brag more than I should. Instead, I will brag only about what I have done in the area God has given me. It is an area that reaches all the way to you. Bible Translation New International Version (NIV) New International Version (NIV) New King James Version (NKJV) New Living Translation (NLT) New Revised Standard Edition (NRSV) The Message Todays New International Version (TNIV) Bible Sample Verse 2 Corinthians 10:13 We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the field God has assigned to us, a field that reaches even to you. We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the field God has assigned to us, a field that reaches even to you. We, however, will not boast beyond measure, but within the limits of the sphere which God appointed us--a sphere which especially includes you. But we will not boast of authority we do not have. Our goal is to stay within the boundaries of God's plan for us, and this plan includes our working there with you. We, however, will not boast beyond limits, but will keep within the field that God has assigned to us, to reach out even as far as you. We're not, understand, putting ourselves in a league with those who boast that they're our superiors. We wouldn't dare do that. But in all this comparing and grading and competing, the quite miss the point. We aren't making outrageous claims here. We're sticking to the limits of what God has set for us. But there can be no question that those limits reach to and include you. We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the sphere of service God himself has assigned to us, a sphere that also includes you. A parallel Bible contains multiple versions side by side. The earliest eample is the Hexapla. Hexapla (Ἑξαπλά: Gr. for "sixfold") is the term for the edition of the Old Testament compiled by Origen of Alexandria, which placed side by side: Hebrew Hebrew transliterated into Greek characters Aquila of Sinope Symmachus the Ebionite Septuagint Theodotion

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