New Testament

The Most Objective Textual Critic You’ll Ever Meet

The evidence from stone and papyrus promises a better way to determine difficult elements of the Bible’s original text.

For many of us, spelling was not our favorite subject in grade school. Getting up in front of class for the annual “spelling bee” filled us with dread. And yet, not all cultures and languages have “spelling bees” like English does. For many languages, in which the alphabet or script is essentially phonetic, a “spelling bee” would be quite boring. The reason it works in English is because the history of sound changes in the language has made correct spelling such a difficult thing to learn. In many ways, we can attribute the idea of “correct” spelling—at least as we moderns see it—to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1436.

Before this monumental invention, and certainly in ancient times, spelling was much less standardized. While certain schools might teach spelling a certain way and general trends might develop, there was no standard or universal spelling for written documents across a region. Different scribes and authors often spelled the exact same words differently.

The value of spelling

In fact, the way that ancient scribes spelled words can provide a valuable window into the nature and quality of their work. I encountered this again and again as I worked through inscriptions and papyri while writing a book on the historical pronunciation and spelling of Judeo-Palestinian Greek coming out later this year.

For the book, I analyzed and documented the spelling of every single word in roughly 4,500 inscriptions and papyri from the time of the New Testament, the centuries leading up to its composition, and the centuries following its completion. The research has yielded thousands upon thousands of various spelling interchanges in the ancient material.

Why are variant spellings important? Aren’t they just mistakes? In some cases, a variant spelling can reflect something about how an ancient scribe was pronouncing a word, just like someone learning to write English might spell the word tough as t-u-f-f. Even though the spelling t-u-f-f is a kind of mistake, it also provides us helpful information about pronunciation. In other cases, certain spelling conventions can tell us something about the time or location of a scribe’s training the same way that the spelling colour points to an author who learned to write in British schools but color to an author who learned to write in the U.S.

Indeed, in addition to providing us with a fairly clear idea of how Koine Greek was pronounced at the time of the New Testament, this research has also yielded a wealth of statistics regarding how different ancient scribes spelled words. In the roughly 4,500 inscriptions and papyri, every “correct” (i.e., standard) and “incorrect” (i.e., variant) spelling is documented and tabulated according to text, date, region, genre, and demographic of author. By looking at all these data together, we can draw conclusions about the pronunciation and spelling practices associated with scribes of particular times, regions, and genres.

The most objective textual critic

While all these data points are important, perhaps the most significant of them all for textual criticism concerns the date and chronology of certain spelling patterns attested in inscriptions written on stone, etc. (epigraphy) and in texts written on papyrus (papyri). After all, none of the extant fragments or manuscripts of the New Testament are from the first century AD. Nevertheless, we would expect the original readings of the New Testament to match scribal practices current in the first century AD.

What we do have in abundance from the first century AD are Greek inscriptions and papyri unrelated to the New Testament. If New Testament textual criticism is ultimately about establishing the original text at the time of its composition, then it would be of great help to know what sort of spelling conventions were current among scribes writing inscriptions and papyri at the same time the New Testament was written.

With all this information at our fingertips, we can eradicate some subjectivity from the work of textual criticism. Instead of making our best judgments regarding the “more difficult reading” (lectio difficilior), trying to determine which wording in a particular passage might be theologically motivated, or merely counting witnesses, we can use epigraphic and papyrological spelling as a sort of measuring stick to determine which witnesses best reflect the scribal conventions of the first century.

Spelling conventions don’t get distorted through a modern lens. Spelling conventions aren’t (typically) motivated by theological or exegetical harmonization. In fact, the evidence shows that when copying biblical manuscripts, scribes tend to regularly update spelling conventions to match contemporary practice, even if it differs from that of the manuscript they are copying.

This is why, with the right data at hand, epigraphic/papyrological spelling can become what I like to call the most objective textual critic you’ll ever meet.

In the remainder of this article, we will look at a couple of examples where a comparison with ancient spelling conventions attested in contemporary epigraphy and papyri can help clarify some text-critical issues.

The name “John” in P45 (3rd c.). CBL BP I, fol. 16r.

Spelling John’s name

In critical editions of the New Testament, you will find the name “John” spelled with two nus (i.e., νν) as ἰωάννης. This is probably because most early witnesses have the name spelled with two nus. There is, however, considerable variation in the witnesses. Here are just some examples:

	ἰωάννης	ἰωάνης
P66 (2nd/3rd c. AD)	ϊωαννης (John 1:6) ϊω[α]ννης (John 10:41)
P4 (3rd c. AD)	ϊωαννης (Luke 3:16)	ιωανου (Luke 3:15) [ιω]ανου (Luke 5:33) ϊωανην (Luke 6:14)
P45 (3rd c. AD)	[ιω]αννην (Luke 9:28) ιωαννης (Luke 9:49) ϊωαννης (John 10:40)
P75 (3rd c. AD)		ϊωανει (Luke 7:18) ϊωανης (Luke 7:20) ϊωανης (John 1:6)
P106 (3rd c. AD)	ιωαννου (John 1:42)
Codex Vaticanus (4th c. AD)	ϊωαννης (Luke 1:60) ϊωαννης (Acts 4:6)	ϊωανης (Matt. 3:4) ϊωανης (Mark 1:4) ϊωανης (Luke 3:16) ϊωανης (John 1:15) ϊωανης (Acts 1:5)
Codex Sinaiticus (4th c. AD)	ϊωαννης (Matt. 3:4) ϊωαννης (Mark 1:4) ϊωαννης (Luke 3:16) ϊωαννης (John 1:15) ϊωαννης (Acts 1:5)
Codex Washingtonianus (4th/5th c. AD)	ϊωαννης (Matt. 3:1) ϊωαννης (Luke 1:60) ϊωαννης (John 1:6)

Spelling of the name “John” in 2nd–5th c. manuscripts

It should also be added that the form ιωαννης is much more common in witnesses of a later date, which are not included here. It would seem, then, that most critical editions opt for the form with two nus (ιωαννης) based on the frequency of its attestation and distribution across early witnesses. Nevertheless, there is seemingly enough evidence for one to make an argument for either of the forms. The manuscripts aren’t sufficient to decide with confidence.

If we take a look at the attestations of this name in the ancient epigraphic and papyrological record, however, the picture becomes much clearer. As can be seen from the chart below, spellings with a single ν are far more common in the first and second centuries, whereas spellings with a double νν are far more common from the third century AD and later:

	1st c. BC/AD	2nd c. AD	3rd c. AD or later
ιωανης	7 (100%)	20 (95%)	23 (13%)
ιωαννης	0 (0%)	1 (5%)	149 (87%)

Spelling of “John” in the epigraphical and papyrological record

These statistics by themselves may be sufficient to give preference to the spelling ιωανης for the original text of the New Testament, at least in some of its occurrences. The reason why we have two different forms, however, requires further explanation. Although there isn’t space to deal with the topic in depth here,¹ we may outline the basic conclusions.

The name ιωανης with a single nu probably goes back to the Hebrew name יוחנן yōḥānān, whereas the name ιωαννης with a double nu may reflect something more closely related to the Aramaic name יוחנה yōḥannā. It would make sense, then, that the more “Hebrew” name is reflected in earlier texts, when Hebrew was still a spoken language, and the more “Aramaic” name is reflected in later texts, when Aramaic had completely displaced Hebrew as the vernacular.

However we explain the different forms, this example shows just how helpful the spelling conventions of contemporary inscriptions and papyri can be in sorting through text-critical issues in the New Testament. And this is not the only place where these datasets can help us.

The quest for “Roman” scribes

In my work on historical Koine Greek pronunciation and spelling, I found myself encountering the same chronological trend over and over. When the ruling, political administration in a region changes, the spelling practices of the scribes working in that region also change. To give a far-fetched illustration, imagine if Britain took over the U.S. tomorrow and we all started altering our spelling of words like realize to realise, color to colour, etc. This is the sort of thing that happened in the ancient world with Greek scribes. Because of this phenomenon, there are a number of spelling conventions that are particularly characteristic of scribes under Roman rule (roughly 1st–3rd c. AD) as opposed to Byzantine rule (roughly 4th—7th c. AD). In addition to the ιωανης vs. ιωαννης distinction noted above, I list two other characteristically “Roman” vs. “Byzantine” features below:

Spelling	Roman	Byzantine
Name “John”	written with ν: ιωανης (Ioanes)	written with νν: ιωαννης (Ioannes)
Long ῑ vowels	written with ει: κρεινω “I judge”	written with ι: κρινω “I judge”
συν- + words starting with π	written without assimilation: συνπαθεῖν “to sympathize”	written with assimilation: συμπαθεῖν “to sympathize”

Because it was composed during the Roman period, we would expect the original spelling of the New Testament to reflect more characteristically “Roman” scribal conventions as opposed to “Byzantine” scribal conventions. Even though scribes tend to update spelling conventions in accordance with contemporary practices (see this article), some scribes may have reproduced the spelling of the manuscript they were copying more precisely.

As such, the overall prevalence of “Roman” (as opposed to “Byzantine”) scribal conventions in a New Testament witness should perhaps contribute to our overall confidence in the reliability of the manuscript tradition. And this from a relatively objective set of data. On this point, it is noteworthy that a manuscript witness like Codex Vaticanus exhibits a high proportion of all three of these characteristically “Roman” scribal conventions. It has ιωανης as opposed to ιωαννης roughly 90 percent of the time (in the New Testament). It also frequently exhibits both ει for long ῑ vowels and unassimilated συνπ- forms: e.g., κρεινω “I judge” (John 5:30); συνπαθησαι “to sympathize” (Heb. 4:15). And we are able to ascertain this characteristically “Roman” character of the scribe without any appeals to particular phraseology, omissions/additions, or anything else that requires a subjective judgment. The relative distribution of certain spelling patterns is an objective statistic. It either correlates well with those spelling conventions of the Roman period or it does not.

The relative distribution of certain spelling patterns is an objective statistic.

Future of the field

These examples show why I call epigraphic and papyrological spelling “the most objective textual critic you’ll ever meet.” Giving careful attention to the scribal conventions of contemporary epigraphy and papyri should become more and more a part of the work of the textual critic as time goes on.

It is telling of just how long the field has minimized the importance of spelling that The Tyndale House Greek New Testament was perhaps the first critical edition of the Greek New Testament to give careful attention to reproducing the spelling conventions used in the manuscript witnesses themselves. This is a major step forward in this regard. Many other critical editions just generalize the “standard” spelling even if the manuscripts have a variant or “non-standard” spelling. And yet, even in The Tyndale House Greek New Testament, we still have ἰωάννης instead of ἰωάνης.

Notes

1
See §7.9.3.1.X in The Pronunciation of New Testament Greek for the full linguistic discussion.

Erasmus and the Search for the Original Text of the New Testament

Erasmus’s Greek New Testament was a monumental achievement, but left room for later scholars to improve it.

Martin Heide

The Greek New Testament published in Basel (Switzerland) in 1516 was the greatest achievement of the magnificent Dutch philosopher, philologist, and Catholic theologian Erasmus of Rotterdam (ca. 1466–1536). At that time in Western Europe, the Latin Bible was the “Gold standard” of Holy Writ; it was often seen as the inspired text. Philologists and theologians such as Erasmus, however, knew that the Latin Bible of his time, also known as the “Vulgate,” was actually a translation, and that it had been translated by Jerome from the Greek in the 4th century AD.

While revising Jerome’s Latin translation and preparing to publish a new Latin edition, Erasmus often consulted Greek manuscripts to ensure his decisions. During that process, he felt encouraged to print the (revised) Latin and the Greek New Testament on facing pages and publish it under the title Novum Instrumentum omne (Complete New Testament), thus allowing qualified readers to verify his revision.

Erasmus used the only Greek New Testament manuscripts available in Basel at his time.

The publication of the Novum Instrumentum omne was a great success. However, because the printing process was done in a hurry, the first edition had many editing errors and typos, which were partly dealt with in the ensuing edition(s). For printing the Greek part of his Novum Instrumentum, Erasmus used the only Greek New Testament manuscripts available in Basel at his time. These eight manuscripts were written between the 10th and 15th centuries. They once belonged to Cardinal John of Ragusa (ca. 1393–1443), who, before the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, had brought about 60 Greek manuscripts, covering all fields of learning, from Constantinople to Basel. John of Ragusa bequeathed these manuscripts to the convent of the Dominicans in Basel. Except for two manuscripts that were already in the hands of Johann Reuchlin (ca. 1455–1522) at Erasmus’s time and that he had to borrow from this great scholar, the Dominican library loaned six manuscripts directly to Erasmus.

Today, six of the eight are housed in the University library of Basel, while manuscript 2814, the only manuscript with the book of Revelation, is owned by the University Library of Augsburg. Manuscript 2105, which Erasmus used mainly for his separately published textual commentary, the Annotationes (Annotations), was discovered in the Bodleian Library of Oxford in 1966. The eight manuscripts are listed in the table below, with the respective Gregory-Aland (GA) numbers that are in use today:

GA	Contents	Date	Shelf Number
1	Acts, epistles, four gospels	12th c.	Basel A.N. IV. 2
2	Four Gospels	12th	Basel A.N. IV. 1
2815	Acts, epistles	12th	Basel A.N. IV. 4
2816	Acts, epistles	15th	Basel A.N. IV. 5
2817	Pauline Epistles	10–11th	Basel A.N. III.11
817	Four Gospels with Theophylact’s commentary	15th	Basel A.N. III. 15
2814	Apocalypse with Andrew’s commentary	12th	Augsburg I.1.4° 1
2105	Pauline Epistles with Theophylact’s commentary	12th	Oxford E. 1. 6

Manuscripts used by Erasmus

Understandably, Erasmus was used to the text of the Latin Bible from his childhood and indebted to the general scholarly opinion of his time that favored this text. Thus, from the first edition in 1516 onward, Erasmus introduced, knowingly or unknowingly, some Latin readings into the Greek text. For example, in Acts 9:5–6, he added the following phrase: “it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks, and he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him” (KJV). In his Annotationes, Erasmus admitted that, “in most Greek manuscripts this addition is not found.”

However, this phrase, being not known from any of the Greek manuscripts at Erasmus’s disposal, is actually found in some later Latin manuscripts and in the printed Latin editions of Erasmus’s time (such as the Gutenberg Bible, and many more). Since the same text is known from Acts 22:10, it might be argued that Erasmus thought the introduction of the Latin phrase would neither change the meaning nor the inspiration of the text.

Moreover, high opinions of the Latin Vulgate and negative views of the Greek text moved Erasmus to write extended apologies for readings which departed from the Latin in his Annotationes. In addition, unfavorable reviews of his first edition forced him to include a late reading based on the Latin in his third edition, the so-called Comma Johanneum, which is added here in brackets: “For there are three that bear record [in heaven, Father, Word, and Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth], Spirit, and water, and blood, and the three agree in one” (1 John 5:7–8 according to Erasmus’ third edition).

As Greek manuscript support was lacking for this reading, it was not included in the first (1516) and second (1519) editions. Erasmus seems to have yielded to pressure to include the passage when he learned that a Greek manuscript in England, the so-called Codex Britannicus, known today as Codex Montfortianus (GA 61), contained the text (fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Codex Britannicus or Montfortianus (GA 61), fol. 439r, with the text of 1 John 5:7–9 including the Comma Johanneum. Source

This codex was actually written around 1520 by a monk named Roy, most likely to provide Erasmus with the missing “evidence.” Erasmus claimed in his Annotationes that he did not believe the reading to be genuine and that it looked very similar to the Vulgate reading. Erasmus wondered why this codex lacked the phrase “and these three agree in one” in verse 8, in accordance with the Latin Vulgate, while it is found in nearly all Greek copies. Moreover, Erasmus saw evidence for a Latin origin of the Greek text in the missing articles before important nouns such as “father” (πατὴρ), “word” (λόγος), and “spirit” (πνεῦμα). Ultimately, however, Erasmus chose to include the Comma Johanneum from his third edition onward, gaining wider acceptance of his Latin and Greek texts, so that, in his own words, no one would have a basis to criticize him.

A comparison of the Codex Montfortianus and Erasmus’ third edition reveals that he added “and” (καί) between “spirit” and “water,” and supplemented the phrase “and these three agree in one.” In the 4th and 5th editions, he polished the Greek, inserting the missing articles. After Erasmus’ death, the text received further improvement, so that the Comma Johanneum reads today: “For there are three that bear record [in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth], the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” (1 John 5:7–8 according to the KJV).

The Comma Johanneum is not found in Luther’s German New Testament of 1522, which was translated from a reprint of Erasmus’ first edition. Martin Luther stated in his “Lecture on the First Epistle of John” that the Comma Johanneum had been “clumsily inserted by the zeal of the old theologians against the Arians … I could easily make fun of the fact that there is no more unsuitable place of proof for the Trinity.” In a similar way as Erasmus, Luther did not really buy the text. In the margin of 1 John 5 in his own Bible, he added the remark that, “there is no testimony in heaven” (in coelo non est testimonium). The German Bible did not include the Comma Johanneum before 1581.

The Text of Revelation

For the text of Revelation, Erasmus had but one Greek manuscript, no. 2814, which actually was a commentary of archbishop Andrew of Caesarea (ca. 563–614). There are many places where Erasmus (or his associate, or his printer) had problems to read the text or to distinguish between the commentary and the biblical text, so that Erasmus’s Greek text of Revelation has not a few unique readings. Most of these faulty readings have never been corrected by Erasmus or those responsible for reprinting the Received Text.

For instance, fig. 2 shows leaf no. 64 (folio 64r) of manuscript 2814. Most of the text consists of Andrew’s commentary, but the red marks in the left margin indicate the next Bible verse (Rev. 17:8b) to be commented upon: “they shall wonder … when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and is” (θαυμασθήσονται … βλεπόντων τὸ θηρίον ὅτι ἦν καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν καὶ παρέσται). However, the last two words cited here appear, due to misreading, in Erasmus’s text not as “and is” (καὶ παρέσται), but as “and yet is” (καὶπερ ἔστιν).

Fig. 2. The last two words of the biblical text (in orange) were misread in Manuscript 2814, University Library of Augsburg (12th c.), f. 64r. Source

In Revelation 21:23–24, Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum introduced a unique reading due to a confusion of Bible text and commentary. As can be seen in fig. 3, the first visible line begins with Revelation 21:23c: “for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (γὰρ δόξα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐφώτισεν αὐτήν καὶ ὁ λύχνος αὐτῆς τὸ ἀρνίον). Immediately after that, Andrew’s commentary resumes, before line four is again marked as biblical text in the margin.

However, the scribe of the manuscript mispositioned the marginal signs! The text of line four simply continues Andrew’s commentary with the words translated in the KJV as “and the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it” (καὶ τὰ ἔθνη τῶν σωζομένων τῷ φωτί αὐτῆς περιπατήσουσιν). This commentary text naturally deviates from the usual Bible text attested in Revelation 21:23–24 which should read “by its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it” (καὶ περιπατήσουσιν τὰ ἔθνη διὰ τοῦ φωτὸς αὐτῆς). Thus, a few words of Andrew’s commentary crept into the Received Text as Holy Writ and, from there, into the early translations such as Luther’s German Bible and the KJV.

Fig. 3. Because of a miswritten marginal sign, the commentary text (in orange) was read as the biblical text in Manuscript 2814, University Library of Augsburg (12th c.), f. 88v. Source

Moreover, as is well-known, a leaf is missing toward the end of manuscript 2814, so that the biblical text quoted ends abruptly with Revelation 22:16 (fol. 92v), while the next leaf (fol. 93r) continues with Andrew’s commentary until its last page (fol. 94r). To fill the gap in his Greek text, Erasmus had to retranslate it from the Latin, which he freely admits in the defense of his text against the critique of Edward Lee: “At the end of my copy of Revelation, a few lines were missing. I added them in accordance with Latin copies,” which means that he retranslated them from the Latin Vulgate into Greek. Similarly, he writes in his Annotationes to the Apocalypse: “Although at the end of this book I have found some words in our text [i.e., the Latin] that were missing in the Greek copies, we have nevertheless added them from the Latin.”

Rev. 22:19 in a 1512 Latin Bible with the word “book” (libro) in the text and the usual reading “tree” (ligno) in the margin — Fig. 4. Rev. 22:19 in a 1512 Latin Bible with the word “book” (*libro*) in the text and the usual reading “tree” (*ligno*) in the margin. Source

Up to today, the textus receptus or “Received Text,” as Erasmus’s Greek text was called from the 17th century onwards, has some Greek readings that hail from Erasmus’s retranslation procedure and that have no manuscript support whatsoever. Although most of these readings are trivial, some are visible in the translations, such as the “book of life” (KJV) instead of “the tree of life” (NASB) (Rev. 22:19). This reading is based on late Latin manuscripts, which confused ligno “tree” with libro “book,” as can be seen in fig. 4.

Further Research after the Reformation Period

After the Reformation, scholars such as the Lutheran pietist clergyman J. A. Bengel (1687–1752) realized that the textus receptus or Received Text was largely based on late medieval Greek manuscripts and that its revision was overdue, in face of many more and much older Greek manuscripts that had become known in Europe. Back in 1516, Erasmus had no choice; he had to use what was available at his time. Bengel, on the other hand, in the spirit and zeal of Erasmus, seized the opportunity and compared the manuscripts newly known in his time to the Received Text. For instance, with the help of the Codex Alexandrinus (5th century) and medieval manuscripts, Bengel was able to correct the most obvious faults of the Book of Revelation (fig. 5) and made text-critical observations that are still valid today.

Bengel’s Testamentum Novum (1734) has the reading τοῦ ξύλου (tou xylou) “of the tree” in the text of Rev. 22:19 — Fig. 5. Bengel’s *Testamentum Novum* (1734) has the reading τοῦ ξύλου (*tou xylou*) “of the tree” in the text of Rev. 22:19, while Erasmus’s reading βίβλου (*biblou*) “of [the] book” is merely cited as a variant. It is marked by the Greek letter ε to signal a reading “to be rejected, though approved by some.” Source

Erasmus’s Legacy

The Novum Instrumentum was the only printed and published Greek text available at the onset of the Reformation and it has done the church a great service. The success and deep impact of the Reformation and its aftermath would be unthinkable without this new spiritual and intellectual basis of the New Testament text. Moreover, no cardinal doctrine is jeopardized by its obvious shortcomings. However, the Greek of the Novum Instrumentum, or the “Received Text,” as it was later called, “soon became, as it were, stereotyped in men’s minds; so that the readings originally edited on most insufficient manuscript authority, were supposed to possess some prescriptive right, just as if … an apostle had been the compositor.”¹

The work of the ingenious and industrious Erasmus marks the beginning of modern New Testament textual criticism, of the science that compares Greek New Testament manuscripts to reconstruct and print the earliest and original text. As it would be foolish today to think that the knowledge, of, e.g., Roman history during the 16th century was superior to our knowledge of the past and to ignore all the progress that has been made in reconstructing ancient history, so it would be foolish to claim that we should see the Novum Instrumentum as the only valid Bible text, arguing that God in some mysterious way restored the original text through the error-prone work of Erasmus.

We do not need to bend our brains to explain away the errors of the Received Text.

Thanks to Erasmus, we do not believe anymore that the Vulgate is the only truly inspired text of the church. And thanks to such men as John Mill (1645–1707), Johann A. Bengel (1687–1752), Samuel P. Tregelles (1813–1875), Constantin v. Tischendorf (1815–1874) and many others who followed in their footsteps and worked hard to restore as close as possible the original Greek text of the New Testament, we do not need to bend our brains to explain away the errors of the Received Text, seeing the text and its ramifications today as it is.

Notes

1
Samuel. P. Tregelles, An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament (London: Bagster, 1854), 29.

Scribal Blunders in Biblical Numbers

Different ways of writing numbers in Greek can be difficult both for ancient scribes and modern scholars.

Zachary J. Cole

Ancient scribes faced many challenges when they copied books, but they seem to have had an especially difficult time with numerals. A survey of the numbers in the Bible shows that copyists often misread and miscopied them, leading to a variety of textual variants among existing manuscripts. This is more significant than we might think at first.

Remember that numbers play a significant role throughout the New Testament. For example, think of the three sets of fourteen generations in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus (Matt. 1:17), the precise hours given for the chronology of Jesus’ passion (Mark 15:25, 33, 42), the number of witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection (1 Cor. 15:6), the number of the Beast (Rev. 13:18), and the ubiquitous numbers three, seven, and twelve.

In this article, we consider why many numerals were prone to corruption during the copying process and what this tells us about the New Testament text.

Writing numbers

To understand why some ancient copyists botched biblical numbers, we need to recognize that there were two different systems of number-writing in use at the time of the New Testament. Perhaps surprisingly, biblical manuscripts often contain both systems standing side-by-side. Actually, modern English does the same thing; we can spell numbers fully or use shorthand symbols (two and 2). Koine Greek likewise used both number-words and number-symbols. A Greek writer, for instance, could spell the number “two” fully, δύο (duo), or use the shorthand equivalent letter beta (β̅). New Testament manuscripts, especially the early ones, often use both systems, sometimes even within the same verse.

Numbers written as both letters (yellow) and words (red) in Luke 12:52 in P75 (3rd c.). Pap.Hanna.1 1B.6v

The numerical shorthand we find in New Testament manuscripts is an alphabetic system. This means the regular letters of the Greek alphabet were used to express numerical values. For example, the number 153 could be expressed in shorthand form as ρ̅ν̅γ̅—where ρ̅ stands for one hundred, ν̅ for fifty, and γ̅ for three. Notice how it is potentially confusing to use the very same characters for both letters and numbers. How should a scribe know if the letter alpha (α) was meant to stand for a number (“one”) or was simply a part of the next word? To help prevent misunderstanding, scribes used a horizontal stroke above the letters to mark them out as shorthand numbers (ρ̅).

Confusing numbers

Even still, confusion occurred. Consider four notable examples of numerals with textual variation in the New Testament.

Number of shipwrecked passengers

First, in Acts 27, Luke narrates the account of Paul’s shipwreck on the way to Rome, and he happens to mention that there were 276 persons aboard the ship (Acts 27:37). Or was it only 76 persons? While the vast majority of Greek manuscripts have the number 276, there is one early manuscript that instead reads: “about 76”. That manuscript is an important one, Codex Vaticanus (B 03).

It is hard to see how such an alternative reading would arise when the numerals are written as words. Observe:

Most Greek manuscripts: “276 in the ship” (ἐν τῷ πλοιῷ διακόσιαι ἑβδομήκοντα ἕξ)
Codex Vaticanus: “about 76 in the ship” (ἐν τῷ πλοιῷ ὡς ἑβδομήκοντα ἕξ)

However, if we remember that scribes often used numerical shorthand, the reason for the error becomes clear. With the number written as a symbol (and without spaces between words), the phrase would have appeared like so: entōploiōsos (εντωπλοιωϲ̅ο̅ϲ̅). Now we can see how the scribe of Vaticanus could misread this as en tō ploiō ōs os (εν τω πλοιω ωϲ ο̅ϲ̅). These numerals in the exemplar of Vaticanus were almost certainly written in shorthand.

Number of years by the pool

A second example appears in Codex W^s (032), which wrongly states that the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda had been lying there for forty-eight years rather than thirty-eight (John 5:5). Here, it is easy to see the similarity between the longhand forms of the numbers: tesserakonta kai oktō (τεσσεράκοντα καὶ ὀκτῳ) versus triakonta kai oktō (τριάκοντα καὶ ὀκτῳ). Such visual and aural similarity by itself might explain the error. However, this appears to be another case in which numerical shorthand caused the problem. The difference between the shorthand versions is very slight, a one-letter difference: mē (μη) versus lē (λη). Furthermore, if we take into account the appearance of ancient majuscule (capital) script, the difference is even harder to detect at first glance: ΜΗ and ΛΗ.

Number of Jesus’ followers

Third, a well-known case of numerical variation appears in Luke 10:1 and 17. Luke tells us that in addition to the core group of twelve disciples, Jesus also had a larger group of seventy followers—or was it seventy-two? Manuscripts are split here. The majority of Greek manuscripts contain “seventy-two,” but several manuscripts—some very early and some later—simply have “seventy.” The difference in Greek would appear like so:

seventy-two: ο̅β̅ = ἑβδομήκοντα δύο
seventy: ο̅ = ἑβδομήκοντα

Making a decision here is extremely difficult, and commentators are not in agreement about the original wording. From a transcriptional point of view, it’s more likely that a scribe would inadvertently omit duo (δύο) or β̅ rather than add it. A survey of numerical errors in New Testament manuscripts shows that, in general, scribes tended to omit the second of two digits rather than add them. This trend suggests that “seventy-two” is the preferable reading. In this case, knowledge of numerical shorthand does not immediately decide the issue but a knowledge of scribal tendencies can help.¹

Number of the Beast

A fourth and final example is the famous “number of the beast” in Revelation 13:18. The standard reading here is, of course, 666. Written fully, it is hexakosioi hexēkonta hex (ἑξακόσιοι ἑξήκοντα ἕξ). In shorthand, it would be χ̅ξ̅ϲ̅. However, two notable Greek manuscripts (P115 and C 04) attest an alternative number, 616. Written longhand, it would be hexakosioi deka hex (ἑξακόσιοι δέκα ἕξ; as in C 04), and shorthand it would be χ̅ι̅ϲ̅ (as in P115). Unfortunately, knowing the appearance of the shorthand version does not seem to help us resolve this textual problem. There is no obvious transcriptional reason why a scribe might mistake one of these for the other.

It is worth recognizing the potential symbolic value of the number of the beast, and thus the likelihood that a scribe could intentionally change it. It is possible, for example, that early Christians saw the numerical value 666 as a code for a name. Using the practice of gematria (called isopsephy in Greek), the letters of a name or word could be totaled up (since, as we have seen, letters were also numbers) and connected with other things.

For example, many early Christian documents have the number 99 written at the top, which most likely means “amen,” since the total of the values in the word amēn (ἀμήν) amount to exactly 99: α (1) + μ (40) + η (8) + ν (50) = 99. If early readers of Revelation were seeking to identify a known individual as the Beast, this may have led to intentional changes so that the numbers “added up,” so to speak.

In short, recognizing the dynamics of Greek number-writing can often, though not always, explain the cause of errors in the copying of numerals.

Preserving numbers

The examples that we have considered here are instructive for an additional reason. One of the striking things about these points of variation is how relatively minor they are. This point can be seen more clearly when we consider how some skeptical scholars claim that scribes intentionally corrupted the text of the New Testament by doctoring its presentation of Jesus. It is often claimed that scribes deleted uncomfortable wording and added things to make Jesus appear more impressive and godlike than he really was.

With that idea in mind, the remarkable thing about New Testament numbers is how stable most of them they are. Take, for example, the account of the feeding of the five thousand in John’s Gospel. Here would have been an opportunity for a scribe to fudge the numbers and exaggerate the extent of Jesus’ miracle. It would have been easy to change five thousand into six thousand, or ten thousand, and so on. And yet the Nestle-Aland critical apparatus notes only one textual variant affecting the value of this number (John 6:10). It is in Codex Sinaiticus (ℵ 01), which wrongly has three thousand (which was subsequently corrected). In other words, scribes here had the opportunity to exaggerate the extent of Jesus’ miracle and thereby inflate the depiction of Jesus. But there is only one known manuscript that miscopied the number, and the value actually decreased. We would expect the opposite if scribes were rewriting the narrative.

The remarkable thing about New Testament numbers is how stable most of them they are.

We can also consider the narrative of the feeding of the four thousand. One might imagine that this account would have been another tempting occasion for a scribe to exaggerate numerical values and thereby increase the miraculous nature of the feeding. Instead, this is exactly what we do not find. The account appears in both Matthew and Mark. According to the Nestle-Aland apparatus, there are no textual variants with respect to the number of loaves Jesus multiplied (seven in Matt. 15:34/Mark 8:5), the size of the crowd (four thousand in Matt. 15:38/Mark 8:9), nor the amount of leftover baskets (seven in Matt. 15:37/Mark 8:8).² In other words, there is remarkable stability across all Greek manuscripts in these seemingly minor numerical details.

In conclusion, appreciating the dynamics of ancient Greek number-writing can help us understand the causes of some errors that occurred while copying. Yet, the overall picture gives us confidence in the stability and reliability of the New Testament.

Notes

1
For more on this argument, see Zachary J. Cole, “P45 and the Problem of the ‘Seventy(-two)’: A Case for the Longer Reading in Luke 10.1 and 17,” NTS 63.2 (2017): 203–221.
2
The only apparent numerical variant is that a handful of manuscripts add “about” (ὡς/ὡσει) before four thousand in Matthew 15:38 in parallel to Mark 8:9.

Revelation’s Place in the Greek Bible

The history of the Apocalypse in the Greek manuscripts reveals that its place at the end is not uniform.

Clark R. Bates

Hardly any book of the New Testament has puzzled Christian readers more than the book of Revelation. It begins as an epistle to seven churches, then shifts to depicting a series of visions of heavenly judgment cast upon the earth, and ends with the glorious restoration of the created order. The reader finds himself lost in a world of falling stars, biblical plagues, monstrous horses, dragons, war, and heavenly cities with startling physical features.

Is what the book portrays real or figurative? Is it a prophecy that is to come or something that has already happened? For some Christians, its contents are read as their window into the future, while others would prefer never to read the book at all. It might surprise you to know that the modern confusion around the book of Revelation is not entirely new. This text has challenged Christian readers almost from its inception, and this is most evident in its Greek manuscript tradition.

Revelation has challenged Christian readers almost from its inception, and this is most evident in its Greek manuscript tradition.

As a book, Revelation (also called the Apocalypse) sometimes rested uneasily alongside the rest of the New Testament, often as an insertion centuries after the copying of the larger canonical corpus. Many of these manuscripts surface after the twelfth century, some containing Revelation from a fourteenth century addition, suggesting a later desire to “close” the collection of books.

Additionally, Revelation stands out among other Greek New Testament texts by its inclusion in groupings of non-biblical material. Its insertion alongside a variety of hagiographic texts, patristic writings, and homilies, without additional New Testament content, also suggests a liminal status within the Greek-speaking church—particularly after the fourth century. This is reinforced by the absence of Revelation in the Greek liturgical tradition, which means it was not read regularly within the gathering of believers. The canonical impact of the material reality surrounding a still-contentious text like Revelation raises questions for modern Bible readers, and, for this reason, deserves our attention.

The Material Data

The latest survey of the manuscript evidence records a total of 314 manuscripts containing all or part of the text of Revelation.¹ This is comprised of seven papyri, twelve majuscules (written on parchment or animal skin in capital letters), and 295 minuscules (written in a form of “lowercase” letters). Some of these manuscripts contain commentary text, others insert the book into collections of New Testament books. Some manuscripts contain only Revelation, while others include it among collections of nonbiblical material. Because the papyri are fragmentary, the earliest, complete witnesses to the book are the large, complete New Testament manuscripts such as Codex Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Ephraemi Rescriptus, which date to the fourth and fifth centuries.²

Perhaps the most glaring feature of the data is the number of New Testament manuscripts that lack the book of Revelation. Textual scholar Josef Schmid felt that the book’s absence in the commentaries of the great Greek exegetes and its exclusion from the liturgy, as seen in the manuscript tradition, reflected the peculiar fate of Revelation. He observed that “the number of manuscripts that preserve Revelation lags behind that of the rest of the New Testament significantly.”³

Six ancient majuscules between the fourth and fifth centuries contain Revelation alongside the early papyri. Among these are, MS 9351 (GA 0163), a fifth-century fragment containing only twelve lines of text from Rev. 16:17–20, P.Oxy 180 (GA 0169), a fourth-century fragment containing thirty lines of text—with many holes—from Rev. 3:19–4:3, and PSI 1166 (GA 0207), a fourth-century page containing Rev. 9:2–15 on twenty-nine lines in two columns covering both sides. The Greek manuscript tradition is silent from the seventh century until the ninth century. By the ninth century, we have a full copy of Revelation in GA 1424, which is the first, complete New Testament in minuscule handwriting.

From the tenth century, three majuscules and thirteen minuscules remain extant, containing larger portions—and in some cases the whole—of Revelation. By the eleventh century the use of majuscule script fades into memory with the wholesale implementation of the minuscule, and the manuscript count increases to thirty-eight minuscules containing most, or all, of the text. In the twelfth century, thirty-six minuscules are extant—most containing the entire book. The manuscripts increase from thirty-eight minuscules in the thirteenth century to sixty-nine in the fourteenth, sixty in the fifteenth, and forty-three in the sixteenth. The number of Revelation manuscripts increases exponentially after the eleventh century. Even then, the number of manuscripts containing either the New Testament or part of it without Revelation is still greater leading up to the sixteenth century.

Dissecting the Data

In both Codex Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, Revelation is combined with the remaining twenty-six books of the New Testament. But there are no extant, complete Greek manuscripts from the following four centuries. When Revelation does reappear, joined with New Testament works, it is found in less than one-third of complete, New Testament collections and less than one-fifth of collections containing Acts, the Pauline Epistles, and the Catholic Epistles (known as Apostolos manuscripts)—or other New Testament texts. Of those manuscripts that contain only the Gospels alongside Revelation, several appear to have had the book of Revelation inserted at a later date. Other combinations include Acts plus Revelation; the Gospels and Catholic Epistles plus Revelation; or Hebrews plus Revelation.

When Revelation appears alone it is often accompanied by the commentary of either Oecumenius, Andrew of Caesarea, or Arethas of Caesarea. While it is not unusual to find New Testament texts accompanied by commentary, the frequency with which Revelation is found with commentary raises the question of how it was being read within these contexts. Some scholars think this format shows that the book was read more often as a kind of study book than a devotional or canonical text. However, what is perhaps the most intriguing of all appearances of Revelation within the extant, textual material is its presence alongside other, nonbiblical texts.

The last peculiarity related to the transmission of Revelation is its textual character. Its increase in circulation during the late-medieval era might lead us to think that the book would, like other contemporaneous New Testament manuscripts, conform to the Byzantine textual family that was dominant in this later period. But this is not the case. Later Revelation manuscripts tend to split into two, well-attested text forms, which then further divide into four major stems.

A scene from the Silos Apocalypse (11th c.). Add MS 11695

Consequently, in those manuscripts containing Revelation alongside the combination of Acts and the Catholic Epistles, the book of Revelation does not fit neatly into the same textual family as the rest of the manuscript. The sister manuscripts in the text of Revelation are rarely ever sisters in the Apostolos, and the sister manuscripts in the Apostolos are almost never immediate sisters in Revelation. This indicates that, when copied, these manuscripts copied the text of Revelation from a different manuscript than what was used for the other books.

From Text to Canon

The peculiarities in the Greek manuscript tradition of Revelation’s reception in the Eastern Church naturally raise questions about the book’s canonical status. To that question, we can make several observations.

First, though the transmission of the text of Revelation is more sporadic and far different than others in the New Testament canon, its use is widely attested in the Latin-speaking, Western Church without the inconsistency in the manuscript tradition seen in the Greek Church.⁴

Second, while Revelation faced challenges to its level of authority in the East after the fourth century, prior to this time, it was generally received as canonical by the most vocal in the Church.

A scene from Albrecht Dürer’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (1498). Source
The Fall and Rise of Revelation
Revelation was used widely in the early church, then doubted in the East in the fourth century, but eventually accepted again.
T. C. Schmidt

Third, it must be remembered that the Church Fathers did not only think of Christian texts in strict binary terms of “canonical” and “non-canonical.” They also thought of them in levels of value. The clearest example of this is found in the writings of the fourth-century historian Eusebius, who identified four categories of books circulating in the Church: “received,” “disputed,” “rejected,” or “heretical.” A good example of how these categories were applied can be seen in the case of 2 Peter. Many outlying New Testament books that are considered canonical today, were challenged in ways similar to Revelation, and this can actually be encouraging to modern Christians because it testifies to the sobriety with which these sacred texts were debated.

Revelation’s lack of use in the worship of the Eastern Church is also not so dissimilar to modern times. The current lectionary cycle for the Western Church reveals that only ten passages of Revelation have been read in the church over a period of ten years, and even these avoid any sections portraying the bowl and vial judgments, the heavenly visions, or other passages that seem “strange” to most modern readers (e.g., Rev. 12:1–4 where a woman gives birth in Heaven and a dragon waits to eat the child).

Conclusion

What modern Christians should take away from the material data of Revelation is an awareness that it must be handled with care. We should be cautious about minimizing its unique content and should probably avoid sweeping theological inferences related to its placement as the final book of the Bible. After all, the reason it is so often found at the end of Greek manuscripts is actually because it was added later, and the end of a manuscript is the easiest place to add more text.

In conclusion, we might well approach the text of Revelation with the temperance of one of its earliest commentators who wrote,

Having been asked many times by many people—who out of love have a greater opinion of my abilities—to elucidate the Apocalypse of John the Theologian and to adapt the prophecies to the time after this vision, I was putting off this undertaking, knowing that to explain the things which are secretly and mysteriously seen by the saints which will happen in the future times befits a great mind and one enlightened by the Divine Spirit.
Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on Revelation

Notes

1
Garrick Allen divides the manuscripts of the Apocalypse into two strands: the canonical and the eclectic. The canonical strand consists of those manuscripts that combine the Apocalypse with other “canonical” books of the New Testament, whereas the eclectic strand is made up of manuscripts which combine the Apocalypse with other, non-canonical material. Allen also acknowledges that these categories cannot account for every manuscript, especially those that are fragmentary, but his classification is immensely helpful for the present and future discussions. See Garrick Allen, Manuscripts of the Book of Revelation: New Philology, Paratexts, Reception (Oxford: Oxford University, 2020), 156–92.
2
While Codex Vaticanus contains the text of Revelation on ff. 1523–1536, it is a fifteenth century supplement and therefore of nominal value for early attestation of the book’s canonical reception.
3
Josef Schmid, Studies in the History of the Greek Text of the Apocalypse: The Ancient Stems, Juan Hernández Jr., Garrick V. Allen, and Darius Müller, eds. and trans. (Atlanta: SBL, 2018), 32.
4
The earliest Latin commentary on the Apocalypse comes from Victorinus of Pettau in AD 260, with commentaries continuing for subsequent centuries into the medieval era.

The Day the Bible Became a Bestseller

Martin Luther didn’t set out to produce a bestseller. But 500 years ago that’s exactly what he did.

Jeffrey Kloha

We know exactly when the Bible first became the “best-selling book of all time.” It was September 21, 1522. This date was the opening of the annual book fair in Leipzig, Germany. The previous April, Martin Luther refused to recant his writings before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at an assembly convened to examine his works known as the Diet of Worms. From there he was secreted to the Wartburg Castle for his own protection.

In eleven weeks, he completed a translation of the New Testament from Greek into German. From there, his colleague at Wittenberg University, Philip Melanchthon, edited the translation. Two businessmen in Wittenberg, Lucas Cranach the Elder and his partner Christian Doering, then employed the printer Melchior Lotter the Younger to rush to completion this New Testament in German in time for the book fair—even setting up temporary presses on their property to ensure completion. Between 3,000 and 5,000 copies were made, bundled up, and rushed to Leipzig for the book fair.

Luther translating the Bible in 1521 as depicted by Eugène Siberdt. Wikimedia Commons

An Immediate Bestseller

The book was a hit. All the copies of this German New Testament sold out before the fair ended a week later. From there, Luther’s German New Testament spread around Europe. A second printing was started immediately and released in December. A pirated version was printed in Basel before the end of 1522. In the next year a total of twelve authorized and sixty-six unauthorized reprints appeared throughout Germany and Europe—hundreds of thousands of copies sold in just over twelve months. Suddenly, the Bible was a bestseller. Luther’s Bible. The German New Testament.

Now, all this might be left as a footnote in history, except that this little Bible by Luther still influences the way that we read Bibles today. From format to contents to readability to explanatory notes—all have been shaped by the Septembertestament.

How did this instant success happen? Luther was not the first to market. In fact, the first printed German Bible had appeared in 1466, fifty-five years before Luther’s work. Seventeen total versions appeared before 1522. So, there was not simply a pent-up demand for the Bible in German into which Luther tapped. Rather, it was Luther’s theology and notoriety, combined with a readable translation style and a physical and visual format designed to help the reader understand the text—at least the text as Luther wanted the reader to understand it—that made this Bible become a bestseller.

Wartburg Castle, where Luther finished his German New Testament in 1522. Photo by Ashley Van Haeften

The Context of Luther’s Achievement

For the first 1500 years of the church, the Bible, or rather, the various books and stories in the Bible, were accessed by almost all people not by reading, but by hearing. People heard the Bible in worship, they sung it in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. They were taught it in sermons and catechetical teaching, they saw its contents portrayed in icons and eventually stained glass, watched it performed in mystery plays and passion plays (some of which are still performed today).

But possessing a Bible, holding a Bible, whether on papyrus or parchment or paper was not at all common. Almost all physical copies of the Bible down to the 1500s were produced for use in churches, in monasteries, and for clergy. A few wealthy people had beautifully decorated devotional books, which often contained the Psalms, but the Bible as we know it was simply not accessible—nor indeed seen to need to be accessible—to the vast, vast majority of people.

Even Gutenberg did not produce a bestseller because what he produced looked and felt and, to some extent, even cost what a Latin manuscript of the Bible cost in the 1450s. Gutenberg could produce sixty copies in the time it took a copyist to produce one manuscript. The first edition of 1454 was produced in about 160 to 180 copies: ¾ of them on paper and ¼ on vellum.

Paper copies cost thirty florins at a time when the salary of a clerk in the Medici bank earned between fourteen and fifty florins per year. So, if you have a great job in 1450, a Gutenberg Bible would cost roughly one year’s wages—and you still had to be able to read Latin. Most copies were purchased by religious orders or wealthy individuals for donation to churches and ecclesial institutions. While a pivotal moment in western history (Time magazine named it the most significant event of the past 1000 years) Gutenberg did not immediately change the way that people accessed the Bible.

But in the early 16th century, people began to want to read the Scriptures for themselves. And reform-minded scholars throughout Europe worked to make it accessible to all people, in their own languages.

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam was one of the greatest classical scholars of all time. He produced numerous first editions of texts from antiquity, including the first published Greek New Testament in 1516. But he did not call it a “New Testament.” He called it a “Novum Instrumentum,” a new tool. The edition has Greek in one column and Latin in the other, but not the Vulgate, the commonly used Latin text, but a fresh translation that Erasmus argued was more accurate to the Greek. He wanted to make the Greek text more accessible to scholars and theologians in the west who did not really know Greek. And what was this tool to be used for? He lays this out in his preface, what he called the paraclesis or “exhortation” at the beginning of his new tool:

The sun belongs to everyone; the science of Christ is just the same. I am totally opposed to the fact that divine scripture should not be translated into one’s native language, to be read by the non-clergy; it is as if Christ’s teaching was so mysterious that only a handful of theologians could understand it, or as if the fortress of religion was built with the ignorance which the Church has forced on the common man. I wish that even the lowliest women read the gospels and the Pauline Epistles. And I would that they were translated into all languages so that they could be read and understood not only by Scots and Irish, but also by Turks and Saracens… Would that, as a result, the farmer sing some portion of them at the plow, the weaver hum some parts of them to the movement of his shuttle, the traveler lighten the weariness of the journey with stories from this source.

Luther used the second edition (printed in 1519) of Erasmus’s “new tool” to create a New Testament for German farmers and weavers, and in so doing created a runaway success. The audience for this German New Testament was the German people themselves. Where the Gutenberg Bible was out of the reach of almost all people, both for the cost and the fact that it was in Latin, a bound copy of Luther’s New Testament cost a single guilder: schoolteacher’s two month’s wages, or the price of a calf.

A Book to Point to Christ

It seems self-evident to us today that the Bible should be translated. But for Luther, the translation of the Bible was not an end in itself. It was not simply, “let’s get the Bible out there and see what happens.” Nor was he interested in a text for academic study since Greek, Hebrew, and Latin editions were available for that if one wanted. Rather, Luther wanted a New Testament through which individuals could hear the Word of God directly, without the mediation of the church or a priest. Said another way: Luther’s goal was that individuals hear “God’s message about Christ.”

Luther’s goal was that individuals hear “God’s message about Christ.”

In the language of Romans 10: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Luther expresses this in his introduction to the Old Testament published later in 1534: “If, then, you would interpret well and surely, set Christ before you; for He is the man to whom it all applies.” But even the New Testament, which Luther acknowledged should be clear enough, also can be misinterpreted and therefore the reader needs assistance to hear the Gospel clearly.

Luther produced this book, quite simply, to point to Christ. To give people access, for themselves—with Luther’s guidance—to the promises of God. We see this on the title page of a 1524 Wittenberg Bible with its simple description, and Christ on the cross.

The title page to the Old Testament in Luther’s 1524 Bible with Christ on the cross. Museum of the Bible BIB.003838.

Luther’s entire purpose in translating the New Testament, then, and every feature of the translation and the contents of the volume is designed to preach Christ and the Gospel message. This accounts for the new features of the Septembertestament. It was a text like no other before it. It translated a Greek text into the vernacular for the first time in Western Europe since the Vulgate. It included prefaces and notes to ensure that the readers heard the Gospel. And even the sequence of the New Testament books was altered to suit Luther’s goal of leading people to trust the promises of Christ.

This might be surprising. A Reformation motto is sola Scriptura! By Scripture alone! without tradition or interpretation. But sola Scriptura itself is actually in service to the central Reformation tenet: “Christ Alone!” (solus Christus). Luther put Scripture into the language of the people so that by Scripture alone they could hear Christ and his gospel, and so receive salvation.

Helps to Guide the Reader to Christ

The physical format and additional features that Luther and his collaborators added to this Septembertestament helped accomplish this goal. These were not without precedent, and certainly not without controversy, as we will see. And there is an important juxtaposition between Luther’s desire for the Word to be heard clearly and directly by people on its own terms and, at the same time, the addition of several “helps” to make sure that the reader gets the right interpretation. Here I will focus on four “helps,” many of which are still used on our Bibles today.

1. Text and Translation

As noted, Luther used the second edition (1519) of Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum as his base text. The parallel Greek-Latin diglot gave Luther access not only to the Greek but also to Erasmus’s Latin rendering. In addition, Erasmus published a remarkable scholarly and historical word-by-word analysis of the Greek New Testament in 1516 called Annotations. He significantly enlarged this resource in 1519, and we know that Luther used both tools, because there are places where the translations follow exactly Erasmus’s explanations. Luther, therefore, would be the first to use these “new tools” to bring a Greek text of the New Testament into a vernacular language.

Given the manuscripts available to him, Erasmus’s Greek text was quite similar to the text used for centuries in the Greek-speaking church. Later editions of his basic text came to be called the Textus Receptus, most commonly available after the mid-16th century in the editions edited by Reformed theologian Theodore Beza. That text was the basis of the Geneva Bible (1557, 1560) and the 1611 Authorized Version of King James. Erasmus’s 1519 edition repaired many of the typos and errors of the 1516 edition. Famously, though, neither edition included the comma Johnanneum at 1 John 5:7–8: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” (KJV).

This passage was added by Erasmus in his 1522 edition, and Luther was aware of the reading. But Luther never included the reading in his German Bible, including the 1534 complete Bible and the 1545 edition, the last printed during Luther’s lifetime. In fact, Luther elsewhere comments on this reading, noting that it was added by the orthodox theologians to counter Arian theology.

The Greek text was Luther’s foundation, but his deepest concern was that the text be readable and understandable by all people. Matching the Greek or Latin style and idiom would not have communicated the message of the New Testament clearly. His defense of his translation work against Catholic critics, written in 1530, underscores this goal.

We do not have to ask the literal Latin [text] how we are to speak German, as these donkeys [Papists] do. Rather we must ask the mother in the home, the children on the street, the common man in the marketplace. We must be guided by their language, by the way they speak, and do our translating accordingly. Then they will understand it and recognize that we are speaking German to them.

In this treatise, Luther provided several examples of how the idiomatic German of his translation is more effective than a translation held captive to other languages:

For instance, Christ says: Ex abundatia cordis os loquitur [Matt. 12:34]. If I am to follow these donkeys, they will lay the original before me literally and translate it thus: “Aus dem uberfluss des hertzen redet der mund” [of the excessiveness of the heart his mouth speaks]. Tell me, is that speaking German? What German could understand something like that? What is “the excessiveness of the heart”? No German can say that; unless, perhaps, he was trying to say that someone was altogether too generous, or too courageous, though even that would not yet be correct. “Excessiveness of the heart” is no more German than “excessiveness of the house,” “excessiveness of the stove” or “excessiveness of the bench.” But the mother in the home and the common man say this: “Wes das hertz vol ist, des gehet der mund über” [What fills the heart overflows the mouth]. That is speaking good German of the kind I have tried for, although unfortunately not always successfully. The literal Latin is a great obstacle to speaking good German.¹

The most radical—some might say, egregious—example is his rendering of Romans 3:28 where his text has added the word “alone.”

So halten wir nun dafür, daß der Mensch gerecht werde ohne des Gesetzes Werke, allein durch den Glauben
So now we hold that a person is justified without the works of the law, by faith alone.

The Greek text does not read an equivalent to “alone” in this passage. As the KJV reads: “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” Luther defends his translation, again in the 1530 Sendbriefe:

Here in Romans 3, I knew very well that the word solum [alone] is not in the Greek or Latin text; the papists did not have to teach me that. It is a fact that these four letters s-o-l-a are not there. And these blockheads stare at them like cows at a new gate. At the same time they do not see that it conveys the sense of the text; it belongs there if the translation is to be clear and vigorous… It is the nature of the German language to add the word allein in order that the word nicht or kein may be clearer and more complete… Actually, the text itself and the meaning of St. Paul urgently require and demand it. For in that very passage he is dealing with the main point of Christian doctrine, namely, that we are justified by faith in Christ without any works of the law.

For Luther, the sense of the text, undeniably influenced by the importance placed on this passage for the teaching of justification by faith, was more important than the Greek or Latin vocables in the base texts. Luther’s goal is to create a New Testament that preaches Christ, understandable directly by the people in language that they can understand. This is not a translation that seeks to capture the feel of an ancient text. It does not seek to sound “authentic” to the speech of, say, a Roman official in the book of Acts. Rather, the translation seeks to speak directly to ordinary people on their own terms. It is direct speech, as if God were speaking German. As if God were preaching Christ directly to them, into their hearts, with no priests, no tradition, no one else needed for the person to hear God and gain Christ.

Luther’s goal is to create a New Testament that preaches Christ, understandable directly by the people in language that they can understand.

2. Prefaces

A second device Luther used in his Septembertestament was to affix prefaces to the four Gospels and then individually for each subsequent book. He was not the first to add prefaces; prologues are found in Latin and Greek manuscripts of the New Testament that provide historical and chronological information and occasionally argue against heretical theological views. But Luther takes this in a different direction. He added prefaces to each book, not modeled on his predecessors, but designed instead to give the reader a basic understanding of the contents and what they will find in the book—or, more accurately, what Luther wants them to find in the book. In the initial preface to the Gospels and the New Testament, he directly explains his purpose for this device.

It would be right and proper that this book should appear without preface and without any other name than that of its authors and convey only its own name and its own language. But many wild interpretations and prefaces have driven the thought of Christians to a point where no one any longer knows what is Gospel or Law, Old Testament or New. Necessity demands, therefore, that it should have an announcement, or preface, by which the simple man can be brought back from the old notions to the right road and taught what he is to expect in this book, so that he may not seek laws and commandments where he ought to be seeking the Gospel and God’s promises.

Luther’s evangelistic purpose is clear here: He wants the reader to seek the Gospel and God’s promises, and to not read the New Testament as a book of rules to be obeyed. This becomes clearest in his preface to Romans. While most prefaces are quite brief, three individual books have extended prefaces: Romans, James, and Revelation. Romans is an outlier, but for that reason it is instructive: It shows how much emphasis Luther put on the contents and teaching of that book. Its preface is far longer than any other: ten full pages of introduction, and this to a book that, in translation, is only nineteen pages long.

The preface to Galatians, which has perhaps even clearer explicit teaching of faith over and against law has an introduction of less than half of a page, with a text that is seven pages long. Ephesians has an even shorter preface: less than fourteen lines of type for six pages of text, and this in the letter that says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” That seems clear. And yet Luther relies on Romans to carry the weight of explaining the entire Bible and the Gospel: “This Epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest Gospel and is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, but occupy himself with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul.”

Not only was this approach novel, it was effective. John Wesley, the famous 18th century English evangelist, preacher, and theologian, claims that his “heart was strangely warmed” and that he was converted to the Gospel by reading Luther’s preface to Romans—not, mind you, by reading Romans itself, but reading Luther’s preface to Romans. The other two lengthy prefaces, for James and Revelation, have a decidedly different tone, as we will see below.

3. Notes

Luther also included notes and explanations in the margins of his edition. Again, this is not a new practice. Medieval manuscripts frequently contain quotations from theologians or glosses, i.e., brief explanatory and interpretive notes throughout the text. But Luther’s goal is not to repeat the best teaching and instruction of the past. His notes also reflect his goal of helping the reader trust in Christ and the Gospel. For example, this is an image of Romans 3. Notice how the margins are completely fullwidth with about 75 percent Bible and 25 percent Luther.

Luther’s marginal notes took almost almost a quarter of the page. Photo

You can almost hear Luther pleading with the reader in the margin:

Note well that he says you are all sinful, etc. This is the chief thing and the central place of the epistle and the whole of the Scriptures. Namely, that all are sinful who are not redeemed by the blood of Christ and justified by faith. So grasp this text, because according to it all work, merit, and deeds remains God’s pure gift and honor (Ps. 84:11).

4. Luther’s New Testament Canon

Perhaps most controversially, Luther arranged the sequence of the New Testament writings to reflect his views of the clarity with which those books taught the Gospel. The table of contents for this New Testament reflects this clearly.

The list of books for Luther’s New Testament. Photo

All twenty-seven books of the New Testament are present. But only twenty-three books are numbered. Four books are shifted to the end, unnumbered, as a kind of appendix: Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. Luther placed these books last and added prefaces warning readers about certain sections and passages. To Luther, Hebrews seemed to disallow repentance if one sins after baptism; Jude seemed to be an epitome of 2 Peter (with the addition of non-canonical stories); the Apocalypse is “a concealed and mute prophecy and has not yet come to the profit and fruit which it is to give to Christians.” James, however, receives the harshest criticism. It is “flatly opposed to St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture, it ascribes righteousness to works.” Luther concludes that “This fault leads to the conclusion that it is not the work of any apostle” and it is, therefore, an “epistle of straw.”

This arrangement of the New Testament writings is unique to Luther, apart from his influence on William Tyndale’s New Testament translation of 1525, which in turn is followed in English by Coverdale (1535) and Matthew (1537). From the Great Bible of 1539, however, all English translations use the sequence of books commonly known today. Luther, though, retained this format through the last edition of the Lutherbibel published during his lifetime in 1545.

A Bible for the People

Luther sought to create a Bible not to be a bestseller, but one through which individuals would hear God speaking directly to them in their world, in their time, in their place. A Bible that was God’s Word—more accurately, God speaking. Not a passive tool that sits on a shelf or a table or even altar. But an active, speaking, seeking, hearable, and impactful speaking of God. Everything Luther does, from the style of translation to the title page to the sequence of the books to notes is designed to bring people to Christ.

This is a Bible designed to not only make the words of the Bible clear, but to make the message of the Bible clear, the message of the Bible that Luther and the Wittenberg School had come to be convinced of: that Christ alone, and his work, received by faith alone, was what God was speaking in his word.

Notes

1
Ein sendbrief D. M. Luthers. Von Dolmetzschen und Fürbit der heiligenn (1530)

Four Benefits of Reading Greek Manuscripts

Reading biblical manuscripts, even for beginners, brings history to life and promises untold surprises along the way.

Amy S. Anderson

There is nothing lovelier than a work created by the hand of a true artisan. This is especially true of ancient artifacts since they were, by necessity, hand-made. In many cases, people were not satisfied with a utilitarian object. Whenever possible, they put in extra effort to make it beautiful. This is the first of four benefits I have found in teaching students to read Greek biblical manuscripts.

1. They are beautiful

The oldest copies of scripture, as we will see below, were indeed utilitarian. They were texts meant to be read. But before too long, scripture books began to be decorated and illustrated. To start with, each piece of parchment was painstakingly produced by a lengthy process, resulting in a material that was often so fine that the writing shows through from the other side, yet sturdy enough to last for thousands of years.

The inks were made from various natural sources, producing brilliant colors. The pens were hand-formed. In addition, writing was not a skill that everyone possessed. We don’t always realize that the ability for normal people to read and write is a relatively modern phenomenon. To form even awkward letters would have been quite an achievement for an ancient person. To write beautifully was a treasured skill.

In fact, widespread illiteracy is one reason that many ancient copies of the Bible are illuminated, some in simple ways with colored initial letters, others with entire pages portraying the Gospel writer or a scene from the text. These are not just pretty touches, but they witness to a desire to honor God and provide tools for teaching the congregation the stories of the Old Testament or the life of Jesus.

Just look at this gorgeous first page of the Gospel of Matthew.

The opening of Matthew in GA 2374, a 13th/14th c. copy of the entire NT except Revelation. Image (cc) Walters Art Museum via CSNTM.

(1) The colorful and ornate box shape at the top is called a “headpiece,” often found at the beginning of biblical books. What looks like gold – is gold! In the center of the headpiece is the title, written in gold paint on top of red. The first word in the text of Matthew is βίβλος (biblos, or “book”). (2) In the left margin, you can see that the first letter, which corresponds to the English letter “B,” is enlarged and richly decorated. This is called an “initial letter.”

Sometimes the same scribe who wrote out the text also did the artwork, but most of the time two different skilled people were at work, one copying the text and one decorating it. (3) Further down in the left margin, you can see an enlarged red letter that looks like an English “C.” This is actually the letter sigma, the first letter of the name Solomon. When beginning a new section of the text, scribes often indicated the first full line with such an initial letter, placed in the margin, enlarged, and “rubricated,” or written in red.

(4) The rubricated text directly under the headpiece is a repeat of the title of the Gospel with decorative dots. This was probably added later since it is crowded into that space. (5) Did you also see the tiny, rubricated alpha (α) with a line above it in the right margin? This is the Greek number one, marking the first section of Matthew. Even though the chapters and verses with which we are familiar were inserted later, early Christians developed their own numbering system that helped readers find specific passages.

Aside from their visual beauty, ancient manuscripts like this also remind us of the real people who lived long ago and read these Bibles.

2. They connect us to the ancient world

We sometimes forget that the people who wrote, copied, and translated our scriptures were living, breathing human beings. The ancient manuscripts often give us glimpses of the lives of these people. What follows are two close-ups of one of the most famous ancient manuscripts. It is called Codex Sinaiticus because it was preserved in a monastery that is located on Mt Sinai. It is dated to the 4th century and is one of the two earliest surviving manuscripts to have originally contained the entire Bible.

A fingerprint in Codex Sinaiticus (4th c.) on Q.68 f.4v at Sirach 8:5. Source

If you look closely at just the right spot on just the right page in Codex Sinaiticus, you can see a finger print! You can also see that the whorls of the print are over top of the letters. This may have been someone who handled the parchment soon after it was written, perhaps even the scribe him/herself.

A wax dripping in Sinaiticus on Q.83 f.4v at 1 Cor. 14:7. Source

At another place in Sinaiticus you can see something that occurs often in the ancient manuscripts. Remember, there was no electrical lighting in churches and other buildings, so that one of the few ways to have enough light to read a manuscript indoors was to use candlelight. That, of course, would be accompanied by the likelihood of drips occurring, as you can see here. This drip occurs in 1 Corinthians 14:7, where Paul is discussing how different musical instruments have distinct sounds as part of his argument for intelligibility in the use of manifestation gifts in the gathering of believers.

A final instance of the humanity of the people who made copies of scripture so long ago comes from Codex Vaticanus, the other of the two oldest copies of the entire Bible, also from the fourth century and in this case housed in the Vatican library. The last part of the New Testament has been lost, but Vaticanus is treasured for the high quality of the text it preserves.

You might be able to see from the photo that a later scribe has traced over the original letters, probably because they had become faded. Also interesting is the comment in the margin. It is evidence of a disagreement between two different correctors.

The start of Hebrews in Codex Vaticanus (4th c.) showing a correction in the margin. Alamy

Six lines down at the left side of the column, corresponding to Hebrews 1:3, is the word φανερῶν (phanerōn, “revealing”). This reading would translate as saying that Jesus reveals all things by the power of His word. But most manuscripts read φέρων (pherōn, “upholding/sustaining”) here. The two words are quite similar, and a close look would show (1) that the color of the second and third letters (αν) is lighter than the rest of the word. Apparently, a corrector has tried to remove them in order to change phanerōn to pherōn. But a second corrector came along and added those two letters back in, returning the reading to what the manuscript first read. (2) This second corrector was irritated with the change made by the first, and comments in the margin: “Fool and knave, leave the old reading, don’t change it!”¹

3. They include the earliest copies of our sacred scriptures

In fact, not only do the ancient manuscripts take us back to the early days of Christianity, they are also among the oldest surviving physical artifacts of the faith. They are at least as early as the catacombs, the mosaics, foundations of church buildings, or anything else that an archaeological dig might discover. And the manuscripts contain many clues to early Christianity—even beyond the texts that became the canons of the Old and New Testaments. In the margins are not only comments like the one above, but organizational symbols, commentary, textual variants, and historical notations. Practices of scribes and correctors reveal much about the developing theological discussions.

Rahlfs 962 (3rd c.) is a copy of Genesis in Greek. This fragment is from Gen 31:5–9. Image (cc) Chester Beatty Library, photo from CSNTM.

What you are looking at here are the surviving fragments of a page of Genesis. They include Genesis 31:5–9, part of the story of Jacob fleeing from Laban. The fact that this copy of Genesis is written in Greek means that this artifact is from the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

(1) In the second line from the top, the word θέος (God) is abbreviated as θς. This is a strong hint that this manuscript was produced and used by a Christian community. There are more than a dozen of these nomina sacra, or “holy names,” that early Christians commonly abbreviated, words such as “God,” “Jesus,” “lord,” or “father.” You can get an idea of what these abbreviations look like by imitating them in English. For example, God could be written as “Gd,” Jesus as “Js,” heaven as “hven.” While scholars still debate possible reasons why Christians followed this practice, any manuscript that contains the nomina sacra can be identified as almost certainly coming from a Christian church or community.

(2) Another feature to notice are the fibers at the top and bottom, as well as the square-shaped breaks in the material. Papyrus as a writing material came from the pith of the stems of papyrus plants, grown in Egypt. The pith was cut in thin layers and then laid side by side—one layer horizontal and one layer vertical. These two layers were pressed together to form a sturdy writing material. The oldest copies of the Septuagint and the New Testament are on papyrus.

Papyrus was constructed by laying slices of the papyrus plant stem at 90 degree angles. Wikipedia

This copy of Genesis is dated to the late third century, making it older than most surviving copies of the New Testament, and much older than many surviving copies of the Old Testament in the original Hebrew. The handwriting is not as “fancy” as the other later hands you see in this article. It is called a “documentary hand,” as opposed to the more finely crafted “literary hand” used to copy literary works (such as Homer or Polybius), pointing to the pragmatism of early Christians.

Indeed, the earliest copies of the New Testament, as well as the Greek copies of the Old Testament, would have been produced not so much as articles of beauty, but in order to make the content available as quickly and broadly as possible. This codex (book) would have been used by early Christians as they studied their scripture to understand, debate, and articulate how Jesus was both the Jewish Messiah and God himself.

4. They help us appreciate why there are differences in the ancient copies

Because the New Testament was copied by hand for about 1400 years, it should not be surprising that the manuscripts differ in small ways on nearly every page, and that there are some bigger differences between them as well. This is why we need trained textual critics who study the manuscripts and offer explanations as to what occurred in the process of transmitting the text over hundreds of years. This might make it sound as if we cannot be certain of the oldest form of the text. But in actuality, you yourself can find out what the most meaningful variations are, simply by checking the footnotes of your own English Bible.

Illustration by Peter Gurry. Image from 123rf.com
Two Reasons There Are Variants in Our Copies of the Bible
For historical and theological reasons, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Bible’s manuscripts have differences.
Peter J. Gurry

Most modern Bibles have footnotes that alert you to significant variation that occurs between manuscripts, differences that could impact interpretation. Look for the footnotes that begin with something like “Some ancient witnesses read…” or “The oldest manuscripts read…” These are text-critical notes, supplied to you by the translators of your Bible. Don’t confuse text-critical notes with translation notes, which are about translation decisions. Translation notes would begin something like “Or…” In other words, translation notes are only offering another legitimate translation of the same Greek or Hebrew in a place where ancient manuscripts have the same word.

If you go through your Bible and look at every single text-critical note, you will see that, though they are interesting and have importance for reading that passage, they are certainly not the sort of variation that would turn our Christian faith on its head.

One of the places in the New Testament where scholars debate a reading is in 1 Corinthians 2:1. You can see in the footnote of your own Bible that scholars are not sure whether Paul wrote “testimony” or “mystery.” It could be a fun exercise to look through various modern translations and see which ones chose which word. There are trustworthy ancient manuscripts with each reading, and Paul uses both words in the immediate context. Both words make sense in the sentence, and the decision of which word to include will change the meaning somewhat.

The correction of “mystery” to “testimony” at 1 Cor. 2:1 in Sinaiticus. Source

Sinaiticus, the 4th century codex mentioned above, carries within it a witness to the fact that early Christians also debated which word Paul would have written in 1 Corinthians 2:1. When you look at this spot in the manuscript, you’ll see a word that begins in the middle of the line and finishes on the next line: ΜΥΣΤΗΡΙΟΝ. That’s mystērion, or “mystery.” The word for “testimony” would be ΜΑΡΤΥΡΙΟΝ, or martyrion. Notice how similar the two words are. You can basically trade out three letters to change one into the other. And that’s exactly what a later corrector has done in Sinaiticus. Look at the small letters written above ΜΥΣΤΗΡΙΟΝ. They are meant by the corrector to be substituted in, changing the reading from mystērion (mystery) to martyrion (testimony).

The most extensive variation between manuscripts involve the ending of Mark and the story of the woman caught in adultery, or the pericope adulterae (John 7:53–8:11). Neither of these longer texts is in the oldest manuscripts, as the footnotes in your Bible will tell you, but they entered the tradition pretty early on, and then scribes dealt with them in various ways. Here is an example of how one group of manuscripts presents the pericope adulterae.

GA 1 (12th c.), showing the ending of John’s Gospel (recto) and the *pericope adulterae* (verso). Source

This is Codex 1, which contains most of the New Testament and was produced in the 12th century. It belongs to a group of closely related manuscripts called Family 1, and one of the characteristics of this family is that its manuscripts have the pericope adulterae at the end of John. What you see above are the front (recto) and back (verso) sides of one folio. Notice how the damages to the parchment are mirror images of each other. You can also see that the two sides are a slightly different color and that the recto has something like (1) light freckles in the upper right corner. That is the hair side of the parchment and the “freckles” are hair follicles. The slightly paler verso is called the skin side.

What you see on the recto is (2) the end of the Gospel of John. Except for the initial letters, (3) the rubricated writing on this page was added later and mostly has to do with marking out the daily church readings. In fact, you can see (4) the end of one reading in the middle of the page where it looks like a “TE” with a line above it. That’s the abbreviation for τέλος (telos), which means “ending.” It occurs in the middle of our v. 19. (5) A new reading begins with the next red mark, the abbreviation of ἀρχή (archē), which means “beginning.” This is placed right before our v. 24.

Frequently, scribes would end a book with this sort of tapering of the lines of text. (6) The last letter is an alpha from the word βίβλια (biblia), which is the plural of “books.” (You’ll remember that the author says that if everything that Jesus did were written down, the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.) After the biblical text ends is (7) a decorative cross with the nomina sacra for “Jesus” and “Christ.”

So that’s the end of John. But when the reader turns the folio to the verso, there is another page of text! And it doesn’t begin with biblical text. (8) The rubricated paragraph, this time written by the original scribe, is a commentary on the pericope adulterae that must go back for hundreds of years since other, older Family 1 manuscripts also contain it. This paragraph informs the reader that the pericope adulterae is not found in most copies, providing evidence from a number of church fathers. Then comes (9) the text of the pericope adulterae in full, also ending in the tapered format with a small decoration.

Knowledge of the ancient manuscripts brings the history of Judaism and Christianity to life.

Just these few explorations of several pages out of our ancient copies of scripture demonstrate how much there is to be gained from a study of the early manuscripts, and how valuable such a study would be for a student of the Bible or of ancient Greek. Knowledge of the ancient manuscripts brings the history of Judaism and Christianity to life, not only in the meaning of the text itself, but in the tangible artifacts that carry the text and that have survived to share beauty, information, and inspiration with readers of the 21st century.

Notes

1
Translation from Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 260.

Topics

Levels

New Testament

The value of spelling

The most objective textual critic

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Spelling John’s name

The quest for “Roman” scribes

Future of the field

Notes

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The Text of Revelation

Further Research after the Reformation Period

Erasmus’s Legacy

Notes

Writing numbers

Confusing numbers

Number of shipwrecked passengers

Number of years by the pool

Number of Jesus’ followers

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Number of the Beast

Preserving numbers

Notes

The Material Data

Dissecting the Data

From Text to Canon

Related

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Conclusion

Notes

An Immediate Bestseller

The Context of Luther’s Achievement

A Book to Point to Christ

Helps to Guide the Reader to Christ

1. Text and Translation

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2. Prefaces

3. Notes

4. Luther’s New Testament Canon

A Bible for the People

Notes

1. They are beautiful

2. They connect us to the ancient world

3. They include the earliest copies of our sacred scriptures

4. They help us appreciate why there are differences in the ancient copies

Related

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