Notes from Aland's Text of the NT

There are 5400 extant Greek NT, not including quotations from the Church Fathers.

Uncial: a style of orthography characterized by somewhat rounded capital letters; found especially in Greek and Latin manuscripts of the 4th to 8th centuries

Lectionary: A schedule of readings from Holy Scripture for use in the weekly liturgy. In current use are both an historic, one-year lectionary with readings that have been in use for centuries, and a more recently developed three-year lectionary. Use of a lectionary provides the congregation with the opportunity to hear carefully chosen sections from the entire Bible.

Codex: Book like format, as opposed to a scroll

Opisthograph: A manuscript, parchment, or book having writing on both sides of the leaves.

Provenance: Evidence of the history of the ownership of a particular book (eg: auctions records, booksellers' records, book plates, etc.) The book may be important because of who owned it; perhaps a president or important bookseller, collector, royalty, or someone who may be related to the book in some way. Important in establishing the ownership of especially rare items.

Minuscule: a portion of the New Testament

Folio: a book (or manuscript) consisting of large sheets of paper folded in the middle to make two leaves or four pages

Fascicles: Are sections of a book, usually a reference work, that because of its length, is issued in parts so that the information may be made available to the public as soon as possible rather than waiting years or decades to complete the entire work

Minuscule: A New Testament minuscule is a portion of the New Testament

[A New Testament uncial is a copy of a portion of the New Testament in Greek or Latin capital or uncial letters, written on parchment or vellum.

New Testament uncials are distinct from:

* New Testament papyri — written on papyrus and generally more ancient; and

* New Testament minuscules — written in minuscule (small, connected) letters and generally more recent.]

Catholic Letters: James, I and II Peter, I, II, and III John, and Jude

Apostolos: Acts and the Catholic Letters

Stemma: A tree diagram, showing the family relationships among manuscript copies of the same text. One key principle in constructing a stemma is to group manuscripts having the same error or eccentricity in common, as being all descended from the manuscript which first made that error.

Recension: Stem. The process of preparing a family tree or stemma of manuscripts. The first step in traditional stemmatics.

Interpolation: In relation to literature and especially ancient manuscripts, an interpolation is an entry or passage in a text that was not written by the original author. As there are often several generations of copies between an extant copy of an ancient text and the original, each handwritten by different scribes, there is a natural tendency for extraneous material to be inserted into such documents over time.

Interpolations may be inserted as an authentic explanatory note, but may also be included for fraudulent purposes.

Western non-interpolations : Are additions in view of the Wescott-Hort

Palimpsest: a manuscript which has been re-used by scraping off the original text and writing over the top

Free Text: a text dealing w/ the original text in a relatively free manner w/ no suggestion of a program of standardization

Normal Text: Relatively faithful tradition which departs from the its exemplar only occasionally

Strict Text: Differs from exemplar only rarely

Majority Text -The Majority Text is derived from the plurality of all existing Greek manuscripts; but because most of these manuscripts are late medieval manuscripts, there is a family resemblance between the Received Text and the Majority Text.

Byzantine text-type The kind of text found in the majority of medieval manuscripts

Alexandrian text-type the ancient type of text which is exhibited in our oldest available manuscripts

Courtesy of Bible-reasearcher.com

Remember there are no verified separate Western, Casarean, or Jerusalem texts.

Orientals (Hebrew and Islam) = sanctity to the letter; Greeks = Sanctity to the message

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p⁵² 125 A.D. contains John 18:31-33, 37-38

Chester Betty papyri/p^45,46,47:

45 (3^rd Cent) = Gospels and Acts lacunae Matt 20:24 - Acts 17:17;

46 (200 AD) Pauline Letters lacunae 2 Thess, Philemon, and Pastorals

47 (3^rd Cent) Rev. 9:10-17:2 w/ small lacunae.

Bodmer papyri: p^{66, 72, 75}:

66 (200 AD) John1:1 – 14:39 w/ almost no lacunae and the rest in fragments. Sewing almost intact;

72 (3/4^th century) *Jude and 1-2 Peter*. Has relatively undamaged pages

75 (3^rd Century) Luke 3:10 and on w/ few lacunae and John 1:10 – 15:8 w/ few lacunae. Still has its binding and may be exemplar to Codex Vaticanus, thus eliminating the theory of recensions (that revisions were happening in the 4^th century).

100 AD – Didache has the Lord’s Prayer

144 AD- Marcion Canon

170 AD – Muratorian Canon

150AD – Discernible quotes from the Gospels in Justin Martyr

175 A.D. - Tatian's Diatessaron, produced was the most prominent of a number of harmonies of the four Gospels, that is, the material of the four distinct Gospels rewritten as a continuous narrative, resolving conflicting statements and removing duplicated text (see synoptic problem). Only 56 verses in the canonical Gospels do not have a counterpart in the Diatessaron, the bulk of the excluded material comprising the two apparently irreconcilable genealogies of Jesus (one in the Gospel of Matthew and one in the Gospel of Luke), together with the pericope of the adulteress (John 7:53 - 8:11). No significant text was added; but, in order to fit all the canonical material in, Tatian felt free to create his own narrative sequence that departed radically from the succession and order of episodes in every one of the four Gospels. The final work is about 72% the length of the four gospels put together (McFall, 1994). Students of gospel harmonies frequently distinguish between the "textual" tradition - i.e. the sources and transmission for the words and phrases within each pericope; and the "sequence" tradition - i.e. the sources and transmission for the order in which pericopes are presented.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

180 AD – Closure of the Gospel and Pauline corpus

200 AD – Because of the spread of Christianity, there was a need for the translation of the NT and by 250 AD, the church was Latin.

3/4^th Century – No centralized organization of the church, thus you have many varying manuscript traditions until than.

After Decius and Valeraion Persecutions (250-260 AD) the Koine Text started in Antioch, which became the Byzantine Imperial Text (also called the Lucian text in the 4^th century). During the persecution many manuscripts were burned and lost, thus sciptoriums were built and copied the NT.

Papryus Bodmer XIV-XV/p⁷⁵ – early 3^rd century

383 AD – Jerome finishes revising the Gospels, from existing Latin text,in the Vulgate (rewrote mainly the OT from Hebrew)

4^th/5^th Century – k (Codex Babiensis) = earliest extant Latin manuscript

5^th Century- Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis/D written in N. Africa or Egypt though it is called the “Western-Text.” Lots of tendentious revisions from its exemplar.

8^th Century Uncial E or Basilensis - ignored by Erasmus

Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis/D^ea 5^th Century and Codex Claromontanus – Theodore Beza’s Library (16^th Century) – poor translations – Wrote 9 editions of the Greek NT

1452-1456 – Johann Gutenberg’s 42 line Latin Bible in Mainz

1/10/1514 - Complutensian Polyglot (published 3/22/1522)

1590 – Pope Sixtus V declares the Vulgate the authoritative text.

1592- Pope Clement VIII again declares the Vulgate’s authority

3/10/1516- Desiderius Erasmus Novum Instrumentum Omne – First edition of the Greek NT (edito princeps). Also known as the Textus Receptus. Total of 5 revisions

Relied on 12/13^th century Byzantine Imperial text, Koine text, or the Majority text

1550 & 1551 – Edito Regia – 7 editions first to use verses by Robert Estienne = Stephanus

1734 – Johnn Albrecht Bengel editied the TR and classified it as α = original reading w/ full certainty β = a reading superior to the TR, though w/ less than absolute certainty

Used Codex Alexandrinus (A) and commentary on Revelation by Andreas of Caesaerea

1751-1752 Johann Jakob Wettstein 2 vol. edition

1775-1777; 1796-1806 Johann Jakob Griesbach

1830 – Karl Lachman “Down w/ the late text of the TR, and back to the text of the early 4^th century church.”

19^th century - Constantin von Tischendorf deciphers the Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus (C) 5^th century text; also found Codex Sinaticus {N/S}

1857-1859 – Cardinal Mai uses Codex Vaticanus (B)

1881 – The New Testament in the Original Greek by Wescott – Hort ; Primarily uses Codex Vaticanus (B) (4th century text)

1898 Eberhand Nestle – Novum Testamentum Graece (final nail in the coffin for the TR). Compared the Wescott-Hort and Tischendorf versions and where they agreed he kept. He consulted a third edition Weymouth’s 2^nd edition of 1892 and after 1901 Weiss’ 1894 -1900 edition)

1902-1913 – Von Soden’s “The Writings of the New Testament, restored to their earliest attainable form on the basis of their textual history.”

1927 – Erwin Nestle’s 13^th ed. of the Nestle Text

1922-1955 – Vogel’s Novum Testamentum Gracae et Latine

1933-1984 – Merk’s Novum Testamentum Gracae et Latine

1942-1986 – Bover’s Novi Testamenti Gracae et Latina

Vogel-Merk-Bover = Roman Catholics

1966 – The Greek New Testament (GNT)

1979 – Pope John Paul II starts work on the Neo-Vulgate (initiated by Pope Paul VI)

Latest and greatest are the Nestle-Aland²⁶ and GNT⁴ (NA²⁶ closest to GNT³)