Textual Criticism of New Testament Manuscripts 

General Practices

Last week we took a brief look at the fact that the New Testament manuscripts are largely contained in two major manuscript families: the Byzantine (or Majority) and the Alexandrian. Today I want to take a quick look at how scholars decide which manuscripts are more likely closer to the original reading of the actual writings of the New Testament. Textual criticism is a complex practice, but there are a few things that we can observe.

First, most textual critics consider the manuscripts belonging to the Alexandrian text family to be the most reliable. This is because these manuscripts, though fewer in number, and generally older. Additionally, they were not used in worship and thus are believed to have been less likely to have been altered over time.

An example may help us understand why critics have made this decision. Have you ever played the game of telephone, where one person whispers something in another person’s ear, and they in turn whisper it to someone else? this pattern is continued until the last person reveals what they believe was the original sentence – and usually, it bears little resemblance to what was spoken at first! At each stage, small errors creep in, and the further we move from the original person, the more likely errors will creep in. Now, the process of textual transmission was much more careful than the game of telephone, but you can see the main point. The longer one moves from the original writing, the more intervening generations or manuscripts, the more likely errors will have crept in. For this reason, text critics tend to prefer the older manuscripts of the Alexandrian family.

This is why most newer translations, including the New International Version, the English Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible, the Revised Standard Bible, the Christian Standard Bible, and the New Living Translation tend to follow the Alexandrian text where there are differences. Note they TEND to follow it. Usually, they will note differences in footnotes, and at times they will follow the Byzantine text. But their normal practice, all things considered, is to follow the Alexandrian text.

However, it should be noted that there are some textual critics and scholars who disagree with this reasoning and prefer the Byzantine family, especially the Majority Text. This was the only family of texts known when the early English translations were made, including the King James – the most important early English translation. Thus, the Byzantine/Majority text is the basis for the King James and the New King James versions of the Bible.

However, today most scholars are fully aware of both text families and labor with all the resources available to try to produce as accurate a translation as possible. Furthermore, many modern translations actually give notes so that you can understand why they made the decisions they did. One notable example of this is the NET Bible, which may be accessed online for free. It gives extensive notes so that even those who do not read Greek can understand why there are differences in various translations.

Next time I will wrap up this discussion of the texts and manuscripts of the Bible with an encouragement for what a gift we have in God’s Word!

In Christ,

Bret