PRINTED EDITIONS OF THE GREEK TEXT

It was in the year 1514 that the whole of the Christian Scriptures in Greek first appeared in print. This was in volume five of the work known as the “Complutensian Polyglot.” This edition of the Christian Scriptures in Greek, however, was delayed in publication and did not go on the market until 1522. It is not known what manuscripts served as the basis for this printed Greek text.

In 1516, Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus produced a printed edition of the Christian Scriptures in Greek. Though printed two years later than the Polyglot text mentioned above, Erasmus’ text was the first to be put on the market. Because of its small size and low price, it gained great popularity. During the eighteenth century Erasmus’ text became known as the “received text.” All principal Protestant translations of the Christian Scriptures in Europe prior to 1881, including the celebrated Authorized, or King James, Version, were based on this Greek text.

However, Erasmus compiled his Greek text from, at most, only six manuscripts, none earlier than the tenth century C.E. For the most part, he had his printer copy from two manuscripts of about the twelfth century. Thus, the manuscript authority for the received text is scanty and many centuries removed from the time of writing of these inspired Bible books.

With the discovery of numerous manuscripts of greater antiquity, scholars began printing the received text with a system of footnotes for showing where and how these more ancient handwritten copies differed from the received text. In modern times, many editions of the Christian Scriptures in Greek have appeared that differ markedly from the printed text that was first published by Erasmus.

The reason for this is simple. Whereas Erasmus had but a few manuscripts to work with, scholars today have many thousands of them. Experts can often trace the history of different readings and pinpoint what the inspired author of a Bible book most probably wrote. The result of painstaking work by textual scholars has been editions of the printed Greek text that represent more accurately than the received text what the Christian Bible writers actually penned.

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Printed Greek text by Erasmus with his Latin translation. This Greek text (with minor variations) became the “received text”