Concerning Source Documents

Although there is overall agreement concerning the major doctrines found in the scriptures, there are differences among the various ancient documents used as sources for the biblical text. The majority of these dissimilarities are minor (for example, alterations in the specific ordering of words and phrases in ways that do not impact meaning). In other cases, differences are more profound. Entire verses are added or missing. Disputed books are sometimes included; canonical books are sometimes missing, either intentionally omitted or lost.

Concern about potentially overstating the nature of the differences among the various source documents led Sir Frederick Kenyon to write:

"No fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading. Constant references to mistakes and divergences of reading, such as the plan of this book necessitates, might give rise to the doubt whether the substance, as well as the language, of the Bible is not open to question. It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain." (Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts. Revised Edition, 1958, page 55.)

The following list includes many of the most famous of the ancient documents. Those primarily related to the Old Testament text are listed first, followed by documents primarily related to the New Testament.

Old Testament Source Documents

Septuagint (LXX)

During the third century B.C., the Hebrew Scriptures (comprising what Christians commonly call the Old Testament) were translated into Greek, which was the common language among communities around the eastern part of the Mediterranean. According to legend, 70 or 72 scholars (six from each of the 12 tribes of Israel) were sent to Alexandria in Egypt where they independently produced identical translations. The work took 72 days. The name Septuagint means "seventy," a round number referring to the number of translators and the number of days. The commonly used abbreviation for the work, LXX, is the Roman numeral for 70. Although the account of its miraculous production is held to be a fable, historical evidence does suggest that the translation may have been undertaken to support the Greek-speaking Jewish community in Alexandria.

During the dawn of the Christian era, the Septuagint was widely available. It was the form of the scriptures known to the nascent church, and writers of New Testament documents frequently used it as a basis for their texts. As the schism between Christian and Jewish groups widened, the growing Christian community increasingly used the Septuagint as its own scripture, and Jewish communities relied on the Hebrew-language version of their writings.

Textual variations multiplied as the Septuagint was copied and distributed throughout the ancient world. Variations led to uncertainties regarding the original language, and Hebrew scholars ultimately disavowed it. Nevertheless, the Septuagint played an important role in guiding the development of the Roman Catholic Canon, and it continues to serve as the authoritative Old Testament text in the Orthodox Canon.

An 1851 English translation of the Septuagint is partially available online from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (at http://www.ccel.org/bible/brenton), and A New English Translation of the Septuagint was published by Oxford University Press in 2007.

Masoretic Text

Roman military conquests in the area of the Middle East during the first few centuries of the Christian era disrupted Jewish communities, and declining numbers of Jewish people relied on the Hebrew language. Concerned about the potential impact on scriptural scholarship, a group called the Masoretes dedicated themselves preserving the Jewish sacred writings in the Hebrew language. They also introduced the use of vowel marks to aid in pronunciation, and they developed practices designed to help ensure flawless copying. By the twelfth century, the Masoretic text produced by the ben Asher family was recognized as the standard.

The ben Asher Hebrew text was used to create the Rabbinic Bible which was printed in 1516–17 and updated in 1524–25 by Jacob ben Chayyim. In the early twentieth century, the ben Chayyim publication was used as the basis for the first two editions of Biblia Hebraica (produced in 1906 and 1912).

The oldest still-surviving complete copy of ben Asher Hebrew text is the Codex Leningradensis (Leningrad Codex) which dates from the early eleventh century. It is currently housed in the National Russian Library in St. Petersburg. The Hebrew text of the Codex Leningradensis was used as the basis of the third edition of Biblia Hebraica, which was published in 1937.

The oldest known Masoretic fragment is the Codex Cairensis, which was produced in the late ninth century A.D., and the oldest known complete (but not still-undamaged) text was the Codex Aleppo, which was produced in the tenth century A.D. The Codex Aleppo it was partially destroyed during unrest in Syria during the middle of the twentieth century. (You can read more about this document at http://www.aleppocodex.org.)

Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Masoretic codices were the oldest known copies of the ancient Hebrew writings. (Codices is the plural form of the word codex, and codex is a term that refers to ancient manuscripts bound in book form as opposed to rolled in scrolls.) When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered during the twentieth century, they pre-dated the existing Masoretic texts by about 1,000 years. Many scholars felt that these newly uncovered texts reinforced the authenticity of the Masoretic text, although others felt that some of the Dead Sea Scrolls supported portions of the Septuagint.

Samaritan Pentateuch

The Pentateuch refers to the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). A split between the Samaritans and the Jews developed at some point during the centuries before the Christian era. As a consequence of this, the Samaritans constructed their own temple on Mount Gerizim in approximately the early fourth century B.C. The Samaritans also kept their own version of the scriptures.

European biblical scholars first learned of the existence of the Samaritan Pentateuch after 1616 when an Italian traveler, Pietro della Valle, obtained a copy from a small community in the vicinity of the biblical city of Shechem. Since that time, other ancient Samaritan manuscripts have been discovered.

Peshitta

During the early Christian era, as Christianity spread toward the eastern parts of the Roman Empire, the scriptures were translated into regional languages. One of these ancient languages was Syriac.

The Peshitta is a translation of the biblical texts into the Syriac language. The title comes from a word that means "common," "simple," "straight," or "widely current." Scholars believe work on the translation began in approximately the fourth century. One copy of the Peshitta, currently housed at the British Museum in London is dated 464 A.D., making it the oldest existing copy of the Bible for which the specific date of production is known.

Biblia Hebraica

Biblia Hebraica is the title of a publication that presents the Hebrew Scriptures. The first edition, produced by Rudolph Kittel in 1906, relied on a version of the Masoretic Text published by Jacob ben Chayyim in 1524–25. Kittel produced a second, updated edition of Biblia Hebraica in 1912.

A third edition was produced in 1937 by Paul Kahle. Instead of using the ben Chayyim publication as its textual basis, Kahle relied on a related, but older, manuscript—the Codex Leningradensis. Codex Leningradensis, the oldest still-surviving complete copy of the Masoretic Text produced by the ben Asher family, was originally printed in 1008 A.D.

The fourth edition, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), was published in 1977. BHS included extensive notes. Modern Bible translators consider it a standard representation of the Hebrew Masoretic Text. Although modern translations of the Old Testament begin with the BHS text, translators also consult other ancient documents (such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, or the Latin Vulgate) to clarify, confirm, or compare meanings.

At the present time, BHS is the most recently published complete version of the Masoretic Text, but a fifth edition, titled Biblia Hebraica Quinta, which will make corrections based on color photocopies of the Codex Leningradensis, is currently under development.

Dead Sea Scrolls

In 1947, scrolls of parchment containing ancient writings, including portions of Old Testament manuscripts and other documents related to an ancient Essene community, were found in a cave in Qumran (which is in Israel) near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. Additional exploration and excavations in the area ultimately lead to the discovery of hundreds of documents, including representatives of every book of the Old Testament with the exception of Esther. The scrolls were dated from approximately the fourth century B.C. to the first century A.D., and they predated the previously oldest known versions of the Hebrew text (the Masoretic Text), by about 1,000 years.

Biblia Qumranica is an ongoing project to provide a textual comparison of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint.

New Testament Source Documents

Textus Receptus

Textus Receptus, which means "received text," refers to a specific edition of the New Testament in Greek.

In 1516, Desiderius Erasmus compiled the text from approximately a half dozen Greek manuscripts that were available to him. His efforts produced a New Testament showing the Greek text along with a Latin translation. The work was published by Johann Froben in Basel, Switzerland. Two of the manuscripts used by Erasmus, which date from the twelfth century, are still kept at the library in Basel. Because portions of the text were in question, Erasmus also used the Latin Vulgate for guidance in reconstructing some of the Greek. Subsequent editions with editorial adjustments were produced in 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535.

Robert Stephanus, a French printer, produced several editions of Erasmus's work during the 1540s and 1550s. Theodore Beza (a sixteenth-century theologian who assumed leadership of the Geneva Church after the death of John Calvin), subsequently made further modifications to the version printed by Stephanus.

Beza eventually published multiple editions of Erasmus's work. Two published near the end of the century were used as source documents for the translators working on The Original King James Version (1611). In 1633, an edition of Beza's work was printed in the Netherlands by Bonaventura and Abraham Elzevir. The introduction to that volume, which was the second edition produced by the Elzevirs, carried a statement claiming that the text it contained was "the text that is now received by all." This phrase led to its common designation as the "Received Text," or Textus Receptus.

Majority Text

The task of determining which ancient writings carry the most authority presents significant challenges. Some scholars propose that identifying which variant appears in the most number of manuscripts, irrespective of their date of production, is useful. The New Testament's Greek Text compiled by this philosophy is called the Majority Text. Except for the book of Revelation, the Majority Text generally agrees with Textus Receptus.

Byzantine Text

Byzantium is the ancient name for the city of Constantinople, which was founded by Constantine during the fourth century A.D. Byzantine refers to the culture that existed there before it fell to the Turkish Empire in 1453 A.D.

In the context of biblical manuscripts, the Byzantine text refers to the family of documents that had their origins in this area. Stylistically, these manuscripts are characterized by editorial refinements and harmonized or conflated readings of passages with differences. These manuscripts were then copied extensively and distributed throughout the Byzantine Empire. As a result, they comprise the largest related group of New Testament materials in the Greek language.

Many of the Byzantine texts are uncial (a writing style that featured detached capital letters in columns) and miniscule (a cursive script) manuscripts produced between the sixth and thirteenth centuries. A few of the oldest manuscripts that are classified as Byzantine Text include Codex Purpureus Petropolitanus (a manuscript from the sixth century representing about half of the gospel text), Codex Sinopensis (another sixth century manuscript containing a section of Matthew), and the gospel portion of Codex Alexandrinus, a fifth century manuscript.

Alexandrian Text

The Alexandrian Text comprises a family of manuscripts that may have shared a common heritage in the region of Alexandria, Egypt. Many modern biblical scholars consider this group to be the oldest and the best currently available representation of the original New Testament writings. In addition to papyrus fragments that have been dated to the second and third centuries, two of the most significant manuscripts classified as Alexandrian text are Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.

Codex Vaticanus was discovered in the Vatican Library in Rome. The manuscript is thought to have been written during the fourth century. At one time it contained the entire Bible in Greek, but of its original 820 leaves, only 759 remain. The manuscript has been known to exist at least since the late fifteenth century, but it was not made available for scholarly review until the nineteenth century.

Codex Sinaiticus, another fourth century manuscript, is the oldest known complete copy of the Greek Bible. It was discovered in 1844 by Constantine Tischendorf at the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai. Additional parts of the Codex were discovered during excavations in 1975. Today, parts of the Codex Sinaiticus are kept at four different institutions: the British Library, the National Library of Russia, Leipzig University Library, and the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine. Additional information and images of the text are available online at http://codexsinaiticus.org/en.

Westcott and Hort's The New Testament in the Original Greek

In 1881, B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort complied a two-volume edition called The New Testament in the Original Greek. The first volume contained the Greek text; the second volume included an introduction and appendix.

Unlike previous Greek New Testaments, such as Textus Receptus which included the text of a specific Greek compilation, Westcott and Hort attempted to reconstruct a version that more closely resembled the original manuscripts. To accomplish this task, they established a system of classifying the ancient manuscripts into families and attempted to identify the variant reading considered to be the most authentic. The work done by Westcott and Hort established the groundwork for creating the Critical Text, an eclectic assemblage of language created by scholars from a variety of ancient sources in an attempt to better represent the earliest versions of the texts.

Nestle and Aland's Novum Testamentum Graece

Eberhard Nestle, a German biblical scholar, developed a Greek edition of the New Testament based on the best textual criticism available at the time and published it in 1898 as Novum Testamentum Graece. Subsequent editions were published as scholarship moved forward. His son, Erwin Nestle, helped bring consistency to the notes beginning with the 13th edition, which was published in 1927.

Kurt Aland joined the editorial team in the mid-1950s, and the work became identified with the joint name Nestle-Aland. The most recent edition, the 28th—known as NA28—is now available online (http://www.nestle-aland.com/en/home).

A version of the Nestle and Aland text (27th edition) with some differences in punctuation and notes regarding the text was produced by the United Bible Societies as The New Testament in Greek, Fourth Edition. The UBS notes were specifically written to help guide translators. It was published in 1993.

A large majority of contemporary translations of the New Testament rely on the Greek text as represented by the Nestle-Aland and the UBS publications.

If you arrived at this section from an earlier link, you may want to return to The Initial Question or The Beginning.