No translator works from the original manuscripts of the New Testament. They do not survive. What survives is more than five thousand Greek manuscripts, from tiny papyrus fragments to complete medieval Bibles, which differ from one another in many small ways and a few large ones (see How reliable is the text?). Scholars compare them and print an edition of the Greek text, and translators translate an edition.

So the first question to ask about any New Testament is: which Greek text? The answer explains many of the differences readers notice when they compare translations, such as verses that seem to be missing, passages in brackets, and footnotes beginning “Some manuscripts add.”

The Textus Receptus

The first printed Greek New Testament was published by Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1516 (see From manuscripts to printed Bibles). He worked quickly, from a handful of late medieval manuscripts available in Basel, and for the last verses of Revelation, missing from his only manuscript of that book, he translated from the Latin back into Greek. He revised the text in later editions, and his work was followed by the printers Robert Estienne (Stephanus), whose 1551 edition introduced the verse numbers still used today, and Theodore Beza.

In 1633 the preface to an edition by the Elzevir printers in Leiden told the reader that he now had the text “received by all.” From that phrase, the tradition of printed editions from Erasmus to the Elzevirs became known as the Textus Receptus, the Received Text. The King James Version was translated from editions in this tradition, mainly Beza’s.

The Textus Receptus is close to the Byzantine text, the form of the Greek New Testament copied in the Greek-speaking church through the Middle Ages, but it is not identical to it. It contains some readings, taken from the Latin Vulgate or from very few Greek manuscripts, that the great majority of Greek manuscripts do not have.

The Majority Text

Some scholars argue that the best guide to the original is the form of text found in most surviving manuscripts, which is the Byzantine text. Two editions print it:

  • Zane Hodges and Arthur Farstad, The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text (1982).
  • Maurice Robinson and William Pierpont, The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform (first edition 1991, revised 2005), placed in the public domain.

Their supporters argue that God’s providence preserved the text through the church’s continuous use, and that the many Byzantine manuscripts outweigh a small number of early ones from Egypt. Most textual critics reply that manuscripts must be weighed rather than counted: the majority of manuscripts are late, and a reading copied many times from one ancestor is still only one witness.

The World English Bible, which this site quotes, translates the Majority Text. That explains some of its readings. For example, the Textus Receptus and the King James Version include Acts 8:37, in which the Ethiopian official confesses his faith before baptism:

And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. (KJV)

Most Greek manuscripts do not have the verse, and the World English Bible, following them, leaves it out, as do translations based on modern critical texts.

Westcott and Hort

In the nineteenth century, scholars such as Lachmann, Tischendorf and Tregelles began printing texts based on the oldest manuscripts rather than the Received Text. The most influential was the edition of B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881), published in the same year as the Revised Version New Testament, whose committee both men served on (see English translations since the King James).

Westcott and Hort grouped manuscripts into families and argued that the Byzantine text was a later, smoothed and combined form. They gave the greatest weight to Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, both from the fourth century (see Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus). Later discoveries, especially the papyri, modified their conclusions in detail, but their method shaped the critical editions that followed (see How textual criticism works).

Nestle-Aland and UBS

In 1898 Eberhard Nestle published a handy Greek New Testament for the Württemberg Bible Society, at first by comparing three leading editions of his day and printing the majority reading. Under his son Erwin Nestle and later Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece became the standard scholarly edition, with a dense apparatus of variant readings. The current edition is the 28th (2012); a 29th is in preparation.

The United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (first edition 1966, fifth edition 2014) was made specifically for translators. It prints fewer variants but gives fuller evidence for each, with letter ratings from A to D indicating the editors’ confidence. Since the 1970s the two editions have shared the same main text. Its companion, Bruce Metzger’s Textual Commentary, explains the committee’s decisions.

The latest editions draw on the Editio Critica Maior, a far more detailed edition being produced book by book, which has so far covered the Catholic Letters, Acts and Mark. The 28th Nestle-Aland changed its text of the Catholic Letters in about thirty-four places as a result. One of these is Jude 5, where it now reads that Jesus saved a people out of Egypt, rather than “the Lord,” a reading that some translations, including the ESV, also print.

The SBL and Tyndale House editions

Two recent editions were produced independently of the Nestle-Aland committee.

The SBL Greek New Testament (2010), edited by Michael W. Holmes and published by the Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software, was made by comparing four earlier editions, Westcott and Hort, Tregelles, Robinson–Pierpont and the Greek text behind the NIV, and deciding between them. Holmes reported that it differs from the Nestle-Aland and UBS text in more than 540 places, most of them small. Its text is freely licensed (it is now released under the Creative Commons Attribution licence), which has made it the basis of many digital tools, and the Lexham English Bible translates it.

The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge (2017), edited by Dirk Jongkind and Peter Williams, re-examined the early manuscripts with particular attention to scribal habits, spelling and paragraphing, and prints the books in an order found in many early manuscripts, with the General Letters before Paul’s.

These editions differ from one another in a few hundred places, most of which make no difference in translation. The real dividing line runs between all of them, the critical texts, on one side, and the Textus Receptus and Majority Text on the other.

Which translation uses which?

  • Textus Receptus: the King James Version, the New King James Version, and the Modern English Version (2014).
  • Majority (Byzantine) text: the World English Bible.
  • Critical texts close to Westcott and Hort: the Revised Version (1881) and the American Standard Version (1901).
  • Nestle-Aland / UBS: most modern translations, including the RSV and NRSV, NASB, NIV, ESV, NLT and CSB, each following its chosen edition with occasional departures of its own.
  • SBL Greek New Testament: the Lexham English Bible and Open Word Bible.

The NKJV is a special case. It translates the Textus Receptus, but its footnotes report where the critical text (marked “NU,” for Nestle-Aland and UBS) and the Majority Text (marked “M”) differ. It is one of the few translations that lets a reader see all three traditions at once.

The famous passages

Three passages show how much the choice of text matters, and how translations signal uncertainty.

The ending of Mark (16:9–20). Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus end Mark’s Gospel at 16:8, with the women fleeing from the tomb “for they were afraid.” Most later manuscripts continue with the twelve verses known as the longer ending; a few have a short ending instead, or both. Translations from the Textus Receptus and Majority Text, including the World English Bible, print verses 9–20 as part of the text. Most translations from the critical text also print them, but in brackets or after a line or heading, with a note saying that the earliest manuscripts do not have them. Some, such as the NRSV, print both the shorter and the longer ending. The SBL edition prints both in double brackets, its sign that the editor regards them as later additions which nevertheless have an old and important place in the tradition.

The woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11). This story is absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts of John, and in some later ones it appears elsewhere, after John 7:36 or 21:25, or in Luke after 21:38. Many scholars think it is an old and genuine tradition about Jesus that found its way into John’s Gospel later. Modern translations nearly always print it, usually in brackets or italics, or set apart with a note; the SBL edition prints it in double brackets.

The Johannine Comma (1 John 5:7–8). The King James Version reads:

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.

The words about the three in heaven, known as the Comma Johanneum, appear in Latin manuscripts from the early Middle Ages but in Greek only in a handful of late manuscripts, some of them in the margin. Erasmus left them out of his first two editions and included them in his third (1522). A popular story says he had promised to include them if a Greek manuscript was produced, but scholars have questioned that account. Almost all modern translations omit the words, some with a note explaining why and some without; the NKJV keeps them with a footnote. Since the Byzantine manuscripts lack them too, the Majority Text leaves them out, and the World English Bible reads simply:

For there are three who testify: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and the three agree as one.

This is a case where the Textus Receptus and the Majority Text part company.

Reading the brackets

None of these differences changes any central Christian teaching, which is taught elsewhere in passages that are not in doubt. But they do affect what a reader holds in their hands, and translations have a duty to say what they are doing. The worst outcome is a reader who discovers by accident that a verse is “missing” and assumes something has been hidden. A short note does a great deal to prevent that (see When manuscripts disagree).

Open Word Bible translates the New Testament from the SBL Greek New Testament, pinned to an exact version, so every word can be traced to its source. Where a textual variant affects the meaning, or where the edition marks a passage as doubtful, the reasoning record for that sentence says so and names the evidence. Its drafts are AI-assisted and unreviewed until named human reviewers approve them; other translations are used only for comparison, never as the basis for its wording; and the result is dedicated to the public domain under CC0.

Sources

  • Metzger, Bruce M., and Bart D. Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
  • Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994.
  • Aland, Kurt, and Barbara Aland. The Text of the New Testament. 2nd ed. Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.
  • Westcott, B. F., and F. J. A. Hort. The New Testament in the Original Greek. 2 vols. Cambridge and London: Macmillan, 1881.
  • Hodges, Zane C., and Arthur L. Farstad, eds. The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
  • Robinson, Maurice A., and William G. Pierpont, eds. The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform 2005. Southborough, MA: Chilton Book Publishing, 2005.
  • Novum Testamentum Graece. 28th revised ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012.
  • Holmes, Michael W., ed. The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature; Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010.
  • Jongkind, Dirk. An Introduction to the Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019.
  • Bible quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain), except where the article quotes the King James Version, which is also in the public domain.