wordsmyth

Which Greek Texts are most widely accepted today?

I know the Codex Vatanicus and Codex Sinaiticus are usually discredited as not representing the majority of early texts even though they represent the earliest of texts. So what is accepted in place of these?

Also, where can I find a timeline of early texts and their translation into modern documents?

Haran

If you mean the Greek Critical Editions that most modern translators use, that would be the United Bible Societies 4th and the Nestle-Aland 27th. Some still use slightly older editions, but there is little variation in the actual Greek text.

Those who like the King James will fall back on the Textus Receptus or the Majority Text.

If you mean ancient manuscripts, then there are tons and tons of them.

Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Ephraemi, and others are still very much relied upon for most of the greek in modern critical editions. For smaller portions of the NT, the <a href="http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/texte/Papyri-list.html" target="_blank">Greek Papyri</a> are used mainly because they are older than the above codeces.

<a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/CriticalEds.html" target="_blank">Critical Editions of the Greek New Testament</a>

How's this:

<a href="http://rosetta.atla-certr.org/TC/extras/Robinson-list.html" target="_blank">NT Greek MSS ordered by century</a>

That's about the best I can find at the moment. If I stuble across anything better, I'll post it.

Haran

wordsmyth

Thanx Haran.

That gave me a great start in the right direction.

not a theist

Don't listen to the people who tell you that. Most of them have an anti-Alexandrian/pro-Byzantine text bias. They often have a KJV-only agenda under their attempts to discredit the Alexandrian text type. Their theory usually involves some sort of hypothetical plot by heretical Origenists to deliberately corrupt the text.

CX

Hmmm. I think that list is awfully optimistic. Only 3 MSS, according to the Alands, date solidly in the 2nd century. P52, P90 and possibly P98. The remainder in that list are either listed as "ca. 200" or II/III. It seems somewhat misleading to count these as second century manuscripts. It is more reasonable to say early third century to be on the conservative side. Plus the vagaries of paleography being what they are many of these could end up in the middle of the third century, though of course the argument is reversable so the most reasonable is probably early third.

Haran

This list was apparently compiled using data from Kurt Aland's Kurzgefasste Liste (which I actually found in the library a few days back...too bad I didn't know this conversation would come up). I don't know how Aland lists them in Kurz... However, it is a major source for all textual critics.

The webpage was compiled by Maurice Robinson. He has his doctorate and frequents the TC-List (as a matter of fact, his MS list is hosted on the TC Website). However, I'm not sure what his biases are.

What do you mean by "to be on the conservative side"?

Too often, I worry that scholars date late rather than early because of feelings like this.

If we ever do find very early MSS (or if we already have), we may never know because so many want to date them late (or "conservatively")... I'm not sure of a way around this dilemma.

Haran

[ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: Haran ]</p>

CX

I imagine you are correct. It would be thrilling to find very early MSS, but they could go unrecognized. Unfortunately the media in use at the time wasn't very amenable to preservation. By "conservatively" I meaning dating texts squarely in the middle of the possible range. The tendancy of apologists is to date them very early (i.e. P52 dating to 100-110 C.E.) whereas critics and scholars can have a tendancy to date very late (i.e. P52 dating to 150). I think the most "conservative" position is to determine a reasonable range for the texts and date them in the middle of it. Thus I accept a date for P52 of around 125 C.E. with the knowledge that it could be earlier or later.

wordsmyth

Yes, I'm finding that out more and more. Apparently there is a small but vocal minority who apparently believe the KJV which was based on the Textus Receptus(Received Text) is the only true inspired translation and that all others are works of Satan attempting to confuse everyone.

The problem with this is that the KJV doesn't seem to match very well with the Textus Receptus in that several words and phrases were added that don't appear in the Greek text.

I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of early texts is very limited so feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.


In my original post I was really looking for something that explains when certain texts were written. For example

Codex Vatanicus - date written?
Codex Sinaiticus - mid 4th century
Codex Alexandrinus - date written?
Codex Zacynthius - date written?
Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus - date written?
Latin Vulgate - date written?
Septuagint - you know the rest

not a theist

Part of their strategy is an attempt to discredit the Alexandrian Text Type. The TR was based on a handful of Byzantine texts. These were later than the current Alexandrian texts (like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) available to us. So why wouldn't we use the earlier ones. Their answer: The Alexandrian Text is corrupt! (It's actually no more corrupt than any other text type.) Heretics down there in bad old Egypt deliberately changed things. The problem with their argument is that if there was this conspiracy to change the text, they did a really lousy job! They passed up so many wonderful chances to really corrupt the text.
They usually like to "count" manuscripts rather than "weigh" them. And 90% of the texts that we have are Byzantine. So (their reasoning goes) the Byzantine text is the one we should trust. The Byzantine Text Type has a tendency to harmonize and to smooth out rough readings so it's marginally more amenable to inerrantists (like the KJV-onlyers).

Some of them actually believe that the KJV can be used to correct the Greek!

I'm no expert on the subject myself.
YOu really ought to take a look at a copy of The Text of the New Testament;
Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration by Bruce Metzger. I just returned a copy to the library that I checked out a month ago. It's very good.
Here are some links that you might find interesting.
<a href="http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/TC.html" target="_blank">TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism</a> It has a few very good articles by Bart Ehrman in issue 5.

<a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/TextTypes.html" target="_blank">Text Types And Textual Kinship</a>

<a href="http://www.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/text_crit.html" target="_blank">Textual Criticism</a>

<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09627a.htm" target="_blank">Manuscripts of the Bible</a>
This one is from NewAdvent but is still extremely good. It's quite dated (1910) but most of the dates for the major manuscripts are the same as given in my UBS Greek NT from 1990. This might be what you're looking for.

Also have a look at Haran's very nice links above.

Steven Carr

As p52 only contains about 20 letters and only 2 complete words, the date of it is irrelevant to determining the text of John. It is simply not used. (As it happens, even the most optimistic reconstruction of the missing letters shows that there was not room for some words found in later texts)