Christian Publishing House Blog
Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity
It is often argued by the Textus Receptus Onlyists and the King James Version Onlyists that there are thousands of differences between Codex Vatican and Codex Sinaiticus. John Miller on Social media makes a typical comment: "You think the TR is corrupt? What about the ~3500 differences between Vaticanus and Sinaiticus just in the gospels... Continue Reading →
New Testament manuscripts in Greek are categorized into five groups, according to a scheme introduced in 1981 by Kurt and Barbara Aland in The text of the New Testament. The categories are based on how each manuscript relates to the various text-types. Generally speaking, earlier Alexandrian manuscripts are category I, while later Byzantine manuscripts are category V. Aland's method involved considering 1000 passages where the Byzantine text... Continue Reading →
An Eastern form of text, which was formerly called the Caesarean text, is preserved, to a greater or lesser extent, in several Greek manuscripts (including Θ, 565, 700) and in the Armenian and Georgian versions. The text of these witnesses is characterized by a mixture of Western and Alexandrian readings. (Bruce M. Metzger)
The Majority Text is nearly synonymous with the Byzantine Text because it was in Byzantium (and surrounds) that the Lucian text was copied again and again until it was standardized in thousands of manuscripts. (Phillip Comfort)
The chief characteristic of Western readings is fondness for paraphrase. Words, clauses, and even whole sentences are freely changed, omitted, or inserted. Sometimes the motive appears to have been harmonization, while at other times it was the enrichment of the narrative by the inclusion of traditional or apocryphal material. (Bruce M. Metzger)