The Path from Paul literally writing, to the Bible in your hand...

Posted : 1 Mar, 2011 08:08 PM

from: http://www.all-of-grace.org/pub/kenaga/SkepticalTrends.pdf









The path from the original NT to the typical English NT follows three steps.



First, the autograph was copied successively into many Greek manuscripts. Some

of the 5,000+ survivors (many fragments and all except the shortest with errors)

are edited back into a few printed critical Greek editions, which attempt to

represent the original. Then, the critical Greek editions are translated into

many contemporary language versions. The Greek NT scholars of sixteenth-century

Europe were acquainted with the manuscript families available to us in the

twenty-first century, though not extensively, but felt confident that the Greek

church had substantially preserved the original Word of God in the Textus

Receptus (TR) editions, based on a set of Byzantine manuscripts, which differed

from the Vulgate in numerous places. The biggest change in the history of

textual criticism so far occurred in 1881, when Westcott and Hort (WH) published

a shorter critical edition based on a completely different and smaller set of

older Greek manuscripts (now commonly called Alexandrian) containing over 6000

differences from the TR. The resultant Revised Version and its successors came

to replace the KJV extensively. These scholars believed that they, like Hilkiah

of old, had recovered the original Word of God. In the twenty-first century, the

majority of textual scholars still prefer the Alexandrian manuscripts over the

Byzantine ones.





James replies:



This is a huge PDF file, and if you want to discuss any of it, I am willing.

This is a kind of subject that I find parts of it very interesting, and other

parts very boring, but I am up for it.



In Christ,



James

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