What is the Majority Text?

Afterwards Mill (a learned Englishman) had many manuscripts in various places examined, and without altering the Textus Receptus, placed the reading which was in his opinion the most exact, below the text.*

The pious and learned Bengel, in Germany, endeavoured to obtain a more exact text by a deep study of manuscripts, etc., and was the first, so far as we know, to turn his attention to the classes (commonly called families) into which they may be divided. We must not here go farther into particulars on this subject, but only make the general remark that two main classes of Greek manuscripts, the so-called Alexandrian and the Constantinopolitan, are the commonest. To the first class belong almost all the oldest manuscripts; to the latter by far the greater number, which, with few exceptions, were written later.

Griesbach rests principally on the ancient MSS in uncial letters; but he has weighed the other authorities. His edition, published after the labours of Mill, Bengel, and Wetstein, has certainly laid the foundations of modern criticism. He sees it right to distinguish from each other three families or classes of readings or of MSS, the Alexandrian, the Constantinopolitan, and the Western. The greater number of the ancient MSS, that is, those in uncial letters, are of the Alexandrian family; and it is on this family that Griesbach has founded his text; but the learned critic did not confine himself to this source.

190 Scholz professes to follow the readings of the Constantinopolitan MSS, which are followed by the mass of modern or western MSS, which, far more than the Alexandrian, countenance the "Received Text." Nevertheless, in reality he often diverges from that family, so that his text differs little from that of Griesbach: his edition is disfigured by many faults of type.

Tischendorf, like Griesbach, follows principally the MSS in uncial letters. In his first edition he is a little rash, but he becomes much more sober in the subsequent editions, in which he has re-established many readings that he had previously rejected.

He elaborated the system of families, arranging the manuscripts into three divisions, and then sought to deal with each division as one witness. The families were the Alexandrian, the Western, and the Byzantine. The text as given by Origen he took as the basis of the Alexandrian, and placed here the ancient copies A B C, L of the Gospels, the Egyptian and some other versions. The Western family was represented by D of the Gospels and Acts, and here he placed those which contained a Latin as well as Greek text; the Old Latin and Vulgate; and quotations in the Latin Fathers. The Byzantine embraced the great mass of other manuscripts, the Versions, and the Greek Fathers. This last family had less value with Griesbach than the other two.

Where two of the families agreed in a reading that decided its reception. Though laying aside the common text, he seems to have had a leaning towards it in cases of difficulty. His work was elaborately done, for he was not content with simply receiving or rejecting readings, but also inserted others, marking them as 'very probable,' and others as 'probable.'

The ELZEVIR Editions came next, in 1624 and 1633. The latter is the one which is called the textus receptus, or 'the text received by all': "textum ergo habes nunc ab omnibus receptum." It is the one commonly reprinted on the continent: and is the same in the main as that of Stephen reprinted in England, there being only about 287 minor differences between them.

15 As to the Syrian text, "which underlies the so-called Textus Receptus, Westcott and Hort, in their "Introduction," § 185, p. 133, admit that it "must be the result of a recension in the proper sense of the word, a work of criticism performed by editors, not merely by scribes."

There is another point which relates to the Greek text itself, and which it is needful to mention. Until the end of the fifteenth century, at which period printing was invented, the holy scriptures — as well as all other books — existed only in the form of manuscripts. The first impression of the Bible was due to Cardinal Ximenes, but the sources from which he drew are still very little known to us. Two years previous to its publication, Erasmus had already given an editio princeps of the Greek text, but he had been able to consult only a very few manuscripts, and indeed for the Apocalypse he possessed but one, and this very incorrect and incomplete. About the middle of the sixteenth century, R. Stephens (Stephanus) published in Paris an edition of the Greek text, founded upon the comparison which he had made of thirteen manuscripts that he had found in the royal library, and of a fourteenth which his son Henry had examined, and which afterwards, from the hands of Theodore Beza, found its way into the Cambridge library. Theodore Beza himself published, at about the same time, an edition of the New Testament with a fresh translation in Latin. Also in 1633 a new edition of the Greek text was published in Holland, differing little from that of Stephens, to which they were bold enough to give the title of "Textus ab omnibus Receptus," the text received by all. If, at the present day, we put aside the translations from the Vulgate or ancient Latin version, we may say that in so far at least as we know, all modern translators of the New Testament have hitherto taken as the basis of their labours, either the text which is called "Text received by all," or another which is even less correct. Now this "Received Text" is founded on a very limited number of MSS. At the time of its publication criticism had made but little progress. The anxiety also of some who feared that the common faith might thereby be shaken prevented the raising of the question as to the accuracy of the existing text thus presented. But since that period many hundred MSS, some of which are of great antiquity, have been carefully examined and compared. Those faults could thus be corrected which copyists had introduced into the thirteen MSS to which Stephens had access, or which, by any other means, had crept into the "Received Text." The learned men who have thus employed their time and their sagacity in purging the text from those errors, which had found their way into it through the carelessness or presumption of men, have formed a corrected text; classifying, according to different systems, and judging, each according to his own point of view, the numerous MSS known at present.

Un siècle après la publication de la dernière édition d’Érasme, les Elzevirs de Hollande (qui avaient reproduit un texte peu différent de ceux d’Étienne, de Théodore de Bèze et d’Érasme) lui attribuèrent, dans la préface de leur seconde édition (1633), le titre de “texte reçu de tous”. C’est là le texte que tous les traducteurs modernes ont aveuglément suivi jusqu’à nos jours.

In the main, however, the translators followed Stephens and Beza; but Beza had copied Stephens for the most part, and Stephens had copied Erasmus. This latter fact is striking in a few places. For Stephens in his edition of 1550 in some places abandoned his former text and all his manuscripts, in favour of readings given by Erasmus, and these were mostly retained in our Authorised Version.

It is commonly understood that the Authorised Version corresponds with the 'common Greek text,' as given, for instance, in Stephen's 1550. Beza's text came after that of Stephen, and those of Elzevir were not then published. But the A.V. in about 28 places follows neither Stephen nor Beza, so that it appears they did not follow any strict rule as to the text they adopted. The differences are not of great importance and a few of them have been altered in modern reprints.

Alford. In his commentary he publishes a Greek text, not remarkable for anything peculiar. In the majority of readings he goes with Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles.