What is the Textus Receptus?

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.

170 In the middle of the sixteenth century R. Stephens published an edition in Paris, which he had prepared by comparing thirteen manuscripts discovered in the Royal French Library, and also another which was examined by his son Henry; the latter belonged at that time to Beza, but is now preserved at Cambridge. Later in the sixteenth century Beza himself published five editions of the New Testament, accompanied by a translation of the same. Most of the European translations have therefore been made from one or other of these earlier editions. An edition of the original text of the New Testament appeared some time after in Holland, which differed little from that of Stephens, although it was entitled, with hardihood enough, "Textus ab omnibus receptus" (the universally received text), by which it is still known.

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.*

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.

The Elzevir Editions. These editions were published in 1624 and 1633. They are mostly copied from Stephens's editions of 1550, corrected in places from Beza's editions. In the second edition they profess to give the text received by all, which is often referred to as the "textus receptus." This is the text commonly reprinted on the continent, though, as we have seen, the edition of Stephens 1550 is the common text in England.*

There are Bibles where it says, "from the book of life", and let me add here some thoughts here as to the reason and the causes why these different readings can occur. We had one before in the course of the day already, and this goes back to the famous Erasmus of Rotterdam who was a very learned man but a humanist. He was interested in the old languages, a feature of the Renaissance, and he was the first to say, 'Why not print the New Testament in the original language' (the printing press had just been invented some fifty years before). This had never been done before and Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1515 was the first to do so, but for that enterprise he needed manuscripts. Until the invention of the printing press every Bible had to be written by hand and there were comparatively few of them, only about six to ten of them. Nowadays we have about 5,300 manuscripts of the Greek Bible, but when Erasmus five hundred years ago printed his first Bible in Greek he had about six to ten manuscripts, all of them dating from about one thousand years after Christ and when the first New Testament scriptures were written. Unfortunately also these rather late manuscripts which he used for the printing of the New Testament were not complete and for our present interest, there was a serious gap in the Revelation. Thus when Erasmus wanted to print it in Greek he had no Greek text retranslated the Bible (and this is very important). He retranslated this part of the New Testament from the Latin back into Greek and he used the normal Latin Vulgate Bible of the Catholic church at the time. It was from this source he got "the book of life". But now we have about 5,300 manuscripts of the Greek Bible and there is not one in which the word "the book of life" occurs. This New Testament of Erasmus became naturally a forerunner, and it became world famous. The first to use it was Martin Luther in 1522 when he was translating the Bible into German. He used the New Testament in Greek, the original language but with these two weaknesses, it had only a few manuscripts and very late manuscripts, and secondly the last part of the Revelation was not the original Greek but retranslated into Greek from Latin. But the Lord used Luther for a great blessing in Germany and all over the Western world. Later on the Dutch Bible, the French Bible and the English Bible were translated from texts which stemmed back to what Erasmus had published. This is the basis of the Authorised Version. This Greek text became so well known that after fifty or sixty years it was called "The Received Text", the text received by all scholars as the only one, and there was no other at that time. About a one hundred and fifty years ago when Mr. Darby started to translate a new translation and at that time scholars had found about one thousand manuscripts of the Greek Bible in comparison with six to ten of Erasmus, and in these manuscripts which were at the disposal of Mr. Darby and his collaborators there were manuscripts which were five, six, seven hundred years older nearer to the original than the manuscripts of Erasmus had used. But in these further manuscripts the words "the book of life" never occurred and it became the basis for other new translations done mostly by unbelievers. Tischendorf was probably a believer, but later scholars and modern scholars are mostly unbelievers. They had many Greek manuscripts although not so many as we have today. Even the unbelieving modern editor of the New Testament says the text of the New Testament is practically one hundred percent sure. They base it mainly on the oldest manuscripts which were not known to Erasmus. Nowadays in certain Christian circles (and we are not untouched by it) there is a battle between those who cling to the Received Text and those Christians who cling to the text reconstructed by the modern scholars based on 5,300 manuscripts which we have now. Some go back almost to the time of John. The oldest portion of the Bible is the Gospel by John going back to the year 130 AD or even 125 AD (number P53 is the oldest part of the New Testament).

Why should we know this? Because the Received Text is not the inspired text which is shown by what has just been said and the modern Greek editions based on the oldest manuscript are not inspired either because it is the work of unbelieving 'Christians'. What are we to do? The first point is that for the most part both types of text are absolutely identical. There are not two different New Testaments! Ninety-five to ninety-seven percent are identical, so there is only five percent of all the thousands of words where there are differences and here we have one. Let us never forget that the Received Text is not inspired nor are all the modern versions, and modern Greek editions. No doubt we do need spiritual intelligence to see what the Spirit wants us to have. It appears that the word "commandment" should not be in verse 14, and the word "book" should not be here, nor should be "tree" because the evidence of the oldest manuscripts shows clearly that was not there. But at the same time we must be careful. Both the Received Text has its faults and all the unbelieving editors of the Critical Text which combines the greatest scholarship of our times in this field. What we need, and that is what brother Darby did, and what the other brethren did and are doing, to find the mind of God in the text, and happily there is now doubt all except a few remaining words.. Let us beware of being partisans of either the Received Text or the Modern Text which are both are human editions of the one inspired by God which God has been pleased (we must say so) to pass into our days in this way. The Old Testament has been translated in an entirely a different way. There is only one text in the Hebrew and there are practically no serious difficulties chiefly because of the Jews reverent jealousy to preserve the Old Testament in exactitude, something quite different from the way most scholars handle the New Testament.

As reference to the chief MSS. and editors of the Greek Testament may be frequent in this and other papers, it seems desirable to give a brief sketch for the sake of those readers who are not versed in such matters. The first printed Greek Testament was that contained in the Complutensian Polyglott. It was completed, it seems, about the beginning of the year 1514; but difficulties occurred to delay its publication till (after the death of its patron, and at least nominal editor, Cardinal Ximenes in 1517) Pope Leo X. formally sanctioned its issue in 1520. Previously to its publication the celebrated Erasmus brought out his first edition in 1516. There can be little doubt that the less costly volume of the Rotterdam scholar contained a text founded on fewer and inferior MSS. and drawn up with censurable haste, when one considers that the word of God was in question. Indeed, Erasmus himself was sensible of the imperfections of the work, though it was not till 1527 that he availed himself of the help afforded by the Complutensian Bible. The MSS. examined by Erasmus remain for the most part at Bâle, where his first edition was printed; those which were used by the Complutensian editors are supposed to be chiefly at Alcala and Madrid. The last edition of Erasmus bears the date, we believe, of 1535, and this, with extremely few changes, was what R. Stephens adhered to in his third edition (1550), though he also collated, to a certain extent, some MSS. in the Royal Library of Paris, etc. A little later Beza published some five editions, which follow Stephens' very closely. In 1624 appeared the first of the Elzevir editions, and in 1633 their second was published, which presumed to give the "Textus ab omnibus receptus," as they styled it.

The English Authorised Version (1611) of the New Testament was mainly derived from what was afterwards called the Received Text, based on a recension of the original Greek called "Byzantine" by Griesbach, and contained chiefly in relatively late MSS. (such as LΔ among uncials and cursive 1). The Revised Version (1881) is founded on a more ancient text (ℵABC, etc.) allied to that which the same critic named "Alexandrian," but, as limited by Westcott and Hort, the most influential members of the committee in textual matters, has been called "Neutral." The views of these English scholars rapidly received general support, and the dominance of their system of selection has only within the last few years been shaken by those critics who incline towards greater recognition of a third rescension, known as the "Western" or "Syro-Latin." As Sir R. Anderson has written, the Westcott-Hort "mutilation of the Gospels" by rejection of the indirect evidence afforded by the united voice of versions (such as the Old Syriac and Old Latin) and Fathers in favour of the direct evidence of "certain of the oldest manuscripts," was not likely to commend itself to adepts in the science of evidence. ("Pseudo-Criticism," p. 5.) The, leaders in the reaction are German critics, Blass and Wellhausen in particular. Sanday continues his allegiance to the Cambridge scholars, whilst Weiss adheres to a modified form of the Westcott-Hort criticism, regarding the cursives somewhat more than those English scholars have done, and internal evidence always, but sometimes following B even when Hort has not done so, as in 5:18, whilst Harnack is disposed to apply the drag to the rapidly radical departure from it.

Westcott and Hort, developing predecessors' classification of the Greek copies, arranged the MSS, as follows:-

Our object, in the present paper, is to give such a sample as our narrow limits may permit, of some remarkable changes which it has been proposed to make in the common text of the Greek Testament. For though God, in His providence, has not failed to watch over His word, yet was it entrusted to the responsibility of man, who has broken down here, as everywhere else. Man has not known how to keep the holy deposit as became him. There were accidental slips of the copyists, as even yet there are, spite of extreme care, not a few errors of the press. Words, clauses, sentences might be, and often were, omitted by oversight. Interchanges of words that bore some resemblance occurred now and then. Then, again, it was not uncommon for marginal notes, originally meant as explanations, etc., to creep into the text through the ignorance or negligence of some after-scribe. Finally, it can hardly be doubted that there are traces of intentional tampering with the copies, occasionally in the way of wholly unfounded additions; more frequently attempts at correcting terms and expressions, grammatical or other supposed errors; and, last of all, assimilations of scripture statements, as, for instance, in the corresponding parts of the four gospels. To these and other kindred causes are due the various readings of the ancient MSS. Numerous as they are, they are not out of proportion to the vast body of the copies.

But the task of correcting the Greek vulgate (i.e., of settling, in each particular case, what were the precise words of the Spirit) is one of no ordinary delicacy. And to us the matter for marvel (we must add, for deep thankfulness) has been the comparative purity, and, indeed, the substantial excellence, of that very "Textus Rec." which it has been of late so much the fashion to despise. It is fully allowed that there are faults in it which not only older and better MSS., but a more careful examination of the then extant documents, might have corrected. Nevertheless, we gravely question whether the critical results of Lachmann, and Tischendorf in his early editions, are preferable on the whole. Sure we are that, in very many instances of serious moment, their latest products are not so trustworthy as yet. For, while the editions of the sixteenth century were formed on insufficient data and were slovenly as to details; the meddling criticism of our own age has made frequent and fearful inroads on the true text. The carelessness of the one and the self-complacent confidence of the other injures to an amount which, if it be not equal in number and weight, is at least highly discreditable to our era with all its boasted appliances.

Next, the idea of many distinct and independent texts (as distinguished from abundance of various readings) seems an evident exaggeration. Take the fact, that this is eked out by putting the Received Text as one; the text of D (or Beza's Cambridge Uncial) as another; and that of most of the MSS. E F G H K M S U, etc., as a third. Now, what right has the Received Text to be thus ranged? It was formed by collating some of those very manuscripts which are thrown together as a third text. The true conclusion, therefore, is simply the not at all unprecedented phenomenon that D differs considerably from almost if not all other manuscripts, and that the Received Text is but a poor approximation to a text based on a collation of manuscripts. A really standard text, which gives just but discriminating value to all worthy witnesses, is as yet a desideratum.

As to the text of the NEW TESTAMENT there is no particular copy that claims any authority, though the Received Text (Elzevir, 1624) was for a long time treated 'as if an angel had compiled it,' as one expressed it. But the undue respect for that text has passed away, and every translator has to examine the evidence for and against every variation, in order to know what he shall translate.