The Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament

When the Roman empire was in existence, Greek was one of the official languages, and remained the language of the Byzantine empire for a very long time. So God chose koine Greek (ordinary Greek instead of classical Greek) to be the language of the New Testament.

There are over 5,900 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, and they are divided into five groups: (1) papyri, (2) majuscules, (3) minuscules, and (4) lectionaries. This huge number of manuscripts was the means by which God would preserve His Word for hundreds of years until the invention of printing. The monks in their monasteries were instrumental in copying an recopying the New Testament.

The Papyri
Papyrus was “paper” produced from reeds, and was commonly used in Egypt. It may have been produced since 4,000 BC, and was used as scrolls. But it was not very durable. There are 141 papyri fragments of the New Testament (as well as miscellaneous writings), and these are among the earliest Greek manuscripts (probably from the 3rd century). The “Black Letter” P with a superscript is used to identify papyri. The Chester Beatty Papyri and the Bodmer Papyri are some of the well-known papyri. Papyri are located in many different countries, primarily in Europe. There is a list of papyri, their locations, and their contents available.

The Uncials
Uncials were manuscripts written in “majuscules” or capital letters on parchment or vellum. There are 324 uncials numbered consecutively, and given "signs" (siglums), with Codex Sinaiticus as Aleph being the first one. The first five uncials -- Aleph, A, B, C, D -- were elevated to a rank which they did not deserve, only because they originated in the 4th and 5th centuries. Out of those א (Aleph or Codex Sinaiticus) and B (Codex Vaticanus) gained the status of “idols”, and all other manuscripts were ignored by modern textual scholars. But age is only one of the criteria for assessing the value of a manuscript.

The Minuscules
The minuscules were copies of the New Testament written in small cursive Greek script on parchment. There are 2,957 minuscules, scattered throughout the world, but large numbers are in Greece and the Vatican. They date from the 9th to the 16th centuries, but that does not diminish their value in the least. The large number itself guarantees that discrepancies would be minimal.

The Lectionaries
According to Orthodox Wiki “A lectionary is a book containing Scripture readings (pericopes) that are appointed to be read in Church services according to the cycles of the liturgical year. The lectionary goes back at least to the fourth century, and some of the oldest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament that have survived are Byzantine lectionaries”. So lectionaries are powerful witnesses to the authenticity of the traditional Greek text of the New Testament. There are 2,486 lectionaries of the New Testament.

Thus when you add up all these manuscripts, the total number of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament is 5,908. However, only 96 of these have been actually collated. Which means that there is no “Majority Text” in existence, since scholars would need to collate absolutely all those manuscripts to determine which were the majority readings.

What we do have at present are two printed texts: (1) the Textus Receptus or Received Text and (2) the Critical Text of Westcott-Hort and Nestle-Aland.

The Textus Receptus
The Textus Receptus (TR) was based upon a relatively small number of Greek manuscripts which were available to (a) Desiderius Erasmus (16th century), (b) Robert Estienne (Stephanus, 16th century) and (c) Theodore Beza (also in the 16th century).

Erasmus used minuscules 1, 2, 7, 817, 2814, 2815, and 2816, then three copies of the Gospels to compare, three of Acts, four of Paul’s letters, two of the other New Testament letters, and only one for the Book of Revelation. Later he used minuscule 33 and Codex Montfortianus (a complete New Testament), five copies of the Gospels, five of Acts, six of Paul’s epistles, four of the other NT letters, and two copies of Revelation. That is a total of 44 manuscripts, while he produced several editions of his text, making necessary corrections where needed.

Stephanus used Codex D (5th Century), Codex L (8th Century), Minuscules 8, 42, and 237 (11th century), 9, 38, 111, 120, 398, 2298, and 2817 (12th Century) 4 and 6 (13th century) and 5 (14th Century), and another 16th Century printed text known as the Complutensian Polyglot. Of these, only Minuscule 42 and the Complutensian Polyglot contained the book of Revelation, and Minuscule 42 had some gaps in Revelation due to damage in the manuscript (though not in the same places as Erasmus’ manuscripts had gaps). That is another 16 manuscripts, since Stephanus used the Greek Text of Erasmus as his basic text. But Stephanus was simply editing the work of Erasmus. However, his 1550 edition of the Received Text is know as the Textus Receptus.

This brings the total to sixty manuscripts supporting the Received Text. In contrast, Westcott and Hort used primarily only two manuscripts, and at most five! Beza may have had a few more, but his focus was primarily on editing the existing Received Text. The Elzevir brothers simply reprinted the text of Beza. But there were very few differences from the time of Erasmus to that of the Elzevirs. Burgon and his associate Miller in the 19th century compared the Greek lectionaries to the TR, and established that they resembled the TR more than the critical text in a ratio of 2:1. Thus they called it "the Traditional Text".

Ever since 1881, there has been a conflict between those who hold to the Textus Receptus as the true text of the NT, and those modern critics who believe that the corrupted texts of Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are superior to the TR. All modern bible versions since 1881 are based upon the corrupt critical text of Westcott and Hort (currently known as “Westcott and Hort [NA27 variants]”). Therefore the only faithful and reliable English translation at the present time is the Authorized Version, also known as the King James Bible (1611), based upon the Textus Receptus.

Although Greek was the official language that was spoken and the manuscripts we have are in Greek, the writers were all Hebrew who studied the scriptures they had that written in Hebrew. They learned of God in the Hebrew language and thought of God in that language. The Greek they wrote in was a translation, for them, of the Hebrew.

Early historians wrote that the gospel of Matthew we have is a translation of the original that was written in Hebrew.

Scholars have translated the Greek into Hebrew to better understand the passages.

So you are saying that Erasmus had 44 and not 7 mss. only that he used and that the total TR thus far of 60 mss against WH who have a maximum 5. 60 against 5 is indeed a mismatch as to the witnesses is concerned.

Erasmus started out with 7 and then as he went along he had access to more manuscripts. But that is far more than WH.