Bible Society of South Africa

Textual Criticism of the New Testament

We have many manuscripts and papyri of the New Testament texts. Some date from shortly after the books of the New Testament were written. The textual criticism of the New Testament makes use of all these texts.

Critical Edition

Modern editions of the Greek New Testament offer what is known as a critical edition of the text. That is, a text that does not follow just one manuscript, but reconstructs the best, most original text from all the manuscripts. A critical edition is, therefore, a composite text based on all the available materials.

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