Decline of the Textus Receptus

Decline of the Textus Receptus

The prevalence of the Textus Receptus first began to wane when newer critical editions of the New Testament provided a means of evaluating variant readings of the text. Scholars began to question the Textus Receptus and began publishing editions of the Greek New Testament that broke from it: Karl Lachmann was the first (1831), followed by Lobegott Friedrich Constantin von Tischendorf (eight editions from 1841–1872) and Samuel Tregelles (1857–1872). These critical editions paved the way for the influential Greek critical edition The New Testament in the Original Greek, produced by Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort in 1881.

Westcott and Hort generally assumed the Alexandrian text-type to be more original than the Byzantine. Although Westcott and Hort’s theories sometimes went beyond the evidence, their edition left a permanent impression on the landscape of New Testament studies, the effects of which reverberate in the influential United Bible Societies’ critical Greek New Testaments. The editors of this publication tend to favor the Alexandrian witness, though it has nuanced Westcott and Hort’s position. The Greek New Testament is now in its fifth edition (called the UBS⁵), and the Novum Testamentum Graece is in its 28th edition (called the NA²⁸)—both edited by Barbara and Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo Martini, and Bruce Metzger. Many modern English translations of the New Testament (NASB, ESV, NIV) tend to follow the conclusions of these textual critics, thus breaking from the influence of the Textus Receptus and the KJV.^[1]

 

---

^[1] Ritzema, Elliot, and S. Michael Kraeger. 2016. “Textus Receptus.” In The Lexham Bible Dictionary, edited by John D. Barry, David Bomar, Derek R. Brown, Rachel Klippenstein, Douglas Mangum, Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, Lazarus Wentz, Elliot Ritzema, and Wendy Widder. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.