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Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Who published an authoritative Greek language text of the NT writings?

According to Lee Martin McDonald (Acadia University, Canada)

Chapter 5 #8 of Before there was a Bible (2023, T & T Clark):

Erasmus of Rotterdam produced the first

published Greek text of the NT in 1516;

it was based primarily on two 12th-century

minuscule manuscripts that he found at

the university at Basel, Switzerland.  In

subsequent editions, Erasmus included five

or six additional Greek manuscripts, but

none of them dated before the 10th century

common era.  All translators and interpreters

of NT text know the importance of discerning

the most reliable biblical text (examples at

Mark 1:1 and Ephesians 5:21, 22). . .Given

the large number of variants in the ancient

NT texts, is it yet possible to produce a

universally approved text of the Church's

Bible?  Undoubtedly church traditions,

councils (e.g. Nicaea in 325 c.e.) and

orthodoxy influenced which books we

have and to some extent limited the scope

of the intentional changes in these ancient

texts.  (pages 142 - 143)

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