Greek New Testament Dot Net Project

GreekNewTestament.Net (Internet Edition With Exhaustive Critical Apparatus) is collated, transcribed, edited and translated into English by Daniel Yen. Unlike printed critical editions of the Greek New Testament, Greek New Testament Dot Net aims to present the readings of all extant manuscripts of the New Testament and quotations from the Early Church Fathers in parallel.

The Original Manuscripts of the New Testament

We do not have the original manuscripts of the New Testament. What we have today are  copies of the copies of the copies of the autographs. Why?

Συντετέλεσται δῆτα καθ᾿ ἡμᾶς ἅπαντα, ὁπηνίκα τῶν μὲν προσευκτηρίων τοὺς οἴκους ἐξ ὕψους εἰς ἔδαφος αὐτοῖς θεμελίοις καταρριπτουμένους, τὰς δ᾿ ἐνθέους καὶ ἱερὰς γραφὰς κατὰ μέσας ἀγορὰς πυρὶ παραδιδομένας αὐτοῖς ἐπείδομεν ὀφθαλμοῖς τούς τε τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν ποιμένας αἰσχρῶς ὧδε κἀκεῖσε κρυπταζομένους, τοὺς δὲ ἀσχημόνως ἁλισκομένους καὶ πρὸς τῶν ἐχθρῶν καταπαιζομένους,

All these things were fulfilled in us, when we saw with our own eyes the houses of prayer thrown down to the very foundations, and the Divine and Sacred Scriptures committed to the flames in the midst of the market-places, and the shepherds of the churches basely hidden here and there, and some of them captured ignominiously, and mocked by their enemies. (Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, Book 8, Chapter 2)

We have as many as eighteen second-century manuscripts of the New Testament, sixty-four from the third, and forty-eight from the fourth. Papyrus Ƿ52, the earliest extant record of a canonical New Testament text, is dated somewhere between 117 AD and 138 AD, that is about three decades after the autograph. There are approximately 5,805 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, of which 323 are majuscules. The immense amount of the manuscripts exceeds all other ancient documents by hundreds of times. In addition, there are over 15,000 manuscripts in Syriac, Latin, Coptic, Armenian, Gothic, Georgian, and Ethiopic versions. On top of that, there are 2,453 lectionary manuscripts and more than one million quotations of the New Testament by the church fathers. Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone in reconstructing the entire New Testament.

But, as I have said elsewhere, no amount of learning, skill, and conscientious care, can quite replace a study of the manuscript itself. (Agnes Smith Lewis)

The wealth of material available for determining the exact wording of the original New Testament is overwhelming. Our dream is to collate all extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament and publish them at this website. Currently, we are collating 11 uncials (majuscule script), 9 minuscules, and 8 ancient versions. More will be added later.

NT Greek Manuscripts Being Collated:

  1. Codex Vaticanus (B)
  2. Codex Sinaiticus (א)
  3. Codex Alexandrinus (A)
  4. Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C)
  5. Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis (D)
  6. Codex Basilensis (E)
  7. Codex Wolfii A / Codex Seidelianus I / Codex Harleianus (Harley MS 5684) (G)
  8. Codex Washingtonensis (W)
  9. Codex Dublinensis (Z)
  10. Codex Sangallensis 48 (Δ)
  11. Uncial 071 (P. Oxy.III 0401) ✓
  12. Uncial 073 ✓
  13. Minuscule 44 (Add MS 4949)
  14. Minuscule 57 (MS Gr. 9)
  15. Minuscule 72 (Harley MS 5647)
  16. Minuscule 83 (Codex Monacensis 518) (Gr. 518)
  17. Minuscule 201 (Add MS 11837)
  18. Minuscule 439 (Add MS 5107)
  19. Minuscule 449 (Add MS 4950)
  20. Minuscule 476 (Arundel MS 524)
  21. Minuscule 478 (Add MS 11300)
  22. Minuscule 479 (Codex Wordsworth)
  23. Minuscule 556 (Codex Bodmer 25)
  24. Ƿ1 (Papyrus 1 / P. Oxy. 2) ✓
  25. Ƿ96 (Papyrus 96 / Pap. K. 7244) ✓
  26. Ƿ101 (Papyrus 101 / P. Oxy. 4401) ✓
  27. Ƿ102 (Papyrus 102 / P. Oxy. 4402) ✓
  28. Ƿ103 (Papyrus 103 / P. Oxy. 4403) ✓
  29. Ƿ110 (Papyrus 110 / P. Oxy. 4494) ✓

Early Versions of the New Testament

  1. Peshitta
  2. Old Latin (a, q, ff2)
  3. Vulgate
  4. Codex Curetonianus Syriacus
  5. Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus
  6. Philoxenian

Early Church Fathers

  1. Irenaeus (c. 202 AD) – see Matt 5:18
  2. Clement of Alexandria (c.150 – 215) – see Matt 5:8
  3. Hippolytus of Rome (170 – 235 AD) – see Matt 12:42
  4. Origen (c. 184 – 253 AD) – see Matt 5:4
  5. Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 263 – 339 AD) – see Matt 3:16
  6. Athanasius (c. 296 – 373 AD) - see Matt 5:8
  7. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – 395 AD) – see Matt 11:10
  8. John Chrysostom  (c. 347 – 407 AD) – see Matt 10:28
  9. Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376 – 444 AD) – see Matt 10:8

Printed Editions of the Greek New Testament Available

  1. Novum Instrumentum omne – Desiderius Erasmus (1516)
  2. Editio Regia – Robertus Stephanus (Robert I Estienne) (1550)
  3.  Novum Testamentum Graecum, cum lectionibus variantibus MSS - John Mill (1707)
  4. The Greek New Testament – Samuel Prideaux Tregelles (1857)
  5.  Novum Testamentum Graece. Editio Octava Critica Maior : 2 vols. - Constantin von Tischendorf (1869 & 1872)
  6. The New Testament in the Original Greek - Brooke Foss Westcott & Fenton John Anthony Hort (1881)
  7. Die Schriften des neuen Testaments, in ihrer ältesten erreichbaren Textgestalt / hergestellt auf Grund ihrer Textgeschichte: 4 vols. –  Hermann von Soden (Berlin: Glaue, 1902-1910)
  8. Many more… (see Matt 1:1)

The Original Text of the New Testament

The Greek New Testament was first printed in 1514 by Francisco Ximenes, and first published (for sale) in 1516 by Desiderius Erasmus. But before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, books had to be copied by hand. As careful as copyists may be, when a book is copied by hand over a thousand years, mistakes are bound to happen. The New Testament is no exception to this rule. For that reason, the primary goal of Greek New Testament Dot Net’s textual research is the recovery of the original text of the New Testament. It is the purpose of this project to collate as many manuscripts as possible and to ascertain from the divergent copies which form of the text should be regarded as the original.

I am confronted with a sacred task, the struggle to regain the original form of the New Testament.
(Lobegott Friedrich Constantin von Tischendorf (1815-1874))

Sample Pages From The Gospel of Matthew

Matthew 1 Matthew 8 Matthew 15 Matthew 22
Matthew 2 Matthew 9 Matthew 16 Matthew 23
Matthew 3  Matthew 10 Matthew 17 Matthew 24
Matthew 4 Matthew 11 Matthew 18 Matthew 25
Matthew 5 Matthew 12 Matthew 19 Matthew 26
Matthew 6 Matthew 13 Matthew 20 Matthew 27
Matthew 7 Matthew 14 Matthew 21 Matthew 28

Introduction To Greek New Testament Dot Net

An introduction and guide to this online edition of Greek New Testament will be provided once this project is completed. PDF and XML versions of the text will also be made available for download.

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We have spent a lot of time collating the New Testament manuscripts and making them available online for free. If you derive some benefit from this website, please consider supporting us in a more tangible way. Your support could help the collator (who is working on this project full-time since December 2011) to replace an old overheating laptop, pay for the renewal of the domain name, hosting fees, internet bills, electricity bills, etc. This will help to lessen the burden of everyday living expenses of the collator.

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