The Byzantine Textform of the Greek New Testament | The New Testament in the Original Greek

A commendable edition of the Greek New Testament | The New Testament in the Original Greek | Maurice A. Robinson, William G. Pierpont

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	• The New Testament in the Original Greek Maurice A. Robinson, William G. Pierpont Chilton Book Publishing, 2005 - 610 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Most Amazing copyright ever

This is a beautiful edition of the Greek New Testament, it's affordable, and the copyright is down-right shocking (click on the 'look inside' and take a look!). NA27 is still a must for serious academic work, but this should be right along side it. Excellent for reading, teaching, studying, and preaching.

The Byzantine Textform of the Greek New Testament

Although the Byzantine Textform of the Greek New Testament is available electronically, I was pleased to obtain a copy of The New Testament in the original Greek Byzantine Textform 2005 compiled and arranged by Maurice A Robinson and William G Pierpont (Southborough Mass: Hilton Book Publishing, 2005). This printed edition offers an accurate Byzantine Textform, easy-to-read presentation, fully accented and punctuated text, marginal entries identifying significant Byzantine variants and footnotes identifying NA27/UBS4 variants. The preface sets out the compilers' methodology, "reasoned transmissionalism", to arrive at the Greek text they have carefully prepared for this edition. Maurice Robinson's essay, "The case for Byzantine priority", is informative and a well-argued advocacy of the Byzantine Textform. Robinson sets out "presuppositions, principles and praxis demonstrating itself to be a legitimate theory under the broad banner of NT textual criticism, and a viable alternative to modern eclecticism".

Whichever text type one favours, the Byzantine tradition represents an important part "in the quest toward the goal of establishing the original text of the canonical Greek New Testament". The portability of the Robinson and Pierpont's edition enables it to be used effectively with the increasing number of electronic NT texts and resources available to the reader. For me, this published edition lives up to its aims and is a valuable addition to my library.

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A commendable edition of the Greek New Testament

This is an all-round excellent edition of the Greek New Testament.

The text font is large and highly readable; similar to what you would find in a Biblical Greek textbook. Overall, the external quality of the book is very high, especially taking into consideration the retail price.

Variant Byzantine readings are included in the margin where they have a significant amount of textual support (although no detail is provided in regards to specific manuscript support of each variant). ALL variations between this text and the NA27/UBS4 base text are also included in the footnotes, even when these are only very minor such as word order (I did a quick comparison of one chapter between this text and the NA27 and all variants were definitely noted).

Accents, Breathings, capitalization and punctuation have been added to the text to improve readability (although these were not included in the original manuscripts they are certainly helpful for those of us who are not experts in Koine Greek). Paragraph divisions and chapter/verse numbers have also been added. Subject headings are not included in the text.

This edition also contains a good introduction and appendix outlining some general introductory information about the various text types and presenting the editors reasons for their choice of texts. Even if you are a NA27 proponent these articles still contain valuable information, and alert the reader to the methodology utilized by the editors when choosing between competing manuscripts.

Conclusion: If you are after a well-priced and highly readable edition of the Greek New Testament, this is a highly viable option.

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The newest and most accurate Greek NT available

I have long believed the Majority Text (MT) to be superior to the Critical Text (CT, i.e., the NA/ UBS text) and even to the Textus Receptus (TR). My first introduction to the MT was via the textual footnotes in the NKJV. These reference Hodges and Farstad's Majority Text.

Later I became aware of Robison & Pierpont's MT, and having studied their differing methodologies, I came to believe that R&P's was even more accurate. However, it should be noted that the differences between these two texts are minimal. This is even truer for the Second Edition of R&P's text as some of the changes between editions brought R&P's text into alignment with the H&F text. I discuss in detail my reasons for preferring the R&P's MT to the CT and TR and even to H&F's MT in my book Differences Between Bible Versions.

So when I felt God was leading me to produce my own translation of the NT back in 1999, I naturally used R&P's text. The First Edition of the text was available on my BibleWorks program, which I used extensively in my translation work. But I was also able to contact Maurice Robinson, and he graciously emailed me a digital copy of his text, with changes that had been made to it at that point in preparation for his Second Edition. So the First Edition of my Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament: Third Editionwas as up-to-date as possible.

In 2005 I began work on the Second Edition of my ALT, and Dr. Robinson once again helped me out by sending me a list of changes between his First and Second Editions, so ALT2 could be based on the new edition. He also sent me a list of all of the Byzantine alternative readings that would appear as footnotes in his new edition. These indicate places where the Byzantine Greek manuscripts are closely divided. But I wasn't able to include those in ALT2.

In 2007, I published a Third Edition of the ALT, along with an accompanying Companion Volume to the Analytical-Literal Translation: Third Edition. In this volume, I was able to include translations of the Byzantine alternative readings. In many cases, the difference between the main text and the alternate reading is so minor that it does not show up in translation. But my "Companion Volume" lists all of the alternate readings where the difference is translatable. But even then, most of the time, the difference between the main text and the alternate reading is very minor. So the reader can have full confidence in the integrity of R&P's Greek text.

So I have been working extensively with this Greek text for some time, even before it was published. But it good to see that Dr. Robinson was finally able to get his text published in a very readable and usable format.

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a necessary book

I bought this book because I want the original text of the bible. There are a lot of 'versions' of the translations of the bible:New International Version, King James Version, New King James Version, American Standard version, New American Standard, etc, only in English. Why not only one version? The original one. The original text from which all the versions come from. That's why I think all the Christians should try to learn a little bit of Greek and read the first texts of the Christianity. That's what you can find in this book
Viorel Oprea from Romania
(vioprea@yahoo.com)

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THE NEW TESTAMENT was written in Koine Greek during the first century AD. From the time of its original revelation, handwritten copies continually were prepared in order tomaintain and preserve that original text into the modern era. All copies made prior to the invention of movable-type printing were made by hand, resulting in various scribal alterations, most of these being of a minor nature. Although the autographs no longer exist and no two manuscript copies are completely identical, sufficient evidence exists by which one can produce an accurate representation of the original text by comparing and evaluating the overall manuscript consensus. Robinson and Pierpont have taken the utmost care in preparing that text for this edition.

Various other methods for restoration of the original NT text have fallen short of their goal, in part due to methodological subjectivity, and in part to a presuppositional bias against the claims of the Byzantine Textform. The texts created under such a bias tend to be based on only a handful of favored manuscripts, and fail to consider all transmissional factors in the preservation of the original text. As a result, the modern eclectic texts tend to preserve more of a caricature than the essence of the originals.

In contrast, Robinson and Pierpont have applied many of the same methods of textual criticism to their task, but without the anti-Byzantine bias. Their method of "reasoned transmissionalism" is based on the wider scope of manuscript transmission throughout history. The preface of this edition explains the basic method by which the present editors have arrived at their basic text. The appendix contains Robinson's essay, "The Case for Byzantine Priority," which presents a rationale for and defense of the theory and methodology that has been applied in the preparation of this edition.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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