On the question of which Greek New Testament text should be used for serious Bible study, there is much debate. On the one hand, there are those who hold that the oldest available manuscipts alone, which happen to be of the Alexandrian textform, are to be trusted. This selection was made by Westcott and Hort, who favored Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus almost exclusively. On the other, there’s the “King James Only, ergo Textus Receptus all the way” camp, which appears to favor the Byzantine textform in most cases but occasionally favors the Western textform when such is the only available source for some traditional passages. There are also those who claim that the original text of the NT has been lost forever, and it is up to them, out of scattered readings found across the various manuscripts from the Alexandrian, Caesarean, Western and Byzantine forms, to assemble a reasonable facsimile. This is known as modern eclecticism, and forms the basis of Nestle-Aland and UBS texts, which are at best a stab in the dark.
Somewhere in the middle, the Byzantine textform has gone largely unnoticed and ignored, due to its reputation for being a "late" form, in spite of manuscripts that date as early as the 4th century AD. To complicate matters further, Byzantine manuscripts bear about 80% of the total textual witness, and most Byzantine manuscripts are in more agreement with each other than can be said of those from any other texform, even the precious Alexandrian. But despite this weighty evidence, the Byzantine-Priority position has fallen by the wayside in favor of other forms of textual criticism. Why, when such a choice is so obvious? Why not check out The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform 2005 and decide for yourself? It’s edited by Maurice Robinson and William Pierpont. Happy studying!
