Selected from: The Greek New Testament, Textus Receptus, Reader’s Edition (Taylors, South Carolina: Grange Press, 2022).
The Holy Scriptures stand unmoved, unaltered and unbroken throughout human history. Despite the mischief of Satan and the onslaught of a hostile world, the Word of God abides, like a bulwark impervious to crashing waves. At the hinge of history, God sent forth into the world his Son, who not only confirmed the law and prophets of the Old Testament but also established a New Testament in his blood. He has published the same to all nations through his apostles in the Greek Scriptures. This reader’s edition of the Received Text of the New Testament aims to equip gospel ministers to read it and run, preaching repentance and remission of sins in our Savior’s name. “And the Lord answered me and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it” (Habakkuk 2:2).
In recent times, advocates of the modern critical text have convinced many ministers that they should not read and run, but rather halt and hesitate. Johann Jakob Griesbach (1745 – 1812) propounded fifteen “canons” (or rules) for determining the authentic text of the New Testament among alternate readings in the manuscripts. These canons still influence the modern critical text movement today. Some of these rules assert an explicit bias in favor of shorter readings, more difficult readings, and cruder readings within competing manuscripts, and view as suspect readings supportive of piety and orthodoxy. Following the time of Griesbach, scholars discovered and brought forth from obscurity a few ancient manuscripts and gave them privileged status as containing readings belonging to a superior text type. Today, the theory and results of text criticism continue to fluctuate, as the academy abandons any hope of confidently recovering the original text of Scripture.
But the Triune God of truth has not abandoned minds and consciences to the fabricated rules of men for discerning the authentic text of his Scriptures. Scripture itself serves as our rule, “the supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.10). “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20). Scripture itself identifies the Scriptures. Three biblical principles guide believers in recognizing the authentic text of Scripture. The Bible teaches us to expect that the authentic text of Scripture will be copied, received, and preserved.
First, God specifies that the authentic text of Scripture will be reliably copied. We should distinguish the original manuscripts, or autographs, of Scripture from the copies, or apographs, of Scripture. God himself authorized the creation of these apographs. The Lord commanded Israel to copy with their hands what he had written with his own finger: “And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates” (Deuteronomy 6:9). The king, at his ascension to the throne, “shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites” (Deuteronomy 17:18). Joshua wrote a copy of the law upon stones in the presence of the children of Israel (Joshua 8:32). This copy of the law bore authoritative witness in the solemn confirmation of the covenant (Joshua 8:33-35). The Son of man, at a time when the autographs of Moses had long since perished, answered the devil by saying, “It is written.” He wielded the sword of the Spirit by quoting the apographs, not by miraculously displaying the Mosaic autographs and declaring, “It was once written.”
In God’s wise design, he determined “for the better preserving and propagating of the truth… to commit the same wholly unto writing” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.1). The light of nature demonstrates the advantage of preserving and propagating writing through the creation of numerous copies. The light of the Word teaches that God himself has both commanded and blessed the copying of his Word in its original languages. Men can ask, “What was originally written in the autographs of Scripture?” The answer to this question, however, will be the same as the answer to another question: “What has been written down through the ages in the apographs of Scripture, since they serve as God’s appointed means of administering his Word to his church?” While acknowledging a few notable exceptions, in which the authentic text can be found in a minority of existing Greek manuscripts, men should otherwise receive those readings that have been most widely copied. As Francis Turretin asserted in his Institutes, “It is one thing to speak of the attempts of heretics to corrupt some manuscripts (which we readily allow)… It is quite a different thing to speak of their success or of entire universal corruption.”
Second, the Scriptures teach that God committed the authentic text of the written Word to his Church on earth and bound them to receive those Scriptures from him. The Church does not create the Scriptures or impart authority to them. But the visible Church, serving as a designated body, bears the prerogative of meekly receiving the written Word and enjoins men to come under its divine authority. “What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God” (Romans 3:1-2; cf., Westminster Confession of Faith 1.4).
When Moses finished writing the book of the law, he commanded the Levites to put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord their God as a witness against Israel (Deuteronomy 31:24-26). Likewise, Christ committed the New Testament Scriptures to his ministers (Revelation 2:1, 8, 12, 18, 3:1, 7, 14) and churches (Colossians 4:16). When the Lord’s ministers grow careless, they will tend to betray the ark of Israel’s testimony into the hands of Philistines – avowed, unbelieving scholars outside the pale of the Church and devoid of the fear of God and allegiance to his kingdom.
Third, the Bible teaches that the authentic text of Scripture will be providentially preserved. “For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89). “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18). God guarantees that the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament are “by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8). This does not mean that God has preserved the autographs of Scripture. Rather, building upon the biblical principles above, God has preserved his Word in the apographs of Scripture, received and read within his Church down through the centuries. We, therefore, must reject every notion that the text used by the Church in the past was substantially defective and unreliable until the advent of recent scholarly discussions.
This preserved Word lies at the heart of all biblical reformation. During the reign of Josiah, a scribe brought the preserved book of the law into the presence of the king. When the tender-hearted king heard the words of the book, he tore his clothes and set about to reform the nation (2 Kings 22:8, 11). In the days of the return from Babylonian Exile, God raised up Ezra as “a ready scribe” (Ezra 7:6). Ezra read the book of the law, preserved through exile, before the congregation (Nehemiah 8). Again, this sparked repentance and reformation. The Bible provides similar accounts of the influence of the preserved law in the reformations of Asa (2 Chronicles 14:2-8) and Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 17:1-10). The pattern of God’s blessing connects the providential preservation of the received text of his Word to times of reformation, not the supplanting of the received text of his Word in times of declension. The former typifies the printed editions of the Received Text of the New Testament at the time of the Protestant Reformation through the work of men such as Erasmus, Robert Stephanus, Theodore Beza, and the Elzevirs. The latter typifies the modern critical text movement.
The publishers of this edition of the Greek New Testament appeal to our Reformed and Evangelical brethren to return to holding fast the Received Text of Scripture. Let all seekers of knowledge examine the growing body of argumentation in defense of the specific readings of the Received Text. Let defenders of the canon of sixty-six books received by the Church defend the traditional text of those books. Let proponents of the Masoretic text of the Old Testament, whose deserved place of primacy may soon be challenged, affirm a position of consistency in standing on the Received Text of the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. Let apologists for Christian orthodoxy refuse to cede to cults and false prophets the idea that the Christian Church throughout history used a corrupted original-language Bible in need of revision through new light. Let them rather defend the historic Scriptural text as a part of the defense of historic Christianity. Let all lovers of the peace and unity of the church contend that our common Head and Savior has not failed to preserve the text of the Bible, once for all laid up for safe keeping in the bosom of his Church. And let all men pray that God would continue to bless the proclamation of this preserved text of Scripture throughout the world, to the conversion of many souls, the sanctification of his redeemed people and the resounding praise of Christ’s glory.
The words of God are words most pure;
they be like silver try’d
In earthen furnace, seven times
that hath been purify’d.
(Psalm 12:6—Scottish Metrical Psalter)
