Seek God's Word - Bible Translation Manuscripts

Papyrus: The earliest manuscripts of the New Testament were on papyrus, a plant found along the Nile River. The manuscripts were copied by hand on scrolls (30ft long and 10 inches wide—average). The columns were usually 3 to 4 inches wide. Scribes often wrote on both sides of the roll. Papyrus was used as a writing material in Egypt as early as 3500 B.C. The earliest extant copies of the New Testament were written on papyrus.

Codex: A codex is simply what we know today as a book. Leaves of papyrus were sewn together to make a book with columns of text.

Vellum or Parchment: goat or lamb skins processed to be written upon with ink. This process was perfected in the second century B.C. and became the dominant means of preserving the New Testament in the fourth century A.D.

Uncials: the word “uncial” refers to a style of writing popular until the ninth century. It is characterized by all capital letters, written large enough to be easily read by a reader in public. It had no spaces between words.

BLESSEDARETHEPOORINSPIRITFORTHEIRSISTHEKINGDOMOFHEAVEN
BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT, FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGODM OF HEAVEN

Miniscules: miniscules are characterized by small letters, written in a cursive style. This style of writing became popular in the ninth century. Its advantage was that more words could fit into the same amount of space.

Paper: Paper was not used in the West until the twelfth century. Of the 5,400 known mss of the New Testament, about 1,300 are written on paper.

Before the invention of the printing press in 1462, all of the copies of the New Testament were done by hand. Some of these copies were done by professional scribes in scriptoriums and others were done by amateurs. The early copies we have show that later hands corrected the original writings on the manuscripts.

Of all 5,480 mss we have of the NT, no two are identical.

People are not capable of copying a lengthy piece of written material without introducing some errors or variants.

Exercise: Sit down and copy out the Gospel of John (any translation). After you have finished, read it through and correct it. Then give the manuscript to two or three friends and have each of them correct your corrected manuscript.

Ancient scriptoriums often had trained scribes who specialized in copying and correcting the writings of the time. They took pride in accuracy but still made mistakes.

The Massoretes from the sixth to the tenth centuries AD took great care in reproducing the Old Testament.

Some NT manuscripts were hand copied by good men whose scribal skills were undeveloped.

In the earliest period, NT documents were copied either for personal use, for reading in the churches, or for the use of sister congregations.

Collections of several NT books took time as people traveled from place to place.

As to the Manuscripts themselves we must leave all palaeo-graphical matters aside (such as have to do with paper, ink, and caligraphy), and confine ourselves to what is material.

These Manuscripts consist of two classes: (a) Those written in Uncial (or capital) letters; and (b) those written in "running hand", called Cursives. The former are considered to be the more ancient, although it is obvious and undeniable that some cursives may be transcripts of uncial Manuscripts more ancient than any existing uncial Manuscript. This will show that we cannot depend altogether upon textual criticism.
It is more to our point to note that what are called "breathings" (soft or hard) and accents are not found in any Manuscripts before the seventh century (unless they have been added by a later hand).
Punctuation also, as we have it to-day, is entirely absent. The earliest two Manuscripts (known as B, the Manuscript in the Vatican and the Sinaitic Manuscript, now at St. Petersburg) have only an occasional dot, and this on a level with the top of the letters.

The text reads on without any divisions between letters or words until Manuscripts of the ninth century, when (in Cod. Augiensis, now in Cambridge) there is seen for the first time a single point which separates each word. This dot is placed in the middle of the line, but is often omitted.

None of our modern marks of punctuation are found until the ninth century, and then only in Latin versions and some cursives.

From this it will be seen that the punctuation of all modern editions of the Greek text, and of all versions made from it, rests entirely on human authority, and has no weight whatever in determining or even influencing the interpretation of a single passage. This refers also to the employment of capital letters, and to all the modern literary refinements of the present day 7.
Chapters also were alike unknown. The Vatican Manuscript ,makes a new section where there is an evident break in the sense. These are called titloi, or kephalaia 8.

There are none in (Sinaitic), see above. They are not found till the fifth century in Codex A (British Museum), Codex C (Ephraemi, Paris), and in Codex R (Nitriensis, British Museum) of the sixth century.

They are quite foreign to the original texts. For a long time they were attributed to HUGUES DE ST. CHER (Huego de Sancto Caro), Provincial to the Dominicans in France, and afterwards a Cardinal in Spain, who died in 1263. But it is now generally believed that they were made by STEPHEN LANGTON, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1227.

It follows therefore that our modern chapter divisions also are destitute of Manuscript, authority.
As to verses. In the Hebrew Old Testament these were fixed and counted for each book by the Massorites; but they are unknown in any Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. There are none in the first printed text in The Complutensian Polyglot (1437 - 1517), or in the first printed Greek text (Erasmus, in 1516), or in R. Stephens's first edition in 1550.

Verses were first introduced in Stephens's smaller (16mo) edition, published in 1551 at Geneva. These also are therefore destitute of any authority.