Greek New Testament

...have been brought to completion. Just as it cannot be doubted that in the very earliest times of the Christian era there were many departures from the pure writings of the apostles—though in this matter there was no wickedness or deceit intended—so too, by wisely and skillfully using the most ancient witnesses we still possess, the form of the apostolic books that was most widely in use in the second century can, for the most part, be probably restored.

I believe everyone who applies themselves to this work will understand that this form of the text comes much closer to the actual integrity of the Sacred Scriptures than those books which were circulated through the Byzantine Church after about the fifth century and were soon afterward propagated almost exclusively. The only exceptions are those who, led by a false sense of piety, have forgotten how to distinguish custom from truth, or those who remain captivated by the theories regarding the recensions theories that group ancient manuscripts into "families" based on shared characteristics and geographical origins of the New Testament books devised by Griesbach, Hug, Scholz, and others.

In order that both groups may be led toward a truer opinion and a fairer judgment of textual criticism, I intend to treat everything relevant to this matter clearly and in detail in the Prolegomena a formal introduction or preliminary discussion to a scholarly work, which will comprise the third volume of this edition. For now, I would like to draw attention to those passages where we have shaped the apostolic text based on a small amount of Greek authority—small, I mean, in the number of witnesses, but greatest in their weight—usually supported by testimony from the Latin original: Italis; referring to the Old Latin versions used before the Vulgate became standard sources.

This has often been done in such a way that it carries a remarkable recommendation of probability. Yet it must not be forgotten that those who place their own judgment before the authority of the witnesses are deeply mistaken. This authority must be judged not by the number of witnesses, but by their antiquity. Furthermore, our most ancient witnesses—despite the ignorance of the Greek language shown by the Alexandrian scribes original: Alexandrinorum calligraphorum; the professional copyists in Egypt who produced early manuscripts like Codex Vaticanus—did not so much follow the linguistic customs of their own age as they did faithfully, however imperfectly, repeat much older copies.

Indeed, as I myself have repeated what I said elsewhere recently—in the critical comparison of the Sinaiticus manuscript original: codicis Sinaitici; a 4th-century Greek Bible discovered by Tischendorf at Saint Catherine's Monastery etc., page 13—while the Vatican manuscript original: Vaticanum; another of the oldest surviving Greek Bibles, held in the Vatican Library and a few other similar Greek manuscripts...