Bible Manuscripts

There are basically two kinds of New Testament Greek Bible manuscripts, with some variations in between. The Alexandrian manuscripts are a minority, but are found earlier. These manuscripts leave out many phrases and words, and weaken some doctrines, such as the divinity of Christ. Modern versions such as the NIV are based on these manuscripts. The Byzantine (Textus Receptus) manuscripts are more numerous and much more uniform, but are found somewhat later. These are the manuscripts on which the King James Version is found. The New King James Version is based on a majority text that is close to the Textus Receptus.

The fact that the Alexandrian manuscripts are found earlier is often used as an argument that they give the correct version of the Bible. However, a closer consideration of the conditions in New Testament times and later shows that this argument is invalid. For the first few centuries, Christianity was persecuted, first by the Jews and later by the Romans. It would have been difficult for the early Christians to preserve any Bible manuscripts under these conditions. In contrast, those who were doing the persecuting would have included the upper classes of society, who would have had much better resources for preserving their versions of the Bible. Therefore the earliest Bible manuscripts that we have are predominantly those of the persecutors of the early Christians, rather than the manuscripts of the early Christians themselves. Furthermore, after the approval of Christianity by Rome, the Bible version officially approved would have been that of Jerome, which was close to the Alexandrian versions. After this time persecutions of Christians who did not join in the official religion uniting Christianity and Paganism continued, and their Bible versions were still difficult to preserve. It took a long time for the faithful Christians to become well enough established that their manuscripts could be preserved. Even in the persecutions of the Middle Ages many, many Bible manuscripts were destroyed. It was even the policy of the Papacy to destroy all writings of their enemies.

However, the Textus Receptus is found translated in many different languages and many different geographical areas, giving evidence of its early origin. Also, the fact that the TR manuscripts are so uniform shows that those who copied them placed a high value on the Bible, while those who copied the Alexandrian manuscripts did a sloppy job and did not have such a high regard for Scripture. This is another evidence for the superiority of the TR over the Alexandrian manuscripts. Unfortunately, modern Bible scholars have not considered such arguments, or have simply ignored them.