New Testament Textual Criticism in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

AT the beginning of the eighteenth century New Testament textual criticism was just coming to birth. Stephen's Editio Regia of 1550 had made such a supreme place for itself that it was the only text used in a series of printed editions of the Greek New Testament. It was as firmly entrenched among New Testament scholars as the King James Version of the English Bible is in our day among the common people. Caryophilus of Rome had based his text (1625) on that of Stephen, as had Stephen de Courcelles of Geneva (1658), John Saubert of Germany (1672), John Fell of Oxford (1675), and Richard Simon of Rotterdani (1689). This supremacy of the text of the Editio Regia was to continue throughout the eighteenth century. But it was in this century that textual scholars began to deal with the New Testament text in such a way that in the nineteenth century a break was made from the textus receptus toward the publication of a text based on earlier and better attested readings. The work of textual criticism in the eighteenth century laid the foundation for the interest in New Testament manuscripts that has characterized many scholars in this last century. This work will be considered under three headings.