The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House

Abstract

This is a critical review of The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Dirk Jongkind, Peter J. Williams, Peter M. Head, and Patrick James, eds. (Wheaton: Crossway Books; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). As the title of the edition indicates, The Tyndale House Greek New Testament (THGNT) is a kind of critical edition of the Greek New Testament produced by several scholars at Tyndale House, an independent and evangelical Christian study center in Cambridge, England. This paper consists of mainly two parts: introducing THGNT and evaluating both its text and methods applied upon building its text. BR THGNT is organized into four main parts: (1) Preface (vii-viii); (2) Greek text of the New Testament (1-504); (3) Introduction (505-524); and (4) Acknowledgements (525-526). The preface explains that THGNT is “based on a thorough revision of the great nineteenth-century edition of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles” and “aims to present the New Testament Books in the earliest form in which they can be attested” (vii). THGNT text is presented surprisingly in the order of the four Gospels, Acts, the catholic epistles (James-Jude), the Pauline epistles including Hebrews, and Revelation. The editors use the ekthesis paragraph divisions (first line set to left margin with the rest of the paragraph inset). The introduction explains the distinctive approach to this edition including orthography, order of books, paragraphs, breathings, accents, punctuation, the apparatus, and the list of witnesses.BR Through investigation of both the text selections including the apparatus and the applied methods of THGNT, and comparing them with those of NTGSUP28/SUP/GNTSUP5/SUP and other some editions, this review evaluates that the two strengths of THGNT are its method (reasoned eclecticism balanced with documentary approach and emphasis of scribal habits) and the text itself with good readability. Some interesting choices of THGNT are as follows: THGNT relegates John 7:53-8:11 to the apparatus, and presents Mark 16:9-20 in the text prefaced by the famous scribal note found in minuscule 1. THGNT abbreviates and marks off with a supralinear stroke some numerals in Revelation 13:18 (χξς, 666) and 21:17 (ρμδ, 144). THGNT chooses ὁ μονογϵήνς υἱóς rather than μονογϵήνς θϵóς (NTGSUP28/SUP/GNTSUP5/SUP) in John 1:18, and includes the prayer of Jesus of Luke 23:34 without brackets but lists the omission as a variant and marks with a black diamond. For the study of the Greek New Testament, this paper therefore strongly recommends THGNT as a good alternative edition to be compared with NTGSUP28/SUP/GNTSUP5/SUP as well as the SBL Edition of The Greek New Testament (2010).