Today's Problems with the Critical Text of the New Testament

Abstract

The Latin phrase yielded the term textus receptus, used ever since of the Greek New Testament text employed in Western Europe for several centuries. The threat to the long established textus receptus began to cast a long shadow even as the Elzevirs coined their term, but the text in common use did not easily yield up its accustomed prestige. The contest was long and often bitter before the text accepted by all was supplanted by what we call today the critical text. A basic problem today is the technical and psychological factor that the Westcott-Hort text has become our textus receptus. We still cannot perceive the origins and the influences and the relationships of the variant texts in use as early as A.D. 200. The best approach might be through the text of the Gospel of John, for which we do possess more abundant and more varied early witnesses.Keywords: critical text; Elzevirs; Gospel of John; Greek New Testament; textus receptus; variant texts; Western Europe