The Greek New Testament [antikvár]

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION To meet the growing need for an edition of the Greelc New Testament speciallj^ adapted to the requirements of Bible translators throughout the world, the American Bible Society, the National Bible Society of Scotland, and the Württemberg Bible Society appointed in 1955 an international and interdenominational committee of textual scholars to prepare such an edition. The three societies were later joined by the Netherlands Bible Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society. In keeping with its distinctive purpose, the edition has the following special features: (1) a critical apparatus restricted for the most part to variant readings significant for translators or necessary for the establishing of the text; (2) an indication of the relative degree of certainty for each variant adopted as the text; (3) a full citation of representative evidence for each variant selected; and (4) a second apparatus giving meaningful differences of punctuation. Much new evidence from Greek manuscripts and early versions has been cited. A supplementary volume, providing a summary of the Committee's reasons for adopting one or another variant reading, will also be published. The Committee carried out its work in four principal stages: (1) on the basis of Westcott and Hort's edition of the Greek New Testament, a comparison was made of the text and apparatus of several other editions, including those of Nestle, Bover, Merk, and Vogels, and to some extent those of Tischen-dorf and von Soden, in order to determine which of the variant readings warranted further study; (2) data on several thousand sets of variants were gathered, not only from printed editions, commentaries and technical studies, but »also from hitherto unused papyri, uncials, minuscules, and lectionaries; (3) about six hundred variations in punctuation which appeared to merit consideration were selected and compared in editions of the Greek text and in the principal English, German, and