The Comparative Greek New Testament is not an extensive list of various manuscript readings. It is simply a comparison of the actual printed text of four editions of the Greek New Testament. The information was originally taken from web site http://www.centauri.com.br/ictus/greek.htm (although it appears many other places) (this web site no longer exists), and it has been edited and expanded here under Phonetics. You can also print out a worksheet for learning how to write the Greek alphabet.
The orthography follows the Stephanus 1550 as it appears in the edition of George Ricker Berry. Characteristic of Berry’s orthography was his uniform inclusion of the final Nu or Sigma in words which might add or drop them before a consonant or vowel.
Verse numbering follows closely the King James Version of 1611.
In sixteen places, the verses are divided differently, and are noted with a single tilde ~ at: Matthew 14:26; Mark 3:20; 6:28; 12:15; Luke 6:18; Acts 3:1; 3:20;13:33; 17:33; 24:3; First Corinthians 14:19; Ephesians 3:18; Philippians 1:17; 2:8; First Thessalonians 2:7; Philemon 1:12.
Two more differences noted with a tilde ~ are: Matthew 23:13-14 are transposed in M and K; Romans 16:25-27 appears at the end of Romans 14:23 in M.
Additional versification irregularities include: Luke 17:36 appears in K only. Acts 8:37; 15:34; 24:7 are not in A or M. Portions of some verses are missing in various texts, such as Acts 4:5-6; First John 5:7. In addition, the enumeration of verses varies in Second Corinthians 13:12-13 and Third John 14. All of these can be discerned in the text.
At the time of the writing of the New Testament, such documents would have been written in all capital letters, with no divisions between the words. (ITWOULDAPPEARLIKETHIS) The words in this comparative text are divided and they appear in cursive characters, which renders it much easier to read and to search. Centuries later, breathers, accents, capitalization, punctuation, and other diacritical markings were added. Because a single word inflection may have variations in accent, and because punctuation may interrupt word searches, such markings are omitted from this text as a practical hindrance to word searches. Of course, this creates a difficulty with words which are spelled the same though they have different markings and meanings. The trade of one problem for the other was necessary, and this was the most practical course to take.
The introductory titles and closing colophons may be considered editorial additions, but are included here for completeness. Introductory titles are marked with an asterisk *. Closing colophons are marked with double tildes ~~.
The following tags precede those words which are peculiar to one printed text. Where the four texts do not differ, there are no tags.
The text used is George Ricker Berry's edition found in The Interlinear Literal Translation of the Greek New Testament (New York: Hinds & Noble, 1897). This text is virtually identical to editions of Disiderius Erasmus (1516, 1519, 1522, 1535), Complutensian Polyglot (1522, 1564, 1573, 1574, 1584, 1590, 1609, 1619, 1620, 1628, 1632), Simon Colinaeus (1534), Robert Stephens (1546, 1549, 1550, 1551), Theodore Beza (1565, 1582, 1588, 1598), and Bonaventure and Abraham Elzevir (1624, 1633, 1641). The edition first named "Textus Receptus" was Elzevir 1633 "textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum."
This is the text of H KAINH DIAQHKH, The New Testament, The Greek Text Underlying the English Authorized Version of 1611 (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1976). This is an unedited reprint of F.H.A. Scrivener’s "The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text followed in the Authorized Version" (Cambridge: University Press, 1894, reprint edition 1902). This is a reconstruction of the Greek text underlying the English 1611, it largely follows Beza 1598, and though sometimes the KJV text follows no Greek manuscript whatsoever, Scrivener nowhere constructs a Greek reading without some manuscript evidence. Though this edition generally follows the "Byzantine" texts, it nevertheless agrees with the modern "Alexandrian" editions in many places.
In The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982; 1985) Zane C. Hodges and Arthur L. Farstad developed a method of identifying and weighing manuscript evidence. This is a critical text constructed from the apparatus of other critical editions (Freiherr Von Soden, Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments in ihrer altesten erreichbaren Textgestalt, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1911, and Herman C. Hoskier, Concerning the Text of the Apocalypse, London: Bernard Quaritch, 1929). This same information was later used by Maurice A. Robinson and William G. Pierpont in The New Testament in the Original Greek According to the Byzantine / Majority Textform (Original Word Publishers, Atlanta, 1991, 1995). They disagree with Hodges and Farstad regarding the evaluation of manuscript evidence, but nevertheless agree on 99.75 percent of the text.
Where T [Stephanus — Textus Receptus], K [Scrivener — King James] , and M [Hodges, Farstad — Robinson, Pierpont] agree, we have simplified the marking with a B for Byzantine.
This is the text of The Greek New Testament, 3rd edition (Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, Allen Wikgren, United Bible Society, 1975, corrected 1983, the same as the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, 26th edition, Deutsche Bibelstiftung, Stuttgart, 1979). It is mostly in agreement with the original Westcott and Hort Text of the Nineteenth Century. It is largely the text used in all modern translations of the Bible, such as the New American Standard Version and the New International Version. Most of the Alexandrian variants from the Textus Receptus are matters of spelling and word order, but that does not reduce the significance of selected variants.
These are all of the possible combinations of tags which are actually found in the comparative text:
We use WinGreek for our Greek word processor utility. The transliteration code for this text is that of the "WinGreek" and "Son of WinGreek" fonts. You can download the utility and find these fonts at:
The Greek letters are transliterated into English as follows:
Greek Symbol = Keyboard Character
© 2005 Harvey Bluedorn