A Lutheran Rehabilitation of the Byzantine Text, Part I

Consider the footnotes in our Bibles—phrases like, "the earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have this passage" or "later manuscripts added this passage." These footnotes often puzzle the laity, and many pastors secretly hope their parishioners will overlook them. The situation becomes all the more perplexing when someone who regularly reads the New King James Version (NKJV) attends church or a Bible study alongside others who use the English Standard Version (ESV) or New International Version (NIV). Sentences and even whole passages like the longer ending of Mark or the story of the woman caught in adultery appear in one Bible, while in another, they are missing or marked with brackets. This confusion leads us to the heart of textual criticism and the questions that have divided scholars and churches: which text is the original, and how should we decide?

For over 140 years, the Greek New Testament predominantly given to seminarians has been the Critical Text. Editions of the Greek New Testament by Nestle-Aland/United Bible Societies have served as the basis for most modern translations. However, the Reformers and the Protestant scholastics in the post-Reformation period relied on texts from the Byzantine tradition. The "Byzantine Text" refers to a distinct grouping of extant Greek manuscripts that became dominant in the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries.[i] Most surviving Greek manuscripts come from this period, displaying a largely uniform textual tradition. However, this textual heritage has largely been set aside in modern scholarship.

This two-part series contends that the Byzantine Text deserves renewed recognition and appreciation within modern scholarship. In this first article, we will begin by examining how Lutheran orthodoxy approached the doctrine of textual preservation, and then turn to the three foundational arguments Westcott and Hort brought against the Byzantine Text. 

A Faithfully Preserved Text

A common dogmatic assertion among Protestants is that the doctrine of inspiration applies strictly to the autographa, the original manuscripts.[ii] Claiming that the originals are the only inerrant texts addresses concerns about textual corruption throughout the centuries. By limiting inspiration to the autographs, room is made to acknowledge the potential for errors, even corruption, in later copies. Such claims of the corruption of the biblical texts are common today, but they were also common among post-Reformation Roman Catholic theologians who historically argued that the Hebrew and Greek texts had suffered corruption due to the carelessness of copyists over the centuries.[iii] However, the Lutheran scholastics of the 16th and 17th Centuries responded to such claims by offering a thorough defense of the apographa, the existing copies of the biblical texts. They did not depend on the lost autographs to establish the inspiration of Scripture but instead regarded the apographa as inspired and authoritative.[iv] Lutheran theologians defended the purity and preservation of the apographa by appealing to divine providence, asserting that "Divine providence kept those books free of corruption (Matt. 5:18)" and that the Scriptures have been "preserved by Divine Providence, free from all corruption."[v]  Theologians such as Baier, Quenstedt, and Hollaz viewed the apographa as possessing both the original Scriptures' content and exact wording, thus retaining their inspired and normative status.[vi]

If the Lutheran scholastics considered the apographa inspired, how did they deal with textual variation? They did not claim that any individual manuscript was free from scribal mistakes. While acknowledging the existence of discrepancies between manuscripts, they argued that these differences were generally minor—such as variations in spelling, word order, or transpositions—and did not compromise the essential meaning or authority of the Scriptures.[vii] Gerhard gives criteria by which scribal mistakes may be corrected.[viii] In addition, he appealed to the citations of Greek Church Fathers such as Chrysostom and Theophylact to support the reliability of the texts they had.[ix] The Lutheran scholastics believed the Greek church had safeguarded a reliable and faithful witness to the original text.[x] Thus, the Lutheran scholastics claimed that the apographa preserved by the Greek Byzantine tradition, and now available to them via the printing press, was authoritative and free from significant corruption.[xi] Gerhard reinforces this view, stating, "you see, [the early Christian church] received the autographs from the evangelists and apostles and faithfully preserved them in the patriarchal churches so that they could correct the copies and other texts according to the contents of the autographs."[xii] In this context when Gerhard refers to the "patriarchal churches," he is explicitly talking about the early Greek-speaking churches, which faithfully preserved and transmitted the New Testament texts. One can see this by noting Gerhard's frequent appeal to the readings found in most Greek manuscripts.[xiii] Thus, to counter claims that the Scriptures had been corrupted, Lutheran scholasticism confessed that God had preserved His Word through the ages in the apographa. The apographa they appealed to were those they had, namely the Byzantine Textual tradition. Thus, Lutheran scholasticism saw the Byzantine Text as an authentic and faithful witness to the original New Testament.

However, the doctrine that God has preserved His Word in the apographa has not gone without modern objections, a few of which need to be briefly considered. The first objection is that Scripture does not explicitly say God would preserve the text.[xiv]  In response, Gerhard cites passages such as Matthew 5:18 and Isaiah 40:8 to support his point. God's promise that his Word would endure forever provides a sufficient biblical basis for believing in divine preservation. The promise of God to keep His Word necessarily applies to both the original writings and the faithful transmission of those writings. Otherwise, if God had not preserved His Word, the foundation and source of Christian faith would be severely compromised.[xv]

It stands to reason that God has at least preserved the very Word which He entrusted to His church, and which the church has used. Note that the argument here is ultimately focused on reception history. So, which text has God given to His church? It is the one that has been received and used in worship and teaching—that text is faithfully transmitted and preserved through centuries of use. The text used by the Greek fathers, preserved in the Byzantine churches, and embraced by the Reformers would certainly qualify. Sturz counters by saying that these passages do not limit preservation to the Byzantine manuscripts. God could have easily preserved his word in a small handful of Egyptian manuscripts. Indeed, he argues, God's providence is not limited to Byzantium.[xvi] This is an important point. Divine providence is not confined to Byzantium, and neither are God’s Word nor His church. So, this reasoning must not be taken as an endorsement of “Byzantine-onlyism.” The Byzantine Text was not the sole text tradition used by the church. Yet it was undeniably received and used across centuries. Its longstanding ecclesial acceptance thus confers a genuine weight and authority that should not be dismissed.

This answer from Gerhard has struck some scholars as a betrayal of Protestantism. Critics argue that it appeals to the authority of church tradition. They claim this reasoning mirrors the ecclesiastical authority and tradition that the Protestant Reformation sought to dismantle. Such an appeal, they argue, is precisely the kind of argument the Reformers rejected.[xvii] Ironically, these critics take the same position as Rome by placing an external authority—ecclesiastical or scholarly—over the Scriptures. The use of the apographa within the church is not a reliance on ecclesiastical authority. It is an acknowledgment of how God has preserved His Word through His people as they have used His Word. The Reformers accepted the importance of the church's role in receiving and using the Scriptures.

On the contrary, the reception and use of a text within the churches was a critical factor in determining canonicity in the early church.[xviii] Gerhard's point is not that tradition itself grants authority but that the faithful transmission and use of the apographa in worship and teaching is evidence of God's providence in preserving His Word. Scripture is the tradition of Protestants—preserved by God and central to the church's life. Far from being a betrayal of Protestantism, this is a reaffirmation of the belief that God preserves His Scriptures in and through the life of His church.[xix]

A "Defective and Deficient" Text

So, why have the majority of textual critics and scholars, since the nineteenth century, rejected the Byzantine Text as the most reliable witness to the original New Testament? The widespread scholarly support for the traditional Byzantine texts significantly declined with the influential work of nineteenth-century textual critics, chief among them B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort. As Professor Jakob van Bruggen observed, "the rejection of the traditional text, that is, the text preserved and handed down in the churches, is hardly written or thought about anymore in the twentieth century: it is a fait accompli."[xx] Van Bruggen notes that the nineteenth-century evaluation of the Byzantine text gave scholarship "a solitary certainty – the certainty of the inferiority of this 'traditional text.'"[xxi] Thus, for over 140 years, the assumption of the inferiority of the Byzantine textual tradition has become a deeply embedded axiom in modern scholarship. Van Bruggen considers the implications: "the text which the Greek church has read for more than 1000 years, and which the churches of the Reformation have followed for centuries in their Bible translations, is now with certainty regarded as defective and deficient: a text to be rejected."[xxii] The text the church trusted and used is now untrustworthy because it has been rejected by modern scholarship. That development should be deeply alarming for confessional Lutherans—but even more alarming is that this rejection has primarily gone unnoticed among Lutherans, and the nineteenth-century evaluations of Westcott and Hort have been widely accepted.

If we want to understand how the Byzantine Text came to be viewed as inferior, we must examine the arguments put forward by Westcott and Hort. Westcott and Hort's rejection of the Byzantine Text can be grouped into three fundamental propositions. First, they argued that the Byzantine Text resulted from an authorized revision rather than a faithful transmission of the original text. The Byzantine Text "must, in fact, be the result of a 'recension' in the proper sense of the word, a work of attempted criticism, performed deliberately by editors, and not merely by scribes."[xxiii] They suggested that the growing confusion of Greek texts led to "an authoritative revision at Antioch" that was later subjected to a second revision to further its purposes.[xxiv] Simply put, they believe that the church in Antioch deliberately altered the New Testament text through an official revision, and this revised version was later modified again, which became the dominant Greek text because it was imposed on the Byzantine Church by ecclesiastical authority. This process, which Westcott and Hort speculate may have been completed by 350 A.D., was possibly associated with Lucian of Antioch.[xxv] Accordingly, although the Byzantine textual tradition is found in the large majority of manuscripts, these are thought to be traced back to a single recension. That means, "the many manuscripts would be nothing else than copies of only one manuscript."[xxvi] As a result, the overwhelming majority of manuscripts is reduced to a singular secondary vote. That vote is subordinate because the Byzantine Text is considered to be a later revision rather than a faithful transmission of the original New Testament text.

Second, they argued that Byzantine readings were later additions, as wording specific to this tradition was absent from the older uncials and writings of the ante-Nicene church fathers. According to their findings, "before the middle of the third century, at the very earliest, we have no historical signs of the existence of readings, conflate or other, that are marked as distinctively Syrian."[xxvii] This lack of attestation in the older uncials and early church fathers before AD 250 strongly indicated to them that distinctively Byzantine readings were of a later origin and should be rejected. Thus, because the wording found in Byzantine manuscripts does not appear in the older majuscules and papyri, once commonly labeled as the Alexandrian Text-type, nor in quotes by early Christian writers, it is argued that these changes must have been added later and were not part of the original New Testament text.

Third, since Westcott and Hort contended that a deliberate editorial process shaped the Byzantine Text, they claim this can be seen through conflation, assimilation, expansion, and harmonization. According to Westcott and Hort, the editors' goal was to produce a version marked by "lucidity and completeness," removing difficulties for the reader wherever possible.[xxviii] The editorial process led to a text that some people think has full readings. They claim numerous additions of pronouns, conjunctions, and other minor elements, as well as more significant expansions.[xxix] When Westcott and Hort compared readings found in Byzantine manuscripts to older Alexandrian manuscripts, they argued that the Byzantine Text had "combined the readings of two of the antecedent texts by simple or complex adaptations," creating a new text distinct from all its predecessors.[xxx] The Byzantine Text rarely omitted what was in the Alexandrian manuscripts, but "new interpolations" were commonly assumed to result from harmonization and assimilation of other readings.[xxxi] The claim is made that the Byzantine Text frequently combined portions from different books, altering or expanding the text to make it more straightforward and complete. In Westcott and Hort's view, this process of harmonizing passages and adding material rendered it unreliable as a faithful reflection of the earliest writings, introducing changes that distorted the original message.

Modern scholarship has followed Westcott and Hort's analysis of the Byzantine Text, which continues to be viewed as a later secondary tradition. Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman's influential introductory textbook on textual criticism echoes Westcott and Hort's conclusions. They emphasize the absence of Byzantine readings in the earliest manuscripts and patristic citations, considering this the strongest argument for labeling the Byzantine Text a later development. Only in "extremely rare instances" do they concede that the Byzantine tradition might preserve the original text.[xxxii] Similarly, Dirk Jongkind, in his introduction to the Tyndale House Greek New Testament, upholds Westcott and Hort's second and third arguments, rejecting the Byzantine Text based on its absence in early sources and its conflated, harmonized nature.[xxxiii] James Voelz's hermeneutics textbook, widely used in confessional Lutheran seminaries, supports the idea that Lucian of Antioch played a role in producing the Byzantine Text and characterizes the text as having many characteristics of a conflation. Like Westcott and Hort, he points to the text's grammatical and stylistic smoothness. However, Voelz downplays the importance of external evidence, instead emphasizing internal evidence, and thus gives less weight to the absence of Byzantine readings in early manuscripts.[xxxiv] Daniel Wallace further affirms Westcott and Hort's conclusions, particularly the second argument, by highlighting the lack of Byzantine support in early Greek manuscripts, translations, and patristic writings. He argues that the Byzantine Text only became dominant in the ninth century and attributes its later uniformity to editorial processes.[xxxv] Modern scholarship has consistently followed Westcott and Hort's view that the Byzantine Text is a later, edited tradition rather than a faithful transmission of the original New Testament.

What, then, has replaced the Byzantine Text? To answer this, we must examine the method now commonly used in textual criticism: eclecticism. Since no single manuscript can be relied upon to provide the best reading consistently, each variant is examined individually.[xxxvi] The eclectic method involves examining each variant reading and making individual judgments on every variant. This method can be understood if we consider a verse which has variant readings on three words. The eclectic scholar considers the first variant, decides which is preferable, then moves on to the second variant, makes another judgment, and so on, until the best possible reading is determined for each variant reading. The eclectic approach is divided into two schools: thoroughgoing eclecticism, which only considers internal evidence, and reasoned eclecticism, which examines internal and external evidence.[xxxvii] Most modern scholars do not practice thoroughgoing eclecticism, and reasoned eclecticism still operates mainly within the Westcott-Hort framework.[xxxviii] That is, Westcott and Hort’s framework for external evidence heavily influences the eclectic method. As shown above, modern scholarship still gives greater weight to the earlier Alexandrian manuscripts to the exclusion of later Byzantine manuscripts. Decisions based on internal evidence often involve subjective judgment, with choices between variants depending mainly on educated guesswork.[xxxix] This method has resulted in the major modern editions of the New Testament, such as the Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies Greek New Testament (UBS), often called eclectic texts.[xl] These editions are composite texts combining readings from various manuscript traditions to create a unified text. Despite this, editions like Nestle-Aland and UBS differ little from the Westcott-Hort text.[xli]

This first article began by outlining the Lutheran scholastic conviction that God preserved His Word in the apographa and examined the three primary arguments advanced by Westcott and Hort against the Byzantine Text. While their influence has shaped modern scholarship’s approach to the Greek New Testament, the question remains whether their conclusions are justified. In the next article, we will assess these arguments and consider how a careful re-evaluation of the evidence can rehabilitate the Byzantine textual tradition.

[i] Other names sometimes used for the Byzantine textual tradition are the Antiochene, Koine, Syrian, Ecclesiastical, or Majority text.

[ii] See for example Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, Vol. 1 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950), 223, 237.

[iii] Robert D. Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, Vol. 1 (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 306. For contemporary scholars making the case for the corruption of Scripture see Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, Updated Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[iv] Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, Vol. 2, Holy Scripture, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 413–415.

[v] Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Verified from the Original Sources, trans. Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs, 2nd English ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Lutheran Publication Society, 1889), 64. Johann Gerhard, On the Nature of Theology and on Scripture, ed. Benjamin T. G. Mayes, trans. Richard J. Dinda (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2009), 118, § 114; 286, § 322.2.

[vi] Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 285.

[vii] Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 306-307.

[viii] Gerhard, On the Nature of Theology and on Scripture, 313, § 356.

[ix] Gerhard, On the Nature of Theology and on Scripture, 313-318, § 357-361.

[x] Theodore P. Letis, "The Protestant Dogmaticians and the Late Princeton School on the Status of the Sacred Apographa," Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 8, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 22, 26.

[xi] Theodore P. Letis, "The Protestant Dogmaticians and the Late Princeton School on the Status of the Sacred Apographa," Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 8, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 22, 26.

[xii] Gerhard, On the Nature of Theology and on Scripture, 311, § 354.3.

[xiii] Gerhard, On the Nature of Theology and on Scripture, 311, §354.4; 318, §360.

[xiv] Daniel B. Wallace, “The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are They Identical?” Bibliotheca Sacra 148 (1991), 154-155.

[xv] Gerhard, On the Nature of Theology and on Scripture, 312, § 354.5.

[xvi] Harry A. Sturz, The Byzantine Text-Type and New Testament Textual Criticism (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 40.

[xvii] James W. Voelz, What Does This Mean: Principles of Biblical Interpretation in the Post-Modern World, 2nd ed., rev. (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2013), 57-58. Dirk Jongkind, An Introduction to the Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 91.

[xviii] As Augustine notes in De doctrina christiana 2.8.12.

[xix] For further arguments, see Wilbur N. Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text II, 3rd ed. (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003), 120-123.

[xx] Jakob van Bruggen, The Ancient Text of the New Testament (Christian Study Library, 1976), 5, https://www.christianstudylibrary.org/files/pub/articles/Jakob_van_Bruggen-The_Ancient_Text_of_the_New_Testament.pdf.

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Van Bruggen, The Ancient Text, 4-5.

[xxiii] Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek, vol. 2, Introduction and Appendix (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1882), 133

[xxiv] Westcott and Hort, New Testament, 137; cf. 137-139.

[xxv] Westcott and Hort, New Testament, 137-138.

[xxvi] Van Bruggen, The Ancient Text, 9.

[xxvii] Westcott and Hort, New Testament, 114-115; cf. 107-115; 148-152.

[xxviii] Westcott and Hort, New Testament, 134.

[xxix] Westcott and Hort, New Testament, 135.

[xxx] Westcott and Hort, New Testament, 133.

[xxxi] Westcott and Hort, New Testament, 135; cf. 93-107; 115-119; 132-135.

[xxxii] Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 177-178, 212, 218-222, 315.

[xxxiii] Jongkind, An Introduction to the Greek New Testament, 98-100.

[xxxiv] Voelz, What Does This Mean, 39, 42, 50, 54-55.

[xxxv] Wallace, “The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are They Identical?”, 159, 165, 166-167; and “Inspiration, Preservation, and New Testament Textual Criticism,” Grace Theological Journal 12, no. 1 (1994): 205-209.

[xxxvi] Voelz, What Does This Mean, 47; Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts, Fundamentals of New Testament Textual Criticism (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2015), 92.

[xxxvii] Metzger and Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament, 223.

[xxxviii] Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, 7-8.

[xxxix] Pickering The Identity of the New Testament Text, 5-6.

[xl] Porter and Pitts, Fundamentals of New Testament Textual Criticism, 92.

[xli] Pickering The Identity of the New Testament Text, 8.

Rev. Matthew Fenn is associate pastor at Ascension Lutheran Church in Waterloo, Iowa, and provost at American Lutheran Theological Seminary. He and his wife Laurin have five children.