Most modern versions of the Bible are based on the Alexandrian manuscripts because they are the oldest. The experts say the Majority Text (the Byzantine type) are corrupted and these verses missing from the Alexandrian texts were added later to the Byzantine texts (the Majority). They say the Byzantine texts should not even be considered. But the evidence is that the Alexandrian texts are corrupt.
There remains a persistent bias against the Byzantine Text type in Critical Text advocates. Here’s Dan Wallace – arguably the most respected New Testament textual critic alive today – talking about one of our oldest manuscripts, the Codex Alexandrius.
“Codex Alexandrius is a very interesting manuscript in that in the Gospels, it’s a Byzantine text largely, which means it agrees with the majority of manuscripts most of the time. While as, in the rest of the New Testament, it is largely Alexandrian. These are the two most competing textual forms, textual families, text types if you want to call them that, that we have for our New Testament manuscripts. So
when you get outside the Gospels, Alexandrius becomes very important manuscript.” – Dan Wallace
Source: YouTube. (
Only 1:35 long, starting at about 0:53)
Please notice the casual dismissal of the Byzantine text type by one of the most respected textual critics of our age. I’m honestly not sure why it’s dismissed so easily.
Codex Alexandrius is the third oldest (
nearly) complete manuscript, dating from the early 400s.
Why dismiss the Gospels just because they are a different text type?
We have 5000+ manuscripts of the New Testament, though many are smaller fragments. In the last ~140 years since the Westcott & Hort 1881 Critical Text, we’ve discovered Papyri from the 300s, 200s, and even a few from the 100s. Despite this, the Critical Text of the New Testament remains virtually unchanged from ~140 years ago. Because they prefer the Alexandrian text types.
The following is regarding the Alexandrian text type manuscripts.
However, the antiquity of these manuscripts is no indication of reliability because a prominent church father in Alexandria testified that manuscripts were already corrupt by the third century. Origen, the Alexandrian church father in the early third century, said:
“…the differences among the manuscripts [of the Gospels] have become great, either through the negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others; they either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they lengthen or shorten, as they please.”
( From Bruce Metzger,
The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 3rd ed. (1991), pp. 151-152). (Bruce Metzger was one of the editors of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament that is the basis for modern translations.)
Origen is of course speaking of the manuscripts of his location, Alexandria, Egypt. By an Alexandrian Church father’s own admission, manuscripts in Alexandria by 200 AD were already corrupt. Irenaeus in the 2nd century, though not in Alexandria, made a similar admission on the state of corruption among New Testament manuscripts. Daniel B. Wallace says, “Revelation was copied less often than any other book of the NT, and yet Irenaeus admits that it was already corrupted — within just a few decades of the writing of the Apocalypse
.
There’s an argument to be made that the Alexandrian Text type was corrupted very early.
So the same argument they use against The Majority Text can be used against the Alexandrian Texts. Alexandria was the center for Gnosticism. Isn’t it more likely that scriptures were removed to align with their Gnostic heresy than that they were added later and copied to a majority of the texts? Does the majority mean anything?
