Good afternoon, All.

I’m on the record championing the need for people who presume to teach God’s Word to be able to do so from personal familiarity with Scripture as it was left to us—in Hebrew and Greek. Please don’t misunderstand me, the average believer doesn’t need to be able to read the Bible in the original languages, just as an average person providing first aid doesn’t need to be able to perform complex surgery. But why would we demand a medical practitioner be appropriately trained and skilled in their craft, but be happy leaving the exposition of Scripture to untrained, unskilled hacks? After all experience teaches us that bad things happen to good people when a Longfield, a Hollins or a Kuhlmann opens a 500 years old translation written in archaic Elizabethan English, seeking to justify a bunch of untethered, subjective personal opinions with respect to its substance and meaning! 

If nothing else I hope my postings over the years demonstrates what’s possible when sufficient time is taken to carefully, responsibly, and humbly handle Scripture by reflecting on the contents of the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.  

So, my aim in this post is simple. I will try to provide a very brief overview of the various published Greek New Testaments available today, which I own and regularly consult. When I prepare to preach or teach from a New Testament passage, I do the vast majority of the exegetical work from these volumes. I’ll turn to English translations—primarily the New International Version and the English Standard Version—only when shaping the final preaching manuscript.

United Bible Societies Greek New Testament 

3^rd (corrected) edition. Published in 1966, this is the version I used when first learning Greek. My edition contains a dictionary towards the back. The UBS editions are intended to be used by students, Bible translators and pastors, and comprises of a ‘critical text’. This means the principles of textual criticism were used to arrive at the most likely ‘original’ reading for each New Testament verse, based on the entirety of the manuscript evidence. Consequently, all the UBS editions include a limited textual apparatus that identifies those variants deemed of particular significance for exegesis. The 3^rd edition is very useful because it also contains a punctuation apparatus. This presents over 600 passages where different placements or types of punctuation significantly impact both the translation and the interpretation of the passage. 

4^th (revised) edition. Published in 1993, the text is more-or-less the same as the 3^rd edition. The principle difference relates to the completely revised apparatus, which was adjusted to make it more useful to Bible translators. The punctuation apparatus was dropped in preference for a discourse segmentation apparatus, but there was also a significant improvement and expansion in the Patristic evidence. Finally, the number of papyri manuscripts referenced was increased to take into account significant discoveries made since 1966.

5^th (revised) edition. Published in 2014, the text remains largely the same as the previous editions, with the notable exception of the Catholic Letters, where a fundamentally different approach to deciding on the priority of variants was used. Known as the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CGBM), the application of extensive computer-based modelling was undertaken to map the relationships between individual verse and passage units, thereby casting the net very broadly indeed in order to decide which verse or passage was most likely the ‘original’ wording among competing variants.

6^th (revised) edition. Published in 2025, I’ve had my copy for a week, as of this writing. Whereas the previous edition made changes to the Catholic Letters via the use of CGBM, the current edition has expanded this to include changes to the Gospel According to Mark, the Acts of the Apostles, and The Revelation of John. Including those made earlier to the Catholic Letters, a total of 165 changes have been made to the base text when compared to the third and fourth editions. I noted there are more Byzantine readings included in the Acts of the Apostles for example, than was the case previously. Another notable change has been in the streamlining of the apparatus, and a significant reduction in references to modern Bible translations. Unfortunately, the Patristic evidence has been significantly reduced in this edition (i.e. from 169 entries to just 28). The order of the New Testament books has also been adjusted to better reflect the ordering found in the ancient manuscripts, with the Catholic Letters appearing between the Gospels and Acts on one hand, and the Pauline letters (including Hebrews) and the Revelation of John on the other.

Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament 

27^th (revised) edition. The Nestle-Aland hand editions are intended for those engaged in scholarly and academic research, and as such have a more extensive apparatus of textual variants than one finds in the UBS editions. Published in 1993, it shares the same text as the UBS fourth edition, and remains my principal reference work when engaging in New Testament exegesis and research.

28^th (revised) edition. Published in 2012, it shares the same text as the UBS fifth edition, and so includes adjustments to the Catholic Letters based on the CGBM methodology. I use this edition occasionally.

Society of Biblical Literature Greek New Testament

The SBL edition was published in 2010, and presents a critical text supported by a greatly reduced apparatus, which identifies agreements with, and divergences from, the Nestle-Aland, Westcott-Hort, NIV, and Tregelles Greek New Testaments. This is the edition I mainly turn to for devotional reading.

Westcott-Hort Greek New Testament 

Originally published in 1881, and reprinted in 2007, this presents the Greek text that dethroned the Textus Receptus. The textual apparatus lists only a very few variants, while the 2007 comparative apparatus identifies differences with the UBS/NA editions. I use this edition sparingly.

New International Version Greek and English New Testament

This is a diglot edition, published in 2012 with the Greek and English texts on facing pages. The Greek text reflects the textual decisions made by the 2011 NIV translation committee, but also includes references to the UBS/NA text. I consult this edition very rarely.

Textus Receptus Greek New Testament

My edition was published by the Trinitarian Bible Society in 1976, and contains the Greek text that underpins the King James Version of the English Bible. It’s based on Desiderius Erasmus’ 1516 edition, modified as it was by the labours of Stephanus in 1551,  Beza in 1598, and the Elzevirs in 1641. It includes textual emendations that do not appear in any ancient manuscript, and as such, it cannot lay claim to representing the ‘original’ New Testament wording. This edition is useful when considering the textual basis of the King James Version, but otherwise I use it very rarely.

Tyndale House Greek New Testament

Published in 2017, this edition is a thoroughgoing revising of the documentary approach followed by Samuel Prideux Tregelles in the nineteenth century. In short, this seeks to replicate not only the words of the major early manuscripts, but also their spelling, breathing, accents and paragraph divisions. Consequently, the book order is the same as what is found in the UBS sixth edition, rather than the Erasmian order that underpins our modern translations. I turn to this volume quite a bit.

Some closing thoughts

By now you might be thinking, “why so many versions of the ‘original’ Greek New Testament?” My response would be along the lines: Each presents a snapshot of the understanding of the known textual evidence at certain points in history, from the second century to the twenty-first. The different editions also serve different communities—translators, scholars, pastors, et cetera. In a practical sense, and the Textus Receptus aside, the differences between the editions are very slight, which is why you might see published statements such as: “We can confidently state the text of the original New Testament is known with 99% accuracy.” Which is perfectly true.

To conclude, there is absolutely no reason for anyone who presumes to teach or preach God’s Word to others to be unable to access, read, understand and interpret the Greek New Testament as ‘originally given’, excepting for personal laziness, willful ignorance and/or misplaced arrogance. 

Blessings, 

Ian