The NIV: The Making of a Contemporary Translation

What Greek text was used by the translators of the NIV New Testament? It was basically that found in the United Bible Societies’ and Nestle’s printed Greek New Testaments, which contain the latest and best Greek text available.

In many passages there is no way of being absolutely certain as to what was the original reading because the best Greek manuscripts, both earlier and later ones, have variant readings. In such cases the translators were asked to weigh the evidence carefully and make their own decision. Of course such decisions were subject to reexamination by the Committee on Bible Translation. In the UBS text the adopted readings are marked with an A, B, C, or D. Those marked “A” are virtually certain, “B” less certain, “C” doubtful, and “D” highly doubtful. It is the last, especially, that have to be weighed carefully.

All the Greek manuscripts were written by hand. This is the meaning of “manuscript”—from the Latin manu, “by hand,” and scriptus, “written.” It would be almost impossible for a scribe to copy the entire Greek New Testament without making any mistakes. This is especially true in the older Greek manuscripts, which not only do not have any chapter and verse divisions nor any separation into sentences (no punctuation marks), but do not even have any separation between words. All we have are thousands of consecutive Greek letters in line after line, column after column, page after page, through a whole book of the New Testament. This made the task of copying exceedingly difficult. Even typists today will sometimes skip a line if two consecutive lines begin or end with the same word. This same error, as would be expected, is found in ancient Greek manuscripts. Fortunately we now have a little over five thousand Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, in whole or in part. By careful comparison of these we can weed out most errors made in copying.

For the past three hundred years, the most widely used English translation of the Bible was the King James Version (1611). Its New Testament was based on the so-called Textus Receptus (“Received Text”), which is essentially the same as the Majority Text and the Byzantine text-type. Since some people are still defending the superiority—and even the infallibility—of the TR, it might be well for us to look at its origin and nature.

The first published printed Greek New Testament was made by Erasmus, the famous Dutch scholar. At the urging of a publisher who wanted to make a “scoop,” he prepared it very hastily, as he himself admitted. He had only about half a dozen Greek manuscripts, none of them earlier than the tenth centurya.d. Now we have two dozen manuscripts from the third century, a dozen from the fourth century, and about two hundred from the fifth to the ninth century that have already been examined carefully. Certainly the Greek text we use today is far more reliable than that produced by Erasmus in his third edition of 1522.

It was this edition, as very slightly modified by Stephanus and Elzevir, that became known as the Textus Receptus, used by the King James translators. It is a text based primarily on late medieval manuscripts, which were the result of copying and recopying across centuries of time.

The oldest manuscripts were written on papyrus, from which we get our word “paper.” It was made by taking strips from the papyrus plant—which one can still see growing near the banks of the Nile River in Egypt and in shallow water in northern Galilee. These strips were laid side by side vertically. Then horizontal lines of strips were laid across them, and the two layers were glued together. Writing was done primarily on the horizontal strips, though sometimes the back of the page was used.

Apparently the books of the New Testament were written on papyrus for the first three centuries. Since this material was so fragile, most of the papyrus mansucripts of the New Testament books perished long ago. But in the dry sands of southern Egypt, some of these have been found during the last fifty years (beginning in the 1930s). As noted above, we now have about twenty-five Greek New Testament papyri from the third century.

It has been said that there is not known to exist today any copies of classical Greek authors’ writings from within eight hundred years of their composition. But we now possess two copies of John’s Gospel (Papyri 66 and 75) from abouta.d. 200—close to one hundred years from the time the Gospel was written (ca.a.d. 95). This is a spectacular gain!

In the fourth century the shift was made pretty much from papyrus to vellum (skins of young animals). The New Testament manuscripts from the fourth to the ninth centuries are called “uncials”—literally “inch-high,” because they were written in large, square capital letters. Manuscripts from the ninth to fifteenth centuries are called “minuscules,” because they were written in small letters. They are also known as “cursives” (running), because they were written in a running script. We have about 2,400 cursive New Testament manuscripts, as against about 270 uncials.

Soon after the middle of the nineteenth century (1859), N. Tischendorf discovered in the monestary of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai a fourth-century uncial manuscript of the entire New Testament, together with much of the Old Testament in Greek translation. From its place of discovery, it is called Codex Sinaiticus. (“Codex” means a bound book, in distinction from a scroll.) Soon after that he pressured authorities into making another fourth-century manuscript available to scholars. It is called Codex Vaticanus, because it is held in the Vatican Library at Rome. Codex Sinaiticus is now in the British Museum.

These two great fourth-century uncials agree rather closely with the third-century papyri. This provides us with a more accurate Greek text of the New Testament than that found in the Textus Receptus, which is based primarily on late minuscules. We should be grateful to God for making these early manuscripts available to us as the basis for an up-to-date, contemporary translation of an ancient text.

The importance of making a careful examination of manuscript evidence may be illustrated by checking the footnotes that deal with textual differences (in the New Testament). We want now to look at a few of these.

The first one is in Matthew 5:22. Footnotes are indicated in the text of the NIV by small letters (in alphabetical order). The footnote carries this letter, followed by the verse number. Then one finds in italics the last word before the raised letter in the text, followed by the addition or change indicated. Here we find that “Some manuscripts” add “without cause” (cf. KJV). But the additional Greek eike is not in the earliest manuscript (Papyrus 67, ca.a.d. 200), nor in the two fourth-century manuscripts. It is understandable how a later scribe might add this modifier to soften the rigor of this warning.

The second textual footnote is at Matthew 5:44. Here it is “Some late manuscripts” that add: “bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you” (cf.kjv). Here the evidence is even stronger against the addition.

More important is the doxology at the end of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:13): “for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” With the exception of W (fifth century), this is not found in any manuscript earlier than the ninth century. It is easy to see how it would be added by someone as a fitting closing to the prayer, but it is clear that it was not a part of the original text of this Gospel.

In the NIV, Matthew 17:21 (kjv) is entirely missing. Why? To answer that question we should first turn to Mark 9:29. There Jesus is reported as saying to his disciples: “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting” (kjv). I once heard a godly missionary say, “If you don’t get the answer to your prayer, then fast, and God will have to answer your petition.” But that is magic—manipulating God—not true religion. The fact is that “and fasting” is not found in our two fourth-century manuscripts (cf.niv). It apparently was added in the fifth century, when much emphasis was being given to Gnostic asceticism and to monasticism. Then the whole of Mark 9:29 was inserted in Matthew. But Matthew 17:21 is not found in our two earliest manuscripts, as well as in the best ninth-century codex. At best it is doubtful whether these words are genuine, and so they should not be emphasized.

The most notorious case of an added reading (in thetr)—and in this case there is no doubt about its having been added—is found at 1 John 5:7. It is the strongest statement in the KJV on the Trinity, but it has no basis in the Greek text. It is found in the KJV, of course, because it is in the Textus Receptus. How did it get there? Erasmus did not have it in his first edition of the Greek New Testament (1516) or his second edition (1519). It is thought that under Roman Catholic pressure—because the passage was in the Latin Vulgate—Erasmus put it in his third edition (1522). Martin Luther wisely did not include it in his German New Testament of that same year. It seems that Roman Catholics produced Codex Montfortianus, inserting this passage from the Latin. We have personally examined this sixteenth-century manuscript in Dublin. The passage is found in the text of only one other manuscript (fifteenth century).

The facts are that these added words are not quoted by any Greek Fathers of the early church and are absent from all the early versions. They were not in the text of the original Latin Vulgate made by Jerome but were inserted later. There can be no doubt today that the words are not a part of the original text of 1 John.

All these facts that we have been rehearsing may seem rather disconcerting to the average reader. But, as we noted before, with thousands of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament now at our disposal, we can reach a high degree of certainty with regard to the probability of the best text. It should be added that comparative statistical studies indicate that all Greek manuscripts are in essential agreement on at least 95 percent of the New Testament text. Significant differences exist, then, in less than 5 percent of the total text. And it must be said emphatically that none of these variant readings poses any problem as to the basic doctrines of the Bible. They are intact! We should like to add that all the members of the Committee on Bible Translation are devout Evangelicals, believing in the infallibility of the Bible as God’s Word. We have all sought earnestly to represent as accurately as possible what seems to be, as nearly as we can determine, the original text of the New Testament.

Brown, Kenneth I. A Critical Evaluation of the Text of the King James Bible. Allen Park, Mich.: Detroit Baptist Divinity School, 1975.

______. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. New York: United Bible Societies, 1975.