Majority Text
The Byzantine text-type (also called Majority Text, Traditional Text, Ecclesiastical Text, Constantinopolitan Text, Antiocheian Text, or Syrian Text) is one of several text-types used in textual criticism to describe the textual character of Greek New Testament manuscripts. It is the form found in the largest number of surviving manuscripts, though not in the oldest. The New Testament text of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Patriarchal Text, is based on this text-type. While considerably varying, it also underlies the Textus Receptus Greek text used for most Reformation-era translations of the New Testament into vernacular languages. Modern translations mainly use Eclectic editions that conform more often to the Alexandrian text-type.
The Byzantine text is also found in a few modern Greek Orthodox editions, as the Byzantine textual tradition has continued in the Eastern Orthodox Church into the present time. The text used by the Greek Orthodox Church is supported by late minuscule manuscripts. It is commonly accepted as standard Byzantine text.
The Byzantine textform is often marked with the abbreviations or Byz.
For some time following the fourth century different types of text were current in the East, but at the end the Byzantine text "almost wholly displaced the rest." The Byzantine text-type has by far the largest number of surviving manuscripts, many of them written in the newer minuscule (lower case) style and in Polytonic orthography handwriting, which had been invented in the 3rd century BC by Aristophanes of Byzantium but which took many centuries to catch on outside scholarly circles. For example, of 522 complete or nearly complete manuscripts of the General Epistles collated by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Münster, Germany, 372 of them attest the Byzantine reading in at least 90% of 98 test places. Amongst the earliest surviving manuscripts, the position is reversed. There are six manuscripts earlier than the 9th century which conform to the Byzantine text-type; of which the 5th century Codex Alexandrinus, (the oldest), is Byzantine only in the Gospels with the rest of the New Testament being Alexandrian. By comparison, the Alexandrian text-type is witnessed by nine surviving uncials earlier than the ninth century (including the Codex Alexandrinus outside the Gospels); and is also usually considered to be demonstrated in three earlier papyri. Modern critical editions of the New Testament tend to conform most often to Alexandrian witnesses — especially Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus.
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