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UK News

Greek New Testament Produced by bible scholars aims to be 'world's most accurate'

by Eno Adeogun

The new edition, which was printed in its original Greek, was published on Wednesday by researchers from Tyndale House, a bible research institute in Cambridge.

Dr Dirk Jongkind, vice-principal of the institute, explained in a press release the motive behind the new publication.

He said: "The scribes who copied the texts that have become our earliest known manuscripts of the New Testament were only human, and inevitably they made small mistakes.

"The great thing is that now we have so much evidence at our fingertips, we can study the types of errors the New Testament scribes made and come to more informed conclusions about what the text being copied would have said."

The new version took ten years to produce and the researchers have said it could pave the way for more accurate English translations.

The New Testament was originally written in an early form of Greek in the first century but was translated into Latin.

A new edition was published in the original Greek by Dutch Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, in 1516, which relied on early texts.

Dr Jongkind explained errors in earlier versions of the New Testament occurred for a number of reasons including when scribes included elements from Matthew's gospel while transcribing Mark's because they wrote from memory.

He said: Previous editors have allowed themselves considerable liberty in standardising spelling, making paragraph divisions, deciding punctuation and other matters.

"This may hide significant data about the origin and even interpretation of the Greek New Testament."

However, he said Christians need not be dismayed by their findings.

He explained: "Christians will be relieved to know that our 10-year study of the most important manuscripts shows that while errors are part and parcel of the copying process, there is no evidence whatsoever of systematic revision of the text.

"So while a scribe might accidentally change 'Jesus Christ' to 'Christ Jesus', we don't encounter textual differences between the manuscripts that materially change the meaning."

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