Majority Text

Overview

The Majority Text is not a term found in any passage of Scripture. It is a term from textual criticism (the discipline that compares manuscripts to identify the text closest to the original), which deals with how to establish the original Greek text of the New Testament. More than 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are known to survive today. The text based on the readings of the Byzantine manuscripts, which make up the great majority of these, is called the Majority Text, and the term is sometimes used as virtually synonymous with the "Byzantine text." The term is not applied to the Old Testament.

Background

In the Western church the Latin Bible, the Vulgate, was widely used. In the Byzantine Empire, by contrast, the Greek Bible continued to be copied, and as a result most surviving Greek manuscripts are Byzantine manuscripts dating from the ninth century onward. In the late nineteenth century, Westcott and Hort published a new Greek text that gave priority to earlier manuscripts from around the fourth century, such as Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. This approach led to the critical text represented today by the Nestle-Aland and UBS editions. During the same period, John Burgon of England and others opposed this approach and defended the text that had traditionally been used. In the late twentieth century, Hodges and Farstad (in 1982) and later Robinson and Pierpont each published editions of the Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text.

Representative Passages Differing from the Critical Text and the Textus Receptus

• End of Matthew 6:13: The doxology at the close of the Lord's Prayer ("For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever") is present in the Majority Text but absent from the critical text.
• Mark 16:9-20: Included in the Majority Text. The critical text places it in brackets to indicate that it may have been added later.
• John 7:53-8:11: The account of the woman taken in adultery, which is included in the Majority Text.
• 1 John 5:7-8: The passage referring to the three heavenly witnesses appears in the Textus Receptus, which underlies the King James Version, but not in the Majority Text. The same is true of Acts 8:37.

As the last example shows, the Majority Text is broadly similar to, but not identical with, the Textus Receptus, the printed text in the tradition going back to Erasmus in the sixteenth century.

Interpretation and Points of Debate

Supporters of the Majority Text hold that the text the church read and copied widely over a long period has faithfully preserved the original. They argue that the survival of many early manuscripts is due merely to Egypt's dry climate and does not mean that those manuscripts are more accurate. Supporters of the critical text hold that a large number of manuscripts indicates that a text was copied frequently in later periods. They therefore argue that the early manuscripts and the character of individual readings must be weighed. The debate divides along the positions of individual scholars rather than along denominational lines. Most scholars on both sides are reported to agree that manuscript differences do not alter the core doctrines of Christianity.

In the Korean Church

Seminaries of many Korean denominations generally use critical-text editions for Greek instruction and exegesis. Several Bible translations, including the New Korean Revised Version, place Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11 in brackets to indicate manuscript differences. In Korea, the Majority Text is discussed mainly in the context of the Bible translation controversy, together with advocacy of the Textus Receptus and the King James Version.