Greek Sources

The Berean Greek New Testament has been developed to reflect the best and earliest manuscripts, complete with modern paragraph and poetry formatting, red letter text, and footnoting for significant textual variants.

The Greek source is documented for all renderings, with the following major sources being considered: Nestle, SBL, and Nestle Aland 28th Edition, Textus Receptus, Byzantine, Greek Orthodox, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, as well as a variety of manuscripts on which these critical texts are based.

In producing the translation, weight was given to the more reliable / earlier manuscripts and more recent critical texts. Significant variants are documented and footnoted.

In choosing a base text for the Berean Greek Bible, it was important to start with a source that we can share and make available for free digital use. The Nestle 1904 was chosen, as we believe it is the most accurate critical text currently in the public domain.  Paragraph and poetry formatting for the Greek Text has been adapted from Westcott and Hort, 1881 and the Berean Study Bible.

Significant variants between modern critical texts have been documented and taken into consideration for translation, along with additional manuscript evidence. The following are the major texts included for consideration and documented or footnoted in the BGB:

Base Text:

Nestle 1904 〈NE〉 
Eberhard Nestle, Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ. Text with Critical Apparatus. (British and Foreign Bible Society, 1904).
https://sites.google.com/ site/nestle1904

Variant Texts:

SBLGNT ‹SBL›
Michael W. Holmes, Greek New Testament: SBL Edition. (Society of Biblical Literature, 2010).

NA28 [NA]
Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th revised edition, Edited by Barbara Aland and others, © 2012 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Westcott and Hort (WH)
Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek, vol. 1: Text; vol. 2: Introduction [and] Appendix (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1881).

Byzantine Majority Text ⧼BYZ⧽
Maurice A. Robinson and William G. Pierpont, The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform, 2005. (Chilton Book Publishing, 2005).

Schrivener’s Textus Receptus 1896 {TR}
F. H. A. Scrivener , The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge: University Press, 1894).

Greek Orthodox Church – GOC
The New Testament as is taught by the Greek Fathers, Greek Orthodox Church, 1904

Tischendorf 8th edition – Tischendorf
Tischendorf’s 8th edition Greek New Testament, Constantin von Tischendorf, 1869-1872

Stephanus Textus Receptus 1550 – TR1550
Stephanus Novum Testamentum Graece, Robertus Stephanus, 1550.

Methodology

Base Text:

Base text and orthography is the Nestle 1904 Greek New testament, courtesy of: https://sites.google.com/ site/nestle1904/.

Paragraph formatting has been adapted from Westcott and Hort, 1881 and the Berean Study Bible.

Variants and Additional text:

BGB Spelling has been updated for consistency with modern critical texts. List of spelling updates.

Significant variants are footnoted. Words not contained in the Nestle 1904 text have been included with the following notation:

{TR} ⧼BYZ⧽ (WH) 〈NE〉 [NA] ‹SBL›

Only the last version from left to right to contain a given variant is marked.

The Nestle text itself has been marked if not contained in either NA or SBL texts.

TR and BYZ variants included in the BGB text are marked using the above formatting, {TR} ⧼BYZ⧽. For major variants not contained in the BGB, TR and BYZ are generally footnoted.

An asterisk has been used to denote a variant word updated from the NE, where both NA and SBL agree.

Word order Variants:

Where either NA or SBL render the word order differently, the NE order is maintained, with the variant noted as follows:

«NE Text» ⇔ «NA and / or SBL text»

Compound Words:

Variants in compound words are noted as follows:

Compound ‿ Word or Compound¦word