The Newly Published Nestle Aland 28th Edition Greek New Testament and Textual Criticism

So, a new edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament has just been released. The 28th edition of that Greek New Testament. In fact, I'm starting a collection of them as they go by. This is my dad's old 25th edition.

I put a nice cover on it, but you can notice it's a little bit on the older side. And then when I started studying Greek, we had the 26th edition was the standard at that time. Notice how small it is.

The 27th Edition and the Coming NA28 Changes

And then someone realized that a little more size would be good, so there's my nice 27th edition. And the 27th has been out for quite some time. In fact, I hadn't looked beforehand, but let's see what the date on this one is, 1993.

This particular one, yeah, 1993. So it's been out for quite a while. So, and now we have the 28th edition. My printed version hasn't arrived yet, and I haven't started seeing accordions or log offs telling me what it's going to cost to upgrade to the 28th edition.

There aren't that many differences between these editions. In fact, back in the olden days, I think it was possibly the UBS 3rd edition corrected or at least the 4th, made the UBS and the Nessie Olin, the readings were the same.

There were some punctuation differences and division differences, but the readings were the same in those two editions. And now the 28th edition only has differences in what are called the Catholic epistles like Jude and 1st and 2nd Peter.

But there are more changes coming. That's why something tells me that the 29th edition is going to come out a whole lot faster. It's going to be a much shorter period of time between the 28th and 29th than it was between 27th and 28th, and probably even the 30th.

The reason for this is called the ECM project, and they've only finished those epistles. And the Nessie Olin is reflecting the textual changes that they have made in those particular epistles. And so as they, I guess the projected time frame is over about the next decade, finish that project, the ECM project, then they will reflect the textual choices that are made in the new editions of the Nessie Olin text.

Jude 5 and the Textual Variant Between “Lord” and “Jesus”

Now, some of those changes are very, very interesting. One is in Jude 5. Let me show you what this looks like in my accordance setup where I have a tremendous number of textual resources available. But since that's not really readable here, let me move that over to just two.

That is the Greek text and then the specific textual information provided by the Nessie Olin text itself. This is the 27th edition, not the 28th edition. I did look at the 28th edition online. That at least is available right now.

And I did find it interesting, if you're looking at the variant here, you will see that the 27th edition lists about seven different readings, possible readings here in Jude 5. Now before anybody freaks out about that, the major difference is between saying, knowing that the Lord having once for all, over against knowing once for all that Jesus.

And so the question is whether it's knowing once for all or whether the Lord or Jesus once for all delivered the people. So that's where the textual variant impacts both translation and the meaning of the text.

What is interesting is that the 28th edition lists 14, not seven. Again, all having some of the differences could not be explained outside of Greek. There were order issues, things like that, but again, it does have a rather fuller listing than the current NA -27 apparatus.

Now it is an interesting, it's a very difficult variant. There's no question about that. It's probably one of the most difficult variants in all of the New Testament. And it's interesting to me that the ESV sort of anticipated the fact that the 28th edition has gone from the reading it had in the 27th, which was the Lord, to Jesus.

Now that's interesting. Jesus delivered the people from Israel. Well, that has got some pretty important theological ramifications to it. There's no question about that. But what I really want to address is not this rather complex and difficult variant, but the attitude that a lot of Christians have that demonstrates a misunderstanding of the value in having critical scholarship and critical editions of the Greek New Testament.

Why Christians Should Welcome Critical Scholarship

When I look at these three texts here, I can just hear in my mind certain people who sometimes are not overly kind and nice, maybe a Sam Gipp type person. I can hear the, and the only term I can use is fundamentalist mindset, and I have good fundamentalist friends who are not this way, but they know exactly what I'm talking about when I describe this.

And that is the mindset that says we shouldn't have to have 28 editions of the Greek New Testament. We should just have one. That's how King James-only-ism thrives, is I don't want to have these notes that say some manuscripts said this and some manuscripts say that.

And certainly, three weeks ago this past Monday evening, actually two weeks ago this past Monday evening in my debate with Adnan Rashid, we saw the exact same attitude, totally non-reflective on Adnan's part, the exact same attitude that I don't want to have, I don't want to know about these variants.

I don't want to have this textual apparatus. I want to have absolute certainty. I understand the desire. But all of us living in the world we live in today need to recognize what's wrong with that thinking and be able to explain it, be able to explain why that thought process is simply backwards, and why it's good to have the 28th edition and the forthcoming 29th edition and the forthcoming 30th edition after that, why it's good that there would be a revaluation of whether it's kurios, Lord, or gesus, Jesus, in the lexical form there in Jude 5.

That's an important thing, to know whether you have those words there. The first thing to remember is we want to know what Jude wrote, not what someone 50 years or 100 years or 1 ,000 years later thought he should have written.

If we really place the locus of inspiration at that point where scripture is produced, then we want to know what was originally written, not what was written long afterwards. And that's why believing Christians, whether the scholarly guild wants to wander off and start exegeting textual variants to try to climb into the minds of later scribes or something, they can do that.

You all go do that. We're going to keep working on this. We may not have as much money anymore, and you may take over all of the resources that we put in place over the years, but we're going to keep going after that because we think that's what's important.

If that's where inspiration takes place, then that's why we want to know the original, and so we're always looking to that, not to simply maintaining a tradition that we've come up with at a later point.

But secondly, it needs to be understood that the readings that will be in the 28th edition are all in the 27th edition, even when there's been a change. I mean, for example, in here there was a little dagger, a little cross placed next to readings in the 27th edition that was different from the 25th.

So you knew where the reading had changed, but a lot of people who don't read one of these or now access it online think that, oh, you've changed it, and so now no one will know what it used to say. No.

The material's all there in the notes, and in fact, the 28th edition is going to have much expanded notes in comparison to the 27th. And so the reading Jesus, which is now in the 28th edition, is found in the notes of the 27th.

It's always, we've always known it's there. It's not like, as is so often represented, you've got a bunch of scholars sitting around the, Adnan likes to say this, you don't know what the Word of God really is, because it's all up to a bunch of scholars sitting around deciding it.

Well, that's not the case. It's not scholars sitting around and they go, well, we're just going to change this. That's the text reading, but the other reading's right there. If you're responsible or interested or if you're just doing your homework, the reading's right there.

You can look at that and you can examine this very difficult textual variance, and if you decide, you know what, I don't think that this new reading accurately reflects the best understanding of this textual variance, you can keep going with Lord if you want to.

It's not like there's just one text, as in almost all editions of the Quran, or actually all editions of the Textus Receptus, too. That's interesting. Anyways, it's not like there's just one text and they're taking words out and putting words in and not letting anybody know.

It's all right there in front of us. Anybody can check it out, Christian or non-Christian. It's one of the reasons why Christians should know how to read this stuff and take the time to learn some of these things because, well, our enemies, our opponents have access to this information as well.

We don't hide this stuff. We couldn't and we shouldn't. We should be upfront about all these things. And so what's good here is that you don't have just a tradition being put in a position of you can't question this.

This is all we want. Remember how Adnan, I'll take Uthman's reading. Well, Uthman's reading would be very, very important, and I think in the vast majority of instances, Uthman's reading would reflect what was originally written down.

No problem, but what about those places where it differs? What about Ibn Masud? What about that, the Palimpsest manuscript, the Su 'anna manuscript? What if that reflects the original? Isn't that what you'd want to know?

Not for some people, not for Muslims in the Quran, many of them anyways, not for King James only folks. It doesn't matter what the original is. It's what's in the King James Version. That's what you got to have.

And that attitude is just completely different than the attitude we should have, which is I want to know what was originally written. And so when you see the 28th edition coming out, for a lot of people, it's like, oh, they just can't get it right.

You know, when are they going to, once they get it right, then they'll stop, right? Well, I suppose if we stopped finding new manuscripts, stopped seeking to examine difficult variants like we have in Jude 5, I suppose, I guess we could come to a stop at some point.

I hope that doesn't happen. That's sort of like what it was like in the Dark Ages, you know, where inquiry stopped for a while in some areas. That's not what we want. That's not where we want to go. If we really honor the New Testament as the Word of God, we will continue to examine new discoveries.

I mean, I'm really looking forward to these new papyri of Mark and Luke, these very early papyri, commentary, a sermon on Hebrews from the second century. That's exciting stuff. That could shed even more light on the original New Testament.

And that's a good thing. That's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing at all. And people who think it's a bad thing only do that because they've decided, I have my tradition, this is my traditional text, don't bother me with any questions.

Don't ask me why. I just accept this as the final authority and that's it. I don't want to have to deal with any of the rest of this stuff. Well, I'll admit that's a much easier position to hold. It's just intellectually dishonest.

You can't call it truth. All you can do is say, it makes me comfortable. And you know what? Your comfort is not what defines truth. And your comfort is not going to be what allows us to present a robust defense of the Christian faith in a world where there's a lot of opposition.

Evangelism, Apologetics, and the Need for Individual Believers to Know the Text

And each and every believer, I think, needs to give much more consideration to how we will join our evangelism and our apologetics into one. It's interesting that a study just came out at the same time saying that the number of people in the United States who are nones, N-O-N-E-S, no religious affiliation, is skyrocketing, especially in the under 30 crowd.

And all it does is it's representing the secularization of our nation. But to be honest with you, I think it's a good thing. Because many of those people who called themselves Christians before felt some need to have some association with a religious body weren't actually believers anyways.

What we're going to be getting is a more accurate view of how many Christians there really are, which has always been far less than what is represented by these polls, in essence. Because we've known that certainly our society, if it was filled with 65 Christians, would be very different than it actually is.

The number of true believers is much smaller than that. And so because of that, there's going to be much more opposition to our faith. And that means we as individuals, we as individual believers, need to be taking the responsibility for apologetics upon ourselves.

We can't leave it to the quote-unquote professional apologists, the few of us that there are. You're the one that needs to do apologetics. You're the one that needs to be able to explain why we can trust the New Testament while sitting on the bus, sitting on the train, sitting on the plane.

You're the ones who could be doing that job. Now I've had the privilege of getting to train lots of people on how to do that and how to answer those questions. That's great. That's fine. It's wonderful.

But I can't be everywhere, and neither can anybody else. It's going to be up to individual believers. And so it's important for you to understand why it is a good thing that we have a new edition of the Greek New Testament.

That means that we are continuing to sharpen our understanding of the original. I mean, we have more manuscripts of this book than any other work of antiquity there is. It's the earliest and best documented work of antiquity there is.

But because we have so much, there's a lot of work that needs to be done. And we haven't stopped. We haven't become complacent. We haven't just said, hey, just accept what we have to say. That's a good thing.

If you can understand that and you can express that to somebody else, then you're really doing apologetics. But the fuzzier it is in your mind, the fuzzier it's going to be for the person you're trying to explain it to.

And so it's a good thing that we have it. But then we need to take this information and take the many blessings that are ours and bring them into play in giving a robust defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's our privilege. It's our calling to be salt and light, no matter what the world thinks about it. And so I hope that you will take this information, you'll use it, and you'll use it to honor and glorify the name of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for watching.