The Nestle-Aland «Novum Testamentum Graece»

My favorite English bible translation is the British ESV, and its well translated and well written "thought-by-thought" NT makes this the best bible translation out there I think. Not only does it rest on a legacy of famous books like the 1526 William Tyndale's NT and the famous 1611 «Authorised King James Version», but like most, if not all modern critical translations, it is based on the critical apparatus that is the backbone of the text of the Novum Testamentum Graece by Eberhard Nestle and later also work on the critical apparatus by his son Erwin Nestle and in the 50s, Kurt Aland who refurbished it completely and put it up to par with modern scientific standards. This Greek New Testament text is currently in its 28th edition («NA28» and the 2011 version of the ESV I use the most is based on the 27th or «NA27» edition.) and for the first time there is an official translation made available online together with the release of the printed book.

So when I went to Amazon today to buy some comics, I tossed in a copy of the latest NA28 with parallell Greek-English text. I already have a few similar books, but I just had to have this one. You know how it is.

The following is from www.nestle-aland.com...

In 1898 Eberhard Nestle published the first edition of his Novum Testamentum Graece. Based on a simple yet ingenious idea it disseminated the insights of the textual criticism of that time through a hand edition designed for university and school studies and for church purposes. Nestle took the three leading scholarly editions of the Greek New Testament at that time by Tischendorf, Westcott/Hort and Weymouth as a basis. (After 1901 he replaced the latter with Bernhard Weiß’s 1894/1900 edition.) Where their textual decisions differed from each other Nestle chose for his own text the variant which was preferred by two of the editions included, while the variant of the third was put into the apparatus.

The text-critical apparatus remained rudimentary in all the editions published by Eberhard Nestle. It was Eberhard Nestle’s son Erwin who provided the 13th edition of 1927 with a consistent critical apparatus showing evidence from manuscripts, early translations and patristic citations. However, these notes did not derive from the primary sources, but only from editions.

This changed in the nineteen-fifties, when Kurt Aland started working for the edition by checking the apparatus entries against Greek manuscripts and editions of the Church Fathers. This phase came to a close in 1963 when the 25th edition of the Novum Testamentum Graece appeared; later printings of this edition already carried the brand name “Nestle-Aland” on their covers.

According to Google, Textual Criticism is «the process of attempting to ascertain the original wording of a text.» But it's way more than that of course, way more than what that sentence could ever include, and deserves a thread on its own, but in all essence it is the hard science of making qualified translations of literary traditions such as the NT and other such books. Wikipedia defines Textual Criticism as «a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in texts, both manuscripts and printed books.»

In short, the more modern an edition of the Nestle-Aland, the more researched and updated every symbol, letter and word is, and can be traced back to a well of available fragments and documents and scholarly research, and the rendered text in all Nestle-Aland Greek NTs is a well researched composite made from all available texts, and added more theological principles like hermeneutics and exegesis. The higher the number the better. Just the way we like it. If your writing differs from the text of the NA28 you better have a really good explanation.

Further:

The 26th edition, which appeared in 1979, featured a fundamentally new approach. Until then the guiding principle had been to adopt the text supported by a majority of the critical editions referred to. Now the text was established on the basis of source material that had been assembled and evaluated in the intervening period. It included early papyri and other manuscript discoveries, so that the 26th edition represented the situation of textual criticism in the 20th century. Its text was identical with that of the 3rd edition of the UBS Greek New Testament (GNT) published in 1975, as a consequence of the parallel work done on both editions. Already in 1955 Kurt Aland was invited to participate in an editorial committee with Matthew Black, Bruce M. Metzger, Alan Wikgren, and at first Arthur Vööbus, later Carlo Martini (and, from 1982, Barbara Aland and Johannes Karavidopoulos) to produce a reliable hand edition of the Greek New Testament.

The first edition of the GNT appeared in 1966. Its text was established along the lines of Westcott and Hort and differed considerably from Nestle’s 25th edition. This holds true for the second edition of the GNT as well. When the third edition was prepared Kurt Aland was able to contribute the textual proposals coming from his preliminary work on the 26th edition of the Nestle-Aland. Hence the process of establishing the text for both editions continued to converge, so that eventually they could share an identical text. However, their external appearance and the design of their apparatus remains different, because they serve different purposes. The GNT is primarily intended for translators, providing a reliable Greek initial text and a text-critical apparatus showing variants that are relevant for translation. In the case of the passages selected for this purpose the evidence is displayed as completely as possible. The Novum Testamentum Graece is produced primarily for research, academic education and pastoral practice. It seeks to provide an apparatus that enables the reader to make a critical assessment of the reconstruction of the Greek initial text.

The text of the 26th edition of the Nestle-Aland was adopted for the 27th edition also, while the apparatus underwent an extensive revision. The text remained the same, because the 27th edition was not “deemed an appropriate occasion for introducing textual changes”. Since then the situation has changed, because the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) of the Catholic Letters is now available. Its text was established on the basis of all the relevant material from manuscripts and other sources. The ECM text was adopted for the present edition following approval by the editorial committee of the Nestle-Aland and the GNT.

As you'll all know by now, the Nestle-Aland is a well researched and well founded document resting on the best-and-latest of all linguistic and textual sciences and up to date with the latest finds and discoveries. This is why a modern NT translation based on this material is a far better and more accurate NT than let's say the 1526 Tyndale or the 1611 KJV or for that matter the 1901 American Standard Version. Keep your bibles updated, at least throw out the KJV or put it together with other historical translations and get yourself a new and updated Critical Study Bible if you intend to do some serious studies.

ETA: UBS's Greek NT from 1993 is another source for the ESV NT.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim
I work with a copy of the 1963 edition, but there are two others (1904, 1916) available if I can't remember where I put that one down.
It would be as well to have a detailed explanation of how textual criticism works, because there are some who see it as a conspiracy against the text of the AV.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Here is a link to the online text of NA28 according to Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft:

www.nestle-aland.com...

Not very download friendly, but an updated and legally available online text.

Also I found this one here, which does look promising, pretty hardcore critical apparatus:

fast.wistia.net/embed/i*frame/9bthd1jt4g

ETA: ATS censors the word iframe in urls it seems, just copy and paste the above (except for the asterisk, the * in "iframe")

Nice work OP. Personally I'm a fan of the NKJV it's always been my favorite. It's been awhile since I bought a new Bible or studied of any of the latest translations but I do know that Nestle Aland is a great text so I'll check out this new one and see what the buzz is about.

I personally like NASB for general reading, and I usually cross reference it with Strongs Literal translation or the Masoretic and early Greek NT texts (usually Nestle GNT 1904 or Wescott and Hort 1881) if necessary.

KJV is ok for OT, but its NT is Textus Receptus based, which has flaws.

If I can't find the answers I need with the Masoretic text, I'll confer the LXX.

I find that sticking to one single translation is like putting your eggs in one basket.

a reply to: RealTruthSeeker

The one I bought online was this one: www.amazon.com... it was the all over cheapest one, and since it's the same publisher as my no.1 favorite bible, I decided upon this one here. There are a few others too just do a search for NA28 at Amazon or your favorite bookshop. Not so much fuzz, and it's not steaming hot, the one I bought was from 2012, damn, finally I managed to smack that fly that's been swirling around for several days. Finally! There is a God!

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest

I personally like NASB for general reading, and I usually cross reference it with Strongs Literal translation or the Masoretic and early Greek NT texts if necessary.

KJV is ok for OT, but its NT is Textus Receptus based, which has flaws.

If I can't find the answers I need with the Masoretic text, I'll confer the LXX.

I find that sticking to one single translation is like putting your eggs in one basket.

Well, the ESV I use the most is based on BHS for OT, and UBS's (United Bible Societies) Greek New Testament (1993 4th ed) and NA27 for NT. I'll edit the OP, since I say the ESV is based more or less solely on the NA. The BHS is just about top of the pops in relation to an existing correct Masoretic text, and still today it is being updated with the latest in Biblical research and discoveries. The ESV NT is basically a virtually literal (hehe) word by word or rather thought by thought translation of the Nestle-Aland and the UBS Greek which reflects the latest in NT research and discoveries. When it all comes down to winning the race, only way to ba sure of winning, is to bet on all the horses, even the one with three legs running backwards.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

I'll have to add ESV to my library. Like you, I agree that all translations carry one flaw or another. I find that building a composite picture works best. That's also why I count syllables in the original language. Thanks for sharing.

Word for word isn't always the best translation. Sometimes, as in the LXX, an expanded or explanatory translation is needed to explain idioms that simply do not carry over in a word for word format. Many of the differences between the Masoretic text and Septuagint can be reconciled with that thought in mind.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

Both my Greek and Hebrew/Aramaic is limited to spelling out the sound of each letter and then confer with a variety of lexicons and dictionaries, different Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, and if I had lived in a town with a proper theological faculty or similar, I could look up the given word in among trollies of fragments using the critical apparatus of a good study bible together with a proper library. There are alternatives online, I use biblehub.com and biblestudytools.com for pretty much everything when discussing online, and there are other good ones out there, it all comes down to what you are comfortable with and like to work with.

Other relevant translations I own other than the 2011 ESV and a selection of Norwegian translations, is the 1952 RSV, a 1977 Clementine Vulgate, reprinted 1599 Geneva and 1611 KJV, a mainly Vaticanus/Alexandinus based LXX with parallell English, a BHS/ESV interlinear and another interlinear of more spurious character, but highly useful since it uses the Strong's numbers which the BHS/ESV one doesn't and it was really cheap too, another gem is a 2nd edition Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible that's easy for second reference. Maybe not as relevant as some of the others, but it has a few alternate wordings here and there and it is a pretty book that didn't cost too much. It does come with a rather intimidating warning not to share or publish any part of it, ever. Or something like that. You'll never know, maybe there is a bible-police out there ready to beat the living daylight out of sloppy bible students.

This addition of the NA28 to my paper library will give it a good notch up in quality and relevance.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim Richmond Lattimore, a 20th century classicist who translated Homer, translated the NT. Now I'm all curious to see how it compares to Nestle-Aland.

a reply to: Look2theSacredHeart

My copy of Homer is the Chapman one and I own another with highlights from the Greek myths by Bulfinch. I haven't read Lattimore's Homer though, but after reading a bit about him, I might just go ahead and get meself a copy of one or two of his books. His translations of NT is based on the 19th century Greek text of NT called Westcott-Hort (abbreviated WH). The NA (Nestle-Aland) differs slightly here and there, but in essence they are two critical renditions of the Greek NT, following the same school of critical research. Nestle used WH extensively when he started writing on what later became the Nestle-Aland.

According to www.bible-researcher.com...

...Lattimore states that he “simply followed the text of Westcott and Hort,” with a few “rare exceptions.”

The bible-researcher.com website also sports a quick-and-dirty, but still a lovely study tool with a basic critical apparatus (though viewed against the ooold KJV) enabling you to identify which biblical documents in Greek or Hebrew agree or disagree with the wording of the KJV. There are some quite powerful tools there, that could probably teach you quite a bit on the development of the canon and also which manuscripts that (dis-)agree and what schools of thought brought about the different bible versions. Great stuff ==> www.bible-researcher.com...

According to en.wikipedia.org... on Westcott and Hort:

The New Testament in the Original Greek is a Greek-language version of the New Testament published in 1881. It is also known as the Westcott and Hort text, after its editors Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828–1892). (Textual scholars use the abbreviation "WH".[1]) It is a critical text, compiled from some of the oldest New Testament fragments and texts that had been discovered at the time. The two editors worked together for 28 years.
[...]
Westcott and Hort distinguished four text types in their studies. The most recent is Syrian, or Byzantine text-type, of which the newest example (thus from the critical text view less reliable) is the Textus Receptus. The Western text-type is much older, but tends to paraphrase, so according to them also lacks dependability. The Alexandrian text-type, exemplified in the Codex Ephraemi, exhibits a polished Greek style. The two scholars identified their favorite text type as "Neutral text", exemplified by two 4th-century manuscripts, the Codex Vaticanus (known to scholars since the 15th century), and the Codex Sinaiticus (discovered in 1859), both of which they relied on heavily (albeit not exclusively) for this edition. This text has only a few changes of the original.[6] This edition is based on the critical works especially of Tischendorf and Tregelles.[6] The minuscules play a minimal role in this edition.[7]
[...]
The texts of Nestle-Aland, and of Bover and Merk, differ very little from the text of the Westcott-Hort.

Hope that helped