Greek NT Formats

I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile for my students. It’s essentially a list of available formats for the main Greek NTs on the market that I would expect my students to be interested in. 

What did I miss?

	NA	UBS	RP	SBL	TH
Reader’s edition		✔️	✔️		✔️
Journal edition	✔️				✔️
Greek-English edition	✔️	✔️			✔️
Greek-Spanish edition		✔️
Greek-Latin edition	✔️
With dictionary	✔️	✔️		✔️	✔️
Annotated edition					✔️
Large print edition	✔️
Digital edition	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Textual commentary		✔️			✔️*

* = forthcoming

Changes to Expect with UBS6/NA29

While doing some work yesterday on the history of the Nestle-Aland, I decided to take a peek at the upcoming NA29/UBS6 editions. I couldn’t find a page for the NA29 at the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft website and the UBS6 isn’t set for release until Oct. 19. What is available now is the reader’s edition that shares the same text. I’ve given a screenshot of the page below. Besides the very obvious typographic change (which may be unique to the reader’s edition), the most notable updates are these: 

• The text adopts the ECM text for all available books. That means Mark, Acts, Catholic Letters, and Revelation. (ECM Matthew is not set for release until December, so it does not include that.)
• The order of books does not follow Erasmus any more but reverts to what is found in earlier MSS (and editions like WH). That means Gospels, Acts, Catholic Letters, Paul (with Hebrews before the Pastorals), Revelation.
• Previously “missing verses” are back in the main text with double brackets. This is the most surprising update and one I did not know about until now. Here’s how the intro explains it: “Unlike in earlier editions of the Nestle-Aland and the UBS Greek New Testament, including the Reader’s Edition, all verses assigned a number within the New Testament are now integrated into the text in double brackets. Previously this was only the case for individual passages which traditionally enjoyed an exceptional position in the church (e.g. Mk 16.9–20; Jn 7.53–8.11).”

You can read the introduction here. Also don't forget about the release of the new Textual Commentary that will accompany the UBS6. 2025 is shaping up to be a banner year for NTTC.

The format of the new UBS6 Reader’s Edition

The Order of Books in Nestle 1

Here’s something I never noticed before. The order of books in Nestle’s 1st ed. (1898) follows Luther’s 1522 NT. Here you can see the two side-by-side. What makes the Nestle odd in a way even Luther’s is not is the headings. I may be wrong, but I can’t remember Hebrews ever being included with the Catholic Letters in any manuscript.

Luther Bible (1522)

Nestle 1 (1898)

By the third edition (1901) the books were back in their Erasmian order, although Hebrews was still set off just slightly from the other Pauline letters. You can see it here in my copy of the 13th edition which is the same.

Nestle 13 reflecting the changed book order

It’s worth mentioning this because my understanding is that the NA29 will switch the order of books, placing the Catholic Epistles immediately after Acts. As a result, the NA will match one of its original three sources and the one that Nestle himself called “the one constituent factor” in his edition (=WH).

Minor update: I notice the Nestle 13th ed. (1927) has the following note at the bottom of the page of Rom 1: “HTWS [=WH, Tischendorf, Weiss, and von Soden] Epistolas Catholicas (Jc, 1.2 P, 1-3 J, Jd) Paulinis anteponunt; epistolam ad Hebraeos datam epistolis pastoralibus praemittunt.”

P.S. Did you know you can look at scans of all the Nestle/Nestle-Aland editions in the VMR? In the Manuscript Workspace, search for N1, N2, etc. in the Manuscripts tab search box. From the 22nd ed. on, search for NA22, etc.

Videos on Bible History from Amsterdam

Just this week, John Meade and I returned from a 2-week trip to Amsterdam to do some speaking and teaching at Tyndale Seminary in the Netherlands. We had a wonderful time there with pastors, leaders, and students and were encouraged to see the work being done there. (My only disappointment was that they had no statue of their most famous graduate, Dirk Jongkind!) If you are looking for an excellent evangelical seminary in Europe with a vision for global ministry, be sure to consider it.

The Preachers and Leaders conference we spoke at was also the occasion for the release of Scribes & Scripture in Dutch. One of the most exciting features of that for us as authors is that the Dutch version includes two new chapters by Paulus-Jan Kieviet. 

John and I with Marcel the publisher (left, middle) and Paulus-Jan (right, middle) who added two chapters.

Paulus-Jan works with Wycliffe/SIL and added chapters on the Bible in Dutch and the Bible in contemporary global translation work. We are very grateful for his contribution that will make the book much more useful for a Dutch audience.

Below are videos that John and I gave on the history of the Bible at the conference. A few of these were new ones for us. Be sure to check out all the conference videos at their YouTube channel as we were not the only speakers. 

Working with Manuscripts: A very brief review (maybe just a note, really)

 

I just finished reading this new book: Liv Ingeborg Lied & Brent Nongbri, Working with Manuscripts: A Guide for Textual Scholars (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2025). It is not a very long or substantial book (179 pages). I read it in a couple of hours on the train to London (and back again). It is very readable, with a good number of photos and illustrations. I think the key thing about it is that it is written as a basic guide for new graduate students, which assumes they've read some texts in a critical edition, but now are thinking about accessing manuscript resources for their research - but don't really know anything about actual manuscripts (see p. 6).  

 

This book, as you can see from the official table of Contents, has chapters on Manuscripts as Artifacts (why looking at manuscripts may be interesting, as well as interesting discussion and definitions of parts of a manuscript book); Finding your Manuscript (how to use a combination of print and online resources to locate a manuscript of interest; and how to decipher the many ways the same manuscript may be referred to); Provenance (thinking about how your manuscript comes to be where it is and the variety of ethical issues which should be considered in researching and publishing on particular manuscripts); Getting Access (how to email a librarian, and other tips); In the Reading Room with your Manuscript (what to actually look for and how to behave around librarians); Back Home - What Now? (how to keep track of your notes and photos); Asking for Help (how to email senior scholars and ask for help); Publishing and Permissions (does what it says on the tin). 

The range and scope of the bibliographies will I imagine help any reader - there are pretty substantial bibliographies for each chapter (I certainly marked up quite a few items to track down and read*); the actual discussion is sometimes pretty basic - but for that reason will be extremely useful for the imagined student reader. There is a lot of good advice here. If you fit the intended reader profile or have students who do, then I'm sure you'll find this book useful. 

 

*Potentially, at some point in the future. Maybe to get a pdf and save it randomly somewhere on my laptop.