Byzantine text-type in the context of "Caesarean text-type"

In textual criticism of the New Testament, the Alexandrian text-type is one of the main text types. It is the text type favored by the majority of modern textual critics and it is the basis for most modern (after 1900) Bible translations.Over 5,800 New Testament manuscripts have been classified into four groups by text type. Besides the Alexandrian, the other types are the Western, Caesarean, and Byzantine. Compared to these later text types, Alexandrian readings tend to be abrupt, use fewer words, show greater variation among the Synoptic Gospels, and have readings that are considered difficult. That is to say, later scribes tended to polish scripture and improve its literary style. Glosses would occasionally be added as verses during the process of copying a Bible by hand. From the ninth century onward, most surviving manuscripts are of the Byzantine type.

The King James Version and other Reformation-era Bibles are translated from the Textus Receptus, a Greek text created by Erasmus and based on various manuscripts of the Byzantine type. In 1721, Richard Bentley outlined a project to create a revised Greek text based on the Codex Alexandrinus. This project was completed by Karl Lachmann in 1850. Brooke Foss Westcott and F. J. A. Hort of Cambridge published a text based on Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus in 1881. Novum Testamentum Graece by Eberhard Nestle and Kurt Aland, now in its 28th edition, generally follows the text of Westcott and Hort.

Codex Boreelianus, or its full name Codex Boreelianus Rheno-Trajectinus, is a uncial manuscript of the New Testament Gospels in Greek, written on parchment. It is designated by F or 09 in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts, and ε 86 in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscripts. It is full of gaps, many of which arose between 1751 and 1830. The codex was named Boreelianus after Johannes Boreel (1577–1629), who brought it from the East.

The text of the codex represents the majority of the text (Byzantine text-type), but with numerous alien readings (non-Byzantine). Some of its readings do not occur in any other manuscript (so called singular readings). According to the present textual critics its text is not very important, but it is cited in all modern editions of the Greek New Testament.

The Garima Gospels are three ancient Geʽez manuscripts containing all four canonical Gospel Books, as well as some supplementary material like lists of Gospel chapters. Garima 2, the earliest, is believed to be the earliest surviving complete illuminated Christian manuscript. Monastic tradition holds that the first two were composed close to the year 500, a date supported by recent radiocarbon analysis; samples from Garima 2 proposed a date of c. 390–570, while counterpart dating of samples from Garima 1 proposed a date of c. 530–660. The third manuscript is thought to date to a later period. The artwork in the manuscripts of the Garima Gospels also demonstrates their affinity to Christian artwork in late antique Coptic Egypt, Nubia, and Himyar (Yemen).

Together, the manuscripts provide the major witness to the Ethiopic version of the Gospels and have been applied as proof texts for the creation of critical editions of the Ethiopic Gospels by Rochus Zuurmond (Gospel of Mark, 1989; Gospel of Matthew, 2001) and Michael G. Wechsler (Gospel of John, 2005). As such, they represent amongst the earliest versional witnesses to the early Byzantine text-type of the Gospels, and are the oldest surviving Ethiopian manuscripts of any kind known to modern scholars. Western scholarship had previously believed both gospels to date from c. 1100 or later on the basis of palaeographic analysis.