The original text

Establishing the original text
To discover the original text of the Bible, scholars compare different kinds of manuscripts with each other. Using the differences and similarities, they work out how the biblical text looked thousands of years ago.

The Old Testament
There are many ancient translations that scholars compare to establish the original text of the Old Testament. The main ones are:

• The Masoretic Text in Hebrew (created from about 600 to 950 AD);
• The Septuagint Greek translation (from around the 3rd century BC);
• Biblical texts from among the Dead Sea Scrolls (from the 1st century BC);
• The Latin Vulgate (completed at the turn of the 5th century AD).

The New Testament
When it comes to the New Testament, scholars examine three ancient types of Greek manuscript:

• Alexandrian texts (written in Egypt from the 2nd century AD onwards);
• Texts from the ‘Western’ tradition, which were written mostly in North Africa, Italy and southern France in the early centuries AD; 
• Byzantine/Majority texts which again, were written in the earliest centuries AD.

Scholars also look at ancient translations of the New Testament in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic and Gothic.