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ONLINE GREEK:
THE STEPHENS 1550 TEXTUS RECEPTUS
TRANSLITERATED EDITION
Prepared and edited by
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.
Version 2.2, 28 April 1990
©1990 and Released as FREEWARE by the Author
FREEWARE DECLARATION:
Jesus stated in John 2:16, "Do not make my Father's
house a house of merchandise!" (mh poieite ton oikon
tou patrov mou oikon emporiou). This Bible product
therefore may NOT be sold for commercial profit.
A SMALL copying/distribution charge may be assessed
for these Greek New Testament files as distributed
with or as a supplement to the ONLINE BIBLE, ver.4.0,
but even this fee must be kept to a minimum.
Publishers of commercial products are specifically
prohibited from including these files within a program
or other package intended for commercial gain without
making prior arrangement with the copyright holder.
A generous donation to your favorite evangelical
organization is encouraged. If you have none, the
editor would suggest Thru the Bible Radio, Box 7100,
Pasadena, CA 91109, through which he first heard the
Word of God TAUGHT verse-by-verse.
INTRODUCTION
The entire Stephens 1550 edition of the Greek New Testament
is included in the present collection of files. The text
appears in transliterated ASCII format, in which a single
English letter represents a single Greek letter according
to the following scheme:
Alpha = a Nu = n
Beta = b Xi = x
Gamma = g Omicron = o
Delta = d Pi = p
Epsilon = e Rho = r
Zeta = z Sigma = s
Eta = h Tau = t
Theta = y Upsilon = u
Iota = i Phi = f
Kappa = k Chi = c
Lambda = l Psi = q
Mu = m Omega = w
Sigma final = v
This transliteration method agrees closely with the placement
of keys on Greek-language typewriters and is identical with
that used by the commercial printer/font driver software
LETTRIX, published by Hammerlab, Inc. Through the use of
LETTRIX or other dot-matrix font drivers, the present Greek
New Testament text can be printed in hard copy on a dot-
matrix printer using actual Greek characters with an optional
mixture of additional text in various English, Hebrew, or
even Russian fonts. Further information regarding LETTRIX
appears at the end of this documentation.
These ASCII Greek New Testament files have been encoded and
incorporated into the ONLINE BIBLE by its programmer, Larry
Pierce. The ONLINE BIBLE format allows full text display as
well as a rapid word search capability in the Greek New
Testament, whether concordance-style by individual word usage
or in various word or phrase combinations through Boolean
AND/OR/NOT searches. Refer to the ONLINE BIBLE file,
MANUAL.DOC for search instructions. Eventually, the ONLINE
BIBLE will provide its own font driver for dot matrix
printers to allow the printing of the Greek text in its
native characters in the same manner as LETTRIX.
The Stephens 1550 text is that found in George Ricker Berry's
edition of "The Interlinear Literal Translation of the Greek
New Testament" (New York: Hinds & Noble, 1897). This
Stephens/Berry text has appeared frequently in reprint
editions (in the United States mostly from Baker Book House
and Zondervan Publishing House) and is the Textus Receptus
edition most readily available to any student of New
Testament Greek.
The Stephens 1550 edition of the so-called "Textus Receptus"
(Received Text) reflects a general agreement with other early
printed Greek texts also (erroneously) called by that name.
These include editions such as that of Erasmus 1516, Beza
1598, and (the only one actually termed "Textus Receptus")
Elzevir 1633. Berry correctly notes that "In the main they
are one and the same; and [any] of them may be referred to as
the Textus Receptus" (Berry, p.ii).
All these early printed Greek New Testaments closely parallel
the text of the English-language King James (or Authorized)
Version of 1611, since that version was based closely upon
Beza 1598, which differed little from its "Textus Receptus"
predecessors. These early Greek "TR" editions generally
reflect the "Byzantine" (otherwise called the "Majority" or
"Traditional") Textform which predominated throughout the
period of manual copying of Greek New Testament manuscripts.
Many evangelical scholars have begun to re-evaluate the
authenticity-claims of the Byzantine Textform over against
subjectively-based textual preferences, whether stemming from
Westcott and Hort or from modern "reasoned" or "rigorous"
eclectic theorists such as Metzger, Aland, or Kilpatrick.
The user should note that the present Stephens 1550 TR
edition does NOT agree with modern critical editions such as
that published by the United Bible Societies or the various
Nestle editions. These editions follow a predominantly
"Alexandrian" Greek text, as opposed to the Byzantine
Textform which generally underlies all TR editions. For more
detail on these technical text-critical matters, consult the
bibliographic resources listed below.
One should recognize, however, that NO printed Receptus Greek
text edition agrees 100% with the aggregate Byzantine
(Majority/Traditional) manuscript tradition. However, all
printed Receptus texts DO approximate the Byzantine Textform
closely enough (around 98% agreement) to claim a near-
identity of reading between those Receptus forms and the
majority of all manuscripts.
The significant differences between the modern critical
texts, the King James Version, and the Byzantine (Majority)
Textform are most clearly presented in the NU- and M-text
footnotes appended to editions of the New King James Version,
published by Thomas Nelson Co.
To standardize his presentation of the Greek text, Berry
adopted certain stylistic conventions concerning the movable
letters -n and -v (i.e., final "n" and "s", which in no way
affect the actual meaning of the Greek text, being solely
matters of form for ease of pronunciation). Berry states in
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