This project began in 2009 when I discovered after looking everywhere for a copy of the accented Greek text of Scrivener's Textus Receptus (1894), that none existed in public domain. There were plenty of unaccented copies of Scrivener's text, but none with the Greek accents. But I also found that there were hundreds if not thousands of variations of even the unaccented copies of what was reported to be the same text. The variations would be minor with alternate spellings because of the movable ν or ς, or typos, but since my interest was to have a base text for the purposes of discovering structural integrity, I needed to be as accurate as possible with the text I was representing.
Since each Greek letter also has a numerical value, and therefore weight, each verse could be represented by the weight of the verse. In terms of structural integrity, the weight is like a checksum. You may not know if the checksum is wrong, but you can certainly know when it is right because the weight will carry a coherent thought in the structure.
Take for example:
James 1:6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
For this verse, most of the Greek manuscripts are the same with the following exceptions: Two iota subscripts which would not appear in any text without accents, such as the one below the omega = ῳ. There is also a movable ν on the 10th word in most manuscripts. When weighed, the iota subscript and the nu would weigh 10 and 50 respectively, but the moveable nu, does not appear the have any weight as one would normally give it. Here is the verse in Greek in most manuscripts with the movable nu in parenthesis.
Jas.1.6 αἰτείτω δὲ ἐν πίστει, μηδὲν διακρινόμενος• ὁ γὰρ διακρινόμενος ἔοικε(ν) κλύδωνι θαλάσσης ἀνεμιζομένῳ καὶ ῥιπιζομένῳ.
The weight of the verse is determined by adding the normal numerical values of the Greek letters. Adding the letters, gives these four possible combinations.
- Include the movable ν, but not the iota subscript = 8040
- Include the movable ν, and the two iota subscripts = 8060
- Do not include the movable ν, but include the iota subscripts = 8010
- Do not include the movable ν, nor the iota subscripts = 7990
Compare the weight to the Strong's...
- Hebrew Strong's # 8040 = left handed
- Hebrew Strong's # 8060 = Shammai
- Hebrew Strong's # 8010 = Solomon
- Hebrew Strong's # 7990 = ruler, lawful
Which weight is correct? Look at the previous verse:
Jas 1:5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
Can you see which weight has the breath of God? The correct weight is 8010 by structural validation.
I used the unaccented copy of the Scrivener’s text to compare with other unaccented texts, and with the accented public domain copy of the Stefanus 1550 Textus Receptus. The differences I verified with the scanned copy of the 1887 Scrivener found on Archive.org here: http://www.archive.org/details/greeknewtestamen00scriuoft
After I made corrections in my text, the project was shelved for about a year until January 2011, when I found Alan Bunning’s website, (site no longer exists), where he compared 5 electronic texts of Scrivener, and found as many as 2159 alternations between the texts. Since Bunning had critically analyzed his text, and fixed all the variations that he could between all the electronic copies, I compared his to the unaccented copy that I generated in 2010 from what appeared to be fairly close to the printed 1894 text. In total, I had 147 variations that had to be manually verified and corrected if needed. Bunning's new website is at https://greekcntr.org.
Although this text is provided "as is" without regard to the structure, it does represent a good starting point should structural analysis be used to help in future textural criticism. The differences I retained are as follows:
I have 14 colophons which I placed at the end of the respective books.
1 difference is because I used a "stigma" rather than a "sigma" in Rev 13:18.
1 difference was because my version of Mark 6:3 uses οὐχ and Bunning's is οὐκ. Mine agrees with the printed 1887 and 1894 text.
6 differences (3 pairs) were Romans 1:9-10, Romans 3:25-26, and 1 Thes 2:11-12 where the verse division may not have been clear. Mine follows the verse division of the KJV.
All the other differences I found, I verified that Brunning's was correct according to the printed 1894. Most of the other differences were either the inclusion or omission of movable ν or ς. Other differences were due to compound words, or word splits.
There is approximately 140,000 words containing accents, of which most are validated with direct comparisons to known accented copy. The remaining differences were manually edited in from verification of a TR-1887 http://www.archive.org/details/greeknewtestamen00scriuoft and the TR-1894 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ih43AAAAMAAJ&ots=TYJAWQVEPZ&pg=PP9.
It is believed that this is the closest electronic version of Scrivener's 1894 Textus Receptus (TR-1894) available in public domain.
To request a copy, please send me an E-mail at downloads@newjerusalem.org with a Subject: Scrivener's 1894 Textus Receptus. Also, let me know how you found about about this, and the reason of your interest.
My text is in OSIS xml format (see: http://bibletechnologies.net/ for information on OSIS).
I also have encoded the Scrivener's 1894 with the Strong's numbers, Robinson Morphology, and KJV Gloss in a Excel file which is also available on request.
- Wade Balzer