The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels

by John William Burgon

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.

241 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

John William Burgon was an English Anglican divine who become the Dean of Chichester Cathedral in 1876. He is remembered for his passionate defense of the historicity and Mosaic authorship of Genesis and of Biblical inerrancy in general.

Reviews

[Frederick]

This is an important work for any serious student of the transmission of Biblical texts. Burgon traced the traditional text of the gospels (not the one from which the NIV, NASB, ESV, HCSV, etc. were created), "from the earliest years of Christianity of which any record of the New Testament remains, to the period when it was enshrined in a large number of carefully-written manuscripts in main accord with one another." This is a worthy study for a student of the Bible.

[M]

Somewhat technical, but not unnecessarily. The book is highly enlightening regarding the "Some early manuscripts..." asterisks which occur in most modern translations. Burgon does an excellent job of showing why those asterisked texts are trustworthy, having been quoted by early church writers and various translations centuries before the "early manuscripts." Burgon lays the case that the minority texts were gradually and firmly rejected by the worldwide body. He also lays serious accusations against the trustworthiness of those few manuscripts.

I come away from the book with the desire to read a good counterargument for the "early" manuscripts and an even stronger desire to get a modern translation based on the "majority" manuscripts. Highly recommended read!