Byzantine catholic dating

Modern translations mainly use Eclectic editions that conform more often to the Alexandrian text-type.

It is the form found in the largest number of surviving manuscripts, though not in the oldest.

Two broad explanations have been offered for this observation: In Mark and Luke the Byzantine text-type looks like a combination of the Alexandrian and the Western text. Mark looks like a combination of the Alexandrian and the Caesarean text.

In order to displace the Textus Receptus (see the following section) from its initially prominent position among printed editions of the Greek New Testament, later textual scholars of the critical text persuasion saw the need for a thoroughgoing theory of the transmission of the text that could effectively disregard the overwhelmingly numerical superiority of the Byzantine text which formed its base.

The earliest Church Father to witness to a Byzantine text-type in substantial New Testament quotations is John Chrysostom (c.

349 – 407); although the fragmentary surviving works of Asterius the Sophist († 341) have also been considered to conform to the Byzantine text, Chrysostom and Asterius used text only in 75% agreed with the standard Byzantine text.