The history of the Apocalypse in the Greek manuscripts reveals that its place at the end is not uniform.| Text & Canon Institute
What can we learn from the overzealous excitement about the earliest known copy of our earliest Gospel? Elijah Hixson gives four cautions about the dangers of trusting in a new manuscript discovery before its been published.| Text & Canon Institute
Sort our entire collection of articles by topic, reading level, and author.| Text & Canon Institute
Illustration by David Fassett By far the most common question I get asked about Bible translation is What’s the best one? What I’ve noticed is that, very often, the question comes with a hint of worry—worry that, depending on my answer, the person may discover they’ve been using a second-best translation. And when it’s God’s word we’re reading, no […]| Text & Canon Institute
Origen’s six-columned Old Testament, produced in the second century, was a monumental achievement in the Bible’s history.| Text & Canon Institute
While not explicitly Christian, the U.S. Constitution was forged by those who shared the Bible’s view of human nature.| Text & Canon Institute
These diverse ancient works expand upon the four canonical Gospels in creative and sometimes subversive ways.| Text & Canon Institute
How does the Oxford don’s influential argument for ‘local texts’ of the Gospels hold up after 100 years?| Text & Canon Institute
The Masoretic Text is the fruit of the genius of Jewish textual scholars who codified the pronunciation of the Hebrew text.| Text & Canon Institute
Bible translators have thousands of decisions to make, many of which go beyond the most obvious one of deciding how to translate any given word or phrase. Here are five decisions that every translator has to decide—whether their readers know it or not. These include who the audience is, whether to start from scratch or revise an older translation, what textual form to translate, how to handle culturally specific terms, and how much to explain the translators decisions through readers’ aid...| Text & Canon Institute
Taking the evidence of the Dead Sea Scroll seriously means putting the differences—and the similarities—in proper context.| Text & Canon Institute
The apostle Paul quoted Scripture more than a hundred times in his thirteen canonical letters, but he never identified the version of Scripture that he used. Why bother?—you may think—everyone knows he used the Septuagint (LXX). He was obviously not quoting Scripture in the original language, because he was writing in Greek, not Hebrew, so […]| Text & Canon Institute
Scenes from the Witch of Endor painting by Benjamin West (1777).Source The portrayal of witches in movies and TV often conjures up images of medieval settings, seen in comedies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, fantasy series like Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia, or more serious movies like In the Name of the Rose and Black Death. These depictions usually show women in […]| Text & Canon Institute
iStock Paleographers perform an important initial step in the textual criticism of the Bible, from studying the development of ancient Greek handwriting to determining the date and provenance of undated manuscripts. One maxim of textual criticism is that, all things being equal, the earliest readings are preferred. However, ancient literary manuscripts often were not dated by […]| Text & Canon Institute
Sectarian translations go too far beyond the natural bias inherent in something as complex as translating the Bible.| Text & Canon Institute
Martin Luther didn’t set out to produce a bestseller. But 500 years ago that’s exactly what he did. His 1522 German New Testament has influenced Bibles ever since, from format to contents to readability to explanatory notes.| Text & Canon Institute
The most widely read English Bible translation has sprouted a series of fictions about it. It’s time to prune them. The King James or Authorised Version is read daily all over the world and remains the most read English Bible in America and cutting away the myths provides a visual banquet on which our souls may feast. In this article, Timothy Berg, answers seven common misconceptions about how the King James Bible was translated and reprinted.| Text & Canon Institute
Why we must steward and protect the trust people have in prominent Bible translations.| Text & Canon Institute
Used by the Apostles and the early church, the Greek translations of the Old Testament may be the most important ever made.| Text & Canon Institute
The modern impulse to get the Bible right in translation has its roots in the Jews who revised the Septuagint.| Text & Canon Institute
Erasmus’s Greek New Testament was a monumental achievement, but left room for later scholars to improve it.| Text & Canon Institute
An argument that Mark 16:9–20 is not original and so not inspired Scripture Peter Head considers the evidence against the Longer Ending and concludes by reflecting on how we should treat it today.| Text & Canon Institute
Today, Codex Vaticanus is treated as a premier biblical manuscript. It was not always so. This article explains how scholars changed their opinions about the importance of the text in Codex Vaticanus.| Text & Canon Institute
By combining familiar and original material, the Scofield Reference Bible ushered in a theological sea change.| Text & Canon Institute
Revelation was used widely in the early church, then doubted in the East in the fourth century, but eventually accepted again. This article explores the reception of Revelation in the biblical canon.| Text & Canon Institute