When reading the New Testament, the main (Koine) Greek text that I consult is the Patriarchal Greek New Testament (PATr) that was published by the Patriarchal Press of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1904. My understanding is that it was based on a little over 100 lectionary manuscripts from the 9th – 16th centuries and that it was corrected in 1912 by Professor Basil Antoniades of the Theological School of Chalki. As such, it is often abbreviated "PATr 1904/1912." Because I mainly use Verbum (AKA Logos Bible Software) when consulting the Greek text, I predominantly use their electronic edition which was published in conjunction with the Hellenic Bible Society. My understanding is that this text is in the public domain (and the Logos copyright information indicates as such).
However, I've noticed there appear to be several variations / streams of this text. Sources I've identified, all of which claim to be PATr 1904 and/or 1912 (some acknowledging later corrections), include (with unofficial abbreviations in the "Abbrev." column that are used only for the purposes of comparison in this article):
| Abbrev. | Description |
|---|---|
| eBible | "1904 Patriarchal Greek New Testament with 20 corrections from later editions." Edited by Robert Adam Boyd. |
| Robinson | "Dr. Maurice A. Robinson's ... New Testament Greek text of Antoniades' 1904/1912 Patriarchal edition." Dr. Robinson is credited as the primary editor and Jussi Ala-Konni as a contributor, along with Dr. Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen as the maintainer of the associated GitHub repository. |
| GOA | Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (GOA) website. "The Greek New Testament displayed is the authorized 1904 text of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Patriarchal text has been made available courtesy of the Greek Bible society and was digitized in XML in cooperation with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese Department of Internet Ministries, the Greek BIble Society and the American BIble Society IT Department's OSIS project. The Open Scriptural Information Standard (OSIS) was developed by the Bible Technologies Group in co-sponsorship with the American Bible Society and the Society of Biblical Literature." |
| HBS | Hellenic Bible Society (HBS) website. Πατριαρχικό Κείμενο (Έκδοση Αντωνιάδη, 1904). "Copyrighted by the Hellenic Bible Society, 2017." This text appears to be getting fetched via API calls to the American Bible Society's Bible API. |
| Logos | Logos edition of The Patriarchal Greek New Testament (PATr 1904/1912) by the Hellenic Bible Society and Logos Bible Software. |
| Accordance | Accordance edition of the Greek New Testament: Ecumenical Patriarchal Text (GNT-EPT). "Prepared by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople." "Basil Antoniades, ed. (1904/1912). Includes subsequent corrections by the Church of Greece." "Version 2.3." |
| e-Sword | The "Greek New Testament" dated September 30, 2013 in e-Sword Bible downloads. "This Greek New Testament is the 1904 'Patriarchal' edition of the Greek Orthodox Church." |
There are other electronic editions that claim to be this text, too, some of which almost certainly are not PATr, but for the purposes of this post I'll compare a few examples from the above editions to illustrate this issue.
Matthew 22:32
| Excerpted Text | Matching Edition(s) |
|---|---|
| ... οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ Θεὸς Θεὸς νεκρῶν, ἀλλὰ ζώντων. | eBible, Robinson, GOA, Logos, Accordance, e-Sword |
| ... οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ Θεὸς νεκρῶν, ἀλλὰ ζώντων. | HBS |
Mark 4:3
| Excerpted Text | Matching Edition(s) |
|---|---|
| ... ἐξῆλθεν ὁ σπείρων τοῦ σπεῖραι. | eBible, Robinson, Logos, Accordance, e-Sword |
| ... ἐξῆθεν ὁ σπείρων τοῦ σπεῖραι. | GOA, HBS |
I believe the GOA and HBS have a reading with invalid morphology for ἐξέρχομαι but am unsure (i.e., this may be an erroneous reading in those editions).
Mark 12:31
| Excerpted Text | Matching Edition(s) |
|---|---|
| ... ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς ἑαυτόν. | eBible, Robinson, Accordance |
| ... ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτόν. | GOA, HBS, Logos, e-Sword |
Luke 8:56
| Excerpted Text | Matching Edition(s) |
|---|---|
| καὶ ἐξέστησαν οἱ γονεῖς αὐτῆς.... | eBible, Robinson, Accordance, e-Sword |
| καὶ ἐξέστησαν οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῖς.... | GOA, HBS, Logos |
John 19:31
| Excerpted Text | Matching Edition(s) |
|---|---|
| ... ἡ ἡμέρα ἐκείνου τοῦ σαββάτου.... | eBible, Robinson, HBS, Logos, Accordance, e-Sword |
| ... ἡ ἡμέρα ἐκείνη τοῦ σαββάτου.... | GOA |
Acts 4:36
| Excerpted Text | Matching Edition(s) |
|---|---|
| ... ἀπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων.... | eBible, Robinson, HBS, Logos, Accordance, e-Sword |
| ... ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων.... | GOA |
Acts 16:34
| Excerpted Text | Matching Edition(s) |
|---|---|
| ... καὶ ἠγαλλιᾶτο πανοικὶ πεπιστευκὼς τῷ Θεῷ. | eBible, Robinson, HBS, Logos, Accordance ("ἠγαλλίατο") |
| ... καὶ ἠγαλλιάσατο πανοικὶ πεπιστευκὼς τῷ Θεῷ. | GOA, e-Sword |
Acts 26:30
| Excerpted Text | Matching Edition(s) |
|---|---|
| ... Βερνίκη.... | eBible, Robinson, GOA, Accordance, e-Sword |
| ... Βερενίκη.... | Logos, HBS |
2 Corinthians 8:2
| Excerpted Text | Matching Edition(s) |
|---|---|
| ... βάθους πτωχεία αὐτῶν.... | eBible, Robinson, HBS, Logos, Accordance, e-Sword |
| ... βάθος πτωχεία αὐτῶν.... | GOA |
Hebrews 8:11
| Excerpted Text | Matching Edition(s) |
|---|---|
| καὶ οὐ μὴ διδάξωσιν... | eBible, Robinson, HBS, Logos, Accordance, e-Sword |
| καὶ οὐ μὴ διδάξουσιν.... | GOA |
James 4:14
| Excerpted Text | Matching Edition(s) |
|---|---|
| ... ἀτμὶς γάρ ἔσται.... | eBible, Robinson, GOA, Accordance |
| ... ἀτμὶς γάρ ἐστιν.... | HBS, Logos, e-Sword |
I've only included a small number of examples and have excluded certain differences from consideration such as movable nu and other minor orthographical differences such as elision (e.g., αλλ` vs. αλλά, απ` vs. από), certain word-break differences (e.g., εἰμὴ vs. εἰ μὴ), verse numbering differences, etc. It's perplexing that they don't all differ in a consistent manner. These all claim to be reproductions of the PATr 1904/1912, but clearly have more variations between them that don't support them all being the same text. Granted, they are all very minor and in some cases untranslatable differences, but perhaps none of them accurately represents the printed edition of PATr from 1904 and/or 1912 (which would include any published errata). I understand that later editors are trying to correct what they perceive to be errors, but ideally clear version control would occur and these editors would document what was changed, or at least provide an updated date when the changes occurred (versus still calling it the 1904 and/or 1912 edition).
I think a little humility is in order here. As much as some scholars bemoan that ancient scribes (who hand-copied texts) created so many manuscript variants, the printing press—let alone structured electronic markup formats—clearly still haven't created more textual uniformity!
Also, this issue isn't limited just to PATr. Alan Bunning indicated that he ran into the same issue with other online texts including Westcott and Hort and Stephanus 1550, and I have seen this also with other electronic Greek New Testaments that are allegedly from some published edition (including some recently-published editions!).
I posted an earlier version of this article on the B-Greek forum. Many thanks to Jeff Dodson for assisting with collations and alerting me to the inconsistencies in the first place!