This site gives the main variants of the Greek New Testament - since there are thousands of NT manuscripts, it is natural that there are differences between them, and it is not always easy to determine what the original reading was, even through for 99% of the verses the original text is clear.
There is also some information on the Greek words in the text. Move the cursor above a word (without clicking) to see its grammatical form and definition, and click on a parola for a definition and other information.
To show the Greek text and variants, choose a book and type the reference of a passage (for example 3:2-4,6, 4:7) and click the button View Text.
The variants of a verse, if they exist, are listed separated by a blank line. The text that the site uses (UBS/NA26) is always given first and the alternative readings follow on the next lines. Every reading is followed by the evidence, that is the manuscripts (or some of the manuscripts) that contain it. If the mouse is left briefly on the name of a manuscripts, you will be able to see the date and text type of the manuscript (which can be useful when a manuscript has several text types, and you want to check the text type of the manuscript in the third ordering in the options).
The default ordering of the manuscripts is: papyri, uncials, families, minuscules, lectionaries, ancient versions, Fathers, editions and Italian translations.
The manuscripts page has more information on the codes used for the manuscripts, and also their date, contents and text type.
In the text of the variants the following Latin abbreviations are used:
omit (= omittit, omittunt) omit the following text
add (= addit, addunt) add the following text
A manuscripts can be accompagnied by the following signs:
(...) has some minor difference
[...] the text in the manuscript is between square brackets
* the original reading
a,b,c three manoscripts of the writings of Theophylact
c a correction; when different people have corrected a manuscript they are indicated by 1, 2, 3 etcetera
text the text of a manuscript or Father when different from the text in the commentary that accompagnies the text
lem a quotation in a lemma of a Father, that is the text the precedes a commentary
comm a quotation in the text of a commentary of a Father, when different from the Biblical text quoted
mg a reading in the margin
dub a quotation from a Father, where there is doubt that it is the work of that Father
gr the Greek text of a Father
lat the Latin text of a Father
arm the Armenian text of a Father
syr the Syriac text of a Father
slav the Slavonic text of a Father
arab the Arab text of a Father
vid (=videtur) the reading is not certain, for example if the document is damaged
v.r. variant reading specifically indicated in the manuscript as an alternative
2/3 etc the second number gives how many times the passage is quoted by a Father, the first number how many times it is quoted in the form of that variant
At the end of a group of manuscripts or of all the evidence, the following can be added:
pc (=pauci) also a few other manuscripts (less than 5% of all the manuscripts)
al (=alii) many manuscripts (from 5 to 25%)
pm (=permulti) most of the manuscripts (from 25 to 70%)
pl (=plerique) almost all the other manuscripts
pt part of the group
ms one manuscript of that group
mss some manuscripts of that group
Other abbreviations:
(ex lat?) the variant might have been influenced by a part of all of the Latin translation
p) after a variant in the Gospels indicates that it was possibly influenced by a parallel passage
f,ff (=uerses sequens, sequentes) and the following
sic an error reproduced exactly
The simplest search is to look for all the verses that contain a word. You need to type the word with normal letters, without accents or an initial h, and in lower case letters, using the following scheme:
| α | a |
| β | b |
| γ | g |
| δ | d |
| ε | e |
| ζ | z |
| η | ê |
| θ | th |
| ι | i |
| κ | k |
| λ | l |
| μ | m |
| ν | n |
| ξ | x |
| ο | o |
| π | p |
| ρ | r |
| σ | s |
| τ | t |
| υ | u or y |
| φ | f or ph |
| χ | ch |
| ψ | ps |
| ω | ô |
To type ê and ô, in Windows hold the key ALT down whilst you type 0234 or 0244 with the numeric keyboard. It is also possible to use ? instead of a letter and * for any number of letters.
Examples:
abussou finds ἀβύσσου
abusso? finds ἀβύσσου and ἄβυσσον
a*el finds Ἅβελ
To search for a root instead of a word, you need to put / in front of the root written in the same way. You can attach the root to the word to specify which one to search for.
Examples:
/abussos finds ἀβύσσου and ἄβυσσον
autou/autos finds αὐτοῦ as a pronoun or adjective
autou/autou finds αὐτοῦ as an adverb
You can also search for a word according to its grammatical form, starting with the symbol #. After the symbol one or more words are put to indicate the form to search for. If there is more than one word, you need to separate them with hyphens. The following list indicates the words that you can use, but no more than one from each line. Some choices exclude others: for example a preposition does not have other characteristics, and so search for a preposition and something else will always return 0 verses. You can also use abbreviations, as long as they contain at least the letters in bold.
verb, noun, adverb, adjective, articole, demonstrative pronoun (abbrev. dp), interrogative/indefinite pronoun (abbrev. ip), personal/possessive pronoun (abbrev. pp), relative pronoun (abbrev. rp), preposition, conjunction, interjection, particle
first person, second persone, third person
present, imperfect, future, aorist, perfect, pluperfect
active, middle, passive
indicative, imperative, subjunctive, optative, infinitive, participle
nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative
singular, plural
masculine, feminine, neuter
comparative, superlative
It is also possible to attach the grammatical form to the word and/or to the root.
Examples:
#o finds all the optative verbs
autou#pp-ne finds αὐτοῦ as the neuter personal pronoun (that is not masculine and not an adverb)
t????/o*#pd-nom finds every word of five letters with a root that begins with o and that is a nominative dimostrative pronoun
Instead of the translitterated letters, you can insert the words using Unicode (UTF-8). However, it is difficult to type the letters in this format. You can however copy and paste a word of a page of this sito, or from another progam, to do a search.
The search expression can contain several words, with symbols between the words to indicate the type of search. If there is a space, the verses that contain both the words will be found. If there is the character | or the character !, the verses that contain at least one of the words will be found. The characters ~ and ^ mean NOT the following word. Finally, a digit from 1 to 9 means the first word and, within that number of verses, also the second. Parenthesis can be used to create more complicated researches.
Examples:
abba /krazô finds all the verses than contain αββα and a word with the root κράζω
iêsous kurios~christos finds all the verses than contain the words Ἰησοῦς and κύριος but not Χριστός
(/silas|/silouanos)5/timotheos^/timotheos finds all the versetti than contain one of the forms of the name Silas and within five verses also Timothy, but not with Timothy in the same verse
To search the words in order in a phrase, and not only in any place in the verse, put them inside square brackets. The parenthesis and the symbol for OR can be used inside the square brackets as well. The numbers have a different meaning: the second word must appear within that number of words from the first. If there are more than two words, the number is always relative to the first, as in the second example.
Examples:
[ampliaton 9 ourbanon] finds the names Ampliatus and Urbanus close together - note that the second word does not have to appear in the same verse as the first
[/metanoia eis2/afesis] finds the verses that speak of repentence for forgiveness, with the three words together in that order
[(/airô|/lambanô) 2 stauron] finds the verses that contain one of the two verbs and no more than two words after the accusative of the word for cross
a*i?? [#ind-sing 5/pisteuô]^(d*|tounantion)3theos finds one verse
After having typed the search expression, you can put the reference of the passage in which you want to search the expression. The site is able to understand almost any form of reference that you might use. Leaving the field empty, the search will be done in all the New Testament.
Finally, you need to choose which Greek text you want to search.
In this search you can find all the words with certain characteristics. If you choose a certain form of the word (verb, noun, etc.), further options are activate. Sometimes not all these extra options are meaningful; for example, if verb is chosed, and the first person participles can be search for, even if such participles don't exist. If at least one of these extra options is chosen, the site searches for the words. Otherwise, the site searches for the roots with these characteristics. Typing the references, you can compare the words in two passages of the NT (to search in all of the NT, leave the field blank). For example, all the words in the NT that appear at least twice in a certain passage, or all the words of a passage that appear less than 10 times in another passage.
1. You can choose whether to view the variant readings, or only the Greek text.
2. You can choose the order in which the manuscripts will be listed:
3. You can choose to also view the text of Westcott and Hort, and the text of Tischendorf (eighth edition). For Tischendorf there were some changes made to the verse numbers (for example at the end of John 1) to use the same numbers as the NA/UBS text.
4. You can choose to view the references to the chosen verses in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. There references were taken from the site Early Christian Writings, that had created an index of these Fathers on the site of the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. There are however some errors on the site of Early Christian Writings, of which I have corrected some. For every verse, every reference in the Fathers is on a different line, with the title of the book of the Fathers, a link to the complete text, and a small phrase that contains the allusion.
5. You can choose, when there are multiple texts (the Greek texts, the variants and the allusions), to view them one after another vertically or horizonally in parallel columns.
6. You can also choose the language to use for these pages (English or Italian).
7. You can choose the Unicode font to use per the Greek text - see the font page for an explanation.
For more information on Text Criticism, see the Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism and the sites listed at the New Testament Gateway.
Back to the Greek New Testament.