Textus Receptus

Textus Receptus (Latin: "Received Text") is the name given to the first Greek text of the New Testament that was printed with movable type. It was compiled by Desiderius Erasmus for his translation of the Bible into Latin, and later used as the basis for the translation of the New Testament in the King James Version of the Bible. This is the text that was in use by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Erasmus' time (c. 1500). The Textus Receptus is classified by scholars as a late Byzantine text.

Erasmus's original 1519 edition of the Greek New Testament was done in haste, and full of typographical errors. The errors in the first printing, and the high demand for a Greek version, led to a flurry of Greek editions in the early 1500's; the name "Textus Receptus" can refer to any of these, or any Greek edition printed from 1519 to about 1650. The name itself derives from the publisher's preface to a 1633 edition, containing the phrase "textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum", meaning roughly "so you have the text now received by all".

See also: New Testament, Byzantine text-type, Alexandrian text-type, Caesarean text-type, Western text-type, Vulgate