This volume collects together for the first time the most influential papers of the late scholar of Georgian and New Testament textual critic, J. Neville Birdsall. Professor Birdsall wrote on Greek witnesses to the New Testament text, the Georgian version of the New Testament, palaeography, patristics, and the theory of textual criticism. The collection fully demonstrates the author’s standing as one of the most learned and wide-ranging New Testament textual scholars of modern times.

Did scribes intentionally change the text of the New Testament? This book argues they did not and disputes the claims that variant readings are theologically motivated. Using evidence gathered from some of the earliest surviving biblical manuscripts these essays reconstruct the copying habits of scribes and explore the contexts in which they worked. Alongside these are studies of selected early Christian writings, which illustrate attitudes to and examples of textual change.

James Rendel Harris uses known statistics of ancient autographs (that is, the original version of a written document) to posit the general appearance of the epistles in their original form.

Frederick Coneybeare uses Armenian and Greek texts of Chrysostom's sermons on Acts to question and correct the core text in use by the Western church.