The “Ideal Version of the Text”: A Text-Critical Review of the Greek Text behind David Bentley Hart's New Testament

Abstract

In his The New Testament: A Translation, David Bentley Hart uses the term “critical text” to describe the Greek text he used as the initial textual base for his translation. However, he also integrated into this critical text readings from the Majority Text, setting them in single square brackets. As a result, Hart describes the source text behind his translation as “an approximation to an ideal version of the [NT] text that in actuality we shall never be able to identify entirely.” This paper investigates Hart's claims about the Greek text underlying his translation, and explores what implications his translation presents to those who are involved in Bible translation, specifically in the area of identifying the textual base for their NT translation projects.