''Editio Regia'' (''Royal edition'') is the third and the most important edition of the Greek New Testament of Robert Estienne (1503–1559). It is one of the most important representatives of the ''

Textus Receptus The (Latin for 'received text') is the succession of printed Greek New Testament texts starting with Erasmus' ''Novum Instrumentum omne'' (1516) and including the editions of Robert Estienne, Stephanus, Theodore Beza, Beza, the House of Elzevir ...

'', the first generation of printed editions of the Greek New Testament in history. It was named ''Editio Regia'' because of the beautiful and elegant Greek font it uses, known as the Grecs du roi. It was edited by Estienne in 1550 at

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. It is the first Greek Testament that has a critical apparatus. Estienne entered on the margins of the pages variant readings from 15 Greek manuscripts as well as many readings from the Complutensian Polyglot. He designated all these sources by symbols from α' to ιϛ'. The ''Complutensian Polyglot'' was signified by α'. The critical collation was the new subject, and although Estienne omitted hundreds of important variants from used witnesses, it was a significant early step towards textual criticism of the New Testament. The oldest manuscript used in this edition was the Codex Bezae, which had been collated for him, "by friends in Italy" (''secundo exemplar vetustissimum in Italia ab amicis collatum''). The majority of these manuscripts are held in the National Library of France to the present day. Estienne made only a few changes in the Erasmian Novum Testamentum: for example, he added verse Luke 17:36, which he took from Codex Bezae. The text of the editions of 1546 (first) and 1549 (second) was a composition of the Complutensian and Erasmian texts. The 1550 (third) edition (the ''Editio Regia'' proper) approaches more closely to the Erasmian fourth and fifth editions. According to John Mill, the first and second editions differ in 67 places, and the third in 284 places. The third edition became for many scholars, especially in England, the normative text of the Greek New Testament. It maintained this position until 1880. The 1551 (fourth) edition used exactly the same text as the third, without a critical apparatus, but the text is divided into numbered verses for the first time in the history of the printed text of Greek New Testament. It was used for the Geneva Bible.

Manuscripts and sources used in ''Editio Regia''

In his preface Estienne said that he had used sixteen manuscripts as his sources. Manuscripts γ', δ', ε', ϛ', ζ', η', ι', ιε' were taken from the King Henry II's Library (Royal Library of France, now

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

). It was suggested by Wettstein that θ' means

Codex Coislinianus Codex Coislinianus designated by Hp or 015 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), α 1022 ( Soden), was named also as ''Codex Euthalianus''. It is a Greek uncial manuscript of the Pauline epistles, dated palaeographically to the 6th century. The ...

(it came to France ca. 1650, and was not available in time of Estienne).

References

External links

''digitized copy of the Editio Regia 1550 in Regensburg, Staatliche Bibliothek, 999/2Script.67''

''Editio Regia'' 1550
* The New Testament in the original Greek – 1881 {{Authority control Greek New Testament Early printed Bibles 1550 books 1546 books 1549 books

Manuscripts and sources used in ''Editio Regia''

See also

References

Further reading

External links