What Scrivener Actually Reconstructed

Part II: Mark 16 and Scrivener · Article 3 of 3

F. H. A. Scrivener’s 1881 Greek New Testament was a reconstruction. Stephen Steele is right about the noun. The question is what Scrivener reconstructed and from what materials.

He did not attempt to recover the apostolic autographs by translating the King James Bible back into Greek. He reconstructed, for a defined historical purpose, the composite Greek basis represented by the AV translators’ choices. He began with Beza’s Greek text of 1598, compared the AV with other Greek editions available to the translators or their predecessors, and recorded about 190 departures from Beza.

The Authorized Version guided the inquiry. Antecedent Greek readings governed what could enter the text.

“Reverse-engineered” is therefore accurate only if it describes the direction of historical collation. It is misleading if it describes the direction of textual authority.

Why the Edition Was Needed

The New Testament Revision Company was instructed to revise the Authorized Version and to consider Greek readings different from the text presumed to underlie it. Readers needed a way to see where the Revisers’ adopted readings departed from the AV’s basis.

There was an immediate practical problem: the AV was not made from one printed Greek edition at every place. Its English descended from Tyndale and subsequent versions; its translators consulted Beza, Stephanus, Erasmus, the Complutensian Polyglot, and other resources. No single Greek volume reproduced all the readings represented by their final English.¹

Scrivener’s companion edition supplied the missing baseline. It printed the Greek text presumed to underlie the Authorized Version and marked readings adopted by the Revision Company. Its purpose was comparative and documentary.

That purpose explains why the AV stands at the beginning of Scrivener’s investigation. If the question is “Which Greek reading did these translators follow?”, the English translation is indispensable evidence.

It does not follow that the English words generated the Greek reading.

Beza as the Base

Scrivener selected Beza’s 1598 New Testament as his primary authority. He gave two reasons. The edition was likely to have been in the translators’ hands, and it agreed more closely with the AV than any other single Greek text.²

The choice was historical, not absolute. Where the AV departed from Beza, Scrivener asked whether its rendering agreed with another Greek reading that could naturally have been known through printed editions to the translators or their predecessors. If so, he displaced Beza with that “more truly representative” reading and noted the variation.

This procedure produced a Greek edition never before printed as one continuous text. Its novelty lay in the configuration, not generally in the component readings.

Edward F. Hills summarized the translators’ eclectic use of the Received Text editions. In 252 places where the sources differed enough to affect English, the AV agreed with Beza against Stephanus 113 times, with Stephanus against Beza 59 times, and 80 times with Erasmus, the Complutensian, or the Latin Vulgate against both. Hills therefore called the AV an “independent variety” of the Textus Receptus.³

The phrase can mislead if it suggests that an English translation is itself a Greek edition. Hills’s point is historical: the translators’ combined choices did not duplicate one editor’s continuous text.

“Only Greek Authority”

One sentence in Scrivener’s preface controls the controversy:

“It was manifestly necessary to accept only Greek authority.”⁴

---

1. F. H. A. Scrivener, preface to The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881), https://kjbhistory.com/the-preface-to-the-greek-tr-of-f-h-a-scrivener/. ↩
2. Ibid. ↩
3. Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th ed. (Des Moines: Christian Research Press, 1984), 220–21, https://ia601502.us.archive.org/0/items/TheKingJamesVersionDefended/TheKingJamesVersionDefended.pdf. ↩
4. Scrivener, preface. ↩

Scrivener immediately explains why. At some places the Authorized Version follows the Latin Vulgate exactly while corresponding only loosely with any form of the Greek original. If English agreement alone were sufficient, he could have fashioned a Greek sentence to match the AV. He did not grant himself that license.

Instead, his approximately 190 departures from Beza were placed in an appendix with the authorities on which they rested. English identified the problem; Greek authority supplied the solution.

This is incompatible with the strongest sense of Steele’s accusation. A Greek text derived linguistically from the KJV would require the editor to translate English wording into Greek wherever no matching form was found. Scrivener expressly refused to do that.

The method can still be criticized. Printed editions accessible to the translators are not identical with surviving manuscript support. An edition can contain a conjecture, a Latin-derived reading, or an error. “Greek authority” in Scrivener’s documentary task meant antecedent Greek print, not a new critical proof of originality at every locus.

That limitation should be stated. It does not turn Greek print into English.

Reconstruction and Authority in Opposite Directions

The logical order can be seen in two sequences.

Scrivener’s historical collation:

Authorized Version → comparison with Beza and other earlier Greek editions → identification of the Greek choices represented by the translation.

---

1. F. H. A. Scrivener, preface to The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881), https://kjbhistory.com/the-preface-to-the-greek-tr-of-f-h-a-scrivener/. ↩
2. Ibid. ↩
3. Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th ed. (Des Moines: Christian Research Press, 1984), 220–21, https://ia601502.us.archive.org/0/items/TheKingJamesVersionDefended/TheKingJamesVersionDefended.pdf. ↩
4. Scrivener, preface. ↩

The translators’ linguistic work:

earlier Greek editions and readings → textual choice → English rendering.

---

1. F. H. A. Scrivener, preface to The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881), https://kjbhistory.com/the-preface-to-the-greek-tr-of-f-h-a-scrivener/. ↩
2. Ibid. ↩
3. Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th ed. (Des Moines: Christian Research Press, 1984), 220–21, https://ia601502.us.archive.org/0/items/TheKingJamesVersionDefended/TheKingJamesVersionDefended.pdf. ↩
4. Scrivener, preface. ↩

Steele takes the first sequence as proof that the second has been reversed. But the sequences answer different questions. One asks what happened in 1611; the other describes how an editor in 1881 recovered evidence of what happened.

An analogy may help. If a musician hears a performance and consults surviving scores to identify which historical version the orchestra used, the sound guides his investigation. It does not follow that the sound created the earlier notes on the page.

The proper criticism must be local. If Scrivener inserted a Greek reading for which no antecedent Greek authority existed, that instance would violate his stated rule. Steele must identify it and show the derivation. The fact that the final edition agrees with the AV is the condition of the project, not proof of illicit back-translation.

What the AV Translators Actually Did

David Norton’s history of the King James Bible confirms that the translators were conscious of both lexical ambiguity and textual variation. The account given to the Synod of Dort says that when a Hebrew or Greek word admitted two suitable senses, one appeared in the text and the other in the margin; the same was done when a different reading stood in good copies.⁵

The translators did not behave as though an English predecessor settled every original-language question. They revised an existing English tradition while consulting the Hebrew and Greek. Their final work could retain inherited phrasing, prefer one printed edition at one locus and another elsewhere, or note alternatives in the margin.

That history explains why the AV’s Greek basis is composite. It also makes translation supremacy an anachronistic account of their labor. The English version came at the end of an original-language process.

Hills: Useful and Dangerous

Hills strengthens the historical answer to Steele. He shows that the AV translators used multiple antecedent Greek editions and that Scrivener’s text gathered their choices. The constituent readings did not spring into existence in 1881.

Hills also goes beyond that historical point. Where Received Text editions differ, he says Christians should favor “the King James Version, or, more precisely, the Greek text underlying” it because providence placed a special stamp of approval upon that form.⁶

That sentence cannot be hidden. Steele could reasonably cite it as evidence that an influential Received Text defender used the AV’s reception to privilege its Greek configuration.

Three distinctions remain.

First, Hills does not claim that English words are inspired above Greek. He corrects his own shorthand with “more precisely” and names the underlying Greek text.

Second, a providential argument from ecclesiastical use is not the same as linguistic back-translation. One may find Hills’s reasoning circular without claiming that he manufactured Greek from English.

Third, Hills’s position does not prove TBS’s formal doctrine. The Society expressly says no translation is definitive and final appeal belongs to the original languages.⁷ Its choice of Scrivener may overlap with Hills’s preferred result without incorporating every premise of his account.

Hills must be used as a corroborating historical witness, not as a substitute for Scrivener’s preface and not as a spokesman whose every theological formulation binds TBS.

Scrivener Was Not a Modern TR-Only Advocate

Steele also emphasizes Scrivener’s own critical judgments. Scrivener hoped to remove what he regarded as corruptions from the Received Text and did not believe every traditional reading original. He judged the Johannine Comma very severely. TBS republishes a historical edition whose editor did not hold the Society’s later confessional position.

That fact is relevant to institutional presentation. A publisher should not make Scrivener appear to have prepared his text as a final defense of every Received Text reading.

It does not alter the edition’s documentary character. An editor can accurately print the Greek basis of a translation while personally believing that some of those readings should be replaced. Scrivener’s critical opinions explain why the companion apparatus marked the Revisers’ alternatives; they do not show that his baseline Greek was translated from English.

The title of the edition is candid: it is the New Testament in Greek “according to the text followed in the Authorised Version,” together with the variations adopted by the Revisers. Its claim is historical representation.

The Missing Preface and Apparatus

Steele’s criticism is strongest when he turns from origin to presentation.

Many modern reprints give readers Scrivener’s continuous text without the original preface, heavier type, Revisers’ footnotes, and appendix of authorities. The volume can then appear to be a self-evident sixteenth-century Received Text rather than an 1881 companion edition.

TBS should make the history readily available. A new preface could state:

1. why the edition was made;
2. why Beza 1598 supplied the base;
3. how departures were identified;
4. what “only Greek authority” meant;
5. how the present printing differs from the original companion apparatus.

Historical transparency would not concede Steele’s accusation. It would make the answer unmistakable.

A New Edition of Old Readings

The decisive distinction is now clear.

Scrivener’s volume was new as a unified edition. The Greek choices it gathered were generally old, standing in editions available before the AV. The English translation functioned as evidence of which choices had been made. Greek authority determined which readings could be printed as their historical basis.

“Reverse-engineered” can therefore be retained only with a definition:

Scrivener worked backward from the Authorized Version to reconstruct the composite Greek configuration represented by its translators’ prior use of Greek editions.

---

1. F. H. A. Scrivener, preface to The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881), https://kjbhistory.com/the-preface-to-the-greek-tr-of-f-h-a-scrivener/. ↩
2. Ibid. ↩
3. Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th ed. (Des Moines: Christian Research Press, 1984), 220–21, https://ia601502.us.archive.org/0/items/TheKingJamesVersionDefended/TheKingJamesVersionDefended.pdf. ↩
4. Scrivener, preface. ↩
5. David Norton, A Textual History of the King James Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 9–10. ↩
6. Hills, King James Version Defended, 223–24. ↩
7. Trinitarian Bible Society, “Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture,” Quarterly Record 571 (April–June 2005): 11, https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.tbsbibles.org/resource/collection/01C074CC-748F-4C67-86AC-A9926A25241A/Issue%20571%20-%20April%202005%20from%20web.pdf. ↩

It becomes false or misleading when expanded to mean:

Scrivener translated the KJV into Greek, created the Textus Receptus in 1881, or made English the linguistic source and final authority of the Greek New Testament.

---

1. F. H. A. Scrivener, preface to The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881), https://kjbhistory.com/the-preface-to-the-greek-tr-of-f-h-a-scrivener/. ↩
2. Ibid. ↩
3. Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th ed. (Des Moines: Christian Research Press, 1984), 220–21, https://ia601502.us.archive.org/0/items/TheKingJamesVersionDefended/TheKingJamesVersionDefended.pdf. ↩
4. Scrivener, preface. ↩
5. David Norton, A Textual History of the King James Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 9–10. ↩
6. Hills, King James Version Defended, 223–24. ↩
7. Trinitarian Bible Society, “Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture,” Quarterly Record 571 (April–June 2005): 11, https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.tbsbibles.org/resource/collection/01C074CC-748F-4C67-86AC-A9926A25241A/Issue%20571%20-%20April%202005%20from%20web.pdf. ↩

Steele’s argument depends upon moving from the first statement to the second without proving the transition.

The verdict for Part II follows:

Mark 16 does not establish a universal majority-vote method, and Scrivener’s historical collation does not reverse the direction of textual authority. Steele has exposed imprecise TBS language and a need for fuller publishing history. He has not shown that Scrivener manufactured Greek from English or that TBS’s use of his edition makes the KJV its final authority.

---

1. F. H. A. Scrivener, preface to The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881), https://kjbhistory.com/the-preface-to-the-greek-tr-of-f-h-a-scrivener/. ↩
2. Ibid. ↩
3. Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, 4th ed. (Des Moines: Christian Research Press, 1984), 220–21, https://ia601502.us.archive.org/0/items/TheKingJamesVersionDefended/TheKingJamesVersionDefended.pdf. ↩
4. Scrivener, preface. ↩
5. David Norton, A Textual History of the King James Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 9–10. ↩
6. Hills, King James Version Defended, 223–24. ↩
7. Trinitarian Bible Society, “Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture,” Quarterly Record 571 (April–June 2005): 11, https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.tbsbibles.org/resource/collection/01C074CC-748F-4C67-86AC-A9926A25241A/Issue%20571%20-%20April%202005%20from%20web.pdf. ↩

Part III tests that conclusion against the readings Steele regards as decisive, especially in Revelation.

Notes

Bibliography

Hills, Edward F. The King James Version Defended. 4th ed. Des Moines: Christian Research Press, 1984.

Norton, David. A Textual History of the King James Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Scrivener, F. H. A. The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881.

Steele, Stephen. “Unpicking a Misleading Meme on Mark 16 (Part 1).” Gentle Reformation. June 23, 2026.

Trinitarian Bible Society. “Statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture.” Quarterly Record 571 (April–June 2005): 6–13.