What is the Textus Receptus?
In the strictest sense, the term Textus Receptus refers to an edition of the Greek New Testament published in 1633 by the Elzevir Press in Leiden, Netherlands. This was the second edition of the Greek New Testament to be published by the Elzevir Press, and in the preface to the edition the publishers made the claim that it represented the standard text of the Greek New Testament, with the comment textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum in quo nihil immutatum aut corruptum damus (“herewith you have the text now received by everyone, without any alterations or flaws”).
In its broader sense the term Textus Receptus refers to the general type of Greek New Testament text that was published, with greater or less variation, from the first edition issued by Erasmus in 1516 through successive editions through the mid nineteenth century. In this sense the term Textus Receptus refers to any form of the Greek New Testament published prior to the major manuscript discoveries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each of Erasmus’ five editions (1516-1535) had a slightly different text, and the editions published by his successors naturally reflected their respective editorial decisions.
Thus the term refers not to a particular form of the New Testament text, but to any of the variety of forms that circulated in medieval Greek monasteries and among the Renaissance scholars of Western Europe, including not only what is now called the Majority Text, but also a variety of minority forms as well. Thus the 1904 edition published by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchal Press in Constantinople (Istanbul), which is the standard text of the Greek Orthodox Church, represents the Textus Receptus type of text in the broad sense of the term, although it differs both from the Textus Receptus in the strict sense, and from what is known by scholars today as the Majority Text.
The increased facility of travel and communication in recent centuries which made possible a wide range of discoveries and studies in the field of biblical manuscripts, contributed to broadening the perspective of biblical scholarship in many ways. New Testament manuscripts a thousand years older than those used by Erasmus and his successors provided a new understanding of the history of the New Testament text. The editions of the Greek New Testament now published by the Bible Societies reflect this new perspective, but with great care taken not to ignore earlier perspectives. Both the UBS Greek New Testament and the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece indicate in their notes the various readings represented by the various forms of the Textus Receptus (in the broad sense of the term), together with the manuscript support on which they rest. The purpose is to make available to the reader not just the special form of the text which was read by a particular monastery or regional church in a particular century, but rather the full range of the Greek New Testament text as it has been read by Christian churches through the centuries.
In summary, a copy of the Textus Receptus in the strict sense appears only rarely in rare book auctions. A copy in the broader sense would describe any Greek New Testament edited in the mid nineteenth century or earlier. They have been reprinted frequently, and may be found in used book stores, as well as in reprint editions by various publishers. One currently available edition is The New Testament: The Greek Text Underlying the English Authorized Version published by The Trinitarian Bible Society (217 Kingston Road, London SW19 3NN, England; 1980). Also of the Textus Receptus type is The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text edited by Z. C. Hodges and A. L. Farstad and published by Thomas Nelson, Inc. (Nashville/Camden/New York; 1982, 2nd ed. 1985).