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Kenyon, 1895. Frederic G. Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts: being a History of the Text and its Translations. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1895. 2nd edition, 1896; 3rd ed., 1897; 4th ed. (revised and enlarged), 1939, Reprinted 1948; 5th ed. (revised and enlarged by A.W. Adams, and with an introduction by G.R. Driver), 1958.

Kenyon's work was the standard student's textbook until the appearance of Metzger's The Text of the New Testament in 1964.

Kenyon, 1909. Frederic G. Kenyon, The Codex Alexandrinus in Reduced Facsimile, New Testament and Clementine Epistles. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1909.

A reduced photographic facsimile edition of the Codex Alexandrinus.


Kenyon, 1932. Frederic G. Kenyon, Recent Developments in the Textual Criticism of the Greek Bible. Oxford University Press, 1932.

A transcript of Kenyon's 1932 Schweich Lectures for the British Academy. Surveys the scholarship of fifty years following the publication of Westcott and Hort 1881.


Kenyon, 1933. Frederick G. Kenyon, The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, Description and Texts of Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible. London: Emery Walker, 1933 and following. Fasciculus I: General Introduction (1933). II/1: The Gospels and Acts, Text (1933). II/2: The Gospels and Acts, Plates (1934). III/1: Pauline Epistles and Revelation, Text (1934). III/2: Revelation, Plates (1936). III/3: Pauline Epistles, Text (supplement. 1936). III/4: Pauline Epistles, Plates (1937). Nine subsequent fascicles presented texts from the Old Testament, and the series was completed in 1958.

The twelve papyrus manuscripts mentioned in the title of this series consist of eight containing portions of the Greek Old Testament, one of an apocryphal work, and three containing portions of the New Testament. They are called the Chester Beatty papyri after the name of the American collector who first brought them to the attention of scholars. Beatty had purchased them from an antiquities dealer in Cairo, who gave no verifiable account of their provenance. The three New Testament papyri are believed to be from the late second and early third centuries. Their designations and contents are as follows.

Papyrus 45.   Mat 20:24-32; 21:13-19; 25:41-26:39; Mark 4:36-9:31; 11:27-12:28; Luke 6:31-7:7; 9:26-14:33; John 10:7-25; 10:30-11:10, 18-36, 42-57; Acts 4:27-17:17.

Papyrus 46.   Rom 5:17-6:14; 8:15-15:9; 15:11-16:27; 1 Cor 1:1-16:22; 2 Cor 1:1-13:13; Gal 1:1-6:18; Eph 1:1-6:24; Phil 1:1-4:23; Col 1:1-4:18; 1 Th 1:1; 1:9-2:3; 5:5-9, 23-28; Heb 1:1-13:25.

Papyrus 47.   Rev 9:10-17:2.

For a good survey of the manuscripts, and the use critics have made of them, see Comfort 1992, chapter six.


Kilpatrick, 1958. George Dunbar Kilpatrick, A Greek-English Diglot for the Use of Translators. London: British and Foreign Bible Society. Mark, 1958; Matthew, 1959; John, 1960; General Epistles, 1961; Luke, 1962; Pastoral Epistles and Hebrews, 1963; Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, 1964. Series discontinued.

This text was published in a series of small volumes (called fascicles) and issued for private circulation among translators employed by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The volumes are now publicly available in major theological libraries. The text and notes reflect the so-called eclectic method of Kilpatrick and of his student at Oxford, J.K. Elliott. Kilpatrick adopted readings only on the basis of certain "internal" criteria which do not consistently favour any group of manuscripts. These criteria, moreover, are not based upon speculations concerning the habits of scribes, but upon tendencies which were assumed for the authors themselves. For example, the readings which are most in keeping with the author's style and message are to be preferred, even if they are weakly attested in the manuscript tradition. Readings which make good sense, and fit well in the context, are naturally preferred over problematic ones. When the British and Foreign Bible Society joined with other Bible societies in the United Bible Societies, it discontinued publication of Kilpatrick's text and sponsored the UBS text instead (see Aland Black Metzger Wikren 1966). After that, Kilpatrick and Elliott became leading critics of Kurt Aland and the UBS text.

For Kilpatrick's own explanation of his method see his Festschrift contributions, "The Greek New Testament Text of Today and the Textus Receptus" in The New Testament in History and Contemporary Perspectives; Essays in Memory of G.H.C. MacGregor, edited by H. Anderson and W. Barclay (Oxford, 1965), and "Style and Text in the Greek New Testament" in Studies in the History and Text of the New Testament in Honor of Kenneth Willis Clark, edited by Boyd L. Daniels and M. Jack Suggs (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1967). These essays are reprinted with others in The Principles and Practice of New Testament Textual Criticism: Collected Essays of G.D. Kilpatrick, edited by J.K. Elliott (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 1990). For arguments against Kilpatrick see Gordon Fee, "Rigorous or Reasoned Eclecticism - Which?" reprinted as chapter 7 of Epp and Fee 1993.

Note: The word "eclectic" has also been used by some scholars in an entirely different sense, to describe the flexible use of all of the internal criteria in deciding between the readings of the oldest manuscripts, without recourse to genealogical arguments which give superior external weight to any one of them. The editors of the UBS text may be called "eclectic" in this sense, but this "eclecticism" has nothing whatsoever to do with the eclectic method of Kilpatrick.


Kipling, 1793. T. Kipling, Codex Theodori Bezae Cantabrigiensis. Cambridge, 1793. 2 vols.

Kipling's edition of the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis was the first to present the full text of this notable manuscript.