The publication in 1881 of The New Testament in the Original Greek, by the Cambridge scholars Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892), marked the culmination of twenty-eight years of work and revolutionised the theory and methods of New Testament textual criticism. The editors broke with tradition and reconstructed a critical text based on the third-century uncial manuscripts Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, paving the way for future editions. Westcott and Hort's claim to reconstruct the 'original text' may seem extravagant today; but according to Bruce Metzger theirs was the 'most noteworthy critical edition of the Greek Testament ever produced by British scholarship'. This second volume contains the reconstructed text. Readings that the editors thought were possible contenders for the original are printed in the margin; other readings, judged to be of value but appearing later, are given in the appendix.
