"Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΕ, Cum Lectionibus Variantibus"
of John Mill (1707)

Arturo Campillo S.

In 1707, the English theologian John Mill wrote "Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΕ, Cum Lectionibus Variantibus", which tried publish a text of the New Testament based on the oldest Greek text known in his time, including those passages cited by the Fathers of the Church.

His work is a classic biblical textual criticism, not only for the care he put in it, but because among the 100 basic manuscripts that he use, he detected 30,000 differences between them. 

Mill provided the most extensive collection of variant readings to that date, and gave his position on some of them, including the heavenly witnesses, but "did not venture to form a text of his own but reprinted Stephanus' text of 1550 without intentional variation" (Metzger & Ehrman, Text of the NT, 4th ed, p. 154).

Thanks to Jeff Cate and Steve Avery for the feedback of this text.

(Source of the images:

http://www.csntm.org/printedbook/viewbook/JohnMillNovumTestamentum1707).