Bruce Metzger

Bruce M. Metzger (1914-2007) was the leading North American expert on translating the New Testament from its Greek. He was a longtime professor of New Testament language and literature at Princeton the Theological Seminary, and was also ordained as a Presbyterian minister.

Metzger earned a Ph.D. in classices from Princeton University (1942). He was a reknowned linguist who mastered, among other languages, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, Spanish, Dutch, French, Coptic, Syriac, and Russian.

Metzger led the translation work on the New Revised Standard Version, as published in 1989. It is known for its gender-inclusive language.

Books

Among Metzger's numerous published works were the following notable books:

• The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations (Clarendon, 1977)
• Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Greek Palaeography (Oxford Univ., 1981)
• The Oxford Companion to the Bible (co-editor, 1993)
• The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions (Baker Academic, 2001).

Quote

"“The textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of material… Besides textual evidence derived from the New Testament Greek manuscripts and from early versions, the textual critic has available the numerous scriptural quotations included in the commentaries, sermons, and other treatises written by early Church fathers. Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament.” – Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 51, 126.