The Marc mu l t i l i n g u e Pro j e c t 7 And there are important and significant variants that belong to the earliest centuries of the New Testament text. Some would rightly say that the most important text-critical variants occurred in the century or so before the canon was fixed (by, say, 200 AD) or before a standardized ecclesiastical text established itself. (Whether such a text merely evolved or was formally encouraged by church decree is disputed.) This is not the place to rehearse the recent history of textual criticism’s findings about text-types. The standard introductions7 set out the various theories. Over the past century the nomenclature of these types and the proliferation of their sophisticated sub-divisions may vary and be debated, but what is beyond doubt is that the texts of the earliest witnesses differ. The early papyri and Codex Bezae, Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus etc. display differences - often sharp divergences from one another. For those whose mission it is to find from within this morass of evidence at each point of variation the ‘original’ text and to jettison the alternatives as scribal aberrations, the resultant eclectic text will overshadow all the differences from the printed text they establish. But for those whose interests are in the evolution of the New Testament text or in the importance of all such changes8 then previous methods of publishing the New Testament text are dissatisfying. The Marc multilingue project was set up a few years ago to satisfy the needs of New Testament textual critics (initially of Mark’s Gospel) who require and may benefit from a visual presentation of the earliest surviving forms of the New Testament text as we have these in extant manuscripts. This means that the readings of the earliest witnesses to Mark must be set out in full throughout the Gospel. As may be seen from a prototype page (Table 1) certain witnesses to the Greek have been selected. These are the so-called Western-type manuscripts D 05 (Codex Bezae), and, in Mark, W 032 (Codex Wash- ingtoniensis); the so-called Caesarean text-type, θ 038 (Codex Koride- thianus), along with the allied minuscules in the family groupings fam1 and fam13 and 28, 565, and 700; two types of the ‘Alexandrian’ text-type then follow: (i) ) 01 (Codex Sinaiticus), and B 02 (Codex Vaticanus); (ii) 7 E.g. Léon Vaganay and C.-B. Amphoux, Initiation à la critique textuelle du Nouveau Testament (Paris, 21986) ET An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism (Cam- bridge, 1991); B.M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (Oxford, 31992); Keith Elliott and Ian Moir, Manuscripts and the Text of the New Testament (Edinburgh, 1995). 8 Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (New York, 1993) and D.C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge, 1997).