Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener

Who was Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener?

The Reverend Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener, LL.D. was an important text critic of the New Testament and a member of the English New Testament Revision Committee which produced the Revised Version of the Bible. He was prebendary of Exeter, and vicar of Hendon.

Graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1835 after studying at Southwark, he became a teacher of classics at a number of schools in southern England, and from 1846 to 1856 was headmaster of a school in Falmouth, Cornwall. He was also for 15 years rector of Gerrans, Cornwall.

Initially making a name for himself editing the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, Scrivener edited several editions of the New Testament and collated the Codex Sinaiticus with the Textus Receptus. For his services to textual criticism and the understanding of Biblical manuscripts, he was granted a Civil list pension in 1872. He was an advocate of the Byzantine text over more modern manuscripts as a source for Bible translations. He was the first to distinguish the Textus Receptus from the Byzantine text. Scrivener compared the Textus Receptus with the editions of Stephanus, Theodore Beza, and Elzevier and enumerated all the differences.