Western text-type

It is the predominant form of the New Testament text witnessed in the Old Latin and Syriac translations from the Greek, and also in quotations from certain 2nd and 3rd-century Christian writers, including Cyprian, Tertullian and Irenaeus.

[1] The main characteristic of the Western text is a love of paraphrase: "Words and even clauses are changed, omitted, and inserted with surprising freedom, wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness.

[5] Compared to the Byzantine text-type distinctive Western readings in the Gospels are more likely to be abrupt in their Greek expression.

Compared to the Alexandrian text-type distinctive Western readings in the Gospels are more likely to display glosses, additional details, and instances where the original passages appear to be replaced with longer paraphrases.

In at least two Western texts, the Gospels appear in a variant order: Matthew, John, Luke, Mark.