This edition having both the Greek and English texts side-by-side is designed for the scholar and the layman alike. Both Ivan Panin's Greek critical text and his English translation are of the highest caliber and rank at the top their respective fields. This edition, suitable for researcher and reader alike, includes the full introductions, notes, and papers in which Panin goes into great detail regarding his methodology and the precise manner in which "Numerics" is used to accurately assess the text.
It is difficult to summarize Panin's work because many know him only as the investigator into Numerics. Suffice it to say that Panin was a Harvard-educated literary scholar fully competent to translate the Scriptures and determine textual readings with or without Numerics. The discovery of Numerics and the subsequent willingness to devote a lifetime to the systematic study of it takes Panin's work into a category of its own; one that adds a new dimension to an already established scholarly work. It is worth noting that NA28, as scholars continue to improve it, has consistently been getting closer to Panin's critical text of a century ago.
As to the setting up of the parallel text, it is somewhat fortunate that the spacial requirements for English and Greek are so similar. The page breaks, as far as possible, are cut off at the same word in both languages. However, often a sentence occurs which has the subject at the end in Greek and at the beginning in English, so this convention, while adhered to as far as possible, often must yield to the form of the texts, from which this edition has not deviated.
Panin published his English translation in 1914, revised it in 1935, and published his critical Greek text in 1934. The twenty year interim was one of intense study of the ordering of Scriptural Numerics; many insights were gained, and improvements are readily evident in the later publishing of the Greek. The Editors have used his English formatting of paragraphs in virtually every case, and in this edition, reformatted his Greek paragraphing to match his English for clarity.
The reader then has available what is quite likely the best parallel version of the New Testament available today, comfortably formatted and in easily readable 12-point type.
