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MAKERS OF THE BIBLE 
 
MAKERS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 AND '* 
 
 THEIR LITERARY METHODS 
 
 By ^ 
 HERMON H. SEVERN 
 
 PROFESSOR OF GREEK AND BIBLICAL LITERATURE 
 IN KAI^MAZOO COLLEGE 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE JUDSON PRESS 
 
 BOSTON CHICAGO ST. LOUIS LOS ANGELES 
 
 KANSAS CITY SEATTLE TORONTO 
 
Copyright, 1921, by 
 GILBERT N. BRINK, Secretary 
 
 Published February, 1922 
 
 Printed in U. S. A. 
 
2^0 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This little manual is intended for young people and 
 others who may desire some information from the modern 
 point of view about the processes through which the Bible 
 has come down to us today. The author hopes by it to 
 help his readers to an intelligent comprehension of how 
 the Bible has come to be what it is and so to a sound 
 basis for faith in the Book of Life. The work has grown 
 out of experience in college classroom and teacher-train- 
 ing classes in church and Sunday school. It is designed 
 to serve two purposes : ( 1 ) The book may be used as a 
 guide for independent study. Those who so use it will 
 work through the outlines by means of the references and 
 some of the briefer articles listed before reading the dis- 
 cussions in the following chapters. For this study a copy 
 of the American Standard Version (with references) 
 should be used, as the marginal notes and variations in 
 this edition of the Bible are of great value. (2) The 
 book may be read as a narrative, without regard to the 
 study outlines and helps, and so become simply a brief 
 story of the making of our Bible. 
 
 Feeling that people at large are entitled to any evidence 
 that bears on the problem of the Bible the author has 
 ventured to include in an appendix a few brief selections 
 
Preface 
 
 from various important materials that have to do with 
 
 the subject. In the selections from the Septuagint he has 
 
 endeavored to make the translation, even at the expense 
 
 of elegance and English idiom, reflect as far as possible 
 
 not only the flavor of the Greek itself but also the value 
 
 of the version as a source of information about the Bible. 
 
 Grateful acknowledgment is here made of a manifest 
 
 indebtedness to the many scholars who have worked in 
 
 this field. But especially does the author desire to record 
 
 the debt he owes to his teachers, Professors Burton and 
 
 Goodspeed, of the University of Chicago, not only for the 
 
 inspiration of the classroom in earlier days, but also for 
 
 personal interest in, and definite suggestions for, the 
 
 present work. To President Stetson, of this College, also, 
 
 is a special debt of thanks due for his great kindness in 
 
 reading the manuscript and for help all the way along. 
 
 Likewise to Rev. Daniel G. Stevens, Ph. D., Book Editor 
 
 of the American Baptist Publication Society, the author 
 
 is indebted for much more than a professional interest in 
 
 the work. He has not only spared no pains to give the 
 
 book an attractive form, but has helped with constructive 
 
 suggestions at many points. 
 
 Hermon H. Severn. 
 
 Kalamazoo College, January 3, 1922. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. What is the Bible? The Problem 1 
 
 II. Pre-Biblical Writers: The Lost Books.. 12 
 
 III. The Writers of the Bible 28 
 
 IV. Early Readers of the Bible 43 
 
 V. Early Translators : The Seventy 56 
 
 VI. Early Translators : Jerome 70 
 
 VII. The Copyists: Bases of the Text 79 
 
 VIII. Need of a Text : Materials for Making It 90 
 
 IX. Constructing the Text 103 
 
 X. Understanding the Bible 115 
 
 XL The Underlying Character of the Bible 126 
 
 Appendix 135 
 
 Index 157 
 
MAKERS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 WHAT IS THE BIBLE? THE PROBLEM 
 
 Study Outline 
 
 L Study the titles of the Biblical books, and ask your- 
 self whether they emphasize the unity of the Bible or its 
 diversity. 
 
 2. Examine the different kinds of literature in the 
 Bible and classify them into history, poetry, prophecy, 
 etc. What is your impression of the Bible as to the 
 unity or diversity of its writings? 
 
 3. Read some encyclopedia or Bible dictionary articles 
 on the languages of the Bible, and ask yourself whether 
 the diversity of the Scriptures suggested above extends 
 to its languages. 
 
 4. Study carefully such passages as 1 Samuel 15 : 3 
 and 19 : 9 ; 1 Kings 22 ; Matthew 6 : 9 and 14 ; Luke 
 15 : 11-32; Hebrews 12 : 7, and state whether the Bible 
 seems diverse to you in its ethical standards. 
 
 5. Look up in any good encyclopedia the history of 
 the v/ord Bible, and state what light it sheds on the 
 character of the Bible as a collection of books. 
 
 Scripture References and Helps 
 
 Judges 5; 2 Peter 3 : 15f.; Daniel 2 : 4 to 7 : 28; 9 : 
 2; Ezra 4 : 8 to 6 : 18; Jeremiah 10 : 11; Isaiah 7 : 
 
 1 
 
Maimers of the Bible 
 
 14; Matthew 1 : 1, 23; 6 : 8, 9, 14; 7 : 11; 1 Samuel 
 15 : 3; 19 : 9; 2 Samuel 6 : 6 (marg.), 7; 1 Kings 22 
 John 17 : 3; Romans 2:2, 6; 2 Timothy 4:8, 14 
 Hebrews 12 : 7, 23; Acts 17 : 28; Luke 15 : 11-32 
 Mark 10 : 18; 2 Corinthians 4 : 7. 
 
 Prologue to Ecclesiasticus ; 1 Maccabees 1 : 56 ; 12 : 9 ; 
 2 Epistle of Clement 14 : 2. 
 
 Hastings, "Dictionary of Bible" (1 vol. ed.), art. 
 "Acrostic," p. 7; art. " Bible," §1, p. 95; §§3, 4, pp. 96, 
 97; art. ** Text, Versions, Languages of the Old Testa- 
 ment," §§1-6, pp. 908, 909, and §40, pp. 915f.; art. 
 " God," pp. 299-303. 
 
 "Standard Bible Dictionary," art. "Bible," §§1-4, pp. 
 98-100; art. "Hebrew Language," pp. 324-326; art. 
 " Poetry," pp. 682-684. 
 
 Nelson's " Encyclopedia," art. " Bible," " Canon of Old 
 Testament," pp. 68f. ; and " The New Testament," p. 70. 
 
 Moulton and Others, " The Bible as Literature," Intro., 
 pp. ix-xviii; and I, pp. 3-11. 
 
 Wood and Grant, " The Bible as Literature," Intro., 
 pp. 13-17. 
 
 What is the Bible? Is it a single book or a collection 
 of books? Or, is it many in one, a collection of books 
 which has so impressed our English-speaking world with 
 its singleness of purpose as to have won recognition as 
 a unit? It may, perhaps, be admitted that for English 
 literature the Bible is a single book,^ but when we enter 
 upon the historical study of the Scriptures, the individ- 
 uality of the different writings attracts and holds the 
 attention. The titles of the books, in themselves a mark 
 
 * Gardiner, " The Bible as Literature," New York, 1910, p. 2. 
 
What is the Bible f The Problem 
 
 of diversity, suggest the variety of books included in 
 the vokime. Some designate the author, as " According 
 to Luke," " The Book of Ezekiel " ; others name the hero 
 or heroine, " The Book of Ruth," " The Book of Daniel " ; 
 still others seem to be indicative of the character of the 
 book, as "The First Book of the Chronicles," "The 
 Acts." So one might continue with the rest of the titles 
 and deepen a superficial impression of the diversity of 
 the Biblical writings. 
 
 And this first impression of variety in the books of the 
 Bible is confirmed by examination of the different types 
 of literature found in the Scriptures. The usual classi- 
 fication of these Biblical books into history, poetry, 
 prophecy, and epistles has served to popularize some- 
 what the designation of the Bible as the Library of Sixty- 
 six Books. Yet it is only within comparatively recent 
 years that we have come to anything like an adequate 
 appreciation of the immense variety of the different parts 
 of this unique literature. There are proverbs, psalms, 
 chronicles. We find sermons, such as the messages of 
 Isaiah in the Old Testament and the book of James in the 
 New. Biographies like the Books of Samuel and the 
 Gospels, soaring visions like Daniel and Revelation, and 
 the impassioned arguments of a Paul in Romans are all 
 present. In fact, so diverse are the books of the Bible 
 in character as to defy grouping according to the recog- 
 nized canons of literary classification.^ In the New Tes- 
 tament the book of Hebrews does not sound just like a 
 letter, much of the prophecy of the Old Testament is 
 poetic in form, and large sections of the so-called his- 
 torical books are laws rather than histories. The truth 
 of the matter seems to be that this Biblical literature is 
 
 2 Barton, "Biblical World," April, 1914, pp. 251-257, 
 
Makers of the Bible 
 
 a composite of materials of different kinds from widely 
 separated periods woven together into its present form. 
 
 And this diversity of the Bible extends to the lan- 
 guages in which it was originally written and the period 
 of its composition. The earliest materials embodied in 
 the Old Testament reach back to the time of Israel's 
 emergence from the nomadic stage of life. For instance, 
 the Song of Deborah (Judg. 5) is generally regarded by 
 scholars as one of the very earliest examples of Hebrew 
 poetry. It is a real triumph-song, celebrating the great 
 victory of the Israelites over the Canaanites. And in 
 the New Testament the latest books extend down to the 
 end of the first century A. D., if not to the middle of the 
 second century. Second Peter seems to look back upon 
 Paul as belonging to an earlier period of the church, far 
 enough back to allow time for the making of a collection 
 of Paul's letters which has been raised by the time of the 
 writer of Second Peter to the level of the other Scrip- 
 tures. (2 Peter 3 : 15f.) But taking the shortest interval 
 for the production of the Biblical writings, we get at 
 least a millennium, more nearly a period of twelve or 
 thirteen hundred years. 
 
 And the original languages of the Bible too are quite 
 sharply distinguished. The Old Testament is written 
 in Hebrew, except some small portions in Aramaic, like 
 Daniel 2 : 4 to 7 : 28, where the new langitage is intro- 
 duced by the phrase, "in the Syrian language" (marg., 
 " Or, in Aramaic ") ; Ezra 4 : 8 to 6 : 18, and Jer. 10 : 
 11. The language of the New Testament is Greek, for 
 the most part the thought-vehicle of the common people 
 of the day, not the literary usage of a few cultured writers. 
 And of course this Greek of the New Testament differs 
 from the Hebrew of the Old Testament both in vocabu- 
 
What is the Bible f The Problem 
 
 ( 
 
 lary and sentence structure. Furthermore, this diversity 
 of languages in the Bible extends for us to the English 
 tongue. We face the difficulties of a translation. Trans- 
 lators generally feel these and, like the Greek translator 
 of the Aramaic Wisdom of Sirach, otherwise known 
 as Ecclesiasticus, ask the indulgence of their readers for 
 failure to do full justice to the phrases of the original. 
 " Things originally spoken in Hebrew have not the same 
 force in them, when they are translated into another 
 tongue" (Prologue, Ecclesiasticus). The translators of 
 the King James Version also recognized the same fact : 
 
 There be many words in the Scriptures, which be neuer found 
 there but once (hauing neither brother nor neighbour, as the 
 Hebrewes speake) so that we cannot be holpen by conference of 
 places. Againe, there be many rare names of certaine birds, 
 beastes, and precious stones, &c., concerning which the Hebrewes 
 themselues are so diuided among themselues for iudgment, that 
 they may seeme to haue defined this or that, rather because they 
 would say something, the because they were sure of that which 
 they said.' 
 
 Sometimes the difficulty of finding an adequate render- 
 ing for an original word has led translators into errors 
 which have proved momentous. Such an instance, ap- 
 parently, is to be found in the term translated " virgin " 
 in Isaiah 7 : 14. The Septuagint translators failed to 
 catch tTie meaning of the Hebrew word and so rendered 
 it virgin. In this form it is quoted in Matthew 1 : 23, 
 and has been a prime support for one of the great doc- 
 trines of the Christian church. But both Christian and 
 Jewish scholars today do not so understand the word, 
 and in the latest Jewish version of the Old Testament in 
 
 ■ The Authorized Version of the Bible, in " Cambridge Classics," Vol. I, 
 Preface, p. 27. 
 
Makers of the Bible 
 
 English * Isaiah's term is actually translated " the young 
 woman." 
 
 Once more, this diversity of the Bible extends to its 
 ethical standards. In the Old Testament God is some- 
 times pictured as being vindictive, and morally irrespon- 
 sible. He incites Saul against David (1 Sam. 19 : 9) 
 and through his prophet commands the king to " smite 
 Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare 
 them not ; but slay both man and woman, infant and suck- 
 ling, ox and sheep " (1 Sam. 15 : 3). He breaks out in 
 a fit of anger upon what seems to us a slight occasion. 
 When the ark was being moved up to Jerusalem, the 
 oxen drawing the cart became restive (2 Sam. 6 : 6 
 marg.), and there was danger that it would topple off. 
 Uzzah, apparently with the sole intention of preventing 
 such a catastrophe, stretched forth his hand to steady it, 
 " and the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Uzzah ; 
 and God smote him there for his error (marg., rashness) ; 
 and there he died by the ark of God" (2 Sam. 6 : 6f.). 
 Even the moral responsibility for the lie which brought 
 about the death of Ahab is charged upon the Almighty. 
 (1 Kings 22 : 20-22.) In this twenty-second chapter 
 of First Kings Jehovah is represented as having decided 
 to procure the death of the odious Israelitish king. In 
 order to carry out this purpose he commissions " a lying 
 spirit " to go out from divine presence and so control the 
 utterances of the four hundred prophets as to make them 
 urge upon Ahab a course of action which will result in 
 his death. The prophets cannot help themselves. They 
 are represented as inspired by Jehovah to tell the lie that- 
 will accomplish the divine purpose, (1 Kings 22.) 
 
 Not such, however, is the New Testament conception 
 
 *"The Holy Scriptures," Philadelphia, 191 7- 
 
What is the Bible f The Problem 
 
 of God. He is ''the only true God'' (John 17 : 3), 
 whose "judgment is according to truth" (Rom. 2:2), 
 and '' who will render to every man according to his 
 works" (Rom. 2:6). He is the righteous judge of all 
 (2 Tim. 4 : 8 and Heb. 12 : 23) and the one in whom 
 ''we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17 : 
 28) . Nay, God deals with men as with sons, even though 
 at times he chastises. (Heb. 12 : 7.) He is in fact the 
 Father, who " knoweth what things ye have need of 
 before ye ask him" (Matt. 6 : 8), more ready to give 
 good things than an earthly parent. (Matt. 7 : 11.) True, 
 as Jesus suggests, the Father is strict with his children 
 when necessary, requiring them to observe the obligations 
 of the kingdom if they desire its blessing. (Matt. 6 : 14.) 
 On the other hand, he is ever ready to welcome back 
 the returning prodigal who comes back truly repentant. 
 (Luke 15 : 11-32.) In brief, he is the good God (Mark 
 10 : 18), our Father. (Matt. 6:9). 
 
 At first puzzling, if not disturbing, this diversity of the 
 Scriptures in time and contents and ethical standards 
 becomes intelligible and even helpful when we come to 
 appreciate, even to a slight degree, the changes through 
 which the Bible has come down to us. This process is 
 suggested by the history of the very name Bible. The 
 term comes to us through the Latin from the Greek word 
 biblos (or bublos). This Greek term was used at first 
 to designate the pith of the papyrus stalk, from which the 
 common writing material of antiquity was made. Then 
 the word was applied to writings placed upon rolls or 
 books composed of this material. "The book (biblos) 
 of the birth (R. V., marg.) of Jesus Christ" (Matt. 
 1:1) is a good illustration of a birth-register written 
 upon this material. Practically the same form of the 
 
 B 
 
8 Makers of the Bible 
 
 word occurs in the Greek version of Daniel 9 : 2, where 
 the writer is searching for and finding in the books 
 (bibles) some information about the seventy years of 
 Jerusalem's desolation declared by Jeremiah of old. This 
 expression is unique in that the word is in the plural 
 and implies the existence of a somewhat definite collection 
 of sacred writings. 
 
 The more common form of the word, however, as a 
 designation for books at this early time was the neuter 
 plural of a diminutive from the same root, a form we 
 transliterate as biblia. This is the form of the word in 
 the Greek prologue to the apocryphal book called the 
 Wisdom of Sirach or Ecclessiasticus, where the writer 
 distinguishes the different parts of the Jewish Scriptures 
 as " the law, and the prophets, and the rest of the an- 
 cestral books" (bibles). Again in First Maccabees this 
 form of the word appears with similar significance, " the 
 sacred books" (biblia), and "the biblia of the law" 
 (1 Mace. 12 : 9 and 1 : 56). 
 
 The same word is found in the New Testament in an 
 interesting connection. Paul seems to have left at Troas 
 at one time some things which later, when a prisoner, he 
 desired very much. So he asked Timothy to bring the 
 articles. (2 Tim. 4 : 13.) They were his cloak, the 
 books (biblia), and the parchments. What did Paul 
 mean by the biblia and the parchments ? Some apply his 
 words simply to his books and his papers.*^ In this case 
 biblia would not apply to the Old Testament books. 
 Others, however, have felt that the apostle here marks a 
 distinction between manuscripts of the Old Testament and 
 his own notes, or writings, on papyrus, which he " re- 
 
 6 Jordan, Hastings' " Dictionary of Apost. Church," II, art. " Writing," 
 p. 701. 
 
What is the Bible? The Problem 
 
 garded as of little importance compared with the ' parch- 
 ments,' copies of certain portions of the Old Testament 
 Scriptures." ^ 
 
 Another occurrence of the word is found in a second 
 century Christian homily, or sermon. In speaking of 
 the meaning of membership in the church and the pre- 
 existent character of that which is spiritual the author 
 uses these words : " And moreover the books and the 
 apostles declare that the church belongs not to the present, 
 but has existed from the beginning" (Second Clement 
 14 : 2). "The books" and "the apostles" are appar- 
 ently designations of Old Testament and New Testament 
 writings respectively. If so, then here again " books " 
 (biblia) is used of the Jewish Scriptures. So also some- 
 what later in the second century Melito, bishop of Sardis, 
 uses the word in the same sense : ^ " Having learned ac- 
 curately the books (biblia) of the Old Covenant I send 
 them to you herewith subjoined." And less than a hun- 
 dred years later the great scholar of the early church, 
 Origen, used a form of the same term with similar refer- 
 ence to the books of the Old Testament: "And it is 
 not to be ignored that the canonical books (biblous), as 
 the Hebrews hand them down, are twenty-two." ^ It is 
 asserted that, in his commentary on John, Origen again 
 uses the word (biblia) of a collection which includes the 
 New Testament books.® If this be so, then it appears to 
 be the first instance of the term with anything like the 
 significance it came to have later as applying to the whole 
 Bible. 
 
 At some time this Greek plural biblia was taken over 
 
 • Milligan, " New Testament Documents," p. 20. 
 
 ' Cf. Goodspeed, " Die Aeltesten Apologeten," p. 309. 
 
 * Quoted by Eusebius, " Church History," VI, 25, i. 
 
 » Murray, " New English Dictionary," I, under " Bible." 
 
10 Makers of the Bible 
 
 into Latin; probably at first with its plural force. In 
 this form it would not be a perfectly clear designation 
 for the Scriptures. At any rate, Jerome, the translator 
 of the Vulgate, at the end of the fourth century or the 
 beginning of the fifth, used the unambiguous term hihlio- 
 theca divinaj " divine library,'' to emphasize the library- 
 character of the Bible. But in the course of time the 
 Latin plural became a singular noun, a change not un- 
 common in the history of the Latin language so far as 
 other words are concerned. And such a change would 
 be applied the more easily to a word like biblia as men 
 came to regard the Biblical writings as one work. Just 
 how early this took place it is impossible to say, but 
 by the fourteenth century the word is found in English 
 in the singular, taken over from a singular Latin noun, 
 and applied to any sort of book. Then it is readily 
 applied to the Bible when English writers reflect the 
 Scriptures as a unit. Thus a word originally plural has 
 been made over into a singular, and the expression The 
 Bible has come to obscure in many minds the fundamental 
 character of these Scriptures as a collection of writings. 
 Hence the Bible in the light of its growth and the history 
 of its name reveals itself to us as a collection of books 
 written out of human life to life, tried out and gathered 
 together in the light of life's needs, and bringing a life- 
 message in all times and to men of all walks and condi- 
 tions of life. 
 
 The need, therefore, today in the realm of Bible study 
 is for a better understanding and appreciation of the 
 origins of our present Biblical writings, if we are to catch 
 the meaning of the different writers in the circumstances 
 under which their works were produced. If the Bible is 
 so various in its different parts, the messages of the dif- 
 
What is the Bible f The Problem 11 
 
 ferent writers must be evaluated in the light of the cir- 
 cumstances and occasions that produced them. This 
 means that we need a wider historical study of the Bible 
 in the present generation, if we are to apply the Biblical 
 teaching successfully to our modern conditions. 
 
 There are two phases to such historical Bible study, an 
 outer and an inner. The latter consists in an attempt to 
 study a book of the Bible for knowledge of its author, 
 readers, date, circumstances of its origin, and course of 
 its thought. The former may be termed the more funda- 
 mental or preliminary task of becoming familiar with 
 the literary background of the Bible, the materials and 
 methods of early writing, the circulation and collection of 
 the writings, and the processes through which they have 
 passed, both translational and textual, to reach their pres- 
 ent form. Applying an expression of Paul's to the Bible, 
 " We have this treasure in earthen vessels " (2 Cor. 4 : 
 7). In the following chapters the effort will be to learn 
 something of the externals of the making of our Bible, in 
 the hope that such knowledge will lead to a better appre- 
 ciation of its great teachings and its great Teacher, Jesus 
 the Christ. 
 
II 
 
 PRE-BIBLICAL WRITERS : THE LOST BOOKS 
 
 Study Outline 
 
 1. Find in your Bible as many occurrences of the word 
 " book " as you can, noting among others Genesis 5:1; 
 Isaiah 29 : 11; Luke 4 : 17. What suggestions of the 
 early use of books do you find in this study? 
 
 2. In the Bible there are reflections of what may be 
 termed " lost books," such as Joshua 10 : 12f. and 
 1 Corinthians 5 : 9. Find as many of these as possible, 
 and try to form an opinion of the character of these lost 
 writings. 
 
 3. Read the books of Kings and Chronicles and make 
 lists of all the ** lost books " there reflected. Estimate 
 how many different books these are, and show how they 
 were used by the writers of our Kings and Chronicles. 
 
 4. On the basis of such passages as Numbers 23 : 7-10 
 and 1 Timothy 3 : 16 find as many poetical fragments in 
 the Bible as you can, and tell how they serve the purposes 
 of different Biblical writers. 
 
 5. Commit to memory Luke's preface (Luke 1 : 1-4), 
 and elicit from it what information it gives on the Evan- 
 gelist's attitude toward earlier Gospel traditions and docu- 
 ments, and his purpose in writing. 
 
 6. State briefly your ideas of the significance of this 
 background literature for one's conception of the Bible. 
 
 7. How does this discovery of the use of sources by 
 Biblical writers affect your conception of the Bible? 
 
 12 
 
Prc-Biblical Writers: The Lost Books 13 
 
 Scripture References and Helps 
 
 Ecclesiastes 12 : 12; Numbers 21 : 14, 17f., 27-30; 
 Judges 5; Joshua 10 : 12f. ; 2 Samuel 1 : 17f., 19-27; 
 1 Kings 11 : 41 ; 14 : 19, and other corresponding refer- 
 ences; 2 Kings 1 : 18, and other corresponding refer- 
 ences ; 1 Chronicles 9 : 1 ; 27 : 24 ; 29 : 29 ; 2 Chronicles 
 9 : 29, etc. ; 1 Samuel 10 : 25 ; 1 Kings 4 : 32f . ; Genesis 
 
 4 : 23f.; Exodus 15 : 1-18; Numbers 23 : 7-10, 18-24; 
 24 : 3-9, 15-24. 
 
 1 Corinthians 5:9;7:1;15:3;13:2;2 Corin- 
 thians 2 : 4; 7 : 8f.; Philippians 4 : 15f.; 2: 25; 4 : 18; 
 Colossians 4 : 16; 3 : 16; Acts 18 : 27; 16 : 25; 20 : 
 35; Romans 16 : 1; 2 Corinthians 3 : 2; 11 : 26f.; Mat- 
 thew 26 : 30; 24 : 43; 21 : 21 ; 1 : 1 ; Ephesians 5 : 19; 
 
 5 : 14; 1 Timothy 3 : 16; 2 Thessalonians 2 : 15; Luke 
 1 : 1-4; 1 Thessalonians 5:4; Mark 11 : 23. 
 
 Driver, " Introduction to Literature of Old Testament," 
 rev. ed., pp. 186-189 and 527-532. 
 
 Hunting, '' Story of Our Bible," pp. 1-20 and 81-89. 
 
 Hastings and Standard Bible dictionaries, arts. " Ja- 
 shar," " Wars of Jehovah." 
 
 Burton, " Short Introduction to the Gospels," pp. 80-98., 
 
 Robinson, " Life of Paul," pp. 164-174. 
 
 Goodspeed, " Story of the New Testament," pp. 36-39, 
 60f., lOOf., 121-123. 
 
 Souter, " Text and Canon of the New Testament," pp. 
 149-151. 
 
 The word book is not uncommon in the English Bible. 
 It represents at least three different words of the original 
 Hebrew and Greek in six or seven variant forms and 
 
14 Makers of the Bible 
 
 occurs in both the earlier and later portions of the Old 
 Testament as well as in the New Testament. The fre- 
 quent references to books, histories, records, letters, and 
 booklets not now extant suggest that there must have 
 been at times in circulation among the Jews and early 
 Christians many more " books " than have come down to 
 us in this Bible; so many more that the writer of Eccle- 
 siastes could complain of the endless making of books 
 in his day and the utter weariness of much study. (Eccl. 
 12 : 12.) 
 
 And this first impression of what may be called the 
 Bible's background literature is confirmed by a search of 
 its pages for reflections of such writings. To begin with, 
 there are at least two " lost books " quoted by name in 
 the Old Testament. The first is mentioned in Numbers 
 21 : 14, where a fragmentary verse of poetry is quoted 
 from the " Book of the Wars of Jehovah " describing the 
 advance of ancient Israel when opposed by the Amorites 
 at the river Arnon. The Israelites were victorious in the 
 struggle, and perhaps some unknown bard celebrated the 
 victory in song. Later the historian found this bit of 
 ancient poetry and incorporated it in his record of the 
 victorious onward march of his people in their early con- 
 quests. After the people had passed on to Be-er, Moses 
 was directed to assemble them to receive water as a gift 
 from Jehovah. This was an auspicious event in the 
 course of Israel's progress and was in all likelihood 
 marked by the composition of a spirited song, part of 
 which has been incorporated by our writer in his narra- 
 tive, perhaps from the same " Book of the Wars of Jeho- 
 vah." Hear them as they sing about the well, exulting in 
 the discovery of refreshing water, which they accept as a 
 gift from their leaders: 
 
P re-Biblical Writers: The Lost Books 15 
 
 '' Spring up, O Well ; sing ye unto it : 
 The well which the princes digged, 
 Which the nobles of the people delved. 
 With the sceptre, and with their staves " 
 
 (Num.21 : 17f.). 
 
 Still farther on in this journey of conquest the continued 
 success of Israel's hosts in conflict with Moabites and 
 Amorites was celebrated again in an ode of triumph, 
 popularized perhaps by reciters and readers who are 
 characterized as "they who speak in proverbs" (Num. 
 21 : 27). And this ode, or part of it, has been preserved 
 to us by our book of Numbers, shall we say from the 
 same *' Book of the Wars of Jehovah " ? 
 
 " Come ye to Heshbon ; 
 Let the city of Sihon be built and established: 
 For a fire is gone out of Heshbon, 
 A flame from the city of Sihon : 
 It hath devoured Ar of Moab, 
 The Lords of the high places of the Arnon. 
 Woe to thee, Moab ! 
 Thou art undone, O people of Chemosh : 
 He hath given his sons as fugitives, 
 And his daughters into captivity. 
 Unto Sihon king of the Amorites. 
 We have shot at them ; Heshbon is perished even 
 
 unto Dibon, 
 And we have laid waste even unto Nophah, 
 Which reacheth unto Medeba " (Num. 21 : 27-30). 
 
 It is not certain, of course, that these three fragments 
 are parts of a single poem. They may be merely frag- 
 
16 Makers of the Bible 
 
 ments of different poems from a single book, or even from 
 different books. But even so, they suggest the early exis- 
 tence of collections of songs celebrating the brave deeds 
 of the chosen people under the leadership of their God. 
 The poems are rugged and vigorous, soul-stirring paeans 
 of victory, and take rank with Deborah's martial ode in 
 the fifth chapter of the book of Judges. Indeed, it is 
 just possible that this remarkable song, '' unsurpassed in 
 Hebrew literature in all the great qualities of poetry," ^ 
 belonged originally to the same noteworthy collection of 
 songs as these three fragments, written and sung for the 
 glorification of a people's heroes at a time when the tribes 
 were emerging into something suggestive of national self- 
 consciousness under the leadership of Jehovah the God 
 of battles. And the title Book of the Wars of Jehovah 
 would be a good name for such a collection of war- 
 ballads. 
 
 The second " lost book " distinctly quoted by name in 
 the Old Testament is mentioned in two places. The first 
 is in Joshua 10 : 12f. The tenth chapter of this book 
 gives the account of the capture of southern Canaan. 
 The first section of this narrative is the story of Joshua's 
 defeat of the five Amorite kings who had formed a 
 league against Gibeon, whence the doughty leader of the 
 Israelites drove the allied kings by Beth-horon to Azekah 
 and Makkedah. Verse 16 is the logical continuation of 
 verse 11 in that story, while verses 12-15 break this 
 thread of connection and constitute an insertion from a 
 different source. They are thus in themselves a short 
 paragraph, in the midst of which stands this fragment 
 of poetry from the Book of Jashar. The word Jashar 
 means " upright one," and so the quotation may possibly 
 
 * Moore, " Inter. Crit. Com. on Judges," p. 135. 
 
Pre-Bihlical Writers: The Lost Books 17 
 
 be taken from an ancient record of the deeds of right- 
 eous men, though this is a rather precarious inference. 
 More Hkely, as in the case of the Book of the Wars of 
 Jehovah, this Book of Jashar was a collection of poems 
 celebrating the early heroes of the Hebrew people and 
 their achievements in war. In this instance the quotation 
 is assigned to Joshua himself : 
 
 " Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon ; 
 And thou, Moon, in the valley of Aijalon. 
 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, 
 Until the nation had avenged themselves of their 
 enemies.'* 
 
 A second mention of this rare old book is more en- 
 lightening, even if in a passage of greater difficulty. It 
 is found in 2 Samuel 1 : 17f., followed by a somewhat 
 lengthy excerpt from the book itself. " And David 
 lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over Jona- 
 than his son (and he bade them teach the children of 
 Judah the song of the bow: behold, it is written in the 
 book of Jashar)." The dirge, or lamentation, following 
 in verses 19-27, shows plainly that the book of which 
 it was part was one of real artistic and literary beauty. 
 Kent writes of the poem as follows : ^ 
 
 The artistic beauty of the poem is unsurpassed. It opens with 
 a stanza in the quick two-beat measure, which rises in the second 
 stanza to the three-beat, and in the third to the four-beat measure, 
 which is maintained throughout the song, until the last refrain is 
 introduced, giving the effect of a final sob. 
 
 Here is Kent's translation of this sweetly solemn song: 
 
 2 " Founders and Rulers of United Israel," Historical Bible. Vol. IT, 
 p. 119. 
 
18 Makers of the Bible 
 
 " Weep, OJudah! 
 Grieve, O Israel ! 
 On thy heights are the slain ! 
 How the mighty have fallen ! 
 
 Tell it not in Philistine Gath, 
 Declare it not in the streets of Askelon ; 
 Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, 
 Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult. 
 
 Ye mountains of Gilboa, may no dew descend, 
 Nor rain upon you, O ye fields of death ! 
 For there was the shield of the mighty thrown down, 
 The shield of Saul, not anointed with oil. 
 
 From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the 
 
 mighty, 
 The bow of Jonathan turned not back. 
 The sword of Saul returned not empty. 
 
 Saul and Jonathan, the beloved and the lovely ! 
 In life and in death they were not parted ; 
 They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger 
 than lions. 
 
 Daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, 
 Who clothed you daintily in finest linen, 
 Golden ornaments he placed on your garments, 
 How the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle ! 
 
 Jonathan, in thy death me thou hast wounded ! 
 O Jonathan, my brother, for thee I'm in anguish. 
 To me thou wert surpassingly dear, 
 Thy love were far more than the love of woman ! 
 
Pre-Biblical Writers: The Lost Books 19 
 
 How the mighty have fallen, 
 
 And the weapons of war perished ! " 
 
 (Historical Bible, H, p. 117f.) 
 
 This Book of Jashar has given rise to a large and 
 varied literature and to many speculations about the 
 character and contents of the interesting old lost book. 
 We must content ourselves here with just the inference 
 that as the passages quoted in Joshua and Second Samuel 
 are fragments of poems in praise of ancient heroes and 
 early events the book was in all. probability a collection 
 of such poems, much like the Book of the Wars of 
 Jehovah.^ Whatever the character and contents of this 
 lost collection, it does tell us that at an early time in 
 Israel books were in process of formation, and were later 
 referred to as sources of inspiration and information by 
 those writers who gave form to the books of our present 
 Bible. 
 
 There are in the next place several lost books in the 
 Old Testament, either simply referred to by name or 
 mentioned as the source from which, the narrator draws 
 his information. The first explicit mention of such a 
 work seems to be in 1 Kings 11 : 41, where the historian 
 gives the Book of the Acts of Solomon as the source 
 of information about Solomon and the events of his 
 reign. In similar fashion, when writing his story of the 
 divided kingdom, he appears to have access to at least 
 two political histories which were based upon annals, or 
 royal chronicles. These histories he calls the Books of 
 the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and Judah. These 
 two well-written accounts, accessible to those who cared 
 
 8Cf. Bennett, in Hastings' "Dictionary of the Bible," Vol. II, art. 
 
 " Jashar." 
 
20 
 
 Makers of the Bible 
 
 to read them, as his formula of reference suggests, he 
 reflects some thirty times or more from 1 Kings 14 : 19 
 to 2 Kings 24 ; 5. A somewhat similar, though more 
 confusing, reflection of sources is found in First and 
 Second Chronicles. The chronicler has an imposing array 
 of some twenty references to sources, as 1 Chronicles 
 9 : 1; 27 : 24; 29 : 29; and 2 Chronicles 9 : 29; and 
 here and there to the end. But these citations in all prob- 
 ability reflect only two or three independent sources upon 
 which he drew.* 
 
 In addition to these lost books so clearly reflected in 
 the pages of the Old Testament, there are mere state- 
 ments about others which are otherwise unknown. Such, 
 for instance, are the proverbs and songs of Solomon about 
 plants and animals (1 Kings 4 : 32f.) and the work by 
 Samuel on the kingdom. (1 Sam. 10 : 25.) There are 
 also reflections of fragments of poetry taken from un- 
 named early writings. The song of Lamech may be such 
 a bit. (Gen. 4 : 23f.) The song of Moses and the chil- 
 dren of Israel is a fairly representative piece of Israel's 
 ancient folk-songs (Exod. 15 : 1-18), while even more 
 interesting and suggestive are the Balaam songs in the 
 book of Numbers. (Num. 23 : 7-10, 18-24, and 24 : 3-9, 
 15-24.) 
 
 The same phenomena appear in the New Testament. 
 Let us begin with Paul. Of course we shall not expect to 
 find him using ** lost books " as sources, for he is writing 
 letters. But it will soon be seen that he wrote more letters 
 than have been preserved in the New Testament. For 
 instance, in the present First Corinthians he says that he 
 had written once before to his Christian friends in Corinth 
 
 * 6f, Driver, " Literature of the Old Testament," rev. ed., p. S27ff., and 
 McFadycn, " Intro, to the Old Testament," p. 3S3ff. 
 
Pre-Biblical Writers: The Lost Books 21 
 
 telling them not to associate with immoral people. ( 1 Cor. 
 5:9.) This of itself shows that he wrote more than 
 twice to the Corinthian church, and the phenomena of the 
 two letters in their present form suggest the possibility 
 of five or six letters to that church. Paul had not only- 
 received and answered a letter from Corinth about certain 
 religious and social practises (1 Cor. 7:1), but in 
 addition thereto seems to have written a " painful " letter, 
 which for a time he regretted and then later felt satisfied 
 with, when he learned that it had finally produced good 
 results. (2 Cor. 2 : 4 and 7 : 8f.) Practically the same 
 situation confronts us in the letter to the Philippians. 
 If Paul was courteous enough to acknowledge gifts sent 
 to him at different times by friends, and if the messenger 
 who brought the gift could carry back a letter of acknowl- 
 edgment, then the apostle may easily have written to his 
 first European church at least four times before sending 
 them this immortal letter; twice from Thessalonica (Phil. 
 4 : 16), once from Corinth (Phil. 4 : 15), and once from 
 Rome on the arrival of Epaphroditus from Philippi with 
 the church's contribution to the needs of their beloved 
 missionary.^ (Phil. 2 : 25 and 4 : 18.) What those lost 
 letters contained we have no means of knowing. The 
 Philippians do not seem to have prized those earlier letters 
 enough to preserve them. Perhaps the same fate over- 
 took the famous lost ''Laodicean letter" (Col. 4 : 16), 
 unless, as some Christians in both ancient and modern 
 times have believed, this lost letter is to be identified 
 with that New Testament writing entitled " To the Ephe- 
 sians." But in spite of this apparent neglect of Paul's 
 letters by the early church, Paul himself as a man has 
 come into his own in the appreciation of the modern 
 
 ^ Cf. Goodspeed, " Story of the New Testament," p. 39. 
 
22 Makers of the Bible 
 
 church. For we not only admire his power to organize 
 and train a corps of workers Hke Timothy, Silas, Luke, 
 and the rest, but also are grateful for his wonderful ability 
 to produce such immortal letters as these that constitute 
 so large a part of our New Testament, remembering that 
 his missionary activity fell within a comparatively short 
 period of about twenty-five years and covered a goodly 
 portion of Asia Minor and southeastern Europe as far 
 west as Rome, if not Spain; that the burden of anxiety 
 for all the churches and the opposition of probably sincere 
 but misguided " false brothers " pressed heavily upon 
 him ; that his daily life was one of toil for self-support 
 in addition to the work of evangelization; that he was 
 often " in danger from rivers and robbers, from Jews and 
 Gentiles, through many a sleepless night, through hunger 
 and thirst, starving many a time, cold and ill-clad, and 
 all the rest of it" (condensed from Moffatt's translation 
 of 2 Cor. 11 : 26f.) 
 
 Not only, however, was individual letter-writing prac- 
 tised among early Christians on a larger scale than is 
 now commonly supposed, but there is also evidence which 
 intimates that the custom of official letter-writing had 
 begun in the Apostolic Age. In the book of Acts ( 18 : 27) 
 we find mention of a letter written by one church to an- 
 other, representing what may be designated as the official 
 literary activity of the early church. At the end of the 
 first century the church in Rome, through one of its 
 members, wrote to the church in Corinth on the question 
 of Christian conduct, and that letter has been preserved 
 as First Clement in the Apostolic Fathers. In a some- 
 what similar fashion the church in Ephesus writes to the 
 brethren in Achaia on behalf of Apollos. This Christian 
 teacher, a cultured native of Alexandria, having finished 
 
Pre-Biblical Writers: The Lost Books 23 
 
 his work in Ephesus, wished to go over to Achaia. So a 
 letter was written in his behalf to prepare a welcome for 
 him and to introduce him to the Christians there. One 
 wonders whether this was simply a letter of commenda- 
 tion or a more formal letter, the forerunner of the modern 
 church letter. Perhaps it combined both features. If it 
 was the former, is it to be classed with Paul's letter com- 
 mending Phoebe to Ephesus, now appearing as part of 
 the sixteenth chapter of Romans (Rom. 16 : 1)? It 
 can scarcely have been one of those " commendatory let- 
 ters " that roused the apostle's ire and drew forth his 
 caustic question indignantly repudiating the practise of 
 " some " in this respect. (2 Cor. 3:1.) 
 
 In the next place, as there are psalms and fragments of 
 songs in the Old Testament, so we are led to look for 
 suggestions of Christian hymns in the New Testament. 
 Early Christian writers of the centuries immediately fol- 
 lowing the Apostolic Age make it clear that hymns formed 
 an important part of the services of the primitive church. 
 There are in the New Testament itself reflections of the 
 same practise. For when Jesus had finished the supper 
 with his disciples, before going out to the Mount of 
 Olives they sang a hymn (Matt. 26 : 30), probably chant- 
 ing a part of the so-called Hallel. Paul and Silas found 
 themselves fast in the stocks at midnight in the Philippian 
 jail and comforted one another with prayer and hymn- 
 singing. (Acts 16 : 25.) And when the apostle wanted 
 the- Colossians to drive out revelings and drunken riot- 
 ings, he suggested that they do it by occupying themselves 
 with " psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," singing 
 and making melody to the Lord from the heart (Col. 3 : 
 16), the same injunction being repeated in the letter to 
 the Ephesians. (Eph. 5 : 19.) 
 
 G 
 
24 Makers of the Bible 
 
 It occasions no surprise, then, to find in the pages of 
 the New Testament what appear to be fragments of this 
 early Christian hymnody. And right here, first, in this 
 same Ephesians there is a bit of an ancient Christian 
 hymn, though it is not printed in the American Standard 
 V^ersion in such form as to suggest its poetical character : 
 
 " Awake, thou that sleepest, 
 And arise from the dead ; 
 And the Christ shall shine upon thee" (5 : 14). 
 
 First Timothy yields a fragment, this time printed in 
 stanza form in our American version : 
 
 " He w^ho was manifested in the flesh. 
 Justified in the spirit, 
 Seen of angels, 
 Preached among the nations, 
 Believed on in the world. 
 Received up in glory" (3 : 16). 
 
 Very much like this are similar lines on the nativity found 
 in that remnant of early Christian hymnody, the so-called 
 Odes of Solomon : 
 
 " She brought him forth openly, 
 And acquired him with great dignity. 
 And loved him in his swaddling-clothes, 
 And guarded him kindly. 
 And showed him in majesty." * 
 
 So also one is tempted to feel that Luke, with an ear for 
 the music of language, finds the beautiful songs of his 
 
 •Goodspeed, in "Biblical World," XLVI, pp. 345-347- 
 
Pre-Biblical Writers: The Lost Books 25 
 
 early chapters in the hymns of the church, while Revela- 
 tion frequently casts its material into poetic form, some 
 of which was very Hkely taken from hymns familiar to 
 the Christians of the writer's age and circle. 
 
 But when search is made for reflections of " lost 
 Gospels" there is clearer light. There are indications 
 in the New Testament of a background of oral evangelic 
 tradition. Paul intimates that he had " received " a body 
 of gospel tradition and had '* delivered " it to the Corin- 
 thians. (1 Cor. 15 : 3.) With similar significance he bids 
 the Thessalonians hold fast the " traditions " they had 
 received. (2 Thess. 2 : 15.) Likewise Luke suggests the 
 existence of a fairly well-defined body of oral tradition 
 when he intimates that by his time a number of Gospel 
 writers had based their works on the testimony of eye- 
 witnesses of the facts of Jesus' life. (Luke 1:2.) 
 
 On the other hand, there are also reflections of written 
 Gospel narratives. In his address to the Ephesian elders, 
 when he tarried for them at Miletus, Paul refers to a 
 saying of the Lord Jesus not found in our present Gos- 
 pels: " It is more blessed to give than to receive " (Acts 
 20 : 35^). This, with such passages as 1 Thessalonians 
 5 : 4 reflecting Jesus' words in Matthew 24 : 43, and 
 1 Corinthians 13 : 2 reflecting Matthew 21 : 21 and 
 Mark 11 : 23, strengthens Souter's conviction that Paul 
 had a written compendium of Jesus' teaching.'' 
 
 Luke's preface, also, affords rather definite suggestions 
 of early evangelic booklets upon which our present Gos- 
 pels are based, at least in part. In this preface it appears 
 that when Luke wrote he had access not only to oral 
 tradition, as indicated above, but also to several more or 
 less complete written narratives of the life of Jesus. 
 
 '"Text and Canon of the New Testament," p. 151. 
 
26 Makers of the Bible 
 
 These earlier Gospel booklets were based upon oral ac- 
 counts proceeding directly from personal companions of 
 Jesus, it is true, yet in the opinion of the third Evangelist 
 they seem to have lacked something in the way of accuracy 
 of statement and fulness of details. Hence after care- 
 ful investigation of the facts of the narrative Luke enters 
 upon the task of providing his readers with " an entirely 
 trustworthy record of the life of Jesus, an historical basis 
 of faith." ® The same writer calls attention to the con- 
 clusion of modern scholarship that while Mark's Gospel, 
 practically as we have it, was used by both Matthew and 
 Luke, there were other written Gospel narratives, now 
 lost at least in part, accessible to these Evangelists. And 
 it is an interesting and enlightening suggestion in this 
 connection that the use of the word " book " in Matthew 
 1:1, referring to the first seventeen verses of that Gospel, 
 reflects such a possible booklet.^ 
 
 Thus it appears reasonably clear that the New Testa- 
 ment, like the Old, has a background literature larger in 
 content than our present " Twenty-seven Books " and of 
 varied literary character. The Bible's " lost books " repre- 
 sent sources from which Biblical writers drew largely 
 both inspiration and materials. Our Bible takes on the 
 character of a " corpus," or deposit, of Jewish and Chris- 
 tian literature, and reminds us not only of those who 
 were inspired to write, but also of those who were in- 
 spired to preserve for later ages these early materials. 
 And this only adds to the worth of the Bible. For it 
 means that many individuals were moved by the spirit of 
 God to interpret afresh those ancient poems and records, 
 and to add their own contributions, in order to show how 
 
 8 Burton, ♦' Short Introduction to the Gospels," pp. 86-88. 
 ® Burton, "Short Introduction," pp. 97 and 126, with note. 
 
Pre-Biblical Writers: The Lost Books 27 
 
 God and Christ make known the divine will to men. 
 What did these early books look like in their original 
 form, both those lost and these preserved ? On what sort 
 of materials and with what kind of instruments were they 
 written? How did the writers go about the actual task 
 of putting their thoughts into written form? These and 
 other like questions press for answer and will engage 
 attention in the succeeding chapters. 
 

 Ill 
 
 THE WRITERS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Study Outline 
 
 1. Find as many references as possible, such as Exodus 
 17 : 14, that reflect familiarity with the art of writing 
 as mere ability to use a pen, noting the circumstances of 
 each reference. 
 
 2. Find some reflections of the art of writing, such as 
 Galatians 6:11 and Judges 5 : 14 margin, that suggest 
 individual writers or classes of writers possessing ability 
 not only to use the pen but to produce works of literary 
 merit. 
 
 3. Trace the reflection in the Bible of the materials 
 of writing: ink and what served for paper; and pens. 
 
 4. Make a careful study of the books of Kings and the 
 thirty-sixth chapter of Jeremiah in the Old Testament and 
 of Luke's preface (Luke 1 : 1-4) and Paul's earlier 
 letters in the New Testament, and trace the reflection 
 of the methods of accomplishing the task of reducing 
 thought to writing, whether by direct composition on the 
 part of the author, or by dictation. 
 
 5. Prepare a concise statement of your study of the 
 subject of this chapter, noting the familiarity of Biblical 
 writers with the externals of the art of writing, their 
 ability in literature, the materials and instruments of 
 writing, and the methods of producing written docu- 
 ments, and the significance of it all for one's conception 
 of the Bible. 
 
 28 
 
The Writers of the Bible 29 
 
 Scripture References and Helps 
 
 Exodus 17 : 14'; 31 : 18; 34 : 1, 28; Joshua 8 : 32; 
 18 : 1-10; 15 : 15; Judges 8 : 14;1 : 11;5 : 14; 2 Sam- 
 uel 11 : 14; 8 : 16f.; 20 : 23-25; 1 Kings 21 : 8; 4 : 3; 
 1 Kings 12 to 2 Kings 17; Isaiah 8 : 2; 36 : 11 ; 8 : 1 ; 
 37 : 14; Habakkuk 2:2; Jeremiah 29 : 1 ; 36 : 10-12, 
 20f.; 36 : 18; 17 : 1; 29 : 5-7; 36 : 23, 28-32; Luke 
 1 : 3f.; 4 : 20; Galatians 6 : 11; Revelation 1:4; 1 : 
 3; 22 : 7; 2 Kings 18 : 18, 37, 18-25; Proverbs 25 : 1 ; 
 Ezekiel 9 : 2; Psalm 45 : 1 ; Job 19 : 24; 13 : 26; 
 3 Maccabees 4 : 20; 2 Corinthians 3 : 3; 4 : 7; 2 John 
 12; 3 John 13; Deuteronomy 27 : 2f.; Numbers 17 : 2; 
 5 : 23; 2 Timothy 4 : 13; Matthew 1 : 1; 1 Thessalo- 
 nians 3 : 6f.; 1 Peter 5 : 12; 2 Thessalonians 3 : 17; 
 Romans 16 : 1, 22; 1 Corinthians 1 : 14; 16 : 21; Acts 
 18 : 27 ; Colossians 4 : 18. 
 
 Milligan, " New Testament Documents," pp. 3-32. 
 
 Gregory, " Canon and Text of the New Testament," 
 pp. 299-338. 
 
 Souter, " Text and Canon of the New Testament," pp. 
 3-9. 
 
 Price, " Ancestry of English Bible," pp. 20-26; 131-134. 
 
 Hunting, " Story of Our Bible." pp. 225-233. 
 
 Hastings, *' Dictionary of Bible," 1 vol. ed., art. " Writ- 
 ing," pp. 978-981. 
 
 Hastings, " Diet, of Apost. Church," vol. H, art. 
 " Writing," pp. 699-704. 
 
 " Standard Bible Diet.," art. " Books and Writing," pp. 
 106-108. 
 
 The art of writing developed early in ancient Israel, as 
 the numerous references to books have already suggested. 
 
30 Makers of the Bible 
 
 The first mention of writing in the Old Testament is 
 found at the end of the story of Israel's conflict with 
 Amalek at Rephidim, when Moses is commanded to write 
 in a book Jehovah's determination to blot out the hated 
 foe. (Exod. 17 : 14.) After the conquest of Ai Joshua 
 is said to have written upon the stones of the altar at 
 Ebal a copy of the law of Moses. (Josh. 8 : 32.) Later, 
 when the distribution of unoccupied territory was to be 
 made to the seven tribes whose inheritance had not been 
 assigned, Joshua appointed three men from each of these 
 tribes to form an apportioning body. This commission 
 examined the district and " described it by cities into 
 seven portions in a book" (Josh. 18 : 1-10). A similar 
 reflection of early familiarity with writing is found in 
 the incident of Gideon's capture of a young man of Suc- 
 coth, who " described (marg., wrote down) for him the 
 princes of Succoth, and the elders thereof, seventy and 
 seven men" (Judg. 8 : 14). Instances multiply rapidly 
 as one reads through the pages of the Bible. David 
 "wrote a letter to Joab " (2 Sam. 11 : 14), Jezebel 
 " wrote letters in Ahab's name and sealed them with his 
 seal " (1 Kings 21 : 8), Isaiah and Habakkuk wrote upon 
 placards (Isa. 8 : 2 and Hab. 2:2), Jeremiah sent a 
 letter to the exiles in their captivity (Jer. 29 : 1), Luke 
 wrote to Theophilus (Luke 1 : 3f.), Paul to his churches 
 (Gal. 6 : 11), and the Revelator penned his matchless 
 vision-book for the assurance and inspiration of his fellow 
 Christians in their hour of trial. (Rev. 1:4.) 
 
 But more instructive than these suggestions of ability 
 to use the pen are those reflections of possible centers 
 of literary activity and classes of writers with at 
 least a semipublic function. The name Kiriath-Sepher 
 (Judg. 1 : 11) hints at familiarity with writings, the 
 
The Writers of the Bible 31 
 
 name in another place actually being translated by the 
 Septuagint "city of records" (Josh. 15 : 15). Again, 
 the expression " the marshal's staff," in the revised ver- 
 sion of Judges 5 : 14, is translated in the King James 
 Bible " the pen of the writer," with a marginal note ex- 
 plaining the Hebrew as meaning " drawe with the pen." ^ 
 The Alexandrian Greek version in this passage uses an 
 expression which means a writer of narrative, while 
 modern scholarship has sometimes rendered it, with the 
 margin, the " staff of the scribe." ^ But even if, with the 
 most recent interpretation of the expression, we make it 
 mean simply *' the muster-master's staff," ^ it will still 
 refer to a military officer whose duty it was to enroll 
 troops, and this implies some sort of writing, to say the 
 least. 
 
 Once more, there were court officials in the time of 
 David and Solomon who were called recorders, or " re- 
 membrancers," and scribes, and who would probably have 
 to be familiar with writings. (2 Sam. 8 : 16f. and 20 : 
 23-25; 1 Kings 4:3.) And in the time of the divided 
 kingdom we catch a glimpse of Hezekiah's talented scribe, 
 Shebna (2 Kings 18 : 18, Z7), who, because he was 
 somewhat of a linguist (Isa. 36 : 11) and therefore pre- 
 sumably gifted with an instinct for literature, may well 
 have been in charge of the " men of Hezekiah," while 
 they were engaged in the task of transcribing and perhaps 
 arranging the proverbs attributed to Solomon. (Prov. 
 25 : 1.) Still later the work of the royal scribe became 
 so important and extensive as to justify his having a 
 special chamber, or office (Jer. 36 : 10-12, 20 f.), while 
 
 ^ Cambridge Reprint of the Authorized Version of 1611, Vol II, p. 70. 
 2 Barton, in "Biblical World," Vol. V, p. 127; Price, "Ancestry of En- 
 glish Bible," p. 22. 
 ^ Moore, "International Critical Commentary on Judges," p. 150. 
 
Z2 
 
 Makers of the Bible 
 
 in the " writer's inkhorn " of Ezekiel (Ezek. 9 : 2) is re- 
 flected the class of professional scribes of that early day. 
 
 And in the New Testament a similar suggestion may 
 be found. Paul composes and dictates such a master- 
 piece of argument as the Epistle to the Romans, the first 
 Gospel is a fine piece of argument in narrative form,* 
 Luke is producing a comprehensive and orderly account 
 of the life of Christ (Luke 1:3), and the author of 
 Revelation brings out a book of artistic worth and literary 
 beauty which he dares to call a work of prophecy. (Rev. 
 1 : 3 and 22 : 7.) 
 
 Thus there is abundant evidence in the Bible that its 
 authors were not only able to do the mechanical work of 
 writing, but were also men of fine instinct for literature 
 and a high degree of literary ability. Care must be taken, 
 of course, not to think of the Biblical writers as moved 
 chiefly by the literary impulse, for the Bible is above all 
 else religious in emphasis and purpose. But if literature 
 is the sublimate of human experience, then we may not 
 deny literary character to this volume, which has grown 
 up out of the soil of human experience. Yet the interest 
 is just now in another phase of the character of the Bible, 
 and these questions arise: When Biblical authors wrote 
 their books, what instruments and materials did they use ? 
 In the preparation of their works for the public did they 
 do the actual writing with their own hands, or did they 
 dictate to a scribe ? 
 
 There are relatively but few suggestions in the Bible 
 of the instruments and materials of writing, but these few 
 are worthy of notice. Reference has been made to the 
 " writer's inkhorn " of Ezekiel, which tells plainly of the 
 use of ink. In Jeremiah 36 : 18 ink is mentioned again, 
 
 * Burton, "Short Introduction," pp. 12-14. 
 
The Writers of the Bible 33 
 
 when Baruch, asked how he had written all these words, 
 with becoming modesty replied, " I wrote them w4th ink 
 in the book." The verse is not free from question, how- 
 ever. Some Hebrew scholars suggest that instead of 
 " with ink " we should read *' with my hand." This 
 change is advised because the princes could easily see 
 what writing fluid the scribe had used, and Baruch wanted 
 to distinguish between Jeremiah's part and his own in 
 the production of the book.® Moreover, the Septuagint 
 version renders this clause simply, " and I wrote them 
 in a book." Pens, too, are reflected as instruments of 
 writing in such passages as Psalm 45 : 1 and Isaiah 
 8 : 1 and others, while in 3 ^laccabees 4 : 20 the expres- 
 sion *' writing pens " occurs. So also in the New Testa- 
 ment we find familiar mention of both these things. " Ye 
 are an epistle of Christ," says Paul, '' written not with 
 ink, but with the Spirit of the living God " (2 Cor. 3:3). 
 In Second and Third John, again, paper and ink are men- 
 tioned, and also ink and pen (2 John, ver. 12, and 3 John, 
 ver. 13), this last passage being Hterally, " with black and 
 reed," thus suggesting a common black ink and an ordi- 
 nary reed-pen. And these reflections of writing materials 
 in the New Testament find abundant illustration and 
 support in the Greek papyri of the period, one of the 
 most striking being found in an Oxyrhynchus papyrus, 
 II, 326, ^' I have set before the dear mother the ink pot 
 and the pens." ® 
 
 The materials upon which ancient books were written, 
 however, is a more interesting subject and richer in sug- 
 gestions. The common word for book and the terms used 
 of writings and books make one think of a pliable mate- 
 
 ' Brown, " American Commentary on Jeremiah," p. 193. 
 ' Cited by Brooke in " International Critical Commentary nn The Johan. 
 nine Epistles," p, 104. 
 
34 Makers of the Bible 
 
 rial. Hezekiah ''spread" his letter before Jehovah (Isa. 
 37 : 14), a term which suggests something that could be 
 rolled and unrolled. And the book from which Jesus 
 read that Sabbath day in the synagogue at Capernaum 
 was undoubtedly written upon a pliable material, as is 
 implied by the word translated " closed " (Luke 4 : 20), 
 which may be rendered literally " rolled up." '^ Such rolls 
 are well illustrated in the Aramaic papyri from Elephan- 
 tine. These are papyrus documents of various sorts pre- 
 served from a Jewish colony in Egypt in the fifth cen- 
 tury B. C. They bear abundant witness to the fact that 
 these Jews had vitally entered into the life of Egypt, as 
 Jeremiah told the captives in Babylon they should do 
 there. (Jer. 29 : 5-7.) These documents testify to the 
 solidarity of the peoples of Biblical lands, and from the 
 point of view of this study reveal the wide-spread use of 
 papyrus for purposes of writing. A possible reflection 
 of this writing material is found ii^ an allusion to the 
 washing out of portions of magical formulae, like that 
 implied in Numbers 5 : 23, as washing out writing was 
 one way of making erasures on papyrus. It is sometimes 
 felt that if the " scribe's knife," used so destructively by 
 the king on Jeremiah's roll (Jer. 36 : 23), was the in- 
 strument for making erasures, then probably the material 
 of the roll was leather. But papyrus when freshly made 
 was not the brittle, fragile material we know it to be 
 today, but rather durable, especially when not exposed 
 to dampness.^ Hence papyrus is not excluded by the 
 reference to an erasing-knife from the possibilities for 
 Jeremiah's roll. A more definite suggestion of it, how- 
 ever, comes from a Greek word in the New Testament 
 
 '' Plummer, " International Critical Commentary on Luke," p. 122. 
 ^ Milligan, " New Testament Documents," p. 176. 
 
The Writers of the Bible 35 
 
 translated ''book," as in Matthew 1:1, hihlos, the name 
 of the pith of the papyrus reed. 
 
 This reed-plant had a triangular stalk, which was cut 
 into any convenient lengths for the purpose in mind. 
 The pith of these lengths was next sliced into thin strips 
 which were fastened edge to edge until a sheet of suf- 
 ficient width was formed. Another sheet similarly made 
 was then placed over the first with its fibers at right 
 angles to those of the under sheet. The two layers, some- 
 times possibly with a sort of glue between, were pressed 
 together to form a single sheet and left in the sun to dry. 
 Then one side was scraped with a shell or piece of 
 glass to remove any undue roughness. In addition, the 
 nicer pieces were rubbed with ivory, or were hammered, 
 before being ready for use. This was the common writ- 
 ing material of late antiquity, and probably many copies 
 of different portions of the Old Testament were made on 
 it. True, copies in any sense official, for the synagogue, 
 say, would probably be made on skins, if the requirement 
 of the Talmud that copies of the Law should be written 
 on skins ® reflects ancient tradition. In the case of the 
 Greek Old Testament and the New Testament, however, 
 it is more than likely that papyrus was the material upon 
 which the original copies were written.^^ 
 
 But we must pass on to elicit from the Bible its in- 
 cidental testimony upon the question of how the writers 
 performed the task of writing, whether they served as 
 their own scribes, using the pen themselves, or dictated 
 to amanuenses. 
 
 In the Old Testament the character of First and Second 
 Kings (considered as one book) would suggest that the 
 
 ^Kenyon, art. "Writing" in Hastings' "Bible Dictionary," IV, p. 945. 
 
 ^"^ Swete, "Introduction to Old Testament in Greek," p. 225; Kenyon, 
 " Textual Criticism of the New Testament," 2 ed., p. 25f. 
 
36 Makers of the Bible 
 
 writer was his own penman. We have seen that the man 
 who put the book in its present form had recourse to the 
 histories of Solomon and the kings of Israel and Judah. 
 This naturally divided his work into three great sections : 
 (1) 1 Kings 1 to 11, about Solomon; (2) 1 Kings 12 
 to 2 Kings 17, about the divided monarchy; (3) 2 Kings 
 18 to 25, about the kingdom of Judah. In the first and 
 third sections, when treating of a single kingdom, he 
 employs a simple method, dealing with the events of 
 Solomon's reign and those of the successive kings of 
 Judah. But in the second section, where he has to bring 
 together the separate accounts of two parallel kingdoms, 
 he begins with the first king of the northern kingdom 
 and continues the story of this king's reign to its close. 
 Then he goes over to Judah and brings down the story 
 of the southern kingdom to the end of the first three 
 reigns, which are contemporary, the last one only about 
 two years, however, with the northern king whose story 
 he has already narrated. Again he returns to Israel for 
 the story of the six kings whose reigns coincide with 
 that of the last king of Judah he has mentioned. And 
 so he continues alternating between Israel and Judah 
 through the period of the dual monarchy, with some 
 modifications where necessary, as when Jehu slew the 
 reigning heads of both kingdoms and as when the writer 
 stops to insert material referring to such prophets as 
 Elijah and Elisha. 
 
 From this it would seem most reasonable to think of 
 the writer as doing his own writing. He gathers the 
 materials of his history from such sources as have been 
 suggested in a previous chapter, himself supplying the 
 framework in which he so skilfully arranges the extracts. 
 At the same time he weaves in his own judgments of the 
 
The Writers of the Bible 2>7 
 
 various kings and their doings, uniformly adverse in the 
 case of the northern -kings, v^hile sometimes favorable in 
 the case of Judah's rulers. In some such way he com- 
 posed his great history, writing it with his own hand, to 
 show how disobedience of the law of Jehovah brought 
 condemnation upon the nation while obedience won divine 
 approval and blessing. 
 
 In the New Testament the Gospel of Luke will perhaps 
 furnish an example of this same sort of direct writing 
 by the author. As Professor Goodspeed points out,^^ the 
 first Christian teachers undoubtedly taught their converts 
 the chief facts of the birth, public ministry, death, and 
 resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and so formed the outlines 
 of what is now called the gospel story. But in matters 
 of detail those first recitals and early written accounts 
 probably differed materially from one another and so 
 caused some perplexity to later and more discriminating 
 converts and Evangelists. Among such we may count 
 Luke, Paul's physician-friend. In the preface to his 
 Gospel he seems dissatisfied with the somewhat numer- 
 ous and perhaps fragmentary accounts of the life of 
 Jesus current in his day. He carefully sifts the details 
 of gospel narrative and tradition and arranges his chosen 
 materials with such skill as to construct a comprehensive 
 and trustworthy record of the life of Jesus for the in- 
 struction and inspiration of his fellow Christians. And 
 if Kenyon's suggestion of an author's autograph copy in 
 this instance be accepted, this, together with the character 
 of the Gospel, will more readily make one feel that Luke 
 did his own writing.^^ " It is not hard to see the pile 
 of notes of conversation or investigation lying near at 
 
 " " Story of the New Testament," pp. 63, 64. 
 ^ Kenyon, " Textual Criticism," p. 33. 
 
38 Makers of the Bible 
 
 hand. Here are papyri rolls of previous monographs on 
 various phases of the life of Christ. Luke himself sits by 
 his own small desk with his own roll spread out before 
 him. He writes after he has gotten ready to write and 
 with all available data at hand." ^^ 
 
 On the other hand, dictation is clearly reflected in the 
 pages of the Bible. In the Old Testament the book of 
 Jeremiah furnishes a conspicuous instance of this method. 
 In the critical year of 604 B. C. the prophet finds him- 
 self excluded from the temple, for some unexplained 
 reason. Yet he feels impelled to tell the people his con- 
 viction of the nation's duty in the national crisis which 
 is upon them. He therefore sets about the God-given 
 task of putting his messages into written form, hoping 
 apparently thus to reach the public conscience and arouse 
 the people to the need of mending their ways. Like 
 many another Oriental, the prophet resorted to a scribe, 
 one of his disciples, Baruch by name, who was in all 
 probability a good penman. The roll was not long, for 
 it seems to have been read three times in one day to 
 people, princes, and king. But the writing of even a 
 short roll drew the admiration of the princes, to whose 
 wondering question the scribe replied briefly, " He pro- 
 nounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and 
 I wrote them with ink in the book " (Jer. Z6 : 18). Kent 
 has pictured the scene : ^* 
 
 In some quiet corner of Jerusalem or Anathoth sat Jeremiah, 
 now in the prime of life, but old in experience, recalling his words 
 uttered at earlier crises. Before him, with pen and parchment 
 in hand, sat his devoted friend and disciple, eagerly writing down 
 
 "Robertson, "Biblical Review," April, 1920, p. 172. 
 
 " " Kings and Prophets of Israel and Judah," Historical Bible, Vol. Ill, 
 P- 251. 
 
The Writers of the Bible 39 
 
 his words and perhaps assisting in that revision which has left 
 these earlier sermons of Jeremiah the most finished poems in the 
 Old Testament. 
 
 The same practise is reflected in the New Testament. 
 Somewhere about spring, A. D. 50, Paul reached Corinth 
 on his second missionary journey, to spend, as it now 
 appears, some eighteen months in evangelistic work there. 
 During this time he had occasion to write a couple of 
 letters to his Christian friends and followers in Thessa- 
 lonica. Silvanus and Timothy had just reached him with 
 word from Macedonia, the latter bringing an encouraging 
 report of the constancy of the Thessalonians. (1 Thess. 
 3 : 6f.) Hence Paul sent a letter ofif to Thessalonica. 
 Soon, however, it became necessary to send a second one 
 in order to correct some false impressions made by the 
 first. These two letters were probably dictated to Sil- 
 vanus, one of Paul's companions. At least he is joined 
 with Paul and Timothy in the salutation, and if we may 
 identify him with the individual of the same name in 
 1 Peter 5 : 12, he appears later as Peter's amanuensis. 
 But reasonable assurance that Paul dictated is reached 
 when we come to the end of this second letter to the 
 Thessalonians and find the words, " The salutation of 
 me Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in 
 every epistle " (2 Thess. 3 : 17). 
 
 A clearer instance of Paul's practise in this regard may 
 be found in what we now know as the sixteenth chapter 
 of Rom.ans. The scene of that chapter is laid at the home 
 of Gains in Corinth, or Cenchrese its port, probably the 
 same person as the Gains of 1 Corinthians 1 : 14. In 
 the company is at least one influential public official, 
 Erastus. The precise conditions under which the dicta- 
 tion was given are not clear. Gregory makes the pas- 
 
 D 
 
40 Makers of the Bible 
 
 sage refer to the dictation of the letter to the Romans, a 
 long task in the course of which there may have been 
 some interruptions.^^ The chapter is better considered, 
 on the other hand, as a part of a letter of introduction 
 for Phoebe to Paul's Ephesian friends.^® This letter, 
 similar perhaps to that written on behalf of Apollos 
 (Acts 18 : 27), was dictated by Paul to Tertius, who 
 took occasion to insert his own greeting along with Paul's 
 to the friends in Ephesus. (Rom. 16 : 22.) It is just pos- 
 sible, of course, that Tertius is merely copying a letter 
 written by Paul himself, yet, when taken in connection 
 with other reflections of Paul's habit of dictation, the 
 passage suggests that the apostle is here dictating. So 
 also in 1 Corinthians 16 : 21 and Colossians 4 : 18 Paul 
 refers to his own writing of the greeting in such a way 
 as to imply that he had dictated the body of the letter. 
 
 There are, however, passages which may show that at 
 times the great apostle to the Gentiles did the actual 
 work of writing himself. In that most personal and inti- 
 mate of all his letters, To Philemon, he says, " I Paul 
 write it with mine own hand," though these words may 
 refer only to the next four, Paul's " promissory note," " I 
 will repay it " (Philemon, ver. 19). The words in Gala- 
 tians 6 : 11 are more difficult. Some have felt that they 
 refer to what goes before, thus pointing to a somewhat 
 lengthy letter in the apostle's own hand, the reason for 
 his laborious task in this instance being his own sense 
 of delicacy in wanting no intermediary at all between 
 himself and those he feels compelled to scold so sharply." 
 On the contrary and more probably, if the statement in 
 
 ^"5 " Canon and Text of the New Testament," p. 302. 
 '« Cf . Goodspeed, " Story of the New Testament," p. 33. 
 " Milligan, " New Testament Documents," p. 24, 
 
The Writers of the Bible 41 
 
 this verse refers only to the closing words of the epistle, 
 they constitute another instance of the apostle's own 
 writing, this time in a bolder hand than the scribe's writ- 
 ing, perhaps humorously, for the purpose of impressing 
 both reader and congregation/^ In whichever way the 
 verse is interpreted, it seems clear that Paul's usual prac- 
 tise was to dictate, signing the letters in his own hand as 
 was the custom of the day. 
 
 Many illustrations of dictation as a common practise 
 of antiquity abound both in non-Christian documents and 
 in early Christian writers a little later than the period 
 of the New Testament. There is extant a papyrus letter 
 dating from about A. D. 50 from an Egyptian olive 
 planter, Mystarion, commending his messenger to one 
 Stotoetes, in which the change of handwriting in the 
 closing word, '' Farewell," seems to indicate Mystarion's 
 own hand.^^ Again, an Oxyrhynchus letter of about 
 A. D. 95 is dictated, the sender authenticating it by adding 
 at the close, " I, Heraclas, have signed." ^^ And Eusebius, 
 the historian of the early church, tells us that Origen 
 dictated " to more than seven amanuenses, who relieved 
 each other at appointed times." ^^ 
 
 What now, in a word, is the meaning of all this? On 
 very ordinary materials and with the common writing 
 instruments of every-day life our Bible was written. 
 Moreover, its writers were left free to follow each his 
 own method. They were human and subject to the limita- 
 tions of our human kind. They not only had to use their 
 powers of observation, judgment, imagination, in order 
 to express the truth as they felt God gave it to them, 
 
 M Cf. Burton, " International Critical Commentary on Galatians," p. 348. 
 
 ^® Dcissmann, "Light from the Ancient East," p. 157. 
 
 2" Milligan, " Greek Papyri," p. 25. 
 
 -^ " Church History," Bk. vi, ch. 23 : 2. 
 
42 Makers of the Bible 
 
 but they were restricted also to the use of such means 
 of expression as they found ready at hand. This means 
 that while they were guided in the selection and use of 
 material for teaching special lessons, they were at the 
 same time compelled to exercise the powers ordinarily 
 employed in literary composition. The human and divine 
 elements in the Bible blend in harmony. 
 
IV 
 EARLY READERS OF THE BIBLE 
 
 Study Outline 
 
 1. Find as many reflections in the Bible as you can of 
 the form of early books. 
 
 2. Read through at one sitting, aloud if possible, any 
 single book of the Bible. Try to imagine yourself writ- 
 ing it by hand in the form of a roll about twelve inches 
 in height, and then estimate the length of the roll. How 
 long a roll would it require for the whole Bible? 
 
 3. What suggestions of the circulation of the different 
 Biblical writings can you find in the Bible? Cf. Acts 8 : 
 28 and 15 : 21. 
 
 4. Notice the assignment of the quotation in Mark 
 1 : 2, 3 to Isaiah (or to "the prophets"); find the 
 writers there quoted, and then try to explain Mark's 
 confusion of the authors he cites. 
 
 5. Read 2 Kings 22 and 23 carefully, and try to deter- 
 mine the length of the law-book there reflected, whether 
 longer or shorter than our present Pentateuch. 
 
 6. Study Nehemiah 8 to 10 and try to determine whether 
 Ezra's law-roll was longer or shorter than Josiah's. 
 
 7. Compare Daniel 9 : 2 and Luke 24 : 44, and then 
 state the three great divisions of the Hebrew Bible, learn- 
 ing the books of each. 
 
 8. Can you suggest any reasons why early Christians 
 should collect and use in public services Paul's letters, the 
 Gospels, and other Christian writings? 
 
 43 
 
44 Makers of the Bible 
 
 9. How long were the books of the Bible in coming 
 together into one great collection? 
 
 Scripture References and Helps 
 
 Psalm 40 : 7 ; 2 Kings 19 : 14 ; Ezekiel 2 : 9f . ; Revela- 
 tion 10:2; 5:1; Jeremiah 36 : 23 ; 1 Maccabees 1 : 56-58 ; 
 Luke 4 : 17-20; Acts 8 : 28; 15 : 21 ; 13 : 15 ; Revela- 
 tion 1 : 3 ; 2 Peter 1:1; Mark 1 : 2, 3 ; 2 Kings 22 and 23 ; 
 2 Kings 22 : 8, 10; 23 : 2; 23 : 15-20; Exodus 20 : 24; 
 Leviticus 17 : 1-9; Nehemiah 8 to 10; Nehemiah 8 : 
 13-18; Deuteronomy 16 : 13-17; Leviticus 23 : 36 marg. ; 
 Daniel 9:2; Jeremiah 25 : 12 and 29 : 10; Luke 24 : 
 44; Colossians 4 : 16; 2 Peter 3 : 16. 
 
 Milligan, " New Testament Documents," pp. 171-229. 
 
 Souter, '' Text and Canon of the New Testament," pp. 
 149-194. 
 
 Goodspeed, " Story of the New Testament," pp. 137- 
 144. 
 
 Westcott, " The Bible in the Church," pp. 19-140. 
 
 Price, " Ancestry of the English Bible," pp. 127-130. 
 
 Ryle, " Canon of the Old Testament," pp. 47-94, 104- 
 199."^ 
 
 Robertson Smith, " The Old Testament in the Jewish 
 Church," pp. 149-187. 
 
 Conley, " The Bible in Modern Light," pp. 48-53. 
 
 Dods, " The Bible, Its Origin and Nature," pp. 33-59. 
 
 Peake, " The Bible : Its Origin, Significance, and Abid- 
 ing Worth," pp. 64-75. 
 
 Standard Bible Dictionary, art. " Bible," §§5, 6, pp. 
 100-102. 
 
 Further questions about our Bible press for answer. 
 When its different books were written, how were they 
 
Early Readers of the Bible 45 
 
 put into circulation ? To answer this question it is neces- 
 sary to ask another: What was Baruch's book hke when 
 finished, and Tertius', and all the rest ? 
 
 Our study of writing materials led to the suggestion of 
 the roll-form for early books. Those suggestions may be 
 further supplemented by more definite reflections of rolls. 
 The psalmist's phrase comes first to mind, " In the roll 
 of the book" (Ps. 40 : 7). Practically the same expres- 
 sion occurs, as we have already seen, in that famous thirty- 
 sixth chapter of the book of Jeremiah. As we have noted 
 also, Hezekiah's letter was probably in the form of a roll, 
 since it was " spread " before Jehovah. (2 Kings 19 : 14.) 
 The same word is used of Ezekiel's " roll of a book, 
 written within and without " with *' lamentations and 
 mourning and woe" (Ezek. 2 : 9f.). The same form of 
 book was probably in the mind of the Revelator as he 
 pictured the '* little book," opened, in the hand of the 
 cloud-clad angel from heaven (Rev. 10 : 2), and also 
 the close-sealed book of the future in the right hand of 
 heaven's majestic ruler (Rev. 5 : 1), in all likelihood 
 doom-rolls overfull of awful things soon to happen.^ 
 
 In these and other similar references there are thus 
 rather plain reflections of the roll-book, though we must 
 be prepared to admit the use of leaf-books earlier than 
 was once thought possible. The writing on rolls was 
 generally in columns of varying width, of course, but 
 more often narrow, and generally so close together as 
 to allow little space for notes except at the top and 
 bottom. In Jeremiah 36 : 23 the word translated 
 " leaves " has as a marginal variant the word " columns," 
 a suggestion of column-writing on rolls. This form of 
 
 ^ Cf. Goodspeed, " Journal of Biblical Literature," 1903, p. 74. 
 
46 Makers of the Bible 
 
 arranging the writing made reading easier, since it would 
 thus be possible to have several columns before the eye 
 without unrolling too much of the roll at once. 
 
 It is not known precisely how many writings in every 
 instance were put up in one roll. A few large rolls are 
 known to have existed but, as early as the middle of the 
 third century B. C, Callimachus, an Alexandrian scholar, 
 expressed the sentiment,^ " A big book is a big nuisance." 
 In the period with which we are deahng smaller rolls pre- 
 dominated, and the common practise was to limit a roll 
 to a single work, unless, of course, it was very short, 
 or too long to be put on a single roll of convenient size. 
 
 An interesting tradition concerning the rolls of the Old 
 Testament in this particular comes to light in the Jewish 
 Talmud : ^ 
 
 Our rabbis taught: It is not forbidden to write the Law, the 
 Prophets, and the Hagiographa in a single volume. The words 
 of Rabbi Meir were, that Rabbi Jehudah used to say, " The Law 
 should be written separately, and the Prophets separately, and 
 the Hagiographa separately." The Wise Men also used to say, 
 each book should be written separately. 
 
 Other passages in this Jewish literature suggest the same 
 thing, and it is clear from the unwieldy shape of rolls that 
 it would be practically impossible to combine different 
 works of any length in a single roll. 
 
 But as to the length of the original rolls of the New 
 Testament it is now possible to judge with a fair degree 
 of accuracy. This information has come to light within 
 the present generation in the Greek papyrus manuscripts, 
 many of which have been found and brought to the 
 
 2 Quoted by Putnam, " Authors and Their Public in Ancient Times," 
 third ed., p. 142. 
 
 ^ Quoted by Ryle, " Canon of the Old Testament," p. 235. 
 
Early Readers of the Bible 47 
 
 museums of the Western world. Sir Frederick Kenyon, 
 of the British Museum, has examined a great many of 
 the extant papyri and has ventured to estimate the prob- 
 able lengths of the New Testament rolls. The shortest 
 New Testament books might have been written upon a 
 single sheet of papyrus six inches wide by about eleven 
 inches in height. Second Thessalonians would require 
 about fifteen inches of papyrus of the same height. The 
 remaining letters of Paul would require longer and longer 
 rolls up to nearly twelve feet of material for the Epistle 
 to the Romans. Kenyon then estimates the length of the 
 roll containing the book of Revelation at fifteen feet; 
 the Gospel of Mark, nineteen feet; John, twenty-three 
 feet six inches ; Matthew, thirty feet ; and Luke and Acts, 
 about thirty-two feet each. This would make the entire 
 New Testament, if put into a single roll-book, a roll over 
 two hundred feet in length, pretty clearly prohibiting any 
 one's having a copy of the whole New Testament in that 
 early period.* 
 
 Is there now any incidental evidence in the Bible of 
 the circulation of these rolls? Naturally one thinks first 
 of the quotations from the Old Testament by writers of 
 the New Testament books, and such a use presupposes 
 the circulation of books. But there is more than this. 
 In 1 Maccabees 1 : 56-58 we have a reflection of both 
 public and private copies of Jewish Scriptures. For the 
 emissaries of the Syrian king not only destroyed copies of 
 the law found in public places, but also ferreted out 
 those people who treasured such Scriptures in private, an 
 unnecessary proceeding if copies of the law were not 
 circulating in some form among the people. Again, when 
 Jesus returned to Galilee from the Temptation in the 
 
 * Kenyon, " Criticism of the New Testament," second ed., pp. 33-35. 
 
48 Makers of the Bible 
 
 power of the Spirit and entered the synagogue of his 
 home town, there was handed to him a roll of Isaiah, 
 from which he read, then " rolled [it] up " and handed 
 it back to the attendant. (Luke 4 : 17-20.) Another 
 copy of the same great roll was perhaps in the hands of 
 the Ethiopian as he pored over the wonderful messages 
 of the fine Prophet of the Exile while journeying home- 
 ward along the desert highway from Jerusalem down past 
 Gaza. (Acts 8 : 28.) The daily examination of the 
 Scriptures by the Beroeans suggests more than a public 
 reading from a single official copy, and so the circulation 
 of private copies. Once more, the law of Moses was 
 widely read (Acts 15 : 21), and even if it were only 
 the public reading in the synagogue, yet it was " in every 
 city," clearly implying the multiplication and circulation 
 of copies of the law. The same is also true of the prophets 
 who were read along with the law. (Acts 13 : 15.) In 
 a similar manner the book of Revelation was perhaps ad- 
 dressed to a wider public than just the seven churches in 
 Asia, though under the names of these (Rev. 1:3), 
 while Second Peter is clearly not a letter to an individual 
 church, but a tract for the writer's fellow believers any- 
 where who would read it. (2 Peter 1:1.) 
 
 These and other indications of the early circulation 
 of the books of the Bible are abundantly supported by the 
 literature of the later church and show us that as among 
 the Jews their Scriptures were read by both priest and 
 people, so among both Jewish and Gentile Christians the 
 public and private use of the Bible continued and in- 
 creased.^ 
 
 Our thought thus far has been of rolls containing en- 
 tire books. But we must recognize the early circulation 
 
 ^ Cf, Harnack, "Bible Reading in the Early Church," pp. 31-47. 
 
Early Readers of the Bible 49 
 
 of rolls, possibly leaf-books also, which contained only 
 extracts from diflferent writings, each such book being a 
 sort of compendium of excerpts upon a given topic, or 
 group of related topics. In the " Extracts " of Melito, 
 bishop of Sardis near the end of the second century A. D., 
 we have an illustration of this practise, which probably 
 reaches back into the first Christian century, if not, in- 
 deed, into prechristian times. These books of excerpts 
 would be brief manuals of passages gotten together for 
 purposes of teaching and argument. Melito's words are 
 as follows : ^ 
 
 Melito, to Onesimus, his brother, greeting: Since, showing your 
 zeal for the word, you often asked that extracts be made for you 
 from both the law and the prophets concerning the Saviour and 
 all our faith, and besides wished to learn also the precise truth 
 of the ancient books, how many they were in number and what 
 their order, I was eager to perform such a task. 
 
 These words show that this work of Melito's was a col- 
 lection of testimonies to Christ and the church drawn 
 from the Old Testament. There were others like it 
 later and probably also earlier. Indeed, it is possible that 
 early Christian writers had access to such " Testimonia " 
 written in Hebrew or Aramaic.*^ At any rate, the circula- 
 tion of such " books of extracts " goes far to explain the 
 confusion in citations of the New Testament from the 
 Old Testament in places like Mark 1 : 2, 3, where pas- 
 sages from Malachi and Isaiah are assigned to the latter 
 alone. The marginal variant in Mark at these verses, 
 reading " in the prophets " instead of " in Isaiah the 
 prophet," points just as clearly to such a source for the 
 
 *In Eusebius, "Church History," IV, 26, 13. 
 
 '' Moffatt, " Introduction to Literature of the New Testament," p. 24. 
 
50 Makers of the Bible 
 
 quotation : as if the author had found it in a book of 
 excerpts from the prophets, who were unnamed in the 
 " extracts." The same explanation serves also for a 
 similar difficulty in Matthew 27 : 9. 
 
 Moreover, not only does the early circulation of rolls 
 make it possible to account for such features of our 
 Bible as have been mentioned, but it also lies back of the 
 collection and grouping of the Biblical books in their 
 present arrangement. It helps us to understand better 
 the early stages in the process by which the " sixty-six 
 books " were slowly gathered together and made into 
 what today we call the canon of Scripture. 
 
 In the twenty-second and twenty-third chapters of 
 Second Kings we have a graphic account of the dis- 
 covery of a '* book of the law " in the eighteenth year 
 of Josiah. The book was found in the course of some 
 repairs in the temple. The high priest recognized the 
 character of the book and delivered it to Shaphan, the 
 scribe. The latter made it known to the king, who was 
 greatly disturbed at its condemnation of the people for 
 forsaking Jehovah. Vigorous measures of religious re- 
 form were instituted at once : a public covenant was en- 
 tered into between king and people to confirm the words 
 of the newly found law-book, idolatry with all its abom- 
 inations was abolished, and an elaborate celebration of 
 the Passover was observed, such as had not been known 
 ** from the days of the judges." 
 
 What, now, was this book of the law ? That it was the 
 entire law of our present Pentateuch seems impossible. 
 For this new-found law-book was apparently read through 
 at least twice in one day, since the narrative seems to leave 
 no room for intervening days between the readings. 
 (2 Kings 22 : 8, 10.) Then it was read again to the 
 
Early Readers of the Bible 51 
 
 assembled people. (2 Kings 23 : 2.) Moreover, Josiah's 
 reforms carried out^ not the requirements of all the Pen- 
 tateuchal laws, but only of those in our present book of 
 Deuteronomy. In fact, some parts of the Pentateuch con- 
 tain laws which conflict with those that guided Josiah's 
 reforms. The one item of the proper place for offering 
 sacrifice will suffice for illustration. In Deuteronomy it 
 is to be at Jerusalem, and Josiah orders the destruction 
 of outside places of worship. (2 Kings 23 : 15-20.) But 
 in Exodus 20 : 24 and Leviticus 17 : 1-9 the place of 
 sacrifice is not thus limited. Hence, when we read this 
 realistic account of the finding of this particular book of 
 the law, of the effect of its being read upon both king 
 and people, and of the changes that took place compared 
 with the commands in the book of Deuteronomy, we are 
 led to believe that Josiah's book of the law thus clearly 
 described in the Bible was a short roll comparable in 
 length to the nucleus of the present fifth book of the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 There is, however, another law-book reflected in the 
 pages of our Bible. For this we have to come down 
 nearly two hundred years later to the time of Ezra and 
 Nehemiah. In chapters 8 to 10 of the book of Nehe- 
 miah we find another account of a public reading from 
 "the book of the law of Moses," "the book of the 
 law of God." What was this book of the law? Until 
 the reading of this law the people had not known the 
 details of the proper celebration of the Feast of Taber- 
 nacles. (Neh. 8 : 13-18.) The law in Deuteronomy had 
 not required the people to dwell in booths for the cele- 
 bration of the feast (Deut. 16 : 13-17), while here this 
 feature of the observance becomes an important element 
 in it, a thing the people had not done " since the days of 
 
52 Makers of the Bible 
 
 Joshua the son of Nun" (Neh. 8 : 17). Again, Deuter- 
 onomy required just seven days for the feast (Deut. 
 16 : 13-15), while the Levitical law adds an eighth day 
 as a " closing festival " (Lev. 23 : 36 marg.). Hence the 
 inference is rather plain that Ezra's book of the law is 
 of larger content than the earlier law-book of the people. 
 And if this be true, it helps to explain the addition of 
 other elements, until in the course of time that which 
 began as prophetic interpretation of the nation's history 
 and reformation of popular laws was brought to com- 
 pletion through scribal expansion into the *' Law " par 
 excellence. 
 
 So far as the further collection of Old Testament writ- 
 ings is concerned there is but one brief reflection in the 
 pages of the Bible, a glimpse of another devout Jew pour- 
 ing over his sacred books. In Daniel 9 : 2 the seer is 
 puzzled over the discrepancy between the exile of Israel 
 and the promises of its restoration. He is therefore pon- 
 dering Jeremiah's words. (Cf. Jer. 25 : 12; 29 : 10.) 
 It is just a suggestion that " the books," to which he thus 
 casually refers, were well known to his readers, and that 
 they included at least the prophecies of Jeremiah. And if 
 one prophet has come to be included among " the books," 
 why may not others have been also? There is evidence 
 that this was actually the case, though the information 
 does not lie in our Bible. It is found in one of the so- 
 called apocryphal books. x\bout 180 B. C. the Wisdom 
 of Sirach was written, probably in Aramaic. About fifty 
 years later the grandson of the author translated this 
 work into Greek and added a prologue of his own. In 
 this prologue we find mention three times over of the 
 prophets as the second group of a threefold division of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures. And in the Gospel of Luke the 
 
Early Readers of the Bible 53 
 
 same threefold collection of sacred Scriptures comes be- 
 fore us in the words of Jesus, " the law of Moses, and 
 the prophets, and the psalms " (Luke 24 : 44). 
 
 There is no reflection in the New Testament of the 
 collection of its books into an authoritative body of Scrip- 
 ture. Reason therefor is not wanting. Christians of 
 the first century did not seem to regard their own writ- 
 ings as of equal authority and importance with those of 
 the Old Testament. They would not therefore begin 
 the task of collecting the new writings, at least in any 
 formal manner, for the purpose of using them in public. 
 Of course, when a letter from Paul was received by a 
 church it was probably put away to be reread, or to be 
 copied for some individual or another church. In fact, 
 Paul so directs at least once. (Col. 4 : 16.) Perhaps 
 it was still too early for the general exchange of letters 
 between churches, and individual reading of letters would 
 not become wide-spread until Christianity embraced more 
 of those who had learned to read. But that such a prac- 
 tise must have begun in the first century is suggested in 
 early second-century Christian writings. Ignatius, the 
 Christian bishop of x\ntioch, wrote a number of letters 
 to the churches which ministered unto him as he was 
 on his way to Rome to martyrdom. Collection of these 
 letters was made by Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, before 
 the middle of the second century. In writing to the 
 Philippians this aged saint uses these illuminating words : 
 
 You wrote to me, both you and Ignatius, that if any one was 
 going to Syria he should carry the letters from you also. This I 
 will do, if I get a convenient opportunity, either I or he whom I 
 send as representative for you also. The letters of Ignatius which 
 were sent to us by him, and as many others as we had by us, we 
 send to you (Phil. 13 : 1). 
 
54 Makers of the Bible 
 
 If Christians before the middle of the second century 
 exchanged non-apostoUc letters, is it unreasonable to as- 
 sume that in the first century some exchange of Paul's 
 letters had taken place? And not only were such letters 
 exchanged and collected, but they were also, in all prob- 
 ability, very early regarded with something of the venera- 
 tion accorded to Scripture. For before the middle of 
 the second century the writer of Second Peter had come 
 to think of Paul's letters as Scripture (2 Peter 3 : 16), 
 very probably a later stage in a process begun some time 
 before. 
 
 Yet Paul's letters, though perhaps collected first, were 
 not generally invested with the sanctity and authority of 
 Scripture as early as the Gospels. These come into clear 
 light as something well known in the churches before 
 A. D. 150, a body of documents read in the public ser- 
 vices of the church along with the Old Testament Scrip- 
 tures and invested with the same authority.^ 
 
 Thereafter the formal collection of Christian writings 
 goes on apace, and Gospels, letters, tracts and apocalypses 
 begin to be grouped together with the books of the Old 
 Testament under the name of the New Testament. Yet 
 there is much diversity as to the details of the different 
 collections, some including more books than others. And 
 it is not until A. D. 367, in a letter written by Athanasius 
 of Alexandria at Easter, that we get just the twenty-seven 
 books which are included in our present New Testament. 
 
 Thus we see something of the process of gathering the 
 Biblical writings into a book, a Bible, like the divine proc- 
 esses in the world of nature, a long one. From the 
 seventh century B. C, and earlier, to the fourth century 
 
 ' Cf . Goodspeed, "Story of the New Testament," pp. 137-144; Souter, 
 "Text and Canon of the New Testament," pp. 160-168. 
 
Early Readers of the Bible 55 
 
 A. D. these sixty-six books were being gathered into 
 a collection, and as. they proved inspiring to those who 
 used them they were gradually invested with that sanc- 
 tity and authority which made them what we today call 
 Bible. But still more than this is necessary before the 
 Bible becomes the book we know it to be today. When 
 written and gathered together in any number the books, 
 if made available at all for lands outside, must be trans- 
 lated into the languages of other peoples. And transla- 
 tion will inevitably affect the character of the Bible, mak- 
 ing it more cosmopolitan, more like the world-book Chris- 
 tians now recognize it to be. To the subject of the trans- 
 lation of the Bible, then, must we turn. 
 
 E 
 
V 
 
 EARLY TRANSLATORS: THE SEVENTY 
 
 Study Outline 
 
 L Some marginal variants reflect the simplicity of the 
 early Hebrew, as 2 Chronicles 24 : 13, '* Healing went 
 up upon the work." Find as many of this sort of variants 
 in the margin of your Bible as you can. What conception 
 of the Hebrew language do you get from these variants? 
 
 2. Read in the appendix to this book the excerpts from 
 the Aristeas-story of the Septuagint, and tell why the de- 
 tails as there given seem unreliable. 
 
 3. Find from encyclopedias or Bible dictionaries the 
 number and order of books in the Hebrew Bible; learn 
 the books of your English version; find from a Roman 
 Catholic Bible the number and order of books of the Old 
 Testament. Compare these three lists of books and try to 
 explain the differences. 
 
 4. What bearing on the number and order of books in 
 the Bible has the early circulation of rolls as indicated 
 in Chapter IV? 
 
 5. See the marginal note on Genesis 6 : 3 and find 
 other similar variants showing how the Greek version 
 of the Old Testament differs from the original Hebrew. 
 
 6. Study the passage from the Greek version of Jere- 
 miah 27 : 1-9 as given on page 66 of this book and try 
 to explain it as a translation of an original Hebrew text. 
 
 7. Compare some New Testament quotations of Old 
 Testament passages with the Old Testament itself, and 
 56 
 
Early Translators: The Seventy 57 
 
 try to explain the differences. How has the Septuagint 
 influenced the New Testament? Of what value is the 
 Septuagint for a proper understanding of the Old Testa- 
 ment? 
 
 Scripture References and Helps 
 
 Proverbs 26 : 3; 1 Samuel 17 : 38-43; chap. 17 and 
 18; Exodus 24 : 10; 2 Chronicles 24 : 13; 1 Kings 11 : 
 40; 14 : 25f. ; 8 : 12, 13 and 53, 54; Genesis 4 : 8a; 
 Deuteronomy 32 : 43 ; Jeremiah 27 : 1 -9. 
 
 Robertson Smith, " The Old Testament in the Jewish 
 Church," pp. 73-148. 
 
 Price, " Ancestry of the English Bible," pp. 48-73. 
 
 Hunting, '' Story of Our Bible," pp. 207-209. 
 
 Hastings' Bible Dictionary, art. '' Septuagint." 
 
 Encyclopedia Britannica, art. " Septuagint." 
 
 Peake, " The Bible : Its Origin, Significance, and Abid- 
 ing Worth," pp. 42-63. 
 
 Hastings' Bible Dictionary, 1 vol. ed., art. " Greek 
 Versions of the Old Testament, 1. Septuagint," pp. 315- 
 319; art. "Text, Versions, and Language of the Old 
 Testament," pp. 908, 909; art. "Bible," §§2-5, 95-97. 
 
 Standard Bible Dictionary, art. "Versions," §§1, 2, 
 pp. 888, 889. 
 
 The various books of the Bible were written upon rolls, 
 gathered together into collections, copied into leaf-books, 
 and finally, in a few instances at least, formed into a 
 single large volume. But there is another interesting side 
 to this wonderful book, and it is the story of how the 
 Bible passed out of the languages in which it was first 
 written, from one language to another, until it came at 
 
58 Makers of the Bible 
 
 last to be translated into the language we understand, 
 and so made familiar to us. This story begins with the 
 account of the translation of the Old Testament into 
 Greek for Jews living outside of Palestine. 
 
 The original language of this part of the Bible was 
 Hebrew except some chapters in the books of Ezra and 
 Daniel. These small portions and a few straggling words 
 elsewhere are in Aramaic, a closely allied dialect. Ancient 
 Hebrew writing was simple, consisting of consonants only. 
 Some of the letters were assigned vowel values very early 
 and would thus help to preserve the proper pronunciation 
 of the language and make it possible for foreigners to 
 find a key to the language. But the complicated vowel 
 system of the Hebrew Bible as it is printed today is an in- 
 vention of medieval Jewish scholars for the purpose of 
 preserving the proper pronunciation of the words.^ 
 
 In the ancient language there was relatively little at- 
 tempt to express the complications of thought so manifest 
 in modern writing. Statement followed statement, and 
 the reader, or hearer, was supposed to think out for him- 
 self the proper relation between clauses. An extreme in- 
 stance is found in the book of Proverbs (Prov. 26 : 3), 
 where a set of three phrases occurs without any verb at 
 all, preserved even in the English translation in this in- 
 stance, the mere statement of the ideas one after another 
 suggesting their connection. A similar feature of the lan- 
 guage, though this time with sentences, is found in the 
 narrative of David and Goliath. Within the space of 
 six verses (1 Sam. 17 : 38-43) the conjunction "and" 
 occurs twenty times (twenty-two in the Hebrew), and 
 the first three clauses of verse 42, when given literally, 
 illustrate pointedly this coordinating quality of early He- 
 
 * Price, " Ancestry of the English Bible," p. 32f. 
 
Early Translators: The Seventy 59 
 
 brew : " And the Philistine looked up and saw David and 
 despised him." 
 
 Essentially the same thing is true of the ancient He- 
 brew vocabulary. The words reflect for the most part 
 an age of observation and contemplation rather than one 
 of verification and reasoning, as in the modern period. 
 They expressed objects of the external world, the ap- 
 pearance of things, more than conceptions or inward be- 
 ing. This gave the words a sense-quality and made the 
 language highly figurative. The word " bone," for in- 
 stance, as significant of the inmost substance of the body, 
 served at times for our modern word " self," or " very." 
 Thus in the phrase **the very heaven " (Exod. 24 : 10) 
 the word for bone occurs in this sense, a phrase which the 
 King James translators rendered by " the body of heaven," 
 not daring to go to the extreme figurativeness of the 
 original Hebrew. One more illustration will suffice 
 to make clear this superfigurative quality of the old 
 Hebrew words. In 2 Chronicles 24 : 13, where it speaks 
 of the repairing of the Temple, the Revised Version 
 reads, " So the workmen wrought, and the work of re- 
 pairing went forward in their hands." But a striking 
 marginal note on this verse shows how figuratively the 
 Hebrew expressed the thought of the last clause, " heal- 
 ing went up upon the work." 
 
 Now it was this marvelously simple and highly figura- 
 tive language that in the course of time came to be trans- 
 lated into a radically different tongue, the Greek of the 
 non-Palestinian Jew and his Gentile neighbors. There 
 were in early times flourishing communities of Jews in 
 Egypt. Just how early they migrated thither it is diffi- 
 cult to say. About the middle of the tenth century B. C., 
 before the death of Solomon, Jeroboam, one of the king's 
 
60 Makers of the Bible 
 
 servants, fell under his master's sore displeasure and 
 ran away to Egypt. (1 Kings 11 : 40.) A few years 
 later " Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Jeru- 
 salem; and he took away the treasures of the house 
 of Jehovah and the treasures of the king's house " 
 (1 Kings 14 : 25f.). While nothing is here said about 
 captives, it would be passing strange if that king did not 
 take back with him prisoners from Palestine and Jeru- 
 salem. But more definitely, we know from the Elephan- 
 tine papyri, papyrus letters from Egypt in the fifth cen- 
 tury B. C, that there was a flourishing colony of Jews 
 on the island in the Nile just at the foot of the first 
 cataract. This Jewish colony had a temple, built and in 
 use as early as 525 B. C, in which they worshiped the 
 God of their fathers. They were much like their kinsmen 
 in Palestine before the exile in their devotion to the tem- 
 ple. For when the Egyptians destroyed this building, 
 the Jews of the community regarded it as a calamity, 
 saying in one of the letters,^ " But when this had hap- 
 pened, we with our wives and our children put on sack- 
 cloth and fasted and prayed to Ihu, the lord of heaven." 
 So it was in other parts of Egypt also. Alexandria was 
 the home of a large and flourishing community of Jews, 
 and it is here that we must probably look for the begin- 
 nings of that process of translation which was to render 
 the Bible into the languages of many diflferent nations. 
 The story of the translation of the Hebrew law into 
 the Alexandrian Greek is told by one who calls himself 
 Arlsteas, in a letter to his brother. Aristeas pretends to be 
 a high official at the court of king Ptolemy II, who reigned 
 over Egypt 285-247 B. C. The king has founded a great 
 
 2 Sprengling, " Aramaic Papyri of Elephantine in English," American 
 Journal of Theology, Vol. XXI, p. 438. 
 
Early Translators: The Seventy 61 
 
 library at Alexandria and has been gathering books for 
 it from all over the known world. The librarian calls the 
 king's attention to the value of the Jewish sacred books 
 and suggests that they be secured for the royal library. 
 An embassy is sent to Jerusalem, one member of which is 
 this Aristeas, to find men who can translate the Law 
 into Greek for the king's library. Finally with the help 
 of the high priest at Jerusalem seventy-two Jewish elders 
 are found, six from each of the twelve tribes, gifted in 
 language and able to do the work of translating their 
 Law into Greek. These seventy-two elders proceed to 
 Alexandria and are there received by the king with all 
 the pomp and feasting he can give them. After being 
 tested with hard questions they are led to a quiet build- 
 ing on what was then an island. Spreading out their 
 Law rolls beautifully written in letters of gold on finely 
 prepared skins, they begin the work of translation, and 
 after seventy-two days of uninterrupted toil translate the 
 whole Law into Greek. The translation is then tested 
 by the Alexandrian Jews, heard read by the king, and 
 finally accepted in a formal manner for the great library. 
 So runs the story of the so-called pseudo-Aristeas con- 
 cerning the origin of the best-known Greek version of 
 the Hebrew Old Testament, This recital has given rise 
 to the name by which this version has become widely 
 known, the Septuagint, a Latin word meaning seventy. 
 
 But the details of the story as thus told by this pseudo- 
 Aristeas are probably fanciful, and cannot be relied upon 
 to give the entire truth about the origin of this first 
 great version of the Jewish Scriptures. As suggested, the 
 needs of Greek-speaking Jews in and around Alexandria 
 and their desire for the Scriptures of their fathers in the 
 language of their daily life were perhaps the underlying 
 
62 Makers of the Bible 
 
 cause of the translation. The actual task of translating 
 the Hebrew Bible was undoubtedly done at different 
 periods during a hundred and fifty years or more, and 
 was done by a number of different men whose names 
 are unknown. 
 
 The most striking difference between this first Greek 
 version of the Old Testament and the original Hebrew 
 lies in the number and arrangement of the separate books. 
 In the early Hebrew Bible the books numbered twenty- 
 four and were arranged in three groups corresponding 
 to the stages of their acceptance as Scripture. But the 
 Septuagint adds a number of books and arranges the 
 whole list in a different order. In the Hebrew Bible 
 we find : the Law, five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, 
 Numbers, Deuteronomy ; the Prophets, eight books, 
 Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 
 The Twelve (=the Minor Prophets); the Writings, 
 eleven books. Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, 
 Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra- 
 Nehemiah, Chronicles. But the Septuagint has the follow- 
 ing : Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, 
 Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Kingdoms (4 books = Samuel and 
 Kings), Omissions (2 books = Chronicles), Esdras, (2 
 books = Ezra and Nehemiah) , Psalms, Proverbs, Eccle- 
 siastes, Song, Job, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of 
 Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel, 
 Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, 
 Zechariah, Malachi, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamenta- 
 tions, Epistle of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Susanna, Bel 
 and the Dragon, Maccabees (4 books). 
 
 A little study of these two arrangements will show 
 where the Greek Old Testament differs from the Hebrew 
 Bible. The first group, the Law, appears unchanged in 
 
Early Translators : The Seventy 63 
 
 the Septuagint. The other two groups are broken up 
 in the Greek version and distributed apparently on the 
 basis of Hterary character. As Swete remarks,^ " his- 
 tories were made to consort with histories, prophetic and 
 poetical writings with others of their respective kinds," 
 an order and arrangement of books best explained by 
 the early circulation of books in roll-form and change 
 therefrom to leaf-book form. It would be natural for 
 the owner of a roll of Esther to place it for keeping in 
 the same box with the rolls of Judith and Tobit. For these 
 books were regarded as similar. Clement of Rome, writ- 
 ing near the end of the first century A. D. to the. Christian 
 church in Corinth, cites in the same chapter as examples 
 of self-sacrifice " the blessed Judith," willing to risk her 
 life for her besieged city, and " the faith-perfect Esther," 
 willing to assume the same risk for her people. ( 1 Clem. 
 55 : 4, 6.) If, then, these writings were held in like 
 regard, when the time came to put the rolls into leaf- 
 book form, what more natural than that an entire set of 
 rolls should be included in a volume? 
 
 But in order to appreciate more thoroughly the char- 
 acter of this Greek Old Testament and at the same time 
 to gain added light on our own form of the Old Testa- 
 ment in the English Bible it becomes necessary to go 
 more minutely into the dififerences between the Hebrew 
 Scriptures and this first Alexandrian Greek translation of 
 them. 
 
 These two Bibles differ in amount of matter, as is plain 
 from the difference in number of books. But difference 
 appears also in brief passages, making possible a closer 
 comparison. In Genesis 4 : 8a, our American Standard 
 Version, representing the Hebrew, reads, " And Cain 
 
 ^ " Introduction to Old Testament in Greek," p. 218. 
 
64 Makers of the Bible 
 
 told (or, said unto) Abel his brother/' while the Greek 
 version has, *' And Cain said unto Abel his brother, ' Let 
 us go into the plain.' " Another interesting passage is 
 found in 1 Kings 8. Here verses 12 and 13 are missing 
 from the Septuagint, but between verses 53 and 54 this 
 version inserts the following striking addition : 
 
 Then Solomon spoke concerning the house how he had com- 
 pleted the building of it, 
 
 "The sun in heaven the Lord made known ; 
 He said he would dwell in darkness. 
 Build my house, a house fitting for thyself, 
 To dwell in newness." 
 
 Behold, is not this written in the book of the song? 
 
 There are some errors in the Greek of this passage which 
 show that it is a translation of a Hebrew original. More- 
 over, the transposition of a single letter (the smallest in 
 the Hebrew alphabet) in the Hebrew word for "the 
 song " makes that word into the name of that old book 
 of war poetry we have already met, the book of Jashar.* 
 Once more, in Deuteronomy 32 : 43, the Song of Moses, 
 four couplets of the Hebrew are expanded into eight in 
 the Septuagint, thus : 
 
 Rejoice, O heavens, with him. 
 And let the sons of God wor- 
 ship him. 
 Rejoice, O nations, with his Rejoice, O nations, with his peo- 
 people : pie, 
 
 And let all the angels of God be 
 strong in him. 
 For he will avenge the blood of For the blood of his servants he 
 his servants, avenges, 
 
 * Robertson Smith, " Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 434f. 
 
Early Translators: The Seventy 65 
 
 And he will render vengeance to And he will avenge, and will 
 his enemies, render vengeance to his ene- 
 
 mies, 
 And he will pay back those who 
 hate 
 And will make expiation for his And will cleanse out the land of 
 land, for his people. his people. 
 
 There are likewise numerous lengthy passages which 
 also well illustrate the differences between the Hebrew 
 Bible and the Septuagint. Of these we may notice two or 
 three. The book of Esther is noteworthy. This book in 
 the Greek version is over one hundred verses longer than 
 the Hebrew original, and the additions are distributed 
 through the book in sections, or paragraphs, in some in- 
 stances as long as average-length chapters. The first sec- 
 tion consists of seventeen verses telHng the story of 
 Mordecai's first promotion at court in the second year of 
 Artaxerxes (Ahasuerus), placed before chapter 1 of our 
 English Esther, which opens in the third year of that king. 
 The second section, of seven verses, professing to give a 
 copy of the letter of Ahasuerus referred to in verse 13 
 of chapter 3, cominanding the destruction of the Jews, is 
 placed in the Greek version of Esther between verses 13 
 and 14 of our English Bible, which, of course, represents 
 the Hebrew Bible. The third and fourth sections, of 
 thirty and sixteen verses respectively, come between chap- 
 ters 4 and 5 of the English text, and give the prayers of 
 Mordecai and Esther and the latter's appearance before 
 the king to win his favor. The fifth section, of twenty- 
 four verses, comes between the twelfth and thirteenth 
 verses of chapter 8 and purports to give a copy of the 
 letter referred to in verses 9-12. The last and sixth sec- 
 tion, of eleven verses, is a sort of epilogue, closing the 
 
66 Makers of the Bible 
 
 whole Esther story by telling of the institution of the feast 
 of Purim (Lots), and closing with this note which pro- 
 fesses to relate the circumstances under which the book 
 was taken to Egypt : 
 
 In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Do- 
 sitheus, who said that he was a priest and Levite, and his son 
 Ptolemy brought the above letter of Purim, as they called it, 
 which had been translated (so they said) by one Lysimachus, son 
 of Ptolemy, a resident at Jerusalem. 
 
 Again, a portion of Jeremiah 27 will illustrate the same 
 differences between the Hebrew and Septuagint texts of 
 this prophet. The first verse of the Hebrew text is 
 omitted in the Greek version, but verse 2 of the Hebrew 
 is numbered 1 in the Greek. Hence, translating the first 
 nine verses of the Greek version, putting the Hebrew 
 verse-numberings in parentheses, we have the following: 
 
 1 (2) Thus said the Lord, Make bonds and bars, and place them 
 around thy neck, 2(3) and you shall send them to the king of 
 Idumea and to the king of Moab and to the king of the sons of 
 Ammon and to the king of Tyre and to the king of Sidon, by the 
 hands of their messengers who came to meet them to Jerusalem 
 to Zedekiah king of Judah. 3(4) And you shall arrange with 
 them to say to their masters, Thus said the Lord, the God of Is- 
 rael, Thus shall ye say to their masters, 4(5) I made the earth by 
 my great power and my outstretched arm, and I will give to 
 whomsoever it shall seem good in my eyes. 5(6) I gave the earth 
 to Nabouchodonosor, king of Babylon, to serve him, and the 
 beasts of the field to work for him. 6(7) And the nation and king- 
 dom which shall not place their neck under the yoke of the king 
 of Babylon, with the sword and with famine will I visit them, said 
 the Lord, until they fail in his hand, 7(8) And ye, hearken not 
 to your false prophets and those who divine for you and those who 
 cause you to have dreams and those who give omens for you and 
 practise sorcery, saying. Ye shall not work for the king of Babylon; 
 
Early Translators: The Seventy 67 
 
 8(9) for they prophesy to you to separate you from your land. 
 9(10) And the nation that shall bring its neck in under the yoke 
 of the king of Babylon and work for him, then will I leave it 
 (them) upon its (their) own land; and it (they) shall work it 
 and dwell in it. 
 
 Lastly, the Goliath-David stories in 1 Samuel 17 furnish 
 an instance where Septuagint differences from the He- 
 brew serve to clear up difficulties in the latter text. In 
 the Hebrew, and so of course the English, of chapter 
 
 16 : 14 ff. we are told how David, introduced to Saul's 
 court, becomes a favorite with the king. Then in chapter 
 
 17 we have an account in which David, though now the 
 king's armor-bearer, does not follow his sovereign to bat- 
 tle. Verse 15 only makes the difficulty more noticeable, 
 and with 16, may be an editorial attempt to smooth out 
 contradictions. Then David is sent by his father to the 
 camp with supplies for the brothers and a small gift for 
 the captain of the local regiment of militia to which they 
 belong: but no gift for the king. Moreover, David is 
 utterly unknown at court, neither Saul nor Abner having 
 heard of him before. (1 Sam. 17 : 55f.) But in the 
 Septuagint, 17 : 12-31, 41, 50 and 17 : 55 to 18 : 5 are 
 missing. Without these verses we get a tolerably con- 
 sistent account, in which David is in camp (1 Sam. 17 : 
 54) close to Saul's person (1 Sam. 17 : 32), as is to be 
 expected from chapter 16. On the other hand, the verses 
 omitted from the Septuagint give a different David story, 
 of a shepherd lad still unknown when his father sent him 
 to camp with provisions. He volunteers to fight, is victor, 
 is retained at court, and becomes the bosom friend of 
 Jonathan. 
 
 How are we to explain such things ? The answer is, in 
 several ways, perhaps. (1) Either the Septuagint has 
 
68 Makers of the Bible 
 
 the true text, and the Hebrew additions are interpolations 
 of fragments from a *' lost " history of David which have 
 been put into the Hebrew text by accident or ignorance in 
 the process of compilation; or (2) the Septuagint has 
 deliberately omitted this passage, 1 Samuel 17 : 12-31, 41, 
 50 and 17 : 55 to 18 : 5. But the query arises, Could 
 simple omission, made without changing a word of what 
 was left, produce a complete and consecutive narrative? 
 For verse 32 follows verse 11 more smoothly than does 
 verse 12. On the other hand, verses 12-31 are self-con- 
 tained and tell a perfectly natural story. Again, verses 
 1-11 are part of a history of public affairs, while 12-31 are 
 part of a biography of David. Moreover, the king's prom- 
 ise of riches and his daughter (1 Sam. 17 : 25) is first 
 referred to in a conversation with David, and that promise 
 suggests that the narrative in verses 12-31 is a fragment 
 foreign to the main narrative of the book of Samuel. For 
 though David did finally marry the king's daughter, he 
 did not receive her as a reward for slaying this Philistine, 
 but for an exploit among the Philistines. (1 Sam. 18 : 
 22-29.) Hence, on the whole, it seems more reasonable to 
 conclude that the Septuagint has not arbitrarily omitted 
 these verses, but rather that they have been interpolated 
 in the Hebrew text with verses 15, 16 as an editor's at- 
 tempt to reconcile differences and explain difficulties. 
 
 What, now, is the meaning of Bible translation for us ? 
 Of course it raises difficulties, especially if we have been 
 accustomed to depend upon the very letter of Scripture. 
 And perhaps we expose ourselves to the criticism of our 
 Roman Catholic friends when they suggest that transla- 
 tion by individuals leads to vagaries and all sorts of 
 " isms.'' On the other hand, does it not rather suggest 
 the marvelous capacity of the Bible for translation, not 
 
Early Translators: The Seventy 69 
 
 only into the various dialects of earth, but also into the 
 language of each individual soul ? Indeed, we were better 
 off in this matter to adopt the attitude of mind expressed 
 by the King James Revisers, who reveal a wonderfully 
 modern spirit in their quaint old language on this point : ° 
 
 Translation it is that openeth the window; to let in the light; 
 that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel ; that putteth 
 aside the curtaine, that we may looke into the most Holy place; 
 that remooveth the cover of the well, that wee may come by the 
 water, even as Jacob rolled away the stone from the mouth of 
 the well, by which meanes the flockes of Laban were watered. 
 Indeed — without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned 
 are but like children at Jacob's well (which was deepe) without 
 a bucket or some thing to draw with : or as that person mentioned 
 by Esay, to whom when a sealed booke was delivered, with this 
 motion, Reade this, I pray thee, hee was fine to make this answere, 
 / cannot, for it is sealed. 
 
 s The Authorized Version of the Bible, in Cambridge English Classics, I, 
 Preface, p. I3f. 
 
VI 
 
 EARLY TRANSLATORS : JEROME 
 
 Study Outline 
 
 L Read the article " Vulgate " (with cross references) 
 in any good Bible dictionary or encyclopedia and describe 
 the version in its external history and character as a 
 translation. 
 
 2. Look up in encyclopedias and histories the life-story 
 of Jerome and familiarize yourself with the outlines of 
 that life. 
 
 3. Study the history of the Roman Empire during the 
 Graeco-Roman period with special reference to the account 
 of the spread of the Greek language during the early 
 centuries of the Christian era. 
 
 4. Read (aloud, if possible) in the appendix to this 
 book some of the selections from the Vulgate, and try 
 to frame an idea of the character of the Latin language 
 as there reflected. 
 
 5. Compare closely some of the selections from the Vul- 
 gate as given in the appendix with the same passages 
 in the English Bible (Authorized Version, if possible), 
 and try to tell how the Vulgate has influenced the rhythm 
 and sound of the English Bible. 
 
 Scripture References and Helps 
 
 John 19 : 19f.; Acts 28 : 30f . ; Revelation 15 : 1 ; 5 : 
 11-14; 1 Corinthians 15 : 42; Genesis 1 : 1-3. 
 70 
 
Early Translators: Jerome 71 
 
 Breasted, "Ancient Times," pp. 630-631 and 642-658. 
 
 Price, " Ancestry of Eng. Bible," pp. 74-84. 
 
 Lewis, " How the Bible Grew," pp. 128-168. 
 
 Gardiner, " Bible as English Literature," pp. 293-310. 
 
 Hastings' Bible Diet., vol. IV, pp. 873-890; 1 vol. ed., 
 pp. 960-964; also art. " Greece," p. 315. 
 
 Encyclopedias, art. *' Vulgate," " Versions," " Jerome." 
 
 Standard Bible Diet., art. " Versions," H, Other Ver- 
 sions of Old Testament, p. 891 f. 
 
 Between the Septuagint and our English Bible lies an- 
 other remarkable version, the Latin Vulgate. In the 
 form given to it by Jerome this version has mightily 
 influenced European life, and therefore we ought to know 
 its place in the making of our Bible. But the Vulgate 
 was preceded by what scholars have designated as the 
 Old Latin translations and was itself a revision of these 
 older versions. 
 
 The Roman Empire was for many years bilingual. 
 Greek and Latin flourished side by side, the latter as the 
 official language of the Empire and the former as the 
 language of daily intercourse in non-official circles. In 
 Palestine there would naturally be a third, the Aramaic, 
 a dialect of the common people closely related to Hebrew, 
 so that we are not surprised to find these three languages 
 reflected in Pilate's inscription on the cross. (John 19 : 
 19f.) Christianity came to the West in Greek dress. 
 Soon after the middle of the first century A. D. we find 
 Paul in Rome preaching to all who would hear him, (Acts 
 28 : 30f.) By the end of this century the Roman church 
 seems to have won a leading place, since one of its 
 bishops, Clement, wrote on behalf of the church a letter 
 to the church at Corinth to settle some difficulties there. 
 
 F 
 
72 Makers of the Bible 
 
 But though Clement had a Latin name, he wrote in Greek 
 the letter known as First Clement among the Apostolic 
 Fathers. Still later the " Shepherd " of Hermas and 
 the writings of Justin Martyr and others appeared at 
 Rome in Greek. Even the Roman emperor, Marcus 
 Aurelius, wrote his " Meditations " in Greek, and Irenaeus, 
 the great Christian b'^ishop of Lyons, toward the end of the 
 second century A. D. used the same language. Moreover, 
 if the lower and perhaps the middle classes were recruited 
 in some considerable measure from Greek-speaking peo- 
 ples, this would be additional reason for the wide-spread 
 use of Greek by those from among whom Christianity 
 made its most numerous converts. 
 
 So we may not after all find the beginnings of Latin 
 versions at Rome, much as we should expect to look to 
 the capital of the Roman world for the origin of the 
 Latin Bible. Some scholars hold that Latin translations 
 of the Scriptures were first made at Antioch in Syria and 
 thence were carried westward.^ But others find in Africa 
 the original home of the Old Latin translations. Here 
 Latin was probably from early times the language of 
 both official life and common daily intercourse among the 
 people,^ and Latin translations of the Scriptures would 
 not only be required soon after the introduction of Chris- 
 tianity into Northern Africa, but they would also find 
 readers as soon as they could be published. But just 
 when the parts of the Bible were first translated into 
 Latin it is impossible to tell, perhaps soon after the 
 middle of the second century A. D. 
 
 There is not now in existence, so far as is known today, 
 a single complete Old Latin Bible among the rather 
 
 1 Cf. Kennedy, Hastings' Bible Diet., Vol. Ill, p. 53f., art. " Latin Ver- 
 sions, the Old." 
 
 ' Cf. Breasted, " Ancient Times," p. 647. 
 
Early Translators: Jerome 7Z 
 
 numerous manuscripts of the Old Latin versions. We 
 know it in the form of quotations made from it by the 
 early Latin Church Fathers, and in a number of fragmen- 
 tary manuscripts. These witnesses to the text of the 
 Old Latin Bible show that as a translation it was free and 
 often rough, and existed in such a variety of renderings 
 as to be confusing and unsatisfactory. Indeed, the great 
 Augustine complained of the Latinarwn interpretum in- 
 iinita varietas and declared ^ that 
 
 those who have translated the Scriptures from Hebrew into Greek 
 can be numbered, but the Latin translators cannot, for every one 
 into whose hands a Greek manuscript came in the first periods 
 of the Christian faith, and who fancied that he had some skill 
 in both languages, ventured to translate. 
 
 This diversity of rendering and freedom in translation 
 was often the source of complaint and trouble, and paved 
 the way for the revision which became the Bible of all 
 Western Christendom for over a thousand years and 
 powerfully influenced all European life through the long 
 medieval period. This revision was the version known as 
 the Vulgate. 
 
 This version was the work of an early scholar named 
 Jerome, who was well fitted for his task. Born of well- 
 to-do Christian parents about the middle of the fourth 
 century A. D. at Stridon, in what is now Czecho-Slovakia, 
 he was well educated first at home and then later sent 
 to Rome to study under one of the celebrated gram- 
 marians of the Empire. He read the great Latin authors, 
 Terence, Vergil, and Cicero, became familiar with Greek 
 literature, and studied rhetoric under a renowned teacher 
 who in his old age became a convert to Christianity. 
 
 3 Quoted by Price, " Ancestry of English Bible," p. 75. 
 
74 Makers of the Bible 
 
 Jerome traveled widely also, both in the West and in the 
 East. It is said that while he was at Antioch in Syria 
 he was taken with a fever, during the course of which a 
 dream made a deep impression upon him and changed the 
 course of his life. He dreamed that he was before the 
 judgment-seat of Christ. Asked who he was, he replied 
 that he was a Christian. At once came back the stern 
 rebuke : * " You deceive yourself, you are a Ciceronian, 
 not a Christian; for where your treasure is, there also 
 is your heart." 
 
 In spite of this, however, Jerome's classical training 
 gave him a fine instinct for language and proved a great 
 advantage for his life-work as a translator of the Scrip- 
 tures into Latin. In search of solitude in the summer 
 of A. D. 374 he moved to a desert place east of Antioch, 
 where he spent five years in self-discipline and study. 
 He learned Hebrew from a rabbi who had been converted 
 to Christianity, was later ordained presbyter in the church 
 at Antioch, moved to Constantinople, and in 382 returned 
 to Rome to live for about two years in close relations 
 with the bishop of Rome, Damasus, who appealed to the 
 great Christian scholar to undertake the task of preparing 
 a better version of the Bible. Jerome could say he was 
 widely popular in Rome and regarded as a scholar, but 
 he foresaw the bitter criticism and hostility such an under- 
 taking would arouse. 
 
 You urge me to revise the old Latin version [he says in the 
 Preface to the Gospels, addressed to Damasus], and, as it were, 
 to sit in judgment on the copies of the Scriptiwes which are 
 now scattered throughout the world and, inasmuch as they differ 
 from one another, you would have me decide which of them 
 agrees with the Greek original. The labor is one of love, but at 
 
 * White, art. " Vulgate," in Hastings' Diet., Vol. IV, p. 873b. 
 
Early Translators: Jerome 7S 
 
 the same time both perilous and presumptuous; for in judging 
 others I must be content to be judged by all; and how can I 
 dare to change the language of the world in its hoary old age, 
 and carry it back to the early days of its infancy? Is there a man, 
 learned or unlearned, who, when he takes the volume into his 
 hands, and perceives that what he reads does not suit his settled 
 tastes, will not break out immediately into violent language, and 
 call me a forger and a profane person for having the audacity to 
 add anything to the ancient books, or to make any changes or 
 corrections therein.^ 
 
 Jerome's first task was simply to revise existing Latin 
 versions, correcting the Old Latin text in the New Testa- 
 ment by the aid of the best Greek manuscripts and in the 
 Old Testament by the best text of the Septuagint. As 
 the Gospels were used for the public reading he seems 
 to have begun with this portion of the New Testament 
 and most naturally to have followed this with the revision 
 of the Psalms in the Old Testament, since these were 
 needed for the services of the church. But the work of 
 revision was interrupted by the death of his friend and 
 patron, Damasus, and the accession of a new bishop 
 who did not care at all for the improvement of Scripture. 
 Jerome continued his work, however, but removed from 
 Rome to the East. He settled finally at Bethlehem, and 
 there took up his task in earnest, no longer merely a 
 revision of existing Latin Bibles, but a new translation 
 from Hebrew and Greek originals, translating the whole 
 Bible faithfully into a fine Latin, which was destined to 
 remain for hundreds of years the accepted form of Scrip- 
 ture for the Western Christian world. 
 
 The Latin of the Vulgate is not, of course, the literary 
 Latin of the classical period, although, as above noted, 
 Jerome was familiar with the classical writers of Rome. 
 
 6 Quoted by Lewis, ** How the Bible Grew," p. i47f- 
 
yd Makers of the Bible 
 
 We do not find the author of the Vulgate imitating Cicero, 
 yet his fine ability as a linguist has been well-nigh uni- 
 versally recognized. One simple illustration will suggest 
 the direction in which the later Latin developed away 
 from the early classical style. Our first days in the high 
 school in the study of this language were made hard be- 
 cause of our difficulty in learning to hold the verb till 
 the end of the sentence, as in classical Latin authors we 
 read. But Jerome did not pattern after that stiff and 
 formidable style in the making of his sentences. He fol- 
 lowed what was to his contemporaries in their daily life 
 and what seems to us nowadays a more natural order. 
 Notice this feature in the following brief passages from 
 the Vulgate : Et vidi aliud signum in caelo magnum et 
 mirahile, " And I saw another sign in heaven, great and 
 wonderful" (Rev. 15 : 1). Once more we read a verse 
 from Paul's impassioned argument on the resurrection: 
 Sic et resurrectio mortnonim. Seminatiir in corriiptione, 
 siirget in incorriiptione: " So also is the resurrection of 
 the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in in- 
 corruption " (1 Cor. 15 : 42). Again, the very first 
 verses of the Bible show the same simplicity of word- 
 order. In principio creavit Deiis caelum et terram. Terra 
 atitem erat inanis et vacua, et tenebrae erant super faciem 
 abyssi; et Spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas: " In the 
 beginning God created the heaven and the earth. But 
 the earth was without form and void, and darknesses were 
 upon the face of the abyss; and the Spirit of God was 
 borne upon the waters" (Gen. 1 : 1-3). 
 
 If now we ask more closely as to the character of this 
 wonderful version, we shall get a better answer by study- 
 ing its influence upon our own English versions. Such in- 
 fluence is difficult to measure, but if we are willing to be 
 
Early Translators: Jerome 77 
 
 at pains to recall our Latin and compare the Vulgate 
 with the King James Bible, we shall get a rather vivid 
 impression of the influence of the Latin upon the En- 
 glish. For Professor Gardiner has pointed this out clearly, 
 showing that our seventeenth century English translators 
 were steeped in the language of the Vulgate. They seem 
 to have transferred to their English much more than the 
 meanings of words — the rhythm and sonorousness of the 
 Vulgate Latin. To compare only a few passages of the 
 English and Latin is to see something of the character of 
 the Vulgate and to feel how much its stateliness and music 
 have influenced our Bible. Gardiner compares the two 
 versions in Revelation 5 : 11-14 and feels® that ** the 
 prevalence of such* resonant phrases as vocem angelorum 
 multorum, honorem et gloriam, in saecula saeculorum, 
 makes this passage almost an anthem as it stands ; and its 
 grave sonorousness is a palpable utterance of the awe and 
 reverence which man feels in the presence of an almighty 
 God." Here are the passages arranged in parallel columns 
 for comparison : 
 
 Et vidi, et audivi voccm An- And I beheld, and I heard the 
 
 gelorum multorum in circuitu, voice of many angels round 
 
 throni, et animalium et senior- about the throne and the beasts 
 
 um; et erat numerus eonun and the elders : and the num- 
 
 millia inillium, ber of them was ten thousand 
 
 times ten thousand, and thou- 
 sands of thousands : 
 
 Dicentium voce magna: Dig- Saying with a loud voice, 
 
 nus est Agnus, qui occisus est, Worthy is the Lamb that was 
 
 accipere virfiitem et divinitatem, slain to receive power, and 
 
 et sapientiam et fortitudinem, et riches, and wisdom, and 
 
 honorem et glorinm, et benedic- strength, and honour, and glory, 
 
 tionem. and blessing. 
 
 * Gardiner, " Bible as Literature," p. josf. 
 
7% Makers of the Bible 
 
 Et omnem creaturam, quae in And every creature which is 
 
 coelo est, et super terrain et in heaven, and on the earth, and 
 
 sub terra, et quae sunt in mari, under the earth, and such as are 
 
 et quae in eo, omnes audivi di- in the sea, and all that are in 
 
 centes: Sedenti in throno, et them, heard I saying, Blessing 
 
 Agno : Benedictio et honor, et and honour, and glory, and 
 
 gloria et potestas in saecula power, be unto him that sitteth 
 
 saeculorum. upon the throne, and imto the 
 
 Lamb for ever and ever. 
 
 Et quatuor animalia dicebant: And the four beasts said, 
 
 Amen. Et viginti quatuor se- Amen. And the four and 
 
 niores ceciderunt in fades suas twenty elders fell down and 
 
 et adoraverunt viventeni in worshipped him that liveth for 
 
 saecula saeculorum. ever and ever. 
 
 So we have come to feel that our English Bible owes 
 a large debt to the Vulgate, and that much of its match- 
 less beauty and power come from the Latin of Jerome. 
 This has long been recognized and was beautifully ex- 
 pressed by the translators of the King James Bible, a 
 tribute to the author of the Vulgate in which Christian 
 people now generally unite : ^ 
 
 This moved S, Jerome, a most learned Father and the best 
 linguist without controversy, of his age, or of any that went be- 
 fore him, to undertake the translating of the Old Testament, out 
 of the very fountains themselves : which he performed with evi- 
 dence of great learning, judgment, industry, and faithfulness, that 
 he hath forever bound the Church unto him, in a debt of special 
 remembrance and thankfulness. 
 
 'Cambridge English Classics, Reprint of Authorized Version of :6ii, 
 Preface, " Translators to the Reader," p. i6. 
 
VII 
 
 THE COPYISTS : BASES OF THE TEXT 
 
 Study Outline 
 
 1. Look up in encyclopedias and Bible dictionaries the 
 articles on " Versions " and consider how they form a 
 basis of our English Bible. 
 
 2. Look up in the references some of the early Church 
 Fathers, and consider how their quotations of Scripture 
 help scholars now to establish the text of the Bible. 
 
 3. Find what information you can in the references 
 about the important manuscripts of the Bible, mastering 
 in outline the story of such manuscripts as Codex Alex- 
 andrinus, Vaticanus, Bezae, Sinaiticus, Washington, and 
 others. 
 
 4. Read the account of the modern discovery of the 
 papyri, and tell what they contribute toward our informa- 
 tion about the bases of the Bible. 
 
 5. What can you say of the character of these textual 
 witnesses and their contribution to our conception of the 
 Bible? 
 
 Scripture References and Helps 
 
 Genesis 6:3; Psalm 139 : 7f . ; Matthew 5 to 7; 19 : 
 17; Z\7',7 \ 18; Luke 2 : 2; John 20 : 10, 25; 3 : 5; 
 Genesis 49 : lOf.; Mark 16 : 14, 15. 
 
 Price, "Ancestry of English Bible," Ch. II, XIII, 
 XIV. 
 
 79 
 
80 Makers of the Bible 
 
 Cobern, " New Archeological Discoveries," pp. 3-97, 
 132-210. 
 
 Gregory, " Canon and Text of the New Testament," 
 pp. 329-353. 
 
 Bible diets, and encyclopedias, arts. '' Versions," 
 " Fathers," " Papyri," " Manuscripts " (also the " Helps " 
 in Teachers' Bibles). 
 
 Conley, " Bible in Modern Light," pp. 58-74. 
 
 Lake, " Text of the New Testament," pp. 11-21, 22-46. 
 
 Vincent, " History of Textual Criticism," pp. 8-41. 
 
 H. D. B., 1 vol. ed., pp. 909-911, §§7-20, art. "Texts, 
 Versions, Languages of Old Testament"; pp. 916-924, 
 §§1-32, " Text of New Testament." 
 
 Standard Bible Diet., art. "New Testament Text," 
 §§1-4, pp. 580, 581; art. "Old Testament Text," §§1-8, 
 pp. 601-603. 
 
 The primary object of the great versions just studied 
 was, of course, to enable people who did not know the 
 original to read the Scriptures in a tongue spoken by 
 them. But now for us today they serve another end. 
 With other translations they have become valuable wit- 
 nesses to the text of Scripture and provide scholars with 
 readings which serve to throw light upon obscure pas- 
 sages. In so far the versions become one of the bases of 
 our modern Bible, and the Revised Version not infre- 
 quently appeals to their variant readings. So, for ex- 
 ample, the marginal note to Genesis 6:3, where we read : 
 " Or, rule in. Ace to Sept., Vulg., and Syr., abide in." 
 
 A second basis for the Bible, as we know it, is to be 
 found in the quotations from Scripture made by early 
 Christian leaders who followed our New Testament writ- 
 ers. They are commonly known as Church Fathers, and 
 
The Copyists: Bases of the Text 81 
 
 their quotations of Biblical passages are called patristic 
 citations. Of these the most important are early, though 
 as a rule loose, seldom giving the exact words of Scrip- 
 ture in the form we have it. Unfortunately for the 
 general reader the revisers of the American Standard 
 Version have not indicated their sources of readings so 
 far as to mention the Church Fathers. Yet some of them 
 are of such importance as to justify a few illustrative 
 quotations from, or rather reflections of, the Bible as 
 found in their writings. 
 
 Clement of Rome, writing to the Corinthians about the 
 end of the first century, quotes both the Old and New 
 Testaments, sometimes accurately, sometimes inaccurately, 
 and sometimes so vaguely as to be in effect a mere allu- 
 sion. Here is a reasonably accurate quotation of a familiar 
 passage, though Clement does not indicate its place in 
 Scripture : 
 
 For somewhere the Scripture says, " Where shall I go, and 
 where shall I conceal myself from thy presence? If I ascend 
 into heaven, thou art there ; if I go away to the ends of the earth, 
 there is thy right hand; if I make my bed in the abyss, there is 
 thy spirit" (1 Clem. 28 : 3, quoting Ps. 139 : 7f.). 
 
 And, again, quoting familiar New Testament passages, 
 he shows the other characteristic : 
 
 For he spoke thus, " Show mercy, that you may receive mercy ; 
 forgive, that it may be forgiven you ; as you do, so shall it be done 
 unto you; as you give, so shall it be given unto you; as you judge, 
 so shall you be judged; as you are kind, so shall kindness be 
 shown to you ; with what measure you measure, with it shall it be 
 measured unto you" (1 Clem. 13 : 2, quoting from the Sermon 
 on the Mount). 
 
 Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, a few years later than 
 Clement, writing to the Christians of ancient Philadelphia, 
 
82 Makers of the Bible 
 
 shows somewhat more freedom in his method of treat- 
 ing Scripture. " For it (the Spirit) knows whence it 
 comes and whither it goes" (Ignatius, Philadelphians 
 7 : 1, reflecting John 3:8). In similar fashion Justin 
 Martyr, about the middle of the second century, reflects 
 a considerable amount of Biblical material in varying de- 
 grees of verbal accuracy. In one passage he quotes Gene- 
 sis as follows : 
 
 A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, 
 until shall come that for which he is set; and he shall be himself 
 the expectancy of nations, binding his foal to a vine, washing his 
 robe in the blood of a grape (Apology, 32 : 1, quoting Genesis 
 49 : lOf.). 
 
 These and many more similar quotations of Scripture 
 in the Fathers suggest that while patristic citations have 
 a greater value than hitherto admitted as a witness to the 
 text of the Bible, they must be used with extreme care. 
 When, however, they support the best manuscripts and 
 versions, as they do at times, they give testimony to the 
 correct text of the Bible that is invaluable. Such an 
 instance of agreement of the best Fathers with the best 
 versions and manuscripts is found in the Revised Ver^ 
 sion's reading of Matthew 19 : 17, " Why askest thou me 
 concerning that which is good ? " where the margin gives 
 a note : " Some ancient authorities read. Why callest thou 
 me good? None is good save one, even God." 
 
 By this time the third and most important basis of 
 the English Bible has suggested itself, the manuscripts. 
 These are very numerous, amounting to thousands in all 
 degrees of incompleteness, and consisting of both parch- 
 ment and papyrus documents. These latter are fragmen- 
 tary, yet because of their early date are of more than 
 
The Copyists: Bases of the Text 83 
 
 passing interest. Some of the manuscripts, as in the case 
 of the parchment or vellum codices, are written in capital 
 letters (uncials), corresponding to hand-printed docu- 
 ments, while others are written in ordinary long hand 
 and are called cursives. 
 
 The story of the modern discoveries of papyri is a 
 romance. Relatively little was accomplished in this field 
 of archeological discovery before 1890, when the long-lost 
 work of Aristotle on the Constitution of Athens was 
 brought to light. A few years later Doctor Grenfell and 
 Doctor Hunt, excavating the site of ancient Oxyrhynchus, 
 situated in the Fayum of Egypt, some one hundred and 
 twenty miles south of Cairo, discovered vast numbers of 
 Greek papyri and caused a sensation by the treasures from 
 antiquity they were able to present to the world of schol- 
 ars. Documents of all sorts were included in this epochal 
 discovery; portions of the ancient classics, coroners' re- 
 ports, official tax-lists, invitations to dinners, private let- 
 ters, business accounts — a vast body of documents reflect- 
 ing every-day life in the centuries just preceding and just 
 after the beginning of the Christian era. Here is a sample 
 dinner invitation of the second century A. D. : ^ " An- 
 tonius, son of Ptolemaeus, invites you to dine with him 
 at the table of the lord Serapis in the house of Claudius 
 Serapion on the 16th at 9 o'clock." 
 
 But naturally we are more particularly interested in 
 the Biblical texts among these papyri, which date back 
 at least a hundred years earlier than other known manu- 
 scripts of the New Testament. One of the earliest of 
 these is a single leaf, written in capitals, dating from the 
 third century A. D. It contains over half of the first 
 chapter of Matthew. It is one of the oldest known manu- 
 
 ^ Milligan, •* Greek Papyri," No. 39, P- 97- 
 
84 Makers of the Bible 
 
 scripts of any part of the New Testament, and supports 
 that type of text represented by the Westcott and Hort 
 Greek Testament. Another papyrus text from this same 
 century, perhaps a bit older than the one just mentioned, 
 contains parts of chapters 8 and 9 of Paul's Letter to the 
 Romans. The papyrus book of which this leaf was a part 
 was only four and a half inches high by about two in 
 width. The leaf is badly mutilated, but scholars have 
 been able to read the familiar words : ^ 
 
 As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of 
 God . . . children of God. . . and if children . . . joint heirs . . . 
 I am persuaded that neither death . . . nor powers . . . nor height 
 . . . nor depth . . . shall be able to separate us. 
 
 One more of these recently found N^ew Testaments is a 
 fifth century Gospel fragment of nearly seven hundred 
 lines. Cobern, in the work just cited above, gives a vivid 
 description of this four-gospel Testament : ^ 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount is given with almost absolute verbal 
 perfection. . . In many other places there are slight variations in 
 spelling. . . In Matthew 3 : 7 the scribe uses a synonym for 
 " warned." . . In Luke 2 : 2 the name of the governor Quirinius is 
 misspelled ... in verse 25 (of John 20) a particle is inserted and 
 in verse 10 the reading is " so they went back to the disciples." . . 
 The only variation in sense in any passages is in Matthew 7 : 18, 
 where instead of writing " neither can a corrupt tree bring forth 
 good fruit," this ancient copyist has written "neither can a good 
 tree bring forth good fruit." The early Christian's love for his 
 Bible is seen from the fact that instead of mutilating the text 
 some reader far back in that ancient world has put in the 
 margin — " sic ! " 
 
 Of the many manuscripts we can notice but two or 
 three. One of the most interesting is also one of the 
 
 'Cobern, "New Archeological Discoveries," p. 154*. 
 ■ " New Archeological Discoveries," p. i59- 
 
The Copyists: Bases of the Text 85 
 
 most recent " finds." In December, 1906, Mr. Freer, of 
 Detroit, bought four great manuscripts of an Arab dealer 
 in Gizeh, near Cairo. The third one of this group is a 
 fine copy of the Gospels, ranking with the leading manu- 
 scripts of tlie world in age and completeness. This splen- 
 did New Testament gospel volume is now located at 
 Washington, D. C, in the Smithsonian Institute and so 
 in a peculiar manner belongs to the United States. It 
 is referred to by the letter W in scholars' discussions of it. 
 Its age is remarkable, the manuscript being not later than 
 the sixth century A. D. and possibly as early as the fourth. 
 It is written on parchment of good quality and was ap- 
 parently intended for a magnificent copy. It contains 
 187 leaves (374 pages) written in one column, thirty lines 
 to the page. The Gospels are practically complete and 
 stand in the order, Matthew, John, Luke, Mark. The 
 text of this copy of the Gospels is marked by numerous 
 additions and some striking omissions as compared with 
 that type presented in the Revisers' text, from which our 
 Revised Version was translated. For instance, in Mark 
 16, between verses 14 and 15 W inserts an eccentric 
 addition in which the disciples defend or excuse them- 
 selves and Jesus replies to that defense. 
 
 And they made excuse, saying, This age of lawlessness and un- 
 belief is under Satan, who by the unclean spirits, does not allow 
 us power to comprehend the truth of God. Wherefore reveal 
 thy righteousness at once, they said to the Christ. And the Christ 
 answered them, Fulfilled is the limit of the years of Satan's 
 authority, but other dangers are come near. And I was delivered 
 unto death for sinners, that they might turn to the truth and no 
 longer sin, in order that they might inherit the glory of righteous- 
 ness, which (glory) is in heaven, spiritual and incorruptible.* 
 
 ♦From Goodspeed's text, "Biblical World," March, 1908, pp. 218-226. 
 
86 Makers of the Bible 
 
 Naturally, critics are divided on the authenticity of the 
 reading, such scholars as Goodspeed and Cobern feeling 
 that the addition is so unlike Jesus' sayings and so dif- 
 ferent from other parts of Mark's Gospel as to be no 
 original part of our second Gospel,^ while Moffatt says ® 
 that the passage originally belonged to the section in 
 which it stands, but was for some reason removed at 
 an early date. 
 
 Another of the most important manuscripts of the 
 Bible is a fourth-century codex in the Vatican Library at 
 Rome and so named Vaticanus. It is designated by the 
 letter B. This is generally regarded as on the whole 
 the most valuable of all the manuscripts of the Greek 
 Bible. It is written on fine vellum, in a small, neat 
 capital (uncial) letter, with three narrow columns of 
 writing to a page. The leaves are nearly ten inches 
 square and number at present 759. It once contained, 
 probably, all the Greek Bible complete, but in the vicissi- 
 tudes through which it has passed it has lost considerable 
 both from the Old Testament and from the New. There 
 is a note of sadness in the history of this old Bible. Until 
 recent years scholars were denied access to B. Its 
 guardians for long years refused to publish its readings, 
 and when they did, the work was so badly done as to be 
 almost worthless. In 1843 the German scholar Tischen- 
 dorf spent some months in Rome, but was permitted to 
 study the manuscript for only six hours on two days. 
 And an English textual critic spent nearly half the year 
 1845 in Rome, but was allowed only the privilege any 
 traveler might expect — a brief glance at the treasure he so 
 longed to study. In the case of B, too, scholars differ 
 
 ^"Biblical World," March, 1908, p. 223, and "New Archeological Dis- 
 coveries," p. 164. 
 
 « " New Translation of New Testament," p. 67. 
 
The Copyists: Bases of the Text S7 
 
 as to the value of the text preserved, but some of the 
 leading textual students of all times have regarded it as 
 a close approximation to the very original text of Scrip- 
 ture, particularly in the New Testament. 
 
 But the romance of the history of textual criticism 
 comes to its fullest expression in connection with the 
 Sinaitic Greek Bible, last known to be at Petrograd. This 
 is a vellum codex of 346^ leaves with the uncial writing 
 in four columns to the page, dating from the fourth cen- 
 tury. Its text is very much like that of Vaticanus. 
 When the two agree, as they often do, they are regarded 
 as of very high authority. In fact, it is primarily, if not 
 entirely, to the influence of these two manuscripts together 
 that the textual differences between the King James Bible 
 and the Revised Version are due. 
 
 The story of the discovery of Sinaiticus has often been 
 told but may be repeated here for its own sake. Tischen- 
 dorf was the happy man to find this treasure. He tells 
 of the discovery himself, as he was in the convent of St. 
 Catherine at Mt. Sinai, in the following simple but 
 dramatic words : ^ 
 
 I perceived in the middle of the great hall a large and wide 
 basket full of old parchments ; and the librarian, who was a man 
 of information, told me that two heaps of papers like this moldered 
 by time had been already committed to the flames. What was my 
 surprise to find amid this heap of papers a considerable number 
 of sheets of a copy of the Old Testament in Greek which seemed 
 to me to be one of the most ancient I had ever seen. The author- 
 ities of the Convent allowed me to possess myself of a third of 
 these parchments or about 45 sheets all the more readily as they 
 were destined for the fire. But I could not get them to yield up 
 possession of the remainder. 
 
 ■^Quoted by Cohern, "New Archeological Discoveries," p. 133, from 
 " Narrative of the Discovery of the Sinaitic Manuscript," i866, p. 28 
 
8S Makers of the Bible 
 
 This was apparently the occasion of Tischendorf's first 
 visit to this old convent. Some fifteen years later, in 
 February of 1859, he went thither for a third search for 
 the manuscript he felt sure was there, if he could only 
 discover it. But the search was apparently to be in vain, 
 as the other visits had been, for Tischendorf ordered 
 the camels to be ready to take him away the following 
 morning. The chief steward of the monastery invited 
 him that night to his room for a last visit. As the eager 
 manuscript hunter could talk of nothing else, the con- 
 versation turned inevitably to the subject. The steward 
 declared that he too had a Septuagint manuscript and 
 then took down from a shelf some old leaves wrapped 
 up in a cloth and showed them to Tischendorf. 
 
 I unrolled the cover [continues the story] and discovered to my 
 suprise not only those very fragments which fifteen years before 
 I had taken out of the basket, but also other parts of the Old Testa- 
 ment, the New Testament complete, and in addition the Epistle of 
 Barnabas and a part of the " Pastor of Hermas." . . I knew that I 
 held in my hands the most precious Biblical treasure in existence, 
 a document whose age and importance exceeded that of all the 
 manuscripts which I had ever examined during twenty years of 
 study of the subject. . . On the 27th of September I returned 
 to Cairo. The monks and archbishops then warmly expressed their 
 thanks for my jealous efforts in their cause and the following day 
 I received from them, under the form of a loan, the Sinaitic Bible 
 to carry to St. Petersburg and there to have it copied as accurately 
 as possible. I set out for Egypt early in October, and on the 19th 
 of November I presented to their Imperial Majesties in the Winter 
 Palace at Tsarkoe-Selo my rich collection of old Greek, Syriac, 
 Coptic, Arabic, and other manuscripts in the middle of which the 
 Sinaitic Bible shone like a crown.^ 
 
 Such are the sources of supply for the text of our Bible 
 today. They are often fragmentary, yet so numerous that 
 
 * Cobern, ibid., p. 134. 
 
The Copyists: Bases of the Text 89 
 
 scholars have been enabled to supply what is lacking 
 in one from the readings of others, and so restore what 
 is generally admitteci to be, in the case of the New Testa- 
 ment at least, a very close approach to the readings of 
 the actual autographs. But the stor>' of the manuscripts 
 and versions reminds us again of the perishable character 
 of the ** earthen vessels " in which we have this treasure 
 of God's revelation of himself to man, and inspires us to 
 win by hard effort and unswerving devotion to the truth 
 the message contained in the Scriptures. In this light the 
 Bible becomes for us a " Promised Land " of truth which 
 we must conquer and appropriate, if we are to enter into 
 possession of its teachings, and we own of it only what 
 we by earnest study and sympathetic appreciation make 
 over into our spiritual life and vitalize with our own 
 personality. 
 
VIII 
 
 NEED OF A TEXT: MATERIALS FOR 
 MAKING IT 
 
 Study Outline 
 
 1. Consider the marginal note on Jeremiah 10 : 11. 
 Is this verse itself an early marginal note which has 
 gotten copied into the text? See if you can find others 
 like it. 
 
 2. Find some marginal notes in your Bible wherein 
 Hebrew or Greek names and terms are explained: as 
 Hosea 1:6; Acts 19 : 31 marg. 
 
 3. Look up any marginal notes on 1 Samuel 19 : 9 and 
 find others giving similar variant translations of the same 
 Hebrew or Greek words. Cf. Mark 7 : 3. 
 
 4. Find some variations in the margin of your Bible 
 which can be adequately explained only as deliberate 
 changes by scribes. Consider in this connection 2 Samuel 
 24 : 1 with 1 Chronicles 21 : 1. Notice also in this 
 connection John 7 : 8, 10. 
 
 5. Study the variations recorded on Jeremiah 27 : 1 
 and Acts 8 : 37, and try to explain how such changes 
 could arise. 
 
 6. Do the same with another class of variants, like 
 Psalm 100 : 3; 1 Timothy 3 : 16. Find others, and ex- 
 plain how they have arisen. 
 
 7. Sum up in a brief statement the significance of such 
 variations in the text of the Bible for the history of the 
 Biblical text. 
 
 90 
 
Need of a Text: Materials for Making It 91 
 
 Scripture References and Helps 
 
 Judges 10 : 11; Matthew 12 : 40; John 7 : 53 to 8 : 
 11 ; Rosea 1 : 6, 9; Acts 9 : 36; 19 : 31 ; 8 : 37; Revela- 
 tion 9 : 11; Exodus 34 : 13; Job 41 : 1; Matthew 5 : 
 46; Genesis 11 : 2; 13 : 11; Mark 7 : 3; 2 Kings 8 : 10; 
 20 : 7f. ; 1 Chronicles 21 : 1 ; 2 Samuel 24 : 1 ; Judges 
 3 : 24; 4; 1 Samuel 24 : 3; 13 : 1 ; 12 : 11 ; 14 : 18; 
 John 7 : 8, 10; 5 : 4; Jeremiah 27 : 1, 3, 12, 20; 28 : 1, 
 2; Psalm 100 : 3; Proverbs 10 : 10; 10: 8; 1 Timothy 
 3 : 16; Isaiah 38 : 21f. 
 
 Price, " Ancestry of Enghsh Bible," pp. 1-12 and 20-35. 
 
 Gregory, " Canon and Text of the New Testament," pp. 
 508-528. 
 
 Vincent, " History of Textual Criticism," pp. 1-7. 
 
 Hastings' Diet, of Bible, 1 vol. ed., art. ** Text, Ver- 
 sions, Languages of Old Testament," pp. 912-916, §§21- 
 40; ibid., *' Text of the New Testament," pp. 927, 928, 
 §§46-49. 
 
 The foregoing chapters have suggested the need of a 
 well-established text of Scripture and also the source of 
 valuable materials for the reconstruction of that text. 
 If we were in possession of the original copies of Biblical 
 books precisely as they left the hands of the writers in 
 each instance, our task would be simply to translate these 
 autographs as well as possible. But the bases of our 
 Bible are manuscripts, versions, and patristic citations, 
 transmitted in documents which have been copied over 
 and over through hundreds of years. Almost inevitably 
 errors of various kinds crept into the text; omissions, 
 repetitions, additions, blunders, all causing variations from 
 the original writing. Moreover, copyists very early began 
 
92 Makers of the Bible 
 
 to make comments about the text they were transcribing, 
 and interpreters tried to explain the meaning of obscure 
 passages. These comments and explanations were very 
 naturally placed in the margins of the copies being made. 
 
 In very early times, because of the scarcity of writing 
 materials, marginal notes were relatively few and brief. 
 In Jeremiah 10 : 11 we have, in all probability, an in- 
 stance of an early marginal note which was later copied 
 into the body of the text. A modern marginal note on 
 this verse warns us that it is written in Aramaic. This 
 means that right in the midst of a passage in Hebrew this 
 one verse is in a different dialect. Moreover, when we 
 read the preceding and the following verses continuously, 
 omitting this verse, we notice that its omission does not 
 break the connection. Hence the verse looks like a mar- 
 ginal note introduced into the text by a later scribe. It 
 may have been at first simply a note in the margin telling 
 pious Jews, when invited to engage in the religious rites 
 of their heathen neighbors, how to answer such invita- 
 tions.^ The same thing has happened in Isaiah 38 : 21 f., 
 where we are able to correct an insertion at a wrong 
 place by a parallel passage. By comparing these verses 
 in Isaiah with the corresponding passage in 2 Kings 20 : 
 7, 8 we learn the true place of the verses. The most natu- 
 ral explanation of the misplacement in Isaiah is that of a 
 marginal addition afterward inserted by a scribe in the 
 wrong place. 
 
 In the New Testament essentially the same thing has 
 happened in Matthew 12 : 40, a copying into the text 
 of an originally marginal explanation by some one of 
 Girist's reference to Jewish literature. This is suggested 
 by the divergences of Matthew 12 : 39-41 from the par.il- 
 
 ^ Cf. Brown, " American Commentary on Jeremiah," p. 92. 
 
Need of a Text: Materials for Making It 93 
 
 lel passage in Luke 11 : 30-32 and the difficulties in the 
 verse under consideration. Some early Qiristian teacher 
 desired to explain what might seem obscure to some read- 
 ers, and he therefore noted his explanation of the sign 
 of Jonah in the margin of his copy. Later, but before 
 the date of our earliest and best manuscripts of the New 
 Testament, some other copyist, feeling the aptness of the 
 explanation, wrote the note into the text of the transcript 
 he was making, and thus the verse found its place in 
 the midst of the words of Jesus. A longer passage re- 
 flecting substantially the same practise is found again in 
 the section of the Gospel of John, 7 : 53 to 8 : 11. These 
 verses do not appear in the Revised Version and probably 
 did not belong to the original text of this Gospel. If on 
 account of its intrinsic beauty and power the section was 
 nevertheless written by some scribe at the end of his 
 copy of this Gospel and later transferred by another 
 copyist to what seemed to him a better place for it,^ fol- 
 lowing 7 : 52, then we have here an instance of a marginal 
 story copied into the text perhaps to be used in the early 
 church, as it was later, for a lesson to people who re- 
 pented and confessed their sins.^ 
 
 In our English Bible the practise of adding such 
 marginalia is said to have originated with Tindale,* whose 
 notes, at first explanatory, became later bitterly controver- 
 sial. This custom continued in the important English 
 Bibles following Tindale, until in the Genevan version 
 explanatory notes and comments on the proper rendering 
 of passages are a distinctive feature. In fact, the aim of 
 the author of the Genevan New Testament was to omit 
 
 ^Milligan, " Ncav Testament Documents," p. 187. 
 
 3 Gregory, " Canon and Text of the New Testament," p. 515. 
 
 * Scrivener, " The Authorized Edition of the English Bible," p. 40. 
 
94 Makers of the Bible 
 
 nothing *' unexpounded, whereby he that is anything exer- 
 cised in the Scriptures of God, might justly complain 
 of hardness." ^ But abuses crept in, and the practise 
 became intolerable. Finally a reaction set in against 
 marginal notes. This is seen in that one of the rules 
 laid down for the guidance of the translators of the 
 King James Bible : ® " No marginal note at all to be af- 
 fixed, but only for the explanation of Hebrew or Greek 
 words, which cannot, without some circumlocution, be so 
 briefly and fitly expressed in the text." 
 
 This suggestion affords us a convenient point of de- 
 parture from which to begin a study of the materials 
 for text-making, as found in the margin of an ordinary 
 copy of the American Standard Version with references. 
 For many of the marginal notes will be found to consist 
 in such explanations of Hebrew and Greek words. In 
 Hosea 1 : 6 the harsh name of the prophet's daughter 
 is explained by a marginal note as, " That hath not ob- 
 tained mercy," while Unloved's younger brother is given 
 even a harsher name, Lo-ammi, " Not my people " (Hosea 
 1 : 9 and marg.). In Acts 9 : 36 a woman's Aramaic 
 name is interpreted in Greek, which, as a marginal note 
 tells us, signifies in English " Gazelle." And a note on 
 Revelation 9:11 explains the Greek name of the angel 
 of the abyss, leader of the hosts of demon-riders, as " De- 
 stroyer." 
 
 Sometimes these marginal notes explain terms not likely 
 to be understood by the uninformed reader. In Exodus 
 34 : 13 the word Asherim is explained as a term for the 
 wooden symbols of the goddess Asherah. So in Job 
 41 : 1 " leviathan " means crocodile, some think, while 
 
 5 Quoted in Westcott, " History of the English Bible," p. 91. 
 « Cited in Westcott, " History of English Bible," p. 115. 
 
Ne-ed of a Text: Materials for Making It 95 
 
 in Matthew 5 : 46 the term '* publicans " means " collec- 
 tors or renters of Roman taxes " ; and " Asiarchs " are 
 said to be " officers having charge of festivals, etc., in the 
 Roman province of Asia" (Acts 19 : 31 marg.). 
 
 Still another class of marginal notes consists in different 
 renderings of the same expression, or attempts to make 
 clear some term of the original. For instance, Genesis 
 11:2 reads, according to the Revised Version, *' as they 
 journeyed east," with a note, " Or, ' in the east.' " The 
 King James version translated this expression, " from 
 the east," the original 1611 edition having no marginal 
 note attached, while in later editions of this same version 
 we find a note to this effect, " Or, * eastward.' " The 
 same term, however, in Genesis 13 : 11 is translated by 
 both the King James version and the Revised Version 
 simply as " east," with no marginal note at all. In the 
 New Testament Mark 7 : 3 gives us a striking note, a 
 comment by the translators on a Greek expression they 
 wished to emphasize. The Revised Version reads, " ex- 
 cept they wash, their hands diligently," the note being, 
 " Or, ' up to the elbow. Gr. with the fist.' " But the 
 original King James edition rendered the expression by 
 these words, " except they wash their hands oft," adding 
 the following interesting note : " Or, ' diligently, in the 
 Originall, with the fist : Theophilact, up to the elbow.' " 
 
 But there are other variants in the margins of our 
 Bible, more significant than the foregoing for the history 
 of this wonderful book. These are notes of various kinds 
 which have grown out of the copying of documents by 
 ancient scribes. As the manuscripts were copied over 
 and over again changes crept into the text in great num- 
 ber and variety. For purposes of this study our illustra- 
 tive examples of variants due to scribal changes may be 
 
96 Makers of the Bible 
 
 gathered up in the large into two groups, intentional 
 changes and unintentional. 
 
 The editors of the Jewish Version say on this matter/ 
 " The Rabbis enumerate eighteen instances in which the 
 scribes consciously altered the text." By these intentional 
 changes are meant those variations in the text of Scrip- 
 ture for which we get an adequate explanation only by 
 assuming a deliberate intention on the part of a scribe 
 to alter a reading. To this class will belong such changes 
 as we find in a marginal note attached to 2 Kings 8 : 10, 
 noticed in a previous chapter. Again, in 1 Qironicles 
 21 : 1 as compared with 2 Samuel 24 : 1 we find what 
 appears to be a deliberate change on the part of a later 
 writer following an earlier as his source. In the Samuel 
 passage it is Jehovah who, moved with anger against 
 Israel, stirs up David to number the people. If, now, it 
 seemed offensive to the Chronicler that Jehovah could 
 be considered the direct instigator of an act regarded as 
 sinful, his change to Satan ("Or, 'an adversary'") as 
 the prime mover of the wrong act, though deliberate, is 
 nevertheless plain. It is an intentional change for theo- 
 logical reasons. Once more, such passages as Judges 
 3 : 24, 1 Samuel 24 : 3, and others, fall into this class, 
 since some indelicate word or expression is deliberately 
 replaced with some euphemistic phraseology. That pas- 
 sage in the New Testament already cited, John 7 : 8, 10, 
 probably belongs in this class of deliberate changes in the 
 text. The variation may have been introduced to save 
 the reputation of Jesus. For Porphyry, a third century 
 A. D. non-Christian philosopher, accused Jesus of deceit 
 in this statement. Hence, in order to answer that charge 
 some copyist may well have changed a simple Greek 
 
 'Jewish Version, Philadelphia, 5677-1917, Preface, p. X. 
 
Need of a Text: Materials [or Making It 97 
 
 negative into a compound one, thus freeing the narrative 
 of the seeming difficulty. This would make the change 
 an intentional variation. 
 
 Textual variants of the second class are of various 
 kinds. Early scribes were not always as careful of the 
 text of Scripture as has sometimes been supposed, nor 
 were they as intelligent in their handling of it as many 
 have believed. 1 Samuel 13 : 1 is a good illustration, 
 though a difficult verse. In the Revised Version the pas- 
 sage reads: '' Saul was (forty) years old when he began 
 to reign," and a marginal note says that " the number 
 is lacking in the Hebrew text, and is supplied conjec- 
 turally." The King James translators did not seem to 
 know what to do with the verse, for they rendered it, 
 " Saul reigned one year ; and when he had reigned two 
 years over Israel," with a note in the margin giving as the 
 Hebrew, '' the son of one year in his reigning." This 
 would make the Hebrew read, " Son of a year (was) Saul 
 in his reigning, and (he was) two (?) years king over 
 Israel." The verse is omitted by the Septuagint alto- 
 gether. How is the form of the verse to be explained? 
 The Hebrew of it is well-nigh incomprehensible, and the 
 English of it without some conjectural addition is sense- 
 less. Has not some copyist blundered in transcribing this 
 verse? Similarly, 1 Samuel 12 : 11 tells of Israel's re- 
 lease from the hand of her foes under the leadership of 
 such heroes as Jerubbaal, Bedan, Jephthah, and Samuel. 
 But a marginal note informs us that " Bedan " is " Ace. 
 to Sept. and Syr. Barak." And as we read the story 
 of Barak's achievements in Judges 4, comparing that ac- 
 count with this recital by Samuel, we feel that the name 
 Bedan has been ignorantly or carelessly written into 
 Samuel's address to Israel. And the same explanation 
 
98 Makers of the Bible 
 
 comes naturally for a similar variant in the text of Jere- 
 miah 27 : 1. This verse, as it reads, gives Jehoiakim as 
 the name of the king in whose reign this prophetic recom- 
 mendation of submission to Babylon was preached. But 
 a note in the margin on this verse suggests that Zedekiah 
 should have been written instead of Jehoiakim. And 
 verses 3, 12, 20 of this chapter and 1 of chapter 28 show 
 that the correction is necessary. Possibly this is an 
 " error of memory," due to the attempt of the copyist to 
 carry in mind the thought rather than the exact words 
 he was copying.® It may, however, just as probably be 
 an error due to the scribe's ignorance, or carelessness, 
 for 27 : 1 is practically a repetition of 26 : 1. It is in- 
 teresting to note in passing that the Septuagint omits the 
 first verse of chapter twenty-seven altogether. 
 
 A somewhat similar instance in the New Testament 
 may be found in the passage about the periodic descent 
 of the angel to trouble the waters of the pool of Bethesda 
 for the healing of the sick. (John 5:4.) The Revised 
 Version omits this verse entirely, with a marginal note say- 
 ing that " many ancient authorities insert wholly or in 
 part * waiting for the moving of the water : 4 for an angel 
 of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, 
 and troubled the water. Whosoever then first after the 
 troubling of the water stepped in was made whole, with 
 whatsoever disease he was holden.' " Yet these words are 
 correctly omitted. In the text of the older version it 
 would seem as if there Had been a double addition. First, 
 the clause " waiting for the moving of the water " may 
 have been added, perhaps in the margin, in order to 
 give point to the sick man's remark in verse 7, " when 
 the water is troubled." Then later another scribe, some- 
 
 * Price, " Ancestry of English Bible," p. 29. 
 
Need of a Text: Materials for Making It 99 
 
 what indifferent, perhaps ignorant, feeling the need of 
 additional explanation and filled with popular superstition, 
 copied the marginal explanation into the text and added 
 the tradition of the angelic troubling of the waters of the 
 pool. Another illustration of the same thing is found in 
 the parallel case of the baptismal confession of the 
 Eunuch in Acts 8 : 37. This too is omitted by the 
 Revised Version. This variation is interesting because it 
 found its way into the text from which the King James 
 Bible was translated from Erasmus' editions. He found 
 the reading in the margin of one of his manuscripts and 
 felt that it had been omitted from the text " by the care- 
 lessness of scribes." ^ He therefore transferred it from 
 the margin to the body of the text which he was then 
 printing. 
 
 A second class of variants unintentionally caused may 
 be designated as errors of ear and eye. These would 
 occur where one person was dictating to a number of 
 scribes, or where the copyist read one line for another. 
 Take the variant in Psalm 100 : 3. The text of the verse 
 reads, " It is he that hath made us, and we are his." The 
 marginal note on this verse tells us, " Another reading is, 
 ' And not we ourselves.' " A literal translation of the 
 Hebrew in this expression will make it clear how two 
 scribes could hear the same sounds but write down two 
 different words. The clause in the text reads literally, 
 " He hath made us, And to him we." The marginal 
 variant is literally, " He hath made us. And not we." The 
 words " and to him " and " and not " sound alike in the 
 Hebrew, and this variant probably arose when, on the 
 occasion of some one's dictating to a number of scribes, 
 
 » Westcott and Hort, " New Testament in Greek," II, Notes on Selected 
 Readings, p. 93. 
 
100 Makers of the Bible 
 
 one wrote " and to him we " while another put down 
 " and not we." ^^ Perhaps it was the scribe's eye that mis- 
 led him in the variant in Proverbs 10 : 10. We read : 
 
 " He that winketh with the eye causeth sorrow ; 
 But a prating fool shall fall." 
 
 But this second line is also the second member of the paral- 
 lelism in verse 8, where the contrast is between the wise in 
 heart and the foolish of lips, though some hold that even 
 there it is out of place.^^ But here in verse 10 the con- 
 trast expected is that between one who makes trouble 
 by insinuation and malicious hints, and the wise man who 
 does the opposite, who makes for peace by straightfor- 
 ward, friendly criticism. And this is just what is found 
 in the Septuagint : 
 
 " He who winks deceitfully with his eye causes sorrow 
 to men, 
 But he who reproves openly makes peace." 
 
 How, now, are we to account for this variant ? Professor 
 Price suggests that this second member, about frank re- 
 proof for wrong, was omitted by a scribe and then later 
 the omission was supplied by another copyist from the 
 second member of verse 8.^^ 
 
 Again, a third class of changes appears in the failure 
 of scribes to catch the sense of passages they are transcrib- 
 ing. A possible illustration of this sort of variations is 
 found in 1 Samuel 14 : 18 : " And Saul said unto Ahijah, 
 Bring hither the ark of God. For the ark of God was 
 at that time with the children of Israel." The margin 
 
 *» Price, " Ancestry of the English Bible," p. 29. 
 
 " Toy, *' International Critical Commentary on Proverbs," p. 204. 
 
 ""Ancestry of the English Bible," p. 28. 
 
Need of a Text: Materials for Making It 101 
 
 has a note on this verse : " Some editions of Sept. 
 have, ' Bring hither the ephod. For he wore the ephod at 
 that time before Israel.' " Perhaps this represents a de- 
 liberate change and should be so classified. Possibly, 
 however, the Greek translator of the passage failed to 
 understand the Hebrew correctly and so introduced the 
 change into his Greek text. 
 
 In the New Testament, 1 Timothy 3 : 16 seems to be 
 an illustration of this same thing. A note on this verse 
 calls attention to the Revised Version's change from 
 " God " to " He who/' asserting that the reading of the 
 older version " rests on no sufficient evidence." And the 
 best manuscripts are against the older version's reading 
 " God." Some copyist apparently failed to catch the true 
 meaning of the passage and changed a relative pronoun 
 in his exemplar to the noun " God." The verse appears 
 to be a quotation from a primitive hymn in praise of 
 Christ. If so, the relative pronoun would be accounted 
 for by the influence of its proper antecedent. But the 
 absence of this antecedent would leave a neuter noun 
 (mystery) before the relative, and the copyist, seeing 
 this neuter noun and not reading the passage very care- 
 fully, would feel that he was at the beginning of a new 
 sentence. So he would change the relative pronoun to 
 " God," in order to begin a new sentence, a very slight 
 alteration in the Greek. All he would have to do in order 
 to effect the change would be to draw a transverse line 
 through the first letter of the relative and a bar above its 
 two letters. Thus ^(? becomes WO, " who '* is changed to 
 " God." Now it is significant that early manuscripts, 
 versions, and quotations of this text in the Fathers are 
 against this change, and common sense is against it also. 
 People would not naturally apply the verbs in the verse 
 
102 Makers of the Bible 
 
 to God. Hence we see the wisdom of the revisers in re- 
 turning to what was probably an original relative, " Who," 
 or " He who." Doctor Vaughn says of this passage : ^^ 
 
 The Revised Version of the New Testament says this to us — 
 and if it were its only change, it would have been worth ten 
 years of labor : The mystery of godliness, the revealed secret which 
 has in it " reverence," the right feeling and attitude of the soul 
 toward God its Author and Object of being, is a Person — incarnate, 
 attested, heralded, believed, glorified — a Person whom to know is 
 life, whom to serve is freedom. He is not a doctrine, nor a book, 
 nor a creed, nor a church — He is a Person. 
 
 Thus one might go on almost indefinitely, for the num- 
 ber of such variants in the Bible is very large. The 
 variations began early and continued to multiply until 
 the days of printing. Yet the large number of variations 
 in the text of the Bible need not disconcert Christians. In 
 fact, it rather suggests the abundance of the materials 
 which constitute the evidence for the text of Scripture. 
 There is no other text from antiquity so well supported 
 as the text of our Bible. Speaking of the New Testa- 
 ment, Doctor Hort, one of the world's foremost textual 
 students of this text, says : ^* 
 
 The proportion of words virtually accepted on all hands as 
 raised above doubt is very great, not less, on a rough computation, 
 than seven-eighths of the whole. The remaining eighth therefore, 
 formed in great part by changes of order and other comparative 
 trivialities, constitutes the whole area of criticism. . . In this 
 second estimate the proportion of comparatively trivial variations 
 is beyond measure larger than in the former: so that the amount 
 of what can in any sense be called substantial variation is but a 
 small fraction of the whole residuary variation, and can hardly 
 form more than a thousandth part of the entire text. 
 
 " Quoted by Schaflf, " Companion to Greek New Testament," p. 20if. 
 " " The New Testament in Greek," II, Intro., p. 2. 
 
IX 
 
 CONSTRUCTING THE TEXT 
 
 Study Outline 
 
 1. From your previous study what can you say of 
 changes or corruptions in the Biblical text? How early 
 did such changes creep in? 
 
 2. Look up the life-story of Erasmus, and tell what he 
 did for the establishment of the New Testament text. 
 
 3. Read the article '' Textual Criticism " in any good 
 encyclopedia and give a brief summary of the progress of 
 textual criticism of the Bible. 
 
 4. From your reading about Codex Bezse and Codex 
 Washington earlier in this study tell briefly the outstand- 
 ing characteristics of the type of text embodied in these 
 manuscripts. 
 
 5. Compare briefly the types of text represented by the 
 manuscripts upon which the Authorized Version and the 
 Revised Version are based. 
 
 Scripture References and Helps 
 
 1 John 5 : 7, 8; Acts 10 : 25 f. ; Luke 6 : 4; 22 : 19f.; 
 24 : 53; Mark 9 : 49; 16 : 9-20; John 7 : 53 to 8 : 11. 
 
 Price, " Ancestry of English Bible," pp. 189-206. 
 
 Lake, " The Text of the New Testament," pp. 1-10 and 
 59-91. 
 
 Gregory, " Canon and Text of the New Testament," 
 pp. 479-508. 
 
 H 103 
 
104 Makers of the Bible 
 
 Vincent, " History of Textual Criticism," pp. 1-7 and 
 48-156. 
 
 H. B. D., 1 vol. ed., art. " Text of the New Testament," 
 pp. 924-927, §§33-45. 
 
 Peake, " The Bible, Its Origin, Significance, and Abid- 
 ing Worth," pp. 76-87. 
 
 Standard Bible Diet., art. '' New Testament Text," §5, 
 p. 581f. 
 
 The witnesses to the Biblical text are many, numbering 
 well up in the thousands. The variations arising in 
 these thousands of authorities amount to hundreds of 
 thousands. At first disquieting, this fact becomes our 
 greatest assurance for the correctness of modern Biblical 
 texts, since the more numerous the witnesses the better 
 the restoration. The task of the textual critic is to bring 
 out of this mass of divergent and often conflicting read- 
 ings the 'actual words of the original writers, or as close 
 an approximation thereto as is humanly possible. How 
 have scholars gone about this work ? 
 
 Of course, attempts at criticism began very early, since 
 alterations in the text of Scripture were made soon after 
 the books were written. There can be little doubt that 
 wilful corruptions of the text soon crept in, since the 
 earlier apologists allude to such practises. Irenseus, be- 
 fore the close of the second century A. D., declares,* 
 " The others, though they acknowledge the Scriptures, 
 pervert their interpretation." And Tertullian, of North 
 Africa, says : ^ " Marcion has used a sword, not a pen ; 
 while Valentinus has both added and taken away." This 
 corruption of the text went on apace, till near the close 
 
 ^ " Against Heresies," III, 12. 
 ^" De Prescript. Haer.," p. 38. 
 
Constructing the Text 105 
 
 of the fourth century Jerome could write to Pope Dama- 
 sus : ® 
 
 You urge me to revise the Old Latin version, and, as it were, 
 to sit in judgment on the copies of the Scriptures which are now 
 scattered throughout the world; and, inasmuch as they differ 
 from one another, you would have me decide which of them agree 
 with the Greek original. . . For, if we are to pin our faith to the 
 Latin texts, it is for our opponents to tell us which; for there 
 are almost as many forms of the text as there are copies. If, 
 on the other hand, we are to glean the truth from a comparison 
 of many, why not go back to the original Greek and correct the 
 mistakes introduced by inaccurate translators, and the blundering 
 alterations of confident but ignorant critics, and, further, all that 
 has been inserted or changed by copyists more asleep than awake. 
 
 Such corruptions of the text of Scripture called forth 
 attempts at correction very early, but little was done in 
 the way of real criticism of the Biblical text before the 
 modern era. What was done in the first centuries and 
 during the Middle Ages w^as more in the nature of a dis- 
 cussion of various readings with comments on the relative 
 value of manuscripts and the number of witnesses to a 
 given reading. For the beginnings of the science of 
 textual criticism We must come down to the revival of 
 learning in Western Europe and the invention of printing. 
 
 The history of the printed text of the New Testament 
 begins at the opening of the sixteenth century. Desiderius 
 Erasmus, of Rotterdam, vagrant scholar of Europe, felt 
 that the Christian religion had become an observance of 
 formalities and a neglect of duties. The Christian Scrip- 
 tures, intoned in the churches by mumbling priests, were 
 made unintelligible to the masses. Copies of the Bible 
 were rare and were generally kept away from the people. 
 
 'Quoted in Lewis, *' How the BiWe Grew," p. I47f. 
 
106 Makers of the Bible 
 
 Erasmus wanted to give the New Testament in its orig- 
 inal language to the world, in order to arouse Europe to 
 its sad condition. In addition to the Greek text he pro- 
 jected a new Latin translation to accompany the Greek, 
 and copious notes on special passages in order to give 
 point to the application of Scripture to the customs and 
 usages of the day. He labored patiently for some time 
 upon this epoch-making book. *' It was finished at last/' 
 says Froude,* 
 
 text and translation printed, and the living facts of Christianity, 
 the persons of Christ and the apostles, their history, their lives, 
 their teaching were revealed to an astonished world. For the 
 first time the laity were able to see, side by side, the Christianity 
 which converted the world, and the Christianity of the Church and 
 a Borgia pope, cardinal princes, ecclesiastical courts, and a my- 
 thology of lies. The effect was to be a spiritual earthquake. 
 
 Erasmus revised his Greek Testament several times and 
 by these different editions powerfully influenced the his- 
 tory of the New Testament text, not always wisely, how- 
 ever. In the 1522 revision he added the passage about 
 the three heavenly witnesses (1 John 5 : 7, 8), inserting 
 at the end of verse 7 (which is the end of verse 6 in the 
 Authorized Version) " For there are three that bear 
 record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy 
 Ghost : and these three are one," and in verse 8 the words 
 " in earth." This he did simply because in a controversy 
 with an opponent he had promised to insert the words if 
 they could be found in a Greek manuscript. They were 
 found, sure enough, in a clumsy form, retranslated into 
 Greek from Latin, in a sixteenth century manuscript, and 
 Erasmus, true to a thoughtless promise, added the passage 
 in his third edition. 
 
 ♦ " Life and Letters of Erasmus," p. iigf. 
 
Constructing the Text 107 
 
 But a text so made and so based on a few late manu- 
 scripts could not long satisfy advancing scholarship. 
 Other scholars followed Erasmus, and numerous revisions 
 of the Greek New Testament were brought out during the 
 century following his third edition. Of these, those by 
 Estienne, of Paris, are important, especially his third edi- 
 tion of 1550, embodying substantially the type of text that 
 later became the basis of the King James Bible. Estienne's 
 fourth edition, 1551, is noted as being the first to appear 
 with the text divided into verses such as have since be- 
 come so familiar. This device undoubtedly helped to 
 popularize the Greek Testament, and the growing com- 
 mercial spirit of the age seized upon the Biblical text as 
 a means of making money. For before the middle of the 
 seventeenth century there were published in Holland some 
 editions so handy in size as to become popular at once. 
 The preface of the second of these continental Greek 
 Testaments, the Elzevirs, contained the words, Textum 
 ergo habes nunc ah omnihus receptiim (" You have there- 
 fore now the text received by all"), a statement giving 
 name to the Received Text, a type of text which was 
 venerated with almost idolatrous reverence down to the 
 close of the nineteenth century and which gave form to 
 our Protestant translations before the days of the critical 
 text upon which the Revised Version is based. 
 
 After this early period of beginnings, which gave West- 
 ern Europe its Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek, 
 as well as several vernacular translations, the history of 
 textual criticism is largely the story of emancipation from 
 the domination of the Received Text. For the next two 
 hundred years scholars busied themselves with the collec- 
 tion of various textual readings from new manuscripts 
 as these were discovered, and gradually amassed the 
 
108 Makers of the Bible 
 
 textual materials that resulted in the revision of the New 
 Testament text toward the close of the nineteenth century. 
 Among these gatherers of materials Dr. John Mill, of 
 Oxford, early in the eighteenth century, published a Greek 
 Testament, the text of which, while substantially like that 
 of Estienne's 1550 edition, was nevertheless accompanied 
 by readings from seventy-eight additional manuscripts 
 and several of the ancient versions. Besides this, Mill 
 was the first to collect the textual evidence of patristic 
 citations to any noteworthy extent. These materials thus 
 gathered were already so numerous, however, as to bring 
 criticism upon the method and in particular, after Mill's 
 death, upon his edition of the New Testament. But a 
 brilliant fellow worker, Richard Bentley, while admit- 
 ting that Mill's method clogged the New Testament with 
 variations, defended vigorously the principle of textual 
 criticism and made a plea for the determination of the 
 text on the basis of all the evidence apart from the 
 dominance of any printed edition. Describing Estienne as 
 the Protestant pope and asserting that Catholicism had 
 no one competent to guide the revision of the Vulgate's 
 text, he wrote : ^ 
 
 The New Testament has been under a hard fate since the in- 
 vention of printing. After the Complutenses and Erasmus, who 
 had but very ordinary manuscripts, it became the property of book- 
 sellers. . . No heathen author has had such ill fortune. Terence, 
 Ovid, etc., for the first century after printing, went about with 
 twenty thousand errors in them. But when learned men under- 
 took them, and from the oldest manuscripts set out correct editions, 
 those errors fell and vanished. But if they had kept to the first 
 published text, and set the various lections only in the margin, 
 those classic authors would be as clogged with variations as Doctor 
 Mill's Testament is. 
 
 5 Vincent, " History of Textual Criticism," p. 72. 
 
Constructing the Text 109 
 
 But though Bentley made elaborate proposals for the 
 printing of a critical text of the Greek Testament, he only 
 left m.aterials for the solution of the problem he had 
 raised. In spite of this seeming failure, however, hia 
 work was of great importance. 
 
 For he gave the impulse needed to extend the field 
 of textual criticism out over the Continent. Here we find 
 John A. Bengel, of Wiirtemburg, publishing the text of a 
 Greek Testament in 1734, in the main like the Received 
 Text, though accompanied by his own preferred readings 
 in the margin. Bengel, however, is noted for having been 
 the first to attempt anything like a real classification of 
 his authorities, a principle which was to become very 
 fruitful in the hands of later critics. He was criticised 
 sharply by J. J. Wetstein, of Basle, who, though he 
 equipped his New Testament of 1751-52 with a number 
 of various readings and a fine series of illustrative pas- 
 sages from sacred and profane literature, was so partial 
 to the textual witnesses upon which the Received Text 
 was based as to reject the evidence of the earlier and 
 better manuscripts. A more illustrious Continental critic 
 was J. J. Griesbach, a native of Hesse Darmstadt, who 
 published three editions of the New Testament between 
 1774 and 1806. Griesbach's contribution to textual science 
 as applied to the Scriptures lay in his extension of the 
 principle of classification of the authorities for the text 
 from a twofold division, Eastern and Western, into a 
 threefold: Alexandrian, found in Origen and some early 
 versions; Eastern, in vogue at Constantinople and An- 
 tioch; and Western, found in the Latin versions and 
 Fathers. This theory, in addition to classifying the au- 
 thorities and seeking to use them critically, attempted to 
 vindicate the older manuscripts against the claims of the 
 
110 Makers of the Bible 
 
 later authorities, and so anticipated the most widely ac- 
 cepted hypothesis of textual criticism today. 
 
 In 1831 a new era in Biblical textual criticism began 
 with the appearance of a New Testament by Karl Lach- 
 mann. This scholar's method was to reject the mass of 
 later authorities and confine attention to a small group of 
 ancient manuscripts, versions, and Fathers. The best- 
 known name, however, in this field during the first part 
 of the nineteenth century was that of Constantine Tischen- 
 dorf. The romantic story of his discovery of the Sinaitic 
 manuscript has been told. But he was just as much in- 
 terested in the use of the greatly enlarged mass of textual 
 materials as in the discovery of more. He published 
 eight editions of the Greek New Testament, the last one 
 following the finding of Sinaiticus and embodying the 
 valuable readings of this fine old Bible. His chief service 
 consisted in adding to the known variant readings a 
 goodly number from the chief ancient manuscripts and 
 so making possible the thorough-going study of variations 
 that came in the epoch-making text of two Englishmen, 
 Westcott and Hort. These coworkers did not edit new 
 manuscripts and gather new materials but rather confined 
 themselves to the elaboration and application of the prin- 
 ciples upon which the text of the New Testament should 
 be constructed. They emphasized a thorough knowledge 
 of the documents as necessary before final judgment on 
 divergent readings could be taken. They sought a more 
 complete grouping of the authorities for the text into 
 families, and distinguished the groups of textual wit- 
 nesses which have since been almost universally accepted 
 by scholars. The Westcott and Hort Greek Testament 
 appeared in 1881, a few months after the Revised Ver- 
 sion was published. It became the accepted authority 
 
Constructing the Text 111 
 
 for England and this country and has guided the course 
 of textual criticism from that day to this. Some modifica- 
 tions of the Westcott and Hort theory have been made 
 since it was first proposed, but it still holds the field 
 among present-day textual scholars and " is presupposed 
 as the starting-point of nearly all the work that is being 
 done in this department of New Testament Criticism." ® 
 Thus we see that classification of the known textual 
 witnesses into groups, or types of text, has become a 
 controlling principle, and it has given us the three or 
 four types of text that are widely recognized today. In 
 very early times variations crept into the New Testament 
 text, since scribes felt free to alter manuscripts they were 
 copying. This practise produced a type of text marked 
 by wide departures from what is now regarded as the 
 true text. These are for the most part additions to the 
 common text, though in a few striking instances they 
 consist in omissions. For instance, in Acts 10 : 25 f. the 
 Revised Version gives : 
 
 And when it came to pass that Peter entered, Cornelius met 
 him, and fell down at his feet, and worshiped him. But Peter 
 raised him up, saying, Stand up: I myself also am a man. 
 
 But in this early popular text we read: 
 
 But as Peter came nigh unto Caesarea, one of the servants ran 
 forward and announced that he had come. And Cornelius rushed 
 out and met him, and falling at his feet worshiped. But Peter 
 said unto him, What are you doing.'' Worship God; for I am 
 a man as you also are. 
 
 Another interesting passage from this early personal text 
 shows essentially the same characteristic. After Luke 
 
 * Kenyon, ' Textual Criticism of the New Testament," p. 308. 
 
1 12 Makers of the Bible 
 
 6 : 4 it adds the incident of the man working in a field on 
 a Sabbath day, to whom Jesus said : " O man, if you 
 realize what you are doing, you are blessed; but if you 
 do not know it, you are cursed and a transgressor of the 
 law." Once more, in Luke 22 : 19f., a marginal note 
 calls attention to the fact that " some ancient authorities 
 omit * which is given for you . . . which is poured out 
 for you.' " This is one of the omissions of this type 
 of New Testament text, which thus makes it appear that 
 at the institution of the Supper the cup preceded the loaf. 
 It looks therefore, as if this, the so-called " Western " 
 text, might have been a private and personal type of text 
 rather than official and ecclesiastical, and hence much 
 more freely handled by Christians in the second and third 
 centuries all over the Roman Empire. 
 
 Another type of text is that which is largely reflected in 
 the Revisers' Greek text, from which the translation of 
 the Revised Version in English was made. This type is 
 called the Neutral, or scholarly text, of the early church, 
 and is generally regarded as being a close approximation 
 to the original text of the New Testament. The character- 
 istics of this are most marked in contrast with the promi- 
 nent features of the next type of text now to be con* 
 sidered. 
 
 This third type of text is that which lies back of the 
 Authorized Version known as the Received Text. In 
 general, the readings of this so-called Syrian text are 
 marked by a tendency to combine divergent readings and 
 smooth out difficulties. In Mark 9 : 49 one group of au- 
 thorities reads as in the Revised Version, " For every one 
 shall be salted with fire." The Western, or popular text, 
 just described, has, '* For every sacrifice shall be salted 
 with salt." But the type of text we are now describing, 
 
Constructing the Text 113 
 
 the Syrian, or authoritative text, combines these two read- 
 ings into one and has, as a marginal note informs us, 
 " For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacri- 
 fice shall be salted with salt." And this is just what is 
 given in the Authorized Version, as we should expect. 
 Another illustration will but confirm the impression al- 
 ready made of the character of this Syrian text. In Luke 
 24 : 53 the verse closes, in the Revised Version, with the 
 words, " blessing God." The Western text reads, " prais- 
 ing God." The Syrian text again combines these into, 
 '* praising and blessing God." Again this is what is 
 given in the Authorized Version. So, similarly, taking 
 longer sections into account, the Syrian text, and conse- 
 quently the Authorized Version, includes such passages as 
 Mark 16 : 9-20, written in the second century by an 
 Asia Minor presbyter named Aristion, as an old Armenian 
 manuscript shows, John 7 : 53 to 8 : 11, the story of the 
 adulteress, and First John 5 : 7f., the three heavenly wit- 
 nesses, which was never rightly a part of the New Tes- 
 tament. Further study of the differences between the 
 Syrian and Neutral types of text will make clear the 
 reasons for the omissions of the Revised Version as com- 
 pared with the Authorized Version. The Revised Version 
 agrees most nearly with the Neutral, or scholarly type 
 of text, used by the leaders of the church and preserved 
 to us by the oldest and best manuscripts of the Bible. 
 
 Thus the work of establishing the text of the New 
 Testament has progressed. For the Old Testament much 
 more remains to be done than for the New Testament. 
 It is sometimes said that textual critics only endanger the 
 text of Scripture and unsettle men's faith in it. But we 
 ought to be thankful for the work of these makers of 
 the Bible, since by their long-continued and devoted study, 
 
1 14 Makers of the Bible 
 
 often at great personal sacrifice, they have secured for us 
 a better text of the Bible than men have hitherto pos- 
 sessed. They have shown that the far greater portion of 
 our modern critical New Testament text is established 
 beyond doubt and that the variations, so disturbing at first 
 thought, hardly form more than a mere fragment of the 
 entire text. Gregory figures this to be about half a page 
 of printed matter about the size of the hand, and con- 
 tinues suggestively : ^ 
 
 And the great point for a Christian is that he must wish to have 
 his one great book brought into the very best condition possible. 
 It would be strange if a Christian should take pains to have a 
 well-built church, and wish to have a well-prepared pastor, and 
 be anxious that a good choir be at command, but should say: 
 " It is no matter about the New Testament. The edition that 
 Estienne printed three centuries and a half ago, when but little 
 was known about the text, is quite good enough for me." It is 
 singular to see a man anxious to have the latest and best thing 
 in electric lights, but totally indifferent as to having the best text 
 in his New Testament. 
 
 ' " Canon and Text of the New Testament," p. 528. 
 
X 
 
 UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE 
 
 Study Outline 
 
 1. State briefly your conception of what the Bible is. 
 What does Paul mean in 2 Timothy 3 : 16? 
 
 2. Compare 1 John 1 : 8 with 3 : 9, Matthew 17 : 5 
 with Luke 9 : 35, and find in your Bible similar verbal 
 inconsistencies and difficulties. 
 
 3. Look up the marginal notes on 1 Samuel 19 : 9 and 
 James 4': 5, and find in the margin of your Bible other 
 similar variant translations. Consider the meaning of 
 such variations for your conception of the Bible. 
 
 4. Study the marginal note on 2 Kings 8 : 10. Find 
 other marginal notes showing variant readings in the au- 
 thorities upon which our Revised Version rests and state 
 how such variant readings affect your idea of the Bible. 
 
 5. Compare Mark 10 : 19 and Romans 3 : 10-18 with 
 the Old Testament passages they reflect. Find other 
 similar New Testament quotations of Old Testament 
 material, and tell whether the New Testament writers 
 and characters took the Old Testament literally or not. 
 
 6. Read in the Appendix to this book the excerpts from 
 the Preface of the King James translators, and state their 
 position on the question of literalism. 
 
 Scripture References and Helps 
 
 2 Timothy 3 : 16. 
 
 1 John 1 : 8; 3 : 9; 2 Kings 1 : 17; 3 : 1 ; Ecclesiastes 
 1 : 15; Luke 3 : 5. 
 
 115 
 
116 Makers of the Bible 
 
 Amos 8:1; Ezekiel 3 : 1-3. 
 
 John 6 : 53 ; Matthew 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9 : 35. 
 
 1 Samuel 19 : 9; Malaclii 2 : 15; Matthew 25 : 41 ; 
 John 1:9; James 4:5. 
 
 2 Kings 8 : 10; John 7 : 8-10; Matthew 16 : 2f. 
 Zechariah 1 : 4; 7 : 7, 12; Daniel 9 : 2, 24-27; Mark 
 
 10 : 9; Matthew 5 to 7; 2 Corinthians 3:6; Romans 
 3 : 10-18; Psalm 14; 2 Corinthians 6 : 16f. 
 2 Corinthians 4 : 7. 
 
 Encyc. Brit. (11th ed.), art. "Inspiration," vol. XIV, 
 pp. 645-648. 
 
 Hastings' Diet, of Bible, (1 vol. ed.), art. " Bible," §3, 
 p. 96. 
 
 Dods, " The Bible, Origin and Nature," pp. 101-163. 
 
 Peake, " The Bible, Its Origin, Significance, and 
 Worth," pp. 1-41. 
 
 Conley, " Bible in Modern Light," pp. 13-45. 
 
 Gardiner, "Bible as English Literature," pp. 1-33. 
 
 What, now, is the Bible? Is it a single book, meaning 
 just what it says; or a collection of books, saying what it 
 means to us ? Is it to be taken literally, as equal in all its 
 parts ; or is it to be interpreted, diverse in content and 
 value? These two views of the Bible are sometimes con- 
 trasted as those of the historic and of the modern faith, as 
 if these were exclusive of and hostile to each other. The 
 first conception, while not altogether forgetting the 
 library-character of the Bible and the necessity of inter- 
 preting it, has nevertheless in the working theory of the 
 vast majority of its advocates made the volume a unit, 
 equally valuable in all its parts and therefore to be taken 
 literally. The second conception presents the Bible as 
 men's record of their experiences of God put down under 
 
Understanding the Bible 117 
 
 the inspiration of the divine Spirit for the good of those 
 who might read. Those who hold the first view are for 
 the most part concerned with the task of making the 
 Bible agree with itself. The proponents of the second 
 view seek to know the Biblical teaching historically and 
 to apply it to life so as to produce the fruits of righteous- 
 ness in conduct, both individual and social. The first view 
 is formal, the second is vital. We modern Christians do 
 well to think through the problem of our Bible, since our 
 attitude toward the Scriptures will largely influence our 
 religious life. 
 
 What, then, is the Bible ? It has been defined as " the 
 Book of God and the god of books." ^ Many people call 
 it briefly " the Word of God " and speak of it as if it had 
 been dictated by the Almighty, and regard it, not as hav- 
 ing grown into its present form, but as having been pro- 
 duced at a single stroke at one time. Others recognize its 
 diversity in time and authorship and yet find no problem 
 connected with its history, its literary development, its 
 place and authority in life. They make the Bible one in 
 teaching and value, infallible in all its statements, and 
 equally authoritative in all its parts. '' The Bible from 
 Cover to Cover " has become a slogan with many, who 
 quote Paul as referring to the Bible in its present form 
 (2 Tim. 3 : 16), and when asked to explain do so by a 
 ready-made theory rather than in the light of the facts 
 of the origin and history of the book and the events 
 which led to the collection of those Scriptures we find 
 embodied in our Old and New Testaments. 
 
 These defenders of the Bible feel that they honor it by 
 holding to the theory of its verbal inspiration, and they 
 declare themselves literalists who take the Word precisely 
 
 ' McPherson, " Modern Conflict Over the Bible," p. 39f. 
 
118 Makers of the Bible 
 
 as it reads. But they who profess the doctrine do not 
 consistently apply it to Scripture. Does the Bible mean 
 what it says? Verbal contradictions and inconsistencies 
 appear here and there. For instance, we read, '' If we say 
 that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth 
 is not in us" (1 John 1:8). Again, ''Whosoever is 
 begotten of God doeth no sin . . . and he cannot sin, be- 
 cause he is begotten of God" (1 John 3:9). Once 
 more, we find an apparent contradiction in words in the 
 records of the kings of Israel and Judah. For in one 
 place the text reads, " And Jehoram began to reign in his 
 stead in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehosha- 
 phat king of Judah." But later we are told of this same 
 king, ** Now Jehoram the son of Ahab began to reign 
 over Israel in Samaria in the eighteenth year of Jehosha- 
 phat king of Judah" (2 Kings 1 : 17; 3 : 1). A third 
 illustration leaves the Old Testament and the New in flat 
 contradiction, if we must take the words of the Bible just 
 as they read. For in Ecclesiastes the Preacher in his 
 pessimism declares, " That which is crooked cannot be 
 made straight " (Eccles. 1 : 15), while a preacher of the 
 new dispensation, quoting from an optimist of the old, 
 hopefully insists, '' And the crooked shall become 
 straight" (Luke 3:5). 
 
 Another class of statements in the Bible which are not 
 taken as they read is made up of such expressions as are 
 often found in the prophets. That stern poet of doom 
 in the Old Testament says : 
 
 " Thus the Lord Jehovah showed me ; 
 And, behold, a basket of summer fruit " (Amos 8:1). 
 
 But no one supposes that God in visible bodily form was 
 actually pointing out fruit to the prophet: only that the 
 
Understanding the Bible 119 
 
 latter saw such a basket, was impressed by it as a means 
 of picturing a truth he had for the people, and used it as 
 a symbol to convey' the lesson he felt moved to teach. 
 Or again, when that prophet-pastor on the banks of the 
 Chebar tells of his eating a roll (Ezek. 3 ; 1-3), we see 
 in his description a symbolic action, which is to be inter- 
 preted as figurative. 
 
 And if reply is made that these illustrations are found 
 in prophetic discourse, we need only remind ourselves of 
 the words of the Master, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
 Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his 
 blood, ye have not life in yourselves" (John 6 : 53). 
 The most ardent literalist would not insist that Jesus in 
 these words requires men to become cannibals in order to 
 have life. Yet that is to take the Bible as it reads. So, 
 also, the words spoken to Jesus in the transfiguration sug- 
 gest a warning against pressing the doctrine of verbal in- 
 spiration. In Matthew's version of the voice out of the 
 cloud the wording is, " This is my beloved Son in whom 
 I am well pleased" (Matt. 17 : 5). Mark and Luke 
 omit the last clause (Mark 9 : 7 and Luke 9 : 35), while 
 Luke reads, '' My Son, my chosen." Broadus, in his 
 comment on Matthew's statement of the voice, disposes 
 of literalism by saying : - "Of course the words cannot 
 have been spoken in all these forms; an unquestionable 
 proof, if it were needed, that the Evangelists do not al- 
 ways undertake to give the exact words." 
 
 If, now, further evidence is needed of the impossibility 
 of the doctrine of literalism, it may be found in variant 
 translations of passages appearing in the margins of an 
 average reference Bible. In 1 Samuel 19 : 9 the text 
 reads, " And an evil spirit from Jehovah was upon Saul." 
 
 2 " American Commentary on Matthew," p. 372. 
 
 I ) 
 
120 Makers of the Bible 
 
 But a marginal variant rendering of this verse gives, 
 "The spirit of Jehovah was evil toward Saul." This 
 marginal translation is far from being identical with that 
 of the text, yet the words of the Hebrew will bear this 
 rendering. Malachi 2 : 15 offers a far more difficult 
 verse, in fact one well-nigh hopelessly obscure. In the 
 body of the passage we read : '' And did he not make one, 
 although he had the residue of the Spirit? And where- 
 fore one? He sought a godly seed." The marginal ver- 
 sion of the verse runs : " And not one hath done so who 
 had a residue of the spirit. Or what? is there one that 
 seeketh a godly seed ? " These translations of the Hebrew 
 are certainly different, yet we are told by Hebrew scholars 
 that the rendering in the text is a possible translation, 
 though that of the margin is better." And the same phe- 
 nomena are found in the New Testament. " Depart from 
 me, ye cursed," or " Depart from me under a curse " says 
 Jesus in Matthew 25 : 41. In John 1 : 9 the statement 
 is, " There was the true light, even the light which lighteth 
 every man, coming into the world." But the margin 
 makes the true light light " every man as he cometh " into 
 the world. And again, in James 4 : 5 there is a passage 
 to which two variant translations are attached. Which 
 of these three does this verse mean? (1) "Doth the 
 spirit which he made to dwell in us long unto envying? " 
 (2) " The Spirit which he made to dwell in us he yearneth 
 for even unto jealous envy." (3) " That Spirit which he 
 made to dwell in us yearneth for us even unto jealous 
 envy." 
 
 But some feel that this appeal to marginal variant ren- 
 derings is not well taken. They declare that we must go 
 back of all translations to the original. 
 
 ' J. M. p. Smith, " International Critical Commentary on Malachi," p. 54. 
 
Understanding the Bible 121 
 
 There are convincing reasons for believing that the original 
 manuscripts of the Bible contained no error. We cannot conceive 
 of error if God inspired the writers to give these truths to men.* 
 
 The term original manuscripts is not wholly free from 
 ambiguity in the above quotation. If by it is meant the 
 actual autographs as they left the hands of the Biblical 
 writers, then nothing can be affirmed of them with assur- 
 ance, since so far as known today none of the autographs 
 of Biblical writings are in existence. And if by the term 
 is meant simply the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of 
 the Bible, then, as copies, they do contain variant read- 
 ings that make it impossible to hold a strict doctrine of 
 verbal inspiration. Consider 2 Kings 8 : 10. As it reads 
 in the text it makes the man of God a liar. For Elisha 
 sent word to the Syrian king by Hazael : " Go say unto 
 him, Thou shalt surely recover; howbeit Jehovah hath 
 showed me that he shall surely die." A marginal variant 
 reading relieves the passage of its verbal contradiction 
 and moral difficulty ; moreover, it makes the account con- 
 sistent : " Thou shalt not recover ; for Jehovah hath 
 showed me that he shall surely die." A similar variation 
 in reading occurs in the New Testament in John 7:8: 
 ** Go ye up unto the feast ; I go not up unto this feast ; 
 because my time is not yet fulfilled." And then when his 
 brethren had gone up Jesus went up secretly. (John 7 : 
 10.) These two verses taken literally, cause real dif- 
 ficulty to most readers and were the occasion of ques- 
 tionings very early in the history of the church. For 
 " many ancient authorities add * yet ' " immediately after 
 " I go not up " in verse 8, if we may trust a marginal 
 note at this point. Finally, to take another instance from 
 the New Testament, the text of the passage in Matthew 
 
 * McPherson, " Modern Conflict," p. 8f. 
 
122 Makers of the Bible 
 
 16 : 2f. contains words which to the end of verse 3, we 
 are told by a marginal note again, " are omitted by some 
 of the most ancient and other important authorities." 
 Jesus' answer to the Pharisees and Sadducees is found in 
 verse 4, as was noticed by Origen in the third century 
 A. D. in his commentary on Matthew, while the last part 
 of verse 2, with all of verse 3, probably formed no part 
 of the original text. Indeed, in spite of the retention of 
 these portions by the Revised Version, Broadus felt that 
 they were certainly not a part of the first Gospel in its 
 original form.^ 
 
 Such passages are numerous in the Bible and suggest 
 the fundamental difficulty inherent in the doctrine of liter- 
 alism, whether it be based on the versions merely or the 
 manuscripts themselves. And this evidence finds support 
 in the Bible's incidental reflection of the attitude of Biblical 
 writers and persons on this unscriptural way of treating 
 the Scriptures. The prophet Zechariah appeals to the 
 authority of those spokesmen of God who lived and 
 preached before the Exile (Zech. 1 : 4; 7 : 7, 12), but 
 he is more concerned with the spirit of their utterances 
 than with the phraseology. He gives the refrain of the 
 earlier prophets and a summary of their teaching, but 
 it is adapted to the conditions of his own age; it is not 
 couched in the words and phrases of the older prophets.** 
 In similar fashion the writer of Daniel is trying to under- 
 stand Jeremiah's ancient prophecy of Jerusalem's seventy- 
 year desolation, but he interprets the older seer's message 
 and transforms it into the famous Seventy Weeks oracle. 
 (Dan. 9 : 2, 24-27.) Jesus, too, was no literalist in his 
 treatment of Scripture. We are told that " the Old Tes- 
 
 ^ Broadus, " American Commentary on Matthew," p. 348. 
 
 • G. A. Smith, " Book of the Twelve," Vol II, p. 26of., note 3. 
 
Understanding the Bible 123 
 
 tament, as we have it today, was the text-book of Jesus, 
 and that in the temptations of Hfe he did not have re- 
 course to his own supernatural resources," but " won his 
 first great victory by simply declaring in a childlike trust : 
 * It is written.' " ^ If this be true, we should expect the 
 Master to reproduce the words of the Old Testament in 
 the form we know them, when he quotes portions of 
 Scripture. But this is not the case. Reciting the com- 
 mandments, in answer to the young man he loved, he 
 inserts one not in the lists as they now appear in the Old 
 Testament. Five of the six he gives are from the ancient 
 law, but " Do not defraud " (Mark 10 : 19) is not there. 
 And in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5 to 7) the oft- 
 repeated formula introducing a new topic suggests how 
 Jesus was contrasting his own teaching with that of 
 both Moses and other teachers in their interpretations.^ 
 Moreover, his quotation of the Wisdom of God (by some 
 believed to be a non-canonical source now lost) against 
 the " lawyers " suggests his readiness to go outside the 
 letter of the Old Testament as we now have it. (Luke 
 11 : 49.) Does not this show that Jesus was concerned 
 with the spirit and purpose of the Old Testament rather 
 than with just its letter? And not only so, he actually 
 points out the transitory character of the Jewish Scrip- 
 tures, and suggests that they were superseded by the gos- 
 pel of the kingdom. " The law and the prophets were 
 until John: from that time the gospel of the kingdom 
 of God is preached " (Luke 16 : 16). This vital concep- 
 tion of Scripture comes to its classic expression in the 
 great apostle to the Gentiles, " The letter killeth but the 
 spirit giveth life " (2 Cor. 3:6). And Paul applies this 
 
 ' McPherson, " Modern Conflict," p. 12, 
 
 * Cf . Broadus, "American Commentary on Matthew," p. 102. 
 
124 Makers of the Bible 
 
 principle in his own practise. Quoting in Romans 3 : 
 10-18 somewhat at length he first abridges a part of 
 Psalm 14, then adds to that abridgment a number of 
 verses (13-18) as if they had originally formed a con- 
 tinuous passage in the Old Testament. But these verses 
 are taken from different parts of the Jewish Scriptures, 
 not always exactly quoted and strung together to form a 
 single passage. Again, he introduces a quotation with the 
 expression '* As said God," yet the quotation is a para- 
 phrase of a number of Old Testament passages, more 
 nearly like the Greek of the Septuagint than the Hebrew, 
 and the first words of the quotation, " I will dwell in 
 them," are not in any of the passages represented in the 
 paraphrase. (Cf. 2 Cor. 6 : 16f.) Surely Paul wanted 
 the spirit of the Old Testament teaching, not its letter. 
 Moreover, Paul quotes from rabbinic tradition as of 
 equal authority with the Old Testament, in Galatians 3 : 
 19, when he says that the law " was ordained by the hand 
 of a mediator." ® 
 
 In general this is the attitude of the church toward 
 Scripture down through the early and Middle Ages of 
 its history. The same is true of the modern period till 
 the time of the King James Bible in 1611. The trans- 
 lators of this splendid version recognized the presence of 
 obscurities in the Biblical text and were liberal-minded 
 enough to put marginal notes in their translation explain- 
 ing and clearing up many doubtful points. Never for a 
 moment did they hold the doctrine of literalism, claiming 
 the verbal inspiration of the Bible. 
 
 It hath pleased God [they say in their noble prefacel in his 
 divine prouidence, heere and there to scatter wordes and sentences 
 of that difficultie and doubt fulnesse, not in doctrinall points that 
 
 '' Cf. Robinson, " Life of Paul," p. 34f. 
 
Understanding the Bible 125 
 
 concerne saluation, . . but in matters of less moment, that feare- 
 fulnesse would better beseeme vs than confidence.^*' 
 
 In fact, one of the prominent features of this so-called 
 Authorized Version is its variety of expression, and this 
 is due to the translators' repudiation of literalism and 
 their refusal to be bound by the letter. They claimed the 
 right to render a Hebrew or Greek word once by " intent '* 
 and another time by " purpose " ; an original word by 
 " journeying " and again by " traveling " ; or, once by 
 " pain " and again by " ache " ; and so on through a long 
 list. In fact, '' to minse the matter," as they so quaintly 
 phrase it, they thought literalism ^^ 
 
 to sauor more of curiositie then wisdome, and that rather it 
 would breed scorne in the Atheist, then bring profite to the godly 
 Reader. For is the kingdome of God become words or syllables? 
 why should wee be in bondage to them if we may be free, vse one 
 precisely when wee may vse another no lesse fit, as commodiously ? 
 
 ^' Cambridge English Classics, Reprint of the Authorized Version of the 
 English Bible, i6ir. The Translators to the Reader, p. 28. 
 
 " Translators to Reader, p, 28, 
 
XI 
 
 THE UNDERLYING CHARACTER OF THE 
 
 BIBLE 
 
 Study Outline: Questions for Reflection 
 
 1. What evidences of the Bible's power can you sug- 
 gest? 
 
 2. What effect on individual lives has the Bible pro- 
 duced ? 
 
 3. What influence on human society has the Bible had? 
 
 4. To what element in the Bible is this influence due? 
 
 5. Wherein does the authority of the Bible lie, in its 
 statements or in its principles? 
 
 6. What to you is the real purpose of the Bible? 
 
 7. What should be our purpose in studying the Bible ? 
 
 References and Helps 
 
 Psalm 25 : 4; 119 : 9, 105; Luke 15 : 11-32; John 
 14 : 6; Romans 8 : 38, 39; 2 Timothy 3 : 17; Hebrews 
 1 : 1, 2. 
 
 Hastings' Diet. Bib., 1 vol, ed., art. '' Bible," p. 95, §1. 
 
 Hughes, " The Bible and Life," pp. 21-48 and 213-239. 
 
 Clarke, " Sixty Years With the Bible," pp. 244-259. 
 
 Dods, " The Bible, Its Origin and Nature," pp. 101-163. 
 
 Von Dobschuetz, " The Influence of the Bible on Civil- 
 ization," pp. 164-190. 
 
 Conley, " The Bible in Modern Light," pp. 25-39. 
 
 Thus far we have been concerned necessarily with the 
 126 
 
The Underlying Character of the Bible 127 
 
 human side of our Bible, reflected so clearly by the writer 
 of Hebrews. (Heb. 1 : 1, 2.) Such a subject has its place, 
 since no study of the records which preserve the Scrip- 
 tures for us is without value. But the author would 
 be untrue to his conviction about the essential nature 
 of the Book, were he to stop here without at least a 
 glance at its divine character. 
 
 The fact of the Bible's power over men is beyond 
 dispute. It is a small volume, yet has been the inspira- 
 tion of almost countless books, sermons, and tracts. It 
 is an ancient volume, yet is still enthroned in the heart of 
 our modern life. Oriental in origin and atmosphere for 
 the most part, it has followed the course of empire and 
 won its greatest triumphs in the Occident. Produced 
 centuries ago in a small and remote country, it has defied 
 geographical distance and temporal limitation. Shaped 
 and colored by the land of its birth, it is none the less 
 adapted to all sorts and conditions of human life. While 
 the sacred books of other religions remain bound by the 
 limited habitat of their origin, the Bible has transcended 
 all the limits of land and clime in the reach of its influence. 
 While other scriptures refuse to thrive on translation, the 
 Christian Scriptures flourish afresh in new forms. " From 
 Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand, the 
 Bible seems as it were indigenous to all zones, climates, 
 and conditions." ^ 
 
 Moreover, all down through its history this book of 
 divine religion has produced a religious eflPect in the lives 
 of its individual readers. For nineteen centuries it has 
 been the interpreter and guide of men, teaching the truth 
 of such fundamental realities as these : the verity of the 
 being of God, the constitution and destiny of man, and 
 
 ^ Baldwin, " Modern Miracles," p. 240. 
 
128 Makers of the Bible 
 
 the nature of the relation existing between the human 
 and divine. It has taught the world that reHgion is God 
 at work in man seeking to Hft him to share in the divine 
 life. It has taught that religion is more than worship 
 alone, though this represents inward devotion ; more than 
 conduct alone, although conduct is a most important ele- 
 ment; more than creed alone, though creed is almost a 
 necessary expression of it. The Bible has been and is 
 today a moral pathfinder, answering the deepest cry of 
 the human heart, 
 
 " Show me thy ways, O Jehovah ; 
 Teach me thy paths '' (Ps. 25 : 4). 
 
 But more significant than this, the Bible has exercised 
 a molding influence on human civilization. To note in 
 passing only one illustration, the Anglo-Saxon-speaking 
 people owe much of their progress to the silent power of 
 the Book. On the occasion of the three-hundredth anni- 
 versary of the King James Version Whitelaw Reid, then 
 our ambassador to Great Britain, is reported by the news- 
 papers to have given expression to this eloquent tribute 
 to the Bible : " For the past three centuries the Bible has 
 been the mainspring of Anglo-Saxon development, hav- 
 ing molded its morals, lifted its legislation and its juris- 
 prudence, and inspired its literature." And von Dob- 
 schuetz, in his Harvard Lectures in 1914, feels that the 
 influence of the Bible on civilization will grow greater 
 in the future, the more the Bible is used as an influence 
 in inward inspiration to piety of life : ^ 
 
 Making men devout, it makes them strong and Influential in the 
 common effort to promote civilization by removing everything 
 
 ' " The Influence of the Bible on Civilization," p. 190. 
 
The Underlying Character of the Bible 129 
 
 which is contrary to the welfare of others. That is the most 
 important influence which the Bible can have; and tliat influence 
 it still exerts and ever will exert on civilization. 
 
 If, now, we seek a reason for this judgment concerning 
 the power and influence of the Christian Scriptures, may 
 it not be found in our conception of the fundamental 
 nature of the Bible? Essentially, it is a book of inner 
 spiritual truth, and such truth is not attested to us by 
 external demonstration. This truth is self-authenticating 
 by its own inherent worth. As we read the Bible we 
 select that which meets the requirements of our per- 
 sonal life. In infinite wisdom God has made it so, and 
 we but follow his direction when we appropriate from 
 the mass of truth in the Scriptures that which satisfies 
 our own individual needs. Having the Spirit of Christ 
 within us, we use this possession as a means of getting 
 from the Bible that truth which will transform the life 
 into the pattern of the divine. 
 
 This is because the Bible is not dependent upon what 
 Bishop Hughes calls formal truthfulness for its power of 
 appeal. It has its forms of expression, as before sug- 
 gested, but the reality of its inspiration does not depend 
 upon these forms. As Hughes suggests, we may read a 
 perfectly correct description of a street scene, which pic- 
 tures to our mind all the details of the various groups in 
 the street on a particular occasion, without feeling that 
 the description is inspired or inspiring. On the contrary, 
 men respond to the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 
 15 : 11-32), for instance, as both inspired and inspiring. 
 For 
 
 the son and the father are ever with us. God and his children 
 are the everlasting facts. The story is more true than the de- 
 
130 Makers of the Bible 
 
 scription. This contrast represents the biblical trend. The Book 
 penetrates through the husk to the kernel, through superficial facts 
 to deepest truths, through passing events to eternal meanings.^ 
 
 And this suggests a basis for one's doctrine of the 
 authority of the Bible. It is not to be found in the forms 
 and formulas of the past, good and helpful though these 
 have been. It must be found in the accordance of Biblical 
 truth with that Spirit of Christ in the heart of the believer. 
 God spoke to men in the olden time through the makers 
 of the Bible, and Christ's Spirit is resident in the hearts 
 of men to-day, speaking to them by faith in his person. 
 Bring these two together, the outer and inner, the ob- 
 jective and subjective, and we have a basis for authority 
 in things spiritual that is permanent and satisfying. It 
 is embodied for us in the Christ of the Gospels, whose 
 person gives us the divine standard : ** I am the way, 
 and the truth, and the life " (John 14 : 6). The authority 
 of the Bible for our religious life is the authority of 
 Jesus the Christ as he makes himself known to the in- 
 dividual soul. He is in us the touchstone of authority 
 by which we are to test all religious teaching, whether 
 ancient or modern. 
 
 What shall we say, now, of the purpose of the Book? 
 Fundamentally, what is the Bible? In respect of its 
 purpose it is a means of spiritual nourishment and quick- 
 ening. It was written and gathered into its present form, 
 not primarily to give us information about this material 
 universe, but for the purpose of helping man to know 
 God and become Godlike in spirit. " Wherewithal shall 
 a young man cleanse his way ? " is the sort of questions 
 it asks, answering them from the heights of inspiration, 
 "by taking heed thereto according to thy word" (Ps. 
 
 » " The Bible and Life," pp. 25, 26. 
 
The Underlying Character of the Bible 131 
 
 119 : 9). Whatever we need to know about God is re- 
 vealed to us in the Bible, and whatever power we need 
 to strengthen us in the struggle against evil and lift us to 
 an indomitable faith in the Son of God as a personal 
 Saviour comes to us in its pages. And this divine purpose 
 of the Bible is intimately associated with its inspiration, 
 giving to it its supreme dynamic. In this it differs from 
 other sacred writings. It is not necessary to deny help- 
 fulness to the sacred books of other religions in order to 
 enhance Christianity's Bible. The literature of Brahman- 
 ism has led men to thoughtful contemplation; the teach- 
 ings of Confucius have served men as a basis for a good 
 code of morals ; and the Koran has proved itself to many 
 an inspiration to prayer and devotion. But the distinction 
 and glory bf the Christian Bible is this, that having all 
 these qualities it also begets in human beings a desire 
 for a Godlike character, and lends to them in their 
 struggle after this supreme good the power of associa- 
 tion, through faith, with One who is not ashamed to call 
 men brothers. And the Bible not only brings to us in our 
 own personal struggle upward the power of the Saviour's 
 personality, beholding whom in its pages we are surely, 
 if slowly, transformed into the divine likeness by what 
 Drummond somewhere so felicitously calls the " alchemy 
 of influence," but it also prepares us by the same trans- 
 forming power for efficient service among our fellow 
 men by furnishing us " unto every good work " (2 Tim. 
 3 : 17). 
 
 As a corollary from the above it follows that we must 
 approach the Bible in the right attitude of mind and with 
 the right purpose. To come to it with any other purpose 
 than to ascertain our duty before God and man is to turn 
 the Book from its true intent. Of course, since we do 
 
132 Makers of the Bible 
 
 not yet fully know its truth, scholarship must continue 
 its task of investigating what may seem at times the 
 superficial and incidental in Bible study, in order to re- 
 cover for us the volume in its fulness. And we must 
 not censure the honest critic by calling harsh names, for 
 the devout scholar does not stop with this critical ap- 
 proach to the Bible. It is not for him an end in itself, 
 only a means to the end. He goes on to search the Bible 
 for knowledge of the will of God for men today. Ap- 
 proaching the Scriptures in this mood, with a spiritual 
 passion and genuine willingness to do the divine will 
 as revealed in the Book, he finds clear light on life's way 
 and power for the doing of duty revealed. So it is with 
 all who come to the Bible in this spirit and with this 
 purpose. For the Book as a divine revelation of vital 
 truth culminates in a Life that gives us our best vision 
 of life, in a Teacher whose words give us the best philoso- 
 phy of life, in a Friend whose Spirit is our best dynamic 
 of life, in a Saviour whose victory over sin and death 
 assures us of our ultimate triumph in life. 
 
 And this brings us to the crowning glory of our Bible, 
 its capacity for translation into the language of each 
 individual heart. We claim the right to interpret the 
 Scriptures for ourselves. This means that our Scripture, 
 authoritative for our life, is not the Bible as others read 
 it, but as read through the medium of our own personality. 
 Respect for the interpretations of others is, of course, 
 essential to the ascertainment of the truth of Scripture, 
 since these interpretations constitute one means by which 
 the Almighty brings instruction in Biblical truth to us. 
 But he who is dependent for his Scripture upon what 
 he hears of the Bible from others is in danger of lacking 
 depth and stability in his spiritual life. And this is no 
 
The Underlying Character of the Bible 133 
 
 plea for mere eccentricity in one's use and interpretation 
 of the Bible. It is rather a suggestion that each bring his 
 own mind and heart under the tutelage of the Spirit of 
 God to be filled with the truth according to individual 
 capacity. 
 
 For this is just the ministry of the Spirit of truth, to 
 take of the wonderful things of the Book and make them 
 ours. And when we in this fashion have each our own 
 Bible, the revelation of the divine will in human records 
 of the past interpreted by the revelation of the Christ 
 in our own heart and conscience, we may, adapting Paul's 
 words to this statement, feel sure that '* neither death, 
 nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, 
 nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, 
 nor any other creature " (Rom. 8 : 38, 39) will be able 
 to rob us of our pathfinder, guide, and stay along the way 
 from earth to heaven. " Thy word is a lamp unto my 
 feet, and light unto my path" (Ps. 119 : 105). 
 
 Lamp of our feet whereby we trace 
 
 Our paths when wont to stray, 
 Stream from the fount of heavenly grace, 
 
 Brook by the traveler's way, 
 
 Word of the ever-living God, 
 
 Will of his glorious Son, 
 Without thee how could earth be trod. 
 
 Or heaven itself be won?* 
 
 * Bernard Barton, 1827. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Excerpts from Writings Which Throw Light Upon 
 Some Matters Presented in the Preceding Chapters 
 
THE LETTER OF PSEUDO-ARISTEAS 
 
 The Story of the Septuagint 
 
 This letter purports to be a contemporary record by 
 Aristeas, who represents himself as an officer in the ser- 
 vice of the king of Egypt (Ptolemy Philadelphus, B. C. 
 285-247). Aristeas is interested in the antiquities of the 
 Jews and writes to his brother, Philocrates, an account of 
 a journey to Jerusalem he had recently made in the in- 
 terest of a Greek version of the Jewish law for the royal 
 library at Alexandria. He was a member of the deputa- 
 tion despatclied by the king to the Jews with a letter to 
 the High Priest Eleazar, asking him to send to Alexandria 
 six learned elders from each of the twelve tribes of Israel 
 to do the work of translation. 
 
 The seventy-two elders were chosen in due time and 
 sent to Alexandria, carrying with them a copy of their 
 Law written in gold ink on rolls made of skins. The 
 king received the elders at a banquet, where he tested their 
 ability with hard questions. Then after a few days De- 
 metrius, the librarian of the royal library, conducted the 
 elders to a place by the seashore remote from the noise 
 and tumult of the city, and urged them to perform their 
 task of translating their Law into Greek. They did it in 
 the space of seventy-two days, and the translation was 
 enthusiastically received by the Jewish community of 
 Alexandria, approved by the king with delight and rever- 
 ence, and ordered put away for safe-keeping. 
 
 Such in barest outline is the story which has given us 
 the name Septuagint for the Alexandrian version of the 
 
 137 
 
138 Makers of the Bible 
 
 Jewish Scriptures. The following excerpts from the let- 
 ter will supply more details of the story, which is not now 
 accepted by scholars as authentic. The story cannot be 
 taken as a contemporary record by a non-Palestinian 
 writer. Once he speaks of the way in which " the affairs 
 of state used to be carried out by these Egyptian kings " 
 (|[.28), and again, after referring to the arrangement for 
 the entertainment of the guests at Philadelphus' court, 
 adds, " it is an arrangement which is still maintained to- 
 day " (^182). There are numerous other indications in 
 the letter of a later date, and the writer is too familiar 
 with Jewish life and customs to have been an Alexandrian 
 Greek ofHcial. But the story is interesting and of some 
 value, representing, as it does, the Jews as having heard 
 and welcomed the Greek version of the Law before it was 
 presented to the king. This suggests that the version was 
 made because the Alexandrian Jews needed it for their 
 religious life. 
 Read the Aristeas story in the following excerpts : ^ 
 
 As the story of our deputation to Eleazar, the high priest of 
 the Jews, is worth the telling, and because thou, Philocrates, hast 
 set thy heart, as thou art constantly reminding me, on learning 
 the motives and purpose of our mission, I have endeavoured to 
 give thee a clear account of the matter. . . It was my devotion to 
 the careful study of religion which led me to offer my services for 
 the embassy to the man I have mentioned, who, owing to his virtu- 
 ous character and exalted position, is held in high honour both by 
 his countrymen and by the rest of the world, and is in possession 
 of documents of the greatest service to his nation, whether at home 
 or abroad, for the translation of the divine law, because it exists 
 in their country written on parchment in Hebrew characters. This 
 embassy then I undertook with enthusiasm, after finding an oppor- 
 tunity of approaching the king on the subject of the men who 
 
 * Thackerary's Translation, Society for the Propagation of Christian 
 Knowledge, London, 191 8. 
 
Appendix 139 
 
 were removed to Egypt from Judaea by the king's father, when 
 first he took over the city and the government of Egypt. This 
 story also it is worth While my telling thee. . . But, not to weary 
 you with too long an introduction, I will resume the thread of 
 the narrative. 
 
 Demetrius of Phalerum, as keeper of the king's library, received 
 large grants of public money with a view to his collecting, if 
 possible, all the books in the world: and by purchases and tran- 
 scriptions he to the best of his ability carried the king's purpose 
 into execution. Being asked once in my presence, about how 
 many thousands of books were already collected, he replied, " More 
 than two hundred thousand, O king; and I will ere long make 
 diligent search for the remainder, so that a total of half a million 
 may be reached. I am informed that the Jews also have cer- 
 tain laws which are deserving of transcription and a place in thy 
 library." " What is to hinder thee, then," replied the king, " in 
 this task? For all the necessary means are at thy service." And 
 Demetrius answered, " Translation is also required. For in the 
 Jews' land they use a peculiar script (just as Egyptians have their 
 system of letters) and speak a peculiar language. It is commonly 
 thought that they use the Syrian language, but this is an error; 
 it is another dialect." And when the king learnt all the facts, 
 he gave command that a letter should be written to the high priest 
 of the Jews, in order that the proposal above mentioned might be 
 carried into effect. . . 
 
 And when this business was ended (the emancipation of Jewish 
 slaves) he ordered Demetrius to submit a statement concerning the 
 transcription of the Jewish books. . . And the following is a copy 
 of the memorial : " To the great king from Demetrius— In obedi- 
 ence to thy order, O king, that the books which are wanting to 
 complete the library should be added to the collection, and that 
 those which are defective should be duly repaired, I have ex- 
 pended great care upon these matters and now submit a reference 
 to thee. The books of the Jewish law with some few others are 
 wanting. They are written in Hebrew letters and in the Hebrew 
 tongue, and have been interpreted somewhat carelessly and do not 
 represent the original text, according to information supplied by 
 the experts, because they have never received a king's fostering 
 care. It is necessary that these books too should in an amended 
 
140 Makers of the Bible 
 
 form find a place in thy library, because this code of laws, in that 
 it is divine, is full of wisdom and faultless. . . If then it be thy 
 good pleasure, O king, a letter shall be written to the high priest 
 at Jerusalem, bidding him send six elders from each tribe, men of 
 the highest repute and versed in their country's law, in order that 
 we may test wherein the more part agree, and so obtaining an 
 accurate translation may deposit it in a conspicuous place in a 
 manner worthy of the undertaking and of thy gracious will. Fare 
 ever well 1 " When this memorial had been presented, the king 
 ordered that a letter should be written to Eleazar on these matters 
 informing him also of the emancipation of the captives, . . 
 
 The tenour of the king's letter was as follows : " King Ptole- 
 maeus to Eleazar the high priest greeting and health. Forasmuch 
 as there are many Jews settled in our realm who were forcibly 
 removed from Jerusalem by the Persians at the time of their 
 power, and others who entered Egypt as captives in the train of 
 our father . . . we, then, have given liberty to more than a hun- 
 dred thousand captives, . . Now since we desire to confer a favour 
 not on these only, but on all Jews throughout the world and 
 on future generations, it is our will that your Law be translated 
 from the Hebrew tongue in use among you into Greek, that so 
 these writings also may find a place in our library with the other 
 royal volumes. . ," 
 
 To this letter Eleazar replied appropriately as follows : " Eleazar 
 the High Priest to King Ptolemaeus, his sincere friend, greet- 
 ing. . . On receiving thy letter we greatly rejoiced because of thy 
 purpose and noble resolve, and we collected the whole people and 
 read it to them. , . We shewed them also the vials which thou 
 sentest, . . the five bowls, and the table as dedicatory offerings, 
 and the hundred talents of silver for the offerings of sacrifices 
 and for such repairs as the temple may require. These gifts 
 were brought by Andreas, one of thy honoured courtiers, and 
 Aristeas, . . We therefore straightway offered sacrifices on thy 
 behalf and on behalf of thy sister and thy children and thy friends, 
 and the whole people prayed that thy undertakings might ever 
 prosper, . . And in the presence of them all we selected six elders 
 from each tribe, good men and true, whom we are also sending 
 with a copy of the Law." 
 
 I have now given thee, dear brother Philocrates, such a sum- 
 
Appendix 141 
 
 mary description of these matters as was necessary. The story 
 of the translation we will tell in the sequel. . . 
 
 So Eleazar, when he- had offered sacrifice and selected the men 
 and made ready many gifts for the king, sent us on our way in 
 great security. And when we reached Alexandria, the king was 
 informed of our arrival. On our admission to the court, Andreas 
 and I gave friendly greetings to the king and delivered the letter 
 from Eleazar. The king was so anxious to meet the delegates that 
 he gave orders to dismiss all the other officials and to summon 
 the men. . . When they entered with the gifts which had been sent 
 and the precious parchments whereon was inscribed the law in 
 gold in the Jewish characters, the material being wonderfully pre- 
 pared, and the joining of the several leaves being rendered imper- 
 ceptible, the king when he saw the men, began to ask concerning 
 the books. And when they had taken the rolls out of their cover- 
 ings and unrolled the leaves, the king, after pausing for a long 
 while and making obeisance some seven times, said, " I thank you, 
 friends, and him that sent you still more, but most of all do I 
 thank God, Whose oracles these are. . .'* And when they had ex- 
 pressed their gratitude, he ordered that the best quarters near the 
 citadel should be assigned to them, and the banquet made ready. 
 
 (Then after a long description of the seven days' ban- 
 quet the writer continues his story of the work of trans- 
 lation : ) 
 
 Now after three days Demetrius took the men with him and 
 passing over the breakwater, seven furlongs in length, to the island 
 crossed the bridge and proceeded to the northern district. There 
 he held a session in a house which had been prepared by the sea- 
 shore, magnificently built in a secluded situation, and bade them 
 carry out their work of translation, since all the necessary ap- 
 pliances had been well provided. And so they proceeded to carry 
 it out, arriving at an agreement on each point by comparing each 
 other's work ; the appropriate rendering so agreed on was then 
 transcribed under the direction of Demetrius. The session used to 
 last until the ninth hour, and thereafter they would depart to at- 
 tend to their bodily comforts, all their wants being plentifully sup- 
 plied. . . Thus, as we have said already, they assembled every day 
 
142 Makers of the Bible 
 
 in this spot, . . And so it came about that the translation was 
 accomplished in seventy-two days, as though this coincidence had 
 been intended. 
 
 And when the work was ended, Demetrius assembled the Jew- 
 ish people on the spot where the translation had been made and 
 read it through to the whole assembly in the presence of the 
 translators, who received another great ovation from the people 
 in recognition of the great services which they had rendered. . . 
 
 When word of these proceedings was brought to the king, he 
 greatly rejoiced, for it seemed to him that his purpose had been 
 securely attained. The whole work was read through to him, and 
 he was greatly astonished at the spirit of the lawgiver. And he 
 said to Demetrius, " How is it that none of the historians or poets 
 ever thought of mentioning such great achievements? . ." 
 
 The king, when he heard the explanation which Demetrius gave 
 of this matter, as above narrated, made obeisance, and ordered that 
 great care should be taken of the books, and that they should be 
 guarded with proper awe. . . 
 
 There, Philocrates, thou hast the whole story which I promised 
 thee. . . 
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE SEPTUAGINT 
 
 1. Kingdoms A, Chapter 17 {— 1 Samuel 17) 
 
 DAVID AND GOLIATH 
 
 1. And the Philistines assembled their armies for war, and were 
 assembled at Succoth of Idumea, and they encamped between Suc- 
 coth and Azeka-Ephermem. 2. And Saul and the men of Israel 
 assembled and encamped in the ravine ; they were arrayed for 
 war against the Philistines. 3. And the Philistines stood on the 
 mountain on one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the 
 other side, with an amphitheater between them. 4. And there went 
 forth a mighty man from the battle-line of the Philistines, named 
 Goliath, of Gath : his height was four cubits and a span. 5. And 
 a helmet was upon his head, and he was clad in a. chainlike cuirass, 
 and the weight of his cuirass was five thousand shekels of bronze 
 and iron. 6. And bronze greaves were upon his legs, and a bronze 
 shield between his shoulders. 7. And the shaft of his spear was 
 like the beam of weavers, and his spear-head six hundred shekels 
 of iron ; and he who carried his weapons went before him. 8. And 
 he rose up and shouted aloud to the battle-line of Israel, and said 
 unto them, Why do ye come forth to* array yourselves in war 
 against us? Am not I a Philistine, and ye and Saul Hebrews? 
 Choose out for yourselves a man and let him come down to me ; 
 9. and if he is able to fight against me, and if he smites me, then 
 wfe will be slaves to you, but if I am able and smite him, ye shall 
 be slaves to us and serve us. 10. And the Philistine said. Behold, 
 I have reproached the battle-line of Israel today: give me a man, 
 and we will both fight together. IL And Saul and all Israel heard 
 these words of the Philistine, and were terrified exceedingly. 
 32. And David said to Saul, Let not, now, the heart of my lord 
 collapse upon him; thy servant will go and fight with this Philis- 
 tine. 33. And Saul said to David, Thou wilt not be able to go 
 against this Philistine to fight with him, for thou art a young 
 boy, and he is a man, a warrior from his youth. 34. And David 
 
 143 
 
144 Makers of the Bible 
 
 said to Saul, Thy servant was tending flocks for his father in the 
 pasture; and whenever there came a lion or a bear and took 
 a sheep from the herd, 35. then I went forth after him and smote 
 him, and drew it out of his mouth; and if he set upon me, I 
 seized him by his throat and smote and killed him. 36. And a 
 bear thy servant smote, and a lion, and the uncircumcised Philis- 
 tine shall be as one of these; shall I not go and smite him, and 
 take away reproach today from Israel? Because who is this un- 
 circumcised, that he reproaches the battle-line of a living God? 
 37. The Lord who delivered me from the paw of a lion and the 
 paw of a bear will deliver me from the hand of this uncircumcised 
 Philistine. And Saul said to David, Go, and the Lord be with 
 thee. 38. And Saul put upon David a woolen cloak and a bronze 
 helmet upon his head, 39. and he girded David with his sword 
 over his woolen cloak; and he became weary after he had walked 
 about once or twice. And David said to Saul, I am not able to 
 go in these, because I have not tried them. And they took them 
 off him. 40. And he took his staff in his hand and picked out for 
 himself five perfect stones from the creek bed and put them in 
 his shepherd's scrip, which he had for gathering articles, and 
 his sling in his hand ; and he went against the Philistine. 42. And 
 Goliath saw David and despised him, because he was a young boy 
 and ruddy with beauty of eyes. 43. And the Philistine said to 
 David, Am I like a dog, that thou comest against me with a rod 
 and stones? And David said, No, worse than a dog. And the 
 Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44. And the Philistine 
 said to David, Come hither to me, and I will give thy flesh to the 
 fowls of heaven and the beasts of earth. 45. And David said 
 to the Philistine, Thou comest against me with sword and spear 
 and shield, and I come against thee in the name of the Lord God 
 of the hosts of Israel's battle-line, which thou hast reproached 
 today. 46. And the Lord will shut thee up today in my hand, 
 and I will kill thee and will take away thy head from thee, and 
 will give thy members and the members of the army of the 
 Philistines on this day to the fowls of heaven and the beasts 
 of earth : and all the earth shall know that there is a God in Israel. 
 47. And all this congregation shall know that it is not with sword 
 and spear that the Lord saves: for war is of the Lord, and the 
 Lord will deliver thee into our hands. 48. And the Philistine 
 
Appendix 145 
 
 arose and went to meet David. 49. And David put forth his 
 hand into the scrip and took thence a single stone and slung it 
 and smote the Philistine in the forehead, and the stone went 
 through the helmet into his forehead, and he fell upon his face 
 to the ground. 51. And David ran and stood over him and took 
 his sword and killed him and took off his head: and the Philis- 
 tines saw that their mighty man was dead, and they fled. 52. And 
 the men of Israel and Judah arose and raised the war-cry, and 
 pursued after them to the entrance of Gath and to the gate of 
 Askalon: and there fell wounded some of the Philistines on the 
 way of the gates both to Gath and Akron. 53. And the men of 
 Israel returned, turning aside from after the Philistines, and they 
 trod down their armies. 54. And David took the head of the 
 Philistine and bore it into Jerusalem, and his accouterments he 
 placed in his tent. 
 
 2. Kingdoms T, 19 : 1-12 (= 1 Kings 19 : 1-12) 
 
 story of elijah 
 
 1. And Ahab told Jezebel his wife all that Elijah had done, and 
 how he had killed the prophets with the sword. 2. And Jezebel 
 sent to Elijah and said, If thou art Elijah and I am Jezebel, 
 these things may the god do to me and more also, (but know) 
 that at this hour tomorrow I will make thy life as the life of 
 one of them. 3, And Elijah feared and arose and went away 
 for his life and came to Beersheba, the land of Judah, and left 
 his servant there. 4. And he proceeded into the desert a day's 
 journey and went and sat down under Rathmen; and he asked for 
 himself that he might die and said, Let it suffice now, take my 
 life from me, Lord, for I am not better than my fathers. 5. And 
 he lay down and fell asleep there under a tree : and behold, some 
 one touched him and said unto him, Arise and eat. 6. And Elijah 
 looked, and behold, at his head a rye loaf and a cruse of water: 
 and he arose and ate and drank and turned and lay down. 7. And 
 the angel of the Lord turned a second time and touched him and 
 said unto him, Arise, eat; for too much for thee is the journey. 
 8. And he arose and ate and drank; and he proceeded in the 
 strength of that food forty days and forty nights unto Mount 
 
146 Makers of the Bible 
 
 Horeb. 9. And there he went into the cave and lodged there; and 
 behold, the word of the Lord came to him and said, Why art 
 thou here, Elijah? 10. And Elijah said, Zealously have I been 
 zealous for the Lord Almighty, because the sons of Israel have 
 forsaken thee; thine altars they have torn down and thy prophets 
 they have killed with the sword, and I am left alone, and they 
 seek my life to take it. 11. And he said, Thou shalt go forth 
 tomorrow and shalt stand before the Lord in the mount; behold, 
 the Lord will pass b3\ And a great mighty wind was rending 
 mountains and crushing rocks before the Lord, in the wind of the 
 Lord (required reading: but not in the wind was the Lord) ; and 
 after the wind, an earthquake (but) not in the earthquake was 
 the Lord; 12. and after the earthquake, a fire, (but) not in the 
 fire was the Lord ; and after the fire, a sound of a gentle breeze. 
 
 3. Kingdoms J, 1 : 18 to 2 : 1 (= 2 Kings 1 : 18 
 
 TO 2 : 1) 
 
 ACCESSION OF JORAM 
 
 18. And the rest of the words of Ochozeios [Ahaziah] which 
 he made, behold are they not written in the book of the accounts 
 of the days for the kings of Israel? And Joram, son of Achaab 
 [Ahab] was king over Israel in Samaria twelve years, in the 
 eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah. And he did evil 
 before the Lord, but not as his brothers and not as his mother; 
 and he put away the pillars of the Baal which his father had 
 made and crushed them; but he was firmly fixed in the sins of 
 the house of Jeroboam who made Israel to sin, and he did not 
 withdraw from them. And with wrath was the Lord vexed against 
 the house of Achaab. (See 2 Kings 3 : 1-3.) 
 
 4. Psalm XIII (XIV) R. V. XIV 
 
 FOR THE end: A PSALM FOR THE DAVID 
 
 1. Said the fool in his heart. There is no God. 
 
 They became corrupt and loathsome in their practises, 
 There is no one doing good, there is not even one. 
 
Appendix 147 
 
 2. The Lord from heaven peeped down upon the sons of men, 
 To see if there was an understanding one, or one seeking God. 
 
 3. All turned aside, together they became useless. 
 There is no one doing good, there is not even one. 
 An open sepulcher is their throat, 
 
 With their tongues they became deceitful. 
 
 The poison of asps is under their lips, 
 
 Whose mouth is filled with cursing and bitterness. 
 
 Swift their feet to shed blood. 
 
 Destruction and wretchedness are in their ways, 
 
 And the way of peace they have not known. 
 
 There is not the fear of God before their eyes. 
 
 4. Will not all they that work iniquity know. 
 
 Those that eat down my people for a meal of bread ? 
 They did not call upon the Lord. 
 
 5. There they were afraid with fear where there was no fear; 
 For God is in the righteous generation. 
 
 6. The counsel of the poor ye put to shame. 
 For the Lord is his hope. 
 
 7. Who will give from Sion the salvation of Israel? 
 
 When the Lord shall turn the captivity of his people, 
 Let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad. 
 
 5. Jeremiah 8 : 8-13 
 
 8. How do ye say. Wise are we, and the law of the Lord 
 is with us? In vain was the false reed to the scribes. 9. The 
 wise were ashamed and dismayed and taken, for the law of the 
 Lord they rejected; what wisdom is there among them? 10. On 
 this account I will give their wives to others and their fields to the 
 heirs, 13. and they shall bring together their products, saith the 
 Lord : there is no grape-cluster on the vines and no figs on the 
 fig-trees, and the leaves are fallen. 
 
148 Makers of the Bible 
 
 6. Jeremiah 10 : l-5a, 9, 5b 
 
 Hear ye the word of the Lord which he spake with reference 
 to you, house of Israel. These things saith the Lord, According 
 to the ways of the Gentiles learn ye not, and of the signs of the 
 heaven be not afraid, for they fear them because of their appear- 
 ance. For the customs of the Gentiles are vain: a tree is cut 
 out from the woods, a work of an artisan, and an image, adorned 
 with silver and gold ; with hammers and nails they fasten them : 
 they will place them and they will not be moved : there is chased 
 silver, they will not proceed, silver affixed from Tharseis will 
 come, gold of Mophaz, and the hand of goldsmiths, works of 
 artificers all ; with hyacinth and purple they clothe them : they will 
 be borne and carried because they will not go. Fear ye not them, 
 for they shall not do evil, and good is not in them. 
 
 7. Jeremiah 29 : 15-23 (Lxx, ch. 36) 
 
 15. Because ye have said. The Lord appointed prophets for us 
 in Babylon; 21. Thus said the Lord with reference to Ahab and 
 Zedekiah, Behold, I give them into the hands of the king of 
 Babylon, and he will smite them before your eyes. 22. And they 
 shall take up from them a curse in all the colony of Judah 
 in Babylon, saying, T>^Iay the Lord do to thee as he did to Zedekiah 
 and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon broiled with fire, 23. on 
 account of their lawless conduct in Israel, and committed adultery 
 with the wives of their citizens, and uttered a word in my name 
 which I did not command them, and I am witness, saith the Lord. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE VULGATE ^ 
 
 1. Genesis 1:1-8 
 
 1. In principio creavit Dens caelum et terram. 2. Terra autem 
 erat inanis et vacua, et teriebrae erant super faciem abyssi; et 
 Spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas. 
 
 3. Dixitque Deus: Fiat lux. Et facta est lux. 4. Et vidit Deus 
 lucem quod cssct bona. Et divisit lucem a tenebris. 5. Appella- 
 
 ' This and the following selections from the Vulgate are taken from 
 Pillion's Biblia Sacra juxta Vulgate, sixth edition, Paris, Aug. 15, 1905. 
 
Appendix 149 
 
 vitqii^e lucem Diem, ct tenebras Noctem. Factumque est vcspere 
 et mane, dies imus, 
 
 6. Dixit quoque Deus: Fiat firmamentum in medio aquarum, et 
 dividat aquas ab aquis. 7. Et fecit Deus firmamentum, divisitque 
 aquas quae erant sub firmamento , ab his quae erant super firma- 
 mentum. Et factum est ita. 8. Vocavitque Deus firmamentum 
 Caelum. Et factum vespere et mane, dies secundus. 
 
 2. Job 38 : 1-9 
 
 1. Respondens autem Domijius Job de turbine, dixit: 
 
 2. Quis est iste involvcns sententias 
 
 sermonibus imperitisf 
 
 3. Accinge sicut vir lumbos tuos; 
 
 interrogabo te, et responde mihi. 
 
 4. Ubi eras quando poncbam fundamenta terrae? 
 
 Indica mihi, si habes intelligentiam. 
 
 5. Quis posuit mensuras ejus, si nosti? 
 
 vet quis tetendit super eam lineamf 
 
 6. Super quo bases illius solidatae sunt? 
 
 aut quis demisit lapidem angularem ejus, 
 
 7. cum me laudarent simul astra matutina, 
 
 et jubilarent omnes filii Dei? 
 
 8. Quis concliisit ostiis mare, 
 
 quando erumpebat quasi de vulva procedens; 
 
 9. cum ponerem nubem vestimentum ejus, 
 
 et caligine illud quasi pannis infantiae obvolverem? 
 
 3. Psalm 24 (Vulg. 23) 
 Psalmus XXIII 
 
 Hymnus triumphalis pro translatione arcae in Sion 
 
 1. Prima sabbati, Psalmus David. 
 
 Domini est terra, et plenitudo ejus; 
 
 orbis terrarum, et universi qui habitant in eo. 
 
 2. Quia ipse super maria fundavit cum, 
 
 et super flumina praeparavit cum. 
 
150 Makers of the Bible 
 
 3. Quis ascendct in montem Domini? 
 
 ant quis stabit in loco sancto ejus? 
 
 4. Innocens manibus et mundo corde, 
 
 qui non accepit in vano animam suant, 
 nee juravit in dolo proximo suo. 
 
 5. Hie aecipiet benedietionem a Domino, 
 
 et misericordiam a Deo salutari suo. 
 
 6. Haec est generatio quarentium eum, 
 
 quaerentiimi faciem Dei Jaeob. 
 
 7. Attollite port as, principes, vestras, 
 
 et elevamini, portae aeternales, 
 et introibit rex gloriae. 
 
 8. Quis est iste rex gloriae? 
 
 Dominus fortis et potens, 
 Dominus potens in praelio. 
 
 9. Attollite portas, principes, vestras, 
 
 et elevamini, portae aeternales, 
 et introibit rex gloriae. 
 10. Quis est iste rex gloriae? 
 
 Dominus virtutum ipse est rex gloriae. 
 
 4. Isaiah 53 
 
 1. Quis credidit auditui nostra? et brachium Domini cut reve- 
 latum est? 2. Et ascendet sicut virgultum coram eo, et sicut 
 radix de terra sitienti. Non est species ei, neque decor; et vidimus 
 eum, et non erat aspectus, et desideravimus eum; 3. despectum, 
 et novissimum virorum, virum dolorum, et scientem infirmitatem; 
 et quasi absconditus vultus ejus et despectus, unde nee reputavimus 
 eum. 
 
 4. Vere languores nostras ipse tulit, et dolores nostras ipse par- 
 tavit; et nos putaviwAis eum quasi leprosum, et percussum a Deo, 
 et humiliatum. 5. Ipse autem vulneratus est propter iniquitat£S 
 nostras, attrittis est propter scelera nostra; disciplina pacts nostrae 
 super eum, et livore ejus sanati sutnus. 6. Onines nos quasi oves 
 erravimus, nnusquisque in viam siiam declinavit; et posuit Dominus 
 in eo iniquitatem omnium nostrum. 
 
 7. Oblatus est quia ipse voluit, et non aperuit os suum; sicut 
 ovis ad occisionem ducetur, et quasi agnus coram tondente se 
 obmutescet, et non aperiet os suum. 8. D£ angustia, et de judicio 
 
Appendix 151 
 
 sublatiis est. Generationem ejus quis enarrabit? quia abscissas est 
 de terra viventium. Propter scelus populi mei percussi eiwi. 
 9. Et dabit impios pro sepidtura, et divitem pro morte sua, eo quod 
 iniquitatem non fecerit, neque dolus fuerit in ore ejus. 
 
 10. Et Dominus voluit conterere eum in infirmitate. Si posuerit 
 pro peccato animam suam, videbit semen longaevum, et voluntas 
 Domini in manu ejus dirigetur. 11. Pro eo quod laboravit anima 
 ejus, videbit et saturabitur. In scientia sua justificabit ipse Justus 
 servus meus multos, et iniquitotes eorum ipse portabit. 12. Ideo 
 dispertiam ei plurimos, et fortium dividet spolia, pro eo quod 
 tradidit in mortem animam suam, et cum sceleratis reputatus est, 
 et ipse peccata multorum tulit, et pro transgressoribus rogavit. 
 
 5. Luke 2 : 8-14 
 
 B. Et pastores erant in regione eadem vigilantes, et custodientes 
 vigilias noctis super gregem sumn. 9. Et ecce angelus Domini stetit 
 juxta illos, ei claritas Dei circumfulsit illos, et timuerunt iimore 
 magno. 10. Et dixit illis angelus: Nolite timer e; ecce enim 
 evangelizo vobis gaudium magnum, quod erit omni populo: 11. 
 quia natus est vobis hodie Salvator, qui est Christus Dominus, in 
 civitate David. 12. Et hoc vobis signum: invenietis infantem pan- 
 nis involtum, et positum in praesepio. 13. Et subito facta est cum 
 angelo multitudo militiae caelestis, laudantium Deum, et dicentiutn: 
 
 14. Gloria in altissimis Deo, 
 
 et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. 
 
 6. Revelation 4 : 8-11 
 
 8. Et quatuor animalia, singula eorum habebant alas senas et in 
 circuitu et intus plena sunt oculis; et requiem non habebant die 
 ac nocte, dicentia: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus Deus om- 
 nipotens, qui erat, et qui est, et qui venturus est. 9. Et cum darent 
 ilia animalia gloriam, et honorem, et benedictionem sedenti super 
 thronum, viventi in saecula saeculorum, 10. procidebant viginti 
 quatuor seniores ante sedcntem in throno, et adorabant viventefn 
 in saecula saeculorum, et mittebant coronas suas ante thronum, 
 dicentes: 11. Dignus es, Domine Deus noster, accipere gloriam et 
 honorem, et virtutem, quia tu creasti omnia, et propter voluu' 
 tatem tuam erant et creata sunt. 
 M 
 
152 Makers of the Bible 
 
 7. Revelation 11 : 15-19 
 
 15. Et Septimus angelus tuba cecinit; et factae sunt voces mag- 
 nae in caelo, dicentes: Factum est regnum hujus mundi, Domini 
 nostri et Christi ejus, et regnabit in saecula saeculorum. Amen. 
 16. Et viginti quatuor senior es, qui in conspectu Dei sedent in se- 
 dibus suis, ceciderunt in fades suas, et adoraverunt Deum, dicen- 
 tes: 17. Gratias agimus tibi, Domine Deus omnipotens, qui es, et 
 qui eras, et qui venturus es, quia accepisti virtutem tuam magnam, 
 et regnoisti. 18. Et iratae sunt gentes, et advenit ira tua, et tempus 
 mortuorum judicari, et reddere mercedem servis tuis prophetis, et 
 Sanctis, et timentibus nomen tuum, pusillis et magnis, et extermi- 
 nandi eos qui corruperunt terram. 19. Et apertum est templum 
 Dei in caelo; et visa est area testamenti ejus in templo ejus, et 
 facta sunt fulgura, et voces, et terrae motus, et grando magna. 
 
SELECTIONS FROM THE PREFACE OF 
 THE KING JAMES VERSION ' 
 
 But it is high time to leaue them (the imputations of 
 adversaries), and to shew in briefe what wee proposed to 
 our selues, and what course we held in this our perusall and 
 suruay of the Bible. Truly (good Christian Reader) wee 
 neuer thought from the beginning, that we shquld neede to 
 make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a 
 good one, . . but to make a good one better, or out of many 
 good ones, one principall good one, not iustly to be excepted 
 against; that hath bene our indeauour, that our marke. To 
 that purpose there were many chosen, that were greater in 
 other mens eyes then in their owne, and that sought the 
 truth rather then their own praise. . . And in what sort did 
 these assemble? In the trust of their owne knowledge, or 
 of their sharpenesse of wit, or deepenesse of iudgment, as it 
 were in an arme of flesh? At no hand. They trusted in 
 him that hath the key of David, opening and no man shut- 
 ting ; they prayed to the Lord the Father of our Lord, to the 
 effect that S. Augustine did; O let thy Scripture be my 
 pure delight, let me not be deceiued in them, neither let me 
 deceiue by them. In this confidence, and with this deuotion 
 did they assemble together; not too many, lest one should 
 trouble another ; and yet many, lest many things haply might 
 escape them. If you aske what they had before them, truely 
 it was the Hebrew text of the Olde Testament, the Greeke 
 of the New. . . These tounges therefore, the Scriptures wee 
 say in those tongues, wee set before vs to translate, being the 
 tongues wherein God was pleased to speake to his Church 
 by his Prophets and Apostles. Neither did we run ouer 
 the worke with that posting haste that the Septuagint did, 
 if that be true which is reported of them, that they finished 
 
 ' Taken from the Cambridge University reprint of the Authorized 
 Version of the English Bible, 1611, Vol. I, in Cambridge English 
 Classics, 1909, pp. 8-29- 
 
 153 
 
 Purpose and 
 spirit of the 
 translators of 
 the King James 
 Version. 
 
 Their task and 
 the care with 
 which they per- 
 formed it. 
 
154 Makers of the Bible 
 
 it in 72. dayes; neither were we barred or hindered from 
 going ouer it againe, hauing once done it, . . None of these 
 things : the worke hath not bene hudled vp in 72. dayes, but 
 hath cost the workemen, as hght as it seemeth, the paines 
 of twise seuen times seuentie two dayes and more : matters 
 of such weight and consequences are to bee speeded with 
 maturitie: for in a businesse of moment a man feareth not 
 the blame of conuenient slacknesse. . . Neither did we dis- 
 daine to reuise that which we hade done, and to bring backe 
 to the anuill that which we had hammered : but hauing and 
 vsing as great helps as were need full, and fearing no re- 
 proch for slownesse, nor coueting praise for expedition, wee 
 haue at the length, through the good hand of the Lord 
 vpon vs, brought the worke to that passe that you see. 
 Their reasons Some peraduenture Would haue no varietie of sences to be 
 
 variatit render- set in the margine, lest the authoritie of the Scriptures for 
 margin ^^their ^^ciding of controuersies by that shew of vncertaintie, should 
 
 liberal-minded- somewhat be shaken. But we hold their iudgmet not to 
 be so sound in this point. . . It hath pleased God in his 
 diuine prouidence, heere and there to scatter wordes and 
 sentences of that difficultie and doubtfulnesse, not in doc- 
 trinall points that concerne saluation, (for in such it hath 
 beene vouched that the Scriptures are plaine) but in matters 
 of lesse moment, that fearefulnesse would better beseeme vs 
 than confidence, and if we will resolue, to resolue vpon 
 modestie with S. Augustine (though not in this same case 
 altogether, yet vpon the same ground) Melius est dnhitare de 
 occultis, quam litigare de incertis, it is better to make doubt 
 of those things which are secret, then to striue about those 
 things that are vncertaine. There be many words in the 
 Scriptures, which be neuer found there but once, (hauing 
 neither brother nor neighbour, as the Hebrews speake) so 
 that we cannot be holpen by conference of places. . . Now 
 in such a case, doth not a margime do well to admonish the 
 Reader to seeke further, and not to conclude or dogmatize 
 vpon this or that peremptorily? For as it is a fault of in- 
 creduHtie, to doubt of those things that are euident: so to 
 determine of such things as the Spirit of God hath left 
 (euen in the iudgment of the iudicious) questionable, can be 
 
 ness. 
 
Appendix 
 
 155 
 
 no lesse then presumption. Therefore as S. Augustine saith, 
 that varietie of Translations is profitable for the finding out 
 of the sense of the Scriptures : so diuersitie of signification 
 and sense in the margine, where the text is not so cleare, 
 must needes do good, yea, is necessary, as we are per- 
 swaded. 
 
 An other thing we thinke good to admonish thee of 
 (gentle Reader) that wee haue not tyed our selues to an 
 vniformitie of phrasing, or to an identitie of words, as some 
 peraduenture would wish that we had done, because they 
 obserue, that some learned men some where, haue beene as 
 exact as they could that way. Truly, that we might not varie 
 from the sense of that which we had translated before, if 
 the word signified the same thing in both places (for there 
 bee some wordes that bee not of the same sense euery 
 where) we were especially careful, and made a conscience, 
 according to our duetie. But, that we should expresse the 
 same notion m the same particular word; as for example, 
 if we translate the Hebrew or Greeke word once by Pur- 
 pose, neuer to call it Intent; if one where lourneying, neuer 
 Traueiling ; if one where Thinke, neuer Suppose ; if one 
 where Paine, neuer Ache; if one where loy, neuer Glad- 
 nesse, &c. Thus to minse the matter, wee thought to sauour 
 more of curiositie then wisedome, and that rather it would 
 breede scorne in the Atheist, then bring profite to the godly 
 Reader. For is the kingdome of God become words or 
 syllables? why should wee be in bondage to them if we 
 may be free, vse one precisely when wee may vse another 
 no lesse fit, as commodiously? . , Lastly, wee haue on the 
 one side auoided the scrupulositie of the Puritanes, . . as 
 also on the other side we haue shunned the obscuritie of the 
 Papists. . . But we desire that the Scripture may speak like 
 it selfe, as in the language of Canaan, that it may bee 
 vnder stood euen of the very vulgar. 
 
 Their reasons 
 for variety of 
 phrasing, avoid- 
 ing the dangers 
 of both Puritans 
 and Papists: not 
 literalists, not 
 slaves to their 
 rules. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Alexandria: Jewish community in, 
 
 60; translation of Old Testament 
 
 in, 60. 
 Amanuenses, 35. 
 Apocryphal books, 52. 
 Apostolic Age, Christian hymns of, 
 
 23-25. 
 Apostolic Fathers, 72. 
 Aramaic: portions of Old Testament, 
 
 4; and Hebrew, original languages 
 
 of Old Testament, 58. 
 Aristeas: story of translation of Sep- 
 
 tuagint by, 60; letter of, 60, 137- 
 
 142. 
 Aristotle on Constitution of Athens, 
 
 83. 
 Augustine and the Latin versions, 
 
 73. 
 
 B 
 
 Baruch, scribe of Jeremiah, 38. 
 
 Bengel, J. A., and textual criticism, 
 109. 
 
 Bentley, Richard, and textual criti- 
 cism, 108. 
 
 Bible, the: historical study of, 2, lo, 
 11; a collection of books, 2, 3, 10; 
 different kinds of materials in, 3; 
 diversity of languages in, 4; types 
 of literature in, 4; difficulties in 
 translation of, 5; ethical standards 
 in, 6; different conceptions of God 
 in, 6, 7; origin of the word, 7-10; 
 early collection of books of, 8, 9; 
 names of sections of, 8, 9; phases 
 of historical study of, 11; lost 
 books referred to in, 20-25; lost 
 books quoted in, 14-20, 24; back- 
 ground literature of, 26; literary 
 instinct in writers of, 31, 33; 
 manner of writing books of, 35- 
 41; human element in, 41, 42; 
 
 first written on rolls, 46; Jewish 
 division of, 46; early circulation 
 of books of, 47; compendia of 
 books of, 49; variant readings in, 
 explained, 49; arrangement of 
 books of, 46, 50; as authoritative 
 Scriptures, 53; original languages 
 of, 58; in Greek version, 59-69; 
 capacity of, for translation, 68, 
 69; in Latin versions, 71-78; ver- 
 sions a basis of, in modern form, 
 80; debt of, to Church Fathers, 80; 
 manuscripts most important basis 
 of, 82; most important codices of, 
 85-88; errors in text of, 91-102; 
 early marginal notes in text of, 
 92; variants in text of, 95-102; 
 text of, well supported, 102; tex- 
 tual criticism and, 104-114; begin- 
 nings of printed text of, 105; 
 types of text of, in New Testa- 
 ment manuscripts, 111-113; differ- 
 ing interpretations of, 116; verbal 
 contradictions and inconsistencies 
 in, 118; figurative language of, 
 119; actual autographs of writers 
 of, lost, 121; divine character of, 
 127; power of, over men, 127; re- 
 ligious effect of, 127; molding in- 
 fluence of, on civilization, 128; a 
 book of inner spiritual truth, 129; 
 not dependent on formal truthful- 
 ness, 129; authority of, 130; the 
 purpose of, 130; natural growth of 
 canon of, 54; difference of, from 
 books of other religions, 131; 
 proper attitude toward, 131; ca- 
 pacity of, for translation into the 
 language of each heart, 132. 
 
 Bibliography, 2, 13, 29, 44, 57, 71, 
 79, 91. 103, US. 126. 
 
 Birth register of Jesus, 7. 
 
 Book of Jashar, 16-19. 
 
 Book of the Law: Josiah's, 50; 
 Ezra's, 51. 
 
 159 
 
160 
 
 Index 
 
 Book of the Wars of Jehovah, 14- 
 
 16, 19. 
 Book-rolls, 34, 45f 57- 
 Books: early materials for, 7; in 
 
 leaf form, 49, 57. 
 
 Chronicles of the Kings of Israel 
 and Judah, Books of the, 19, 20. 
 
 Church Fathers and our modern 
 Bible, 80. 
 
 Church letters in time of Paul, 22, 
 
 23. 
 Circulation of books of the Bible, 
 
 early, 46-55. 
 
 Clement: First Epistle of, 72; quota- 
 tions by, from the Bible, 81. 
 
 Compendia of Bible books, 49. 
 
 Codices of the Bible: Washington, 
 85; Vaticanus, 86; Sinaiticus, 87. 
 
 Damasus, pope, and Jerome, 74, 105. 
 David-Goliath stories in Hebrew and 
 in Septuagint, 67, 68. 
 
 God, conception of: in New Testa- 
 ment, 6, 7; in Old Testament, 6. 
 
 Goliath-David Stories in Hebrew and 
 in Septuagint, 67, 68. 
 
 Gospels as authoritative Scripture, 
 
 54- 
 
 Gospel writers, interdependence of, 
 26. 
 
 Gospels, lost, 25, 26. 
 
 Greek language: of New Testament, 
 4; used by Jews in Egypt, 59; 
 used in Roman Empire, 71. 
 
 Griesbach, J. J., and textual criti- 
 cism, 109. 
 
 H 
 
 Hebrew: characteristics of, 4; and 
 Aramaic, original languages of 
 Old Testament, 58; nature of, in 
 sentence structure, 58, in vocabu- 
 lary, 59. 
 
 Hermas, " Shepherd " of, 72. 
 
 Hezekiah's letter, 45. 
 
 Historical interpretation, 116. 
 
 Historical study of the Bible, 2, 10, 
 II. 
 
 Hymns, early Christian, fragments 
 from, 23-25, loi. 
 
 Ecclesiasticus. (See " Wisdom of 
 
 Sirach.") 
 Egypt: Jewish communities in, 59; 
 
 Jewish temple in, 60. 
 Elephantine papyri, 59. 
 Elzevirs, 107. 
 Erasmus: and Acts 8 : 37, 99; and 
 
 printed text of the Bible, 105; 
 
 not always wise in textual criti- 
 cism, 106. 
 Esther, book of, in Hebrew and in 
 
 Septuagint, 65. 
 Estienne and the printed Greek New 
 
 Testament, 107. 
 Eusebius, 41. 
 Ezra's books of the law, 51. 
 
 Folk-songs of Israel, 20. 
 Froude on Greek Testament of 
 Erasmus, 106. 
 
 Ignatius: letters of, 53; quotations 
 
 from Bible by, 81. 
 Inspiration, verbal, 117, 121. 
 Irenaeus: works of, in Greek, 72; 
 
 on wilful corruption of Scripture, 
 
 104. 
 
 Jashar, Book of, 16-19. 
 
 Jeremiah: dictated his prophecies, 
 38; book of, in Hebrew and in 
 Septuagint, 66. 
 
 Jerome: translator of the Vulgate, 
 10; life of, 73; preparation of, for 
 work as translator, 74; letter of, 
 to pope Damasus, 74, 105; revised 
 old Latin text, 75; made a new 
 translation, the Vulgate, 75; sim- 
 ple style of Latin of, 76. 
 
Index 
 
 161 
 
 Josiah, reforms of, 50. 
 Justin Martyr, quotations from Bible 
 by, 82. 
 
 K 
 
 Kenyon, estimate of length of New 
 
 Testament rolls by, 47. 
 King James translators: modern 
 
 spirit of, 69; tribute of, to Jerome, 
 
 78; and literalism, 124. 
 King James version, selections from 
 
 preface of, 1 53-1 5 5- 
 Kings, books of, writer of, his own 
 
 penman, 35, 36. 
 
 Lachmann, Karl, and textual criti- 
 cism, no. 
 
 Languages, diversity of, in Bible, 4. 
 
 Latin translations of Scriptures: first 
 made in eastern Mediterranean 
 world, 72; early, existing in nu- 
 merous Mss., 72; no complete text 
 of, 73; character of, unsatisfac- 
 tory, 73. 
 
 Law, the Jewish: written in a sepa- 
 rate roll, 46; early circulation of, 
 47; widely read, 48. 
 
 Leaf -book, 49, 57. 
 
 Letter-writing: among early Chris- 
 tians, 20-23, 53; in Old Testament 
 times, 20-23, 30, 45. 
 
 Library, divine, 3, 10. 
 
 Literalism: theory of, in interpreta- 
 tions of Bible, 1 16-125; inconsis- 
 tencies of, 118; variant transla- 
 tions against, 119; variant readings 
 against, 121; Biblical writers not 
 upholders of, 122; later church 
 against, 124. 
 
 Literature: types of, in Bible, 4; 
 instinct for, among Biblical wri- 
 
 . ters, 31, 32. 
 
 Luke: used earlier Gospels, 25; 
 quotes early hymns, 25, 26; his 
 own penman, 37. 
 
 M 
 
 Manuscripts of Bible: kinds of, 82; 
 
 names of more important, 85-88. 
 Marcion, 104. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, " Meditations " of, 
 
 72. 
 Marginal notes: in Bible text, 92; 
 
 rule by King James translators as 
 
 to, 94; a study of, in American 
 
 Standard Revision, 94. 
 Melito: use of word biblia by, 9; 
 
 " Extracts " of, 49. 
 Mill, John, and textual criticism, 
 
 108. 
 Mystarion, letter of, 41. 
 
 N 
 
 New Testament: language of, 4; 
 conception of God in, 6, 7; orig- 
 inally written on rolls, 46; proba- 
 ble size of original rolls of, 47; 
 early circulation of books of, 47, 
 48; collection of authoritative 
 Scriptures of, 53, 54; marginal 
 notes in text of, 92; three types 
 of text of, 111-113. 
 
 Odes of Solomon, 24. 
 
 Old Latin. (See "Vulgate" and 
 " Latin Translations.") 
 
 Old Testament: languages of, 4; 
 originally written on rolls, 47; 
 threefold division of, 46, 52; early 
 circulation of books of, 47; mar- 
 ginal notes in text of, 92. 
 
 Oral tradition of the gospel, 25, 26. 
 
 Origen: use of word biblotis by, 9; 
 dictated to amanuenses, 41. 
 
 Oxyrhynchus papyri: number and 
 kinds of, 34, 41, 83; Bible texts 
 among, 83; and Westcott and 
 Hort text, 83. 
 
 Papyri, Elephantine, 60. 
 
 Papyrus, material for writing, 7, 34, 
 35. 
 
 Paul: sends for biblia, 8; lost books 
 of, 20, 21; had a compendium of 
 Jesus' teaching, 25; dictated let- 
 ters, 39-41; letters of, authorita- 
 tive Scripture, 53, 54, exchanged 
 
162 
 
 Index 
 
 and collected, 54; concerned for 
 the spirit of Bible teaching, 124. 
 Pentateuch, the: and Josiah's law- 
 book, 50; and Ezra's law-book, 
 
 SI- 
 Poetic fragments from lost books, 
 
 15-20. 
 Polycarp collects letters of Ignatius, 
 
 53- 
 
 Prophets, Old Testament: written 
 on a separate roll, 46; early cir- 
 culation of, 47, 48. 
 
 Proverbs and songs of Solomon, lost 
 books, 20. 
 
 Ptolemy II, translation of Septuagint 
 under, 60. 
 
 Q 
 
 Quotations: from Bible in Church 
 Fathers, 80; to be used with ex- 
 treme care, 82. 
 
 Received text, 107, 112. 
 Recorders, 31. 
 
 Reid, Whitelaw, on the Bible, 128. 
 Roll form for books, 45, 57- 
 Roman Empire, languages of, 71. 
 
 Samuel on the kingdom, a lost book 
 of, 20. 
 
 Scribes, royal, 31. 
 
 Septuagint: story of, 60-62; differ- 
 ences between Hebrew Scriptures 
 and, 62-68; translations from, 143- 
 148. 
 
 Septuagint translators, 5. 
 
 " Shepherd " of Hermas, 72. 
 
 Sinaitic manuscript, the, 87. 
 
 Skins as writing material, 34, 35. 
 
 Solomon, Odes of, 24. 
 
 Song of Deborah, 4. 
 
 Song of Moses in Hebrew Bible and 
 in Septuagint, 64. 
 
 Song of the Well, 15. 
 
 Songs of Israel, remains of early 
 folk, 17-20. 
 
 Temple in Egypt, Jewish, 60. 
 Tertullian on wilful corrupters of 
 
 Scripture, 104. 
 Testimonia, 49. 
 Textual criticism: and the Received 
 
 Text, 107; from John Mill to the 
 
 present, 1 08-1 14. 
 Texiiis rcceptus, 107, 112. 
 Tischendorf: and codex Vaticanus, 
 
 86; and codex Sinaiticus, 87; and 
 
 textual criticism, no. 
 
 Valentinus, 104. 
 
 Variants in text of the Bible: due 
 to compendia, 49; due to versions, 
 80; designedly introduced, 96; un- 
 intentionally inserted, 97; due to 
 errors of eye and ear, 99; due to 
 misunderstanding of sense, 100; 
 no occasion for alarm, 102, 114. 
 
 Vaticanus manscript, 86. 
 
 " Virgin " or " young woman," 5. 
 
 Von Dobschuetz on the Bible, 128. 
 
 Vulgate, the: preceded by Old Latin 
 version, 71; Bible of Western 
 Christendom in medieval period, 
 73; work of Jerome, 75; character 
 of, 75 ; influence of, on English 
 versions, 76-78; passages from, 
 76-78; tribute to, by King James 
 translators, 78; translations from, 
 148-152. 
 
 W 
 
 Wars of Jehovah, Book of the, 14- 
 
 16, 19. 
 Washington codex, 85. 
 Well, Song of the, 15. 
 Westcott and Hort and textual criti 
 
 cism, no. 
 Westcott and Hort text and Oxy 
 
 rhynchus papyri, 83. 
 Wetstein, J. J., and textual criticism, 
 
 109. 
 Wisdom of Sirach, 5, 8, 52. 
 Writing: early materials for, 7, 30 
 
 32-35. 45; early development of, 
 
 29ff.