M's:.^ :<*H ^««i /(»»¦ fig faoftMsg if It CDJfep. M^&^ C«&'/ty'\ The Samaiutan PENTATEuciiTior.L at Xabi.ous. (Oriffinnl height, exelmling rnUei:i. nhnvt \r,in,.) OFE BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS Ibistors of tbe Hejt anb its translations FREDERIC G. KENYON, M.A„ D.Litt. Hon. Ph.D. of Halle University ; Late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford WITH 26 FACSIMILES EYRE AN'D SPOTTISWOODE LONDON— GREAT NEW STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C. EniNBUKaH, GLiseow, Melbourne, SYDUEr, and New York 1895 LONDON ; EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE, Her Majesty's Pnntere, DOWNS PARK BOAD, HACKNEY, N.B. PEEFACE. rilHE Bible has a twofold history, internal and external. -¦- The internal history deals with the character of its narrative and its teaching, as a revelation of God and of God's will ; the external history tells how and when the several books were written, and how they have been preserved , to us. The former treats of the Bible in its divine, the latter in its human, aspect. The former is unique, differing not merely in detail, but in kind, from the history of any other book ; the latter is shared by the Bible with every other book that ever was written. It is, of course, its internal history which is of supreme value ; but the very greatness of this value gives to the external history of the Bible a special interest and importance above that of all other books. If the Bible claims so unparalleled a pre-eminence, it is of the first consequence to us to know when and how it was written, whether the several books of it are authentic, and whether they have been faithfully handed down to us through the centuries which separate us from the time of their origin. The present volume deals solely with the latter part of the Bible's external history, the transmission of the sacred PREFACE. text. It is a subject upon which very much has been written, and each section of it has engaged the attention and occupied the lives of many scholars. My object has been to condense within the limits of a moderate volume the principal results at which these specialists have arrived, so as to furnish the reader who is not himself a specialist in textual criticism with a concise history of the Bible text, and to enable him to form an intelligent opinion on the textual questions which continually present themselves to the Bible student. In this attempt I have necessarily been indebted to the labours of others at every turn. To acknowledge this indebtedness in every case, to trace every statement to its original owner, would be an endless task, and would over load this book with notes to an extent quite unsuitable to its character ; but it may be of some use to mention the principal authorities whom I have followed in edch part of the history. To Strack, Davidson, Driver, Cornill, and Buhl on the Old Testament generally ; to Field, Lagarde, Ceriani, and Swete on the Septuagint ; to Scrivener, Gregory, and Hort on the New Testament ; to the writers in the second volume of Scrivener's Introduction (4th edition, by Miller) on the versions of the New Testament ; to Wordsworth, White, and Berger on the Vulgate ; to Skeat, Madden, and especially Westcott on the history of the English Bible — I desire to record my obligations in the strongest terms of respect. I have not, however, confined myself to the writers here mentioned, but have tried throughout to find and consult all the best authorities, so as to present in this volume a readable summary of the present results of the best criticism. I hope also that I may have gained something from an acquaintance with the Biblical manuscripts in the British Museum. PREFACE. This volume is especially intended for those who study the Bible in English, and in referring to details of textual criticism I have consequently had in my mind the only edition of the English Bible in which these details are made accessible to the ordinary reader, namely the Variorum Bible published by Messrs. Eyre and Spottis- woode. I hope, however, that it may also be found useful by students who are beginning to make acquaintance with the textual criticism of the Septuagint or New Testament in their original language, and who use such editions as the Cambridge Septuagint edited by Prof. Swete, or the Oxford Greek Testament edited by Prof. Sanday. To any of these editions this volume may, in the chapters relating to those parts of the subject, serve as a companion ; but indepen dently of such use, it is intended to give the reader a general knowledge of the textual history of the Bible, from the time at which the several books were written until their appearance in our English Bibles to-day. With regard to the plates, a few words of explanation are necessary. In presenting facsimiles of large manu scripts within the compass of a small page, two alternatives are possible. One may either reproduce a small portion of the original page in its full size, or one may give the whole page (or a large part of it) on a reduced scale. There is something to be said for either course; but I have preferred the latter, on the ground that it gives a better idea of the general appearance of the manuscript, and also that it enables one to point out more examples of the character istics of the manuscripts and the errors of the scribes. I have, however, in every case stated the original size of the page reproduced, and (in cases where the whole page S 2761. l3 vi PEEFACE. cannot be given) of the pai% reproduced ; and it is open to anyone to counteract the reduction by the use of a magni fying glass. It should be observed that in many cases the greater part of the difference between the whole page and the part reproduced is accounted for by the margins. Use has been made, in several instances, of the plates published by the Palseographical Society, with the permission of the editors ; but wherever it has been possible I have tried to give pages which especially illustrate the peculiarities of the manuscript in question or some important detail of textual criticism. ' In a book which covers so much ground on which so much labour has been bestowed, it is useless to hope that there should be no room for differences of opinion and no errors of detail; but I shall be very grateful for any corrections which may serve to make my work less un worthy of the high subject with which it ventures to deal. F. G. K. Department of Manusobipts, British Museum. 25th October, 1895. CONTENTS. CHAPTEE L Variations jn the Bible Text. pa(Je The existence of variations. — Examples. — Their origin. — Mistakes of copyists : (1) Errors of hand and eye. — (2) Errors of mind. — (.3) Errors of deliberate alteration. — Early MSS. the most free from error. — Method of recovering the true text. — Textual errors do' not endanger doctrine ......... l-Jl CHAPTEE n. The Authorities fob the Bible Text. The Authorities classified. — L Manuscripts. — 2. Versions. — 3. Quotas tions in the Fathers ....... 12.-li6 CHAPTEE rn. , The Original Mahusohipts of the Bible. Writing in early times : the Tell el-Amarna tablets. — Writing ia Babylonia. — In Egypt. — In Palestine. — -Form of the original manuscripts of the Bible ...... 17^22 CHAPTEE IV. The Hebrew Text. The Hebrew characters. — The Hebrew language. — Classification of the books of the Old Testament into three groups. — These groups represent three stages in the formation of the Hebrew Canon : (1) The Law ; (2) The Prophets; (3) The Hagiographa.— Dates of these stages, from which the care for the text may be supposed to commence. — Stages in the history of the Hebrew text. — 1. The Targums. — 2. The Talmud. — 3. The Massoretes. — The extant Hebrew text entirely Massoretie. — The text, once fixed, copied with extreme 'care. — The extant MSS. comparatively late, but faithful. — Causes of disappearance of older copies. — The extant MSS., how classified. — Description of the chief MSS. — The printed text. — • Summary : the extant MSS. contain a faithful representation of a text which can be traced back to about a.d. 100 ; but they do not enable us to follow it further ...... 23-42 vm CONTENTS. CHAPTEE V. The Ancient Versions of the Old Testament. pase The versions the only means for arriving at a pre-Massoretio text . 43-92 § 1. — The Samaritan Pentateuch. Its origin. — Its discovery. — Its character. — Its manuscripts ...... 44-48 § 2. — The Septuagint and other Greek versions. Origin of the Septuagint. — Its contents. — Becomes the Bible of the Christian Church. — Consequently rejected by the Jews. — Eival translations in the 2nd century : (1) Aquila, (2) Theodotion, (3) Symmachus. — Origen's Hexapla : its great effect on the Septuagint. — Editions of the Septuagint in the 3rd century : (1) Eusebius, (2) Lucian, (3) Hesychius. — Present state of the Septuagint: The extant MSS. — The printed editions.^Eeconstruction of the ancient editions from the MSS. — The Septuagint and Massoretie texts , 48-73 § 3.— Other Eastern Versions. The Syriac version. — The Coptic versions. — The Ethiopie version. — The Gothic and other versions ...... . . 73-77 § 4. — The Latin Versions. (a) The Old Latin Version. — (b) The Vulgate 77-83 § 5.— Condition of the Old Testament Text. Summary of the evidence of the versions. — Most of them too late to be of use. — Evidence of the Samaritan Pentateuch. — The real issue : Septua gint V. Massoretie. — The Hebrew text certainly corrupt in places : but the Septuagint not always trustworthy. — Additions and corruptions in Septuagint. — Deliberate falsification of Hebrew text not proven. — Summing-up ..... 83-92 CHAPTEE VI. The Text of the New Testament. The original MSS. of the N. T.— Circumstances under which the early copies were written.— Careful copying begins in the 4th century.— Transmission from 4th to 15th century.— The earliest printed texts. —The " received " text.— Its deficiencies.— Materials for correcting it: the chief manuscripts (uncial and cursive), versions, and Fathers.- Grouping of authorities.— Westcott and Hort's theory — Distinction of Syrian, Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral groups — Importance of this theory. — Objections to it. — The objections considered .... „ , 93-115 Appendix to Chapter VI. The chief modern editions of the New Testament 116-120 CONTENTS. ix CHAPTEE VII. The Manuscripts of the New Testament. page Codex Sinaiticus («). — Codex Alexandrinus (A).— Codex Vaticanus (B). — Codex Ephreemi (C). — Codex Bezse (D). — Codex Claromontanus (Dj).— Other uncial MSS.— Cursive MSS 121-150 CHAPTEE VIIL The Ancient Versions of the New Testament. § 1 . — The Eastern Versions. I. Syriac Versions. The Old or Curetouian Syriac. — The Peshitto. — The Philoxenian or Hark- leian Syriac. — The Palestinian Syriac. — II. Coptic Versions. The Memphitic or Bohairic. — The Thebaic or Sahidie. — The Fayyumic, Middle Egyptian, and Akhmimic Versions. — III. Other Eastern Versions. Armenian. — Gothic. — Ethiopie. — Arabic, etc. . 151-165 § 2. — The Western Versions, (a) The Old Latin. — ^Various forms of it.— The principal MSS.— (6) The Vulgate.— The principal MSS.— Codex Amiatinus 165-173 CHAPTEE IX. The Vulgate in the Middle Ages. Importance of the Vulgate as the Bible of the West. — Simultaneous use of Old Latin and Vulgate. — Consequent mixture of texts. — r'Spanish and Irish MSS. — Irish illuminations in English MSS. — Texts of English MSS. derived from Italy. — The Lindisfarne Gospels. — Eminence of English scholarship in the Sth and 9th centuries. — Charlepiagne's effort to improve the Vulgate. — Alcuin's revision. — The Golden Gospels. — Theodulf's revision. — The school of St. Gall. — Subsequent deterioratioii. — Eevision in the 13th century by the University of Paris. — The earliest printed Latin Bibles. — The Sixtine Vulgate. — The Clementine Vulgate . . . 174-188 CHAPTEE X. The English Manuscript Bibles. The conversion of England. — Caedmon's Bible paraphrase,— The Psalter of Aldhelm. — Bede. — Alfred. — Interlinear glosses in Latin Bibles. — The Gospels of the 10th century. — JElfric's Old Testament. — Progress suspended by the Norman Conquest. — Verse translations in the 13th century. — Translations of the Psalms. — Eevival of religion in the 14th century. — Wydiffe. — The earlier Wycliffite Bible. — The later WydiiHte Bible. — Theory that the Wydiflite Bible is not really Wycliffe's.— Examination of the theory .... 189-208 CONTENTS. CHAPTEE XL The English Printed Bible. page The invention of printing and the revival of learning. — The Eeformation. — The struggle for a translation of the Bible. — (1) Tyndale's New Testament, 1525. — His Pentateuch, 1530. — Eevised New Testament, 1534, 1535. — Tyndale's Bible the direct ancestor of the Authorised Version.— (2) Coverdale's Bible, 1535.— (3) Matthew's Bible, 1537. —(4) The Great Bible, 1539-1541.— (5) Taverner's Bible, 1639.— Progress suspended during reigns gf Edward VI. and Mary. — (6) The Geneva Bible, 1557-1560.— (7) The Bishops' Bible, 1568.— (8) The Eheims and Douai Bible, 1582-1609.— (9) The Authorised Version, 1611. — Its excellence and influence. — Acceptance of the Axithorised Version. — Causes necessitating a, revision in our own time. — (10) The Eevised Version. — Its characteristics. — Changes in text. — Changes in interpretation. — Changes in language. — Summary. — Eeeeption of the Eevised Version ..... 209-245 Appendix. Specimens of the English translations of the Bible . . . 247, 248 Index . . . . . . . . ' . . . . 249 LIST OF PLATES. Frontispieces-Til's SAM.UiiTAN Pentateuch-kOlI, at JTaeious. I. — Clay Tablet from Tell el-Amakna . . . facing II.-^Hebbew Synagogue-roll (Brit; Mus. Harl. 761 9) III. — The Moabite Stone IV.— Hebrew MS. (Brit. Mus.- 0*. 4445') t^. — Samaritan Pentateuch (il6ftie, Earberini Library 106) VI. — Codex Marchalianus VIL— Peshitto Syriac MiS. (Brit. Mus. Add. 14425) VIIL — Codex Sinaiticus . IX. — Codex Alexandrinus X. — Codex Vaticanos . XL— Codex Ephbaemi XII. — Codex Bezae Xin. — Codex Claromontanus XIV.— Cursive Greek MS. (Evan. 348) XV. — Curetonian MS. of Old Syriac (Brit. Mus. Add, 14451) XVL— Bohairic MS. (Brit. Mus. Or. 1315) . XVIL— Sahidio MS. (Brit. Mus. Or. 4717 (10)) XVIII. — Codex Vbhcellensis (Old Latin) XIX. — Codex Amiatinus (Vulgate) XX. — The Lindisfarne Gospels XXL— Alcuin's Vulgate (Brit. Mus. Add. 10546) XXII.— Mazaein Bible ..... XXIII. — English Gospels of the 10th Century (Brit Mus. Ecg. 1 A XIV.) XXIV.— Wycliffe's Bible (Bodleian MS. 957) XXV. — Tyndale's New. Testament page 18 21 2439 47 64 74 125130 136 139142 145149155 161 163167 171 179 183 187 194200 214 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS: BEING A ibtstori? of tbe Xlcst anD its Uranslatfons. T CHAPTER I VAEIATIONS IN THE BIBLE TEXT. HE following history of the Bible text and of its translation into English is an attempt to trace the manner in which the words _ ^ . ^. of the sacred books have been handed down to Uncertainties in the Eevised US, from the time when they were first written in the original Hebrew or Greek, down to their appearance in our English Eevised Version to-day. No one can read that version intelligently without seeing that in very many places there is considerable doubt as to the exact words used by the original writers. On nearly every page, especially of the New Testament, we see notes in the margin to the effect that " Some ancient authorities read" this, or " Many ancient authorities read" that, — these readings being alternatives to the readings actually adopted in the text of the Revisers. The question inevitably follows, "What are these " ancient authorities ? " How comes it that they differ so frequfently among themselves ? How do we, or how does anyone, know which to follow among these divergent witnesses ? And then the larger question suggests itself. How has the text of the Bible come down to us ? We know that the several books which compose it were written many centuries ago, and in other languages than ours. What do we know of their history since that time, and how have they been preserved to us and trans lated into our own language ? B 2764. A OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. The difficulties suggested by the various readings in the Revised Version are made more prominent if we look at such an edition as the Variorum Bible.* Here we find the several ^^^ Bible'"^"™ " S'licient authorities " quoted separately whenever there is any important conflict of evidence as to the exact reading of any passage. Thus at Matt. 19. 17, to the words "Why callest thou Me good ? " there' is the following note : " So C L^, Fesh. Theh. Mel. k marg. ; Why askest thou me con cerning the good ? X B D L, JLZ. La. Ti. Tr. We. WE. e." The meaning of this note is that there are two divergent readings recorded in this passage. The manuscripts known as C and a (which will be found described in Ch. VII.), two ancient trans lations of the New Testament into Syriac and Egyptian, the editor M^Clellan, and tho margin of the Revised Version, read " Why callest thou Me good ? " On the other hand, the four manuscripts >f, B, D, L, the editors Alford, Lachmann, Tischen- dorf, Tregelles, Weiss, Westcott and Hort, and the text of the Revised Version, have "Why askest thou Me concerning the good ? " To the student acquainted with these critical symbols, this information is intelligible and important ; but unless we have some previous knowledge of the subject we shall not under stand the comparative value of the various authorities quoted. The indispensable information is given in the preface and intro duction to the Variorum Bible ; but, although stated with ad mirable completeness and conciseness, it is necessarily brief, * This is, I believe, the only critical edition of the Bible in English. It gives a digest, under the head of "Various Eenderings," of the translations J or interpretations proposed by the best commentators in doubtful passages, '* and under the head of " Various Eeadings," of the more important variations of the principal manuscripts, versions, and editions. The names of the editors (Prof. Driver and Prof. Cheyne of the O.T., Prof. Sanday and the Eev. E. L. Clarke of the N.T., and the Eev. C. J. Ball of the Apocrypha) are guar antees for the excellence of the work. The surest results of Biblical criticism are thus made accessible to English readers in a clear and compact form ¦ and since the present book is intended primarily for those who study the Bible in English, reference wiU generally be made to the notes of the Variorum Bible rather than to the critical editions of the Hebrew or Greek texts. ' VARIATIONS IN THE BIBLE TEXT. and it may occur to many to wish to know more about the authorities on which our knowledge of the Bible rests. It is all very well to say that such-and-such manuscripts support one reading of a passage, while other manuscripts support another, but we are no better able than before to judge which reading is to be preferred unless we know which manuscripts are most likely to be right. The questions asked above recur with doubled force : How do there come to be differences in different records of the Bible text, and how do we know which reading to prefer when the authorities differ ? That these questions are not idle nor unimportant may be seen by mentioning a few of the passages in which important variations J, . are found. We will take, for the moment, the Gos- of important pels alone. The Doxology of the Lord's Prayer is omitted in the oldest copies of Matt. 6. 13 ; several copies omit Matt. 16. 2, 3 'altogether ; a long additional passage is sometimes found after Matt. 20. 28 ; the last twelve verses of St. Mark are omitted altogether by the two oldest copies of the original Greek ; one very ancient authority inserts an addi tional incident after Luke 6. 4, while it alters the account of the institution of the Lord's Supper in Luke 22. 19, 20, and omits altogether Peter's visit to the sepulchre in 24. 12, and several other details of the Resurrection ; the version of the Lord's Prayer in Luke 11. 2-4 is much abbreviated in many copies ; the incident of the Bloody Sweat is omitted in 22. 43, 44, as also is the word from the Cross, " Father, forgive them," in 23. 34 ; the mention of the descent of an angel to cause the moving of the waters of Bethesda is entirely absent from the oldest copies of John 5. 4, and all the best authorities omit the incident of the woman taken in adultery in 7. 53-8. 11. Besides the larger discrepancies, such as these, there is scarcely a verse in which there is not some variation of phrase in some copies. No one can say that these additions or omissions or alterations are matters of mere indifference. It is true (and it cannot be too emphatically stated) that none of the fundamental truths of Christianity rests on passages of which the A 2 4 OTJR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. genuineness is doubtful ; but it still remains a matter of concern to us to know that our Bible, as we have it to-day, represents as closely as may be the actual words used by the writers of the sacred books. It is the object of this volume to present, within a moderate compass and as clearly as possible, the means we have for knowing that it does so ; to trace the history of the sacred texts from the time of their original composition to our own Revised Version of 1885 ; to show the authorities on which they rest, and the com parative value to be put upon each. It is the special duty of scholars to weigh the evidence on each particular disputed passage, and to form editions and translations of the sacred books ; but any intelligent reader, without any knowledge of either Greek or Hebrew, can learn enough to understand the processes of criticism and the grounds on which the judgments of scholars must be based. Nor is the subject dry or uninteresting. The history of the Bible text has a living interest for all those who care for its con tents ; and no Englishman should be altogether ignorant of the history of the English Bible. One preliminary question should be cleared away before pro ceeding to the history of the text. It is the question that naturally The origin ^^^^^ ^^®*' ' -^"^ ^° various readings of a passage of variations in come into existence ? It is a question easilv the text. , , , „ . answered, so soon as the character of ancient books is understood. Nowadays, when an author writes a book, he sends it to the printer, from whom he receives proof-sheets ; and he corrects the proof-sheets until he is satisfied that it is printed accurately, and then hundreds or thousands of copies, as the case may be, are struck off from the same types and distributed to the world. Each one of these copies is exactly like all the rest, and there can be no varieties of readings. All the extant copies of, say, any one edition of Macaulay's History or Tennyson's Poems are identical. Tennyson may have himself altered his own verses from time to time, and so have other authors ; but no one doubts that in each edition of a modern book we have (slips of editor or printer excepted) exactly what the author intended at the time, and VARIATIONS IN THE BIBLE TEXT. that each copy of it is exactly like every other copy. But before the invention of printing this was far from being the case. Each separate copy of a book had to be written by hand ; and the human hand and brain have not yet been created which could copy the whole of a long work absolutely without error. Often (and this we may easily beheve to have been especially the case in the early days of the Christian Church, when it was a poor, half-educated, and persecuted body) copies were made hurriedly and without opportunity for minute revision. Mistakes were certain to creep in ; and when once in existence they were certain to increase, as fresh copies were made from manuscripts already faulty. If the original manuscripts of the sacred book were still preserved, the errors of later copies would be to us now a matter of indiffer ence ; but since the original manuscripts perished long ago, we have to try to arrive at their contents by a comparison of later copies, all of which are more or less faulty and all varying from one another. This is the problem of textual criticism, and it will be seen that its sphere is large. Printing was invented in 1454, little more than four centuries ago ; but for all the centuries before that date, books existed only in hand-written copies, which we call manuscripts (from the Latin manu-scriptum^^^ 'vnimu by hand," often abbreviated as " MS."). Of the chief of these manuscripts we shall have to speak at greater length in the course of this book. Meanwhile it wiU be clear that the existence of differences of reading in many passages of the Bible as we have it to-day is due to the mistakes made in copying them by hand during the many centuries that elapsed between the composition of the books and the invention pf printing. The mistakes of scribes are of many kinds and of varying im portance. Sometimes the copyist confuses words of similar sound, as in EngUsh we sometimes find our correspon- ^c^yistsT ° dents write there for their or here for hear. Some- 1. Errors of hand times he passes over a word by accident ; and this is especially likely to happen when two adjoining words end with the same letters. Sometimes this cause 6 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. of error operates more widely. Two successive lines of the manu script from which he is copying end with the same or similar words ; and the copyist's eye slips from the first to the second, and the intermediate line is omitted. Sometimes, again, the manuscript from which he is copying has been furnished with short explanatory notes in the margin, and he fails to see where the text ends and the note begins, and so copies the note into the text itself. These are all simple errors of hand and eye. Errors of the mind are more dangerous, because they are less easy to detect. The copyist's mind wanders a httle from the ¦ mio"° book he is copying, and he writes down words which come mechanically into his head, just as we do nowadays if people talk while we are writing, and distract our attention. Some words are familiar in certain phrases, and the familiar phrase runs off the pen of the copyist when the word should be written in some other combination. A form of this error is very common in manuscripts of the Gospels. The same event is often narrated in two or more of them, in slightly different language ; and the copyist, either consciously or unconsciously, alters the words of the one version to make them the same as those of the other. A- careful reader of the Variorum Bible or the Revised Version will note many instances where this has happened. Thus in Matt. 11. 19 the Authorised Version has " But wisdom is justified of her children," as m Luke 7. 35 ; but the Revised Version tells us that the original text had " works " instead of "children" here, the truth being that the copyists of all except the earliest extant manuscripts have altered it, so as to make it correspond with the account in St. Luke. Similarly in Matt. 16. 13, our Lord's question runs (in the E.v.) "Who do men say that the Son of Man is ? " and the margin tells us that "Many ancient authorities read that I, the Son of Man, am; see Mark 8. 27, Luke 9. 18." In Matt. 23. 14 a whole verse has probably been inserted from the parallel passages in Mark and Luke ; and so with Mark 15. 28. In Luke 6. 48 the concluding VARIATIONS IN THE BIBLE TEXT. words of the parable of the house built on the rock, "because it had been well builded," have been altered in "many ancient authorities" in accordance with the more striking and familiar phrase in St. Matthew, " for it had been founded upon the rock." Errors like these increase in the later copies, as the words of the sacred narrative are more and more familiar to the copyists ; and when once made they do not admit of correction, unless we are able to examine copies written before the corruption took place. They do not betray themselves by injuring the sense of the pas sage, as is generally the case with errors of the first class. An untrue hand or eye or an over-true memory may do much harm in a copyist ; but worst and most dangerous of all is it when - _, , the copyist begins to think for himself. The 3. Errors of ^¦' ° deliberate alter- veneration in which the sacred books were held has generally protected them against intentional alterations of the text, but not entirely so. The harmonisation of the Gospel narratives, described in the last paragraph, has cer tainly been in some cases intentional ; and that, no doubt, without the smallest wish to deceive, but simply with the idea of supple menting the one narrative from its equally authentic companion. Sometimes the alterations are more extensive. The earliest Greek translation of the Old Testament contains several passages in the books of Esther and Daniel which are not found in the Hebrew. The long passages, Mark 16. 9-20 and John 7. 53 — 8. 11, which are absent from the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament, must have been either omitted in these or inserted in the others intentionally. If, as is more probably the case, they have been inserted in the later copies, this was no doubt done in order to supplement the Gospel from some other good source, and the narratives are almost certainly authentic, though they may not have been written by the Evangelist in whose Gospel they now appear. Indeed an Armenian translation of St. Mark has quite )-ecently been discovered, in which the last twelve verses of St. Mark are ascribed to Aristion, who is otherwise known as one of the earliest of the Christian Fathers ; and it is quite 8 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. possible that this tradition is correct, and that Aristion compiled this short summary to take the place of the original ending, which had been lost. There is, however, no reason at all to suppose that additions of this kind have been made in any except a very few cases. The evidence for our Bible text is too great and of too varied a description to allow us to suppose that passages have been interpolated without any sign of it being visible. The intentional alterations of scribes are, for the most part, verbal, not substantial, such as the modification of a phrase in one Evangelist to suit the narrative of another, or the combination- of two reports of some utterance into one ; and errors of this kind can generally be de tected on a comparison of several different manuscripts, in some of which the alteration will not have been made. From this short account of the different classes of mistakes into which the copyists of manuscripts were most liable to fall, it will be clear that the later a manuscript is in date, the scripts thTniMt more likely it is to contain many errors. Each likely to be free ^jj^g g, fresh copy is made, some new mistakes will from error. ^¦' ' probably be introduced, while only the most ob vious blunders in the manuscript copied will be corrected. It may therefore be stated as a general rule that the earUer a manuscript is, the better is its text hkely to be. The rule is only a general one, and is liable to exceptions ; for instance, a manuscript written in the year 1200, if copied direct from a manuscript of the year 350, will probably be more correct than a manuscript written in the year 1000, which was copied from one written in 850 or 900. Each manuscript must therefore be searched, to see if it shows signs of containing an early form of the text ; but the general rule that the earliest manuscripts are the best will stiU usually hold good. The problem which lies before the textual critic, as the student of the language of the Bible is technically called, is now becoming The method of ^^^^"^^ "^^^ Original manuscripts of the Bible, recovering the written by the authors of the various books, have long ago disappeared. The critic's object, conse- VARIATIONS IN THE BIBLE TEXT. 9 quently, is to reconstruct the text of these original manuscripts by a comparison of the later copies which have come down to us ; and the difficulty of his task depends on the age and number of these copies which he is able to compare. A diagram wiU make the position clear. A /AAA h i J hi rn, n. <] /\\\N\ 11/ Here A represents the original author's copy of a book ; I and c are copies made from it ; d, e, /, g are copies made from I and c, and so on. Some errors are sure to be made in i and c, but not the same in each : d will correct a few of those in li, but will copy the rest and add more ; e will both correct and copy different ones, and so will/ and g and all the subsequent copies. So, as time goes on, the number of errors will go on increasing, and the extreme copies diverge from one another more aUd more. Often a copyist win use two manuscripts to copy from (for instance, we may sup pose the writer of p to have copied from n as well as from h), and then the errors of two different lines of descent wiU become mixed. At some stage in the history of the text perhaps some scholar will compare several copies, correct what he thinks are mistakes in them, and cause copies to be made of his corrected text ; and then all manuscripts which are taken, directly or indirectly, from these corrected copies will bear the stamp of this revision, and will differ from those of which the line of descent is different. Now suppose all the manuscripts denoted by the letters in the diagram to have disappeared (and it must be remembered that by far the greater number of copies of any ancient book have perished long ago), 10 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. except p, I, and y. It is evident that none of these copies will con tain exactly the true text of A ; each will have diverged from it, but each will have diverged differently. Some mistakes they may have in common, but in most they will differ ; and wherever they differ it is the business of textual criticism to determine which manuscript has the true reading, and so to try to re-estabHsh by comparison the original text of A. Such, but infinitely complicated by the number of manuscripts of the Bible which have come down to us, and by the long lapse of years since the originals were written, is the task of the scholars who try to restore to us the exact words of the sacred books. The object of the chapters which follow is to show in more detail the nature of the problem in respect to the Old Testament and New Testament respectively ; to state what is known, or plausibly con jectured, concerning the history of their text ; and to describe the principal manuscripts of each, and the other means available for the detection .of mistakes and the restoration of the truth. The story is not so technical but that all may understand it, and all can appreciate the interest and value of the minutest study of the true Word of God. One word of warning, already referred to, must be emphasised in conclusion. No fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests _ . . on a disputed reading. Constant references to do not endanger mistakes and divergencies of reading, such as the plan of this book necessitates, might give rise to the doubt whether the substance, as well as the language, of the Bible is not open to question. It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain. Especially is this the case with the New Testament.* The number of manuscripts ¦* Dr. Hort, whose authority on the point is quite incontestable, estimates the proportion of words about which there is some doubt at about one-eighth of the whole ; but by far the greater part of these consists merely of differences in order and other unimportant variations, and " the amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation .... can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text." (Introduction to The New Testament !» the original Greelf, p. 2). VARIATIONS IN THE BIBLE TEXT. 11 of the New Testament, of early translations from it, and of quota tions from it in the oldest writers of the Church is so large, that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful pas sage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world. Scholars are satisfied that they possess substantially the true text of the principal Greek and Roman writers whose works have come down to us, of Sophocles, of Thucydides, of Cicero, of Virgil, yet our knowledge of their writings depends on a mere handful of manu scripts, whereas the manuscripts of the New Testament are counted by hundreds, and even thousands. In the case of the Old Testa ment we are not quite in such a good position, as wUl be shown presently. In some passages it seems certain that the true reading has not been preserved by any ancient authority, and we are driven to conjecture in order to supply it. But such passages are an infinitesimal portion of the whole and may be disregarded. The ' Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, faith fully handed down from generation to generation throughout the centuries. ( 12 ) CHAPTER II. THE AUTHOEITIES FOE THE BIBLE TEXT. WE have seen that the Bible has been preserved to us, for many centuries previous to the invention of printing, by means of copies written by hand ; and we have seen that in such copies mistakes are certain to arise and multiply. Now if a scholar at this present day were to take in hand the task of correcting these mistakes and recovering the true text, how would he set about it .'' Of course, as a matter of fact, he would find that very much of the work had already been done for him by earlier scholars ; but we will suppose that nothing has been done, and see how he must go to work. That will show us the way in which scholars for the last four centuries have laboured on the text of the Bible. In the first place he will examine as many as possible of the manuscripts of the Bible in the original languages in which it was written, Hebrew and Greek. These are scattered 1. IffaiLuscripts. about in all the great libraries of the world, and must be visited and carefully studied. He wiU note which are the oldest, he will use his judgment to determine which are the best. Where all the manuscripts are agreed, he has nothing more to do, and those parts of the text are put down at once as certain. Where there are differences between the manuscripts, he will have to decide which of the various readings is the more probable. In some cases the reading of a manuscript will be obviously wrong ; in many it vnill be easy to see that the one reading is a perversion of the other, — that the copyist has inadvertently dropped out a word or misread the word in the original from which he was copying, or has fallen into some other of the classes of error THE AUTHORITIES FOR THE BIBLE TEXT. 13 described in the preceding chapter. In this way a correct repre sentation of the greater part of the text will be obtained. Still there will remain a considerable number of passages about which the manuscripts differ, but in which it is not possible to decide at once what reading is right. Then it will be necessary to discrimi nate between the manuscripts. Our scholar's earlier investigations will have shown him which manuscripts are generally trustworthy, and which are most full of mistakes. As a general rule he will prefer the reading which is supported by the oldest manuscripts, • as being nearest to the time of the original work ; and if all the oldest manuscripts are on one side, and all the later on the other, the reading of the former will certainly be adopted. Where the older manuscripts are divided, his task becomes harder ; he has to consider whether either of the alternative readings is likely to have been derived from the other, or if one of them is more likely than the other to have been invented at a later time. For instance, there is a tendency among scribes, when they do not understand a phrase, to substitute one more easy of comprehension ; and hence it is a rule of criticism that a harder reading is generally to be preferred to an easier one, since the latter is more likely to have been substituted for the former than vice versd. This rule must be applied with discretion, however, for the unintentional altera tions of scribes will often produce a harder reading than the true one. Another principle is to try to classify the manuscripts in groups, those which habitually agree with one another being pro bably descended from some common ancestor ; and a reading which is supported by two or more groups is more likely to be right than one which is supported by one only, even though that one may be a very large and numerous group. By the time our scholar has proceeded so far in his work, he will have formed a pretty confident opinion as to which manuscripts are the most worthy of trust ; and then, when other methods fail to determine the true reading in a doubtful passage, he will be inclined to axicept that reading which is supported by the manuscripts which he believes to be the best. 14 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. So far our scholar has confined himself entirely to the manu scripts of the sacred books in their original languages ; but he will be making a great mistake if he stops there. He . ersions. ^.^^ remember that the Bible has been translated into many different languages, and he wiU bethink himself that a translation which has been made with any care and accuracy will generally show what was the Hebrew or Greek text which the translator had before him. Now several of the translations of the Bible, — such as the Samaritan and Greek versions of the Old Testament, the Syriac and Latin versions of the New — were cer tainly made at a date much earlier than that at which any of the manuscripts which we now possess of the original Hebrew and Greek were written. The oldest manuscript of the Greek New Testament now in existence was written about a.d. 350 ; but the earliest Syriac and Latin translations of the New Testament were made somewhere about a.d. 150. Hence, if we can gather from the existing copies of these translations what were the Greek words which their authors were translating, we know what was read in that particular passage in a Greek manuscript current about the year 150, when these translations were made ; and this brings us back very near to the time when the originals of the New Testa ment books were themselves written. It is true that we have not the original copies of the Latin and Syriac versions, any more than we have the originals of the Greek itself, and that a similar process of comparison of copies to that described in the last paragraph must be gone through if we are to discover the original readings of the translations ; but in many cases this can be done with certainty, and then we have a very early testimony indeed to the original Greek text. We talk sometimes of the " stream of tra dition " by which the text of the Bible has been borne down to us from the fountain-head in the original manuscripts ; well, the service of the Versions (as the translations of the Bible into other languages are technically called) is that they tap the stream near the fountain-head. They are unaffected by any corruptions that may have crept into the Greek text after the translations were THE AUTHORITIES FOR THE BIBLE TEXT. 15 made ; they may have corruptions of their own, but they will not generally be the same as the corruptions in the Greek text, and they will serve mutually to correct one another. To alter the comparison, we get several groups of evidence converging on the same spot, as the accompanying diagram shows. A lOriffinalTexiJ Varim/s Mariascrtpts ofGrcrJc n/rtv ticfcoit Our scholar has yet one other source to which he may turn for evidence as to the original text, namely, the quotations of isolated passages in the writings of the early Fathers. 3. The early Manv of the first Christian writers whose works have been preserved — for instance, Irenasus, Origen, Jerome, Athanasius— must have used manuscripts of the Bible older than any that we now have, and many of them quoted largely from the Bible in their writings. If, therefore, we know in what form they quoted any particular passage, we may argue that they found that form of it in the manuscript which they used. But this argument must be used with much caution. In the first place, it is evident that they often quoted from memory. Copies of the Bible were not so common in those days as they are now, and, in the absence of the modern division into chapters and verses, it was less easy to turn up a passage when required to verify a quotation. A curious proof of the liabiUty to error in quotations from memory is furnished by a modern divine. It is said that Jeremy Taylor quotes the well-known text, " Except a man be born again he 16 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. cannot see the kingdom of God," no less than nine times, yet only twice in the same form, and in no single instance correctly. We must not assume that the ancient Fathers were infallible in their memories. Further, it is often difficult to be certain that we have the quotations as the Fathers themselves wrote them. If a scribe who was copying a manuscript of one of the early Fathers found a text quoted in a form unfamiliar to him, he would be not unlikely to alter it into the form then current. For these reasons it is dangerous to base an argument for a reading on the Fathers alone, except when the context in which it is found shows conclusively in what form the writer quoted it ; but to con firm other evidence they may often be of very great value. They will be of stUl more value when their own texts have themselves been critically edited, which is at present far from being the case with all of them. Manuscripts, Versions, Fathers, — such are the resources of our scholar in his task of recovering the triie text of the Bible. Of the third of these we cannot speak more at length within the compass of this book ; but in the history of the two first is the history of the Bible text. Our object will be to describe, first the principal manuscripts, and then the chief translations, of each Testament in turn, and so to carry down the history of the Bible from the earliest times to our own days, — to show how our own English Bible is the liiteal descendant of the volumes once written by Prophet, Apostle, and Evangelist'. ( 17 ) CHAPTER III THE OEIGINAL MANUSCEIPTS OF THE BIBLE. TN the year 1887 a discovery was made which has revolutionised -'- our knowledge of the conditions of writing in Palestine in the earliest times. In the course of that year an Tell el-Amarna Egyptian woman found, amid the ruins of an Tablets ancient city about half-way between Thebes and Memphis, now known as Tell el-Amarna, a collection of clay tablets inscribed with strange symbols. When these were brought to the knowledge of Oriental scholars, their excitement was immense ; for here, in the middle of Egypt, were documents written, not, after the manner of the country, in the Egyptian language and upon papyrus, but engraved upon clay, and in the unmistakable cunei form, or wedge-shaped, writing characteristic of Assyria and Babylonia. Nor did their surprise lessen as they deciphered the writing and discovered its meaning. For these tablets proved to be the official correspondence of Egyptian governors or vassal- princes, stationed in Palestine and in other places beyond the borders of Egypt, with their master. King Amenophis IV. of Egypt, and his ministers at home. Their date is about the year 1380 B.C., and, according to some scholars, the time is that at which Joshua and the Hebrews were overrunning southern Pales tine, while the Hittites were conquering Damascus, and the Ammonites were invading Phoenicia. Jerusalem and Lachish, Jabin, king of Hazor, and Japhia, king of Gezer, are mentioned by name. It is a record contemporary with the events described in the Book of Joshua, and in part relating to those events themselves.* ¦ '* If this chronology be accepted, the ordinary date assigned to the Esodus, in the reign of Merenptah, successor of Eameses IL, wiU have to be abandoned ; for Amenophis IV. ruled about a century before Eameses II. The question S 2764. B 18 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. The direct historical importance of the discovery is very great ; but it is hardly less important for the Ught it throws on the Uterary conditions of the East at the time when they were "^of^it^"^ wi-itten. It proves that writing was famiUarly known and freely used in Palestine fourteen cen turies before Christ. It shows that the Babylonian language was the recognised medium of official intercourse in the East at that date, much as French has been in modern Europe. It shows that historical records were preserved, from which later writers may have drawn their materials. It teUs us somethuig of the form in which were written, if not the Bible books themselves, at least some of the documents from which they were composed. It is no part of the plan of this book to discuss the date- at Which, the several books of the Old Testament were written. That is a subject requiring a treatise to itself. AU that concerns us at present is to know in what outward form and shape books were written in Palestine during the periods in which the Old Testa ment books may have been composed. Palestine lay between the kingdoms of Egypt and Babylonia, and its literary development was affected from both sides. Both in Egypt and in Babylonia writing was largely practised from the earliest times of which we have knowledge, but; in different materials and in very different languages. The writers of Palestine, as wiU be shown, borrowed something from each, but they also struck out new developments of their own. In Babylonia the material on which books were written was clay. The clay was moulded into tablets or cylinders of various shapes, and tbe writing was inscribed on them BabvUin/^ with a sharp-pointed instrument while the clay was stUl moist. Whole libraries of these tablets, of all kinds of sizes, have been discovered, and there may now he whether the Abiri, mentioned in the tablets as overrunning southern Palestine, are the same as the Hebrews, must be left fo* specialists to decide ; and their opinions are at present divided. According to the usual chronology, the Tell el- Amarna tablets belong to the century before the Exodus. ATE I. ^.SM«'«««»2* 4&&t.. "^^^^^«^*^^=^^1* j^t^jtv^ani jfc.4^1^ i^jwy ^v^*^!; A:»i»^ it*'^'.SLj*&-ii /»», »4»»^,^»' "J^^-.sr . .jtb^^n-ji y^*»rf ; ^«^ -5: . .d>* -S.- «'*v' ¦'¦"'fe; fcA-t-', -,8*"* gfe^S.^^-^ u,«E»igr .«ai._ ^'^^ -fef*-4t' Clay Tablet i-itoji Tell kl Amakxa — Cirf. i;.c. 1380. [Oi'ioinal size, o^in. x :il in.) THE- ORIG-INAL MANUSCRIPTS OF THE BIBLE. 19 seen in the British Museum the tablets on which are recorded the ancient Babylonian story of the Flood, so curiously resembling the narrative in Genesis, and Sennacherib's account of his campaigns against Hezekiah of Judah. The discovery of the Tell el-Amarna tablets (one of which is reproduced in Plate I. as an example of this form of book) proves that writing of this kind was freely practised in Palestine at the time of the invasion of Joshua, or even earlier. We do not indeed know that the Hebrews themselves ever adopted this form of writing on clay for their books ; but there can be very little doubt that Hebrew writers made use of records of this kind, which they found stored up in the cities of Palestine.* Even if we accept the very latest date which the most advanced criticism has assigned to the composition of the Pentateuch in its present form., the compilers of it must have used records of a far earlier date, and among them, as we .now see, may have been clay tablets contemporaneous with the events narrated in the history. In Egypt, on the other hand, books were made of papyrus, a material resembling paper in general characteristics, but manufac tured out of the fibres of the papyrus-plant, which Egypt."' then grew plentifully in the waters of the Nile. The fibres of the stalk of this plant were separated, and laid upon one another in two layers, so that the fibres in the upper layer ran horizontally, and those of the lower layer perpen dicularly. The two layers were then moistened with Nile water knd fastened together by glue and pressure into a single sheet. These sheets were then attached to one another, side by side, so as to -form long roUs of papyrus ; the surface of the roll was rubbed and polished until it was smooth enough to be written ' on with ease, and on these roUs the writing was inscribed with reed pens and vegetable ink. One of these roUs, still preserved, reaches the enormous length of 144 feet, but usually they are much shorter, twenty feet being a fair average length for a Greek papyrus ¦ "'The name of Kiriath-sepher, mentioned in Josh. 15. 15, means "the city of books," and is so translated in the Greek version of the passage. The name evidently implies that books were stored there. B 2 20 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. manuscript. Brittle as the papyrus becomes with age, the dry climate of Egypt has preserved hundreds and thousainds of such manuscripts, the earliest now extant having been written about the year 2500 B.C. These were the books with which the Israelites became famiUar during their residence in Egypt, and it was from these that the form of their own books in later times was derived. The roU form, and to a great extent the papyrus material, were also adopted from Egypt by the Greeks ; and all the great works of classical literature were written in this manner. It was not until after the beginning of the Christian era that the page form, as in a modem book, came into existence. The sands of Egypt stiU from time to time give us back books written fifteen, twenty, or even thirty centuries ago ; but only the later ones are in book form, the earlier are invariably rolls. There is nothing in the historical books of the Bible which ex pressly tells us the shape and form of books in the earlier part of that period, but in the times of the prophets TalestEie!' ^^^^ ^^^^ certainly used. Tablets were no doubt employed for short inscriptions, such as Jeremiah was thinking of when he said " The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond ; it is graven upon the table of their heart " (Jer. 17. 1), and it was upon a " great tablet" (Isa. 8. 1, R.V.) that Isaiah wrote the words "For Maher- shalal-hash-baz " ; but it was a " roU of a book " which Jeremiah took in order that Baruch might write therein with ink the words which the Lord had spoken against Israel, and which Jehoiakim cut with a penknife and burnt in the fire that was in the brasier before him (Jer. 36. 2, 18, 23).* It was a " roU of a book " which was spread before Ezekiel, written within and without with lamen tations and mourning and woe (Ezek. 2. 9, 10). The material of * There can be little doubt that the alternative rendering, " columns," instead of "leaves," given in the E.V. and the Variorum Bible, is right. 'The knife which the king used was, as the note in the Variorum Bible explains, a scribe's knife, used for erasing words wrongly written ; and this makes it probable that the material of the roll was skin, not papyrus, on which a knife could hardly be used, on account of its thinness of texture. PLATE I J. Hebkew iSYNAGoonE-EoLL— 14th Cent. (Original height, excluding rollers, 27 in.) THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS OF THE BIBLE. 21 which these rolls were made was not pa])yrus, however, but the prepared skins of sheep and goats. Skins were used in the ancient world as a material for books wherever papyrus was not obtain able ; when specially prepared for this purpose they form the material known as parchment or vellum. It is possible, indeed probable, that papyrus was imported into Palestine, as it was into Greece, and was used concurrently with skins ; but the sacred books seem always to have been written on the more durable material. If, then, we ask the question, Of what form were the original manuscripts of the Bible ? the answer will be that the documents from which the historical books of the Old Testa- Porm of the ori- , ¦•,-,¦ ginal manuscripts ment were composed were very possibly in some of the Bible. cases inscribed on clay tablets, but that the books themselves were written on roUs, possibly of papyrus, but pro bably of skins, more or less carefully prepared. The later copies were certainly on skins. Whether on papyrus or on skins, the writing was arranged in colunms of moderate width, which take the place of pages in a modern book. The skin or papyrus was either wound up in a single roU, the end being inside, or else wound round two sticks, one at each end, in which case it was unrolled from the one and rolled up round the other as the reader progressed. The latter form was stereotyped, at some date early in the Christian period, as essential for copies of the Law which were to be used in the service of the synagogue ; but copies for private reading were written in book form when that shape came into general use. Specimens of both kinds are still in existence, and can be seen in many museums and public libraries. Plate IL, which is taken from a Hebrew Pentateuch roU in the British Museum, written on goat-skin in the fourteenth century, wiU serve to show the general appearance of this kind of book. With regard to the original manuscripts of the books of the New Testament, it is highly probable that many of them were written on papyrus. Papyrus was still the common material of the Greek literary world, and for books written by poor authors. 22 OUR BIBLE AND- THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. or for epistolary correspondence, it would almost certainly be used rather than vellum. In Egypt, where some of the earUest copies of the New Testament were made, papyrus would have been the material employed, even for the most important and handsome books. It has been remarked that the oldest vellum manuscripts which we now possess, being written with maiiy narrow columns on a page, resemble in general appearance an open roU of papyrus (dee Plates VIIL and X., and the accompanying descriptions of them) ; and from such a manuscript they may very likely have beeii copied. When, however, the Christian Scriptures came to be regarded as on the same level of importance as the Old Testa ment Scriptures (which was not at first the case), copies intended for church or library use would be ¦s^Titten on vellum ; but for private copies papyrus continued to be employed until the ex tinction of Greek writing in Egypt by the Arab conquest in the seventh century. For copies of the translation into the native; Coptic tongue it continued to be used much later. '. The visitor to the British Museum may still see manuscripts' which reproduce in external form the books Of the Bible as they were first written. In one of the exhibition-cases he will see the, great synagogue rolls of the Hebrew Scriptures, written on large and heavy skins, and wound round great wooden roUers, a weight too heavy to lift with comfort in the hand. Elsewhere he may see the copies for common use, written on ordinary vellum in the famiUar book form. Among the earliest Greek manuscripts he wiU find deUcate papyrus rolls, nOw spread out under glass for their' protection, with their narrow columns of small writing, which may, weU represent that in which the Gospels and Epistles were first, written down ; and finally he wiU see one of the earliest extant copies of the Greek Bible vn-itten in handsome letters upon fine vellum, the monument of a time when the Church was becoming' prosperous under a Christian Empire, and now one of the most valuable witnesses to the original text of the Bible that has been spared to us by the ravages of time. 23 ) CHAPTER IV. THE HEBEEW TEXT. .rPiHE original manuscripts of the Hebrew books perished long ¦-*- ago, and the scholar who would find out, as near as may be, ,the exact words which they contained, must, as we have seen, begin by examining and comparing the copies, more or less dis tantly derived from these originals, which have come down to us. What will he see then, when he opens one of the old Hebrew volumes in one of our great libraries, and what will it tell hin;i concerning the text whi^h it contains ? In the first place he , will see the page covered with characters which to most people are quite unfamiliar. It is writing such as that represented in. Plate IV. The letters are generally of a .square shape, and underneath them are little dots and strokes. The writing is usually arranged in columns, two or more going to the page if the manuscript Ls in book form ; and the margins are filed with other writing of similar appearance. What, now, .is the meaning of this ? What is the history of the Hebrew .writing ? The characters in which modern Hebrew manuscripts are written are not the same as those which were in use when the books of the Hebrew Scriptures were composed. ^characterT^ ^^ '^® ''™'^ °^ *^® Jewish kingdom, Hebrew was written in characters which were common to the iHebrews themselves, the Samaritans, and the Phcenicians ; and these characters, having been preserved by the Samaritans when the Jews abandoned them, are known to us in the manuscripts of ¦the Samaritan Pentateuch {see Plate V.). The oldest form in which they are liow extant is ' on the Moabite Stone, the famous monument on Which Mesha, king of Moab, recorded his war with 24 OUR BTBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Ahab of Judah about the year 890 B.C.* Plate III. contains a representation of this most valuable relic of antiquity as it stands to-day in the Louvre Museum at Paris. ; Two centuries later they appear in the Siloam Inscription (about B.C. 700), carved on the conduit leading to the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem. After this date they appear on coins and later inscriptions, and, as just stated, in MSS. of the Samaritan Pentateuch. The Jewish story of the origin of the " square " writing, as the later Hebrew characters are caUed, is that Ezra brought it back with him from Babylon, and that it was forthwith adopted for general use. This is only an instance of the common habit of tradition, to assign to a single man and a single moment a change which must have been spread over several generations. The contemporary coins and inscriptions enable us to trace the process, though imperfectly. In the first place, the old stiff Hebrew characters were gradually modified, after the ExUe, so as, to make them more cursive, more easily written, that is, in running hand ; a change partly due to the example of the contemporary Aramaic writing in Syria and Arabia. Then, by way of reaction from this, and with the intention, no doubt, of making the writing of the sacred books more beautiful, the square characters were developed, and were thenceforth adopted as the essential form for the manuscripts of the Scriptures. . A similar phenomenon is seen in the case of the Greek Bible, where we find the handsomest uncial writing {i.e. in detached capital letters) springing up, in the fourth century, for use in great copies of the Bible- in the midst of a very debased and unornamental style of cursive characters, of which many examples have come down to us on papyrus. In the case of the Hebrew writuig, the change must have taken place before the time of our Lord, for the proverbial use of " jot" (=yo<^, the tenth letter in * The Moabite stone was found by a German Missionary, Herr Klein, in 1868, in the possession of some Arabs. It was then perfect, but before it was acquired by M. Clermont-Ganneau for the Louvre Museum, the Arabs had broken it in pieces, and many of the fragments have never been recovered. It can however, be restored by the help of a paper impression taken before it was broken. The Moabite Stone — Circ. e.g. 890. (Original lieight, about 4, feet.) THE HEBREW TEXT. 25 the Hebrew alphabet) to indicate a very small object (as in Matt. 5. 18) would only be possible after the adoption of the square characters, since in the earlier alphabet yod was by no means the smallest letter. The language in which the manuscripts we are examining are written is, of course, Hebrew, a branch of the great Semitic famUy of languages, which includes the Babylonian, As- ''^lan^age^ Syrian, Chaldsean, Phoenician, and other tongues spoken in Western Asia. It was the spoken lan guage of Palestine down to the time of the Exile ; and even after that date, when Aramaic was adopted for ordinary use, Hebrew remained the literary language of the educated Jews. It is written from right to left, not from left to right as in our modern European books. But the special peculiarity of it is that in its original state only the consonants ivere written, the vowels being left to be filled up by the reader's mind. In the Hebrew manu script which we have supposed ourselves to be examining, the great letters which form the Unes of the writing are all consonants. The vowels are indicated by the dots or points beneath these letters, and these vowel-points are only a comparatively late invention, as will be shown presently. This ancient practice of omjtting the vowels is one fertile cause of varieties in the text, for it will readily be understood that doubts might often occur as to the proper vowels to be supplied to a group of consonants. To take a paraUel from English, the consonants m e might be read either as m(a)r(e) or m(i)r(e) or m(o)r(e), and it is quite possible that in some cases the sense of the passage would not show for certain which way was right. A glance at the notes of the Variorum Bible will show that this danger is far from being imaginary; e.g., in Dent; 28. 22, either "sword" or "drought" may be read, according to the vowels suppUed ; in Judg. 15. 16, " heaps upon heaps " or " I have flayed them " ; in Isa. 27. 7, " them that are slain by him " or " those that slew him " ; and see Gen. 49. 5 and Judg. 7. 13 for more extensive variations due to the same cause. Besides the vowel points, accents are also added, to indicate 26 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. the rhythmical pronunciation of each word; but these too are a comparatively late invention. . The main division of the Hebrew Old Testament is a classi,- fication of the books into three groups, known as the Law, the 4^ . Prophets, and the Hagiographa, or sacred writ- the Books of the ings. The Law included the five books of Moses, es amen . .^j^j^^j^ ^g ^^^ ^^^ the, Pentateuch. The Prophets comprised the historical books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, which were known as "the Former Prophets"; and Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor Prophets,, knowij as "the Later Prophets." The Hagiographa consisted of the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, ^pcclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 and 2 Chronicles. The origin of this classification and of the inclusion of several historical and prophetic books among the Hagiographa, is uut known ; but it almost certainly implies that those books were written later, and were among the last to be recognised as inspired. Divisioife of the books themselves into reading-lessons, paragraphs, and verses (very nearly corresponding to our modern verses) were made in very early times ; but they are not of much importance to us here. They are indicated in the manuscripts by blank spaces of greater or lesser size. So much for the external characteristics of the Hebrew manu' scripts. What, now, is the history of the text of the books which these manuscripts enshrine ? The beginning of this history is necessarUy obscure, because we do not know the dates at which the various books of the Old Testament were originally written. One school Hebrew Canon, of Critics tells US that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, substantially in the form in which we now have it, before the year 1400 b.c. The newer school is posi tive that, although the substance of the books is old, yet they were not finaUy put into their present shape until after the Exile, about B.C. 400, and that even the principal documents out of which they are composed were not written before b.c. 700. With these THE HEBREW TEXT. 27 controversies resp'ecting the dates of the various books we have nothing here to do. Even if we take the latest date, it is stUl far earlier than the earliest period at which we have any evidence as to the state of the text. The most we can do is to show, with some approach to definiteness, at what periods the various books were recogbised as being inspired Scripture ; and it is from that point that the care for their text may be supposed to have CODHuenced. It seems tolerably certain that the three divisions of the books; of the Old Testament, mentioned just above, represent three stages, , in the process known as the formation of the ¦ l?*The^law. Hebrew Canon of Scripture ; that is, of the authorised list of books recognised as sacred and inspired. Whenever the books of the Pentateuch were written, it is ,at least certain that they, constituting the Law, were the first grpup of writings to be thus accepted. In the days of the kings it was possible for the " book of the Law" (perhaps meaning our pputeronomy) to be lost and forgotten, and to be recovered as it, were by accident (2 Kings 22.8) ; but the Captivity taught the, Jews to be careful of their Scriptures, and the Canon of the Law may be. taken as fixed about the time of the return from exUe, possibly under the guidance of Ezra, to whom Jewish tradition assigned a special prominence in the -work of collecting the sacred books.* From this time forth the five books of Moses were regarded as a thing apart. They were sacred ; and by degrees the. greatest care came to be devoted to copying them with perfect. acpuracy and studying minutely every word that they contained., There is reason to suppose that this extreme accuracy was not. at first required or obtained ; but in the time of our Lord it is clear that the text of the Law was held in the utmost veneration, and the , * The Jews themselves attributed the formation of the whole Canon to Ezra, with the help of elders composing a body known as " The Great Syna gogue"; but it has been, shown that this, body is an imaginary one, and it is, now generally recognised that the formation of -the Canon must have been, gradual, foUowiiig the stages here indicated. 28 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. class of the " scribes," whose special duty was to copy the sacred books, was fully established, and held in considerable esteem. The second group of books to obtain recognition as inspired, and to be adopted into the Canon, was that of the Prophets. This must have taken place between the date of 2. The Pro- Malachi, the last of the Prophets, about 430 B.C., pjl6tiS> and the reference to " the twelve prophets " in Ecclesiasticus 49. 10, written about 180 B.C. ; but the date cannot be fixed precisely. The remaining group, known as the Hagio grapha, is of a miscellaneous character, and for some time the books composing it evidently circulated on much ^ ^apha^^"" *'^® &s.v!ie. footing as other books which were eventually excluded from the Canon, such as Judith, Tobit, and Ecclesiasticus. When the final decision was reached, we cannot tell. On the one hand, the books which now form our Old Testament appear already to be distinguished from those which we class as Apocrypha before the time of our Lord ;* on the other, a certain amount of discussion as to the inspiration of some of the books (such as the Song of Solomon) continued at least until the end of the first century after Christ. It is no part of our purpose here to discuss the question of the formation of the Hebrew Canon in all its details. The point of importance for us is that, taking the latest dates assigned by good authorities, the Law was fully recognised as inspired Scripture by about B.C. 450, the Prophets (including the earUer historical books) about B.C. 300, and the Hagiographa about B.C. 100. From these dates, then, at the latest, the special care for the preservation of the text of these books must be supposed to begin. It would seem, however, that this care was not at first so minute and pains taking as it afterwards became. During the early years of the * It is noticeable that while there are many quotations in the New Testament from each group of books in the Old, there is not a single direct quotation from the Apocrypha. A similar distinction is found in Josephus and Philo. It was probably only in Alexandria that the apocryphal books had equal currency with the canonical. THE HEBEEW TEXT. 29 return from the Captivity, and throughout the wars of the Macca bees, there may well have been little time to spare for the labours of scholarship, and the zeal of the Jews for their Scriptures may well have related rather to their general contents than to the exact details of their language. During the same period, too, it may be remembered, came the change from the old to the square Hebrew writing, which would naturaUy lead to errors m copying. With the return of peace, however, came greater attention to study, and in the famous schools of Hillel and Shammai, about the beginning of the Christian era, we may find the origin of the long line of Rabbis and scribes to whom is due the fixing of the Hebrew text in the form in which we now have it. The fall of Jerusalem (a.d. 70) and the destruction of Judaea as a nation only intensified the zeal of the Jews for their Bible ; and the first centuries of the Christian era witnessed a great outburst of activity in the multipli cation, the transmission, and the recording of traditional learning with respect to the Scriptures. The two great centres of Jewish scholarship were Palestine and Babylonia, the former having its headquarters successively at Jamnia and Tiberias, the latter in Babylon, where a Jewish colony had remained since the days of the Exile. It is from the records of these schools, each of which preserved to some extent distinct traditions of text and interpre tation, that we derive our earliest direct knowledge of the Hebrew text as it existed among the Jews themselves. Indirect evidence for an earUer time may be derived, as we shaU see, from the Samaritan and Greek translations which have come down to us from the pre-Christian period ; but in the present chapter we are concerned with the Hebrew text alone. The earliest direct evidence which we possess as to the text current among the Jews themselves is that provided by the Targums, or paraphrases of the Scriptures into History of the Hebrew text: the Aramaic dialect. After their return from the 1. The Targums. Captivity the Jews gradually adopted this lan guage (a tongue closely related to Hebrew, being a kindred branch of the same Semitic family of speech, sometimes called, as in the 30 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. margins of our Bibles, Chaldee) ; and it became thenceforth the cur rent language of ordinary life. Thus, it may be remarked by th4 way, it was the language commonly spoken in Judsea at the time of our Lord's life on earth. Meanwhile the ancient Hebrew remained as the language in which the sacred books were written, bemg studied and preserved by the educated and literary class among th'i Jews, but becoming continually less familiar to the common folk. Hence arose the necessity of paraphrasing the Scriptures into the current Aramaic tongue. At first these paraphrases were simply given by word of mouth, as in the scene described in Neh. 8. 1-8; when Ezra read the book of the Law before thie people, " and Jeshua and Bani and Sherebiah .... the Leyites, caused the people to understand the Law " ; but subsequently the method of interpretation was reduced to a systeih, and written down, and this practically became the popular Bible of the Jewish nation. These written paraphrases are known as "Targums," the word itself probably meaning " paraphrase." In the form in which we now have them, they probably represent accumulated layers of tra dition, going back to a time before the foundation of Christianity, of which they show no knowledge ; but they did not reach their present shape until a much later date. The Palestinian and Baby' Ionian schools possessed distinct Targums of their own. The best of those that have come down to us is the Babylonian Targum ori the Pentateuch, which is ascribed to a writer named Onkelos (and hence is oited in the Variorum Bible as Onlc.). The date of this is rather uncertain. Onkelos is sometimes identified with Aquila, the author of a very literal translation of the Old Testament into Greek {see p. 52), who lived in the second century after Christ; but the best opinion seems to be that this Targum was produced in its present shape about the third century, on the basis of an earlier paraphrase. It is a very simple and literal translation of the Pentateuch, and is for that reason the more useful as evidence for the Hebrew text from which it was taken. Of the other Targums (cited coUectively as Targ. in the Variorum Bible) much the best is that which bears the name of Jonathan ben Uzziel, on: THE HEBREW TEXT. 31 the Prophets (using that term in its technical sense, see p. 26). It was written about the fourth century, and is somewhat .more ffee'than that of Onkelos. There is also a Palestinian Targum On the Law which is ascribed, but falsely, to this same Jonathan (hence cited as Ps.-Jon.) ; but this, which was probably iiot written till the seventh century, and all the other Targums are of small critical value compared with those of Onkelos and JonathanJ It is not always possible to use the Targums as evidence for the Hebrew text of the sacred books on which they are based, sinde' they at times paraphrase freely, inserting explanations, moderating strong expressions, and otherwise introducing alterations. It is, however, clear that the Hebrew text from which they were made (that is, the text current in Judtea about the end of the first century B.C., to which their tradition reaches back) was not iden tical with that which has come down to us. The student of the Variorum Bible wiU find many passages in which they are quoted as differing from the received text, sometimes for the better ; e.gi Deut. 33. 26 ; Josh. 9. 4 ; Judg. 5. 30 ; 2 Sam. 18. 13 ; 1 Kin. 13. 12 ;¦ Ps. 100. 3 ; Isa. 49. 5 ; etc. They have this advantage at least over most of the other versions, that whenever we can be sure of the Hebrew text which they represent, we know that it was a text accepted by the leaders of criticism ainong the Jews theln- selves. The period of the Targums is overlapped by that of the Talmud. While the Targumists paraphrased the Hebrew text, the scholars known as the Talmudists explS,ined and commented on it. The fact that in ancierit Hebrew writing the vowels were entirely omitted led, as explained above, to the occurrence of many words and phrases in which' a different sense could be obtained according as different vowels were supplied. Hence plenty of scope was left to the ingenuity of the Talmudists, who gradually accumulated a mass of tra dition concerning the proper reading and explanation of the text. It does not appear that they themselves did much towards fixing the actual text which appears in the manuscripts. On the 32 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. contrary, even in the earliest among the writings of the Talmud, the quotations from Scripture generally agree with our received text ; the existence of a settled text of the Scriptures seems to be implied, and the most minute rules are laid down to ensure the faithful copying of this text by the scribes. The Talmudist scholars did not by any means confine their attention to textual matters ; on the contrary, the Talmud contains the essence of many generations of traditional commentary of all kinds on the sacred books, concentrated and approved by the judgment of the leading scholars of the period. The Talmudist period extends from about a.d. 270 to 500, and is succeeded by that of the Massoretes. This is the final and decisive stage in the .history of the Hebrew text. retes.*^^'' Prom about the beginning of the seventh century the scholars whom we now call the Massoretes set themselves to sift out from the mass of the Talmud the traditions which bore on the actual text of the sacred books. Hitherto, although the Talmudists had accumulated a great quantity of tradition concerning the correct vowel-punctuation of the Hebrew, the vowel-points had not been introduced into the manuscripts in use, and the textual traditions of the Talmudists were not separated from the exegetical or explanatory. The work of the Massoretes was to edit the Old Testament books in accordance with the tradi tions preserved in the Talmud. The head-quarters of the school of Jewish doctors which undertook this labour was at Tiberias ; but it was not the work of a single generation or of a single place. The text was provided with points to indicate the vowels ; and this in itself went far towards fixing the interpretation of doubtful passages. In addition, the body of traditional remarks handed down from previous generations was recorded, so far as it related to strictly textual matters, with additions by the Massoretes themselves, and the whole of this textual commentary received the name of the " Massorah," which means " tradition." So far were the Massoi-etes from introducing alterations into the actual text of the sacred books, that, even where the traditional text was plainly THE HEBREW TEXT. 33 wrong, they confined themselves to stating in the margin the reading which they held to be superior. Such variations were known by the names of Kri ("read") and Kthib ("written"), the latter being the reading of the text, the former that of the margin, which was to be substituted for the other when the passage was read. The Massorah is generally found in manuscripts in the margins of the pages, surrounding the text ; and according as it is given in a fuller or a more abbreviated form it is caUed the Greater or the Lesser Massorah. Sometimes both are found together. Thus in our illustration of a Hebrew MS. (Plate IV.) the Lesser Massorah is written in the margins to the left of the columns, and the Greater Massorah at the top and bottom of the page. Besides recording varieties of reading, tradition, or conjecture, the Massoretes undertook a number of calculations which do not enter into the ordinary sphere of textual criticism. They num bered the verses, words, and letters of every book. They calculated the middle word and the nuddle letter of each. They enumerated verses which contained aU the letters of the alphabet, or a certain number of them ; and so on. These trivialities, as we may rightly consider them, had yet the effect of securing minute attention to the precise transmission of the text ; and they are but an excessive manifestation of a respect for the sacred Scriptures which in itself deserves nothing but praise. The Massoretes were indeed anxious that not one jot nor tittle — not one smaUest letter nor one tiny part of a letter — of the Law should pass away or be lost. The importance of the Massoretie edition to us lies in the fact that it is stiU the standard text of the Hebrew Bible. All the The extant extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament Hebrew Text contain substatitially a Massoretie text. entirely , . . , , j , Massoretie. When once that revision was completed, sucn precautions were taken to secure its preservation, to the exclusion of any other form of text, as to make it certain that the text has been handed down to us, not indeed without any errors or variations, but without essential corruption. Extraordi nary care was taken to secure perfect accuracy in the transcription S 2764. C 34 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. of the sacred books. Especially was this the case with the syna gogue rolls, or copies of the Pentateuch intended for use in the synagogues. These were written on skins, fastened together so as to form a roll, never in modern book form. Minute regu lations are laid down in the Talmud for their preparation. The copying of ""^ synagogue roU must be written on the skins Hebrew of clean animals, prepared for the particular use Manuscripts. , ,, , ^ ^ of the synagogue by a Jew. These must be fastened together with strings taken from clean animals. Every skin must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the entire codex.* The length of each column must not extend over less than forty-eight, or more than sixty lines ; and the breadth must consist of thirty letters. The whole copy must be first lined ; and if three words be written in it without a line, it is worthless. The ink should be black, neither red, green, nor any other colour, and be prepared according to a definite receipt. An authentic copy must be the exemplar, from which the tran scriber ought not in the least to deviate. No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory, the scribe not having looked at the codex before him Between every consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene ; between every word the breadth of a narrow consonant ; between every T\ew parshiah, or section, the breadth of nine consonants ; between every book, three lines. The fifth book of Moses must terminate exactly with a line ; but the rest need not do so. Besides this, the copyist must sit in full Jewish dress, wash his whole body, not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink, and should a king address him while writing that name he must take no notice of him The rolls in which these regulations are not observed are condemned to be buried in the ground or burned; or they are banished to the schools, to be used as reading-books." f *"Codex''is a Greek word, meaning properly a manuscript arranged in generfu"' ''' ^^'^''' °^'*° "'"^ ""P^^ ^' equivalent to "manuscript" t Davidson, Introdmtion to the Old Testament, 1856, p. 89. THE HEBREW TEXT. 35 Private or common copies were not subject to such precise regulations. They are written in book form, sometimes on vellum, sometimes on paper. Inks of various colours are used, and the size of the columns is not necessarily uniform. The Hebrew text is often accompanied by an Aramaic paraphrase, arranged either in a parallel column or between the lines of the Hebrew. In the upper and lower margins (generally speaking) the Great Massorah may be written ; in the external side margins are notes, comments, corrections, and indications of the divisions of the text ; between the columns is the Lesser Massorah. Vowel points and accents, which are forbidden in synagogue rolls, are generally inserted in private copies ; but they were always written separately, after the consonant-text had been finished. It is under conditions such as these that the Massoretie text has been handed down, from manuscript to manuscript, until the invention of printing. Now what of the actual manuscripts which are still in existence, stored away among the treasures of our great Ubraries ? It is generaUy rather a shock when one first learns that the oldest extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament are no earlier than the ninth century after Christ. That ^^MSS^ate^^^ is to say, they are some five hundred years later than the earliest manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, and that although the books of the New Testament were written several centuries- later than those of the Old. Over a thousand years separate our earliest Hebrew manuscripts from the date at which the latest of the books contained in them was origi nally written. It is a disquieting thought to those who know how much a text may be corrupted or mutilated in the course of trans mission by manuscript over a long period of time ; how easy it is for copyists to make mistakes, and how difficult it often is to correct them subsequently. In the case of the Old Testament, however, there are several considerations which greatly mitigate this disquietude, and which account for the disappearance of the .earUer manuscripts. C 2 36 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. In the first place, the extreme care with which manuscripts were written, as described above, is a guarantee against serious errors having crept into all the copies which have come but faithful. . j. • ,• down to us. The comparison ot existing manu scripts does indeed show that, in spite of all precautions, variations have arisen ; but as a rule they are not of much importance. Scholars are generaUy agreed that from a comparison of manu scripts, especiaUy of those from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, which are the oldest that we have, the Massoretie text can be ascertained with almost complete certainty. The Massoretie text, as we have seen, is substantially the same as that which we find used by the writers of the Talmud, and the way in which the writers of the Talmud speak of it shows that it had been in * existence for some time previously. We are thus able to conclude that the manuscripts which we now possess have preserved for us a text which was current in or soon after the time of our Lord. One eminent modern writer declares that all our existing Hebrew manuscripts descend from a single copy made in the reign of Hadrian (a.d. 102-117), at the time of the great persecution of the Jews by that emperor ; and most scholars would agree that the origin of the Massoretie text goes back, at any rate, to somewhere about that time. It is for the period before that date that the evidence of the Hebrew manuscripts fails us. They do not carry us back so far as the time of the actual composition of the several books of the Old Testament ; but within their limits their evidence may be accepted as trustworthy. The same extreme care which was devoted to the transcription of manuscripts is also at the bottom of the disappearance of the earUer copies. When a manuscript had been of older copies, copied with the exactitude prescribed by the Talmud, and had been duly verified, it was accepted as authentic and regarded as being of equal value with any other copy. If aU were equally correct, age gave no advantage to a manuscript ; on the contrary, age was a positive disadvantage, since a manuscript was liable to become defaced or damaged in the THE HEBREW TEXT. 37 lapse of time. A damaged or imperfect copy was at once con demned as unfit for use. Attached to each synagogue was a ^'Gheniza," or dumber-cupboard, in which defective manuscripts were laid aside ; and from these receptacles some of the oldest manuscripts now extant have in modern times been recovered. Thus, far from regarding an older copy of the Scriptures as more valuable, the Jewish habit has been to prefer the newer, as being the most perfect and free from damage. The older copies, once consigned to the " Gheniza," naturaUy perished, either from neglect or from being deliberately buried when the " Gheniza " became overcrowded. The absence of very old copies of the Hebrew Bible need not, therefore, either surprise or disquiet us. If, to the causes already enumerated, we add the repeated persecutions (involving much destruction of property) to which the .Jews have been subject, the disappearance of the ancient manuscripts is adequately accounted for, and those which remain may be accepted as preserving that which alone they profess to preserve, namely the Massoretie text. There is consequently not much to be said in the way of description of individual manuscripts. When we come to speak of the Greek text, whether of the Old or of the New Testament, we shall find it both interesting and important to describe the chief manuscripts with some minuteness, in respect of their age, their comparative value, and the gToups or families into which they fall. In none of these respects is it possible to distinguish effectuaUy between Hebrew manuscripts. The reader of the Variorum Bible will easily see this for himself ; for whereas in the New Testament the readings of a considerable number of manuscripts are cited indi vidually, each manuscript being distinguished by its own letter, in the Old Testament no manuscript is*amed individually. Since all represent the same type of text, and none is conspicuously older than the rest, there is little opportunity for marked pre-eminence. Moreover, even the best authorities differ widely both as to the age and the relative value of different copies, so that we have no certain ground beneath our feet. 38 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. The points to be taken into consideration in examining a Hebrew manuscript are the following ; but it wiU be seen that their importance is not very great : — First, whether ''ilehrew MSS°^ i* ^^ intended for public or private use ; since those intended for the service of the synagogue, like the great leather rolls of the Law, are most likely to be ac curately copied. Next, its age ; but on this head it is difficult to , arrive at any certainty. Many manuscripts contain a statement of their date ; but these statements are extremely misleading and of doubtful authenticity. Sometimes we do not know by what era the date is calculated ; sometimes the date is evidently that of the manuscript from which it was copied, not of the manuscript itself ; sometimes, unfortunately, the date is simply fraudulent; And it is not possible always to test such statements by the handwriting of the manuscript, as can generally be done with Greek writings. The best authorities differ so widely (in the case of one well- known manuscript, one good authority assigns it to the tenth century, and another to the fourteenth, while another copy has been assigned to various dates between the sixth and the fifteenth centuries) as to prove that the science of dating Hebrew writing is very imperfect. It is more possible to distinguish the country in which a manuscript has been written ; but even so our advantage is small ; for while the Jews themselves have generaUy held manu scripts written in Spain to be the best, two most distinguished scholars (the Englishman Kennicott, and the Italian De Rossi) prefer those which were made in Germany. Finally, manuscriptr may be distinguished as containing an Eastern or a Western text, the former being derived from the school of Babylonia, the latter from that of Palestine. Each of these schools had its own Talmud, each had a different system of vowel-punctuation, and each had a certain number of textual variations peculiar to itself, which are recorded in several manuscripts ; but these very rarely affect the sense to any material extent. Probably the oldest manuscript now in existence of any part of the Hebrew Bible is one that was recently acquired by the British PLATE IV. u l¦i::h^±;v:;^^^T^^^•'-"' L -i r!"Dti4j?T (. ^yM^^r /ri.TT''"" •7^'.. 1, •a\>j3iii»> ^51 lyji'.!; 'o ¦~^.^¦ •^ i^:.' Vj^VU^I j-i1^5 ^iil Tin-,' Hebrew MS.— 9th Cent. {Original size, 16i in. x 13 in.) THE HEBREW TEXT. 39 Museum, and of which a page is reproduced in Plate IV. It is not dated, but its writing is of an earUer type than extant MSS. ^hat of the earliest copies of which the precise date is known, and it is consequently supposed to have been written not later than the ninth century. It contains. the Pentateuch, written in book form (not as a roll), and is im perfect at the end. Both Gi'eater and Lesser Massorah have been added in the margins, the former at the top and bottom, the latter at the side. The text is furnished with vowel-points and accents ; the Massorah is without them in some places, but in others, contrary to the usual practice, it has them. The passage shown in the plate is the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus (Gen. 50. 23— Exod. 2. 14). , The oldest manuscript containing a precise statement of its date which can be trusted is the St. Petersburg manuscript of the Prophets. This was written in the year 916, and contains the " Later Prophets," written on veUum, in double columns, with the Massorah between, below, and on the outer margin. The accents and vowel-points are written above the letters, instead of below, according to a system in use at Babylon. The text is correctly written, and furnishes a strong proof of the truth of the a,ssertion that all extant Hebrew MSS. are descended from a single copy ; for although it contains an Eastern text, while the com monly-received text is based on Western MSS. (no Babylonian MSS. having been known to exist until within the last thirty years), and although it only came to light quite recently, long after the formation of the received text, yet on a comparison of it with a standard edition of the latter in a single book, that of Ezekiel (in which the Massoretie text is certainly often corrupt),. it was found to contain only sixteen real variations from it.* SimUarly, the British Museum MS. of the Pentateuch is substan tially in full agreement with the received text. Although these two copies have been described as the oldest * Cornill, Das Buch des Propheten Eeechiel, p. 9. 40 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. now in existence, there are many others which claim a consider ably earUer date. There are quite a large number of such in Russia, one of which purports to have been corrected in the year 580, while others are dated 489, 639, 764, 781, 789, 798, besides many of the ninth and tenth centuries. Unfortunately these dates are universally discredited, and most of them are known to be due to the fraudulent enterprise of a Jew named Firkowitzsch. A manuscript in the Cambridge University Library bears the date of 856, and the correctness of this date has been maintained by at least one capable scholar ; but it is not generally accepted. Of other manuscripts perhaps the most notable are (1) the Codex Ben-Asher, now at Aleppo, supposed to have been written in the tenth century, and held to be one of the best authorities for the text of the Old Testament, though both its age and its value have been strongly questioned ; (2) Codex Landianus, at Oxford, con taining the whole Old Testament except a large part of Genesis, numbered 1 by Kennicott, and held by him to have been written in the tenth century and to contain a very important text ; (3) No. 634 in the list of De Rossi, containing the Pentateuch, assigned by him to the eighth century, by others to the tenth or later. It seems useless to extend the Ust, in view of the great doubts attaching to aU dates, and to the general unimportance of the divergencies. One other source of knowledge for the Hebrew text should, however, be mentioned, namely, readings quoted in the Middle Ages from manuscripts since lost. The chief of MSS. now lost. j_, . . : these is a manuscript known as the Codex HUlelis, which was at one time supposed to date back to the great teacher Hillel, before the time of our Lord. It is, however, probable that it was reaUy written after the sixth century. It was used by a Jewish scholar in Spain, and a considerable number of its readings have been preserved by references to it in various writers. Other lost manuscripts are sometimes quoted, but less often, and their testi mony is less important. The first portion of the Hebrew Bible to appear in print was the THE HEBEEW TEXT. 41 Psalms, which issued from the press, probably at Bologna in Italy, in 1477. The first complete Old Testament fol- Hebr^w'^ext. lowed in 1488, at Soncino. Both these editions were due to Jews. The first edition prepared by a Christian scholar was that which appeared in the great Bible printed by Cardinal Ximenes at Alcala (and hence known as the Complutensian Bible, from Complutum, the Latin name of Alcala), in Spain, during the years 1514-1517. In this Bible the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin texts were printed side by side ; and it forms, as will be seen more fully hereafter, a most important landmark in the story of the beginnings of Biblical study in modern Europe. It was not, however, until the end of the eighteenth century that scholars fairly took in hand the critical study of the Hebrew text. The first collection of the evidence was made by Bishop Kennicott, who published at Oxford in 1776-80 the readings of no less than 634 Hebrew manuscripts (giving, however, only the consonants, without vowel points). He was foUowed, in 1784-8, by the Italian scholar De Rossi, who pubUshed collations of 825 more manuscripts. De Rossi used better MSS., on the whole, than Kennicott, but the general result of the labours of both is the same. It is to them that the proof is due of the fact that aU Hebrew manuscripts represent the same text, namely the Massoretie, and that without substantial variation. Other manuscripts have come to light since their time, notably in Russia, where a number of MSS. of the Babylonian type were discovered within our own day ; but, as has been sho-wn above in the case of the most important of these, the St. Petersburg MS. of the Pro phets, the conclusion estabUshed by Kennicott and De Rossi remains undisturbed. The result of our examination of the Hebrew text is, then, this. We have manuscripts which collectively give us a good represen tation of a text which reached its final shape about of"resultJ. the seventh century. We also have evidence that the scholars who made this final revision did not substantially alter the text which had been in use for some five 42 OUB BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. centuries previously. We may therefore be satisfied that the text of our Old Testament has been handed down without serious change from about a.d. 100. Further back we cannot go with the aid of the Hebrew manuscripts alone. The great, indeed all-important, question which now meets us is this — Does this Hebrew text, which we call Massoretie, and which we have shown to descend from a text drawn up about a.d. 100, faithfully represent the Hebrew text as originally written by the authors of the Old Testament books .' To answer this question it is necessary to bring up our second line of authorities, described in Chapter II. We must refer to those translations of the Old Testament into other languages which were made before the date at which we have arrived. We must see what evidence they can give us as to the Hebrew text from which they were translated, and examine the extent and credibility of that evidence. In this way alone can we hope to bridge over the gap in our knowledge between the actual composition of the books of the Old Testament and the text whose descent from about the first century of the Christian era has been traced in this present chaptei'. ( 43 ) CHAPTER V. THE ANCIENT VERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. XN August 1883 the world was startled by the announcement -*- of a discovery which, if it were authentic, seemed to go far towards bridging the great gap in our knowledge of which we spoke at the end of the last chapter. This was no less than some fragments of a manuscript of the Old Testament purporting to have been written about eight hundred years before Christ, which their owner, a Jew of the name of Shapira, stated that he had obtained from some Arabs about five years before. The material was old leather, and the writing was similar to that of the Moabite Stone. • The contents were striking enough. They purported to be portions of the Book of Deuteronomy, but with many remark able variations. To the Ten Commandments was added an eleventh, and the language of the others was altered and amplified. In these strips of leather there was enough to cast doubt upon the whole of the received text of the Old Testament and to dis credit the whole science of textual criticism. The sensation, however, only lasted . a few days. Evidences of forgery soon began to pour in ; and the final blow was given w-hen it was shown that the strips of leather on which the characters were written had been cut from the margins of an ordinary synagogue roll. There is, indeed, no probability that we shall ever find manu scripts of the Hebrew text going back to a period before the formation of the text which we know as Massoretie. We can only arrive at an idea of it by a study of the earUest trans lations made from it ; and our task in the present chapter is to describe these translations in turn. 44 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. § 1. — The Samaritan Pentateuch. The version of the Old Testament which possesses the longest pedigree is that which owes its existence to the Samaritans. Strictly speaking, it is not a veraion at all, as it is in the Hebrew tongue, though written in a different character from that of the extant Hebrew MSS. It is written in the old Hebrew character, such as it was before the adoption by the Jews of the square characters, as described in the last chapter (p. 24). The precise origin of this separate Samaritan Bible has been a subject of dispute ; but the most probable account is that it takes its rise in the events described in Neh. 13. 23-30, namely, the expulsion by Nehemiah of those Jews who had contracted marriages with the heathen. Among those expelled was a grandson of the high-priest Eliashib, whose name, as we learn from Josephus, was Manasseh. This Manasseh, in indigna tion at his expulsion, took refuge among the Samaritans, and set up among them a rival worship to that at Jerusalem. The Samaritans, whom we know from 2 Kings 17. 24-41 to have been foreigners imported into the country of the Ten Tribes by the king of Assyria, and there, presumably, to have mingled with the scanty remnant of IsraeUtes, had at first incorporated the worship of Jehovah, as the God of the land; into the worship of their own gods ; and later, on the return of the Jews from captivity, had been willing to join in the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, but had been refused permission. Since this repulse they had been bitterly hostile to the Jews, and the schism of Manasseh gave them a head and a rival worship, which embittered and per petuated the quarrel. Manasseh obtained leave from Darius Nothus, king of Persia, to set up a temple on Mount Gerizim, which became the centre of the new religion and the rival of Jerusalem. He had brought with him, it is beUeved, the Hebrew Pentateuch, and this, with certain alterations (notably the substi tution of Gerizim for Ebal in Deut. 27. 4 as the hiU on which the memorial altar should be placed), became the sacred book of the THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH. 45 Samaritans. As we have seen in the last chapter, probably this was the only part of the Old Testament which had at that time been definitely recognised as inspired Scripture by the Jews them selves ; and when the Prophets and Hagiographa were subse quently added to the Canon, the Samaritans refused to accept them. They refused also to accept the square Hebrew characters adopted by the Jews ; and we may be quite certain that they would pay little respect to any alterations in the text, if such there were, which were made by Jewish scribes and scholars after the date of the original secession. So far, then, it appears as if we had, in the Samaritan Pen tateuch, an invaluable means of testing the extent of the variation which the Hebrew text has undergone since the days of Nehemiah. We have an independent tra dition, coming down from about B.C. 408 (the date of Manasseh's secession), without any contact with the Hebrew text, preserving the original form of writing, and thereby avoiding one consider able source of possible error and corruption. No wonder that when, in 1616, the first copy of the Samaritan Bible came to Ught many scholars thought that they had obtained evidence for the original text of the Old Testament far preferable to that of the Hebrew manuscripts. The Samaritan community had existed from the days of its first settlement by Sargon of Assyria until then, and it exists still, a little community of about a hundred persons, settled at Nablous, the ancient Shechem, and stiU observ ing the Mosaic Law ; but none of their saered books had come to light until, in that year, a copy was obtained by Pietro della Valle. Several other copies have since been secured by travellers and are now in European libraries. The first printed edition was issued m the Paris Polyglott Bible in 1632, and for generations a hot controversy raged among Biblical scholars as to the comparative value of the Samaritan and Hebrew texts. At length, in 1815, it was settled, for the time, by an elaborate examination of all the variations by the great Hebrew scholar Gesenius, whose ver dict was wholly against the Samaritan version. He divided the variations into groups, according to their character, and argued that 46 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. in hardly a single instance was a Samaritan reading to be pre ferred to that of the Hebrew. This opinion has held the field until the present day ; but there seems to be a disposition now to question its justice. The Samaritan version has been estimated to differ from the Hebrew in about 6,000 places. The great majority of these are of very trifling importance, consisting of gramma- tical alterations or the substitution of Samaritan idioms for Hebrew. Others (as in Deut. 27. 4^ quoted above) are alterations of substance, so as to suit Samaritan ideas of ritual or religion. Others contain supplements of apparent deficiencies by the help of similar passages in other books, repetitions of speeches and the Uke from parallel passages, the removal of obscurities or insertion of explanatory words or sentences, or distinct differences of reading. In all these latter cases there may evidently be two opinions as to whether the Samaritan or the Hebrew read ing is preferable. The apparent deficiencies in the Hebrew may be real, the obscurities may be due to error, and the Samaritan text may be nearer to the original language. This probability is greatly increased when we find that in many passages where the Samaritan version differs from the Hebrew, the Greek Septua gint version (of which we shall speak presently) agrees with the former. For example, the Samaritan and Hebrew texts differ very frequently as to the ages of the patriarchs mentioned in the early .chapters of Genesis. Gesenius classified these variations as alterations introduced on grounds of suitabiUty ; but it is at least possible that they are not alterations at all, but the original text, and that the numbers have become corrupt in the Hebrew text ; and this possibility is turned into a probability when we find the Septuagint supporting the Samaritan readings. There is no satisfactory proof of either the Septuagint or the Samaritan text having been corrected from the other, nor is it in itself likely ; and their independent evidence is extremely dilficult to explain away. Hence scholars are now becoming more disposed to think favour ably of the Samaritan readings. Many of them may be errors, many more may be unimportant, but there remain several which PLATE V. -,-? pp^^T — ^-^r^^jx I a r*^ ¦ - - * '-!» R.y j( H '" 5 -. 1 "X * <> 1 « f ^ I. f »? »-o tf $ 0 ^ If 1< THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH. 47 are of real value. The editors of the Variorum Bible give thirty- five variations of the Samaritan text in the five books of the Pentateuch as being either equal or superior to the Hebrew readings. Among these may be mentioned, for the sake of example. Gen. 4. 8, where the Samaritan has " Cain said to Abel his brother. Let us go into the field"; 47. 21, "As for the people he made slaves of. them," instead of "he removed them to cities " ; Exod. 12. 40, the 430 years of the sojourning of the children of Israel are said to have been in Egypt and in Canaan (thus agreeing with Gal. 3. 17), instead of in Egypt only ; Num. 4. 14, the foUowing words are added at the end of the verse, " And they shall take a cloth of purple, and cover the laver and his foot, and put it into a covering of seals' skins, and shall put them upon a frame " ; and in Deut. 32. 35 the first half of the verse runs " against the day of vengeance and recom- pence ; against the time when their foot shall slip." These are perhaps the most notable of the Samaritan variants, and it is observable that in every case the Septuagint confirms them. The general result of the comparison of this and the other versions with the Hebrew text must be reserved to the end of the chapter ; meanwhile it will be sufficient to observe that these variations, though sufficient to arouse our interest, are not serious enough to cause any disquietude 'as to the substantial integrity of the text of our Old Testament. No manuscript of the Samaritan Bible (so far as is known) is older than the tenth century. It is true the Samaritan community at Nablous cherishes a precious roll, which it Its manuscripts, j^g^^jj^g^j^g ^ ^^-^q ^jeen written by Abisha, the great-grandson of Moses, in the thirteenth year after the conquest of Canaan ; but this story, which rests on the authority of an inscription said to be found in the MS. itself, may very safely be dismissed. The MS., of which a photograph forms our frontis piece, is vsTitten in letters of gold, and is rolled upon silver roUers with round knobs at the top. The MS. of which we give a reproduction in Plate V. is at Rome, and is said to have been written in the year 1227. It wiU be seen that the three 48 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. columns are aU in the same style of writing, but each contains a different dialect. The right-hand column contains the Hebrew text of Gen. 47. 1-6, as preserved among the Samaritans ; it is, in fact, what is commonly caUed the Samaritan Version, and what we have been describing above. The left-hand column contains a Samaritan Targum, or paraphrase of the text in the current Samari tan dialect ; and in the centre is an Arabic translation of the Samaritan version, originaUy made in the year 1070. AU three columns are written in the Samaritan or old Hebrew characters, and represent the form of writing in which the books of the Old Testament were originaUy written down. All the existing manu scripts of the Samaritan version are written on either veUum or paper (in this instance vellum is used), in the shape of books (not rolls, with the exception of three roUs at Nablous), without any vowel- points or accents, but with punctuation to divide words and sen tences. The whole of the Pentateuch is divided into 964 paragraphs. § 2.— The Septuagint and other Greek Versions. Two considerations make the Samaritan version of the Old Testament less important than it would otherwise be. In the first place, it contains only the Pentateuch ; and it is just this part of the Old Testament which is best preserved in the Hebrew text, and consequently needs least correction. Secondly, none of the extant copies of it is older than the tenth century, so that they are as far removed from the fountain head as the Hebrew manuscripts. themselves. Neither of these drawbacks applies to the Greek version, of which we have now to speak. It is a complete transla tion of the Old Testament, containing, indeed, not only the books which now compose our Old Testament, but also those which, after a considerable period of uncertainty, were finally excluded from the Hebrew Canon and now constitute our Apocrypha. Further, it is preserved in several manuscripts of very great age, the earUest, as we shaU see presently, going back to the fourth and fifth cen turies after Christ. In every respect, both textuaUy and historically, the Greek version of the Old Testament is by far the most impor tant of aU the ancient translations. On the one hand, it is our THE SEPTUAGINT, 49 chief means of testing the accuracy of the Massoretie Hebrew text, and of correcting it when it is wrong ; and, on the other, it has been the Bible of Greek Christendom from the earUest age of Christianity down to this present day. It will consequently require and deserve a somewhat extended notice at our hands. The first questions to be answered are those that relate to its origin. When was it made ? Why was it made ? For whom was it made ? Curious as it may seem at first sight, "seftuafint.^ this Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible was made in a land which was neither Greek nor Hebrew, namely Egypt. After the submission of Egypt to Alex ander the Great, and the introduction of Greek settlers under Ptolemy, his lieutenant, Alexandria became the headquarters alike of the commerce and the literature of the East. Its population, mainly Greek, included also a large colony of Jews. Greek became the common language of intercourse between people of different nationalities in the East, and the Jews in Egypt learnt, before long, to use it as their native tongue. Hence there arose the necessity of having their Scriptures accessible in Greek ; and the answer to tills demand was the version known as the Septuagint. The story which was long current as to its origin is largely mythical, but it contains a kernel of truth. In a letter purporting to be written by one Aristeas to his brother Philocrates, in the reign of Ptolemy PhUadelphus (b.c. 284-247), it is said that king Ptolemy, hearing of the Jewish Scriptures, and being urged by his librarian to obtain a copy of them for his great library at Alexandria, sent an embassy (of which the writer of the letter was one) to the high priest at Jerusalem with magnificent presents, begging him to send a copy of the sacred books, with a body of men capable of translating them. Thereupon six translators were selected from each of the twelve tribes and despatched to Alexandria, bearing with them a copy of the Law, written ui letters of gold. They were splendidly received by the king, and, after a banquet and public display of their wisdom, set about then- task of translation, working separately in the first instance, but afterwards comparing their results, and S 2764. ^ 50 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. finally producing the version which was thenceforth known as the Septuagint, or the Version of the Seventy. Later generations improved upon this story, until the legend ran that each of the seventy-two translators was shut up in a separate cell (or by pairs in 36 cells) and each produced a translation of the whole Old Testament in exactly seventy-two days ; and when their trans lations were compared it was found that they all agreed precisely with one another, in every word and every phrase, thus provino' that their version was directly inspired by God. This, how ever, is merely an exaggeration of the original story, which itself is now generaUy believed to be an exaggeration of the real facts, at least in respect of the special and magnificent patron age of Ptolemy. What is true is that the Septuagint version was made in or about his reign, in Alexandria, and that the Pentateuch was probably translated first. The other books were added later, by different translators and at different times. The style of translation differs so markedly in different books as to prove that the whole Testament cannot have been the work of a single group of translators, whUe some of the later books, such as Ecclesiasticus, were not even written at the time of which the story speaks. The Septuagint version, as finally completed, contains not merely the books which now form our Old Testament, but also those Its contents ^^^°^' ^^^^^ ^'^^ Reformation, have been placed apart in the Apocrypha.* Some of these books (2 Esdras, the additions to Esther, Wisdom, part of Baruch, the * It is unfortunate that the Apocrypha is generally omitted from copies of the English Bible. No doubt a little explanation of the nature of the hooks contained m it is needed by most people, but that information is now easily accessible in many popular handbooks, e.g., in the Eev. C H H Wrights article in the Variorum Aids to the Bible Student. The Variorum Apocrypha, also, by the Eev. C. J. Ball, can be confidently recommended as containing ex cellent critical and (in the form of "various renderings") explanatory notes. These are especially valuable, since, in the absence (as yet) of any Eevised Version of the Apocrypha, the ordinary reader has no means of knowing how far the Authorised Version is trustworthy; and they also, of course, contain much which no Eevised Version can possibly give. THE SEPTUAGINT. 51 Song of the Three Children, 2 Maccabees) never existed in Hebrew at all ; but the others were originally written in Hebrew and circulated among the Jews for some time on very much the same footing as some of the books which form the section of the Hagiographa (p. 28). They never, however, attained the same position of authority, and when the Canon of the Old Testam.ent was finally closed, they were left outside. From this point dates their disappearance in their Hebrew form ; they ceased to be copied in Hebrew ; and so they have come down to us only in the Greek, or in translations made from the Greek. Jerome rejected them from his Latin Bible because they were not extant in Hebrew ; but the older Latin translations of them were subse quently incorporated into the Vulgate, and they have remained in the Latin Bible of the Roman Church to the present day. The Septuagint is, however, their real home, and there they take their proper places among the books of the Old Testament. The First Book of Esdras takes precedence of the Book of Ezra, of which it is an alternative version with some additions. After the Book of Nehemiah (which, in conjunction with the canonical Ezra, is caUed the Second Book of Ezra) come, in the principal manuscript of the Septuagint, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Job, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus (or the Wisdom of Sirach), Esther (including the parts now banished to the Apocrypha), Judith, Tobit. Then follow the Prophets ; but Jeremiah is succeeded by Baruch, Lamentations, and the Epistle of Jeremiah (=Baruch, ch. 6), and Daniel by Susanna and Bel and the Dragon. Finally the Old Testament is concluded by the books of the Maccabees, of which there are, in some of the earUest copies, four instead of only two. When the Septuagint translation was completed, it became at once the Bible of the Greek-speaking Jews, and circulated in Palestine and Asia as weU as in Egypt, the home Grtet-^speikfng of its bi^th; At the time of our Lord's life on Jews and the earth, Greek was the literary language of Pales- Christian Church. . . . , , 1 „*<-!,„ tine, as Aramaic was the spoken language ot the D 2 52 'OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. common people. Hebrew was known only to the small class of students, headed by the Rabbis and the scribes. All the books of the New Testament (with the possible exception of the Gospel of St. Matthew in its original form) were written in Greek ; and , most of the quotations from the Old Testament which appear in them are taken from the Septuagint version, not from the original Hebrew. As Christianity spread beyond the borders of Palestine, Greek was necessarily the language in which it appealed aUke to the Jew and to the GentUe ; and when, in speaking to the former, it based its claim on the fulfilment of prophecy, it was in the language of the Septuagint version that the prophecies were quoted. The Christian Church adopted the Septuagint as its own Book of the Old Covenant, and looked to that as its Bible long before it had come to realise that its own writings would take a place beside it as equally sacred Scripture. The result of this appropriation of the Septuagint by the Chris tian Church was that the Jews cast it off. When the Christians Eival transia- ^^ controversy pressed them with quotations from tions in the the Prophets, of which the fulfilment had been found in Jesus Christ, the Jews took refuge in a denial of the accuracy of the Septuagint translation. In the second century of our era this repudiation took form in the pro duction of rival versions. The Hebrew text had been fixed, m the form in which it has come down to us, in the preceding century, and what was now needed was a faithful translation of this into Greek for the use of Greek-speaking Jews. The pro- duction of such a translation was the work of 1. Aquila. Aquila, who may be identical with the Onkelos to whom is ascribed the principal Targum on the Pentateuch {see p. 30). The name is the same, in a Latin dress, and the spirit in which the translation was executed is the same. The version of Aquila is an exceedingly bald and Uteral rendering of the Hebrew, adhering to the original so closely as to lose most of the Greek idiom, and often falling into obscurity and even non sense. Aquila is said to have been a disciple of the celebrated THE SEPTUAGINT. 53 Rabbi Akiba, the chief and leader of the extremest anti-Christian Jews at the end of the first century, and his version, which must have been made somewhere about the year 150, became the official Greek translation of the Scriptures in use among the non-Chris tian .lews. Later in the same century another translation was „, , ,. made, upon the opposite side, by Theodotion, a 2. Theodotion. ' ^ ^-^ ' •' Christian, said to have been a native of Ephesus. Theodotion's translation resembled Aquila's in being based upon the authorised Jewish text of the Old Testament (though retain ing the apocryphal additions to the Book of Daniel), but was exactly contrary in its treatment of it, being very free in its rendering of the original. Naturally enough, it received no countenance from the Jews, but it obtained much popularity among Christians, and exercised a considerable influence upon the subsequent history of the Septuagint. Notably was this the case in respect of the Books of Daniel and Job. Theodotion's version of Daniel was so much preferred to that of the Septuagint, that it actuaUy took its place in the manuscripts of the Septuagint itself, and the original Septuagint version has only come down to us in one single copy, written in the ninth century. In the case of Job, the Septuagint version did not contain many passages (amounting to about one-sixth of the book in all) which appear in the received or Massoretie text of the Hebrew ; and these were supplied in the Septuagint from the version of Theodotion. It is possible that something of the same sort may have occurred in other books, but the proof is at present incomplete. Yet one other Greek version of the Old Testament remains to be mentioned, that of Symmachus, which was made about" Ihe year 3. Symmachus. ^^^^ ^j^^ ^p^^j^^ i^^iuTQ of this translation is the literary skiU and taste with which the Hebrew phrases of the original are rendered into good and idiomatic Greek. In this respect Symmachus approaches nearer than any of his rivals to the modern conception of a translator's duty ; but he had less influence than any of them on the history of the Greek Bible. Curiously enough, he had more influence upon the Latin 54 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Bible ; for Jerome made considerable use of him in the preparation of the Vulgate. At the beginning of the third century there were thus three Greek versions of the Old Testament in existence, besides the Septuagint itself. The next step, and one of ^^sl't°m iit^^ ^'^^^^ importance in the history of the Greek 1. Origen's Hexa- text, was taken by the great Alexandrian scholar, Origen, whose life occupies the first half of the third century (a.d. 186-253). Finding all these various, and often conflicting, versions of the Scriptures existing side by side, he determined to draw them together, and to try to use them for the production of one more perfect version than them aU. Accord ingly, with that stupendous energy which earned for him the admiration of his contemporaries and of posterity, he set about the colossal work to which was given the name of the Hexapla, or "sixfold" version of the Old Testament Scriptures. In six parallel columns, at each opening of his book, were arrayed the following six different versions : — (1) The Hebrew text then current (substantially identical with the Massoretie text) ; (2) the Hebrew text in Greek letters ; (3) the Greek translation of Aquila (placed here as being the nearest to the Hebrew in fidelity) ; (4) the translation of Symmachus ; (5) the Septuagint, as revised by Origen himself ; (6) the translation of Theodotion, coming last in the series as being the furthest removed in style from the original.* The last four columns seem to have existed in a separate form, known as the Tetrapla, or fourfold version, which was probably a later reproduction in handier size of the more important part of Origen's work ; but in any case the Hexapla, whether earlier or later, is the complete and authoritative form of it. So huge a work as this (the Old Testament is rarely * In some books (chiefly the poetical ones, it would seem) three other Greek versions were appended. These were obscure translations which Origen had discovered, and their importance seems to have been small. Very little of them has been preserved, and their authors do not seem to have been known lo Origen himself. They are simply called the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh versions. THE SEPTUAGINT. 55 contained entire in any manuscript in a single version, and this contained it in six !) was not likely to be copied as a whole. The original manuscript still existed at Csesarea at the begin ning of the seventh century, but it perished shortly afterwards, and of all its columns, except the fifth, no complete repre sentation has come down to us. It is with this fifth column, however, that we are principally concerned, since it contained Origen's edition of the Septuagint, and this edition had a consider able influence on the text of the version in subsequent ages. Unfortunately, Origen's efforts were not directed towards the recovery of the original form of the Septuagint, but at bringing it into harmony with the Hebrew text then current, and to do this he introduced alterations into it with the utmost freedom. At the same time he tried to indicate all such alterations by the use of certain symbols. Passages occurring in the Septuagint which were not found in the Hebrew were marked by an obelus { — ) ; passages occurring in the Hebrew but not in the Septuagint were inserted in the latter from the version of Theodotion, such inser tions being marked by an asterisk (^ or -^ff ) ; a metobelus (>^) in each case marking the end of the passage in question. For Origen's purpose, which was the production of a Greek version corresponding as closely as possible with the Hebrew text as then settled, this procedure was weU enough ; but for ours, which is the recovery of the original Septuagint text as evidence for what the Hebrew was before the formation of the Massoretie text, it was most unfortunate, since there was a natural tendency for his edition to be copied without the critical symbols, and thus for the additions made by him from Theodotion to appear as part of the genuine and original Septuagint. This has certainly happened in some cases ; it is difficult to say with certainty in how many. Fortunately we are not left without some means of discovering these insertions, for in the year 617, shortly before the disappearance of the original manuscript of the Hexapla, Bishop Paulus, of Telia in Mesopotamia, made a Syriac translation of the column contain ing the Septuagint, copymg faithfuUy into it the critical symbols 56 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. ¦ of Origen ; and a copy of part of this, written in the eighth .century, is still extant (in the Ambrosian Ubrary at Milan), containing the Prophets and most of the Hagiographa.* For the Pentateuch the chief authority is a Greek manuscript at Leyden, -written in the fifth century, and known as the Codex Sarravianus ; and a few other manuscripts exist, Ukewise containing an Origenian -text, some of which will be described below. There are thus fair •means for recovering the Septuagint column of Origen's great work. The versions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus have, however, for the most part perished. No manuscript exists which contains any continuous portion of them, except those parts of Theodotion which were incorporated in the received text of the Septuagint ; but a very large number of individual readings hawe been preserved in the margin of Septuagint MSS., and these have been coUected and arranged with great skill and care in the two portly volumes of Dr. Field's edition of the Hexapla, pubUshed by the Oxford University Press in 1875. Origen's own colossal work went to the ground, but the part of it which was most important in his eyes, and the ultimate object of the whole — the revised text of the Septuagint — survived, and had a most noteworthy influence on the subsequent history of the version. At the beginning of the third century, we find a sudden crop of new editions of the Septuagint, aU more or less affected by his work. Three such are known to us, and they are of great importance for our present purpose, as we shaU see when we come to describe the form in which the Septuagint has come down to ns. Reproduced hy '^^^^^ ^^^^ editions are those of (1) Eusebius of Eusehius and Cffisarea, (2) Lucian, (3) Hesychius. Eusebius Pamphilus. „_ , „ ^^ •' Ot Csesarea, the first great historian of Christia- ¦ nity, with the assistance of bis friend Pamphilus, produced * The Ambrosian MS. contains Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of ' Solomon, and the Prophets. The first volume of this MS. was in existence in 1674, but has since disappeared. On the other hand, fragments of other MSS. have been discovered, and are now in the British Museum, containing Exodus and Euth complete, and portions of Genesis, Numbers, Beuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and 1 and 2 Kings. THE SEPTUAGINT. 57 2, Lucian. Origen's text of the Septi^gjint (the fifth column of the Hexapla) as an independent edition, with alternative readings from the other versions in the margin. Lucian of Samosata, a leading scholar at Antioch, produced another edition, of which the most marked characteristic was his habit, when he found different words or phrases in different copies, to combine them into a composite phrase, and so to preserve both. In the next chapter we shall see reason to believe that a similar course has been followed in the case of the New Testament at some period of its history. Lucian suffered martyrdom during the persecution of Maximus, in a.d. 311 ; and the same fate is believed to have befallen Hesychius, the author of the esyc lu . j.j^^ edition of the Septuagint during the period of which we are speaking. Of the character of this version very little is known at present ; but there is reason to hope that a fuUer study of the extant manuscripts of the Septuagint may increase our kuQwledge of it. These three editions were practi cally contemporary, and must all have been produced about the year 800. Each circulated in a different region. The edition of Eusebius and Pamphilus was generally used in Palestine ; that of Lucian had its home in Antioch, and was also accepted in Con stantinople and Asia Mmor, while Hesychius was a scholar of Alexandria, and his edition circulated in Egypt. The following diagram will roughly iUustrate the origin of these three editions, and their respective degrees of approach to the Hebrew text : — Oriffinalli^- Crcck. XS SebrevrMSS. 58 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. After the beginning of the fourth c^lury the Septuagint, so far as we know, underwent no further revision, and it is unnecessary ^ , ^ to trace its history beyond this point. In one The present state j j r oftheSeptua- form or another, and gradually becoming cor rupted in all by the errors of copyists, it continued to be, as it is to this day, the Old Testament of the Greek or Eastern Church. We have now to begin at the other end, and ask in what form it has come down to us, and what means we have of ascertaining its original text. And the method of this inquiry must be exactly the same as we have already appUed in the case of the Hebrew text, and as we shall again have to apply when we come to the Greek text of the New Testament. We have to ask, primarily, in what manuscripts it has come down to us, what are their age and character, and into what groups they can be divided ; and then it will be necessary to ask further whether any light can be thrown upon its history by the translations which have been made from it in ancient times, and by the quotations made from it by the early Christian Fathers. We have seen in the last chapter that no copy of the Hebrew Bible now extant was written earUer than the ninth century, while those of the Samaritan Pentateuch only go back Septuagint. ^ *^® tenth. The oldest copies of the Greek Bible are, however, of far greater antiquity than this, and take rank as the most venerable, as well as the most valuable, authorities for the Bible text which now survive. The oldest and best of them contain the New Testament as weU as the Old, and will have to be described again in greater detail (since the New Testament portion has generally been more minutely studied than the Old) in a subsequent chapter. But a short account of them must be given here. Greek manuscripts are divided into two classes, according to the style of their writuig. Putting aside those written on papyrus (of which, so far as the Bible is concerned, only a cursive MSS. ^^^ s°i8,ll fragments have as yet been discovered), it may be said broadly that aU the earlier manu- THE SEPTUAGINT. 59 scripts, from the fourth century to the ninth, are written in what is known as uncial writing, and all the later ones, from the ninth century to the invention of printing, in cursive or minuscule writ ing. In uncial writing aU the letters are large and are formed separately {see Plates VI., VIIL — XIII.) ; minuscules are smaU {see Plate XIV.), and are generally linked together in a runnin'g hand, whence they have received the name of cursive (= " run ning"), which is their commoner, but less exact, designation. For convenience of reference, each manuscript has, in addition to its name, a letter or number by which it is commonly denoted. Uncial' manuscripts are indicated by capital letters, cursives (in the case of the Septuagint) by numbers. The former, being the older, are generally the most valuable, and they alone require or deserve individual description. About thirty such manuscripts exist for the Septuagint, but many of these are mere fragments, containing only a few leaves, and only two are even approximately complete. The following is a list of them, in the alphabetical order of the letters by which they are commonly indicated, with fuller descriptions of the most important : — X {Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet) stands for the famous Codex Sinaiticus, one of the two oldest copies of the Greek Bible. The story of the romantic discovery of this manu script in the present century, when part of it was in the very act of being consumed as fuel, must be reserved for Chapter VII. For the present it must suffice to say that it was discovered by the great German Biblical scholar, Constantine Tischendorf, in 1844, in the monastery of St. Catherine, at Mt. Sinai. At his first visit he secured forty-three leaves belonging to the Old Testament, and presented them to his patron. King Frederick Augustus of Saxony, who placed them in the Court Library at Leipzig, where they still remain, with the name of the Codex Friderico-Augustanus. A subsequent visit brought to light 156 more leaves of the Old Testament and the whole of the New Testament ; and these ulti mately found a home in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg, and are known as the Codex Sinaiticus. Parts of a few more 60 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. leaves were subsequently discovered in the bindings of other manuscripts in the Ubrary of Mt. Sinai. The manuscript was written in the fourth century, in a beautiful uncial hand ; and it is extremely unfortunate that so much of the Old Testament has been lost. The parts which survive include fragments of Genesis 23, 24, and of Num. 5, 6, 7 ; 1 Chron. 9. 27—19. 17 ; 2 Esdras [i.e. canonical Ezra] 9. 9 to end ; Nehemiah, Esther, Tobit, Judith, 1 Mace, 4 Mace, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lament. 1. 1 — 2. 20, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum to Malachi, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Job. Four different scribes were employed on the writing of it, besides several cori'ectors. A facsimile of a page of this beautiful and most valuable manuscript is given in Plate VIIL A. Codex Alexandrinus, in the British Museum. This was probably written in the first half of the fifth century, and contains the whole Bible, except Gen. 14. 14-17; 15. 1-5, 16-19 ; 16. 6-9 ; 1 Kings 12. 20—14. 9 ; Ps. 50. 20—80. 11, and some parts of the New Testament, which have been lost through accidental mutila-, tion. It includes all four books of the Maccabees, for which it is the principal authority. Before the Psalms are placed the Epistle of Athanasius to Marcellinus on the Psalter, and the summary of the contents of the Psalms by Eusebius. At the end of the Psalms is an additional psalm (the 151st), which is found in some other early manuscripts, and a number of canticles, or chants, extracted from other parts of the Bible (for instance, the songs of Moses, in Deut. 32, of Hannah, in 1 Sam. 2. 1-10, and the Magni ficat) which were used in the services of the Church. The apo cryphal Psalms, of Solomon were originaUy added at the end of the New Testament, but the leaves containing them have been lost. For the history of the manuscript and a specimen of its writing, see pp. 128-132 and Plate IX. B. Codex Vaticanus, in the Vatican Library at Rome. It con tains the whole Bible, written in the fourth century, and is at once the oldest and probably the best extant copy of the Septuagint. It is neariy perfect, wanting only Gen. 1. 1—46. 28 ; 2 Kings 2. 5-7, THE SEPTUAGINT. 61 10-13 ; Ps. 106. 27-138. 6 of its original contents, so far as the Old Testament is concerned ; but the Prayer of Manasses and the books of Maccabees were never included in it. The text of the current editions of the Septuagint are mainly derived from this manuscript. {See pp. 132-137 and Plate X.) C. Codex Ephraemi, in the National Library at Paris. {See pp. 137-139 and Plate XI.) This is &, palimpsest ; that is, the original writing has been partially washed or scraped out in order that the vellum might be used again to hold some other work, — in this case a theological treatise. The result is that only parts of the original writing can now be read ; and, in addition, most of the leaves con taining the Old Testament have been lost. The 64 leaves which remain contain parts of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and the Song of Solomon, written in the fifth century. The manuscripts hitherto mentioned were originally com plete Greek Bibles, containing both the Old and the New Testaments. Those which follow do not appear ever to have included the New Testament, and many of them only a portion of the Old. D. The Cotton Genesis. One of the most lamentable sights in the Manuscript Department oi the British Museum is that of the charred remains of many manuscripts of the greatest value which were burnt in the fire among Sir R. Cotton's books in 1731. Perhaps the most valuable of all the volumes then destroyed was this copy of the Book of Genesis, written in a fine uncial hand of the fifth century, and adorned with 250 Ulustrations in a manner evidently derived directly from the ancient Greek style of painting. The remains of this once beautiful manuscript stUl show the general character of the writing and the miniatures, but in a lamentably shrunken and defaced condition. Fortunately the manuscript had been examined and its text carefully collated by Grabe before the fire ; and from this collation its evidence for the text of Genesis is now known. E. The Bodleian Genesis, at Oxford. Written m the eighth 62 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. century, but though thus considerably later than the copies hitherto mentioned, it contains a good text. The following passages are wanting, owing to mutilation of the manuscript : Gen. 14. 6 — 18. 24, 20. 14—24. 54, 42. 18 to end of book. F. Codex Ambrosianus, at Milan. Written in the fifth century, with three columns to the page, and having (what is very unusual in early manuscripts) punctuation, accents, and breathings by the original scribe. It contains Gen. 31. 15— Josh. 12. 12, with many losses, however, from mutilation, and small fragments of Isaiah and Malachi. Its evidence is valuable, and where A and B differ it generally agrees with A. G. Codex Sarravianus, at Leyden : a very fine manuscript, probably of the fifth century, though it has- sometimes been attributed to the fourth. It is written with two columns to the page, and (like the Vatican and Sinaitic MSS. above) his no enlarged initials. It contains the Pentateuch, with portions of Joshua and Judges, and its special characteristic is that it contains a Hexaplar text. It is provided with Origen's asterisks and obeli; but, unfortunately, as in all other MSS. of this class, these symbols have been very imperfectly reproduced, so that we cannot depend absolutely . on it to recover the text as it was before Origen's additions and alteratiors. Twenty- two leaves of this MS. are at Paris, where they have some times been named the Codex Colhertinus, and one more is at St. Petersburg. H. Codex PetropoUtanus, at St. Petersburg, of the sixth cen tury ; contains part of the Book of Numbers. I. A Bodleian MS. of the Psalms (including, like A, the can ticles), of the ninth century. It was wrongly included by Holmes and Parsons among the cursive MSS., and numbered 13. In its margin many readings are given from Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and from the " fifth " and " seventh " versions {see p. 54). K. A MS. at Leipzig, of the seventh century, containing- frag ments of Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges. THE SEPTUAGINT. 63 L. The Vienna Genesis : a splendid MS. at Vienna, written in silver letters upon purple vellum, and adorned with iUustrations, which, like those of D, recall the classical style of painting. It is of the fifth or sixth century, and contains only the Book of Genesis. A fine photographic facsimile of the whole of this MS. has just been published. M. Codex Coislinianus, at Paris ; a handsome MS. of the seventh century, containing the earlier books of the Old Testament, from Genesis to 1 Kings 8. 40, though mutUated in places. This MS. belongs to the same class as G, containing a Hexaplar text. N. Codex Basiliano-Vaticanus, at Rorne and Venice ; written in sloping uncials of the eighth or ninth century. It consists of two volumes, both of which have, unfortunately, been much mutilated. In their present condition, the first (at Rome) contains from Lev. 13. 59 to the end of Chronicles (with some lacunas), 2 Esdras {i.e. the canonical Ezra) 5. 10 — Neh. 7. 3, and Esther ; the second (at Venice) begins with Job 30. 8, and contains the rest of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Wisdom, Ecclesiasti cus, Minor Prophets, Major Prophets, Tobit, Judith, and the four books of the Maccabees. Until quite recently the two volumes were regarded as different MSS., and the second had assigned to it a distinct letter, V, and was entitled Codex Venetus. In conjunction with B, this was used for the Roman edition of the Septuagint, pubUshed in 1587, which has been the edition in common use down to the present day. The person who examined it for Holmes and Parsons omitted to tell the editors that it was written in uncials, and it consequently appears in their list among the cursives, with the number 23, while its first volume takes its proper place among the uncials. 0. Codex Dublinensis Rescriptus, at Trinity CoUege, Dublin. This is a palimpsest, like C, but consists of only eight leaves, containing portions of Isaiah, written early in the sixth century. Its special value is due to the fact that it was -written in Egypt and apparently provides us with information as to the text of the edition by Hesychius, which circulated in that country. 64 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. P. Fragments of Psalms, at Emmanuel CoUege, Cambridge; originally reckoned by Holmes and Parsons among the cursives, as No. 294, but subsequently placed am.ong the uncials (No. IX.). Q. Codex Marchalianus, in the Vatican Library at Rome. This is a most valuable copy of the Prophets, written in Egypt in the sixth century, in a fine bold uncial hand. The editor of this manuscript. Dr. Ceriani, has shown that the text, as originally written, is that of Hesychius ; and its value is still further in creased by the fact that an almost contemporary hand has added a great number of various readings in the margin from a copy of the Hexaplar text. These marginal readings include the additions made by Origen, generally accompanied by the proper critical marks (the obelus or asterisk), together with readings from Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. Plate VI. gives a repre sentation of a page of this manuscript (the whole of which has been published in a photographic facsimUe) containing Ezek. 5. 12-17.* In the margin will be seen several asterisks, which are repeated in the line itself at the point "at which the insertion begins {e.g., lines 6, 10), and before the beginning of each fine of the passage affected, while the metobelus, indicating the close of the inserted passage, is represented by a sort of semi-colon {e.g., lines 2, 7). In most cases the name of the version from which the inserted passage was taken is indicated by an initial in the margin, a standing for Aquila {e.g., Une 1), 0 for Theodotion (lines 6, 11, 15, 17, 22), and o- or a-v for Symmachus. Where Hesychius has introduced words on his own account which were not in the original Septuagint, the asterisk indicating such words has been written by the original scribe, and has ample space allowed it in the writing ; but the great majority of the critical signs have been added by the reviser, and show that the insertion had already been made by Origen in his Hexaplar text, which * A papyrus fragment of this same passage, also containing the Hexaplar text and symbols, has lately been acquired in Egypt by Mr. B. P. Grenfell, and is now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It was apparently -written about the fourth century. PLATE VI. t'iV XA->il,p- X s ¦]^&%t>l-Vi\ t %'-^X ltd NTO I C KYKKyimx- KAITi e« YlxSt'fl 1 1 0 YKYKALLJC ITYm." fXn 0-rrTlPTOKl t 0 YTTC I 0 YNTlHi i ffi i ii I Icy'vckuLi 1 0 YkTii-rhtTji f -o'li'tA- n iiNxti'WE-i 1 0 NeKep"! r!t0.tYisvv- ki 1 1 1 l^ti j>i fi jXKt ti lt»l{ 1 1 jsi rrcu!,vV -r t u I i-ri 1 e tM'r £ At f * rt t c ti i'(i 4-yi i I't i i-Y- vri-l t" 1 0 n-tin iTYfsYtiKin t iri KAH-Wiot Lttj'Kiii f rn ru t/J « iiAi Iti {-f^ct lici as AJ'AUVCI E W-;=;HAt.l JUO YE NTlluYl ITt ¦ J.'T£-nn-8TJVtj)f3:t,«jITiY^-oV^. s;. Kli rt t TiTii tV {'k:i.6T\b';'r<:K*jLijT(( st?? ^ AaliY^-iiz^l^h¦^A^*llTJJllMcl.l,a-Hl: ¦ ' .x cYMis«|i' E^ )Yit^eACJLLeyi>4frM'. IT! AlU fTTI e f Al iLloV-lktBJ-H PiSTmiH i/rVTllTI tlU»P:H 1 0 JLAlt t eiCtiW^ LTD t ¦ • Cll lUlLM It A^IYt « NTl ! 6T1T < LIOUWU^^ ^iiJIItTrl^Llt£T^ltfKYli:X(f^HN•^. '¦' 2i.;'e.t'^c«A.LAii«i;'- ¦> !. - > ^. f.'Srpr!',,, -i./iuYT'-Tl '¦''1 'J" f^T^'u ^ Codex Marchalianus — 6tii Cent. (Original size, lli»». x 7 in.) THE SEPTUAGINT. 60 Hesychius often followed. The small writing in the margin con sists of notes added in the thirteenth century, of. no textual importance. R. Verona Psalter, containing both Greek and Latin versions of the Psalms, written in the sixth century. Several canticles are added, as in A, and the 151st Psalm has been supplied by a later hand. The Greek is written in Latin letters. T. Zurich Psalter, in its original state a splendid manuscript^ written in silver letters with gold initials upon purple vellum. Several leaves are now missing. The canticles are included. Written in the seventh century, and often agrees with the readings of A in doubtful passages. U. Papyrus Psalter, in the British Museum ; thirty-two leaves of papyrus, containing Ps. 11. 2—19. 6 ; 21. 14—35. 6, written in a sloping hand, probably of the seventh century. Its readings are often unique, and sometimes agree with the Hebrew against all other MSS. of the Septuagint. V. Codex Venetus, in the libraiy of St. Mark's at Venice ; see N, above. W. Fragments of Psalms, at Paris, of the ninth century. In cluded by Holmes and Parsons among the cursives, as No. 43. X. A MS. in the Vatican at Eome, containing most of Job, of the ninth century. Included by Holmes and Parsons among the cursives, as No. 258. y. Codex Taurinensis, at Turin, of the ninth century, contain ing the Minor Prophets. Z», 7fi, Z«, Z<7i=>;^^4!C. Peshitto Syriac MS.— a.d. 464. (Original size of page, M in. x 8^ in. ; of part reproduced, Gl in. x 6i i THE EASTERN VERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 75 and they now appear in all the earlier Syiiac MSS. -n-hich make any pretence to contain a complete Old Testament. The Syriac version of these books is often useful in correcting errors which have found their way into the Greek text.* At a later date the whole version was revised by comparison with the Septuagint ; and hence it is not very trustworthy as evidence for the Hebrew text, and its agreements with the Septuagint cannot be taken with any certainty as independent confirmations of its reading. The Coptic Versions {see Plates XVI. & XVII.).— Coptic is the language which was used by the natives of Egypt at the time when the Bible was first translated for their use. It is, indeed, a modified form of the language which had been spoken in the country from time immemorial ; but about the end of the first century after Christ it began, owing to the influence of the great number of Greeks settled in Egypt, to be written in Greek characters, with six ad ditional letters, and With a considerable admixture of Greek words. It is to this form of the language that the name of Coptic was given, and it continues to the present day to be used in the services of the Christian Church in Egypt. There were, however, differ ences in the dialects spoken in different parts of the country, and consequently more than one translation of the Scriptures was required. The number of these dialects is stiU a matter of un certainty, for the papyri discovered in Egypt of late years have been, and still are, adding considerably to our knowledge of them ; but it a_ppears that four or five different versions of the New Testament have been identified, and three of the Old. Only one of these, however, has survived complete, though there are very considerable fragments of another. The Coptic versions of the Bible are more important for the . New Testament than for the Old, and it will consequently be convenient to treat of them at greater length in the chapter dealing with the versions of the New Testament. In the Old Testament * Especially in the Book of Ecclesiasticus, in which the Syriac version must have been made from the Hebrew original, now lost ; see the Variorum Apocrypha and the editor's preface. 76 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. they were made from the Septuagint, and consequently their evidence is mainly valuable for the purpose of restoring the Greek text, and only indirectly for the Hebrew text which lies behind the • Greek. For the student of the Septuagint, however, they should be of considerable service. As it is probable that they.were taken from the edition of the Septuagint current in Egypt, which was that of Hesychius, they should give valuable assistance in identic fying and recovering the text of that edition. The two most important of the Coptic versions are {a) the Memphitic or Bohairic. Version, current in Lower or Northern Egypt, and {b) the Thebaic or Sahidie Version, current in Upper or Southern Egypt. Of these the Bohairic alone is complete, having been ultimately adopted as the standard Bible for all Egypt ; but the Sahidie exists in very considerable fragments. One portion of the Sahidie version is of especial interest ; for within the last few years copies of the Book of Job in this version have been discovered con taining a text which bears every mark of being its original form. It is shorter than the received text by about one-sixth, omitting in all about 376 verses, but the* passages which disappear are in many cases inconsistent with the general argument of the book, and appear to have been iifserted by Jewish scholars who did not understand, or did not approve of, the plan of the poem as it was originally written. Indeed the whole Sahidie Old Testament seems to hav,e been at first free from Hexaplar additions, but to have been subsequently revised from MSS. containing these addi tions, presumably copies of the Hesychian text which was current in Egypt. Both versions appear to have been made in the third century, if not earlier, the Bohairic being probably the first in order of time. Of the third version, (c) the Middle Egyptian, only a few fragnj.ents have as yet been discovered. The Ethiopia Version. — With the versions of Egypt may natu rally go the version of Ethiopia ; but it will require only a brief notice. The Ethiopian manuscripts (most of which were acquired by the British Museum at the time of the Abyssinian war in 1867) are of very late date, but the original translation was probably THE LATIN VERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 77 made in the fourth century after Christ. This version was, no doubt, made from the Septuagint ; but it has been questioned whether the extant MSS. really represent this translation, or a much later one, made in the fourteenth century from the Arabic or Coptic. The fact is that at present little can be said to be known about the version at all. Both Old and New Testament are preserved to us entire, though in. very late manuscripts, but they have never been properly edited. The remaining Oriental versions may be dismissed in a few words. A few fragments remain of the Gothic version, made for the Goths in the fourth century by their bishop, Ulfilas, while they were still settled in Moesia, the modern Servia and Bulgaria. Its chief interest lies in the fact that it was taken from a copy of the Lucianic edition of the Septuagint. The Armenian, Arabic, Georgian, and Slavonic versions were all made from the Septuagint, but they .appear to be of little critical value. § 4. — The Latin Versions. {a) The Old Latin Version; — When Christianity reached Rome, the Church which was founded there was at first more Greek than Latin. St. Paul wrote to it in Greek, the names of most oi its members, so far as we know them, are Greek, and its earliest bishops were Greek : one of them, Clement, wrote an epistle to the Corinthians in Greek which is found along with the books of the New Testament in one of the earliest Greek Bibles, the Codex Alexandrinus. There was therefore at first no necessity for a Latin version of the Scriptures ; and the necessity, when it arose, was felt less in Rome itself than in the Roman province of Africa. It is in this province, consisting of the habitable part of northern Africa, lying along the southern coast of the Mediterranean, that a Latin Bible first makes its appearance. The importance of the Old Latin version, as it is caUed, to distinguish it from the later version of St. Jerome, is much greater in the New Testament than in the Old. In the former,' 78 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. it is the earUest translation of the original Greek which we possess, and is an important evidence for the state of the text in the second century. In the latter it is only a version of a version, being made from the Septuagint, not from the original Hebrew; Historically, moreover, it is of less importance ; for it was almost entirely superseded by the version of Jerome, and it exists to-day only in fragments. No entire manuscript survives of the Old Testament in this version ; a few books only, and those chiefly of the Apocrypha, exist complete ; for the rest we are indebted for most of our knowledge of this version to the quotations in the early Latin Fathers. The Old Latin version of the New Testament was extant in Africa in the second century after Christ, and it is probable that the translation of the Old Testament was made at the same time, since it is almost certain that a complete Latin Bible was known to TertuUian (about a.d. 200). Whether the first translation was actually made in Africa, it is impossible to say, for want of positive evidence ; but this view is commonly held and is at least probable. What is certain is that the version exists in two different forms, probably representing two independent transla tions, known, from the regions in which they circulated, as the African and the European -, and that a revised form of the latter was current in Italy towards the end of the fourth century, and was known as the Italic. The original translation was rough and somewhat free ; in the ItaUc edition the roughnesses are toned down and the translation revised with reference to the Greek. As the translation was originally made before the time of the various editions of Origen, Lucian, and Hesychius, its evidence, wherever we possess it, is useful as a means to the recovery of the earlier form of the Septuagint ; and it is observable that its text is akin to that which appears in the Codex Alexandrinus, which seems to indicate an Egyptian origin. Unfortunately it is available only to a limited extent. The apocryphal books of Esdras, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and Maccabees, together with the additions to Daniel and Esther, were not translated or THE LATIN VERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 79 revised by Jerome, and consequently the Old Latin versions of these books were incorporated in the later Latin Bible and remain there to this day.* The Psalter survives in a very slightly altered form ; and Job and Esther are preserved in some ancient manu scripts. With these exceptions, the books of the Old Testament are known to us only in the scanty fragments of three manuscripts and the quotations of the Fathers ; and though the latter are copious, they are an uncertain and insufficient basis for general criticism. {b) The Vulgate.— It is very different when we come to the great work of St. Jerome, which, in the main, continues to be the Bible of the Roman Church to this day. Its origin is known to us from the letters and prefaces of its author ; its evidence is preserved to us in hundreds and even thousands of manuscripts of all ages from the fourth century to the fifteenth. Its historical importance is enormous, especially for the Churches of Western Europe ; for, as we shall see in the progress of our story, it was the Bible of these Churches, including our own Church of England, untU the, time of the Reformation. We shall have to trace its history in the later chapters of this book ; for the present we are concerned with the story of its birth. By the end of the fourth century the imperfections of the Old Latin version had become evident to the leaders of the Roman Church. Not only was the translation taken from the Greek of the Septuagint, instead of the original Hebrew, but the current* copies of it were grossly disfigured by corruptions. The inevitable mistakes of copyists, the omissions and interpolations of accident or design, the freedom with which early translators handled the text of their original, the alterations of revisers, and the different origin of the African and European forms of the version, all contributed to produce a state of confusion and * The Old Latin version of Ecclesiasticus enables us to correct a disarrange ment which has taken place in the text of the Septuagint. In the Greek version, chap. 30. 25 — 33. iSa is placed after chap. 36. 16a, which is plainly wrong. The Latin version has preserved the true order, which has been followed in our Authorised Version. 80 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. distortion intolerable to an educated Churchman. Hence about the year 382 Pope Damasus appealed to the most capable Biblical scholar then living, Eusebius Hieronymus, whom we know better under the abbreviated form of his name, Jerome Jerome. ^ ¦, , -, . . „ , to undertake a revision of the Latin Bible. Jerome was born in 346, a native of Stridon in Pannonia, not far from the modern Trieste. Throughout his life he was devoted to Biblical studies. In 374 he set himself to learn Hebrew, then a very rare accomplishment in the West, taking as his teacher a converted Jew. His first Biblical undertakincr. however, was not connected with his Hebrew studies. The existing Latin Bible was a translation from the Greek throughout, in the Old Testament as weU as in the New, and all that Pope Damasus now invited Jerome to do was to revise this translation with reference to the Greek. He began with the of^rGospelT (Gospels, of which we shall have to speak later ; but about the same time he also made his first revision of the Psalter. He produced eventually no less than three versions of the Psalms, all of which are stiU extant. The first was this very slight revision of the Old Latin version, with reference to the Septuagint, and is known as the Roman Psalter ; it was officially adopted by Pope Damasus, and stiU remains in use in the cathedral of St. Peter at Rome. The second, made between 387 and 390, was a more thorough His three ¦ • Psalters. revision, stiU with reference to the Septuagint; but Jerome attempted to bring it into closer conformity with the Hebrew by using Origen's Hexaplar text and reproducing his asterisks and obeli ; this version was first adopted in Gaul, whence it is known as the Galliean Psalter, and it has held its place as the Psalter in general use in the Roman Church and in the Roman Bible from that day to this, in spite of the superior accuracy of the third version which Jerome subsequently published. This is known as the Hebrew Psalter, being an entirely -fresh translation from the original Hebrew. It is found in a fair number of manuscripts of the Vulgate,, often m parallel THE LATIN VERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 81 columns with the GalUcan version, but it never attained to general usage or popularity. About the time when Jerome produced his GaUican Psalter, he also revised some of the other books of the Old Testament, such as Job (which alone now survives in this form), with Testament. reference to the Hexaplar text ; but it would appear that this undertaking was not carried to completion. It is probable that Jerome, as his knowledge of Hebrew increased, grew dissatisfied with the task of merely revis ing the Old Latin translation with reference to a text which itself was only a translation. He had completed the revision of the New Testament on these lines ; but with the Old Testament he resolved to take in hand an altogether new translation from the Hebrew. He appears to have felt no doubt as to the superiority of the Hebrew text over the Greek, and in all cases of divergence regarded the Hebrew as alone correct. This great work occupied him from about the year 390 to 404 ; and separate books or groups of books were published as they were completed. The first to appear were the Books of Samuel and Kings, next the Prophets, and lastly the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and Esther. In the prefatory letters prefixed to these books, Jerome teUs us much of his work and its reception. In spite of much individual support which he received, the general attitude hifversron.^ towards it was one of great hostiUty. The sweeping nature of the changes introduced, the marked difference in the text translated, alienated those who had been brought up to know and to love the old version, and who could not understand the critical reasons for the alteration. Jerome felt this opposition keenly, and raged against what he regarded as its unreasonableness ; and his sensitiveness, not to say irritability, finds vigorous expression in his prefaces. We who have seen the introduction of a Revised Bible in our own country, intended to supersede the version to which England has been devotedly attached for centuries, can understand the difficulties which surrounded the work of Jerome. Gradually, as we shaU see S 2764. i" 82 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. in a later chapter, the superior accuracy and scholarship of his version gave it the victory, though not in a .perfect or complete form. The GaUican Psalter continued to hold its own, and was never replaced by the version from the Hebrew. The apocryphal books he wished to reject entirely, because they found no place in the current Hebrew Bible. He did indeed consent reluctantly to make a very hurried translation of the Books of Judith and Tobit ; but the remaining books he left untouched. In spite of this, they continued to find a place in the Latin Bible ; and the Vulgate, as finally adopted by the Roman Church, contains these books iu the form in which they had stood, before the days of Jerome, in the Old Latin version. In the rest of the Old Testament, Jerome's version ultimately superseded the Old Latin, and in the New Testament his revision of the Old Latin held its ground. To this composite Bible, consisting partly of unrevised translations from the Greek, partly of revised translations from the same, and partly of translations from the Hebrew, was given in later days, when it had been generally accepted in Western Europe, the name of the "Vulgate," or commonly received translation ; and of this, the Bible of our own country until the Reformation, and of the Roman Church until to-day, we shall have much to say hereafter as we trace its history through the centuries. We shaU also reserve for later chapters an account of the chief manuscripts in which it is now preserved. In the present chapter we have to do with it only as it affords evidence which may help us to recover the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament. In this respect its importance is not to be compared with that of the Septuagint. The Hebrew text accessible to Jerome was practi cally identical with that which is accessible to Its character. ourselves ; for although the Massoretes themselves are later in date than Jerome by several centuries, yet, as we have seen, the text which they stereotyped had come down practically unchanged since the beginning of the second century after Christ. Hence the version of Jerome is of little help to us in our attempt to recover the Hebrew text as it existed in the centuries before the CONDITION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TEXT. 83 Christian era ; on the other hand, if the Massoretic text is in itself superior to the Greek version as a whole, then the Vulgate is a more satisfactory national Bible than the Septuagint. The trans lation itself is of unequal merit ; some parts are free to the verge of paraphrase, others are so literal as to be nearly uiiintelligible ; but on the whole the work is one of very great merit, and justifies the commanding position which Jerome holds among the Fathers of the Roman Church. Jerome was, indeed, for the West what Origen was for the East, — the greatest Biblical scholar which the Church produced before the revival of learning at the end of the Middle Ages. § 5. — Condition of the Old Testament Text. The Vulgate is the last of the versions of the Old Testament which need be mentioned here ; and now we come back to the question with which we ended the preceding chapter. What light, after aU, do these versions throw on the text of the Old Testament ? Do they help us to get behind the Massoretic text, and see what the words of the Scriptures were when they were first written down ? And, if so, does this earlier evidence confirm the accuracy of the Massoretic text, or does it throw doubt upon it ? With the answer to this question we can close our examination of the Old Testament text. A diagram may serve to summarise, in broad outUne, the infor mation which has been given above. JOO Sanraj'ltan, S/ptuagtjit JhbjiUr Jfeiirrtr , F 2 84 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. In the first place it wiU be clear that some of the versions we have described must be excluded on the ground that they are not translations of the Hebrew at all. Thus the Most of the ver sions too late to Coptic, Ethiopie, Gothic, Armenian, Arabic, e p us. Gfeorgian, Slavonic, and Old Latin versions were made from the Greek of the Septuagint ; and they can only indirectly help us to recover the original Hebrew. Their value is that they help us to restore the original text of the Septuagint ; and from the Septuagint we may get on to the Hebrew. In the next place, the Peshitto Syriac and the Latin Vulgate, though translated from the Hebrew, were translated at a time when the Hebrew text was practically fixed in the form in which we now have it. The Peshitto was made in the second or third century, the Vulgate at the end of the fourth ; but we have already seen that we can trace back the Massoretic text to about the beginning of the second century. In some cases, when the Hebrew has been corrupted at a comparatively late date, these versions may show us the mistake ; but their main value arises from the fact that, at the time when they were made, the Hebrew vowel-points were not yet written down, but were supplied in reading the Scriptures according to the tradition current among the Jews. Hence the Peshitto and the Vulgate show us in what way the absent vowels were suppUed at a date very much earlier than any of our existing manuscripts. The same is the case with the Greek versions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus. They were made from the Hebrew, but from a Hebrew text too late to be of much service to us in our present inquiry. There remain the Samaritan and the Septuagint versions. Of these the Samaritan is the oldest ; and as it is not really a trans- Evidence of the l^*'i°ii i^*'° ^ different language, but a direct Samaritan Pen- descendant of the original Scriptures in the same tateuch. language and written in the same characters, its evidence might be expected to be of exceptional value. Unfortu- ' nately, however, it relates only to the Pentateuch ; and we have seen (p. 72) that it is exactly here that help is least required, and CONDITION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TEXT. 85 that the variations of the Samaritan text, even where they appear to be right, are not of very great or striking importance. With the Septuagint it is quite otherwise. It contains aU the books of the Old Testament, including those which the Jews finally refused to accept as inspired ; and its variations are, in many of the books both numerous and important. The real question to be debated, then, is this : Does the Septuagint or the Massoretic text represent most accurately the words and form of the Old Testament Scrip tures as they were originally written ? So far as the weight of authority goes, the preponderance is decidedly in favour of the Hebrew. Origen and Jerome, the two greatest BibUcal scholars of antiquity, deliber- ^Ma°soreticr' ^'^^J abandoned the original Septuagint and its descendants, the translations made from it, in order to produce versions which should correspond as nearly as possible with the Hebrew. So, too, in the modern world, all the translators of the Bible whose scholarship was equal to it went to the Hebrew for their text of the Old Testament, while those who could not read Hebrew feU back upon the Vulgate, which was itself translated from the Hebrew. Our own Authorised and Revised Bibles, as well as nearly all the translations which preceded them, rest almost entirely upon the Massoretic text, and only very rarely follow the versions in preference to it. And this is very natural ; for the Old Testament books were written in Hebrew, and it seems reasonable to suppose that they would be best represented in the Hebrew manuscripts. In the case of no other book in the world should we look to a translation rather than to copies in the original language for the best representation of the contents of the work. Since the last century, however, there have been scholars who have maintained that the Septuagint comes nearer to the original Hebrew than do the Hebrew manu scripts of the Massoretic family ; and this view has recently been urged with much vigour and plausibility in an English journal.* * By Sir Henry Howorth, M.P., E.E.S., in the Academy, 1893.-4. 86 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. It would be absurd to attempt to decide the point authoritatively in such a work as this ; but the conditions of the problem can be stated, and the apparent course of the controversy indicated in brief. In the first place it is only natural that the Hebrew text should have suffered considerable corruption. If we take the year 100 The Hebrew text ^^^^^ Christ as representing the date to which we sure to be cor- can trace back the existence of the Massoretic ^^^ ' text, there is stiU a gap of many centuries before we reach the dates at which most of the books were composed. Nearly a thousand years separate us from the earliest of the Prophets, and even if we accept the latest date which modern criticism assigns to the composition of the Pentateuch in its present form, there are stUl more than five hundred years to be accounted for. It would be contrary to reason to suppose that the text had been handed down through all these centuries without suffering damage from the errors of scribes or the alterations of correctors, especially when we remember that in the course of that period the whole style of writing had been changed by the intro duction of the square Hebrew characters, that the words were not divided from one another, and that the vowels were not yet indi cated by any marks. It is thus natural in itself that the Hebrew text, as we have it now should need some correction. It is also natural that the Septuagint version, which we can trace back to an origin more than 350 years earlier than the Massoretic text, should in some cases enable us to supply the needed correction. Thei text of the Septuagint may itself have suffered much corruption between the, time of its composition and the time to which our direct knowledge of it goes back ; but it is contrary to reason to suppose that it has always been comipted in those places where the Hebrew has been corrupted, and that it does not sometimes preserve the right reading where the Hebrew is wrong. A partial confirmation of this conclusion is provided by the- Targums, the eariiest portions of which go back a century or more before the formation of the Massoretic text. In these there are CONDITION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TEXT. 87 indications that the text on which they were based, though very „„j .„. -, like the Massoretic text, was not identical with it. and certainly ' corrupt iu We can, however, go further, and show that there some places. . , - ^ n ¦ ^ ¦ ^ IS a much larger number ot passages in which corruption has almost certainly taken place between the date at which the Septuagint was written and that at which the Masso retic text was formed. It would need an entire treatise to do this thoroughly, but the reader of the Variorum Bible will find a con siderable number of places noted in which the reading of the Septuagint makes better sense than that of the Hebrew. In not a few passages the Hebrew gives no natural meaning at all ; for instance, Ex. 14. 20 ; 1 Sam. 13. 21 ; 27. 10 (where even the Authorised Version departs from the Massoretic text) ; much of 1 Kings 6 & 7 ; Job 3. 14 ; 35. 15, and many other passages indicated in the Variorum Bible. In other places verses are sup plied by the Septuagint which are not in the Hebrew ; in these it' will be a matter for critics to decide in each case whether the- Hebrew has -wrongly omitted words, or the Septuagint wrongly inserted them, but it is not likely that the answer wUl always be the same. A list of some such passages has aheady been given on p. 72. Again, take the larger variations there mentioned in the Books of Jeremiah and Job. In the former the arrangement found in the Septuagint is by many scholars considered preferable to that of the Hebrew, and its text in many doubtful passages appears to be superior. In Job the proof is even more complete ; for a large number of passages in it, which had already been believed, on the ground of their style, to be later additions to the Hebrew, have recently been shown to have been, absent from the original text of the Septuagint, and to have been added by Origen in his Hexapla, with the usual marks indicating that they had been introduced by him from the Hebrew. Once more, in the Penta teuch we find the Septuagint and the Samaritan version often agreeing in opposition to the Hebrew ; and sioce there is no reasonable ground for asserting that either of these translations was influenced by the other, we can only suppose that in such passages they represent the original reading of the Hebrew, and 88 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. that the Massoretic text is corrupt. To this it may be added that the " Book of Jubilees," a Jewish work written not long before the faU of Jerusalem (a.d. 70) and containing a modified version of the story of Genesis, frequently supports the Septuagint and Samaritan readings in preference to those of the Hebrew. It seems, then, reasonable to conclude that in many cases the Septuagint certainly contains a better text than the Hebrew ; and But the Septua- ^^ ^'^'^ ^® ®°' ^'' ^® Ukely that it is often right in gint not always passages where we are not able to decide with certainty between alternative readings. Can we go further and say that it is generally so, and that wherever the two differ, the presumption is in favour of the Septuagint ? Cer tainly not, without considerable qualifications. There can be no doubt,' first, that the Septuagint as originaUy written contained many mistakes ; and, secondly, that the text of it has been much corrupted in the course of ages. It must be remembered that the Septuagint was translated from a Hebrew text in which the words were not separated from one another and were unprovided with vowel points. Hence some of ' the differences between the Septuagint and the Hebrew do not imply a difference of reading at all, but simply a difference in the division of the letters into words or in the vowel points suppUed. Sometimes the one may be right and sometimes the other ; but in any case the difference is one of interpretation, not of text. Then, again, there can be no doubt that the authors of the Septuagint made many actual mistakes of translation. Hebrew, it must be remembered, was not their habitual language of conversation ; it was a matter of study, as old English is to scholars to-day, and it was quite possible for them to mistake the meaning of a word, or to confuse words which were written or spoken nearly alike. The possibility of such mistakes must be borne in mind, and only a good Hebrew scholar can warn us of them.* It is a more difficult point to decide whether the authors of * Some interesting examples of errors caused by the Greek translator having misunderstood the Hebrew, or having supplied the wrong vowel points, are given in the preface to the Variorum lApocrypka. CONDITION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TEXT. 89 the Septuagint made deliberate additions to the text. Translators held a different view of their rights and duties from that which would be accepted to-day. They thought them- SeptuagLt? selves at liberty to add explanatory words and phrases, to paraphrase instead of adhering closely to their original, to supplement what they believed to be omissions (often by incorporating words from other passages where the same or simUar events were recorded, as from Kings into Chronicles, and vice versa), perhaps even to insert incidents which they believed to be true and edifying. This would seem to be the case with the additions to the Books of Daniel and Esther, which the Jews refused to accept as part of the inspired Scriptures, and which have been banished to the Apocrypha in the English Bible. In smaller detaUs, the authors of the Septuagint seem at times to have softened down strong expressions of the Hebrew, no doubt from a feeling that the more refined literary taste of Alexandria would be offended by them. As to the corruptions of the Septuagint text, the history of it in the preceding pages explains these sufficiently. It is no easy task, in many places, to be sure what the true SeSnTtext. reading of the Septuagint is. Some manuscripts represent the text of Origen, in which everything has been brought into conformity with the Hebrew as it was in his day ; many are more or less influenced by his text, or by the versions of AquUa and Theodotion. Some represent the edition of Lucian ; others that of Hesychius. Even those which bebng to none of these classes do not agree among themselves. The great manuscripts known as A and B frequently differ very markedly from one another, and X sometimes stands quite apart from both. It is clear that in many cases it is impossible to correct the Hebrew from the Greek until we have first made sure what the Greek reading really is. One further possibility remains to be considered^ that of de liberate falsification of either Greek or Hebrew for party purposes. Such accusations were made, both by Christians and by Jews, 90 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. in the early centuries of the Church's history, when the Jews held to the Hebrew text as it was fixed about a.d. 100, and : the Christians to the Septuagint. They have falsification of been renewed from time to time ; and, quite Hebrew not lately. Sir H. Howorth, in his contention for proven. the superiority of the Septuagint, has declared the Massoretic text to have been deliberately altered by the Jews with an anti-Christian purpose. But the proof for so serious a charge is wholly lacking. It is true that the Hebrew Bible as we know it assumed its present form at a time when the anta gonism between Jew and Christian was strongly marked, and probably under the direction of the Rabbi Akiba, the great leader of the extreme party of the Jews at the end of the first century. At such a time and under such a leader it might seem not impossible that an attempt would be made to remove from the Old Testament those passages and expressions to which the Christians referred most triumphantly as prophecies of Christ. The best answer to such a charge is that these passages have not been removed, and that the differences between the Massoretic text and the Septuagint are by no means of this character. Nothing can have been gained, from the party point of view, by altering the order of the prophecies of Jeremiah, or by expanding the Book of Job. The Books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, which were ejected from the Hebrew text and retained in the Greek, do not testify of Christ more than the. undisputed books which remain in both. The Christians had less reason to feel special interest in the Books of the Maccabees than the patriotic Jews. Indeed, it is untrue to say that the books of the Apocrypha were at this time ejected from the Hebrew Bible ; the fact being that they had never formed part of it, and were never quoted or used on the same level as the books recognised as inspired. It is true that one verse has dropped out of a long list of towns (after Josh. 15. 59), in which was contained (as the Septuagint shows ; see Variorum footnote) the name of " Ephratah, which is Bethlehem," by the help of which the reference to Ephratah in Psalm 132. 6 might be CONDITION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TEXT. 91 interpreted as a prophecy of our Lord's birth at Bethlehem ; but seeing that the same identification is repeated in four other places, including the much more strongly Messianic passage in Micah 5. 2, the omission in Joshua alone would be perfectly useless for party purposes, and may much more fairly be explained as an accident. It is needless to add that the greater prophecies of the Messiah, such as the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, stand quite untouched in the Hebrew, and that the vast majority of the differences between the Hebrew and the Greek throughout the Old Testament could have no possible partisan motive whatever. The authors of our Revised Version of the Old Testament, while recognising the probable existence of earlier editions of the Hebrew differing from the Massoretic text, yet umming- p. ^gpjg^j.g ^^i^ «^j^g gj^^^g Qf knowledge on the subject is not at present such as to justify any attempt at an entire reconstruction of the text on the authority of the versions," and have consequently " thought it most prudent to adopt the Massoretic Text as the basis of their work, and to depart from it, as the Authorised Translators had done, only in exceptional cases." There can be no doubt that they did rightly. The versions have as yet been too insufficiently studied to justify a general use or a rash reliance upon them. When the text of the Septuagint, in particular, has been placed on a satisfactory footing (to which it is to be hoped the forthcoming Cambridge edition wiU greatly con tribute) it will be time enough to consider how far its readings may be taken in preference to those of the Hebrew. It is probable that eventually a much fuller use wiU be made of the Septuagint than has hitherto been the case, and those have done good work who have called attention, even in exaggerated tones, to the claims of the ancient Greek version ; but no general substitution of the Greek for the Hebrew as the prime authority for the text of the Old Testament wiU be possible unless the universal assent of students be won to the change. It wUl not be enough for one section of specialists to take up the cry, and, proclaiming them selves to be the only advanced and unprejudiced school, look down 92 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. upon aU others as unenUghtened laggards. Such schools and such cries, stimulative as they are of thought and of work, are for the moment only. If the Massoretic text is ever to be driven from the assured position of supremacy which it has held since the days of Origen and of Jerome, it will only be when the great bulk of sober criticism and the general inteUigence of Biblical students have been convinced that the change is necessary. It is very doubtful whether such a conviction will ever be reached ; and meanwhile the plain student of the Bible may take comfort in the thought that, however interesting in detail the variations between the versions and the Hebrew may be, they touch none of the great fundamental teachings of the Old Testament. The history of the Chosen People remains the same ; the moral eloquence of prophet and psalmist is unaltered ; and stiU the Old Testament Scriptures testify of Christ, as they have always testified. ( 93 ) CHAPTER VI. THE TEXT OS THE NEW TESTAMENT. WHEN we pass from the Old Testament to the New, we pass from obscurity into a region of comparative Ught. Light, indeed, is plentiful on most of its history ; our danger is rather lest we should be confused by a multiplicity of illumination from different quarters, as the electric search-lights of a fleet often bewUder those who use them. We know, within narrow limits, the dates at which the various books of the New Testament were -written ; we have a multitude of manuscripts, some of them reaching back to within 250 years of the date of the composition of the books ; we have evidence from versions and the early Christian writers which carry us almost into the apostolic age itself. We shall find many more disputes as to minor points con cerning the text of the New Testament than we do in the Old, just because the evidence is so plentiful and comes from so many different quarters ; but we shall find fewer doubts affecting its general integrity. The books of the New Testament were -written between the years 50 and 100 after Christ. If anyone demurs to this lower limit as being- stated too dogmatically, we would only say that it is not laid down in ignorance that it has been con- Vss^*^* tested, but in the beUef that it has been contested without success. But this is not the place for a discussion on the date of the Gospels or Epistles, and if anyone prefers a later date, he only shortens the period that elapsed •between the composition of the books in question and the date at which the earUest manuscripts now extant were written. The originals of the several books have long ago disappeared. They must have perished in the very infancy of the Church ; for no 94 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. allusion is ever made to them by any Christian writer.* We can however, form some idea of what they must have looked Uke. Each book, we must remember, was written separately, and there can have been no idea at first of combining them into a single collection corresponding in importance and sacredness to the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa. St. Luke merely wrote down, as many had taken in hand to do before, a memoir of our Lord's Ufe ; St. Paul wrote letters to the congregation at Rome or at Corinth, just as we write to our friends in Canada or India. The material used was, no doubt, papyrus {see p. 21) ; for this was the common material for writing, whether for literary or for private purposes, though parchment was used at times, probably, as the instructions of the Talmud at a later date imply, for more im portant documents, such as the sacred books of the Old Testament. Thus, when St. Paul directs Timothy to bring with him " the books, but especially the parchments," the latter may. well have been copies of parts of the Old Testament ; the rest must have been works -written on papyrus, but of what nature we cannot tell. His own letters would certainly have been written on papyrus ; and the discoveries of the last fifty, and especially of the last five, years have given us back not a few books and letters written on this material by inhabitants of the neighbouring country of Egypt at this very time. The elder of the church in Western Asia who arose in his congregation to read the letter of St. Paul which we know as the Epistle to the Ephesians, must have held in his hand a roll of white or light yeUow material about four feet in length and some ten inches in height. The Acts of the Apostles might have formed a portly roU of thirty feet, or might even have been divided into two or more sections. Even had the idea been entertained of making a collection of all the books which now form our New Testament, it would have been quite impossible to have combined them in a single volume, so long as papyrus was the material employed. * A very rhetorical passage in Tertullian may be ignored. THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 95 But in fact the formation of a single "New Testament" was impossible, so .long as no decision had been reached by the Church to distinguish between the inspired and the un- '^Teftaments'^ inspired books. The four Gospels had indeed , impossible at been marked off as a single authoritative group first. o jr early in the second century ; and the epistles of St. Paul formed a group by themselves, easily recognisable and ; generaUy accepted. But in the second and third and even in the fourth century the claims of such books as 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Jiide, and the Apocalypse were not admitted by all ; whUe other early Christian writings, such as the Epistle of Clement, the epistle which passed by the name of Barnabas, and the " Shepherd " of Hermas, ranked almost, if not quite, on the same footing as the canonical books. All this time it is highly improbable that the sacred books were written otherwise than singly or in small groups. Only when the minds of men were being led to mark off with some unanimity the books held to be authoritative, are collected editions, as we should now call them, likely to have been made. Only gradually did men arrive at the conception of a Canon, or authori tative coUection, of the New Testament which should rank beside the Canon of the Old. We need, then, feel no surprise either at the fact that all the manuscripts of the first three centuries have (so far as we know) perished, or at the great quantity of various readings which we find to have come into existence by the time our earliest extant manuscripts were written. The earliest Christians, a poor, scat tered, often illiterate body, looking for the return of their Lord at no distant date, were not likely either to care sedulously for minute accuracy of transcription, or to preserve their books religiously for the benefit of posterity. Salvation was not to be secured by exact ness in copying the precise order of words ;. it was the substance of the teaching that mattered, and the scribe might even incorporate into the narrative some incident which he believed to be equally authentic, and think no harm in so doing. So divergent readings would spring up, and different texts would become current in 96 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. different regions, each manuscript being a centre from which other copies would be taken in its own neighbourhood. Persecution, too, had a potent influence on the fortunes of the Bible text. On the one hand, an edict such as that of Diocletian in 303, ordering all the sacred books of the Christians to be burnt, would lead men to distinguish between the sacred and non-sacred books, and so assist the formation of an authoritative Canon. On the other hand, numberless copies must have been destroyed by the Roman officials duriiig these times of persecution, the comparison of copies with a view to removing their divergencies must have been difficult, and the formation of large and carefully written manu scripts must have been discouraged. The change comes with the acceptance of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine in a.d. 324. Christianity ceased to be perse cuted and became the religion of the Empire. of''^texts*'h^eginf ^^^ books needed no longer to be concealed ; on "* ^"tury '^^"" *^® contrary, a great demand for additional copies must have been created to supply the new churches and the new converts. The Emperor himself instructed Eusebius of CiBsarea, the great historian of the early Church, to provide fifty copies of the Scriptures for the churches of Constantinople ; and the other great towns of the Empire must have required many more for their own wants. Here then, and possibly not before, we may find the origin of the first collected New Testaments ; and here we are already in touch with the earliest manuscripts which have come down to us, from which point the chain of tradition is complete as far as our own days. The oldest manuscripts of the Greek New Testament now in ex istence were written in the fourth century. Two splendid volumes, Tran ' " "'^^ ^°^ ^"^ ^^^ Vatican Library at Rome, the other from 4th to isth at St. Petersburg, are assigned by aU competent een nry. critics to this period. Two more were probably written in the fifth century ; one of these is the glory of our own British Museum, the other is in the National Library at Paris. In addition to these there are perhaps twelve very fragmentary THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 97 manuscripts of the same century which contain only some small portions of the New Testament. From the sixth century twenty- seven documents have come down to us, but only five of these contain so much as a single book complete. From the seventh we have eight small fragments ; from the eighth six manuscripts of some importance and eight fragments.* So far the stream of tradition has run in a narrow bed. Time has, no doubt, caused the destruction of many copies ; but it is also probable that during these centuries not so many copies were made as was the case subsequently. The style of writing then in use for works of literature was slow and laborious. Each letter was a capital, and had to be written separately ; and the copy ing of a manuscript must have been a long and toUsome task. In the ninth century, however, a change was made of great importance in the history of the Bible, and indeed of aU ancient Greek literature. In place of the large capitals hitherto employed, a smaUer style of letter came into use, modified in shape so as J;o admit of being written continuously, without lifting the pen after every letter. Writing became easier and quicker ; and to this fact we may attribute the marked increase in the number of manu scripts of the Bible which have come down to us from the ninth and tenth centuries. From this point numeration becomes useless. Instead of counting our copies by units we number them by tens and scores and hundreds, untU by the time that printing was invented the total mounts up to a mass of several thousands. And these, it must be remembered, are but the remnant which has escaped the ravages of time and survived to the present day. When we remember that the great authors of Greek and Latin literature are preserved to us in a mere handful of copies, in some cases indeed only in one single manuscript, we may * It must be understood that the dates here given are not absolutely certain. Early manuscripts on vellum are never dated, and their age can only be judged from their handwriting. But the dates as here stated are those which have been assigned by competent judges, and may be taken as ¦ approximately correct. S 2f64. G 98 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. feel confident that in this great mass of Bible manuscripts we have much security that the true text of the Bible has not been lost on the way. With the invention of printing in the fifteenth century a new era opens in the history of the Greek text. The earliest printed document (so far as Europe is concerned) was printe^^'textl issued in the year 1454 ; and the first complete book produced by the printing press was, rightly enough, the Bible, in 1456. This, however, was a Latin Bible ^ for Latin was, in the fifteenth century, the language of Uterature in Western Europe. Greek itself was Uttle known at this date. It was only gradually that the study of it spread from Italy (especiaUy after the arrival there of fugitives from the East, when the Turkish capture of Constantinople overthrew the Greek Empire) over the adjoining countries to the other nations of the West. It was not until the sixteenth century had begun that there was any demand for a printed Greek Bible ; and the honour of leading the way belongs to Spain. In 1502, Cardinal Ximenes formed a scheme for a printed Bible containing the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin texts in parallel columns. Many years were spent in coUecting and comparing manuscripts, with the assistance of several scholars. It was not untU 1514 that the New Testa ment was printed, and the Old Testament was only completed in 1517. Even then various delays occurred, including the death of Ximenes himself, and the actual pubUcation of this edition of the Greek Bible (known as the Complutensian, from the Latin name of Alcala, where it was printed) only took place in 1522 : and by that time it had lost the honour of being the first Greek Bible to be given to the world. That distinction belongs to the New Testament of the great Dutch scholar, Erasmus. He had been long making coUections Erasmus' Greek ^°^ ^° edition of the Bible in Latin, when in Testament, 1515 a proposal was made to him by a Swiss 1516. . •' printer, named Froben, to prepare an edition in Greek which should anticipate that which Ximenes had in hand. THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 99 Erasmus consented : the work was rapidly executed and as rapidly passed through the press ; and in 1516 the first printed copy of the New Testament in the original Greek was given to the world. The first edition was full of errors of the press^ due to the failure of a subordinate who had been entrusted with the duty of revising the sheets ; but a second edition quickly followed, and a third, and a fourth, each representing an- advance in the direction of a more accurate text. Erasmus' first edition was based on not more than six manuscripts at the most, and of these only one was either ancient or valuable, and none was complete, so that some verses of the Apocalypse were actually re-translated by Erasmus himseU into Greek from the Latin ; and, what is more remarkable, some words of this translation, which occur in no Greek manuscript whatever, still hold their place in our received Greek text. That text is, indeed, largely based on the edition of Erasmus. The work of Ximenes was much more careful and elaborate ; but it was contained in six large folio volumes, and only 600 copies were printed, so that it had a far smaller circulation than that of Erasmus. The great printer-editor, Robert Estienne or Stephanus, of Paris (sometimes anglicised as Stephens, without ground), issued several editions of the Greek New Testament, based mainly on Erasmus, but corrected from the Complutensian and from fifteen manuscripts, most of them comparatively late ; and of these editions the third, printed in 1550, is ^^*t^ext*'^^* substantially the received text which has appeared in all our ordinary copies of the Greek Bible in England down to the present day. On the Continent the received text has been that of the Elzevir edition of 1624, which differs very sUghtly from that of Stephanus, being in fact a revision of the latter with the assistance of the texts published in 1565-1611 by the great French Protestant scholar Beza. Such is the history of our received text of the Greek New Testament ; and it wiU be obvious from it how little likelihood ,^ , „ . . there was that it would be a really accurate Its deficiencies, ¦' representation of the original language. For G 2 100 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. fourteen hundred years the New Testament had been handed down in manuscript, copy being taken from copy in a long succession through the centuries, each copy multiplying and spreading errors (slight, indeed, but not unimportant in the mass) after the manner described in our first chapter. Yet when the great invention of printing took place, and the words of the Bible could at last be stereotyped, as it were, beyond the reach of human error, the first printed text was made from a mere handful of manuscripts, and those some of the latest and least trustworthy that existed. There was no thought of searching out the oldest manuscripts and trusting chiefly to them. The best manuscripts were stUl unknown to scholars or inaccessible, and the editors had to content them selves with using such later copies as were within their reach, generaUy those in their native town alone. Even these were not always copied with such accuracy as we should now consider necessary. The result is that the text accepted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to which we have clung from a natural reluctance to change the words which we have learnt as those of the Word of God, is in truth f uU of inaccm'acies, many of which can be corrected with absolute certainty from the vastly wider information which is at our disposal to-day. The difference between the Authorised Version and the Revised Version shows in great measure the difference between the text accepted at the time of the first printed editions and that which commends itself to the best modern scholars. We do not find the fundamentals of our faith altered, but we find many variations in words and sentences, and are brought so much nearer to the true Word of God, as it was written down in the first century by Evangelist and Apostle. What, then, are the means which we have for correcting the "received text," and for recovering the original words of the New Testament ? This question wiU be answered Means for £ ^^ ¦ l_^ , , , , ., amending it. ™ore fully m the next two chapters ; but it wUl be useful to take a brief survey of the ground before us first, and to arrange in their proper groups THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 101 the materials with which we have to deal. As was explained in the second chapter, the evidence by which the Bible text is examined and restored is threefold. It consists of (1) Manu scripts, (2) Versions, (3) Quotations in the Fathers. 1. Manuscripts. — The early papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament have aU perished (unless indeed some are still lying buried in the soU of Egypt, which is far from improbable), and all the extant manuscripts are written on vellum, with the exception of a few scraps of papyrus, not earUer than the earUest vellum MSS., and some quite late copies, which are on paper. They are divided into two great classes, according to the style in which they are written, namely uncials and cursives. Uncials are those written throughout in capital letters, each formed separately {see Plates VI., VIIL — XIIL). Cursives are those written in smaller letters and in a more or less running hand {see Plate XIV.). As explained above (p. 59), uncial manuscripts are the earliest, running from the fourth century (and doubtless earlier if earUer MSS. should be found) to the ninth, while cursives range from the ninth to the fifteenth, and even later, wherever manuscripts were stiU written after the invention of printing.* L^ncial manuscripts, being the oldest, are also the rarest and the most important. Including even the smaUest fragments, only one hundred and twelve uncial manuscripts of the Uncial MSS. „ , «t m , , , • -, „ Greek jSiew iestament are known to exist, and of these only two contain all the books of it, though two more are nearly perfect. The books of the New Testament, before * This sharp distinction in time between uncial and cursive writing does not apply to papyri. Here we find cursive writing side by side with uncial from the earliest times at which Greek writing is known to us (the third century b.c). The reason for the difference in the case of vellum MSS. is simply that vellum was only employed for books intended for general use, and for such books uncial -writing was regularly used until the ninth century, because it was the most handsome style. In the ninth century an ornamental style of running- hand was invented, and this superseded uncials as the style usual in books. A cursive hand must always have existed for use in private documents, where publication was not intended. 102 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. they were gathered into one collection, were formed into four groups, viz. Gospels, Acts and Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles, Apocalypse ; and most manuscripts contain only one, or at most two, of these groups. Uncial manuscripts are distinguished for purposes of reference by capital letters of the Latin, Greek, or Hebrew alphabets, such as A, B, A, K, etc., as the reader may see by looking at the notes on any page of the New Testament in the Variorum Bible. Reserving a full description of these manuscripts for the next chapter, it wiU be sufficient for the present to say that the most important of them are those known as B (Codex Vaticanus) and K (Codex Sinaiticus), which are assigned to the fourth century ; A (Codex Alexandrinus) and C (Codex Ephraemi), of the fifth century ; D (of the Gospels), Dj (Pauline Epistles), and E2 (Acts and Catholic Epistles), of the sixth century. These are the main authorities upon which the text of the New Testament is based, though they need to be supplemented and reinforced by the testimony of the later copies, both uncial and cursive. Cursive manuscripts are enormously more common than uncials. The earUest of them date from the ninth century, and from the . tenth century to the fifteenth the cursives were Cursive MSS. ,, _,., , ". ^ the Bible of Eastern Europe. Many have no doubt perished ; but from the fact of their having been written nearer to the times of the revival of learning many have been preserved. Every great library possesses several of them, and many are no doubt stiU lurking in unexamined corners, especially in out-of-the-way monasteries in the East. The latest enumeration of those whose existence is known gives the total as 2429, besides 1273 Lectionaries, or volumes containing the lessons from the New Testament prescribed to be read during the Church's year. Even deducting duplicates, where a manuscript has been counted more than once owing to its containing more than one of the above- mentioned groups (each of which has a separate series of numbers), the total comes to just over 3000. They are referred to simply by numbers ; for instance, Evan. 100 means cursive manuscript No. 100 THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 103 of the Gospels,* Act. 100 -= cursive No. 100 of the Acts and CathoUc Epistles, Paul. 100 = cursive No. 100 of the PauUne Epistles, Apoc. 100 = cursive No. 100 of the Apocalypse, Evst. (j.e.Evange- Ustarium) 100 = lectionary of the Gospels No. 100, and Apost. 100 = lectionary of the Acts and Epistles No. 100. Thus if a manuscript contains more than one of these groups of books, it appears in more than one list, and generally with a different number ui each ; for instance a certain manuscript in the British Museum, which contains the whole New Testament (a very rare occurrence, only about thirty MSS. in all being thus complete), is consequently described as Evan. 584, Act. 228, Paul. 269, Apoc. 97. These, however, are minutiae which concern only the Biblical scholar. The cursive manuscripts, with few exceptions, are rarely quoted as authorities for the text. Their importance is chiefly collective, as showing which of two readings, where the leading uncials are divided, has been adopted in the great mass of later copies. In the Variorum Bible it has rightly been thought best to omit all mention of them, as needlessly cumbering the critical notes. The vast majority of cursives contain substantially the same type of text, that, naniiely, which appears in the received text and is translated in our Authorised Version. The cursives which appear to contain a better and an older form of the text, approxi mating to that of the leading uncials, are those known as Act. 61 and Evan. 33 ( = Act. 13 = Paul. 17) ; next to these, Evan. 1, 13, 81, 157, 209 ; Act. 31, 44, 137, 180. 2. Versions. — The most important versions, or translations of the New Testament into other languages, are the Syriac, Egyptian, and Latin. They wiU be described in detaU in the next chapter but one, but a short statement of their respective dates is necessary here, in order that we may understand the history of the New Testament text. As soon as Christianity spread beyond the borders of Palestine there was a necessity for translations of the Scriptures * F}van,. stands for Evangelium, the Latin form of the Greek word which we translate " Gospel." 104 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. into all these languages. Syria was the nearest neighbour of Palestine, Egypt a prominent literary centre and the home of many Jews, while Latin was the language of Africa and Italy and the West of Europe generaUy. At first, no doubt. Christian instruc tion was given by word of mouth, but in the course of the second century written translations of most, at any rate, of the New Testament books had been made in these languages ; and these versions are of great value to us now, since from them we can often gather what reading of a disputed passage was found in the very early copies of the Greek Testament from which the original translations were made. In Striac four versions are known to have been made : (1) the Old Syriac, of the Gospels only ; (2) the Peshitto, the standard translation of the whole Bible into Syriac ; (3) the HarUeian, a revision made by Thomas of Harkel in A.D. 616 of an earlier version made in a.d. 508- ; (4) th.^ Pales tinian, an independent version from the Greek, extant vn fragments only, and of doubtful date. Of these the Old Syriac and the Peshitto are much the most important. In Egypt no less than five versions were current in different dialects of the Coptic of native tongue, but only two of these 'are at present known to be Important for critical purposes : (1) the Memphitic or Bohairic, belonging to Lower Egypt ; (2) the Thebaic or Sahidie, of Upper Egypt. Both of these appear to have been made about the beginning of the third century, or perhaps eariier ; but the Thebaic exists only in fragments. The Latin versions are two in number, both of great importance : (1) the Old Latin, made early m the second century, and extant (though only in fragments) m three somewhat varying shapes, known respectively as African, Euro pean, and Italian ; (2) the Vulgate, which is the revision of the Old Latin by St. Jerome at the end of the fourth century. Other early translations of the Scriptures exist in various languages- Armenian, Ethiopian, Arabic, and Gothic ; but these are neither so early nor so important as those we have mentioned. The Old Syriac, Peshitto, Memphitic, Thebaic, Old Latin, and Vulgate versions are referred to in the notes of the Variorum Bible, and THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 105 they are unquestionably the most important of the versions for the purposes of textual criticism. 3. Fathers. — The evidence of early Christian writers for the text of the New Testament begins to be available about the middle of the second century. The most important are Justin Martyr (died a.d. 164) ; Tatian, the author of a famous Harmony of the Gospels, recently recovered in an Arabic translation (died a.d. 172) ; IrenEeus, bishop of Lyons, who flourished about a.d. 178 ; Clement of Alexandria, at the end of the century ; Hippolytus of Rome and Origen of Alexandria, in the first half of the third century ; and the two great Latin writers of Africa, Tertullian and Cyprian, the former at the beginning of the third century, and the latter about the middle of it. Later still we have the great scholars, Eusebius of Csesarea in the first half of the fourth century, and Jerome in the second. The evidence of the Fathers has, however, to be used with care. As has been already explained (p. 16), copyists were liable to alter the words of a Scriptural quotation in the Fathers into the shape most famiUar to themselves, so that the evidence of a Father is less trustworthy when it is in favour of a commonly accepted reading than when it is against it ; and further, the early writers were apt to quote from memory, and so to make verbal errors. When, however, we can be sure that we have a quotation in the form in which the Father actuaUy wrote it (and the context sometimes makes this certain), the evidence is of great value, because the Father must have been copying from a manuscript of the Bible much older than any that we now possess. There is also this further advantage, that we generally know in what part of the world each of the Fathers was writing, and so can tell in what country certain corruptions of the text began or were most common. This is a very important consideration in the part of the inquiry to which we are now coming. Now when we have got all this formidable array of authorities, — our three thousand Greek manuscripts, our versions in half-a- dozen languages, and aU the writings of the Fathers — what more can be done ? Are we simply to take their evidence on each 106 OUR -BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. disputed passage, tabulate the authorities for each various reading, and then decide according to the best of our judgment which reading is to be preferred in each several case ? WeU, very much can be, and very much has been done by this method. Allowing proper weight for the superior age of the leading uncial manu scripts, so that the evidence of the uncials shall not be overborne by the numerical preponderance of late cursives, a mere statement of the authorities on either side wUl often be decisive. Thus, if we find in Mark 7. 19 that eight of the later uncials and hundreds of cursives have the received reading, " purging all meats," whQe it. A, B, E, F, G, H, L, S, X, A, and three Fathers have a slight variety which gives the sense, "This he said, making aU meats clean," no one will doubt that the superiority, both of authority and of sense, is on the side of the latter, even though the numerical preponderance of MSS. is with the former ; and consequently we find that aU editors and the Revised Version have rejected the received reading. This is only one instance out of a great many, which the reader of the Variorum Bible or of any critical edition can easily pick out for himseU, in which a simple inspection of the authorities on either side and of the intrinsic merit of the alternative readings is sufficient to determine the judgment of editors without hesitation. But is it possible to go beyond this ? Can we, instead of simply estimating our authorities in order of their age, arrange them into groups which have descended from common an- of autiorifies. cestors, and determine the age and character of each group ? It is obvious that no manuscript can have greater authority than that from which it is copied, and that if a hundred copies have been taken, directly or indirectly, from one manuscript, while five have been taken from another which is older and better, then if we find the hundred supporting one reading, while the five support another, it is the five and not the hundred which we ought to foUow. In other words, the number of manuscripts in a group which has a common parentage proves nothing, except that the form of text represented by that THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 107 group was preferred in former times ; which may or may not be an important factor of the evidence. It does not in itself prove superiority in either age or merit. The question then arises, is it possible to arrange the authorities for the text of the New Testa ment in groups of this kind ? The general answer of critics, tacitly at least, has been. No. It has been very rare, in the history of Biblical criticism, to find an editor forming his manuscripts into groups. They have generally been content to use the best manuscripts that were avaUable to them, and to judge each on its own merits, or even, at times, to decide every question according to numerical preponderance among a small number of selected manuscripts. One critic of earlier days, however, Griesbach by name, at the end of the last century, essayed the task of grouping, and two distinguished Cambridge scholars of our own day, Hort's'theory. Bishop Wcstcott and the late Professor Hort, have renewed the attempt with much greater success. They believe that by far the larger number of our extant MSS. can be shown to contain a revised (and less original) text ; that a comparatively small group has texts derived from manu scripts which escaped, or were previous to, this revision ; and that, consequently, the evidence of this small group is almost always to be preferred to that of the great mass of MSS. and versions. It is this theory, which has been set out with conspicuous learning and conviction by Dr. Hort, that we propose now to sketch in brief ; for it appears to mark an epoch in the history of New Testamenlj criticism. An examination of passages in which two or more different readings exist shows that one small group of authorities, consisting of the uncial manuscripts B, K, L, a few cursives MSS.^in^N.T. ^"^^ ^^ Evan. 33, Act. 61, and the Memphitic and Thebaic versions, is generally found in agree ment ; another equally clearly marked group consists of D, the Old Latin and Old Syriac versions, and cursives 13, 69, 81 of the Gospels, 44, 137, and 180 of the Acts, and Evst. 39, with a few 108 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. others more intermittently ; while A, C (generally), the later uncials, and the great mass of cursives and the later versions form another group, numericaUy overwhelming. Sometimes each of these groups will have a distinct reading of its own ; sometimes two of them will be combined against the third ; sometimes an authority which usually supports one group will be found with one of the others. But the general division into groups remains constant and is the basis of the present theory. Next, it is possible to distinguish the origins and relative priority of the groups. In the first place, many passages occur „ , . , in which the first group described above has one or "conflate" reading, the second has another, and the third combines the two. Thus in the last words of St. Luke's Gospel (as the Variorum Bible shows), N, B, 0, L, with the Memphitic and one Syriac version, have "blessing God " ; D and the Old Latm have " praising God " ; but A and twelve other uncials, all the cursives, the Vulgate and other versions, have " praising and blessing God." Instances like this occur, not once nor twice, but repeatedly. Now it is in itself more probable that the combined reading in such cases is later than, and is the result of, two separate readings. It is more likely that a copyist, finding two different words in two or more manu scripts before him, would put down both in his copy, than that two scribes, finding a combined phrase in their originals, would each select one part of it alone to copy, and would each select a different one. The motive for combining would be praiseworthy,— the desire to make sure of keeping the right word by retaining both ; but the motive for separating would be vicious, since it involves the deliberate rejection of some words of the sacred text. More over we know that such combination was actually practised ; for, as has been stated above, it is a marked characteristic of Lucian's edition of the Septuagint. At this point the evidence of the Fathers becomes important as to both the time and the place of origin of these combined (or as Dr. Hort technically caUs them "conflate") readings. They THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 109 are found to be characteristic of the Scripture' quotations in I c r fo of ^^^ works of Chrysostom, who was bishop of groups by aid Antioch in Syria at the end of the fourth cen tury, and of other writers in or about Antioch at the same time ; and thenceforward it is the predominant text in manuscripts, versions, and quotations. Hence this type of text, the text of our later uncials, cursives, early printed editions, a,nd Authorised Version, is believed to have taken its rise in or near Antioch, and is known as the " Syrian " text. The type found in the second of the groups above described, that headed by D, the Old Latin and Old Syriac, is called the " Western " text, as being especially found in Latin manuscripts and in those which (like D) have both Greek and Latin texts, though, it is certain that it had its origin in the East, probably in or near Asia Minor. There is another small group, earlier than the Syrian, but not represented continuously by any one MS. (mainly by C in the Gospels, A, C, in Acts and Epistles, with certain cursives and occasionally X and L), to which Dr. Hort gives the name of "Alexandrian." The remaining group, headed by B, may be best described as the "Neutral "text. Now among all the Fathers whose writings are left to us from before the middle of the third century (notably Irengeus, Hippo lytus, Clement, Origen, Tertullian, and Cyprian), readinls'^Mest. ^e find readings belonging to the groups described as Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral, but no distinctly Syrian readings. On the other hand we have seen that in the latter part of the fourth century, especially in the region of Antioch, Syrian readings are found plentifully. Add to this the fact that, as stated above, the Syrian readings often show signs of having been derived from a combination of non-Syrian readings, and we have strong confirmation of the belief, which is the corner stone of Dr. Hort's theory, that the Syrian type of text originated in a revision of the then existing texts, made about the end of the third century in or near Antioch. The result of accepting this conclusion obviously is, that where the Syrian text differs from 110 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. that of the other groups, it must be rejected as being of later origin, and therefore less authentic ; and when it is remembered that by far the greater number of our authorities contain a Syrian text, the importance of this conclusion is manifest. In spite of their numerical preponderance, the Syrian authorities must be relegated to the lowest place. Of the remaining groups, the Western text is characterised by considerable freedom of addition, and sometimes of omission. Whole verses, or even longer passages, are found ^ group.^™ ^^ manuscripts of this family, which are entirely absent from all other copies. Some of them will be found enumerated in the following chapter in the description of D, the leading manuscript of this class. It is evident that this type of text must have had its origin in a time when strict exactitude in copying the books of the New Testament was not regarded as a necessary virtue. In early days the copies of the New Testament books were made for immediate edification, without any idea that they would be links in a chain for the transmission of the sacred texts to a distant future ; and a scribe might innocently insert in the narrative additional details which he believed to be true and valuable. Fortunately the literary conscience of Antioch and Alexandria was more sensitive, and so this tendency did not spread very far, and was checked before it had greatly contaminated the Bible text. Western manuscripts often contain old and valuable readings, but any variety which shows traces of the characteristic Western vice of amplification or explanatory addition must be rejected, unless it has strong support outside the purely Western group of authorities. There remain the Alexandrian and the Neutral groups. The Alexandrian text is represented, not so much by any individual jj^g MS. or version, as by certain readings found " Alexandrian " scattered about in manuscripts which elsewhere be- group. long to one of the other groups. They are readings which have neither Western nor Syrian characteristics, and yet differ from what appears to be the earliest form of the text ; and THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Ill being found most regularly in the quotations of Origen, CyrU of Alexandria, and other Alexandrian Fathers, as well as in the Memphitic version, they are reasonably named Alexandrian. Their characteristics are such as might naturally be due to such a centre of Greek scholarship, since they affect the style rather than the matter, and appear to rise mainly from a desire for correctness of language. They are consequently of minor importance, and are not always distinctly recognisable. The Neutral text, which we believe to represent most nearly the original text of the New Testament, is chiefiy recognisable by the absence of the various forms of aberration noticed "^^^ ^mT^ ^^ ^'^^ other groups. Its main centre is at Alex andria, but it also appears in places widely removed from that centre. Sometimes single authorities of the Western group wUl part company with the rest of their family and exhibit readings which are plainly both ancient and non-Western, showing the existence of a text preceding the Western, and on which the Western variations have been grafted. This text must therefore not be assigned to any local centre. It belonged origi naUy to aU the Eastern world. In many parts of the East, notably in Asia Minor, it was superseded by the text which, from its transference to the Latin churches, we call Western. It remained pure longest in Alexandria, and is found in the writings of the Alexandrian Fathers, though even here sUght changes of language were introduced, to which we have given the name of Alexandrian. Our main authority for it at the present day is the great Vatican manuscript known as B, and' this is often supported by the equaUy ancient Sinaitic manuscript {a), and by the other manu scripts and versions named above (p. 107). Where the readings of this Neutral text can be plainly discerned, as by the concurrence of aU or most of these authorities, they may be accepted with con fidence in the face of all the numerical preponderance of other texts ; and in so doing Ues our best hope of recovering the time words of the New Testament. The following diagram may perhaps serve to make more clear 112 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. the various groups of textual authorities, aU more or less divergent from the true and original text. It must be understood, however, that it is only a very rough approximation to the facts, the inter mixture of texts in aU extant manuscripts being far too compUcated to be represented by any diagram. The Western famUy is depicted on the left, the Syrian on the right, the Alexandrian and the Neutral between them. A.D. JOO 2(J0 300 400 sno600 . Ort^iruil Mt '5. rlost; Baxiytd. an Such is, in brief, the theory of Dr. Hort. Its importance in the history of the Bible text, especially in England, is evident when it „ is seen that it largely influenced the Revisers of Importance of _, ,. , .^., , ,„, -, -, . ^ "Westcott and our English Bible. The text underlymg the or s eory. jjgyjgg^ Version does not indeed go so far as that of Westcott and Hort in its departure from the received text and from the mass of manuscripts other than B, K, aiid their fellows ; but it is unquestionable that the cogent arguments of the Cam bridge Professors had a great effect on the Revisers, and most of the leading scholars of the country have given in their allegiance to the theory. It is indeed on these lines alone that progress in Biblical criticism is possible. The mere enumeration of authorities for and against a disputed reading, — the acceptance of the verdict of a majority — is plainly impossible, since it would amount to con- THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 113' structing our text from the latest and least original MSS. To select a certain number of the earUest MSS. and count their votes alone (as was done by Lachmann) is better ; but .this too is un critical, and involves the shutting of our eyes to much light which is at our service. To estimate the intrinsic merit of each reading in a disputed passage, taking into account the general predominance of 'good authorities on one side or the other, is better still, and good critics have gone far by this method ; but it stiU leaves much to the personal taste and judgment of the critic, which in the last resort can never be convincing. Only if our authorities can be divided into groups — if their genealogical tree, so to speak, can be traced with some approach to certainty, so that the earlier branches may be distinguished from the later, — only so is there any chance of our criticism advancing on a sound basis and being able to com mand a general assent. It is, however, only fair to admit that Dr. Hort's theory has not been accepted by all competent judges, and that some, notably Dr. Scrivener and Dean Burgon, are vehemently opposed to it {are, we may say, for though they, like the great scholar whom they criticised, have passed away from earth, their opinions and their writings live on). . The main difficulty (and it is a real one) in the theory is that there is ab solutely no historical confirmation of the Syrian revision of the text, which is its corner-stone. It is rightly urged that it is very strange to find no reference among the Fathers to so important an event as an official revision of the Bible text and its adoption as the standard text throughout the Greek world. We know the names of the scholars who made revisions of the Septuagint and of the Syriac version ; but there is no trace of those who carried out the far more important work of fixing the shape of the Greek New Testament. Is not the whole theory artificial and illusory, the vain imagining of an ingenious mind, Uke so many of the pro ducts of modern criticism, which spins endless webs out of its own interior, to be swept away to-morrow by the ruthless broom of common sense ? S 2764. H 114 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Against this indictment may be placed the consideration that even if we can find no historical reference to a re-vision, yet the critical reasons which indicated the separation of of "hjections" ^^'^ Syrian text from the rest, and its inferiority in date, remain untouched. We still have the groups of authorities habitually found in conjunction ; we still have the fact that the readings of the group we have called Syrian are shown by their intrinsic character to be probably later than the non-Syrian ; and we stiU have the fact that readings of the Syrian type are not found in any authorities earlier than about A.D. 250. Unless these facts can be controverted, the division into groups and the relative inferiority of the Syrian group must be considered to be established. At the same time, if it is permissible to suggest a modification of Dr. Hort's theory, it does seem possible that the formal revision of the sacred text in or about Antioch may be a myth. Dr. Hort himself divides the revision into two stages, separated by some interval of time, and thus doubles the difficulty of accounting for the total absence of any mention of a revision. It seems possible that the Syrian text is the result rather of a process continued over a considerable period of time than of a set revision by constituted authorities. In the com paratively prosperous days of the third century the Church had. leisure to collect and compare different copies of the Scriptures hitherto passing without critical examination. At a great centre of Christianity, such as Antioch, the principle may have been established by general consent that the best way to deal with di vergencies of readings was to combine them, wherever possible, to smooth away difficulties and harshnesses, and to produce an even and harmonious text. Such a principle might easily be adopted by the copyists of a single neighbourhood, and so lead in time to the creation of a local type of text, just as the Western text must be supposed to have been produced, not by a formal revision, but by the development of a certain way of dealing with the text in a certain region. The subsequent acceptance of the Antiochian or Syrian type as the received text of the Greek New Testament THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 115 would be due to the action of Constantine on the adoption of Christianity by the Empire. The fifty copies which Eusebius of Csesarea caused to be made at the Emperor's command for the churches of Constantinople would naturaUy follow the texts current in his own neighbourhood and represented in the library of Pam philus which existed at Caesarea. But since Antioch was probably in more intimate connection with Syria and Palestine than was Alexandria, these texts would most naturally be of the Syrian type ; and when Constantinople and Antioch led the way, the rest of the Greek world would be likely to follow. It is at any rate certain that this one type of text predominated in the Eastern world from the fifth century onwards ; that the Greek manuscripts which found their way westward at the close of the Middle Ages were entirely of this class, and that it was from these that the " received text " of the Greek Scriptures was con structed in the early days of printed editions. On the basis of this text our Authorised Version was made ; and it stiU survives in aU the ordinary printed copies of the Greek Testament. Only within the last two centuries, and especiaUy within the last fifty years, has the attempt been seriously made to use all the available materials in order to correct this text and to get back as nearly as may be to the original language of the sacred books. It is always possible, and not even improbable, that the soU of Egypt, so fertile in dis coveries, may yet be preserving for us copies on papyrus earlier than any manuscripts which we now possess ; but, except for such external aid, the best hope for progress in textual criticism appears to lie along the track that has been opened out by the genius and learning of Dr. Hort. H 2 ( 116 ) APPENDIX TO CHAPTEE VI XHE CHIEF EDITIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. THE earliest printed editions of the New Testament — those of Erasmus, Ximenes, Stephanus, and Beza — have been men tioned in the preceding chapter (pp. 98, 99), and there would be Uttle profit or interest in a list of aU the editions which have folio w'ed these down to the present day. But since certain editors stand out above their feUows by reason of their exceptional services towards the improvement of the text, and their opinions are often quoted among the authorities presented to the student in critical editions, it may be useful to give (mainly from the more detaUed histories of TregeUes and Scrivener) some sUght record of their labours, and of the principles adopted by them. It will not be inappropriate, in a history of the Bible text, to record the names of those who have especially devoted their lives to the task of freeing it from the errors of past ages, and the restoration of it, as near as may be, to its original truth.] There are two steps in this operation ; first, the collection of evidence, and, secondly, the using of it. The " received text," as shown above, was based on the comparison of a few manuscripts, mostly of late date, and for more than a century the most pressing need was the examination of more and better manuscripts. Brian Walton, afterwards Bishop of Chester, led the way in 1657, by publishing in his Polyglott Bible the readings of fourteen hitherto unexamined MSS., including the uncials. A, D, and Dg ; but the real father of this department of textual criticism is John Mill (1645-1710), of Queen's College, Oxford. MUl, in 1707, reprinted Stephanus' text of 1550, with only accidental divergencies, but added the various readings of nearly 100 manuscripts, and thereby provided all subsequent scholars with a broad basis of established evidence. Richard Bentlet (1662-1742), the most famous of all EngUsh classical scholars, planned a critical edition of the New Testament in both Greek and Latin, and to that end procured THE CHIEF EDITIONS OF THE NEW IESTAMENT. 117 coUations of a large number of good manuscripts in both lan guages ; but an increasing sense of the complexity of the task, and the distraction of other occupations, prevented the completion of his work, and his masses of materials proved of little use. He had, however, stimulated others to carry on the task he left un finished, and J. J. Wetstein (1693-1754), of Basle, who had originally worked for Bentley, made very large additions to the stores of manuscript evidence. His New Testament, published in 1751-2, quotes the readings of more than 300 MSS., including nearly all those which are now recognised as being of the greatest value. To this list some seventy more were added by C. F. Matth^i (1744-1811). Meanwhile other scholars had begun to turn their attention to the use of the materials thus collected ; and the pioneer of critical method was J. A. Bengbl, of Tiibingen (1687-1752). To this scholar belongs the honour of having been the first to divide the manuscripts of the New Testament into groups. The great majority of MSS. he assigned to a group which he called the Asiatic, though its headquarters were at Constantinople, while the few better ones were classed as African. Bengel did not, however, advance far with this principle, and the first working out of it must be assigned to J. J. Griesbach (1745-1812), who made a careful classification of MSS. into three groups, the Alexandrian, the Western, and the Byzantine. These groups roughly correspond to the Neutral, Western, and Syrian groups of Dr. Hort, of whom Griesbach is the true forerunner. On the basis of this classifica tion Griesbach drew up lists of readings which he regarded as, in greater or less degree, preferable to those of the received text, and so paved the way for the formal construction of a revised Greek Testament. So far all editors had been content to reprint the received text of the New Testament, merely adding their coUections of various readings in foot-notes ; but with the nineteenth century a new departure was made, and we reach the region of modern textual criticism, of which the principle is, setting aside the "received 118 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. text," to construct a new text with the help of the best authorities now available. The author of this new departure was C. Lachmann (1793-1851), who published in 1842-50 a text constructed accord ing to principles of his own devising. Out of all the mass of manuscripts collected by Mill, Wetstein, and their colleagues, he selected a few of the best (A, B, C, and sometimes D, with the fragments P, Q, T, Z, in the Gospels ; D, E2, in the Acts ; D2, G3, H3, in the PauUne Epistles ; together with some of the best MSS. of the Latin Vulgate, and a few of the Fathers), and from these he endeavoured to recover the text of the New Testament as it was current in the fourth century (when the earliest of these authorities were written) by the simple method of counting the authorities in favour of each reading, and always foUowing the majority. Lachmann's method was too mechanical in its rigidity, and the list of his authorities was too small ; at the same time his use of the best authorities led hiih to many unquestionable im provements on the received text. Lachmann was foUowed by the two great Biblical critics of the last generation, Tischendorf and Tregelles, who unite in themselves the two distinct streams of textual criticism, being eminent alike in the coUection and the use of evidence. A. F. C. Tischendorf (1815-1874) published no fewer than eight editions of the Greek New Testament, with an increasing quantity of critical material in each ; and the last of these (1864-72, with prolegomena on the MSS., versions, etc., by Gregory, in 1884-94) remains stUl the standard coUection of evidence for the Greek text. Besides this, he pubUshed trustworthy editions of a large number of the best individual manuscripts, crowning the whole with his great discovery and pubUcation of the Codex Sinaiticus, as described in the next chapter. Tischendorf's services in the publication of texts (mcluding X, C, D^, E^, L, and many more of the Greek New Testament, with the Codex Amia tinus of the Latin) are perfectly inestimable, and have done more than anything else to estabUsh textual criticism on a sound basis. His use of his materials, m his revisions of the New Testament text, is less satisfactory, owing to the considerable fluctuations in THE CHIEF EDITIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 119 his judgments between one edition and the next ; but here, too, his work has been very useful. S. P. Tregelles (1813-^1875) published only two MSS. in full, but collated very many with great accuracy, and used his materials with judgment in the preparation ofare.ised text. Like Lachmann, he based his text exclusively on the ancient authorities ; but he used a larger number of them, paid much attention to the versions and Fathers, and did not tie himself down to obedience to a numerical majority among his witnesses. Like Tischendorf, he followed no principle of grouping in his use of his authorities, so that his choice of readings is liable to depend on personal preference among the best attested variants ; but his experience and judgment were such as to entitle his opinion to very great weight. Of Westcott and Hort we have spoken at length in the pre ceding chapter, showing how they revived Griesbach's principle, and worked it out with greater elaboration and with a far fuller command of material. Their names close, for the present, the list of editors of the Greek New Testament whose attention has been directed especiaUy to its text rather than (as with Alford, Lightfoot, Weiss, and others) its interpretation. It is right, how ever, to mention the names of one or two scholars who have devoted their attention to textual studies without actually publish ing revised texts of their own. Chief among these is F. H. A. Scrivener, who, besides editing the manuscripts D and Fj and collating a number of cursives, wrote, in his Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, the standard history of the New Testament text. J. W. Burgon, Dean of Chichester, was another scholar of immense industry, learning, and zeal in textual matters, although his extreme distaste for innovations led him to oppose, rightly or wrongly, nearly every new departure in this field or in any other. To Scrivener and Burgon may especially be attributed the defence of the principle that all the available authorities should, so far as possible, be taken into consideration, and not only the most ancient. They attached much weight to the evidence of the great mass of MSS. headed by A and C, while they opposed the 120 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. tendency of Westcott and Hort, and their foUowers, to defer almost invariably to the testimony of B and K. In this respect they are supported by J. B. M^Clellan, who published in 1875 an English version of the Gospels, based upon a revision of the Greek, in which internal probabiUty is taken as the most trustworthy guide in the selection between disputed readings ; a principle which leaves much to the individual judgment, and in curs the danger of determining what it is right that God's Word should say, instead of patiently examining to see what it does say. The foregoing list includes all the editors whom the reader may expect to find often quoted, in any textual commentary on the Bible which he is likely to use, and may, it is hoped, help him to understand the principles on which their opinions are given. To the reader who wishes to find a statement of the evidence on aU important passages in the New Testament, without wading through such a mass of material as that pro vided by Tischendorf, the following hints may be useful. The Cambridge school Greek Testament, edited by Scrivener, gives the received text, with notes stating the readings adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, TregeUes, Westcott and Hort, and the Revised Version of 1881. The Oxford Greek Testament, which contains the received text as edited by Bishop Lloyd in 1828, has recently been provided by Prof. Sanday with an appendix contam- ing an admirable selection of various readings, and a statement of the principal manuscripts, versions. Fathers, and editors in favour of each, and, in addition, a complete coUation of the text of West cott and Hort. This may be confidently recommended to students who wish for a handy critical edition of the Greek text. FinaUy, the student who prefers to use the English Bible wiU find a simi lar coUection of evidence, amply sufficient for aU practical purposes, and excellently selected by Prof. Sanday and Mr. R. L. Clarke, m the notes to the Variorum Bible ; where he wUl likewise find notes which summarize the best opinions on the translation, as weU as the text, of the most important passages about which there is any doubt. ( 121 ) CHAPTEE VII. THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. THE romance of Biblical criticism is to be found in connection with the history of the manuscripts, and especially of the ^ost ancient of them, from which the best of our knowledge is derived. Their fortunes, even in comparatively modern days, have often been full of interest ; and from their venerable pages wfe can spell out something of their history in the distant ages in which they first saw the light. In this chapter we shall trace the history of a few of the most important of them, and shall give facsimiles of their outward appearance ; so that to the reader who studies the pages of a critical Greek text or the Variorum edition of the English Bible, the symbols {<, A, B, C, D, and the rest which pervade its notes may be no longer meaningless combinations of letters, but may stand for separate books which he knows individually, and whose characteristics and peculiarities he has studied. : It has already been stated (p. 101) that Greek manuscripts are divided into two classes, known, according to the manner of their writing, as uncials or cursives ; and that of these the uncials are at once the oldest and the most important. The uncials are known, for the sake of brevity, by the capital letters of the alphabet, though each of them possesses some special name as weU. We shall now proceed to describe the best of them in the order of their alphabetical precedence. Some of them we have met already in our catalogue of the manuscripts of the Septuagint. K. Codex Sinaiticus ; the last found of aU the flock, yet one of the most important, and therefore (since the letters of the common alphabet had been already- appropriated for other manuscripts) designated by its discoverer by the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph. The discovery, of this manuscript, fifty-one 122 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. years ago, was the supreme triumph of the great BibUcal scholar, Constantine Tischendorf. In the year 1844 he was traveUing in the East in search of manuscripts, and in the cou^ of his travels he visited the monastery of St. Catherine at Mount" Sinai. He was taken into the library, and after surveying the books on the shelves he noticed a basket containing a large number of stray pages of manuscripts, among which he was astounded to behold several leaves of the oldest Greek writing he had ever set eyes on, and, as a short inspection proved, containing parts of the Greek Bible. No less than forty-three such leaves did he extract, and the librarian casuaUy observed that two basket loads of simUar waste paper had already been used to Ught the fires of the monastery. It is therefore not surprising that he easily obtained permission to keep the leaves which he had picked up ; but when he discovered that some eighty more leaves of the Old Testament from the same manuscript were also in existence, difficulties were made about letting him see them ; and he had to content himself with informiog the monks of their value, and entreating them to light their fires with something less precious. ) Hfe theri\ returned to Europe, and having presented his treasure to his severely. King Frederic Augustus of Saxony, pubUshed its contents under the name of the Codex Friderico-Augustanus. These forty-three leaves belonged, like all that Tischendorf had yet seen or heard of, to the Old Testament, containing portions of 1 Chronicles and Jeremiah, ' -with Nehemiah and Esther- complete ; they are now, as we have seen (p. 59), at Leipzig, separated from the rest of the volume to which they once belonged. In 1853 he returned to Sinai ;^bur his former warning, and perhaps the interest aroused in Europe by the discovery, had made the monks cautious, and he could hear nothing more concerning the manuscript. In 1859 he visited the monastery once again, this time under the patronage of the Czar Alexander IL, the patron of the Greek Church ; but stiU his in quiries were met with blank negation, until one evening, only a few days before he was to depart, in the course of conversation with the steward of the monastery, he showed him a copy of his THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 123 recently published edition of the Septuagint. Thereupon the steward remarked that he too had a copy of the Septuagint, which he should like to show to his visitor. Accordingly he took him to his room, and produced a heap of loose leaves wrapped in a cloth ; and there before the astonished scholar's eyes lay the identical manuscript for which he had been longing. Not only was part of the Old Testament there, but the New Testament, complete from beginning to end. Concealing his feelings, he asked to be allowed to keep it in his room that evening to ex amine it ; leave was given, " and that night it seemed sacrilege to sleep." : Then the influence of the Russian Emperor was brought into play. It was represented to the monks that it would be a most appropriate step to present the manuscript to the great protector of their Church. This reasoning, backed bywhatever influence could be brought to bear, was successful ; Tischendorf' first obtained leave to have the manuscript sent after him to j Cairo and copy it there ; next to carry it with him to Russia for further study ; and finally to lay it as a gift (in return for which presents were made to the monks by the Russian Government) at the feet of the Czar at St. Petersburg, in the library of which capital it has thenceforth remained. >^ The romance of the Codex Sinaiticus was not yet over, however. Since the year 1856 an ingenious Greek, named Constantine Simonides, had been creating a considerable sensation by produc ing quantities of Greek manuscripts professing to be of fabulous antiquity, — such as a Homer in an almost prehistoric style of writing, a lost Egyptian historian, a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel on papyrus, written fifteen years after the Ascension (!), and other portions of the New Testament dating from the first century. These productions enjoyed a short period of notoriety, and were then exposed as forgeries. Among the scholars concerned in the exposure was Tischendorf ; and the revenge taken by Simonides was distinctly humorous. While stoutly maintaining the genuine ness of his own wares, he admitted that he had written one manuscript which passed as being very ancient, and that was the 124 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Codex Sinaiticus, the discovery of which had been so trium phantly proclaimed by Tischendorf ! The idea was ingenious, but it would not bear investigation. Apart from the internal evidence Of the text itself, the variations"^ which no forger, however dever. Could have invented, it was shown that Simonides could not have completed the task in the time which he professed to have taken ; and this Uttle cloud on the credit of the newly-discovered manu script rapidly passed away. Plate VIIL gives a general idea of the appearance of this manuscript. The ofiginal size of the page is 15 inches by 13^ inches. There are four narrow columns to each page (the only known instance of so many), and the eight columns thus presented to the reader when the volume is opened have much of the appear ance of the succession of columns in a papyrus roll ; and it is not at aU impossible that it was actually copied from such a roll. The veUum is made from the finest skins of antelopes, and is of excellent quality ; the writing is large, clear, and good, without any attempt at ornamentation. The MS. originally contained the whole Greek Bible, but, as has been stated above (p. 59), only a part of the Old Testament escaped the waste-paper basket of the Sinai monastery. The New Testament is complete, and at the end are added two apocryphal works, which for a long timQ. enjoyed almost equal credit -with the New Testament books, but finally faUed to obtain a position in the Canon, namely the Epistle of Barnabas and the " Shepherd " of Hermas, The original text has been corrected in many places, the various correctors being indica ted in critical editions as N*, K*, N", etc. The date of the manu script is in the fourth century, probably about the middle or end of it. It can hardly be earlier than a.d. 340, since the divisions of the text known as the Eusebian sections are indicated in the margin of the Gospels, in a hand evidently contemporaneous with the text ; and these sections, which are a device for forming a sort of Harmony of the Gospels, by showing which sections in each Gospel have paraUel sections in any of the others, were due to the scholar Eusebius, who died about a.d. 340. On the other handj PLATE VIII. ^11^ zf?^2 ;-|f' THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 125 the character of the writing shows that it can hardly be later than the fourth century. The oldest corrector, ^^% is not much later than the manuscript itself, and must have made his corrections from a very good and ancient copy. N'' is of the sixth century ; X«, a very active corrector, of the seventh ; the others, later and of smaU importance. A study of the facsimUe page wiU show something of the way in which manuscripts were written and corrected, besides providing a specimen of the readings of X in an important passage. The page contains Luke 22. 20-52, though it has been necessary to omit eight lines from the top of each column in the plate. In V. 22 (the first line of the plate), X has " for " (on) in place of the received text " and " ; and, as the note in the Variorum Bible shows, X is supported by B, D, and L among the prmcipal MSS., while A heads the mass of later uncials and cursives which' contain the "received'' reading. Of the editors. Tischendorf. TregeUes, M^Clellan, Westcott and Hort, and the Revised \ ersion foUow X, whUe Lachmann and Weiss are on the other side. In 1. 2 the scribe has accidentally omitted the little word ^ty, and has added it above the Une. At I. 14, which begins verse 24, wUl be seen an example of the usual procedure of {<{ in marking the beginning of a fresh paragraph by allo-wing the first letter to pro ject into the margin, but without any enlargement.. In 1. 15 the original scribe had written « 'A' -^ '• ST' I- si ¦3? -5 ' ^ 2i' r ". :C ^ ^- r> > y ¦* ''* c V 5 >' > ^ ?. << C 0 0 - i- 0?2 r r •' i « ;-2* w< M «/ fc - 5 - > i <^: :^ ; '.; « V V ,~ - . • .^ ^ •J 1-" y ; f' r y - 2 *— r, '^ '- ¦< : ' - V / i 'i i > /, V - - •¦i. it iyi.-. ¦ ho ¦:5> ; w V ** 2 r -- 'i i '' t - r V ¦%t - ¦l?'- ',¦¦-' ^ ^ i ,-' f6- ¦< 0 : 3 - «-- 0 iz; r ^ i 9 y r i ^ /. ; y i. - f- : 'J < ^ -i y V^ •y''- " >< - i -•< f i - ' 1 =^ < -^ ; i '' f. - " !^ ^ r i ^ ' '¦' i : THE MANU8CEIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 131 examination shows that the first and last parts of the passage origi nally occupied 1. 14, before the erasure ; but the words in italics are an addition which was not in the original text. They are also omitted {see the Variorum Bible foot-note) by X, B, C, L. with. the Curetonian Syriac and the Sahidie versions. They are found only in D, the corrections of A and C, and later MSS., and are thus inevitably omitted by nearly all the editors. With regard to verse 4 the distribution of evidence is different. It is omitted, like the former words, by X, B, C, the Curetonian Syriac, most MSS. of the Bohairic and the Sahidie versions ; and these are now joined by D, which in the previous case was on the other side. On the other hand, A and L have changed in the contrary direc tion, and are found to support the verse, in company with C°, the later uncials, and all cursives but three, the Old Latin and Vul gate, and the Peshitto Syriac. Thus the versions are fairly equally divided ; but K, B, C, D form a very strong group of early authority, as against A and the mass of later MSS. L and the Old Latin are, in fact, the only witnesses to the verse which can be considered as pre-Syrian, and consequently we find the Revised Version omits the verse, in common with Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort ; Lachmann and M^Clellan alone appearing on the other side. Specimens of scribes' errors and their corrections may be seen in 11. 1, 2, 26-28. In the former the words first -wi-itten have been erased, and the correct reading written above them ; in the latter, some words had been written twice over by mistake (Xeyej avten deXet; iyirn yevetrBat Xeyet avra SiXeif fyoj; yeveaSai aiteKpi9ri avTu). The whole passage (from the first yev^a-eai) has been erased, and then correctly re-written, with a slight variation {Xeyei for aic€Kjii6vi) ; but as the correct reading was much shorter than that originally written, a considerable space is left blank, as the facsimile shows. As regards the quality of the text preserved in the Codex Alexandrinus, it must be admitted that it does not stand quite so high as its two predecessors in age, X and B. Different parts of I 2 132 OUE BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. the New Testament have evidently been copied from different originals ; but in the Gospels, at any rate, A is the oldest and most pre-eminent example of that re-vised " Syrian " text which (to judge from the quotations in the Fathers) had become the predominant text as early as the fourth century. It will often be found at the head of the great mass of later uncials and cursives which support the received text ; and although it is much superior to the late cursives from which the " received text " was in fact derived, it yet belongs to the same class, and wiU be found oftener in agreement with the Authorised Version than -with the Revised. In the Acts and Epistles its text is predominantly Alexandrian, -with some Western readings ; in the Apocalypse it belongs to the Neutral type, and is probably the best extant MS. of that book. The Epistles of Clement, which are very valuable for the history of the early Church, having been written about the end of the first century, were untU quite recently not known to exist in any other manuscript. The Eusebian sections and canons, referred to above (p. 124), are indicated in the margins of the Gospels, which also exhibit the earliest example of a division into chapters. A similar di-vision of the Acts and Epistles, ascribed to EuthaUus of Alexandria, who -wrote about a.d. 458, is not found in this manu script ; and this is an additional reason for believing it not to have been written later than the middle of the fifth century. The Codex Alexandrinus was the first of the greater manuscripts to be made accessible to scholars. The Epistles of Clement were published from it by Patrick Young in 1683, the Old Testament by Grabe in 1707-1720, and the New Testament by Woide in 1786. In 1816-28 the Rev. H. H. Baber published the Old Testament in type resembUng as closely as possible the writmg of the original. FinaUy a photographic reproduction of the whole MS. was published m 1879-1883, under the editorskip of Mr. (now Sir) E. Maunde Thompson, the present Principal Librarian of the British Museum. , B. Codex Vaticanus, the most ancient and most valuable of all the manuscripts of the Greek Bible. As its name shows, it is in THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 133 the great Vatican Library at Rome, which has been its home since about the year 1450 (certainly before 1475). There is, therefore, no story to teU of the discovery of this MS. ; the interest which attaches to its history is of a different kind, and relates to ' the long struggle that was necessary before its contents were made accessible to scholars. For some reason which does not clearly appear, and which it is difficult to represent as very creditable to the heads of the Roman Church, the authorities of the Vatican Library put continual obstacles in the way of aU who wished to study it in detail. A correspondent of Erasmus in 1533 sent that scholar a number of selected readings from it, as proof of its superiority to the received Greek text. In 1669 a collation (or statement of its various readings) was made by Bartolocci, but it was never published, and remained unknown until 1819. Other imperfect coUations were made about 1720 and 1780. Napoleon carried the manuscript off as a prize of victory to Paris, where it remained tUl 1815, when the many treasures of which he had despoiled the libraries of the Continent were returned to their respective owners. While at Paris it was studied by Hug, and its great age and supreme importance were first fully made known ; but after its return to Rome a period of seclusion set in. In 1843 Tischendorf, after waiting for several months, was aUowed to see it for six hours. Next year De Muralt was permitted to study it for nine hours. In 1845 the great English scholar Tregelles was allowed indeed to see it but not to copy a word. His pockets were searched before he might open it, and aU writing materials were taken away. Two clerics stood beside him and snatched away the volume if he looked too long at any passage ! However, the Roman authorities now took the task in hand themselves, and in 1857 an edition by Cardinal Mai was published, which, however, was so inaccurate as to be almost useless. In 1866 Tischendorf once more applied for leave to edit the MS., but with difficulty obtained leave to examine it for the purpose of coUating difficult passages. Unfortunately the great scholar so far forgot himself as to copy out twenty pages in fuU, contrary to the conditions under 134 OUR BTBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. which he had been allowed access to the MS., and his permission -was naturally withdrawn. Renewed entreaty procured him six days longer study, maldng in all fourteen days of three hours each ; and by making the very most of his time Tischendorf was able in 1867 to publish the most perfect edition of the manuscript which had yet appeared. An improved Roman edition appeared in 1868-81 ; but the final and decisive publication was reserved for the years 1889-90, when a complete photographic facsimile of the whole MS.' made its contents once and for all the common property of aU scholars. ^ The Codex Vaticanus originally contained the entire Greek Bible, but it has suffered not a little from the ravages of time. The beginning has been lost, as far as Gen. 46. 28 ; in the middle. Psalms 106-138 have dropped out ; at the end, the latter part of Hebrews (from Chap. 9. 4), the Catholic Epistles, and the whole of the Apocalypse have disappeared.* Each page measures 10^ by 10 inches. The vellum is beautifuUy fine, and is said to be made from antelopes' skins. The writing {see Plate X.) is in small and deUcate uncials, perfectly simple and unadorned, with three columns to the page. There are no enlarged initials, no stops or accents, no divisions into chapters or sections such as are found in later MSS., but a different system of division peculiar to this manuscript. Unfortunately, the beauty of the original writing has been spoilt by a later corrector, who, thinking perhaps that the original ink was becoming faint, traced over every letter afresh, omitting only those letters and words which he believed to be incorrect. Thus it is only in the case of such words that we see the original writing untouched and uninjured. An example may be seen in the thirteenth and fourteenth lines from the bottom * The Codex -Vaticanus being deficient in the Apocalypse, the letter B is in the case of that book transferred to another MS. also in the Vatican, but much later in date, being of the eighth century. It is of some importance, as uncial MSS. of the Apocalypse are scarce ; but it must be remembered that its autho rity is by no means equal to that of the great manuscript to -which the letter B is else-where appropriated . THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 135 of the third column in our plate, where the corrector has not retouched the words Koya aweo-rtiXa avTovi; €i; Toy KOtrnov, which have been written twice over by mistake. One scribe wrote the whole of the MS., and, was also, as we have seen, employed on part of the Codex Sinaiticus. There are corrections by various hands, one of them (indicated as B^) being ancient and valuable. With regard to the^.date of the manuscript, critics are agreed in assign ing it to the fourth century ; and the identity of scribe between it and part of X shows that they are practically contemporary, though the more complete absence of ornamentation from B has generally caused it to be regarded as slightly the older. Over the character of the text contained in B a most embittered controversy has raged. It wUl have been noticed that it is only within quite recent years that N and B have emerged from their obscurity and have become generally known ; and it so happens that these two most ancient manuscripts differ markedly from the class of text represented by A, which up to the time of their appearance was held to be the oldest and best authority in existence. Hence there has been a natural reluctance to abandon' the ancient readings at the bidding of these two new-comers, imposing though their appearance may be ; and this is especially the case since the publication of Dr. Hort's theory, which assigns to these two manuscripts, and especially to B, a pre-eminence which is almost overwhelming. Dean Burgon tilted desperately against the text of Westcott and Hort, and even went so far as to argue that these two documents owed their preservation, not to the goodness of their text, but to its depravity, having been, so to speak, piUoried as examples of what a copy of the Scripture ought not to be ! In spite of the learning with which the Dean main tained his arguments, and of the support which equally eminent but more moderate scholars such as Dr. Scrivener gave to his conclusions, they have failed to hold their ground. Scholars in general believe B to be the chief evidence for the most ancient form of the New Testament text, and it is clear that the Revisers of our EngUsh Bible attached the greatest weight to its authority. 136 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Even where it stands alone, or almost alone, its evidence must be treated with respect ; and such readings not unfrequently find a place in the margin of the Revised Version. One notable instance, the omission of the last twelve verses of St. Mark, has been men tioned in 'speaking of the Codex Sinaiticus ; others wUl be found recorded in the notes to the Variorum Bible, or in any critical edition of the Greek New Testament. The page exhibited in our facsimile contains John 16. 27 — 17. 21. Six lines have been omitted from the top of the plate-. It was chosen especially as showing a good example of the untouched writing of the MS., as described above ; but it also contains several interesting readings. In 16. 27 it has "the Father " instead of " God " ; and the note in the Variorum Bible informs us that B is here supported by the original text of C, and by D and L. On the other hand, it is opposed by the original text of X (both {,{ and C have been altered by later correctors), and by A and A. Most of the later MSS. foUow the latter group ; the versions and Fathers are divided. The evidence is thus very evenly divided, and so, consequently, are the editors ; Tischendorf, M'Clellan, and Weiss retaining the "received " reading, " God," while Lachmann, Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort follow B. The Revisers have done the same, being probably influenced by the fact that the evidence in support of the word "Father" comes from more than one group of authorities, B and L being Neutral, D Western, and C mixed, while the Coptic versions, which also support it, are Alexandrian. This is a good instance of an evenly balanced choice of readings. In 16. 33 the received reading " shall have " is supported only by D and the Latin versions, while X A, B, C, and nearly all the other uncials and versions read " have " ; so that practically all editors adopt the latter reading. In 17. 11 another instance occurs of an overwhelming majority in favour of a change, the received reading being supported only by a correction in D and by the Vulgate, while x» A, B, C, L, and aU editors read " keep them in thy name which thou hast given me." In the next verse, X, B, G, D, L (all the best MSS. except A, lATE X. H ¦-5 2 L » r '^ --J , ' ¦ '.'"'is O * L ;.- 3,'..o s .,\^ -' r s- y. 9-y~'\: 2- 'O >.,;•«,.,-,; .... o .... )->.i. 3 ^UZ'O'O-'* O'3'h 0 s i, 0 s; o o 2 ¦<¦ ; 11 c yj !!)¦',< I •< 3 ~ '3, I ^ 7 - L° '¦ ; 2,-0' >,^ y < :^ .i1L'-.i i-c 3-z- t 0 1^ ? ^ t I- < 2 i op 2 u t 3 r 0 z •* £ >-¦ 0 5-< ¦ O'Q III 0 - 3 Z^'i'Q -4 O, L..U<6 .< COO xWij :i ^ r I 2 iJ o "! .'-,0 3 3.=—'- Z^J S -1 -^ - » f'Q m f^.*4 * '.*. .¦¦^(0'3*3 '-'- 2 w 2 ti ¦8 <5o»vc r <« S ~ *o'3t'3 «-r^ ¦'- «,•' ^ -ctu o -cfaTi'S'ui 0 ^ 1- j. j- Cj'-'t'U' <-«' i- i9 ," 2 • - 1 o. 7 ~ ;' 5: u >< *- ,''U. -!¦.'¦} 1-: ... - * 1 ?i- J'j i's ^-i¦ wjji'i x^&'ii 5 y .-CM® ^ -^ 0 z - >-:c <*' re "'3 I. p ,^'J ,>^3 ^ r i-, -S h = I" ¦< •< 4 'w -5 s >-¦ ^.- r ? <- s --^ !- -^ ¦^:2-f2a, t( ;: 4 3-j 2HE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 137 and most of the versions) omit the words " in the world," which are found in A and the mass of cursiveSi Of the editors, only M"Clellan, preferring what he regards as internal probabUity to external evidence, retains the " received " reading. In the words which follow, a more complicated difference of opinion exists, for which referehce may be made to the Variorum Bible note. One reading is supported by A and D ; another by X° (the third corrector of J,') and the two chief Coptic versions ; a third by B, C, and L. Of the editors, Lachmann adopts the first reading, M^CleUan the second, and the others, including the Kevisers, the third. None of the variations here mentioned as occurring on this page of B is of first-rate importance, but they furnish a fair example of the sort of problems -with which the ^textual critic has to deal, and of the conflicting evidence of MSS. and the divergent opinions of editors. Finally, in v. lb (col. 3, 11. 19, 20 in the plate) there is a good example of a class of error to which, as mentioned above (p. 6), scribes were especially liable. The words to be copied were " I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them out of the evU " ; but when the scribe had -written the first "out of the," his eye wandered on to the second occurrence of these words, and he proceeded to write " evU " instead of " world," thus omitting several words, and producing nonsense. The correction of the blunder has involved the canceUing of some words in 1. 20 and the writing of others in the margin. Sometipies the omission of words in this way does not produce obvious nonsense, and then the error may escape notice and be perpetuated by being copied into other manuscripts. C. Codex Ephraemi, now in the National Library of Paris, having been brought from the East to Italy early in the sixteenth century, and taken from Italy to Paris by Queen Catherine de' Medici. This manuscript is a prominent instance of a fate which befeU many ancient books in the Middle Ages, before the introduc tion of paper into Europe. When vellum became scarce, a scribe who was unable to procure a sufficiency of it was apt to take some 138 OUE BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. manuscript to which he attached little value, wash or scrape off the ink as well as he could, and then write his book on the vellum thus partially cleaned. Manuscripts so treated are called palimpsests, from a Greek word implying the removal of the original writing. The Codex Ephraemi is a palimpsest, and derives its name from the fact that the later writing inscribed upon its veUum (probably in the twelfth century) consists of the works of St. Ephraem of Syria. Naturally to us the earlier writing in such a case is almost always the more valuable, as it certainly is in this case ; but it requires much labour and ingenuity, and often the application of chemicals, in order to discern the faded traces of the original ink; Attention was first called to the Biblical text underlying the works of St. Ephraem at the end of the seventeenth century. In 1716 a collation of the New Testament was made, at the instance of the great EngUsh scholar Richard Bentley ; but the first complete edition of it was due to the zeal and industry of Tischendorf, who published aU that was decipherable, both of the Old and of the New Testament,, in 1843-5. The original manuscript contained the whole Greek Bible, but only scattered leaves of it were used by the scribe of St. Ephraem's works, and the rest was probably destroyed. Only 64 leaves are left of the Old Testament ; of the New Testament there are 145 (out of 238), containing portions of every book except 2 Thes salonians and 2 John. It is written in a medium-sized uncial hand, in pages measuring 12^ inches by 9 J inches, and with only one column to the, page. The Eusebian sections and the division into chapters appear in the Gospels, but there are no traces of divisions in the other books. The writing is generaUy agreed to be of the fifth century, perhaps a little later than the Codex Alexandrinus ; and two correctors have left their mark upon the text, the first in the sixth century, and the other in the ninth. Of course it wUl be understood, in reference to other manuscripts as weU as this, that the readings of an early corrector may be as valuable as those of the manuscript itself, since they must have been taken from other copies then in existence. PLATE XI. W i.'l (?"" lOy^-o>t.'i lit ! vi i i;'C' Vr-; •¦¦i>'ii. i I \iii K ^Al (¦ iX\ .' M • '. ? I ¦'TS'rX-'i&j'i 1 ) vl.CL\l-kh»UU^l-»v Codex Ephraemi — Stii Cent. (Original size of page, 12j in. x 9^ w.; of part reproduced, 7} ere. x 9 in.) THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 139 The great age of C makes it extremely valuable for the textual criticism of the New Testament ; but it is less important than those which we have hitherto described, owing to the fact that it represents no one family of text, but is rather compounded from them all. Its scribe, or the scribe of one of its immediate an cestors, must have had before him manuscripts representing all the diffetent families which have been described above. Sometimes it agrees with the Neutral group of manuscripts, sometimes with the Western, not unfrequently with the Alexandrian, and perhaps oftenest with the Syrian. The page exhibited in Plate XI. con tains Matt. 20. 16-34 (eight lines being omitted from the bottom of the page), and a reference to the notes in the Variorum Bible wiU show that its readings here are of somp interest. In v. 16 it is the chief authority for the words, "for many be called but few chosen " ; in this case it is supported by D, but opposed by X and B, which omit the sentence (A is defective here). Similarly in verses 22 and 23 the words, " and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with," are found in C, E, and a multitude of later uncials and cursives, but are omitted by X> -B, D, L, Z, and most of the versions. In aU these cases the Eevised Version sides with X and B against C, and there can be little doubt that the Revisers are right, and that these readings of C are due to the habit (very common in the Syrian type of text) of introducing into the narrative of one Evangelist words and clauses which occur in the description of the same or simUar events in the others. D. Codex Bezae; in the University Library at Cambridge. This is undoubtedly the most curious, though certainly not the most trustworthy, manuscript of the New Testament at present known to us. It was probably written in the south of France, perhaps at Lyons. It was at Lyons in the year 1562, when Theodore Beza, the disciple of Calvin and editor of the New Testament (see p. 99), procured it, probably after the sack of the city by the Huguenots in that year ; and by Beza, from whom it derives its name, it was presented in 1581 to the University of 140 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Cambridge. It is remarkable as the first example of a copy of the Bible in two languages ; for it contains both Greek and Latin texts. It is also remarkable, as will be shown directly, on account of the many curious additions to and variations from the authentic text which it contains ; and no manuscript has been the subject of so many speculations or the basis of so many con? flicting theories. It was partially used by Stephanus in his edition of 1550 and by Beza in his various editions. After its acquisition by Cambridge it was coUated, more or less imperfectly, by various scholars in the 17th and 18th centuries, and pubUshed in full by Kipling in 1793. A new edition, with fuU annotations, was issued by Dr. Scrivener in 1864 ; and since that date two other Cambridge scholars. Professor Rendel Harris and Mr. Chase, have made careful studies of its text from rather different points of view, In size the Codex Bezae is smaller than the manuscripts hitherto described, its pages measuring ten inches by eight. The Greek and Latin texts face one another on opposite pages, the Greek being on the left hand, the Latin on the right. Each page con tains a single column, not -written continuously, as in the MSS. hitherto described, but in lines of varying length, the object (imperfectly attained, it is true) being to make the pauses of sense come at the end of a Une. It is written in uncials of rather large size, the Latin and Greek 'characters being made curiously alike, so that both pages have a similar general appearance at first sight. The writing is evidently in a style later than that of A or C, and it may be assigned with fair confidence to the sixth century. The manuscript has been corrected by many hands, including the original scribe himself ; some of the correctors are nearly contemporary with the original writing, others are much later. The existence of a Latin text is sufficient proof by itseU that the manuscript was written in the West of Europe, where Latin was the language of literature and daUy Ufe. In the East there would be no occasion for a Latin translation ; but in the West THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 141 Latin was the language which would be the most generaUy intel- Ugible, while the Greek was added because it was the original language of the sacred books. But Latin copies of the Scriptures existed long before this manuscript was written ; and then the question arises, whether the scribe has simply copied a Greek manuscript for his Greek pages and a Latin manuscript for his Latin, or whether he has taken pains to make the two versions correspond and represent the same readings of the original. On this point a rather curious division of opinion has arisen. It is tolerably clear that in the first instance independent Greek and Latin texts were used as the authorities to be copied, but it is also clear that the texts have been to some extent assimilated to one another ; and while Dr. Scrivener (and most scholars until recently) argues that the Latin has been altered to suit the Greek (and therefore ceases to be very valuable evidence for the text of the Old Latin version). Professor Rendel Harris maintains that the Greek has been altered to suit the Latin, and that therefore it is the Greek that is comparatively unimportant as evidence for the original Greek text. Striking evidence can be produced on both sides ; so that there seems to be nothing left but to conclude that both texts have been modified, which is in itself not an un reasonable conclusion. The general result is that the evidence of D, whether for the Greek or Latin texts, must be used with some caution ; and care must be taken to make sure that any apparent variation is not due to some modification introduced by the scribe. But the special interest of .Codex Bezae is not to be found so much in verbal variations as in wider departures from the normal text, in which there is no question of mere accommodations of language, but which can only be due to a different tradition. Codex Bezae, unlike the MSS. hitherto described, which are copies of the entire Bible, contains only the Gospels and Acts, with a few verses of the CathoUc Epistles, which originally preceded the Acts ; but in these portions of the New Testament it exhibits a very remarkable series of variations from the usual text. It is the 142 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS chief representative of the Western type of text, which, formerly supposed to have originated in the West, is now shown to have come into existence in Syria or Asia Minor, at a very early date indeed, probably near the beginning of the second century. The Church in Gaul {i.e. Prance) was closely connected with the Church of Asia Minor, from which it had been founded ; and it may have been in this way that this type of text passed from the East (where it left its mark in the Old Syriac version) to the West,' where it became the predominant form in the early ages of the Church. Its special characteristic, as explained above (p. 110), is the free addition, and occasionally omission, of words, sentences, and even incidents. One of these wUl be found in the page of the MS. reproduced in our Plate XII., containing Luke 5. 38 — 6. 9. The first word on the page shows that this manuscript' contains the last words of verse 38, " and both are preserved," which are omitted by X, B, and L, and after them by Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, and the Revised Version ; while A, C, and the mass of later MSS. agree with D, and are followed by Lachmann, Tregelles, and M^CleUan. Vei-se 39 is omitted altogether, both by D and by the Old Latin version {see note in Variorum Bible). At the end of 6. 9 the words oi Se tViawo* (" but they were silent ") are added by D alone ; and in place of verse 5, D alone inserts the foUowing curious passage (11. 16-20 in the plate) : " On the same day, seeing one working on the sabbath day, he said unto him, Man, if thou knowest what thoii doest, blessed art thou ; but if thou knowest not, thou art accursed and a transgressor of the law." This striking incident, which is con tained in no other manuscript or version, cannot be held to be part of the original text of St. Luke ; but it may weU be that ' it is a genuine tradition, one of the " many other things which Jesus did" which were not written in the Gospels. If this be so, one would forgive aU the liberties taken by this manuscript with the sacred text, for the sake of this addition to the recorded words of the Lord. It wiU be of interest to note some of the principal additions and XII. fc-'ru - •''4*1 "s. "s- THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 143 omissions found elsewhere in this remarkable manuscript. After Matt. 20. 28, D is the principal authority (being supported by one uncial, *, the Old Latin and Old Syriac versions, and a few copies of the Vulgate) for inserting another long passage : " But seek ye to increase from that which is small, and to become less from that which is greater. When ye enter into a house and are summoned to dine, sit not down in the highest places, lest perchance a more honourable man than thou shall come in afterwards, and he that bade thee come and say to thee, Go down lower ; and thou shalt be ashamed. But if thou sittest down in the worse place, and one worse than thee come in afterwards, then he that bade thee will say to thee. Go up higher ; and this shaU be advantageous for thee." Matt. 31. 44 ("and whosoever shaU fall on this stone," etc.) is omitted by D, one cursive (33), and the best copies of the Old Latin. In Luke 10. 42, D and the Old Latin omit the words, " one thing is needful, and." In Luke 28. 19, 20 the same authorities and the Old Syriac omit the second mention of the cup in the in stitution of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, thus reversing the order of administration of the elements. In Luke 24. 6, D and the Old Latin omit the words " He is not here, but is risen" ; they omit the whole of v. 12, with Peter's entry into the sepulchre ; they omit in v. 36 " and saith unto them. Peace be unto you " ; the whole of V. 40, " And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and his feet" ; in v. 51 the words "and was carried up into heaven " ; and in v. 52 the words " worshipped him and." In John 4. 9 the same authorities omit " for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans " ; this time with the support of >J. In Acts 15. 20 D omits " and from things strangled," and adds at the end of the verse " and that they should not do to others what they would not have done to themselves." In the narrative of St. Paul's niissionary journeys in Asia, this manuscript and its alUes have so many variations as to have suggested the idea that they represent a separate edition of the Acts, equally authentic but different ia date ; or else that they (or rather the source from which they are descended) embody touches of local detaU added by 144 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. a scribe who must ha-ve been a resident in the country and acquainted with the local traditions. Little changes of phrase, which the greatest Uving authority on the history and geography of Asia Minor declares to be more true and vivid than the ordinary text, are added to the narratives of St. Paul's visits to Lycaonia and Ephesus. Thus in ch. 19. 9, D adds the detail that St. Paul preached daily in the school of Tyrannus " from the fifth hour to the tenth." In ch. 19. 1 the text runs thus, quite differently from the verse which stands in our Bibles : " Now when Paul desired in his own mind to journey to Jerusalem, the Spirit spake unto him that he should turn back to Ephesus ; and passing through the upper parts he cometh to Ephesus, and finding certain disciples he said unto them." And when the evidence of D comes to an end, as it does at 22. 29, the other authorities usuaUy associated -with it continue to record a text differing equaUy remarkably from that which is recorded in the vast majority of manuscripts and versions. The instances which have been given are sufficient to show at once the interest and the freedom characteristic of the Western text, of which the Codex Bezae is the chief representative. It is not, however, to be supposed that it is always so striking and so independent. In many cases it is found in agreement with the Neutral text of B and X, when it no doubt represents the authentic words of the original. But space wiU not aUow us to dweU too long on any single manuscript, however interesting, and further information as to its readings can always be found by a study of any critical edition or of the notes to the Variorum Bible. Dj. Codex Claromontanus; in the National Library at Paris (Plate XIIL). It has been said that the Codex Bezae contains only the Gospels and Acts ; and consequently when we come to the Pauline Epistles the letter D is given to another manuscript, which contains only this part of the New Testament. Like the Codex Bezae it formerly belonged to Beza, having been found at Clermont (whence its name), in France, and hi 1656 it was bought for the Royal Library. Like the Codex Bezae, again, it PLATE XIII. THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 145- contains both Greek and Latin texts, written on opposite pages. Each leaf measures 9| inches by 7| inches, with very wide margins. It is written on beautifuUy fine vellum, in a very handsome style of writing, and (stiU like D of the Gospels) it is arranged in lines of irregular length, corresponding to the pauses in the sense. It is generally assigned to the sixth century, and was probably written in Africa, perhaps in Egypt. The Greek text is correctly written, the Latin has many blunders, and is more independent of the Greek than is the case in Codex Bezae, belonging to the African type of the Old Latin version. It has been corrected by no less than nine different hands, the fourth of which (about the ninth century) added the breathings and accents, as they appear in the plate.. The page shown con tains Rom. 7. 4-7. In verse 6 it has a reading different from that usually found : "But now we have been discharged from the law of death, wherein we were holden." The text of this Codex is distinctly Western, as might be expected from its containing a Latin version ; but Western readings in the Epistles are not so striking as we have seen them to be in the Gospels and Acts. The remaining uncial manuscripts of the New Testament may, and indeed must, be described more briefly ; but as they are sometimes referred to in the Variorum Bible, and of course oftener in critical editions of the Greek, a short notice of them seems to be necessary. E of the Gospels (Codex Basiliensis) is an eighth century copy of the four Gospels, at Basle, in Switzerland, containing, a good representation of the Syrian type of text, so that it will often be found siding with A. ' E of the Acts (Eg),' the Codex Landianus, is much more valu able, and is the most important Biblical MS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It is a manuscript of the sixth century, containing both Latin and Greek texts, the Latin being on the left and the Greek on: the right (unlike D and Dg).' It is written in large rough uncials, in lines of varying length, but containing S 2761. K 146 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. only one to three words each. Its text is Western, with a large admixture of Alexandrian readings. The history of this volume is interesting. An inscription contained in it shows that it was in Sardinia at some time in the seventh century. It was brought to England probably by Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canter bury, in 668. It was probably deposited by him in one of the great monasteries in the north of England, for it is practically certain that it was used by Bede in -writing his commentary on the Acts. At the dissolution of the monasteries it must have been turned loose on the world, like so many other treasures of uiestim- able value ; but ultimately it came into the hands of Archbishop Laud, and was included by him, in 1636, in one of his splendid gifts to the University of Oxford. E of the Pauline Epistles (B3) is merely a copy of D2, made at the end of the ninth century, when the text of D2 had already suffered damage from correctors. Hence it is of no independent value. Of the remaining manuscripts we shall notice only those which have some special value or interest. Many of them consist of fragments only, and their texts are for the most part less valu able. Most of them contain texts of the Syrian type, and are of no more importance than the great mass of cursives. They prove that the Syrian text was predominant in the Greek world, hut they do not prove that it is the most authentic form of the text. Some of the later uncials, however, contain earUer texts to a greater or less degree ; and these deserve a separate mention. L (Codex Eegius), in the National Library at Paris, is con spicuous among the later uncials for the antiquity of the text which it preserves, and it was probably copied from a very early manuscript. It is assigned to the eighth century, and contains the Gospels complete, except for a few smaU lacunas. It has a large number of Alexandrian readings (having in fact probably been -written in Egypt), but it is also in very great measure Neutral in its character, and it is very frequently found in con- THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 147 junction with B in readings which are now generally accepted as the best. One notable case in which its evidence is of special interest is at the end of St. Mark's Gospel. Like B and X it breaks off at the end of t;. 8 ; but unlike them it proceeds to give two alternative endings. The second of these is the ordinary vv. 9-20, but the first is a shorter one, which is also found in a small number of minor authorities : " But they told to Peter and his companions all the things that had been said unto them. And after these things the Lord Jesus himself also, from morning even untU evening, sent forth by them the holy and imperishable pro clamation of eternal salvation." It is certain that' this is not the original ending of St. Mark's Gospel, but it is very probably an early substitute for the true ending, which may have been lost through some accident,* or else not written at all. In any case it is interesting ais showing the independent character of L and increasing the general value of its testimony elsewhere. P (Codex Guelpherbytanus A) is a palimpsest of the sixth century, containing 518 verses from various parts of all four Gospels, over which have been -written some of the works of Isidore of Seville. It is now at Wolfenbiittel in Germany. Its text is partly Syrian, but contains some good readings. Q (Codex Guelpherbytanus B) is another palimpsest, of the fifth century, containing 247 verses from St. Luke and St. John ; it now forms part of the same volume as P, and its text is of the same general character. R (Codex Nitriensis) is a paUmpsest in the British Museum (Add. MS. 17,211), where it may be seen exhibited in the same case as the Codex Alexandrinus. It was brought from the convent of St. Mary Deipara, in the Nitrian Desert of Egypt. It contains 516 verses of St. Luke in a fine large hand of the sixth century, * Dr. Hort suggests that a leaf containing ot. 9-20 may have teen lost from an early copy of the second century ; but it must be observed that this implies that the manuscript -was -written in book form, -which is very improbable at that date. If it -were a papyrus roll, as is most likely, the end would be in the inside of the roll, and therefore not exposed to much risk of damage. K 2 148 X)UR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. over which a Syriac treatise by Severus of Antioch has been -written in the eighth or ninth century. Its text is distinctly valu- , able, and it contains a large proportion of pre-Syrian readings. T (Codex Borgianus), in the Propaganda at Rome, is peculiar as containing both Greek and Coptic texts, the latter being of the Thebaic or Sahidie version. It is only a fragment, or rather several small fragments, containing 179 verses of St. Luke and St. John. It is of the fifth century, and contains an almost en tirely Neutral text, with a few Alexandrian corrections. Dr. Hort ranks it next after B and X for excellence of text. Several frag ments of other Grseco-Coptic MSS. have since been discovered of lesser size and importance. Z (Codex Dublinensis) is a palimpsest, consisting of 32 leaves, containing 295 verses of St. Matthew in writing of the sixth or possibly the fifth century, over which some portions of Greek Fathers were written in the tenth century. It was evidently written in Egypt, in a very large and beautiful hand. Its text is decidedly pre-Syrian, but it agrees with X rather than with B. A, i.e. Delta, the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet (Codex Sangallensis), is a nearly complete copy of the Gospels in Greek, with a Latin translation between the lines, written in the ninth century by an Irish scribe at the monastery of St. GaU in Switzer land. It was originaUy part of the same manuscript as G3 of the PauUne Epistles. Its text, except in St. Mark, is of the ordinary Syrian type and caUs for no special notice, but in St. Mark it is decidedly Neutral and Alexandrian, of the same type as L. S, i.e. Xi, the fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet (Codex Zacynthius), is a palimpsest containing 342 verses of St. Luke, written in the eighth century, but covered in the thirteenth with a lectionary. It is now in the Ubrary of the British and Foreign Bible Society in London, whither it was brought from the island of Zante in 1820. Its text belongs to the same class as L, having a large number of Alexandrian readings, and also some of Western type ; but its substratum is to a great extent Neutral, and Dr. Hort places it next to T. PLATE XIV. ^3 fil^if 1 1 Kl AT^ K'T » Kif I iTTf iV'rM'>y fiMyri KiV f t M 'rMfv r*" M M o vw »'^^f- f 1 6-?o oy*^ P «fl M«-'M ' j> J' <:> ^-i) FO VA M M« MVj'rAU*T*^oVt» K A A C *^ M ,fe-T#^''H J<'AI f-Af PM24'riF^- vp^i-'rjAFMirrMM «iAi '>ft»^6?T^'^'* ^.FMriinrppfJoY J Sahtdic MS. — OTII Cent. (?) {Original size.) COPTIC VERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 163 . ' ¦ . ii Dr. Hort as a not unfrequent ally of the chief representatives of that form of the text, the Codex Bezse (D), and the Old Latin and Old Syriac versions. The specimen shown in our Plate XVII. is selected mainly on the ground of its age. It is probably one of the oldest extant fragments of the Sahidie New Testament, having perhaps been written in the fifth century. It is now in the British Museum (MS. Or. 4717 (10) ). Unfortunately, it is only a fragment con sisting of four pages. The page exhibited, which is reproduced in its original size, contains 2 Thess. 3. 2-11. No important variations of reading occur in this passage. The remaining Coptic versions may be dismissed very briefly. They have only recently been discovered, they are known as yet only in a few fragments, and their characteristics cannot yet be said to be estabUshed. Hence they have not yet made their appearance in critical editions of the New Testament, and may for the present be disregarded. They are (c) the Payyumic, or version current in the district of the Fayyum, west of the Nile and south of the Delta, from which an enormous number of Greek and Coptic papyri have reached Europe in recent years. It appears to be related to the Sahidie, being probably descended from an early form of the same version, {d) The Middle Egyptian, found in manuscripts from the region of Memphis, related, Uke the Fayyumic, to the Sahidie. _ («) The Akhmimic, found in a number of fragments from the neighbourhood of Akhmim, the ancient Panopolis, from which also came the manuscript containing the extraordinarily interesting portions of the apocryphal Gospel and Revelation of Peter which were pubUshed in 1892. This is said to be the earliest dialect of the Coptic language, but at present only a few smaU fragments of the New Testament have been published, the first to appear being tbe discovery of Mr. W. E. Crum. It is as certain as such speculations can be, that our knowledge of the Egyptian versions -will be very greatly increased within the next few years. Materials are rapidly coming to Ught, and scholars competent to deal with them are now not wanting. Meanwhile we L 2 164 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. must be thankful for the high character of the versions which are already available for the criticism and restoration of the sacred text. The remaining Oriental versions of the New Testament may be dismissed with a very short notice. Their evidence may sometimes be called into court, but it is seldom of much importance. The Armenian version, as we have it now, dates from the fifth century. Up to about the year 390 Aimenia, the country to the east of Asia Minor and north of Mesopotamia, lying between the Roman and Persian empires, possessed no version of its own ; but between that date and a.d. 400 translations of both Old and New Testaments were made, partly from Greek and partly from Syriac. About the year 433 these translations were revised with the help of Greek manuscripts brought from Constantinople. The result was the existing Armenian version, which consequently has, as might be expected, a very mixed kind of text. One very in teresting piece of evidence has, however, been preserved in an Armenian manuscript. Most of the oldest MSS. of the Gospels in this version omit the last twelve verses of St. Mark ; but one of them, -written in the year 989, contains them, with a heading stating that they are " of the Elder Aristion." * Aristion Uved in the first century, and is mentioned by Papias, his younger contem porary, as having been a disciple of the Lord. If the tradition which assigns to him the authorship of Mark 16, 9-20 may be accepted, it wiU clear up the doubts surrounding that passage in a satisfactory way. It wUl show that St. Mark's Gospel was left unfinished, or was mutUated at a very early date, and that a sum-. mary of the events foUowing the Resurrection, written by Aristion, was inserted to fill the gap ; and we gain the evidence of another witness of our Lord's life on earth. The earliest MS. of the Armenian Gospels is dated in the year 887 ; there are probably two others of the ninth century and six of the tenth. The rest of * The credit of this discovery belongs to Mr. F. C. Conybeare, of University College, Oxford. EASTERN VERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 165 the New Testament is only found in copies containing the whole Bible, which are rare and never older than the twelfth century. The Gothic version, as has already been stated (p. 77), was made for the Goths in the fourth century, while, they were settled in Moesia, before they overran Western Europe. It was made by their Bishop Ulfilas, and was translated directly from the Greek. We know it now only in fragments, more than half of the Gospels being preserved in a magnificent manuscript at Upsala, in Sweden, written (in the fifth or sixth century) in letters of gold and silver upon purple vellum. Some portions of the Epistles of St. Paul are preserved in paUmpsest fragments at MUan; but the Acts, Catholic Epistles, and Apocalypse are entirely lost. The Greek text used by Ulfilas seems to have been of the Syrian type in the New Testament, just as it was of Syrian (Lucianic) type in the Old. The Ethiopie version belongs to the country of Abyssinia, and was probably made about the year 600 ; but most of the existing manuscripts (of which there are over a hundred) are as late as the seventeenth century, only a few going back as early as the fifteenth, the oldest of all (at Paris) being of the thirteenth century. Little is known about the character of the text, as it has never been critically edited. Several Arabic versions are known to exist, some being trans lations from the Greek, some from Syriac, and some from Coptic, while others are revisions based upon some or aU of these. None is earUer than the seventh century, perhaps none so early ; and for critical purposes none is of any value. Other Oriental versions (Georgian, Slavonic, Persian) are of stUl later date, and may be ignored. § 2. — The Western Versions. We now pass to the Western world,.and trace the history of the New Testament as it spread from its obscure home in Palestine to the great capital of the world, and to the countries in its neigh bourhood which owned its sway and spoke its language. In 166 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. — =_, — — — — — speaking of the Latin Bible we are at once taking a great step nearer home ; for Latin was the literary language of our own fore fathers, and the Latin Bible was for centuries the official Bible of our own country. Nay, more, it was from the Latin Bible that the first English Bibles were translated. Therefore we have a special interest in the history of this version, an interest which is still further increased by the remarkable character which it pos sessed in its earlier stages, and by the minuteness with which we are able to trace its fortunes in later days. We have aheady described the Latin versions in relation to the Old Testament ; we have now to speak of them in relation to the New. In the Old Testament we have seen that there are two Latin versions, known as the Old Latin and the Vulgate ; and we have seen that of these the Vulgate is the more important as an aid to the recovery of the original Hebrew text, because it was translated directly from the Hebrew, while the Old Latin was translated from the Septuagint ; and also because the Vulgate is complete, while the Old Latin has only come down to us in fragments. In respect of the New Testament the relative importance of the two is some what different. Here we possess both versions practicaUy com plete : and whereas the Old Latin was translated direct from the original Greek, the Vulgate was only a revision of the Old Latin. Moreover, we possess a few manuscripts of the original Greek which are as early as the Vulgate ; but the Old Latin was made long before any of our manuscripts were -written, and takes us back almost to within a generation of the time at which the sacred books were themselves composed. The Old Latin Version is consequently one of the most valuable and interesting evidences which we possess for the condition of the New Testament text in the earliest times. It has already been said (p. 78) that it was originally made in the second century, perhaps not very far from A.D. 150, and probably, though not certainly, in Africa. Another version, apparently independent, subsequently appeared in Europe ; and the divergencies between these rival translations, as well as the extensive variations of text PLATE XVIII. ^ rCl!STJ^UK^-^";~.-^^j[^|\llSqtlO |.qi-ieci,vcciric '¦iV^illCMibjct... UohlS-*"- KIN... -^UXbOKbf XT >IC (Original size of page, 9 Codex Vercellensis, — irn Cent. 7U>^^\u];.)'""""'* '""ryins, as here. LATIN VERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 167 which found their way into both, made a revision necessary, which was actually produced in Italy in the fourth century. Hence it is that three different families or groups can be traced, the African, the European, and the Italian. We are able to identify these several families by means of the quotations which occur in the writings of the Latin Fathers. Thus the quotations of Cyprian, who died in 258, give us a representation of the African text ; the European text is found in the Latin version of the works of Irenseus by Rufinus, who died in 397 ; while the Italian text appears conspicuously in Augustine (a.d. 354-430). By the help of such evidence as this we can identify the texts which are found in the various manuscripts of the Old Latin which have come down to us. Owing to the fact that the Vulgate eventuaUy superseded the Old Latin as the Bible of the Western Church, manuscripts of the latter are scarce, but when they exist are generaUy very old. No copy contains the whole of the New Testament, and very few are perfect even in the books which they contain. Thirty-eight. manuscripts of the Old Latin exist ; of these, twenty-eight contain the Gospels, four the Acts, five the Catholic Epistles, eight the Pauline Epistles, and three the Apocalypse, of which a practically complete text is also preserved to us in the commentary of Prima- sius, an African Father of the sixth century. Manuscripts of the Old Latin are indicated in critical editions by the small italic letters of the alphabet. One of the oldest and best is the Codex Vercellensis {a), of which a facsimUe is given in Plate XVIII. It contains the four Gospels, in the order usual in the Western Church, namely, Matthew, John, Luke, Mark. It is written in silver letters, in very narrow columns, on extremely thin vellum stained with purple. The passage shown in the Plate is John 16. 23-30. In verse 25 this MS. has a curious reading, which is found nowhere else ; instead of " Ye shall ask in my name ; and I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you," it has "ask in my name, and I wiU pray for you." The passage may be seen at the top of the second column : " in nomine meo petite et 168 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. ego rogabo propter vos," the words " et ego " being added above the line. This manuscript was written in the fourth century, and is consequently as old as the oldest Greek MSS. of the Bible. It is now at Vercelli in Italy. Other important MSS. of the old Latin are, for the Gospels, the Codex Vbronensis {b), of the fourth or fifth century, one of the most valuable of all ; Codex Colbertinus (c), an extraordinarily late copy, having been vn-itten in the twelfth century, in Langue- doc, where the tradition of the Old Latin text lingered very late^ but containing a good text ; Codex Palatinus (e), fourth or fifth century, very incomplete, containing a distinctly African type of text ; Codex Brixianus (/), sixth century, with an ItaUan text ; Codex Bobiensis {h), fifth or sixth century, containing a yery early form of the African text ; the Latin text of the Codex Bez^ {d), for which see p. 139. In the Acts, there are Codex Bez^ {d), as before ; the Latin text of the Codex Laudianus (e), see p. 145 ; Codex Gigas {g), of the thirteenth century, the . largest manuscript in the world, containing the Acts and Apoca lypse in the Old Latin version, the rest in the Vulgate ; and some palimpsest fragments {h and s) of the fifth or sixth century. The CathoUc Epistles are very imperfectly represented, being contained only in the Codex Coebeiensis, of St. James (/), of the tenth century, and portions of the other epistles in other fragmentary MSS. The PauUne Epistles are known in the Latin version of the Codex Claromontanus {d), for which see p. 144 ; «,/, g are similarly Latin versions of other bUing-ual manuscripts ; and the re maining authorities are fragments. The Apocalypse exists only in m of the Gospels and g and h of the Acts. It must be remembered, however, that these MSS. are supplemented by the quotations in Latin Fathers, which are very numerous, and which show what sort of text each of them had before him when he wrote. It may be interesting to mention which manuscripts represent the various famUies of the Old Latin text. The African text is found in h and (in a somewhat later form) e of the Gospels, h of the Acts and Apocalypse, in Primasius on the Apocalypse, and in LATIN VERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 169 Cyprian generaUy. The Italian text, which is the latest of the three, appears in/ and q of the Gospels, q of the CathoUc Epistles, r of the Pauline Epistles, and in Augustine. The remaining MSS. have, on the whole, European texts (5 being an especiaUy good example), but niany of them are mixed and indeterminate in character, and some have been modified by the incorporation of readings from the Vulgate. It has been said above (p. 107) that the Old Latin version testifies to a type of Greek text of the class which has been de scribed as " Western." This applies especially to the African and European groups of the Old Latin ; the Italian text being evidently due to a revision of these with the help of Greek copies of a Syrian type. The earlier forms of the Old Latin, however, are distinctly Western, as has been shown in describing the peculiar readings of this class of text ; and since the original translation into Latin was made in the second century, and perhaps early in that century, it shows how soon considerable corruptions had been introduced into the text of the New Testament. It is, indeed, especiaUy in the earliest period of the history of the text that such interpolations as those we have mentioned can be introduced. At that time the books of the New Testament had not come to be regarded as on a level with those of the Old. They were precious as a narrative of aU-important facts ; but there was no sense of obligation to keep their language free from all change, and addi tions or alterations might be made without much scruple. Hence arose the class of manuscripts of which the Old Latin version is one of the most important representatives. The Vulgate, — The history of this version has already been narrated in connection with the Old Testament. It was in the year 382 that Pope Damasus entrusted Jerome with the task of producing an authoritative revision of the Latin Bible which should supersede the innumerable conflicting copies then in exist ence. A settled version of the Gospels was naturaUy regarded as the prime need, and this was the flrst part of the work to be undertaken. Jerome began cautiously. A whoUy new version of 170 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. the familiar text would have provoked much opposition, and Jerome consequently contented himself, as Damasus had intended, with merely revising the existing Old Latin translation. He compared it with some ancient Greek manuscripts, and only made alterations where they were absolutely necessary to secure the true sense of a passage. Minor corrections, though in themselves certain, he refrained from introducing, in order that the total change might be as little as possible. The Gospels were completed in 384, and the rest of the New Testament, revised after the same manner, but still more sUghtly, probably appeared in the following year. The Old Testament, which, as we have seen, was an alto gether new translation from the Hebrew, was not finished until twenty years after this date. The New Testament was consequently a distinct work from the Old, and was made on a different principle. It was based on the "ItaUan" type of the Old Latin, from which it differs less than the Italian differs from the primitive " African " text. The revision which produced the ItaUan text consisted largely, as we have seen, in the introduction of Syrian readings into a text which was mainly Western in character. Jerome's revision removed many of the Syrian interpolations, but still left the Vulgate a mixed Western and Syrian text. Its evidence is, consequently, of less Value than that of the earUer A'ersions ; but it must be remem bered that all the authorities used by Jerome in the production of the Vulgate must have been as old as, or older than, the oldest manuscripts which we now possess. Manuscripts of the Vulgate are countless. There is no great library in Western Europe which does not possess them by scores and by hundreds. After existing side by side with the Old Latin version for some centuries it became universally adopted as the Bible of Western Christendom, and was copied repeatedly in every monastery and school until the invention of printing. Hence when we come now to try to recover the original text of the Vulgate, we are confronted with a task at least as hard as that of recovering the original text of the Greek Bible itself. It is PLATE XIX. qaiviNpoTesi vre CTutRTute IinpeRWSpiRITI BUS IwonuNdis epoceaNT erdmuLt^xBXTtiR p*o\<5edio iNocnsex o'Locuw Rer roNis S URoe'«sxuixxi-)«>esYNAqoc;^ ~ -WTftOlUnMNdOCVKKPSKlOONr socRUS xuTi«n sunoNis TENei^XTUR wxcisis peniiiB* eTRocx«eRUNT illuinpRoex . et'ST.vNSSopeRtllwr* KT>peRK UiT peiiRi eTC>icp|siT iLlAajj CnJNlSTRMlXX lUiS >. e, cu^.safc:ji«recr> o«itd«S5eT OtWNes «}UllTXI5eBW.JT1NptR auceoANT lULos vfteuon , XTiLLesiN^uLis aTXNtis icnpo , Neiss cxiRXBXieos - gxiecxNT eriMn dXetjxsNXues.s"t^vies. J^CtlSSTXCNUUI piscvTORCs xuixxnOisceNOe TJXNTerHuxp\KT ixrrpk is\uei\-> quxeeuxT sivnoNis ljo<;xun xuTfcxii xtcrrv Re^>oceRe pusiLLuw exseOeNS OoceBXT ^ deNXUICuLxTURBXS . ~^ljToess.vuiT ?«jTecr> Lpqui '"" OixrrxOsiawNeos ¦ C>aciK\UiTLia> eilxxjCneiTX UeSTR^INCXprURMTP teTnespc»*&eNs sKtuessf 4>IX-|TlUi|f • piuecepTOR pejiTOTxw NOCTBtlO UVBORXNTES NlhlLtXTpHTKlS 4 iNueRBo\uTeo>ixjo < - ercwo-) hoc pctsse-np OONCiuSeRUtOT piS^>'lUO£> , . ¦ irHiL,TiTuOiNen>oopK)SMn Ruo>peBxtuu xu-rao nereeoR*" (Ori. Codex Amiatinus — Circ. a.d. 715. size of page, 191 in. x 18^ in. ; of part reproduced, 8-i in. x 101 ire.) LATIN VERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 171 believed that over 8000 manuscripts exist in Europe, and the majority of these have never been fuUy examined.* It is only kno-wn that the text has been very considerably corrupted, partly by intermixture with the Old Latin version during the time when both translations were simultaneously in use, partly by the natural accidents attending the text of any book which has been repeatedly copied. We shall see in the next chapter what attempts were made to correct it during the Middle Ages. In modern times no critical edition has yet been produced. Our great English scholar, Richard Bentley, examined and caused to be examined a consider able number of manuscripts, but never advanced so far as to form a revised text of any part of the Bible, Now at last the task has been seriously taken in hand, and this very year has witnessed the completion of an edition of the four Gospels by Bishop Words worth of SaUsbui-y and the Rev. H. J. White. This edition is based upon a complete examination of over thirty of the 'best manuscripts, with occasional references to many others, and is the first truly critical edition of the-Vulgate that has ever been pub lished. It is sincerely to be hoped that, in due course of time, the same accomplished editors may give us the rest of the Vulgate in an equally satisfactory form. ¦ The best manuscript of the Vulgate is the Oodbx Amiatinus, of which a reduced facsimile, showing the lower half of the page, is given in Plate XIX. This has a special interest for Englishmen, apart from the value of the text contained in it, as having been pro duced in England (possibly by an Italian scribe) at the beginning of the eighth century. Its English origin was only discovered eight years ago, and in a curious way. On its second page is an inscription stating that it was presented to the abbey of Monte Amiata by Peter of Lombardy, and it was always supposed to have been written in Italy. But Peter's name was obviously -written over an erasure, and, besides, spoilt the metre of the verses in which the inscription is composed. StUl the truth was never suspected untU a briUiant * Dr. Gregory gives a list amounting to 2270, but his enumeration does not pretend to be anything like exhaustive. 172 . OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. conjecture by the ItaUan G, B. de Rossi, confirmed by a further dis covery by Prof. Hort, showed that the original name was not Peter of Lombardy, but Ceolfrid of England, Then the whole history of the MS. was made clear. It was written either at Wearmouth or at Jarrow, famous schools in the north of England in the seventh and eighth centuries (having probably been copied from MSS, brought from Italy by Ceolfrid, or by Theodore of Tarsus, see p. 179), and was taken by Abbot Ceolfrid as a present to Pope Gregory II. in the year 716, It was used in the revision of the Vulgate by Pope Sixtus V. in 1585-90, and its present home is in the great Lauren- tian Library at Florence. It is a huge volume, each leaf measure- ing 19| in. by 13^ in., -written in large and beautifully clear letters. The passage shown in the Plate is Luke 4. 32 — 5. 6. An example of a correction may be seen in col. 2., 13 Unes from the bottom, where the singular imperative laxa has been altered by a corrector to the plural laxate, which corresponds more exactly with the original Greek. The text is carefully and accurately written, and it is taken by Wordsworth and White as their first and most important authority. Among the other most important MSS. of the Vulgate are the Codex Fuldensis, written in a.d. 546 for Bishop Victor of Capua, containing only the Gospels, arranged in a consecutive narrative, based on the Diatessaron (or Harmony) of Tatian, which was made about A.D. 170 ; Codex Cavensis (ninth century), written in Spain, and with a Spanish type of text; Codex Toletanus (eighth century), very similar to the Cavensis ; the Lindisfarne Gospels (about a.d. 690), a splendid north English copy, resem bling the Codex Amiatinus in text, described more fully on p. 179 ; the Harleian Gospels (sixth or seventh century), in the British Museum; the Stonthurst Gospels (seventh century), formerly at Durham, now at Stonyhurst, written in a beautiful little uncial hand ; and the manuscripts exhibiting the revision by Alcuin, described in the foUo-wing chapter. As yet, no complete classifica tion of the manuscripts into groups has been effected, and the relative value of the texts contained in them consequently remains LATIN VERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 173 uncertain. Distinct types of text are recognisable in the manu scripts of certain countries, notably those of Ireland and Spain, of which we shall have more to say in the next chapter ; and it is fairly clear that the best manuscripts are those which most nearly resemble the Codex Amiatinus ; but for fuller knowledge we must wait until Bishop Wordsworth and Mr. White are able to sum up the results of their patieat and long-continued labours. So we close the list of our witnesses to the original text of the New Testament. We have traced, so far as we are able, the history of the Greek text itself ; we have examined the principal manuscripts of it, and classified them into families, which carry us back far towards the date at which the sacred books were originally written. Then we have enumerated all the early translations of the New Testament into other languages, and have described their several characteristics. With all this mass of evidence, reinforced by the testimony given on isolated passages by quotations in the early Christian writers, the trained scholar must face the task of determining the true reading of each passage in which the authorities differ. It has been the object of these chapters to enable every student of the Bible to foUow this process with inteUigent interest ; to understand why variations exist in the text of the Bible, and on what principles and by what means the true readings are distinguished from the false. In so doing, we have given a history of the spread of the Bible, both in the East and in the West, in the first five or six centuries after the foundation of Christianity. In the chapters which foUow we shaU trace the later fortunes of the Bible in the West and the origin and history of our own English versions, thus Unking in one continuous chain the original Hebrew and Greek Scrip tures with the Bible which we read in our churches and homes to-day. ( 174 ) CHAPTER IX. THE VULGATE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. THE history of the Bible in Western Europe is for a thousand years the history of the Vulgate, and of the Vulgate alone. In the East the Scriptures circulated in Greek, the'viUgate! ^^ Syriac, in Coptic, in Armenian, in Ethiopie. In the West, Latin was the only language of literature. The Latin language was carried by the Roman legion aries into Africa, into Gaul, into Spain, into parts of Germany, and even to distant Britain ; and wherever the Latin language went, thither, after the conversion of the Empire to Christianity, went the Latin Bible. Throughout the period which we know as the Middle Ages, which may roughly be defined as from a.d. 500 to 1500, almost all books were written in Latin. Latin was the language in which different nations communicated with one another. Latin was the language of the monasteries ; and the monasteries were the chief centres of the learning which existed during those centuries. An educated man, speaking Latin, was a member of a society which included aU educated men in Western Europe, and might be equally at home in Italy, in Gaul, and in Britain. We shall see in the next chapter that translations of parts of the Bible into English existed from a very early time ; but these were themselves translations from the Latin Bible, and for every copy of the Bible in English there were scores, or even hundreds, in Latin. The same was the case on the Continent. Translations were made, in course of time, into French, Italian, and other languages ; but the originals of these translations were always Latin Bibles. Every monastery had many copies ; and the relics of these, the remnant which escaped from the vast destruc tions of the Reformation and all the other chances of time, fiU our THE VULGATE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. lib museums and libraries to-day. To the Latin Bible we owe our Christianity in England ; and in tracing its fortunes during the Middle Ages, we are but supplying the link between the early narrative of the spread of the Bible throughout Europe and its special history in our own islands. We have said that the form in which the Bible was flrst made known to the Latin-speaking people of the West was that of the „. ,^ Old Latin version. The African form of this Simnltaneoas use of Old Latin Version spread along the Roman provinces which ^ ^^ ¦ occupied the north of the continent in which it was produced ; the European variety of it was propagated through out Gaul and Spain, while a revised and improved edition was current in Italy in the fourth century. Then came the Vulgate, the revised Latin Bible of St. Jerome. Undertaken as it was at the express request of the Pope, it yet did not win im mediate acceptance. Even so great an authority as St. Augustine objected to the extensive departures from the current version which Jerome had made in his Old Testament. For some centuries the Vulgate and the Old Latin existed side by side. Complete Bibles were then rare. More commonly, a volume would contain only one group of books, such as the Pentateuch or the Prophets, the Gospels or the PauUne Epistles ; and it would very easily happen that the library of any one individual would have some of these groups according to the older version, and others according to the Vulgate. Hence we find Christian writers in the fifth and sixth centuries using sometimes one version and sometimes the other ; and when complete copies of the Bible came to be written, some books might be copied from manuscripts of the one type, and others from those of the other. Special famUiarity with particular books was a strong bar to the accept ance of the new text. Thus the Gospels continued to circulate in the Old Latin much later than the Prophets, and the old ver sion of the Psalms was never superseded by Jerome's translation at all, but continues to this day to hold its place in the received Bible of the Roman Church, 17G OUR biSle and tSe' ancient' manuscripts. One unfortunate result followed from this long period of simul taneous existence of two different texts,' namely the intermixture of readings from one with those of the other. mirture^of T^xts. Boribes engaged in copying the Vulgate would, from sheer familiarity with the older version^ Write down its words instead of those of St. Jerome ; and on the other hand a copyist of the Old Latin would, introduce into its text some o£ the improvements of the Vulgate. When it is remembered that this was in days when every copy had to be written by hand, when the variations of one manuscript were perpetuated and increased in all those which were copied from it, it will be easier to understand the confusion which was thus intro duced into both versions of the Bible text. . It is as though every copy of our Revised Version were written by hand, and the copyists were to substitute, especially in the best known books, such as the Gospels, the more famUiar words of the Authorised Version. Very soon no two copies of the Bible would remain alike, and the con fusion would only be magnified as time went on. So it was with the Latin Bible in the Middle Ages. The fifth and sixth centuries are the period during which the old and new versions existed side by side. In Italy the final acceptance of the Vulgate was largely due to Gregory the Great (590-604). In Gaul, ill the sixth century, certain books, especiaUy the Prophets, were habitually known in Jerome's translation ; the rest were stiU current mainly in the old version. In the seventh century the victory of the Vulgate was general. But it was a sadly mutilated and corrupted Vulgate which emerged thus victorious from the struggle ; and the rest of the Middle Ages is the history of suc cessive attempts to revise and reform it, and of successive deca dences after each revision, until the invention of printing made it possible to fix and maintain a uniform text in all copies of the Bible. The truest text of the Vulgate was no doubt preserved in Italy. The worst was unquestionably in Gaul, which we may now begin to call France. But two countries, situated at different extremes THE VULGATE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 177 of Western Christendom, preserved somewhat distinct types of Ihe Videate in ^^^'' ^^^^^ eventuaUy had considerable influence Spain and upon the history of the Vulgate. These were Spain and Ireland. Each was, for a consider able period, cut off from communication with the main body of Christendom ; Spain, by the Moorish invasion, which for a time confined the Christian Visigoths to the north-western corner of the peninsula ; Ireland, by the EngUsh conquest of Britain, which drove the ancient Celtic Church before it, and interposed a barrier of heathendom between the remains of that Church and its feUow Christians on the Continent. The consequence of this isolation was that each Church preserved a distinct type of the Vulgate text, recognisable by certain special readings in many passages of the Bible. The Spanish Bible was complete, and its text, though of very mixed character, contains some good and early elements ; witness the Codex Cavensis and the Codex Toletanus, mentioned on p. 172. The Irish Bible as a rule consists of the Gospels alone, and its text is likewise mixed, containing several remarkable readings ; but its outward form and ornamentation were of surpassing beauty, and stamped their mark deep on the history of the Bible for several centuries. Of this, as it especiaUy concerns our EngUsh Bibles, we shall have to speak more at length. f--^ The seventh century is the most glorious period in the history '-^of the Irish Church. While Christianity was almost extinct in England, whUe the Continent was torn with wars and plunged in ignorance, the Irish Church was producing the finest monuments of Christian art, as applied to the ornamentation of manuscripts, which the world has ever seen, and was sending forth its missionaries far and wide to call back Europe and England to the Christian faith. In the seclusion of their western isle, the Irish devised and perfected a style of decoration, as appUed to manuscripts, of absolutely unique beauty and elaboration. The special feature of this style is its extra- ordinarUy intricate system of interlacing patterns, combined and S 2764. m; 178 OUE BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. continued with marvellous precision over a whole page throughout the pattern of a huge initial letter. Looked at from a Uttle distance, a page of one of these manuscripts resembles a harmoni ous mosaic or enameUed pattern in soft and concordant colours. Examine it closely, even with a magnifying glass, and the eye wearies itself in foUowing the intricacy of its pattern, and the hand strives in vain to reproduce its accuracy even for a few inches of its course. The use of gold gives to later Uluminations a greater splendour of appearance at first sight ; but no other style shows a quarter of the inexhaustible skUl and patient devotion which is the glory of the Irish school and of their Anglo-Saxon pupUs. For those who are acquainted with illuminated manuscripts, this style of decoration is a striking monument of the introduction . of Christianity into northern England from the introduced into Irish Church. While Augustine, the delegate of ^^ " ¦ the Roman Church, was winmng his way in Kent, Irish missionaries had planted a settlement in the island of lona, from which they preached the Gospel in southern Scot land ; and in the year 635 Oswald, who had learnt Christianity while an exile at lona, sent to beg that a priest might be sent to him to aid in the conversion of his newly-won kingdom of Northumbria. Aidan was dispatched in answer to his caU, to become bishop of Lindisfarne ; and in Aldan's steps came a great band of Irish and Scotch missionaries, who -spread themselves abroad in the land and planted Christianity there firmly and finally. But in coming to England they did not forget the art which they had learnt at home. In lona had perhaps been produced the most splendid example of Irish iUumination in existence, the Book of KeUs, now the special glory of the Ubrary of Trinity College, Dublin ; but in England they executed other manuscripts scarcely less magnificent, predominant among which is the beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels, a page of which is repro duced in Plate XX. But whUe the decoration of the north EngUsh manuscripts was PLATE XX. 1lJciprr-euaug>7ui7n The Lindisfarne Gospels — Ciiv. a.d. 690. (Original size, ISlitt. x 10 in.) THE VULGATE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 179 whoUy derived from Ireland, their text had, in great measure. Texts of English ^ (different origin, and was of a very superior MSS. derived quaUty. We have seen that the manuscript which contains the purest text of the Vulgate now extant, the Codex Amiatinus, was written at Jarrow or Wearmouth shortly before the year 716. A few years earlier, the book of the Lindisfarne Gospels was written at Lindisfarne, and its text shows a marked aflBnity to that of the Codex Amiatinus. Now the source of the Lindisfarne text can be proved with practical cer tainty. It is a copy of the four Gospels, written in a fine and bold uncial hand, with magnificent ornamentation at the begin ning of each book. The main text is that of the Latin Vulgate ; but between the lines a later hand has -written a paraphrase of the Latin into the primitive English which we commonly caU Anglo-Saxon. Of this paraphrase more wiU be said in the next chapter ; at present our concern with it lies in the fact that the author of it has added at the end of the volume a history of the manuscript. He teUs us that it was written by Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne, in honour of St. Cuthbert, the great saint of Lindisfarne and Northumbria, who died in a.d. 687 ; that it was covered and " made firm on the outside " by Ethilwald ; that BiUfrith the anchorite wrought in smith's work -the orna ments on its cover ; and that he himself, Aldred, " an unworthy and mostmiserable priest," wrote the English translation between the lines. We know, therefore, that the volume was written shortly 'after the year 687. -K Now before each Gospel is placed a Ust of festivals on which lessons were read from that book ; and, strange as it may seem at first sight, it has been quite recently shown that these festivals are unquestionably festivals of the Church of Naples. What is still more remarkable, this strange fact can be completely explained. When Theodore of Tarsus was sent by Pope VitaUan to England in 669 to be Archbishop of Canterbury, he brought with him, as his com panion and adviser, one Hadrian, the abbot of a monastery near Naples. Theodore visited the whole of England, including M 2 180 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS Northumbria ; and there can be no reasonable doubt that the Lindisfarne Gospels were copied from a manuscript which Abb.ot Hadrian had brought with him from Italy. Here, then, we have the clue to the origin of the excellent texts of the Vulgate found in these north EngUsh manuscripts. There can be no dOubt that the Codex Amiatinus, though written in England, derived its text from Italy, and carries on the best traditions of the ItaUan Vulgate. The plate opposite this page is a much reduced copy, of the first words of the Gospel of St. Luke in the Lindisfarne book ; and even in this reduction the beauty and elaboration of ^GospeYs,^^"* the intricately interlaced design which composes the initial Q can be fairly seen. Between the lines of the original writing is the English paraphrase, in a minute cursive hand, without pretensions to ornament, f The history of the MS. after its completion deserves a word of mention ; for a special romance attaches to it. Written in honour of St. Cuthbertj it was preserved at Lindisfarne along with the Saint's body ; but in the year 875 an invasion of the Danes drove the monks to carry away both body and book. For several years they wandered to and fro in northern England ; then, in despair, they resolved to cross over to Ireland. But the Saint was angry at being taken from his own land, and a great storm met the boat as it put out ; and as the boat lay on its side in the fury of the storm the precious volume was washed overboard and lost. Realising the Saint's dis pleasure, the monks put back, in a st^te of much penitence and son-ow for their loss ; but at last the Saint encouraged one of them in a dream to search for the book along the shore, and on a day of exceptionally low tide they found it, practically uninjured by its immersion. The story is told by the chronicler Simeon of Durham, writing about 1104 ; and it need not be dismissed as a mere mediaeval legend,- Precious volumes, according to the Irish prac tice, were carried in special cases or covers, which might well defend them from much damage from the sea ; and it is certain that several pages of this book (which was regularly known in ;- THE VULGATE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 181 mediaeval times as "the book of St, Cuthbert which feU into the sea") show to this day the marks of injury from water which has filtered in from without. The subsequent history of the MS. may be briefly told. Always accompanying the Saint's body, it found homes at Chester-le-Street, Durham, and finally at Lindisfarne once more. At the dissolution of the monasteries it was cast abroad into the world and stripped of its jewelled covers ; but was rescued by Sir Robert Cotton, and passed with his Collection into the British Museum, where it now rests in peace and safety, "h But this is a digression. The point which we have established is the spread of the Vulgate from Ireland to northern England, and the formation of an exceUent text there by EngUshTchoiar- i^ieans of copies brought from Italy. During the ship in sth and eighth and ninth centuries northern England was 9th centuries. the most fiourishing home of Christian scholarship in western Europe. Wearmouth and Jarrow were the head-quarters of the school ; and the great names in it are those of Bede and Alcuin. Bede (a.d. 674-735), the first great historian of England, Uved and died at Jarrow. Of him we shall have more to say iu the next chapter, in connection with the earliest translations of the Bible into English; Alcuin (a.d. 735-805), on the other hand, is intimately connected with the most important stage of the history of the Vulgate in the Middle Ages. While Ireland and England were taking the lead in promoting the study and circulation of the Bible, the Bible in France was sinking deeper and deeper into the confusion and by aMleml*me corruption which have been described above: No to revise -Vulgate one who has not worked among manuscripts can know the endless degrees of deterioration to which a much-copied text can sink, or realise the hopelessness of main taining for long a high or uniform standard of correctness. Nothing but the strong hand of a reformer could check the pro gress of decay ; and that was at last found in the great emperor, Charlemagne. From the beginning of his reign this monarch 182 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. manifested great concern for the reformation of the text of the Scriptures. He forbad them to be copied by inexperienced boys at schools ; and when he cast his eyes round for a scholar who might undertake the revision of the corrupted text, he naturally looked to England, and there found the man whom he required in the person of Alcuin of York, the most distinguished scholar of the day. Alcuin was invited to France; was attached to the court at Aix and made master of the schools which Charlemagne estab lished in his palace, with the title and revenues of the abbot of St. Martin of Tours ; and subsequently retiring to Tours, inaugurated there a great school of copyists and scholars, and there received the commission of the emperor to prepare a revised and corrected edition of the Latin Bible. Two famUies of texts -were then widely represented in France, the Spanish and the Irish. These, coming respectively from south and north, met in the region of the Loire, and VulffS'e^ both were known to Alcuin. In 796 we find him sending to York for manuscripts, showing how highly he valued the text preserved in the copies of northern England ; in 801 the revision was complete, and on Christmas Day in that year a copy of the restored Vulgate was presented hy him to Charlemagne. We have evidence of several copies having been made under Alcuin's own direction during the short remain der of his life, and although none of these has actually come down to us, we yet possess several manuscripts which contain Alcuin's text more or less perfectly preserved. The best of these is the Codex Vallicellianus, containing the whole Bible, now in the library of the Oratory adjoining the Church of Sta. Maria in Vallicella, at Rome, but written at Tours in the ninth century, probably in or soon after the life time of Alcuin. Another fine copy (Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 10546, sometimes known as the Bible of Charlemagne), likewise containing the whole Bible, may be seen in one of the show-cases in the British Museum, and of this a reproduction is given in Plate XXI. It is an exceUent specimen of the style of writing introduced in France during the reign of PLATE XXI. .Y^{'cxrtz^I^ererxfulrniJ^e^tncJLrrt3Jx^nJorn.¦\J^e^-'e^{• , '^*inco-')rt\»}Cpfect^fcMn-aJni^l'icp^riontT>i!u3UA.f£>Li|eJtTiAx3u».«^rfpfik^u3LCi:^A»itui<^er:Tr1ao-Outcrt>ltz:t-n fi\xoaiycrzze<' f ¦ri7rtimtaaitnfir-e]at-noncrx^tzrfilu>-'riendx£eT"fkfix: Alcuin's Vulgate — 3th Cent. (Original size of page, 20 in. x 14Hn.; of part reproduced Si in. x S.ifl.) THE VULGATE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 183 Charlemagne, the special head-quarters of which was the school of Tours, over which Alcuin presided. It marked a new departure in the history of Latin writing, and it was this style of writing that indirectly formed the model from which our modern printed types are taken. The MS. in question is -written in double columns on a page measuring 20 inches by 14|. Here only part of one column can be shown (aijd that much reduced in scale), containing 1 John 4. 16 — 5. 10, and it will be seen that the famous interpolation in verse 8 relating to the Three Witnesses is here absent. As stated in the Variorum Bible, this text is found in no Greek manuscript, with the exception of two, in which it is mani festly inserted from the Latin. It is a purely Latin interpolation, though one of early origin, and it finds no place in Alctdn's corrected Vulgate. There the text runs, " For there are three that bear witness, the spirit, the water, and the blood ; and the three are one." The zeal of Charlemagne for the Bible was not manifested in his encouragement of Alcuin's revision alone. From his reign date a series of splendid manuscripts of the Gospels, The Golden . , ^ , , , i •. i i Gospels of -wntten m gold letters upon white or purple vei- Charlemagne, j^^^ ^^^ adorned with magnificent decorations. The inspiraticto of these highly decorated copies is clearly derived from the Irish and north English manuscripts of which we have spoken above, and it is probable that here again Alcuin was the principal agent in carrying the English influence into the Conti nent. ' It has at least been shown to be probable that the centee from which these " Golden Gospels," as they are sometimes caUed, took their rise, was in the neighbourhood of the Rhine, where Alcuin was settled as master of the palace schools before his retirement to Tours; and the earUest examples of this style appear to have been written during the time of his residence in that region. In any case they are a splendid evidence of the value in which the sacred volume was held, and they show how the tradi tion of the Irish fflumination was carried abroad into France. The characteristic interlacings of the Irish style are plainly evident, 184 OUR. BIBLE AND THE' ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. but the extent to which they are eniployed has diminished ; and although the pi'ofuse employment of gold lends them a gorgeous- ness which their predecessors do not possess, yet the skiU and labour bestowed upon them cannot be ranked so high, and the reader who will compare the best examples of . either class wiU probably agree thg,t, while both are splendid, the Books of KeUs and of Lindisfarne are even more marvellous as works of art than the Golden Gospels of Charlemagne. The texts of these Gospels differ from those of the Tours manuscripts in being closer to the Anglo- Saxon type, and this is quite in accordance with the theory, which assigns their origin to the influence of Alcuin, but at a period earUer than that of his thorough revision of the Vulgate. Manu scripts of this class continued to be written under the successors of Charlemagne, especiaUy in the reign of Charles the Bald (843-881) ; but after that date they disappear, and a less gorgeous style of illumination takes the place of these elaborate and beauti^ ful volumes. It was not only under . the immediate direction of Charlemagne that the desire for an improved text of the Vulgate was active. Almost simultaneously with Alcuin, Theodulf, ^^Th^odiuT "^ Bishop of Orleans, was undertaking a revision upon different Unes. Theodulf was probably a Visigoth by birth, a member, that is, of the race of Goths which had occupied Spain, and from which the Spaniards are in part descended. He came from the south of France, and hence all his associations were with the districts on either side of the Pyrenees. Thus, while Alcuin represented the Irish tradition of the Bible text, TheoduU embodied the traditions of Spain. At Orleans, however, of which see he was bishop about the year 800, he stood at the meeting place of the two streams ; and his revised Vulgate, though mainly Spanish in type, shows also traces of Irish . influence, as weU as of the use of good Alcuinian MSS. His revision is very unequal in value, and its importance is by no means so great as that of Alcuin's work. Undertaken apart from the influence of Charlemagne, it was never generaUy adopted, and .'• ' THE ¦ VULGATE IN' THE MIDDLE AGES. 185 how survives in corhparatively few manuscripts, the best of which is in the National Library at Paris.* One other school of Biblical study at this period deserves notice. Not far from the Lake of Constance lies the monastery of St, Gall, now a coinparatively obscure and unvisited spot, ' ^^St^^GaU °^ ^'^^ formerly a great centre of study and of pen manship. At this day it is almost, if not quite, unique in retaining stiU ' in the nineteenth century the library which made it famous in the ninth. At a .stUl earlier period it was a focus of Irish missionary effort, Irish monks made their way to its. waUs, bringing with them their own peculiar style of writing ; and manuscripts in the Irish style stiU exist in some numbers in the Ubrary of St. Gall. The style was taken up and imitated by the native monks ; and in the ninth century, under the direction of the scribe and scholar Hartmut, the school of St, GaU was definitely established as a pi:ominent centre of activity in the .work of copying MSS, His successors, towards the end of the century, developed a distinct style of writing, which became generally adopted in the districts bordering on the Rhine, The text of these St. Gall manuscripts, on the other hand, looks southwards for its home, not north, and is derived from Milaii, with some traces of Spanish influence, instead of from Ireland, Thus in the ninth century a healthy activity prevailed in many quarters, directed to-wards the securing of a sound text of the Bible, But permanence in goodness cannot be Subsequent maintained so long as books are copied by hand deterioration, . , alone; The errors of copyists undo the labours of scholars, and in a short time chaos has come again. The Alcuinian text was corrupted with surprising rapidity, and the private labours of Theodulf had even less lasting an effect. The decadence of the house of Charlemagne was reflected in the decadence of the Bible text which he had striven to purify * The British Museum possesses a copy (Add. MS. 24124), kno-wn as the Bible of St. Hubert, which is at present exhibited in one of the show cases. 186 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. and estabUsh. The invasion of the Normans broke up the school of Tours, as the invasion of the Danes broke up the school of Wearmouth and Jarrow in Northumbria. In these wars and tumults scholarship went to the ground. A few individuals, such as our Norman Archbishop Lanfranc, tried to check the growing corruption of the Bible text, but with only temporary effect. It was not untU four centuries had passed away that a real and effectual attempt was made to restore the Vulgate to something like its ancient form. England had led the way in the ninth century ; but in the thirteenth the glory belongs almost entirely to France. It is to the influence of the French king, St. Louis, and tL^l3thientVy. ^'^^ Scholarship of the newly estabUshed Uni versity of Paris that the re-vision of the thirteenth century is due. Those who are acquainted with the manuscripts of the Vulgate in any of our great libraries -wUl know what a remarkable proportion of them were written in this century. The small, compressed -writing, arranged in double columns, with Uttle decoration except simple coloured initials, becomes very famiUar to the student of manuscripts, and impresses him -with a sense of the great activity which must have prevaUed at that period in multiplying copies of the Bible. For us at the present day the principal result of the labours of the Paris doctors is the division of our Bible into chapters. Divisions of both Old and New Testaments into sections of various sizes existed from very early times ; but our modern chapter-division was the' work of Stephen Langton, then a doctor of the University of Paris, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the barons in the struggle which gave birth to Magna Charta. The texts of these Parisian Bibles are not, it must be admitted, of any very remarkable excellence ; but they are very important in the history of the Vulgate, because it is virtually upon them that the printed text of the Bible of the Roman Church is based to this day. We are going ahead too fast, and shall have to retrace our steps in the next chapter ; but it wUl be convenient to conclude here PLATE XXIL ^liuiptrlitvrltiTfitf) (tiif «oe (mufi" jfi ptiniipio nrainf tms nlu OJnmiij tt traara . Itna autttn ttat inants tt Datuanambnttamflmfeofabarctt ^titue Imt bebfltut mpct aquae. fiiBttg Btue.jfiat luf-ftEadafluj. ft BiBtt Btuelucmttptflttbonartt siuiftt hitraiattntbna-aBifllauiHii lutantaintttttttbtaa notltm./faitu tCtantQpr^raamljitatrauB.iiitit Hump BtuB. fiat 6rraaratntu in m^ Bio aquaru: tt DiuiDat aquae ab a- qms.ft fecit Dfus fitmamnnu : Diub fttq; aquae qut team fiib &niianua< m ab biie quf trant Tuptt 6nnaintn= tuni:t&dum tftita.^atauitq; ime (timsnunm te(un (actum eft mfpttc tt mant Bits ftcunBue. isijit atto Dt ^ ua.Congttgtntur aqut qut Tub tela runtin locum nnu a anianat ariBo. fc&torattttta.fcDocauitBfuBan^ Bam tfttam rtogctg-anoncTq; aquaQ aflirtlauitraatia. JfemBitDtue vni ftt bonu- tt ait-iBttraintr tttta bnta mtaitemtt&cinttjm ftinta : tt Iignu pomiBaii&rittKfiuctumiujEta mnu'' Bm: niina rtmmin ftmrapo lit mptt iraam . ft faiuratft tta . ft pcomht tttra tfftbam uictmtia tt foiitnmn fc TOmiuttagttmaruu:lignuqi£arimefcudu tt^abra unuqSip fantrntCiara iftdi fufl.ft uiBH Btua tp tHklnmi: tt &*u t ottpttc tt mnnt BTO ttmuB . Btjtitq; aut Btua . |iant luramatia in finnamtm itti • i BmiBat Bitra ot nmifnlintinrijtia-i tepota-iQita^ annoa: uthittatin Rtniaratto ciU tt ulumina tittiftfaita tftita.fttitq? 6ni8 tarn lumiaria mafluaiimiarE mama utptllttoiriE Imufartmitt'' UI pttonofa Waa-i prfuit taa in temamtto nUutlucrttm fun ttna: ft pcStnt Bin at noffi:i BiuiBtcct himn at ttnttoas. ft oiBit ic? tp tOtt binii: n &du fotltmc tt mant Bice quarts. £)i^t ttiam Dtue . ^cuButant aqut icpntt am'mt uiutntia et uolanlr fitg ttttam : Qtb firmantoo tttLCctaunq; Btua cttE gtauDia-rt omnt onima m- uttttmi asp motabiltm qua proBuites rrnu aqut m Ijitaee fuaan oranr ua< lattlt fttuoBS gmus fml. ft m&it Bt< narottrttboracbmtOrattcti Bitraa. fttmtr tt mnlti}ilitaramt-tt nplttt a quae mans : aut&i; multtpbttntur fupit ttttam. ft Sutiitatlineintane Bins quime. £i^t quaq; Btus.^rti< Butat tttta annua mutntcmin gtne< ttfuo:mratmaitep«lia--ibtaiaatft= tt recuii8uliratafuaB.|fadiifita.ft ftcit Bfua btfliaa ttcte uitta Ipiata IIk aeriuranita i omnt repnlt ttttt ra nt' nntruo. ftmBiiBniaqifilttbouu: et mt. ^anara'bjram! aormajini t fifimBint imftta-i pfu piUate mane- 1 aolanlibJcdi-iMbiBuniiirfliittnt: oraiq? ctpnii qB raouef itcna.ft etta-- m"t Bmabommt aBnuagtnittrimi< limBinc Tuara : aB ema giunn tn ma-- uit illunna&uli: tt tEmina tttauit toe, Bmtaiatqt illie Bma • tt au.fitCdtt tt mulnplicamint i ttplttt ttnam • tt fubintctara:^ Boratnamim pifnbua mane-T unlanlibua leli : t uniimfta animanbuaqut moiitmuc fug ttna. Uifltq? BeuB . fcce BcQi uobiB orant tatbara atonttm ftinm fup ttttam- ttuniuralijfnaquc^bct r ftiiittime rntiEtt gtame fm:utlint uobie ima- ^ tiitlia aiannbnetttn- tjifiiq! uolucri ttbinniuttfiaqmo! :r T iiittffa-tti qmbnatanima uiiu : ut bnhat aB utfttnBu.lft&ttu r'- :M.13iBittp ibib niniaqurtccaat: :r ttatDalOeboui- The Mazaein Bible — a.d. 1456. (Original size, 15 in. x 11 in.) THE VULGATE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 187 the history of the Latin Bible. It has been made evident that, so long as Bibles continued to be copied by hand, Latin Bibles. ^1° stability or uniformity of text could be main tained. As with the Greek Bible, so with the Latin, the later copies become progressively worse and worse. Hence the enormous importance of the invention of printing, which made it possible to fix and stereotype a form of text, and secure that it should be handed on without substantial change from one genera tion to another. The first book printed in Europe, it is pleasant to know, was the Latin Bible, — the splendid Mazarin Bible (so-caUed from the fact that the first copy which attracted much attention in later times was that in the library of Cardinal Mazarin) issued by Gutenberg in 1456, of which a copy may be seen exhibited in the British Museum, and from which the first page is here given in reduced facsimile (Plate XXIL). But this edition, and many others which followed it, merely reproduced the current form of text, without revision or comparison with the best manuscripts. Ximenes and Erasmus, the first editors of the Greek printed Bible, also bestowed much labour on the Latin text ; but the first reaUy critical edition was that prepared by Stephanus in 1528, and revised by himself in 1538-40. No authoritative edition, how ever, was forthcoming until the accession to the Papal chair of Sixtus V. in 1585. ' • Immediately on his accession, this energetic Pope appointed a commission to revise the text of the Bible, and in the wOrk of revision he himself toOk an active part. Good ^'^BihU*'"* manuscripts were used as authorities, includ ing notably the Codex Amiatinus ; and in 1590 the completed work issued from the press in three volumes. The text resembles generaUy that of Stephanus, on which it was evidently based. But hardly had Pope Sixtus declared his edition to be the sole authentic and authorised form of the Bible, when he died ; and one of the first acts of Clement VIIL, on his accession in 1592, was to call in aU the copies of the Sixtine Bible. There is no doubt that the Sixtine edition was fuU of errors. The 188 OUR. BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. press had been very imperfectly revised, and a number of mistakes, discovered after the sheets had been struck off, were corrected by means of hand -stamped type. It is believed, however, that Clement was also incited to this attack on his predecessor's memory by the Jesuits, whom Sixtus had offended. ^ sfwe.^ ™^ ^^ ^^y °^s® ^^^ ^^^ remains that Clement caused a new edition to be prepared, which appeared towards the end of 1592. This edition was not confined to a removal of the errors of the press in the Sixtine volumes, but presents a considerably altered text, differing, it has been estimated, from its predecessor in no less than 3000 readings. Here at last we reach the origin of the text of the Latin Bible current to-day ; for the Clementine edition, sometimes appearing under the name of Clement, sometimes (to disguise the appearance of difference between two Popes) under that of Sixtus, was constituted the one authorised text of the Vulgate, from which no single variation is permitted. It cannot be pretended that the Clementine text is satisfactory from the point of view of history or scholarship. The alterations which differentiate it from the Sixtine edition, except where they simply remove an obvious blunder, are, for the most part, no im provement ; and in any case, the circumstances of the time did not permit so full and scientific an examination of aU the evidence as ¦ is possible now. The task of revising the Vulgate text in accordance with modern knowledge has, however, been left almost entirely to scholars outside the pale of the Roman Church. Of these the most conspicuous have been Richard Bentley in the past, Bishop Wordsworth, Mr. White, M. Berger, and Dr. Corssen at the present time. It may be that in the futm'c the leaders of the Roman Church wUl be willing to make use of the labours of these careful and accomplished scholars, and issue for the benefit of aU who use the Latin Bible a text which shall reproduce, as nearly as may be, the original words of the version prepared by St. Jerome fifteen hundred years ago^ ( 189 ) CHAPTER X. THE ElSraLISH MANUSCEIPT BIBLES. TTTE take another step forward in our story, and narrow stUl ' ' further the circle of our inquiry. It is no longer the original text of the Bible with which we have to deal, nor even the Bible of Western Europe. Our step is a step nearer home ; our subject is the Bible of our own country and in our own language. For nearly a thousand years, from the landing of Augustine to the Reformation, the official Bible, so to speak, the Bible of the Church services and of monastic usage, was the Latin Vulgate. But al though the monks and clergy learnt Latin, and a knowledge Of Latin was the most essential element of an educated man's culture, it was never the language of the common people. To them the Bible, if it came at all, must come in English, and from almost the earUest times there were churchmen and statesmen whose ' care it was that, whether by reading it for themselves,! if they were able, or by hearing it read to them, the common peopfe should have at least the more important parts of the Bible accessible to them in their own language. For twelve hundred years one may fairly say that the English people has never been entirely without an EngUsh Bible. It was in the year 597 that Augustine landed in Kent, and brought back to that part of the island the Christianity which had been driven out of it by our Saxon, Jute, and ''ofEngllnd?'' Engle forefathers. In 634, Birinus, a Roman priest from Gaul, converted the West Saxons ; and in 635 came Aidan from lona to preach Christianity in Northumbria, as related in the last chapter- Soon after the middle of the century all England had heard the Word of Christ, 190 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCEIPTS. proclaimed by word of mouth by the missionaries of Rome or of Ireland. At first there would be no need of a written Bible for the common people. As in the days of Christ and His Apostles, men heard the Word of God by direct preaching. Most of them could not read, and the enthusiasm of a convert requires personal instruction rather than study of a written book. Yet it was not Th B'M lo^g before the story of the Bible made its ap- paraphrase of pearance in English literature. In the abbey of the Lady Hilda at Whitby was a brother named Csedmon, who had no skill in making songs, and would therefore leave the table when his turn came to sing something for the pleasure of the company. But one night when he had done so, and had lain down in the stable and there fallen asleep, there stood One by him in a dream, and said, " Caedmon, sing Me some thing," And he answered, " I cannot sing, and for that reason I have left the feast." But He said, " Nevertheless, thou canst sing to Me." "What," said he, "must I sing?" And He said, " Sing the beginning of created beings." So he sang ; and the poem of Csedmon is the first native growth of EngUsh Utera ture. It is a paraphrase in verse of the Bible narrative, from both Old and New Testaments, -written in that early dialect which we call Anglo-Saxon, but which is really the ancient form of English, Cffidmon's Bible paraphrase was written about 670, a generation after the coming of Aidan ; and another generation had not passed away before part of the Bible had been "^AWiilm!"^ actually translated into EngUsh. Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, who died in 709, translated the Psalms, and thereby holds the honour of having been the firat translator of the Bible into our native tongue. It is uncertain whether we stUl possess any part of his work, or not. There is a version of the Psalms in Anglo-Saxon, preserved in a manuscript at Paris, which has been supposed to be the Psalter of Aldhelm ; but the manuscript was only written in the eleventh century, and the language of the translation seems to contain forms THE ENGLISH MANUSCEIPT BIBLES. 191 which had not come into existence in the time at which Aldhelm lived. If, therefore, this version, which gives the first fifty Psalms in prose and the rest in verse, really belongs to Aldhelm at all, the language must have been somewhat modified in later copies. The next translator of whom we hear is the greatest name in the history of the early EngUsh Church. Bede (674-735) was the glory of the Northumbrian school, which, as Bede. we have seen, was> the most shining light of learning in western Europe during the eighth century. In addition to his greatest work, the History of the English Church, he wrote commentaries on many of the books of the Bible. These works, which were intended primarUy for scholars, were written in Latin ; but we know that he also took care that the Scriptures might be faithfully deUvered to the common people in their own tongue. He translated the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, as the first essentials of the Christian faith; and at the time of his death he was engaged on a translation of the Gospel of St. John. The story of its completion, told by his disciple, Cuthbert, is weU known, but it never can be omitted in a history of the EngUsh Bible. On the Eve of Ascension Day, 735, the great scholar lay dying, but dictating, whUe his strength allowed, to his disciples ; and they wrote down the translation of the Gospel as it fell from his lips, being urged by him to write quickly, since he knew not how soon his Master would call him. On Ascension morning one chapter alone remained unfinished, and the youth who had been copying hesitated to press his master further ; but he would not rest. " It is easUy done," he said, "take thy pen and write quickly." FaUing strength and the last fareweUs to the brethren of the monastery prolonged the task, tiU at eventide the boy reminded his master: "There is yet one sentence unwritten, dear master." "Write it quickly," was the answer ; and it was written at his word. " It is written now," said the boy. "You speak truth," answered the saint, " it is finished now." Then he bade them lay him on the pavement 192 OUR BIBLE .AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCEIPTS. of his cell, supporting his head in their hands ; and as he repeated the Gloria, with the name of the Holy Spirit on his lips, he passed quietly away. Of Bede's translation no trace or vestige now remains ; nor are we more fortunate when we pass from the great scholar of the early Church to the great statesman, King Alfred. Alfred, by far the finest name among the early sovereigns of England, careftd for the moral and inteUectual welfare of his people, d.id not neglect the work which Aldhelm and Bede had begun. He prefixed a translation of the Ten Commandments and other ex tracts from the Law of Moses to his own code of laws, and translated, or caused to be translated, . several other parts of the Bible. He is said to have been engaged on a version of the Psalms at the time of his death ; but no copy .of .his work has survived, although a manuscript (really of later. date) now in the British Museum,* and containing the Latin text -with an EngUsh translation between the Unes, has borne the name of King Alfred's Psalter. StiU, though nothing has come down to us from Bede or Alfred, the tradition is valuable, as assuring us of the existence of English Bibles, or parts of Bibles, in the eighth and ninth centuries. From the end of this period we have an actual example of an English Psalter still extant ; for a manu script in the British Museum, containing the Psalms in Latin, written about k.'d. 700 (though formerly supposed to have belonged to St. Augustine himself), has had a word-for-word translation in the Kentish dialect inserted about the end of the ninth century. In the tenth century we stand on firmer ground, for, in addition to similar interlinear translations, we reach the date of independent versions, known to us from copies still extant in several of our public libraries. It is indeed possible that the Gospels were rendered into English earUer than the tenth century, since one would naturally expect them to be the first part of the Bible which a trans- " Stowe MS. 2, of the eleventh century. THE ENGLISH MANUSCRIPT BIBLES. 193 later would wish to make accessible - to the common people ; but we have no actual mention or proof of the Interlinear existence of such a translation before that date. glosses. As in the case of the Psalter, the earliest form in which the Gospels appear in the English language is that of glosses, or word-for-word translations written between the lines of Latin manuscripts; and the oldest copy of such a gloss now in existence is that of which mention has already been made in describing the Lindisfarne book of the Gospels. That magnifi cent volume was originally written in Latin about the year 700 ; and about 950 Aldred the priest wrote his Anglo-Saxon para phrase between the lines of the Latin text. Some words of this translation may be seen in the facsimile given in Plate XX. ; and we may regard them with a special interest as belonging to the oldest existing copy of the Gospels in the English language. The dialect in which this translation is written is naturally North umbrian, which differed in some respects from that spoken in other parts of the island. Another gloss of the Gospels is found in a manuscript at Oxford, known as the ' Rush worth MS. It is of somewhat later date than the Lindisfarne book, and in the' Gospels of St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John it follows that manuscript closely ; but the gloss on St. Matthew is in the Old Mercian dialect, which was spoken in the central part of England. These glosses were, no doubt, originaUy made in order to assist the missionaries and preachers who had to instruct their con- The G 1 gregations in the message of the Gospel ; and of the 10th cen- the same must have been the object of the "^' earliest independent translations of the Bible books. Few, if any, of the ordinary EngUsh inhabitants would be able to read; but the monks and priests who preached to them would interpret the Bible to them in their own tongue, and their task would be rendered easier by the existence of written English Gospels. We know, moreover, that during the latter part of the Anglo-Saxon period, the culture and scholarship S 2764, N 194 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. of the English clergy declined greatly, so that the preachers them selves would often be unable to understand the Latin Bible, and needed the assistance of an English version. It is in the south that we first meet with such a translation of the Gospels existing hy itself, apart from the Latin text on which it was based. There are in all six copies of this translation now extant, two at Oxford, two at Cambridge, and two in the British Museum. All these are closely related to one another, being either actually copied from -one another, or taken from a common original without much variation. The oldest is a manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi CoUege, Cambridge, which was written by one ^Ifric, at Bath, about the year 1000. There can be no doubt that the original translation, of which these are copies, was made in the south-west of England, in the region known as Wessex, not later than about the middle of the tenth century. It may have been made earUer, but we have no evidence that it was so, and the total absence of such evidence must be taken- as an unfavourable sign. In Plate XXIII. is given a facsimile of one of the British Museum copies of this first independent version of the Gospels in English. The manuscript, which was written in the early part of the twelfth century, has an interest of its own, even apart from its contents ; and its history is partly told by the inscrip tions which it bears on its first page, here reproduced. This page contains the beginning of St. Mark's Gospel, which holds the first place in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, and is headed "Text[us] iiii. evangelior[um]," i.e. "The text of the four Gos pels." To the right of this are the words " aug~. d xvi. G* IIII," Below is the name " Thomas Cantuarien[sis] " and the figures " 1 a, xiv " ; and at the bottom of the page (not included in the plate) is the signature " Lumley," What do aU these inscriptions tell us of the history of the MS, ? They tell us that it belonged to the great monastery of St. Augustine at Canterbury, in the library of which it bore the press-mark " D[istinctio] xvi, G[r]a[dus] IV " ; that after the dissolution of the monasteries PLATE XXIII. English Gospels of the Tenth Centuhy — 12th Cent. ( Original size of page, 8i in. x 5f i?i. ; of pari reproduced, 41 in. x 5 in.) THE ENGLISH MANUSCRIPT BIBLES. 195 it passed into the possession of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, whose secretary -wrote his name (in a hand closely resembling the prelate's own -writing) at the head of the page ; that after Cranmer's death it was acquired, with many others of his books, by Henry Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, from whom it descended to his son-in-law, John, Lord Lumley. Lumley died in 1609, and his library was bought for Henry, Prince of Wales, eldest son of James I. Thereby this volume entered the Royal Library, in which it bore the press-mark 1 A xiv. ; and when that Ubrary was presented to the nation by George II. in 1757, it passed into the keeping of the British Museum, then newly estabUshed ; and there, retaining the same press-mark, it stiU remains. So much history may a few notes of ownership convey to us. Some readers may be curious to see the form of the language in which this first English Bible is written. It is unUke enough to our modern English, yet it is its true and direct ancestor. After quoting the first words of the Gospel in Latin, the translation begins thus : " Her ys Godspelles angin, halendes cristes godes sune. Swa awriten ys on thaswitegan bee isaiam. Nu ic asende mine sengel beforan thinre ansyne. Se gegarewath thinne weg beforan the. Clepigende stefen on tham westene gegarwiath drihtnes weg. Doth rihte his sythas. lohannes wses on westene fulgende & bodiende. Daedbote fuiwyht on synna forgyfenysse." This specimen will probably be enough for those who have no special acquaintance with Anglo-Saxon. Shortly after the date at which this version of the Gospels was probably The Old.Tes- jj^ade, m or about the year 990, iElfric, Arch- tament of ailfric, ' ¦' bishop of Canterbury, translated a considerable part of the Old Testament, namely, the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Kings, Esther, Job, Judith, and Maccabees, omitting such pas sages as seemed to him less necessary and important. Two copies of this version are known, at Oxford and in the British Museum. This completes the history of the English Bible before the Norman Conquest. That catastrophe seems to have crushed for a time the literary development of the EngUsh people. The upper class N 2 196 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. was overthrown and kept in subjection; the lower orders were too ignorant to carry on the work for themselves. It is true that the existence of the manuscript described just above is a proof that the early English version of the Gospels continued to be copied, and presumably read, in the twelfth century ; but it is not until the century after this that we find any resumption of the task of translating the Scriptures into the language of the common people. In the reigns of John and Henry III. the „ ^ , intermixture between Norman and English was verse transia- ° tions in the progressing fast, and the English element was beginning to assert its predominance in the combination. English poetry begins again with Layamon about the year 1205. Ten years later religious verse made its reappear ance in the " Ormulum," a metrical version of the daily services of the Church, including portions of Scripture from the New Testament. About the middle of the century the narratives of Genesis and Exodus were rendered into rhyming verse ; and towards its end we find a nearer approach to regular translation in a metrical version of the Psalter which has come down to us in several copies. It is curious that, at this time, the Psalter seems to have been in especial favour in England, almost to the exclusion of the other books of the Bible. For about a century, from 1250 to 1350, no book of the Bible seems to have been translated into English except the Psalter ; and of this there were no less than three distinct versions within that period. In addition to the verse translation just mentioned, of which the author is unknown, the Psalms were rendered into prose in 1320 by WiUiam of Shoreham, Vicar of Chart Sutton, in Kent ; and almost at the same time Richard RoUe, a hermit of Hampole, near Doncaster, prepared another version, accompanied by a com mentary, verse by verse. Some specimens of these translations wiU show the progress of the English language, and carry on the history of the English Bible. The foUowing is the beginning of the 56th Psalm as it appears in the version of WUUam of Shoreham':— "Have THE ENGLISH MANUSCRIPT BIBLES. 197 mercy on me, God, for man hath defouled me. The fende trubled The Psalters of ™®' ^®^^*™<1* ^^'^^.y o^^Aayns me. Myn enemys ¦William of defouled me, alday, for many were fe^Atand Shoreham, o^^ains me. Y shal dred the fram the he^At of the daye ; y for sothe shal hope in the. Hu shal hery my wordes, what manes flesshe doth to me. Alday the wicked acurseden myn wordes o^Aains me ; alle her thoutes ben in ivel." In Richard RoUe of Hampole, the verses are separated from one another by a commentary, much exceeding the original text in and of Richard ^^^S^h. Many copies of this version exist, but RoUe of Ham- they differ considerably from one another, so ^° *¦ that it is difficult to say which represents best the author's original work. Here is the same passage as it appears in one of the manuscripts (Brit. Mus. Arundel MS. 158) : " Have mercy of me, God, for man trad me, al day the iyghtjnge troublede me. Myn enemys me trede al day for many ijghtjnge aghenes, me. Fro the hy^Anesse of the day schal I drede : I sothly schal hope in the. In God I schal preyse my wordes, in God I hopede. I schal noght drede what flesch doth to me. Al day my wordes thei cursede a^Aenes me, alle the tho^Ates of hem in yvel." Such was the knowledge of the Bible in England on the eve of the great revival which took place in the fourteenth j^ . . century. The old Anglo-Saxon version of the of religion in Gospels had dropped out of use, as its language gradually became antiquated and unintelligible ; and no new translation had taken its place. The Psalms alone were extant in versions which made any pretence to be faithful. The remaining books of the Bible were known to the common people only in the shape of rhyming paraphrases, or by such oral teaching as the clergy may have given. But with the increase of life and interest in the lower classes, and with the revival of literary activity in the EngUsh language, this condition of things * The letter represented by 'gh sometimes corresponds to our j, sometimes to g or gh. 198 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. could not last. The end of the thirteenth century had seen the first recognition of the right of the common folk to representation in the national Council, which thenceforward became a Parlia ment. The reigns of Edward II. and Edward III. saw the steady growth of a spirit of healthy Ufe and independence in the people* They saw also the rise of Uterature, in Langland and Gower, and above aU in Chaucer, to a position of real influence in the national life. And with this quickening interest in their sur roundings on the part of the common people, there came a quickening interest in religion, which was met and answered by the power and the will to provide religious teaching for them in their own language. Thus was the way prepared for the religious movement which makes the fourteenth century so im portant a period in the history of our Church and Bible. In France, under the stimulus of the University of Paris, and perhaps of the king, St, Louis, the awakening had come a century sooner, and had manifested itself alike in a revised edition of the current Vulgate text, with a great multipUcation of copies for common and private use, and in the preparation of the first complete ver sion of the Bible in French. In England the result of the movement was likewise an increased circulation of the Bible, but it was a Bible in the language of the people. The movement of which we are speaking is commonly connected in our minds, and quite rightly, with the name of WycUffe ; but it is impossible to define exactly the extent of his own personal par ticipation in each of its developments. The movement was at first discountenanced, and presently persecuted, by the leading authorities in Church and State ; and hence the writers of works in connection with it were not anxious to reveal their names. Most of the pubUcations on the Wyclifiite side are anonymous ; and the natural consequence of this is that nearly aU of them have been, at one time or another, attributed to WycUffe himself. So far, however, as our immediate subject, the translation of the Bible, is concerned, there is no reason to doubt the personal responsibUity of WycUffe ; nor is there any suflBcient reason for THE ENGLISH MANUSCRIPT BIBLES. 199 the opinion, which has been sometimes held, that a complete English Bible existed before his time. It rests mainly on the statement of Sir Thomas More, in his controversy with Tyndale, the author of the first printed EngUsh New Testament, that he had seen English Bibles of an earlier date than Wycliffe's. No trace of such a Bible exists, and it is highly probable that More was not aware that there were two Wycliflfitc translations, and had mistaken the date of the earlier one. To the history of these translations, the first complete Bible in the EngUsh language, we may now proceed. John WycUffe was born in Yorkshire about the year 1320. He entered BaUiol College at Oxford, and presently became Fellow, and, for a short time. Master of that CoUege; "Wycliffe. but resigned the latter post when, in 1361, he was presented to the Uving of FUliugham, in Lincolnshire. It was not untU he had passed middle Ufe that he began to take part in public controversies ; but when he did so, he at once became the most promment leader of the party of reform. It was a period of discontent in England ; discontent at the long and costly war with France, discontent at the demands of the Pope for money, dis content at the wealth of the higher dignitaries and corporations of the Church, who, in the main, supported the claims of the Pope. Wycliffe's first work was a treatise justifying the refusal of ParUament to pay the tribute claimed by the Pope in 1366 ; and from 1371 he was in the forefront of the reUgious and social dis turbance which now began to rage. Papal interference and Church property were the main objects of his attack, and his chief enemies were the bishops. He was supported in most of his struggles by John of Gaunt, who wished to humiliate the Church; by the University of Oxford, consistently faithful to him except when he committed hunself to theological opmions which it held heretical ; and by the great mass of the common people, whose views he reflected with regard to the Pope and the Papal sup porters. With the poUtical and religious controversy we have here 20O OUE BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCEIPTS. nothing to do. Whether Wycliffe was right or wrong in his attack on Church property or in his generally socialistic schemes concerns us not now. Reformers are often carried to extremes which dispassionate observers must condemn. But his champion ship of the common people led him to undertake a work which entitles him to honourable mention by men of all parties and all opinions, — the preparation of an English Bible which every man who knew his letters might read in his own home. And that even those who could not read might receive the knowledge of the teachings of this Bible, he instituted his order of " poor priests " to go about and preach to the poor in their own tongue, work ing in harmony with the clergy if they would allow them, but against them or independent of them if they were hostUe. The exact history of WycUffe's translation of the Bible is uncer tain. Separate versions of the Apocalypse and of a Harmony of the Gospels have been attributed to him, with Wyclifflteyme. ^lo^^ or less probabUity, but with no certainty. In any case these were but preludes to the great work. The New Testament was first finished, about the year 1380 ; and in 1382, or soon afterwards, the version of the entire Bible was completed. He was now rector of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, living mainly in his parish, but keeping constantly in touch with Oxford and London. Other scholars assisted him in his work, and we have no certain means of knowing how much of the translation was actually done by himself. The New Testa ment is attributed to him, but we cannot say with certainty that it was entirely his own work. The greater part of the Old Testament was certainly translated by Nicholas Hereford, one of Wycliffe's most ardent supporters at Oxford. Plate XXIV. gives a repro duction of a page of the very manuscript written under Hereford's direction, now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Bodl. 959). The manuscript itself seems to tell something of its history. It breaks off quite abruptly at Baruch 3. 20, m the middle of a sentence, and it is evident that Hereford carried on the work no further ; for another manuscript at Oxford, copied from it, ends at the same PLATE XXIV. igS SCSI'S ^&-"§e*&£$S THE ENGLISH MANltSCEIPT BIBLES. 201 place, and contains a contemporary note assigning the work to Hereford. It may be supposed that this sudden break marks the time of Hereford's summons to London in 1882, to answer for his opinions, which resulted in his excommunication and retirement from England. The manuscript is written by five different scribes. The page exhibited, which contains Ecclesiasticus 47. 6 — 48. 17, shows the change from the fourth hand to the fifth, with correc tions in the margin which may be those of Hereford himself. After Hereford's departure the translation of the Old Testament was continued by Wycliffe himself or his assistants, and so the entire Bible was complete in its EngUsh dress before the death of WycUffe in 1384. A marked difference in style distinguishes Hereford's work from that of Wycliffe and his other assistants, if such there were. Wycliffe's style is free and colloquial. There can be little doubt that he had in his mind the common people, for whom his version was especially intended, and that he wrote in a style which they would understand and appreciate. Hereford, on the other hand, was a scholar, perhaps a pedant, trained in University ideas of exactness and accuracy. He clung too closely to the exact words of the Latin from which his translation was made, and hence his style is stiff and awkward, and sometimes even obscure from its too Uteral faithfulness to the original. Wycliffe's own work also was capable of improvement, and the strong contrast in style between him and his colleague called aloud for a revision of the whole version. Such a revision was taken in •vrydiffite''Bihle, ^^^^' shortly after Wycliffe's death, by one of his foUowers, and was completed probably about the year 1388. The pupU who executed it has left a preface, in which he describes the principles upon which his revision was made, but he has not told us his name ; from internal evidence, however, and especially from the verbal resemblance between this preface and other writings of which the author is known, he is believed to have been John Purvey, one of WycUffe's most intimate friends during the latter part of his life, and a sharer in the condemnation 202 OUE BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCEIPTS. of Nicholas Hereford. The Old Testament, which stood most in need of revision, was completed first, and the reviser's preface relates to that alone. The New Testament foUowed later. This revised version rapidly supplanted its predecessor, and became the current form of the Wycliffite Bible during the fifteenth century. About a hundred and seventy copies of the Wycliffite Bible are now known to be in existence ; and of these, five-sixths contain the revised edition by Purvey, while less than thirty have the original form of the translation. The following instance wUl show the character of this, the first complete English Bible, and the extent of the alterations made by Purvey. In the first passage the author of the older version is Hereford ; in the second it is Wycliffe or one of his unnamed assistants. EAELIEE VEESION, Isaiah 35. 1-6. Gladeu shal desert and the -with oute -weie, and ful out shal ioyen the -wildernesse, and flouren as a lilie. Buriownynge it shal burioune, and ful out ioyen, ioyeful and preising. The glorie of Liban is youe to it, the fairuesse of Carmel and of Saron ; thei shul see the glorie of the Lord, and the fairnesse of oure God. Coum- forteth the hondes loosid at-wynne, and the feble knees strengtheth. Seith,yee of litil corage, taketh eoum- fort, and -w-ileth not dreden ; lo ! oure God veniaunce of yelding shal bringe, God he shal eome and sauen us. Thanne shul ben opened the eyen of blynde ,men, and eres of deue men shal ben opened. Thanne shal lepe as an hert the halte, and opened shal be the tunge of doumbe men; for kut ben in desert -watris, and stremes iu -wildernesse. LATEK VEESION. Isaiah 35. 1-6. The forsakun Judee and "with outen -w-eie schal be glad, and -wildirnisse schal make ful out ioye, and schal floure as a lilie. It burio-wnynge schal burio-wne, and it glad and prei- singe schal make ful out ioie. The glorie of Liban is youun to it, the fairnesse of Carmele and of Saron; thei schuleu se the glorie of the Lord, and the fairnesse of oure God. Coum- forte y& comelid hondis, and make ye strong feble knees. Seie ye, men of litil coumfort,. be ye coumfortid, and nyle ye drede; lo! oure God schal brynge the veniaunce of yelding, God hym silf schal eome, and schal saue us. Thanne the iyen of blynde men schulen be openyd, and the eeris of deef men schulen be opyn. Thanne a crokid man schal skippe as an hert, and the tunge of doumbe men schal be openyd; for -whi -watris ben brokun out in desert, and stremeg in wildirnesse. THE ENGLISH MANUSCEIPT BIBLES. 203 EABLIEE VEESION. LATEE VEESION. Hebbews 1, 1-3, Hebkews 1. 1-3, Manyfold and many maners sum God, that spak sum tyme bi pro- tyme God spekinge to fadris in pro- phetis in many maneres to oure fadris, phetis, at the laste in thes dales spak at the laste in these dales he hath to us in the sone: -whom he ordeynede spoke to us bi the sone ; -whom he eyr of alle thingis, by "whom he made hath ord&yned eir of alle thingis, and and the -worldis. The -whieluwhanne bi -whom he made the -worldis. -Which he is the sehynynge of glone and -whanne also he is the brightnesse of figure of his substaunce, and berynge glorie, and figure of his substaunoe, alle thingis bi -word of his vertii, and berith all thingis bi -word of his makyng purgacioun of synnes, sittith vertu, he makyth purgaeiouu of synnes on the righthalf of mageste in high and syttith on the righthalf of the thingis ; so moche maad betere than maieste in heuenes ; and so much is aungelis, by ho-w moche he hath in- maad betere than aungels, bi hou herited a more different, or exceUent, myehe he hath enerited a more dy- name bifore hem. uerse name bifor hem. Such is the first complete English Bible,, the first Bible which we know to have circulated among the common people of England, Many of the copies which now remain testify that they were intended for private use. They are not large and weU- written volumes, such as would be placed in libraries or read to a congre gation. Such copies there were, indeed, — volumes which were found in kings' houses and in monastic libraries, as we shall see presently ; but those of which we are now speaking are small, closely-written copies, with no ornamentation, such as a man would have for his own reading and might carry in his pocket. In this form the Bible reached those who could not read Latin. It had indeed travelled a long way. It was no careful rendermg of an accurately studied and revised Greek text, such as we have to-day. The original Greek had been translated into Latin long centuries before ; the Latin had become corrupted and had been revised and translated anew by St, Jerome ; St, Jerome's version had become corrupted in its turn, and had suffered many things of editors and copyists ; and from copies of this corrupted Latin the EngUsh translation of Wycliffe and Purvey had been made. StUl, through aU these changes and chances, the substance of the Holy Scriptures remained the same ; and, with whatever 204 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. imperfections, the entire Bible was now accessible to the Eng lish in their own language, through the zeal and energy of John Wycliffe. So, at least, it has always been held ; and it is nothing less than astounding to find it now suggested that the Wycliffite I th -w rfflt •^i'^l^ i^ ^°^ Wycliffe's at all, but is the work Bible really of his bitterest opponents, the bishops of the WycliflFe's! i^ ' i English Church who represented the party of Rome. Such is the remarkable assertion recently made by a well-known Roman Catholic scholar in England, Father Gasquet.* Father Gasquet has earned honourable distinction for his careful and original work on the history of the Reformation of the EngUsh Church ; and any views expressed by him on a matter of history deserve respect and notice. In the present case it is difficult not to feel that he has gone upon insufficient evidence ; but the subject is interesting enough to deserve fuller discussion. Father Gasquet's main points are as follows : (1) the evidence Theory that connecting Wycliffe with an English version of it was an the Bible is very slight ; (2) the hostUity of the sion issued bishops to an English Bible has been much y e IS ops. exaggerated, and there is no sign that the possession or use of such a Bible was commonly made a subject of inquiry in the examinations of WycUffe's adherents ; (3) the character of the extant copies, and the rank and known opinions of their original owners, are such as to be inconsistent with the idea that they were the work of a poor and proscribed sect, as the Wycliffites are represented to have been ; (4) there are indications of the existence of an authorised translation of the Bible at this period, and this we must conclude to be the ver sion which has come down to us. The Bible of WycUffe, if it ever existed, must have been completely desti'oyed. Now on the first of these points. Father Gasquet seems to ignore the strength of the evidence which connects WycUffe and * In the Dublin, Review, July 1894. THE ENGLISH MANUSCRIPT BIBLES. 205 his supporters, not merely with a translation of the Bible, but with these translations. That they were responsible Examination of fQj. ^ translation is proved by the contemporary evidence of Archbishop Arundel, Knyghton, and a decree of the Council held at Oxford in 1408 — all wit nesses hostile to the Wycliffites. If that translation is not the one commonly known as the Wycliffite Bible, then no trace of it exists at present, which is in itself improbable. But of the actually extant translations, the Old Testament in the earlier version, as we have seen, is shown to be the work of Nicholas Hereford by the evidence of the note in the Oxford manuscript ; while the later version is obviously based upon the earlier, and was, moreover, certainly the work of some one who held identical views with Purvey ; further, in a manuscript of the earlier ver sion at Dublin Purvey's own name is written as the owner, and (what is more important) the prologues to the several books commonly found in the later version have here been inserted in Purvey's own writing. Father Gasquet says " whether Hereford or Purvey possibly may have had any part in the translation does not so much concern us " ; but he cannot seriously mean to maintain that an authorised version of the English Bible, existing (as on his theory it existed) in direct opposition to the WycUffite Bible, could itself be the work of Hereford and Purvey, the two most conspicuous adherents and companions of Wycliffe. Moreover, the last words of the preface to the revised version show that the author did not know how his work might be received by those in power, and looked forward to the possibUity of being caUed upon to endure persecution for it : " God graunte to us aUe grace to kunne [understand] wel and kepe wel hoU writ, and suffre ioiefuUi sum peyne for it at the laste." This evidence, taken together with the proved connection of Here ford and Purvey with the extant translation, is sufficient to establish that it is, as has always been beUeved, the WycUffite Bible. On his second point, however, Father Gasquet's position is 206 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. much stronger. There is no doubt that the Lollards (as WycUffe's followers were called) were persecuted, but it does not appear that the possession, use, or manufacture of an English version of the Bible was one of the charges specially urged against them, The subject is not raised in the extant Ust of articles upon which the suspected were to be questioned. One is glad that it should be so, that the leaders of the English Church should not have been hostile to an English Bible ; and one may accept Father Gasquet's argument on this point with the more willing ness, because it is fatal to his two remaining points. If the Lollards were not persecuted in connection with the English Bible, it is manifestly absurd to argue that the existing Bibles cannot have been written by them because they were persecuted and their writings destroyed. It'is only in rhetorical passages that the picture has been drawn of the hunted WycUffite writing his copy of the English Bible in his obscure cottage, in constant fear of surprise and arrest. Wycliffe always had strong sympa thisers, notably John of Gaunt and the University of Oxford ; indeed, just as the University of Paris is identified with the first French Bible, so is the University of Oxford closely as sociated with the first Bible in EngUsh ; and with such support Wycliffe can have had no difficulty in obtaining workmen to transcribe handsome and elaborate copies of his Bible. Nor need even those who most strongly opposed the socialistic and heretical opinions of WycUffe have therefore refused to possess copies of his translation of the Scriptures, if the existence of such a translation formed no part of the cause of their hostUity to him. Copies of the EngUsh version are known to have belonged to Henry VI,, to Henry VII,, to Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the founder of the University Library at Oxford, and to many reUgious houses ; and if it could be shown that the WycUffite translation was an object of persecution by the leaders of the English Church, the pubUc possession of such copies by noted supporters of the Church would unquestionably be difficult THE ENGLISH MANUSCRIPT BIBLES. 207 f to explain. But since Father Gasquet has shown that this persecution did not take place, at any rate to the extent that has been supposed, the rest of his case for distinguishing the Wycliffite translation from the translations now extant breaks down, The fact would seem to be that the Lollards were persecuted, but not their Bible. Such hostility as was shown to this was only temporary, and was confined to a few persons, such as Archbishop Arundel. Generally the translation was tolerated ; and this is perfectly comprehensible, since the extant copies, which we have seen to be connected with Hereford and Purvey, show no traces of partisanship or of heretical doctrine. It is a plain translation of the Latin text of the Scriptures then current, without bias to either side : and, whatever Arundel might do, other bishops, such as WUUam of Wykeham (who was, moreover a supporter of John of Gaunt), would not be likely to condemn it. Nor would the tendency to toleration be less as time went on, and when John of Gaunt's son, Henry IV., had succeeded to the throne. If this be admitted, then the references (often very vague) to an authorised or tolerated version, on which Father Gasquet bases his fourth point, can be explained without caUing into existence a version other than that of Wycliffe and put forward in its place by the Church. It is not from any spirit of partisanship that we have argued against Father Gasquet's novel and interesting theory. One would gladly believe that the bishops and leaders of the EngUsh Church in the fourteenth century did put forward an English translation of the Scriptures for the use of their flocks, if there were sufficient evidence to support such a view. Unfortunately, such evidence is not to be had. We know that Wycliffe and his adherents prepared a translation ; we know that two of his most prominent supporters, Hereford and Purvey, had at least some connection with the translations which actually exist ; and we can see no ground for refusing to take the further step, and say that the Wycliffite version and the existing translations 208 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. are one and the sanie thing. In any case Wycliffe has the credit of having been the first to translate the entire Bible into our native tongue ; and one would be glad that our Church and nation should have the credit of having accepted so valuable a work, and of- having allowed copies of it to be multiplied and to be preserved to the present day. ( 209 ) CHAPTER XL THE ENGLISH PEINTED BIBLE. IN the fifteenth century, then, the Bible was circulating, to a Umited extent, in the WycUffite translations, tolerated, though not encouraged, by the powers of Church and State ; but the middle of the century was barely passed, when two events took place which, though totaUy unconnected with one another, by their joint effects revolutionised the history of the Bible in Western Europe, In May 1453 the Turks* stormed Constantinople ; and in November 1454 the first known product of the printing press in Europe was issued to the world. The importance of the latter event is obvious, and has been already explained. Not only did the invention of printing do away, once and for all, with the progressive corruption of texts through the inevitable errors of copyists, but it also rendered it possible to multiply copies to an indefinite extent and to make learning accessible to every man who could read. Know ledge need no longer " rest in mounded heaps " in the monastic libraries, but could freely "melt in many streams to fatten lower lands." All that was required was that men should be found willing and able to make use of the machinery which the discovery of Gutenberg had put into their hands. It was the other of the two events above recorded which, in great measure, provided the inspiration that was needful in order to make the invention of printing immediately fruitful. The Turkish invasion of Europe, culminating in the capture of Con stantinople and the final faU of the Eastern Empire, drove to the West numberless scholars, able and wUUng to teach the Greek language to the people among whom they took refuge. Greek, almost forgotten in Western Europe during many centuries, had always been a Uving language in the East, and now, journeying westwards, it met a fresh and eager spirit of inquiry, which S 2764. 0 210 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. welcomed joyfully the treasures of the incomparable Uterature enshrined in that language. Above aU, it brought to the West the knowledge of the New Testament in its original tongue ; and with the general zeal for knowledge came also a much increased study of Hebrew, which was of equah value for the Old Testament. Thus at the very moment when the printing press was ready to spread instruction over the world a new learning was springing up, which was only too glad to take advantage of the opportunity thus presented to it. The revival of learning affected the Bible in three ways. In the first place it led to a multiplication of copies of the then current Bible, the Latin Vulgate. Next, and far more important, it pro duced a study of the Scriptures in their original languages ; and though the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts then available were by no means perfect, they at least served to correct and explain the more corrupt Latin. FinaUy — ^the point -with which we are especially concerned in the present chapter, — it promoted a desirg- to make the Scriptures known to all classes of men directly, and not through the medium of men's instruction ; and this could only be done by having the Bible translated in each country into the common language of the people. EspeciaUy was this the case in the countries which, in the sixteenth century, broke away from the domination of the Pope. The monasteries were corrupt, the religious teaching, which was the special justification for their existence, was often either false or nonexistent. The reformers held that the best method Of overthrowing the power of . the monasteries and of the Roman Church was to enable the common people to read the Bible for themselves and learn how much of the current teaching of the priest and friar had no basis in the words of Scripture. The leaders of the Roman Church, on the other hand, doubted the advisability of allowing the Scriptures to be read by uneducated or half -educated folk, without the accompaniment of oral instruction. Some of them may have known that certain current practices could not be justified out of the Bible ; others may have feared that the reformers would THE ENGLISH PRINTED BIBLE. 211 introduce heretical teaching into their translations. So it fell out that the struggle of the Reformation period was largely concerned with the question of the translation of the Bible, In Germany the popular version was made, once and for all, by the great reformer, Luther ; but in England, where parties were more divided, the translation of the Bible was the work of many years and many hands. In this chapter we shall narrate the history of the successive translations which were made in England, from the invention of printing to the completion of the Authorised Version in 1611, and in conclusion shall give some account of the Revised Version of 1881-5. The true father of the EngUsh Bible is WiUiam Tyndale, who was born in Gloucestershire about the year 1484. He was edu cated at Oxford, where he was a member of 1. Tyndale's Magdalen Hall, then a dependency of Magdalen College, Here he may have begun his studies of Biblical interpretation and of the Greek language under the great leaders of the new learning at Oxford, Colet of Magdalen and Grocyn of New College; but about 1510 the fame of Erasmus, who was then teaching at Cambridge, drew him to the sister University, where he stayed for several years. It was whUe he was at Cambridge, or soon afterwards, that he formed the resolve, to the accompUshment of which his whole subsequent Ufe was devoted, to translate the Bible into English ; saying, m controversy with an opponent, " If God spare my Ufe, ere many years I wiU cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than thou doest," He had hoped that this might be accomplished under the patronage of the leaders of the Church, notably Tunstall, Bishop of London, to whom he first appUed for countenance and support, TunstaU, however, refused his application, and although Humphrey Monmouth, an alderman of London, took him into his house for several months, it was not long before Tyndale understood "not only that there was no room in my lord of London's palace to translate the New Testa ment, but also that there was no place to do it in all EngMnd." 0 2 212 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Accordingly in 1524 he left England and took up his abode in the free city of Hamburg, Here his translation of the New Testament was completed, and in 1525 he transferred himseU to Cologne in order to have it printed. Meanwhile rumours of his work had got abroad. He was known to belong to the reforming party ; in translating the Bible he was following the example of Luther ; he may even have met Luther himself at Wittenburg, which is not far from Hamburg. His translation was probably part of a design to convert England to Lutheranism ; and clearly it must not be aUowed to go forward if it were possible to stop it. The secret of the printing was, however, well kept ; and it was not until the printing had made considerable progress that Cochlgeus, an active enemy of the Reformation, obtained the clue to it. Hearing boasts from certain printers at Cologne of the revolution that would shortly be made in England, he invited them to his house ; and having made them drunk, he learnt that three thousand copies of an EngUsh translation were being printed, and that some ten sheets of it had already leen struck off. Having, in this truly creditable manner, obtained the infoi-mation he required, he at once set the authorities of the town ui motion to stop the work; but Tyndale secured the printed sheets and fled with them to Worms. At Worms he not only finished the edition partly printed at Cologne, which was m quarto form and accompanied by marginal notes, but also, knowing that a description of this edition had been sent by Cochlseus to England, in order that its importation might be stopped, had another edition struck off in octavo form and without notes. Both editions were completed in 1525, which may consequently be regarded as the bhth-year of the EngUsh printed Bible, though it was probably not untU the beguining of 1626 that the first copies reached this country. Money for the work had been found by a number of EngUsh merchants, and by their means the copies were secretly conveyed into England, where they were eagerly bought and read on aU sides. The THE ENGLISH PRINTED BIBLE. 213 leaders of the Church, however, declared against the trans lation from the first. Archbishop Warham, a good man and a scholar, issued a mandate for its destruction. Tunstall preached against it, declaring that he could produce 3000 errors in it. Sir Thomas More -wrote against it with much bitterness, charging it with wilful mistranslation of ecclesiastical terms witih heretical intent. The book was solemnly burnt in London at Paul's Cross, and the bishops subscribed money to buy up all copies obtain able from the printers ; a proceeding which Tyndale accepted with equanimity, since the money thus obtained enabled him to proceed with the work of printing translations of other parts of the Bible.* At the same time one reprint of the New Testa ment after another was issued by Dutch printers, and, in spite of aU efforts of the Bishops, copies continued to pour into England as fast as they were destroyed. The EngUsh New Testament was thus irrevocably launched upon the world ; yet so keen was the search for copies, both * The account of this transaction given by the old chronicler Hall is very quaint. After describing ho-w a merchant named Packington, friendly to Tyndale, introduced himself to Tunstall and offered to buy up copies of the Ne-w Testament for him, he proceeds thus : " The Bishop, thinking he had God by the toe, -when indeed he had the devil by the fist, said, 'Gentle Mr. Packington, do your diligence and get them ; and -with all my heart I -will pay for them -whatsoever they cost you, for the books are erroneous and nought, and I intend surely to destroy them all, and to burn them at Paul's Cross.' Packington came to William Tyndale and said, '"William, I kno-w thou art a poor man, and hast a heap of Ne-w Testaments and books by thee, for the -which thou hast both endangered thy friends and beggared thyself, and I have now gotten thee a merchant -which, -with ready money, shall despatch thee of all that thou hast, if you think it so profitable for yourself.' 'Who is the merchant?' said Tyndale. 'The Bishop of London,' said Pack ington. ' Oh, that is because he will burn them,' said Tyndale. ' Yea, marry,' quoth Packington, ' I am the gladder,' said Tyndale, ' for these two benefits shall come thereof: I shall get money to bring myself out of debt, and the whole world will cry out against the burning of God's Word ; and the over plus of the money that shall remain to me shall make me more studious to correct the said New Testament, and so newly to imprint the same once again, and I trust the second -will much better like you than ever did the first.' And 60 forward went the bargain, the Bishop had the books, Packington had the thanks, and Tyndale had the money." 214 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. then and afterwards, and so complete the destruction of them, that barely a trace of these earliest editions remains to-day. Of the quarto edition, begun at Cologne and ended at Worms, only one solitary fragment exists, containing Matt. 1, 1 — 22. 12. It is now in the GrenviUe coUection in the British Museum, and from it is taken the half -page reproduced, in Plate XXV., show ing the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. Of the octavo; one perfect copy exists in the library of the Baptist CoUege at Bristol,* another, iniperfect, in St. Paul's Cathedral. This is aU that is left of the many thousand copies which poured from the press between 1526 and 1530. Tyndale's New Testament differs from all those that preceded it in being a translation from the original Greek, and not from the Latin. He made use of such other materials 'as were avail able to assist his judgment, namely, the Vulgate, the Latin translation which Erasmus published along with his Greek text, and the German translation of Luther ; but these were only subordinate aids, and his main authority was unquestionably the Greek text which had been published by Erasmus in 1516 and revised in 1522. This was a new departure, and some of the "mistakes" which Tunstall and others professed to find in Tyndale's work may have been merely cases in which the Greek gave a different sense from the Latin to which they were accustomed. The amount of actual errors in translation would not appear to be at all such as to justify the extremely hostUe reception which the leaders of the Church gave to the English Bible. More may or may not have been right in holdiag that the old ecclesiastical terms, such as "church," "priest," "charity," round which the associations of centuries had gathered, should not be set aside in favour of " congregation," " senior," " love," and the like : there is much to be said on both sides of the question ; but certainly this was no just reason for proscribing the whole translation and assailing its author. Nor can such * This copy was discovered in 1740 by an agent of the Earl of Oxford, who bestowed on the fortunate discoverer an annuity of £20. PLATE XXV. i. ^ A , V.^ ^ ^ '-^#S^.^ o w ¦s- i THE ENGLISH PRINTED BIBLE. 215 treatment be explained on the ground of Tyndale's marginal comments, controversial though they unquestionably were, and, in part, derived from those of Luther ; for measures were taken to suppress the book before its actual appearance, and the pro scription was not confined to the quarto, which alone contaiued the comments, but was extended to the octavo, in which the sacred text stood by itseU. The reception which the heads of the English Church, Henry VIII. included, gave to Tyndale's Testament can only be attributed to a dislike of the very existence of an EngUsh Bible. Tyndale's labours did not cease with the appearance of his New Testament. His hope was to complete the translation of the whole Bible ; and although other works, chiefly of a controversial character, occupied some portion of his time, he now set himself to work on the Old Testament. The first instalment occupied him for four years, and in 1530 the Pentateuch issued from the press, accompanied by strongly controversial marginal notes. The five books must have been' separately printed, smce Genesis and Num bers are printed in black letter, and the others in Roman (or ordinary) type ; but there is no sufficient evidence of separate pub lication. The Pentateuch was followed in 1531 by the Book of Jonah, of which only one copy is now known to exist. But Tyndale had not said his last word on the New Testament. Like a good scholar, he was as fully aware as his critics could be that his version admitted of improvement, and he undertook a full and deUberate revision of it, striving especially after a more exact correspondence with the Greek. The pubUcation of his labours was hastened by the appearance of an unauthorised revision in 1534, the work of one George Joye. Since the original pubUcation in 1526, the printers of Antwerp had been issuing successive reprints of it, each less correct than its predecessor, and at last Joye had consented to revise a new edition for the press. Joye had taken Tyndale's version, altered it considerably, especially by comparison with the Latin Vulgate, had introduced variations of translation in accor dance with his., own theological opinions, and had published the 216 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS whole without any indication of a change of authorship. Tyndale was justly indignant at this act of combined piracy and fraud ; but his best antidote was found in the publication of his own revised edition in the autumn of the same yoar. It is this edition of 1534 which is the true cUmax of Tyndale's work on the New Testament. The text had been diUgently corrected ; introductions were prefixed to each book ; the marginal commentary was re written in a less controversial spirit ; and at the end of the volume were appended certain extracts from the Old Testament which were read as " Epistles " in the Church services for certain days of the year. With the appearance of this edition Tyndale's work was practi caUy at an end. The battle was substantially won ; for although he himself was held in no greater favour in England than before, the feeling against an English Bible had considerably abated, and the quarrel with Rome had reached an open rupture. CromweU and Cranmer were already convinced o"f the desirabiUty of having the Bible translated by authority ; and Tyndale was able to present a magnificent copy of his new edition to Queen Anne Boleyn,* who had constantly favoured the undertaking of the English Bible. But the enmity of the Romanist party against Tyndale himself was not abated ; and his labour for the diffusion of God's Word was destined to receive the crown of martyrdom. He was now residing at Antwerp, a free city, and was safe as an inmate of the "English House," an established home of EngUsh merchants in that city. But in 1535 a traitor, named Henry PhUips, wormed himself into his confidence and used his opportunity to betray him into the hands of some officers of the Emperor Charles V., by whom he was kidnapped and carried out of the city. The real promoters of this shameful plot have never been known. It is certain that PhUips was weU supplied with money, which must have come from the Romanist party, to which he belonged. Henry VIIL, who was now at open war with this party, can have * This copy is now in the British Museum. THE ENGLISH PRINTED BIBLE. ^Yt had no share in the treachery. The most that can be said against him is that he took no steps to procure Tyndale's release. CromweU used his infiuence to some extent ; but from the moment of the arrest, the prisoner's fate was certain. Charles V. had set himself to crush heresy by stringent laws ; and there was no doubt that, from Charles's point of view, Tyndale was a heretic. After a long imprisonment at Vilvorde, in Belgium, he was brought to trial, and in October 1536 he suffered martyrdom by strangling at the stake and burning, praying with his last words, " Lord, open the King of England's eyes." Before his arrest Tyndale had once more revised his New Testa ment, which passed through the press during his imprisonment. This edition, which appeared in 1535, differs little from that of 1534, and the same may be said of other reprints which appeared in 1535 and 1536. These cannot have been supervised by Tyndale himself, and the eccentricities in spelling which distinguish one of them are probably due to Flemish compositors. We shall see in the foUo-wing pages how his work lived after him, and how his translation is the direct ancestor of our Authorised Version. The genius of Tyndale shows itself in the fact that he was able to couch his translations in a language perfectly understanded of the people and yet full of beauty and of dignity. If the language of the Authorised Version has deeply affected our English prose, it is to Tyndale that the praise is origiuaDy due. He formed the mould, which subsequent revisers did but modify. A specimen of his work may fitly close our account of him.* It is his version of Phil. 2. 5-13 as it appears in the edition of 1534, and readers wiU at once recognise how much of the wording is familiar to us in the rendering of the Authorised Version : — " Let the same mynde be in you that was in Christ Jesu : which beynge in the shape of God, and* thought it not robbery to be equaU with God. Nevertheless, he made him silfe of no reputa- cion, and toke on him the shape of a servaunte, and became lyke * Another specimen willbe found in the Appendix, where it can be compared witli the versions of his successors. 218 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. unto men, and was found in his aparell as a man. He humbled him silfe and became obedient unto deeth, even the deethe of the crosse. Wherfore God hath exalted him, and geven him a name above all names : that in the name of Jesu shuld every knee bowe< bothe of thinges in heven and thinges in erth and thinges under erth, and that all tonges shuld confesse that Jesus Christ is the lorde unto the prayse of God the father. Wherefore, my dearly beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not when I was present only, but now moche more in myne absence, even so worke out youre owne salvacion with feare and tremblynge. For it is God which worketh in you, both the wiU and also the dede, even of good wUl." Tyndale was burnt; but he, with even greater right than Latimer, might say that he had Ughted such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as should never be put out. ^BiWeTiMs!^ His own New Testament had been rigorously excluded from England, so far as those in autho rity could exclude it ; but the cause for which he gave his life was won. Even before his death he might have heard that a Bible, partly founded On his own, had been issued in England under the protection of the highest authorities. In 1534 Convocation had petitioned the king to authorise a trans lation of the Bible into EngUsh, and it was probably at this time that Cranmer proposed a scheme for a joint translation by nine or ten of the most learned bishops and other scholarsi Cranmer's scheme came to nothing ; but Cromwell, now Secretary of State, incited MUes Coverdale to publish a work of translation on which he had been already engaged. Coverdale had kno-wn Tyndale abroad, and is said to have assisted him in his translation bf the Pentateuch ; but he was no Greek or Hebrew scholar, and his version, which was printed abroad in 1535 and appeared ih England in that year or the next, professed only to be translated from the Dutch [i.e. German] and Latin. Coverdale, a moderate, tolerant, earnest man, claimed no originaUty, and expressly looked forward to the Bible being more faithfuUy presented both " by the THE ENGLISH PRINTED BIBLE. 219 ministration of other that begun it afore " (Tyndale) and by the future scholars who should follow him ; but his Bible has two important claims on our interest. It was not expressly authorised, but it was undertaken at the wish of Cromwell and dedicated to Henry VIII ; so that it is the first English Bible which circulated in England without let or hindrance from the higher powers. It is also the first complete EngUsh printed Bible, since Tyndale had not been able to finish the whole of the Old Testament. In the Old Testament Coverdale depended mainly on the Swiss-German version published by Zwingli and Leo Juda in 1524-1529, though in the Pentateuch he also made considerable use of Tyndale's translation. The New Testament is a careful revision of Tyndale by comparison with the German. His task was consequently of a secondary character, consisting of a skilful selection from the materials of others ; but such editorial work is far from being unimportant, and many of Coverdale's phrases have passed into the Authorised Version. In one respect he departed markedly from his predecessor, namely, in bringing back to the EngUsh Bible the ecclesiastical terms which Tyndale had banished. In addition to the Bible issued in 1535-6, Coverdale, in 1538, published a revised New Testament with the Latin in paraUel columns.* Meanwhile the demand for the Bible continued un abated, and a further step had been made in the direction of securmg official authorisation. Two revised editions were pub lished in 1537, and these bore the announcement that they wer^ " set forth with the king's most gracious Ucense." The bishops in Convocation might still discuss the expediency of aUowing th^ Scriptures to circulate in English, but the question had been decided without them. The Bible circulated, and there could be no returning to the old ways. • This was printed in England, but so inaccurately that Coverdale had a, second edition printed at once in Paris. This no doubt led to a coolness with his English printer, Nycolson, of Southwark, who issued another edition, also very inaccurate, substituting the name of "Johan Holly bushe " for that of Coverdale on the title page. 220 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Fresh translations, or, to speak more accurately, fresh revisions, of the Bible now followed one another in quick succession. The first to foUow Coverdale's was that which is 3. Matthew's known as Matthew's Bible, but which is in fact Bible, 1537. the completion of Tyndale s work. Tyndale had only published the Pentateuch, Jonah, and the New Testament, but he had never abandoned his work on the Old Testament, and he had left behind him in manuscript a version of the books from Joshua to 2 Chronicles. The person into whose hands this version fell, and who was responsible for its publication, was John Rogers ; and whether " Thomas Matthew," whose name stands at the foot of the dedication, was an assistant of Rogers, or was Rogers him self under another name, has never been clearly ascertained.* The Bible which Rogers pubUshed in 1537, at the expense of two London merchants, consisted of Tyndale's version of Genesis to 2 Chronicles, Coverdale's ] for the rest of the Old Testament (including the Apocrypha), and Tyndale's New Testament accord ing to his fitnal edition in 1535 ; the whole being very sUghtly revised, and accompanied by introductions, summaries of chapters, woodcuts, and copious marginal comments of a somewhat con tentious character. It was printed abroad, dedicated to Henry VIIL, and was cordiaUy welcomed and promoted by Cranmer. Cromwell himself, at Cranmer's request, presented it to Henry and procured his permission for it to be sold publicly ; and so it came about that Tyndale's translation, which Henry and all the heads of the Church had in 1525 proscribed, was in 1537 sold in England by leave of Henry and through the active support of the Secretary of State and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The English Bible had now been licensed, but it had not yet been commanded to be read in Churches. That honour was * It has also been suggested that Matthew stands for Tyndale, to whom the greater part of the translation was really due. The appearance of Tyndale's name on the title page would have made it impossible for Henry VIII. to admit it into England -without convicting himself of error in proscribing Tyndale's New Testament. THE ENGLISH PRINTED BIBLE. 221 reserved for a new revision which CromweU (perhaps anxious lest the substantial identity of Matthew's Bible Bible\*6M-i54i. "^^^^ Tyndale's, and the controversial character of the notes, should come to the king's knowledge) employed Coverdale to make on the basis of Matthew's Bible. The printing was begun in Paris in 1538, but before it was completed came an order from the French king, forbidding the work to proceed and confiscating the printed sheets. Coverdale, however, rescued a great number of the sheets, conveyed printers, presses, and type to London, and there completed the work, of which CromweU thereupon ordered that a copy should be put up in some convenient place in every church. The Bible thus issued in the spring of 1539 is a splen didly printed volume of large size, from which characteristic its popular name was derived. In contents, it is Matthew's Bible revised throughout, the Old Testament especially being consider ably altered in accordance with Miinster's Latin version, which was greatly superior to the Zurich Bible on which Coverdale had relied in preparing his own translation. The New Testament was also revised, with special reference to the Latin version of Eras mus. Coverdale's characteristic style of working was thus ex hibited again in the formation of the Great Bible. He did not attempt to contribute independent work of his o-wn, but took the best materials which were available at the time and combined them according to his own editorial judgment. He was an editor, and a very judicious one, not a translator. In accordance with CromweU's order, copies of the Great Bible were set up in every Church ; and we have a curious picture of the eagerness with which people flocked to make acquaintance with the English Scriptures in the complaint of Bishop Bonner that "diverse -wilful and unlearned persons inconsiderately and in discreetly read the same, especially and chiefly at the time of divine service, yea in the time and declaration of the word of God." One can picture to oneself the great length of Old St. Paul's (of which the bishop is speaking) with the preacher haranguing 222 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. from the pulpit at one end, whUe elsewhere eager volunteers are reading from the six volumes of the English Bible which Bonner had put up in different parts of the cathedral, surrounded by crowds of listeners who, regardless of the order of divine service, are far more anxious to hear the Word of God itself than expositions of it by the preacher in the pulpit. Over aU the land copies of the Bible spread and multipUed, so that a contemporary witness testifies that it had entirely superseded the old romances as the favourite reading of the people. Edition after edition was required from the press. The first had appeared in 1539 ; a second (in which the books of the Prophets had again been considerably revised by Coverdale) followed in April 1540, with a preface by Cranmer, and a third in July. In that month Crom well was overthrown and executed ; but the progress of the Bible was not checked. Another edition appeared in November, and on the title-page was the authorisation of Bishop Tunstall of London, who had thus lived to sanction a revised form of the very work which, as originally issued by Tyndale, he had formerly proscribed and burnt. Three more editions appeared in 1541, all substantially reproducing the revision of April 1540, though with some variations ; and by this time the immediate demand for copies had been satisfied, and the work alike of printing and of revising the Bible came for the moment to a pause.* It is from the time of the Great Bible that we may fairly date the origin of the love and knowledge of the Bible which has characterised, and which still characterises, the English nation. The successive issues of Tyndale's translation had been largely wasted in providing fuel for the opponents of the Ref ormation ,¦;- but every copy of the seven editions of the Great Bible found, not merely a single reader, but a congregation of readers. The Bible * Several of the editions of the Great Bible were printed by Whitchurch, and it is under the name of Whitchurch's Bible that the rules laid down for the guidance of the revisers of 1611 refer to it. The rule (which instructs the revisers to refer to " Tindale's, Matthew's, Coverdale's, Whitchurch's " and the " Geneva" translations) is quoted in the preface to the Revised New Testament of 1881. THE ENGLISH PRINTED BIBLE. 223 took hold of the people, superseding, as wfe have seen, the most popular romances ; and through the rest of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries the extent to which it had sunk into their hearts is seen in their speech, their writings, and even in the daUy strife of politics. And one portion of the Great Bible has had a deeper and more enduring influence still. When the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. was dra-wn up, directions were given in it for the use of the Psalms from the Great Bible ; and from that day to this the Psalter of the Great Bible has held its place in our Book of Common Prayer. Just as, eleven hundred years before, Jerome's rendering of the Psalter from the Hebrew faded to supersede his sUghtly revised edition of the Old Latin Psalms, to which the ears of men were accustomed, so the more correct translation of the Authorised Version has never driven out the more famiUar Prayer-Book version which we have received from the Great Bible. It may be, it certainly is, less accurate ; but it is smoother in diction, more evenly balanced for purposes of chanting ; above aU, it has become so minutely familiar to us in every verse and phrase that the loss of old associations, which its abandonment would produce, would more than counterbalance the advantage of any gain in accuracy. One other translation should be noticed in this place for com pleteness sake, although it had no effect on the subsequent history of the English Bible. This was the Bible of B. *BUiiri539? Taverner, an Oxford scholar, who undertook an independent revision of Matthew's Bible at the same time as Coverdale was preparing the first edition of the .Great Bible under CromweU's auspices. Taverner was a good Greek scholar, but not a Hebraist ; consequently the best part of his work is the revision of the New Testament, in which he intro duces not a few changes for the better. The Old Testament is more slightly revised, chiefly with reference to the Vulgate. Taverner's Bible appeared hi 1539, and was once reprinted ; but it was entirely superseded for general use by the authorised Great Bible, and exercised no influence upon later translations. 224 OUE BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCEIPTS. The closing years of Henry's reign were marked by a reaction against the principles of the Reformation. Although he had thrown off the supremacy of the Pope, he was by J.- 7^^.. i^t^fZL no means favourably disposed towards the- teach- Bible, 1567-1560. •' ^ ings and practices of the Protestant leaders, either at home or abroad ¦; and after the fall of Cromwell his distrust of them took a more marked form. In 1543 all translations of the Bible bearing the name of Tyndale were ordered to be destroyed ; all notes or comments in other Bibles were to be obliterated ; and the common people were forbidden to read any part of the Bible either in public or in private. In 1546 Coverdale's New Testament was joined in the same condemnation with Tyndale's, and a great destruction of these earUer Testaments then took place. Thus not only was the work of making fresh translations suspended for several years, but the continued existence of those which had been previously made seemed to be in danger. The accession of Edward VI. in 1547 removed this danger, and during his reign the Bible was frequently reprinted ; but no new translation or revision made its appearance. It is trae that Sir John Cheke, whose memory is preserve^ by Milton, as having "taught Cambridge and King Edward Greek," prepared a translation of St. Matthew and part of St. Mark, in which he avoided, as far as possible, the use of all words not English in origin, substituting (for example) " gainrising " for " resurrec tion" and "biword" for "parable"; but this version was not printed, and remains as a mere linguistic curiosity. Under Mary it was not likely that the work of translation would make any progress. Two of the men most intimately associated with the previous versions, Cranmer and Rogers, were burnt at the stake, and Coverdale (who under Edward VI. had become Bishop of Exeter) escaped with difficulty. The public use of the EngUsh Bible was forbidden, and copies were removed from the churches ; but beyond this nO special destruction of the Bible was attempted. Meanwhile the fugitives from the persecution of England were gathering beyond sea, and the more advanced and earnest among THE ENGLISH PEINTED BIBLE. 225 them were soon attracted by the influence of Calvin to a congenial home at Geneva. Here the interrupted task of perfecting the English Bible was resumed. The place was very favourable for the purpose. Geneva was -the home, not only of Calvin, but of Beza, the most prominent BibUcal scholar then living. Thought was free, and no considerations of state policy or expediency need affect the translators. Since the last revision of the EngUsh translation much had been done, both by Beza and by others, to improve and elucidate the Bible text. A company of Frenchmen was already at work in Geneva on the production of a revised translation of the French Bible, which eventually became the standard version for the Protestants of that country. Amid such surroundings a body of English scholars took in hand the task of revising the Great Bible. The flrst-fruits of this activity was the New Testament of W. Whittingham, brother-in-law of Calvin's wife and a Fellow of AU Souls' College, Oxford, which was printed in 1557 ; but this was soon superseded by a more comprehensive and complete revision of the whole Bible by Whittingham himself and a group of other scholars. Taking for their basis the Great Bible in the Old Testament, and Tyndale's last revision in the New, they revised the whole with much care and scholarship. In the Old Testament the changes introduced are chiefly in the Prophetical Books and the Hagiographa, and consist for the most part of closer approximations to the original Hebrew. In the New Testament they took Beza's Latin transla tion and commentary as their guide, and by far the greater number of the changes in this part of the Bible are traceable to his influence. The whole Bible was accompanied by explanatory comments in the margin, of a somewhat Calvinistic character, but without any excessive violence or partisanship. The division of chapters into verses, which had been introduced by Whittingham from Stephanus's edition of 1551, was here for the first time adopted for the whole EngUsh Bible. In all previous translations the division had been into paragraphs, as in our present Revised Version. S 2764. P 226 OUE BISLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Next to Tyndale, the authors of the Geneva Bible have exercised the most marked influence of all the early translators on the Authorised Version. Their own scholarship, both in Hebrew and in Greek, seems to have been sound and sober ; and Beza, their principal guide in the New Testament, was unsurpassed in his own day as an interpreter of the sacred text. Printed in legible Roman type and in a convenient quarto form, and accompanied by an inteUigible and sensible commentary, the Geneva Bible (either as originally pubUshed in 1560, or with the New Testament further revised by Tomson, in fuUer harmony with Beza's views, in 1576) became the Bible of the household, as the Great Bible was the Bible of the church. It was never authorised for use in churches, but it was cordially received by the heads of the English Church, and until the final, victory of King James's Version it was by far the most popular Bible in England for private reading ; and many of its improvements, in phrase or in interpretation, were adopted in the Authorised Version. With the accession of EUzabeth a new day dawned for the Bible in England. The public reading of it was naturally restored, and the clergy were required once more to have a ''¦Khiefibesf' ^°^^ °* *^® ^^^^^ ^^^^® V^^^^ ill *^eir churches^ which all might read with due order and rever ence. But the publication of the Geneva Bible made it impossible for the Great Bible to maintain its position as the authorised form of the EngUsh Scriptures. The superior coirectness of the Geneva version threw discredit on the official Bible ; and yet, being itself the Bible of one particular party m the Church, and reflecting in its commentary the views of that party, it could not properly be adopted as the universal Bible for pubUc service. The necessity of a revision of the Great Bible was therefore obvious, and it happened that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, was himself a textual scholar, a coUector of manuscripts, an editor of learned works, and consequently fitted to take up the task which lay ready to his hand. Accordingly, about the year 1563, he set on foot a scheme for the revision of the Bible by a The ENGLISH PRINTED BIBLE. 227 . . -4». . — number of scholars working separately. Portions of the Bible were assigned to each of the selected divines for revision, the Archbishop reserving for himself the task of editing the whole and passing it through the press. A considerable number of the selected revisers were bishops,* and hence the result of their labours obtained the name of the Bishops' Bible. The Bishops' Bible was published in 1568, and it at once superseded the Great Bible ¦ for official use in churches. No' edition of the earlier text was printed after 1569, and the mandate of Convocation for the provision of the new version in aU churches and bishops' palaces must have eventually secured its general use in public services. Nevertheless, on the whole, the revision cannot be considered a success, and the Geneva Bible continued to be preferred as the Bible of the household and the individual. In the forty-three years which elapsed before the appearance of the Authorised Version, nearly 120 editions of the Geneva Bible issued from the press, as against twenty of the Bishops' Bible, and while the former are mostly of small compass, the latter are mainly the large volumes which would be used in churches. The method of revision did not conduce to uniformity of results. There was, apparently, no habitual consultation be.- tween the several revisers. Each carried out his own assigned portion of the task, subject only to the general supervision of the Archbishop. The natural result is a considerable amount of unevenness. The historical books of the Old Testament were comparatively Uttle altered ; in the remaining books changes were much more frequent, but they are not always happy or even correct. The New Testament portion was better done, Greek being apparently better known by the revisers than Hebrew. Like almost aU its predecessors, the Bishops' Bible was provided * Alley, Bishop of Exeter ; Davies, Bishop of St. David's ; Sandys, Bishop Of Worcester; Home, Bishop of Winchester; Bentham, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry; Grindal, Bishop of London; Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich; Coze, Bishop of Ely ; and Guest, Bishop of Rochester. The other revisers ¦ were Pearson, Canon of Canterburj-; -Perne, Canon of Ely; Goodman, Dean of Westminster ; and Giles Lawrence. 228 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCEIPTS. with a marginal commentary, on a rather smaller scale than that in the Geneva Bible. A second edition was published in 1572, in which the New Testament was once niore revised, while the Old Testament was left untouched; but the total demand for the Bishops' Bible, being probably confined to the copies required for public purposes, can never have been very great. Meanwhile the zeal of the reformed churches for the possession of the Bible in their own languages drove the Romanists into 8 Th RTi • competition with them in the production of trans- and Douai Bible, lations. For each of the principal provinces of the Latin Church a translation was provided con formable to the views of that Church on the text and interpretation of Scripture, It was not that the heads of the Roman Church believed such translations to be in themselves desirable ; but since there was evidently an irrepressible popular demand for them, it was clearly advisable, from the Roman point of -view, that the translated Bible should be accompanied by a commentary in accordance with Roman teaching, rather than by that of the Genevan Calvinists or the EngUsh bishops. The preparation of an English version naturaUy fell to the scholars of the EngUsh seminary which had lately been established in France. The ori ginal home of this seminary was at Douai, but in 1578 it was transferred for a time to Rheims ; and it was during the sojourn at Rheims that the first part of the English Bible was produced. This was the New Testament, which was pubUshed in 1582. The Old Testament did not appear untU 1609, when the seminary had returned to Douai ; and consequently the completed Bible goes by the name of the Rheims and Douai version. The most important point to observe about this Roman -Catholic Bible is that the translation is made, not from the original Hebrew and Greek, but from the Latin Vulgate. This was done deUberately, on the ground that the Vulgate was the Bible of Jerome and Augustine, that it had ever since been used in the Church, and that its text was preferable to the Greek wherever the two differed, because the Greek text had been corrupted by THE ENGLISH PEINTED BIBLE. 229 heretics. Furthermore, the translators (of whom the chief was Gregory Martin, formerly Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford) held it their duty to adhere as closely as possible to the Latin words, even when the Latin was uninteUigible, Bishop Westcott quotes an extraordinary instance in Ps. 57. 10 : " Before your thorns did understand the old briar : as living so in wrath he swalloweth them." The general result is that the translation is almost always stiff and awkward, and not unfrequently meaning less. As a contribution to the interpretation of Scripture it is practically valueless ; but, on the other hand, its systematic use of words and technical phrases taken directly from the Latin has had a considerable influence on our Authorised Version. Many of the words derived from the Latin which occur in our Bible were inooi-porated into it from the Rheims New Testament. The Romanist Bible had no general success, and its circulation was not large. The New Testament was reprinted thrice between 1582 and 1750 ; the Old Testament only once. Curiously enough, the greater part of its chculation was in the pages of a Protestant controversialist, Fulke, who printed the Rheims and the Bishops' New Testaments side by side, and also appended to the Rheims commentary a refutation by himself. Fulke's work had a con siderable popularity, and it is possibly to the wider knowledge of the Rheims version thus produced that we owe the use made of it by the scholars who prepared the Authorised Version : to which version, after our long and varied wanderings, we are now at last come. The attempt of Archbishop Parker and the Elizabethan bishops to provide a universally satisfactory Bible had failed. The Bishops' Bible had replaced the Great Bible for 9, The Authorised ^gg j^ churches, and that was aU. It had not superseded the Geneva Bible in private use ; and faults and inequalities in it were visible to aU scholars. For the remammg years of EUzabeth's reign it held its own ; but in the settlement of religion which followed the accession of James I., the provision of a new Bible held a prominent place. At the 230 OUB BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCEIPTS. 4 _ . . . Hampton Court Conference in 1604, to which bishops and Puritan clergy were alike invited by James in order to confer on the subject of religious toleration. Dr. Reynolds, President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, raised the subject of the imperfection of the current Bibles. Bancroft, Bishop of London, supported him ; and although the Conference itseU arrived at no conclusion on this or any other subject, the King had become interested in the matter, and a scheme was formulated shortly afterwards for carrying the revision into effect. It appears to have been James himself who suggested the leading features of the scheme ; namely, that the revision should be executed mainly by the Universities ; that it should be approved by the bishops and most learned of the Church, by the Privy Council, and by the king himself, so that all the Church should be concerned in it ; and that it should have no marginal commentary, which might render it the Bible of a party only. ' To James were also submitted the names of the revisers ; and it is no more than justice to a king whose political miscon-i ceptions and mismanagements have left him with a very indifferent character among EngUsh students of history, to aUow that the good sense on which he prided himself seems to have been conspicuously manifested in respect of the preparation of the Authorised Version, which, by reason of its after -effects, may fairly be considered the most important event of his reign. It was in 1604 that the scheme of the revision was drawn up, and some of the revisers may have begun work upon it privately at this time ; but it was not untU 1607 that the task was formally taken in hand. The body of revisers was a strong one. It m- cluded the professors of Hebrew and Greek at both Universities, with practically all the leading scholars and divines of the day. There is a slight uncertainty about some of the names, and som6 changes in the list may have been caused by death or retirement, but the total number of revisers was from forty-eight to fifty, These were divided into six groups, of which two sat at West minster, two at Oxford, and two at Cambridge. In the, first instance each group worked separately, having a special part of THE ENGLISH PEINTED BIBLE. 231 the Bible assigned to it. The two Westminster groups revised Genesis — 2 Kings, and Romans — Jude; the Oxford groups Isaiah — Malachi, and the Gospels, Acts, and Apocalypse ; while those at Cambridge undertook 1 Chronicles— Ecclesiastes and the Apocrypha. Elaborate instructions were drawn up for their guidance, probably by Bancroft. The basis of the revision was to be the Bishops' Bible ; the old ecclesiastical terms (about which Tyndale and More had so vehemently disagreed) were to be retained ; no marginal notes were to be affixed, except necessary explanation of Hebrew and Greek words ; when any company had finished the i!evision of a book, it was to be sent to all the rest fot their criticism and suggestions, ultimate differences of opinion to be settled at a general meeting of the chief members of each company ; learned men outside the board of revisers were to be invited to give their opinions, especially in cases of particulat difflcultyi With these regulations to secure careful and repeated revision, the work was earnestly taken in hand. It occupied two years and nine months of strenuous toU, the last nine months being taken up by a final revision by a committee consisting of two members from each centre ; and in the year 1611 the result of the revisers' labours issued from the press. It was at once attacked by Dr. Hugh Broughton, a Biblical scholar of great eminence and erudition, who had been onutted from the list of revisers on account of his violent and impracticable dis position. His disappointment vented itself in a very hostUe criticism of the new version ; but this had very little effect, and the general reception of the revised Bible seems to have been eminently favourable. Though there is no record whatever of any decree ordaining its use, by either King, Parliament, or Convocation, the words "appomted to be read in churches" appear on its title-page; and there can be no doubt that it ' at once superseded the Bishops' Bible (which was not reprinted after, 1606) as the official version of the Scriptures for pubUc service. Against the Geneva Bible it had a sharper struggle, and 232 OUE BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCEIPTS. for nearly half a century the two versions existed side by side in private use. From the first, however, the version of 1611 seems to have been received into popular favour, and the reprints of it far outnumber those of its rival. It cannot have been authority in high places of Church or State that caused the final victory of the new version ; for the Geneva version had outlived the com petition of the Bishops' Bible, and the period in which it finally feU before King James's version was that in which Church and State were overthrown. It was its superior merits, and its total freedom from party or sectarian spirit, that secured the triumph of the Authorised Version, which from the middle of the seven teenth century took its place as the undisputed Bible of the English nation. The causes of its superiority are not hard to understand. In the first place, Greek and Hebrew scholarship had greatly in creased in England during the forty years which anV^*flue™ce. ^^ passed since the last revision. It is true that the Greek text of the New Testament had not been substantiaUy improved in the interval, and was still very imperfect ; but the chief concern of the revisers was not with the readings, but with the interpretation of the Scriptures, and in this department of scholarship great progress had been- made. Secondly, the revision was the work of no single man and of no single school. It was the deliberate work of a large body of trained scholars and divines of aU classes and opinions, who had before them, for their guidance, the labours of nearly a century of revision. The translation of the Bible had passed out of the sphere of controversy. It was a national undertaking, in which no one had any interest at heart save that of producing the best possible version of the Scriptures. Thhdly, the past forty years had been years of extraordinary growth in English Uterature. Prose writers and poets— Spenser, Sidney, Hooker, Marlowe, Shakespeare, to name only the greatest — had combined to spread abroad a sense of literary style and to raise the standard of literary taste. Under the influence, conscious or unconscious, of masters such as tjiese, the revisers wrought out the THE ENGLISH PEINTED BIBLE. 233 fine material left to them by Tyndale and his successors into the splendid monument of Elizabethan prose which the Authorised Version is universally admitted to be. Into the detaUs of the revision it is hardly necessary to go far. The earlier versions of which the revisers made most use were those of Rheims and Geneva. Tyndale no doubt fixed the general tone of the version more than any other translator, through the transmission of his influence down to the Bishops' Bible, which formed the basis of the revision ; but many improvements in interpretation were taken from the Geneva Bible, and not a few phrases and single words from that of Rheims. Indeed, no source of information seems to have been left untried ; and the result was a version at once more faithful to the original than any translation that had preceded it, and finer as a work of literary art than any translation either before or since. In the Old Testament the Hebrew tone and manner have been admirably reproduced, and have passed with the Authorised Version into much of our literature. Even where the translation is wrong or the Hebrew text corrupt, as in many passages of the Prophets or the last chapter of Ecclesiastes, the splendid stateliness of the English version makes us blind to the deficiency in the sense. And in the Ngw Testament, in particular, it is the simple truth that the English version is a far greater literary work than the original Greek, The Greek of the New Testament is a language which had passed its prime, and had lost its natural grace and infinite adaptabUity.. The English of the Authorised Version is the finest specimen of our prose Uterature at a time when EngUsh prose wore its stateliest and most majestic form. The influence of the Authorised Version, alike on our religion and our literature, can never be exaggerated. Not only in the great works of our theologians, the resonant prose of the seven teenth-century Fathers of the English Church, but in the writings of nearly every author, whether of prose or verse, the stamp of its language is to be seen, Milton is fuU of it ; naturaUy, perhaps, from the nature of his subjects, but stUl his practice shows his ^34 OUE BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCEIPTS. sense of the artistic value of its style. So deeply has its language entered into our common tongue, that one probably could not take up a newspaper or read a single book in which some phrase was not borrowed, consciously or unconsciously, from King James's version. No master of style has been bUnd to its charms ; and those who have recommended its study most strongly have often been those who, like Carlyle and Matthew Arnold, were not pre-. pared to accept its teaching to the f ulL But great as has been the literary value of the Authorised Version, its reUgious signiflcance has been greater still. For liearly three centuries it has been the Bible, not merely of public use, not merely of one sect or painty, not even of a single country, but of the whole nation and of evei'y English-speaking country on the face of the globe. It has been the literature of milUons who have read little else, it has been the guide of conduct to men and -Women of every class in life and of every rank in learning and education. No small part of the attachment of the English people to their national church is due to the common love borne by every party and well-nigh every individual for the English Bible. It was a national work in its creation, and it has been a national treasure since its completion. It was the work, not of one man, nor of one age, but of many labouters, of diverse and even opposing views, over a period of ninety years. It was watered with the blood of martyrs, and its slow growth gave time for the casting off of imperfections and for the full accompUsh ment of its destiny as the Bible of the EngUsh nation. With the publication of the Authorised Version the history of the English Bible closes for many a long year. Partly, no =, , ^, i , doubt, this Was due to the troubled times which The Authorised ¦Version acdepted came upon England in that generation and the next. When the constitutions of Church and State alike were being cast into the melting-pot, when men were beating their ploughshares into swords, and their pruning- hooks into spears, there was little time for nice discussions as to the exact text of the Scriptures, and little peace for the labours THE EEVISED VERSION. 235 of scholarshipi But the main reason for this pause in the work was that, for the moment, finality had been reachedi The version of 1611 was an adequate translation of the Greek and Hebrew texts as they were then known to scholars. The scholarship of the day was satisfied with it as it had been satisfied with no version before it; and the common people found its language appeal to them with a greater charm and dignity than that of the Genevan version, to which they had been accustomed* As time went on the Authorised Version acquired the prescriptive right of age ; its rhythms became famiUar to the ears of all classes ; its language entered into our literature j and Englishmen became prouder of their Bible than of any of the creative works of their own literature. What, then, were the causes which led to the revision of this beloved version within the present generation, after it had held . . its ground for nearly three hundred years ? revision in our They may be summed up in a single sentence ; own time. rpj^g increase of our knowledge concerning the original Hebrew and Greek texts, especially the latter. The reader who -wiU glance back at our history of the Greek texts in Chapters VI.— VIII. wiU see how much of our best knowledge about the text of the New Testament has been acquired since the ' date of the Authorised Version. Of aU the manuscripts de scribed in Chapter VII. scarcely one was known to the scholars of 1611 ; of aU the versions described in Chapter VIII, not one was known except the Vulgate, and that mainly in late and corrupt manuscripts. The editions of the Greek text chiefly used by the translators of 1611 were those of Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza ; and these had been formed from a comparison of only a few manuscripts, and those mostly of the latest period,* The trans lators used the best materials that they had to their hands, and with good results, since their texts were substantially true, though not in detaU ; but since their time the materials have increased * Stephanus consulted two good uncials, D and L, but only to a slight extent. 236 OUR 'bible and THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. enormously. New manuscripts have come to light, and all the earliest copies have been minutely examined and discussed. Many scholars have devoted years of their Uves to. the collection of evidence bearing on the text of the New Testament ; and the general result of these generations of study is ta show that the text used by the translators of 1611 is far frbm perfect. For two centuries scholars- laboured on without pressing for a revision of the English Bible, though small .alterations were silently introduced into it untU late in the eighteenth ^°" v«s?on."'^ century ; but in the middle of the present cen tury the discrepancies between the received and the amended Greek texts became so many and so generaUy known that the desirabiUty of a revision became apparent. The dis covery of the Codex Sinaiticus, and the critical texts published by Tischendorf and Tregelles, did much to bring this need home to all who cared for the accuracy of the English Bible. Partial trans lations were published by individual scholars, which served a good purpose in their own time, though they need not be described here, since none of them exercised any direct influence on the Revised Version ; but the final result was that in 1870 decisive steps were taken to secure an authoritative revision of the whole English Bible in the light of the fuUest modern knowledge and the best Biblical scholarship. The history of the revision is told at sufficient length hi the. preface to the Revised Version of the New Testament. The initiative was taken by the Convocation of the province of Canter bury, In February of the year 1870 a definite proposal was made that a_ revision of the Authorised Version should be taken into consideration. In May the broad principles of the revision were laid down in a series of resolutions, and a committee of sixteen members was appointed to execute the work, Avith power to add to its numbers. The conunittee divided itself into two companies, one for each Testament, and invitations were issued to aU the leading Biblical scholars of the United Kingdom to take part in the work. The invitations were not confined to members THE REVISED VERSION. 237 of the Church of England. The English Bible is the Bible of Nonconformists as Well as of the EstabUshed Church, and repre sentatives of the Nonconformist bodies took their seats among the revisers. Thus Were formed the two companies to whom the Revised Version is due. Each company consisted originaUy of twenty-seven members, but deaths and resignations and new appointments caused the exact numbers to vary from time to time ; and it cannot be questioned that most of the leading Biblical scholars of the day were included among them. Further, when the work had barely begun, an invitation was sent to the churches of America asking their co-operation ; and, in accord ance -with this invitation, two companies were formed in America, to whom all the results of the English companies were communi cated. The suggestions of the American revisers were carefully and repeatedly considered, and those of their alterations on which they desired to insist, when they were not adopted by their EngUsh colleagues, were recorded in an appendix to the published version. The Revised Version is, consequently, the work not of the English Church alone, nor of the British Isles alone, but of all the English- speaking churches throughout the world ; only the Roman Catho- Uos taking no part in it. The methods of the revision left Uttle to be desired in the way of care and deliberation. The instructions to the Revisers (which are given in full in their preface) required them to intro duce as few alterations as possible consistently with faithfulness ; to use in such alterations the language of the Authorised or earlier versions, where possible ; to go over their work twice, in the first revision deciding on alterations by simple majorities, but finally making or retaining no change except two-thirds of those present approved of it. Thus the Revised Version represents the deliberate opinions of a large majority of the best scholars of aU English- speaking churches in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It was on the twenty-second of June 1870 that the members of the New Testament Company, having first received the Holy Communion in Westmhister Abbey, held their first meeting in the 238 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Jerusalem Chamber ; the Old Testament Company entered on their work eight days later. It was on the eleventh of November 1880 that the New Testament Revisers set their signatures to the. preface of their version, which finally issued from the press in May 1881. The Old Testament preface is dated the tenth of July 1884, and the entire Bible, with the exception of the Apocrypha,* was published in May 1885. The New Testament company records that it sat for about forty days in each year for ten years. The Old Testament revision occupied 792 days in a space of fourteen years. Whatever judgment be passed on the merits of the Revised Version, it cannot be held to have been made precipitately, or without the fullest care and deliberation. What, then, of the results ? Is the Re-vised Version a worthy successor to the Authorised Bible which has entered so deeply into the Ufe of Englishmen ? Has it added fresh perfection to that glorious work, or has it laid hands rashly upon sacred things.? What, in any case, are the characteristics of the revision of 1881-5 as compared with the version on. which it is based ? The first class of changes introduced in the Revised Version consists of those which are due to a difference in the text translated ; and these are most conspicuous and the" Revised ° ™ost important in the New Testament. The Version: version of 1611 was made from a Greek text A. Changes in text, formed by a comparison of very few manuscripts, and those, for the most part, late (see p. 99). The version of 1881, on the other hand, was made from a Greek text based upon an exhaustive examination, extending over some two centuries, of all the best manuscripts in existence. In Dr. Hort and Dr. Scrivener the New Testament Company possessed the two most learned * The revision of the Apocrypha -was not initiated by Convqcation, but by the University Presses, which commissioned a company, formed from the Old and New Testament Companies, to undertake the work. Material for the re-vision is comparatively scanty, but the -Variorum Edition, by the Eev. C. J. Ball, 1892, is accepted both in England and in Germany as a very important contribution to this branch of Biblical literature. As this sheet is finally going to press, the Revised Apocrypha is announced for immediate publication, THE EEVISED VEESION. 239 textual critics then alive ; and when it is remembered that no change was finally accepted unless it had the support of two-thirds of those present, it wiU be seen that the Greek text underlying the Revised Version has very strong claims on our acceptance.* No one edition of the Greek text was foUowed by the Revisers, each reading being considered on its own merits ; but it is certain' that the edition and the textual theories of Drs. Westcott and Hort, which were communicated to the Revisers in advance of the pubUcation of their volumes, had a great influence, on the text ultimately adopted, while very many of their readings which were not' admitted into the text of the Revised Version, yet find a place in the margin. The Greek text of the New Testament of 1881 has been estimated to differ from that of 1611 in no less than 5,788 readings, of which about a quarter are held notably to modify the subject-matter ; though even of these only a smaU ^ proportion can be considered as of first-rate importance. The chief of these have been referred to on p. 8, but the reader who wishes for a fuUer list may compare the Authorised and Revised readings in such passages as : Matt. 1. 25 ; 5. 44 ; 6. 13 ; 10. 3 ; 11. 23 ; 17. 21 ; 18. 11 ; 19. 17 ; 20. 22 ; 23, 14 ; 24, 36 ; 27. 35. Mark 7. 19 ; 9. 44, 46, 49 ; 15. 28 ; 16. 9-20. Luke 1. 28 ; 2, 14 ; 9. 35, 54, 55 ; 11. 2-4 ; 17. 36 ; 23. 15, 17. John 4, 42 ; 5, 3, 4 ; 6, 69 ; 7. 53—8, 11 ; 8, 59. Acts 4. 25 ; 8. 37 ; 9. 5 ; 15. 18, 34 ; 18, 5, 17, 21 ; 20. 15 ; 24. 6-8 ; 28. 16, 29. Rom, 3. 9 ; 4. 19 ; 7. 6 ; 8. 1 ; 9. 28 ; 10, 15 ; 11. 6 ; 14, 6 ; 16, 5, 24. 1 Cor. 2. 1 ; 6. 20 ; 8. 7 ; 11. 24, 29 ; 15. 47. 2 Cor. 1. 20 ; 12. 1, Gal. 3. 1, 17; 4. 7 ; 5. 1. Eph. 3. 9, 14; 6. 30. PMl. 1. 16, 17. Col. 1. 2, 14; 2, 2, 18, 1 Thess. 1. 1. 1 Tim. 3. 3, 16 ; 6. 5, 19. 2 Tim. 1, 11. Heb. 7, 21. 1 Peter 4, 14. 1 John 4. 3 ; 5, 7, 8, 13. Jude 23. Rev.1.8, 11 ; 2.3 ; 5.10 ; 11.17 ; 14.5 ; 16.7 ; 21.24; 22, 14. * The Revisers' Greek text has been edited by Archdeacon Palmer at Oxford, and Dr. Scrivener at Cambridge ; and it would be a great gain if this could be adopted in our schools and universities as the standard text of the Greek Testament, in place of the old " received text," which every scholar knows to be imperfect. S40 OUE BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCEIPTS. This list, which any reader of the Variorum Bible may extend in definitely for himself (with the advantage of having the evidence for and against each change succinctly stated for him), contains some of the more striking passages in which the Revised Version is translated from a different Greek text from that used in the Autho rised Version, and few scholars wUl be found to deny that in nearly every case the text of the Revised Version is certainly superior. In the Old Testament the case is different. This is not because the translators of the Old Testament in the Authorised Version were more careful to select a correct text than their colleagues of the New Testament, but simply because our knowledge of the Old Testament text has not increased since that date to anything Uke the extent that it has in respect of the New Testament. As we have seen hi the earlier chapters, aU extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures contain what is known as the Massoretic text, and they do not greatly differ among themselves. Such differences of reading as exist are traced by a collation of the early versions, e.g. the Septuagint or the Vulgate ; but we know too little as yet of the character and history of these versions to f oUow them to any great extent in preference to the Hebrew' manuscripts. The Revisers, therefore, had no choice but to translate, as a rule, from the Massoretic text ; and consequently they were translating sub stantially the same text as that which the authors of King James's Version had before them. This is one explanation of the fact, which is obvious to every reader, that the Old Testament is much less altered in the Revised Version than the New ; * and the reader who wishes to learn the improvements which might he- introduced by a freer use of the ancient versions must be referred to the notes in the Variorum Bible. * A well kno-wn example of an altered reading occurs in Isa. 9. 3 (the first lesson for Christmas Day), " Thou hast multiplied the people and not increased the joy ; they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest," etc. ; the marginal reading being to him. In the Eevised -Version these readings change places, " his " (lit. to him) being in the text, and not in the margin. The note in the Variorum Bible explains that iu the Hebrew both readings are pro nounced alike. THE EEVISED VEESION. 241 The situation is reversed when we come to consider the differ ences, not of text but of interpretation, between the Authorised Version and the Revised. Here the advance is interp^r^tation. gi'^ater in the Old Testament than iu the New, and again the reason is plain. The translators of the New Testament in the Authorised Version were gener ally able to interpret correctly the Greek text which they had ¦before them, and their work may, except in a few passages, be taken as a faithful rendering of an imperfect text. On the other hand, Hebrew was less well known in 1611 than Greek, and the passages in which the Authorised Version fails to represent the. original are far more numerous in the Old Testament than in the New. The reader who will take the trouble to compare the ¦Authorised and Revised Versions of the prophetical and poetical books wUl find a very considerable number of places in which the latter has brought out the meaning of passages which iu the former were obscure. To some extent the same is the case with the Epistles of St. Paul, where, if we miss much of the famUiar language of the Authorised Version, we yet find that the connec tion between the sentences and the general course of the argument are brought out more clearly than before. But it is in the Old Testament, in Job, in Ecclesiastes, in Isaiah and the other Prophets, that the gain is most manifest, and no one who cares for the meaning of what he reads can afford to neglect the light thrown upon the obscure passages in these books by the Revised Version.* Besides differences in text and differences in interpretation, we C. Changes in ^""^ ^"^ *^® Revised Version very many differ- language. ences in language. By far the greater number of the changes introduced by the Revisers are of this class. * The most striking single passage in the New Testament where the Revised Version has altered the interpretation of the Authorised Version is Acts 26. 28, where for tbe familiar " almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian " we find '¦ With but little persuasion thou wouldest fain make me a Christian,"— un- questionalJy a more correct translation of the Greek. S 27G4. ^ 242 OUE BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. and it is on them that the general acceptance, or other wise, of the new translation very largely depends. Sometimes these changes embody a slight change of meaning, or remove a word which has acquired in course of time a meaning different from that which it originaUy had. Such are the substitution of " Sheol " or " Hades " for "hell," " condemnation " for " damna tion," and " love " for " charity " (notably in 1 Cor. 13). Others are attempts at slightly greater accuracy in reproducing the pre cise tenses of the verbs used in the Greek, as when in John 17. 14 " the world hated them " is substituted for " the world hath hated them." Others, again, are due to the attempt made to represent the same Greek word, wherever it occurs, by the same English word, so far as this is possible. The translators of the Authorised Version were avowedly indifferent to this consideration ; or rather, they deUberately did the reverse. Where there were two or more good English equivalents for a Greek word, they did not wish to seem to cast a slight upon one of. them by always using the other, and so they used both interchangeably,* * See the Translators' Preface (unfortunately omitted from our ordinary Bibles, but very rightly inserted in the Variorum Bible, p. xxiii.) ; "Another thing we think good to admonish thee of, gentle Reader, that we have not tied ourselves to an uniformity of phrasing, or to an identity of words, as some peradventure would wish that we had done, because they observe, that some learned men somewhere have been as exact as they could that way. Truly, thiit we might not vary from the sense of that which we had translated before, if the word signified the same thing in both places, (for there be some words that be not of the same sense every where,) we were especially careful, and made a conscience, according to our duty. But that we should express the same notion in the same particular word ; as for example, if we translate the Hebrew or Gree/c word once by picrpose, never to call it intent ; if one where journeying, never travelling ; if one where think, never suppose; if one where ¦pain, never ache; if one where ^oy, never gladness, &c. thus to mince the matter, we thuught to savour more of curiosity than wisdom, and that rather it would breed scorn in the atheist, than bring profit to the godly reader. For is the kingdom of God become words or syllables? Why should we be in bondage to them, if we may bo free ? use one precisely, when we may use another no less fit as commodiously ? . . . Now if this happen in better times, and upon so small occasions, we might justly feel hard censure, if generally we should make verbal and unnecessary changings. We might also be charged THE REVISED VEESION. 24i The Revisers of 1881-5 took a different view of their duty. Sometimes the point of the passage depends on the same or different words being used, and here it is misleading not to follow the Greek closely. So much weight is laid on the exact words of the Bible, so many false conclusions have been drawn from its phrases by those who are not able to examine the meaning of those phrases in the original Greek or Hebrew, that minute accuracy in reproducing the exact language of the original is highly desirable, if it can be had without violence to the idioms of the English tongiie. One special class of passages to which this principle has been applied occurs in the first three Gospels. In these the same events are often recorded in identical words, prov ing that the three narratives have some common origin ; but in the Authorised Version this identity is often obscured by the use of different renderings of the same words in the various Gospels. The Revisers have been careful to reproduce exactly the amount of similarity or of divergence which is to be found in the original Greek of such passa,ges. What, then, is the final value of the Revised Version, and what is to be in future its relation to the Authorised Revised Version! "Version to which we have been so long accus tomed ? On the first appearance of the Revised New Testament it was received with much unfavourable criticism. (by scoffers) with some unequal dealing towards a great number of good English words. For as it is written of a certain great Philosopher, that he should say, that those logs were happy that were made images to be wor shipped ; for their fellows, as good as they, lay for blocks behind the fire : so if we should say, as it were, unto certain words. Stand up higher, have a place in the Bible always ; and to others of like quality. Get you hence, be banished for ever ; we might be taxed peradventure with St. James's words, namely. To be partial in ourselves, and judges of evil thoughts. Add hereunto, that niceness in words was always counted the next step to trifling ; and so was to be curious about names too : also that we cannot follow a better pattern for elocution than God Himself; therefore He using divers words in His holy writ, and indifferently for one thing in nature : we, if we will not be super stitious, may use the same liberty in our English versions out of Hebrew and Greek, for that copy or store that He hath given us." S 2764. ' ^ 244 OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. Dean Burgon of Chichester, occupying towards it much the same position as Dr. Hugh Broughton in relation to the Author ised Version, assailed it vehemently in the Quarterly Review with a series of articles, the unquestionable learning of which was largely neutralised by the extravagance and intemper ance of their tone. The Dean, however, was not alone in his dislike of the very numerous changes introduced by the Revisers into the familiar language of the English Bible, and there was a general unwillingness to adopt the new translation as a substitute for the Authorised Version in common use. When, four years later, the revision of the Old Testament was put forth, the popular verdict was more favourable. The improvements in interpretation of obscure passages were obvious, while the changes of language , were less numerous ; moreover, the language of the Old Testament books being less familiar than that of the Gospels, the changes in it passed with less observation. Scholars, however, were not by any means universally satisfied with it, and the reviews in the principal magazines, such as the Quarterly and Edinburgh, were not favourable. It must be remembered, however, that most of the leading scholars of the country were members of the revision companies, and that the reviews, as a rule, were neces sarily written by those who had not taken part in the work. The grounds of crioicism, in the case of both Testaments, were two-fold ; either the critics objected on scientific grounds to the readings adopted by the Revisers, or they protested against the numerous changes in the language, as making the Revised Version less suitable than its predecessor to be the Bible of the people. But with respect to the first class of criticisms, it may fairly be supposed that the opinion of the Re-visers is entitled to greater weight than that of their critics. In a work involving thousands of details, concerning many hundreds of which the evidence is nearly equally balanced, it was not to be supposed that a result could be reached which would satisfy in every point either each member of the revision companies themselves, or. each critic out side ; and consequently the less Weight can be -attached to the THE REVISED VERSION. 245 fact that reviewers, who themselves had taken no direct part in the work, found many passages on which their own opinion differed from that to which the majority of the Revisers had come. As regards the fitness of the new translation to be the Bible of the people, that question will be decided neither by the Revisers nor their critics, but by the people ; and it is impossible as yet to forecast their ultimate verdict. We who have been brought up entirely on the Authorised Version, to whom many of its phrases are the most famiUar Avords in our language, are hardly able to judge fairly of the literary merits of the Revision. For a long time, in any case, the two versions must exist side by side ; and it will be a generation that has become familiar with both of them that wiU decide whether or not the Revised Version is to supersede the Authorised Version, as the Vulgate, after a long struggle, superseded the Old Latin, and as the .Authorised Version super seded the Bible of the Elizabethan Bishops. So ends, for the present, the history of the English Bible. We have talked much in this book of divergent manuscripts, of versions, of corruptions, of revisions. It is good to end with a re-affirmation of that with which we began, and to remind the reader that through aU these variations of detaU it is the same unchanged Word of God that has come down to us. Men have been careless at times of the exact form in which they had it ; they are rightly jealous now for the utmost accuracy that it is possible to attain. But whether men were careless or careful, God has so ordered it that the substantial truths of the Christian story and the Christian faith have never been lost from His Word. Men might draw from it false or imperfect conclusions of their own ; but their little systems have arisen, have had their day and ceased to be, whilJ still, unchanged and unchangeable, the Word of the Tiord abideth for ever. APPENDIX. SPECIMENS OF THE ENG-LISH TRANSLATIONS OF This Table contains Heb. 1. 1-9 as translated in all the principal versions described in Chapter XI. Wycliffite Bibles has already been given on p. 203. A comparison of these passages will illustral foundation of the Authorised Version is to be found in Tyndale. The Wycliffite versions sta^nd apar but in Tyndale, even m his earh'est New Testament, we find already the cadences and the phrases of ¦ version as finally revised by him, and all the other translations are plainly nothing but revisions o Mr. F. Fry's facsimile reprint of the Bristol copy; the rest are from originals in the British Museum. Tyndale, 1525. God in tyme past diversly and many wayes, spake vnto the fathers by prophets : but in these last dayes he hath spoken vnto vs by hys sonne,whom he hath made heyre ot all thyngs : by whom also he made the worlde. "Which sonne beynge the brightnes of his glory, aiid very ymage oI!E his sub stance, bearynge vppe all thyngs with the worde of his power, hath in his awne per son pourged oure synnes, and is sytten on the right honde of the maiestie an hye, and is more excellent then the angels in as moche as he hath by inheritaunee obteyn- ed an excellenter name then have they. Por vnto which off the angels sayde he at eny tyme : Thou arte my sonne, this daye begate I theV And agayne: I will be his father, and he shalbe my sonne. And a- gayne when he bryng- efch in the fyrst be gotten sonne in the worlde, he sayth: And all the angels of god shall worshippe hym. And vnto the angels he sayth : He maketh his angels spretes, and his ministers flammes of fyre. But vnto the Sonne he sayth : God thy seate shal be lor ever and ever. The cepter of thy kyngdom is aright cepter. Thou hast loved rightewes- nes and hated ini- quitie: Wherfore'hath god, which is thy god, anoynted the with the oyle off gladnes above thy felowes. Coverdale, 1535. God in tyme past dyuersly and many wayes, spake vnto y« fathers by prophetes, but in these last dayes he hath spoken vnto vs by his sonne, whom he hath made heyre of all thinges, by whom also he made the worlde. Which (sonne) beynge the brightnes of his glory, and the very ymage of his sub staunce, bearinge vp all thinges with the worde of his power, hath in his owne per- sonne pourged oure synnes, and is set on the righte hande of the maiestie on hye: beynge even as moch more excellent then y'' angels, as he hath optayned a more ex cellent name then they. Por vnto which of the angels sayde he at eny tyme : Thou art my sonne, this daye have I begotten the ? And agayne : I will be his lather, and he shalbe my sonne : and agayne, whan he bryngeth in the fyrst begotten sonne in to the worlde, he sayeth : And all the angels of God shal worshippe him. And of the an gels he sayeth: He maketh his angels spretes, and his myni- sters flammes of tyre. J3ut vnto y" sonne he sayeth : God, y' seate endureth for ever and ever : the cepter of y' kyngdom is a right cepter. Thou hast loved righteousnes, and hated iniquyte: wherfore God (which is thy God) hath an oynted the with the oyle of ¦ gladnesse a- bove y' felowes. Matthew, 1537. God in tyme past dyuersly and many waves, spake vnto the fathers by y" Pro phetes but in these last dayes he hath spoken vnto vs by hys sonne, whom he hath made heyre of all thinges : by whom also he made y*^ worlde. Which sonne beynge the brightnes of his glory, and very ymage of hys sub stance, bearynge vp all thynges wyth the worde of hys power, hath in hys awne person purged oure synnes, and is sytten on the righte hande of the maiestye on hye, and is more excellent then the angels, in as moche as he hath by inherytaunce obteyn- ed an excellenter name then haue they, l^or vnto whych of the angels sayde he at eny tyme : Thou arte my sonne, this daye begate I the ? And agayne : I will be his father, and he shalbe my sonne. And a- gayne when he bring- eth in the fyrst begot ten sonne into the worlde, he sayth: And all the angeis of God shall worshyppe hym. And of the angels he sayth : He maketh hys angels spretes, and hys ministres flammes ot fyre. Uut vnto y sonne he sayth : God, thy seate shalbe for ever and ever. The scepter of thy kyng- dome is a ryght scep ter. Thou hast loved ryghtewesnes and hat ¦ ed iniquyte. Where fore God whych is thy God, hath anoynted the with the oyle of gladnes aboue thy felowes. Great Bible (Crom weU's), 1539. God in tyme past diuersly and many ways, spake vnto the fathers by Prophetes : but in these last dayes he hath spoken vnto vs by hys awne sonne, whom he hath made heyre of all thinges, by whom also he made the worlde. Whych (sonne) beinge the brightnes of hys glory, ana the very ymii^e of hys substance rul- yngc all thynges wyth the worde of hys pow er, hath by hys awne person pourged oure synnes, and sytteth on the righte hande of the maiestye on hye: beynge so moch more excellent then the an gels, as he hath by in herytaunce obteyned a more excellent name then they. Por vnto whych of the angels sayde he at eny tyme : Thou art my sonne, this daye have I begotten the? And agayne: I will be his father, and he shalbe my sonne. And. agayne,whenhe bring- eth m the fyrst begot ten sonne into the worlde, he sayth. And let all the angels of God worshyppe hym. And vnto the angels he sayth : He makeih hys angels spretes, and hys ministres a tlamme of fyre. But vnto the sonne he sayth : Thy seate (0 God) shalbe for ever and ever. The scepter of thy kingdome is a ryght scepter. Thou hast loved ryghtewes nes, and hated ini quyte. Wherfore, God, even thy God hath an oynted the with the oyle of gladnes aboue thy felowes. The Geneva Bible, 1560. 1. At sondrie times and in diners maners God spake in y" olde time to our fathers by the Prophetes ; 2. In these last dayes he hathe spoken vnto us by h is Sonne.whome he hathe made heir of all things, by whome also he made the worldes, 3. Who being the brightnes of the glo rie, and the ingraued forme of his persone, and bearing vp all things by his mightie worae, hath by him self purged our sinnes. andsittethat the right hand of the maiestie in the highest places, 4. And is made so much more excellent then the Angels in as muche as he hathe obteined a more excel lent name then thei. 5. For vnto which of the Angels said he at anie time. Thou art my Sonne, this day begate I thee V and a- gaine, I wil be his Fa ther, and he shalbe my sonne? 6. And againe when he brinfieth in his Hist begotten Sonne into the worlde, he saith. And let all the Angels of God worship him. 7. And of the Angels he saith, He maketh the Spirits his messen gers, and his ministers a flame of fyre. 8. Eutvnto the Sonne he saith, O God, thy thrOne is for euer and euer: the scepter of thy kingdome is a scepter of righteous nes. 9. Thou hast loued righteousnes and ha ted iniquitie. W here- fore God, euen thy God, bathe anointed thee with y" oyle of gladnes aboue thy fel- lowes. The Bishops' Bib 1568. 1. God which in ty past, at sunavie ty iii and in diners mane spake vnto the f athi in the prophetes : 2. Hath in these li dayes, spoken vnto in the sonne, whc he hath appoynt heyre of all thyng by whom also he niu tlie wurldes. 3. Who beyng t bryghtnessepf the g rie, and the very ima of his substaunce, i holdyng all thyng with the worde of 1 power, hauing by hi seife pourgecl o sinnes, hath syt the ryght hande the maiestie on hye 4. iJeyijg so mu more excellent th the Angels, as he ha by inheritaunee ( tayned a more exc lent name then the; 5. For vnto which the Angels sayde at any tyme: Tnou i my sonne, this d haue I begotten the 6. And agayne, I w be to hym a fath and he shalbe to ] a sonne V and agay when he bryngeth the flrst begoti sonne into theworl he saith: And let the Angels of G worship hym. 7. Ana vnto the J gels he sayth: He r keth his Angels s rites, and his minist a tiambe of lyre. 8. But vnto the sor [he sayth] Thy se O Goa [shalbe] euer ana euer: 1 scepter of thy ki dome [is] a sceptei ryghteousiiesse. y. Thou hast loi ryghteousnesse, s hated iniquitie : Th fore God,euen thy G hath annoyntea t] with the oyle of gl nesse, aboue thy lowes. INDEX. .Elfrio, Arehhishop, translation of O.T. by, 195. African Latin version of Bible, 77, 78, 167, 168. Akiba, Eabbi, his share in fixing Hebrew text of 0. T., 90. Alcuin, revision of Vulgate by, 182- 184. Aldhelm, Bishop, his version of the Psalter, the first English transla tion from the Bible, 190. Aldred, translates Gospels into Eng lish, 193. Alexandrian readings in N. T. 109, 110. Alfred, King, translates parts of the Bible, 192. America, participation of, in Revised Version, 237. Apocrypha, hooks of, their .character and history, 28, 50, 51 ; Syriac version of, 74, 75 ; Latin version, 78, 79. Aquila, Greek version of 0. T. by, 52. Arabic versions of N. T., 166. Aramaic language, adopted by Jews after the Captivity, 29. Armenian version of N. T., 164. AugustiAe, qjiotations by, from N. T., 167, 169. Authorised Version, the, .229-234. Babylon, Jewish school of Biblical tradition at, 29, 30, 38. S 2764 Bancroft,, Bishop, probable author of instructions for preparation of Authorised Version, 231. Barnabas, Epistle of, in Codex Sinai ticus, 124. Bede, his translation oiF St. John's Gospel, 191, Bengel, J. A., edition of Greek N. T, by, 117. Bentley, Eiehard, collections made by, for critical edition of Greek N. T., 116 ; for edition of Vulgate, 171. Beza, editions of Greek N. T. by, 99 ; owned Codd. Bezae and Claro montanus, J39, 144 ; his influence on the Geneva Bible, 225, 226. Bishops' Bible, the, 226-228. Bohairic version of 0. T., 76 ; of N. T., 160-162. Broughton, Dr. Hugh, attacks Autho rised Version, 2Z1. Burgon, Dean, his contributions to textual criticism of N. T., 119; attacks Eevised Version, 244. Caedmon, makes poetical paraphrase of Bible in English, 190. Canon of 0. T., formation of, 26-28. Chapter-.division of Bible, made by Stephen Langton, 186. Charlemagne, invites Alcuin to revise Vulgate, 1S2; Golden Gospels of,_ 183. T 250 INDEX. Cheke, Sir John, his translation of the Gospels, 224. Chrysostom, quotations from 0. T. by, 70; fromN.T., 109. Clay tablets, use of, for writing, 18, 20. Clement, Epistles of, in Codex Alex andrinus, 129, 132. Clement VIIL, Pope, causes autho rised edition of Vulgate to be prepared, 188. Cochlaeus, interrupts printing of Tyn^ dale's N.T., 212. Codex Alexandrinus, in 0. T., 60, 70 ; its history, 129, 130 ; description, 131 ; its readings and character in N.T., 130-132. Ambrosianus, 62. Amiatinus, 171, 172. Basiliano-Vaticanus, 63. Basiliensis, 145. Ben-Asher, of O.T., 40. Bezae, 107, 110, 139-144, 168. Bobiensis, 168. BorgianHs, 148. Brixianus, 168. Cavensis, 172. Claromontanus, 144, 145, 168. Coislinianus, 63, 69. Colbertinus, 168. Corbeiensis, 168. Cryptoferratensis, 65. Dublinensis, of 0. T., 63, 70 ; of N.T., 148. Ephraemi, of 0. T., 61 ; of N. T., 109, 137-139. Puldensis, 172. Gigas, 168. Guelpherbytanus, A and B, 147. Hillelis, 40. Laudianus.(Gk. and Lat.), 145, 146, 168. Landianus (Hebrew), 40. Marchalianus, '64, 69^ 70. Nitriensis, 147. Palatinus, 168. - — Petropolitarius (Gk.), 62. Codex Eegius, 107, 146, 147. Sangallensis, 148. Sarravianus, 66, 62, 69. Sinaiticus, in 0. T., 69, 60, 71 ; its history, 122-124 ; description, 124 ; its readings and character in N.T., 107, 111, 125-128. ^^^^ Taurinensis, 65. Toletanus, 172. Vallicellianus, 182. -^ — Vaticanus, in 0. T., 60, 61, 71 ; its history, 133, 134 ; description, 134, 135; its readings and cha racter in KT., 107, 111, 135-137. Venetus, 63, 65, 70. —- — Vercellensis, 167. Veron^nsis, 168. Zacynthius, 148. : for descriptions of other MSS., see Manuscript. Complutensian Polyglott Bible, 41, 67. Conflate readings, 108. Constantine, Emperor, orders copies of the Scriptures, 96. Constantinople, capture of, by Turks, its influence on history of the Bible, 209. Coptic language, 76 ; versions of 0. T., 75, 76; of N.T., 107, 160-164. Coverdale, Miles, makes first complete English printed Bible, 218, 219; edits Great Bible, 221. Cranmer, Archbishop, owns early English Gospels, 196 ; promotes Matthew's Bible, 220 ; writes pre face to Great Bible, 222. Cromwell, Thomas, promotes Cover- dale's Bible, 218 ; procures license for Matthew's Bible, 220 ; promotes Great Bible and orders its use, 223. Curetonian Syriac version of N.T., 162-157. Cuthbert, St., Lindisfarne Gospels' written in his honour, 180, 181. Cyprian, quotations by, from N. T., 167; 169. INDEX. 251 Daniel, Theodotion's version of, in corporated in Septuagint, 63. De Eossi, collection of readings of Hebrew MSS. by, 41. Diocletian, edict of, for destruction of Christian books, 96. Douai 0. T., 228, 229. Elzevir edition of Greek N. T:, the "received" text on the Continent, 99. England; MSS. of Vulgate current in, 178-181; derive ornamentation from Ireland, 178; and texts from Italy, 179, 180. Earliest transla tions of the Bible, 190. History of English Bible, 189-245. Erasmus, edits first printed edition of Greek N..T., 98,99. Estienne, Eobert. See Stephanus. Ethiopie version of O.T., 76, 77; of KT., 165. European Latin version of Bible, 78, 167, 169. Eusebius of Caesarea, edition of Septu agint by, 66 ; MSS. of this edition, 69 ; prepares copies of Greek Bible for Constantine, 96. Fathers, use of quotations from, in textual criticism, 15, 106, 109. Field, F., edition of Hexapla by, 56, 68, 70. . Firkowitzsch, dates of Hebrew MSS. falsified by, 40. Gasquet, Father, his theory as to authorship of Wycliffite Bible, 204-208. Gaunt, John of, supports Wycliffe, 199, 206. Genesis, Cotton MS. of, 61 ; Bodleian MS., ib. ; Vienna MS., 63. Geneva Bible, the, 225, 226. Gheniza, receptacle for damaged He brew MSS., 37. Golden Gospels of Charlemagne, the, 183, 184. Gospels, earliest translation of into English, 193 ; the version of, in tenth century, 193^196. Gothic version of O.T., 77; of N.T., 166. Great Bible, thej 221-223 ; Psalter of, retained in our Prayer-Book, 223. Griesbach, J. J., edition of Greek N.T. by, 117; his classification of MSS.,ii. Gwilliam, G. H., edition of Peshitto Syriac by, 157, 158. Hagiographa, date of their adoption into the Hebrew Canon of Scripture, 28. Harkleian Syriac version of N.T., 158. Hartmut, Abbot, establishes school of St. Gall, 185. Hebrew Bible, early printed editions, 41. Hebrew characters, history of, 23. Hebrew language, history of, 25. Hebrew manuscripts, regulations for copying, 34 ; dates of, 35, 38, 40 ; old copies destroyed, 36, 37 ; the chief extant MSS., 39, 40. Hebrew text of 0. T., history of, 29- 36 ; instances of corruption, 87. Hereford, Nicholas, translates part of Wycliffite Bible, 200, 201. Hermas, the " Shepherd " of, in Codex Sinaiticus, 124. Hesychius of Alexandria, edition of Septuagint by, 57 ; MSS. of this edition, 70. Hexapla, of Origen, 54-66. Holmes and Parsons, edition of Septu agint, 68. Horner, G., edition of Bohairic ver sion by,. 161. 252 INDEX. Hort, Prof., his theory of textual Lucar, Cyril, presents Codex Alexan- criticism of N.T., 107-115, il9. drints to Charies I., 128. Howorth, Sir H., his attack on the Lucian of Samosata, edition of Septua Massoretic text of the O.T., 85, 90. gint by, 67 ; MSS. of this edition. 69, 70. Irenseus, quotations by, frirm. N.T., 105, 109, 167. M'Clellan, J. B., edition of the Gos Irish MSS. of Vulgate, 177, 178; pels by, 120. . their illuminations, ib. Manuscripts : meaning of term, 6 ; Italian Latin yefsioti of Bible, 78, use of, in recovering true text, 12 ; 167, 169. different forms of, 18-22. Uncial and cursive MSS., 68, 69, 101-103. for descriptions of individual James I., Eingy promotes Authorised MSS., see Codex ; also thei foUo-tr- Version, 230. ing:— Jeremiah, different order of prophecies Anglo-Saxon Gospels, 194, 195. in Septuagint, 72. Armenian MSS., 164. Jerome, St.j his Latin version of the Bible of Charlemagne, 182. Bible (the Vulgate), 79-83, 169-171. Bible of St. Hubert, 186. Job, Septuagint version of, shorter Bodleian Genesis, 61. than Hebrew, 53, 76; Old Latin Psalter, 62. version of, revised by Jerome, 81. Bohairic MSS., 161. Jonathan ben Uzziel, Targum of, 30. Book of KeUs, 178. Jubilees, Bodk of, supports Septuagint British Museum MS. of Pen text of Genesis against Hebrew, 88. tateuch, 39. Cotton Genesis, 61. Curetonian SyriaeMS.,163,lS5. Kennicott, collection of readings of Gothic MS., of Ulfilas, 166. Hebrew MSS. by, 41. Harleian Gospels, 172. Kri, readings in Hebrew text, 33. Lindisfarne Gospels, 172, 179- Kthib, readings in margins of Hebrew 181, 193. MSS., 33. Papyrus Psalter, 65. Peshitto Syriac MSS. of 0,T., 74; ofN.T., 157. Lachmann, C, edition of Gfeek N". T. Eushworth MS., 193. by, 118. Sahidie MSS., 163. Lagarde, edition of Lucian's Septua St. Petersburg MS. of the gint by, 68. Prophets, 39. Latin versions of 0. T., 77-83; of ' Samaritan MSS., 47. N.T., 165-173. Sinaitic Syriac MS., 164. Lindisfarne Gospels, the, 179-181 ; Stonyhurst Gospels, 172. interlinear translation into English, Theodulf's revised Vulgate,185. 193. Verona Psalter, 66. LoUards, not persecuted on account Vienna Genesis, 63. of their English Bible^ 206, 207. Zurich Psalter, 65. INDEX. 258 Mark, last twelve verses of Gospel of, 7, 127, 147, 164. Martin, Gregory, principal author of Eheims and Douai Bible, 229. Massorah, in Hebrew MSS., 32, 33, 35. Massoretes, the, fixing of Hebrew text by, 32, 33. Matthsei, C.F., edition of Greek N. T., by, 117. Matthew's Bible, 220. Mazarin Bible, first printed book, 187- Memphitic version. See Bohairic ver sion. Mill, John, edition of Greek N.T. by, 116. Moabite Stone, the, 24. More, Sir T., attacks Tyndale's ¥. T., 213. Nablous, copy of Samaritan Penta teuch at, 47. Naples, text of Lindisfarne Gospels derived from, 179. Neutral text of N. T., 109, 111. New Testament, original MSS. of, 93, 94 ; conditions under which it was copied in early times, 95 ; the extant MSS., 96, 97, 101-103, 121-149 printed editions, 98-100, 116-120 ancient versions, 103, 104, 161-173 classification of MSS., 106-1 15< Nitria, Syriac MSS. brought from, 74, 162. Nycolson, printer of English Bible,2 1 9 . Old Latin version, of 0. T., 77-79 ; of N.T., 166-169; MSS. of, 167,168; character of text, 107, 169. Old Testament, original MSS. of, 21 ; classification of books in, 26 ; for mation of Canon, 26-28 ; Hebrew text, 23-48; Septuagint text, 48- 73 ; other versions, 73-83 ; general condition of the text, 83-92. Onkelos, Targum of, 30. Origen, Hexapla of, 54-66. Ormulum, metrical translations from the Bible in, 196. Oxford, University of, supports Wy cliffe, 199, 200, 206. Palestinian Syriac version of N. T., 159. Palmer, Archdeacon, edition of the Eevisers' Greek text by, 239. Papyrus, use of, for writing, 19, 21, 94. Pans, University of, promotes re vision of Vulgate, 186. Parker, Archbishop, editor of Bishops' Bible, 226. Pentateuch, date of its adoption into the Hebrew Canon of Scripture, 27. Peshitto, Syriac version of Bible, 74, 167, 168. Philips, betrayer of Tyndale, 216. Philoxenian Syriac version of N.T., 158. Printing, importance of invention of, in history of Bible, 209. Prophets, the, date of their adoption into the Hebrew Canon of Scripture, 28. Psalter, three Latin versions of, Eoman, GaUican, and Hebrew, 80- , translated into English by Ald helm, 190; by Alfred, 192; by anonymous translators, 192, 196 ; by WiUiam of Shoreham, 196 ; by Eiehard EoUe, 197; Prayer-Book version, derived from Great Bible, 223. Purvey, John, probable author of revised Wycliffite Bible, 201. Eevised Version, the, its history, 237, 238 ; its characteristics, 239-243 ; its reception, 243-245. 254 INDEX. Eheims N. T., 228, 229. Eogers, John, produces Matthew's Bible, 220; martyred, 224. EoUe, Eiehard, of Hampole, translates Psalter, 197. Eushworth MS. of Gospels, Lat. and Eng., 193. Sahidie Version of 0. T., 76 ; of N. T., 162, 163. St. Gall, school of copyists at, 185. Samaritan characters, 23. Pentateuch, 44-48. Sanday, Prof., Oxford Greek Testa ment edited by, 120. Scribes, mistakes of, 5-7. Scrivener, F. H. A., his contributions to textual criticism of N. T., 119. Septuagint, origin of, 49, 60 ; con tents, 50, 51 ; history, 61-67 ; MSS. of, 59-67 ; printed editions, 67, 68. Comparison with Hebrew text of O.T., 71, 85-92. Shapira, forged copy of Deuteronomy produced by, 43. Shoreham, William of, translates Psalter, 196, 197. Siloam, inscription in conduit of, 24. Simonides, C, claims to have written Codex Sinaiticus, 123. Sinaitic MS. of Old Syriac, 154-167. Sixtus, v.. Pope, promotes Eoman edition of Septuagint, 67 ; authori tative edition of Vulgate, 187. Skins, use of, for writing, 21. Solomon, Psalms of, formerly in Codex Alexandrinus, 60. Spanish MSS. of Vulgate, 177, 184. Stephanus, editions of Greek N. T. by, 99; of Vulgate, 187; introduces verse-division, 226. Swete, Cambridge Septuagint edited by, 68. Symmachus, Greek version of O.T. by, 63. Syriac language, 73 ; version of O.T., 73-75; ofN.T., 107, 152-169. Syrian text of N. T., 109 ; supposed due to revision at Antioch, 109, 114. Talmud, its bearing on the Hebrew text of the Bible, 31, 32. Targums, 29-31. Taverner, E., his translation of the Bible, 223. Tell el-Amarna, tablets found at, 17. Textual criticism, principles of, 4-10, 105, 106. Thebaic version. See Sahidie ver sion. Theodoret, quotations from 0. T. by, 70. Theodotion, Greek version of 0. T. by, 63. Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, revises Vulgate, 184. Tischendorf, A. F. C, editions of Septuagint by, 68 ; of Greek N. T., 118; discovers Codex Sinaiticus, 122, 123; his efforts to coUate Codex Vaticanus, 133, 134; pub lishes Codex Ephraemi, 138. Tomson, revises Geneva N. T., 226. Tours, school of copyists established at, 182, 183. Tregelles, S. P., edition of Greek N. T. by, 119. Tunstall, Bishop, tries to destroy Tyndale's N.T., 213; authorises Great Bible, 222. Tyndale, William, his life and trans lation of the Bible, 211-218. Variorum Bible described, 2, 120. Various readings, causes of, 5-8 ; examples of, in Gospels, 3. Verse-division of Bible, when intro duced, 225. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 03760 6424 S^'iV?^« y V«M„ih.?t.!!i 1^ " 'I , t ^1' . J ,1 ' « .'¦ '/'^