BIBLE 611 ranged it, made an index, and availed himself systematically of its whole apparatus. It was reprinted several times in the Kith and 17th cen- turies. After these three independent editions, all that follow contain a mixed text. The Ant- werp Polyglot, published 1569-'72, at the ex- pense of King Philip II. of Spain, and there- fore called the royal Polyglot, was composed from the Complutensian and Bomberg's. Be- sides the texts in five volumes, four contain- ing the Old and one the New Testament, three other volumes gave a valuable apparatus, crit- ical, philological, antiquarian. The various edi- tions of Plantin followed the Antwerp Poly- glot, as did those of Christian Reineccius. It was the basis also of the Paris Polyglot (10 vols. folio, 1645), which gave the text in He- brew, Samaritan, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, and Latin, containing for the first time in print the Samaritan Pentateuch. It was repeated again in the London Polyglot (6 vols. folio, 1657). Elias Hntter, in his first edition published at Hamburg in 1587, and three times reprinted, used the copies of Venice, Antwerp, and Paris. In 1611 the manual edition of Buxtorf was printed. Buxtorf undertook to improve upon Bomberg's Bible, and as far as he could conformed to the Masora, for whose text he had the highest respect, regarding it as the only perfect one. The next important edition for which the oldest and best MSS. were col- lated was that of Joseph Athias, printed at Amsterdam, 1661 and 1667. Among the later editions that have followed this, the most no- ted from their new collation of MSS., careful selection of readings, and thorough correction of points, are those of Jablonski, Berlin, 1699 ; Van der Hooght, Amsterdam, 1705; J. H. Michaelis, Halle, 1720; Houbigant, Paris, 1753 ; Simon, Halle, 1752, 1767; Kennicott, Oxford, 1776, 1780; August Hahn, 1831 ; andG. Theile, 1849. Besides these editions, which aim at bringing the Masoretic text near its perfec- tion, critical helps are found in the Masora contained in the rabbinical Bibles of Bomberg and Buxtorf, and the various readings which are found in all the best editions. The toil and treasure expended upon this long series of editions, each of which was a triumph in its time, have not been wasted. The result on the whole is a text of these ancient and venerable books, not indeed perfect in every point and particle, but more excellent than might have been expected, a text that nearly corresponds with that of the books which constituted the oldest Hebrew canon. The task of purifying the Greek of the New Testament and bring- ing it to the perfection of our latest and best editions was much less difficult, yet a work of no small magnitude. Not a fragment from the hand of an evangelist or an apostle sur- vived the early generations that used the ori- ginal MSS. and wore them out. The early Christians did not feel the importance of laying them sacredly aside. The greater their value, the more extensive was their circulation, and the briefer consequently their existence. The books of the New Testament were written after the custom of the time upon papyrus, or upon parchment, finer and more durable, which was beginning to take its place, and were in the roll form. The writing itself, done with a reed and ink, was in uncial or large letters, and ran in continuous lines, with no spaces be- tween the words, no capitals or stops. The heading of the books, " According to Matthew," " According to Luke," &c., was added later. Some epistles had their address marked upon them, but in others it was inferred from the contents. The title "catholic" ("general" in our English Bibles) was given to certain epis- tles in the 4th century. As copies of these an- cient books multiplied, they naturally varied more or less from the originals and from each other ; the copyists confounding similar letters or words, substituting a synonyme for a given term, introducing something from a parallel passage or marginal gloss, or making other al- terations unintentional or even intentional, as the copyist tried to harmonize seeming discrep- ancies or to explain what seemed obscure. These variations, small and great, number not less than 120,000 ; yet they are mostly variations of spelling or inflection, often impossible to ex- press in a translation. There are not more than 1,600 or 2,000 places where the true reading is at all in doubt, while the doubtful readings which affect the sense are much fewer still, and those of any dogmatic importance can be easily numbered. The MSS. of the New Testament have been classified according to certain literary or geographical affinities. They were divided into the eastern and the western, or according to another description, into an Alexandrine and a Latin, an Asiatic and a Byzantine text. The Alexandrine type of the Greek text was in use among the oriental Jewish Christians who used the Greek version of the Old Testament. The Latin type is found not only in the Latin copies, but in the Greek copies which the Latins used. These groups were not wholly distinct from one another, and it is difficult to fix upon the pecu- liar reading that belongs to each. The MSS. of the Byzantine class are most uniform. To- ward the close of the 4th century no single MS. was known that comprised the whole New Testament. At a considerably later period they were rare, and most of these contained also the Old Testament in Greek. The four gospels were commonly written in one collec- tion, and the Pauline epistles in one. The catholic epistles were classed with the Acts, though sometimes these last two collections and the Pauline were united. MSS. of the Apocalypse were the rarest. The gospels were generally found in the order in which we have them, though in some copies they were trans- posed. After the Acts usually came the cath- olic epistles. The order in which the letters of Paul stood varied much. The place of the Apocalypse was fixed by Athanasius at the end of the collection, as it stands at present. By
