Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - 1881.djvu/94

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lxxxvi
INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

claim to be independent critical recensions of the text, but Lave a special interest and value in connection with the Westminster or Anglo-American Revision, and supplement each other. They were carefully prepared by two members of the New Testament Company of Revisers, but it is distinctly stated that "the Revisers are not responsible" for the publication. They were undertaken by the English University Presses.

Dr. Scrivener, in his edition published by the University Press of Cambridge, gives The New Testament in the Original Greek, according to the Text followed in the Authorised Version (i. e. the Textus Receptus of Beza's edition of 1598), together with the Variations adopted in the Revised Version. He puts the new readings at the foot of the page, and prints the displaced readings of the text in heavier type.

Dr. Palmer, archdeacon of Oxford, in The Greek Testament, with the Readings adopted by the Revisers of the Authorised Version, published by. the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1881, pursues the opposite method: he presents the Greek text followed by the Revisers, and puts the discarded readings of the Textus Receptus and of the version of 1611 in foot-notes. The Revisers state, in the Preface from the Jerusalem Chamber (p. xiii., royal-octavo ed.), that they did not esteem it within their province " to construct a continuous and complete Greek text. In many cases the English rendering was considered to represent correctly either of two competing readings in the Greek, and then the question of the text was usually not raised." Dr. Palmer, with the aid of lists of readings prepared by the Revisers in the progress of their work, has constructed a continuous text, taking for the basis the third edition of Stephens