The work of all these men was used and more
than supplemented by the {jigantic labors of
Tischendort in his great eighth edition, pub-
lished in I8().i-7'2, containing a critical text and
an apparatus exhibiting all the more important
variants then known. Similar in character, and
also the monument of the labor of a lifetime, was
the Greek Testament of S. P. Tregelles, which
appeared in 1857-72. In 1881, after twenty-five
years' joint study, the edition of Westcott and
Hort was published at Cambridge and London —
the text in one volume, an introduction and ap-
pendix in another, written by Dr. Hort. The
veteran German exegete, Bernhard Weiss, has
also crownied his lifelong study of the Xew
Testament by an edition of its text (1900). Of
these four great critical editions, those of
Tischendorf and of Westcott and Hort are in
inost common use.
(2) The Textual Criticism of the New Testa- ment. — Since the autographs of the Xew Testa- ment have long since perished, the existing wit- nesses to the text must be carefully studied, their variations noted, and a decision reached, if possible, as to which variants are to be pre- ferred as more nearly representing the readings of the autograph. This is textual criticism.
(a) The witnesses to the text of the Xew Testament are: (1) Greek JISS. : (2) Ancient versions; (3) Kew-Testament citations found in the writings of ecclesiastical writers, espe- cially of the first five centuries. ( 1 ) Greek MSS. are of two kinds — uncial and cursive. The uncials are those written in capitals or senii- cai)itals. the letters Ijeing unconnected with each other. Some of the uncial MSS. contain the whole or large portions of the Xew Testa- ment, while others are only fragments, stray leaves of lost codices. They are all earlier than the Tenth Century. In the Xinth Century the cursive or running style of handwriting came into use. MSS. written in this are called cur- sives. Xo cursives are earlier than the Xinth Century, but many of them preserve ancient and valuabie texts. While there are less than a hundred uncials, the known cursives number over 1400 for the Gospels alone, .mong all these MSS. five uncials deserve special men- tion: (1) The Codex Sinaiticus, now in Saint Petersburg, containing the whole Xew Testa- ment, with the Epistle of Harnabas and a part of Hennas, was discovered by Tischendorf in the Monastery of Saint Catharine at Mount Sinai, in February, 185!). It was written in the Fourth or Fifth Century. Its leaves are of fine parch- ment, or vellum, 13^4 inches wide by 14% inches high. The text is in four columns of 48 lines each. The codex once contained the whole Bible. (2) The Codex Alexandrinus, one of the treas- ures of the British Museum, was written in the Fifth Century. It is also a MS. of the entire Bible. To the Kew Testament were added I. and II. Clement. The whole MS. contains 773 leaves, of which GV.) belong to the Old Testa- ment. The pages measure lO'/i by 12% inches, with two columns on each. The text is divided into sections, or paragraphs, instead of being without a break (except at the end of a book), as in the Sinaitieus and V'aticanus. (3) The Codex Vaticanus, in the Vatican Library at Rome, is probably the best Xew-Testament MS. in existence. It is of about the same age as the Sinaitieus, and, like it, is a MS. of the whole Bible. Its pages measure 10 by 10*^ inches. Its vellum is of the finest quality: 142 of its 759 leaves belong to the New Testament. The last part of the volume is missing. The Xew- Testament text is written in three colunms on a page. (4) The Codex Ephracmi Rescriptus. This is a palimpsest — i.e. a MS. whose original writing has been erased in order to use the parchment for another work. In this case a part of a Greek Bible was uswi on which to write some of the works of the Syrian father Ephraim. By means of chemicals, the original writing has been partially restored. The MS. has but one broad column on a page. It was written in the Fifth Century. At present it contains only about two-thirds of the Xew Testament, many parts having been lost. The Codex is in the Xa- tional Library in Paris. (5) The Codex He:w is a MS. of the Gospels and Acts, written in the Sixth Century. It is a bilingual codex, the Greek text being on the left, the Latin on the right, page of the open book. There is but one column on a page. This MS. was presented to the Universitv of Cambridge, by Theodore Beza, in 1581.
For convenience of reference JISS. are desig- nated by symbols, either letters of an alphalx-t or numbers. Thus the five uncials just described are designated by the letters Ji^ (or S), A, B,. C, D, respectively.
In addition to Xew-Testament MSS., the ser- vice-books of the Greek Church, containing les- sons for daily reading, are useful witnesses to the Xew-Testament text. Over 1000 such books, ranging in date from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century, are known.
(2) The VccsioH.s. — For textual criticism, the three most important versions are the Syriac, the Latin, and the Egyptian.
The origin of the Syriac Version is hidden in obscurity. It is altogether likely, judging from the parallel history of the Latin Version, that the first translations were of a private char- acter, the work of diflerent Christian teachers in the early days of Syrian Christianity. Tatian (about jv.D. 150-175), a companion of Justin Martyr after his quarrel with the Konian Church, returned to his native Syria, and there published his Diatvssaron, a compilation of the four canonical Gospels into a continuous narra- tive. Some have thought that this was the be- ginning of the Syriac Xew Testament. However that may be, it is a remarkable fact that the earliest forms of the Syriac 'ersion were made from a Greek text similar to that prevalent in Rome in the latter half of the Second Century. Such, in general, is the text found in the frag- ments discovered by William Cureton in 1842 (published in 1858). and in the Syriac palimp- sest discovered in 1892 at Mount Sinai by Mrs. Lewis and her sister, Mrs. Gibson. After a while the.se earlier forms of text become more conformed to the type of Greek text regnant in the East. This text is represented in the Pcsliit- to, or common Syriac Version, which was cur- rent as early as the Fourth Century. The Philoxenian, or Harkleian, Version, a slavishly literal translation, begun in A.n. 508. was revised and completed in a.d. 016. The .Jerusalem, or Palestinian, Version was made about the same time, for the use of the Syrian churches of Palestine.
