of the written evidence with which all criticism has to deal, presenting it in a form somewhat different from that of the detailed catalogues which it is the office of other books to supply. The entire body of documentary evidence, with inconsiderable exceptions, consists of three parts; extant Greek MSS, ancient translations or 'Versions' in different languages, and quotations from the New Testament made by ancient Christian writers or 'Fathers'.
98. The Greek MSS of the New Testament are divided into two classes, conventionally though somewhat incorrectly termed 'Uncials' and 'Cursives', according as they are written in capital or in minuscule characters. Since Wetstein's time (1751, 1752) it has been customary to distinguish Uncials by capital letters, and Cursives for the most part by arabic numerals. At the head of the list of Uncials stand four great MSS belonging to the fourth and fifth centuries. When complete, they all evidently contained the whole Greek Bible. At least three, and not improbably all four, had all the books of the New Testament that have been subsequently recognised as canonical, at least two containing other books in addition: as two are mutilated at the end, it is impossible to speak with greater precision. These four MSS are products of the earlier part of that second great period of Church history which begins with the reign of Constantine; the time when the various partial Canons of Scripture were brought together and as it were codified in various ways, the first step in the process being probably the catalogue of Eusebius in his Church History (of about 325), and the most decisive step, at least for the Greek churches, the catalogue of Athanasius in his 39th Paschal Epistle, of 367. About 332 Constantine directed Eusebius to have fifty easily legible copies of the complete Scriptures executed by skilful calligraphers for the use of the churches in his newly founded capital. We learn nothing of the texts or the contents of these "sumptuously prepared volumes" (Eus.
Vit. Const. IV 37): but if the contained books corresponded with Eusebius's own list of a few years earlier (
H. E. III 25), none of our present MSS can well have been of the number. The incident illustrates however a need which would arise on a smaller scale in many places, as new and splendid churches came to be built under the Christian Empire after the great persecution: and the four extant copies are doubtless casual
