Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 27 - CHI-ELD.pdf/158

 130

CCELENTERA

that Paul left, not Aquila, but Aquila’s house; and in the restoration of a curious syntactical construction which is peculiar to Codex Bezae. Other corrections may be made. But it is in the annotations that the student will, by the aid of the facsimile, add most to the Scrivener transcript, and where he will make many corrections both as to the matters deciphered and the dates to which the hands are assigned. Of publications which in recent times have dealt with the Codex Bezse, and the peculiar Western text of which it is the chief representative, the following should be noted:—(1) J. Rendel Harris, Study of Codex Bezce (1891), in which the problem of the Bezan text was reopened, and an attempt was made to explain the peculiarities by the hypothesis of Latin reactions upon a Greek text, accompanied in a lesser degree by some Syriac reactions, the additional matter being largely due to a glossator who was probably under the influence of the Montanist movement. (2) F. H. Chase, Old Syriac Element in the Codex Bezce (1893) and The Sylo-Latin Text of the Gospels (1895), in which substantially the whole of the Bezan peculiarities were referred to Syriac influence, and an attempt was made to find the original home of the text in Antioch. (3) The reply by Harris in Four Lectures on the Western Text (1894) should be studied, both for what it contradicts and what it concedes, and especially for the proof it contains of the early diffusion of the Bezan accretions to the Acts in Mesopotamia and other parts of the East. (4) But these and other attempts to explain the genesis of the Bezan text were cast into the shade by a brilliant hypothesis of Professor Blass of Halle, who maintained that the Lucan writings (St Luke and the Acts) in which the deviation of the Codex Bezse from canonical form is most conspicuous, were in reality extant in two separate editions produced by St Luke himself, one of which he calls Antiochian, and the other Roman, a hypothesis which Blass defends with astonishing learning and skill, and in which he enlisted, almost at once, a body of sympathizers such as Nestle, Hilgenfeld, Belser, Salmon, and others, whose writings must be referred to. Blass himself not only published the Acts in what he supposed to be the original double edition, but defended himself against all attacks with amazing vigour, so that even Harnack has hardly succeeded in demolishing his theory. Whether, however, this theory can be finally sustained is still in lite. What is certain is that the Western text, as represented in the Codex Bezae and cognate authorities, is older and more widely diffused than had been generally recognized; that it was extant in Greek, Latin, and Syriac in the earliest times; and that no single series of linguistic reactions can explain it away. And whatever be the exact value of the Blass demonstrations and reconstructions, it is evident that a great increase of critical weight has accrued to the Western readings generally in consequence of them; so that, even if it be conceded, as it must be, that the Codex Bezae is subject to all kinds of corrupting influences, such as lectionary prefaces, harmonizations, and bad transcriptions, the nucleus of the text is as old as anything which we have in evidence for the text of the New Testament. A striking instance of this may be found in a far-reaching observation of a pupil of Professor Blass, named Lippelt, who found on examining the spelling of the name Twdvv^s in the Codex Bezae, that the name was almost uniformly spelt with one v in the two Lucan books, although in the rest of the Codex the conventional spelling has prevailed. This striking testimony to the fact that the Bezan Luke and Acts once circulated together in a separate volume, though they are not now side by side, may be further extended by examining the Latin version, from which it appears that the spelling with one n prevails in Luke, but not in Acts, the inference being that the combined Lucan volume

was not translated all at once, but at two different times and by two different hands. The Bezan text, therefore, retains traces of the history and collection of the books of the N.T. and of their translation which are not to be found in any other MS., and to be faithful thus in minimis renders it certain that it is also trustworthy in greater matters. The ultimate discrimination of the various elements in the Bezan (Western) text has yet to be made, and the suspicion is that the problem has not yet found its Newton. (j. n. ha.) Coelentera form a Group or Grade of the Animal Kingdom, the zoological importance of which has risen considerably since the time (1887) of the publication of the original article in the Ency. Brit., even though their numbers have been reduced by the elevation of the Sponges or Porifera to the rank of an independent Phylum under the title Parazoa (Sollas, 1884). For the Coelentera thus restricted, the term Enterocoela, in contrast to Coelomocoela (the old Coelomata), was suggested by Lankester (1900). From the more complex colonial Protozoa the Coelentera are readily separated by their possession of two distinct sets of cells, with diverse functions, arranged in two definite layers,—a condition found in no Protozoan. The old criterion by which they and other Metazoa were once distinguished from Protozoa, namely, the differentiation of large and small sexual cells from each other and from the remaining cells of the body, has been broken down by the discovery of numerous cases of such differentiation among Protozoa. The Coelentera, as contrasted with other Metazoa (but not Parazoa), consist of two layers of cells only, an outer layer or ectoderm, an inner layer or endoderm. They have hence been described as Diploblastica. In the remaining Metazoa certain cells are budded off at an early stage of development from one or both of the two original layers, to form later a third layer, the mesoderm, which lies between the ectoderm and endoderm ; such forms have therefore received the name Triploblastica. At the same time it is necessary to observe that it is by no means certain that the mesoderm found in various groups of Metazoa is a similar or homologous formation in all cases. A second essential difference between Coelentera and other Metazoa (except Parazoa) is that in the former all spaces in the interior of the body are referable to a single cavity of endodermal origin, the “ gastro-vascular cavity,” often termed the coelenteron: the spaces are always originally continuous with one another, and are in almost every case permanently so. This single cavity and its lining serve apparently for all those functions (digestion, excretion, circulation, and often reproduction) which in more complex organisms are distributed among various cavities of independent and often very diverse origin. In the Coelentera the ectoderm and endoderm are set apart from one another at a very early period in the lifehistory ; generally either by delamination or invagination, processes described in the article Embryology. Between these two cell-layers a mesogloea (Bourne, 1887) is always intercalated as a secretion by one or both of them; this is a gelatinoid, primitively structureless lamella, which in the first instance serves merely as a basal support for the cells. In many cases, as, for example, in the Medusae or jelly-fish, the mesogloea may be so thick as to constitute the chief part of the body in bulk and weight. The ectoderm rarely consists of more than one layer of cells: these are divisible by structure and function into nervous, muscular, and secretory cells, supported by interstitial cells. The endoderm is generally also an epithelium one cell in thickness, the cells being digestive, secretory, and sometimes muscular. Reproductive sexual cells may be found in either of these two layers, according to the class and