Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/590

 TESTAMENT

'532

TESTAMENT

gences we find between various MSS. of the same work. To these causes may be added, in regard to the Scriptures, exegetical difficulties and dogmatical controversies. To exempt the sacred writings from ordinary conditions a very special providence would have been necessary, and it has not been the will of God to exercise this providence. More than 150,000 different readings have been found in the older wit- nesses to the text of the New Testament — which in itself is a proof that Scriptures are not the only, nor the principal, means of revelation. In the concrete order of the present economy God had only to pre- vent any such alteration of the sacred texts as would put the Church in the moral necessity of announcing with certainty as the word of God what in reality was only a human utterance. Let us say, however, from the start, that the substantial tenor of the sacred text has not been altered, notwithstanding the uncer- tainty which hangs over some more or less long and more or less important historical or dogmatical pas- sages. Moreover — and this is very important — these alterations are not irremediable; we can at least very often, by studying the variants of the texts, eliminate the defective reading and thus re-establish the prim- itive text. This is the object of textual criticism.

A. Brief History of the Textual Criticism. — The ancients were aware of the variant readings in the text and in the versions of the New Testament; Origen, St. Jerome, and St, Augustine particularly insisted on this state of things. In every age and in diverse places efforts were made to remedy the evil; in Africa, in the time of St. Cyprian (2.50) ; in the East by means of the works of Origen (200-.54); then by those of Lucian at Antioch and Hesychius at Alexandria, in the beginning of the fourth century. Later on (383) St. Jerome revised the Latin version with the aid of what he considered to be the best copies of the Greek text. Between 400 and 4.50 Rabbula of Edessa did the same thing for the Syriac version. In the thir- teenth century the universities, the Dominicans, and the Franciscans undertook to correct the Latin text. In the fifteenth century printing lessened, although it did not completely sup]>ress, the diversity of read- ings, because it sjjread the same type of text, viz., that which the Hellenists of the Renaissance got from the Byzantine scholars, who came in numbers to Italy, Germany, and France, after the capture of Constan- tinople. This text, after having been revised by Eras- mus, Robert Estienne, and Theodore de Beze, finally, in 1(533, became the Elzeverian edition, which was to bear the name of the "received text". It remained the ne varietur text of the New Testament for Protes- tants up to the nineteenth century. The British and Foreign Bible Society continued to spread it until 1904. All the official Protestant versions depended on this test of Byzantine origin up to the revision of the Authorized Version of the Anglican Church, which took place in 1881.

The Catholics on their side followed the official edition of the Latin Vulgate (which is in substance the revised version of St. Jerome), publi.shed in 1.592 by order of Clement VIII, and called on that account the Clementine Bible. Thus it can be .said that, during two centuries at least, the New Testament was read in the West in two different forms. Which of the two wa-s the more exact? According as the ancient MSS. of the text were discovered and edited, the critics remarked and noted the differences these MSS. pre- sented, and also the divergences between them and the commonly receivetl ( Ireek text as well as the Latin Vulgate. The work of comparison and criticism that became urgent was begun, and for almost two centu- ries hiis been conducted with diligence and iiiethod by manv scholars, amongst whom the following deserve a special mention: Mill (1707), Bentley (1720), Bengel (1734), Wetstein (17.51), Semler (17ti,5), Griesbach (1774), Hug (1809), Scholz (1830), both

CathoUcs, Lachmann (1842), Tregelles (1857), Tischendorf (1869), Westcott and Hort, Abb6 Mar- tin (1883), and at present B. Weiss, H. Von Soden, R. C. Gregory.

B. Resources of Textual Criticism. — Never was it as easy as it is in our own days to see, consult, and con- trol the most ancient documents concerning the New Testament. Gathered from almost everywhere they are to be found in the libraries of our big cities (Rome, Paris, London, Saint Petersburg, Cambridge, etc.), where they can be visited and consulted by everyone. These documents are the MSS. of the Greek text, the old versions and the works of ecclesiastical or other WTiters who have cited the New Testament. This collection of documents, daily increasing in number, has been called the apparatus criticus. To facilitate the use of the codices of the text and versions they have been classed and denominated by means of letters of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets. Von Soden recently introduced another notation, which essentially consists in the distribution of all the MSS. into three groups designated resjiectivcly by the three Greek letters S (i. e. SiaS^di;, the i\ISS. contain- ing the Go.spels and something else as well), e (i. e. cvayyiXia, the MSS. containing the Gospels only), o (i. e. diro(TToXos, the MSS. containing the Acts and the Epistles. In each series the MSS. are numbered according to their age.

(1) Manuscripts of the Text. — More than 4000 have been already catalogued and partly studied, only the minority of which contain the whole New Testa- ment. Twenty of these texts are prior to the eighth century, a dozen are of the sixth century, five of the fifth century, and two of the fourth. On account of the number and antiquity of these documents the text of the New Testament is better established than that of our Greek and Latin classics, except Virgil, which, from a critical point of view, is almost in the same conditions. The most celebrated of these manu- scripts are: B Vaticanus, S 1, Rome, fourth cent.; Sinaiticus, S 2, Saint Petersburg, fourth cent.; C Ephrcemus rescripfus, 5 3, Paris, fifth cent.; A Alex- amirinus, S 4, London, fifth cent.; D Cantabrigiensis (or Codex Beza-) S 5, Cambridge, sixth cent.; D 2 Claromontanus, a 102(i, Paris, sixth cent.; Laurensis, S 6, Mount Athos, eighth-ninth cent.; E Basilcensis, e 55, Bale, eighth cent. To these copies of the text on parchment a dozen fragments on papyrus, recently found in Egypt, most of which go back to the fourth century, one even to the third century, must be added.

(2) Ancient Versions. — Several arc derived from original texts prior to the most ancient Greek MSS. These versions are, following the order of their age, Latin, Syriac, Egyptian, Armenian, Ethiopian, Gothic, and Georgian. The first three, especially the Latin and the Syriac, are of the greatest impor- tance. (1) Latin version. — Up to about the end of the fourth century, it was diffused in the West (Pro- consular Africa, Rome, Northern Italy, and espe- cially at Milan, in Gaul, and in Spain) in slightly dif- ferent forms. The best known of these is that of St. Augustine called the "Itala", the sources of which go as far back as the second century. In 383 St. Jerome revised the Italic type after the Greek MSS., the best of which did not differ much from the text represented by the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus. It was this revision, altered here and there by readings from the primitive Latin version and a few other more recent variants, that prevailed in the west from the sixth century under the name of Vulgate. (2) Syriac Version. — Three primitive types are repre- sented by the Diatessaron of Tatian (second cent.), the palimpsest of Sinai, called the Lewis codex from the nanw- of the lady who found it (third cent,, per- hajis from the end of the second), and the Codex of Cureton (third cent,). The Syriac Version of this primitive epoch that still survives contains only the