Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/592

 TESTAMENT

534

TESTAMENT

text. St. Jerome revised a western text with a neu- tral text and another not yet determined. The whole was contaminated, before or after him, by the Syrian text. What is certain is that his revision brought the Latin version perceptibly nearer to the neutral text, that is to say to the best. As to the received text which was compiled without any really scientific method, it should be put completely aside. It differs in nearly 8000 places from the text found in the Vati- canus, which is the best text known.

(c) We must not confound a received text with the traditional text. A received text is a determined type of text used in some particulai' place, but never current in the whole Church. The traditional text is that which has in its favour the constant testimony of the entire Christian tradition. Considering the substance of the text, it can be said that every Church has the traditional text, for no Church was ever deprived of the substance of the Scripture (in as far as it preserved the integrity of the Canon) ; but, as regards textual criticism of which the object is to recover the ipsissima verba of the original, there is no text now existing which can be rightly called "tra- ditional". The original text is still to be established, and that is what the editions called critical have been trying to effect for the last century.

(d) After more than a century's work are there still many doubtful readings? According to West- cott and Hort seven-eighths of the text, that is 7000 verses out of 8000, are to be considered definitely estabhshed. Still more, critical discussions can even now solve most of the contested cases, so that no serious doubts exist except concerning about one- sixtieth of the contents of the New Testament. Per- haps even the number of passages of which the authenticity has not yet had a sufficient critical dem- onstration does not exceed twelve, at least as regards substantial alterations. We must not forget, how- ever, that the Cambridge critics do not include in this calculation certain longer passages considered by them as not authentic, namely the end of St. Mark (xyi, 9-20) and the episode of the adulteress (John, viii, 1-11.

(3) These conclusions of the editors of the Cam- bridge text have in general been accepted by the majority of scholars. Those who have written since them, for the past thirty years, B. Weiss, H. Von Soden, R. C. Gregory, have indeed proposed differ- ent classifications; but in reality they scarcely differ in their conclusions. Only in two points do they differ from Westcott and Hort. These latter have accord- ing to them given too much importance to the text of the Vaticanus and not enough to the text called Western. As regards the last-mentioned, recent dis- coveries have made it better known and show that it is not to be overmuch depreciated.

D. Results. — (1) The critical editions of the New Testament resulting from a personal study of the sources, which have appeared during the past fifty years are those of Const. Tischendorf, "Novum Tes- tamentum grjece, editio octava critica major" (1869- 1872), with the Prolegomena to Tischendorf's eighth edition of C. R. Gregory, 1894; that of S. P. Tregalles, "The Greek New Testament, with the Latin version of Jerome from the cod. Amiatinus" (1857-1872), and an appendix of Dr. Hort (1879); that of B. F. West- cott and F. J. A. Hort, "The New Testament in the original Greek" (1881), with a volume of introduction edited by Hort; that of B. Weiss, "Das neue Testa- ment" (1892-9), and a more recent edition (1902-.')). H. Von Soden has published only the valuable intro- duction to the edition of the text, which is being pre- pared for the last twelve years, under the title "Die Schriften d<'s neucn Testaments in ihrer iiltesten erreichbaren Text gcst alt hergestellt auf Grund ihrer Textgeschichtc" (1902-10). C. R. Gregory also has announced that he is preparing a new critical edition

(cf. Vorschlage fur eine kritische Ausgabe des grie- chischen neuen Testaments, 1911).

(2) From the materials thus collected manuals have been edited. The best known to students are the following: R. F. Weymouth, whose work aims at being the resultant of the critical editions that appeared before 1886. The author usually sides with the majority. O. de Gebhart (1895) follows Tischendorf; E. Nestle (1898) (Greco-Latin) keeps in his text the reading accepted by both Tischendorf and Westcott- Hort (this ordinarily means the accord of B with N). If they do not agi-ee, the editor generally follows Wey- mouth and Weiss. Since the year 1904 "the British and Foreign Bible Society have substituted the text of Nes- tle for the received text, which it had used from the time of its estabhshment. Besides these Protestant texts there are three Greco-Latin editions of manuals of Cathohc origin: F. Brandscheid (1893); Hetz- enauer (1896); E. Bodin, who published an anony- mous edition (Paris, 1911). Between the Protestant and Catholic editions there is a double difference. The latter keep in their text the sections of which the authenticity is contested (Mark xvi, 9-20; Luke xxii, 43-44; John v, 4, viii, 1-11; I John v, 7); and also in their choice of variants they pay more attention to the readings authorized by the Latin Vulgate.

V. Contents of the New Test.\ment. History and Doctrine. — The New Testament is the principal and almost the only source of the early history of Christianity in the first century. All the "Lives of Jesus Christ" have been composed from the Gos- pels. The history of the Apostles, as narrated by Renan, Farrar, Fouard, W^eizsiicker, and Le Camus, is based on the Acts and the Epistles. The "The- ologies of the New Testament", of which so many have been WTitten during the nineteenth century, are a proof that we can with canonical texts build up a com- pact and fairly complete doctrinal system. But what is the worth of these narrations and syntheses? In what measure do they bring us in contact with the actual facts? It is the question of the historical value of the New Testament which to-day preoccupies higher criticism.

A. History. — Everybody agrees that the first three Gospels reflect the beliefs regarding Jesus Christ and his work current among Christians during the last quarter of the first century, that is to say at a dis- tance of forty or fifty years from the events. Few ancient historians were in such favourable conditions. The biographers of the Caesars (Suetonius and Taci- tus) were not in a better position to get exact infor- mation. AU are forced to admit, moreover, that in the Epistles of St. Paul we come into immediate con- tact with the mind of the most influential propagator of Christianity, and that a quarter of a century after the Ascension. The faith of the Apostle represents the form of Christian thought most victorious and most widespread in the Greco-Roman world. The writings of St. John introduce us to the troubles of the Churches after the fall of the Synagogue and the first encounter of Christianity with the violence of pagan Rome; his Gospel expresses, to say the least, the Christian attitude of that j)criod towards Christ. The Acts inform us, at all events, what was thought in SjTia and Palestine towards the year (55 of the foun- dation of the Church; they lay before our eyes a traveller's diary which allows us to follow St. Paul from day to day during the ten best years of his missions.

Must our knowledge stop here? Do the earliest mon\iments of Christian hterature belong to the class of WTitings called "memoirs", and reveal only the impressions and the judgments of their authors? Not a single critic (meaning those who are esteemed as such) has yet ventured to underrate thus the his- torical worth of the New Testament taken as a whole. The ancients did not even raise the question; so