Page:Gospel of Saint Matthew in West-Saxon.djvu/10

 Prefatory Note

edition of the Gospel of St. Matthew in West-Saxon is issued simultaneously with an edition of the Gospel of St. John of the same Version. In the case of the fourth Gospel, however, the text is accompanied by Notes and a Glossary. That such a difference should separate these two volumes that are to be held together as parts of the same edition of the Version is due to the circumstances of publication. The general editor of the series to which these volumes belong first requested an edition of the Gospel of St. John, and his request was complied with in the preparation of the volume as it is now published. But this involved the surrender of a portion of the edition of the Version that the editor already had in preparation. The next step, therefore, was to enter upon a plan that might keep the entire text of the Version together, and yet not lead too far beyond the initial limits of expenditure set for the series. Accordingly this edition of the first Gospel has been restricted, for the present, to the text and the variant readings.

Awaiting the publication of the second and third Gospels and additional apparatus, the student is referred to the volume containing the Gospel of St. John. The Introduction to that volume will give a view of questions relating to the Version; the Notes will furnish explanations that in part are applicable to the present text; and the Glossary will be found to record so large a portion of the words and constructions that occur also in the Gospel of St. Matthew that its importance as an aid in the use of the present volume will at once be perceived.

J. W. B.

Baltimore, October, 1904.