Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/55

BIBLE. The Latin Version. — Not until about the end of the Second Century did the need arise for a Latin New Testament. The early Roman Chris- tians used Greek. It was in country districts, probably, especially in Northwest Africa, that the first Latin translations were made. These were private translations lor local use. The text was of the Western type, current in Rome and Northern Africa. A little later the same thing took place in Italy. The effect of so many inde- pendent versions was that iu the time of Augus- tine (3'>4-430) and Jerome (c.340-420) the Latin text was greatl_v confused. At the solicita- tion of Dainasus, Bishop of Rome, Jerome un- dertook to revise it. Though he used the best Greek JISS. at his disposal, yet his work was but a revision, not a new translation. It was pub- lished about A.D. 384. It slowly but steadily won its way to supremacy, and so became known as the Vulgata, or commonly used version. Through careless copying and mixture with older types of text the Vulgate became corrupted. It was revised by Alcuin in 801, by Lanfranc in 1009- 89, and by others in succeeding centuries. In obedience to a decree of the Council of Trent (1546), a revised Vulgate was published in 1589- 90 with the sanction of Pope Sixtus V. (the Sixtine Vulgate). This was found so faulty that in 1592, under the auspices of Pope Clem- ent VIll., the Clementine Vulgate, the stand- ard Bible of the Roman Catholic Church, was issued. A critical revision of the Vulgate is now in process of publication in England (Words- worth and White's). The Codex Amiatinus, the most important MS. of the uigate. is one of the most magnificent books in the world.

The Egyptian or Coptic Version. — The early history of this is exceedingly obscure. Several dialects were spoken by the native Egyptian dur- ing the early Christian centuries. These dia- lects are all represented in the Coptic MSS. of the New Testament. The beginnings of this version seem to have been made as early as a.d. 250. It was designed in the first place to meet the needs of the uncultivated populations of the rural districts. For some unknown reason, the text of the Egyptian Version is more Western than Alexandrian.

The other ancient versions are of minor im- portance. The Armenian seems to have been made in the Fifth Century, the Georgian a little later. The Gothic, the work of Ulifilas, second bishop of the Goths in Moesia, dates from the latter half of the Fourth Century. The Ethiopic, used in the churches of Abyssinia, was made in the Fifth Century. The Persian and the Arabic are several centuries later. The earliest Slavic version dates from the Ninth Century. The Franlcish of the Ninth and the .Anglo-Saxon of the Tenth Centurj- were made from the Latin. _ A third class of witnesses to the text of the New Testament consists of the patristic citations. Among the Fathers, Iren;rus. Tertullian, and Cy- prian are the main representatives of the West- ern text, Clement of Alexandria and Origen of the .Iexandrian, while the post-Nicene fathers, especially of the East, generally represent the Syrian text.

(b) The Principles of Textual Criticism. — The first printed Greek Testaments were uncriti- cal and based on few and late MSS. With the ap- pearance of Mill's New Testament in a.d. 1707 it was seen that the number of witnesses to be consulted was very large, and that the variant readings were to be counted by the thousands. The first attempts to decide between readings were based, naturally, either on mere individual )irefercnce or on the comparative number and age of the opposing authorities. It was soon found, liowever, that such simple rules were not suffi- cient. For verj- often the reading that commends itself on grounds of intrinsic worth and proba- bility is absent from the majority of MSS., in- cluding some of the oldest. It is well known that difficult readings in an autograph are quite likely to be changed in the cour.se of transcription to easier or smoother ones. The reverse is not the case. Hence we have the celebrated canon of Bengel, "proclivae scriptioni prtestat ardua," i.e. the more difficult reading is to be preferred to the easier. Other principles or canons are, "that reading is to be preferred which seems to have been likely to have been the source of the others," and, "the shorter reading is to be preferred." Such canons are the result of close observation and are necessary to prevent the too free use of mere conjecture. But a textual critic deals not merely with readings alone. Readings are contained in documents, and the quality and interrelationship of the documents must be considered. If nine out of ten manuscripts are all copies of one and the same manuscript, their united testimony anioimts only to the testimony of the one manuscript from which they are derived. If that one was a poor manuscript, the text of the nine copies can be no better. Therefore, the testimony of one manuscript may be of more weight than that of a number of opponents. That a majority of witnesses favor a reading is not a necessary indication of its correctness. The witness of a manuscript which is carefully executed or seems to have been exceptionally fortunate in its ances- try should be allowed great weight. The general value of a manuscript is ascertained by a care- ful examination of each of its various "readings. Hence the canon adopted by Westcott and Hort, "knowledge of documents should precede judg- ment on readings." Another canon, formulated by the same critics, is drawn from the fact that the relation between the difl'erent manuscripts of a work is like that of the several branches of a genealogical tree. With any new copy or set of copies serious changes may be introduced. Such copies may become, in their turn, parents of large numbers of others, all of which will exhibit the same characteristic changes. These readings will be ab.sent from manuscripts belonging to another line of descent. So we have the canon, "all trustworthy restoration of corrupted texts is founded upon a study of their histoi-y — that is, of the relations of descent or affinity which connect the several documents." The most consistent example of the applicition of such principles is Westcott and Horfs Greek Xew Testament, of 1881. Other critical editors, while recognizing the value of these principles, have allowed their individual preferences fuller play.

VI. BrRLioGR.ipiiY. The following carefully selected and purposely brief list of books, for the most part in English, is made up of those sug- gested by the authors of the preceding article, with a few additions, and is arranged under the same heads as the article itself. Only the latest edition is mentioned :

I. Tn Grncral.—W. R. Smith. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (New York, 1901);