Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - 1881.djvu/21

Rh desires free and intelligent worshippers. "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." The Bible, in its origin and history, is a human as well as a divine book, and must be studied under this twofold aspect. It is the incarnation of God's truth, and reflects the divine-human person of Christ, to whom it bears witness as the Alpha and Omega, as the Way, the Life, and the Truth. Even if we had the apostolic autographs, there would be room for verbal criticism, since they, like other ancient books, were written as a continuous whole, without accents, without punctuation, without division of sentences or words, without titles and subscriptions, without even the name of the author unless it was part of the text itself.

In the absence of the autographs, we must depend upon copies, or secondary sources. But these are, fortunately, far more numerous and trustworthy for the Greek Testament than for any ancient classic. "In the variety and fulness of the evidence on which it rests, the text of the New Testament stands absolutely and unapproachably alone among ancient prose writings" (W. and H., p. 561).

The sources of the text are threefold: Manuscript Copies, Ancient Versions, and Patristic Quotations.

The Manuscripts, or Codices, are the direct and most important sources. They number now over seventeen hundred, counting all classes, and new ones may yet be dis-