Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - 1881.djvu/29

 INTRODUCTION TO TIIK AMKKI.'AN KDITION. xxi

the Old Testament in the Septuagint Version (109 leaves), and the whole Now Testament, without any omission, to- gether with the Epistle of Barnabas, all in Greek, and a part of the Pastor Ilennte in Greek (147 leaves). It is much disfigured by numerous corrections made by the original scribes or several later writers, especially one of the fourth century (x a ), whose emendations are very valu- able, and one of the seventh (x c ). It often confirms Cod. Vaticanus in characteristic readings (as poioytviis Seoc for vt'oc, in John i. 18; r//- i^Xtjaiav rov Stov for Kvpiov, in Acts xx. 28 ; of ifaripwSr) for &oc, in 1 Tim. iii. 1 0), and omissions, as the doxology (Matt vi. 13) ; the end of Mark (xvi. 9-20); the passage of the woman taken in adultery (John vii. 53-viii. 11), in part, also, the Old Latin Version; but sometimes it supports other witnesses. It lias contrib- uted very much towards the settlement of the text, and stimulated the progress of the revision movement in Eng- land, in connection with Tischcndorfs Taiichnitz edition of King James's Version (1869), which gives in foot-notes the chief readings of the three great uncials K, B, and A. Tischendorf first copied the Sinaitic MS., with the help

��Sinaitic over the Vatican 318., and assigns them both to the middle of the fourth century, maintaining even that one of the scribes of K (who wrote six leaves, and whom he designates D) wrote the New Testament part of B. Compare the learned and very able essay of Dr. Ezra Abbot (against Air. Burgon): Comparative Antiquity of the Sinaitic and Vatican MSS. , " in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. x. (1872), pp. 189-200. Oebhardt, in Herzog's Utal-Knryklupadie (new ed.), vol. ii. p. 414, pronounces Burgon's attempt to prove the higher antiquity of the Vatican MS. by fifty to one hundred years an entire failure.

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