Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf/356

318

416. An initial capital has likewise been used for in the four places, all in St Luke's Gospel, in which it stands in the singular without an article. In this shape it exactly represents the anarthrous Elion, a very ancient name not confined to the Jews, and is virtually itself a proper name. In the LXX the article is usually inserted: but in Ecclesiasticus, doubtless a better authority for Palestinian custom, occurs frequently, and has the article but once, except in combination with another title.

E.&ensp;417—423.&emsp;Punctuation, Divisions of text, and Titles of books

417. Punctuation properly includes not stops only, but spaces at the beginning, middle, or end of lines, and indeed any notation having a similar effect, that is, the distribution of words into clauses, and of clauses into sentences of greater or less complexity. In this sense probably no MSS are without punctuation, though in the earlier biblical MSS it is vague and comparatively infrequent. Comparison of the punctuation of extant MSS leads to the conclusion that, though in some places breaks or stops occur with fair constancy, there has been no transmission of punctuation of any kind from the autographs; so that whatever punctuation is found is merely a record of ancient interpretations of unknown authority. Punctuations presupposed in the renderings of Versions may often be older, but they have essentially the same character; and those which are involved in the renderings or interpretations of Fathers differ only as having usually the authority, whatever it may be, of known expositors or theologians. Many interpretations embodying punctuations naturally became traditional within a wider or narrower sphere: but the starting-point of each tradition must have been an individual act of judgement upon an inherited text, not a continuously transmitted reproduction of an original punctuation as part of a text. Modern editors have therefore no option but to punctuate in accordance with the best interpretation that they are themselves able to arrive at, with ancient and modern aids; and no unwillingness to encumber a text with needless comments can dispense them from the necessity of deciding a multitude of subtle and difficult points of interpretation, to be expressed only by stops.