Eastern Church. The present system of verses first appears in the edition printed by Robert Stephens in the year 1551.
The titles and subscriptions of the New Testament books are another point on which a succession of changes has taken place. The oldest MSS. have much shorter titles than those which the English version adopted from the later Greek text ; and the sub- scrFptions, with their would-be historical information, are not only late but worthless. Those appended to the epistles of St Paul are attributed to Etithalius.
More important than these external matters are the variations which in course of time crept into the text itself. Many of these variations are mere slips of eye, ear, memory, or judgment r:i the part of a copyist, who had no intention to do otherwise *]..,. ,._.iiow what lay before him. But transcribers, and espp" . ./ Dearly transcribers, by no means aimed at that minute accu -i .y which is expected of a modern critical editor. Corrections were made in the interests of grammar or of style, slight changes were adopted in order to remove difficulties, additions came in, especially from parallel narratives in the gospels, citations from the Old Testament were made more exact or more complete. That all this was done in perfect good faith, and simply because no strict conception of the duty of a copyist existed, is especially clear from the almost entire absence of deliberate falsification of the text in the interests of doctrinal controversy. To detail all the sources of various readings would be out of place ; it may suffice to mention, in addition to what has been already s.iid, that glosses, or notes originally written on the margin, very often PP. Jed by being taken into the text, and that the custom of reading the Scriptures in public worship naturally brought in liturgical additions, such as the doxology of tlie Lord s Prayer; while the commencement of an ecclesiastical lesson torn from its proper context had often to be supplemented by a few explanatory words, which soon came to be regarded as part of the original.
Up to a certain point the various readings due to so many different causes constantly became more and more numerous; but the number of independent readings which could arise and be per petuated was limited by various circumstances. A general simi larity necessarily prevailed in associated groups of copies, which were either derived from the same archetype, or written by the same copyist, or corrected by comparison with a single celebrated MS. Causes such as these, combined with local peculiarities of style and taste, and with the fact that the New Testament, like Christianity itself, was sent forth from central mother churches to newly-formed communities all around, gave a decided local colour ing to the text current in certain regions ; so that we are stiil able to speak in a general way of an Alexandrian, a Western, a Byzan tine, and perhaps also (with Tischendorf) of an Asiatic text. But of course no ancient local text remained uninfluenced by copies from other regions. The comparison of copies became more and more extended in range as the church grew and consolidated into a homogeneous form ; and though old readings, which had obtained a firm hold in certain communities, were not easily eradicated, it at length became almost impossible for any important new error to escape detection. Most variations of any consequence which are found in existing MSS. are known to be as old as the 4th century, and other readings existed then which no MS. is known to contain.
The variations of early copies were most completely smoothed into uniformity in the later Byzantine MSS., after the Mahometan conquest had overthrown Greek learning in Syria and Egypt. The scribes of Constantinople spent great pains on the text in accordance with their own notions of what was proper, and gave it a form which is certainly smoother, correcter, and more uniform than that of older MSS. But precisely these peculiarities sliow that this late recension is remote from the original shape of the New Testa ment writings, and compel us to seek the true text by study of early MSS., especially of the still existing uncial copies.
The manuscripts are of six classes, containing respectively the gospels, the Acts with the catholic epistles, the Pauline epistles, the Apocalypse, the ecclesiastical lessons from the gospels, the lessons from the Acts and epistles. Copies belonging tu the last two classes are called lectionaries, and lectionaries of the gospels are called evangclistaria. Each MS. is referred to by critics by a special mark. Uncial MSS. are denoted by a capital letter, A standing for the Codex Alexandrinus, B for the Vaticanus, and soon. Cursives and lectionaries are denoted by Arabic numerals. It is to be observed that the same letter in a different part of the New Testament does not necessarily refer to the same MS. Thus Cod. D of the gospels and Acts is the Codex Bcza?, but D of the Pauline epistles is the Claromontanus. If we reckon fragments, the number of uncial MSS. is 56 of the gospels, 14 of the Acts, 6 of the catholic epistles, 15 of the Pauline epistles, 5 of the Apocalypse. But many of these are extremely short fragments. The number of cursives and lectionaries is enormous, so that altogether there are nearly a thousand MSS. for the gospels, and as many more for the rest of the New Testament. Not nearly all the cursive copies have been thoroughly examined, and most of them have small value, though some comparatively recent MSS. are important from the fact that they represent an ancient text. Lectionaries, even when uncial, are little esteemed by most critics. Grace-Latin codices which have the Greek and Latin in parallel columns were formerly suspected of correcting the Greek text by the Latin, but their value is now generally recognized.
The oldest copies of the Greek Testament ore the Codex Sinaiticus (X) and the Codex Vaticanus (B), both of the 4th century. Next in age come the Alexandrian manuscript (A) and the Codex Ephraemi (C), both of which are referred to the 5th century. All of these copies were originally complete Bibles, with the Old as well as the New Testament. X is still complete as regards the New Testament; A and B have lacuna? ; C is very imperfect, and barely legible, the ancient writing having been almost removed by a mediaeval scribe to make way for the writings of Ephraem Syrus. ^ , A, B, C, are the four great first-rate uncials, and will be found more fully described in separate articles. Besides these there are one or two fragments as old as the 5th century (I, I b , T).
A quite peculiar place is held by the Graeco-Latin Codex Bezae at Cambridge (D), which dates from the 6th century, but presents a text full of the most singular interpolations. The other uncials of the gospels are less important, either from their fragmentary state or from the character of their text. The later uncials are hardly more valuable than good cursives.
The most important MS. of the Acts, in addition to those already mentioned, is E, the Codex Laudianus, Graco-Latin of the 6th century, in the Bodleian at Oxford. For the. Pauline epistles we may mention D, or Codex Claromontanus, at Paris, also Gra;co- Latin of the 6th century, and II, or Codex Coisliuianus, of tl:e same century, of which there are 12 leaves at Paris and 2 at St Petersburg. Uncial authority is most scanty for the Apocalypse, for which the Vaticanus is defective. B of the Apocalypse is an uncial of the 8th century.
2. The Christian Versions.—We have seen that the early church adopted the LXX., not so much in the character of a version, as in that of an authoritative original. Although several attempts were made in the 2d century of our era to produce a better Greek rendering of the Old Testament, not one of these seems to have had its origin in the Catholic Church. Aquila was a Jew, whose closely verbal rendering was designed to serve the subtilties of Rabbinic exegesis. Symmachus and Theoclotion were probably Ebionites. The former was an excellent master of Greek, who happily corrected many clumsy renderings of the LXX., but inclined too much to paraphrase, a-nd to the obliteration of characteristic figures and bold expressions. Theodotion made less extensive changes, and aimed only at necessary corrections. His rendering of Daniel was so manifest an improvement that it entirely displaced the old version, and is still regularly printed as part of the LXX.
In the Christian Church the importance of these new versions, and the unsatisfactory condition of the LXX. which, apart from its original defects, had been much corrupted in successive transcrip tionswere first clearly set forth by Origen in his Hexaplar edition of the Old Testament. This great work takes its name from the six columns in which it was arranged, containing respectively the Hebrew in the proper character, the same in Greek letters, the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and a text of the LXX., partly corrected by comparison of MSS., partly emended by recourse to the Hebrew. The variations of several less important versions were also noted. The complete Hexapla was too huge a work to be transcribed and circulated as a whole. It lay in the library at Cresarea, and was only occasionally consulted by scholars ; but the column containing Origen s emended text of the LXX. was pub lished in separate transcripts by Eusebius and Pamphilus, and attained so great a circulation that in the Palestinian churches, as we learn from Jerome, it quite displaced the older text. In com posing his Hexaplar text, Origen was careful to distinguish his own improvements from the original LXX. by the use of asterisks and other marks. In later copies these marks were unfortunately often omitted. The Hexaplar text became mixed up with the true LXX., and the modern critic is sometimes tempted to forget how much the Eastern Church owed to this first attempt to go back to the Hebrew Old Testament, in his impatience at the obliteration by the adoption of Hexaplar corrections of important divergences of the LXX. from the Massoretic text. Our knowledge of the other columns of Origen s great edition is fragmentary, and is derived partly from citations in ancient authors, partly from notes in MSS. of the Hexaplar LXX., or of the Syriac translation of it composed by Paul of Tela (616 A.D.) The best collection of these fragments is that edited by Field (Origenis Hcxaplorum qua supcrsunt, Oxford, 1867-1875).
The first origin of translations of the Christian Scriptures into the vernacular of non-Hellenic churches is involved in much obscurity. Apart from the probable existence of early Aramaic gospels, there is no sure trace of a Christian literature in any other tongue than Greek till late in the 2d century. Even in the churches of Gaul, Greek was the recognized language of Christian authorship. In Rome the literary use of Greek extended into the 3d century ; and in the earliest days of the Roman Church, Greek was the language of public worship. Even in remoter districts the demand
