Chapter VII. Printed Editions and Critical Editions.
It would be quite foreign to our present design, to attempt to notice all the editions of the New Testament in Greek which have appeared in the course of the last three centuries and a half, nor would a large volume suffice for such a labour. We will limit our attention, therefore, to those early editions which have contributed to form our commonly received text, and to such others of more recent date as not only exhibit a revised text, but contain an accession of fresh critical materials for its more complete emendation[148].
Since the Latin or “Mazarin” Bible, printed between 1452 and 1456, was the first production of the new-born printing-press (see above, p. [61]), and the Jews had published the Hebrew Bible in 1488, we must impute it to the general ignorance of Greek among divines in Western Europe, that although the two songs, Magnificat and Benedictus (Luke i), were annexed to a Greek Psalter which appeared first at Milan in 1481, without a printer's [pg 176] name; next at Venice in 1486, being edited by a Greek; again at Venice from the press of Aldus in 1496 or 1497: and although the first six chapters of St. John's Gospel were published at Venice by Aldus Manutius in 1504, and John vi. 1-14 at Tübingen in 1514, yet the first printed edition of the whole in N. T. the original is that contained in—
1. The Complutensian Polyglott[149] (6 vols., folio), the munificent design of Francis Ximenes de Cisneros [1437-1517], Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, and Regent of Castile (1506-1517). This truly eminent person, six years of whose humble youth were spent in a dungeon through the caprice of one of his predecessors in the Primacy of Spain, experienced what we have seen so conspicuously illustrated in other instances, that long imprisonment ripens the intellect which it fails to extinguish. Entering the Franciscan order in 1482, he carried the ascetic habit of his profession to the throne of Toledo and the palace of his sovereign. Becoming in 1492 Confessor to Queen Isabella the Catholic, and Primate three years later, he devoted to pure charity or to public purposes the enormous revenues of his see; founding the University at Alcalá de Henares in New Castile, where he had gone to school, and defraying the cost of an expedition which as Regent he led to Oran against the Moors. In 1502 he conceived the plan of the first Polyglott Bible, to celebrate the birth of him who afterwards became the Emperor Charles V, and gathered in his University of Alcalá (Complutum) as many manuscripts as he could procure, with men he deemed equal to the task, of whom James Lopez de Stunica (subsequently known for his controversy with Erasmus) was the principal: others being Æ. Antonio of Lebrixa, Demetrius Ducas of Crete, and Ferdinand of Valladolid (Pintianus). The whole outlay of Cardinal Ximenes on the Polyglott is stated to have exceeded 50,000 ducats or about £23,000, a vast sum in those days:—but his yearly income as Primate was four times as great. The first volume printed, Tom. v, contains the New Testament in two parallel columns, Greek and Latin, the latter being that modification of the Vulgate then current: the colophon on the last page of the Apocalypse states [pg 177] that it was completed January 10, 1514, the printer being Arnald William de Brocario. Tom. vi, comprising a Lexicon, indices, &c., bears date March 17, 1515; Tom. i-iv of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, 1517 (Tom. iv dated July 10), on November 8 of which year the Cardinal died, full of honours and good deeds. This event must have retarded the publication of the whole, since Pope Leo's licence was not granted until March 22, 1520, and Erasmus did not see the book before 1522. As not more than six hundred copies were printed, this Polyglott must from the first have been scarce and dear, and is not always met with in Public Libraries.
The Apocryphal books, like the N. T., are of course given only in two languages; in the Old Testament the Latin Vulgate holds the chief place in the middle, between the Hebrew and the Septuagint Greek[150]. The Greek type in the other volumes is of the common character, with the usual breathings and accents; in the fifth, or New Testament volume, it is quite different, being modelled after the fashion of manuscripts of about the thirteenth century, very bold and elegant (see Plate x, No. 26), without breathings, and accentuated according to a system defended and explained in a bilingual preface πρὸς τοὺς ἐντευξομένους, but never heard of before or since: monosyllables have no accent, while in other words the tone syllable receives the acute, the grave and circumflex being discarded. The Latin is in a noble church-character, references are made from the one text to the other by means of small letters, and where in either column there is a void space, in consequence of words omitted or otherwise, it is filled up by such curves as are seen in the bottom line of our specimen. The foreign matter in this volume consists of the short Preface in Latin and Greek, Eusebius Carpiano (but without the canons), Jerome's letter to Damasus, with the ordinary Latin Prologues [pg 178] and Arguments before each book. St. Paul's Epistles precede the Acts, as in Codd. א, 61, 69, 90, &c. and before them stand the ἀποδημία παύλου, Euthalii περὶ χρόνων, the ordinary ὑποθέσεις to all the twenty-one Epistles (grouped together), with Theodoret's prologues subjoined to thirteen of the ὑποθέσεις. By the side of the Latin text are numerous parallel passages, and there are also five marginal notes (on Matt. vi. 13; 1 Cor. xiii. 3; xv. 31; 51; 1 John v. 7, 8). The only divisions are the common Latin chapters, subdivided by the letters A, B, C, D, &c. Copies of laudatory verses[151], an interpretation of Proper Names, and a Greek Lexicon of the N. T., close the volume.
It has long been debated among critics, what manuscripts were used by the Complutensian editors, especially in the N. T. Ximenes is reported to have spent 4,000 ducats in the purchase of such manuscripts; in the Preface to the N. T. we are assured that “non quevis exemplaria impressioni huic archetypa fuisse: sed antiquissima emendatissimaque: ac tante preterea vetustatis, ut fidem eis abrogare nefas videatur: Que sanctissimus in Christo pater et dominus noster Leo decimus pontifex maximus, huic instituto favere cupiens ex apostolica bibliotheca educta misit....” Yet these last expressions can hardly refer to the N. T., inasmuch as Leo X was not elected Pope till March 11, 1513, and the N. T. was completed Jan. 10 of the very next year[152]. Add to this that Vercellone, whose services to sacred literature have been spoken of above, brought to light the fact that only two manuscripts are recorded as having been sent to the Cardinal from the Vatican in the first year of Leo, and neither of them (Vat. 330, 346) contained any part of [pg 179] the N. T.[153] The only one of the Complutensian codices specified by Stunica, the Cod. Rhodiensis (Act. 52), has entirely disappeared, and from a Catalogue of the thirty volumes of Biblical manuscripts once in the library at Alcalà, but now at Madrid, communicated in 1846 by Don José Gutierrez, the Librarian, we find that they consist exclusively of Latin and Hebrew books, with the exception of two which contain portions of the Septuagint in Greek[154]. Thus we seem cut off from all hope of obtaining direct information as to the age, character, and present locality of the materials employed for the Greek text of this edition.
It is obvious, however, that in the course of twelve years (1502-14), Ximenes may have obtained transcripts of codices he did not himself possess, and since some of the more remarkable readings of the Complutensian are found in but one or two manuscripts (e.g. Luke i. 64 in Codd. 140, 251; ii. 22 in Cod. 76), such copies should of course be narrowly watched. We have pointed out above the resemblance that Siedel's codex (Act. 42, Paul. 48, Apoc. 13) bears to this edition: so too Cod. 4 of the Gospels. Mill first noticed its affinity to Laud. 2 or Evan. 51, Act. 32, Paul. 38 (Evan. 51), and though this is somewhat remote in the Gospels, throughout the Acts and Epistles it is close and indubitable[155]. We see, therefore, [pg 180] no cause for believing that either Cod. B, or any manuscript much resembling it in character, or any other document of high antiquity or first-rate importance, was employed by the editors of this Polyglott. The text it exhibits does not widely differ from that of most codices written from the tenth century downwards.
That it was corrupted from the parallel Latin version was contended by Wetstein and others on very insufficient grounds. Even the Latinism βεελζεβούβ Matt. x. 25, seems a mere inadvertence, and is corrected immediately afterwards (xii. 24, 27), as well as in the four other places wherein the word is used. We need not deny that 1 John v. 7, 8 was interpolated, and probably translated from the Vulgate; and a few other cases have a suspicious look (Rom. xvi. 5; 2 Cor. v. 10; vi. 15; and especially Gal. iii. 19); the articles too are employed as if they were unfamiliar to the editor (e.g. Acts xxi. 4; 8): yet we must emphatically deny that on the whole the Latin Vulgate had an appreciable effect upon the Greek. This last point had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of Michaelis and of Marsh by Goeze[156], in whose short tract many readings of Cod. Laud. 2 are also examined. In the more exact collation of the N. T., which we have made with the common text (Elzevir 1624), and which appeared in the first edition of the present work, out of 2,780 places in all, wherein the Complutensian edition differs from that of Elzevir (viz. 1,046 in the Gospels, 578 in the Pauline Epistles, 542 in the Acts and Catholic Epistles, 614 in the Apocalypse), in no less than 849 the Latin is at variance with the Greek; in the majority of the rest the difference cannot be expressed in another language. Since the Complutensian N. T. could only have been published from manuscripts, it deserves more minute examination than it has received from Mill or Wetstein; and it were much to [pg 181] be desired that minute collations could be made of several other early editions, especially the whole five of Erasmus.
Since this Polyglott has been said to be very inaccurately printed, it is necessary to state that we have noted just fifty pure errors of the press; in one place, moreover (Heb. vii. 3), part of the ninth Euthalian κεφάλαιον (εν ω ότι και του αβραάμ προετιμήθη) has crept into the text. All the usual peculiarities observable in later manuscripts are here, e.g. 224 itacisms (chiefly ω for ο, η for ει, ει for ι, υ for η, οι for ει, and vice versâ); thirty-two instances of ν ἐφελκυστικόν, or the superabundant ν, before a consonant; fifteen cases of the hiatus for the lack of ν before a vowel; ουτως is sometimes found before a consonant, but ουτω sixty-eight times; ουκ and ουχ are interchanged twelve times. The following peculiarities, found in many manuscripts, and here retained, may show that the grammatical forms of the Greek were not yet settled among scholars; παρήνγελεν Mark vi. 8; διάγγελε Luke ix. 60; καταγγέλειν Acts iv. 2; διαγγέλων Acts xxi. 26; καταγγέλων 1 Cor. ii. 1; παραγγέλω 1 Cor. vii. 10; αναγγέλλων 2 Cor. vii. 7; παραγγέλομεν 2 Thess. iii. 4; παράγγελε 1 Tim. iv. 11; v. 7; vi. 17. The augment is omitted nine times (Matt. xi. 17; Acts vii. 42; xxvi. 32; Rom. i. 2; Gal. ii. 13; 1 Tim. vi. 10; 2 Tim. i. 16; Apoc. iv. 8; xii. 17); the reduplication twice (John xi. 52; 1 Cor. xi. 5); μέλλω and μέλει are confounded, Mark iv. 38; Acts xviii. 17; Apoc. iii. 2; xii. 4. Other anomalous forms (some of them would be called Alexandrian) are παμπόλου Mark viii. 1; νηρέαν Rom. xvi. 15; εξαιρείτε 1 Cor. v. 13; αποκτένει 2 Cor. iii. 6, passim; στιχούμεν Gal. v. 25; είπα Heb. iii. 10; ευράμενος ibid. ix. 12; απεσχέσθαι 1 Pet. ii. 11; καταλειπόντες 2 Pet. ii. 15; περιβαλλείται Apoc. iii. 5; δειγνύντος ibid. xxii. 8. The stops are placed carelessly in the Greek, being (.), (,), rarely (·), never (;). In the Latin the stops are pretty regular, but the abbreviations very numerous, even such purely arbitrary forms as xps for Christus. In the Greek σ often stands at the end of a word for ς, ï and often ü or υ are set at the beginning of syllables: there are no instances of ι ascript or subscript, and no capital letters except at the beginning of a chapter, when they are often flourished. The following forms are also derived from the general practice of manuscripts, and occur perpetually: απάρτι, απάρχης, δαν (for δ᾽ ἂν), ειμή, εξαυτής, επιτοαυτό, εφόσον, εωσότου, καίτοιγε, καθημέραν, κατιδίαν, κατόναρ, μεθήμων, μέντοι, ουμή, τουτέστι; and for the most part διαπαντός, διατί, διατούτο, είτις, ουκέτι. Sometimes the preposition and its case make but a single word, as παραφύσιν, and once we find ευποιήσαι, Vulg. benefacere (Mark xiv. 7).
The Complutensian text has been followed in the main by only a few later editions, chiefly by Chr. Plantin's Antwerp Polyglott (1569-72)[157].