LECTURE VII.
ON THE ORIGINAL TEXTS, AS KNOWN IN 1611, AND AS NOW KNOWN.
Another, and distinct, class of reasons for the further revision of the English Bible, arises from the more abundant material now possessed for the determination of the original text of Scripture than was within the reach of the Revisers of 1611.
Even if these honoured men had perfectly fulfilled their work, and had never erred in their interpretation of the sacred books, the result of their labours would still be open to correction because of the less perfect form of the texts which they set themselves to translate. The exact words used by the inspired writers are, as was stated in the first lecture, not now to be found in any one book or manuscript. They have to be gathered from varied sources, by long and careful labour, demanding much skill and learning. These sources, moreover, are so numerous that the investigation of them can be accomplished only by a large division of labour, no one life being long enough for the task, and no one scholar having knowledge enough to complete it alone. Nevertheless, it is well that our sources are thus extensive. Had one copy only of the books of the Old and New Testament come down to us, then, indeed, we should have been freed from the necessity of this manifold and laborious research, but unless this were the original copy itself, we should have had no means whereby to detect and to remove the errors which had crept in from the human imperfections of the transcribers. And though none of these errata might in any serious degree have affected the great truths which the Bible conveys to us, or have diminished our estimate of its surpassing worth, they would have been as blots upon its pages which our love and reverence for it would long to see removed. The greater the number and variety of our resources, the greater is our ability, by the examination and comparison of their differences, to remove these blemishes; and the greater also is the confidence we are able to feel in the absolute correctness of those far more numerous and extensive passages in which our authorities agree. And hence, though the toil imposed upon us is so largely multiplied thereby, we cannot but rejoice in the number and extent of our authorities, and we gather therefrom a fresh illustration of the saying, that “in all labour there is profit.”
The sources, whence our knowledge of the original texts is chiefly derived, are three in number: (1) Manuscripts containing one or more of the books of Scripture; (2) Ancient Versions of the Bible; and (3) Quotations of Scriptural passages found in the works of early Christian writers.
Respecting our Manuscript Authorities, the first fact claiming emphatic notice is, that while in the case of the classic poets, philosophers and historians, the extant manuscript copies are numbered by tens and sometimes even by units, those of the Scriptures are numbered by hundreds. Of the New Testament alone nearly eighteen hundred manuscripts have been catalogued and more or less carefully examined. Of these 685 are manuscripts of the Gospels, 248 contain the Acts and Catholic Epistles, 298 the Pauline Epistles, and 110 the Apocalypse; 428 are Lectionaries or service books of the Greek church, 347 of which contain passages from the Gospels and 81 passages from the Acts and the Epistles. Thus while our knowledge of the interesting narratives of Herodotus is dependent upon five or six authorities only, and the history of Livy upon eight or nine only (and none of these contain the whole even of the portions extant),[77] our knowledge of the life and words of our Lord is drawn from over a thousand manuscript authorities, and of which the larger part contain the whole of the four Gospels.
In antiquity again the manuscripts of the New Testament far surpass those of classical authors. Few, if any, of the latter are older than the ninth or tenth century, while of the former we have copies belonging to the fourth and fifth centuries. The oldest manuscripts are written in capital letters, and on this account are called uncial[78] manuscripts, or briefly uncials. Later manuscripts are written in a smaller character, and in a style approaching to what we call a running hand, and are hence named cursives. Of uncial manuscripts, containing portions of the New Testament, one hundred and fifty-eight have been examined and catalogued. Some of the most valuable of these have been published under the superintendence of careful editors. Others have been thoroughly examined, and their variations so faithfully noted and recorded, that a private student is, for most practical purposes, placed in the same position as the possessor of the manuscript itself. This work is technically described as collation, and the amount of painstaking labour spent upon the collation of Biblical manuscripts during the past two hundred years, and especially in the last forty or fifty years, is simply enormous. To one who has never examined a document written many centuries ago it is difficult to convey any adequate notion of the amount of time and labour involved in the collation even of a single manuscript. The unusual and varying forms of the letters, the indistinctness of the characters, the various contractions employed by the scribe, and, as is the case with our most ancient documents, the non-separation of word from word, and the absence of stops, render the mere task of deciphering the manuscript very difficult and painfully wearying to the eyes.[79] Much watchful attention is also demanded, as well as a good knowledge of the language, in making the proper separation of the words, and in judging aright of any peculiarities of spelling that may attach to the writer. In making the collation of any Biblical manuscript—say of the New Testament—the course generally pursued is as follows: The collator procures a printed copy of the Greek text, commonly of some well-known edition, and in the margin of this he marks all the variations of the manuscripts from the printed text before him, whether of omission, addition, or otherwise, including even variations in spelling. He also marks carefully where each line and page of the manuscript begins and ends, what corrections or alterations have been made in it, whether these were made by the original writer or by a later hand; and where several handwritings may be detected, he specifies and distinguishes these. All this is done with so much minuteness that it would be possible for the collator to reproduce the original manuscript in every respect save in the shape of the letters and the appearance of the parchment or paper.
Of the uncial manuscripts of the New Testament, the most ancient and important are the Sinaitic,[80] written in the fourth century, and now deposited in the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg; the Vatican,[81] also of the fourth century, and preserved in the Vatican Library at Rome; the Alexandrine,[82] of the fifth century, now in the British Museum; the Ephraem Codex,[83] of the fifth century, in the National Library at Paris; Beza’s Codex,[84] of the sixth century, in the University Library, Cambridge; and the Claromontane,[85] also of the sixth century, which formerly belonged to Beza, but is now in the National Library at Paris. As will be seen presently, only two of these most ancient manuscripts were available for the preparation of the text from which the translators of 1611 made their revision. The Alexandrine was not brought to light until 1628, when it was presented to Charles I. by Cyril Lucar, patriarch of Constantinople. Although the Ephraem Codex was brought to Europe in the early part of the sixteenth century, it was not known to contain a portion of the New Testament until towards the close of the seventeenth century, and was not collated until the year 1716. The Sinaitic was discovered by Dr. Tischendorf, in the Convent of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, so recently as February 4th, 1859. And the Vatican, though deposited in the Library at Rome in the fifteenth century, was, during a long time, so jealously guarded by the Roman authorities, that little use could be made of it. Now, however, all these six important manuscripts have been edited and published, some in the ordinary style of printing, and some in quasi fac-simile. At the present time, by the application of the processes of photography, an exact copy of the Alexandrine is in course of preparation, and the New Testament portion has been successfully completed.