believing that the bilingual at least as concerns the Gospels is older than Tatian."

Harris thinks that the Western text is Roman of the second century and that Tatian, who studied and taught at Rome, used it in his Diatessaron.2

Still more recently Resch advanced the theory that the differences in the great original Texts are due to independent translations of a Hebrew original.3 Chase endeavours to show a strong Syrian influence. Blass has given strong reasons for the opinion that the Western text of Acts rests upon another edition of the original than that used by the other ancient family of manuscripts.5 Harris in consideration of these theories adheres to his opinion, yet recognizes the force of Blass' arguments.

X. THE SO-CALLED TEXT OF LUCIAN

The Western text of the New Testament has apparently nothing exactly to correspond with it in the Greek text of the Old Testament. This is due to the defects of the Greek manuscripts of this text, in that they contain parts of the New Testament alone. It cannot escape attention, however, that whilst this text is sustained by the most ancient Latin and Syriac texts of the New Testament, these same ancient Latin and Syriac texts in the Old Testament sustain the so-called text of Lucian. Driver and Mez 6 both call attention to this and sum up the evidence. Mez calls attention to the facts that Ceriani 7 saw the agreement of the old Latin with Lucian in Lamentations; Vercellone for the codex of Leon, Wellhausen for Samuel, Jacob for the book of Esther, Silberstein for the first book of Kings. Driver says:

10

1 Codex Beza in Texts and Studies, Cambridge, II. 1, pp. 114, 161, 192. 2 l.c., p. 234.

8 Resch, Agrapha, 1892, pp. 350, 351; Die Logia Jesu nach dem Griechischen und Hebräischen Text wiederhergestellt, 1898.

4 Chase, The Old Syriac Element in the Text of Cod. Bezæ, 1893.

5 Blass, Studien und Krit., 1894, s. 86-120; Acta Apost., 1896; Evangelium

secundum Lucam secundum formam quae videtur Romanam, 1897.

6 Driver, Samuel, p. lxxvii; Mez, Die Bibel des Josephus, 1895, s. 81.

7 Ceriani, Mon. Sacr. et Profan., 1861, I. 1, p. xvi. (Addenda).

Vercellone, Varia Lectiones, II. 436.

9 Z. A. T. W., 1893, s. 20.

10 Samuel, 1890, pp. lxxvii, lxxviii.

"The conclusion which the facts observed authorize is thus that the Old Latin is a version made, or revised, on the basis of MSS. agreeing closely with those which were followed by Lucian in framing his recension. The Old Latin must date from the second century A.D.; hence it cannot be based upon the recension of Lucian as such: its peculiar interest lies in the fact that it affords independent evidence of the existence of MSS. containing Lucian's characteristic readings (or renderings), considerably before the time of Lucian himself."

Mez carefully examines the citations from the Old Testament in Josephus, Antiq., Books V.-VII., and reaches the conclusion that the so-called text of Lucian is older than Josephus, and that Theodotion made a revision of it.

The Codex Vaticanus 330 was recognized by Field and then by Lagarde as giving essentially the text of Lucian. This manuscript was the chief authority for the text of the Complutensian Polyglot.1

In the New Testament the recension of Lucian is not known to exist in any manuscript. This is just as striking as the absence of Western readings from manuscripts of the Old Testament.

XI. THE LATER SYRIAN TEXT

Westcott and Hort distinguish between an earlier and later Syriac revision, and are willing to ascribe the earlier to Lucian. But all the manuscripts except those of the families thus far specified, and consequently the vast majority of all existing manuscripts, belong to the later Syriac revision. Westcott and Hort do not distinguish the earlier Syrian readings and make no effort to ascertain the text of Lucian. Here they are weak. This is their view of Syrian readings:

"The fundamental text of late extant Greek MSS. generally is beyond all question identical with the dominant Antiochian or Græco-Syrian text of the second half of the fourth century. The community of text implies on genealogical grounds a community of parentage: the Antiochian Fathers and the bulk of

1 Field, Origenis Hexapl., I., Prol., p. lxxxviii; Cornill, Ezekiel, s. 65; Buhl, l.c., s. 140. Lagarde also used for Lucian, H. & P., 19, 44, 82, 93, 108, 118, and Cornill, H. & P., 22, 23, 36, 48, 51, 231.

extant MSS. written from about three or four to ten or eleven centuries later must have had in the greater number of extant variations a common original either contemporary with or older than our oldest extant MSS., which thus lose at once whatever presumption of exceptional purity they might have derived from their exceptional antiquity alone."1

This text presupposes the work of Lucian and other rival texts. "The guiding motives of their criticism are transparently displayed in its effects. It was probably initiated by the distracting and inconvenient currency of at least three conflicting texts in the same region. The alternate borrowing from all implies that no selection of one was made, - indeed it is difficult to see how under the circumstances it could have been made as entitled to supremacy by manifest superiority of pedigree. Each text may perhaps have found a patron in some leading personage or see, and thus have seemed to call for a conciliation of rival claims.” 2

The general characteristics of these texts are as follows:

"Both in matter and in diction the Syrian text is conspicuously a full text. It delights in pronouns, conjunctions, and expletives, and supplied links of all kinds, as well as in more considerable additions. As distinguished from the bold vigour of the 'Western' scribes, and the refined scholarship of the Alexandrians, the spirit of its own corrections is at once sensible and feeble. Entirely blameless on either literary or religious grounds as regards vulgarised or unworthy diction, yet shewing no marks of either critical or spiritual insight, it presents the New Testament in a form smooth and attractive, but appreciably impoverished in sense and force, more fitted for cursory perusal or recitation than for repeated and diligent study.”3

Great progress has been made in recent years in the classification of the manuscripts; but much still remains to be done. It seems to be evident that B, X, and their group represent a text earlier than any of the revisions of the third century. We are in the way of determining the text of the Old Testament as revised by Origen and Lucian. The general character and antiquity of the so-called Western text of the New Testament has been established, and the tendency is to an increasing estimate of its value as compared with B. The relation of that 1 Westcott and Hort. l.c., p. 92. 2 Westcott and Hort, l.c., pp. 133, 134. 3 Westcott and Hort, l.c., p. 135.

text to the New Testament revision of Lucian and to the Old Testament Lucian has still to be determined. The school of Westcott and Hort halt in their study of the Syrian text. It is necessary to distinguish between the late Syrian and the earlier Syrian text. They seem altogether uncertain as regards the earlier Syrian text. It is probable that these questions of Textual Criticism will have to be determined by the special study of all the different writings of the Old Testament. Back of the codices of the third century lie libraries of rolls, and in these libraries each roll had a history of its own. The future work of the Textual Criticism of the Greek Bible is largely in the second century B.C.

XII. PRINTED TEXTS OF THE GREEK BIBLE

1. The first printed text of the Greek Bible is in the Complutensian Polyglot, 1514-1517.1 This text was revised in the Antwerp Polyglot, 1569–1572, and the Paris Polyglot, 1645.

2. Erasmus published his Greek New Testament in five editions, 1516-1535. Luther translated from the second edition of 1519.2

3. The Aldine edition of the Old Testament was published at Venice, 1518.

4. Robert Stephens issued four editions of the Greek New Testament, 1546-1551. He used in addition to Erasmus and the Complutensian, fifteen manuscripts, and for the first time in 1551 divided the Greek text into verses.

5. Theodore Beza issued four editions of the Greek New Testament, in folio, 1565-1598, and five octavo editions, 15651604. He knew of D of the Epistles, but seems to have made little use of it.5

1 This text was based on the Vatican codices 330, 346 (H. & P., 108, 248), and a few manuscripts of minor importance in Madrid, such as Venet. V. (H. & P., 68).

2 Erasmus used several manuscripts of Basle, Evv. 1, 2; Acts 2; Apoc. 1, and for the third edition Ev. 61.

3 It was based on H. & P., 29, 68, 121; Lagarde, Mitt. 2, 57; Sept. St. 1, 2; Nestle, in Urtext und Uebersetzungen, s. 65.

4 He used but slightly D and L of the Gospels.

5 Ezra Abbot, Critical Essays, 1888, p. 210.

6. In 1586 there was published at Rome the Sixtine edition of the Greek Old Testament. This was based on B, but the parts lacking in B were supplied from other manuscripts, which were not indicated. This text was also given in the London Polyglot, 1657, with a critical apparatus and various readings.1

7. The Elzevirs of Leyden issued a series of editions of the Greek New Testament from 1624 onward. The second edition of the year 1633 claimed to give the received text of the New Testament. But there was no intrinsic merit in these editions based on manuscript authority to justify this reputation.

In the eighteenth century numerous efforts were made to give better texts.

8. Mill issued his New Testament at Oxford in 1707, the text of Stephens of 1550 with a rich critical apparatus.

9. The Codex Alexandrinus was published by Grabe, Lee, and Wigan at Oxford in 1707-1720 with prolegomena.

10. Bengel issued his critical text of the New Testament in 1734. He arranged the manuscripts in two families, the African and the Asiatic.

11. Wetstein published his New Testament in 1751-1752 at Amsterdam, with prolegomena and critical apparatus from the manuscripts. He was the first to designate the manuscripts with letters and numbers.

12. Semler and his pupil Griesbach in their New Testament Criticism divided the manuscripts into three classes: the Western, the Alexandrian, and the Byzantine. Griesbach sums up the characteristics of the two older texts in the phrase "grammaticum egit alexandrinus censor, interpretem occidentalis." 2 His New Testament appeared in several editions from 1774– 1806; see especially small edition of 1805.

13. Holmes and Parsons issued their Greek Old Testament at Oxford 1798–1827, citing a mass of manuscripts which they arranged in families in accordance with the great historical editions of the third century, Lucian, Hesychius and Origen. They used 20 Uncials and 277 Minuscules.3

1 These are from A, D; also, according to Nestle, l.c., p. 66; H. & P., IV., XIL, 60, 75, 86. 8 See Nestle, l.c., s. 66, 67.

2 Gregory, Prolegomena, pp. 187, 188; see O. von Gebhardt, l.c., s. 44.