want of manuscripts themselves translated Act. ix. 29-x. 32; xxvi. 8-xxviii. 31. In Walton's Polyglott the New Testament was reprinted with many faults, and an unusually bad Latin translation by Dudley Loftus, from which Mill and his successors derived their various readings. C. A. Bode published a new or revised version of the Ethiopic N. T. given in the Polyglott (Brunswick, 1753), and in what he goodnaturedly calls his "Pseudo-critica Millio-Bengeliana" (Halle, 1767—9), corrects some of the errors of those great scholars. Lastly, in 1826-30 in London, Th. Pell Platt, A.M., edited for the British and Foreign Bible Society, "Nov. Testament... Ethiopicè, ad codicum manuscriptorum fidem." Respecting these codices and their readings, at least in the Gospels, Mr Platt gave Tregelles some loose notes, and the latter engaged L. A. Prevost, of the British Museum, to collate Walton's and Platt's texts with the Greek for the use of his N. T., as Tischendorf is similarly indebted to Gildemeister. Mr Platt's edition, being purely of a practical character, is so unsystematic in its employment of manuscripts as to be nearly useless to Biblical critics. The remaining versions may sometimes be consulted with advantage for a special object, but for the general purposes of critical science they are of little weight. A very short notice. will suffice for all of them. 9. THE GEORGIAN (Georg.) or Iberian (Iber.) version of the whole Bible, assigned to the sixth century, is written in a language very little known, and was published at Moscow in 1743 from manuscripts said to be extensively corrupted from the Slavonic. It is doubtful whether it was made from the Greek or Armenian. Both Scholz and Tischendorf saw ancient and perhaps purer codices at the monastery of the Holy Cross at Jerusalem, which may afford us a hope of restoring this version to something like its primitive state. J. H. Petermann edited Philemon as a specimen (Berlin, 1844), and from F. C. Alter's description of its readings (Ueber Georgianische Literat., 1798) it appears that the present text contains even such plain interpolations as 1 John v. 7. 10. THE SLAVONIC VERSION (Sl.), though made as late as the ninth century, was rendered from the best Greek codices of that age, although it would seem to have been subsequently altered from the Latin; or (as Tischendorf thinks) from other sources. Two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, converted about A.D. 870, those tribes of the great Slavonic race that were settled about the Danube in Moravia and its neighbourhood. They then proceeded to translate the Bible (or certainly the New Testament) into Slavonic, for which barbarous tongue Cyril (like Ulfilas and Miesrob before him) had previously constructed an alphabet. This version was brought into Russia on the conversion of Wladimir, its Grand Duke, in 988, in which country it received many changes (perhaps with a view to modernise the style) from the fourteenth century downwards. The oldest manuscript of the whole Bible is dated 1499, and the first printed Bible, 1581. Of the New Testament there are many codices, of widely differing recensions, some few as old as the tenth or eleventh century; e.g. an Evangelistarium, dated 1056, and the Gospels at Rheims [x], on which the Kings of France used to take the coronation oath. These were fully described and in part collated by J. Dobrowsky for Griesbach's N. T., 2nd ed. See also Tischendorf, N. T., 7th ed. Proleg. pp. 253-5. 11. ANGLO-SAXON VERSIONS (Sax.) of the New Testament and parts of the Old (e. g. the Psalms) were numerous and apparently independent, dating from the eighth to the eleventh century, but can only be applied to the criticism of the Latin Vulgate, from which they are all rendered. Manuscripts in this language abound in English libraries (Tischendorf names one in the British Museum with the interlinear Latin, which he attributes to the eighth century), but even of the N. T. the Gospels alone are printed. For them Mill uses Marshall's edition of 1665 in parallel columns with the Gothic (see p. 276), and Tischendorf that published by Benj. Thorpe, London, 1842. 12. A FRANKISH VERSION (Fr.) of St Matthew, from a manuscript of the ninth century at St Gall, in the Frankish dialect of the Teutonic, was published by J. A. Schmeller in 1827. Tischendorf (Proleg. N. T. p. 225) thinks it worthy of examination, but does not state whether it was translated from the Greek or Latin: the latter is the more probable. 13. PERSIC VERSIONS (Pers.) of the Gospels only, in print, are two: (1) one in Walton's Polyglott (pers) with a Latin version by Samuel Clarke (which C. A. Bode thought it worth his while to reconstruct, Helmstadt, 1750-51, with a learned Preface), obviously made from the Peshito Syriac (which the Persians had long used) "interprete Symone F. Joseph Taurinensi," and taken from a single manuscript belonging to E. Pococke, probably dated A.D. 1341. This version may prove of some use in restoring the text of the Peshito. (2) The second, though apparently modern [XIV ?], was made from the Greek (pers"). It was commenced in 1652 by Abraham Wheelocke, Professor of Arabic and Anglo-Saxon and University Librarian at Cambridge, at the expense of Sir Th. Adams, the generous and loyal alderman of London. The basis (as appears from the volume itself) was an Oxford codex (probably Laud. A. 96 of the old notation), which Wheelocke, in his elaborate notes at the end of each chapter, compared with Pococke's and a third manuscript at Cambridge (Gg. v. 26), dated 1014 of the Hegira (A.D. 1607). On Wheelocke's death in 1653 only 108 pages (to Matth. xviii. 6) were printed, but his whole text and Latin version being found ready for the press, the book was published with a second title page, dated London, 1657, and a short Preface by an anonymous editor (said to be one Pierson), who in lieu of Wheelocke's notes, which break off after Matth. xvii, appended a simple collation of the Pococke manuscript from that place. The Persians have older versions, parts of both Testaments, still unpublished. 14. ARABIC VERSIONS (Arab.) are many, though of the slightest possible critical importance: their literary history, therefore, need not be traced with much minuteness of detail. It is known that John, Bishop of Seville, translated the Bible (from the Latin Vulgate, it is thought) into Arabic, A.D. 719 (Walton, Proleg. XIV. c. 18), and Tischendorf enumerates several manuscripts brought by himself and others from the East, assigned by competent judges to the eighth and following centuries (N. T. Proleg. 1859, pp. 236-9). The printed edi tions of the New Testament portion are, (1) The Roman edition of the Gospels, from the Medicean press, 1590--1 (ar), edited by J. Baptista Raymundi, some copies having a Latin version by Gabriel Sionita, who was engaged on the work described below as (3) fifty years later (Mill, Proleg. § 1295). T. W. J. Juynboll (Leyden, 1838) holds that this edition, and the text of a Franeker codex of the Gospels, belong to the version of John of Seville. (2) The whole N. T., from a Scaliger manuscript, and (in the Gospels) from a second dated 988 of the aera of the Martyrs, or A.D. 12721, edited at Leyden by Th. Erpenius [1584-1624] in 1616 (ar). (3) The N. T. of the Paris Polyglott (ar), 1645. (4) The N. T. in the London Polyglott, 1657. (5) The N. T., Peshito and Arabic, in the Carshunic character (i. e. the Arabic in Syriac letters, see p. 245), Rome, 1703, based on a manuscript brought from Cyprus. Editions published by the Propaganda, Biblia, Rome, 1672, and altered from the Latin, and by our venerable Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, N. T., London, 1727, and altered from the original Greek, both designed for circulation in the East, need not be considered. Since the Dissertatio inaug. critica de Evan. Arab. of G. C. Storr appeared (Tübingen, 1775) it seems to have been acknowledged that the several published editions of the Gospels have sprung from one version, and that taken from the Greek, though now sadly mixed and confused: Juynboll, however, has rendered it probable that its original was the Latin, which was subsequently corrected by the Greek. The Acts and Epistles in Erpenius' N. T. were certainly made from the Peshito; his Apocalypse seems to have been derived from the Memphitic: but in both Polyglotts all except the Gospels are undoubtedly from the Greek. A list of Greek manuscripts attended with Arabic versions is given above, p. 225. 1 This manuscript of the Gospels only, together with seventy others which once belonged to Erpenius, was bought for the University of Cambridge by its Chancellor, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, just before his murder in 1628. It is now in the University Library, Gg. V. 33, and in the margin of its subscription we find “·i· anno Christi 1272” in Erpenius' handwriting. Pr. Lee (who did not know its history) inferred its identity with Erpenius' codex from the subscription, and other internal marks (Prolegomena to Bagster's Polyglott, p. 31, note). There is a second copy of the Gospels in the same Library, Gg. v. 27, with an inscription by the Patriarch Cyril Lucar (see p. 79), dated 1618. CHAPTER IV. ON THE CITATIONS FROM THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT, OR ITS VERSIONS, MADE BY EARLY EC CLESIASTICAL WRITERS, ESPECIALLY BY THE 1. WE might at first sight be inclined to suppose that the numerous quotations from the New Testament contained in the remains of the Fathers of the Church and other Christian writers from the first century of our æra downwards, would be more useful even than the early versions, for enabling us to determine the character of the text of Scripture current in those primitive times, from which no manuscripts of the original have come down to us. Unquestionably the testimony afforded by these venerable writings will be free from some of the objections which so much diminish the value of translations for critical purposes (see above, p. 228); but not to insist on the fact that many important passages of the New Testament have not been cited at all in any very ancient work now extant, this species of evidence will be received with increasing distrust, the more familiar we become with its uncertain and precarious nature. Not only is this kind of testimony fragmentary and not (like that of versions) continuous, so that it often fails us where we should most wish for information: but the Fathers were better theologians than critics; they frequently quoted loosely or from memory, often no more of a passage than their immediate purpose required; what they actually wrote has been found peculiarly liable to change on the part of copyists and unskilful editors; they can therefore be implicitly trusted, even as to the manuscripts which lay before them, only in the comparatively few places wherein their own direct appeal to |