THE MONTHLY REVIEW, For DECEMBER, 1764. The New Testament, carefully collated with the Greek, and corrected ; divided and pointed according to the various fubjects treated of by the infpired writers, with the common divifim into chapters and verfes in the margin; and illuftrated with notes critical and explanatory. By Richard Wynne, A. M. Rector of St Alphage. 8vo. 2 vols. 12 s. Dodfley. A * S the principal and declared intention of the Author, in this edition of the New Teftament, is to rescue the facred writings from the confufion into which they have been thrown by the modern divifion of them into chapters and verfes, and to restore them to their primitive form and native fimplicity; we prefume it will not be unacceptable to fome of our readers, if we introduce this article with a more full and particular account of the ftate of the facred text in the antient MSS. than they will meet with in the preface to this tranflation: in doing which, we shall not only attend to the modern divifions, but to those which were introduced into the Bible in general, in times of the earliest antiquity. It is probable that the most antient MSS. of the Bible were written without any divifions or diftinctions at all; without even any spaces to feparate not only one paragraph, but one word from another. In this the Scripture agrees with all the antient books and writings of the Greeks and Romans, which we find written in the fame manner. As this was the cafe, 'it feemed neceffary, for the more convenient reading of the law in the fynagogues, that certain Paufes or Breaks fhould be agreed upon; and that thefe fhould be diftinguished by fome known * Vid. Preface, at the beginning. REV. Dec. 1764. Dd marks marks and characters. Accordingly we are told that, about the time of Ezra, the five books of the Law were divided into a number of Sections, correfponding with the number of Sabbaths in the year: * and that one of thefe Sections was publickly read every Sabbath-Day: This agrees with the account we have in the Acts of the Apostles, † where we are told that Mofes had of old time them that preach him, being read in the fynagogue every Sabbath-Day. Till the time of the perfecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Jews only read the Pentateuch. But then being forbidden to read the Law any more, ‡ in the room of it they substituted an equal number of Sections out of the Prophets; and continued the use of thefe ever after. So that, as the learned Prideaux obferves, when the reading of the Law was again restored by the Maccabees, the Section which was read every Sabbath Day out of the Law was their firft leffon; and the Section out of the Prophets their second: and thus the practice feems to have been in the times of the Apoftles, where we read of Paul's ftanding up to preach after the reading the Law and the Prophets. In procefs of time not only the Law, but the Prophets, and thofe books, viz. Job, Pfalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, which fearned men have diftinguished by the name of Hagiographa, came also to be divided into Sections. But befides thefe greater divifions, thefe Sections themselves were divided into verfes, which the Jews called Pefukim. They are marked out in the Hebrew Bibles, by two great points at the end of them, and called from hence Soph-Pafak, i. e. the end of the verfe. The neceffity of this provifion will immediately appear, if the manner in which the Law, and afterwards, the other parts of Scripture were read and explained to the people, Be confidered. After the Babylonifh captivity, the Chaldee language became the mother-tongue of the Jews; and the cuftom was, in the public reading of the Law to the people, for a perfon, appointed for this fervice, to read a verfe of the Law in its original language, which was immediately rendered by an interpreter into the Chaldee, that it might be fully understood: then the reader read another portion, which the interpreter alfo explained, and fo on, till the Section was finished. It is from hence highly probable that this method of dividing the Scripture, very differ • Buxtorfii Tiberias & Synagoga Judaica. + Acts xv. 21. Elias in Tifbile, Buxtorfius, &c.. ent ént indeed from our prefent form, was as antient as the time of interpreting them into the Chaldee language in their fynagogues which was not long after their return from the captivity. Some writers feem to have confounded these inferior divifions of the facred Text, which we have here called Verfes, with the olx of the Greeks, which we apprehend was of a totally different nature. The six feems to answer moft exactly to our Line; and it was a common thing with antient Authors to fet down at the end of their works how many of these Lines or Verfes they contained and this was not only a practice among the poets, but we find alfo the works of profe writers, computed in the fame manner. The clix of the Greeks is doubtless the fame with the Latin Verfus, and both exactly correspond with what we call a line in writing: the former a military allufion from the rank and order in which the letters are placed ; the latter à vertendo, because the writer when he is got to the end of one line, returns back and begins again. The state of the most antient books of the writers of the N. Teftament, is very fimilar to what we have found in the Jewish Scriptures, without accents, without punctuation, and not divided into chapters. It is not probable that they fhould continue very long in this form; the conveniency of reading these facred books in Chriftian affemblies, of comparing the different ac counts of the Evangelifts and Apoftolic writers, and of citing the words of the text itself, in the controverfies that arofe, would naturally make way for fome regular and orderly divifion of them and accordingly we meet with references to fuch divifions, as early as in the writings of Juftin Martyr and Tertullian. The first divifion we meet with was among the Greeks, who divided the books of the N. Teftament into Kepahaia, according to which it appears from Eufebius, Euthymius, and others, that Matthew was divided into LXVIII greater Sections; Mark into XLVIII; Luke into LXXXIII, and John into XVIII. These are called the greater divifions, and are marked in the margin by the capital letters, A, B, T, &c. to which corref pond, at the top or the bottom of the page, certain yapal OF TITO, tituli, giving a fhort account of the fubject or argument; e. g. In the Gofpe! of Matthew, ch. 2 & 1, to the mar ginal letter A, correfponds, at the top of the page, like a kind of running title, Περί των μάγων; to the letter Β, Περι των ἀναιρεθέντων παίδων ; and fo of the reft. * Of there τιτλοι οι Tycapai, Suidas tells us there were in Matthew 355; in Mark 236; in Luke 348, and in John 232.-Fabricius fays, that other kinds of divifion took place in the Latin Church, and • Mill's prolegomena, p. 39. Ddz particu 1 particularly mentions St Hilary, as dividing the Gospel of Mat- Much in the fame view does F. Simon feem to have confidered this fubject, in his learned Critical Hiftory of the Bible. The word chapter, fays he, in its original, fignifies nothing but a Summary or an abridgment, and this the Greeks called xxxαιov, and the Latins capitulum. These fummaries or chapters, were placed before each book, and were distinguished by letters or cyphers; and these fame letters or cyphers were alío put into the margin of the text, juft over against the place where the fection began; which was marked with a point, and a little void space that was left to fhew the section. What was heretofore called chapter, was not any thing like to the sections, or chapters at prefent; but for the rendering of the books more intelligible, men thought of making little abridgments, and putting thofe abridgments or fummaries, which the Greeks called xspaλaia, at the beginning of each book. + Caffiodore, adds the Father, calls thefe chapters Titles, and they are fometimes confounded one with another, because one and the other were only fummaries of what was contained in the fections. There feems, however, to be the fame difference between Title and Chapter, as there is betwixt the general title or infcription of the fection, and the titles and more particular fummaries of the fame fection: fo that Title, in relation to Chapters, is the fame as TITA, taken from the Latin word titulus, is in relation to what the Greeks called παρατίλα. We now come to speak of the divifion of the Holy Scriptures into chapters and verfes, as we now have them, and which is of much later date than what we have been confidering. Some have afcribed the prefent form of our Bibles to the Schoolmen: others fay it was the invention of Langton, abp. Canterbury, 1220: and Heidegger affigns it to one Arlott, an Hetrufcian general, of the order of Minims, who flourished about 1290. But *Fabricii Biblioth. Gr. lib. iv. ch. 5. + See an example of this in an Edit. of N. Test. printed at Venice 1538; and in R. Stephens's Edît. F. Simon's Crit. Hift. Bib. B. i. ch. 28, others, others, and those the ableft and moft judicious critics, afcribe the invention to Hugo de Sancto Claro, a Dominican monk, best known by the name of cardinal Hugo, who wrote about the year 1240, and died in 1262. This celebrated monk was the firft who made a concordance of the vulgar Latin Bible. In doing this, he found it neceffary in the first place to divide the books into fections, and thefe fections into under-divifions, that he might make his references with greater eafe; and point out in the Index with greater exactnefs, where every word or paffage might be found in the text, which till then, was extremely dif ficult, if not impoffible. Thefe fections are the chapters into which the Bible hath ever fince been divided. But as to the underdivifions of thefe fections, or chapters, Hugo's way of making them was by the letters A, B, C, D, &c. placed in the margin, at equal distance from each other, according as the chapters were fhorter or longer; which method was imitated by our firft English tranflators of the Bible. Robert Stephens, the learned and famous French printer, taking the hint from Hugo, fubdivided his under-divifions, and inftead of letters, placed numeral figures in the margin of a Greek Teftament, which he printed 1551; and afterwards in an edition of the vulgar Latin Bible, which Conrad Bodius printed for him four years after.-But now, whereas Stephens had only put numeral figures in the margin, the Editors of an English N. Teftament about this time, printed the feveral little fubdivifions with breaks, and placed the number at the begining of every one of them. Thus was the present state of our English Bibles fixed above two hundred years ago; fince which time, it hath not received any improvement whatever, from public authority. We shall conclude these ftrictures, with the judgment of the learned Ifaac Cafaubon, who faid, he did not entirely disapprove the prefent method; yet did not doubt but there might be another far more convenient, if fome great divine would undertake the work. + Which brings us to our proper business of reprefenting to the public, what Mr. Wynne hath done in the Edition before us. It is proper that his defign be given in his own words. The Gofpels and Acts of the Apoftles are here divided into fections and paragraphs, according to the various tranfactions related by the Evangelifts; and the epiftles agreeably to the subjects they treat of, without deftroying the connection, or huddling to.. gether a variety of matter: in both I have followed Bengelius's Lewis's Hift. of trans. of Bible. ↑ Notæ in Nov. Teft. Did 3 method, |