The New Teftament, carefully collated with the Greek, and corrected; divided and printed according to the various fubjects treated of by the infpired writers, with the common divifin into chapters and verfes in the margin; and illuftrated with notes critical and explanatory. By Richard Wynne, A. M. Rector of St Alphage. Svo. 2 vols. 12 s. Dodley. A S the principal and declared intention of the Author, in this edition of the New Teftament, is to refcue the facred writings from the confufion into which they have been thrown by the modern divifion of them into chapters and verfes, and to reftore 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 Dible were written without any divisions or distinctions at all; without even any fpaces 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 seemed neceflary, 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 diftinguifhed by fome known. Vid. Preface, at the begining. 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 Apoftles, † where we are told that Mofes had of ald 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 fubftituted an equal number of Sections out of the Prophets; and continued the use of these ever after. So that, as the learned Prideaux obferves, when the reading of the Law was again reftored by the Maccabees, the Section which was read every Sabbath Day out of the Law was their first leffon; and the Section out of the Prophets their second: and thus the practice feems to have been in the times of the Apostles, where we read of Paul's ftanding up to preach after the reading the Law and the Prophets. In process of time not only the Law, but the Prophets, and thofe books, viz. Job, Pfalms, Proverbs, and Ecclefiaftes, which Fearned men have diftinguifhed by the name of Hagiographa, came alfo to be divided into Sections. But befides thefe greater divifions, thefe Sections themselves were divided into verfas, which the Jews called Pesukim. 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 and 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 Babylonish 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, ent 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 thefe inferior divifions of the facred Text, which we have here called Verfes, with the lix of the Greeks, which we apprehend was of a totally different nature. The clix feems to anfwer 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 Verses 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 olx of the Greeks is doubtless the fame with the Latin Verfus, and both exactly correfpond 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 ftate 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 accounts of the Evangelifts and Apoftolic writers, and of citing the words of the text itself, in the controverfies that arose, 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 Justin Martyr and Tertullian. The first divifion we meet with was among the Greeks, who divided the books of the N. Teftament into Kepaλaia, 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, F, &c. to which correfpond, at the top or the bottom of the page, certain mypapai, TITλ01, tituli, giving a fhort account of the fubject or argument; e. g. In the Gospel of Matthew, ch. 2 & 1, to the marginal letter A, correfponds, at the top of the page, like a kind of running title, Περι των μάγων; to the letter B, Περί των αναιρεθέντων παίδων ; and fo of the reft. * Of thefe τίτλοι or Tapa, 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 prolegon ena, p. 39. Dd 2 particu 182 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 xpaλalov, and the Latins capitulum. These fummaries or chapters, were placed before each book, and were diftinguished by letters or cyphers; and these fame letters or cyphers were also 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 fection. 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 xxxia, 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 sections. 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 fpeak 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 Edir.. of N. Teft. printed at Venice 1538; and in R. Stephens's Edit. F. Simon's Crit. Hift. Bib. B. i. ch. 28. others, others, and those the ableft and most judicious critics, afcribe the invention to Hugo de Sancto Claro, a Dominican monk, beft known by the name of cardinal Hugo, who wrote about the year 1240, and died in 1262. This celebrated monk was the first who made a concordance of the vulgar Latin Bible. In doing this, he found it neceffary in the firft 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 difficult, 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 prefent ftate 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 thefe 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 representing to the public, what Mr. Wynne hath done in the Edition before us. The It is proper that his defign be given in his own words. 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 fubjects 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 tranf. of Bible. ↑ Notæ in Nov. Test. Dd 3 method, |