and mediaeval scribes. The importance of this work has been often overlooked, and the plodding scrutiny of collators and editors has been despised as fruitless and suspicious toil amidst dusty parchments and mouldy MSS. With what pangs of terror and indignation did not Owen attack Walton, and Whitby assail Mill? And even where the results of critical labour have not excited panic and dismay, the work, so far from being hailed with gratitude, has too often excited wonder, tinged with satirical compassion for the amount of misdirected effort.

At the same time, we should be grateful that the text of Scripture is so perfect. It is in a far better state than that of any common book which has come down to us from ancient times. In many classical authors, there are numerous passages so hopelessly corrupt, that conjecture is the only remedy for amending them. Let any one look at the pages of Eschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Terence, or Lucretius, and he will find not only thousands of different readings-scarcely a line being without one-but many places in which erudite skill can only guess at what the text might be. There are sentences which nobody can construe, clauses of which no one can divine the meaning, collocations of words which all the tact of Hermann could not unravel, and all the ingenuity of Bentley and Porson could only interpret by recomposing the paragraph.

And it is the fidelity of collators which has multiplied the various readings of Scripture. For example, the common text of the Old Testament is based on that of Opitius, who spent no less than thirty years in its preparation. For their editions of the Hebrew Scriptures, Kennicott and De Rossi collated 1418 MSS. and 375 printed documents. And since the publication of the first edition of the Greek Testament by Erasmus in 1516, what prodigious pains and research have been bestowed upon its text. Beza, Stephens, Usher, and Fell led the way. Then followed the thirty years' toil of Mill-toil only concluded fourteen days before his death. The task of his life was done, and the servant was released. In Kuster's edition of Mill are supplied the readings of 12 additional MSS. The pious labours of Bengel preceded those of Wetstein, who collated upwards of sixty MSS., and has appended to his text more than a million of quoted authorities. The 30,000 various readings of Mill were in this way considerably augmented. Griesbach collated some hundreds of MSS., and he has been followed by Scholz, Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles. The readings may now amount to at least a hundred thousand. For not only have all the differences in all the MSS. been carefully compared and accurately jotted down, but the old versions, such as the Syriac, Latin, and Gothic, have been ransacked, and their supposed variations

Multiplication of various Readings.

429

added to the lists, nay, the quotations found in the Fathers have been subjected to the same ordeal, and all their discrepancies and peculiarities seized on and subjoined to the formidable catalogue. Let our readers bear in mind what we have said as to the numerous sources of variation on the part of the copyists; let them reflect on the fact that the authors of the old versions might not always make a skilful and accurate translation, and that it is often matter of mere conjecture as to what they saw in the Greek MSS.; let them farther recollect that the Fathers quoted generally from memory, sometimes interposing a brief paraphrase, inserting an expository parenthesis, adding a plainer synonyme, and often quoting the same verse in different ways, and he will not be surprised that the various readings should form so huge a list. The collation of three or four classic MSS. gives nearly as many readings for a single author, and the wonder is that so many MSS., of all ages and countries; so many versions, themselves needing revision; and so many quotations made freely, and with no attempt at verbal accuracy, should not have quadrupled the number already discovered. To put the matter in a modern light. Let it be the Bible in our own authorized version which is under critical investigation, and let the first edition of it under King James be reckoned the standard. It will be found on examination that the variations of spelling must be reckoned by myriads, every clause affording an example; and that the actual misprints in the various editions. would amount to many thousands. And if quotations of Scripture printed in sermons and famous books of theology were also compared, and the differences noted down, the roll of various readings would swell to a bulk beyond calculation. And then if peculiar idioms in the Gaelic and other tongues were to be regarded as proofs that the translators read accordingly in the original copy from which they made their versions, who could put into figures the swarms of multiplied readings? Now if, instead of being printed, and the errors of the press corrected by the apparatus of proofs and revises, and compared with one another for these two hundred years, our copies of the English Bible had been all written out, either by some men who had leisure, or by others who made copying their craft and occupation-each scribe, whether amateur or professional artist, taking whatever copy he could most readily lay hold of; what must have been by this time the register of various readings, if some hundreds of these English MSS. were to be collated, and versions and quotations were forced to add their prolific results? A volume as large as Scripture itself could not contain the muster. In like manner, the number of copies possessed at the middle of the third century by several millions of Christians

must have been very great: probably a hundred thousand copies of the whole or of parts of the New Testament, were in circulation in families and in churches. Transcription must therefore have been very often repeated, and not only so, but from the nature of things, fewest copies would be taken from the veritable autographs of the evangelists and apostles. More copies would be taken from the second transcription than the first, and from the third than the second, because the facilities for transcription increased with the dispersion of manuscripts already made; so that by the time specified, the copy in the possession of individuals or communities might have been written off from a roll which was itself a fiftieth transcription in succession from the first date and publication of the gospel or epistle. That in all this multiplying and copying error should be found, who can wonder? In a quarto pulpit bible with which we are familiar, one clause reads, "who makes" (not his sun, but) "his son to rise on the evil and on the good." And in a metrical psalm book-from the Queen's printers in Edinburgh-runs the line, "I said that ye are goods" (gods.) In an edition of the Queen's printers in London, 1843, (Eph. i. 9,) occur the letters "glood" for "good." If such mistakes happen, with all the careful readings and corrections of modern printing-houses, what might not be expected among the ancient scribes? We repeat it, the wonder is that the Greek and Hebrew various readings are not greatly more numerous than they really are. It seems as if Providence had studiously kept them down to their present

amount.

And the faith of no one needs to be stumbled. The great majority of these discrepancies refer to orthography and the order of words-whether it should be Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus; whether a particle should be here or there in a clause; whether some noun should have its masculine or neuter form; whether de or kau is the genuine term, or whether a personal pronoun, plainly implied in the syntax, should be inserted or deleted. We have opened a page of Tischendorf's edition of the Greek New Testament at random, p. 82, containing a portion of the first chapter of Mark; and here are the variations, which we here record in plain English. V. 7, instead of "mightier than I," one MS. has "the mighty one;" a plain blunder of the Alexandrian copyist. Instead of "after me," one codex simply reads "after," "me" being implied, and its omission being a piece of obvious stupidity. Another MS. has omitted the Greek word for "stooping down;" the error of a hurried or slovenly transcriber. It is very plain that such readings are and can be of no authority, for they have no support. They are the result of evident negligence; but yet they are as carefully noted as if

Text of the Old Testament.

431

they had been supported by preponderant authority, with a host of MSS. and versions in their favour. Therefore if all those various readings which have really no support at all were discarded, nine-tenths of the whole list would be at once expunged, and the vast majority of the remaining tenth-whatever the evidence for and against them, will be found to be of utter insignificance. The sense is not materially affected by the critical result, so that after such inevitable deductions, only a few remain of primary importance, and sometimes these are supported by authority so nicely balanced, that it is difficult to come to a satisfactory decision. After all, then, the text of Scripture is in a state that warrants us in placing implicit faith in the revelation which it contains. The text of no ancient author has undergone scrutiny and revision so careful and prolonged, and we feel no hesitation in affirming that we have the Bible virtually in the state in which it was originally furnished to us. The spots in the sun do not darken his lustre, and these minor discrepancies-the unavoidable results of human infirmity-do not detract from the perfection and authority of the oracles of God.

The received text of the Old Testament is that of Van der Hooght, published at Amsterdam and Utrecht in 1705, and often revised and reprinted, as by Judah d'Allemand, London, 1822, and by Hahn, Leipsic, 1832. To the Jews must be given the credit of having kept their Scriptures better than the Christians have kept theirs. Their critical accuracy has been excited and aided by their superstitions and their cabalistic interpretations. The divines who found so much meaning wrapt up in the mere form or accidental position of a letter, were likely to regard such sources of theology with peculiar veneration. The authors of the Masora, in the sixth century, while they laboured with incredible diligence, enlarged, indeed, the critical stores of their Talmudic predecessors, and took notice of many various readings, but they meddled not with the text. They originated, however, the machinery of K'ri and K'thib. When a word in the text was suspicious or wrong, they indicated in the margin how it ought to be read, (K'ri,) and in this way they have given us numerous emendations of spelling, grammar, exegesis, and euphemism. It is to be regretted that we have now almost no means of knowing what the pre-Masoretic text was. Only we may safely conjecture that the Masora was a faithful attempt to restore the Hebrew Scriptures to their original verbal purity-an attempt, guided by the records of a tradition which was strengthened by the unusual fondness of a people for its ancient and only literature, and by the attachment of a Church to its "lively" oracles. The puerility of so much in the Masoretic collection must not

blind us to its great value, for the laborious trifling of these hoary sages has left among the rubbish some particles of the true ore, and the mass has been well sifted and washed by the keen and patient labour of Bomberg, Buxtorf, and Jacob Ben Chayim. The toil of Kennicott and De Rossi has not been without its value in this department of sacred literature, though the result has been sadly damaged by their defective theory of criticism and their want of a just discrimination. We might shew the value of correct criticism by one or two examples did our space suffice. But we only notice Isaiah ix. 3. Our version reads thus, "Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy they joy before thee," &c. The sense is contradictory, and the fault is that of some old scribe who apparently copied from dictation. The Hebrew adverb signifying "not" has the same sound as the pronoun meaning "to it," though the words are differently spelled. The error is thus very easily accounted for, and the correct reading is, "Thou hast multiplied the nation, and to it increased the joy: they joy before thee." It is a blunder somewhat akin to that which might be committed by an English clerk, if, writing off as another read, he confounded, from haste and similarity of sound, the verb "know” with “no,” -the monosyllable of negation.

It has often been alleged that the Jews have, in at least two places, and from anti-Messianic prejudice, tampered with their Scriptures. But we cannot acquiesce in the charge. The first passage alleged is Psalm xvi. 10,-"Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." The Hebrew text now reads, "thy holy ones," as if, by a plural form, there had been an attempt to destroy a pointed and personal reference to Jesus. We apprehend, however, that the plural is in reality the better reading, and that it gives an intensity of meaning to the adjective, much the same as in the Latin phrase,-filius delicia matris suæ. The other passage is Psalm xxii. 16, and in the clause rendered in our version" they pierced my hands and my feet." The Hebrew does not well warrant such a version, and it is argued that the Jews have purposely spoiled an allusion to that cross which was to them "a stumbling-block." But again must we vindicate the ancient guardians of the Old Testament. The word can only be translated "they have pierced" by either changing its termination or adding to its letters. It means literally "like a lion;" and this form of the word having almost the whole weight of the MSS. in its favour, appears to be the genuine reading. In the first clause of the verse there is an allusion to one class of animals, and in the last clause there is reference to another. The real translation therefore is,—