H3. Written in the sixth century, one of the most valuable manuscripts, but unfortunately incomplete. Its leaves were used in 975 and 1218 to cover some manuscripts at Mount Athos. Forty-one of these have been rescued, of which 22 are now in Paris, 8 at Mount Athos, 3 in St. Petersburg, 3 in Moscow, 2 in Turin, and 3 in Kiev. They contain portions of 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews. The value of the manuscript is indicated in the subscription, which runs, “I, Euthalius,[71] wrote this volume of the Apostle Paul as carefully as possible in stichoi, so that it might be read with intelligence: the book was compared with the copy in the library at Cæsarea, written by the hand of Pamphilus the saint.”[72] The subscription may of course have stood in the original of H, and simply been copied into it along with the text, as in the case of the minuscules 15, 83, and 173 of the Acts. But no matter, it serves to locate the text of this manuscript, and it is one of our main witnesses for the so-called Euthalian Recension of the Acts and Catholic Epistles.
In or previous to the year 396, a deacon called Euthalius, afterwards known as Bishop of Sulce,[73] published an edition of the Acts and Catholic and Pauline Epistles, in which, following the rules laid down by the Greek schools of oratory, the text was carefully broken up into lines, the length of which depended on the sense (sense-clauses), and divided into paragraphs or chapters. Euthalius also provided a system of Church lections, added a summary of contents to the various chapters, and catalogued the quotations from the Old Testament and elsewhere in the separate Epistles and in the entire group. This edition became a sort of model for later times, and seems to have been made use of for the Armenian version among the rest. The comparison of the manuscript with those of Pamphilus, as well as other additions, would seem then to have been made on the occasion of a later revision. Ehrhard, however, thinks that we have the autograph edition of this system in Codex H, but that Evagrius is to be read instead of Euthalius in the place where the name has been erased. This view is combated by Dobschütz, and in part rightly. Working independently of both, Conybeare, from Armenian sources, establishes the year 396 as the date of Euthalius. But in a parchment manuscript of the eleventh century in the library of the Laura at Mount Athos, Wobbermin found a fragment of a dogmatic treatise with the inscription, Εὐθαλίου ἐπισκόπου Σούλκης ὁμολογία περὶ τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως, from which he makes out that Euthalius lived in the second half of the seventh century and that Sulce was in Sardinia. See G. Krüger in the Lit. Cent. Blatt 1899, No. 14.
Omont, Notice sur un très ancien manuscrit grec en onciales des épîtres de S. Paul, Paris, 1889. J. A. Robinson, Euthaliana, Texts and Studies, iii. 3, 1895. (See S. Berger, Bull. Crit., 96, 8.) Th. Zahn, Euthaliana, Theol. Lit. Blatt., 1895, 593, 601. Ehrhard, Der codex H ad Epistolas Pauli und Euthalius diaconus, Eine palaeographisch-patrologische Untersuchung in the Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, 1891, pp. 385-411. E. v. Dobschütz, Ein Beitrag zur Euthaliusfrage, in the same magazine, 1893, pp. 49-70; Euthaliusstudien in the ZKG. xix. pp. 107-154 (1898): also, Euthalius, in the PRE3, v. pp. 631-633 (1898). Islinger, Die Verdienste des Euthalius um den neutestamentlichen Bibeltext, Hof. 1867 (Prog.). Conybeare, On the Codex Pamphili and date of Euthalius, in the Cambridge Journal of Philology, xxiii. 241 (1895). R. L. Bensly, The Harklean Version etc., pp. 9, 27 (1889). See also J. A. Robinson, Texts and Studies, vi. 1; C. Butler, The Lausiac History of Palladius, p. 104 ff., and note 2, p. 188 below.
I2, K2, L2, P2: See above, p. 75.
M2. Codex Ruber, of the ninth century: four leaves written in bright red ink or other colouring matter, two of them in London and the other two in Hamburg.
N2. Of the ninth century, consisting of two leaves with portions of Galatians and Hebrews: in St. Petersburg.
O2. Of the ninth century, two leaves in the same library containing portions of 2 Corinthians.
Ob. Of the sixth century, one leaf with part of Ephesians: in Moscow.
Q2. Of the fifth century, five papyrus leaves with fragments of 1 Corinthians: in St. Petersburg.
R2. Of the seventh century, a single leaf with part of 2 Corinthians: in Grotteferrata.
S2. See above, p. 75.
Tg. A few sentences from 1 Timothy. See TiGr., p. 441.
Ts. Two leaves containing 1 Corinthians i. 22-29, written in the ninth or tenth century, and published simultaneously with Ti-r. Gregory now designates Tg as Ta Paul, and Ts as Tb Paul.
ב2. See above, p. 75.
ד14. A fragment of papyrus containing part of 1 Corinthians, cc. i., ii., iii., written in the fifth century.
The first seven verses of the first chapter of Romans have been published in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part II. (pp. 8 f., Plate II.). The fragment is probably a schoolboy’s exercise. It is written in a large rude uncial hand, and dates from the first half of the fourth century. In verse 7 it reads Κ̅Υ̅ Χ̅Ρ̅Υ̅ Ι̅Η̅Υ̅.
There are fewest manuscripts of the Apocalypse. It is found entire only in א A B, while C and P exhibit portions of it. In the Apocalypse, however, it is to be observed that Codex B is not the famous Codex Vaticanus 1209 but a much later manuscript 2066, dating from the end of the eighth century. It would be better, therefore, with some editors, to call it Q or B2.
Altogether the number of Greek manuscripts is as follows[74]:—
In closing our survey of the extant uncials, it is to be borne in mind that we are not at liberty to regard even the oldest of them as presenting the very form of the New Testament autographs. The books of the New Testament, at all events the majority of them, were not originally intended for publication at all, while the others were meant for only a limited circle of readers. Now these recent papyrus discoveries have shown conclusively what a vast difference existed even in those days between the book-hand and what we may call the hand of common life and business. A glance at Kenyon’s Palæography of Greek Papyri will show how fundamental is the distinction between literary and non-literary papyri. That writer states that in many cases the difference is just as marked as between handwriting and print at the present day, and he instances also the distinction between the book-hand and the charter-hand of the Middle Ages. Of course documents of this or the other class may occasionally be found written in the hand that is not the usual one, a prescription, e.g., in book-hand, or conversely a literary text in the hand of common life. The greater part of Aristotle’s work on the Polity of the Athenians, for instance, has been preserved in the common hand. This papyrus, which is attributed to the first century of the Christian era, is the work of four scribes. But only one of these writes in a style approximating to the book-hand; the other parts are written in a very cursive style on the back of an old account, probably by one who had borrowed a copy of the work for a short time and transcribed it with the help of two or three friends or slaves. Kenyon quite properly instances this as an illustration of the manner of the origin and propagation of the New Testament books, and suggests that this mode of propagation has to be considered in connection with times of persecution. Our very oldest manuscripts are superb codices, editions de luxe, such as could be prepared only in an age when the Church had attained a position of affluence and power. The distinction referred to above is one that has had but little attention paid to it hitherto, as is shown by the illustration given in Harris’s excellent work on the New Testament autographs. It is manifest at the same time that this consideration is of great importance in trying to understand the origin and dissemination of the various readings that occur in our manuscripts. It is just a pity that Kenyon has not given a sample of this manuscript of Aristotle in his book, seeing that the latter is more accessible to the ordinary student than the complete facsimile edited in 1891 by the Trustees of the British Museum, or the Plate published in the second volume of the work of the Palæographical Society.
A further consideration is emphasised by means of these papyrus discoveries—viz. that no distinction of time can be drawn between the uncial and cursive hands found in the manuscripts. Even in the very earliest documents the hand of common life displays a very cursive character, and a fairly cursive uncial hand with ligatures is not necessarily later than an uncial hand without ligatures. It is somewhat different in the case of writing on parchment: here the old distinction of uncial and minuscule manuscripts is rightly maintained, only we must guard against supposing that the minuscule hand and the cursive are quite the same thing; nor must we forget that for a considerable time the older uncial and the later minuscule scripts were in use together.[75] The sharp line of demarcation, therefore, which has hitherto been drawn in the textual criticism of the New Testament between these two classes of manuscripts has no real justification in fact. The present account, however, is intended merely as a survey of the position of things up to the present, and the following description of the minuscules is subject to that limitation.
When the Greek New Testament began to be printed, the editors had necessarily to be content with indifferent and late minuscules, and even those who followed them, like Bentley and Lachmann, thought they were at liberty to disregard these altogether and to found their text exclusively on the oldest uncials. They forgot that the text of a late manuscript may be derived from a very early and good source through comparatively few intermediaries, and that it is possible to reconstruct a lost original by means of a comparison of several witnesses. Accordingly, in more recent times, English editors like Tregelles, Burgon, Ferrar, Hoskier, and Scrivener have rendered great service in the way of collating manuscripts, and the last-mentioned as well as Gregory in Germany has also catalogued them. At the present moment a systematic investigation in this department is being carried on in Berlin. Most of the minuscules are still written on parchment which began to be mixed with paper in the ninth century, and was ultimately superseded by it. Various minuscules contain commentaries and other additional matter, such as the List of the Seventy Apostles, short Biographies of the Apostles, Summaries of the journeys of St. Paul, or notes as to the date and place of the composition of the different books. When dates are given in the manuscripts, they are still as a rule computed in the Byzantine manner, reckoning from the Creation of the world (5508 B.C.). In only a few cursives is the date reckoned from the Birth of Christ.
Since the time of Wettstein the minuscule manuscripts have been indicated by Arabic numerals, the numbers in each of the four groups beginning with 1, so that one and the same manuscript may have three or four numbers—18evv. e.g. being 113Acts, 132Paul, and 51Apoc., while 209evv is the same as 95Acts, 108Paul, and 46Apoc. It is still more awkward that in the two principal works on the minuscules, that of Scrivener and of Gregory, the recently discovered manuscripts are numbered differently. Our enumeration will follow that of Scrivener.
1 (Acts 1, Paul 1). Of the tenth century, but according to others of the twelfth or the thirteenth, in Basel, with beautiful miniatures which were stolen prior to 1860. The manuscript was borrowed by Reuchlin and used by Erasmus for his second edition. (Scrivener, i. 137, Plate IX. 23.)
2. Of the twelfth century, though some strangely suppose the fifteenth: also in Basel: formerly purchased for two Rhenish florins: printed by Erasmus.
3. Of the twelfth century, in Vienna, lent to Erasmus for his second edition.
4-41 are all in the National Library at Paris. 4-9 and 38 were used by Stephen. The most notable among them is 13, together with 69, 124, 211, 346, 348, 556, 561 (788), 624, and 626, which are remarkable for their very peculiar form of text and their additions.[76] Luke xxii. 43, 44 is found after Matthew xxvi. 39, and John vii. 53—viii. 11 after Luke xxi. 38. The subscriptions, moreover, state that Matthew was written in Hebrew eight years after our Lord’s Ascension, and contained 2522 ρηματα and 2560 stichoi, Mark ρωμαιστι ten years after the Ascension with 1675 ρηματα and 1604 stichoi, Luke ελληνιστι fifteen years after with 3803 (lege 3083) ρηματα and 2750 stichoi, and John thirty-two years after with 1938 ρηματα. These manuscripts were referred to a common archetype by the Irish scholar Ferrar, and were accordingly denominated the Ferrar Group, and indicated by the letter Φ before that symbol was appropriated to the Codex Beratinus. Most of them came from Calabria, and another has lately been added to the number. Their additions, however, as Rendel Harris shows, are rather of Syrian origin. In the first edition I ventured to suggest that these manuscripts might go back to Lucian the Martyr (d. 312) of whom Jerome makes mention, saying that he knew of codices quos a Luciano (et Hesychio) nuncupatos paucorum hominum adserit perversa contentio, quibus ... nec in novo testamento profuit emendasse, cum multarum gentium linguis scriptura ante translata doceat falsa esse quae addita (cod. E edita) sunt. That, however, is not possible in the event of the so-called Syrian recension being the work of Lucian, which Hort indicates as possible. In any case, these minuscules have preserved to us a very early attempt to restore the text.
16 is noteworthy as being written in four different colours according to the contents. The continuous narrative is written in green, the words of Jesus and the Angels are in red and occasionally in gold, the words of His followers are in blue, while those of the Pharisees, the multitude, and of the devil, are written in black.
28. Contains relics of a very ancient text and bears some resemblance to D.
33. Written about the tenth century: the “queen of the cursives”: its text bears a greater resemblance to that of B, D, L than does that of any other cursive. The manuscript is much damaged, but 34, which is equally old, is still in splendid condition, as though it were fresh from the hand of the artist. (Scrivener, i. 343, Plate XIII. 39.)
38. Sent by the Emperor Michael Palæologus to St. Louis (d. 1270).
51. At Oxford: text resembles that of the Complutensian.
59. At Cambridge: has many points of connection with D.
61. Of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. This is the notorious Codex Montfortianus, now in Dublin, which derives its name from one of its later possessors. It was this manuscript, “codex apud Anglos repertus,” that decided Erasmus to insert in his third edition of 1522 the passage of the Three Heavenly Witnesses, 1 John v. 7, 8. It was probably written by a Franciscan monk of the name of Froy or Roy. Its twin brother, the parchment codex Ravianus (Rau), formerly numbered 110, and now in Berlin, which also contains the passage, proves to be nothing more than a transcript of the text of the Complutensian. Manuscripts, it may be observed, continued to be prepared long after the invention of printing. Melanchthon, e.g., wrote out the Epistle to the Romans three times in Greek; and the manuscript in the Zurich Library hitherto cited as 56Paul is nothing else than a copy of Erasmus’s printed edition of 1516 made by Zwingli in the following year.
69. Cf. 13 above, and see J. R. Harris, Origin of the Leicester Codex of the New Testament, 1887. (Scrivener, i. 343, Plate XIII. 40.)
77 and 78. Formerly in the fine library of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary (d. 1490).
90. In this manuscript the Gospels are in the order John, Luke, Matthew, Mark.
106. Would be important, but has been lost sight of since the time of Wettstein.
140. Presented to Pope Innocent VII. by the Queen of Cyprus. This manuscript reads διηρθρώθη in Luke i. 64, therein agreeing with the Complutensian.
146-153. In Rome, came from Heidelberg.
154-156. Once the property of Christina, Queen of Sweden.
157. In Rome: its text is said to bear a considerable resemblance to the quotations found in the early Christian writer Marcion. See below, p. 211.
164. The subscription of this manuscript states that it was compared with certain ancient manuscripts in Jerusalem.
205-215 and 217 are in Venice, being part of the donation of Cardinal Bessarion. 209 contains the whole of the New Testament, and was the Cardinal’s own copy which he had with him at the Council of Florence in 1439.
218-225 are in Vienna.
226-233 are in the Escorial.
237-259 are at Moscow, with the exception of four at Dresden.
263-320 are in Paris, with the exception of 272, which was removed thence to the British Museum.
274 exhibits the shorter conclusion of Mark’s Gospel in the lower margin. (See Plate X.)
405-418 are now in Venice, and, like U, once belonged to the Nani family.
422-430. In Munich.
431. This manuscript is sometimes stated to have perished at Strassburg, in the war of 1870, like 180Acts. This, however, is incorrect.
452. In Parma, one of the most superb codices.
473. Of the ninth and tenth centuries, a purple manuscript with gold lettering, said to have been written by the Empress Theodora. See under N. above, and note, p. 151.
481, dated 7th May 835, is the earliest manuscript of the Greek New Testament bearing an exact date.
531. Written in a microscopic hand.
604. Written in the twelfth century, now in the British Museum, exhibits 2724 variations from the Textus Receptus, and has besides 270 readings peculiar to itself. It is the only witness we know that supports that peculiar form of the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer found in Marcion in the second century, and in Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth, ἐλθέτω τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμά σου ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς καὶ καθαρισάτω ἡμᾶς (Luke xi. 2).[77]
743 has the double conclusion in Mark.
1071. See under D, p. 66.
In his Gospel according to St. Mark, Swete cites frequently, in addition to those just mentioned and those of the Ferrar Group, 1, 28, 33, 66, 109, 118, 131, 157, 209, 238, 242, 299, 435, 473, 475, 556, 570, 736.
2 and 4. Used by Erasmus.
7-10. Used by Stephen.
15, 83, 173. These, like א in the Old Testament and H3, were compared with the Codex of Pamphilus—i.e. were faithfully copied from such an exemplar.
33. The parent manuscript of Montfortianus. See above, p. 86.
42. Closely related to the Complutensian.
52. Once in the possession of Stunica, the chief editor of the Complutensian. It has now disappeared.
61 has been designated the most important minuscule of the Acts. This, however, is an exaggeration.
137 supplements D E where these are defective.
158. Used by Cardinal Mai to supply the defects of Codex B in the Pauline Epistles.
162. Of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, now in Rome: a bilingual in Latin and Greek: contains the passage 1 John v. 7.
182. Numbered 110 by Hort, who calls it one of the best of the cursives.
220. One of the finest manuscripts of the latter part of the New Testament.
232. An equally superb copy, on which a monk called Andreas bestowed three years’ labour.
246. Written in gold letters for Charlotte, Queen of Cyprus (d. 1487).
419. Written in 800 by the Empress Maria, after being divorced by Constantine VI.
7. Used by Erasmus.
56 and 66 are quite worthless, being simply copies of Erasmus’s printed text. (See above under 61evv).
67. A valuable manuscript on account of its corrector having evidently made use of an exemplar with a text very closely akin to that of B M.
80 bears a close resemblance to 69evv.
1. This was the only manuscript at Erasmus’s command for this part of the New Testament. It is defective in the last chapter from verse 16 to the end. For the rest it exhibits a fairly good text. (See p. 3 f.)
36. A text akin to א.
38 has a text resembling that of A C.
68. Resembles A.
95 does so still more. This last has the reputation of being one of the best minuscules of the Apocalypse.
The number of minuscules under each class is, according to Scrivener (Miller), as follows:—
| Gospels, | 1326 |
| Acts and Catholic Epistles, | 422 |
| Pauline Epistles, | 497 |
| Apocalypse, | 184 |
| —— | |
| 2429 |
A great many New Testament manuscripts are in England. Some are in the possession of private individuals, like those at Parham Park in Sussex belonging to Lord de la Zouche. In 1870-72 the Baroness Burdett Coutts brought with her from Janina in Epirus over one hundred manuscripts, of which sixteen were of the Gospels, one of them belonging to the Ferrar Group, and as many were Evangeliaria. There are 136 manuscripts of the New Testament in the British Museum.
| The number in Great Britain is | 438 |
| In the National Library of Paris, | 298 |
| In Germany, | 140 |
| In Italy, | 644 |
For the total number of Greek manuscripts arranged according to countries, see Scrivener, i., Indices I., II., pp. 392 ff.
What a vast number of manuscripts are still waiting to be examined is shown by the account given by Dr. von der Goltz. Accompanied by Dr. G. Wobbermin, he made a journey to Athos in the winter of 1897-98, and there in that ancient Monastery, the Laura of St. Athanasius, he found, among about 1800 manuscripts altogether, including Lectionaries, some 250 codices of the New Testament, of which only a very few have been noted by Gregory. And these manuscripts may be of the very utmost importance, as witness the further statement of the same explorer. He was looking through the manuscripts of the Apostolos, to which he and his companion had to give most of their attention, when his eye fell on one written in the tenth or eleventh century, containing the following note before the Pauline Epistles: γεγράφθαι ἀπὸ ἀντιγράφου παλαιοτάτου, οὗ πεῖραν ἐλάβομεν ὡς ἐπιτετευγμένου ἐκ τῶν εἰς ἡμᾶς ἐλθόντων Ὠριγένους τόμων ἢ ὁμιλιῶν εἰς τὸν ἀπόστολον ... ἐν οἷς οὖν παραλλάττει ῥητοῖς πρὸς τὰ νῦν ἀποστολικά, διπλῆν τὴν λεγομένην παρεθήκαμεν ἔξωθεν, ἵνα μὴ νομισθῇ κατὰ προσθήκην ἢ λεῖψιν ἡμαρτῆσθαι τουτὶ τὸ ἀποστολικόν. And from the subscription at the end of the Pauline Epistles we learn that the manuscript, or, as von der Goltz believes, the exemplar from which it was copied, was written by a monk called Ephraim. See further in von der Goltz, Eine textkritische Arbeit des zehnten bezw. sechsten Jahrhunderts herausgegeben nach einem Kodex des Athosklosters Lawra. Mit einer Doppeltafel in Lichtdruck. Leipzig, 1899. (Texte und Untersuchungen, Neue Folge, ii. 4); and compare below, p. 190.
Literature.—On 2evv, see Hoskier, above, p. 5.
On 13, see W. H. Ferrar, Collation of four important Manuscripts of the Gospels, edited by T. K. Abbott, Dublin, 1877. J. P. P. Martin, Quatre manuscrits du N. T., auxquels on peut ajouter un cinquième, Amiens, 1886. J. R. Harris, On the Origin of the Ferrar Group, London, 1894. K. Lake, “Some new members of the Ferrar Group of MSS. of the Gospels,” in the Journal of Theological Studies, I. i. pp. 117-120. The well-known manuscript of the pre-Lutheran German Bible, the Codex Teplensis, has the words from John viii. 2, “in the morning he came again into the temple,” after Luke xxi. 38, an arrangement similar to that which is characteristic of the Ferrar Group, in which John vii. 53-viii. 11 is found after Luke xxi. 38. See S. Berger, Bull. Crit., 1894, p. 390. See Addenda, p. xv.
On 561, Codex Algerinae Peckover, see J. R. Harris in the Journal of the Exegetical Society, 1886, 79-96.
On 892evv, see Harris, “An Important Manuscript of the N. T.” in the Journal of Biblical Literature, ix., 1890, 31 ff.
On Minuscules of the Apocalypse, see Bousset, Textkritische Studien in T. und U., xi. 4.
C. R. Gregory, “Die Kleinhandschriften des N. Testaments” (Theologische Studien für B. Weiss., Göttingen, 1897, 274-283).
E. J. Goodspeed, “A Twelfth Century Gospel Manuscript” (Biblical World, x. 4).
Till quite recently the Lectionaries, or Books of Church Pericopae, were even more neglected than the minuscules. And yet they are reliable witnesses to the text of the Bible in the provinces to which they belong, on account of their official character and because their locality can be readily distinguished. The slight alterations of the text occurring at the beginning of the pericopae, and consisting usually in the insertion of the subject of the sentence or of an introductory clause, are easily recognisable as such, and deceive no one. It is not always easy to determine the date of such books, because the uncial hand was employed in this sort of manuscript much longer than in the others. Among the oldest, perhaps, is 135, a palimpsest (of which there is a considerable number among the Lectionaries), assigned by Tischendorf to the seventh century, and 968, written on papyrus and ascribed to the sixth century, which was found in Egypt in the year 1890. When these Lectionaries originated has not yet been clearly made out.[78] Up till the present 980 Evangeliaria—i.e. Lessons from the Gospels—have been catalogued, and 268 Apostoli or Praxapostoli—i.e. Lessons from the Acts and Epistles. Some of them are magnificently executed; some, alas, have been sadly mutilated. 117, in Florence, is a very beautiful codex; and 162, in Siena, is perhaps “one of the most splendid Service-books in the world.” 235 may have been written in part by the Emperor Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118). 286 is the Golden Evangeliarium on Mount Sinai, dating from the ninth to the eleventh century, though the tradition of the monks says that it was written by no less a personage than the Emperor Theodosius (d. 395). Tischendorf’s 352-360 are now in the National Library at Paris. 355 is printed in Omont’s Catalogue (see above, p. 71). 45evl is a fragment of black parchment inscribed with gold letters preserved at Vienna.[79] 40 is kept in the Escorial along with the reliques of St. Chrysostom, and regarded as his autograph.[80] Bilingual Lectionaries are also found, in Greek and Arabic for example. The arrangement of these Service-books varies with the time and region in which they were composed. Several fragments which were formerly regarded as parts of manuscripts of the Gospels should perhaps be classed among the Evangeliaria—e.g. the solitary leaf of a Bible manuscript Württemberg is known to possess, and the Tübingen Fragment, formerly classed among the uncials as R of the Gospels, but now enumerated as 481evl. An important Syriac Lectionary will fall to be considered under the head of the Versions.
For further details, reference must be made to Scrivener, to TiGr., and now especially to Gregory, Textkritik, i. pp. 327-478.
Our second source of material for the reconstruction of the text of the New Testament is the early Versions. The value of their testimony depends on their age and fidelity. When did the first versions originate? This question reminds us of the Inscription on the Cross, a portion of which is still exhibited in Rome. It was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. But we may get further back still. Palestine at the time of Christ was a country where the most diverse languages and dialects came into contact with each other. In the last century B.C. a transformation had occurred, which might be regarded as a counterpart to the supplanting of Norman French by English, or of Low by High German. Aramaic had already taken the place of the old Hebrew, and after the time of Alexander came the intrusion of Greek, and later still of Latin. Some of the disciples of Jesus bore old Hebrew names, like James (Ἰάκωβος) and John (Ἰωάννης); others had names wholly or partly Aramaic, as Cephas (= Peter), the cognomen of Simon, and Bartholomew; while others, again, had Greek names, as Philip (Φίλιππος) and Andrew (Ἀνδρέας). To the question what language Jesus Himself spoke, the most probable answer is that it was Aramaic with a Galilean colouring. “Thou art a Galilean, thy speech bewrayeth thee,” said the Jerusalem girl to Peter. The Galileans, like the Babylonians and the Samaritans, were recognisable by their not distinguishing the gutturals so sharply as the pure Jews did. At the same time, Jesus certainly understood the Hebrew of the Old Testament. But those words of His that have been preserved are Aramaic—talitha, abba, and so is sabaqtani in Matthew xxvii. 46, and Mark xv. 34, if that is the original form of the text, and not asabthani, as a number of manuscripts show.
In what language, however, the first record of the preaching of the Gospel was made, whether it was in the classic Hebrew of the Old Testament or in the Aramaic of the time, is still subject of dispute.[81] But as this question is of moment only for the original sources, and even then for only a certain part of the New Testament—viz. the Gospels—it does not fall to be considered here. We have to do only with those versions that are derived from the Greek, and again with those of them only that are important for the criticism of the text, which are the oldest.
The versions which are of consequence here may be placed under three or four heads.
In the East, Antioch, with its semi-Greek, semi-Syrian population, very early became the centre of the new faith, which, indeed, obtained its name there, and must very soon have established itself in Damascus and Mesopotamia. In that region the form of Aramaic now commonly known as Syriac was spoken.
In the West, Greek was mostly spoken and understood, even in Rome. Paul consequently, and others as well as he, wrote to Rome in Greek. At the same time, the need must have existed, even in the second century, of having the Gospel in the Latin language in parts of Africa, in the north of Italy, and in the South of Gaul. Quite as early, perhaps, the new faith spread to Egypt, which at that time was a kind of centre of religious culture, and so we find in Egypt not one but several versions in various dialects.
The Gothic version of Ulfilas deserves special mention as being the oldest monument of Christianity among the Germanic people, and valuable too in the criticism of the text.
L. J. M. Bebb, Evidence of the Early Versions and Patristic Quotations, etc., in Studia Biblica, ii., Oxford, 1890. Lagarde, De Novo Testamento ad Versionum Orientalium fidem edendo. Berlin (1857); with slight alterations in his Ges. Abhandlungen, 1886, pp. 84-119. Reprinted 1896. Urtext (see p. 7). Copinger (see p. 6). An earlier bibliographical work is the Bibliotheca Sacra post ... Jacobi Le Long et C. F. Boerneri iteratas curas ordine disposita, emendata, suppleta, continuata ab A. G. Masch. Halle, 1778-90, 4to. Pars I., De editionibus textus originalis. Pars II., De versionibus librorum sacrorum (3 Vols.). R. Simon, Histoire critique des versions du N. T., 1690. Nouvelles observations sur le texte et les versions du N. T., 1695.