CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



the basis of later editions by Simon, Hahn, Theile, 

 and others. The controversy regarding the purity 

 of the Masoretic text in the i7th century led to 

 an extensive examination of Hebrew manuscripts 

 in the next century. Kennicott collated 630 258 

 throughout, the rest in part ; De Rossi, 751, of 

 which all but 17 were collated for the first time. 

 Many still remain uncollated. The result of this 

 elaborate investigation has been to convince 

 scholars that the Masoretic text is substantially 

 correct. 



At first, there were no intervening spaces be- 

 tween Hebrew words ; afterwards, small intervals 

 appear to have been occasionally allowed. With 

 the introduction of the square character, the use 

 of small interstices to separate words became 

 general. The Talmud prescribes how much space 

 should be between words in sacred manuscripts 

 designed for the synagogue. Various divisions 

 according to the sense were also introduced at an 

 early period. In the Pentateuch there were two, 

 termed respectively open and closed. The former 

 were intended to mark a change in the matter of 

 the text ; the latter, slight changes in the sense. Of 

 these, the Pentateuch contained 669, named pera- 

 shioth (sections). This division is probably as 

 old, or nearly so, as the practice of reading the 

 Law. It is found in the Talmud, while the divi- 

 sion into 54 great perashioth is first found in the 

 Masora, and is not observed in the rolls of the 

 synagogues. The poetical books were also sub- 

 jected, from a very early period, to a stichomet- 

 rical division, according to the peculiarities of 

 Hebrew versification. In order to facilitate the 

 reading and understanding of the prose books, a 

 division into logical periods was also made. Our 

 present division of the Old Testament into chap- 

 ters is a later invention, and, though accepted by 

 the Jews, is of Christian origin ; it may be dated 

 as far back as the I3th century, some assigning it 

 to Cardinal Hugo, others to Stephen Langton, 

 Archbishop of Canterbury. It was first employed 

 in a concordance to the Vulgate, whence it was 

 borrowed by Rabbin Nathan in the i5th century, 

 who made a similar concordance to the Hebrew 

 Bible. Nathan's divisions are found in Bom- 

 berg's Hebrew Bible of 1518. Verses were first 

 introduced into editions of the Hebrew Bible by 

 Athias of Amsterdam, 1661, but were employed in 

 the Vulgate as early as 1558. The first English 

 Bible divided into verses was published at Geneva 

 in 1560. 



New Testament. The original manuscripts of 

 the New Testament were probably all written on 

 papyrus, the cheapest, but least durable material 

 that could be obtained for the purpose. It was 

 therefore impossible, considering the constant 

 handling to which the documents must have 

 been subjected by the eager converts, that they 

 could have lasted for any length of time. We 

 know, indeed, that a very large number of 

 copies were in existence from an early period. 

 Norton states the number at about 40,000. The 

 text of these, however, did not always agree. 

 Variations originated, to a considerable extent, 

 from the same causes as operated in the case of 

 the Old Testament, namely, imperfect vision or 

 hearing, misunderstanding, carelessness, or an un- 

 critical judgment on the part of transcribers ; but 

 it is natural to suppose that, on account of the 

 greater freedom of spirit and thought which char- 



396 



acterised primitive Christianity, compared with 

 Judaism, a latitude of conviction in regard to the 

 value of the letter of Scripture also influenced the 

 churches. Modern criticism reckons no less than 

 80,000 variations in the existing manuscripts. Of 

 these manuscripts, upwards of 1400 are known to 

 scholars, and have been collated, and no essential 

 discrepancy has been detected. 



Some slight attempts seem to have been made, 

 during the early history of the Church, to obtain a 

 correct text. One Lucian, a presbyter of Antioch, 

 and Hesychius, an Egyptian bishop, are said by 

 Jerome to have undertaken a recension of the 

 New Testament, and both Origen and Jerome 

 himself were of considerable service in this re- 

 spect. It is to modern criticism, however, that we 

 owe almost everything in regard to the regulation 

 of the text. Bengel and Semler first started the 

 idea of arranging the manuscripts of the New Tes- 

 tament into families or classes. After these came 

 Griesbach, who, following out the idea, propounded 

 his famous threefold division of the manuscripts 

 into Western, Alexandrian, and Byzantine. The 

 first two he considers the oldest ; the third, a cor- 

 rupt mixture of both. Griesbach himself preferred 

 the Alexandrian : he believed that the Byzantine 

 transcribers had taken great liberties with the 

 text, and held that a few Alexandrian manuscripts 

 outweighed, in critical value, a large number of 

 the other. The accuracy of Griesbach's division 

 has subsequently been questioned by many emi- 

 nent German scholars, among whom may be 

 mentioned Hug, Matthia, Scholz, and Eichhorn, 

 each of whom has in turn favoured the world 

 with a theory of his own in regard to the prob- 

 able value of the various families of manuscripts. 

 Recently, Lachmann has applied, with excessive 

 strictness, a principle first hinted by Bentley, 

 namely, that no weight ought to be attached to 

 any manuscripts except those written in the old 

 or uncial character. The chief advocate for the 

 application of this principle in England is Tre- 

 gelles ; but it is rejected by the vast majority of 

 biblical scholars, for the simple reason, that a 

 manuscript of the loth or nth century, if faithful 

 to that from which it is copied (a thing not impos- 

 sible), may exhibit a really older and purer text 

 than one of the 4th or 5th century. The exact 

 value of each manuscript is still a matter of dis- 

 pute ; but a great deal has been done to place the 

 knowledge of the various lines of evidence within 

 the reach of all scholars. Especially, Tischendorf 

 has carefully examined the most important of the 

 uncial manuscripts, and published them separately, 

 somewhat after the fashion of a fac-simile. He 

 has also published a fac-simile of the Codex Sin- 

 ai ticus, which he found in a monastery on Mount 

 Sinai in 1859. 



The whole of the New Testament was first 

 printed in the Complutensian Polyglott, 1514. 

 From 1516 to 1535, five editions appeared at 

 Basel, under the care of Erasmus, but without 

 any great pretensions to critical accuracy. The 

 subsequent numerous editions were, for the most 

 part, either founded on the editions of Erasmus 

 or on the Complutensian, or on a collation of 

 both. Among these editions we may mention 

 that by Colonai (Paris, 1534), by Bogard (Paris, 

 1 543)5 tne third by the elder Stephens (1550), and 

 that by the younger Stephens (Geneva, 1569). 

 Beza was the first who, by several collations 



