590 NEW TESTAMENT 



I. Preparatory Studies 



(1) Textual criticism. By the common confession of scholars, the 

 present period of textual criticism of the New Testament dates from 

 the publication of Westcott and Hort's text and introduction in 1881. 

 Availing themselves of the immensely valuable work of such scholars 

 as Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Scrivener, 

 the Cambridge scholars so organized and interpreted the accessible 

 facts that all who have succeeded them are compelled to state their 

 views very largely in the form of agreement with or dissent from their 

 opinions. Nor are there to-day visible upon the horizon any signs 

 to justify the expectation either of another work so epoch-making as 

 theirs, or of an achievement comparable for significance with that 

 foundation-laying task which was accomplished by those great prede- 

 cessors of Westcott and Hort already named. What remains to be 

 done belongs rather to the completion of a structure which in its main 

 line is already built, than either to those pioneer tasks which prepare 

 the way for great constructive work or to such constructive work 

 itself. Yet the tasks that remain are in themselves both large and 

 important, and there is every reason to be glad that there is so large 

 a body of earnest workers whose tastes incline them and whose ability 

 fits them to undertake and accomplish these labors. 



The work of Westcott and Hort was significant in three directions : 

 (a) in the formulation of the methods of textual criticism; (6) in the 

 outlining of the history of the New Testament text, especially in 

 the first four centuries of its existence; (c) in the actual construction 

 of the text. In all three of these particulars their work marked an 

 advance on that of their predecessors. In respect to the first and 

 second of them, few scholars will deny that in the main the views of 

 Westcott and Hort have been sustained by the verdict of scholarly 

 criticism and by subsequent discovery. Yet it would have been 

 surpassingly strange if their work had been in all these things so 

 decisive as to leave no room for doubt or further investigation. So 

 strange a thing has, at any rate, not happened. In two important 

 respects Westcott and Hort were compelled to work with but an 

 imperfect presentation of the data: in the matter of quotations from 

 the New Testament in the Fathers, and in that of the text and history 

 of the early versions. The tasks with which scholars since their day 

 have been engaged, and with which those of the next following decades 

 at least are likely to be engaged, are chiefly in the more thorough 

 working of these two fields, and in the criticism of the Westcott and 

 Hort theory of the history of the text on the basis of such reworking. 



Definite and full results in reference to the quotations must await 

 for their achievement the completion of those editions of the Fathers 

 now in preparation, and in which such splendid progress has already 



