PROBLEMS OF NEW TESTAMENT STUDY 591 



been made the Berlin and Vienna editions of the Greek and Latin 

 Fathers, and the Paris editions of the Oriental Christian literature. 

 As these tasks progress, it will become increasingly possible to replace 

 those great collections of quotations which Burgon made with others 

 that will be of far greater value because they will be of wider scope, 

 and based, as respects the Greek and Latin Fathers at least, on a 

 critically edited text. 



In the matter of the versions, Wordsworth and White are steadily 

 carrying forward their tasks of editing the Latin texts of the New 

 Testament, and so laying a foundation for more exact knowledge of 

 the history and character of the Latin versions. Horner is prosecuting 

 his work of editing the Bohairic version of Egypt. The practical 

 recovery of Tatian's Diatessaron, and the discovery by Mrs. Lewis 

 and Mrs. Gibson of the Sinaitic manuscript of the Syriac gospels, 

 supplemented by the scholarly labors of Gwilliam, Harris, Burkitt, 

 Hjelt, and others, not only in spite of, but in part because of, their 

 differences of opinion on many points, are laying a foundation for 

 a far more accurate knowledge of the history and text of the Syriac 

 versions than has hitherto been possessed. In respect to the Sahidic, 

 Armenian, and other ancient versions scarcely more than a beginning 

 has been made. 



The monumental work of Tischendorf and Gregory in collecting 

 and classifying the ascertained facts in all parts of the field is now to 

 be supplemented by that of Von Soden and his associates in the 

 preparation of a new critical edition upon a magnificent scale. 



Final criticism of the views of Westcott and Hort in respect to the 

 history of the text must, as intimated, await the completion of some 

 of these investigations. Yet in the mean time scholars are not idle 

 in this direction. Few are left to-day either to dispute the correct- 

 ness of the genealogical theory which Westcott and Hort did so much 

 to state with clearness, or to deny that their contention respecting 

 the Syrian text was substantially correct, save perhaps in imputing 

 to its producers too much of a deliberate intention to create a new 

 text. Respecting the pre-Syrian texts the case is somewhat different. 

 The validity of the distinction between the Neutral and Alexandrian 

 texts has been disputed by more than one scholar of repute, and the 

 precise nature of the relation between these two types of text still 

 remains to be determined with certainty. The progress of knowledge 

 in respect to versions and quotations will, it is to be expected, lead 

 after no long time to a more definite solution of this problem than has 

 hitherto been possible. 



But it is in respect to the Western text that there is to-day perhaps 

 the sharpest difference of opinion and the greatest probability of a 

 revision of the Westcott and Hort view. That the Western text is not 

 properly called Western Hort himself recognized; it is now questioned 



