592 NEW TESTAMENT 



whether it is properly a text, and does not rather (to use the words of 

 Burkitt) "represent the unrevised and progressively deteriorated 

 state of the text throughout the Christian world in the ante-Nicene 

 age." To the solution of the origin, nature, and value of the so-called 

 Western text, perhaps the most important question now at issue in 

 this field, all those are contributing who are working either in the 

 versions or the quotations or in the study of the facts brought out by 

 the laborers in these fields. 



It would be rash to predict what will be the outcome of all the 

 investigations now in progress or waiting to be undertaken. But at 

 present it seems probable that the result will not be so much any con- 

 siderable revision of the text as a different interpretation of the facts 

 respecting the history of the text, in which is involved also the possible 

 discarding of the name "Western," a new grouping of so-called 

 Western documents, and a new valuation of the testimony of certain 

 combinations of witnesses. 



Closely connected with the peculiar variations of the Western type 

 of text in the gospels, especially in the Gospel of Luke and in the Acts, 

 is a problem which arises from the nature of the process by which 

 the synoptic gospels were produced. As the facts in respect to the 

 text of Acts and Luke suggest the possibility of two editions of the 

 same work, each having a claim to be accepted as genuine, so the 

 evidence that the synoptic gospels were not produced each of them 

 independently, and by a single act of individual authorship, but in 

 part at least by compilation and a process of editorship, the precise 

 length and limits of which it is difficult to define, raises the question, 

 What is to be considered the original text? In both cases the pro- 

 blem of textual criticism becomes tangent with, if it does not even 

 merge into, that of historical or literary criticism, and the need arises 

 for the clear definition of the textual critic's task, and of its relation to 

 documentary criticism. Whether the unfavorable verdict which at 

 present scholars seem inclined to pass upon Blass's theory of the 

 double text of Acts and Luke will be confirmed or not, it can scarcely 

 be doubted that the whole problem of the text of the synoptic gospels 

 and Acts calls for investigation by one who is equally at home in the 

 facts and principles of textual criticism and in the synoptic problem. 



(2) The language of the New Testament. The lexicons of Grimm- 

 Thayer, Cremer, and others, and the grammars, such as those of 

 Buttmann, Blass, and Winer-Schmiedel, are monuments of diligent 

 and successful work already achieved in reference to the New Testa- 

 ment language. Yet the authors of these books would probably be 

 foremost in declaring that this portion of our field abounds in unsolved 

 problems and unaccomplished tasks. The studies of Dalman in 

 relation to the Greek used by New Testament writers, the publication 

 of papyri, in Germany especially by the scholars of Berlin, and in 



