II. CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

ANALYSIS.

The New Testament.-Character of the original Greek.-The ancient Manu-` scripts. Recensions and classifications of the MSS.

I. The Four Gospels.-Their title. Their relative peculiarities.-Their relationship. Their deviations from each other.-St. Matthew and his Gospel.-Its scope, object, and style.-Facts peculiar to St. Matthew.-St. Mark and his Gospel. Its scope, object, and style.-Facts peculiar to St. Mark.-St. Luke and his Gospel.-Its scope, object, and style.-Facts peculiar to St. Luke.-St. John his life and character.-His Gospel: its style, object, and peculiarities. -Facts peculiar to St. John.

II. The Acts of the Apostles.-Proofs of its having been written by Luke.Time and place.

SUMMARY.

The New Testament, 'H Kain Aιałŋký, i. e. The New 26 Covenant, or Testament, comprises 27 Books, written by eight persons, and divided into three classes: viz. 1. The five Historical Books. 2. The twenty-one Epistles, composing the fourteen Pauline letters and the seven Catholic. 3. The Prophetical Book of the Revelations of St. John. These two last classes are explained in the second portion of the present work, see foot note to page 209; the first only we shall hereafter describe in the present Introduction.

Character of the original Greek.—The Greek learnt 27 by the Jews was not the ancient classic Greek that we find in works of the Grecian writers of the Augustan age in Athens, but a degenerate dialect widely diffused by the dominion of Alexander and his successors. The dialect as it was spoken in Alexandria, where it assumed certain peculiarities, is called the Macedonic-Alexandrine Greek. It underwent another modification under the influence of the Jews, who translated the Old Testament into Greek. The compound dialect, thus composed of

28

four distinct elements-the original Greek, the Macedonic influence, that of Alexandria, and that of the Hebrew Bible and its Hebrew translators-is found in the Septuagint, and consequently is found also in the New Testament. Here, however, it has a peculiar aspect; for as Christianity introduced ideas and required modes of expression not to be found in the Mosaic religion, the inspired writers of the New Testament gave a new character to the language they employed. Hence there are three chief sources whence the language of the New Testament is derived: viz. 1. The Greek of the dialect above characterized. 2. The Hebrew found in peculiarities of structures. 3. The Christian, in thoughts and substance.

The

The ancient manuscripts.-The original manuscripts or autographs of the New Testament books perished at an early day. They were written partly by the apostles themselves, and partly by scribes or amanuenses. most ancient transcripts, or copies, as well as the manuscripts in general which ensued, were formed either by the eye or the ear; in other words, the writer either directly copied from his original, or he wrote down what was read to him from the original by another. Hence arose many errors-some from the mistakes of the eye, others from the mistakes of the ear. These errors, however, are not so considerable as to place in doubt, or to modify, any doctrine of the New Testament. Sometimes words were purposely changed by the transcribers in order to explain the sense. A word or a note made in the margin may afterwards have been taken into the text. But these variations from the original are infrequent or unimportant, and undoubtedly the text of the New Testament has been transmitted to us without falsification, and without material change. The manuscripts were not rolls like those of the Old Testament,

but unbound books, somewhat like our pamphlets, and consisted either of sheets of parchment or of paper. The oldest are of parchment, written in large or capital letters, (Uncials,) and without division of words, without pointing, and without accents. The later manuscripts, that is, those from the tenth century, have small letters, (Cursive, or running-hand,) and more recently with punctuation. Only few manuscripts contain all the New Testament; most of them consist of only a part or parts, as the Four Evangelists, and the Epistles of Paul; others, again, have nothing more than certain portions, or paragraphs, such as were read in public worship. Many, especially those of later date, are written with extraordinary care and skill, for the monks devoted much time and trouble to tasks of this kind. The contractions which occur in them require the reader to be well versed in that kind of Greek writing.

Recensions and classifications of the MSS.-It will 29 be seen by the last section, how a number of various readings and slight variations or modifications of the original text had crept into the various manuscripts. A collection of these were exhibited by Mill and Wetstein, and at length began to be regarded with a philosophic eye. Important readings in different manuscripts were found to resemble each other, and from this circumstance different systems of classification of the MSS. were worked out, and explained by different scholars according to their different views. This matter can perhaps be best understood by the following account of the system set forth by Griesbach. This learned scholar discovered that certain characteristic readings distinguished one class of MSS., including both ancient versions and quotations made by the Fathers; that other characteristic readings pointed out a second class, and others again a third class. Each of

these three classes or families was called a recension, by which we should now understand a revision, or rather an edition; and though no formal revision of the Greek text is known either from history or tradition, yet there is no doubt of its existence. Griesbach also professed to have further discovered, that this threefold classification had an additional foundation in respect to the places where the MSS. were written, the Fathers lived, and the versions were made. Griesbach, accordingly, gave to these three classes, or recensions, the following names.

1. The Occidental or Western Recension was based on the most ancient MSS., viz. such as were made before the Epistles had been collected together. Accordingly it preserved with greater care the Hebraisms of the New Testament, but made explanatory additions. Its leading characteristic is therefore exegetical, that is, having a tendency to interpret.

2. The Oriental, Alexandrine, or Eastern Recension, selected readings most conformable to pure Greek, and made slight alterations in the text where the language did not appear to be classical. It was distinguished therefore by its grammatical tendency.

3. The Byzantine or Constantinopolitan Recension arose from the intermingling of the other two. A senior and a junior Constantinopolitan are distinguished. The former belongs to the fourth century, and is marked to a still greater extent than the Alexandrine, by its rejection of readings that seemed less classical, as well as by its reception of glosses, or comments; the latter originated in the fifth and sixth centuries, in consequence of the labours of the learned men belonging to the Syrian church. The leading characteristic of the Constantinopolitan Recension is therefore its glossarial tendency.

There are other Recension systems by Hug, Eichhorn,

Scholz, Michaelis, and Nolan, which it will be unnecessary to explain here.*

I. The four Gospels: their title.-The word "Gospel" 30 is derived from the Saxon words "god," good, and "spel," speech or tidings. It answers to the Greek word Evayyeλov, glad tidings. Thus the four histories of our Lord and Saviour were called "Gospels" by our ancestors, and the term is also applied to the whole doctrine of salvation taught by Christ and his apostles, and the writers of the Gospels are called "Evangelists."

Their relative peculiarities.—The first three Gospels 31 are quite different from the fourth, but stand to each other in a very intimate relationship. They describe chiefly the abode and the labours of our Saviour in Galilee, whilst the fourth Gospel informs us concerning his repeated presence in Jerusalem. In handling his subject, Matthew appears to have mainly had Jewish readers in view; Mark gives a compressed account, designed for Pagan readers; still more decidedly does Luke write for persons who lived beyond the borders of Palestine, whilst he preaches more prominently the universality of that salvation which was by Christ. In all three Gospels, however, the Saviour appears rather in his human nature, and is set forth as the long-promised Messiah and messenger of God to men. It is different with the fourth Gospel. Here the Saviour is described specially, according to his holy and Divine nature, and in general the Gospel is much deeper and more spiritual. While in the

*The author's object in the above paragraph has been only to explain what a Recension of the New Testament really is. He has no wish to give a prominence to the system of Griesbach, but merely to use it as an illustration of the subject. Perhaps even there is not sufficient data to warrant or support any one system of Recensions. For all further accounts of both the different systems of Recensions, of the most ancient existing MSS., and of the ancient versions of the New Testament, the reader must refer to larger works, for all attempts at such abridgement as would be here required, might be now and then of some slight use in "cramming," but would utterly confuse all other readers.