CHAPTER I

.

HISTORY OF THE PRINTED TEXT SINCE 1514.

[Transcriber’s Note: Throughout this book, superscripts and subscripts are used for various purposes. Superscripts after the titles of books indicate edition numbers. Superscripts after the symbols for manuscript groups are used to name members of the group. Subscripts are also used for distinguishing documents.

In this text version, superscripts are indicated with the caret symbol: ^. A single-character superscript will be shown as text^1; a multiple-character superscript will be wrapped in brackets: text^{1, 2}, text^{abc}. Subscripts are indicated with the underscore, followed by the subscript text wrapped in brackets: text_{1}.

The asterisk, *, is often used as part of the name of a manuscript.

There are also some instances of characters printed, one on top of the other. In this e-book they are rendered A/B, with A on top and B on the bottom.]

It is not quite creditable to Christian scholarship at the close of the Middle Ages that not a single printed edition of the Greek New Testament appeared during the course of the fifteenth century. The Jews printed their Hebrew Psalter as early as 1477, and the entire Hebrew Bible in 1488.

[Sidenote: Editio princeps. Complutensian Polyglot.]

1. The honour of producing the first edition belongs to the Spanish Cardinal Francis XIMENES de Cisneros (1437-1517). It was included in the so-called _Complutensian Polyglot_, which takes its name from Complutum (now Alcalà de Henares), where it was printed. The plan of the work was conceived as early as 1502, in celebration of the birth of the future Emperor Charles V. The scholar who had the principal part in it was James Lopez de Stunica. The printing of the New Testament was completed on the 10th January 1514, and of the remaining five volumes, comprising the Old Testament with Grammar and Lexicon, on the 10th July 1517. On the 8th November of the same year the Cardinal died. It was not, however, till the 22nd March 1520 that Pope Leo X. sanctioned the publication of the work, the two Vatican manuscripts of the Greek Old Testament, which had been borrowed in the first year of Leo’s papacy, having been returned on the 9th July 1519.[2] On the 5th December 1521, the presentation copy designed for the Pope, printed on parchment and bound in red velvet, was placed in the Vatican Library. No copies seem to have reached Germany through the trade till the year 1522. Only 600 copies were printed, which were sold at 6-½ ducats per copy—about £3 of our present English money. The Cardinal, who enjoyed the income of a king but was content to live like a monk, expended over 50,000 ducats on the undertaking. At the present time, copies of the Complutensian Polyglot, especially those printed on parchment, are counted among the rarest treasures of libraries. The Old Testament is printed in three columns, the Latin text of the Bible used in the Church of the Middle Ages standing between the original Hebrew text of the Synagogue and the Alexandrian Greek version, “like Jesus between the two thieves.” The New Testament has only two columns, that on the left containing the Greek text, that on the right the Latin version. For the sake of those learning Greek the corresponding words in each are indicated. The type is modelled on the characters found in good manuscripts. Of accents, the acute alone is used to mark the tone syllable.

LITERATURE.—Scrivener, _Introduction_, ii. c. 7; Hoskier (see below, p. 5); Frz. Delitzsch, _Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Polyglottenbibel des Cardinals Ximenes_, Leipzig, 1871; _Fortgesetzte Studien_, 1886; _Urtext und Uebersetzungen der Bibel_, p. 64. A facsimile of the title-page and colophon will be found in Schaff’s _Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version_. The decree of Pope Leo X. is printed in the Greek and Latin Testament of Van Ess, Tübingen, 1827.

Previous to Ximenes, however, the famous Venetian printer Aldus Manutius had conceived the idea of such a Polyglot. In the Preface to his undated Greek Psalter (_circa_ 1497), a triglot Bible was promised. Of this he was reminded from London by Grocyn on the 6th October 1499. On the 9th July 1501 he wrote about it to the German humanist Conrad Celtes, to whom he sent the first specimen page on the 3rd September of the same year. (Facsimile in Renouard, _L’Imprimerie des Aldes_^{2, 3}.)

Still earlier, the Magnificat and the Benedictus[3] had been printed among the hymns at the end of the Greek Psalter (Milan, 1481; Venice, 1486). These were the first portions of the Greek New Testament to be printed, while the first printed in Germany appeared at Erfurt in 1501-2. The first edition of the Greek New Testament for sale was Erasmus’s edition of 1516.

LITERATURE.—On Aldus, see Nestle, _Septuagintastudien_, i. 2; ii. 11. On Aldus’s well-known device, the anchor and dolphin, see Léon Dorez, _Études Aldines_, Revue des bibliothèques, vi. (1896), part 5-6, p. 143 ff.; part 7-9; also J. R. Harris, _The Homeric Centones_, London, 1898, p. 24. The device is emblematic of the favourite motto of Augustus and Titus, ἀεὶ σπεῦδε βραδέως, Semper festina lente.

[Sidenote: Erasmus, 1516.]

2. Froben, the printer of Basel, was anxious to forestall the costly edition of the Spanish Cardinal, and with this object appealed on the 15th March 1515 to the famous humanist Desiderius ERASMUS (1467-1536), then in England. His edition appeared as early as the 1st March 1516, and was dedicated on the 1st February to Pope Leo. The printing was begun in the previous September, and was partly superintended by Zwingli’s friend, John Oecolampadius of Weinsberg. Erasmus himself confessed afterwards that his New Testament was “præcipitatum verius quam editum,” though he boasted that he had employed in its preparation not any sort of manuscripts, but the oldest and most correct copies.[4] As early as 1734, J. A. Bengel recognised that in the Apocalypse Erasmus must have used only one manuscript, and that partly mutilated, so that he was unable to read it correctly and was obliged to supply its lacunæ by means of a retranslation from the Latin into Greek. And this conclusion was confirmed in 1861 by the rediscovery of that very manuscript by Franz Delitzsch in the Oettingen-Wallerstein Library at Mayhingen.[5]

In a parallel column Erasmus gave a translation of the Greek into elegant Latin. The Emperor protected the edition for four years by copyright, but as early as February 1518 it was reprinted by Aldus Manutius in his Greek Bible. It was sanctioned by the Pope on the 10th September 1518. Four successive editions were afterwards prepared by Erasmus: the second in 1519, the third in 1522, the fourth (improved) in 1527, and the fifth in 1535.

In his third edition, Erasmus for the first time incorporated the well-known “comma Johanneum,” the passage about the Three Witnesses (1 John v. 7). He did so on the evidence of a manuscript now in Dublin (Montfortianus, 61), in which the passage had probably been inserted from the Vulgate by the English Franciscan monk Roy. From the Vulgate it had already been received, in a slightly different form, into the Complutensian Polyglot. Luther himself purposely omitted it from his version. The first edition of his translation to contain it was that printed at Frankfurt by Feyerabend in 1576. It was not inserted in the Wittenberg editions till 1596. After 1534 no Greek edition appeared without it for the space of 200 years.

LITERATURE.—Scrivener, vol. ii. p. 182 ff.; Frz. Delitzsch, _Handschriftliche Funde_, i., Leipzig, 1861; H. C. Hoskier, _A full Account and Collation of the Greek Cursive Codex Evangelium 604 ... together with ten Appendices containing ..._ (B) _... the various readings by the five editions of Erasmus_, 1516, 1519, 1522, 1527, 1535.... (F) _Report of a Visit to the Public Library at Bâle, with facsimile of Erasmus’s second MS. Evan. 2_, ... London, 1890. On Erasmus’s supplementary matter, the New Version, Annotationes, Paraclesis ad lectorem, Methodus and Apologia, as also on the entire practical and reforming aim of his N.T., see R. Stähelin in the _Protestantische Real-Encyklopädie_, third edition, v. 438. Froude, _Life and Letters of Erasmus_, p. 126 ff.

[Sidenote: Collections of editions.]

3. The number of editions of the Greek New Testament which have been brought out since the time of Ximenes is about 1000. No library in the world contains them all. In the last century the Danish Pastor Lorck possessed perhaps the largest private collection of Bibles. This was purchased by Duke Charles of Württemberg, and has found a place in the Royal Public Library at Stuttgart. Unfortunately, it is not possible to supplement or enlarge it in the way that it deserves. The largest collection of the present century is that of the late Prof. Ed. Reuss of Strassburg. In his descriptive catalogue he established the genealogy of the separate editions by a collation of the readings in 1000 selected passages. Several editions he was unable to obtain: some he was obliged to regard as of doubtful existence: others, again, mistakenly quoted by previous collectors, he was able to discard once for all. His labours form the basis of those further researches prosecuted with much ardour chiefly in England and America: in the latter by the German-Swiss scholar Philip Schaff (d. 20th Oct. 1893), and his American friend I. H. Hall (d. 1896), in England by F. H. A. Scrivener (d. 26th Oct. 1891), and in Germany by the American C. R. Gregory. Mention can be made of only a few of these printed editions.

LITERATURE.—Ed. Reuss, _Bibliotheca Novi Testamenti Graeci, cuius editiones ab initio typographiae ad nostram aetatem impressas quotquot reperiri potuerunt collegit digessit illustravit E. R. Argentoratensis_, Brunsvigae, 1872. Tischendorf, _Novum Testamentum Graece ad antiquissimos testes denuo recensuit apparatum criticum apposuit Constantinus de Tischendorf_, Lipsiae (Hinrichs), vol. i. 1869; vol. ii. 1872; vol. iii., _Prolegomena scripsit Caspar Renatus Gregory additis curis Ezrae Abbot_, 1894, 8vo. (vol. iii. cited in the following part of this work under the symbol _TiGr._). F. H. A. Scrivener, _A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament_. Fourth edition, edited by Ed. Miller, 2 vols., London, 1894. P. Schaff, _Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version_. Fourth edition revised, New York, Harper, 1892. Schaff’s _Companion_ gives, in an Appendix, Reuss’s list of printed editions of the Greek N.T., with additions bringing it down to 1887, by I. H. Hall. It also contains an interesting set of facsimile illustrations of twenty-one standard editions of the Greek N.T., showing in each case the title-page and a page of the print. I. H. Hall, _A Critical Bibliography of the Greek New Testament, as published in America_, Philadelphia, 1883. Also, by the same author, _Some Remarkable Greek New Testaments_, in the Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, Dec. 1886, 40-63. S. P. Tregelles, _Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament with remarks on its revision and a collation of the critical texts with that in common use_, 1854. Copinger, _The Bible and its Transmission, being an historical and bibliographical view of the Hebrew and Greek Texts, and the Greek, Latin, and other Versions of the Bible (both manuscript and printed) prior to the Reformation. With 28 facsimiles._ London, Sotheran, 1897, large 8vo. H. J. Holtzmann, _Einleitung in das Neue Testament_ (_Allgemeiner Teil_, _Geschichte des Textes_), Freiburg, 1886. _Urtext und Uebersetzungen der Bibel in übersichtlicher Darstellung_, a reprint of the article “Bibeltext und Bibelübersetzungen,” in the third edition of the Real-Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1897, pp. 15-61 (Tischendorf), O. v. Gebhardt, “_Bibeltext des Neuen Testamentes_,” PRE, ii. 728-773 (cited hereafter as _Urt._). C. R. Gregory, _Textkritik des Neuen Testamentes_, vol. i. Leipzig, 1900. Vol. ii. in the press.

[Sidenote: First critical edition.]

4. The first to prepare a really critical edition of the Greek New Testament, _i.e._ one based on a collation of manuscripts, was Simon de Colines (COLINAEUS), the father-in-law of the Parisian printer Robert Stephen (Estienne). In his edition^1, which appeared in 1534, he adopted for the first time a number of readings that are now generally accepted, though naturally he did not succeed in gaining credit for them. Up till the time of Mill and Bengel the publishers and their more or less uncritical coadjutors simply reprinted the text of Ximenes and Erasmus, mostly the latter, with trifling variations.

Among the innovations introduced by these editors was the choice of a more convenient form. The first editions were all in folio. But in 1521, Anselm, then in Hagenau but previously in Tübingen, reduced the size to quarto; in 1524 Cephaleus in Strassburg still further to octavo; while Valder printed the first miniature edition in Basel in 1536. The smallest edition printed previous to this century is that of Jannon, 1628 (Sedan); the smallest of this century is that of Pickering, 1828 (London).

But a much more important feature was the collation of fresh manuscripts. The credit of being pioneer in this respect rests with the Parisian Typographer-Royal, Robert STEPHEN (1503-1559). [Sidenote: Stephen.] He was assisted by his son Henry Stephen (1528-1598),

## particularly in the preparation of his third edition of 1550, the

_Editio Regia_, which takes its name from the inscription on its title-page in honour of Henry II., Βασιλεῖ τ’ ἀγαθῷ, κρατερῷ τ’ αἰχμητῇ.[6] The first edition, called _O mirificam_, from the opening words of its preface, appeared in 1546. The Editio Regia was the first to contain a critical apparatus in which fifteen manuscripts indicated by the Greek letters β—ιϛ were collated with the text of the Complutensian which was designated α. All the manuscripts employed were of late date, with two exceptions, viz., the Codex Bezae, of which we shall have a good deal to say in the sequel, and a Parisian MS. of the eighth century, now known as L.

[Sidenote: Verse division.]

An important innovation of another sort is due to the same Robert Stephen, who printed at Geneva in the following year (1551) a fourth edition containing the Greek text with the Latin version of Erasmus on the outer side and the Vulgate on the inner.[7] With a view to carrying out this arrangement conveniently, he divided the text into separate verses or very small sections, which he numbered on the margin. In this way he introduced into the New Testament not only a convenient verse-enumeration—there are 7959 verses in all—but also the unfortunate practice of printing the text in separate verses. Mill in 1707, and notably Bengel in 1734, were the first to revert to the practice of printing the text in paragraphs divided according to the sense while retaining the enumeration of the verses in the margin. [Sidenote: Chapters.] The customary division of the New Testament books into chapters is much earlier, having been first invented in Paris for the Latin Bible by Stephen Langton (died Archbishop of Canterbury in 1228), and at once adopted in the earliest printed editions of the Vulgate. It was employed in the Complutensian Polyglot with a subdivision of the various chapters into A B C etc.

LITERATURE.—_Nov. Test. textus Stephanici_ A.D. 1550, _ed._ Scrivener, Camb., 1859, 1871 etc. Hoskier (as above) ... (B) _A Reprint with corrections of Scrivener’s list of differences between the editions of Stephen 1550 and Elzevir 1624, Beza 1565 and the Complutensian, together with fresh evidence ... by the other editions of Stephen of 1546, 1549, 1551...._ Ezra Abbot, _De Versibus_, in _TiGr._ 167-182. I. H. Hall, _Modern Chapters and Verses_, in Schaff’s _Religious Encyclopædia_, i. 433. _Journal of the Soc. of Bib. Lit. and Exeg._, 1883, 60; 1891, 65.

It is frequently stated that copies exist of Stephen’s edition of 1551 (the first to contain the verse enumeration) bearing on the title-page the date MDXLI. In the two I examined belonging to the collections of Lorck and Reuss, the two halves of the number MD and LI are far apart. In the case of the Lorck copy it is possible to suppose that a letter has been erased from the middle, but not in the Reuss copy. In his Preface, Stephen says: “Quod autem per quosdam ut vocant versiculos opus distinximus, id, vetustissima Graeca Latinaque ipsius Novi Testamenti exemplaria secuti, fecimus: eo autem libentius ea sumus imitati, quod hac ratione utraque translatio posset omnino eregione Graeco contextui respondere.” As Ezra Abbot pointed out, Stephen gave a double number 19/20 to the verse Τινὲς δὲ ... πρὸς μέ in Acts xxiv. A similar double enumeration occurs in the previous chapter, where the verse Γράψας ... χαίρειν is numbered 25/26. Accordingly, Abbot’s supposition becomes pretty certain, that the verse division was originally made for a Latin copy which, at the passage in Acts xxiv., contained the additional sentence: Et apprehenderunt me clamantes et dicentes, Tolle inimicum nostrum. And in