BIBLICAL CRITICISM, the science which has for its objects (1) to decide which books are entitled to have a place in the Scripture canon, and (2) to bring the text of these canonical books to the utmost possible degree of purity. In prosecuting the first of these aims, the Biblical critic must not be confounded with the Christian apologist; the func tion of the former is a strictly judicial one, while the office of the latter is that of an advocate. One important subject of investigation is as to what Old Testa ment books were recognized as divine by the ancient Jewish Church or Syna gogue; as also what New Testament books were at once and universally wel comed by the early Christian Church, and what others were for a time par tially rejected, though they ultimately found acceptance everywhere. Biblical Criticism has received its highest devel opment in the hands of German schol ars, who attacked its problems with an energy and destructiveness which, for a time, threatened to leave little of the authority or authenticity of the text. In recent years a reaction from these radical methods has set in, and while scholars recognize the necessity of ap plying the laws of criticism to the sa cred texts, there is a pronounced dis position, founded on archmological and philological researches, to leave the authority of the texts unimpaired, un less there is unquestioned reason for disputing it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY, the science or Bibliography, the science or knowledge of books, their authorship, the dates of their first publication, and of the several editions they have gone through, with all other points requisite for literary history. This, it will be per ceived, is not the meaning of the word in Greek. The Greek term generated the French bibliographic, with the meaning (identical with neither the Greek nor the English one) of acquaintance with an cient writings and skill in deciphering them. About A. D. 1752 the modern sense of the word was arising, though the old one still held its ground. Finally, in 1763, the publication of De Bure's "Bib liographie Instructif" established the new meaning, and gave the deathblow to the old one. It was not the first book which had appeared on literary history, Conrad Gesner's "Bibliotheca Univer salis," containing a catalogue of all the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin books he knew, had long preceded it, having ap peared in 1545.