RECENSION. After the critical materials at the basis of the N.T. text had accumulated in the hands of Mill and Bentley, they began to be ex amined with care. Important readings in different documents were seen to possess resemblances more or less striking. Passages were found to present the same form, though the MSS. from which they were derived belonged to various times and coun tries. The thought suggested itself to Bengel, that the mass of materials might be definitely classified in conformity with such peculiarities. The same idea afterwards occurred to Semler. Bengel classi fied all the documents from which various readings are collected into two nations or families—the Asiatic and the African. To the former belonged the codex Alexandrinus as the chief ; to the latter the codices Graeco-Latini. At first the eminent critic does not seem to have had a very distinct apprehension of the subject ; and therefore he speaks in general terms of it in his edition of the Greek Testament published in 1734 ; but in the posthumous edition of the Apparatus Criticus (1763, edited by Burkius) he is more explicit. Semler was the first that used the term recension of a particular class of MSS., in his Ifermenentische Vorbereitung (1765). This critic, however, though acquainted with Wetstein's labours on the text of the N. T., had nothing more than a dim notion of the subject. He followed Bengel without clearly understanding or enlarging his views. Griesbach was the first scholar who treated the topic with consummate learning and skill, elaborating it so highly that it became a prominent subject in the criticism of the N. T. But he had the benefit of Wetstein's abundant treasures. The term recension applied to MSS. quotations by ancient writers, and versions of the Greek Testament bearing an affinity to one another in characteristic readings, became a classical word in his hands ; and has continued so. The appellation is not happily chosen. Family, nation, class, or order, would have been more ap propriate ; because recension suggests the idea of revision, which is inapplicable. If it be remem bered, however, that the word denotes nothing more than a certain class of critical documents characterised by distinctive peculiarities in com mon, it matters little what designation be em ployed.
The sentiments of Griesbach, like those of Ben gel, developed and enlarged with time. Hence
we must not look for exactly the same theory in his different publications. In his Dissertatio Critica de codicibus quatuor Evangeliorum Origenianis, pars prima, published in 1771, he says, that there are perhaps three or four recensions into which all the codices of the N.T. might be divided (0,Msczela Academica, edited by Gabler, p. 239, vol. i.) In the preface to his first edition of the Greek Testament (1777) he states that at the beginning of the 3d century there were two recensions of the gospels, the Alexandrian and the Western.
In the prolegomena to the first volume of his second edition of the Greek Testament, the ma tured sentiments of this able critic are best set forth. There he illustrates the Alexandrian recen sion, the Western, and the Constantinopolitan. The first two are the more ancient, belonging to the time in which the two collections of the N. T. writings, the dayyeXtop and 6 were made. The Alexandrian was an actual recension arising at the time when the two portions in ques tion were put together ; the Western was simply the accidental result of carelessness and arbitrary procedure on the part of transcribers and others in the MSS. current before the chrbaroNos or epistles were collected. The Constantinopolitan arose from the intermingling of the other two, and, like the Western, is no proper recension, but was rather the result of a condition of the documents brought about by the negligence and caprice of copyists or meddling critics. The Alexandrian is presented by the MSS. C L 33, 102, 106, and by B in the last chapters of the four gospels ; by the Memphitic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Philoxenian versions ; and the quotations of Clemens Alexandrinus, Ori gen, Eusebius, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and Isidore of Pelusium. The Western accords with the codices Graeco-Latini, with the Ante Hieronymian Latin version, and with B in the gospel of St. Matthew ; also with i. 13, 69, 118, 124, 131, 157 ; with the Thebaic and Jerusalem Syriac versions, and the quotations of Irenxus in Latin, Cyprian, Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augus tine. The third or Constantinopolitan is shown in A E F G H S of the gospels, the Moscow codices of the Pauline epistles, the Gothic and Slavonic versions ; and in the quotations of such fathers as lived during the 4th, 5th, and 6th cen turies in Greece, Asia Minor, and the neighbouring provinces.