IL Hebrew Manuscripts.— Certain parts of the Hebrew Bible,— Daniel ii, 4b-vii, 28, and Ezra iv, 8-vi, 18, together with vii, 12-26,— are not in Hebrew, but in Aramaic. These Biblical Aramaic portions, in the la age that the exiled Jews adopted during their Babylonian captivity (ac. 586-536), are here treated con jointly with the Hebrew text into which they have been received. We shall briefly sum up the age, number and worth of the Hebrew man' uscripts of the Bible.
1°. criticism divides the He brew text of the Bible into the Masoretic and pre-Masoretic.
The Masoretic text is that of our complete Hebrew manuscripts. It represents the v aso rah. This authoritative textual tradition was begun in the 1st centurya.c ; was fixed in its consonantal readings during the Talmudic pe riod (A.n. 300-500) ; and received the vowel points about the 8th century of our era. The pre-Masoretic text includes chiefly the readings that are not witnessed to by Masorah. The ear liest manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, and probably the oldest extant Biblical manuscript, is the Nash papyrus. There are four frag ments, which, when pieced together, give 24 lines of a pre-Masoretic text of the 10 com mandments and of the shentd (Exod. xx, 2, 17; Deut. v, 6-19, and vi, 4-5). The writing is without vowels, and seems paleographically to belong to not later than the 2d century. An other witness to the pre-Masoretic text is the Samaritan Pentateuch, which is probably pre exilic in origin. The earliest Samaritan manor script extant is that of Nablus, once rated very ancient and now assigned to the 12th or the 13th century. The newly-discovered Hebrew 'Bede siasticus,> represented by fragmentary manu scripts of the 10th or 11th century, preserves parts of the pre-Masoretic text of a book until recently thought to have been written in Hel lenistic.
All other Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible are Masoretic, and belong to the 10th century or later. At most 9 or 10 are earlier than the 12th century. The earliest are Codex Pe tropolitanus, dated A.D. 916; the Saint Peters burg Bible, dated A.D. 1009; and Oriental, 4445, British Museum, which Ginsburg assigns to A.D. 820-850.
2°. Kenaicott Gen eralis in Vetus Testamentum Hebrai cum,) 1780), collated 16 Samaritan and 638 Masoretic manuscripts. De Ross; (( \Tarim Lectiones,> 1784), brought the number of Maso retie manuscripts up to 1,375. No one has since surpassed this critical work of De Rossi on the Masoretic text. Some 2,000 Masoretic manu scripts gathered in the Crimea by Firkpwitsch, await critical study in the Imperial Library of Petrograd. Consult Strack, 'Die biblischen and massaretischen ten zu Tschufut Kale) (In Zeits fair lush. Theol. and Kirche, 1875).
3°. This rich store of some 3,375 manuscripts promises no very important critical results. For they all depend on an archetype of the 2d century A.D.; and are singularly alike in accuracy of reproduction. The Masoretes were most detailed in their painstaking efforts to hand down the text of this archetype. The Scribes counted words and consonants of each book; noted the middle words and middle consonants; retained pecul iarities of script,— such as broken letters, in versions, consonants that were too small or too large,. dots out of place, etc. All these oddities were 'handed down as God intended, and re ceived mystical interpretations. Here is an in stance. In Genesis ii, 4, behibbdre' °when they were the letter h is unduly small. The rabbis handed down this peculiarity as God inspired; translated the word, ((In the letter It he created them)); and then disputed what that meant. Hence die importance of manuscripts of the early versions of the Old Testament, so as to reach a pre-Masoretic •text.
Bibliography.— Kraft and Deutsch, (Die handsehriftl. hebraischen Werke der k. k. Hof bibliothek> (1857) ;'Strack and Harkavy, (Cat alog der hebr. Bibelhandschriften der kaiser lichen Bibliothek>. (1875); Schiller-Szinessy, of the Hebrew Manuscripts) (pre served in the University Library, 1876) Assemani, (Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vatican Codices (1756) ; Mai, (Appendix to Aissemani) (1831) ; Neubauer, (Facsimiles of Hebrew Manuscripts) in the Bodleian Library (1886), and (Catalogue of the Hebrew Manu scripts) in the • Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford (1886).
III. Greek Manuscripts.— Textual critics divide Greek manuscripts of the Bible into umiak and minuscules. Uncial manuscripts are written in large disconnected letters that vary in force so as to indicate the time and place of provenance. Words are not separated; accents and punctuation marks are not used; no great :variety of script is admitted; ligatures are em ployed for the most ordinary words; paragraphs are marked off by small lacunas. The deca dence of elegant uncial writing begins in the 6th century; twists and turns are given to cer tain letters. In the 76 century manuscripts still greater freedom of flourish is allowed the scribe; accents and breathings are introduced, and the script leans to the right. By the 10th century the writing in Biblical manuscripts be gins 'to be more or less cursive; these manu scripts are called minuscules. The letters are now small, connected and written with a run sting hand. Cursive writing holds sway in Bib lical manuscripts until the 16th century. In A D. 1514, the Greek New Testament was for the )'list time printed.