TNE NEW TESTAMENT.
How stands the case with the New Testa ment? One might suppose its problem would be less complex, less difficult to grapple and master, on account of the abundant material of evidence; but it yields no whit to the other. The so-called critical apparatus is indeed so enormons in extent as to be hard even to name for ready reference. It consists wholly of three kinds of manuscripts: (1-) The Greek text itself ; (2) translations into various other languages; (3) quotations in a multitude of authors. Of these the first might appear to be prepotent, but such is by no means always the case. The manuscripts, very numerous, are rarely of the whole New Testament (only about 167), more often of only some sections thereof, most frequently of the Gospels (1,277), then of Acts and Fallible Epistles (32), then of Acts and Catholic Epistles (25). Many are only stnall fragments, scattered through the centuries (as well as the libraries) from the 4th to the 17th, and a few pieces of papyrus, each containing but a, few verse•s (over 40 in all), may date from the 3d century. In form they are of two grand types: uncials, up to the 9th century, and minuscules from the 10th century on. In general the material is parchment or vellum up to the 13th century and after the 14th paper. Of course the au thority of the eldest is in general by far the weightiest, but not necessanly decisive.
Notation.--The system of naming the manuscripts, introduced by John Jacob Wet stein (1693-1754), .designates the uncials by capital letters (Latin, Greek, Hebrew); the nunuscules by Arabic numerals; it has been most fully developed by F. H. A. Scrivener (1813-91) and by Tischendorf's successor, C. R. Gregory (1846-1917), whose notation supplants Scrivener's. Bnt as new discoveries multiply the manuscripts, the letters become insufficient in number and at best such designations are purely formal and tell nothing at all about the manuscripts themselves. Hence Hermann von Soden has proposed (1902) a wholly new system of co-ordinates sharply defining the manuscript itself. He makes three grand di visions, according to the contents of the man uscript, denoted by (5 (for diatheke, Testa ment), e (for evangehon, Gospel) and a (for gosto/os, Acts—Epistles), the presence or absence of the Apocalypse not affecting the denotation. The second co-ordinate is a num ber naming the century, the numbers 1 to 49 being assigned to the first nine centuries, those from 50 to 99 to thc 10th, the higher numbers to the later centuries, thc third digit denoting the centuries after the 10th (as 4 the 14th) and so on. Owing to further distinctions in cen
turies where the number of manuscripts is very large, especially in the 12th and 13th, the de notation becomes elaborate and somewhat cumbrous, but it tells the utmost possible by a few signs and is extensible to any number of manuscripts likely to be found. However, for the most important and familiar codices, the current Wetstein-Gregory notation re mains preferable. B and D are more man ageable than d 1 and d 5, and E than a 1001.
Text.— Criticism of the New Testament text, the attempt to restore the supposed orig inal, after valuable preliminaries by Mill (1707), in Bentley's Proposals' (1720), in Bengel's