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and at the same time exemplify the abbreviations frequent in Greek manuscripts of the 12th and 13th centuries. Our specimen comprises the ten first verses of the first chapter of Saint John's Gospel: the abbreviations, though very numerous, being uniformly the same, do not interpose any material difficulty to the easy perusal of the manuscript. Wetstein, though he has admitted it into his catalogue, has made use of it only in the eighteenth chapter of Saint John's Gospel; Michaelis has classed it among the uncollated manuscripts of the New Testament. It is to be hoped that some learned member of the University of Oxford will publish a collation of the various readings which may be found in this manuscript.

XX. The limits assigned to this work forbid any further detail respecting the other manuscripts of the New Testament. Referring the reader therefore to the elaborate volumes of Michaelis, who has given a catalogue raisonné of two hundred and ninety-two manuscripts, to which his annotator Bishop Marsh has added one hundred and seventy-seven, we proceed briefly to notice two collations of manuscripts, which in the seventeenth century produced a warm contest between biblical critics of different denominations.

1. In 1673, Pierre Poussines (Petrus Possinus), a learned Jesuit, published3 extracts from twenty-two manuscripts, which, he said, were in the library of Cardinal Barberini at Rome, and had been collated by order of Pope Urban VIII., by John Matthæus Caryophilus. Dr. Mill inserted these extracts among his various readings; but as it was not known for a long time what had become of the Barberini manuscripts, and as the readings of the Barberini collation are for the most part in favour of the Latin Vulgate version, Wetstein, Semler, and other Protestant divines, accused Poussines of a literary fraud. Of this, however, he was acquitted by Isaac Vossius, who found the manuscript of Caryophilus in the Barberini Library; and

1 See Wetstein's N. T. Proleg. p. 58. Bishop Marsh's Michaelis, vol. ii. part i. p. 258. De Murr's Memorabilia Bibliothecæ Norimb. part ii. pp. 100-131. where the Codex Ebnerianus is minutely described and illustrated with thirteen plates of illuminations, &c. which are very curious in an antiquarian point of view. Our engraving is copied from one of De Murr's fac-similes.

Michaelis, vol. ii. part i. pp. 185–361. part ii. pp. 649-835. Professor Beck, in his Monogrammata Hermeneutices Librorum Novi Fœderis (part i. pp. 42-100) has given a catalogue of all the manuscripts (394 in number) which are certainly known to have been collated, exclusive of Lectionaria Euchologia, or prayer books of the Greek church, and Menologia or Martyrologies. In pp. 91–93. he has specified, by numbers referring to his own catalogue, what manuscripts are written in uncial letters; what contain the entire New Testament, and how many contain the greater part, or particular books of the New Testament. It seems to be precisely that sort of catalogue which Michaelis recommends biblical students to make, in order that they may be enabled (when consulting Mill or Wetstein) to judge of the proportion of manuscripts which are in favour of a reading to those which decide against it. The total number of manuscripts collated by Griesbach for his edition of the New Testament, was three hundred and fifty-five. He has given a list of them in his Prolegomena, tom. i. pp. ci.-cxxvi. and also critical accounts of the most important manuscripts in the two volumes of his Symbols Critica.

3 At the end of his Catena Patrum Græcorum in Marcum. Poussines prefixed to these extracts the title of Collationes Græci Contextus omnium Librorum Novi Testamenti juxta editionem Antverpiensem regiam, cum xxii. Antiquis Codicibus Manuscriptis. Ez Bibliotheca Barberini.

the imputation against the veracity of that eminent Greek scholar has been completely destroyed by M. Birch, a learned Danish divine, who recognised in the Vatican Library six of the manuscripts from which Caryophilus had made extracts.i

2. Another Jesuit, John Louis De la Cerda, inserted in his Adversaria Sacra, which appeared at Lyons in 1696, a collation of sixteen manuscripts (eight of which were borrowed from the library of the king of Spain) which had been made by Pedro Faxardo, Marquis of Velez. From these manuscripts, the marquis inserted various readings in his copy of the Greek Testament, but without specifying what manuscripts in particular, or even how many in general, were in favour of each quoted reading. The remarkable agreement between the Velesian readings and those of the Vulgate excited the suspicions of Mariana (who communicated them to De la Cerda) that Velez had made use only of interpolated manuscripts, that had been corrected agreeably to the Latin Vulgate, subsequently to the council of Florence. However this may be, the collation of Velez will never be of any utility in the criticism of the New Testament, unless the identical manuscripts, which he made use of, should hereafter be discovered in any Spanish library. But this discovery must be considered as hopeless after the laborious and careful researches made by Bishop Marsh, relative to the collation of Velez, who (he has proved to demonstration), did NOT collate one single Greek or Latin manuscript, but took his various lections from Robert Stephen's edition of the Latin Vulgate, published at Paris in 1540: that the object which the marquis had in view, in framing this collection of readings, was to support, not the Vulgate in general, but the text of this edition in particular, wherever it varied from the text of Stephen's Greek Testament printed in 1550; and that with this view he translated into Greek the readings of the former, which varied from the latter, except where Stephen's Greek margin supplied him with the readings which he wanted, where he had only to transcribe, and not to translate.2

1 Michaelis, vol. ii. part i. pp. 212-216. part ii. pp. 666, 667. Birch, Quatuor Evangelia, Prolegom. p. 36. Ejusdem, Variæ Lectiones ad Text. iv. Evangel. Proleg. p. xlii. Hafniæ, 1801, 8vo.

2 Michaelis, vol. ii. part i. pp. 351-354. part ii. pp. 824, 825. Mr. (now Bishop) Marsh's Letters to Archdeacon Travis, p. 67, and the Appendix to that work, (pp. 253-344.) in which a minute detail of the Velesian readings is given, as also in Christian Benedict Michaelis's Tractatio Critica de Variis Lectionibus Novi Testamenti, §§ 87-89. (pp. 96-101.) 4to. Halæ Magdeburgica, 1749.

CHAPTER III.

ON THE EDITIONS OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT.

SECTION I.

A CRITICAL NOTICE OF THE PRINCIPAL EDITIONS OF THE

HEBREW BIBLE.

BISHOP WALTON,1 Carpzov, and particularly Le Long, have treated at great length on the various editions of the Hebrew Scriptures. These have been divided by De Rossi and others into Masoretic and Non-Masoretic editions, a distinction, the utility of which is not perceived. In the present section, Dr. Masch's improved edition of Le Long's Bibliotheca Sacra3 has been chiefly followed. According to that eminent bibliographer, the various impressions the Hebrew Bible may be divided into the four following classes, viz.

i. Editiones Principes, or those first printed.

ü. Editions, whose text has been literally adopted in subsequent impressions.

iii. Editions, whose text is accompanied with rabbinical commen

taries.

iv. Polyglotts, or editions of the Bible with versions in several languages.

v. Editions, which are furnished with critical apparatus.

i. Editiones Principes.

1. Psalterium Hebraicum, cum commentario Kimchii. Anno 237. (1477) 4to.

The first printed Hebrew book. It is of extreme rarity, and is printed with a Square Hebrew type, approaching that of the German Jews. The text is without points, except in the four first psalms, which are clumsily pointed. The commentary of Rabbi Kimchi is subjoined to each verse of the text in the rabbinical character, and is much more complete than in the subsequent editions, as it contains all those passages which were afterwards omitted, as being hostile to Christianity. 2. Biblia Hebraica, cum punctis. Soncino, 1488, folio.

The first edition of the entire Hebrew Bible ever printed. It is at present of such extreme rarity, that only nine copies of it are known to be in existence. One of these is in the library of Exeter College, Oxford. At the end of the Pentateuch there is a long Hebrew subscription, indicating the name of the editor (Abraham Ben Chajim,) the place where it was printed, and the date of the edition. This very scarce volume consists, according to Masch, of 373 (but Brunet says 380) folios, printed with points and accents, and also with signatures and catchwords. The initial letters of each book are larger than the others, and are ornamented. Dr. Kennicott states, that there are not fewer than twelve thousand verbal

1 Prolegom. cap. iv. De Bibliorum Editionibus præcipuis. 2 Critica Sacra, pars i. cap. 9. pp. 387-428.

3 Bibliotheca Sacra, post. cl. cl. V. V. Jacobi Le Long et C. F. Boerneri iteratas Quras ordine disposita, emendata, suppleta, continuata ab Andrea Gottlieb Masch. Hale, 4to. 1778-85-90. 4 vols. with Supplement. The account of Hebrew editions is in the first volume, pp. 1–186. 331-424. De Bure's Bibliographie Instructive, tom. i. (Paris 1763,) and Brunet's Manuel du Libraire, et de l'Amateur de Livres, (4 vols. 8vo. Paris 1820. 3d edit.) have also been consulted occasionally. 15

VOL. II.

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