TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. BY JOHN DAVID MICHAELIS, TRANSLATED FROM THE FOURTH EDITION OF THE GERMAN, AND CONSIDERABLY AUGMENTED WITH NOTES, BY HERBERT MARS H, B. D. FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. VOL. I. PART I. CAMBRIDGE, Printed by J. ARCHDEACON Printer to the UNIVERSITY; And fold by J. & J. MERRILL, and W. H. LUNN, in Cambridge; B. WHITE, and R. MARSH, Fleetftreet, T. CADELL, MDCCXCIII. [ENTERED AT STATIONERS HALL.] TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. HE Public is here prefented with the translation of a work, which is held in high estimation in Germany, a country at prefent the moft diftinguished in Europe for theological learning. The first edition, which appeared in 1750, the only one that exifts in an English tranflation, though it met with a favourable reception, is in all refpects inferior to the prefent. The learned labours of our celebrated author, during almost forty years that have elapfed between the publication of the firft and the fourth edition printed in 1788, have not only produced fuch an increase of materials, as to render it at least fix times as voluminous as the former, but have had very material influence on our author's sentiments, with refpect to feveral important points of biblical criticism. In a letter, with which he honoured the tranflator, he calls his firft performance the work of a novice, and in the fhort preface prefixed to the German original of the fourth edition, he expreffes himself in the following modeft and fenfible manner. 'Whenever I • reflect on the year 1750, when the first edition of this Introduction appeared, which I published at that time chiefly as a guide for my academical lectures, and compare it with the more complete editions of 1765, • and 1777, I feel a fatisfaction, and even a degree of aftonishment, at the progrefs of learning in the prefent age and as during the laft ten years in particular the • most rapid advances have been made in literature, the prefent edition of this work, which is a kind of general repofitory, has received a proportional increase. I candidly confefs, not only that my own private knowledge at the time of my firft publication was inferior to what it fhould and might have been, but that the performance a 2 |