INTRODUCTION, BY CONSTANTINE TISCHENDORF. To place the glorious works which adorn the literature of England and America within reach of the readers of other countries, was the aim of the noble originator of the "Tauchnitz Collection." And in selecting the Word of God as recorded by the Apostles for the thousandth volume of the series, he has chosen the most appropriate crown for such a structure of human genius. As early as the reign of Elizabeth, the English nation possessed an authorised translation, executed by the Bishops under the guidance of Archbishop Parker; and this, half a century later, in the year 1611, was revised at the command of James the First by a body of learned divines, and became the present "Authorised Version." It is the New Testament portion of this version which forms the thousandth volume of the Tauchnitz Collection. Founded as it was on the Greek text at that time accepted by Protestant theologians, and translated with scholarship and conscientious care, this version of the New Testament has deservedly become an object of great reverence, and a truly national treasure to the English Church. The German Church alone possesses in Luther's New Testament a treasure of similar value. But the Greek text of the apostolic writings, since its origin in the first century, has suffered many a mischance at the hands of those who have used and studied it; the mere process of constant copying and recopying alone having given rise to many alterations. The Authorised Version, like Luther's, was made from a Greek text which Erasmus in 1516, and Robert Stephens in 1550, had formed from manuscripts of later date than the tenth century. Whether those manuscripts were thoroughly trustworthy—in other words, whether they exhibited the apostolic original as perfectly as possible-has long been matter of diligent and learned investigation. Since the sixteenth century Greek manuscripts have been discovered of far greater antiquity than those of Erasmus and Stephens; as well as others in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and Gothic, into which languages the sacred text was translated between the second and fourth centuries; while in the works of the Fathers from the second century downwards, many quotations from the New Testament have been found and compared. And the result has been, that while on the one hand scholars have become aware that the text of Erasmus and Stephens was in use in the Byzantine Church long before the tenth century, on the other hand, they have discovered thousands of readings which had escaped the notice of those editors. The question then arose, which reading in each case most correctly represented what the apostles had written? By no means an easy question, since the variations in the documents are very ancient. Jerome notices them, and many were in existence even as early as the fourth century. Scholars are much divided as to the readings which most exactly convey the Word of God, but one thing is agreed upon by the majority of those who understand the subject, namely, that the oldest copies approach the original text more nearly than the later ones. Providence has ordained for the New Testament more sources of the greatest antiquity than are possessed by all the old Greek literature put together. And of these, two manuscripts have for long been especially esteemed by Christian scholars, since, in addition to their great antiquity, they contain very nearly the whole of both the Old and New Testaments. Of these two, one is deposited in the Vatican, and the other in the British Museum. |