New-York tribune., 1891-05-24
RS TEXT AND TIE CANON.

the Jews before the time OF pOSst9SSu
collected volume of Old Testament Scriptures, or that
the early Christians possessed collected volume OF the
RibIe as we now have it, Such was far from being
+he case In the first place, it was not possible TO
circulate these sacred writings generally among the
peope even II they had been collected together in one
volume, which they were not Manuscripts were eA-
pensive and the few that were In existence were kpt
by the officials of the Church to be read TO the people
on stated occasions. And in the second place, there
was strong prejudice both among the Jews and among
the carly Christians In favor Of oral tradition rather
than written records. "The traditions of the elders
had for the dcvout Jew sacred sanction that no mere
rritpp could have The same thing is true OF early
Christianity For long time the oral tradition Oh te
words OF Jesus gave life and strength to the Church
The necessity Importance Of recording tnat traduo
in writing was not recognized, partly because Christians
slrank from cxang any writings to place OF equal
authority with the Hebrew Scriptures and partly be-
cause they did not imagine that the Christian Church
was TO exist for any length OF time The last days
we're near at hand When Christ was to come In glory 10
tudre The world why therefore take the trouble to make
any careful record Of the oral Gospef For ts reason
such writings as were made from time to time were not
ct rst accepted with the that was afterward
attached to them Neither those who wrote them nor
those to whom they were sent or by whom they were
read regarded them as In aly special sense Inspired
There IS not the slightest evdece 10 show for instance
that when Paul wrote his Epistes he understood NM
self to be contributing to an infably inspired BOOK IN
the modern sense Of the term. Such authority as he
believed himself to possess the same in kind as that
possessed by other godly men who preached Christ.
And as we have seen, Luke the Evangelist wrote his
rospel simply to instruct friend to the things per
tanning to the Kingdom of God There were ull-
doubtedly many other Christian writings besides those
that have come down TO us, which we're more or less
circulated in the primitive churches, to none of which
at first any special sancy appears to have been at
tached. Comparatively few Christians ever saw these
writings much less the writings Of the Jewish Script
urcs and the great majority Of them learned all they
knew of Christ from the preaching Of the clergy whose
instruction was based on the oral Gospel And as we
shall see It was not until much later age that the
importance Of gathering together these scattered and
dlscuIsive writings began TO be recognized.
This preference for tradition rather than written
records explains great deal about the text Of the
Scriptures. The common people knew nothing and
cared nothing about the text of these writings and those
In whose keeping they were felt themselves justified
I'm freely revising and amending them. 1t must be
borne in mind that the original autographs OF the Bible
writers do not exist. The most ancient manuscripts
that VIC have written after the lives of the
authors. For many centuries Hebrew was written
without any vowel points which were a comparatively
modern addition. OF this resulted in many mis-
takes on the part Of copylSts, any one can easily
understand by writing ordinary English sentence
without vowels II the word brood" occurred for
instance in such sentence ID might be filed out by
some copyst TO mean bird, board bread"
"brad,' bred" bra!d' ETC.; and it might easily
happen that one Of these erroneous readings
would make excellent sense So we would have two
rival schools of interpreters for sentence, the
"broOd" school, and will say the bird" school, who
would bring into the conflict all the bitterness Of the
"odium theolOglcum.n In jeremiah, tx, 81, the
three Hebrew cOnsonants DIR which is filed out
dabar," meaning death" In HabaklSuk, ill., 5, the
dnha
lcnce" Some copyst inserted the vowels in these two
words on his own authority. "When we know" says
Dr. GLADDEN., Z" that the Bible written In such q
language, and that II not until 600 years after
Christ that the vowel points were written out in FULL
the theory Of the verbal nerrancy OF the text
now have II becomes incredible Unless the men
who supplied the vowel points gifted with super
natural knowledge. they must have made mistakes in
spelling ont some Of these words II the Divine Wisdom
Ind proposed 90 deliver 10 infallible book,
lie would not have had il recorded in language
whose written words consist only Of cons0nants leav-
ing readers thousand years after TO fill in the vowes
by conjecture The very fact that such language
chosen Is the conclusive and unanswerabc evidence
that God never designed TO give niallible book"
Moreover the Jews in the time Of our Lord no
longer spoke Hebrew, but Aramac, and used a Greek
version Of the Old Testament known the Septuagint
And this version differed from the Hebrew version not
only In many places texuay but IN the fact that il
contained the apocryphal books without indicating
that they differed In any respect from the other and
| more ancient books. Our Lord and His apostles
quoted from the septuagint. and IT practically the
only version Of the Old Testament Scriptures known
| 10 the early Church. We have apostolic manu-
scripts Of the New Testament The oldest New Testa-
ment manuscript in existence is probably the Vatican
manuscript 1t Is written in crucial capital letters,
which indicates that 1t is earlier than the tenth cen
tury when the practice Of using small or cursive
letters instead OF capital letters began 10 be adopted
II certainly dates back earlier than the fourth
| century. Most Of the old manuscripts are frag-
nentary and the received text Of English Bibles
is obtained By a careful comparison OF these ancient
! fragments What that means may be Inferred from
Tive fact that the various readings Of these
scripts number nearly 10000. OF all the New
Testament manuscripts extant only twcnty-seven con-
| tain the New Testament entire and OF these no two
| exactly agree
The Vatican manuscript referred 10 Is quarto COW
cred by red morocco, oontsinsng 75D leaves Of line
vellum 1t contains the septuagint translation OF tho