A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. I.Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose
Religion
A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. I.
Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose
Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
proceed regularly down to § 93, with which the second to the Thessalonians
ends. The Epistle to the Hebrews which then follows opens with § 59; the
last section extant (§ 64) begins at Heb. ix. 11, and the manuscript ends
abruptly at καθα ver. 14. It plainly appears, then, that the sections of
the Codex Vaticanus must have been copied from some yet older document, in
which the Epistle to the Hebrews preceded that to the Ephesians. It will
be found hereafter (vol. ii) that in the Thebaic version the Epistle to
the Hebrews preceded that to the Galatians, instead of following it, as
here. For a list of the more modern divisions in the Epistles, see the
Table given below. The Vatican sections of the Gospels have also been
discovered by Tregelles in one other copy, the palimpsest Codex Zacynthius
of St. Luke (Ξ), which he published in 1861.
2. Hardly less ancient, and indeed ascribed by some to Tatian the
Harmonist, the disciple of Justin Martyr, is the division of the Gospels
into larger chapters or κεφάλαια _majora_(64). It may be noticed that in
none of the four Gospels does the first chapter stand at its commencement.
In St. Matthew chapter A begins at chap. ii. verse 1, and has for its
title περὶ τῶν μάγων: in St. Mark at chap. i. ver. 23 περὶ τοῧ
δαιμονιζομένου: in St. Luke at chap. ii. ver. 1 περὶ τῆς ἀπογραφῆς: in St.
John at chap. ii. ver. 1 περὶ τοῦ ἐν Κανᾶ γάμου. Mill accounts for this
circumstance by supposing that in the first copies the titles at the head
of each Gospel were reserved till last for more splendid illumination, and
were thus eventually forgotten (Proleg. N. T. § 355); Griesbach holds,
that the general inscriptions of each Gospel, Κατὰ Ματθαῖον, Κατὰ Μάρκον,
&c., were regarded as the special titles of the first chapters also. On
either supposition, however, it would be hard to explain how what was
really the second chapter came to be _numbered_ as the first; and it is
worth notice that the same arrangement takes place in the κεφάλαια (though
these are of a later date) of all the other books of the New Testament
except the Acts, 2 Corinth., Ephes., 1 Thess., Hebrews, James, 1 and 2
Peter, 1 John, and the Apocalypse: e.g. the first chapter of the Epistle
to the Romans opens ch. i. ver. 18 Πρῶτον μετὰ τὸ προοίμιον, περὶ κρίσεως
τῆς κατὰ ἐθνῶν τῶν οὐ φυλασσόντων τὰ φυσικά. But the fact is that this
arrangement, strange as it may seem, is conformable to the practice of the
times when these divisions were finally settled. Both in the Institutes
and in the Digest of Justinian the first paragraph is always cited as pr.
(i.e. _principium_, προοίμιον, _Preface_), and what we should regard as
the second paragraph is numbered as the first, and so on throughout the
whole work(65).
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