A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. II.Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose
Religion
A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. II.
Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose
Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
To these thirty-eight codices must be added extracts from the Latin
Fathers, of which the Latin interpreter of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian,
Augustine, Priscillian, and Primasius are the most important for the
history of the version. For Tertullian, considerable labour will be saved
to the student by the work of H. Roensch (Das neue Testament Tertullians,
Leipzig, 1871), who has arranged in order his quotations, direct and
indirect; for Cyprian, Hartel’s excellent edition (vol. iii in the Vienna
Corpus) is marred by his having edited the Testimonia, which consist of
direct quotations from the Bible, arranged under various heads, from a
late and inferior MS. (_see_ O. L. Bibl. Texts, ii. p. xliii). The works
of Priscillian, who suffered death as a heretic in 385, have been quite
lately discovered and edited by Dr. G. Schepss (vol. xviii in the Vienna
Corpus); the quotations in them bear a strong resemblance to those of the
so-called “Speculum” of St. Augustine (_m_), and are mainly from the
Epistles. Primasius, bishop of Hadrumetum (d. 558?), was the author _inter
alia_ of a commentary on the Apocalypse; in this he incorporated nearly
the entire text of that book, and as this text agrees almost word for word
with the citations found in Cyprian’s Testimonia, we thus obtain a
complete African text of a book in which so many MSS. are defective. In
addition to this he quoted largely from another Latin translation of the
Apocalypse—that of the Donatist Ticonius—whose version seems to be a good
specimen of a later text approximating more closely to the Vulgate; these
have also been published quite recently by Professor Haussleiter (Zahn’s
Forschungen, iv. Teil, Leipzig, 1891).
When we come to arrange these authorities for the Latin version before
Jerome, we find a complicated and difficult task before us; for few of our
MSS. present a consistent type of text. We will confine ourselves
therefore to grouping them in the three great families described by Dr.
Hort (Introd. p. 78), whose division has been accepted by most textual
critics, and to pointing out how here and there even that division must be
accepted with some modification.
The _African_ family is comparatively easy to fix, from the rich store of
biblical quotations found in the African Fathers. Tertullian indeed does
not give us so much help as we should have expected, as he seems to have
largely used a Greek Bible and translated it into Latin himself. Cyprian’s
quotations, however, are valuable, as he apparently confined himself
strictly to the Latin Bible current in his time; he may be taken as the
standard of the early African version; to him we must add, for the
Gospels, the Bobbio MS. (_k_) and the Codex Palatinus (_e_), which,
however, represents a stage somewhat later than _k_; for the Acts, the
Fleury palimpsest (_h_); for the Apocalypse, Primasius and _h_; and a
later and revised stage in the so-called “Speculum” (_m_), and in the
quotations from Ticonius preserved in Primasius.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account