When we pass from the volumes of the Expositor's Bible that deal with the Old Testament to those which expound the books of the New Testament we discover less departure from the traditional attitude. And yet a very little knowledge of the enormous amount of research which has been prosecuted during recent years in the fruitful field of primitive Christian literature and its surrounding scenes must convince us that here also was a clamorous call for a fresh treatment of the whole subject. It is much to have the books taken one by one and treated each as a distinct entity; in this way we are led on to perceive that richer harmony of the various apostolic notes which means so much more than the unison of the older methods: First, instead of the familiar treatment of minute phrases commonly known as "text," we have the wider survey and broader handling of the arguments of the books, which to those who have not been accustomed to it appears as a revelation, so that these books become new things to them. Then we have that individual treatment, that temporary isolation of the books, which enables us to understand their limitations as well as the amplitude of their contents. Lastly, we come to see the specific teaching of the several New Testament writers, so that we can no longer confuse the distinctive message of the author of _Hebrews_ with that of St. Paul, or confound the ideas of St. Peter with those of St. James. II.--TEXT AND TRANSLATION The Expositor's Bible is based upon a more accurate text and more exact renderings of the New Testament than were available for previous works of exposition. The discovery of one of the two oldest known manuscripts at the Monastery of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai, in the middle of the nineteenth century, is only one, though perhaps the greatest, of the steps in advance towards obtaining a correct Greek Testament which have been taken during the last hundred years. The immense labors of Tischendorf in the collation of manuscripts and readings from the Fathers, following the earlier work of Mill, Griesbach and others, but with a much richer mine of materials to draw upon, laid a foundation on which later experts have been laboring with the aim of producing the purest possible text.[34] Westcott and Hort went further in working out a scientific theory with canons of interpretation which at first appeared to sweep the field and claim almost universal assent.[35] More recently, however, it has been felt that these scholars were tempted to rely too much on one or two old manuscripts--chiefly, indeed, on a single manuscript, the Vatican, and to treat too contemptuously the claims of what is known as the "Western Text," represented among other authorities by the great Cambridge MS., the _Codex Bezae_. Accordingly their text cannot be regarded as final.[36] Meanwhile perhaps the soundest working Greek Testament is that edited by Nestlè for the "British and Foreign Bible Society," which strikes the mean of several