t See ntjove. pjt. 44i>, t>W^.
i Comp. Hretsctineider on :jl ' Aldina, Melanth. et Has. minor: mp4fut jtl T(t7fioi quwi et codd. qxiidam Hoeschelii.' The first and last statements are cpiite incorrect.
% 0. Moeschcl quotes amongst the editions used by him fre. quently * liiblia Parisiis impressa a R. Stephano, A 1."».'.5.' From his quotations it would appear that it is in Greek and Latin with notcH. Is there such an eilition?
a Tliis follows from a comjiarison of the scholia and the Notes of Nohilius in the edition of I.'>8$ ; com)>. on :il ' in aliquibus libriH est v0-(* rtv waTfiti ' I s:cod. 263], ' in aliquibus aliis xpi/Mt ' I =3 Loniccnis]. Nobillus quot^-s at least a dozen readings from a and MSS which are not found in HP.
•I Kolde (art. 'Canierarivis' in PRE^ iii. 689) mentions only the (tecond edition (Lipsiie, 16118); the same year is given l)y lloesrhel (inM): but lirusius (1696) and the Caulogue of the British Museum give 1570, 2 vols.
first chapter, and as the code.x is closely reL-ited to 253 and the •Syriae Ilexapla.
Tile source and present place of another MS use<l by Hoe.schel (■Fnignientuin AI.S v.iri:i'lectionisaliciuol capitumescidis Fr. Sylburgii') are unliiiown to the present writer.
From Hoe.schel till Fritzsclie not much was done for the text mil criticism of a book which needed it greatly. We have — Senteniice Jesu Siracidm, Grfe- ct(m texttim ad fidem codirum ct verxionuvi, emen- davit et illustravit, Linde (Gedani, 1795) ; and Liber Jesu Siracidce Greece, Ad fidem codicum et versionum emendatus et perpelna annotntione illns- trtitiis, a C. G. Bretschneider (Ratisbonae, 1S04), xvi. 758 pp.
Br. is not accurate enough, but he has the merit of having called attention to a witness in textual criticism, tlie Florilegitnn of .^ntonius and Maxiinus, neglected by most workers in this field.
Hart's edition must find its place among the MSS (see below).
vi. Thi: Grf.kk Text.— The problem of textual criticism in this book is of exceptional interest. Luther declares in the Preface to his translation (what pains it had taken him to translate this book may be jud^'ed from a comparison with all other coj)ies, Greek, Latin, or German, old or new): ' There have come so many " Kliig/ingc " over this book, that it would be no wonder if it were totally disligured, not to be understood, without any u.se. Like a torn, trampled, and scattered letter, we have gathered it, wiped oH" the dust, and brought it as far as can be seen.' Some idea of this m.ay be gathered bj'the F.ngli.sh reader from a glance at the margins of KV. There are about eighty mar- ginal notes ; fifty times it is stated that a verse or ijart of a veise or even a series of verses is omitted by many or by the best or the oldest authorities (cf. P- "*• ^') ; once only (17'") ' this line is added by the best authorities'; at other places we read, 'The Greek text here is probably corrui)!.' 'the Greek text is here very confused.' The numbering of verses and even of the chapiters does not agree. The latter is caused by the misplacement of some leaves (Rys.sel says 'two'; and it may have been two, which must have been the inner leaves of a layer, and somewhat more closely written than A and still more tlian l!S') in the coiiy from wliich all the Greek MSS hitherto known have been derived. This fact, (irst i>ointed out by O. F. Fritzsche {Ausleg. 169, 170), who was led to his discovery by a similar observation of H. Sauppe on a Heidelberg MS of Lysiast, would not have been recognized with such certainty but for the Latin and Syriae texts, m lucli have the dillerent order. J Already Nobilius declared the Latin order to be the better, calling attention especially to the reading KaraKXrjpoi'iij.ricroi' ' in noli nullia (libris),' ' quod optime convenit, si conjungatur cum illis qua; in vulg. c. 36' (a reading received into the text by Grabe, but not to be found elsewhere in HP, quoted by Hoeschel from his codex Augustanus ; Camerarius put KaTaK\■qpovtl^L■r}(ra^). Where did the llimian editors get it from? and which is the ' un\is vetustus codex,' which accord- ing to their repeated statement has, like the Com- plutensian, the Latin order? It isnut the cod. 248,
• Toy i,Encyc. [lihl vol. ii. col. 1173) siieaks of the displace- ment of roUs of the »B MS, or possibly of tlie Hebrew JIS from whicli the Gr. translation was ma<le.
( This accident occurs very often in ancient MSS. In the British Mus. there is a German Bible which has Mt 11-5'* after Deuteronomy ; at Gotha there is another with the same mis- placement. On a misplacement in co(L S see Swete. Introd p. 131 ; in a MS of ecclesiastical cjinons see Turner, JThSt ii 2(19 ; in the Church History of Zacharios of Mitylene see the edition of Brook. Hamilton ;"in tlio llouiilicsol Origenon .Icr. see E. Klostemiann (Or. ill. p. xiii). For other examples (Plautus, Mostetlaria, etc.) see Ed. p. 154.
! The strange confusion Melanchthon produced in his edition, by placing the verse xai x«rix>.r,e«*ca<ir« in the middle of i-h. 33 and liauTpi KrfTt.it in the middle of ch. SO, ho« been partially amended in the edition of 1697.