The text printed in this commentary is the Textus Receptus, but that which is commented upon is practically that of Westcott and Hort. Various readings, of any importance, have been carefully noted in the apparatus criticus, with such an indication of the authorities for them as will be sufficient for those who do not aspire to be experts in this department: care has been taken to give the evidence for those readings in which critical editors depart from the received text. It is impossible here to do more than note the MSS. and other authorities which have been cited; information as to their characteristics and value must be sought from such sources as the Prolegomena to Tischendorf’s Novum Testamentum Graecum,
or Scrivener’s Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, or Westcott and Hort’s Introduction, vol. ii. An easier book to begin with is Hammond’s Textual Criticism applied to the New Testament. In Sanday and Headlam’s Com- mentary (pp. Ixiii-lxxiv.), there is a lucid account of the chief sources of evidence for the text of Romans, and of their relations to one another; while B. Weiss, in his great work, Das Neue Testament : Textkritische Untersuchungen und Textherstellung, gives weight to considerations of a kind that more purely “diplomatic” constructors of texts are apt to overlook.
The principal MSS. of Romans are those which also contain the yospels, v7z., RABC. & and B belong to the fourth century, A and C to the fifth. The MSS. next in importance, DEFG, are different from those which are called by the same names in the gospels: they are all Graeco-Latin MSS. D is the Codex Claromontanus which Tischendorf assigns to the sixth century. It wants Romans i. 1-7, 27-30. Tregelles describes it as ‘‘one of the most valuable MSS. extant”. Ε is the Codex Sangermanensis, now at St. Peters- burg. It is probably not older than the ninth or tenth century, and is described by Sanday and Headlam as ‘nothing more than a faulty copy of D”. F is the Codex Augiensis, now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is of the ninth century, and wants Romans i. 1-iii. 19 ἐν τῷ vé[pw]. G is the Codex Boernerianus, now in Dresden, and is a little later than F. It wants Romans i. 1 ἀφωρισμένος . . . i. ὃ πίστεως, and ii. 16 τὰ κρυπτὰ . . . ti. 25 νόµου ής. These four all belong to the type of text which Westcott and Hort call Western. Other uncials of less importance are K, Codex Mosquensis; L, Codex Angelicus; and P, Codex Porphyrianus, all of about the same age, 1.6., the ninth century. Of cursive MSS. those quoted in this work are 17 (the same as 33 in the Gospels, and 13 in Acts), ‘the queen of cursives”; 47, of the eleventh or twelfth century, now in the Bodleian Library; and 67, of the eleventh century, now at Vienna. The marginal corrector of this MS., quoted as 67**, gives many peculiar and ancient readings. The versions referred to are the Latin Vulgate, especially as given in Codex Amiatinus circa 514 Α.Ρ. and Codex Fuldensis, also of sixth century ; the old Latin contained in DEFG (see above); the Syriac versions, one of which (the Peshitto) was ‘“‘certainly current much in its present form early in the fourth century”? (Sanday and Headlam), while the other dates from the sixth: an occasional reference is also made to the Egyptian ver- sions, and to the Armenian: the last was made in the fifth century.