visiting his Church at an early date and reducing the recalcitrant Diotrephes to order.
Tue TRxT OF THE EPISTLES.
The accompanying Greek text is the regia editio (1560) of Robert Stephanus (Etienne), commonly known in England as the Textus Receptus.1 Constructed from a few late and inferior MSS. when the science of Textual Criticism was yet unborn, it is far from satisfac- tory; and the principal variants are presented in the critical notes, The long and patient labours of Mill, Bentley, Griesbach, Lachmann. Tregelles, Tischendorf, and Westcott and Hort have cleared away the rubbish of corruption and reduced uncertainty to a minimum; and Dr, Eberhard Nestle’s text (British and Foreign Bible Society) is probably a very close approximation to the sacred autographs. It is “the resultant of a collation” of the monumental recensions of Tischendorf (8th edition, 1869-72), Westcott and Hort (1881), and Bernhard Weiss (2nd edition, 1905). ‘‘ The readings adopted in the text are those in which at least two of these editions agree.”
The materia critica is copious and excellent. 1. Greek MSS. :—
:Ν Codex Sinaiticus, 4th ο. Discovered by Tischendorf in 1844 and 1859 in the monastery of St. Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai. Now at St. Petersburg.
A Codex Alexandrinus, 5th c. Brought from Alexandria to Constantinople by Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople (d. 1638), and sent by him to King Charles I. in 1628 by the hand of Thomas Roe on the return of the latter from a Turkish embassy. Now in the British Museum.
B Codex Vaticanus, 4th ο. In the Vatican Library at Rome.
C Codex Ephraemi, 5th ο. A rescript or palimpsest, written over in 12th c. with a Greek version of thirty-eight
treatises of Ephraemus Syrus. In the National Library’
at Paris. In 1834-35 the librarian Carl Hase had the original writing revived by a chemical process, the applica- of Giobertine tincture. The codex was written, probably in Egypt, in Sth c.; corrected first, probably in Palestine, in 6th ο. (03), then, probably at Constantinople, in 9th c. (09).
K Codex Mosquensis, 9ί1 ο. Brought to Moscow from the monastery of St. Dionysius at Mount Athos.
+See C. R. Gregory’s Pwdegomena to Tischendorf’s Nov. Test. Gr., pp. 212 sqq. VOL. VY. II
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