THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
verses of St. Mark's Gospel are a case in point. The conclusion of the Gospel somehow fell into confusion, was torn off, or lost. A rever-
Examples ent scholar, probably in the first half
from the of the second century, wrote in the Gospels, present conclusion, taking his materials from Matthew and Luke. The doxology to the Lord's Prayer in one form of the Matthean text (Matt. v. 13) is another example. The Prayer was soon taken into the corporate worship of Jewish Christians. Designed by Jesus not so much for a specific prayer as to show the framework and perspective of prayer, it needed the ascription to qualify it for liturgical uses. The Christians who made the addition had no thought of doing injury to Christ's authority or tampering with his meaning. They rather supposed that they were asserting his authority and publishing his mind. Consequently, the second of the conditions stated above, a deliberate purpose to alter the text, is wholly lacking. Both conditions therefore being absent, doubt regarding the correctness and propriety of the term in the New-Testament field appears to be well founded, so far as the Gospels are concerned. The phenomena of interpolation, under the pressure of recent discoveries, are converted in large measure into one element of a much larger and more vital problem, namely the part played by Christian interpretation of the person of Christ in bringing the Logia, the saving words of Jesus, into their present text. One example will serve, the text of our Lord's teaching about divorce (Matt, v. 32, xix. 9; Mark x. 9 sqq.; Luke xvi. 18). A strong, if not a decisive, body of scholarly opinion, renders it probable that the permission of divorce on the ground of fornication or adultery was no part of our Lord's teaching. Mark and Luke are silent. Furthermore, this exception to his prohibition of divorce seems to run counter to his methods as an inspirer of constructive morality. Except in this one instance, he deals with the supreme ideals in their perfection of spiritual and moral beauty. Therefore it seems probable that the Matthean text is a molded form of the original logion, and that the change took place as the result of debates between Jewish Christians and Jews over the interpretation of Deut. xxiv. 1. But no scholar would think of applying the word " interpolation " to the process.
The same process goes on in the New-Testament
text outside the Gospels. Harnack and others have
recently affirmed that " things strangled " (Acts
xv. 29) was never a part of the original Lucan text,
but was read in by later Christians.
Further This is problematical. But there is
Examples, little that is problematical regarding the present text of Eph. iii. 5. St. Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians (see Paul). He did not write and could not have written " as it was revealed to his holy apostles." These words show the handiwork of the Paulinist editor of the Pauline letters. It is, however, quite a different affair to say that the editor was an interpolator. Indeed, the use of the term seems to involve a view of the origin and growth of the New-Testament Scriptures which is decisively contradicted by a
large and growing body of facts. It would be, for example, a serious misnomer to call John viii. 53ix. 11 (the woman taken in adultery) an interpolation. That it is no part of the Johannine text is now agreed on all hands. Yet there are strong grounds for believing the story to be a piece of genuine and trustworthy tradition. Some day, when the Churches have recovered their self-possession, this fragment may find itself printed along with other extra-canonical sayings of Jesus as an appendix to the New Testament. Again, John v. 3-4 (the account of the angel stirring the waters) can not justly be called an interpolation. No conscious, deliberate intention to tamper with the text is here in question. The variant is found within a class of phenomena which belong to the history of the conflict between the text and the margin. How natural, how irresistible even the conflict is, may be illustrated by the history of the greatest hymns and their use in the churches (cf. Julian, Hymnology, s.v. " Rock of Ages " or " Nearer, my God, to Thee "). When once a noble hymn has been taken to the heart of the living Church it begins to pay taxes for its right to rule. Similarly, sane historical views of the sacred text help to realize the immense pressure brought to bear on a book like the Bible incessantly employed and appealed to by canonist and theologian, by the preacher and the pastor and the saint, and to prevent wonder at the irrepressible conflict, under certain conditions, between the text and the margin. The case which seems to come nearest to the requirements of rigorous definition is I John vii. 6-8a (the " three heavenly witnesses "). The authority against it is overwhelming, and its entrance into the Greek text is illuminating. Erasmus omitted it in the first edition of his Greek Testament (1516). A great outcry was raised, and Erasmus offered to insert the reading if a single Greek manuscript containing it could be found. One was found, later study of which made probable that its text for I John had been achieved by a translation, at a very late period, out of Latin into Greek. But Erasmus kept his word, and the reading appeared in his second edition. It became a part of the commercial text of the New Testament and passed into the so-called textus receptus of 1633.
Henry S. Nash. Bibliography: The subject is generally dealt with in works on the textual criticism of the N. T., and much of the literature named under Bible Text (ii. 112-113 of this work) contains matter upon it, particularly the works of Copinger and Kenyon named there; works on the general introduction to the N. T. also discuss the subject (see Biblical Introduction). Special mention may be made of B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, N. T in the Original Greek, i. 571 sqq., ii. 325 sqq., New York, 1882; P. Schaff, Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Versions, pp. 183 sqq., 420 sqq., ib. 1883; F. H. A. Scrivener, Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, i. 7-9, ii. 249, 321 sqq., London, 1894; C. A. Briggs, General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture, chap. x„ New [York, 1899; C. R. Gregory, Canon and Text of the N. T., pp. 508 sqq., ib. 1907.
INTERSTITIA: The intervals supposed to elapse, according to Roman Catholic canon law, between the times of a man's receiving the different orders. The principle that there should be such intervals is expressly laid down in the thirteenth canon of