CNT-05 VARIOUS READINGS.

VARIOUS READINGS. Of course, the earliest printed editions of the New Tes­tament were issued before most of these hidden manuscripts were discovered and compared; and hence con­tained slight errors of copyists, which could only be de­tected when other copies were collected and collated. Since that time, a vast number of such manuscripts have been discovered, and compared, word by word, and letter by letter; and every real discrepancy in the sense, as well as every little error in spelling or copying,—like the failure to dot an i, or cross a t—has been noted and reported, thus making up the vast number of “various readings,” about which skeptics talk,—ninety-nine out of a hundred of which are of no consequence whatever. Obviously if there were but one manuscript of the New Testament in existence there could of course be no vari­ous readings; but the more manuscripts discovered, the more of these “various readings” there will be; and as there are ten times as many manuscripts of the New Tes­tament as of any other ancient book, of course there will be ten times as many “various readings;” and whenever any new reading of importance is discovered, then it is necessary to look through the best ancient manuscripts, and see what is really the true reading of the passage. No existing manuscripts of Greek or Roman classics can compare with those of the New Testament in number, or antiquity and authenticity. Of Herodotus, the oldest and the most important of the classic historians, there are extant about fifteen manuscript copies, most of them written since AD 1450. One or two may date back to the ninth or tenth century. There are still fewer manuscript copies of the writings of Plato. One of the earliest bears date AD 895. And the text of these ancient writers is far less correct than that of the New Testament manuscripts. Take, for example, the Comedies of Terence, who was born at Carthage 195 BC The learned Dr. Bentley asserts, in his reply to Collins (Part I., § 32), that the oldest and best manuscript copy, now in the Vatican Library, has “hun­dreds of errors;” and remarks, “I myself have collated several, and do affirm that I have seen twenty thousand various readings in that little author, not near so big as the New Testament; and am morally sure that if half the number of manuscripts were collated for Terence, with that minuteness which has been used in twice as many for the New Testament, the number of variations would amount to above fifty thousand.” From the hundreds of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament which have been carefully examined, critics have collected perhaps 150,000 various readings; most of which are simple differences in spelling, such as are found in printed books today; as we see by consulting any good dictionary, where we find “traveller” and “trav­eler,” “worshipped” and “worshiped,” “labour” and “la­bor.” Only about 400 of them perceptibly affect the sense; an average of less than one error to a manuscript. And of this 400 only about fifty are of much con­sequence. From the writings of Milton, Bunyan, and Shakspeare, though they are little more than two hun­dred years old, and have been printed, instead of being copied by hand, there could doubtless be culled more various readings than all that have been gathered from the multitudes of different manuscripts of the New Testa­ment that have been examined.

Says a writer in the North American Review, in an article on Prof. Norton’s work on the New Testament, “It seems strange that the text of Shakespeare, which has been in existence less than two hundred and eight years, should be far more uncertain and corrupt than that of the New Testament, now over eighteen centuries old, during nearly fifteen of which it existed only in manuscript. .... With perhaps a dozen or twenty exceptions, the text of every verse in the New Testament may be said to be so far settled by general consent of scholars, that any dis­pute as to its reading must relate rather to the interpreta­tion of the words than to any doubts respecting the words themselves. But in every one of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays there are probably a hundred readings still in dispute, a large portion of which materially affect the meaning of the passages in which they occur.”