Pauline (q.v.), i.e., the Judaizing and anti-Judaizing parties, which does unquestionably appear to have existed; the still living tradition of the apostles; the difficulty of diffusing apostolic writings sent only to particular churches; the absence of criticism; the vacillation in determining the point where the apostolic men ceased; the use, in the worship of God, of the Old Testament, and, in particular churches, of casual Christian writings not now looked upon as canonical: all these causes together operated in hindering, till the middle of the 2d c., a formal collection of New Testament writings of any compass or critical value, though it seems quite clear that they existed separately, and were regarded as the most authoritative records of the new dispensation. The earliest trace of

such a collection (the ten Pauline epistles without the pastoral epistles) appears after the middle of the 2d c., in opposition to that gnostic perversion of Primitive Christianity which had been introduced by Marcion of Pontus. The Muratorian Canon in the West, and the Peshito (q.v.) in the East, both belonging to this period, which has been called the Age of the Apologists,' furnish important evidence in regard to the New Testament canon, for both refer to nearly every book now received as authoritative, the exceptions being, in the former, the Epistle of James, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and 2 Peter; in the latter, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and the Apocalypse. In the close of the 2d, and in the beginning of the 3d c., Irenæus, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Tertullian bear testimony to the recognition of the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the thirteen Pauline epistles, 1 Peter, 1 John, and the Apocalypse, as canonical writings. But they do even more than bear testimony to their recognition-they appeal to antiquity for proof of the authenticity of the books which they used as Christian Scriptures. On this point Tertullian is especially precise, and his most convincing argument on behalf of the surety of the gospels' is, that the very heretics bear witness to them.' They did not, it is admitted, acknowledge the whole of the New Testament canon, but this is explicable on the hypothesis, which is justified by investigation, that the portions rejected were those that seemed alien to their own opinions. Two distinct collections of writings are now noticed-the Instrumentum Evangelicum, containing the four gospels; and the Instrumentum Apostolicum, containing the Acts of the Apostles, with the Pauline and other epistles. Respecting several parts of the New Testament canon, differences of opinion prevailed in early times, nor was the war of criticism closed until the 6th c., for considerable difference of opinion existed in regard to the value of the testimony of the early apologetic authors. Origen doubted the authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews, of the Epistle of James, of Jude, of 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 John; while he was disposed to recognize as canonical certain apocryphal scriptures, such as those of Hermas and Barnabas, which were decidedly rejected by the church. The Apocalypse was treated as a dubious part of the canon

down to he 7th c. The learned and circumspect Father, Eusebius, 4th c., in a passage of his Church History, distinguishes three classes of New Testament Scriptures: 1. Universally received Scriptures (homologoumena), the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the fourteen Pauline epistles, 1 John, 1 Peter, and, with a certain reservation, the Apocalypse of John. 2. Scriptures not universally received, or not received at all. These he calls disputed (antilegomena), and subdivides them into such as were gen erally known and approved by most-viz., the epistles of James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John; and such as were 'spurious' (notha)-viz., the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Institutes of the Apostles, and the Gospel of the Hebrews. 3. Heretical forgeries, such as the gospels of Peter, Thomas, Matthias, which Eusebius pronounces to be altogether absurd and impious.'

The Western Church, more conservative and less critical than the Eastern Church, completed the canon with greater rapidity. Although the eastern Council of Laodicea (360-364), in determining the canon of the New Testament, excluded the Apocalypse, the western synods of Hippo-Regius (393), Carthage (397), the Roman bishop, Innocent I. (beginning of the 5th c.), and the Concilium Romanum under Gelasius I. (494), recognized the entire canon of the New Testament as we find it in the present day. The doubts entertained by individuals respecting some parts of the canon had become exceptional and unimportant at the close of the 7th c. Owing to the want of Greek scholarship, as also, perhaps, to the growing idea of an infallible church papacy, there was no criticism worthy of the name during the middle ages. Doubts, therefore, respecting the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistles of James and Jude were first revived, after a long quietude, at the time of the Reformation. Erasmus denied the apostolic origin of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 2 Peter, and the Apocalypse. Luther ventured to declare the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse apocryphal." Melanchthon, Gerhard, and Chemnitz went in the same direction, and Calvin denied the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But biblical criticism, for reasons both political and ecclesiastical, soon became dormant, and so remained for nearly two centuries, when it was revived by a liberal Rom. Cath, writer, Richard Simon (d. 1712), who first conceived the plan of an historicocritical introduction' to the B.; afterward, the labors of Lowth, Semler, Herder, Griesbach, Michaelis, Eichhorn, and others, gave a new impulse to scriptural exegesis. In Germany we may name among writers on the conservative and orthodox side, the Rom. Catholic divines Jahn and Hug, with the Protestant writers Hengstenberg, Häver-. nick, Guerike, Delitzsch, and Caspari: on the other side, Berthold, De Wette, Credner, Reuss; and since the publication of the Life of Jesus by Strauss, the New Tübingen school,' with F. Baur (q.v.) at its head, has questioned the authenticity and apostolical antiquity of all the New Testa

ment scriptures, except the four larger Epistles of Paul-to the Romans, the, Corinthians (1 and 2), and the Galatians. The critical labors of Ewald (especially on the Old Testament), of Hilgenfeld, and of Keim have exerted important influence.

But, as might have been expected, the effects of the strife could not always remain confined to Germany. They have been felt more or less over all Protestant countries, England, Holland, and America; and even Rom. Catholic France, which has no theology to contend for, shows the influence of the new movement. Renan (q.v.), who in his Vie de Jésus excited a vivid sensation, has followed up his first work by a series of volumes on the early history of Christianity. In England, during the 18th c., several valuable apologetic works were published, such as Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History, and Paley's Hora Paulina. In the early part of the 19th c. appeared Horne's Introduction to the Study of the Scriptures, frequently reprinted. Since then, Tregelles, Davidson, Westcott, and numerous other scholars, have entered the field; and it is not too much to affirm, that, among the more earnest British and American theologians, there exists at this moment a keener spirit of impartial inquiry, as regards the foundations of biblical criticism, than Britain has ever previously witnessed. The practical tendencies of the Anglo-Saxon mind long restrained it from interfering in what seemed to be a mere maze of unprofitable speculation; but now that its deep and vital relations to the groundwork of men's actual and possible beliefs have begun to be felt, these very practical tendencies are manifestly asserting themselves, and we may confidently anticipate a large measure of attention on the part both of clergy and of laity to this most important branch of knowledge.

EDITIONS OF THE BIBLE: HISTORY OF THE TEXT.-AS both the Old and the New Testament were written in ancient languages, and transcribed in times when philological criticism hardly existed, the examination and comparison of various editions, with a view to obtain the greatest possible purity of text, forms an important part of theological study.

Text of the Old Testament.-The first duty of an impartial critic of this question is to lay aside both of the extreme and untenable opinions regarding the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, viz: 1st, that it has come down to us in an absolutely faultless condition, by miraculous preservation; and 2d, that it has been wilfully and unscrupulously falsified by the Jews. That there are erroneous readings, nobody doubts. The real task devolving on a student of this branch of theological science is to explain these on natural principles, and, by collating the various recensions, to endeavor to obtain a pure text, or as close an approximation as possible. The following is a reasonably complete classification of the causes of errors. 1. Errors arising from imperfect sight or occasional inattentiveness; as when transcribers substituted one letter for another similar in appearance, transposed letters, words,

Ard sentences, and omitted the same; of which there are various examples. 2. Errors arising from imperfect hearing, of which there are not many examples. 3. Errors arising from defective memory; as when a transcriber fancied that he knew certain words, phrases, or clauses, on account of their having occurred before; of these there are occasional examples. 4. Errors arising from defective judgment; as when words were wrongly divided, or abbreviations wrongly resolved; also from the custodes linearum (i.e., the letters which filled up the occasional vacant space at the end of lines) and marginal remarks being sometimes incorporated with the text. These not unfrequently happen. 5. Errors arising from a well-meant desire on the part of the transcriber to explain or amend a text, really or apparently obscure. In this respect the Samaritans are greatly to blame. A very knotty point is, the condition of the text before and at the close of the canon. The opinion of Eichhorn, De Wette, and others is, that while the books circulated singly in a sphere of uncertain authority, they were greatly corrupted; in support of which considerable evidence is adduced, but still the probabilities are, on the whole, against such a supposition, and it is probably better to suppose that the conflicting accounts of the same events which are to be met with, especially in the historical books, arise not from the carelessness or corruptions of copyists, but rather from the original authors or compilers having consulted differe documents.

From recent investigations, it appears clear that the strict dogmatic Jews of Palestine and Babylon were generally far more careful in their preservation of sacred records than the Samaritans and the Alexandrines, the latter of whom were remarkable for their free, philosophizing, nontextual spirit. In the schools of learning in Jerusalem at the time of Christ, presided over by Hillel, who had come from Babylon, and Shammai, and in those which flourished elsewhere in Palestine, after the fall of the metropolis, for instance, at Lydda, Caesarea, Tiberias, etc., as also in the academies of Sora, Pumpeditha, and Nahardea, near the Euphrates, at a later period, the text of the Old Testament was defined with great care, first by the Talmudists, who seem to have adhered very closely to the ancient text, and after the completion of the Talmud at the close of the 5th c. by the Masorites. See MASSORAH. This care was at first bestowed only on the consonants of the Hebrew text. The Masoretic vowel system, which sprang from that already existing among the Syrians and Arabians, was developed from the 7th to the 10th c. at Tiberias. By the 11th c. it appears to have been completed, while the Spanish rabbis of the next c. seem ignorant of its then recent origin. (For proof of this, see Davidson's Text of the Old Testament Considered, 1856.) After the 11th c., the Masoretic text, with its perfected system of vowels and accents, became the standard author ity among Jewish scholars. The comparative values of the different readings in the various MSS. had by that

time been carefully determined, and the chief business of copyists, henceforth, was to make faithful transcripts.

The earliest printed editions of the Hebrew B. bear a close resemblance to the MSS. They are without titles at the commencement, have appendices, are printed on parchment with broad margin, and large ill-shaped type, the initial letters being commonly ornamented either with wood-cut engravings or by the pen. These letters, however, are often absent. With vowels, the editions in question are very imperfectly supplied. Separate parts of the B. were first printed.' The Psalms appeared in 1477, probably at Bologna; the Pentateuch at Bologna, 1482; the Prophets, 1487; the Hagiographa, 1487. To most of these were subjoined the rabbinical commentary of Kimchi. The whole of the Old Testament appeared in small folio at Soncino, 1488, and seems to have been followed by the edition of Brescia (1494), used by Luther in his translation of the Old Testament. The Biblia Polyglotta Complutensia (1514-17), the Biblia Rabbinica of Bom berg, edited by Rabbi Jacob-Ben-Chajim (Venice, 1525-6), adopted in most of the subsequent editions-the Antwerp Biblia Polyglotta (8 vols., 1569-72), also the editions by Hutterus (Hamburg, 1587. and frequently reprinted), Buxtorf (Basel, 1611), and especially that by Jos. Athias (Amsterdam, 1661-67)—all these are celebrated, and have supplied the basis of later editions by Simon, Hahn, Theile, and others. In the 17th c., a vehement controversy arose regarding the integrity of the Hebrew text; one party maintained that the Masoretic text was greatly corrupted, and contrasted it unfavorably with that of the Samaritan Pentateuch. The chief advocates of this view were Vossius, Whiston, Morin, and Capellus. On the other hand, Buxtorf, Arnold Bootius, Wasmuth, and others, defended the absolute purity of the Masoretic text, even to the inspiration of the vowel-points, which Buxtorf, in the preface to his grandfather's Tiberius, gravely asserts to have been first invented by Ezra. This controversy had at least one good result. It led to an extensive examination of Hebrew MSS. in the next c. Kennicott collated 630, 258 of which throughout, the rest in part; De Rossi, 751, of which all but 17 were collated for the first time. Many still remain uncollated. The result of this elaborate investigation has been to convince scholars that the Masoretic text is substantially correct All known codices confirm it; the oldest of the professedly literal versions, as well as the Targums of the time of Christ, furnish similar satisfactory evidence; and when we consider the bibliolatrous tendencies of the Jews after their return from exile, whatever may have been the case before, it may be safely concluded that the text of the Old Testament is now much in the same condition as at the close of the canon.

At first, there were no intervening spaces between He. brew words; afterwards, small intervals appear to have been occasionally allowed, With the introduction of the square character, the use of small interstices to separate words became general. The Talmud prescribes how