ors and heirs of Peter showed any special
solicitude for this prime duty of their office, the preservation of this
precious jewel of their treasure, the New Testament. What they neglected,
had therefore to be recovered by our philologists. Just as those who
wished to study the Peloponnesian war resorted to the manuscripts of
Thucydides, the Christian scholars, to become acquainted with the origins
of Christianity, betook themselves to the manuscripts of the New
Testament. And as the manuscripts of Thucydides vary widely from one
another and in certain passages leave us quite helpless, so do the
manuscripts of the New Testament. Bentley speaks of thirty thousand _variae
lectiones_ in the New Testament; but since his time their number must have
increased fourfold. The manuscripts of the New Testament are more numerous
than those of any classic. Two thousand are known and have been described,
and more yet may lie buried in libraries. Now while this large number of
manuscripts and various readings have given the philologists of the New
Testament greater difficulties than the classical philologist encounters,
still on the other hand the New Testament has the advantage over all
classical texts, in that some of its manuscripts are much older than those
of the majority of classical writers. We have, for instance, no complete
manuscripts of Homer earlier than the thirteenth century, while the oldest
manuscripts of the New Testament descend from the fourth and fifth
centuries. It is frequently said that all these things are of no
importance for the understanding of the New Testament, and that
theologians need not trouble themselves about them. But this is saying too
much. There are _variae lectiones_, which are certainly not without
importance for the facts and the doctrines of Christianity, and in which
the last word belongs not to the theologian, but to the philologist. No
one would say that it makes no difference if Mark xvi. 9-20 is omitted or
not; no one would declare that the authenticity or spuriousness of the
section on the adulteress (John vii. 53-viii. 11) was entirely
indifferent. When we consider what contention there has been over the
seventh verse of the fifth chapter of the first Epistle of John, and how
the entire doctrine of the Trinity has been based on that ("For there are
three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost:
and these three are one"), it will hardly be maintained that the
ma