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Is, first to set forth a summary of the materials now available, and then to indicate the drift of criticism with regard to the results obtained from them.

2. The materials available for ascertaining the true text of the NT (and, in their measure, of all other ancient works of literature) fall into three classes: (1) Manu-scripts, or copies of the NT in the original Greek; (2) Versions, or ancient translations of it into other languages, which were themselves, of course, originally derived from very early Greek MSS, now lost; (3) Quotations in ancient writers, which show what readings these writers found in the copies accessible to them. Of these three classes it will be necessary to treat separately in the first instance, and afterwards to combine the results of their testimony.

3. Manuscripts. — It is practically certain that the originals of the NT books were written on rolls of papyrus, that being the material in universal use for literary purposes in the Greek- and Latin-speaking world. Each book would be written separately, and would at first circulate separately; and so long as papyrus continued to be employed, it was impossible to include more than a single Gospel or a group of short Epistles in one volume. Consequently there could be no collected 'New Testament' at this early stage, and no question (so far as the conditions of literary transmission were concerned) of fixing a Canon of books to be included in such a collection. Papyrus is a material (made from the pith of the stem of the Egyptian water-plant of that name) which becomes brittle with age, and quite unable to resist damp; consequently papyrus MSS have almost wholly perished, — from friction and use if they remained above ^ound, from moisture it they were buried beneath it. Only in Middle and Upper Egypt, where the soil is extraordinarily dry, have buried papyri survived. Literary works and business documents have been dug up of late years in Egypt in very large numbers, ranging from about B.C. 500 to A.D. 700, so that the styles of writing in use at the time when the NT books were written are well known to us; but Christianity and its literature are not likely to have penetrated much beyond Lower Egypt in the first two centuries of their existence, and consequently It is perfectly natural that no manuscripts of the NT of this period are now extant. From the latter part of the 3rd cent. a.d. a few small fragments have been recovered, which show that some of the NT books were known in Middle Egypt at that date; but the only papyrus MS as yet discovered which can be said to have substantial textual importance, is one (Oxyrhynchus Pap. 657, 3rd-4th cent.) containing about a third of Hebrews, which is the more valuable because Cod. B is defective in that book. Besides the natural causes just mentioned for the disappearance of early Biblical MSS, It should be remembered that Christian books (espe-cially the official copies in the possession of Churches) were liable to destruction in times of persecution.

4. These conditions, which amply account for the disappearance of the earliest MSS of the NT, were fundamentally altered in the 4th century. The accept-ance of Christianity by the Roman Empire gave a great Impulse to the circulation of the Scriptures; and simul-taneously papyrus began to be superseded by vellum as the predominant literary material. Papyrus con-tinued to be used in Egypt until the 8th cent, for Greek documents, and, to a lesser and decreasing extent, for Greek literature, and for Coptic writings to a still later date; but the best copies of books were henceforth written upon vellum. Vellum had two great advantages: it was much more durable, and (being made up in codex or book-form, instead of rolls) it was possible to include a much greater quantity of matter in a single manu-script. Hence from the 4th cent, it became possible to have complete copies of the NT, or even of the whole Bible; and it is to the 4th cent, that the earliest extant Biblical MSS of any substantial size belong.

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6. Vellum MSS are divided into two classes, according to the style of their writing. From the 4th cent, to the 10th they are written in uncials, i.e. in capital letters, of relatively large size, each being formed separately. In the 9th cent, a new style of writing was introduced, by the adaptation to literary purposes of the ordinary running hand of the day; this, consisting as it did of smaller characters, is called minuscule, and since these smaller letters could be easily linked together Into a running hand, it is also commonly called cursive. In the 9th cent, the uncial and minuscule styles are found co-existing, the former perhaps still predominating; in the 10th the minuscules have decidedly triumphed, and the uncial style dies out. Minuscules continue in use, with progressive modifications of form, until the supersession of manuscripts by print in the 15th cent.; at first always upon vellum, but from the 13th cent, onwards sometimes upon paper.

6. Uncial MSS being, as a class, considerably older than the minuscules, it is natural to expect that the purest and least corrupted texts will be found among them; though it is always necessary to reckon with the possibility that a minuscule MS may be a direct and faithful representative of a MS very much older than itself. Over 160 uncial MSS (including fragments) of the NT or of parts of it are known to exist, of which more than 110 contain the Gospels or some portion of them. In the apparatus criticus of the NT they are indi-cated by the capital letters, first of the Latin alphabet, then of the Greek, and finally of the Hebrew, for which it is now proposed to substitute numerals pre-ceded by 0. Further, since comparatively few MSS contain the whole of the NT, it is found convenient to divide it into four groups: (1) Gospels, (2) Acts and Catholic Epistles, (3) Pauline Epistles, (4) Apocalypse; and each group has its own numeration of MSS. The uncial MSS which contain all of these groups, such as those known as A and C, retain these designations in each group; but when a MS does not contain them all, its letter is given to another MS in those groups which it does not contain. But here again it is now proposed to adopt a simpler system, by which nearly every MS will have one letter or number to itself, and one only.

7. A selection of the most important uncial MSS will now be briefly described, so as to indicate their importance in the textual criticism of the NT:

N. Codex Sinaiticus, originally a complete codex of the Greek Bible. Forty-three leaves of the OT were discovered by Tischendort in the monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai in 1844, and acquired by him for the University Library at Leipzig; while the remainder (156 leaves of the OT, and the entire NT, with the Epistle of Barnabas and part of the 'Shepherd' of Hennas, on 148 leaves) were found by him in the same place in 1859, and eventually secured for the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg. The Bible text is written with four columns to the page (the narrow columns beingasurvival from the papyrus period) ; and palseographera are now generally agreed in referring the MS to the 4tli cent., so that it ia one of the two oldest MSS of the Bible in existence. Tiachendorf attributes the original text of the MS to four acribes, one of whom he believea (though, in the opinion of many, this is very questionable) to have been alao the scribe of the Codex Vaticanus (B); and the correc-tions to six different hands, of whom the most important are N* (about contemporary with the original scribe), and t< '"' and Neb (of the 7th cent.) . The corrections of N "'■ were derived (according to a note affixed to the Book of Esther; from a MS corrected by the martyr Pamphilua, the disciple of Origen and founder of the library of Caesarea. It has been held that N itself waa written at C^aarea, but this cannot be regarded as certain. The character of its text will be considered in § 40 ff. below.

A. Codex AlexandrinzLSy probably written at Alexandria in the 5th cent., and now m the British Museum. From an uncertain, but early, date it belonged to the Patriarchs of Alexandria; it was brought thence by Cyril Lucar in 1621, when he became Patriarch of Conatantinople, and was presented by him to Charles i. in 1627, and ao paased, with the rest of the Royal Library, to the British Museum