of the descendants of Israel, of the house of David. The king of Jerusalem made peace with Buktnusr; and the ambassador, having secured the obedience of the chiefs, returned. When he reached Tibrea, a city in Syria, near Damascus, he heard that the Israelites had revolted. They had complained to their king at Jerusalem, saying, 'Why did you not fight? You have deceived us.' They had taken possession of the government, put the king to death, and prepared for war."

Your correspondent suggests, that the king who was put to death may have been Gedaliah. Allow me to ask whether it may not have been Jehoiakim. We are told, (2 Kings xxiv. 1,) that "In his days Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant three years: then he turned and rebelled against him." May not this have been the rebellion mentioned by the Oriental historian, and attributed in Sacred History to Jehoiakim, simply as being the head of the nation? Again, Jeremiah (xxii. 18, 19,) prophesied concerning Jehoiakim, "They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah! my brother! or Ah! sister! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah! lord! or, Ah! his glory! He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem." And (xxxvi. 30,) "His dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost." Now we have no Scriptural record whatever of the particulars of the death of Jehoiakim; but the prophecy of Jeremiah would in all probability be literally fulfilled, if he were put to death like the Jewish prince mentioned by the Mahometan writer, by his own subjects. J. B. L.

Leigh, March 28th, 1835.

GREEK TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

MY DEAR SIR,-As I have taken upon myself to speak for the authorized version and its origin, no act of mine respecting it ought to be done in a corner; I therefore request you to admit the following note, which has been sent to each of the bishops :

"MY LORD,-In the British Magazine of January last, Mr. Oxlee professes to have there demonstrated what all previous opposers of Stephanus had taken for granted-viz., that he could have no MSS. for the formation of the widely differing texts of all his editions, but those that he took to furnish opposing readings to his folio.

I was bound to examine this pretended proof, and in doing this, in the March Number of the Magazine, it was necessary for me to give nearly a summary of the arguments which I had urged in vindicating The Early Parisian Greek Press,' and consequently the received text and the authorized version. I offer, then, no apology for sending a copy of that paper to your lordship, as one of the heads of a church which is thus boldly accused of commanding that, 'what is known and admitted by all to be forgeries and les,' should be read constantly in her public service as the word of God'; and this, not merely by those who have gone out from us, but, alas! where her foes are they of her own household.

"I am, &c." As I see Mr. Oxlee has not confined himself, in his second letter, to chastising me for my "manner," but has renewed his slanders of Stephanus, I may be obliged to trouble you with some brief notices of Yours, faithfully, FRANCIS HUYSHE.

them.

HEAVENLY WITNESSES.

SIR,-In sitting down to make a few brief remarks on the criticisms of Dr. Wiseman, as introduced to the notice of your readers by Mr. Huyshe, I find it difficult, as usual, to detach from the other questions that which more immediately relates to the text of the Heavenly Witnesses. The assurance, that the glory of modern criticism consists in taking internal testimony, and in reducing the external to recensions or families, as Bengel calls them, I shall dispatch in a very few words. The internal evidence, as it is commonly called, of the goodness or genuineness of any reading of the sacred text, except it be adequately supported by the external evidence, I hold to be absolutely nothing of itself. By external evidence, I mean, of course, the Greek MSS., the ancient versions, and the comments of the Greek fathers on the readings of the text. Unless an appeal can be made to such vouchers, not only interpolations and insertions, but transpositions and omissions might abound in every chapter of the New Testa ment, without the chance of being detected. Take, for instance, the context of the Heavenly Witnesses. Throw out both the seventh and the eighth verses, connect the sixth with the ninth, and, then, let any one shew me, if he can, from the internal evidence alone, any defect in the argument.

The assertion, that two or three copies of Greek manuscript are often deemed sufficient for readings substituted for those of the received text, is not correct. Such readings are never adopted on the bare authority of two or three MSS. and in defiance of the majority, but on the conjoint authorities of the ancient versions and the fathers; from which it may be clearly proved, that at one time, though not now, the majority of the best MSS. must have contained the proposed readings. It does not follow that we are always to approve of this method of editing the Greek text; but I cannot allow it to pass for a fact, that readings are thus adopted in preference to the received ones, at the mere pleasure and caprice of the editor, and without any regard to higher considerations.

The critical principle laid down by Bishop Pearson, that the agree ment of the Greek MSS. is sufficient to determine the reading of the Greek text, is a very just and undeniable principle; no matter whether it may have been always acted upon or not. The church, indeed, has shewn herself infallible neither in the preservation, nor in the interpretation of the sacred scriptures. The correct truth, however, and the verbal accuracy of the written word depend entirely on the tradition of the church; and the existing tradition of the church is nothing else than the external evidence, the actual state of the MSS., whether of the original or of the more ancient translations. If Wetsten, then, or any other modern critic should affirm, that sometimes a reading, not to be found in any one of our present Greek MSS., nor yet fully supported by the traditional evidence of the fathers, and the more ancient versions, ought to be preferred and inserted, instead of the received one, he is not to be listened to for a moment. It is always allowable to choose where there is variety, VOL. VII.-May, 1835.

4 A

but never to alter and forge when there is nothing to suit the taste. Though it should even seem morally certain that the true reading of a passage had wholly disappeared from the MSS., and was retained only in the writings of the fathers, or in some of the more ancient versions, I should still consider it presumptuous in any editor to admit such a reading into the text, when unsupported by manuscript authority. If the existing Greek MSS., in any particular part, have become universally corrupt, all that we can do, either at present or in future, is to prevent them from becoming still further corrupted, either from wantonness or carelessness. But what, let me ask, has this principle of criticism to do either with the suspected honesty of Robert Stephens, or with the contested passage of the Heavenly Witnesses? Does your worthy correspondent seriously mean to contend that Robert Stephens acted up to this sound principle of criticism in admitting the disputed text on the authority either of the majority or of the more valuable portion of his Greek MSS.? If the claim should be conceded, why then, on the very same grounds, the modern editors are perfectly justified in rejecting it, seeing that it is supported neither by the majority nor the choice few of these MSS. The just and loud complaint against the interpolation is, that it can be vindicated on no principle of criticism, neither by the authority of the many, nor of the choicest part of the existing Greek MSS., nor yet by the testimony of the fathers, nor by the interpretation of the ancient versions, nor by any kind of traditional evidence or authority whatsoever, that can be brought to bear on the question.

I must now betake myself to the proofs of Dr. Wiseman that the littora littoribus contraria ever preserved the words of the apostle unmutilated, that is, I suppose, the words of the disputed text. It were much to be wished that your correspondent had favoured us with one or two of those incontrovertible proofs. The Magazine to which a reference is made is not likely to be familiar to, nor in the hands of, many of your readers. It should appear, however, from the statements afforded, that Dr. Wiseman believes in the existence of an African recension, and argues that the testimonies in favour of a various reading have not an individual force, independent of the recension or family to which they belong, and that a reading must be decided, not by the number of distinct authorities, but by the weight of the recension which contains it; moreover, that Dr. Wiseman, by his discovery of the Santa Croce MS., has produced a new addition to the combined evidence of the African writers in favour of the disputed verse, as having existed in the recension of the African church; that the first Latin translation was really made in Africa, and consequently the African text, being preserved pure by the writers of that church, ascends to a higher antiquity, not only than the Italian, but than any Greek MS. now in existence.

Before I make a single remark on any of the foregoing positions, I beg to premise a few words on the question of families or recensions. Now, it is very conceivable that in a region where Christian churches were flourishing and increasing under the same form of discipline, and copies of the Scriptures were thus necessarily multiplied, there would

consequently be generated a family likeness in all the copies verbally transcribed, and the greatest number of such copies would possess no more weight and authority than the smallest number. So, on the other hand, in countries where the churches were being reduced to a few, and a smaller number of copies sufficed, the authority of the surviving few would be equal to that of many, but yet not of the whole family or recension, because, if more copies had survived, more discrepancies probably would have been discovered; nor is a whole race or family to be adjudged and determined from the exhibition alone of two or three faces. In his Prolegomena to the Four Gospels, Dr. Schultz has distributed the Greek MSS. into two families, the Alexandrine and the Constantinopolitan, and by way of illustration has exhibited a specimen of each from the fifth chapter of St. Mark, containing about thirty examples. But, on comparing with this specimen the text of the Codex Alexandrinus, I find, that it contains just as many readings of the one family as it does of the other. The old Syriac version, too, assigned by Dr. Schultz to the Constantinopolitan recension, contains in this very chapter not less than twelve decided readings of the Alexandrine, and only four of the Constantinopolitan family. The Philoxenian version, indeed, has nine readings of the Constantinopolitan family, but yet it contains seven of the Alexandrine, together with one or two more readings which belong to neither family. These and similar results of the trouble which I have occasionally taken to inform myself on this material point, serve to convince me that, in deciding on the merits of any reading of the sacred text, a very little stress ought to be laid on the supposed distinction of the families, and that the testimonies produced ought not only to be weighed, but also numbered in the account.

The opinion that the first Latin version was made not in Italy but in Africa, and there preserved in its pristine purity, is doubtless a grand discovery in modern criticism. The interesting correspondence between Jerome and Augustine, relative to the translation of the Scriptures, and written at the close of the fourth century, plainly demonstrates that neither of those thus eminent fathers could have been aware of so important a fact. In one of his epistles, Augustine declares that the Latin text of the Scriptures, in use in the African churches, was so various and discrepant in the different copies as scarcely to be endurable, and so suspected of being corrupt that every body hesitated either to allege it or to prove anything from it, for fear it should be found quite otherwise in the Greek. In another epistle, he expresses his anxious desire for Jerome's Latin translation of the Septuagint, in order that he might be freed from the so very great ignorance and unskilfulness of the Latin translators, no matter who they might have been, that had previously attempted to do it. He thanks him, moreover, for his new Latin translation of the Gospel, because it was free from fault, and wherever it differed from the one in use could be defended from the original Greek. These testimonies of Augustine do not tell much either for the authority or the integrity of the African recension in the age in which he flourished, and what was generally and notoriously corrupt in the fourth or fifth, can

scarcely be expected to exist very pure now, in the nineteenth century. But Augustine was no SOLOMON, (! ED.) and that, perhaps, will be thought to account for his strange ignorance of the whole matter.

How Dr. Wiseman may have prosecuted his argument I pretend not to know. Does he profess to have discovered any peculiar marks or signs of the African recension, so as thereby to be able to ascertain whether an old Latin MS. has been originally copied in Africa, and not in Ireland, or in Italy, or in Spain? and does he undertake to shew, from these sure and certain signs, that the MS. in his possession is one of that favoured and special number? If he has actually attempted all this, I should feel highly gratified to be informed in your Magazine how the experiment has been conducted. The assertion that the African recension is older than any Greek MS. now existing, if intended as an argument for the genuineness of the disputed text, is a most absurd and silly allegation. The Latin version, used in the African churches before the time of Jerome, may have existed long before the date of any Greek MS. now in existence, but it does not therefore follow that the Santa Croce MS., supposed to derive its descent from this African recension, is consequently of greater antiquity than any Greek MS. at present existing. If remarks of this sort are to be allowed to pass for arguments, the opponents of the verse may just as well allege that the Syriac version, which never had the passage, is much older than any Latin MS. of the African recension. Nay, they may proceed at once to finish the controversy by truly alleging, that the Greek original of the New Testament is doubtless older than the oldest translation.

The reference to a Greek MS. at Venice demands a few words. It appears, then, that in certain marginal annotations in a certain Bible, which once belonged to Angelo Rocca, secretary to the congregation for the correction of the Vulgate, there is to be found inserted a statement to this effect, that the words of the disputed passage, commonly called the text of the Heavenly Witnesses, are by all means to be considered a genuine part of the sacred text; that they are cited by Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Cyril, Cyprian, and Jerome, and are read in a very old Greek MS. preserved at Venice. But, before we can attach any importance to this marginal statement, we require some further assurance that the MS. referred to was really what it is declared to have been, an ancient and not a modern MS., that it contained the words in the text and not in the margin only, and that it furnished the whole of the passage and not merely a part of it. If what is affirmed of the testimony of the Greek MS. may be judged of from what is affirmed of the testimonies of the fathers, it must have been all a mistake from beginning to end. The passage, so far from being quoted against the heretics by the long list of fathers here enumerated, is quoted by none of them. The Benedictine editor, Baluze, by referring the reader for satisfaction to Father Simon, clearly indicates what he himself thought of its supposed citation in St. Cyprian. Then, as to the rest, I believe I may safely challenge your correspondent to name any one of their genuine tracts in which the passage under dispute is either cited or alluded to. Dr. Wiseman ought to