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tendency to paraphrase. "Words, clauses, and even whole sentences, were changed, omitted, and inserted with astonishing freedom wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness." * Our editors conclude that early in the second century Western variation had set in; the Apostolic text had its securest refuge at Alexandria, but there underwent another but slighter series of changes (the Alexandrian readings, characterised also by occasional paraphrase, but more by clever harmonistic alteration); while an eclectic text, having its origin at Antioch, perhaps towards the end of the third century, established itself at Constantinople, and thenceforward increasingly prevailed. The persecution under Diocletian in the beginning of the fourth century was accompanied by a vast destruction of MSS.; and when reaction set in under Constantine, it was the Antiochian text which was propagated, and became the standard New Testament of the East.t

We have already hinted at the exceptional position claimed by our editors for N and B. They find and B "to stand alone in their almost complete immunity from distinctive Syrian readings; to stand far above all documents except B in the proportion which the part of its text neither Western nor Alexandrian bears to the rest; and B to stand far above in its apparent freedom from either Western or Alexandrian readings" (with a partial exception in the Pauline Epistles). They conclude, moreover, that the texts of and B represent two lines of transmission from a common original (or probably a collection of exemplars of separate portions), "the date of which cannot be later than the early part of the second century, and may well be earlier"; § but surmise that both were written in the West,

* W. and H. II. 122.
W. and H. 210.

+ W. and H. II. 139, 142. § W. and H. II. 223.

probably at Rome; the ancestry of B being Western, of Alexandrian, in the geographical, not in the textual, sense.

We hoped, if time and space permitted, to illustrate by citation the influence exerted by the readings common to B and upon the text of Drs. Westcott and Hort, and, largely through their text (we may fairly suppose), upon the Revised Version. It must, however, suffice us to say that of twenty noteworthy passages in one of the Gospels, in which our editors vary, with B, from the Received Text, in fourteen cases the text of the Revised Version is with them, while in the remaining six their reading is noted in the margin.

The quod erat faciendum of our editors, in reference to the problem they proposed to themselves, is thus expressed: "The text of this edition, in that larger sense of the word 'text' which includes the margin, rests exclusively on direct ancient authority, and its primary text rests exclusively on direct ancient authority of the highest kind." But still they are not slow to recognise the fact † that there are passages in which no extant document preserves the original reading, and where, consequently, there is legitimate scope for subjective consideration and conjectural emendation. Such a passage is 2 Peter iii. 10. τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ ἔργα ευρεθήσεται, "the works that are therein shall be found." (R. V. 'discovered,' which is ambiguous.) The reading of A, KатaкańσEтat, "shall be burned up," κατακαήσεται, is merely an attempt to rescue the sense. Here Drs. Westcott and Hort conjecture that the original reading was 'punσeral, or one of its compounds.

W. and H. II. 267.

+ W. and H. II. 290. W. and H. II. 279, Ap. 103. We have been inclined to suggest ἐρρήσει[και] οι a related word. Conjectural emendation, So long discredited, has recently attracted some attention in connection with the efforts of Naber in this field. His suggestions seem of very unequal value: ἱστὸν for σίτον (Acts xxvii. 39) is possible; while ὅτι κατέγνωμεν ὅς √y (Gal. ii. 11) is confuted at once by Clem. Hom. xvii. 19.

It would be mere presumption on our part to attempt to pronounce a judicial verdict upon our editors' methods or results, or to predict the position these will hold in the opinion of those most qualified to estimate them. The editors themselves will take that assured place in the front rank of textual critics to which their scholarly and conscientious labour entitles them. We venture to say, however, that their Introduction, while it is "caviare to the general," is, in one respect at least, disappointing to the student of New Testament criticism, by whom alone it will be read. It is a record of processes that are not shown; it is like the enunciations and figures of Euclid without the demonstrations. It is difficult to read page after page dealing with difficulties and dilemmas without one concrete example to show that these are not hypothetical, or with literary characteristics (such as those of the Alexandrian readings) without an illustration to help the understanding or the memory. The lucidity with which Drs. Westcott and Hort can make texts and variants tell their own tale when they please (as in the instances of conflation) prompts a keen regret that they did not make their Introduction twice as long and much more detailed.

The execution of the volume containing the Greek Text leaves nothing to be desired. Print, paper, and arrangement make this probably the most beautiful manual text ever published in England. The quotations from the Old Testament are printed in a fine uncial type, very like that used in some recent classical editions from the Teubner press, the poetical passages in metrical arrangement, which is also adopted for passages presumed to be from Christian poetry (e. g., Eph. v. 14; 1 Tim. iii. 16), and the Lord's Prayer in Matthew.

We wish we could give an equally hearty commendation to the externals of the second volume. The Introduction

would not be an easy book to read under any circumstances; but we cannot imagine why a pale and dazzling type and a thin yellowish paper should have been permitted to render it the most painful modern book to read by gaslight that we ever remember to have encountered.

J. EDWIN ODGERS.

HERBERT SPENCER'S 'DATA OF ETHICS.

TH

HE publication, two years ago, of Mr. Herbert Spencer's Data of Ethics" was an event of real importance in the history of the philosophy of Evolution, and the book at once established its claim to be reckoned with by all who should thenceforth undertake to discuss the grounds and principles of morality. It had been looked forward to, both by Mr. Spencer's own followers and by those who were by no means prepared to subscribe to all the methods and conclusions of his philosophy, with an interest proportionate to the supreme importance of this branch of his work.

To establish the laws of right and wrong on a scientific basis would be to render the greatest service to humanity, and to require this of any philosophical system is to put it to the severest test. The Synthetic Philosophy would have been a column without a capital if it had not culminated in some systematic declaration of the outcome of the principles of Evolution in that which is its highest field, the motives and rules of human conduct. Mr. Spencer was wise, therefore, in deferring the second and third parts of his Sociology till he had given us the essential points of his Principles of Morality.

It was with hope, as well as interest, that we awaited his exposition of these principles. Mr. Spencer enjoys a wellearned reputation for the ingenious disentanglement of many knotty problems, for industrious collection of facts, and for comprehensive and thorough systematisation. His Social Statics exhibited a moral enthusiasm and a compre

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