not be the exact text which was before the translators when they made that English version. Despite all these difficulties, "the value of versions is still considerable; and in the matter of determining the authenticity of whole clauses or sentences inserted or omitted by Greek manuscripts, it is sometimes very great" (Mitchell, "Critical Handbook," 114).

In the work of carrying Christianity throughout the Roman Empire the apostles and early missionaries needed no other language than Greek, so long as they kept to the great highways of commerce and civilization. Along the western part of the Mediterranean, on both the northern and southern shores, the native language was Latin; at the eastern end it was Aramaic; in the Valley of the Nile it was Egyptian or Coptic; and in each petty region there was also a local dialect peculiar to that region. But the great language of intercommunication, read and spoken by educated men all around the Mediterranean, was Greek. In this language a merchant of Corinth would write to his correspondent in Antioch; and a strolling teacher from Alexandria would lecture to his classes in Rome. This is the reason why the gospel story, first in its oral form and later in its written form, was put into Greek.

The Greek of the New Testament is evidently not the same as that of the classics or of contemporaneous books modelled after the classics; and the cause of the difference has been a subject of much debate among

scholars. Formerly it was supposed that New Testament Greek was a special dialect arising from the influence of the Septuagint, or from the fact that its writers were men whose native tongue was Aramaic. But recently an increased knowledge of the Greek in common use during the first century has shown that New Testament Greek is practically the ordinary Greek of that day. The evangelists and apostles wrote as they preached, in the language familiar to every one who used Greek at that time; and, although it sometimes seemed novel, this was mainly because they had a new message to proclaim, and the language must be shaped to express it.

Despite the advantage of having the gospels in Greek, the need of having them in other languages would soon be felt. The majority of Christians were of lowly position, and could read or understand no other than their native tongue. Until the Gospels were translated into that tongue, they could become acquainted with them only at second hand. It might be too much to ask for a translation into a local dialect; but very soon demand would be made for translations into Latin and Aramaic and Coptic. Just when the demand was made in each case and how it was met, we do not know. Undoubtedly it was made as early as the second century; and probably, since the New Testament books had not yet been formed into one collection, the translations were of separate books in

different places and at different times. A A very brief account of what we know about these versions is enough to show their bearing upon the problems of textual criticism.

In the Latin language the most famous version, which after various revisions became the authorized text of the Roman Catholic Church and still holds that place to-day, is the Vulgate a name given to it in later days because then it was the version in common use. It was made by the great scholar, Jerome, who completed that part of it which contains the gospels about A. D. 383. Long before that time, however, the gospels had been translated into Latin; and one reason why Jerome was asked to undertake his version was because the text in different manuscripts was not the same. There are still existing, mostly as fragments, more than forty manuscripts giving us these earlier texts—one of which is the Latin portion of Codex D— and we can see how much they differ. Scholars are not yet agreed as to whether all these manuscripts are based upon one original version, and the differences arose through errors and alterations by copyists; or whether there were several versions differing from one another originally. And in case the theory of one version be adopted, it is disputed where that version was made—in Northern Africa, in Italy, or elsewhere. The name Old Latin or Itala has been given to the earlier version or versions by way of distinction from

the Vulgate. The text of this Old Latin is of the type already described as the Western, and represented by Codex D. In fact it was the prevalence of this type of text in early Latin manuscripts and in quotations by Latin Fathers, that led scholars to call it the Western, because they supposed it to be peculiar to Latin-speaking lands. A fuller knowledge has shown that it prevailed generally in the second and third centuries.

In the Aramaic language, which was spoken throughout the great land of Syria, there were many distinct dialects, among them that of Palestine; but the one in use at Edessa was the most literary, and is usually meant when we speak of the Syriac. The chief Syriac version is called the Peshitta, i. e., the "simple," and holds a place in the Syrian language similar to that which the Vulgate holds in the Latin. It used to be extolled as "the Queen of Versions," and tradition declared that it was made by the evangelist Mark. Its supposed antiquity and the fact that its text was of the Syrian type, were arguments used in proof that the Syrian or Antiochian text, which our Authorized Version follows, is the original text. To-day it is generally agreed that the Peshitta is not much, if at all, earlier, than the fifth century, and that, like the Vulgate, it is a revision of earlier versions. Only two manuscripts of these earlier versions have been discovered, viz., the Curetonian Syriac, so called from Dr. Cureton who discovered and edited it some fifty years ago, and the

Lewis Syriac or Sinaitic Syriac, a palimpsest discovered in 1892 by Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson on Mt. Sinai in the same convent where Tischendorf discovered Codex . The latter seems to be the earlier of the two versions; but their relation to one another and to the Diatessaron of Tatian is a vexed problem.

The text of these earlier Syriac versions is Western. In the Lewis manuscript certain readings in the first chapter of Matthew have attracted attention and been much quoted in recent discussions about the virgin birth of Christ. The readings are: "Joseph, to whom was espoused the virgin Mary, begat Jesus who is called the Christ" (verse 16), "She shall bear thee a son" (verse 21)," She bare him a son, and he called His name Jesus" (verse 25). These readings would tend to support the theory that the original text of Matthew represented Joseph as the father of Jesus; yet in the same manuscript we find unchanged the other statements of this chapter about the supernatural conception of Jesus. How shall we explain it? The translator or some later copyist may have deliberately altered the text, in which case the question arises, Were his alterations in the direction of orthodoxy or the reverse?-Did he seek to make the birth of Christ more divine or more human? But the theory of deliberate alteration fails to explain why the changes were not more thorough-going. Why should evident contradictions be left? Possibly the writer did not consider them to be contradictions, in which case the statement