to ask who these ancient authorities are, and how it comes about that there are alternative

readings. These questions we will endeavour to answer.

Before the invention of printing, every book, of necessity, was written by hand. This

manuscript work, however, faithfully undertaken, becomes, in time, partly automatic, and

slight errors are bound to occur. When we remember that, in some cases, the scribe was a

poor, badly educated believer, making his copy in secret, under the shadow of possible

apprehension and martyrdom, we can understand how the possibilities of error in

transcription were multiplied. Yet, if the reader will but think for a moment, none of

these errors need prevent him from understanding what was the original text. Suppose

this present article were given to twenty different persons, of all grades of education and

appreciation of the subject-matter to copy. It is possible that not one copy would be

absolutely free from some typographical fault; yet, though every copy should contain

errors, a careful examination of them all would enable any judicious reader to discover

the original text, for it is certain that where, say, five would make the same mistake, the

other fifteen would correct it.

We shall find that the mistakes of transcription fall into several clearly defined groups.

Sometimes it is but a matter of spelling, that leaves the sense unimpaired. Often it is the

result of two lines of the manuscript ending with the same word. The eye of the copyist

falls upon the second line instead of the first, so that the whole line is omitted; or the

process may be reversed, and the whole line repeated. Again, this is not a serious matter,

and is easily corrected by comparison with other manuscripts.

Errors that are more difficult to deal with are those which are not mechanical, as are

the above instances, but mental. Something goes on in the copyist's mind which we

cannot know, and in a momentary lapse a wrong word is inserted. A very common form

of this error is the alteration of a passage to one that is remembered in another part of the

book. For example, the words of Luke 6: 48 in the A.V. are identical with those of the

parallel passage in Matt. 7: 25: "For it was founded upon a rock." The reader of any

critical Greek testament, however, will observe that Tischendorf and Tragelles found

sufficient evidence to warrant the reading, "Because it had been well builded", which is

the reading adopted by the R.V. There is every likelihood that those MSS of Luke vi 48

that agree with Matt. 7: 25 were written by a scribe whose mind retained the earlier

reading although his eye read what the R.V. has in the text. The most serious of all

modifications, of course, is intentional alteration, but the fact that copies of the Scriptures

were multiplied all over the earth, and were connected with differing schools of thought,

provides an effective check in nearly all cases. These remarks may at first appear rather

disconcerting, but we hasten to assure the reader that they are not so. Dr. Hort, whose

learning and labours give him a high place in matters of textual criticism, says of the

various readings of the N.T., that by far the greatest part of these are concerned merely

with differences in order and other unimportant variations, and that "the amount of what

can in any sense be called substantial variation . . . . . can hardly form more than a

thousandth part of the entire text".