Tischendorf on the New Testament Text [pp. 604-618]

TISCHENDORF ON THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXT.
Greek originals of the Evangelists and Apostles were, probably
without exception, composed on papyrus, the already mnentioned
oldest kind of paper. It was probably owing to the destructibI)ility of this vegetable material that these originals disappeared
early from circulation; at least no Christian scholar, even if we
go back to the second century, tells us that he has seen such a
one: later assertions on this point lack credibility. Nevertheless, we can still picture to ourselves the original writings of the
-ewv Testament, by examining the papyrus rolls which hatve
been brought to light from the old tombs of Egypt, and from the
houses of Herculaneumn buried in the first Christian century.
But there is no doubt that the originals of the New Testament
were many times copied during the second half of the first century, the first fifty years of their existence, and that they were
spread abroad by means of these copies.
I remiark here that the Pauline Epistles were the earliest
-amongi the books of the New Testament, and that the first composed of these-the two Epistles to the Thessalonians-wero
written twenty years after Christ's ascension; while the probably last written book of the New Testament-the Gospel of
John-may have been composed toward the end of the first
.century.
Thus many copies of the writings of the New Testament had,
without doubt, been already made in the first century. On
such copies, which, after the middle of the second century, containedcl several or indeed most of the books of the New Testa-nent, the Christian Church was in great measure dependent
for faith and worship, although the authority of a living or verbal tradition had early arisen and made itself felt.
Let us now inquire what has become of these important
transcriptions, and we mieet with a surprisirg, even wonderful fact: that we possess to-day some of these, the writing of which dates back into the fourth century. Just at that
time, in the fourth century, the more durable parchment came
to be preferred to papyrus, and of such writings on parchment,
prepared in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, we still possess
more than twenty, mostly, to be sure, of but small volume. To
these are to be added over thirty of the seventh, eighth, and
ninth centuries. I called the fact of this possession surprising
and wonderful. Is it not so? To what risks of destruction
[Oct.