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

TIS2HENDORF ON THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXT.
hensive knowledge of the text of the Evangelists and Apostles,
as it was circulated in the whole church in the second, third,
and fourth centuries.
After these considerations it must now be possible to answer
the question: Have we to-day in use the text of the Evangelists
and Apostles, as it was composed by these holy mien in the first
century? With the last words, to be sure, too muchl is implied,
if we would be very guarded; for the positive proofs at our disposal, concerning the earliest text, do not reach back to the
originals themselves, so that we can compare our present editions
of the Bible with the textual documents of the first Christian
centuyv. Yet one thing is undoubted: the text which we can
prove to have been read and circulated in the second century
may, with more righlt, be regarded as the re)res(:ntative of the
ge,,nuine, original text, than that which we can, only establish
from the usage of later centuries.
What text, now, has the church of to-day in use? And
what security have we for its genuineness, its unadulterated
purity?
The most widely circulated German text of the New Testainent is that which came from Luther's hand to the Evangelical
Christianl Church. To this text the authorized version of the
Anglican or Eng'lish Church corresponds almost exactly, as does
that of other Protestant lands, and not less the version of the
Orthodox Church, that is, that which is used in the Church of
Ptussia and in the Greek Orient. Whence is this text derived?
Its groundwork and source is that Greek version which
Erasmus, the great huimanist of the sixteenth century, published
several times after 1516 he miade it out of some few Greek
mnanuscripts of the fifteenth andcl the next precediing centuries,
as the publisher had them at hand in Basle.
Erasmus knew neither the age of the manuscripts, nor
how the older and later manuscripts compared with each
cther. Luther was just as ignorant; it was to him a source of
special satisfaction that hle composed his translation of the New
Testaiment, not after the Latin sources of the Roman Catholic
Church, but according to the Greek, the original language of
the Apostles. But since that time-in the last 350 years-an
entirely cdifferent light has been thrown on this subject. Among
the many Greek manuscripts of the New Testament still extant,
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