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

1874.] TISCHENDORF ON TIHE NEW TESTAME-NT TEXT.
issued in the sixteenth century, has anything but a guarantee of
its genuineness in its aoreelnint witlh so many of thene later manuseripts.
As regards the tloman Catholic cnhurch, I rem,arkl that the
Papal official edition of the Latin Bible, at thle end of the sixteenth century, as it expressly asserts, did not even keep conscientiously to the work of Jerome of the end of tlhe fourth century*; still less did it go back be7yond Jeromie to thie earliest
Latin documents.
Shall w-e now, in this state of the question, relmain quiet, in
spite of the con ciousne,s that ini our tx t of tihe New Testament we follow only ecclesiastical customn,only ulsage,even though
it be ancient usage? No, I do not thi,nk so. Even an error of
a thousand years is still an error, and lhas no right to rank
above the truth. Tertullian's manlaly utterance, " Christ did not
call bimnself Usage but the Truth," applies here, although an
error of a hundred years, such as existed at the tims of the great
African, is much easier to correct than one of a thousand. As
opposed to the P,O6mishl traditional church, Protestanismi has
its true Pallad(iumi in the Scripture; therefore to Protestantism
conspicuously is the genuineness and correctness of the text of
the Scripture of the greatest importance. To strive with all tlhe
means of science for the restoration of the sacred text is one of
the highest duties of Protestantism.
In this conviction I have for thirty-two years past given my
best powers to the solution of just this problem. At the outset
there must be new, thorough studies of the sources. I spent,
therefore, a period of nine years in travels of research. I ex
* That this is so, is placed beyond doubt by the two oldest maniuscripts of the
'-ulgate- the Cod(lex Awlitinus, written ab)out 541l, and tlhe li'ulnc is, of the year
5i{. The first, belonging to the Ie(-lii Library, in Florence, I copied into my
papers in 1843, and from these published it ver&ef'.7 in 1850 the other, personally revi-ed by Biishop Victor, of Capta. Prof. Ernst lianke issued in alMrburg
in 18(t8. In 1853. in a conversation with Pope Greg,ory XVI. about the documnentary reformn of the Bible text, at which time the worthy old man told nme that
he hirnself once suggestecl simil,rt laoors on the IHIe'rew text; hle agreed( entirely
with my principle, which was before hiIn in a printed form, viz.. that the olles
mianuscripts of Jerome must be the first iuthorities for th: restoration of the text
of Jerome, and therefore for that of the Vulgite also. But tihe Clodex Amiatinus
differs fron, th~ Vulg'ate in many hundired(l passages, along w-hich is the celebrated
passage, i. John v., 7 and S8, to which so great a dognimtic significance is attached.
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