The Cambridge Paragraph Bible. Edited for the Syndics of the
Uni- versity Press by the Rev. F. H. Scrivener. (Cambridge University Press.)—The object proposed to themselves by,the promoters and the editor of this work has been to supply " a critical edition of the Autho- rised Version" of the Bible, in contemplation, it may be added, of the completion of the revision which is now in progress. It is a curious fact that no such edition has ever appeared. The first edition was hurried through the press. "The printing," says Dr. Scrivener, in his introduction, "so far as the translators superintended it at all, must have been begun and ended within the short period of nine months, which seems wholly inadequate for all they had in hand." To bring our Bible into strict conformity with what is nominally the standard edition would certainly not be desirable. Dr. Scrivener goes on to describe with careful minuteness the principal editions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He does, in fact, everything that could be desired for the text of the Authorised Version, and this is a more considerable labour than most readers would imagine. The second section deals with the "marginal notes," and the third with the use of italic type, as representing additions or changes made by the translators for the purpose of more clearly bringing out the sense of the original. For this use the translators appear to have had certain rule; which, however, they carried out but very imperfectly. Much has been done in this edition to make it more consistent. Punctuation, obviously a matter of the greatest importance, as supplying what is in fact a perpetual commentary, is the subject of another section. A fifth deals with orthography, grammatical peculiarities, &c., and a sixth with the marginal references. Among the Appendices is one of peculiar interest on the "Greek Text adopted by the Translators of the Authorised Version of the New Testament." The prose portions of the Scriptures are arranged in paragraphs, the poetical according to the structure of the verse. The Apocrypha very properly forms part of the volume. The exclusion of these books from the ordinary Bibles is surely a mistake. Ecclesiasticas especially is a book of the greatest value, both literary and theological.
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