THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS.
The New Testament Documents. By G. Milligan, D.D. (Macmillan and Co. 10s. 6d. net.)—Dr. Milligan has printed the six lectures which he gave at Edinburgh on the Croall Foundation upon the origin and early history of the documents of the New Testament. The general reader or theological student will find in them a full and scholarly and at the same time readable account of the processes by which the original manuscripts first came into being, and of the methods by which they were circulated and finally collected. He will learn all about papyrus rolls and parchment codices, uncial letters and cursive ; the effect upon the text of the habit of dictation; the dangers of confusion and corruption arising from the roll-form in which the papyrus sheets were fastened together; and many other things of the kind. He will find also an excellent resume of the new light thrown on the Greek of the New Testament by comparison with the Greek of common life, as it is now known from the papyrus fragments disinterred from Egyptian dust-heaps. One lecture is devoted to a clear statement of the present position of the Synoptic problem, and another to the Pauline epistles and Apocalypse ; and the whole book is supplied with full references to authorities, so that the reader may pursue his studies upon any point that interests him as far as he has inclination. A dozen plates add much to the interest of the volume. Among them is one of a waxen tablet in the British Museum, covered with still undeciphered shorthand writing, probably of the third century A.D.
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