OUR BIBLE AND THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS By Sir Frederic Kenyon
When Sir Frederic Kenyon published his well-known book on the history of the Bible in 1895, it became at once a standard authority. But so much has been discovered about the Biblical texts that his fourth edition (Eyre and Spottis- woode, los. 6d.) is virtually a new book. The early Biblical papyri which Sir Frederic has been active in editing were unknown in 1895 ; since then they have revolutionised textual studies not only in relation to the controversy between the Western, Byzantine, and other types of text, but also by show- ing that the familiar Greek of the New Testament was emphatically not Attic Greek. Moreover, we know much more about the chief Greek uncial MSS. and about the non-Hellenic versions of the Bible. All this knowledge, old and new, is gathered up and set forth most lucidly in this excellent book. Sir Frederic Kenyon illustrates the value of textual criticism by citing a number of the more notable variants between MSS. of different types. He ends his book as before with a chapter on the Vulgate in the middle ages and with two admirable chapters on the English MS. and printed Bible,. His rejoinder to Cardinal Gasquet's theory that there was no Wycliffite Bible is polite but crushing, and his comparison f the Authorised and Revised Versions—the one for reading and the other for study---has been confirmed by time. There are twenty-eight photographs of MSS.
Previous page
