A Companion to the Creek Testament and the English Version.
By Philip Schaff, D.D. (Macmillan.)—Dr. Schaff's volume contains an
account, as complete as could be desired, of what may be called the
circumstances of the New Testament and the English Version. In the first chapter he deals with the "Language of the New Testa- ment," speaking generally of the modification of Greek, as it is represented by classical literature, which is found in it, and of the peculiarities of the various authors. Chapter II. speaks of the manuscripts, and those which follow of " Ancient Versions," "Patristic Quotations," and "Textual Criticism," these being suc- ceeded in the sixth chapter by the "History of the Printed Text." It is almost needless to say that here Dr. Schaff is very far from being in accord with Dean Burgon. To him the ".Coder Sinaiticas " is a "precious document providentially preserved." We should be scarcely surprised to hear that the Dean considers it to be a work of the Evil One. The veneration which Dean B argon feels, though he scarcely avows it, for the Textus Receptus, is "a pious superstition which, though gradually undermined during the present century, still lingers, and will die very reluctantly." "Chapter VII. treats of the Authorised Version, and chapter VIII. of the Revised. Of course Dr. Schaff, who was President of the American Company of Revisers, gives us special information about their proceedings. An Appendix furnishes an interesting document by which the American Baptists adopt the Revised Version. They are the first ecclesiastical body that has done so.—Along with this may be mentioned The Authorised Edition of the English Bible (1611) ; its Subsequent Reprints and Modern Representations, by F. H. A. Scrivener, MA. (Cambridge University Press.)—Most of it has appeared before in the author's introduction to the Cambridge Paragraph Bible, but it well deserves a separate form.
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