CHAPTER V - ON THE EARLY PRINTED, AND LATER CRITICAL EDITIONS OF THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT

Summary

IT would be quite foreign to our present design, to attempt to notice all the editions of the New Testament in Greek which have appeared in the course of the last three centuries and a half, nor would a volume suffice for such a labour. We will limit our attention, therefore, to those early editions which have contributed to form our commonly received text, and to such others of more recent date as not only exhibit a revised text, but contain an accession of fresh critical materials for its more complete emendation.

Since the Latin Bible of 1452 was the first production of the new-born printing-press (see p. 262), and the Jews had published the Hebrew Bible in 1488, we must impute it to the general ignorance of Greek among divines in Western Europe, that although the two songs Magnificat and Benedictus (Luke i.) were annexed to a Greek Psalter which appeared at Venice in 1486, and the first six chapters of St John's Gospel were published at Venice by Aldus Manutius in 1504, and John vi. 1- 14 at Tubingen in 1514, the first printed edition of the whole N. T. in the original is that contained in

THE COMPLUTENSIAN POLYGLOTT (6 Vol. folio), the munificent design of Francis Ximenes de Cisneros [1437—1517] Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, and Kegent of Castile (1506—17).