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Untitled Article
vastly more improbable . This disquisition concludes with a strange and hardly serious detail of the supposed concurrence of preceding editors of the New Testament , in the . basis o £ the hypothesis . This concurrence the author deduces from the authority which they ascribe to the existing Latin versions ; not to his own supposed original , ( which he admits to be lost , for he gives up that part of Hardouin's dream which sees it in the Vulgate , ) but to versions obviously formed from the Greek . That a version , say even of
the eighth century , formed , we will suppose with care , from MSS . then probably very ancient , should often be considered of as much , perhaps more , weight than an older MS . of the original language , say of the sixth , which may be a mere transcript by an ignorant hand , is by no means an irrational conclusion . The former may bring the testimony of a faithful witness on an examination of documents now lost , but which were very likely of more value and antiquity than those which remain to us ; and that testimony besides is often free from the suspicion that tricks have been played with it for party
purposes , which we know to have been the case with the Greek text after the disputes between contending sects had arisen . From these tricks a version might have a better chance of escaping . But what has this to do with any admission or assumption of the theory of a previously existing , but now lost , Latin original , from which the text of these Greek MSS . was formed ? And to what more would the argument drawn from the Latinizing of old Greek MSS . amount , supposing the fact to be clear , than to prove this sort of reliance on the part of their writers on . the evidence of old versions in
doubtful cases ? It amounts to nothing more , unless , indeed , it could be shewn , that there were in fact no such versions in existence anterior to the date of those Greek MSS . At any rate , the Latinizing of early Greek MSS would necessarily prove only this , that both they and the Latin versions draw their authority from spine common original ; and it may be added , that this agreement of ancient Greek MSS . with versions , is not peculiar to those in the Latin language , but exists in a similar way with regard to those in other tongues , such as the Syriac and the Coptic .
In the sixth disquisition the author makes an attempt in which one can hardly suppose he means to place any : reliance , and which , if he does , throws more discredit on Jiis judgment than any other portion of his hypothesis * He endeavours to support hts theory by forcing it to elucidate the system of the most eminent foreign biblical critics as to the different families of recensiones of MSS . For this purpose , he relics on Griesbach ' s description pf certain elapses or recensiones ( we might better say , editions ) of MSS . as exhibiting " textura toto suo habitu , universoque colore diversum . " This
he chooses to twist into an expression of that sort of difference which two independent translations from a given original would exhibit . Here , he argues , is a proof of a copunon l # tin original , or at least of a Latin version more ancient than the present various Greek texts , which are , he contends , separate qnd cfotinet versions . Tfciere is much that is instructive , much that is , pt all events , fyighly interesting , in the Pateoromaiea , as opening new topics
of important inquiry ; but tjie author can haycUy suppose that such speculations as those which we have last adverted to , would either redound to hi * personal credit for judgment , or propitiate public attention to tte graver arguments in favour of hi ? hypothesis . In reality , tye circumstance of there being evefl in Jerome ' s time many distinct , Latin versions , and substantially only one Greek text , seems # qjsive against the notion that the latter is , the jresult of translation . For if so , why should ' it not be found existing ina&
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1827, page 98, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1793/page/18/
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