Bible

Bible. That the volume which we call the Bible is the inspired revelation of God appears from a chain of evidence beginning with very early times. The history of the LXX., the Greek translation of the Old Testament (see below), proves the existence of the Old Testament long before the Christian era; in the second prologue to Ecclesiasticus, about b. c. 230, “the Law and the Prophets and the rest of the Books” are spoken of, which virtually represents our Lord’s own division. (Luke xxiv. 44.) And that these books, then, afterwards, and now existing, came from most primitive ages as the productions of those whose names they bear, may rest upon the testimony of Philo, the Jewish philosopher, in the first half, and Josephus, the Jewish historian, in the second half, of the first century, to the extreme and jealous care with which the Jews preserved their sacred writings—writings described by Josephus in agreement with all later catalogues of the Old Testament.

Of these later catalogues, the first extant is that in the works of Melito, Bishop of Sardis (a. d. 180), another is by Origen, a few years later, and there are eight others in the works of the Fathers, down to St. Augustine in the fifth century. Then came the catalogues set forth by the councils, adding the New Testament; that of Lao-dicea (363), gives all our books except the Revelation of St. John; while that of Carthage (397), adds the Revelation, and inserts also some of the Apocryphal books.

The word Bible, in Greek and Latin Biblia, is a plural noun turned into a singular, being the Greek “books.” St. Chrysostom, in the fourth century, first uses it in his Homilies (the earlier titles of the “Bible” being such as answer to our expressions, “the Holy Scriptures,” or “Sacred Writings”); and through the Latin translation into ancient, middle, and modern English, it passed as the familiar name by which we know the volume of sacred books of our Christian religion. With most of the reformed churches it is divided into the three great sections of the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament.

I. — The Original Hebrew Old Testament. —The thirty-nine books, whose names stand at the beginning of our Bibles, in “The Names and Order of all the Books,” formed, of course, and form now, the Hebrew Bible; but they were differently arranged into the three sections of which our Lord speaks (Luke xxiv. 44), as “the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms;” (1) the Law being the five Books of Moses; (2) the Prophets, not only those books which we call by that name, but the historical ones also, which were placed in this category in consequence of the belief that the prophets were the historians; (3)

the Psalms, the book of that name and the other poetical ones. This is but a rough classification, and not at all times strictly accurate, but such was the principle.

The books are of most various dates, from Job, or rather part of Job, down to Malachi the prophet. With regard to the former, the exact date is uncertain, but it is thought by some that Moses edited what already existed, and added the historical beginning and end; the date usually given to Moses is about b. c. 1490. From about this time, then, the five Books of Moses and that of Job are dated; and the Book of Malachi from about b. c. 420. Over more than a thousand years, therefore, the Books of the Old Testament range; and, as during this time the work of collection was gradually going on, more than one assemblage of books is, as might be expected, known. Thus about B. c. 1420, “the Book of the Law of God” (Josh, xxiv. 26) was, as tradition has uniformly maintained, what is now known as the Pentateuch. About B. C. 710 Isaiah (xxxiv. 16) mentions “the Book of the Lord;” and about B. c. 520 Zechariah’s mention (vii. 7) of “the former prophets” is probably an allusion, though not quite so clear a one, to an earlier compilation of prophets and historians. And at the end of the fifth century before Christ, that is, rather more than a hundred years after the last date, the latesfcollection and redaction was made by Ezra and Nehemiah, the two Jewish restorers, and the standard copy thus produced laid up in the Temple. This was lost at the taking of Jerusalem by the Romans (a. d. 70), just as the sacred autographs had been lost when Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took the city (b. c. 588).

Far later even than A. d. 70 are the earliest Hebrew copies which now exist. The MS. Bible in the Cambridge University Library is said to date from A. d. 856 (Smith: .Dictionary of the Bible, under Old Testament), and other copies of different books on the Continent from 843, 897, 916; the MSS. of the Samaritan Pentateuch, a recension in Samaritan characters, made about b. c. 400, date from the tenth century. The printed editions began in 1477, with the Psalter, at Bologna; other separate portions followed, and before the end of the century the whole Bible was printed at Soncino, near Cremona; a copy of this edition is at Exeter College. The great Complutensian Polyglot (the Bible in Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, and Latin), succeeded in 1522, at Complutense. now Alcala; and many other editions more or less important, among which the other Polyglots may be mentioned: the Antwerp Polyglot, 1569-1572, containing (besides the above languages) the Syriac version; the Paris, 1628-1645, containing also Samaritan and Arabic; the London, 1657 (edited by Bishop Watson, of Chester); the Leipsic, 1750, containing the German version; and the Second London, 1816,-published by the Bag-sters. All modern Hebrew Bibles, however, are based on Van der Hooght’s edition, Amsterdam, 1705.

The Greek Old Testament.—Some portions of the Old Testament (the history of the Exodus, the settlement in Canaan, the Law of Moses, strictly so called), may have been translated into Greek very shortly after the final redaction by Ezra; and there is a quotation of Aristobulus, a Jewish priest of about B. C. 160, by Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, or Miscellanies, i. 22), to the effect that Plato the philosopher (b. C. 42S-347) had studied them. But the whole of the Old Testament was first translated in the reign of Ptolemy IL, Philadel-phus, King of Egypt (b. C. 288-247). This king was the founder of the famous museum and library of Alexandria, and under the care of Demetrius Phalereus, the orator, who was his librarian, the Old Testament was translated by learned Jews of Alexandria. This is all that is really known of the history of the translation; the legends that seventy translators were sent from Jerusalem by the high - priest, that they were shut up in seventy cells on the island of Pharos, and each, by the help of the Holy Ghost, finished a version in seventy days, which seventy, by the same Divine power, minutely agreed—these are discredited by the simple evidence of the version itself, that the translators were not quite perfectly acquainted with Hebrew; one portion, however, of these traditions is embodied in the name of the version, “the Septuagint,” or, in short, LXX.

One of the oldest MSS. of the Septuagint known, the Codex Cottonianus, of the fourth century, was almost destroyed by fire in 1731; what remains is in the British Museum. There is also the Codex Alex-andrinus, which is almost complete in both Testaments, and dates from the fifth century; but at the Vatican is a Greek Bible somewhat less complete, of the same age as the Cottonian, another at Paris, and another at Milan, more fragmentary still, and about two centuries younger. The Psalter was printed at. Milan, in 1481, and at Venice, i486 and 1496, but the first complete LXX. was in the Complutensian Polyglot already mentioned, 1517. The text of this was an eclectic one; but reprints of both the Alexandrian and Vatican MSS., which differ slightly from each other (the latter being generally nearest the Hebrew), have often been made; thus the latter is taken by Bishop Walton in his Polyglot, 1697; by Holmes and Parsons, Oxford, 1798; by Dean Gaisford’s small edition, Oxford, 1848; also by Messrs. Bagster’s reprints; while the former is represented by Grabe, Oxford, 1707; Breit-inger, Zurich, 1730; and Mr. Field in 1859, who also arranged the version according to the Hebrew, by separating the Apocryphal Books, and altering, where necessary, the arrangement of chapters.

Three other versions, by Aquila, Theo-dotion, and Symmachus, date from the second century; they are not extant except in fragments; their characteristics are—of Aquila’s, great and unintelligible literalness; of Theodotion’s, very considerable ignorance of Hebrew, far more than the slight and partial ignorance of the LXX.; of Symmachus’, the reverse of the first, too great paraphrase. Theodotion’s requires further notice, from the curious fact that his Daniel was, for unknown reasons, very early substituted for that of the LXX. It so remained universally till 1772,- when the latter was first published at Rome, from the Codex Chigianus of the tenth century, and very commonly so afterward. Gaisford (1848) gives both. Yet three more versions, though only partial ones, existed, but are now extant only in very scattered fragments; being anonymous they are only known as the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh versions. All the seven, together with the original Hebrew, and the same in Greek letters, formed the great Hexapla of Origen (a. d. 185-254), arranged in parallel columns, and having its title from the number of columns which went throughout. This work was kept at Caesarea, but was destroyed when the Saracens took the town in 653. The central column only, being the LXX. itself, with Origen’s annotations, was preserved in a copy made by Eusebius; but numerous fragments were embedded as quotations in different works of the Fathers and others, and all these have been brought together successively by Morin (1587), Drusius (1622), Montfau-con (1714), and Mr. Field (1875), whose preface is now the best, as well as the latest, authority on the whole subject.

The Latin Old Testament.—The earliest Latin versions, not only of the Old Testament but of the whole Bible, did not come, as might have been expected, from the Roman Church, which, in the first days of Christianity, was Greek-speaking, but from that of Africa, which from the beginning seems to have used Latin. One version, which is not otherwise known, is quoted by very early writers of our own Church, as by Fastidius, a devotional writer of the fifth century, said to have been Bishop of

London; and even before this, as early as Tertullian (a. D. 150-220), there seems to have been more than one version, or, more properly, several recensions of the same text, such as the African, British, Gallican, and one, the best known, called the Old Italic. Of this last, the chief part (of the Old Testament) which now remains is the Psalter, which was long used in divine service, and with us till the Normanconquest. These early versions were from the LXX.; as the preface to our English Bible says: “They were not out of the Hebrew fountain, but out of the Greek stream; therefore the Greek not being altogether clear, the Latin derived from it must needs be muddy. This moved St. Jerome to undertake the translating of the Old Testament out of the very fountains themselves.” He began with the Psalter, of which he left three distinct versions, all extant; (1) the Roman, being the Old Italic slightly corrected; (2) the Gallican, a fresh version from the LXX; (3) the Hebrew, direct from the original: he then proceeded with the rest of the Bible, and finished it during the last twenty years of the fourth century. His version by degrees superseded the Old Italic, and, revised by order of Charlemagne (a. d. 802), and again by Pope Clement VIII. in 1593, is the present authorized version of the Roman Catholic Church. The name, Vulgate, by which this Bible is known, was originally applied by Jerome himself to the Old Italic, and afterwards gradually transferred to his own work. The existing MSS. are very many; some of the earliest date from the sixth century; one of this age, the Codex Amiatinus, is at Florence; one in the British Museum, known as Charlemagne’s Bible', is beautifully illuminated, and another of the same kind at Durham Cathedral is known by the name of Bishop Pudsey, or de Brisac (1153-1197). The Vulgate, on the invention of printing, was the very first book to come from the press, about 1450; after the edition was supposed to be lost, a copy of it was found, in the seventh century, in the library of Cardinal Giulio Mazarin, at Paris, and it is therefore called the Mazarin Bible. About twenty copies are now known, mostly in England.

In the sixteenth century other translations were made; in 1527 by Sanctes Pa-quinus (d. 1536); in 1535 by Sebastian Munster (d. 1552); in 1572, by Benedict Arias Montanus (d. 1598); in 1579, by Emanuel Tremellius (d. 1580), to which his son-in-law, Francis Junius (d. 1602), added a translation of the Apocrypha; this name has led a writer in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible into a strange blunder (ii. 466); “the margin of the A. V. (Tob. xi. 18), gives Junius as the equivalent of Nabas.”

II. — The Original Greek Neiv Testament.—The New Testament was all originally written in Greek (for the theories that St. Matthew’s gospel was a translation from Hebrew, and St. Mark’s from Latin, are now given up, the latter by all scholars, the former by nearly all) within the last half of the first century; the original autographs are long since lost, it is impossible to say when or how, and the earliest MSS. which exist date from the fourth and fifth centuries. The principal ones (of which some have already been mentioned) are: (1) The Sinaitic MS., discovered by Tischendorf in 1859, and now at St. Petersburg, of the latter part of the fourth century; (2) the Alexandrine, brought to England in 1625, and placed in the British Museum, 1753, of the early portion of the fifth century; (3) the Vatican, in that Library since 1450, of the early part of the fourth century, and so the oldest known; (4) Ephraem, at Paris, of the fifth century; and (5) Bezs, at Cambridge since 1581, of the sixth century. Of these, the only one where the New Testament is quite complete, is the first; the second is very nearly so; the third somewhat more deficient; the fourth is only large fragments; and the fifth the Gospels and Acts. Little more than a brief list can be given of some of the more important printed editions, of which the first (though some of the early chapters of St. John had been printed sooner), was, as of the Old Testament, that of the Com-plutensian Polyglot of Cardinal Francis Ximenes de Cisueros, which was published in 1514, before the rest: to Ximenes succeeded Erasmus, who published in his lifetime five editions, 1516, 1519, 1522, 1527, 1535. Theodore Beza, and the printers Stephens and Elzevir, were the editors of the next hundred years, and Dr. Scrivener thinks that Beza’s last edition, 1598, is the text which our Authorized Version most nearly represents. But not all of the five great MSS. were yet known: those which were known do not appear to have been used, and Ximenes and Erasmus formed their text from very few, and those late and unimportant ones. Stephens was the first to collate any number, though even he used them carelessly; and the Polyglot of Bishop Walton of Chester, 1657, was the first real, preparation for the formation of a correct text by criticism. Bishop Fell of Oxford, 1675, in some measure, though slightly, carried on the work; but Dr. John Mill, Canon of Canterbury, 1707, “found the edifice of wood and left it marble” (Scrivener): such was his industry, zeal, and sagacity, that he is universally allowed to be the parent of all the work that has been done. Bentley’s great plans came to nothing, and for the next century almost all original research was made in Germany. Bengel, Wetstein, Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, successively did their work upon the New Testament, which was crowned, in 1872, by Tischendorf’s final and eighth edition of his revised text. Meanwhile, of later years, in England, the three texts of Dr. Tregelles, Dean Alford,'and Bishop Wordsworth have been published, and in 1881 the great edition of Professors Westcott and Hort came forth, which is the last attempt to settle the words actually written by the inspired writers.

These, the words actually written, cannot, it is almost universally allowed, be those of the common or received text; and the problem before critics, unless Westcott and Hort, as some think, have solved it, is to ascertain these as nearly as possible from the three chief sources, namely MSS., Versions, and Quotations. Of these three only one has yet been mentioned, and but a small portion of that; but there exist, roughly speaking, about 2,000 MSS., more or less complete, of which rather less than a tenth are “uncial,” the others being “cursive” (the modern words answering to these would-be “point-hand” and “running-hand”), the uncial being, as a rule, the earliest. The Versions of chief critical value are the Latin, Syriac, Gothic, Egyptian, TEthiopic, and Armenian; and the Quotations referred to are those made by the early Fathers of the Church. These three sources of evidence come in the order of their value; for in the second it cannot, of course, be always certain what Greek reading is represented by any translation, nor in the third whether a quotation is meant to be a verbatim one. Again, in applying the evidences there will be differences; for some critics, as Dean Alford and others, attach paramount importance to the early uncials, those already mentioned by name and some few others, and to their descent from and relation to each other; while some, of whom Dean Burgon in his celebrated Quarterly .Review papers, and in a less degree Mr. Maclellan, in his English New Testament, are examples, give great weight in all cases to the later cursives, whose influence formed our received text, and to the possibility, which, no doubt, always exists, that some may be copies from an earlier uncial than any we now possess. To strike the balance is the great difficulty of criticism; and it must not be forgotten that Tischendorf, one of the greatest of critics, in many cases returned in his later editions to the received readings.

There are also “Graeco-Latin” MSS., i. e., of the two languages side by side.’ The best known is Codex Bezae, whose Latin is simply its translation of its own Greek; others have, some the Old Italic, some the Vulgate. Lastly, Theodore Beza, in 1556, made a very elegant version of the New Testament, which went through many editions, and has been reprinted by the Bagsters; and Emanuel Tremellius, in 1569, made a version from the Syriac.

HI.—Other Early Versions of the Bible. —To these very little space can be given; those whose names have been already mentioned are: (1) The Syriac, in which language and its dialects there are known six more or less different and perfect versions; the best known, the Peshito (meaning Simple), is of the third century, and was published as early as 1555, by Albert Wiedmanstadt, Chancellor to the Emperor Ferdinand I.; (2) the Egyptian, dividing into three in different dialects, of the fourth or fifth century; (3) the Gothic, made by Bishop Ulfilas, about A. d. 360; (4) the jEthiopic, whose date is unknown (Christianity came to Ethiopia in the fourth century); this version only exists in late MSS.; (5) the Armenian made in the fifth century. Others are (6) the Arabic, of the tenth century; (7) the Chaldee of the Old Testament only, called the Targum, a word of unknown meaning; this is intermixed with Jewish comment, paraphrase, and explanation, and is of very various and uncertain dates; (8) the Samaritan, in a debased Hebrew dialect, of perhaps the seventh century—not to be confused with the “Samaritan Pentateuch;” (9) the Slavonic, of doubtful age, perhaps, partly, even mediaeval.

IV. — The English Bible.

(1) Primitive Persians.—Of these there is a trace, but a very slight one, in a sermon of St. Chrysostom, about the end of the fourth century; the Scriptures are read, he says, even in the British Isles, and the same faith is learnt as at Constantinople, though in another tongue.

(2) Ancient English, or Saxon and Norman Versions.—No complete Anglo-Saxon version of the Bible now exists, or probably ever existed; the Venerable Bede (672—735), Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne (d. 721), and King Alfred the Great, translated great part of it, but these versions are now lost. Elfric, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1005), translated the Heptateuch (Moses, with Joshua and Judges), parts of Kings, Esther, Job, Judith, two Books of Maccabees, with the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus; of these, the Heptateuch, Job, Judith, and Nicodemus, were published, 1699, by Edward Thwaites (d. 1711), Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford,

Regius Professor of Greek, also Professor of Moral Philosophy. The Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospels appears to be ascribed to Tlfric without sufficient authority. There remain six such MSS. at Cambridge, Oxford, and the British Museum, of which the oldest is at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; but they differ from one another, and their relations, either common or mutual, are not as yet clear. A text representing them was published by Archbishop Parker, and John Foxe, 1571; by Thomas Marshall, Rector of Lincoln College (d. 1685), 1665; by Mr. Benjamin Thorpe, the eminent Anglo-Saxon scholar, 1842, and by Professor Bosworth, 1865. Besides these are two/yyy, or Latin with interlinear Anglo-Saxon, known as the Lindisfarne and Rushworth Gospels; the former, in the British Museum, is of the tenth century, the latter, in the Bodleian Library, of the ninth; both have been published by the Surtees Society. There were also metrical versions, more or less paraphrastic, which have no strict right to be on the present list—such as the narrative poems by Caedmon, a monk of Whitby, in the seventh century, published in 1655, and by Mr. Thorpe in 1832; and the version of the Psalms by Aidhelm, Bishop of Sherborne (d. 709), published by Sir John Spelman, 1640, by Mr. Thorpe, 1835, and the Rev. Joseph Stevenson, 1843. Later, when the language began to change, there seems to have been a version of the Bible in Norman-English, of which fragments remain; and, as in Saxon-English, there were also metrical paraphrases. The chief of these are the “Ormulum” and the “Southear,” both in the Bodleian Library. The former, of the eleventh century, contains the New Testament narrative only; the latter, of about the twelfth century, that of both Testaments.

(3) Medieval English Versions.—These begin with the Psalters of William Shoreham, Vicar of Chart Sutton, near Staplehurst, and of Richard Rolle, chantry priest of Hampole (now Hamphall), near Doncaster, which were produced about the same time, the first half of the fourteenth century. The former exists only in one MS. in the British Museum; the latter is more common, and was printed as late as 1536. Of entire translations of the Bible, it has been asserted more than once that Wycliffe’s was not the first. Foxe, quoting from a tract of the early fifteenth century, speaks of “a Bible in English of Northern speech, which seemed to be 200 years old;” Sir Thomas More, 1532, says that there was a translation in English “by virtuous and well-learned men long before Wycliffe’s days.” This testimony is very vague, and it is at any rate certain that Wycliffe knew nothing of any predecessor. Foxe’s Bible may have been one of the Saxon, or (perhaps more probably) Norman versions; More’s, either this or an early copy of Wycliffe, for since he speaks of “long before,” he cannot, primd facie, refer to the version of John Trevisa, for the former existence of which there is really evidence of a certain kind, summed up by Mr. J. H. Cooke, F. S. A., in Notes and Queries, 4th s., x. 261. John Trevisa, whom Allibone styles “a Cornish divine,” Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford, and Canon of Westbury-on-Trym (where, curiously enough, Wycliffe was also Canon) was vicar of Berkeley, and chaplain to the Lords Berkeley, from 1350 to 1412. Among his other works he translated Higden’s Bolychronicon; and Caxton, in the version based on this, which he printed, 1482, is the first to mention his translation of the Bible; the mention was repeated by Bale, Holins-hed, and others, and in the preface to our Authorized Version. There remains at Berkeley Castle a draft letter from the first Earl of Berkeley to James, Duke of York, afterward James IL, asking his acceptance of “a booke, wh. is an ancient collection in manuscript of some part of the Bible,” which “has been carefully preserved near 400 years,”and the Berkeley librarian of the beginning of this century records that the “booke” is now in the Vatican. Mr. Cooke, however, says that such search as has been made there, has not disclosed it; and all that is really known of Tre visa’s labors in this kind are some fragments of the text of the Apocalypse, painted by him in Latin and Norman-French on the roof of Berkeley Chapel.

In default, therefore, of this, the earliest version must be considered to be the Wycliffe Bible, which work was begun by John Wycliffe (Rector of Lutterworth), about 1360, in his commentaries, first on the Revelation, then on the Gospels, translations being added to both works. Shortly afterward he translated the rest of the New Testament, and put the whole together in a volume (1380). The Old Testament was begun by Nicholas Hereford (D. D., Queen’s College, Oxford, Chancellor and Treasurer of Hereford), but not finished, as the translator, being tried, 1382, for heresy, was excommunicated, and left England to appeal at Rome; it was completed by Wycliffe himself, and thus a complete English Bible was for the first time produced. Like all other translations hitherto made, however, it was from the Vulgate, and from not very good MSS. of that; and, a few years after Wycliffe’s death in 1384, a revision was made by John Purvey, afterward vicar of West Hythe. Of both these versions there are many MSS. still extant; but they were not printed in mediaeval times, and there were, indeed, much uncertainty and confusion in the whole history, till the admirable edition of the Rev. Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederick Madden appeared (4 vols. 4to., 1850), giving a list of 170 existing MSS. The edition contains the two versions in parallel columns, and was the first printing of the Old Testament in this version, except that Wycliffe’s “Song of Solomon” had been printed in Dr. Adam Clarke’s Commentary, 1810—25. Wycliffe’s New Testament was published by Mr. Lea Wilson in 1848, and Purvey’s (which was then supposed to be Wycliffe’s), by the Rev. John Lewis in 1731, by the Rev. Henry Baker in 1810, and in Bagster’s English Hexapla, 1841.

Of the long opposition, partly political, partly ecclesiastical, to those Protestant doctrines of which Wycliffe was one of the earliest preachers, and, consequently, to the Bible in the vulgar tongue, this is not the place to speak. The translation was formally condemned in Convocation by Archbishop Thomas Arundel, 1408; but the version survived, and the number of still extant MSS. is enough to show the wide circulation which it had.

(4) Modern English Versions. —John Foxe’s witness to the circulation of the Wycliffite versions at the beginning of the sixteenth century is well known: some, he says, “gave a load of hay for a few chapters of St. Paul.” This earnest desire fora vernacular Bible, translated from the Greek Testament of Erasmus, was much increased by Luther’s German version, and William Tyndale at last undertook the work. He began with the New Testament; but finding the work impossible in England, since Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall of London (afterward of Durham) obstinately refused his sanction, he settled at Hamburg, in 1524, where he seems to have published St. Matthew and St. Mark separately. Next, in 1525, the whole New Testament came out at Cologne and Worms, in two editions, 4to and 8vo, and early in 1526 was brought to England, where great but useless efforts were made to stamp it out. Burning the copies was of no use; it only put money into the translator’s pocket; even an Act of Parliament afterward passed (35 Henry VIII.) was no use. Six more editions came out abroad, one after the other, some, unknown to Tyndale, revised by his secretary, George Joye (Fellow of Peter-house, Cambridge, d. 1553). Tyndale then proceeded to the Old Testament, publishing the Pentateuch in 1530, and the Book of Jonah in 1534; other fragmentary translations were attached to the New Testament of 1534, being such of the Epistles in the Sarum Missal as were taken from the Old Testament. Tyndale, however, was executed on a charge of heresy, 1536, leaving more of his Old Testament in MS. as far as the end of II. Chronicles. This was afterward used, as will be seen, by Rogers and Matthews.

Tyndale’s actual work was so effectually destroyed that very few copies remain; of the 4to New Testament in the first edition one fragment, St. Matthew to xxii. 12, was discovered in 1836, and is now in the British Museum; of the 8vo first edition a perfect copy, except the title, is in the Baptist College at Bristol (from this the Bagsters reprinted in their Jdexapla), and an imperfect one is at St. Paul’s; of some of the other editions there are copies at Cambridge University Library and the British Museum. In the latter, also, there are copies of the Pentateuch; and one of the Book of Jonah was discovered in 1861, bound in a volume of tracts, by the present Bishop of Bath and Wells.