cient works three things are to be considered, namely: (α) aye, (β) value, and (γ) genealogy; and we shall add a word on (δ) critical nomenclature, or notation.
(α) Age is sometimes indicated by a note in the manuscript itself; but the date, when not suspected of falsification, may simply be transcribed from the exemplar. However, as dated manuscripts are usu- ally not very old, recourse must be had to various palæographic indications which generally determine with sufficient accuracy the age of Greek and Latin manuscripts. Hebrew palæography, though more uncertain, presents fewer difficulties, inasmuch as Hebrew manuscripts are not so old. Besides, the exact age of a copy is, after all, only of minor importance, as it is quite possible that an ancient manuscript may be very corrupt while a later one, copied from a better exemplar, may come nearer to the primitive text. However, other things being equal, the presumption is naturally in favour of the more ancient document, since it is connected with the original by fewer intervening links and consequently has been exposed to fewer possibilities of error. (β) It is more important to ascertain the relative value than the age of a manuscript. Some evidences inspire but little confidence, because they have frequently been found to be defective, while others are readily accepted because critical examination has in every instance shown them to be veracious and exact. But how is the critic to discriminate? Prior to examination, the readings of a text are divided into three or four classes: the certainly or probably true, the doubtful, and the certainly or probably false. A manuscript is rated good or excellent when it presents in general true readings and contains few or none that are certainly false; under contrary conditions it is considered mediocre or worthless. Needless to add, the intrinsic excellence of a manuscript is not measured according to the greater or less care exercised by the scribes; a manuscript may teem with copyist's errors, though it be made from a very correct exemplar; and one transcribed from a defective exemplar may, considered merely as a copy, be quite faultless. (γ) The genealogy of documents, from a critical view-point, is most interesting and important. As soon as it is proved that a manuscript, no matter what its antiquity, is simply a copy of another existing manuscript, the former should evidently disappear from the list of authorities, since its particular testimony is of no value in establishing the primitive text. This, for instance, is what happened to the "Codex Sangermanensis" (E of the Pauline Epistles) when it was proved to be a defective copy of the "Codex Claromontanus" (D of the Pauline Epistles). Now, if a text were preserved in ten manuscripts, nine of which had sprung from a common ancestor, we would not therefore have ten independent testimonies but two, as the first nine would count for only one, and could not, therefore, outweight the tenth, unless it were shown that the common exemplar of the nine was a better one than that from which the tenth was taken. The consequences of this principle are obvious, and the advantage and necessity of grouping the testimonies for a text into families is readily understood. It might be supposed that the critic would be mainly guided in his researches by the birthplace of a mainuscript; but the ancient manuscripts often travelled a great deal, and their nationality is rarely known wth certainty. This, many are of the opinion that the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus emanated from Csesarea in Palestine, while others maintain that they were written in Egypt, and Hort inclines to the belief that they were copied in the West, probably in Rome (see Codex Vaticanus; Codex Sinaiticus). Hence the critics' chief guide in this matter should be the careful comparison of manuscripts, upon the principle that identical readings point to a common source, and when the identity between two or more manuscripts is constant—especially in exceptional and eccentric variants—the identity of the exemplar is established. But this investigation encounters two difficulties. A first, and a very embarrassing, complication arises from the mixture of texts. There are but few texts that are pure; that is to say, that are taken from a single exemplar. The ancient scribes were nearly all to a certain extent editors, and made their choice from among the variants of the different exemplars. Moreover, the correctors or the readers often introduced, either on the margin or between the lines, new readings which were subsequently embodied in the text of the manuscript thus corrected. In such a case the genealogy of a manuscript is liable to become very complicated. It also sometimes happens that two manuscripts which are closely related in certain books are totally unrelated in others. As a matter of fact, the separate books of the Bible, in ancient times, used to be copied each upon its own roll of papyrus, and when they came to be copied from these separate rolls upon sheets of parchment, and bound together in one enormous "codex", texts belonging to quite different families might very possibly be placed together. All these facts explain why critics frequently disagree in determining genealogical groupings. (On this subject consult Hort, "Introduction," pp. 39-69: "Genealogical Evidence".)
(δ) Critical Nomenclature, or Notation.—When the copies of a text are not numerous each editor assigns them whatever conventional symbols he may choose; this was for a long time the case with the editions of the original Greek and Hebrew, of the Septuagint and the Vulgate, not to mention other versions. But when, as nowadays, the number of manuscripts becomes greatly increased, it is necessary to adopt a uniform notation in order to avoid confusion.
Hebrew manuscripts are usually designated by the figures assigned them by Kennicott and De Rossi. But this system has the disadvantage of not being continuous, the series of figures recommencing three times: Kennicott MSS., De Rossi MSS., and other MSS. catalogued by De Rossi, but not belonging to his collection. Another serious inconvenience arises from the fact that the manuscripts not included in the three preceding lists have remained without symbol, and can only be indicated by mentioning the number of the catalogue in which they are described.
The notation of Greek manuscripts of the Septuagint is almost the same as that adopted by Holmes and Parsons in their Oxford edition 1798-1827. These two scholars designated the uncials by Roman figures (from I to XIII) and the cursives by Arabic figures (from 14 to 311). But their list was very defective, as certain manuscripts were counted twice, while others which were numbered among the cursives were uncials either wholly or in part, etc. For cursives the Holmes-Parsons notation is still retained; the uncials, including those found since, are designated by Latin capitals; but no symbols have been assigned to recently discovered cursives. (See the complete list in Swete, "An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek", Cambridge, 1902, p. 120-170.)
The nomenclature of the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament also leaves much to be desired. Wetstein, the author of the usual notation, designates uncials by letters and cursives by Arabic figures. His list was continued by Birch and by Scholz, and afterwards by Scrivener, independently, by Category. The same letters answer for many manuscripts, hence the necessity of distinguishing indices, thus Dev="Codex Bezæ", Dpaul=Codex Claromontanus, etc. Moreover, the series of figures recommences four times (Gospels, Acts and Catholic Epistles, Epistles of Paul, Apocalypse), so that a cursive containing all the books of the New Testament must be designated by four different numbers accompanied by their index. Thus the MS. of the British Museum "Aditit. 17469" is for
