By Frederic G. Kenyon, M.A., D.Litt., Hon. Ph.D. With Twenty-six Facsimiles. Second Edition. Eyre and Spottiswoode, etc. 1896.
Third Edition, revised and enlarged, with Twenty-nine Facsimiles and an Appendix on Recent Biblical Discoveries. 1898.
The Palaeography of Greek Papyri. By Frederic G. Kenyon, M.A., Hon. Ph.D. (Halle), Hon. D. Litt. (Durham). With Twenty Facsimiles and a Table of Alphabets. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. 1899.
Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. By Frederic G. Kenyon, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts, British Museum. With Sixteen Facsimiles. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited; New York: The Macmillan Company. 1901.1
The publication of Dr. Kenyon’s “Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament” furnishes a fit occasion for bringing together for cursory remark the chief contributions he has hitherto made to the better or wider understanding of the history and state of the text of the New Testament. We have accordingly associated with this latest of his works on the subject two earlier publications, one more popular, one more scientific in its scope, to both of which the present volume bears a somewhat close relation. We have observed the attribution to him of yet another volume which would naturally fall into the same series—a collection of “Facsimiles of Biblical Manuscripts in the British Museum” (1900): but this happens not to have fallen in our way. There is also, of course, the somewhat long list of his editions of Greek texts from the British Museum papyri, which more remotely bear upon his work on the problems of the New Testament text. These began, it will be remembered, with almost the unexpectedness of an explosion, in the simultaneous publication in 1891 of the text and translation of Aristotle’s “Constitution of the Athenians” and the volume of “Classical Texts from Papyri in the British Museum,” containing fragments of Demosthenes, Herodas, Homer, Hyperides, Isocates, etc. Certainly here was an achievement for a young man under thirty, whose scientific expression hitherto had been practically confined to the preparation of the earlier parts of the “Catalogue of Additions to the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum” (1888–1893). A separate facsimile edition of Herodas and an edition of the “Orations of Hyperides against Athenogenes and Philippides” (1892) quickly followed. Later there was added an edition of the Odes of Bacchylides (1897), while other papyri fragments have been from time to time given to the world through the periodical press ( Class. Rev., vi. 436; Rev. de Phil., xvi. 181, xxi. 1; Journal of Philology, xxi. 296; Mélanges Weil, 1898, p. 243), and still others in those beautiful volumes, “Greek Papyri in the British Museum, Catalogue with Texts”—the first of which with one hundred fifty plates appeared in 1893, and the second with one hundred twenty-three plates in 1898. In the comprehensive Introduction to this last-named work, we find much which has been drawn upon—with appropriate amplifications and modifications, of course—in the books which we have placed at the head of this article, and to this extent this “Catalogue” might readily be looked upon as part of Dr. Kenyon’s direct preparation for writing his latest book, with which we are now more immediately concerned. But it is not unfair to treat the whole series as bearing witness rather to Dr. Kenyon’s general palæographical learning, and thus as only indirectly facilitating the preparation of his treatise on New Testament Textual Criticism. With the two earlier books, which we have placed at the head of this article, the case is different: in different ways and degrees, it is true, but equally really, both stand immediately at the root of the “Textual Criticism” and contribute directly to its pages. It might almost be said, in fact, that this treatise is but an amplified, enriched, and scientifically heightened recension of the portion of “Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts” dealing with the New Testament text, which, among other additions, has incorporated also the cream of “The Palaeography of Greek Papyri,” so far as it is applicable to the New Testament.
It is not our purpose, however, to revert to these volumes more than is necessary to call attention to them and place them in their right relation to the volume more particularly in hand. The earlier of them is a remarkably successful attempt to put into the hands of educated Bible readers a readable and accurate account of how the Bible has come down to us. It opens with three general chapters on Variations in the Bible Text, The Authorities for the Bible Text, and The Original Manuscripts of the Bible. The Hebrew Text and the Versions of the Old Testament are then treated in two chapters; and these are succeeded by three in which the Text, Manuscripts, and Versions of the New Testament are dealt with. A single chapter is given to the Vulgate in the Middle Ages: and then the book closes with two chapters tracing the fortunes of the English Bible, in its Manuscript and Printed Forms. No pretension is made to originality: the book is frankly based on the work of others, which it only proposes to popularize. It’s note is sobriety and judiciousness. Only in a single matter has it gone astray by accepting bad guidance. This is a very serious matter in itself, though here of less importance because forming no essential part of the book: it concerns the account given of the origin and history of the Canon, both Old Testament and New (cf. pp. 27, 95). One wonders, again, that Dr. Kenyon, of all men, with his first-hand knowledge of papyrus documents, should not have known in 1898 how the papyrus-paper was manufactured (p. 19: the matter is set right in the later books—“Papyri,” p. 15; “Handbook,” p. 19). But (with the exception of the matter of the Canon) they are only minute flaws that can be picked in this good book. It easily takes rank with the best popular expositions we have.