Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1890 — An Important Discovery. [ARTICLE]

An Important Discovery.

We hnTe reasons to believe that , a discovery of equal importance to New Testament scholars with that which Eire Codex Aleph to the world has just *u made The rumor curreot-itt. | well-informed quarters credits the new I find to Bryennois, the learned Arch--1 bishop of Nioomedia. The completion ' of the Bpistle of Clement of Rome, and 1 the unique manuscript of the Teaching of the Apostles have made him famous for disoovaries even in this ag? of dia-

—-- < covery. * But if the rumor that has come to us be true, and we think there are good reasons for believing it to be so, his name will be more closely identified with the New Testament itself. It is said that in some Turkish library at Damasens he has found amanusreipt of the New Testament dating from about the middle of the fourth century —i. e.. of the same antiquity as the Codex Sinaiticus. Indeed, some apprehensions are felt whether it is not altogether too much like the Sinaitic manuscript to be of the phenomenal importance that another totally independent mannscript of the same age would be. If, as is said, and we are not yet in a position to speak of it as more than a rumor, the new Codex resembles the Sinaitic not only in the additional books that are appended to it —the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas (we wonder whether, unlike the Sinaitic.it contains all the latter) —but also in the peculiarities of text, it would seem to be almost a duplicate of the Sinaitic, both forming, perhaps, part of an edition issued for the common use of the Palestinian Church. But even if this should prove to be the ease, it would tend to show that the general type of text represented by it and the few older manuscripts was more commonly ac-' cepted than the defenders of the received text allow it to have been, and may perhaps help to reassure those strange exponents of criticism who make much of the question of numbers in the authorities for a reading. To the school of Westcott and Hort we should suppose that twenty ‘or thirty duplicates of the Sinaitic would make but little difference, save as confirming the correctness of their theory; but to those timid critics to whom numbers are of importance, it would probably be really helpful. Whether or not the new manuscript (if it exists) be only a contemporary duplicate or an independent witness, the civilized world will await fuller particulars with extreme interest. —London Record.