The following
quotation from Dr. Cobern will indicate to what extent Textual Criticism has
succeeded in giving us a reliable text:
The writer was working in London University when the first sensational discovery
was made of a leaf from a pocket Bible which had been carried by an Egyptian
Christian of the third century. This leaf was a hundred years older than any
other fragment of Scripture previously known. It was written on poor papyrus in
a fairly good hand and well represented the New Testaments which were being
used by poor men in the days of the martyrs. The book must originally have been
composed of twenty-four or twenty-five sheets of papyrus.
Only those who have come personally into close touch with supremely important
discoveries can understand with what eagerness this discolored leaf was
examined by everyone interested in the authenticity of the New Testament
writings. It had been written generations before the great Council of
Constantine--was it the same Biblical text as that which in uninterrupted
succession continued to be used from the fourth century onward? The whole tone
of modern New Testament criticism was changed for the better when it was found
that, with the exception of a slightly different spelling of three proper
names, David, Zerah, and Amninadab, and the omission of two articles before
proper names, this oldest extant manuscript of the New Testament agreed exactly
with the Westcott and Hort Greek text which formed the basis of our Revised Version--having
even the same abbreviations and one wrongly placed rough breathing. This
fragment confirms the fact that the Church of the martyrs possessed the same
New Testament as our fathers revered.5
5 Camden M. Cobern, The New Archeological Discoveries (New
York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1928), pp. 132, 133.
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