THE Various or different Readings belong likewise to the sacred Text, they being certain Passages of Scripture which are read differently in different Copies. There are of them upon the whole Bible in general, and upon some Books in particular. We design this Article for an Account of the former, and of the latter we shall speak in the Article following. Now these Various Readings are in as many Languages as there are original Copies of the Bible; that is to say, there are Hebrew, Samaritan, Chaldee, and Greek Lections. It is not our Design to produce any of them here, but to point out the Places only where they may be found, and the Authors who have treated of them.
Various Hebrew Readings.
We find many of them in Bartolocci’s Rabbinical Bible; but Elias Levita was the first who published any, at Venice, in 1538, in 4to. which Sebastian Munster translated into Latin, and printed at Ba-sil in 1539, in 8vo.
Elias Levita, surnamed in his own Language Habbachur, was a German of Brandenburg, born at Neustadt in 1569, and not an Italian, as was believed by Bartolocci. He went to Rome, where he had many Christians for his Scholars; among the rest Cardinal Gyles of Viterbo, an Augustinian Hermit, whom he instructed in the Hebrew Tongue, which drew upon him great Persecutions from the Jews: However, he continued always a Jew, and died in his Incredulity in 1549, at 40 Years of Age. Baillet, Simon, and other Catholicks, commend and esteem him mightily for his great Sincerity in acknowledging the Errors of the Rabbins. He composed a great number of Books, which are mentioned by Baillet, in his Jugemens Savans; by Simon, in his Critical History of the Old Testament, Book 1. ch. 31. and Bartolocci in his Bibliotheca, tom. 1. p. 135.
There are several Jews who likewise have published Various Readings; among others, Rabbi Manahem, in a Book entituled Lux Legis, printed at Venice in 1618, and at Amsterdam in 1659, in 4to. He took them out of old Hebrew Manuscripts.
Among the Calvinists Buxtorf, the Father, particularly employed himself in collecting Various Readings of this kind. We find them in his Tiberias, or his Comment upon the Masora. See what Walton says of them, in his 8th Prolegomena, numb. 27.
Arias Montanus put out likewise different Readings of the Hebrew Text, in his Apparatus, which makes the eighth Volume of his Polyglot.
Maldonat has done the same thing, in order to shew the Differences of the Greek in many Places from the Hebrew. He himself speaks of this Piece, in his Comment on St. Matthew xiii. 15. and calls it the Book of Hebrew Lections. We do not know whether it was printed, it being mentioned only by himself.
In 1635 Sixtinus Amama put out a Dissertation containing Keri & Chetib, that is to say, different Hebrew Readings, at Amsterdam, in 8vo. It is likewise in his Anti-Barbarus of 1628, p. 727,— 898, and in the following Editions.
Amama, who was of Frizeland, and a Calvinist, taught Hebrew in the University of Franekar, after having been Disciple to Drusius. He went into England, and was very well received at Oxford by the Doctors who were there at that time. He died in 1629, not being very old. See what Bayle says of him, in his Critical Dictionary, tom. 1. p. 224. of the first Edition, the Catalogue of his Works, in M. Dupin’s Tables, tom. 4. p. 1027. and in Fabricius’s History of his Library, t. 1. p. 325. what Baillet says of him in his Anti, and M. Simon, in his Critical History of the Old Testament.
Lewis Capellus’s Critica Sacra contains only the different Readings of the Old Testament, and he makes use of them in explaining many difficult Passages. See the Index which he has inserted at the End, according to the Order of the sacred Writings. Walton has also published some, in the 6th Tome of his Polyglot.
Lewis Capellus, a different Person from James and John, tho’ all three Calvinists, was of Sedan, where he was born in 1585, in the midst of the Civil Wars of France. He was scarce two Years old when he lost his Father and Mother. He continued unknown till the Year 1613, when he was Professor of Hebrew and Divinity at Saumur. He died in 1658, at 80 Years of Age. See his Life, written by himself, which is before his Critical Notes, printed at Amsterdam in 1689, in fol. Dupin has given us an Abridgment of them in his Bibliotheque des Heretiques, tom. 2. p. 325, 336, where he speaks of his Works. He was very learned in the Oriental Languages, and particularly in Hebrew; very conversant in the Works of the Rabbins; a laborious and good Critick. He had likewise a great deal of Wisdom and Judgment, and wrote with Purity and Clearness, there being a great deal of Perspicuity and Method in his Works.
Samaritan, Chaldee, Arabick, &c. Various Readings.
John Morinus put out Various Readings of the Samaritan Pentateuch, at Paris, 1657, in 12mo. in his Opuscula.
In the sixth Tome of the London Polyglot we find Chaldee Various Readings, by Samuel Clark; Syriac, by Herbert Thorndike; Samaritan and Ethiopic, by Castle; Persian upon the Pentateuch and the four Gospels, by Thomas Gravius; and Arabick, by Edward Pocock, upon the Old Testament. In the Apparatus of Antwerp the Chaldee are by Raphelingius, and the Syriac by la Boderie and Trostius.
Herbert Thorndike was an Englishman, of the Church of England. He lived towards the End of the 17th Century. Dupin speaks of his Works, in his Tables, tom. 4. p. 1323.
Thomas Gravius was likewise an Englishman, and understood the Oriental Languages. He died Prebendary of the Church of Peterborough in 1637. We write his Name in English, Greaves.
Edward Pocock was of Oxford, Hebrew and Arabick Professor, Canon of Christ- Church. He died in 1692. Dupin has given us a Catalogue of his Works, in his Tables, tom. 4. p. 1327.
Martin Trostius, a German of Westphalia, and a Lutheran, died in 1631. He understood the Oriental Languages.
Gilles Gutbir put out at Hamburg, 1667, in 8vo. Critical Notes upon the New Testament in Syriac, wherein are different Readings, taken from the best Copies; and John Albrecht published some likewise on the four Gospels, at Jena, 1666, in 8vo.
Gilles Gutbir, and John Albrecht were Germans, and Lutherans; the first was of Thuringe, and died in 1667; the other was living about the Year 1666. They both understood the Syriac Language.
Various Greek Readings.
There are many in the Polyglot of England, tom. 6. in the Greek Bibles which had been before printed, or were after; in the Great Criticks of London; and Drusius printed them with Notes, at Arnhem, 1619, in 4to.
But Dom Bernard de Montfaucon published them more at large, in his Edition of Origen’s Hexapla of two Vols. in fol. They are Fragments of the old Greek Interpreters Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. See what F. Morinus says of them, in his Letters, p. 366. and John de la Cerda, in his Adversaria Sacra, ch. 174. p. 182.
Aquila, who was originally of Pontus, and from a Christian turned Jew, lived in the Reign of the Emperor Adrian, about 128, as M. de Tillemont shews, in his History of the Emperors, tom. 2. See what Cave says of him in his Historia Litteraria, p. 315. D. Montfaucon, ubi supra, in his Preliminary Discourses upon Origen, ch. 4. and Pope Blount, who collected all the several Encomiums of him that are published. Every thing that St. Epiphanius says of him is called in question. St. Jerome commends him in more Places than one, as a Man very knowing in the Greek Tongue, but glances at those Christians who reproached him with having studied too much Profane Authors, and with being too much addicted to Judicial Astrology. The Jews preferr’d him to all the other Greek Interpreters of the Old Testament.
Symmachus was both by Nation and Religion a Samaritan. He turned Jew, afterwards Christian, and became an Ebionite. He lived in 194. under the Emperor Severus, according to F. Alexander; under Commodus in 184, as F. le Long says; under Marcus Aurelius, in 170, according to M. Tillemont upon Origen, art. 8. p. 512. of the third Tome of his Memoirs. He is thought to be more elegant, and a better Interpreter than Aquila. St. Epiphanius accuses him with having had too much Ambition: However, he ranks him in the number of those wise Men who flourished among the People of his Nation.
Theodotion was a Marcionite, as St. Epiphanius says, and afterwards turned Jew. St. Jerome believes he was an Ebionite. He lived under the Emperor Commodus, in 185, as M. Tillemont proves, in the 3d Tome of his Memoirs, p. 512, upon Origen. He was not so learned in the Greek Tongue as Symmachus and Aquila; nay, it is very hard sometimes to excuse the Mistakes he has committed in his Version; tho’ Origen prefers it to the two others, as M. Simon observes.
In the sixth Tome of Walton’ Polyglot, as well as in that of Alcala, or Complutum, there are other various Greek Readings, collected by Peter Morinus Flaminius, Nobilius, Alphonsus de Zamora, Patricius Junius, Thomas Pierce, and Hugo Grotius, with Remarks of their making.
Patrick Junius, commonly called Young, was a Scotchman, and Library- Keeper to James I. James I. King of England. He understood Greek, and died in 1652, at 68 Years of Age. He has also written upon the Greek Fathers. We shall mention him again upon Job.
Pierce was an Englishman, of the Church of England, and Dean of Salisbury about 1683. He wrote a Controversial Piece, which is mentioned in Dupin’s Tables, tom. 4. p. 1337.