The Apocalypse is the only book in the New Testament of a strictly prophetic character. It was written shortly after the death of Nero, and strengthened the hearts of Christians against a threatening persecution by giving hope of the approaching kingdom of Christ. - For 1,000 years learned men have been studying the authenticity and arrangement of the constituent parts of the Bible. The history of this work will be found under the title Canon. Far greater study, however, has been given to the original text of Scripture. The Hebrew text of the Old Testament as we have it has already passed through many revisions. Of the primitive text we have little positive information. The books were first written on skins or linen cloth or papyrus, and preserved in rolls. The letter used was the old Hebrew character, which is found on the coins of the Maccabees, and was probably of Phoenician origin. There were no accents nor vowel points, the consonants only being written, and the vowel sounds supplied by the usage of the living speech; and the words were generally run together in a continuous line. Not until the Hebrew became a dead language was its vowel system perfected, to take the place of the familiar usage which was passing away.
After the return from the Babylonish exile, the sacred books were subjected to a careful and critical examination. About the same time the written character of the ancient Hebrew was modified by the Aramaic chirography, until it took the square form, more nearly resembling the Palmyrene letters, which was adopted perhaps on account of its beauty. Simultaneously came another arrangement of the text, with a view to its public reading. Tradition had prescribed the manner in which the reader's voice should emphasize words and balance sentences, but it was long before that mode was declared by any written signs. The first step toward this was the separation of words from each other, and it was followed by the division into verses. This had been marked in poetry very early by lines or blank spaces measuring the rhythm. In prose it was introduced later for the convenience of the synagogue, and was established by the close of the period we are considering. Before this distribution into sentences, the necessity was felt of breaking up the text into sections of less or greater length.
In this division the book of the law consisted of (569 paragraphs or "pa-rashes," and these, in the absence of headings and running indices, were known and referred to by the subject that was most prominent in each; for example, parash "Balaam," parash "Bush," or "Deluge." The text, thus written and distributed, was most jealously guarded. In copying it nothing must be added, nothing taken away, nothing changed; letters, words, verses, sections were counted. Rules were made in regard to the way in which the MSS. were to be written; every letter that was larger or smaller, suspended or inverted, or otherwise unusual in its form, even if accidentally so written, was to be needfully copied. Another division into larger parashes or sections, adapted to the public readings on the Sabbath, was introduced at a later time. The next period in the history of the Old Testament text is the Masoretic, commonly reckoned from the 6th to the 11th century. The word masora means a "collection of traditions/' and the main object of the laborers in this field was to gather up and arrange the critical material of an older time before the existing traditions should fade out.
But the Masorites did more than this; they aimed at completing what had been commenced before; they would fix the reading of the text in all its parts, and their scrupulous care did much to finish and perfect it. They collated MSS., noticed critical and orthographical difficulties, and ventured upon conjectures of their own. Their notes were at' first written in separate books; afterward for convenience they were copied upon the margin of MSS. or even at the end of a book, a practice that led gradually to vast confusion. Attempts were even made to crowd the whole Masora upon the margin of MSS., and when the space was too small, as often it was, the annotations were appended to the text or omitted entirely Since the completion of the Masoretic period the labors of scholars have been spent in elucidating and perpetuating the Masoretic text. The MSS. of the Pentateuch were very carefully revised, and some of them are very ancient. Of the other books no MSS. date back as far as the Masoretic period: four or five belong to the 12th century; some 50 belong to the 13th; and for the following centuries the number increases.
Eminent Jewish scholars of the middle ages devoted themselves to the task of purifying the sacred text by the largest possible collation of MSS., and in their writings speak of famous copies now lost whose use they enjoyed. When the invention of printing had made easy the exact reproduction and extensive multiplication of copies, an attempt was made to compare carefully the best MSS. extant, to collate with them the Masora, and thus to bring out a true and pure Masoretic text; an undertaking too large to be accomplished at once, and therefore but imperfectly executed at that time. The books were produced singly. The earliest printed portion of the Hebrew Bible, the Psalter, was done in 1477, in small folio form, very carelessly, with many abbreviations, and not a few grave omissions. Later, about 1480, it was reprinted in 12mo, without date or place, and again in the same form with an index. The whole Pentateuch, with the points, the Chaldee paraphrase, and Rashi's commentary, was printed in 1482, in folio, at Bologna. In 1486 appeared in two folios, at Soncino, the prophets, early and later, with Kimchi's commentary.
The whole Hagiographa was printed in Naples in 1487. The entire Hebrew Bible was first printed at Soncino in 1488. It was made partly from MSS. neither very old, probably, nor very good, and partly from editions of separate books already published. It contained many errors. Only nine copies of this edition are extant. This was strictly followed by the Gerson edition printed at Brescia in 1494, from which Luther made his translation. It was the parent of the first rabbinical Bible of Bomberg, 1517 and 1518, and of Bomberg's manual editions from 1518 to 1521; of the editions of Robert Stephens (4to, 1539-'44), and of Sebastian Minister's (Basel, 2 vols. 4to, 1536). The next independent edition prepared from a fresh comparison of MSS. was the famous Complutensian Polyglot (Complutum, i. e., Alcala de Henares), the work of Cardinal Ximenes, assisted by the most eminent biblical scholars in Spain. No expense was spared to procure Hebrew MSS. from different countries. The Vatican and other libraries lent their treasures; and 14 years of preparatory labors were spent before the first volume was issued (1522). The text of the Complutensian Bible agrees closely with that of Bomberg's first edition of 1518. The third great original edition is the second of Bomberg's rabbinical Bible, printed in folio at Venice, 1525-'6. This embodies the labors of Rabbi Jacob ben Cha-jim, who revised the Masora word by word, arranged it, made an index, and availed himself systematically of its whole apparatus.
It was reprinted several times in the 1 6th and 17th centuries. After these three independent editions, all that follow contain a mixed text. The Antwerp Polyglot, published 1569-'72, at the expense of King Philip II. of Spain, and therefore called the royal Polyglot, was composed from the Complutensian and Bomberg's. Besides the texts in five volumes, four containing the Old and one the New Testament, three other volumes gave a valuable apparatus, critical, philological, antiquarian. The various editions of Plantin followed the Antwerp Polyglot, as did those of Christian Reineccius. It was the basis also of the Paris Polyglot (10 vols, folio, 1645), which gave the text in Hebrew, Samaritan, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, and Latin, containing for the first time in print the Samaritan Pentateuch. It was repeated again in the London Polyglot (6 vols, folio, 1657). Elias IIutter, in his first edition published at Hamburg in 1587, and three times reprinted, used the copies of Venice, Antwerp, and Paris. In 1611 the manual edition of Buxtorf was printed. Buxtorf undertook to improve upon Bomberg's Bible, and as far as he could conformed to the Masora, for whose text he had the highest respect,