OR, Book of Revelation; THE ORIGINAL GREEK TEXT, WITH MSS. COLLATIONS; AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION AND HARMONY, WITH NOTES; AND AN APPENDIX TO THE HULSEAN LECTURES FOR 1848 ON THE APOCALYPSE. BY CHR. WORDSWORTH, D.D. CANON OF WESTMINSTER; FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND LATE PUBLIC ORATOR AND HULSEAN LECTURER IN THAT UNIVERSITY. LONDON: FRANCIS & JOHN RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE. 1849 PREFACE DESCRIBING THE PLAN AND CONTENTS OF THE PRESENT VOLUME. THE History of the Original Greek Text of the APOCALYPSE is very remarkable. At the revival of Letters in Europe, the Art of Printing was employed in the publication of Classical Authors many years before it was applied to the impression of the GREEK TESTAMENT. Virgil was printed in the year 1469, Homer in 1488; but no edition of the Greek Testament appeared before the year 1516. The first was published by ERASMUS, at Basle, from the press of Froben. Erasmus had only one MS., and that an imperfect one, of the APOCALYPSE. He supplied the last six verses, which were wanting in that MS., from the Latin Vulgate, translated by himself into Greek ; and it is observable, that some words of Erasmus, not authorized by any MS., still remain in some editions of the Apocalypse printed at this day. 449 The second edition of the New Testament was that of the COMPLUTENSIAN POLYGLOTT, so called from Complutum, or Alcalà, in Spain, the place at which it was printed. This was in the year 1520. The Complutensian Editors, says Wetstein*, had only one MS. of the APOCALYPSE. They were followed in the Apocalypse by Erasmus in his fourth and fifth editions in 1527 and 1535, and by ROBERT STEPHENS in the year 1546, and again in 1549, 1550, and 1551. Wetstein † affirms that Robert Stephens had only two MSS. of the APOCALYPSE, and that these were not accurately collated. + Ibid. The third edition of Stephens formed the basis of those of THEODORE BEZA, which appeared at Geneva in 1565, 1576, 1589, 1598, and also of the ELZEVIR ‡ * Proleg. in Apocalyps. N. T. ii. p. 741. The following summary is from BISHOP MARSH's Lectures on the Criticism of the Bible. Ed. Camb. 1828. Lect. iv. p. 111: "We now come to the Elzevir edition of 1624, in which was established the text (of the Greek Testament) that is now in daily use. The person who conducted this edition (for Elzevir was only the printer) is at present unknown; but whoever he was, his critical exertions were confined within a narrow compass. The text of this edition was copied from Beza's text, except in about fifty places; and in these places the readings were borrowed partly from the various readings in Stephens's margin, partly from other editions, but certainly not from Greek manuscripts. "The textus receptus, therefore, or the text in common use, was copied, with a few exceptions, from the text of Beza. Beza himself closely followed Stephens; and Stephens (namely, in his |