among men"; because there are many that have eudokia without the s, though not the three great ones. And the R.V. generally tells in the margin when there are differences like this.1

All these manuscript copies of which I have been speaking are of course in Greek. But there are many other manuscript copies of Versions in other languages. For translations began to be made of the Gospels and Epistles in very early times. For example, there were great numbers of Christians in Syria and neighbouring lands who did not know Greek, and for their use a Version was made in the 2nd century in the Syriac language which they spoke. At the same time, a Syriac Version of the Old Testament was also made. This Syriac Bible came to be called the Peshitto, which means the "simple" or "correct" Version. It had a wonderful career, for it seems to have been read almost all over Asia! One of the Churches of the East, called the Nestorian, gradually sent missionaries into Persia and

1 In I John v., the R.V. margin has no entry regarding the "three in heaven," because the words omitted are not in any of the oldest MSS.

India and even to China; and there is in China to-day a very old slab of stone with a long inscription engraven on it, which has both Chinese and Syriac characters, and which tells how the Christian Religion had spread in China. The valuable MS. of that same Syriac Bible which is now at Cambridge actually came from India, where it was given to Dr. Claudius Buchanan by the Bishop of the Christian Church in South India which has existed for hundreds of years as the fruit of those ancient Missions. Here is a specimen of the ancient Syriac writing. It is St. John iii. 16:

Then in North Africa, also, the Christians generally did not know Greek, but spoke Latin, the language of Rome ; and a Latin Version was made for them. Other Versions were made in the Armenian, Ethiopian, and Coptic languages, in the next two or three.

centuries; and one was made for the Goths who invaded the Roman Empire, by a famous Bishop named Ulphilas. There is a very valuable MS. of portions of this Gothic Version at Upsala in Sweden, with the characters inscribed in silver on mulberrytinted vellum. It is called Codex Argenteus, the Silver Book.

But the most interesting and important of all these Versions was made by the learned monk, Saint Jerome. The Latin Version of the New Testament made in North Africa was very imperfect, and Jerome revised it; and he also made a new Latin Version of the Hebrew Old Testament. He took twentyone years to do it, toiling away in his cell at Bethlehem; and it was completed in A.D. 405. Jerome was the greatest scholar of those days, and one would think that all the Christians who usually spoke Latin-of whom there were by that time hundreds of thousands in Italy and Spain and Gaul (France) and North Africa - would have eagerly welcomed his great work. But they did not; they liked the old imperfect Version they were used to better; and they thought a new Version was dangerous, and would

lead people astray. However, in about a hundred years it became the one great Bible of Western Europe, and remained so for a thousand years, until the Reformation. It came to be called Versio Vulgata, the "commonly received Version," from vulgus, a Latin word signifying the common people. So we usually call it "the Vulgate." There are a great many manuscript copies of this Version, and it is interesting that the most important of them, which is now at Florence, is said to have been written in England, in Northumberland, about the end of the 7th century. We shall hear more about the Vulgate in future chapters.

CHAPTER VI

ABOUT EARLY ENGLISH VERSIONS

In our last chapter we saw that an important manuscript of Saint Jerome's great Latin Version of the Scriptures, which we call the Vulgate, was written in Northumberland, towards the end of the 7th century. No doubt there were copies in the British Isles long before that. Although the AngloSaxon invaders in the 5th and 6th centuries had almost destroyed the ancient British Church, the Church of Ireland which Saint Patrick had founded was flourishing. It is said that there were Versions of portions of Scripture in Erse, the old Irish language, which is very likely, for Ireland was then known as the Island of Saints, and students from other countries fled thither from the turmoil and bloodshed of the Continent of