XVIII

...because the Roman editors declared that they used the very ancient Vatican manuscript as the foundation of their edition, and indeed they largely did so, whereas both of the editions that preceded it had been shaped according to the reliability of later manuscripts—and not without arbitrary judgment The author is criticizing earlier editors for making subjective changes to the biblical text rather than following the oldest sources. 1); the Grabe edition 2), on the other hand, not only valued the Alexandrian manuscript more than was just...

1. The Complutensian Edition is found in the Complutensian Polyglot: The Hebrew, Chaldean, Greek, and Latin Bible, now printed for the first time in the University of Alcalá original: "Complutensi universitate" by the command and at the expense of Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (Archbishop of Toledo) by the industry of Arnaldo Guillén de Brocar, 1514–1517, in 6 volumes. (But it was finally published only a short time after the year 1522.) There is a remarkable disagreement regarding this edition among editors and those who examined it later. For while the editors themselves boasted that they had printed from very ancient and highly corrected copies sent to Alcalá by Leo X from the Apostolic Library itself, and that they had employed many others, including the most refined manuscript of Bessarion Basilios Bessarion (1403–1472), a Greek scholar and Cardinal whose manuscript collection was legendary.: so Walton, in the Prolegomena to the Polyglot Bible, IX, 28, said it was inferior to all others and stood furthest of all from the genuine Septuagint original: "LXX" version; for he claimed it was a new and mixed version, patched together partly from the Septuagint, partly from Origen’s additions from Theodotion, and partly from the words of Aquila, Symmachus, and other translators, and even from Greek commentators, so that in this way it might better correspond to the Hebrew text across the columns. Thus Walton judged, and many others have judged similarly. This reproach seems to be more unfair than is just; for certainly the vast majority of what was published at Alcalá is confirmed by manuscripts. Nevertheless, because of the doubtful reliability of that edition, it is much better to test the Complutensian readings against the manuscripts themselves than to grant them a manufactured authority. Nonetheless, two centuries ago, the Complutensian text was reprinted several times: at Antwerp (by the study of Livineius and Canter, with the Latin by Arias Montano) in the Royal Polyglot Bibles, 1572; from the Sanctandreana office in the Polyglot usually called Vatablus's, 1586 (the same edition is said to have appeared in other copies in 1587, and in others in 1599 at Heidelberg, likewise in 1616 from the Commeliniana office. Regarding this matter, see Andreas Gottlieb Masch's Sacred Library, part I, chapter III, section VIII); at Hamburg in 1596 in Wolder’s Polyglot Bible (Masch noted in the Sacred Library, part II, vol. II, sect. I, § LII, against Fabricius, that this text was not shaped according to the Aldine edition); at Paris in the Polyglot (chiefly by the author D. Michael de Jay) 1645. — As for the one who very recently made use of the Complutensian edition in the polyglot edition of Theile and Stier (namely Boeckel), I judge him to be entirely foreign to sound critical reasoning.
   The Venetian or Aldine Edition, in three volumes which comprise both the Old and New Testaments in Greek, came from the house of Aldus and his father-in-law Asulanus in the year 1518. Although this was long said to be purer than the Complutensian and closer to the Roman edition, it too deviated in various and serious ways from the truth, as Ussher James Ussher (1581–1656), Archbishop of Armagh, famous for his biblical chronology. has already noted in these words:

"I have observed that it sometimes follows not the Septuagint original: "LXX" but the
"readings of Aquila; many glosses Explanatory notes originally written in margins that later slipped into the main text. also, first noted in the margins of
"manuscripts and later admitted into the text, occur here, and these are
"sought not only from various editions and versions, but even in places
"which the apostles cited that differ from the common Greek reading of the Seventy original: "τῶν ο'" (the 70).."

This edition also (further deformed by very many typographical errors) is of doubtful reliability; for it is not sufficiently clear from which manuscripts it flowed, nor with how much diligence or religious care the editors followed the authority of the manuscript books. The Aldine text was reprinted at Strasbourg in 1526 by Wolfgang Köpfel original: "Wolph. Cephaleo" (with a new title at Strasbourg and, as is elsewhere, at Basel, 1529); at Basel in 1545 by Johann Herwagen, and in the same place in 1550 by Nicolaus Brylinger (issued again in 1582); at Frankfurt am Main by the Wechelian press in 1597 (again at Venice in 1687).

2. Regarding the Grabe edition, and likewise the Zurich edition of Breitinger, see below under the Alexandrian manuscript.