 Last Updated: July 25, 2010 |
Mill's GNT: PAExcerpt for review from: John Mill, Greek NT, (London, 1707) |
|
Last Updated: July 25, 2010 |
Mill's GNT: PAExcerpt for review from: John Mill, Greek NT, (London, 1707) |
Edward Miller discusses John Mill:
"Through the help of Bishop Fell (Oxford), who during his lifetime supplied impetus and funds, Dr. John Mill devoted the labour of 30 years to the preparation of a grant NT which was intended to surpass Stephen's in beauty as well as in other respects. The good bishop's death in 1686 seems to have delayed the work: and it was not till 1707, 3 years after Archbishop Sharpe obtained for the struggling editor a stall at Canterbury and Royal aid in the prosecution of his purpose, that the volume came out. Mill himself died just a fortnight after the publication. Thenceforward the science of Textual Criticism proceeded upon a new career.
Mill only attempted to reproduce the text of Stephen, though he has departed from it in a few particulars.1 But he added some 30,000 readings, and in invaluable Prolegomena. He far excelled all his contemporaries and predecessors in accuracy of collation and comprehensiveness of method.
Of the criticism of the NT in the hands of Dr. John Mill, it may be said, that he found the edifice of wood, and left it marble."
1. Dr. Scrivener, Plain Introduction p.450 and note, has specified instances of this deflection.
- Edward Miller,
A Guide to the TC of the NT,
(London, 1886)
