TOGETHER WITH THE PROCESS OF HISTORICAL PROOF; OR, A CONCISE ACCOUNT OF THE MEANS BY WHICH THE GENUINENESS OF ANCIENT LITERATURE GENERALLY, AND THE AUTHENTICITY OF HISTORICAL WORKS ESPECIALLY, ARE ASCERTAINED; INCLUDING INCIDENTAL REMARKS UPON THE RELATIVE STRENGTH OF THE EVIDENCE USUALLY ADDUCED IN BEHALF OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. BY ISAAC TAYLOR. VERI SCIENTIA VINDEX. A New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. LONDON: JACKSON AND WALFORD, 18, ST. PAUL’S CHURCHYARD. 1859. LONDON: PRINTED BY RICHARD CLA

Two books which appeared more than thirty years ago, and which have been long out of print, are brought into one in this volume. The second of them—the “Process of Historical Proof,” was, in fact, a sequel to the first—the “History of the Transmission of Ancient Books to Modern Times.” In now reprinting the two, as one, it has not been difficult to give continuity to the whole: this has been effected, partly by removing from each volume portions which seemed to be of secondary importance, and to

The credit of ancient literature, the certainty of history, and the truth of religion, are all involved in the secure transmission of ancient books to modern times. Many of the facts connected with the history of this transmission are to be found, more or less distinctly mentioned, in every work in which the claims of the Holy Scriptures are advocated. But these facts are open to much misapprehension when they are brought together to subserve the purposes of a single argument. It is the intentio

The antiquity and genuineness of the extant remains of ancient literature may be established by three lines of proof that are altogether independent of each other; and though, in any particular instance, one, or even two out of the three should be wanting, the remaining one may alone be perfectly conclusive:—When the three concur, they present a redundant demonstration of the facts in question. The first line of proof relates to the history of certain copies of a work, which are now in existence

Let us now suppose, that the Greek and Latin authors are extant only in the printed editions—that is to say, that every one of the ancient manuscripts has long since perished, and that the facts that have been referred to in the preceding pages are out of our view, or unknown. Our business then would be, to collect from these works such a series of mutual references, as should both prove the identity of the works now extant with those so referred to; and also fix the relative places of the sever

A language is at once the most complete, and it is the least fallible of all historical records. A poem or a history may have been forged; but a language is an unquestionable reality. The bare circumstance of its existence, though it may long have ceased to be colloquially extant, proves, in substance, what it is which history has to communicate. If we did but possess a complete vocabulary of an ancient language, and if we were to digest the mass in accordance with an exact principle of synthesi

No material for books has, perhaps, a higher claim to antiquity than the skin of the calf or goat, tanned soft, and which usually was dyed red or yellow: the skins, when thus prepared, were most often connected in lengths, sometimes of a hundred feet, sufficient to contain an entire work; or one book of a history or treatise, which then formed a roll, or volume . These soft skins seem to have been more in use among the Jews and other Asiatics than among the people of Europe. The copies of the He

The instruments used for writing would, of course, be such as were adapted to the material on which they were to be employed. For writing upon the brazen, leaden, or waxed tablets, above mentioned, a needle, called a style, was used, the upper end of which, being smooth and flat, served to obliterate the marks on the tablet, as occasion might require. These styles were at first most often formed of iron or brass; but afterwards of ivory, bone, or wood. Indeed a fatal use having been, on several

The mode of compacting the sheets of their books remained the same among the Greeks during a long course of time: little, therefore, pertinent to our argument, is to be gathered on this head. The sheets were folded three or four together, and separately stitched: these parcels were then connected nearly in the same mode as is at present practised. Books were covered with linen, silk, or leather. Sometimes the page was undivided; sometimes it contained two, and in a few instances of very ancient

More than half a century before the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, the learned men of that city, apprehensive of the approaching fall of the empire, had begun to emigrate into Italy, where they opened schools, and became the preceptors of princes and the guides of the public taste, which they directed towards the study of the classic writers of Greece especially, and even of Rome. But it was the fall of Constantinople in 1453 which filled the Italian cities with these learned strangers.

The facts referred to in the preceding chapters belong in common to ancient books of all classes, and they tend to prove that the works of the Greek and Roman writers—poets, dramatists, philosophers, critics, and historians—which issued from the press in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, may, by means of various and independent evidence, be infallibly traced up to the age in which they are commonly supposed to have been written. The reader’s attention is now to be directed to one class of t

From the very nature of the case the authenticity of an historical work can be affirmed only in a restricted sense, and must be understood to be open to exceptions in particular instances. Such exceptions may be taken without impeaching the character of the writer for veracity, or even for general accuracy. It is easy to suppose that he may have been imposed upon in certain cases, by his informants; or he may have reported things that were currently believed in his time, without thinking himself

Most of the principal facts mentioned by ancient historians, as well as many particulars of less importance, are confirmed by evidence that is altogether independent, both in its nature, and in the channels through which it has reached us. In truth, although the narratives of historians serve to connect and explain the entire mass of information that has descended to modern times, relative to the nations of remote antiquity, they are far from being the sole sources of that information:—perhaps t

Civilization has not ordinarily, if indeed it has ever done so, sprung up spontaneously in any land. A germ of the arts, and of literature, transmitted from people to people, and passed down from age to age, has taken root and become prolific, in a degree, proportioned generally to the amount and variety of those elements of social and intellectual improvement that may have been received from distant sources. These germs of civilization may have been transported, and scattered by colonization, b

Some copies of Quintilian’s Institutions of Oratory, very much corrupted and mutilated by the ignorance or presumption of copyists, were known in Italy before the fifteenth century. But in 1414, while the Council of Constance was sitting, Poggio, a learned Italian, was commissioned by the promoters of learning to proceed to that place, in search of ancient manuscripts, which were believed to be preserved in the monasteries of the city and its vicinity. His researches were rewarded by discovering

We have now seen in what way, and liable to what conditions, the mass of ancient literature, including the Holy Scriptures, has been sent forward through the long track of centuries intervening between the times of its production and the revival of learning, and the employment of the printing-press, in these modern times. What I now propose to do is to place before the reader—in a single and a very signal instance, the entire historic process; or that method of proceeding by means of which we, a

That the Greek text of Herodotus, such as it now appears—small verbal variations only excepted, was extant and well known in Greece, at least as early as the commencement of the Peloponnesian war ( B.C. 431), is the conclusion that is warranted by the evidence already adduced. It now remains to inquire how far this proof of the antiquity and genuineness of the work carries with it a proof of the general truth of the History. In a civilized community, where a free expression of opinion is allowed