# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1863_S319
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History.                    319

repeated under the protection of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, together with a crowd of shameless apostates, and they wanted to take the place of the Catholic truths." The bishop now lists the individual doctrines of the opponents one by one and ends his historical review with the assurance that all of them together "had to yield, like darkness before the light," even as "the synagogue of Satan yields to the Church, Belial to Christ!"

Bible Text Revision. The Eisenach Conference of Deputies of the presently 20 governing bodies of the German territorial churches, which again held its sessions this past June — sessions attended by 24 deputies — occupied itself with the project of a revision of the Bible text, and on that subject adopted the following resolutions:

"The Evangelical Conference considers it expedient, and fitting to its position with respect to the undertaking, to work toward a uniform shaping of the Luther text among all Bible institutes in a purely supportive way. The Evangelical Conference declares that a revised edition of Dr. Martin Luther's Bible translation, produced by one man or by several, capable of making the matured fruit of the present age's understanding of Scripture into common property, would be an exceedingly meritorious work, deserving of every encouragement. It believes, however, that for its own part it must proceed from the effort to establish a uniform textual form.

"In this it holds — thereby agreeing in substance with the principles expressed by the Canstein Bible Institute — the following to be proper: 1) that in general the present textus receptus of the Canstein Bible should be taken as the basis, with preferential regard to the original editions of Dr. Martin Luther, especially the last-hand edition, yet without on that account returning to those linguistic forms of the old editions which have become wholly foreign to our time; 2) that, further, the readings currently in use among the several Bible societies are to be taken into account in such a way that unity of the textual form is achieved through the general adoption of whatever is better, in such wise, however, that where there is doubt as to which of these readings should be chosen, the original text decides; 3) that, alongside this, the relatively few passages — chiefly in the New Testament — whose alteration or correction may appear necessary and unobjectionable in the interest of the understanding of Scripture, are to be restored, faithfully to the sense and as far as possible out of the vocabulary of the Luther Bible, in accordance with the original text; 4) that the Bible societies producing new editions of the Bible are to be invited by the Evangelical Conference to enter, so far as possible, into a mutual agreement for the purpose of a uniform textual form of the Lutheran Bible translation, the Evangelical Conference for its part assuring them of the fullest furtherance of the work, provided it is undertaken in the manner set out below.

"The Canstein Bible Institute is to be invited — perhaps through the requested mediation of the Evangelical Supreme Consistory of Prussia — to open the matter by undertaking: a) to have compiled the variants of the currently circulating Bible editions that come into consideration, together with such improvements as may appear necessary; b) to add which reading accordingly results for a uniform textual form; c) with respect to points a–b, to bring about, so far as possible, an agreement with all the Bible societies producing new editions of the Bible; d) to communicate the result thus obtained to the Evangelical Conference for further resolution.

"The Evangelical Conference will request the several church governments concerned to be as helpful as possible to the Bible societies in this matter, particularly with regard to facilitating mutual negotiations, securing theological assistance, and so forth."

The Sinaitic Bible manuscript, which Dr. Tischendorf discovered in the year 1859, and which is supposed to be the oldest among those now existing, has, on account of some variants and omissions, already thrown many a faint heart into anxiety and made them fear that it would give fresh strength to hostile criticism. But with that matters stand well enough. An article in this year's Saxon Kirchen- und Schulblatt of July 30, which contains an exact description of the manuscript, demonstrates how with it nothing