The New Testament was not produced as a single work issued by an authoritative Church for the instruction of its members. The four Gospels were composed in different times and places over perhaps a third of a century, and for a time circulated separately among a number of other narratives of our Lord's life (of which the newly discovered fragment of an unknown gospel may have been one).

It is indeed a striking proof of the essential soundness of the tradition that with which all these thousands of copies, tracing their ancestry back to so many different parts of the earth and to conditions of such diverse kinds, the variations of text are so entirely questions of detail, not of essential substance.

Throughout, the work of Tyndale formed the foundation, and more than anyone else he established the rhythms and furnished much of the language which is familiar to us in the Authorised Version.

The aim of the scholarly editor is not to produce the the easiest text for the reader, but to get as near as he can to the text of the author.

No serious student of the Bible in English can neglect the Revised Version without loss.

It is from the graves and ruins and rubbish-heaps of Egypt that writings have been restored to us in great numbers.

The last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.