How This Edition Was Made

Where the text came from

The source of record is the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek color scan, digital object bsb10412533. Printed page N is scan N+14. Page 301 is scan 00315. The errata leaf is scan 00316. Scan 00317 is a blank leaf. An optical scan was used only to find a line. It never decided a letter, a Greek accent, a citation, or a page break.

How the English was checked

The English was compared with those page images twice, from the title page through the errata leaf. The first reading was made while the book was translated, in batches, and the confirmed corrections were put into the text before the next batch. The second reading was a fresh comparison of the whole book with the same images. It checked paragraph breaks, negations, speakers, quotations, Greek and Latin, biblical citations, names, and the words that fall at a page turn. The confirmed corrections from that reading are in this book.

The English was also read by a human. W. C. Muenchow IV read the translation in addition to those two comparisons with the page images.

After the second reading, the book was checked again as a whole: printed pages 1 through 301 stand in order, all thirteen chapters are present, all 482 notes are linked to the sentence that cites them and back again, all ten items on Ritschl’s errata leaf are recorded, and the italic marks balance.

The two English copies

One working copy keeps each English word on the printed page that carries the German word, so a sentence can be awkward at a page turn. That copy is how the images were checked. This reading text keeps every page marker and puts the English back into ordinary order across the turn. The sense of each repaired sentence is the sense already recorded in the second reading. Where a word was hyphenated across a page, this text gives the whole word. The marker remains at the page turn. It does not end the sentence.

Notes

Ritschl’s notes are numbered continuously within each of his thirteen chapters. The Introduction is its own sequence. Book One, Chapter V is one sequence: the Luke chapter headings inside it do not start a new count. Each note keeps the printed key, such as [p. 5, n. 1], and sits with the page that prints it.

His errata leaf

The short list after page 301 is Ritschl’s own unnumbered leaf of corrections, headed Verbesserungen. It is one printed leaf, so it is one short list. All ten corrections are already applied in the English and marked at the place with [Corrected in Ritschl’s errata]. The leaf is translated here so the printed book can be checked against it. The ten places are pages 24, 28, 32, 61, 62, 64, 71 (two items), 74, and 141.

Readings left as printed

These were left as they stand because the scan or the syntax does not justify a further change. They are not silent repairs.

• Page 106. The two forms are given as printed, ἆραι and ᾆραι.
• Page 108. τοῦτό ἐστι or τοῦτο ἔστι is left unresolved.
• Page 115. Whether BD. is one siglum is left as printed.
• Page 119. The apostrophe in ἀντ᾽ ἄλλων is left as printed.
• Page 135. The accents on Πέτρον and ὅ ἐστι are left as printed.
• Page 141. Ναζαρήτ or Ναζαρὴτ is left as printed.
• Page 148. ὡσεὶ or ὡςεὶ is left as printed.
• Page 149. ταῦτα or ταυτά is left as printed.
• Page 185, note 2. εἰσέλθη is kept without the iota subscript.
• Page 186. The second acute on αἵματί is kept. It may be ink.
• Page 195. The printed citation Cap. 21, 41–44, beside a later cap. 20, 41–44, is left as printed.
• Page 197. The Luke 10 verse numbers printed V. 19 and V. 20 are left as printed.
• Pages 206–207. diese auf Kosten jener is read as the Twelve set down at the expense of the Seventy, following the next sentence.
• Page 219. in demselben is read as the Gospel.
• Page 227. The breathing of ἔλεγε is kept, and λοιποὺς is given with the grave accent the page prints.
• Page 245. The printed Schriftsteliers is translated “writer” and flagged.
• Page 246, note 4. The printed a. o. O. is expanded as the work cited above.
• Page 248. εἰμι is kept, and the English follows the singular subject where the German verb is plural.
• Page 249, note 1. The printed Gebot is translated “commandment.”
• Page 283. The accent of περιτομή is kept.
• Page 290. The elision in ἀφ᾽ ὑμῶν is left as printed.
• Page 299. The Latin of Irenaeus, a Paulo et Barnaba et Joanne, is unchanged. The English follows Acts: Barnabas and John separated from Paul. The ablatives can also be read as one “from” phrase.
• Revelation 2:8 is kept in the form Ritschl printed, 2, 8.

What was not added

Ritschl later withdrew the 1846 thesis. That later writing is not part of this book. It is not translated here, and it does not change the 1846 argument.

A search on 27 September 2026, against the German title, the English title, library and facsimile records, and the scholarship that cites the book, did not locate a complete English translation. That search is not a proof that none exists. The German original, German facsimile reprints, English summaries, and English translations of other works by Ritschl are not this book.

This note is editorial framing by the present editor. It is not Ritschl’s text.