Autographa

“autographa: autographs, originals;

specifically, the original autograph copies of the books of the Bible as they came from the hands of the inspired authors.”

Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology, Term: autographa.

NOTES: It is interesting to observe that the “autographa” was for the Protestant Scholastics of the Reformation, “original autograph copies.” For the Protestants of old and for us here at StandardSacredText.com, we looks to the copies as autographic. Thus Francis Turretin writes concerning “The Purity of the Sources,”

“By the original texts, we do not mean the autographs written by the hand of Moses, of the prophets and of the apostles, which certainly do not now exist. We mean their apographs [copies] which are so called because they set forth to us the word of God in the very words of those who wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost.”

Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. 1, Second Topic, Q. 10, Sec. II.