Chapter IX. History Of The Text.
An adequate discussion of the subject of the present chapter would need a treatise by itself, and has been the single theme of several elaborate works. We shall here limit ourselves to the examination of those more prominent topics, a clear understanding of which is essential for the establishment of trustworthy principles in the application of external evidence to the correction of the text of the New Testament.
1. It was stated at the commencement of this volume that the autographs of the sacred writers “perished utterly in the very infancy of Christian history:” nor can any other conclusion be safely drawn from the general silence of the earliest Fathers, and from their constant habit of appealing to “ancient and approved copies[262],” when a reference to the originals, if extant, would have put an end to all controversy on the subject of various readings. Dismissing one passage in the genuine Epistles of Ignatius (d. 107), which has no real connexion with the matter[263], the only allusion to the autographs of Scripture met with in the primitive ages is the well-known declaration of [pg 258] Tertullian (fl. 200): “Percurre Ecclesias Apostolicas, apud quas ipsae adhuc Cathedrae Apostolorum suis locis praesident, apud quas ipsae Authenticae Literae eorum recitantur, sonantes vocem, et repraesentantes faciem uniuscujusque. Proximè est tibi Achaia, habes Corinthum. Si non longè es a Macedoniâ, habes Philippos, habes Thessalonicenses. Si potes in Asiam tendere, habes Ephesum. Si autem Italiae adjaces, habes Romam ...” (De Praescriptione Haereticorum, c. 36.) Attempts have been made, indeed, and that by eminent writers, to reduce the term “Authenticae Literae” so as to mean nothing more than “genuine, unadulterated Epistles,” or even the authentic Greek as opposed to the Latin translation[264]. It seems enough to reply with Ernesti, that any such non-natural sense is absolutely excluded by the word “ipsae,” which would be utterly absurd, if “genuine” only were intended (Institutes, Pt. iii. Ch. ii. 3)[265]: yet the African Tertullian was too little likely to be well informed on this subject, to entitle his rhetorical statement to any real attention[266]. We need not try to explain away his obvious meaning, but we may fairly demur to the evidence of this honest, but impetuous and wrong-headed man. We have no faith in the continued existence of autographs which are vouched [pg 259] for on no better authority than the real or apparent exigency of his argument[267].
2. Besides the undesigned and, to a great extent, unavoidable differences subsisting between manuscripts of the New Testament within a century of its being written, the wilful corruptions introduced by heretics soon became a cause of loud complaint in the primitive ages of the Church[268]. Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, addressing the Church of Rome and Soter its Bishop (a.d. 168-176), complains that even his own letters had been tampered with: καὶ ταύτας οἱ τοῦ διαβόλου ἀπόστολοι ζιζανίων γεγέμικαν, ἃ μὲν ἐξαιροῦντες, ἃ δὲ προστιθέντες; οἷς τὸ οὐαὶ κεῖται: adding, however, the far graver offence, οὐ θαυμαστὸν ἄρα εἰ καὶ τῶν κυριακῶν ῥαδιουργῆσαί τινες ἐπιβέβληνται γραφῶν (Euseb., Eccl. Hist., iv. 23), where αἱ κυριακαὶ γραφαί can be none other than the Holy Scriptures. Nor was the evil new in the age of Dionysius. Not to mention Asclepiades, or Theodotus, or Hermophylus, or Apollonides, who all under the excuse of correcting the sacred text corrupted it[269], or the Gnostics Basilides (a.d. 130?) and Valentinus (a.d. 150?) who published additions to the sacred text which were avowedly of their own composition, Marcion of Pontus, the [pg 260] arch-heretic of that period, coming to Rome on the death of its Bishop Hyginus (a.d. 142)[270], brought with him that mutilated and falsified copy of the New Testament, against which the Fathers of the second century and later exerted all their powers, and whose general contents are known to us chiefly through the writings of Tertullian and subsequently of Epiphanius. It can hardly be said that Marcion deserves very particular mention in relating the history of the sacred text[271]. Some of the variations from the common readings which his opponents detected were doubtless taken from manuscripts in circulation at the time, and, being adopted through no private preferences of his own, are justly available for critical purposes. Thus in 1 Thess. ii. 15, Tertullian, who saw only τοὺς προφήτας in his own copies, objects to Marcion's reading τοὺς ἰδίους προφήτας (“licet suos adjectio sit haeretici”), although ἰδίους stands in the received text, in Evann. KL (DE in later hands) and all cursives except eight, in the Gothic and both (?) Syriac versions, in Chrysostom, Theodoret, and John Damascenus. Here the heretic's testimony is useful in showing the high antiquity of ἰδίους, even though אABDEFGP, eight cursives, Origen thrice, the Vulgate, Armenian, Ethiopic, and all three Egyptian versions, join with Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort in rejecting it, some of them perhaps in compliance with Tertullian's decision. In similar instances the evidence of Marcion, as to matters of fact to which he could attach no kind of importance, is well worth recording[272]: but where on the contrary the dogmas of his own miserable system are touched, or no codices or other witnesses countenance his changes (as is perpetually the case in his edition of St. Luke, the only Gospel—and that maimed or interpolated from the others—he seems to have acknowledged at all), his blasphemous extravagance may very well be forgotten. In such cases he [pg 261] does not so much as profess to follow anything more respectable than the capricious devices of his misguided fancy.
3. Nothing throws so strong a light on the real state of the text in the latter half of the second century as the single notice of Irenaeus (fl. 178) on Apoc. xiii. 18. This eminent person, the glory of the Western Church in his own age, whose five books against Heresies (though chiefly extant but in a bald old Latin version) are among the most precious reliques of Christian antiquity, had been privileged in his youth to enjoy the friendly intercourse of his master Polycarp, who himself had conversed familiarly with St. John and others that had seen the Lord (Euseb., Eccl. Hist., v. 20). Yet even Irenaeus, though removed but by one stage from the very Apostles, possessed (if we except a bare tradition) no other means of settling discordant readings than are now open to ourselves; namely, to search out the best copies and exercise the judgement on their contents. His locus classicus must needs be cited in full, the Latin throughout, the Greek in such portions as survive. The question is whether St. John wrote χξιϛ᾽ (666), or χιϛ᾽ (616).
“Hic autem sic se habentibus, et in omnibus antiquis et probatissimis et veteribus scripturis numero hoc posito, et testimonium perhibentibus his qui facie ad faciem Johannem viderunt (τούτων δὲ οὕτως ἐχόντων, καὶ ἐν πᾶσι δὲ τοῖς σπουδαίοις καὶ ἀρχαίοις ἀντιγράφοις τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τούτου κειμένου, καὶ μαρτυρούντων ἀυτῶν ἐκείνων τῶν κατ᾽ ὄψιν τὸν Ἰωάννην ἑωρακότων, καὶ τοῦ λόγου διδάσκοντος ἡμᾶς ὅτι ὁ ἀριθμὸς τοῦ ὀνόματος τοῦ θηρίου κατὰ τὴν τῶν Ἑλλήνων ψῆφον διὰ τῶν ἐν ἀυτῷ γραμμάτων [ἐμφαίνεται]), et ratione docente nos quoniam numerus nominis bestiae, secundum Graecorum computationem, per literas quae in eo sunt sexcentos habebit et sexaginta et sex: ignoro quomodo erraverunt quidam sequentes idiotismum et medium frustrantes numerum nominis, quinquaginta numeros deducentes, pro sex decadis unam decadem volentes esse (οὐκ οἶδα πῶς ἐσφάλησάν τινες ἐπακολουθήσαντες ἰδιωτισμῷ καὶ τὸν μέσον ἠθέτησαν ἀριθμὸν τοῦ ὀνόματος, ν᾽ ψήφισμα ὑφελόντες καὶ ἀντὶ τῶν ἓξ δεκάδων μίαν δεκάδα βουλόμενοι εἶναι). Hoc autem arbitror scriptorum peccatum fuisse, ut solet fieri, quoniam et per literas numeri ponuntur, facilè literam Graecam quae sexaginta enuntiat numerum, in iota Graecorum literam expansam.... Sed his quidem qui simpliciter et sine malitia hoc fecerunt, arbitramur veniam dari a Deo.” (Contra Haeres. v. 30. 1: Harvey, vol. ii. pp. 406-7.)
Here we obtain at once the authority of Irenaeus for receiving the Apocalypse as the work of St. John; we discern the living interest its contents had for the Christians of the second century, even up to the traditional preservation of its minutest readings; [pg 262] we recognize the fact that numbers were then represented by letters[273]; and the far more important one that the original autograph of the Apocalypse was already so completely lost, that a thought of it never entered the mind of the writer, though the book had not been composed one hundred years, perhaps not more than seventy[274].
4. Clement of Alexandria is the next writer who claims our attention (fl. 194). Though his works abound with citations from Scripture, on the whole not too carefully made (“in adducendis N. T. locis creber est et castus,” is rather too high praise, Mill, Proleg. § 627), the most has not yet been made of the information he supplies. He too complains of those who tamper with (or metaphrase) the Gospels for their own sinister ends, and affords us one specimen of their evil diligence[275]. His pupil Origen's [185-253] is the highest name among the critics and expositors of the early Church; he is perpetually engaged in the discussion of various readings of the New Testament, and employs language in describing the then existing state of the text, which would be deemed strong if applied even to its present [pg 263] condition, after the changes which sixteen more centuries must needs have produced. His statements are familiar enough to Biblical enquirers, but, though often repeated, cannot be rightly omitted here. Seldom have such warmth of fancy and so bold a grasp of mind been united with the life-long patient industry which procured for this famous man the honourable appellation of Adamantius. Respecting the sacred autographs, their fate or their continued existence, he seems to have had no information, and to have entertained no curiosity: they had simply passed by and were out of reach. Had it not been for the diversities of copies in all the Gospels on other points (he writes)—καὶ εἰ μὲν μὴ καὶ περὶ ἄλλων πολλῶν διαφωνία ἦν πρὸς ἄλληλα τῶν ἀντιγράφων—he should not have ventured to object to the authenticity of a certain passage (Matt. xix. 19) on internal grounds: νυνὶ δὲ δηλονότι πολλὴ γέγονεν ἡ τῶν ἀντιγράφων διαφορά, εἴτε ἀπὸ ῥαθυμίας τινῶν γραφέων, εἴτε ἀπὸ τόλμης τινῶν μοχθηρᾶς τῆς διορθώσεως τῶν γραφομένων, εἴτε καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν τὰ ἑαυτοῖς δοκοῦντα ἐν τῇ διορθώσει προστιθέντων ἢ ἀφαιρούντων (Comment. on Matt., Tom. iii. p. 671, De la Rue). “But now,” saith he, “great in truth has become the diversity of copies, be it from the negligence of certain scribes, or from the evil daring of some who correct what is written, or from those who in correcting add or take away what they think fit[276]:” just like Irenaeus had previously described revisers of the text as persons “qui peritiores apostolis volunt esse” (Contra Haeres. iv. 6. 1).
5. Nor can it easily be denied that the various readings of the New Testament current from the middle of the second to the middle of the third century, were neither fewer nor less considerable than such language would lead us to anticipate. Though no [pg 264] surviving manuscript of the Old Latin version, or versions, dates before the fourth century, and most of them belong to a still later age, yet the general correspondence of their text with that used by the first Latin Fathers is a sufficient voucher for its high antiquity. The connexion subsisting between this Latin version, the Curetonian Syriac, and Codex Bezae, proves that the text of these documents is considerably older than the vellum on which they are written; the Peshitto Syriac also, most probably the very earliest of all translations, though approaching far nearer to the received text than they, sufficiently resembles these authorities in many peculiar readings to exhibit the general tone and character of one class of manuscripts extant in the second century, two hundred years anterior to Codd. אB. Now it may be said without extravagance that no set of Scriptural records affords a text less probable in itself or less sustained by any rational principles of external evidence, than that of Cod. D, of the Latin codices, and (so far as it accords with them) of Cureton's Syriac. Interpolations, as insipid in themselves as unsupported by other evidence, abound in them all[277]: additions so little in accordance with the genuine spirit of Holy Writ that some critics (though I, for one, profess no skill in such alchemy) have declared them to be as easily separable from the text which they encumber, as the foot-notes appended to a modern book are from the main body of the work (Tregelles, An Account of the Printed Text, p. 138, note). It is no less true to fact than paradoxical in sound, that the worst corruptions to which the New Testament has ever been subjected, originated within a hundred years after it was composed; that Irenaeus and the African Fathers and the whole Western, with a portion of the Syrian Church, used far inferior manuscripts to those employed by Stunica, or Erasmus, or Stephen thirteen centuries later, when [pg 265] moulding the Textus Receptus. What passage in the Holy Gospels would be more jealously guarded than the record of the heavenly voice at the Lord's Baptism? Yet Augustine (De Consensu Evangelist, ii. 14) marked a variation which he thought might be found “in aliquibus fide dignis exemplaribus,” though not “in antiquioribus codicibus Graecis,” where, in the place of ἐν σοὶ ἠυδόκησα (Luke iii. 22), the words ἐγὼ σήμερον γεγέννηκά σε are substituted from Psalm ii. 7: so also reads the Manichaean Faustus apud Augustin.; Enchiridion ad Laurentium, c. 49. The only Greek copy which maintains this important reading is D: it is met with moreover in abc (in d of course), in ff1 primâ manu, and in l, whose united evidence leaves not a doubt of its existence in the primitive Old Latin; whence it is cited by Hilary three times, by Lactantius and Juvencus, to which list Abbot adds Hilary the deacon (Quaestiones V. et N. T.). Among the Greeks it is known but to Methodius, and to those very early writers, Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, who seem to have derived the corruption (for such it must doubtless be regarded) from the Ebionite Gospel (Epiphan., Haeres., xxi. 13)[278]. So again of a doubtful passage which we shall examine in Chapter [XII], Irenaeus cites Acts viii. 37 without the least misgiving, though the spuriousness of the verse can hardly be doubted; and expressly testifies to a reading in Matt. i. 18 which has not till lately found many advocates. It is hard to believe that 1 John v. 7, 8 was not cited by Cyprian, and even the interpolation in Matt. xx. 28 was widely known and received. Many other examples might be produced from the most venerable Christian writers, in which they countenance variations (and those not arbitrary, but resting on some sort of authority) which no modern critic has ever attempted to vindicate.
6. When we come down to the fourth century, our information grows at once more definite and more trustworthy. Copies of Scripture had been extensively destroyed during the long and terrible period of affliction that preceded the conversion of [pg 266] Constantine. In the very edict which marked the beginning of Diocletian's persecution, it is ordered that the holy writings should be burnt (τὰς γραφὰς ἀφανεῖς πυρὶ γενέσθαι, Eusebius, Eccl. Hist., viii. 2); and the cruel decree was so rigidly enforced that a special name of reproach (traditores), together with the heaviest censures of the Church, was laid upon those Christians who betrayed the sacred trust (Bingham, Antiquities, book xvi. ch. vi. 25). At such a period critical revision or even the ordinary care of devout transcribers must have disappeared before the pressure of the times. Fresh copies of the New Testament would have to be made in haste to supply the room of those seized by the enemies of our Faith; and, when made, they had to circulate by stealth among persons whose lives were in jeopardy every hour. Hence arose the need, when the tempest was overpast, of transcribing many new manuscripts of the Holy Bible, the rather as the Church was now receiving vast accessions of converts within her pale. Eusebius of Caesarea, the ecclesiastical historian, seems to have taken the lead in this happy labour; his extensive learning, which by the aid of certain other less commendable qualities had placed him high in Constantine's favour, rendered it natural that the emperor should employ his services for furnishing with fifty copies of Scripture the churches of his new capital, Constantinople. Eusebius' deep interest in Biblical studies is exhibited in several of his surviving works, as well as in his Canons for harmonizing the Gospels: and he would naturally betake himself for the text of his fifty codices to the Library founded at his Episcopal city of Caesarea by the martyr Pamphilus, the dear friend and teacher from whom he derived his own familiar appellation Eusebius Pamphili. Into this Library Pamphilus had gathered manuscripts of Origen as well as of other theologians, and of these Eusebius made an index (τοὺς πίνακας παρεθέμην: Eccles. Hist., vi. 32). From this collection Cod. H of St. Paul and others are stated to have been derived, nay even Cod. א in its Old Testament portion (see vol. I. p. 55 and note), which is expressly declared to have been corrected to the Hexapla of Origen. Indeed we know from Jerome (Comment. in Epist. ad Tit.) that the very autograph (“ipsa authentica”) of Origen's Hexapla was used by himself at Caesarea, and Montfaucon (Praeliminaria in Hexapl., chap. i. 5) cites from one [pg 267] manuscript the following subscription to Ezekiel, Ὁ Εὐσέβιος ἐγὼ σχόλια παρέθηκα. Πάμφιλος καὶ Εὐσέβιος ἐδιωρθώσαντο.
7. We are thus warranted, as well from direct evidence as from the analogy of the Old Testament, to believe that Eusebius mainly resorted for his Constantinopolitan Church-books to the codices of Pamphilus, which might once have belonged to Origen. What critical corrections (if any) he ventured to make in the text on his own judgement is not so clear. Not that there is the least cause to believe, with Dr. Nolan (Inquiry into the Integrity of the Greek Vulgate, p. 27), that Eusebius had either the power or the will to suppress or tamper with the great doctrinal texts 1 John v. 7, 8; 1 Tim. iii. 16; Acts xx. 28; yet we cannot deny that his prepossessions may have tempted him to arbitrary alterations in other passages, which had no direct bearing on the controversies of his age[279]. Codd. אB are quite old enough to have been copied under his inspection[280], and it is certainly very remarkable that these two early manuscripts omit one whole paragraph (Mark xvi. 9-20) with his sanction, if not after his example (see below, Chap. [XII]). Thus also in Matt, xxiii. 35 Cod. א, with the countenance only of Evan. 59, Evst. 6, 13, 222 (see under Evst. 222), discards υἱοῦ βαραχίον, for which change Eusebius (silentio) is literally the only authority among the Fathers, Irenaeus and even Origen retaining the words, in spite of their obvious difficulty. The relation in which Cod. א stands to the other four chief manuscripts of the Gospels, may be roughly estimated from analyzing the transcript of four pages first published by Tischendorf[281], as well as in any other [pg 268] way. Of the 312 variations from the common text therein noted, א stands alone in forty-five, in eight agrees with ABCD united (much of C, however, is lost in these passages), with ABC together thirty-one times, with ABD fourteen, with AB thirteen, with D alone ten, with B alone but once (Mark i. 27), with C alone once: with several authorities against AB thirty-nine times, with A against B fifty-two, with B against A ninety-eight. Hence, while the discovery of this precious document has unquestionably done much to uphold Cod. B (which is the more correctly written, and doubtless the more valuable of the two) in many of its more characteristic and singular readings, it has made the mutual divergencies of the very oldest critical authorities more patent and perplexing than ever[282].
8. Codd. אB were apparently anterior to the age of Jerome, the latest ecclesiastical writer whose testimony need be dwelt upon, since from his time downwards the stream of extant and direct manuscript evidence, beginning with Codd. AC, flows on without interruption. Jerome's attention was directed to the criticism of the Greek Testament by his early Biblical studies, and the knowledge he thus obtained had full scope for its exercise when he was engaged on revising the Old Latin version. In his so-often cited “Praefatio ad Damasum,” prefixed to his recension of the Gospels, he complains of certain “codices, quos a Luciano et Hesychio nuncupatos, paucorum hominum asserit perversa contentio,” and those not of the Old Testament alone, but also of the New. This obscure and passing notice of corrupt and (apparently) interpolated copies has been made the foundation of more than one theory as fanciful as ingenious. Jerome further informs us that he had adopted in his translation the canons which Eusebius “Alexandrium secutus Ammonium” (but [pg 269] see Vol. I. pp. 59, &c.) had invented or first brought into vogue; stating, and, in his usual fashion, somewhat exaggerating[283], an evil these canons helped to remedy, the mixing up of the matter peculiar to one Evangelist with the narrative of another. Hence we might naturally expect that the Greek manuscripts he would view with special favour, were the same as Eusebius had approved before him. In the scattered notices throughout his works, Jerome sometimes speaks but vaguely of “quaedam exemplaria tam Graeca quam Latina” (Luke xxii. 43-4, almost in the words of Hilary, his senior); or appeals to readings “in quibusdam exemplaribus et maximè in Graecis codicibus” (Mark xvi. 14). Occasionally we hear of “multi et Graeci et Latini codices” (John vii. 53), or “vera exemplaria” (Matt. v. 22; xxi. 31), or “antiqua exemplaria” (Luke ix. 23), without specifying in which language: Mark xvi. 9-20 “in raris fertur Evangeliis,” since “omnes Graeciae libri paene” do not contain it[284]. In two places, however, he gives a more definite account of the copies he most regarded. In Galat. iii. 1 τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι is omitted by Jerome, because it is not contained “in exemplaribus Adamantii,” although (as he elsewhere informs us) “et Graeca exemplaria hoc errore confusa sint.” In the other of the two passages Jerome remarks that in some Latin copies of Matt. xxiv. 36 neque filius is added, “quum in Graecis, et maxime Adamantii et Pierii exemplaribus, hoc non habeatur adscriptum.” Pierius the presbyter of Alexandria, elsewhere called by Jerome “the younger Origen” (Cat. Scriptt. Eccl., i. p. 128), has been deprived by fortune of the honour due to his merit and learning. A contemporary, perhaps the teacher of Pamphilus (Euseb., Eccl. Hist., vii. 32) at Caesarea, his copies of Scripture would naturally be preserved with those of Origen in the great Library of that city. Here they were doubtless seen by Jerome when, to his deep joy, he found Origen's writings copied in Pamphilus' hand (Cat. Scriptt. Eccl., [pg 270] ubi supra), which volumes Acacius and Euzoius, elder contemporaries of Jerome himself, had taken pious care to repair and renew (ibid. i. p. 131; ad Marcell. Ep. cxli). It is not therefore wonderful if, employing as they did and setting a high value on precisely the same manuscripts of the N. T., the readings approved by Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome should closely agree.
9. Epiphanius [d. 403], who wrote at about the same period as Jerome, distinguishes in his note on Luke xix. 41 or xxii. 44 (Tom. ii. p. 36) between the uncorrected copies (ἀδιορθώτοις), and those used by the Orthodox[285]. Of the function of the “corrector” (διορθωτής) of an ancient manuscript we have spoken several times before: but a system was devised by Professor J. L. Hug of Freyburg (Einleitung, 1808), and maintained, though with some modifications, by J. G. Eichhorn, which assigned to these occasional, and (as they would seem to be) unsystematic labours of the reviser, a foremost place in the criticism of the N. T. Hug conceived that the process of corruption had been going on so rapidly and uniformly from the Apostolic age downwards, that by the middle of the third century the state of the text in the general mass of codices had degenerated into the form exhibited in Codd. D, 1, 13, 69, 124 of the Gospels, the Old Latin and Sahidic (he would now have added the Curetonian Syriac) versions, and to some extent in the Peshitto and in the citations of Clement of Alexandria and of Origen in his early works. To this uncorrected text he gave the name of κοινὴ ἔκδοσις, and that it existed, substantially in the interpolated shape now seen in Cod. D, the Old Latin, and Cureton's Syriac, as early as the second century, need not be doubted. There is some foundation for this position, but it was marred by Hug's lack of sobriety of judgement. What we may fairly dispute is that this text ever [pg 271] had extensive circulation or good repute in the Churches whose vernacular language was Greek. This “common edition” Hug supposes to have received three separate emendations in the middle of the third century; one made by Origen in Palestine, which he thinks Jerome adopted and approved; two others by Hesychius and Lucian (a presbyter of Antioch and Martyr), in Egypt and Syria respectively, both which Jerome condemned, and Pope Gelasius (a.d. 492-6) declared to be apocryphal[286]. To Origen's recension he referred such copies as AKM, 42, 106, 114, 116, 253 of the Gospels, the Harkleian Syriac, the quotations of Chrysostom and Theodoret; to Hesychius the Alexandrian codices BCL; to Lucian the Byzantine documents EFGHSV and the mass of later books. The practical effect of this elaborate theory would be to accord to Cod. A a higher place among our authorities than some recent editors have granted it, even than it quite deserves, yet its correspondence with Origen in many characteristic readings would thus be admitted and accounted for (but see p. [226]). But in truth Hug's whole scheme is utterly baseless as regards historical fact, and most insufficiently sustained by internal proof. Jerome's slight and solitary mention of the copies of Lucian and Hesychius abundantly evinces their narrow circulation and the low esteem in which they were held; and even Eichhorn perceived that there was no evidence whatever to show that Origen had attempted a formal revision of the text. The passages cited above, both from Eusebius and Jerome—and no others are known to bear on the subject—will carry us no further than this:—that these Fathers had access to codices of the N. T. once possessed by Adamantius, and here and there, perhaps, retouched by his hand. The manuscripts copied by Pamphilus were those of Origen's own works; and while we have full and detailed accounts of what he accomplished for the Greek versions of the Old Testament, no hint has been thrown out by any ancient writer that he carried his pious labour into [pg 272] the criticism of the New. On the contrary, he seems to disclaim the task in a sentence now extant chiefly in the old Latin version of his works, wherein, to a notice of his attempt to remove diversity of reading from codices of the Septuagint by the help of “the other editions” (κριτηρίῳ χρησάμενοι ταῖς λοιπαῖς ἐκδόσεσιν, i.e. the versions of Aquila and the rest), he is represented as adding, “In exemplaribus autem Novi Testamenti, hoc ipsum me posse facere sine periculo non putavi” (Origen, Tom. iii. p. 671).
10. Hug's system of recensions was devised as a corrective to those of Bengel and of Griesbach, which have been adequately discussed in Chapter [VII]. The veteran Griesbach spent his last effort as a writer in bringing to notice the weak points of Hug's case, and in claiming him, where he rightly could, as a welcome ally[287]. But neither did Hug's scheme, nor that propounded by Scholz some years later, obtain the general credit and acceptance which had once been conceded to Griesbach's. It was by this time plainly seen that not only were such theories unsupported by historical testimony (to which indeed the Professor of Halle had been too wise to lay claim), but that they failed to account for more than a part, and that usually a small part, of the phenomena disclosed by minute study of our critical materials. All that can be inferred from searching into the history of the sacred text amounts to no more than this: that extensive [pg 273] variations, arising no doubt from the wide circulation of the New Testament in different regions and among nations of diverse languages, subsisted from the earliest period to which our records extend. Beyond this point our investigations cannot be carried, without indulging in pleasant speculations which may amuse the fancy, but cannot inform the sober judgement. Such is the conclusion to which we are reluctantly brought after examining the principles laid down, as well by the critics we have named above, as by Lachmann, by his disciple Tregelles, and even by the par nobile of Cambridge Doctors, Professor Hort and Bishop (formerly Canon) Westcott, of whose labours we shall speak presently.