Chapter X. Recent Views Of Comparative Criticism.
Yet is it true that we are thus cast upon the wide ocean without a compass or a guide? Can no clue be found that may conduct us through the tangled maze? Is there no other method of settling the text of the New Testament than by collecting and marshalling and scrutinizing the testimony of thousands of separate documents, now agreeing, now at issue with each other:—manuscripts, versions, ecclesiastical writers, whose mutual connexion and interdependence, as far as they exist (and to some extent they do and must exist), defy all our skill and industry to detect and estimate aright? This would surely be a discouraging view of critical science as applied to the sacred volume, and it is by no means warranted by proved and admitted facts. Elaborate systems have failed, as might have been looked for from the first. It was premature to frame them in the present stage of things, while the knowledge we possess of the actual contents of our extant authorities is imperfect, vague, and fragmentary; while our conclusions are liable to be disturbed from time to time by the rapid accession of fresh materials, of whose character we are still quite ignorant. But if we be incompetent to devise theories on a grand or imposing scale, a more modest and a safer course is open. Men of the present generation may be disqualified for taking a general survey of the whole domain of this branch of divine learning, who may yet be employed, serviceably and with honour, in cultivating each one for himself some limited and humble field of special research, to which his taste, his abilities, or opportunities have attached him: those persons may usefully improve a farm, who cannot hope to conquer a kingdom. Out of the long array of uncollated manuscripts which swell our catalogues, let the student choose from the mass a few within his reach which he may deem worthy of complete examination; or exhaust the information some ecclesiastical writer of the first six centuries can afford; or [pg 275] contribute what he can to an exact acquaintance with some good ancient version, ascertaining the genius of its language and (where this is attainable) the literary history of its text. If, in the course of such quiet toil, he shall mark (as a patient observer will find cause to mark) resemblances and affinities more than accidental, between documents of widely different ages and countries; he will not only be contributing to the common stock what cannot fail to be available hereafter as raw material, but he will be helping to solve that great problem which has hitherto in part eluded the most earnest inquiries, the investigation of the true laws and principles of Comparative Criticism.
The last-mentioned term has been happily applied by Tregelles to that delicate and important process, whereby we seek to determine the comparative value, and trace the mutual relation, of authorities of every kind upon which the original text of the N. T. is based. Thus explained (and in this enlarged sense scholars have willingly accepted it), its researches may be pursued with diligence and interest, without reference to the maintenance or refutation of any particular system or scheme of recensions. The mode of procedure is experimental and tentative, rather than dogmatical; the facts it gradually develops will eventually (as we trust) put us on the right road, although for the present we meet with much that is uncertain, perplexing, ambiguous. It has already enabled critics in some degree to classify the documents with which they have to deal; it may possibly lead them, at some future period, to the establishment of principles more general, and therefore more simple, than we can now conceive likely or even possible to be attained to.
1. In the course of investigations thus difficult and precarious, designed to throw light on a matter of such vast consequence as the genuine condition of the text of Scripture, one thing would appear at first sight almost too clear for argument, too self-evident to be disputed,—that it is both our wisdom and our duty to weigh the momentous subject at issue in all its parts, shutting out from the mind no source of information which can reasonably be supposed capable of influencing our decision. Nor can such a course become less right or expedient because it must perforce involve us in laborious, extensive, and prolonged examination of a vast store of varied and voluminous testimony. It is essential [pg 276] that divines should strive to come to definite conclusions respecting disputed points of sacred criticism; it is not necessary that these conclusions should be drawn within a certain limited period, either this year, or even in the lifetime of our generation. Hence such a plan as that advocated by Lachmann, for abridging the trouble of investigation by the arbitrary rejection of the great mass of existing evidence, must needs be condemned for its rashness by those who think their utmost pains well bestowed in such a cause; nor can we consistently praise the determination of others, who, shunning the more obvious errors into which Lachmann fell, yet follow his example in constructing the text of the N. T. on a foundation somewhat less narrow, but scarcely more firm than his. As the true science of Biblical criticism is in real danger of suffering harm from the efforts of disciples of this school, it cannot be out of place if we examine the pleas which have been urged in vindication of their scheme, and assign (as briefly as we may) our reasons for believing that its apologists are but labouring in vain.
2. Brevis vita, ars longa. For this lawful cause, if for no other, the most ardent student of Biblical criticism would fain embrace some such system as is advocated by Lachmann and his followers, if only it could be done in tolerable safety. The process of investigation might thus be diminished twentyfold, and the whole subject brought within a compass not too vast for one man's diligence or the space of an ordinary lifetime. The simplicity and comparative facility of this process of resorting to the few for instruction hitherto supposed to be diffused among the many, has created in its favour a strong and not unnatural prejudice, which has yielded, so far as it has yet yielded at all, to nothing but the stubborn opposition of indisputable facts. It will also readily be admitted, that certain principles, not indeed peculiar to this theory, but brought by it into greater prominence, are themselves most reasonable and true. No one will question, for example, that “if the reading of the ancient authorities in general is unanimous, there can be but little doubt that it should be followed, whatever may be the later testimonies; for it is most improbable that the independent testimony of early MSS., versions, and Fathers should accord with regard to something entirely groundless” (Tregelles, N. T., [pg 277] Introductory Notice, p. 2). No living man, possessed of a tincture of scholarship, would dream of setting up testimony exclusively modern against the unanimous voice of antiquity. The point on which we insist is briefly this:—that the evidence of ancient authorities is anything but unanimous; that they are perpetually at variance with each other, even if we limit the term ancient within the narrowest bounds. Shall it include, among the manuscripts of the Gospels, none but the five oldest copies Codd. אABCD[288]? The reader has but to open the first recent critical work he shall meet with, to see them scarcely ever in unison; perpetually divided two against three, or perhaps four against one. All the readings these venerable monuments contain must of course be ancient, or they would not be found where they are; but they cannot all be true. So again, if our search be extended to the versions and primitive Fathers, the same phenomenon unfolds itself, to our grievous perplexity and disappointment. How much is contained in Cureton's Syriac and the Old Latin for which no Greek original can now be alleged? Do not the earliest ecclesiastical writers describe readings as existing and current in their copies, of which few traces can be met with at present[289]? If the question be fairly proposed, “What right have we to set virtually aside the agreement in the main of our oldest uncials, at the distance of one or two centuries—of which, owing probably to the results of persecution, we have no MS. remains—with the citations of the primitive Fathers, and with the earliest versions?”: the answer must be rendered, without hesitation, no right whatever. Where the oldest of these authorities really agree, we accept their united testimony as practically conclusive. It is not at all our design to seek our readings from the later uncials, supported as they usually are by the mass of cursive manuscripts; but to employ their confessedly secondary evidence in those numberless instances wherein their elder brethren are hopelessly at variance[290]. We do not claim for the recent documents the high consideration and deference fitly [pg 278] reserved for a few of the oldest; just as little do we think it right to pass them by in silence, and allow to them no more weight or importance than if they had never been written. “There are passages,” to employ the words of a very competent judge, “where the evidence of the better cursives may be of substantial use in confirming a good reading, or in deciding us between two of nearly equal merit to place one in the text and assign the other to the margin[291].”
3. It may readily be supposed that the very few manuscripts which, being ancient themselves, are regarded by the school of Lachmann as alone preserving an ancient and genuine form, have not been selected as virtually the sole authorities for the settling of the sacred text, except for reasons which those who thus adopt them regard as weighty, and which merit at any rate our best consideration before we put them aside as insufficient. The great uncials, we are told, are treated with so much deference, not only or chiefly because they are old, but because they have been rigorously tested and have proved on trial to deserve the confidence which has been reposed in them. The process of investigation shall now be stated, as fairly and even favourably as possible. It is not worth while, as it certainly is not our desire, to snatch a transient advantage by misrepresenting the views we are controverting. We would rather comprise in our own system all that is sound and exact in them, while we withstand the attempt to carry them beyond the limits which they may legitimately occupy, and refuse to generalize on the strength of facts which are only partially true.
We have already laid down the axiom admitted by all, that manuscripts of the original hold the first rank among our critical materials; versions, and, yet more, the citations of ecclesiastical authors being subordinate to them. Yet whatever other disadvantages the Patristic writings may labour under, we are at [pg 279] any rate certain respecting the age in which they were composed, the works themselves being assumed to be authentic. If Irenaeus, or Tertullian, or Origen, expressly assure us that particular words which they name were read in their copies of Scripture, we cannot withstand their testimony that such words were really found in manuscripts of the New Testament in the second and third centuries, one or two hundred years before Codd. אB were in existence. If, therefore, we take a various reading of the text for which any one of these venerable men has vouched, and observe that it is supported perhaps by a few manuscripts of various ages, then by a version or two, especially if they be natives of different countries, and flow together into the same stream from sources remote from each other;—the rather too if the reading be plausible and even probable in itself:—and if, after having formed an opinion that on the whole it deserves to be respectfully considered, we then turn to א or B, or to both, and discover the same reading in them also:—not only has the variation itself made out an urgent case for our acceptance, but the character of א and B as faithful witnesses is largely enhanced. It is moreover evident, that if the same method of investigation be pursued many times over with the same, or something approaching to the same success, the value of א and B as truthful codices will be proportionally increased.
A single good example of this process will make it yet more intelligible to the careful student. It shall be one that has been chosen for the purpose by more than one of the advocates of the system we are on the whole opposing. Of the two forms in which the Lord's Prayer is delivered to us, Matt. vi. 13 has the clause ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ in every known authority: in Luke xi. 4 the case is far otherwise. That Tertullian, when citing the words before and after it, should take no notice of it, would of itself prove little. Origen, however, once passes it by in like manner, once more expressly declares that it was not in St. Luke (παρὰ τῷ Λουκᾷ σεσιώπηται), a third time explains in his most happy manner why it was omitted by the one Evangelist, inserted by the other. The question thus raised sets us upon the inquiry what other evidence we have for rejecting the clause in St. Luke. It appears to be wanting in several Greek manuscripts, such as L, 1, 22, 57, 130 both Greek and Latin, 131, 226*, 237, 242, 426, 582, 604, and in the catenas annexed to 36, [pg 280] 237, 239, 253, 259, 426; several of these codices (as 57, 226, 242) not being much found in such company. It is absent from the Vulgate version, and apparently from some forms of the Old Latin, the rather as Augustine says that St. Luke gives five petitions in the Lord's Prayer, St. Matthew seven, and attributes the omission of our clause to some such reason as Origen had assigned. It is omitted also in the Armenian version, which, except for the later translation by Sahak from Syriac, might be supposed to differ toto caelo from the Latin in country and genius. The list is closed by the younger Cyril, a pure witness from another region, very different lines of evidence thus converging into one. Then comes the probability that if one of the Gospels contained the Lord's Prayer in a shorter form than the other, nothing was so likely as that a scribe in perfect innocence would supply what he considered an undoubted defect, without staying to reflect with Origen and Augustine that the two were delivered on different occasions, to different classes of persons, with different ends in view. Turning therefore now, with a strong case already made out for the omission of the clause, to א and B, which have been hitherto kept out of sight, we find that B has not the disputed words at all, nor had א by the first hand, but in one three centuries later. The clear result, so far as it goes, is at once to vindicate the claim of אB to high consideration, and to make out a formidable case against the genuineness of the six words involved. We say advisedly a formidable, not necessarily a fatal case, for the counter evidence is still very strong, and comes as much as that alleged above from different quarters, being also as early as widely diffused. It consists of Codd. ACDEFGHKMR[292]SUVΓΔΛΠ, of [pg 281] all cursives not named above, of the Old Latin b c f ff i l q, whereof f mostly goes with the Vulgate (hiant a e), the Bohairic, Peshitto, Curetonian, Harkleian Syriac (the Jerusalem not containing this week-day Lesson), and the Ethiopic versions. So far as this side as stated is weak at all, it lacks Patristic evidence (which cannot now be investigated for our purpose), and the balance of internal evidence is decidedly adverse to it.
4. The student may try the same experiments on two other passages often urged in this debate, Matt. v. 22, for which he will find the materials above, p. [255], and Matt. xix. 17, which will be discussed in Chap. [XII]. We freely admit that these are but a few out of many cases where the statements of ancient writers about whose date there can be no question are borne out by the readings of the more ancient codices, especially of א or B, or of the two united. Undoubtedly this circumstance lends a weight and authority to these manuscripts, and to the few which side with them, which their mere age would not procure for them: it does not entitle them to be regarded as virtually the only documents worthy of being consulted in the recension of the sacred text; as qualifying to be sole arbiters in critical questions relating to the New Testament, against whose decision there can be no appeal. Yet nothing less than this is claimed in behalf of one or two of them by their devoted admirers. In a court of justice, we are told, when once the evidence of a witness has been thoroughly probed and tested, it is received thenceforth as true, even on those points where it stands alone, and in the face of strong antecedent improbabilities. Now reasoning in metaphor has its advantages, as well for the sake of clearly expressing our meaning, as of making an impression on those we address; but it is attended with this grave inconvenience, that, since the analogy between no two things that can be compared is quite complete, we are sorely tempted to apply to the one of them properties which appertain exclusively to the other. In the present instance, besides the properties wherein documentary can be assimilated to oral testimony, such as [pg 282] general accuracy and means of information, an important element is present in the latter, to which the former has nothing parallel, namely, moral character, that full persuasion of a witness's good faith and disinterested integrity to which a jury will often surrender, and rightly surrender, all earlier impressions and predilections. Of this we can have nothing in the case of the manuscripts of Scripture which we now possess. In the second century we have seen too many instances of attempts to tamper with the text of Scripture, some merely injudicious, others positively dishonest; but all this was over long before the scribes of the fourth and fifth centuries began their happy task, as simple and honest copyists of the older records placed before them. Let their testimony be received with attention at all times; let it be accepted as conclusive whensoever there are no grave reasons to the contrary, but let not their paramount authority shut out all other considerations, external and internal, which might guide us to the true reading of a passage; nor let us be so illogical as to conclude, because א and B are sometimes right, that therefore they never are in the wrong[293].
The results of this excessive and irrational deference to one of our chief codices, that which he was so fortunate as to bring to the light twenty-five years ago, appears plainly in Tischendorf's eighth edition of the New Testament. That great critic had never been conspicuous for stability of judgement. His third edition was constructed almost without any reference to the cursive manuscripts, which, unless they be, what no one asserts or imagines, merely corrupt copies, or copies of copies, of existing uncials, must needs be the representatives of yet older codices which have long since perished: “respectable ancestors” (as one has quaintly put the matter) “who live only in their descendants” (Long, Ciceronis Verrin. Orat., Praef. p. vi)[294]. In Tischendorf's [pg 283] seventh edition, completed in 1859, that error was rectified, and the sum of textual variations between the third and seventh edition in consequence amounted to 1296, in no less than 595 of which (430 of the remainder being mere matters of spelling) he returned to the readings of the Received text, which he had before deserted, but to which fresh materials and larger experience had brought him back[295]. In the eighth edition another disturbing element is introduced, and that edition differs from his seventh in as many as 3369 places, to the scandal of the science of Comparative Criticism, as well as to his own grave discredit for discernment and consistency. The evidence of Cod. א, supported or even unsupported by one or two authorities of any description, proved with him sufficient to outweigh all other witnesses, whether manuscripts, versions, or ecclesiastical writers.
The foregoing examination will probably have satisfied the student that we have no right to regard Cod. B as a second Infallible Voice proceeding from the Vatican, which, when it has once spoken, must put an end to all strife. Yet nothing less than this is claimed for it by writers, who yet have bestowed [pg 284] much thought and labour on this controversy. “Seeing that the Vatican manuscript does not contain one single passage that can be demonstrated to be spurious, or that by the evidence of other manuscripts and of the context, admits of just doubt as to its authenticity, a position that no other manuscript enjoys, man is bound to accept the testimony of that manuscript alone, as his present text of the sacred record, wherever he possesses its teaching[296].” I am not sure whether, if we conceded this writer's premisses, we should be bound to accept his conclusion; but the easiest way of disposing of his argument, as well as of that of persons, who, in heart agreeing with him, would hardly like to enunciate their principle so broadly, is presently to lay before the student a few readings of Cod. B, either standing alone, or supported by א and others, respecting whose authenticity, or rather genuineness, some of us must be forgiven if we cherish considerable doubts. It is right, however, to declare that this discussion is forced upon us through no wish to dissemble the great value of the Codex Vaticanus, which in common with our opponents we regard as the most weighty single authority that we possess, but entirely by way of unavoidable protest against a claim for supremacy set up in its behalf, which can belong of right to no existing document whatsoever.
5. But indeed the theories of preceding critics, as well as the practical application of those theories to the sacred text, have been thrown into the shade by the more recent and elaborate publications of Drs. Hort and Westcott, briefly noticed in a preceding chapter, and claiming in this place our serious attention[297].
The system on which their text has been constructed has been vindicated, so far as vindication was possible, in Dr. Hort's “Introduction,” a very model of earnest reasoning, calling for and richly rewarding the close and repeated study of all who would learn the utmost that can be done for settling the text of the New Testament on dogmatic principles. The germ of this theory can be traced in the speculations of Bentley and Griesbach; its authors would confess themselves on many points disciples of Lachmann, although their process of investigation is far more artificial than his. But there is little hope for the stability of their imposing structure, if its foundations have been laid on the sandy ground of ingenious conjecture: and since barely the smallest vestige of historical evidence has ever been alleged in support of the views of these accomplished editors, their teaching must either be received as intuitively true, or dismissed from our consideration as precarious, and even visionary. This much said by way of preface, we will endeavour to state the principles they advocate, as fairly and concisely as we can.
(α) The books of the New Testament, even the Holy Gospels themselves, could not well have been collected into one volume till some time after the death of St. John. During this early period, each portion of the inspired record would be circulated separately, until at length the four Gospels would be brought together in one book or Quaternion, and, since each component member had to receive a distinctive appellation, the simplest and [pg 286] the earliest headings would ascribe them to their respective authors, κατὰ Ματθαῖον, κατὰ Μάρκον, κ.τ.λ., the general title of the four being Εὐαγγέλιον. “It is quite uncertain to what extent the whole N. T. was ever included in a single volume in Ante-Nicene times” (Hort, Introduction, pp. 223, 268), only that the Gospels had certainly been collected together when Justin Martyr wrote his first Apology between a.d. 139 and 150, inasmuch as he appeals thrice over to the Memoirs of the Apostles, which he once identifies with the Gospels (οἱ ἀπόστολοι ἐν τοῖς γενομένοις ὑπ᾽ ἀυτῶν ἀπομνημονεύμασιν ἃ καλεῖται εὐαγγέλια). Justin's disciple Tatian, again, composed a Harmony of the Four (Διὰ τεσσάρων), respecting the precise nature of which we have recently gained very seasonable information. “The idea, if not the name, of a collective ‘Gospel’ is implied throughout the well-known passage in the third book of Irenaeus, who doubtless received it from earlier generations” (Hort, p. 321). Hence it is not unreasonable to suspect that our great codices (אABC), which originally contained the whole N. T., may have been transcribed in their several parts from copies differing from each other in genius and in date. With such a possibility before us we ought not to be perplexed if the character of the text whether of Cod. A or of Cod. B differs in the Gospels from that which it bears in the Acts and the Epistles; or if Cod. C in the Apocalypse, and Cod. Δ in St. Mark, as has been already explained under those MSS., appear to belong to a family or group apart from that of the rest of their respective codices.
(β) At this remote period, during the first half of the second century, must have originated the wide variations from the prevailing text on the part of our primary authorities, both manuscripts and versions, which survive in Cod. Bezae of the Greek, and in the Old Latin codices or at least in some of them. The text they exhibit is distinguished as Western, and they have been joined by a powerful ally, the Curetonian Syriac. Critics of every school agree in admitting the primitive existence of this Western recension, and in their estimate of its general spirit. “The earliest readings which can be fixed chronologically belong to it... But any prepossessions in its favour that might be created by this imposing early ascendency are for the most part soon dissipated by continuous study of its internal [pg 287] character” (Hort, p. 120). “The chief and most constant characteristic of the Western readings is a love of paraphrase. Words, clauses, and even whole sentences were changed, omitted, and inserted with astonishing freedom, wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness” (ibid. p. 122). “Another equally important characteristic is a disposition to enrich the text at the cost of its purity by alterations or additions taken from traditional and perhaps from apocryphal and other non-biblical sources” (ibid. p. 123). Especially may we note among other interpolations the long passage after Matt. xx. 28 which we cited above, Vol. I. p. 8.
(γ) We now come to the feature which distinguishes Dr. Hort's system from any hitherto propounded; by the acceptance or non-acceptance of which his whole edifice must stand or fall. He seems to exaggerate the force of extant evidence when he judges that the corrupt Western “was the more widely-spread text of Ante-Nicene times” (ibid. p. 120); but he tacitly assumes that many codices, versions, and ecclesiastical writers remained free from its malignant influence. The evidence of this latter class was preserved comparatively pure until the middle of the third century, when it was taken in hand, at some time between a.d. 250 and 350, “at what date it is impossible to say with confidence, and even for conjecture the materials are scanty” (ibid. p. 137), by the Syrian bishops and Fathers of the Patriarchate of Antioch, who undertook (1) “an authoritative revision at Antioch” of the Greek text, which (2) was then taken as a standard for a similar authoritative revision of the Syriac text, and (3) was itself at a later time subjected to a second authoritative revision, carrying out more completely the purposes of the first (ibid. p. 137). Of this twofold authoritative revision of the Greek text, of this formal transmutation of the Curetonian Syriac into the Peshitto (for this is what Dr. Hort means, though his language is a little obscure), although they must have been of necessity public acts of great Churches in ages abounding in Councils General or Provincial, not one trace remains in the history of Christian antiquity; no one writer seems conscious that any modification either of the Greek Scriptures or of the vernacular translation was made in or before his time. It is as if the Bishops' Bible had been [pg 288] thrust out of the English Church service and out of the studies of her divines, and the Bible of 1611 had silently taken its place, no one knew how, or when, or why, or indeed that any change whatever had been made. Yet regarding his speculative conjecture as undubitably true, Dr. Hort proceeds to name the text as it stood before his imaginary era of transfusion a Pre-Syrian text, and that into which it was changed, sometimes Antiochian, more often Syrian[298]; while of the latter recension, though made deliberately, as our author believes, by the authoritative voice of the Eastern Church, he does not shrink from declaring that “all distinctively Syrian readings must be at once rejected” (ibid. p. 119), thus making a clean sweep of all critical materials, Fathers, versions, manuscripts uncial or cursive, comprising about nineteen-twentieths of the whole mass, which do not correspond with his preconceived opinion of what a correct text ought to be (ibid. p. 163).
(δ) But one or two steps yet remain in this thorough elimination of useless elements. A few authorities still survive which are honoured as Pre-Syrian, and continued unaffected by the phantom revisions, which, for critical purposes, have reduced their colleagues to ignominious silence. Besides the Western, Dr. Hort has in reserve two other groups, the Alexandrian and the Neutral. The former retains a text essentially pure from Syrian (though not from Western) mixture, but its component members are portentously few in number, being tolerably void of corruption as regards the substance, with “no incorporation of matter extraneous to the canonical text of the Bible, and no habitual or extreme license of paraphrase ... the changes made having usually more to do with language than with matter, and being marked by an effort after correctness of phrase” (ibid. p. 131). There are no unmixed vouchers for this Non-Western, Pre-Syrian, Alexandrian class, though Cyril of Alexandria seems to come the nearest to purity (ibid. p. 141), [pg 289] then Origen, occasionally other Alexandrian Fathers, also the Sahidic, and especially the Bohairic version (ibid. p. 131). No extant MS. has preserved so many Alexandrian readings as Cod. L (ibid. p. 153). Cod. C has some, T and Ξ more: in the Gospels they are chiefly marked by the combination אCLXZ, 33 (ibid. p. 166). In Cod. A, for the Acts and Epistles, the Alexandrian outnumber both the Syrian and Western readings (Hort, p. 152), but they all are mere degenerations so far as they depart from Dr. Hort's standard
(ε) The Neutral type of text: so called because it is free from the glaring corruption of the Western, from the smooth assimilations of the Syrian, and from the grammatical purism of the Alexandrian. Only two documents come under this last head, Codd. B and א, and of these two, when they differ, B is preferable to א, which has a not inconsiderable Western element, besides that the scribe's bold and rough manner has rendered “all the ordinary lapses due to rapid and careless transcription more numerous” than in B (ibid. p. 246). Yet, with certain slight exceptions which he carefully specifies, it is our learned author's belief “(1) that the readings of אB should be accepted as the true readings until strong internal evidence is found to the contrary, and (2) that no readings of אB can safely be rejected absolutely, though it is sometimes right to place them only on an alternative footing, especially where they receive no support from Versions and Fathers” (ibid. p. 225): and this their pre-eminence, in our critic's judgement, “is due to the extreme, and, as it were, primordial antiquity of the common original from which the ancestries of the two MSS. have diverged, the date of which cannot be later than the earlier part of the second century, and may well be yet earlier” (ibid. p. 223).
That אB should thus lift up their heads against all the world is much, especially having regard to the fact that several versions and not a few Fathers are older than they: for, while we grant that a simple patristic citation, standing by itself, is of little value, yet when the context or current of exposition renders it clear what reading these writers had before them, they must surely for that passage be equivalent as authorities to a manuscript of their own age. Nor will Dr. Hort allow us to make any deduction from the weight of the united testimony of אB [pg 290] by reason of the curious fact, demonstrated as well to his satisfaction (Hort, p. 213) as to our own, that the scribe of B was the actual writer of parts of three distinct quires, forming three pairs of conjugate leaves of א (see above, p. [96], note 1); but on this head we think he will find few readers to agree with him. His devotion to Cod. B when it stands alone is of necessity far more intelligent than that of the unnamed writer mentioned already, yet we believe that his implied confidence is scarcely the less misplaced. He is very glad when he can to find friends for his favourite, and discusses with great care the several binary combinations, such as BL, BC, BT, Bι, BD (which last, indeed, is unsafe enough), AB, BZ, B 33 or BΔ (for St. Mark) in the Gospels; AB, BC, &c., in the rest of the N. T. (Hort, p. 227). He does not disparage the subsingular readings of B, meaning by this convenient, perhaps novel, term, the agreement of B with “inferior Greek MSS., Versions, or Fathers, or combinations of documentary evidence of these kinds” (ibid. p. 230). But, when the worst comes to the worst, and Cod. B is left absolutely alone, its advocates need not despair, inasmuch as no readings of that manuscript, not involving clerical error (and “the scribe reached by no means a high standard of accuracy,” ibid. p. 233), must be lightly or hastily rejected, so powerfully do they commend themselves on their own merits (ibid. p. 238). This transcendent excellency, however, belongs to it chiefly in the Gospels. In the Acts and Catholic Epistles, if the value of A increases as has been said, that of B is somewhat diminished; while in the Pauline Epistles a “local Western element of B” (Hort, p. 240) brings it into the less reputable company of DFG or even of D alone. Hence in the formation of Westcott and Hort's Pauline text we sometimes meet with what appears the paradoxical result that the evidence of B alone is accepted, while that of B attended by other codices is laid aside as insufficient.
It is very instructive to compare the foregoing sketch of Dr. Hort's system, brief and inadequate, yet not we trust unfair, as it is, with the theory of Griesbach, for whose labours and genius we share much of his successor's veneration. As regards the modification of text called Western their views are nearly identical, only that Griesbach was necessarily ignorant of such important constituents of it as the Curetonian Syriac and the [pg 291] Old Latin codices which have come to light since his day, and thus was exempted from the temptation to which Dr. Hort has unhappily yielded, of believing that Codd. אB, with all their comparative purity, represent a primitive text already corrupted by certain accretions from which the Western copies were free (see below, p. [299] and note 1): a violent supposition which seriously impairs the homogeneousness and self-consistency of his whole argument (Hort, pp. 175-6). Griesbach's Alexandrian class includes not only that which Dr. Hort understands by the name, but the later critic's Neutral class also, which indeed we fail to distinguish from the other by any marked peculiar characteristics. The more mixed text which Griesbach called Constantinopolitan, and which is represented by Cod. A in the Gospels, in part by Cod. C, the Latin Vulgate, and later authorities, differs from Dr. Hort's Syrian in much more than name. Wider and deeper researches have made it evident that Griesbach's notion of a gradual modernizing of the text used from the fourth century downwards in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, would not adequately account for the phenomena wherewith we have to deal. The general, almost universal, prevalence of such a departure from the readings of אB, met with in ecclesiastical writers at least as early in date as the parchment of those manuscripts themselves, can be explained by nothing less than a comprehensive, deliberate, authoritative recension of the sacred books, undertaken by the chief rulers of the Antiochene Church, accepted throughout that great Patriarchate, yet, in spite of all this, never noticed even in the way of passing reference by writers of any description from that period onwards, until its consequences, not its process, became known to eminent critics in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Nothing less than the exigency of his case could have driven our author to encumber himself with a scheme fraught with difficulties too great even for his skill to overcome.
Dr. Hort's system, therefore, is entirely destitute of historical foundation[299]. He does not so much as make a show of pretending to it: but then he would persuade us, as he has persuaded himself, that its substantial truth is proved by results; and for results of themselves to establish so very much, they must needs be unequivocal, and admit of no logical escape from the conclusions [pg 292] they lead up to. But is this really the case? “Two Members of the New Testament Company” of Revisers, in a temperate and very able pamphlet, have answered in the affirmative, and have assigned, after Dr. Hort, but with greater precision than he, three reasons “for the belief that the Syrian text is posterior in origin to those which he calls Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral” (The Revisers and the Greek text of the N. T., p. 25). Granting for our present purpose the reality of this Syrian text, of whose independent existence we have no direct proof whatever, let us see what the three reasons will amount to.
(α) “The first reason appears to us almost sufficient to settle the question by itself. It is founded on the observation ... that the Syrian text presents numerous instances of readings which, according to all textual probability, must be considered to be combinations of early readings still extant.”... “The reader will find in Dr. Hort's own pages abundant illustration of the fact in eight examples rigorously analyzed, which seem to supply a proof, as positive as the subject admits, that Syrian readings are posterior both to Western readings, and to other readings which may be properly described as Neutral” (ibid. pp. 25-6). But the misfortune is that the subject does not admit of positive proof; that what appears to one scholar “textual probability,” appears to another a mere begging of the whole question. These eight examples have been re-analyzed by Canon Cook (Revised Version, pp. 205-18), and just before him by the Quarterly Reviewer (Revision Revised, pp. 258-65), writers not destitute either of learning or of natural acuteness, who would fain lead us to draw directly opposite inferences from Dr. Hort's. We will take but one specimen, the eighth and last, to make our meaning as clear as possible. “This simple instance,” says Dr. Hort complacently, “needs no explanation” (Hort, p. 104).
Luke xxiv. 53. καὶ ἦσαν διαπαντὸς ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ, αἰνοῦντες καὶ εὐλογοῦντες τὸν Θεόν. Thus it stands in the Received text with AC**FHKMSUVXΓΔΛΠ, all cursives, even those most esteemed by Westcott and Hort, with c f g, the Vulgate, Peshitto and Harkleian Syriac, the Armenian, and Ethiopic virtually (εὐλογοῦντες καὶ αἰνοῦντες τὸν Θεόν). This is called the Syrian reading.
The two so-termed Pre-Syrian forms are,
om. αἰνοῦντες καὶ אBCL*, Bohairic (Hort), Jerusalem Syriac. This is the Neutral and Alexandrian text.
om. καὶ εὐλογοῦντες D, a b e ff l, gat. bodl., Bohairic (Tischendorf). This is the Western text.
The assumption of course is that the Syrian reading is a conflation of those of the other two classes, so forming a full but not overburdened clause. But if this praejudicium be met with the plea that D and the Latins perpetually, B and its allies very often, seek to abridge the sacred original, it would be hard to demonstrate that the latter explanation is more improbable than the former. Beyond this point of subjective feeling the matter cannot well be carried, whether on one side or the other.
Dr. Hort's other examples of conflation have the same double edge as Luke xxiv. 53, and there is no doubt that Dr. Sanday is right in asserting that like instances may be found wheresoever they are looked for; but they prove nothing to any one who has not made up his mind beforehand as to what the reading ought to be. We have already confessed that there is a tendency on the part of copyists to assimilate the narratives of the several Gospels to each other; and that such Harmonies as that of Tatian would facilitate the process; that synonymous words are liable to be exchanged and harsh constructions supplied. Part of the value of the older codices arises from their comparative freedom from such corrections: but then this modernizing process is on the part of copyists unsystematic, almost unconscious; it is wholly different from the deliberate formal emendations implied throughout Dr. Hort's volume.
(β) The second reason adduced by the Two Revisers “is almost equally cogent” in their estimation. It is that while the Ante-Nicene Fathers “place before us from separate and in some cases widely distant countries examples of Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral readings, it appears to be certain that before the middle of the third century we have no historical traces of readings which can properly be entitled distinctively Syrian” (The Revisers, &c., p. 26). Now the middle of the third century is the earliest period assigned by Dr. Hort for the inception of his phantom scheme of Syrian revision, and we feel [pg 294] sure that the epoch of Patristic evidence was not put thus early, in order to exclude Origen, whose support of his Alexandrian readings Griesbach found so partial and precarious (see above, p. [226]). In fact Dr. Hort expressly states that “The only period for which we have anything like a sufficiency of representative knowledge consists roughly of three-quarters of a century from about 175 to 250: but the remains of four eminent Greek Fathers, which range through this period, cast a strong light on textual history backward and forward. They are Irenaeus, of Asia Minor, Rome, and Lyons; his disciple Hippolytus, of Rome; Clement, of Athens and Alexandria; and his disciple, Origen, of Alexandria and Palestine” (Hort, p. 112). Even if the extant writings of these Fathers had been as rigorously examined and as thoroughly known as they certainly are not, “their scantiness and the comparative vagueness of the textual materials contained in them” (ibid.) would hinder our drawing at present any positive conclusions regarding the sacred text as known to them. Even the slender specimens of controverted readings collected in our Chap. [XII] would suffice to prove that their evidence is by no means exclusively favourable to Dr. Hort's opinions, a fact for which we will allege but one instance out of many, the support given to the Received text by Hippolytus in that grand passage, John iii. 13[300].
There are three considerable works relating to the criticism of the N. T. still open to the enterprise of scholars, and they can hardly be taken up at all except by the fresh hopefulness of scholars yet young. We need a fuller and more comprehensive collation of the cursive manuscripts (Hort, pp. 76-7): “a complete collection of all the fragments of the Thebaic New Testament is now the most pressing want in the province of textual criticism,” writes Bp. Lightfoot, and he might have added a better edition of the Bohairic also: but for the demands of the present controversy we must set in the first rank the necessity for a complete survey of the Patristic literature of the first five centuries at the least. While we concede to Dr. Hort that as [pg 295] a rule “negative patristic evidence”—that derived from the mere silence of the writer, “is of no force at all” (Hort, p. 201), and attach very slight importance to citations which are not express, it is from this source that we must look for any stable decision regarding the comparative purity in reference to the sacred autographs of the several classes of documents which have passed under our review.
(γ) Hence the second reason for supporting the text of Westcott and Hort urged by the Two Revisers relates to an investigation of facts hitherto but partially ascertained: the third, like the first, involves only matters of opinion, in which individual judgements and prepossessions bear the chief part. “Yet a third reason is supplied by Internal Evidence, or, in other words, by considerations ... of intrinsic or of Transcriptional Probability” (The Revisers &c., p. 26): and “here,” they very justly add, “it is obvious that we enter at once into a very delicate and difficult domain of textual criticism, and can only draw our conclusions with the utmost circumspection and reserve” (ibid.). On the subject of Internal Evidence enough for our present purpose has been said, and Dr. Hort's Transcriptional head appears to be Bp. Ellicott's paradiplomatic under a more convenient name. Our author's discussion of what he calls the “rudimental criticism” of Internal evidence (Hort, Part ii. pp. 19-72), if necessarily somewhat abstruse, is one of the most elaborate and interesting in his admirable volume. It is sometimes said that all reasoning is analytical, not synthetical; the reducing a foregone conclusion to the first principles on which it rests, rather than the building upon those first principles the materials wherewith to construct the conclusion. Of this portion of Dr. Hort's labours the dictum is emphatically true. Cod. B and its characteristic peculiarities are never out of the author's mind, and those lines of thought are closely followed which most readily lead up to the theory of that manuscript's practical impeccability. We allege this statement in no disparaging spirit, and it may be that Dr. Hort will not wholly disagree with us. Not only is he duly sensible of the precariousness of Intrinsic evidence, inasmuch as “the uncertainty of the decision in ordinary cases is shown by the great diversity of judgement which is actually found to exist” (Hort, p. 21), but he boldly, [pg 296] and no less boldly than truly, intimates that in such cases the ultimate decision must rest with the individual critic: “in almost all texts variations occur where personal judgement inevitably takes a large part in the final decision.... Different minds will be impressed by different parts of the evidence as clearer than the rest, and so virtually ruling the rest: here therefore personal discernment would seem the surest ground for confidence” (ibid. p. 65). For the critic's confidence perhaps, not for that of his reader.
The process of grouping authorities, whether by considerations of their geographical distribution or (more uncertainly) according to their genealogy as inferred from internal considerations (ibid. pp. 49-65), occupies a large measure of Dr. Hort's attention. The idea has not indeed originated with him, and its occasional value will be frankly acknowledged in the ensuing pages, so that on this head we need not further enlarge. In conclusion we will say, that the more our Cambridge Professor's “Introduction” is studied the more it grows upon our esteem for fulness of learning, for patience of research, for keenness of intellectual power, and especially for a certain marvellous readiness in accounting after some fashion for every new phenomenon which occurs, however apparently adverse to the acceptance of his own theory. With all our reverence for his genius, and gratitude for much that we have learnt from him in the course of our studies, we are compelled to repeat as emphatically as ever our strong conviction that the hypothesis to whose proof he has devoted so many laborious years, is destitute not only of historical foundation, but of all probability resulting from the internal goodness of the text which its adoption would force upon us[301].
This last assertion we will try to verify by subjoining a select [pg 297] number of those many passages in the N. T. wherein the two great codices א and B, one or both of them, are witnesses for readings, nearly all of which, to the best of our judgement, are corruptions of the sacred originals[302].
6. Those who devote themselves to the criticism of the text of the New Testament have only of late come to understand the full importance of attending closely to the mutual connexion subsisting between their several materials of every description, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers. The study of grouping has been recently and not untruly said to be the foundation of all enduring criticism[303]. Now that theories about the formal recensions of whole classes of these documents have generally been given up as purely visionary, and the very word families has come into disrepute by reason of the exploded fancies it recalls, we can discern not the less clearly that certain groups of them have in common not only a general resemblance in regard to the readings they exhibit, but characteristic peculiarities attaching themselves to each group. Systematic or wilful corruption of the sacred text, at least on a scale worth taking into account, there would seem to have been almost none; yet the tendency to licentious paraphrase and unwarranted additions distinguished one set of our witnesses from the second century downwards; a bias towards grammatical and critical purism and needless omissions appertained to another; while [pg 298] a third was only too apt to soften what might seem harsh, to smooth over difficulties, and to bring passages, especially of the Synoptic Gospels, into unnatural harmony with each other. All these changes appear to have been going on without notice during the whole of the third and fourth centuries, and except that the great name of Origen is associated (not always happily) with one class of them, were rather the work of transcribers than of scholars. Eusebius and Jerome, in their judgements about Scripture texts, are more the echoes of Origen than independent investigators.
Now, as a first approximation to the actual state of the case, the several classes of changes which we have enumerated admit of a certain rude geographical distribution, one of them appertaining to Western Christendom and the earliest Fathers of the African and Gallic Churches (including North Italy under the latter appellation); a second to Egypt and its neighbourhood; the third originally to Syria and Christian Antioch, in later times to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. We have here, no doubt, much to remind us of Griesbach and his scheme of triple recensions, but with this broad distinction between his conclusions and those of modern critics, that whereas he regarded the existence of his families as a patent fact, and grounded upon it precise and mechanical rules for the arrangement of the text, we are now content to perceive no more than unconscious tendencies, liable to be modified or diverted by a thousand occult influences, of which in each single case it is impossible to form an estimate beforehand. Even that marked bias in the direction of adding to the record, which is the reproach of Codex Bezae and some of its compeers, and renders the text of the Acts as exhibited by DE, by the cursive 137, and the margin of the Harkleian Syriac, as unlike that commonly read as can well be imagined[304], is mixed up with a proneness to omissions which we should look for rather from another class of documents (e.g. the rejection of ψευδόμενοι Matt. v. 11), and which in the latter part of St. Luke's Gospel almost suggests the idea of representing an earlier edition than that now in ordinary use, [pg 299] yet proceeding from the Evangelist's own hand (see p. [18])[305]. Again, the process whereby the rough places are made plain and abrupt constructions rounded, is abundantly exemplified in the readings of the great uncial A, supported as it is by the mass of later manuscripts (e.g. Mark i. 27; Acts xv. 17, 18; xx. 24); yet in innumerable instances (see [Appendix] to this chapter) these self-same codices retain the genuine text of the sacred writers which their more illustrious compeers have lost or impaired.
Hence it follows that in judging of the character of a various reading proposed for our acceptance, we must carefully mark whether it comes to us from many directions or from one. And herein the native country of the several documents, even when we can make sure of it, is only a precarious guide. If the Ethiopic or the Armenian versions have really been corrected by the Latin Vulgate, the geographical remoteness of their origin must go for nothing where they agree with the latter version. The relation in which Cod. L and the Bohairic version stand to Cod. B is too close to allow them their full value as independent witnesses unless when they are at variance with that great uncial, wheresoever it may have been written: the same might be said of the beautiful Latin fragment k from Bobbio. To whatever nations they belong, their resemblances are too strong and perpetual not to compel us to withhold from them a part of the consideration their concord would otherwise lay claim to. The same is incontestably the case with the Curetonian and margin of the Harkleian Syriac in connexion with Cod. D. Wide as is the region which separates Syria from Gaul, there [pg 300] must have been in very early times some remote communication by which the stream of Eastern testimony or tradition, like another Alpheus, rose up again with fresh strength to irrigate the regions of the distant West. The Peshitto Syriac leans at times in the same direction, although both in nation and character it most assimilates to the same class as Cod. A.
With these, and it may be with some further reservations which experience and study shall hereafter suggest, the principle of grouping must be acknowledged to be a sound one, and those lines of evidence to be least likely to lead us astray which converge from the most varied quarters to the same point. It is strange, but not more strange than needful, that we are compelled in the cause of truth to make one stipulation more: namely, that this rule be henceforth applied impartially in all cases, as well when it will tell in favour of the Received text, as when it shall help to set it aside. To assign a high value to cursive manuscripts of the best description (such as 1, 33, 69, 157, Evst. 259, or 61 of the Acts), and to such uncials as LRΔ, or even as א or C, whensoever they happen to agree with Cod. B, and to treat their refined silver as though it had been suddenly transmuted into dross when they come to contradict it, is a practice too plainly unreasonable to admit of serious defence, and can only lead to results which those who uphold it would be the first to deplore[306].
7. It is hoped that the general issue of the foregoing discussion may now be embodied in these four practical rules[307]:—
(1) That the true readings of the Greek New Testament cannot safely be derived from any one set of authorities, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers, but ought to be the result of [pg 301] a patient comparison and careful estimate of the evidence supplied by them all.
(2) That where there is a real agreement between all documents containing the Gospels up to the sixth century, and in other parts of the New Testament up to the ninth, the testimony of later manuscripts and versions, though not to be rejected unheard, must be regarded with great suspicion, and, unless upheld by strong internal evidence, can hardly be adopted[308].
(3) That where the more ancient documents are at variance with each other, the later uncial and cursive copies, especially those of approved merit, are of real importance, as being the surviving representatives of other codices, very probably as early, perhaps even earlier, than any now extant.
(4) That in weighing conflicting evidence we must assign the highest value not to those readings which are attested by the greatest number of witnesses, but to those which come to us from several remote and independent sources, and which bear the least likeness to each other in respect to genius and general character.