§ 1.
There exist not a few corrupt Readings,—and they have imposed largely on many critics,—which, strange to relate, have arisen from nothing else but the proneness of words standing side by side in a sentence to be attracted into a likeness of ending,—whether in respect of grammatical form or of sound; whereby sometimes the sense is made to suffer grievously,—sometimes entirely to disappear. Let this be called the error of Attraction. The phenomena of 'Assimilation' are entirely distinct. A somewhat gross instance, which however has imposed on learned critics, is furnished by the Revised Text and Version of St. John vi. 71 and xiii. 26.
'Judas Iscariot' is a combination of appellatives with which every Christian ear is even awfully familiar. The expression Ιουδας Ισκαριωτης is found in St. Matt. x. 4 and xxvi. 14: in St. Mark iii. 19 and xiv. 10: in St. Luke vi. 16, and in xxii. 31 with the express statement added that Judas was so 'surnamed.' So far happily we are all agreed. St. John's invariable practice is to designate the traitor, whom he names four times, as 'Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon;'—jealous doubtless for the honour of his brother Apostle, 'Jude (Ιουδας) the brother of James[228]': and resolved that there shall be no mistake about the traitor's identity. Who does not at once recall the Evangelist's striking parenthesis in St. John xiv. 22,—'Judas (not Iscariot)'? Accordingly, in St. John xiii. 2 the Revisers present us with 'Judas Iscariot, Simon's son': and even in St. John xii. 4 they are content to read 'Judas Iscariot.'
But in the two places of St. John's Gospel which remain to be noticed, viz. vi. 71 and xiii. 26, instead of 'Judas Iscariot the son of Simon' the Revisers require us henceforth to read, 'Judas the son of Simon Iscariot.' And why? Only, I answer, because—in place of Ιουδαν Σιμωνος ΙσκαριωΤΗΝ (in vi. 71) and Ιουδα Σιμωνος ΙσκαριωΤΗ (in xiii. 26)—a little handful of copies substitute on both occasions ΙσκαριωΤΟΥ. Need I go on? Nothing else has evidently happened but that, through the oscitancy of some very early scribe, the ΙσκαριωΤΗΝ, ΙσκαριωΤΗ, have been attracted into concord with the immediately preceding genitive ΣΙμωΝΟΣ ... So transparent a blunder would have scarcely deserved a passing remark at our hands had it been suffered to remain,—where such bêtises are the rule and not the exception,—viz. in the columns of Codexes B and [Symbol: Aleph]. But strange to say, not only have the Revisers adopted this corrupt reading in the two passages already mentioned, but they have not let so much as a hint fall that any alteration whatsoever has been made by them in the inspired Text.