§ 2.
Those writers who overlook the corruptions which the text has actually experienced through a mistaken solicitude on the part of ancient critics to reconcile what seemed to them the conflicting statements of different Evangelists, are frequently observed to attribute to this kind of officiousness expressions which are unquestionably portions of the genuine text. Thus, there is a general consensus amongst critics of the destructive school to omit the words και τινες συν αυταις from St. Luke xxiv. 1. Their only plea is the testimony of [Symbol: Aleph]BCL and certain of the Latin copies,—a conjunction of authorities which, when they stand alone, we have already observed to bear invariably false witness. Indeed, before we proceed to examine the evidence, we discover that those four words of St. Luke are even required in this place. For St. Matthew (xxvii. 61), and St. Mark after him (xv. 47), had distinctly specified two women as witnesses of how and where our Lord's body was laid. Now they were the same women apparently who prepared the spices and ointment and hastened therewith at break of day to the sepulchre. Had we therefore only St. Matthew's Gospel we should have assumed that 'the ointment-bearers,' for so the ancients called them, were but two (St. Matt. xxviii. 1). That they were at least three, even St. Mark shews by adding to their number Salome (xvi. 1). But in fact their company consisted of more than four; as St. Luke explains when he states that it was the same little band of holy women who had accompanied our Saviour out of Galilee (xxiii. 55, cf. viii. 2). In anticipation therefore of what he will have to relate in ver. 10, he says in ver. 1, 'and certain with them.'
But how, I shall be asked, would you explain the omission of these words which to yourself seem necessary? And after insisting that one is never bound to explain how the text of any particular passage came to be corrupted, I answer, that these words were originally ejected from the text in order to bring St. Luke's statement into harmony with that of the first Evangelist, who mentions none but Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses. The proof is that four of the same Latin copies which are for the omission of και τινες συν αυταις are observed to begin St. Luke xxiii. 55 as follows,—κατακολουθησασαι δε ΔΥΟ γυναικες. The same fabricated reading is found in D. It exists also in the Codex which Eusebius employed when he wrote his Demonstratio Evangelica. Instead therefore of wearying the reader with the evidence, which is simply overwhelming, for letting the text alone, I shall content myself with inviting him to notice that the tables have been unexpectedly turned on our opponents. There is indeed found to have been a corruption of the text hereabouts, and of the words just now under discussion; but it belongs to an exceedingly remote age; and happily the record of it survives at this day only in [Symbol: Aleph]BCDL and certain of the Old Latin copies. Calamitous however it is, that what the Church has long since deliberately refused to part with should, at the end of so many centuries, by Lachmann and Tregelles and Tischendorf, by Alford and Westcott and Hort, be resolutely thrust out of place; and indeed excluded from the Sacred Text by a majority of the Revisers.
[A very interesting instance of such Harmonistic Influence may be found in the substitution of 'wine' (οινον) for vinegar (οξος), respecting which the details are given in the second Appendix to the Traditional Text.]
[Observe yet another instance of harmonizing propensities in the Ancient Church.]
In St. Luke's Gospel iv. 1-13, no less than six copies of the Old Latin versions (b c f g1 l q) besides Ambrose (Com. St. Luke, 1340), are observed to transpose the second and third temptations; introducing verses 9-12 between verses 4 and 5; in order to make the history of the Temptation as given by St. Luke correspond with the account given by St. Matthew.
The scribe of the Vercelli Codex (a) was about to do the same thing; but he checked himself when he had got as far as 'the pinnacle of the temple,'—which he seems to have thought as good a scene for the third temptation as 'a high mountain,' and so left it.