§ 2.
1. When we speak of Assimilation, we do not mean that a writer while engaged in transcribing one Gospel was so completely beguiled and overmastered by his recollections of the parallel place in another Gospel,—that, forsaking the expressions proper to the passage before him, he unconsciously adopted the language which properly belongs to a different Evangelist. That to a very limited extent this may have occasionally taken place, I am not concerned to deny: but it would argue incredible inattention to what he was professing to copy, on the one hand,—astonishing familiarity with what he was not professing to copy, on the other,—that a scribe should have been capable of offending largely in this way. But in fact a moderate acquaintance with the subject is enough to convince any thoughtful person that the corruptions in MSS. which have resulted from accidental Assimilation must needs be inconsiderable in bulk, as well as few in number. At all events, the phenomenon referred to, when we speak of 'Assimilation,' is not to be so accounted for: it must needs be explained in some entirely different way. Let me make my meaning plain:
(a) We shall probably be agreed that when the scribe of Cod. [Symbol: Aleph], in place of βασανισαι 'ημας (in St. Matt. viii. 29), writes 'ημας απολεσαι,—it may have been his memory which misled him. He may have been merely thinking of St. Mark i. 24, or of St. Luke iv. 34.
(b) Again, when in Codd. [Symbol: Aleph]B we find τασσομενος thrust without warrant into St. Matt. viii. 9, we see that the word has lost its way from St. Luke vii. 8; and we are prone to suspect that only by accident has it crept into the parallel narrative of the earlier Evangelist.
(c) In the same way I make no doubt that ποταμω (St. Matt. iii. 6) is indebted for its place in [Symbol: Aleph]BC, &c., to the influence of the parallel place in St. Mark's Gospel (i. 5); and I am only astonished that critics should have been beguiled into adopting so clear a corruption of the text as part of the genuine Gospel.
(d) To be brief:—the insertion by [Symbol: Aleph] of αδελφε (in St. Matt. vii. 4) is confessedly the result of the parallel passage in St. Luke vi. 42. The same scribe may be thought to have written τω ανεμω instead of τοις ανεμοις in St. Matt. viii. 26, only because he was so familiar with τω ανεμω in St. Luke viii. 24 and in St. Mark iv. 39.—The author of the prototype of [Symbol: Aleph]BD (with whom by the way are some of the Latin versions) may have written εχετε in St. Matt, xvi. 8, only because he was thinking of the parallel place in St. Mark viii. 17.—Ηρξαντο αγανακτειν (St. Matt. xx. 24) can only have been introduced into [Symbol: Aleph] from the parallel place in St. Mark x. 41, and may have been supplied memoriter.—St. Luke xix. 21 is clearly not parallel to St. Matt. xxv. 24; yet it evidently furnished the scribe of [Symbol: Aleph] with the epithet αυστηρος in place of σκληρος.—The substitution by [Symbol: Aleph] of 'ον παρητουντο in St. Matt. xxvii. 15 for 'ον ηθελον may seem to be the result of inconvenient familiarity with the parallel place in St. Mark xv. 6; where, as has been shewn[185], instead of 'ονπερ ηιτουντο, Symbol: [Aleph]AB viciously exhibit 'ον παρητουντο, which Tischendorf besides Westcott and Hort mistake for the genuine Gospel. Who will hesitate to admit that, when [Symbol: Aleph]L exhibit in St. Matt. xix. 16,—instead of the words ποιησω 'ινα εχω ζωην αιωνιον,—the formula which is found in the parallel place of St. Luke xviii. 18, viz. ποιησας ζωην αιωνιον κληρονομησω,—those unauthorized words must have been derived from this latter place? Every ordinary reader will be further prone to assume that the scribe who first inserted them into St. Matthew's Gospel did so because, for whatever reason, he was more familiar with the latter formula than with the former.
(e) But I should have been willing to go further. I might have been disposed to admit that when [Symbol: Aleph]DL introduce into St. Matt. x. 12 the clause λεγοντες, ειρηνη τω οικω τουτω (which last four words confessedly belong exclusively to St. Luke x. 5), the author of the depraved original from which [Symbol: Aleph]DL were derived may have been only yielding to the suggestions of an inconveniently good memory:—may have succeeded in convincing himself from what follows in verse 13 that St. Matthew must have written, 'Peace be to this house;' though he found no such words in St. Matthew's text. And so, with the best intentions, he may most probably have inserted them.
(f) Again. When [Symbol: Aleph] and Evan. 61 thrust into St. Matt. ix. 34 (from the parallel place in St. Luke viii. 53) the clause ειδοτες 'οτι απεθανεν, it is of course conceivable that the authors of those copies were merely the victims of excessive familiarity with the third Gospel. But then,—although we are ready to make every allowance that we possibly can for memories so singularly constituted, and to imagine a set of inattentive scribes open to inducements to recollect or imagine instead of copying, and possessed of an inconvenient familiarity with one particular Gospel,—it is clear that our complaisance must stop somewhere. Instances of this kind of licence at last breed suspicion. Systematic 'assimilation' cannot be the effect of accident. Considerable interpolations must of course be intentional. The discovery that Cod. D, for example, introduces at the end of St. Luke v. 14 thirty-two words from St. Mark's Gospel (i. 45—ii. 1, 'ο δε εξελθων down to Καφαρναουμ), opens our eyes. This wholesale importation suggests the inquiry,—How did it come about? We look further, and we find that Cod. D abounds in instances of 'Assimilation' so unmistakably intentional, that this speedily becomes the only question, How may all these depravations of the sacred text be most satisfactorily accounted for? [And the answer is evidently found in the existence of extreme licentiousness in the scribe or scribes responsible for Codex D, being the product of ignorance and carelessness combined with such looseness of principle, as permitted the exercise of direct attempts to improve the sacred Text by the introduction of passages from the three remaining Gospels and by other alterations.]