§ 4.
We repeat that the ill treatment which the deposit has experienced at the hands of those who fabricated the text of Cod. D is only to be understood by those who will be [pg 183] at the pains to study its readings throughout. Constantly to substitute the wrong word for the right one; or at all events to introduce a less significant expression: on countless occasions to mar the details of some precious incident; and to obscure the purpose of the Evangelist by tastelessly and senselessly disturbing the inspired text,—this will be found to be the rule with Cod. D throughout. As another example added to those already cited:—In St. Luke xxii, D omits verse 20, containing the Institution of the Cup, evidently from a wish to correct the sacred account by removing the second mention of the Cup from the record of the third Evangelist.
St. Mark (xv. 43) informs us that, on the afternoon of the first Good Friday, Joseph of Arimathaea “taking courage went in (εἰσῆλθε) to Pilate and requested to have the body (σῶμα) of Jesus”: that “Pilate wondered (ἐθαύμασεν) [at hearing] that He was dead (τέθνηκε) already: and sending for the centurion [who had presided at the Crucifixion] inquired of him if [Jesus] had been dead long?” (εἰ πάλαι ἀπέθανε.)
But the author of Cod. D, besides substituting “went” (ἦλθεν) for “went in,”—“corpse” (πτῶμα) for “body” (which by the way he repeats in ver. 45),—and a sentiment of “continuous wonder” (ἐθαύμαζεν) for the fact of astonishment which Joseph's request inspired,—having also substituted the prosaic τεθνήκει for the graphic τέθνηκε of the Evangelist,—represents Pilate as inquiring of the centurion “if [indeed Jesus] was dead already?” (εἰ ἤδη τεθνήκει; si jam mortuus esset?), whereby not only is all the refinement of the original lost, but the facts of the case also are seriously misrepresented. For Pilate did not doubt Joseph's tidings. He only wondered at them. And his inquiry was made not with a view to testing the veracity of his informant, but for the satisfaction of his own curiosity as to the time when his Victim had expired.
Now it must not be supposed that I have fastened unfairly on an exceptional verse and a half (St. Mark xv. half of v. 43 and all v. 44) of the second Gospel. The reader is requested to refer to the note[263], where he will find set down a collation of eight consecutive verses in the selfsame context: viz. St. Mark xv. 47 to xvi. 7 inclusive; after an attentive survey of which he will not be disposed to deny that only by courtesy can such an exhibition of the original verity as Cod. D be called “a copy” at all. Had the genuine text been copied over and over again till the crack of doom, the result could never have been this. There are in fact but 117 words to be transcribed: and of these no less than 67—much more than half—have been either omitted (21), or else added (11); substituted (10), or else transposed (11); depraved (12, as by writing ανατελλοντος for ἀνατείλαντος), or actually blundered (2, as by writing ερχονται ημιον for ἔρχονται ἡμῖν). Three times the construction has been altered,—once indeed very seriously, for the Angel at the sepulchre is made to personate Christ. Lastly, five of the corrupt readings are the result of Assimilation. Whereas the evangelist wrote καὶ ἀναβλέψασαι θεωροῦσιν ὅτι ἀποκεκύλισται ὁ λίθος, what else but a licentious [pg 185] paraphrase is the following,—ερχονται και ευρισκουσιν αποκεκυλισμενον τον λιθον? This is in fact a fabricated, not an honestly transcribed text: and it cannot be too clearly understood that such a text (more or less fabricated, I mean) is exhibited by Codexes BאD throughout.