Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture

by C. J. Ellicott

Now this I unhesitatingly declare, as I shall subsequently be able to prove, is contrary to the facts of the case. It is perfectly true that our two eminent colleagues gave, I believe, to each one of us, from time to time, little booklets of their text as it then stood in print, but which we were always warned were not considered by the editors themselves as final. These portions of their text were given to us,

not to win us over to adopt it, but to enable us to see each proposed reading in its continuity. How these booklets were used by the members of the Company generally, I know not. I can only speak for myself; but I cannot suppress the conviction that I was acting unconsciously in the same manner as the great majority of the Company. I only used the booklets for occasional reference. In preparing the portion of the sacred volume on which we were to be engaged in the next session of the Company, I took due note of the readings as well as of the renderings, but I formed my judgement independently on the evidence supplied to me by the notes of the critical edition, whether that of Tischendorf or Tregelles, which I then was in the habit of using. This evidence was always fully stated to the Company, nearly always by Dr. Scrivener, and it was upon the discussion of this evidence, and not on the reading of any particular editor, on which the decision of the Company was ultimately formed. We paid in all cases great attention to the arguments of our two eminent colleagues and our experienced colleague, Dr. Scrivener; but each question of reading, as it arose, was settled by the votes of the Company. The resulting text, as afterwards

published by the Oxford University Press, and edited by Archdeacon Palmer, was thus the direct work of the Company, and may be rightly designated, as it will be in these pages, as the Revisers’ text.

It is of considerable importance that this should be borne in mind; for, in the angry vituperation which was directed against the Revisers’ text, it was tacitly assumed that this text was practically identical with that of Westcott and Hort, and that the difficulties which are to be found in this latter text (and some there certainly are) are all to be found in the text of the Revisers. How very far such an assumption is from the true state of the case can easily be shown by a simple comparison of one text with the other. Let us take an example. I suppose there are very few who can entertain the slightest doubt that in Acts xii. 35, St. Luke tells us that Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem after their mission was over, and took with them (from Jerusalem) St. Mark. Now what is the reading of Westcott and Hort?—“to Jerusalem” with the Vatican Manuscript, and a fair amount of external support. We then turn at once to the Revisers’ text and find that from (εξ) is maintained, in spite of the clever arguments

which, in this case, can be urged for an intrinsically improbable reading, and, most likely, were urged at the time, as I observe that the Revisers have allowed the “to” to appear in a margin.

I regret that I have never gone through the somewhat laborious process of minutely comparing the Revisers’ text with the text of Westcott and Hort, but I cannot help thinking that the example I have chosen is a typical one, and does show the sort of relations between the two texts, when what a recent and competent writer (Dr. Salmon, of Trinity College, Dublin) considers to be the difficulties and anomalies and apparent perversities in the text of Westcott and Hort are compared with the decisions of the Revisers [59]. There are, I believe, only sixty-four passages in the whole revision, in which the text of the Revisers, when agreeing with the text of Westcott and Hort, has not also the support of Lachmann, or Tischendorf, or Tregelles.

I observe that the above-named writer expresses his satisfaction that the Revised Version has not superseded the Authorised Version in

our Churches [60a], and that things which were read at Rome in the second century may still be read in our own Churches in the nineteenth century. This, perhaps, is a strong way of expressing his aversion to the text of Westcott and Hort, but it is not perfectly clear that the Revisers’ text has “so closely” followed the authority of these two eminent critics as to be open, on Dr. Salmon’s part, to the same measure of aversion. Until more accurate evidence is forthcoming that the Revisers have shown in their text the same sort of studied disregard of Western variations as is plainly to be recognized in the text of Westcott and Hort, I can only fall back on my persuasion, as one who has put to the vote these critical questions very many times, that systematic neglect of Western authority cannot fairly be brought home to the Revisers. It is much to be regretted then, that in the very opening chapter of his interesting volume, Dr. Salmon roundly states that Westcott and Hort exercised a “predominating influence” on their colleagues in the revision on the question of various readings [60b], and that “more than half of their brother members of the Committee had given no special attention to the subject.” Now,

assuming that the word “Committee” has been here accidentally used for the more usual term Company, I am forced to say that both statements are really incorrect. I was permitted by God’s mercy to be present at every meeting of the Company except two, and I can distinctly say that I never observed any indication of this predominating influence. We knew well that our two eminent colleagues had devoted many years of their lives to the great work on which they were engaged; and we paid full deference to what they urged on each reading as it came before us, but in the end we decided for ourselves. For it must not be forgotten that we had an eminent colleague (absent only eight times from our 407 meetings) who took a very different view of the critical evidence to that of Westcott and Hort, and never failed very fully, and often very persuasively, to express it. I am of course alluding to my old friend Dr. Scrivener. It was often a kind of critical duel between Dr. Hort and Dr. Scrivener, in which everything that could be urged on either side was placed before the Company, and the Company enabled to decide on a full knowledge of the critical facts and reasonings in reference to the reading under consideration.

Now it is also not correct to say of the Company that finally decided the question, that more than half “had given no special attention to the subject.” If this refers to the matter subsequently put forward by Dr. Hort in the introductory volume to Westcott and Hort’s Greek Testament, to the clever and instructive genealogical method, and to the numberless applications of it that have given their Greek Testament the pre-eminence it deservedly holds—if this be the meaning of the Provost’s estimate of the critical knowledge of the Company, I should not have taken any exception to the words. But if “the subject” refers to the general critical knowledge at the time when the Company came together, then I must gently protest against an estimate of the general critical capabilities of the Company that is, really and truly, incorrect. All but three or four are now resting with God, and among these twenty they were not few who had a good and full knowledge of the New Testament textual criticism of the generation that had just passed away. Among them were not only the three experts whom I have mentioned, but editors of portions of the New Testament such as Bishop Lightfoot and others, principals of large