5. But indeed the theories of preceding critics, as well as the practical application of those theories to the sacred text, have been thrown into the shade by the more recent and elaborate publications of Drs. Hort and Westcott, briefly noticed in a preceding chapter, and claiming in this place our serious attention[297].
The system on which their text has been constructed has been vindicated, so far as vindication was possible, in Dr. Hort's “Introduction,” a very model of earnest reasoning, calling for and richly rewarding the close and repeated study of all who would learn the utmost that can be done for settling the text of the New Testament on dogmatic principles. The germ of this theory can be traced in the speculations of Bentley and Griesbach; its authors would confess themselves on many points disciples of Lachmann, although their process of investigation is far more artificial than his. But there is little hope for the stability of their imposing structure, if its foundations have been laid on the sandy ground of ingenious conjecture: and since barely the smallest vestige of historical evidence has ever been alleged in support of the views of these accomplished editors, their teaching must either be received as intuitively true, or dismissed from our consideration as precarious, and even visionary. This much said by way of preface, we will endeavour to state the principles they advocate, as fairly and concisely as we can.
(α) The books of the New Testament, even the Holy Gospels themselves, could not well have been collected into one volume till some time after the death of St. John. During this early period, each portion of the inspired record would be circulated separately, until at length the four Gospels would be brought together in one book or Quaternion, and, since each component member had to receive a distinctive appellation, the simplest and [pg 286] the earliest headings would ascribe them to their respective authors, κατὰ Ματθαῖον, κατὰ Μάρκον, κ.τ.λ., the general title of the four being Εὐαγγέλιον. “It is quite uncertain to what extent the whole N. T. was ever included in a single volume in Ante-Nicene times” (Hort, Introduction, pp. 223, 268), only that the Gospels had certainly been collected together when Justin Martyr wrote his first Apology between a.d. 139 and 150, inasmuch as he appeals thrice over to the Memoirs of the Apostles, which he once identifies with the Gospels (οἱ ἀπόστολοι ἐν τοῖς γενομένοις ὑπ᾽ ἀυτῶν ἀπομνημονεύμασιν ἃ καλεῖται εὐαγγέλια). Justin's disciple Tatian, again, composed a Harmony of the Four (Διὰ τεσσάρων), respecting the precise nature of which we have recently gained very seasonable information. “The idea, if not the name, of a collective ‘Gospel’ is implied throughout the well-known passage in the third book of Irenaeus, who doubtless received it from earlier generations” (Hort, p. 321). Hence it is not unreasonable to suspect that our great codices (אABC), which originally contained the whole N. T., may have been transcribed in their several parts from copies differing from each other in genius and in date. With such a possibility before us we ought not to be perplexed if the character of the text whether of Cod. A or of Cod. B differs in the Gospels from that which it bears in the Acts and the Epistles; or if Cod. C in the Apocalypse, and Cod. Δ in St. Mark, as has been already explained under those MSS., appear to belong to a family or group apart from that of the rest of their respective codices.
(β) At this remote period, during the first half of the second century, must have originated the wide variations from the prevailing text on the part of our primary authorities, both manuscripts and versions, which survive in Cod. Bezae of the Greek, and in the Old Latin codices or at least in some of them. The text they exhibit is distinguished as Western, and they have been joined by a powerful ally, the Curetonian Syriac. Critics of every school agree in admitting the primitive existence of this Western recension, and in their estimate of its general spirit. “The earliest readings which can be fixed chronologically belong to it... But any prepossessions in its favour that might be created by this imposing early ascendency are for the most part soon dissipated by continuous study of its internal [pg 287] character” (Hort, p. 120). “The chief and most constant characteristic of the Western readings is a love of paraphrase. Words, clauses, and even whole sentences were changed, omitted, and inserted with astonishing freedom, wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness” (ibid. p. 122). “Another equally important characteristic is a disposition to enrich the text at the cost of its purity by alterations or additions taken from traditional and perhaps from apocryphal and other non-biblical sources” (ibid. p. 123). Especially may we note among other interpolations the long passage after Matt. xx. 28 which we cited above, Vol. I. p. 8.
(γ) We now come to the feature which distinguishes Dr. Hort's system from any hitherto propounded; by the acceptance or non-acceptance of which his whole edifice must stand or fall. He seems to exaggerate the force of extant evidence when he judges that the corrupt Western “was the more widely-spread text of Ante-Nicene times” (ibid. p. 120); but he tacitly assumes that many codices, versions, and ecclesiastical writers remained free from its malignant influence. The evidence of this latter class was preserved comparatively pure until the middle of the third century, when it was taken in hand, at some time between a.d. 250 and 350, “at what date it is impossible to say with confidence, and even for conjecture the materials are scanty” (ibid. p. 137), by the Syrian bishops and Fathers of the Patriarchate of Antioch, who undertook (1) “an authoritative revision at Antioch” of the Greek text, which (2) was then taken as a standard for a similar authoritative revision of the Syriac text, and (3) was itself at a later time subjected to a second authoritative revision, carrying out more completely the purposes of the first (ibid. p. 137). Of this twofold authoritative revision of the Greek text, of this formal transmutation of the Curetonian Syriac into the Peshitto (for this is what Dr. Hort means, though his language is a little obscure), although they must have been of necessity public acts of great Churches in ages abounding in Councils General or Provincial, not one trace remains in the history of Christian antiquity; no one writer seems conscious that any modification either of the Greek Scriptures or of the vernacular translation was made in or before his time. It is as if the Bishops' Bible had been [pg 288] thrust out of the English Church service and out of the studies of her divines, and the Bible of 1611 had silently taken its place, no one knew how, or when, or why, or indeed that any change whatever had been made. Yet regarding his speculative conjecture as undubitably true, Dr. Hort proceeds to name the text as it stood before his imaginary era of transfusion a Pre-Syrian text, and that into which it was changed, sometimes Antiochian, more often Syrian[298]; while of the latter recension, though made deliberately, as our author believes, by the authoritative voice of the Eastern Church, he does not shrink from declaring that “all distinctively Syrian readings must be at once rejected” (ibid. p. 119), thus making a clean sweep of all critical materials, Fathers, versions, manuscripts uncial or cursive, comprising about nineteen-twentieths of the whole mass, which do not correspond with his preconceived opinion of what a correct text ought to be (ibid. p. 163).
(δ) But one or two steps yet remain in this thorough elimination of useless elements. A few authorities still survive which are honoured as Pre-Syrian, and continued unaffected by the phantom revisions, which, for critical purposes, have reduced their colleagues to ignominious silence. Besides the Western, Dr. Hort has in reserve two other groups, the Alexandrian and the Neutral. The former retains a text essentially pure from Syrian (though not from Western) mixture, but its component members are portentously few in number, being tolerably void of corruption as regards the substance, with “no incorporation of matter extraneous to the canonical text of the Bible, and no habitual or extreme license of paraphrase ... the changes made having usually more to do with language than with matter, and being marked by an effort after correctness of phrase” (ibid. p. 131). There are no unmixed vouchers for this Non-Western, Pre-Syrian, Alexandrian class, though Cyril of Alexandria seems to come the nearest to purity (ibid. p. 141), [pg 289] then Origen, occasionally other Alexandrian Fathers, also the Sahidic, and especially the Bohairic version (ibid. p. 131). No extant MS. has preserved so many Alexandrian readings as Cod. L (ibid. p. 153). Cod. C has some, T and Ξ more: in the Gospels they are chiefly marked by the combination אCLXZ, 33 (ibid. p. 166). In Cod. A, for the Acts and Epistles, the Alexandrian outnumber both the Syrian and Western readings (Hort, p. 152), but they all are mere degenerations so far as they depart from Dr. Hort's standard
(ε) The Neutral type of text: so called because it is free from the glaring corruption of the Western, from the smooth assimilations of the Syrian, and from the grammatical purism of the Alexandrian. Only two documents come under this last head, Codd. B and א, and of these two, when they differ, B is preferable to א, which has a not inconsiderable Western element, besides that the scribe's bold and rough manner has rendered “all the ordinary lapses due to rapid and careless transcription more numerous” than in B (ibid. p. 246). Yet, with certain slight exceptions which he carefully specifies, it is our learned author's belief “(1) that the readings of אB should be accepted as the true readings until strong internal evidence is found to the contrary, and (2) that no readings of אB can safely be rejected absolutely, though it is sometimes right to place them only on an alternative footing, especially where they receive no support from Versions and Fathers” (ibid. p. 225): and this their pre-eminence, in our critic's judgement, “is due to the extreme, and, as it were, primordial antiquity of the common original from which the ancestries of the two MSS. have diverged, the date of which cannot be later than the earlier part of the second century, and may well be yet earlier” (ibid. p. 223).
That אB should thus lift up their heads against all the world is much, especially having regard to the fact that several versions and not a few Fathers are older than they: for, while we grant that a simple patristic citation, standing by itself, is of little value, yet when the context or current of exposition renders it clear what reading these writers had before them, they must surely for that passage be equivalent as authorities to a manuscript of their own age. Nor will Dr. Hort allow us to make any deduction from the weight of the united testimony of אB [pg 290] by reason of the curious fact, demonstrated as well to his satisfaction (Hort, p. 213) as to our own, that the scribe of B was the actual writer of parts of three distinct quires, forming three pairs of conjugate leaves of א (see above, p. [96], note 1); but on this head we think he will find few readers to agree with him. His devotion to Cod. B when it stands alone is of necessity far more intelligent than that of the unnamed writer mentioned already, yet we believe that his implied confidence is scarcely the less misplaced. He is very glad when he can to find friends for his favourite, and discusses with great care the several binary combinations, such as BL, BC, BT, Bι, BD (which last, indeed, is unsafe enough), AB, BZ, B 33 or BΔ (for St. Mark) in the Gospels; AB, BC, &c., in the rest of the N. T. (Hort, p. 227). He does not disparage the subsingular readings of B, meaning by this convenient, perhaps novel, term, the agreement of B with “inferior Greek MSS., Versions, or Fathers, or combinations of documentary evidence of these kinds” (ibid. p. 230). But, when the worst comes to the worst, and Cod. B is left absolutely alone, its advocates need not despair, inasmuch as no readings of that manuscript, not involving clerical error (and “the scribe reached by no means a high standard of accuracy,” ibid. p. 233), must be lightly or hastily rejected, so powerfully do they commend themselves on their own merits (ibid. p. 238). This transcendent excellency, however, belongs to it chiefly in the Gospels. In the Acts and Catholic Epistles, if the value of A increases as has been said, that of B is somewhat diminished; while in the Pauline Epistles a “local Western element of B” (Hort, p. 240) brings it into the less reputable company of DFG or even of D alone. Hence in the formation of Westcott and Hort's Pauline text we sometimes meet with what appears the paradoxical result that the evidence of B alone is accepted, while that of B attended by other codices is laid aside as insufficient.
It is very instructive to compare the foregoing sketch of Dr. Hort's system, brief and inadequate, yet not we trust unfair, as it is, with the theory of Griesbach, for whose labours and genius we share much of his successor's veneration. As regards the modification of text called Western their views are nearly identical, only that Griesbach was necessarily ignorant of such important constituents of it as the Curetonian Syriac and the [pg 291] Old Latin codices which have come to light since his day, and thus was exempted from the temptation to which Dr. Hort has unhappily yielded, of believing that Codd. אB, with all their comparative purity, represent a primitive text already corrupted by certain accretions from which the Western copies were free (see below, p. [299] and note 1): a violent supposition which seriously impairs the homogeneousness and self-consistency of his whole argument (Hort, pp. 175-6). Griesbach's Alexandrian class includes not only that which Dr. Hort understands by the name, but the later critic's Neutral class also, which indeed we fail to distinguish from the other by any marked peculiar characteristics. The more mixed text which Griesbach called Constantinopolitan, and which is represented by Cod. A in the Gospels, in part by Cod. C, the Latin Vulgate, and later authorities, differs from Dr. Hort's Syrian in much more than name. Wider and deeper researches have made it evident that Griesbach's notion of a gradual modernizing of the text used from the fourth century downwards in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, would not adequately account for the phenomena wherewith we have to deal. The general, almost universal, prevalence of such a departure from the readings of אB, met with in ecclesiastical writers at least as early in date as the parchment of those manuscripts themselves, can be explained by nothing less than a comprehensive, deliberate, authoritative recension of the sacred books, undertaken by the chief rulers of the Antiochene Church, accepted throughout that great Patriarchate, yet, in spite of all this, never noticed even in the way of passing reference by writers of any description from that period onwards, until its consequences, not its process, became known to eminent critics in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Nothing less than the exigency of his case could have driven our author to encumber himself with a scheme fraught with difficulties too great even for his skill to overcome.
Dr. Hort's system, therefore, is entirely destitute of historical foundation[299]. He does not so much as make a show of pretending to it: but then he would persuade us, as he has persuaded himself, that its substantial truth is proved by results; and for results of themselves to establish so very much, they must needs be unequivocal, and admit of no logical escape from the conclusions [pg 292] they lead up to. But is this really the case? “Two Members of the New Testament Company” of Revisers, in a temperate and very able pamphlet, have answered in the affirmative, and have assigned, after Dr. Hort, but with greater precision than he, three reasons “for the belief that the Syrian text is posterior in origin to those which he calls Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral” (The Revisers and the Greek text of the N. T., p. 25). Granting for our present purpose the reality of this Syrian text, of whose independent existence we have no direct proof whatever, let us see what the three reasons will amount to.