(α) “The first reason appears to us almost sufficient to settle the question by itself. It is founded on the observation ... that the Syrian text presents numerous instances of readings which, according to all textual probability, must be considered to be combinations of early readings still extant.”... “The reader will find in Dr. Hort's own pages abundant illustration of the fact in eight examples rigorously analyzed, which seem to supply a proof, as positive as the subject admits, that Syrian readings are posterior both to Western readings, and to other readings which may be properly described as Neutral” (ibid. pp. 25-6). But the misfortune is that the subject does not admit of positive proof; that what appears to one scholar “textual probability,” appears to another a mere begging of the whole question. These eight examples have been re-analyzed by Canon Cook (Revised Version, pp. 205-18), and just before him by the Quarterly Reviewer (Revision Revised, pp. 258-65), writers not destitute either of learning or of natural acuteness, who would fain lead us to draw directly opposite inferences from Dr. Hort's. We will take but one specimen, the eighth and last, to make our meaning as clear as possible. “This simple instance,” says Dr. Hort complacently, “needs no explanation” (Hort, p. 104).
Luke xxiv. 53. καὶ ἦσαν διαπαντὸς ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ, αἰνοῦντες καὶ εὐλογοῦντες τὸν Θεόν. Thus it stands in the Received text with AC**FHKMSUVXΓΔΛΠ, all cursives, even those most esteemed by Westcott and Hort, with c f g, the Vulgate, Peshitto and Harkleian Syriac, the Armenian, and Ethiopic virtually (εὐλογοῦντες καὶ αἰνοῦντες τὸν Θεόν). This is called the Syrian reading.
The two so-termed Pre-Syrian forms are,
om. αἰνοῦντες καὶ אBCL*, Bohairic (Hort), Jerusalem Syriac. This is the Neutral and Alexandrian text.
om. καὶ εὐλογοῦντες D, a b e ff l, gat. bodl., Bohairic (Tischendorf). This is the Western text.
The assumption of course is that the Syrian reading is a conflation of those of the other two classes, so forming a full but not overburdened clause. But if this praejudicium be met with the plea that D and the Latins perpetually, B and its allies very often, seek to abridge the sacred original, it would be hard to demonstrate that the latter explanation is more improbable than the former. Beyond this point of subjective feeling the matter cannot well be carried, whether on one side or the other.
Dr. Hort's other examples of conflation have the same double edge as Luke xxiv. 53, and there is no doubt that Dr. Sanday is right in asserting that like instances may be found wheresoever they are looked for; but they prove nothing to any one who has not made up his mind beforehand as to what the reading ought to be. We have already confessed that there is a tendency on the part of copyists to assimilate the narratives of the several Gospels to each other; and that such Harmonies as that of Tatian would facilitate the process; that synonymous words are liable to be exchanged and harsh constructions supplied. Part of the value of the older codices arises from their comparative freedom from such corrections: but then this modernizing process is on the part of copyists unsystematic, almost unconscious; it is wholly different from the deliberate formal emendations implied throughout Dr. Hort's volume.
(β) The second reason adduced by the Two Revisers “is almost equally cogent” in their estimation. It is that while the Ante-Nicene Fathers “place before us from separate and in some cases widely distant countries examples of Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral readings, it appears to be certain that before the middle of the third century we have no historical traces of readings which can properly be entitled distinctively Syrian” (The Revisers, &c., p. 26). Now the middle of the third century is the earliest period assigned by Dr. Hort for the inception of his phantom scheme of Syrian revision, and we feel [pg 294] sure that the epoch of Patristic evidence was not put thus early, in order to exclude Origen, whose support of his Alexandrian readings Griesbach found so partial and precarious (see above, p. [226]). In fact Dr. Hort expressly states that “The only period for which we have anything like a sufficiency of representative knowledge consists roughly of three-quarters of a century from about 175 to 250: but the remains of four eminent Greek Fathers, which range through this period, cast a strong light on textual history backward and forward. They are Irenaeus, of Asia Minor, Rome, and Lyons; his disciple Hippolytus, of Rome; Clement, of Athens and Alexandria; and his disciple, Origen, of Alexandria and Palestine” (Hort, p. 112). Even if the extant writings of these Fathers had been as rigorously examined and as thoroughly known as they certainly are not, “their scantiness and the comparative vagueness of the textual materials contained in them” (ibid.) would hinder our drawing at present any positive conclusions regarding the sacred text as known to them. Even the slender specimens of controverted readings collected in our Chap. [XII] would suffice to prove that their evidence is by no means exclusively favourable to Dr. Hort's opinions, a fact for which we will allege but one instance out of many, the support given to the Received text by Hippolytus in that grand passage, John iii. 13[300].
There are three considerable works relating to the criticism of the N. T. still open to the enterprise of scholars, and they can hardly be taken up at all except by the fresh hopefulness of scholars yet young. We need a fuller and more comprehensive collation of the cursive manuscripts (Hort, pp. 76-7): “a complete collection of all the fragments of the Thebaic New Testament is now the most pressing want in the province of textual criticism,” writes Bp. Lightfoot, and he might have added a better edition of the Bohairic also: but for the demands of the present controversy we must set in the first rank the necessity for a complete survey of the Patristic literature of the first five centuries at the least. While we concede to Dr. Hort that as [pg 295] a rule “negative patristic evidence”—that derived from the mere silence of the writer, “is of no force at all” (Hort, p. 201), and attach very slight importance to citations which are not express, it is from this source that we must look for any stable decision regarding the comparative purity in reference to the sacred autographs of the several classes of documents which have passed under our review.
(γ) Hence the second reason for supporting the text of Westcott and Hort urged by the Two Revisers relates to an investigation of facts hitherto but partially ascertained: the third, like the first, involves only matters of opinion, in which individual judgements and prepossessions bear the chief part. “Yet a third reason is supplied by Internal Evidence, or, in other words, by considerations ... of intrinsic or of Transcriptional Probability” (The Revisers &c., p. 26): and “here,” they very justly add, “it is obvious that we enter at once into a very delicate and difficult domain of textual criticism, and can only draw our conclusions with the utmost circumspection and reserve” (ibid.). On the subject of Internal Evidence enough for our present purpose has been said, and Dr. Hort's Transcriptional head appears to be Bp. Ellicott's paradiplomatic under a more convenient name. Our author's discussion of what he calls the “rudimental criticism” of Internal evidence (Hort, Part ii. pp. 19-72), if necessarily somewhat abstruse, is one of the most elaborate and interesting in his admirable volume. It is sometimes said that all reasoning is analytical, not synthetical; the reducing a foregone conclusion to the first principles on which it rests, rather than the building upon those first principles the materials wherewith to construct the conclusion. Of this portion of Dr. Hort's labours the dictum is emphatically true. Cod. B and its characteristic peculiarities are never out of the author's mind, and those lines of thought are closely followed which most readily lead up to the theory of that manuscript's practical impeccability. We allege this statement in no disparaging spirit, and it may be that Dr. Hort will not wholly disagree with us. Not only is he duly sensible of the precariousness of Intrinsic evidence, inasmuch as “the uncertainty of the decision in ordinary cases is shown by the great diversity of judgement which is actually found to exist” (Hort, p. 21), but he boldly, [pg 296] and no less boldly than truly, intimates that in such cases the ultimate decision must rest with the individual critic: “in almost all texts variations occur where personal judgement inevitably takes a large part in the final decision.... Different minds will be impressed by different parts of the evidence as clearer than the rest, and so virtually ruling the rest: here therefore personal discernment would seem the surest ground for confidence” (ibid. p. 65). For the critic's confidence perhaps, not for that of his reader.