The process of grouping authorities, whether by considerations of their geographical distribution or (more uncertainly) according to their genealogy as inferred from internal considerations (ibid. pp. 49-65), occupies a large measure of Dr. Hort's attention. The idea has not indeed originated with him, and its occasional value will be frankly acknowledged in the ensuing pages, so that on this head we need not further enlarge. In conclusion we will say, that the more our Cambridge Professor's “Introduction” is studied the more it grows upon our esteem for fulness of learning, for patience of research, for keenness of intellectual power, and especially for a certain marvellous readiness in accounting after some fashion for every new phenomenon which occurs, however apparently adverse to the acceptance of his own theory. With all our reverence for his genius, and gratitude for much that we have learnt from him in the course of our studies, we are compelled to repeat as emphatically as ever our strong conviction that the hypothesis to whose proof he has devoted so many laborious years, is destitute not only of historical foundation, but of all probability resulting from the internal goodness of the text which its adoption would force upon us[301].
This last assertion we will try to verify by subjoining a select [pg 297] number of those many passages in the N. T. wherein the two great codices א and B, one or both of them, are witnesses for readings, nearly all of which, to the best of our judgement, are corruptions of the sacred originals[302].
6. Those who devote themselves to the criticism of the text of the New Testament have only of late come to understand the full importance of attending closely to the mutual connexion subsisting between their several materials of every description, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers. The study of grouping has been recently and not untruly said to be the foundation of all enduring criticism[303]. Now that theories about the formal recensions of whole classes of these documents have generally been given up as purely visionary, and the very word families has come into disrepute by reason of the exploded fancies it recalls, we can discern not the less clearly that certain groups of them have in common not only a general resemblance in regard to the readings they exhibit, but characteristic peculiarities attaching themselves to each group. Systematic or wilful corruption of the sacred text, at least on a scale worth taking into account, there would seem to have been almost none; yet the tendency to licentious paraphrase and unwarranted additions distinguished one set of our witnesses from the second century downwards; a bias towards grammatical and critical purism and needless omissions appertained to another; while [pg 298] a third was only too apt to soften what might seem harsh, to smooth over difficulties, and to bring passages, especially of the Synoptic Gospels, into unnatural harmony with each other. All these changes appear to have been going on without notice during the whole of the third and fourth centuries, and except that the great name of Origen is associated (not always happily) with one class of them, were rather the work of transcribers than of scholars. Eusebius and Jerome, in their judgements about Scripture texts, are more the echoes of Origen than independent investigators.
Now, as a first approximation to the actual state of the case, the several classes of changes which we have enumerated admit of a certain rude geographical distribution, one of them appertaining to Western Christendom and the earliest Fathers of the African and Gallic Churches (including North Italy under the latter appellation); a second to Egypt and its neighbourhood; the third originally to Syria and Christian Antioch, in later times to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. We have here, no doubt, much to remind us of Griesbach and his scheme of triple recensions, but with this broad distinction between his conclusions and those of modern critics, that whereas he regarded the existence of his families as a patent fact, and grounded upon it precise and mechanical rules for the arrangement of the text, we are now content to perceive no more than unconscious tendencies, liable to be modified or diverted by a thousand occult influences, of which in each single case it is impossible to form an estimate beforehand. Even that marked bias in the direction of adding to the record, which is the reproach of Codex Bezae and some of its compeers, and renders the text of the Acts as exhibited by DE, by the cursive 137, and the margin of the Harkleian Syriac, as unlike that commonly read as can well be imagined[304], is mixed up with a proneness to omissions which we should look for rather from another class of documents (e.g. the rejection of ψευδόμενοι Matt. v. 11), and which in the latter part of St. Luke's Gospel almost suggests the idea of representing an earlier edition than that now in ordinary use, [pg 299] yet proceeding from the Evangelist's own hand (see p. [18])[305]. Again, the process whereby the rough places are made plain and abrupt constructions rounded, is abundantly exemplified in the readings of the great uncial A, supported as it is by the mass of later manuscripts (e.g. Mark i. 27; Acts xv. 17, 18; xx. 24); yet in innumerable instances (see [Appendix] to this chapter) these self-same codices retain the genuine text of the sacred writers which their more illustrious compeers have lost or impaired.
Hence it follows that in judging of the character of a various reading proposed for our acceptance, we must carefully mark whether it comes to us from many directions or from one. And herein the native country of the several documents, even when we can make sure of it, is only a precarious guide. If the Ethiopic or the Armenian versions have really been corrected by the Latin Vulgate, the geographical remoteness of their origin must go for nothing where they agree with the latter version. The relation in which Cod. L and the Bohairic version stand to Cod. B is too close to allow them their full value as independent witnesses unless when they are at variance with that great uncial, wheresoever it may have been written: the same might be said of the beautiful Latin fragment k from Bobbio. To whatever nations they belong, their resemblances are too strong and perpetual not to compel us to withhold from them a part of the consideration their concord would otherwise lay claim to. The same is incontestably the case with the Curetonian and margin of the Harkleian Syriac in connexion with Cod. D. Wide as is the region which separates Syria from Gaul, there [pg 300] must have been in very early times some remote communication by which the stream of Eastern testimony or tradition, like another Alpheus, rose up again with fresh strength to irrigate the regions of the distant West. The Peshitto Syriac leans at times in the same direction, although both in nation and character it most assimilates to the same class as Cod. A.
With these, and it may be with some further reservations which experience and study shall hereafter suggest, the principle of grouping must be acknowledged to be a sound one, and those lines of evidence to be least likely to lead us astray which converge from the most varied quarters to the same point. It is strange, but not more strange than needful, that we are compelled in the cause of truth to make one stipulation more: namely, that this rule be henceforth applied impartially in all cases, as well when it will tell in favour of the Received text, as when it shall help to set it aside. To assign a high value to cursive manuscripts of the best description (such as 1, 33, 69, 157, Evst. 259, or 61 of the Acts), and to such uncials as LRΔ, or even as א or C, whensoever they happen to agree with Cod. B, and to treat their refined silver as though it had been suddenly transmuted into dross when they come to contradict it, is a practice too plainly unreasonable to admit of serious defence, and can only lead to results which those who uphold it would be the first to deplore[306].
7. It is hoped that the general issue of the foregoing discussion may now be embodied in these four practical rules[307]:—
(1) That the true readings of the Greek New Testament cannot safely be derived from any one set of authorities, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers, but ought to be the result of [pg 301] a patient comparison and careful estimate of the evidence supplied by them all.
(2) That where there is a real agreement between all documents containing the Gospels up to the sixth century, and in other parts of the New Testament up to the ninth, the testimony of later manuscripts and versions, though not to be rejected unheard, must be regarded with great suspicion, and, unless upheld by strong internal evidence, can hardly be adopted[308].
(3) That where the more ancient documents are at variance with each other, the later uncial and cursive copies, especially those of approved merit, are of real importance, as being the surviving representatives of other codices, very probably as early, perhaps even earlier, than any now extant.