The reader has, we trust, been furnished with the leading principles on which it is conceived that dialectic peculiarities should be treated in revising the text of the N. T. It would have been out of place to have entered into a more detailed account of variations which will readily be met with (and must be carefully studied) in any good Grammar of the Greek New Testament. Dr. Moulton's translation of Winer ought to be in the hands of every student, and leaves nothing to be regretted, except that accurate scholarship and unsparing diligence should [pg 320] have been expended on improving another man's work, by one who is well able to produce a better of his own[334].
Chapter XII. Application Of The Foregoing Materials And Principles To The Criticism Of Select Passages Of The New Testament.
In applying to the revision of the sacred text the diplomatic materials and critical principles it has been the purpose of the preceding pages to describe, we have selected the few passages we have room to examine, chiefly in consideration of their actual importance, occasionally also with the design of illustrating by pertinent examples the canons of internal evidence and the laws of Comparative Criticism. It will be convenient to discuss these passages in the order they occupy in the volume of the New Testament: that which stands first affords a conspicuous instance of undue and misplaced subjectivity.
First Series. Gospels.
1. Matt. i. 18. Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ... is altered by Tregelles into Τοῦ δὲ Χριστοῦ, Ἰησοῦ being omitted: Westcott and Hort place Ἰησοῦ between brackets, and Τοῦ δὲ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ of Cod. B in the margin: Tischendorf, who had rejected Ἰησοῦ in his fifth and seventh editions, restored it in his eighth. Michaelis had objected to the term τὸν Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν, Acts viii. 37 (see that verse, to be examined below), on the ground that “In the time of the Apostles the word Christ was never used as the Proper Name of a Person, but as an epithet expressive of the ministry of Jesus;” and although Bp. Middleton has abundantly proved his statement incorrect (Doctrine of the Greek Article, note on Mark ix. 41), and Ἰησοῦς Χριστός[335], especially in some one of the oblique cases after prepositions, is very common, yet the [pg 322] precise form ὁ Ἰησοῦς Χριστός occurs only in these places and in 1 John iv. 3; Apoc. xii. 17, where again the reading is more than doubtful. Hence, apparently, the determination to change the common text in St. Matthew, on evidence however slight. Now Ἰησοῦ is omitted in no Greek manuscript whatsoever[336]. The Latin version of Cod. D (d) indeed rejects it, the parallel Greek being lost; but since d sometimes agrees with other Latin copies against its own Greek, it cannot be deemed quite certain that the Greek rejected it also[337]. Cod. B reads τοῦ δὲ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ, in support of which Lachmann cites Origen, iii. 965 d in the Latin, but on very precarious grounds, as Tregelles (An Account of the Printed Text, p. 189, note †) candidly admits. Tischendorf quotes Cod. 74 (after Wetstein), the Persic (of the Polyglott and in manuscript), and Maximus, Dial. de Trinitate, for τοῦ δὲ ἰησοῦ. The real testimony in favour of τοῦ δὲ Χριστοῦ consists of the Old Latin copies a b c d f ff1, the Curetonian Syriac (I know not why Cureton should add “the Peshitto”), the Latin Vulgate, the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon, Wheelocke's Persic, and Irenaeus in three places, “who (after having previously cited the words ‘Christi autem generatio sic erat’) continues ‘Ceterum potuerat dicere Matthaeus, Jesu vero generatio sic erat; sed praevidens Spiritus Sanctus depravatores, et praemuniens contra fraudulentiam eorum, per Matthaeum ait: Christi autem generatio sic erat’ (Contra Haeres., lib. iii. 16. 2). This is given in proof that Jesus and Christ are one and the same Person, and that Jesus cannot be said to be the receptacle that afterwards received Christ; for the Christ was born” (An Account of the Printed Text, p. 188). To this most meagre list of authorities Scholz adds, “Pseudo-Theophil. in Evang.,” manuscripts of Theophylact, Augustine, and one or two of little account: but even in Irenaeus (Harvey, vol. ii. p. 48) τοῦ δὲ ιυ χυ (tacitè), as preserved by Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople [viii], stands over against the Latin “Christi.”
We do not deny the importance of Irenaeus' express testimony[338] (a little impaired though it be by the fanciful distinction [pg 323] which he had taken up with), had it been supported by something more trustworthy than the Old Latin versions and their constant associate, the Curetonian Syriac. On the other hand, all uncial and cursive codices (אCΣEKLMPSUVZΓΔΠ: ADFGΦ &c. being defective here), the Syriac of the Peshitto, Harkleian, and Jerusalem (δέ only being omitted, since the Church Lesson begins here), the Sahidic, Bohairic, Armenian, and Ethiopic versions, Tatian, Irenaeus, Origen (in the Greek), Eusebius, Didymus, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, and the younger Cyril, comprise a body of proof, not to be shaken by subjective notions, or even by Western evidence from the second century downwards[339].
2. Matt. vi. 13. ὅτι σοῦ ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία καὶ ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας. ἀμήν. It is right to say that I can no longer regard this doxology as certainly an integral part of St. Matthew's Gospel: but (notwithstanding its rejection by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort) I am not yet absolutely convinced of its spuriousness [i.e. upon much less evidence than is now adduced]. It is wanting in the oldest uncials extant, אBDZ, and since ACP (whose general character would lead us to look for support to the Received text in such a case) are unfortunately deficient here, the burden of the defence is thrown on Φ and Σ and the later uncials EGKLMSUVWfΔΠ (hiat Γ), whereof L is conspicuous for usually siding with B. Of the cursives only five are known to omit the clause, l, 17 (habet ἀμήν), 118, 130, 209, but 566 or hscr (and as it would seem some others) has it obelized in the margin, while the scholia in certain other copies indicate that it is doubtful: even 33 contains it, 69 being defective, while 157, 225, 418 add to δόξα, τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος, but 422 τοῦ πρσ only. Versions have much influence on such a question, it is therefore important to notice that it is found in all the four Syriac (Cureton's omitting καὶ ἡ δύναμις, and some editions of the Peshitto ἀμήν, which [pg 324] is in at least one manuscript), the Sahidic (omitting καὶ ἡ δόξα), the Ethiopic, Armenian, Gothic, Slavonic, Georgian, Erpenius' Arabic, the Persic of the Polyglott from Pococke's manuscript, the margin of some Bohairic codices, the Old Latin k (quoniam est tibi virtus in saecula saeculorum), f g1 (omitting amen) q. The doxology is not found in most Bohairic (but is in the margin of Hunt. 17 or Bp. Lightfoot's Cod. 1) and Arabic manuscripts or editions, in Wheelocke's Persic, in the Old Latin a b c ff1 g1 h l, in the Vulgate or its satellites the Anglo-Saxon and Frankish (the Clementine Vulg. and Sax. add amen). Its absence from the Latin avowedly caused the editors of the Complutensian N. T. to pass it over, though it was found in their Greek copies: the earliest Latin Fathers naturally did not cite what the Latin codices for the most part do not contain. Among the Greeks it is met with in Isidore of Pelusium (412), and in the Pseudo-Apostolic Constitutions, probably of the fourth century: soon afterwards Chrysostom (Hom. in Matt. xix. vol. i. p. 283, Field) comments upon it without showing the least consciousness that its authenticity was disputed. The silence of some writers, viz. Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Maximus, especially when expounding the Lord's Prayer, may be partly accounted for by the fact of the existence of the shorter form of the Lord's Prayer as given in St. Luke without the doxology; or upon the supposition that the doxology was regarded not so much a portion of the Prayer itself, as a hymn of praise annexed to it; yet this latter fact would be somewhat unfavourable to its genuineness, and would be fatal unless we knew the precariousness of any argument derived from such silence. The Fathers are constantly overlooking the most obvious citations from Scripture, even where we should expect them most, although, as we learn from other passages in their writings, they were perfectly familiar with them. Internal evidence is not unevenly balanced. It is probable that the doxology was interpolated from the Liturgies, and the variation of reading renders this all the more likely; it is just as probable that it was cast out of St. Matthew's Gospel to bring it into harmony with St. Luke's (xi. 4): I cannot concede to Scholz that it is “in interruption of the context,” for then the whole of ver. 13 would have to be cancelled (a remedy which no one proposes), and not merely this concluding part of it.
It is vain to dissemble the pressure of the adverse case, though it ought not to be looked upon as conclusive. The Διδαχή (with variation) and the Syriac and Sahidic versions bring up the existence of the doxology to the second century; the Apostolic Constitutions in the third; Ambrose, Caesarius, Chrysostom, the Opus Imperfectum, Isidore, and perhaps others[340], attest for it in the fourth; then come the Latin codices[341] f g1 k q, the Gothic, the Armenian, the Ethiopic, and lastly Codd. Φ and Σ of the fifth or sixth century, and the whole flood-tide of Greek manuscripts from the eighth century downwards, including even L, 33, with Theophylact and Euthymius Zigabenus in the eleventh and twelfth. Perhaps it is not very wise “quaerere quae habere non possumus,” yet those who are persuaded, from the well-ascertained affinities subsisting between them, that ACP, or at least two out of the three, would have preserved a reading sanctioned by the Peshitto, by Codd. f k, by Chrysostom, and by nearly all the later documents, may be excused for regarding the indictment against the last clause of the Lord's Prayer as hitherto unproven, in Dr. Scrivener's judgement passed upon much less than the evidence in favour adduced above; and for supposing the genuineness of the clause to be proved when the additional evidence is taken into consideration.