(3) That it is exceedingly improbable that the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries, which in a most able period had been occupied with discussions on verbal accuracy, should have made the gross mistake of adopting (what was then) a modern concoction from the original text of the Gospels, which had been written less than three or four centuries before; and that their error should have been acknowledged as truth, and perpetuated by the ages that succeeded them down to the present time.
But we must draw nearer to Dr. Hort's argument.
He founds it upon a detailed examination of eight passages, viz. St. Mark vi. 33; viii. 26; ix. 38; ix. 49; St. Luke ix. 10; xi. 54; xii. 18; xxiv. 53.
1. Remark that eight is a round and divisible number. Did the author decide upon it with a view of presenting two specimens from each Gospel? To be sure, he gives four from the first two, and four from the two last, only that he confines the batches severally to St. Mark and St. Luke. Did the strong style of St. Matthew, with distinct meaning in every word, yield no suitable example for treatment? Could no passage be found in St. John's Gospel, where not without parallel, but to a remarkable degree, extreme simplicity of language, even expressed in alternative clauses, clothes soaring thought and philosophical acuteness? True, that he quotes St. John v. 37 as an instance of Conflation by the Codex Bezae which is anything but an embodiment of the Traditional or 'Syrian' Text, and xiii. 24 which is similarly irrelevant. Neither of these instances therefore fill up the gap, and are accordingly not included in the selected eight. What can we infer from this presentment, but that 'Conflation' is probably not of frequent occurrence as has been imagined, but may indeed be—to admit for a moment its existence—nothing more than an occasional incident? For surely, if specimens in St. Matthew and St. John had abounded to his hand, and accordingly 'Conflation' had been largely employed throughout the Gospels, Dr. Hort would not have exercised so restricted, and yet so round a choice.
2. But we must advance a step further. Dean Burgon as we have seen has calculated the differences between B and the Received Text at 7,578, and those which divide [Symbol: Aleph] and the Received Text as reaching 8,972. He divided these totals respectively under 2,877 and 3,455 omissions, 556 and 839 additions, 2,098 and 2,299 transpositions, and 2,067 and 2,379 substitutions and modifications combined. Of these classes, it is evident that Conflation has nothing to do with Additions or Transpositions. Nor indeed with Substitutions, although one of Dr. Hort's instances appears to prove that it has. Conflation is the combination of two (or more) different expressions into one. If therefore both expressions occur in one of the elements, the Conflation has been made beforehand, and a substitution then occurs instead of a conflation. So in St. Luke xii. 18, B, &c., read τον σιτον και τα αγαθα μου which Dr. Hort[619] considers to be made by Conflation into τα γενηματα μου και τα αγαθα μου, because τα γενηματα μου is found in Western documents. The logic is strange, but as Dr. Hort has claimed it, we must perhaps allow him to have intended to include with this strange incongruity some though not many Substitutions in his class of instances, only that we should like to know definitely what substitutions were to be comprised in this class. For I shrewdly suspect that there were actually none. Omissions are now left to us, of which the greater specimens can hardly have been produced by Conflation. How, for instance, could you get the last Twelve Verses of St. Mark's Gospel, or the Pericope de Adultera, or St. Luke xxii. 43-44, or any of the rest of the forty-five whole verses in the Gospels upon which a slur is cast by the Neologian school? Consequently, the area of Conflation is greatly reduced. And I venture to think, that supposing for a moment the theory to be sound, it could not account for any large number of variations, but would at the best only be a sign or symptom found every now and then of the derivation attributed to the Received Text.
3. But we must go on towards the heart of the question. And first to examine Dr. Hort's eight instances. Unfortunately, the early patristic evidence on these verses is scanty. We have little evidence of a direct character to light up the dark sea of conjecture.
(1) St. Mark (vi. 22) relates that on a certain occasion the multitude, when they beheld our Saviour and his disciples on their way in a ship crossing to the other side of the lake, ran together (συνεδραμον) from all their cities to the point which He was making for (εκει), and arrived there before the Lord and His followers (προηλθον αυτους), and on His approach came in a body to Him (συνηλθον προς αυτον). And on disembarking (και εξελθων), i.e. (εκ του πλοιου, ver. 32), &c. It should be observed, that it was only the Apostles who knew that His ultimate object was 'a desert place' (ver. 31, 30): the indiscriminate multitude could only discern the bay or cape towards which the boat was going: and up to what I have described as the disembarkation (ver. 34), nothing has been said of His movements, except that He was in the boat upon the lake. The account is pictorial. We see the little craft toiling on the lake, the people on the shores running all in one direction, and on their reaching the heights above the place of landing watching His approach, and then descending together to Him to the point where He is going to land. There is nothing weak or superfluous in the description. Though condensed (what would a modern history have made of it?), it is all natural and in due place.
Now for Dr. Hort. He observes that one clause (και προηλθον αυτους) is attested by B[Symbol: Aleph] and their followers; another (και συνηλθον αυτου or ηλθον αυτου, which is very different from the 'Syrian' συνηλθον προς αυτον) by some Western documents; and he argues that the entire form in the Received Text, και προηλθον αυτους, και συνηλθον προς αυτον, was formed by Conflation from the other two. I cannot help observing that it is a suspicious mark, that even in the case of the most favoured of his chosen examples he is obliged to take such a liberty with one of his elements of Conflation as virtually to doctor it in order to bring it strictly to the prescribed pattern. When we come to his arguments he candidly admits, that 'it is evident that either Δ (the Received Text) is conflate from [Symbol: alpha] (B[Symbol: Aleph]) and β (Western), or α and β are independent simplifications of Δ'; and that 'there is nothing in the sense of Δ that would tempt to alteration,' and that 'accidental' omission of one or other clause would 'be easy.' But he argues with an ingenuity that denotes a bad cause that the difference between αυτου and προς αυτον is really in his favour, chiefly because αυτου would very likely if it had previously existed been changed into προς αυτον—which no one can doubt; and that 'συνηλθον προς αυτον is certainly otiose after συνεδραμον εκει,' which shews that he did not understand the whole meaning of the passage. His argument upon what he terms 'Intrinsic Probability' leads to a similar inference. For simply εξελθων cannot mean that 'He "came out" of His retirement in some sequestered nook to meet them,' such a nook being not mentioned by St. Mark, whereas πλοιον is; nor can εκει denote 'the desert region.' Indeed the position of that region or nook was known before it was reached solely to our Lord and His Apostles: the multitude was guided only by what they saw, or at least by vague surmise.
Accordingly, Dr. Hort's conclusion must be reversed. 'The balance of Internal Evidence of Readings, alike from Transcriptional and from Intrinsic Probability, is decidedly' not 'in favour of Δ from α and β,' but 'of α and β from Δ.' The reading of the Traditional Text is the superior both as regards the meaning, and as to the probability of its pre-existence. The derivation of the two others from that is explained by that besetting fault of transcribers which is termed Omission. Above all, the Traditional reading is proved by a largely over-balancing weight of evidence.
(2) 'To examine other passages equally in detail would occupy too much space.' So says Dr. Hort: but we must examine points that require attention.