The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels / Being the Sequel to The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels

by John William Burgon

One and the same reply has been rendered to this inquiry ever since the days of Erasmus. A note in the Complutensian Polyglott (1514) expresses it with sufficient accuracy. 'In the Greek copies, after And deliver us from evil, follows For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. But it is to be noted that in the Greek liturgy, after the choir has said And deliver us from evil, it is the Priest who responds as above: and those words, according to the Greeks, the priest alone may pronounce. This makes it probable that the words in question are no integral part of the Lord's Prayer: but that certain copyists inserted them in error, supposing, from their use in the liturgy, that they formed part of the text.' In other words, they represent that men's ears had grown so fatally familiar with this formula from its habitual use in the liturgy, that at last they assumed it to be part and parcel of the Lord's Prayer. The same statement has been repeated ad nauseam by ten generations of critics for 360 years. The words with which our Saviour closed His pattern prayer are accordingly rejected as an interpolation resulting from the liturgical practice of the primitive Church. And this slipshod account of the matter is universally acquiesced in by learned and unlearned readers alike at the present day.

From an examination of above fifty ancient oriental liturgies, it is found then that though the utmost variety prevails among them, yet that not one of them exhibits the evangelical formula as it stands in St. Matt. vi. 13; while in some instances the divergences of expression are even extraordinary. Subjoined is what may perhaps be regarded as the typical eucharistic formula, derived from the liturgy which passes as Chrysostom's. Precisely the same form recurs in the office which is called after the name of Basil: and it is essentially reproduced by Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Jerusalem, and pseudo-Caesarius; while something very like it is found to have been in use in more of the Churches of the East.

'For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, now and always and for ever and ever. Amen.'

But as every one sees at a glance, such a formula as the foregoing,—with its ever-varying terminology of praise,—its constant reference to the blessed Trinity,—its habitual νυν και αει,—and its invariable εις τους αιωνας των αιωνων, (which must needs be of very high antiquity, for it is mentioned by Irenaeus[170], and may be as old as 2 Tim. iv. 18 itself;)—the doxology, I say, which formed part of the Church's liturgy, though transcribed 10,000 times, could never by possibility have resulted in the unvarying doxology found in MSS. of St. Matt. vi. 13,—'For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.'

On the other hand, the inference from a careful survey of so many Oriental liturgies is inevitable. The universal prevalence of a doxology of some sort at the end of the Lord's Prayer; the general prefix 'for thine'; the prevailing mention therein of 'the kingdom and the power and the glory'; the invariable reference to Eternity:—all this constitutes a weighty corroboration of the genuineness of the form in St. Matthew. Eked out with a confession of faith in the Trinity, and otherwise amplified as piety or zeal for doctrinal purity suggested, every liturgical formula of the kind is clearly derivable from the form of words in St. Matt. vi. 13. In no conceivable way, on the other hand, could that briefer formula have resulted from the practice of the ancient Church. The thing, I repeat, is simply impossible.

What need to point out in conclusion that the Church's peculiar method of reciting the Lord's Prayer in the public liturgy does notwithstanding supply the obvious and sufficient explanation of all the adverse phenomena of the case? It was the invariable practice from the earliest time for the Choir to break off at the words 'But deliver us from evil.' They never pronounced the doxology. The doxology must for that reason have been omitted by the critical owner of the archetypal copy of St. Matthew from which nine extant Evangelia, Origen, and the Old Latin version originally derived their text. This is the sum of the matter. There can be no simpler solution of the alleged difficulty. That Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose recognize no more of the Lord's Prayer than they found in their Latin copies, cannot create surprise. The wonder would have been if they did.

Much stress has been laid on the silence of certain of the Greek Fathers concerning the doxology although they wrote expressly on the Lord's Prayer; as Origen, Gregory of Nyssa[171], Cyril of Jerusalem, Maximus. Those who have attended most to such subjects will however bear me most ready witness, that it is never safe to draw inferences of the kind proposed from the silence of the ancients. What if they regarded a doxology, wherever found, as hardly a fitting subject for exegetical comment? But however their silence is to be explained, it is at least quite certain that the reason of it is not because their copies of St. Matthew were unfurnished with the doxology. Does any one seriously imagine that in A.D. 650, when Maximus wrote, Evangelia were, in this respect, in a different state from what they are at present?

The sum of what has been offered may be thus briefly stated:—The textual perturbation observable at St. Matt. vi. 13 is indeed due to a liturgical cause, as the critics suppose. But then it is found that not the great bulk of the Evangelia, but only Codd. [Symbol: Aleph]BDZ, 1, 17, 118, 130, 209, have been victims of the corrupting influence. As usual, I say, it is the few, not the many copies, which have been led astray. Let the doxology at the end of the Lord's Prayer be therefore allowed to retain its place in the text without further molestation. Let no profane hands be any more laid on these fifteen precious words of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There yet remains something to be said on the same subject for the edification of studious readers; to whom the succeeding words are specially commended. They are requested to keep their attention sustained, until they have read what immediately follows.