Nothing can be more exquisitely precise than St. John's way of describing an incident to which St. Mark (xvi. 9) only refers; viz. our Lord's appearance to Mary Magdalene,—the first of His appearances after His Resurrection. The reason is discoverable for every word the Evangelist uses:—its form and collocation. Both St. Luke (xxiv. 3) and previously St. Mark (xvi. 5) expressly stated that the women who visited the Sepulchre on the first Easter morning, 'after they had entered in' (εισελθουσαι), saw the Angels. St John explains that at that time Mary was not with them. She had separated herself from their company;—had gone in quest of Simon Peter and 'the other disciple.' When the women, their visit ended, had in turn departed from the Sepulchre, she was left in the garden alone. 'Mary was standing [with her face] towards the sepulchre weeping,—outside[173].'
All this, singular to relate, was completely misunderstood by the critics of the two first centuries. Not only did they identify the incident recorded in St. John xx. 11, 12 with St. Mark xv. 5 and St. Luke xxiv. 3, 4, from which, as we have seen, the first-named Evangelist is careful to distinguish it;—not only did they further identify both places with St. Matt, xxviii. 2, 3[174], from which they are clearly separate;—but they considered themselves at liberty to tamper with the inspired text in order to bring it into harmony with their own convictions. Some of them accordingly altered προς το μνημειον into προς τω μνημειω (which is just as ambiguous in Greek as 'at the sepulchre' in English[175]), and εξω they boldly erased. It is thus that Codex A exhibits the text. But in fact this depravation must have begun at a very remote period and prevailed to an extraordinary extent: for it disfigures the best copies of the Old Latin, (the Syriac being doubtful): a memorable circumstance truly, and in a high degree suggestive. Codex B, to be sure, reads 'ειστηκει προς τω μνημειω, εξω κλαιουσα,—merely transposing (with many other authorities) the last two words. But then Codex B substitutes ελθουσαι for εισελθουσαι in St. Mark xvi. 5, in order that the second Evangelist may not seem to contradict St. Matt, xxviii. 2, 3. So that, according to this view of the matter, the Angelic appearance was outside the sepulchre[176]. Codex [Symbol: Aleph], on the contrary, is thorough. Not content with omitting εξω,—(as in the next verse it leaves out δυο, in order to prevent St. John xx. 12 from seeming to contradict St. Matt. xxviii. 2, 3, and St. Mark xvi. 5),—it stands alone in reading ΕΝ τω μνημειω. (C and D are lost here.) When will men learn that these 'old uncials' are ignes fatui,—not beacon lights; and admit that the texts which they exhibit are not only inconsistent but corrupt?
There is no reason for distrusting the received reading of the present place in any particular. True, that most of the uncials and many of the cursives read προς τω μνημειω: but so did neither Chrysostom[177] nor Cyril[178] read the place. And if the Evangelist himself had so written, is it credible that a majority of the copies would have forsaken the easier and more obvious, in order to exhibit the less usual and even slightly difficult expression? Many, by writing προς τω μνημειω, betray themselves; for they retain a sure token that the accusative ought to end the sentence. I am not concerned however just now to discuss these matters of detail. I am only bent on illustrating how fatal to the purity of the Text of the Gospels has been the desire of critics, who did not understand those divine compositions, to bring them into enforced agreement with one another. The sectional system of Eusebius, I suspect, is not so much the cause as the consequence of the ancient and inveterate misapprehensions which prevailed in respect of the history of the Resurrection. It is time however to proceed.
§ 2.
Those writers who overlook the corruptions which the text has actually experienced through a mistaken solicitude on the part of ancient critics to reconcile what seemed to them the conflicting statements of different Evangelists, are frequently observed to attribute to this kind of officiousness expressions which are unquestionably portions of the genuine text. Thus, there is a general consensus amongst critics of the destructive school to omit the words και τινες συν αυταις from St. Luke xxiv. 1. Their only plea is the testimony of [Symbol: Aleph]BCL and certain of the Latin copies,—a conjunction of authorities which, when they stand alone, we have already observed to bear invariably false witness. Indeed, before we proceed to examine the evidence, we discover that those four words of St. Luke are even required in this place. For St. Matthew (xxvii. 61), and St. Mark after him (xv. 47), had distinctly specified two women as witnesses of how and where our Lord's body was laid. Now they were the same women apparently who prepared the spices and ointment and hastened therewith at break of day to the sepulchre. Had we therefore only St. Matthew's Gospel we should have assumed that 'the ointment-bearers,' for so the ancients called them, were but two (St. Matt. xxviii. 1). That they were at least three, even St. Mark shews by adding to their number Salome (xvi. 1). But in fact their company consisted of more than four; as St. Luke explains when he states that it was the same little band of holy women who had accompanied our Saviour out of Galilee (xxiii. 55, cf. viii. 2). In anticipation therefore of what he will have to relate in ver. 10, he says in ver. 1, 'and certain with them.'
But how, I shall be asked, would you explain the omission of these words which to yourself seem necessary? And after insisting that one is never bound to explain how the text of any particular passage came to be corrupted, I answer, that these words were originally ejected from the text in order to bring St. Luke's statement into harmony with that of the first Evangelist, who mentions none but Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses. The proof is that four of the same Latin copies which are for the omission of και τινες συν αυταις are observed to begin St. Luke xxiii. 55 as follows,—κατακολουθησασαι δε ΔΥΟ γυναικες. The same fabricated reading is found in D. It exists also in the Codex which Eusebius employed when he wrote his Demonstratio Evangelica. Instead therefore of wearying the reader with the evidence, which is simply overwhelming, for letting the text alone, I shall content myself with inviting him to notice that the tables have been unexpectedly turned on our opponents. There is indeed found to have been a corruption of the text hereabouts, and of the words just now under discussion; but it belongs to an exceedingly remote age; and happily the record of it survives at this day only in [Symbol: Aleph]BCDL and certain of the Old Latin copies. Calamitous however it is, that what the Church has long since deliberately refused to part with should, at the end of so many centuries, by Lachmann and Tregelles and Tischendorf, by Alford and Westcott and Hort, be resolutely thrust out of place; and indeed excluded from the Sacred Text by a majority of the Revisers.
[A very interesting instance of such Harmonistic Influence may be found in the substitution of 'wine' (οινον) for vinegar (οξος), respecting which the details are given in the second Appendix to the Traditional Text.]
[Observe yet another instance of harmonizing propensities in the Ancient Church.]
In St. Luke's Gospel iv. 1-13, no less than six copies of the Old Latin versions (b c f g1 l q) besides Ambrose (Com. St. Luke, 1340), are observed to transpose the second and third temptations; introducing verses 9-12 between verses 4 and 5; in order to make the history of the Temptation as given by St. Luke correspond with the account given by St. Matthew.
The scribe of the Vercelli Codex (a) was about to do the same thing; but he checked himself when he had got as far as 'the pinnacle of the temple,'—which he seems to have thought as good a scene for the third temptation as 'a high mountain,' and so left it.