§ 1.
There results inevitably from the fourfold structure of the Gospel,—from the very fact that the story of Redemption is set forth in four narratives, three of which often ran parallel,—this practical inconvenience: namely, that sometimes the expressions of one Evangelist get improperly transferred to another. This is a large and important subject which calls for great attention, and requires to be separately handled. The phenomena alluded to, which are similar to some of those which have been treated in the last chapter, may be comprised under the special head of Assimilation.
It will I think promote clearness in the ensuing discussion if we determine to consider separately those instances of Assimilation which may rather be regarded as deliberate attempts to reconcile one Gospel with another: indications of a fixed determination to establish harmony between place and place. I am saying that between ordinary cases of Assimilation such as occur in every page, and extraordinary instances where per fas et nefas an enforced Harmony has been established,—which abound indeed, but are by no means common,—I am disposed to draw a line.
This whole province is beset with difficulties: and the matter is in itself wondrously obscure. I do not suppose, in the absence of any evidence direct or indirect on the subject,—at all events I am not aware—that at any time has there been one definite authoritative attempt made by the Universal Church in her corporate capacity to remodel or revise the Text of the Gospels. An attentive study of the phenomena leads me, on the contrary, to believe that the several corruptions of the text were effected at different times, and took their beginning in widely different ways. I suspect that Accident was the parent of many; and well meant critical assiduity of more. Zeal for the Truth is accountable for not a few depravations: and the Church's Liturgical and Lectionary practice must insensibly have produced others. Systematic villainy I am persuaded has had no part or lot in the matter. The decrees of such an one as Origen, if there ever was another like him, will account for a strange number of aberrations from the Truth: and if the Diatessaron of Tatian could be recovered[184], I suspect that we should behold there the germs at least of as many more. But, I repeat my conviction that, however they may have originated, the causes [are not to be found in bad principle, but either in infirmities or influences which actuated scribes unconsciously, or in a want of understanding as to what is the Church's duty in the transmission from generation to generation of the sacred deposit committed to her enlightened care.]
§ 2.
1. When we speak of Assimilation, we do not mean that a writer while engaged in transcribing one Gospel was so completely beguiled and overmastered by his recollections of the parallel place in another Gospel,—that, forsaking the expressions proper to the passage before him, he unconsciously adopted the language which properly belongs to a different Evangelist. That to a very limited extent this may have occasionally taken place, I am not concerned to deny: but it would argue incredible inattention to what he was professing to copy, on the one hand,—astonishing familiarity with what he was not professing to copy, on the other,—that a scribe should have been capable of offending largely in this way. But in fact a moderate acquaintance with the subject is enough to convince any thoughtful person that the corruptions in MSS. which have resulted from accidental Assimilation must needs be inconsiderable in bulk, as well as few in number. At all events, the phenomenon referred to, when we speak of 'Assimilation,' is not to be so accounted for: it must needs be explained in some entirely different way. Let me make my meaning plain:
(a) We shall probably be agreed that when the scribe of Cod. [Symbol: Aleph], in place of βασανισαι 'ημας (in St. Matt. viii. 29), writes 'ημας απολεσαι,—it may have been his memory which misled him. He may have been merely thinking of St. Mark i. 24, or of St. Luke iv. 34.
(b) Again, when in Codd. [Symbol: Aleph]B we find τασσομενος thrust without warrant into St. Matt. viii. 9, we see that the word has lost its way from St. Luke vii. 8; and we are prone to suspect that only by accident has it crept into the parallel narrative of the earlier Evangelist.
(c) In the same way I make no doubt that ποταμω (St. Matt. iii. 6) is indebted for its place in [Symbol: Aleph]BC, &c., to the influence of the parallel place in St. Mark's Gospel (i. 5); and I am only astonished that critics should have been beguiled into adopting so clear a corruption of the text as part of the genuine Gospel.
(d) To be brief:—the insertion by [Symbol: Aleph] of αδελφε (in St. Matt. vii. 4) is confessedly the result of the parallel passage in St. Luke vi. 42. The same scribe may be thought to have written τω ανεμω instead of τοις ανεμοις in St. Matt. viii. 26, only because he was so familiar with τω ανεμω in St. Luke viii. 24 and in St. Mark iv. 39.—The author of the prototype of [Symbol: Aleph]BD (with whom by the way are some of the Latin versions) may have written εχετε in St. Matt, xvi. 8, only because he was thinking of the parallel place in St. Mark viii. 17.—Ηρξαντο αγανακτειν (St. Matt. xx. 24) can only have been introduced into [Symbol: Aleph] from the parallel place in St. Mark x. 41, and may have been supplied memoriter.—St. Luke xix. 21 is clearly not parallel to St. Matt. xxv. 24; yet it evidently furnished the scribe of [Symbol: Aleph] with the epithet αυστηρος in place of σκληρος.—The substitution by [Symbol: Aleph] of 'ον παρητουντο in St. Matt. xxvii. 15 for 'ον ηθελον may seem to be the result of inconvenient familiarity with the parallel place in St. Mark xv. 6; where, as has been shewn[185], instead of 'ονπερ ηιτουντο, Symbol: [Aleph]AB viciously exhibit 'ον παρητουντο, which Tischendorf besides Westcott and Hort mistake for the genuine Gospel. Who will hesitate to admit that, when [Symbol: Aleph]L exhibit in St. Matt. xix. 16,—instead of the words ποιησω 'ινα εχω ζωην αιωνιον,—the formula which is found in the parallel place of St. Luke xviii. 18, viz. ποιησας ζωην αιωνιον κληρονομησω,—those unauthorized words must have been derived from this latter place? Every ordinary reader will be further prone to assume that the scribe who first inserted them into St. Matthew's Gospel did so because, for whatever reason, he was more familiar with the latter formula than with the former.