The proposed solution of the difficulty,—if not the evidence on which it immediately rests,—might no doubt be exhibited within exceedingly narrow limits. Set down abruptly, however, its weight and value would inevitably fail to be recognised, even by those who already enjoy some familiarity with these studies. Very few of the considerations which I shall have to rehearse are in fact unknown to Critics: yet is it evident that their bearing on the problem before us has hitherto altogether escaped their notice. On the other hand, by one entirely a novice to this department of sacred Science, I could scarcely hope to be so much as understood. Let me be allowed, therefore, to preface what I have to say with a few explanatory details which I promise shall not be tedious, and which I trust will not be found altogether without interest either. If they are anywhere else to be met with, it is my misfortune, not my fault, that I have been hitherto unsuccessful in discovering the place.
I. From the earliest ages of the Church, (as I shewed at page [192-5],) it has been customary to read certain definite portions of Holy Scripture, determined by Ecclesiastical authority, publicly before the Congregation. In process of time, as was natural, the sections so required for public use were collected into separate volumes: Lections from the Gospels being written out in a Book which was called “Evangelistarium,” (εὐαγγελιστάριον,)—from the Acts and Epistles, in a book called “Praxapostolus,” (πραξαπόστολος). These Lectionary-books, both Greek and Syriac, are yet extant in great numbers,[394] and (I may remark in [pg 215] passing) deserve a far greater amount of attention than has hitherto been bestowed upon them.[395]
When the Lectionary first took the form of a separate book, has not been ascertained. That no copy is known to exist (whether in Greek or in Syriac) older than the viiith century, proves nothing. Codices in daily use, (like the Bibles used in our Churches,) must of necessity have been of exceptionally brief duration; and Lectionaries, more even than Biblical MSS. were liable to injury and decay.
II. But it is to be observed,—(and to explain this, is much more to my present purpose,)—that besides transcribing the Ecclesiastical lections into separate books, it became the practice at a very early period to adapt copies of the Gospel to lectionary purposes. I suspect that this practice began in the Churches of Syria; for Syriac copies of the Gospels (at least of the viith century) abound, which have the Lections more or less systematically rubricated in the Text.[396] There is in the British Museum a copy of S. Mark's Gospel according to the Peshito version, certainly written previous to A.D. 583, which has at least five or six rubrics so inserted by the original scribe.[397] As a rule, in all later cursive Greek MSS., (I mean those of the xiith to the xvth century,) the Ecclesiastical lections are indicated throughout: while either at the summit, or else at the foot of the page, the formula with which the Lection was to be introduced is elaborately inserted; prefaced probably by a rubricated statement (not always very easy to decipher) of the occasion when the ensuing portion of Scripture was to be read. The ancients, to a far greater extent than ourselves,[398] were accustomed,—(in [pg 216] fact, they made it a rule,)—to prefix unauthorized formulæ to their public Lections; and these are sometimes found to have established themselves so firmly, that at last they became as it were ineradicable; and later copyists of the fourfold Gospel are observed to introduce them unsuspiciously into the inspired text.[399] All that belongs to this subject deserves particular attention; because it is this which explains not a few of the perturbations (so to express oneself) which the text of the New Testament has experienced. We are made to understand how, what was originally intended only as a liturgical note, became mistaken, through the inadvertence or the stupidity of copyists, for a critical suggestion; and thus, besides transpositions without number, there has arisen, at one time, the insertion of something unauthorized into the text of Scripture,—at another, the omission of certain inspired words, to the manifest detriment of the sacred deposit. For although the systematic rubrication of the Gospels for liturgical purposes is a comparatively recent invention,—(I question if it be older in Greek MSS. than the xth century,)—yet will persons engaged in the public Services of God's House have been prone, from the very earliest age, to insert memoranda of the kind referred to, into the margin of their copies. In this way, in fact, it may be regarded as certain that in countless minute particulars [pg 217] the text of Scripture has been depraved. Let me not fail to add, that by a judicious, and above all by an unprejudiced use of the materials at our disposal, it may, even at this distance of time, in every such particular, be successfully restored.[400]
III. I now proceed to shew, by an induction of instances, that even in the oldest copies in existence, I mean in Codd. B, א, A, C, and D, the Lectionary system of the early Church has left abiding traces of its operation. When a few such undeniable cases have been adduced, all objections grounded on primâ facie improbability will have been satisfactorily disposed of. The activity, as well as the existence of such a disturbing force and depraving influence, at least as far back as the beginning of the ivth century, (but it is in fact more ancient by full two hundred years,) will have been established: of which I shall only have to shew, in conclusion, that the omission of “the last Twelve Verses” of S. Mark's Gospel is probably but one more instance,—though confessedly by far the most extraordinary of any.
(1.) From Codex B then, as well as from Cod. A, the two grand verses which describe our Lord's “Agony and Bloody Sweat,” (S. Luke xxii. 43, 44,) are missing. The same two verses are absent also from a few other important MSS., as well as from both the Egyptian versions; but I desire to fasten attention on the confessedly erring testimony in this place of Codex B. “Confessedly erring,” I say; for the genuineness of those two verses is no longer disputed. Now, in every known Evangelistarium, the two verses here omitted by Cod. B follow, (the Church so willed it,) S. Matth. xxvi. 39, and are read as a regular part of the lesson for the Thursday in Holy Week.[401] Of course they are also omitted in the same Evangelistaria from the lesson for the Tuesday [pg 218] after Sexagesima, (τῇ γ᾽ τῆς τυροφάγου, as the Easterns call that day,) when S. Luke xxii. 39-xxiii. 1 used to be read. Moreover, in all ancient copies of the Gospels which have been accommodated to ecclesiastical use, the reader of S. Luke xxii. is invariably directed by a marginal note to leave out those two verses, and to proceed per saltum from ver. 42 to ver. 45.[402] What more obvious therefore than that the removal of the paragraph from its proper place in S. Luke's Gospel is to be attributed to nothing else but the Lectionary practice of the primitive Church? Quite unreasonable is it to impute heretical motives, or to invent any other unsupported theory, while this plain solution of the difficulty is at hand.
(2.) The same Cod. B., (with which Codd. א, C, L, U and Γ are observed here to conspire,) introduces the piercing of the Saviour's side (S. John xix. 34) at the end of S. Matth. xxvii. 49. Now, I only do not insist that this must needs be the result of the singular Lectionary practice already described at p. 202, because a scholion in Cod. 72 records the singular fact that in the Diatessaron of Tatian, after S. Matth. xxvii. 48, was read ἄλλος δὲ λαβὼν λόγχην ἔνυξεν αὐτοῦ τὴν [pg 219] πλευρὰν: καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ὕδωρ καὶ αἷμα. (Chrysostom's codex was evidently vitiated in precisely the same way.) This interpolation therefore may have resulted from the corrupting influence of Tatian's (so-called) “Harmony.” See [Appendix (H)].
(3.) To keep on safe ground. Codd. B and D concur in what Alford justly calls the “grave error” of simply omitting from S. Luke xxiii. 34, our Lord's supplication on behalf of His murderers, (ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἔλεγε, Πάτερ, ἄφες αὐτοῖς: οὐ γὰρ οἴδασι τί ποιοῦσι). They are not quite singular in so doing; being, as usual, kept in countenance by certain copies of the old Latin, as well as by both the Egyptian versions. How is this “grave error” in so many ancient MSS. to be accounted for? (for a “grave error” or rather “a fatal omission” it certainly is). Simply by the fact that in the Eastern Church the Lection for the Thursday after Sexagesima breaks off abruptly, immediately before these very words,—to recommence at ver. 44.[403]
(4.) Note, that at ver. 32, the eighth “Gospel of the Passion” begins,—which is the reason why Codd. B and א (with the Egyptian versions) exhibit a singular irregularity in that place; and why the Jerusalem Syriac introduces the established formula of the Lectionaries (σὺν τῷ Ἰησοῦ) at the same juncture.
(If I do not here insist that the absence of the famous pericopa de adulterâ (S. John vii. 53-viii. 11,) from so many MSS., is to be explained in precisely the same way, it is only because the genuineness of that portion of the Gospel is generally denied; and I propose, in this enumeration of instances, not to set foot on disputed ground. I am convinced, nevertheless, that the first occasion of the omission of those memorable verses was the lectionary practice of the primitive Church, which, on Whitsunday, read from S. John vii. 37 to viii. 12, leaving out the twelve verses in question. Those verses, from the nature of their contents, (as Augustine declares,) easily came to be viewed with dislike or suspicion. The passage, however, is as old as the second century, for it is found in certain copies of the old Latin. Moreover Jerome deliberately gave it a place in the Vulgate. I pass on.)