Is one here more struck with the unfairness of the Critic, or with the feebleness of his reasoning? For,—(to say nothing of the insecurity of building on a Latin Translation,[502] [pg 261] especially in such a matter as the present,)—How can testimony like this be considered to outweigh the three distinct places in the original writings of this Father, where he reads not εὐδοκίας but εὐδοκία? Again. Why is a doubt insinuated concerning the trustworthiness of those three places, (“ut nunc reperitur,”) where there really is no doubt? How is Truth ever to be attained if investigations like the present are to be conducted in the spirit of an eager partisan, instead of with the calm gravity of an impartial judge?
But I may as well state plainly that the context of the passage above quoted shews that Tischendorf's proposed inference is inadmissible. Origen is supposing some one to ask the following question:—“Since Angels on the night when Christ was born proclaimed ‘on earth Peace,’—why does our Saviour say, ‘I am not come to send Peace upon earth, but a sword?’... Consider,” (he proceeds) “whether the answer may not be this:”—and then comes the extract given above. Origen, (to express oneself with colloquial truthfulness,) is at his old tricks. He is evidently acquainted with the reading εὐδοκίας: and because it enables him to offer (what appears to him) an ingenious solution of a certain problem, he adopts it for the nonce: his proposal to take the words εἰρήνη εὐδοκίας together, being simply preposterous,—as no one ever knew better than Origen himself.[503]
3. Lastly, Cyril of Jerusalem is invariably cited by the latest Critics as favouring the reading εὐδοκίας. Those learned persons have evidently overlooked the candid acknowledgment of De Touttée, Cyril's editor, (p. 180, cf. bottom of p. 102,) that though the MSS. of Cyril exhibit εὐδοκία, yet in his editorial capacity he had ventured to print εὐδοκίας. This therefore is one more Patristic attestation to the trustworthiness of the Textus Receptus in respect of S. Luke ii. 14, which has been hitherto unaccountably lost sight of by Critics. (May I, without offence, remind Editors of Scripture that instead of copying, they ought in every instance to verify their references?)
III. The history of this corruption of the Text is not hard to discover. It is interesting and instructive also.
(1.) In the immediately post-Apostolic age,—if not earlier still,—some Copyist will have omitted the ἐν before ἀνθρώποις. The resemblance of the letters and the similarity of the sound (ΕΝ, ΑΝ,) misled him:—
ΕΝΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΙΣ
Every one must see at a glance how easily the thing may have happened. (It is in fact precisely what has happened in Acts iv. 12; where, for ἐν ἀνθρώποις, D and a few cursive MSS. read ἀνθρώποις,—being countenanced therein by the Latin Versions generally, and by them only.)
(2.) The result however—(δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις Θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία)—was obviously an impossible sentence. It could not be allowed to stand. And yet it was not by any means clear what had happened to it. In order, as it seems, to force a meaning into the words, some one with the best intentions will have put the sign of the genitive (Σ) at the end of εὐδοκία. The copy so depraved was destined to play an important part; for it became the fontal source of the Latin Version, which exhibits the place thus:—Gloria in altissimis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.... It is evident, by the way, (if the quotation from Irenæus, given above, is to be depended upon,) that Irenæus must have so read the place: (viz. εἰρήνη ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας.)
(3.) To restore the preposition (ΕΝ) which had been accidentally thrust out, and to obliterate the sign of the genitive (Σ) which had been without authority thrust in, was an obvious proceeding. Accordingly, every Greek Evangelium extant exhibits ἐν ἀνθρώποις: while all but four (B, א, A, D) read εὐδοκία. In like manner, into some MSS. of the Vulgate (e.g. the Cod. Amiatinus,) the preposition (“in”) has found its way back; but the genitive (“bonae voluntatis”) has never been rectified in a single copy of the Latin version.—The Gothic represents a copy which exhibited ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας.[504]
The consequence is that a well-nigh untranslatable expression retains its place in the Vulgate to the present hour. Whether (with Origen) we connect εὐδοκίας with εἰρήνη,—or (with the moderns) we propose to understand “men of good pleasure,”—the result is still the same. The harmony of the three-part Anthem which the Angels sang on the night of the Nativity is hopelessly marred, and an unintelligible discord substituted in its place. Logic, Divinity, Documents are here all at one. The reading of Stephens is unquestionably correct. The reading of the latest Editors is as certainly corrupt. This is a case therefore where the value of Patristic testimony becomes strikingly apparent. It affords also one more crucial proof of the essential hollowness of the theory on which it has been recently proposed by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles and the rest to reconstruct the text of the New Testament.