(3) Lastly, the requirements of assailants and apologists alike, the business of Commentators, the needs of controversialists and teachers in every age, have resulted in a vast accumulation of additional evidence, of which it is scarcely possible to over-estimate the importance. For in this way it has come to pass that every famous Doctor of the Church in turn has quoted more or less largely from the sacred writings, and thus has borne testimony to the contents of the codices with which he was individually familiar. Patristic Citations accordingly are a third mighty safeguard of the integrity of the deposit.
To weigh these three instruments of Criticism—Copies, Versions, Fathers—one against another, is obviously impossible [pg 010] on the present occasion. Such a discussion would grow at once into a treatise.[44] Certain explanatory details, together with a few words of caution, are as much as may be attempted.
I. And, first of all, the reader has need to be apprised (with reference to the first-named class of evidence) that most of our extant copies of the N. T. Scriptures are comparatively of recent date, ranging from the Xth to the XIVth century of our era. That these are in every instance copies of yet older manuscripts, is self-evident; and that in the main they represent faithfully the sacred autographs themselves, no reasonable person doubts.[45] Still, it is undeniable that [pg 011] they are thus separated by about a thousand years from their inspired archetypes. Readers are reminded, in passing, that the little handful of copies on which we rely for the texts of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Æschylus and Sophocles, are removed from their originals by full 500 years more: and that, instead of a thousand, or half a thousand copies, we are dependent for the text of certain of these authors on as many copies as may be counted on the fingers of one hand. In truth, the security which the Text of the New Testament enjoys is altogether unique and extraordinary. To specify one single consideration, which has never yet attracted nearly the amount of attention it deserves,—“Lectionaries” abound, which establish the Text which has been publicly read in the churches of the East, from at least a.d. 400 until the time of the invention of printing.
But here an important consideration claims special attention. We allude to the result of increased acquaintance with certain of the oldest extant codices of the N. T. Two of these,—viz. a copy in the Vatican technically indicated by the letter b, and the recently-discovered Sinaitic codex, styled after the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet א,—are thought to belong to the IVth century. Two are assigned to the Vth, viz. the Alexandrian (a) in the British Museum, and the rescript codex preserved at Paris, designated c. One is probably of the VIth, viz. the codex Bezæ (d) preserved at Cambridge. Singular to relate, the first, second, fourth, and fifth of these codices (b א c d), but especially b and א, have within the last twenty years established a tyrannical ascendency over the imagination of the Critics, which can only be fitly spoken of as a blind superstition. It matters nothing that all four are discovered on careful scrutiny to differ essentially, not only from ninety-nine out of a hundred of [pg 012] the whole body of extant MSS. besides, but even from one another. This last circumstance, obviously fatal to their corporate pretensions, is unaccountably overlooked. And yet it admits of only one satisfactory explanation: viz. that in different degrees they all five exhibit a fabricated text. Between the first two (b and א) there subsists an amount of sinister resemblance, which proves that they must have been derived at no very remote period from the same corrupt original. Tischendorf insists that they were partly written by the same scribe. Yet do they stand asunder in every page; as well as differ widely from the commonly received Text, with which they have been carefully collated. On being referred to this standard, in the Gospels alone, b is found to omit at least 2877 words: to add, 536: to substitute, 935: to transpose, 2098: to modify, 1132 (in all 7578):—the corresponding figures for א being severally 3455, 839, 1114, 2299, 1265 (in all 8972). And be it remembered that the omissions, additions, substitutions, transpositions, and modifications, are by no means the same in both. It is in fact easier to find two consecutive verses in which these two MSS. differ the one from the other, than two consecutive verses in which they entirely agree.
But by far the most depraved text is that exhibited by codex d. “No known manuscript contains so many bold and extensive interpolations. Its variations from the sacred Text are beyond all other example.”[46] This, however, is not the result of its being the most recent of the five, but (singular to relate) is due to quite an opposite cause. It is thought (not without reason) to exhibit a IInd-century text. “When we turn to the Acts of the [pg 013] Apostles,” (says the learned editor of the codex in question, Dr. Scrivener,[47])—
“We find ourselves confronted with a text, the like to which we have no experience of elsewhere. It is hardly an exaggeration to assert that codex d reproduces the Textus receptus much in the same way that one of the best Chaldee Targums does the Hebrew of the Old Testament: so wide are the variations in the diction, so constant and inveterate the practice of expounding the narrative by means of interpolations which seldom recommend themselves as genuine by even a semblance of internal probability.”
“Vix dici potest” (says Mill) “quam supra omnem modum licenter se gesserit, ac plane lasciverit Interpolator.” Though a large portion of the Gospels is missing, in what remains (tested by the same standard) we find 3704 words omitted: no less than 2213 added, and 2121 substituted. The words transposed amount to 3471: and 1772 have been modified: the deflections from the Received Text thus amounting in all to 13,281.—Next to d, the most untrustworthy codex is א, which bears on its front a memorable note of the evil repute under which it has always laboured: viz. it is found that at least ten revisers between the IVth and the XIIth centuries busied themselves with the task of correcting its many and extraordinary perversions of the truth of Scripture.[48]—Next in [pg 014] impurity comes b:—then, the fragmentary codex c: our own a being, beyond all doubt, disfigured by the fewest blemishes of any.
What precedes admits to some extent of further numerical illustration. It is discovered that in the 111 (out of 320) pages of an ordinary copy of the Greek Testament, in which alone these five manuscripts are collectively available for comparison in the Gospels,—the serious deflections of a from the Textus receptus amount in all to only 842: whereas in c they amount to 1798: in b, to 2370: in א, to 3392: in d, to 4697. The readings peculiar to a within the same limits are 133: those peculiar to c are 170. But those of b amount to 197: while א exhibits 443: and the readings peculiar to d (within the same limits), are no fewer than 1829.... We submit that these facts—which result from merely referring five manuscripts to one and the same common standard—are by no means calculated to inspire confidence in codices b א c d:—codices, be it remembered, which come to us without a character, without a history, in fact without antecedents of any kind.
But let the learned chairman of the New Testament company of Revisionists (Bp. Ellicott) be heard on this subject. He is characterizing these same “old uncials,” which it is just now the fashion—or rather, the craze—to hold up as oracular, and to which his lordship is as devotedly and blindly attached as any of his neighbours:—
“The simplicity and dignified conciseness” (he says) “of the Vatican manuscript (b): the greater expansiveness of our own Alexandrian (a): the partially mixed characteristics of the Sinaitic (א): the paraphrastic tone of the singular codex Bezæ (d), are now brought home to the student.”[49]