“The case of Dr. Tischendorf” (proceeds Bp. Ellicott) “is still more easily disposed of. Which of this most inconstant Critic's texts are we to select? Surely not the last, in which an exaggerated preference for a single Manuscript which he has had the good fortune to discover, has betrayed him into [pg 023] an almost child-like infirmity of critical judgment. Surely also not his seventh edition, which ... exhibits all the instability which a comparatively recent recognition of the authority of cursive manuscripts might be supposed likely to introduce.”[58] With Dr. Tischendorf,—(whom one vastly his superior in learning, accuracy, and judgment, has generously styled “the first Biblical Critic in Europe”[59])—“the evidence of codex א, supported or even unsupported by one or two other authorities of any description, is sufficient to outweigh any other witnesses,—whether Manuscripts, Versions, or ecclesiastical Writers.”[60] We need say no more. Until the foregoing charge has been disproved, Dr. Tischendorf's last edition of the N. T., however precious as a vast storehouse of materials for criticism,—however admirable as a specimen of unwearied labour, critical learning, and first-rate ability,—must be admitted to be an utterly unsatisfactory exhibition of the inspired Text. It has been ascertained that his discovery of codex א caused his 8th edition (1865-72) to differ from his 7th in no less than 3505 places,—“to the scandal of the science of Comparative Criticism, as well as to his own grave discredit for discernment and consistency.”[61] But, in fact, what is to be thought of a Critic who,—because the last verse of S. John's Gospel, in א, seemed to himself to be written with a different pen from the rest,—has actually omitted that verse (xxi. 25) entirely, in defiance of every known Copy, every known Version, and the explicit testimony of a host of Fathers? Such are Origen (in 11 places),—Eusebius (in 3),—Gregory Nyss. (in 2),—Gregory Nazian.,—ps.-Dionys. Alex.,[62]—Nonnus,—Chrysostom (in 6 places),—Theodoras Mops. (in 2),—Isidorus,—Cyril Alex. (in 2),—Victor Ant.,—Ammonius,—Severus,—Maximus,—Andreas [pg 024] Cretensis,—Ambrose,—Gaudentius,—Philastrius,— Sedulius,—Jerome,—Augustine (in 6 places). That Tischendorf was a critic of amazing research, singular shrewdness, indefatigable industry; and that he enjoyed an unrivalled familiarity with ancient documents; no fair person will deny. But (in the words of Bishop Ellicott,[63] whom we quote so perseveringly for a reason not hard to divine,) his “great inconstancy,”—his “natural want of sobriety of critical judgment,”—and his “unreasonable deference to the readings found in his own codex Sinaiticus;”—to which should be added “the utter absence in him of any intelligible fixed critical principles;”—all this makes Tischendorf one of the worst of guides to the true Text of Scripture.
The last to enter the field are Drs. Westcott and Hort, whose beautifully-printed edition of “the New Testament in the original Greek”[64] was published within five days of the “Revised Authorized Version” itself; a “confidential” copy of their work having been already entrusted to every member of the New Test. company of Revisionists to guide them in their labours,—under pledge that they should neither show nor communicate its contents to any one else.—The learned Editors candidly avow, that they “have deliberately chosen on the whole to rely for documentary evidence on the stores accumulated by their predecessors, and to confine themselves to their proper work of editing the text itself.”[65] Nothing therefore has to be enquired after, except the critical principles on which they have proceeded. And, after assuring [pg 025] us that “the study of Grouping is the foundation of all enduring Criticism,”[66] they produce their secret: viz. That in “every one of our witnesses” except codex b, the “corruptions are innumerable;”[67] and that, in the Gospels, the one “group of witnesses” of “incomparable value”, is codex b in “combination with another primary Greek manuscript, as א b, b l, b c, b t, b d, b Ξ, a b, b z, b 33, and in S. Mark b Δ.”[68] This is “Textual Criticism made easy,” certainly. Well aware of the preposterous results to which such a major premiss must inevitably lead, we are not surprised to find a plea straightway put in for “instinctive processes of Criticism” of which the foundation “needs perpetual correction and recorrection”. But our confidence fairly gives way when, in the same breath, the accomplished Editors proceed as follows:—“But we are obliged to come to the individual mind at last; and canons of Criticism are useful only as warnings against natural illusions, and aids to circumspect consideration, not as absolute rules to prescribe the final decision. It is true that no individual mind can ever work with perfect uniformity, or free itself completely from its own idiosyncrasies. Yet a clear sense of the danger of unconscious caprice may do much towards excluding it. We trust also that the present Text has escaped some risks of this kind by being the joint production of two Editors of different habits of mind”[69] ... A somewhat insecure safeguard surely! May we be permitted without offence to point out that the “idiosyncrasies” of an “individual mind” (to which we learn with astonishment “we are obliged to come at last”) are probably the very worst foundation possible on which to build the recension of an inspired writing? With regret we record our conviction, that these accomplished scholars have succeeded in producing a Text vastly more remote from the inspired autographs of [pg 026] the Evangelists than any which has appeared since the invention of printing. When full Prolegomena have been furnished we shall know more about the matter;[70] but to [pg 027] judge from the Remarks (in pp. 541-62) which the learned Editors (Revisionists themselves) have subjoined to their elegantly-printed volume, it is to be feared that the fabric [pg 028] will be found to rest too exclusively on vague assumption and unproved hypothesis. In other words, a painful apprehension is created that their edition of “The New Testament in the original Greek” will be found to partake inconveniently [pg 029] of the nature of a work of the Imagination. As codex א proved fatal to Dr. Tischendorf, so is codex b evidently the rock on which Drs. Westcott and Hort have split. Did it ever occur to those learned men to enquire how the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament has fared at the hands of codex b? They are respectfully invited to address themselves to this very damaging enquiry.
But surely (rejoins the intelligent Reader, coming fresh to these studies), the oldest extant Manuscripts (b א a c d) must exhibit the purest text! Is it not so?
It ought to be so, no doubt (we answer); but it certainly need not be the case.
We know that Origen in Palestine, Lucian at Antioch, Hesychius in Egypt, “revised” the text of the N. T. Unfortunately, they did their work in an age when such fatal misapprehension prevailed on the subject, that each in turn will have inevitably imported a fresh assortment of monstra into the sacred writings. Add, the baneful influence of such spirits as Theophilus (sixth Bishop of Antioch, a.d. 168), Tatian, Ammonius, &c., of whom we know there were very many in the primitive age,—some of whose productions, we further know, were freely multiplied in every quarter of ancient Christendom:—add, the fabricated Gospels which anciently abounded; notably the Gospel of the Hebrews, about which Jerome is so communicative, and which (he says) he had translated into Greek and Latin:—lastly, freely grant that here and there, with well-meant assiduity, the orthodox themselves may have sought to prop up truths which the early heretics (Basilides, a.d. 134, Valentinus, a.d. 140, with his disciple Heracleon, Marcion, a.d. 150, and the rest,) most perseveringly assailed;—and we have sufficiently explained how it comes to pass that not a few of the codices of primitive Christendom must have exhibited Texts which [pg 030] were even scandalously corrupt. “It is no less true to fact than paradoxical in sound,” writes the most learned of the Revisionist body,
“that the worst corruptions, to which the New Testament has ever been subjected, originated within a hundred years after it was composed: that Irenæus [a.d. 150] and the African Fathers, and the whole Western, with a portion of the Syrian Church, used far inferior manuscripts to those employed by Stunica, or Erasmus, or Stephens thirteen centuries later, when moulding the Textus Receptus.”[71]
And what else are codices א b c d but specimens—in vastly different degrees—of the class thus characterized by Prebendary Scrivener? Nay, who will venture to deny that those codices are indebted for their preservation solely to the circumstance, that they were long since recognized as the depositories of Readings which rendered them utterly untrustworthy?
Only by singling out some definite portion of the Gospels, and attending closely to the handling it has experienced at the hands of a א b c d,—to the last four of which it is just now the fashion to bow down as to an oracular voice from which there shall be no appeal,—can the student become aware of the hopelessness of any attempt to construct the Text of the N. T. out of the materials which those codices exclusively supply. Let us this time take S. Mark's account of the healing of “the paralytic borne of four” (ch. ii. 1-12),—and confront their exhibition of it, with that of the commonly received Text. In the course of those 12 verses, (not reckoning 4 blunders and certain peculiarities of spelling,) there will be found to be 60 variations of reading,—of which [pg 031] 55 are nothing else but depravations of the text, the result of inattention or licentiousness. Westcott and Hort adopt 23 of these:—(18, in which א b conspire to vouch for a reading: 2, where א is unsupported by b: 2, where b is unsupported by א: 1, where c d are supported by neither א nor b). Now, in the present instance, the “five old uncials” cannot be the depositories of a tradition,—whether Western or Eastern,—because they render inconsistent testimony in every verse. It must further be admitted, (for this is really not a question of opinion, but a plain matter of fact,) that it is unreasonable to place confidence in such documents. What would be thought in a Court of Law of five witnesses, called up 47 times for examination, who should be observed to bear contradictory testimony every time?
But the whole of the problem does not by any means lie on the surface. All that appears is that the five oldest uncials are not trustworthy witnesses; which singly, in the course of 12 verses separate themselves from their fellows 33 times: viz. a, twice;—א, 5 times;—b, 6 times;—c, thrice;—d, 17 times: and which also enter into the 11 following combinations with one another in opposition to the ordinary Text:—a c, twice;—א b, 10 times;—א d, once;—c d, 3 times;—א b c, once;—א b d, 5 times;—א c d, once;—b c d, once;—a א c d, once;—a b c d, once;—a א b c d, once. (Note, that on this last occasion, which is the only time when they all 5 agree, they are certainly all 5 wrong.) But this, as was observed before, lies on the surface. On closer critical inspection, it is further discovered that their testimony betrays the baseness of their origin by its intrinsic worthlessness. Thus, in Mk. ii, 1, the delicate precision of the announcement ἠκούσθη ὅτι ΕἸΣ ΟἾΚΟΝ ἘΣΤΙ (that “He has gone in”), disappears from א b d:—as well as (in ver. 2) the circumstance that it became the signal for many “immediately” (א b) to assemble about the door.—In ver. 4, S. Mark explains his predecessor's concise [pg 032] statement that the paralytic was “brought to” our Saviour,[72] by remarking that the thing was “impossible” by the ordinary method of approach. Accordingly, his account of the expedient resorted to by the bearers fills one entire verse (ver. 4) of his Gospel. In the mean time, א b by exhibiting (in S. Mark ii. 3,) “bringing unto Him one sick of the palsy” (φέροντες πρὸς αὐτὸν παραλυτικόν,—which is but a senseless transposition of πρὸς αὐτόν, παραλυτικὸν φέροντες), do their best to obliterate the exquisite significance of the second Evangelist's method.—In the next verse, the perplexity of the bearers, who, because they could not “come nigh Him” (προσεγγίσαι αὐτῷ), unroofed the house, is lost in א b,—whose προσενέγκαι has been obtained either from Matt. ix. 2, or else from Luke v. 18, 19 (εἰσενεγκεῖν, εἰσενέγκωσιν). “The bed where was the paralytic” (τὸν κράββατον ὍΠΟΥ ἮΝ ὁ παραλυτικός), in imitation of “the roof where was” Jesus (τὴν στέγην ὍΠΟΥ ἮΝ [ὁ Ἰησοῦς], which had immediately preceded), is just one of those tasteless depravations, for which א b, and especially d, are conspicuous among manuscripts.—In the last verse, the instantaneous rising of the paralytic, noticed by S. Mark (ἠγέρθη εὐθέως), and insisted upon by S. Luke (“and immediately he rose up before them,”—καὶ παραχρῆμα ἀναστὰς ἐνώπιον αὐτῶν), is obliterated by shifting εὐθέως in א b and c to a place where εὐθέως is not wanted, and where its significancy disappears.
Other instances of Assimilation are conspicuous. All must see that, in ver. 5, καὶ ἰδών (א b c) is derived from Matt. ix. 2 and Luke v. 20: as well as that “Son, be of good cheer” (c) is imported hither from Matt. ix. 2. “My son,” on the other hand (א), is a mere effort of the imagination. In the same verse, σου αἱ ἁμαρτίαι (א b d) is either from Matt. ix. 5 (sic); or [pg 033] else from ver. 9, lower down in S. Mark's narrative. Λέγοντες, in ver. 6 (d), is from S. Luke v. 21. Ὕπαγε (א) in ver. 9, and ὕπαγε εἰς τὸν οἶκόν σου (d), are clearly importations from ver 11. The strange confusion in ver. 7,—“Because this man thus speaketh, he blasphemeth” (b),—and “Why doth this man thus speak? He blasphemeth” (א d),—is due solely to Mtt. ix. 3:—while the appendix proposed by א as a substitute for “We never saw it on this fashion” (οὐδέποτε οὕτως εἴδομεν), in ver 12 (viz. “It was never so seen in Israel,” οὐδέποτε οὕτως ἐφάνη ἐν τῷ Ἰσραήλ), has been transplanted hither from S. Matt. ix. 33.