It has resulted from nothing else, we reply, but the determination to assimilate a statement of S. Mark (vi. 20) concerning Herod and John the Baptist, with another and a distinct statement of S. Luke (ix. 7), having reference to Herod [pg 067] and our Lord. S. Luke, speaking of the fame of our Saviour's miracles at a period subsequent to the Baptist's murder, declares that when Herod “heard all things that were done by Him” (ἤκουσε τὰ γινόμενα ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ πάντα), “he was much perplexed” (διηπόρει).—Statements so entirely distinct and diverse from one another as this of S. Luke, and that (given above) of S. Mark, might surely (one would think) have been let alone. On the contrary. A glance at the foot of the page will show that in the IInd century S. Mark's words were solicited in all sorts of ways. A persistent determination existed to make him say that Herod having “heard of many things which the Baptist did,” &c.[173]—a strange perversion of the Evangelist's meaning, truly, and only to be accounted for in one way.[174]
Had this been all, however, the matter would have attracted no attention. One such fabrication more or less in the Latin version, which abounds in fabricated readings, is of little moment. But then, the Greek scribes had recourse to a more subtle device for assimilating Mark vi. 20 to Luke ix. 7. They perceived that S. Mark's ἐποίει might be almost identified with S. Luke's διηπόρει, by merely changing two of the letters, viz. by substituting η for ε and ρ for ι. From this, there results in S. Mk. vi. 20: “and having heard many things of him, he was perplexed;” which is very nearly identical [pg 069] with what is found in S. Lu. ix. 7. This fatal substitution (of ἠπόρει for ἐποίει) survives happily only in codices א b l and the Coptic version—all of bad character. But (calamitous to relate) the Critics, having disinterred this long-since-forgotten fabrication, are making vigorous efforts to galvanize it, at the end of fifteen centuries, into ghastly life and activity. We venture to assure them that they will not succeed. Herod's “perplexity” did not begin until John had been beheaded, and the fame reached Herod of the miracles which our Saviour wrought. The apocryphal statement, now for the first time thrust into an English copy of the New Testament, may be summarily dismissed. But the marvel will for ever remain that a company of distinguished Scholars (a.d. 1881) could so effectually persuade themselves that ἐποίει (in S. Mark vi. 20) is a “plain and clear error,” and that there is “decidedly preponderating evidence” in favour of ἠπόρει,—as to venture to substitute the latter word for the former. This will for ever remain a marvel, we say; seeing that all the uncials except three of bad character, together with every known cursive without exception;—the old Latin and the Vulgate, the Peschito and the Philoxenian Syriac, the Armenian, Æthiopic, Slavonian and Georgian versions,—are with the traditional Text. (The Thebaic, the Gothic, and Cureton's Syriac are defective here. The ancient Fathers are silent.)
IV. More serious in its consequences, however, than any other source of mischief which can be named, is the process of Mutilation, to which, from the beginning, the Text of Scripture has been subjected. By the “Mutilation” of Scripture we do but mean the intentional Omission—from whatever cause proceeding—of genuine portions. And the causes of it have been numerous as well as diverse. Often, indeed, there seems to have been at work nothing else but a strange passion for getting rid of whatever portions of the [pg 070] inspired Text have seemed to anybody superfluous,—or at all events have appeared capable of being removed without manifest injury to the sense. But the estimate of the tasteless IInd-century Critic will never be that of the well-informed Reader, furnished with the ordinary instincts of piety and reverence. This barbarous mutilation of the Gospel, by the unceremonious excision of a multitude of little words, is often attended by no worse consequence than that thereby an extraordinary baldness is imparted to the Evangelical narrative. The removal of so many of the coupling-hooks is apt to cause the curtains of the Tabernacle to hang wondrous ungracefully; but often that is all. Sometimes, however, (as might have been confidently anticipated,) the result is calamitous in a high degree. Not only is the beauty of the narrative effectually marred, (as e.g. by the barbarous excision of καί—εὐθέως—μετὰ δακρύων—Κύριε, from S. Mark ix. 24):[175]—the doctrinal teaching of our Saviour's discourses in countless places, damaged, (as e.g. by the omission of καὶ νηστείᾳ from verse 29):—absurd expressions attributed to the Holy One which He certainly never uttered, (as e.g. by truncating of its last word the phrase τό, Εἰ δύνασαι πιστεῦσαι in verse 23):—but (i.) The narrative is often rendered in a manner unintelligible; or else (ii.), The entire point of a precious incident is made to disappear from sight; or else (iii.), An imaginary incident is fabricated: or lastly (iv.), Some precious saying of our Divine Lord is turned into absolute nonsense. Take a [pg 071] single short example of what has last been offered, from each of the Gospels in turn.
(i.) In S. Matthew xiv. 30, we are invited henceforth to submit to the information concerning Simon Peter, that “when he saw the wind, he was afraid.” The sight must have been peculiar, certainly. So, indeed, is the expression. But Simon Peter was as unconscious of the one as S. Matthew of the other. Such curiosities are the peculiar property of codices א b—the Coptic version—and the Revisionists. The predicate of the proposition (viz. “that it was strong,” contained in the single word ἰσχυρόν) has been wantonly excised. That is all!—although Dr. Hort succeeded in persuading his colleagues to the contrary. A more solemn—a far sadder instance, awaits us in the next Gospel.
(ii.) The first three Evangelists are careful to note “the loud cry” with which the Redeemer of the World expired. But it was reserved for S. Mark (as Chrysostom pointed out long since) to record (xv. 39) the memorable circumstance that this particular portent it was, which wrought conviction in the soul of the Roman soldier whose office it was to be present on that terrible occasion. The man had often witnessed death by Crucifixion, and must have been well acquainted with its ordinary phenomena. Never before had he witnessed anything like this. He was stationed where he could see and hear all that happened: “standing” (S. Mark says) “near” our Saviour,—“over against Him.” “Now, when the Centurion saw that it was after so crying out (κράξας), that He expired” (xv. 39) he uttered the memorable words, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” “What chiefly moved him to make that confession of his faith was that our Saviour evidently died with power.”[176] “The miracle” (says Bp. Pearson) “was not in the death, but in the voice. The [pg 072] strangeness was not that He should die, but that at the point of death He should cry out so loud. He died not by, but with a Miracle.”[177] ... All this however is lost in א b l, which literally stand alone[178] in leaving out the central and only important word, κράξας. Calamitous to relate, they are followed herein by our Revisionists: who (misled by Dr. Hort) invite us henceforth to read,—“Now when the Centurion saw that He so gave up the ghost.”
(iii.) In S. Luke xxiii. 42, by leaving out two little words (τω and κε), the same blind guides, under the same blind guidance, effectually misrepresent the record concerning the repentant malefactor. Henceforth they would have us believe that “he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy Kingdom.’ ” (Dr. Hort was fortunately unable to persuade the Revisionists to follow him in further substituting “into thy kingdom” for “in thy kingdom;” and so converting what, in the A. V., is nothing worse than a palpable mistranslation,[179] into what would have been an indelible blot. The record of his discomfiture survives in the margin). Whereas none of the Churches of Christendom have ever yet doubted that S. Luke's record is, that the dying man “said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me,” &c.
(iv.) In S. John xiv. 4, by eliminating the second καί and the second οἴδατε, our Saviour is now made to say, “And whither I go, ye know the way;” which is really almost nonsense. What He actually said was, “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know;” in consequence of which (as we all remember) “Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, we know [pg 073] not ‘whither’ Thou goest, and how can we know ‘the way’?” ... Let these four samples suffice of a style of depravation with which, at the end of 1800 years, it is deliberately proposed to disfigure every page of the everlasting Gospel; and for which, were it tolerated, the Church would have to thank no one so much as Drs. Westcott and Hort.
We cannot afford, however, so to dismiss the phenomena already opened up to the Reader's notice. For indeed, this astonishing taste for mutilating and maiming the Sacred Deposit, is perhaps the strangest phenomenon in the history of Textual Criticism.
It is in this way that a famous expression in S. Luke vi. 1 has disappeared from codices א b l. The reader may not be displeased to listen to an anecdote which has hitherto escaped the vigilance of the Critics:—
“I once asked my teacher, Gregory of Nazianzus,”—(the words are Jerome's in a letter to Nepotianus),—“to explain to me the meaning of S. Luke's expression σάββατον δευτερόπρωτον, literally the ‘second-first sabbath.’ ‘I will tell you all about it in church,’ he replied. ‘The congregation shall shout applause, and you shall have your choice,—either to stand silent and look like a fool, or else to pretend you understand what you do not.’ ” But “eleganter lusit,” says Jerome[180]. The point of the joke was this: Gregory, being a great rhetorician and orator, would have descanted so elegantly on the signification of the word δευτερόπρωτον that the congregation would have been borne away by his mellifluous periods, quite regardless of the sense. In other words, Gregory of Nazianzus [a.d. 360] is found to have no more understood the word than Jerome did [370].