But take a less solemn example. Instead of,—“And His [pg 094] disciples plucked the ears of corn, and ate them, (τοὺς στάχυας, καὶ ἤσθιον,) rubbing them in their hands” (S. Luke vi. 1),—b c l r, by transposing four Greek words, present us with, “And His disciples plucked, and ate the ears of corn, (καὶ ἤσθιον τοὺς στάχυας,) rubbing them,” &c. Now this might have been an agreeable occupation for horses and for another quadruped, no doubt; but hardly for men. This curiosity, which (happily) proved indigestible to our Revisionists, is nevertheless swallowed whole by Drs. Westcott and Hort as genuine and wholesome Gospel. (O dura Doctorum ilia!)—But to proceed.
Then further, these preposterous Transpositions are of such perpetual recurrence,—are so utterly useless or else so exceedingly mischievous, always so tasteless,—that familiarity with the phenomenon rather increases than lessens our astonishment. What does astonish us, however, is to find learned men in the year of grace 1881, freely resuscitating these long-since-forgotten bêtises of long-since-forgotten Critics, and seeking to palm them off upon a busy and a careless age, as so many new revelations. That we may not be thought to have shown undue partiality for the xxiind, xxiiird, and xxivth chapters of S. Luke's Gospel by selecting our instances of Mutilation from those three chapters, we will now look for specimens of Transposition in the xixth and xxth chapters of the same Gospel. The reader is invited to collate the Text of the oldest uncials, throughout these two chapters, with the commonly Received Text. He will find that within the compass of 88 consecutive verses,[343] codices א a b c d q exhibit no less than 74 instances of Transposition:—for 39 of which, d is responsible:—א b, for 14:—א and א b d, for 4 each:—a b and א a b, for 3 each:—a, for [pg 095] 2:—b, c, q, א A, and a d, each for 1.—In other words, he will find that in no less than 44 of these instances of Transposition, d is implicated:—א, in 26:—b, in 25:—a, in 10:—while c and q are concerned in only one a-piece.... It should be added that Drs. Westcott and Hort have adopted every one of the 25 in which codex b is concerned—a significant indication of the superstitious reverence in which they hold that demonstrably corrupt and most untrustworthy document.[344] Every other case of Transposition they have rejected. By their own confession, therefore, 49 out of the 74 (i.e. two-thirds of the entire number) are instances of depravation. We turn with curiosity to the Revised Version; and discover that out of the 25 so retained, the Editors in question were only able to persuade the Revisionists to adopt 8. So that, in the judgment of the Revisionists, 66 out of 74, or eleven-twelfths, [pg 096] are instances of licentious tampering with the deposit.... O to participate in the verifying faculty which guided the teachers to discern in 25 cases of Transposition out of 74, the genuine work of the Holy Ghost! O, far more, to have been born with that loftier instinct which enabled the pupils (Doctors Roberts and Milligan, Newth and Moulton, Vance Smith and Brown, Angus and Eadie) to winnow out from the entire lot exactly 8, and to reject the remaining 66 as nothing worth!
According to our own best judgment, (and we have carefully examined them all,) every one of the 74 is worthless. But then we make it our fundamental rule to reason always from grounds of external Evidence,—never from postulates of the Imagination. Moreover, in the application of our rule, we begrudge no amount of labour: reckoning a long summer's day well spent if it has enabled us to ascertain the truth concerning one single controverted word of Scripture. Thus, when we find that our Revisionists, at the suggestion of Dr. Hort, have transposed the familiar Angelic utterance (in S. Luke xxiv. 7), λέγων ὅτι δεῖ τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου παραδοθῆναι,—into this, λέγων τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ὅτι δεῖ, &c., we at once enquire for the evidence. And when we find that no single Father, no single Version, and no Codex—except the notorious א b c l—advocates the proposed transposition; but on the contrary that every Father (from a.d. 150 downwards) who quotes the place, quotes it as it stands in the Textus receptus;[345]—we have no hesitation whatever in rejecting it. It is found in the midst of a very thicket of fabricated readings. It has nothing whatever to recommend it. It is condemned by the consentient voice of Antiquity. [pg 097] It is advocated only by four copies,—which never combine exclusively, except to misrepresent the truth of Scripture and to seduce the simple.
But the foregoing, which is a fair typical sample of countless other instances of unauthorized Transposition, may not be dismissed without a few words of serious remonstrance. Our contention is that, inasmuch as the effect of such transposition is incapable of being idiomatically represented in the English language,—(for, in all such cases, the Revised Version retains the rendering of the Authorized,)—our Revisionists have violated the spirit as well as the letter of their instructions, in putting forth a new Greek Text, and silently introducing into it a countless number of these and similar depravations of Scripture. These Textual curiosities (for they are nothing more) are absolutely out of place in a Revision of the English Version: achieve no lawful purpose: are sure to mislead the unwary. This first.—Secondly, we submit that,—strong as, no doubt, the temptation must have been, to secure the sanction of the N. T. Revisionists for their own private Recension of the Greek, (printed long since, but published simultaneously with the “Revised Version”)—it is to be regretted that Drs. Westcott and Hort should have yielded thereto. Man's impatience never promotes God's Truth. The interests of Textual Criticism would rather have suggested, that the Recension of that accomplished pair of Professors should have been submitted to public inspection in the first instance. The astonishing Text which it advocates might have been left with comparative safety to take its chance in the Jerusalem Chamber, after it had undergone the searching ordeal of competent Criticism, and been freely ventilated at home and abroad for a decade of years. But on the contrary. It was kept close. It might be seen only by the Revisers: and even they were tied down to secrecy as [pg 098] to the letter-press by which it was accompanied.... All this strikes us as painful in a high degree.
VI. Hitherto we have referred almost exclusively to the Gospels. In conclusion, we invite attention to our Revisionists' treatment of 1 Tim. iii. 16—the crux criticorum, as Prebendary Scrivener styles it.[346] We cannot act more fairly than by inviting a learned member of the revising body to speak on behalf of his brethren. We shall in this way ascertain the amount of acquaintance with the subject enjoyed by some of those who have been so obliging as to furnish the Church with a new Recension of the Greek of the New Testament. Dr. Roberts says:—
“The English reader will probably be startled to find that the familiar text,—‘And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh,’ has been exchanged in the Revised Version for the following,—‘And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; He who was manifested in the flesh.’ A note on the margin states that ‘the word God, in place of He who, rests on no sufficient ancient evidence;’ and it may be well that, in a passage of so great importance, the reader should be convinced that such is the case.
“What, then, let us enquire, is the amount of evidence which can be produced in support of the reading ‘God’? This is soon stated. Not one of the early Fathers can be certainly quoted for it. None of the very ancient versions support it. No uncial witnesses to it, with the doubtful exception of a.... But even granting that the weighty suffrage of the Alexandrian manuscript is in favour of ‘God,’ far more evidence can be produced in support of ‘who.’ א and probably c witness to this reading, and it has also powerful testimony from the versions and Fathers. Moreover, the relative ‘who’ is a far more difficult reading than ‘God,’ and could hardly have been substituted for the latter. On every ground, therefore, we conclude that [pg 099] this interesting and important passage must stand as it has been given in the Revised Version.”[347]
And now, having heard the learned Presbyterian on behalf of his brother-Revisionists, we request that we may be ourselves listened to in reply.
The place of Scripture before us, the Reader is assured, presents a memorable instance of the mischief which occasionally resulted to the inspired Text from the ancient practice of executing copies of the Scriptures in uncial characters. S. Paul certainly wrote μέγα ἐστὶ τὸ τῆς εὐσεβείας μυστήριον; Θεὸς ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί, (“Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh”) But it requires to be explained at the outset, that the holy Name when abbreviated (which it always was), thus,—ΘΣ (“God”), is only distinguishable from the relative pronoun “who” (ΟΣ), by two horizontal strokes,—which, in manuscripts of early date, it was often the practice to trace so faintly that at present they can scarcely be discerned.[348] Need we go on? An archetypal copy in which one or both of these slight strokes had vanished from the word ΘΣ (“God”), gave rise to the reading ΟΣ (“who”),—of which nonsensical substitute, traces survive in only two[349] manuscripts,—א and 17: not, for certain, in one single ancient Father,—no, nor for certain in one single ancient Version. So transparent, in fact, is the absurdity of writing τὸ μυστέριον ὅς (“the mystery who”), that copyists promptly substituted ὅ (“which”): thus furnishing another illustration of the well-known property of [pg 100] a fabricated reading, viz. sooner or later inevitably to become the parent of a second. Happily, to this second mistake the sole surviving witness is the Codex Claromontanus, of the VIth century (d): the only Patristic evidence in its favour being Gelasius of Cyzicus,[350] (whose date is a.d. 476): and the unknown author of a homily in the appendix to Chrysostom.[351] The Versions—all but the Georgian and the Slavonic, which agree with the Received Text—favour it unquestionably; for they are observed invariably to make the relative pronoun agree in gender with the word which represents μυστήριον (“mystery”) which immediately precedes it. Thus, in the Syriac Versions, ὅς (“who”) is found,—but only because the Syriac equivalent for μυστήριον is of the masculine gender: in the Latin, quod (“which”)—but only because mysterium in Latin (like μυστήριον in Greek) is neuter. Over this latter reading, however, we need not linger; seeing that ὅ does not find a single patron at the present day. And yet, this was the reading which was eagerly upheld during the last century: Wetstein and Sir Isaac Newton being its most strenuous advocates.
It is time to pass under hasty review the direct evidence for the true reading. a and c exhibited ΘΣ until ink, thumbing, and the injurious use of chemicals, obliterated what once was patent. It is too late, by full 150 years, to contend on the negative side of this question.—f and g, which exhibit ΟΣ and ΟΣ respectively, were confessedly derived from a common archetype: in which archetype, it is evident that the horizontal stroke which distinguishes Θ from Ο must have been so faintly traced as to be scarcely discernible. The supposition that, in this place, the stroke in question represents the aspirate, is scarcely admissible. There is no single example of ὅς written ΟΣ in any part of [pg 101] either Cod. f or Cod. g. On the other hand, in the only place where ΟΣ represents ΘΣ, it is written ΟΣ in both. Prejudice herself may be safely called upon to accept the obvious and only lawful inference.