It may not be without use to the Venerable writer that he should be reminded that critical questions, instead of being disposed of by such language as the foregoing, are not even touched thereby. One is surprised to have to tell a “fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,” so obvious a truth as that by such writing he does but effectually put himself out of court. By proclaiming that his mind is “quite unalterably made up” that the end of S. Mark's Gospel is not authentic, he admits that he is impervious to argument and therefore incapable of understanding proof. It is a mere waste of time to reason with an unfortunate who announces that he is beyond the reach of conviction.
The New Testament in the Original Greek, according to the Text followed in the Authorized Version, together with the Variations adopted in the Revised Version. Edited for the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, by F. H. A. Scrivener, M.A., D.C.L., LL.D., Prebendary of Exeter and Vicar of Hendon. Cambridge, 1881.
Ἡ ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ. The Greek Testament, with the Readings adopted by the Revisers of the Authorized Version. [Edited by the Ven. Archdeacon Palmer, D.D.] Oxford, 1881.
[Note,—that I have thought it best, for many reasons, to retain the ensuing note as it originally appeared; merely restoring [within brackets] those printed portions of it for which there really was no room. The third Article in the present volume will be found to supply an ample exposure of the shallowness of Drs. Westcott and Hort's Textual Theory.]
While these sheets are passing through the press, a copy of the long-expected volume reaches us. The theory of the respected authors proves to be the shallowest imaginable. It is briefly this:—Fastening on the two oldest codices extant (b and א, both of the IVth century), they invent the following hypothesis:—“That the ancestries of those two manuscripts diverged from a point near the autographs, and never came into contact subsequently.” [No reason is produced for this opinion.]
Having thus secured two independent witnesses of what was in the sacred autographs, the Editors claim that the coincidence of א and b must “mark those portions of text in which two primitive and entirely separate lines of transmission had not come to differ from each other through independent corruption:” and therefore that, “in the absence of specially strong internal evidence to the contrary,” “the readings of א and b combined may safely be accepted as genuine.”
But what is to be done when the same two codices diverge one from the other?—In all such cases (we are assured) the readings of any “binary combination” of b are to be preferred; because “on the closest scrutiny,” they generally “have the ring of genuineness;” hardly ever “look suspicious after full consideration.” “Even when b stands quite alone, its readings must never be lightly rejected.” [We are not told why.]
But, (rejoins the student who, after careful collation of codex b, has arrived at a vastly different estimate of its character,)—What is to be done when internal and external evidence alike condemn a reading of B? How is “mumpsimus” for example to be treated?—“Mumpsimus” (the Editors solemnly reply) as “the better attested reading”—(by which they mean the reading attested by b,)—we place in our margin. “Sumpsimus,” apparently the right reading, we place in the text within ††; in token that it is probably “a successful ancient conjecture.”
We smile, and resume:—But how is the fact to be accounted for that the text of Chrysostom and (in the main) of the rest of the IVth-century Fathers, to whom we are so largely indebted for our critical materials, and who must have employed codices fully as old as b and א: how is it, we ask, that the text of all these, including codex a, differs essentially from the text exhibited by codices b and א?—The editors reply,—The text of Chrysostom and the rest, we designate “Syrian,” and assume to have been the result of an “editorial Revision,” which we conjecturally assign to the second half of the IIIrd century. It is the “Pre-Syrian” text that we are in search of; and we recognize the object of our search in codex b.
We stare, and smile again. But how then does it come to pass (we rejoin) that the Peschito, or primitive Syriac, which is older by full a century and a half than the last-named date, is practically still the same text?—This fatal circumstance (not overlooked by the learned Editors) they encounter with another conjectural assumption. “A Revision” (say they) “of the Old Syriac version appears to have taken place early in the IVth century, or sooner; and doubtless in some connexion with the Syrian revision of the Greek text, the readings being to a very great extent coincident.”