And pray, where is “the Old Syriac version” of which you speak?—It is (reply the Editors) our way of designating the fragmentary Syriac MS. commonly known as “Cureton's.”—Your way (we rejoin) of manipulating facts, and disposing of evidence is certainly the most convenient, as it is the most extraordinary, imaginable: yet is it altogether inadmissible in a grave enquiry like the present. Syriac scholars are of a widely different opinion from yourselves. Do you not perceive that you have been drawing upon your imagination for every one of your facts?
We decline in short on the mere conjectural ipse dixit of these two respected scholars to admit either that the Peschito is a Revision of Cureton's Syriac Version;—or that it was executed about a.d. 325;—or that the text of Chrysostom and the other principal IVth-century Fathers is the result of an unrecorded “Antiochian Revision” which took place about the year a.d. 275.
[But instead of troubling ourselves with removing the upper story of the visionary structure before us,—which reminds us painfully of a house which we once remember building with playing-cards,—we begin by removing the basement-story, which brings the entire superstructure in an instant to the ground.]
For we decline to admit that the texts exhibited by b א can have “diverged from a point near the sacred autographs, and never come into contact subsequently.” We are able to show, on the contrary, that the readings they jointly embody afford the strongest presumption that the MSS. which contain them are nothing else but specimens of those “corrected,” i.e. corrupted copies, which are known to have abounded in the earliest ages of the Church. From the prevalence of identical depravations in either, we infer that they are, on the contrary, derived from the same not very remote depraved original: and therefore, that their coincidence, when they differ from all (or nearly all) other MSS., so far from marking “two primitive and entirely separate lines of transmission” of the inspired autographs, does but mark what was derived from the same corrupt common ancestor; whereby the supposed two independent witnesses to the Evangelic verity become resolved into a single witness to a fabricated text of the IIIrd century.
It is impossible in the meantime to withhold from these learned and excellent men (who are infinitely better than their theory) the tribute of our sympathy and concern at the evident perplexity and constant distress to which their own fatal major premiss has reduced them. The Nemesis of Superstition and Idolatry is ever the same. Doubt,—unbelief,—credulity,—general mistrust of all evidence, is the inevitable sequel and penalty. In 1870, Drs. Westcott and Hort solemnly assured their brother Revisionists that “the prevalent assumption, that throughout the N. T. the true text is to be found somewhere among recorded readings, does not stand the test of experience;”[P. xxi.] and they are evidently still haunted by the same spectral suspicion. They see a ghost to be exorcised in every dark corner. “The Art of Conjectural Emendation” (says Dr. Hort) “depends for its success so much on personal endowments, fertility of resource in the first instance, and even more an appreciation of language too delicate to acquiesce in merely plausible corrections, that it is easy to forget its true character as a critical operation founded on knowledge and method.”[Introd. p. 71.] Specimens of the writer's skill in this department abound. One occurs at p. 135 (App.) where, in defiance of every known document, he seeks to evacuate S. Paul's memorable injunction to Timothy (2 Tim. i. 13) of all its significance. [A fuller exposure of Dr. Hort's handling of this important text will be found later in the present volume.] May we be allowed to assure the accomplished writer that in Biblical Textual Criticism, “Conjectural Emendation” has no place?
True, that a separate volume of Greek Text has been put forth, showing every change which has been either actually accepted, or else suggested for future possible acceptance. But (in the words of the accomplished editor), “the Revisers are not responsible for its publication.” Moreover, (and this is the chief point,) it is a sealed book to all but Scholars.
It were unhandsome, however, to take leave of the learned labours of Prebendary Scrivener and Archdeacon Palmer, without a few words of sympathy and admiration. Their volumes (mentioned at the beginning of the present Article) are all that was to have been expected from the exquisite scholarship of their respective editors, and will be of abiding interest and value. Both volumes should be in the hands of every scholar, for neither of them supersedes the other. Dr. Scrivener has (with rare ability and immense labour) set before the Church, for the first time, the Greek Text which was followed by the Revisers of 1611, viz. Beza's N. T. of 1598, supplemented in above 190 places from other sources; every one of which the editor traces out in his Appendix, pp. 648-56. At the foot of each page, he shows what changes have been introduced into the Text by the Revisers of 1881.—Dr. Palmer, taking the Text of Stephens (1550) as his basis, presents us with the Readings adopted by the Revisers of the “Authorized Version,” and relegates the displaced Readings (of 1611) to the foot of each page.—We cordially congratulate them both, and thank them for the good service they have rendered.
καὶ ἀκούσας αὐτοῦ πολλὰ ἂ ἐποίει, καὶ ἡδέως αὐτοῦ ἤκουεν, will have been the reading of that lost venerable codex of the Gospels which is chiefly represented at this day by Evann. 13-69-124-346,—as explained by Professor Abbott in his Introduction to Prof. Ferrar's Collation of four important MSS., etc. (Dublin 1877). The same reading is also found in Evann. 28 : 122 : 541 : 572, and Evst. 196.
Different must have been the reading of that other venerable exemplar which supplied the Latin Church with its earliest Text. But of this let the reader judge:—“Et cum audisset illum multa facere, libenter,” &c. (c: also “Codex Aureus” and γ, both at Stockholm): “et audito eo quod multa faciebat, et libenter,” &c. (g2 q): “et audiens illum quia multa faciebat, et libenter,” &c. (b). The Anglo-Saxon, (“and he heard that he many wonders wrought, and he gladly heard him”) approaches nearest to the last two.
The Peschito Syriac (which is without variety of reading here) in strictness exhibits:—“And many things he was hearing [from] him and doing; and gladly he was hearing him.” But this, by competent Syriac scholars, is considered to represent,—καὶ πολλὰ ἀκούων αὐτοῦ, ἐποίει; καὶ ἡδέως ἤκουεν αὐτοῦ.—Cod. Δ is peculiar in exhibiting καὶ ἀκούσας αὐτοῦ πολλά, ἡδέως αὐτοῦ ἤκουεν,—omitting ἐποίει, καί.—The Coptic also renders, “et audiebat multa ab eo, et anxio erat corde.” From all this, it becomes clear that the actual intention of the blundering author of the text exhibited by א b l was, to connect πολλά, not with ἠπόρει, but with ἀκούσας. So the Arabian version: but not the Gothic, Armenian, Sclavonic, or Georgian,—as Dr. S. C. Malan informs the Reviewer.