The last contribution to this department of sacred Science is a critical edition of the New Testament by Drs. Westcott and Hort. About this, we proceed to offer a few remarks.
I. The first thing here which unfavourably arrests attention is the circumstance that this proves to be the only Critical Edition of the New Testament since the days of Mill, which does not even pretend to contribute something to our previous critical knowledge of the subject. Mill it was (1707) who gave us the great bulk of our various Readings; [pg 246] which Bengel (1734) slightly, and Wetstein (1751-2) very considerably, enlarged.—The accurate Matthæi (1782-8) acquainted us with the contents of about 100 codices more; and was followed by Griesbach (1796-1806) with important additional materials.—Birch had in the meantime (1788) culled from the principal libraries of Europe a large assortment of new Readings: while truly marvellous was the accession of evidence which Scholz brought to light in 1830.—And though Lachmann (1842-50) did wondrous little in this department, he yet furnished the critical authority (such as it is) for his own unsatisfactory Text.—Tregelles (1857-72), by his exact collations of MSS. and examination of the earliest Fathers, has laid the Church under an abiding obligation: and what is to be said of Tischendorf (1856-72), who has contributed more to our knowledge than any other editor of the N. T. since the days of Mill?—Dr. Scrivener, though he has not independently edited the original Text, is clearly to be reckoned among those who have, by reason of his large, important, and accurate contributions to our knowledge of ancient documents. Transfer his collections of various Readings to the foot of the page of a copy of the commonly Received Text,—and “Scrivener's New Testament”[712] might stand between the editions of Mill and of Wetstein. Let the truth be told. C. F. Matthæi and he are the only two Scholars who have collated any considerable number of sacred Codices with the needful amount of accuracy.[713]
Now, we trust we shall be forgiven if, at the close of the preceding enumeration, we confess to something like displeasure at the oracular tone assumed by Drs. Westcott and Hort in dealing with the Text of Scripture, though they admit (page 90) that they “rely for documentary evidence on the stores accumulated by their predecessors.” Confident as those distinguished Professors may reasonably feel of their ability to dispense with the ordinary appliances of Textual Criticism; and proud (as they must naturally be) of a verifying faculty which (although they are able to give no account of it) yet enables them infallibly to discriminate between the false and the true, as well as to assign “a local habitation and a name” to every word,—inspired or uninspired,—which purports to belong to the N. T.:—they must not be offended with us if we freely assure them at the outset that we shall decline to accept a single argumentative assertion of theirs for which they fail to offer sufficient proof. Their wholly unsupported decrees, at the risk of being thought uncivil, we shall unceremoniously reject, as soon as we have allowed them a hearing.
This resolve bodes ill, we freely admit, to harmonious progress. But it is inevitable. For, to speak plainly, we never before met with such a singular tissue of magisterial statements, unsupported by a particle of rational evidence, as we meet with here. The abstruse gravity, the long-winded earnestness of the writer's manner, contrast whimsically with the utterly inconsequential character of his antecedents [pg 248] and his consequents throughout. Professor Hort—(for “the writing of the volume and the other accompaniments of the Text devolved” on him,[714])—Dr. Hort seems to mistake his Opinions for facts,—his Assertions for arguments,—and a Reiteration of either for an accession of evidence. There is throughout the volume, apparently, a dread of Facts which is even extraordinary. An actual illustration of the learned Author's meaning,—a concrete case,—seems as if it were never forthcoming. At last it comes: but the phenomenon is straightway discovered to admit of at least two interpretations, and therefore never to prove the thing intended. In a person of high education,—in one accustomed to exact reasoning,—we should have supposed all this impossible.... But it is high time to unfold the Introduction at the first page, and to begin to read.
II. It opens (p. 1-11) with some unsatisfactory Remarks on “Transmission by Writing;” vague and inaccurate,—unsupported by one single Textual reference,—and labouring under the grave defect of leaving the most instructive phenomena of the problem wholly untouched. For, inasmuch as “Transmission by writing” involves two distinct classes of errors, (1st) Those which are the result of Accident,—and (2ndly) Those which are the result of Design,—it is to use a Reader badly not to take the earliest opportunity of explaining to him that what makes codd. b א d such utterly untrustworthy guides, (except when supported by a large amount of extraneous evidence,) is the circumstance that Design had evidently so much to do with a vast proportion of the peculiar errors in which they severally abound. In other words, each of those codices clearly exhibits a fabricated Text,—is the result of arbitrary and reckless Recension.
Now, this is not a matter of opinion, but of fact. In S. Luke's Gospel alone (collated with the traditional Text) the transpositions in codex b amount to 228,—affecting 654 words: in codex d, to 464,—affecting 1401 words. Proceeding with our examination of the same Gospel according to S. Luke, we find that the words omitted in b are 757,—in d, 1552. The words substituted in b amount to 309,—in d, to 1006. The readings peculiar to b are 138, and affect 215 words;—those peculiar to d, are 1731, and affect 4090 words. Wondrous few of these can have been due to accidental causes. The Text of one or of both codices must needs be depraved. (As for א, it is so frequently found in accord with b, that out of consideration for our Readers, we omit the corresponding figures.)
We turn to codd. a and c—(executed, suppose, a hundred years after b, and a hundred years before d)—and the figures are found to be as follows:—
| In a. | In c. | |
| The transpositions are | 75 | 67 |
| affecting | 199 words | 197 |
| The words omitted are | 208 | 175 |
| The words substituted | 111 | 115 |
| The peculiar readings | 90 | 87 |
| affecting | 131 words | 127 |
Now, (as we had occasion to explain in a previous page,[715]) it is entirely to misunderstand the question, to object that the preceding Collation has been made with the Text of Stephanus open before us. Robert Etienne in the XVIth century was not the cause why cod. b in the IVth, and cod. d in the VIth, are so widely discordant from one another; a and c, so utterly at variance with both. The simplest [pg 250] explanation of the phenomena is the truest; namely, that b and d exhibit grossly depraved Texts;—a circumstance of which it is impossible that the ordinary Reader should be too soon or too often reminded. But to proceed.
III. Some remarks follow, on what is strangely styled “Transmission by printed Editions:” in the course of which Dr. Hort informs us that Lachmann's Text of 1831 was “the first founded on documentary authority.”[716]... On what then, pray, does the learned Professor imagine that the Texts of Erasmus (1516) and of Stunica (1522) were founded? His statement is incorrect. The actual difference between Lachmann's Text and those of the earlier Editors is, that his “documentary authority” is partial, narrow, self-contradictory; and is proved to be untrustworthy by a free appeal to Antiquity. Their documentary authority, derived from independent sources,—though partial and narrow as that on which Lachmann relied,—exhibits (under the good Providence of God,) a Traditional Text, the general purity of which is demonstrated by all the evidence which 350 years of subsequent research have succeeded in accumulating; and which is confessedly the Text of a.d. 375.