“It was probably initiated by the distracting and inconvenient currency of at least three conflicting Texts in the same region.”—(p. 133.)
Well but,—Would it not have been more methodical if “the currency of at least three conflicting Texts in the same region,” had been first demonstrated? or, at least, shown to be a thing probable? Till this “distracting” phenomenon has been to some extent proved to have any existence in fact, what possible “probability” can be claimed for the history of a “Recension,”—which very Recension, up to this point, has not been proved to have ever taken place at all?
“Each Text may perhaps have found a Patron in some leading personage or see, and thus have seemed to call for a conciliation of rival claims.”—(p. 134.)
Why yes, to be sure,—“each Text [if it existed] may perhaps [or perhaps may not] have found a Patron in some leading personage [as Dr. Hort or Dr. Scrivener in our own days]:” but then, be it remembered, this will only have been possible,—(a) If the Recension ever took place: and—(b) If it was conducted after the extraordinary fashion which prevailed in the Jerusalem Chamber from 1870 to 1881: for which we have the unimpeachable testimony of an eye-witness;[722] confirmed by the Chairman of the Revisionist body,—by whom in fact it was deliberately invented.[723]
But then, since not a shadow of proof is forthcoming that any such Recension as Dr. Hort imagines ever took place at all,—what else but a purely gratuitous exercise of [pg 274] the imaginative faculty is it, that Dr. Hort should proceed further to invent the method which might, or could, or would, or should have been pursued, if it had taken place?
Having however in this way (1) Assumed a “Syrian Recension,”—(2) Invented the cause of it,—and (3) Dreamed the process by which it was carried into execution,—the Critic hastens, more suo, to characterize the historical result in the following terms:—
“The qualities which the Authors of the Syrian text seem to have most desired to impress on it are lucidity and completeness. They were evidently anxious to remove all stumbling-blocks out of the way of the ordinary reader, so far as this could be done without recourse to violent measures. They were apparently equally desirous that he should have the benefit of instructive matter contained in all the existing Texts, provided it did not confuse the context or introduce seeming contradictions. New Omissions accordingly are rare, and where they occur are usually found to contribute to apparent simplicity. New Interpolations, on the other hand, are abundant, most of them being due to harmonistic or other assimilation, fortunately capricious and incomplete. Both in matter and in diction the Syrian Text is conspicuously a full Text. It delights in Pronouns, Conjunctions, and Expletives and supplied links of all kinds, as well as in more considerable Additions. As distinguished from the bold vigour of the ‘Western’ scribes, and the refined scholarship of the ‘Alexandrians,’ the spirit of its own corrections is at once sensible and feeble. Entirely blameless, on either literary or religious grounds, as regards vulgarized or unworthy diction, yet shewing no marks of either Critical or Spiritual insight, it presents the New Testament in a form smooth and attractive, but appreciably impoverished in sense and force; more fitted for cursory perusal or recitation than for repeated and diligent study.”—(pp. 134-5.)
XVII. We forbear to offer any remarks on this. We should be thought uncivil were we to declare our own candid estimate of “the critical and spiritual” perception of the man who could permit himself so to write. We prefer to proceed [pg 275] with our sketch of the Theory, (of the Dream rather,) which is intended to account for the existence of the Traditional Text of the N. T.: only venturing again to submit that surely it would have been high time to discuss the characteristics which “the Authors of the Syrian Text” impressed upon their work, when it had been first established—or at least rendered probable—that the supposed Operators and that the assumed Operation have any existence except in the fertile brain of this distinguished and highly imaginative writer.
XVIII. Now, the first consideration which strikes us as fatal to Dr. Hort's unsupported conjecture concerning the date of the Text he calls “Syrian” or “Antiochian,” is the fact that what he so designates bears a most inconvenient resemblance to the Peschito or ancient Syriac Version; which, like the old Latin, is (by consent of the Critics) generally assigned to the second century of our era. “It is at any rate no stretch of imagination,” (according to Bp. Ellicott,) “to suppose that portions of it might have been in the hands of S. John.” [p. 26.] Accordingly, these Editors assure us that—
“the only way of explaining the whole body of facts is to suppose that the Syriac, like the Latin Version, underwent Revision long after its origin; and that our ordinary Syriac MSS. represent not the primitive but the altered Syriac Text.”—(p. 136.)