“The fundamental text of late extant Greek MSS. generally is beyond all question identical with the dominant Antiochian or Græco-Syrian text of the second half of the IVth century.”—(p. 92.)
Be it so. It follows that the Text exhibited by such codices as b and א was deliberately condemned by the assembled piety, learning, and judgment of the four great Patriarchates of Eastern Christendom. At a period when there existed nothing more modern than Codices b and א,—nothing so modern as a and c,—all specimens of the former class were [pg 287] rejected: while such codices as bore a general resemblance to a were by common consent pointed out as deserving of confidence and recommended for repeated Transcription.
XXVI. Pass fifteen hundred years, and the Reader is invited to note attentively what has come to pass. Time has made a clean sweep, it may be, of every Greek codex belonging to either of the two dates above indicated. Every tradition belonging to the period has also long since utterly perished. When lo, in a.d. 1831, under the auspices of Dr. Lachmann, “a new departure” is made. Up springs what may be called the new German school of Textual Criticism,—of which the fundamental principle is a superstitious deference to the decrees of cod. b. The heresy prevails for fifty years (1831-81) and obtains many adherents. The practical result is, that its chief promoters make it their business to throw discredit on the result of the two great Antiochian Revisions already spoken of! The (so-called) “Syrian Text”—although assumed by Drs. Westcott and Hort to be the product of the combined wisdom, piety, and learning of the great Patriarchates of the East from a.d. 250 to a.d. 350; “a ‘Recension’ in the proper sense of the word; a work of attempted Criticism, performed deliberately by Editors and not merely by Scribes” (p. 133):—this “Syrian Text,” Doctors Westcott and Hort denounce as “showing no marks of either critical or spiritual insight:”—
It “presents” (say they) “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.”—(p. 135.)
XXVII. We are content to leave this matter to the Reader's judgment. For ourselves, we make no secret of the grotesqueness of the contrast thus, for the second time, presented to the imagination. On that side, by the hypothesis, [pg 288] sit the greatest Doctors of primitive Christendom, assembled in solemn conclave. Every most illustrious name is there. By ingeniously drawing a purely arbitrary hard-and-fast line at the year a.d. 350, and so anticipating many a “floruit” by something between five and five-and-twenty years, Dr. Hort's intention is plain: but the expedient will not serve his turn. Quite content are we with the names secured to us within the proposed limits of time. On that side then, we behold congregated choice representatives of the wisdom, the piety, the learning of the Eastern Church, from a.d. 250 to a.d. 350.—On this side sits—Dr. Hort! ... An interval of 1532 years separates these two parties.
XXVIII. And first,—How may the former assemblage be supposed to have been occupying themselves? The object with which those distinguished personages came together was the loftiest, the purest, the holiest imaginable: viz. to purge out from the sacred Text the many corruptions by which, in their judgments, it had become depraved during the 250 (or at the utmost 300) years which have elapsed since it first came into existence; to detect the counterfeit and to eliminate the spurious. Not unaware by any means are they of the carelessness of Scribes, nor yet of the corruptions which have been brought in through the officiousness of critical “Correctors” of the Text. To what has resulted from the misdirected piety of the Orthodox, they are every bit as fully alive as to what has crept in through the malignity of Heretical Teachers. Moreover, while the memory survives in all its freshness of the depravations which the inspired Text has experienced from these and other similar corrupting influences, the means abound and are at hand of testing every suspected place of Scripture. Well, and next,—How have these holy men prospered in their holy enterprise?
XXIX. According to Dr. Hort, by a strange fatality,—a most unaccountable and truly disastrous proclivity to error,—these illustrious Fathers of the Church have been at every instant substituting the spurious for the genuine,—a fabricated Text in place of the Evangelical Verity. Miserable men! In the Gospels alone they have interpolated about 3100 words: have omitted about 700: have substituted about 1000; have transposed about 2200: have altered (in respect of number, case, mood, tense, person, &c.) about 1200.[724] This done, they have amused themselves with the give-and-take process of mutual accommodation which we are taught to call “Conflation:” in plain terms, they have been manufacturing Scripture. The Text, as it comes forth from their hands,—
(a) “Shews no marks of either critical or spiritual insight:”—
(b) “Presents the New Testament in a form smooth and attractive, but appreciably impoverished in sense and force:”—
(c) “Is more fitted for cursory perusal or recitation, than for repeated and diligent study.”