“Now, the foregoing statement is in a high decree suggestive. For here is an orthodox Father of the IInd century inviting attention to four well-known families of falsified manuscripts of the Sacred Writings;—complaining of the hopeless divergences which they exhibit (being not only inconsistent with one another, but with themselves);—and insisting that such corrected, are nothing else but shamefully corrupted copies. He speaks of the phenomenon as being in his day notorious: and appeals to Recensions, the very names of whose authors—Theodotus, Asclepiades, Hermophilus, Apollonides—have (all but the first) long since died out of the Church's memory. You will allow therefore, (will you not?), that by this time the claim of the oldest existing copies of Scripture to be the purest, has been effectually disposed of. For since there once prevailed such a multitude of corrupted copies, we have no security whatever that the oldest of our extant MSS. are not derived—remotely if not directly—from some of them.”
(4) S. O. “But at all events the chances are even. Are they not?”
Q. R. “By no means. A copy like codex b, once recognized as belonging to a corrupt family,—once known to contain a depraved exhibition of the Sacred Text,—was more likely by far to remain unused, and so to escape destruction, than a copy highly prized and in daily use.—As for Codex א, it carries on its face its own effectual condemnation; aptly illustrating the precept fiat experimentum in corpore vili. It exhibits the efforts of many generations of men to restore its Text,—(which, ‘as proceeding from the first scribe,’ is admitted by one of its chief admirers to be ‘very rough,[748]’)—to something like purity. ‘At least ten different Revisers,’ from the IVth to the XIIth century, are found to have tried their hands upon it.[749]—Codex c, after having had ‘at least three correctors very busily at work upon it’[750] (in the VIth and IXth centuries), finally (in the XIIth) was fairly obliterated,—literally scraped out,—to make room for the writings of a Syrian Father.—I am therefore led by à priori considerations to augur ill of the contents of b א c. But when I find them hopelessly at variance among themselves: above all, when I find (1) all other Manuscripts of whatever date,—(2) the most ancient Versions,—and (3), the whole body of the primitive Fathers, decidedly opposed to them,—I am (to speak plainly) at a loss to understand how any man of sound understanding, acquainted with all the facts of the case and accustomed to exact reasoning, can hesitate to regard the unsupported (or the slenderly supported) testimony of one or other of them as simply worthless. The craven homage which the foremost of the three habitually receives at the hands of Drs. Westcott and Hort, I can only describe as a weak superstition. It is something more than unreasonable. It becomes even ridiculous.—Tischendorf's preference (in his last edition) for the bêtises of his own codex א, [pg 326] can only be defended on the plea of parental partiality. But it is not on that account the less foolish. His ‘exaggerated preference for the single manuscript which he had the good fortune to discover, has betrayed him’—(in the opinion of Bishop Ellicott)—‘into an almost child-like infirmity of critical judgment’ ”[751]
(5) O. S. “Well but,—be all that as it may,—Caius, remember, is speaking of heretical writers. When I said ‘I want Christian evidence,’ I meant orthodox evidence, of course. You would not assert (would you?) that b and א exhibit traces of heretical depravation?”
Q. R. “Reserving my opinion on that last head, good Sir, and determined to enjoy the pleasure of your company on any reasonable terms,—(for convince you, I both can and will, though you prolong the present discussion till tomorrow morning,)—I have to ask a little favour of you: viz. that you will bear me company in an imaginary expedition.
“I request that the clock of history may be put back seventeen hundred years. This is a.d. 183, if you please: and—(indulge me in the supposition!)—you and I are walking in Alexandria. We have reached the house of one Clemens,—a learned Athenian, who has long been a resident here. Let us step into his library,—he is from home. What a queer place! See, he has been reading his Bible, which is open at S. Mark x. Is it not a well-used copy? It must be at least 50 or 60 years old. Well, but suppose only 30 or 40. It was executed therefore within fifty years of the death of S. John the Evangelist. Come, let us transcribe two of the [pg 327] columns[752] (σελίδες) as faithfully as we possibly can, and be off.... We are back in England again, and the clock has been put right. Now let us sit down and examine our curiosity at leisure.[753]... It proves on inspection to be a transcript of the 15 verses (ver. 17 to ver. 31) which relate to the coming of the rich young Ruler to our Lord.
“We make a surprising discovery. There are but 297 words in those 15 verses,—according to the traditional Text: of which, in the copy which belonged to Clemens Alexandrinus, 39 prove to have been left out: 11 words are added: 22, substituted: 27, transposed: 13, varied; and the phrase has been altered at least 8 times. Now, 112 words out of a total of 297, is 38 per cent. What do you think of that?”
(6) S. O. “Think? O but, I disallow your entire proceeding! You have no business to collate with ‘a text of late and degenerate type, such as is the Received Text of the New Testament.’ When this ‘is taken as a standard, any document belonging to a purer stage of the Text must by the nature of the case have the appearance of being guilty of omissions: and the nearer the document stands to the autograph, the more numerous must be the omissions laid to its charge.’ I learnt that from Westcott and Hort. See page 235 of their luminous Introduction.”
Q. R. “Be it so! Collate the passage then for yourself with the Text of Drs. Westcott and Hort: which, (remember!) aspires to reproduce ‘the autographs themselves’ ‘with the utmost exactness which the evidence permits’ [pg 328] (pp. 288 and 289).[754] You will find that this time the words omitted amount to 44. The words added are 13: the words substituted, 23: the words transposed, 34: the words varied 16. And the phrase has been altered 9 times at least. But, 130 on a total of 297, is 44 per cent. You will also bear in mind that Clement of Alexandria is one of our principal authorities for the Text of the Ante-Nicene period.[755]
“And thus, I venture to presume, the imagination has been at last effectually disposed of, that because Codices b and א are the two oldest Greek copies in existence, the Text exhibited by either must therefore be the purest Text which is anywhere to be met with. It is impossible to produce a fouler exhibition of S. Mark x. 17-31 than is contained in a document full two centuries older than either b or א,—itself the property of one of the most famous of the ante-Nicene Fathers.”