But really the occasions are without number when minute words have dropped out of אB and their allies,—and yet have been faithfully retained, all through the centuries, by the later Uncials and despised Cursive copies. In St. John xvii. 2, for instance, we read—δόξασόν σου τὸν [pg 195] υἱόν, ἵνα ΚΑῚ ὁ υἱός ΣΟΥ δοξάσῃ σέ: where καί is omitted by אABCD: and σου (after ὁ υἱός) by אBC. Some critics will of course insist that, on the contrary, both words are spurious accretions to the text of the cursives; and they must say so, if they will. But does it not sensibly impair their confidence in א to find that it, and it only, exhibits λελάληκεν (for ἐλάλησεν) in ver. 1,—δώσω αὐτῷ (for δώσῃ αὐτοῖς) in ver. 2, while אB are peculiar in writing Ἰησοῦς without the article in ver. 1?
Enough has surely been said to exhibit and illustrate this rude characteristic of the few Old Copies which out of the vast number of their contemporaries are all that we now possess. The existence of this characteristic is indubitable and undoubted: it is in a measure acknowledged by Dr. Hort in words on which we shall remark in the ensuing chapter[287]. Our readers should observe that the “rubbing off” process has by no means been confined to particles like καί and γάρ, but has extended to tenses, other forms of words, and in fact to all kinds of delicacies of expression. The results have been found all through the Gospels: sacred and refined meaning, such as accomplished scholars will appreciate in a moment, has been pared off and cast away. If people would only examine B, א and D in their bare unpresentableness, they would see the loss which those MSS. have sustained, as compared with the Text supported by the overwhelming mass of authorities: and they would refuse to put their trust any longer in such imperfect, rudimentary, and ill-trained guides.
Chapter XI. The Later Uncials And The Cursives.
§ 1[288].
The nature of Tradition is very imperfectly understood in many quarters; and mistakes respecting it lie close to the root, if they are not themselves the root, of the chief errors in Textual Criticism. We must therefore devote some space to a brief explanation of this important element in our present inquiry.
Tradition is commonly likened to a stream which, as is taken for granted, contracts pollution in its course the further it goes. Purity is supposed to be attainable only within the neighbourhood of the source: and it is assumed that distance from thence ensures proportionally either greater purity or more corruption.
Without doubt there is much truth in this comparison: only, as in the case of nearly all comparisons there are limits to the resemblance, and other features and aspects are not therein connoted, which are essentially bound up with the subject believed to be illustrated on all points in this similitude.
In the first place, the traditional presentment of the New Testament is not like a single stream, but resembles rather a great number of streams of which many have [pg 197] remained pure, but some have been corrupted. One cluster of bad streams was found in the West, and, as is most probable, the source of very many of them was in Syria: another occurred in the East with Alexandria and afterwards Caesarea as the centre, where it was joined by the currents from the West. A multitude in different parts of the Church were kept wholly or mainly clear of these contaminants, and preserved the pure and precise utterance as it issued from the springs of the Written Word.