The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels

by John William Burgon

It is at least as reasonable to assert that we can afford entirely to disregard the testimony of the Uncials, as to pretend that we can afford entirely to disregard the testimony of the Cursives. In fact of the two, the former assertion would be a vast deal nearer to the truth. Our inductions would in many cases be so fatally narrowed, if we might not look beyond one little handful of Uncial Copies.

But the point to which the reader's attention is specially invited is this:—that so far from our being entirely [pg 203] dependent on Codexes BאCD, or on some of them, for certain of the most approved corrections of the Received Text, we should have been just as fully aware of every one of those readings if neither B nor א, C nor D, had been in existence. Those readings are every one to be found in one or more of the few Cursive Codexes which rank by themselves, viz. the two groups just mentioned and perhaps some others. If they are not, they may be safely disregarded; they are readings which have received no subsequent recognition[293].

Indeed, the case of the Cursives presents an exact parallel with the case of the Uncials. Whenever we observe a formal consensus of the Cursives for any reading, there, almost invariably, is a grand consensus observable for the same reading of the Uncials.

The era of greater perfection both in the outer presentment and in the internal accuracy of the text of copies of the New Testament may be said, as far as the relics which have descended to us are concerned, to have commenced with the Codex Basiliensis or E of the Gospels. This beautiful and generally accurate Codex must have been written in the seventh century[294]. The rest of the later [pg 204] Uncials are ordinarily found together in a large or considerable majority: whilst there is enough dissent to prove that they are independent witnesses, and that error was condemned, not ignored. Thus the Codex Regius (L, eighth century), preserved at Paris, generally follows B and א: so does the Codex Sangallensis (Δ, ninth century), the Irish relic of the monastery of St. Gall, in St. Mark alone: and the Codex Zacynthius (Ξ, an eighth century palimpsest) now in the Library of the Bible Society, in St. Luke[295]. The isolation of these few from the rest of their own age is usually conspicuous. The verdict of the later uncials is nearly always sustained by a large majority. In fact, as a rule, every principal reading discoverable in any of the oldest Uncials is also exhibited in one, two, or three of the later Uncials, or in one or more of the small handful of dissentient Cursives already enumerated. Except indeed in very remarkable instances, as in the case of the last twelve verses of St. Mark, such readings are generally represented: yet in the later MSS. as compared with the oldest there is this additional feature in the representation, that if evidence is evidence, and weight, number, and variety are taken into account, those readings are altogether condemned.

§ 2[296].

But we are here confronted with the contention that the text of the Cursives is of a debased character. Our opponents maintain that it is such that it must have been compounded from other forms of text by a process of conflation [pg 205] so called, and that in itself it is a text of a character greatly inferior to the text mainly represented by B and א.

Now in combating this opinion, we are bound first to remark that the burden of proof rests with the opposite side. According to the laws which regulate scientific conclusions, all the elements of proof must be taken into consideration. Nothing deserves the name of science in which the calculation does not include all the phenomena. The base of the building must be conterminous with the facts. This is so elementary a principle that it seems needless to insist more upon it.

But then, this is exactly what we endeavour to accomplish, and our adversaries disregard. Of course they have their reasons for dismissing nineteen-twentieths of the evidence at hand: but—this is the point—it rests with them to prove that such dismissal is lawful and right. What then are their arguments? Mainly three, viz. the supposed greater antiquity of their favourite text, the superiority which they claim for its character, and the evidence that the Traditional Text was as they maintain formed by conflation from texts previously in existence.

Of these three arguments, that from antiquity has been already disposed of, and illustration of what has been already advanced will also be at hand throughout the sequel of this work. As to conflation, a proof against its possible applicability to the Traditional Text was supplied as to particles and other words in the last chapter, and will receive illustration from instances of words of a greater size in this. Conflation might be possible, supposing for a moment that other conditions favoured it, and that the elements to be conflated were already in existence in other texts. But inasmuch as in the majority of instances such elements are found nowhere else than in the Traditional Text, conflation as accounting for the changes which upon this theory must have been made is simply impossible. On the other hand, [pg 206] the Traditional Text might have been very easily chipped and broken and corrupted, as will be shewn in the second part of this Treatise, into the form exhibited by B and א[297].

Upon the third argument in the general contention, we undertake to say that it is totally without foundation. On the contrary, the text of the Cursives is greatly the superior of the two. The instances which we proceed to give as specimens, and as specimens only, will exhibit the propriety of language, and the taste of expression, in which it is pre-eminent[298]. Let our readers judge fairly and candidly, as we doubt not that they will, and we do not fear the result.