There is hardly to be found a more precious declaration concerning the guiding and illuminating office of the Holy Ghost, than our Lord's promise that “when He, the Spirit of Truth shall come, He shall guide you into all the Truth”: ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς εἰς πᾶσαν τὴν ἀλήθειαν (St. John xvi. 13). Now, the six words just quoted are found to have experienced an extraordinary amount of perturbation; far more than can be due to the fact that they happen to be the concluding words of a lection. To be brief,—every [pg 217] known variety in reading this passage may be brought under one of three heads:—
1. With the first,—which is in fact a gloss, not a reading (διηγήσεται ὑμῖν τὴν ἀλήθειαν πᾶσαν),—we need not delay ourselves. Eusebius in two places[349], Cyril Jer.[350], copies of the Old Latin[351], and Jerome[352] in a certain place, so read the place. Unhappily the same reading is also found in the Vulgate[353]. It meets with no favour however, and may be dismissed.
2. The next, which even more fatally darkens our Lord's meaning, might have been as unceremoniously dealt with, the reading namely of Cod. L (ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ πάσῃ), but that unhappily it has found favour with Tischendorf,—I suppose, because with the exception of πάσῃ it is the reading of his own Cod. א[354]. It is thus that Cyril Alex.[355] thrice reads the place: and indeed the same thing practically is found in D[356]; while so many copies of the Old Latin exhibit in omni veritate, or in veritate omni[357], that one is constrained to inquire, How is ἐν ἀληθείᾳ πασῃ to be accounted for?
We have not far to look. ὁδηγεῖν followed by ἐν occurs in the LXX, chiefly in the Psalms, more than 16 times. Especially must the familiar expression in Ps. xxiv. 5 (ὁδήγησόν με ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ σου, Dirige me in veritate tua), by inopportunely suggesting itself to the mind of some early copyist, have influenced the text of St. John xvi. 13 in this fatal way. One is only astonished that so acute a critic as Tischendorf should have overlooked so plain [pg 218] a circumstance. The constant use of the Psalm in Divine Service, and the entire familiarity with the Psalter resulting therefrom, explains sufficiently how it came to pass, that in this as in other places its phraseology must have influenced the memory.
3. The one true reading of the place (ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς εἰς πᾶσαν τὴν ἀλήθειαν) is attested by 12 of the uncials (EGHIbKMSUΓΔΛΠ), the whole body of the cursives, and by the following Fathers,—Didymus[358], Epiphanius[359], Basil[360], Chrysostom[361], Theodotus, Bp. of Antioch[362], Cyril Alex.[363], Theodoret[364]; besides Tertullian in five places, Hilary and Jerome in two[365].
But because the words πᾶσαν τὴν ἀλήθειαν are found transposed in ABY alone of manuscripts, and because Peter Alex.[366], and Didymus[367] once, Origen[368] and Cyril Alex.[369] in two places, are observed to sanction the same infelicitous arrangement (viz. τὴν ἀλήθειαν πᾶσαν),—Lachmann, Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and Hort, adopt without hesitation this order of the words[370]. It cannot of course be maintained. The candid reader in the meantime will not fail to note that as usual the truth has been preserved neither by A nor B nor D: least of all by א: but comes down to us unimpaired in the great mass of MS. authorities, uncial and cursive, as well as in the oldest Versions and Fathers.
§ 9.
It may have been anticipated by the readers of these pages that the Divine Author of Scripture has planted here and there up and down the sacred page—often in most improbable places and certainly in forms which we should have least of all imagined—tests of accuracy, by attending to which we may form an unerring judgement concerning the faithfulness of a copy of the sacred Text. This is a discovery which at first astonished me: but on mature reflection, I saw that it was to have been confidently anticipated. Is it indeed credible that Almighty Wisdom—which is observed to have made such abundant provision for the safety of the humblest forms of animal life, for the preservation of common seeds, often seeds of noxious plants,—should yet have omitted to make provision for the life-giving seed of His own Everlasting Word?
For example, strange to relate, it is a plain fact (of which every one may convince himself by opening a copy of the Gospels furnished with a sufficient critical apparatus), that although in relating the healing of the centurion's servant (St. Matt. viii. 5-13) the Evangelist writes εκατονταρχΟΣ in verses 5 and 8, he writes εκατονταρχΗ instead of -ΧΩ in ver. 13. This minute variety has been faithfully retained by uncials and cursives alike. Only one uncial (viz. א) has ventured to assimilate the two places, writing εκατονταρχης throughout. With the blindness proverbially ascribed to parental love, Tischendorf follows א, though the carelessness that reigns over that MS. is visible to all who examine it.
The matter is a trifle confessedly. But so was the scrap of a ballad which identified the murderer, another scrap of it being found with the bullet in the body of the murdered man.