Nevertheless, it may be best to listen for a moment to such objections as have been advanced against conclusions like these, and which it may be presumed will be urged again.
1. “After all it cannot be denied that B and א are the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament in existence, and that they must therefore be entitled to the deference due to their age.” Now the earlier part of this allegation is conceded by us entirely: prima facie it constitutes a very strong argument. But it is really found on examination to be superficial. Fathers and Versions are virtually older, and, as has been demonstrated, are dead against the claim set up on behalf of those ancient manuscripts, that they are the possessors of the true text of the Gospels. Besides which antiquity is not the sole note of truth any more than number is. So much has been already said on this part of the subject, that it is needless to enter into longer discussion here.
2. “The testimony of witnesses ought to be weighed before it is reckoned.” Doubtless: this also is a truism, and allowance has been made for it in the various “notes of truth.” But this argument, apparently so simple, is really intended to carry a huge assumption involved in an elaborate maintenance of the (supposed) excellent character of B and א and their associates. After so much [pg 227] that has been brought to the charge of those two MSS. in this treatise, it is unnecessary now to urge more than that they appeared in strange times, when the Church was convulsed to her centre; that, as has been demonstrated, their peculiar readings were in a very decided minority in the period before them; and, as all admit, were rejected in the ages that passed after the time of their date.
3. It is stated that the Traditional is a conflate text, i.e. that passages have been put together from more than one other text, so that they are composite in construction instead of being simple. We have already treated this allegation, but we reply now that it has not been established: the opinion of Canon Cooke who analysed all the examples quoted by Hort[373], of Scrivener who said they proved nothing[374], and of many other critics and scholars has been against it. The converse position is maintained, that the text of B and א is clipped and mutilated. Take the following passage, which is fairly typical of the large class in question: “For we are members of His Body” (writes St. Paul[375]) “of His flesh and of His bones” (ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων αἰτοῦ). But those last 9 words are disallowed by recent editors, because they are absent from B-א, A, 8, and 17, and the margin of 67, besides the Bohairic version. Yet are the words genuine. They are found in DFGKLP and the whole body of the cursives: in the Old Latin and Vulgate and the two Syriac versions: in Irenaeus[376],—in Theodorus of Mopsuestia[377],—in Nilus[378],—in Chrysostom[379] more than four times,—in Severianus[380],—in Theodoret[381],—in Anastasius Sinaita[382],—and in John Damascene[383]. They were probably read by [pg 228] Origen[384] and by Methodius[385]. Many Latin Fathers, viz. Ambrose[386],—Pacian[387],—Esaias abb.[388],—Victorinus[389],—Jerome[390],—Augustine[391]—and Leo P.[392] recognise them.
Such ample and such varied attestation is not to be set aside by the vapid and unsound dictum “Western and Syrian,”—or by the weak suggestion that the words in dispute are an unauthorized gloss, fabricated from the LXX version of Gen. ii. 23. That St. Paul's allusion is to the oracular utterance of our first father Adam, is true enough: but, as Alford after Bengel well points out, it is incredible that any forger can have been at work here.
Such questions however, as we must again and again insist, are not to be determined by internal considerations: no,—nor by dictation, nor by prejudice, nor by divination, nor by any subjective theory of conflation on which experts and critics may be hopelessly at issue: but by the weight of the definite evidence actually producible and [pg 229] produced on either side. And when, as in the present instance, Antiquity, Variety of testimony, Respectability of witnesses, and Number are overwhelmingly in favour of the Traditional Text, what else is it but an outrage on the laws of evidence to claim that the same little band of documents which have already come before us so often, and always been found in error, even though aided by speculative suppositions, shall be permitted to outweigh all other testimony?
To build therefore upon a conflate or composite character in a set of readings would be contrary to the evidence:—or at any rate, it would at the best be to lay foundations upon ground which is approved by one school of critics and disputed by the other in every case. The determination of the text of Holy Scripture has not been handed over to a mere conflict of opposite opinions, or to the uncertain sands of conjecture.
Besides, as has been already stated, no amount of conflation would supply passages which the destructive school would wholly leave out. It is impossible to “conflate” in places where Bא and their associates furnish no materials for the supposed conflation. Bricks cannot be made without clay. The materials actually existing are those of the Traditional Text itself. But in fact these questions are not to be settled by the scholarly taste or opinions of either school, even of that which we advocate. They must rest upon the verdict found by the facts in evidence: and those facts have been already placed in array.
4. Again, stress is laid upon Genealogy. Indeed, as Dean Burgon himself goes on to say, so much has lately been written about “the principle” and “the method” “of genealogy,” that it becomes in a high degree desirable that we should ascertain precisely what those expressions lawfully mean. No fair controversialist would willingly fail to assign its legitimate place and value to any principle for [pg 230] which he observes an opponent eagerly contending. But here is a “principle” and here is a “method” which are declared to be of even paramount importance. “Documents ... are all fragments, usually casual and scattered fragments, of a genealogical tree of transmission, sometimes of vast extent and intricacy. The more exactly we are able to trace the chief ramifications of the tree, and to determine the places of the several documents among the branches, the more secure will be the foundations laid for a criticism capable of distinguishing the original text from its successive corruptions[393].”
The expression is metaphorical; belonging of right to families of men, but transferred to Textual Science as indicative that similar phenomena attend families of manuscripts. Unfortunately the phenomena attending transmission,—of Natures on the one hand, of Texts on the other,—are essentially dissimilar. A diminutive couple may give birth to a race of giants. A genius has been known to beget a dunce. A brood of children exhibiting extraordinary diversities of character, aspect, ability, sometimes spring from the same pair. Nothing like this is possible in the case of honestly-made copies of MSS. The analogy breaks down therefore in respect of its most essential feature. And yet, there can be no objection to the use of the term “Genealogy” in connexion with manuscripts, provided always that nothing more is meant thereby than derivation by the process of copying: nothing else claimed but that “Identity of reading implies identity of origin[394].”