The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels

by John William Burgon

Only in this limited way are we able to avail ourselves of the principle referred to. Of course if it were a well-ascertained fact concerning three copies (XYZ), that Z was copied from Y, and Y from X, XYZ might reasonably be spoken of as representing three descents in a pedigree; although the interval between Z and Y were only six [pg 231] months,—the interval between Y and X, six hundred years. Moreover, these would be not three independent authorities, but only one. Such a case, however,—(the fact cannot be too clearly apprehended),—is simply non-existent. What is known commonly lies on the surface:—viz. that occasionally between two or more copies there exists such an amount of peculiar textual affinity as to constrain us to adopt the supposition that they have been derived from a common original. These peculiarities of text, we tell ourselves, cannot be fortuitous. Taking our stand on the true principle that “identity of reading implies identity of origin,” we insist on reasoning from the known to the unknown: and (at our humble distance) we are fully as confident of our scientific fact as Adams and Le Verrier would have been of the existence of Neptune had they never actually obtained sight of that planet.

So far are we therefore from denying the value and importance of the principle under discussion that we are able to demonstrate its efficacy in the resolution of some textual problems which have been given in this work. Thus E, the uncial copy of St. Paul, is “nothing better,” says Scrivener, “than a transcript of the Cod. Claromontanus” D. “The Greek is manifestly worthless, and should long since have been removed from the list of authorities[395].” Tischendorf nevertheless, not Tregelles, quotes it on every page. He has no business to do so, Codexes D and E, to all intents and purposes, being strictly one Codex. This case, like the two next, happily does not admit of diversity of opinion. Next, F and G of St. Paul's Epistles, inasmuch as they are confessedly derived from one and the same archetype, are not to be reckoned as two authorities, but as one.

Again, the correspondence between the nine MSS. of the Ferrar group—Evann. 13 at Paris, 69 at Leicester, 124 at [pg 232] Vienna, 346 at Milan, 556 in the British Museum, 561 at Bank House, Wisbech,—and in a lesser degree, 348 at Milan, 624 at Crypta Ferrata, 788 at Athens,—is so extraordinary as to render it certain that these copies are in the main derived from one common archetype[396]. Hence, though one of them (788) is of the tenth century, three (348, 561, 624) are of the eleventh, four (13, 124, 346, 556) of the twelfth, and one (69) of the fourteenth, their joint evidence is held to be tantamount to the recovery of a lost uncial or papyrus of very early date,—which uncial or papyrus, by the way, it would be convenient to indicate by a new symbol, as Fr. standing for Ferrar, since Φ which was once attributed to them is now appropriated to the Codex Beratinus. If indicated numerically, the figures should at all events be connected by a hyphen (13-69-124-346-&c.); not as if they were independent witnesses, as Tischendorf quotes them. And lastly, B and א are undeniably, more than any other two Codexes which can be named, the depositaries of one and the same peculiar, all but unique, text.

I propose to apply the foregoing remarks to the solution of one of the most important of Textual problems. That a controversy has raged around the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel is known to all. Known also it is that a laborious treatise was published on the subject in 1871, which, in the opinion of competent judges, has had the effect of removing the “Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark” beyond the reach of suspicion. Notwithstanding this, at the end of ten years an attempt was made to revive the old plea. The passage, say Drs. Westcott and Hort, “manifestly cannot claim any Apostolic authority; but is doubtless founded on some tradition of the Apostolic age,” of which the “precise date must remain unknown.” It is “a very early interpolation” (pp. 51, 46). In a word, “the [pg 233] last twelve verses” of St. Mark's Gospel, according to Drs. Westcott and Hort, are spurious. But what is their ground of confidence? for we claim to be as competent to judge of testimony as they. It proves to be “the unique criterion supplied by the concord of the independent attestations of א and B” (p. 46).

“Independent attestations”! But when two copies of the Gospel are confessedly derived from one and the same original, how can their “attestations” be called “independent”? This is however greatly to understate the case. The non-independence of B and א in respect of St. Mark xvi. 9-20 is absolutely unique: for, strange to relate, it so happens that the very leaf on which the end of St. Mark's Gospel and the beginning of St. Luke's is written (St. Mark xvi. 2-Luke i. 56), is one of the six leaves of Cod. א which are held to have been written by the scribe of Cod. B. “The inference,” remarks Scrivener, “is simple and direct, that at least in these leaves Codd. Bא make but one witness, not two[397].”

The principle of Genealogy admits of a more extended and a more important application to this case, because B and א do not stand quite alone, but are exclusively associated with three or four other manuscripts which may be regarded as being descended from them. As far as we can judge, they may be regarded as the founders, or at least as prominent members of a family, whose descendants were few, because they were generally condemned by the generations which came after them. Not they, but other families upon other genealogical stems, were the more like to the patriarch whose progeny was to equal the stars of heaven in multitude.

Least of all shall I be so simple as to pretend to fix the [pg 234] precise date and assign a definite locality to the fontal source, or sources, of our present perplexity and distress. But I suspect that in the little handful of authorities which have acquired such a notoriety in the annals of recent Textual Criticism, at the head of which stand Codexes B and א, are to be recognized the characteristic features of a lost family of (once well known) second or third-century documents, which owed their existence to the misguided zeal of some well-intentioned but utterly incompetent persons who devoted themselves to the task of correcting the Text of Scripture; but were entirely unfit for the undertaking[398].

Yet I venture also to think that it was in a great measure at Alexandria that the text in question was fabricated. My chief reasons for thinking so are the following: (1) There is a marked resemblance between the peculiar readings of Bא and the two Egyptian Versions,—the Bohairic or Version of Lower Egypt especially. (2) No one can fail to have been struck by the evident sympathy between Origen,—who at all events had passed more than half his life at Alexandria,—and the text in question. (3) I notice that Nonnus also, who lived in the Thebaid, exhibits considerable sympathy with the text which I deem so corrupt. (4) I cannot overlook the fact that Cod. א was discovered in a monastery under the sway of the patriarch of Alexandria, though how it got there no evidence remains to point out. (5) The licentious handling so characteristic of the Septuagint Version of the O. T.,—the work of Alexandrian Jews,—points in the same direction, and leads me to suspect that Alexandria was the final source of the text of B-א. (6) I further observe that the sacred Text (κείμενον) in Cyril's Homilies [pg 235] on St. John is often similar to B-א; and this, I take for granted, was the effect of the school of Alexandria,—not of the patriarch himself. (7) Dionysius of Alexandria complains bitterly of the corrupt Codexes of his day: and certainly (8) Clemens habitually employed copies of a similar kind. He too was of Alexandria[399].

Such are the chief considerations which incline me to suspect that Alexandria contributed largely to our Textual troubles.

The readings of B-א are the consequence of a junction of two or more streams and then of derivation from a single archetype. This inference is confirmed by the fact that the same general text which B exhibits is exhibited also by the eighth-century Codex L, the work probably of an Egyptian scribe[400]: and by the tenth-century Codex 33: and by the eleventh-century Codex 1: and to some extent by the twelfth-century Codex 69.