IV. Shewing attempts to classicize New Testament Greek.
These attempts have left their traces, conspicuous especially for omissions, all over B and א in a multiplicity of [pg 291] passages too numerous to quote. Their general character may be gathered in a perusal of Dr. Hort's Introduction, pp. 223-227, from which passage we may understand how these MSS. may have commended themselves at periods of general advancement in learning to eminent scholars like Origen and Dr. Hort. But unfortunately a Thucydidean compactness, condensed and well-pruned according to the fastidious taste of the study, is exactly that which does not in the long run take with people who are versed in the habits of ordinary life, or with scholars who have been exercised in many fields, as was shewn by the falling into disuse of Origen's critical manuscripts. The echoes of the fourth century have surely been heard in the nineteenth.
Appendix VI. The Peshitto And Curetonian.
[The Rev. C. H. Waller, D.D., Principal of St. John's Hall, Highbury.]
A careful collation of the Curetonian Syriac with the Peshitto would I think leave no doubt on the mind of any one that the Curetonian as exhibited by Cureton himself is the later version. But in order to give full effect to the argument it would be necessary to shew the entire Curetonian fragment side by side with the corresponding portions of the Peshitto. Otherwise it is scarcely possible to realize (1) how entirely the one version is founded upon the other—(2) how manifestly the Curetonian is an attempt to improve upon the other; or (3) how the Curetonian presupposes and demands an acquaintance with the Gospels in general, or with views of Gospel history which belong to the Church rather than to the sacred text.
Even in those brief passages exhibited by Dr. Scrivener from both editions this can be made out. And it is capable of still further illustration from almost every page of Dr. Cureton's book.
To take the fragments exhibited by Dr. Scrivener first. (a) In St. Matt. xii. 1-4, where the Peshitto simply translates the Textus Receptus (not altered by our Revisers), saying that the disciples were hungry “and began to pluck ears of corn and to eat,” the Curetonian amends thus:—“and the disciples were hungry and began to pluck ears of corn, and break them in their hands, and eat,” introducing (as it frequently does, e.g. St. Matt. iv. 11, “for a season”; St. Matt. [pg 293] iv. 21, “laying his hand”; St. Matt. v. 12, “your fathers”; St. Matt. v. 47, “what thank have ye?”) words borrowed from St. Luke vi. 1.
But in the next verse of the passage, where the words “on the Sabbath,” are absolutely required in order to make the Pharisees' question intelligible to the first readers of St. Matthew, “Behold, thy disciples do what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath” (Textus Receptus and Peshitto; not altered by our Revisers), the Curetonian must needs draw on the common knowledge of educated readers by exhibiting the question thus, “Why are thy disciples doing what is not lawful to do?” an abbreviated reading which leaves us ignorant what the action objected to might be; whether to pluck ears in another man's field, or to rub the grain from them on the Sabbath day? On what possible ground can such emendations as this have the preference of antiquity in their favour?