"When
the language in common use in any country becomes irregular
|
| SO,
YOU THINK THE NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION OF THE BIBLE IS GOD'S WORD ??? Well, my dear fool, who owns the copyright to the NIV? The Comcast cable network, a suitor of the Walt Disney company and its parent, the ABC network, offers hard-core porn from the Hot Network channel as part of its premium package. Comcast's CEO, Brian Roberts, helped organize the 2000 Republican national convention in Philadelphia. Direct TV, the largest satellite television network in the US, also offers the Hot Network. Direct TV is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch also owns the NIV. How long will it be before the NIV comes with a centerfold after Malachi? |
I wrote this article in 1993 in response to a request from the editor of Crosswinds magazine. He needed something that was readable and understandable by the average pastor and he had correctly concluded that his need was not met with books written by textual scholars. I know the arguments for, and the importance of, a Biblical commentator staying within his discipline. Even so, it seems to me that I have a God-given mandate to defend the Bible that has been the guiding light of our fathers, mothers, and leaders for three hundred years in the English speaking world, beginning studies in the book of Genesis is the time and place. It is the Mighty and Timeless Old King James upon which we have built our concept of home, church, community, and the Kingdom of God. It is from the Authorized Standard Version that we have gleaned our understanding of what the moral law is and says, and what it requires of us.
It was the Bible of John Knox, Jeremy Taylor, George Whitefild, John Westley, J. B. Lightfoot, Matthew Henry, G. Campbell Morgan, Charles Spurgeon, James Strong, Benjamin Warfield, Charles Hodge, J. Gresham Machen, Jonathan Edwards, D. L. Moody, R. A. Torrey, Hudson Taylor, Andrew Murray, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham to name a few. Now, at the end of the age, a heady, dialectic, and elite gang of arrogant seminarians have jumped up to claim that it is flawed, dishonest, out of touch and preferred only by novices, fanatics, and fools. We have much better textual evidence today, they say, than we have had in the past. We will pass for the moment on the question of whether that has anything to do with the inerrancy, inspiration and infallibility of the Bible (which we do not believe that it has).
The question
we wish to ask here is: Is this true? Will a study of what Hort and
his followers did reveal better evidence, or will it show a manipulation of the
evidence, a decline in reverence, and upsurge in creature worship and power brokerage?
I wish to moderate a discussion of that in this Appendix as best I am able, but
a few things need to be made clear at the outset.
1. I am not, and do not claim to be, a textual scholar. I am not a "scholar" at all in any formal sense of the term, though it may be correct to say that I am an informal scholar. My library consists of less than five hundred volumes, mostly books that I have read in whole or in part. Of course that is not a great number, but I see no reason for books that I do not plan to use, cluttering up the shelves. I am a dedicated reader and enjoy the acquisition of knowledge too much, I fear. Yet my gift and calling in the Church is that of a prophet, not a school man. It is true that I am an expository teacher, but from the perspective of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, not the letters and certificates of the School.
In the Bible it
is fully recognized that there are certain matters which are evident to even the
unregenerate man and a discussion of those matters is useful. But the goal
of Orthodox Christianity and its leaders must ever be to inform by revelation
and faith, not by intellect and sight. I will not defer to discuss that
subject further here (I shall later on) but I refer you to I Corinthians,
Chapters 1 and 2, Ephesians 1:8-23, Colossians 1:9 and 2:2-10. Though we
will look into it a bit to make our point, my purpose is not to critically examine
the Westcott and Hort theory of textual criticism. My goal is to show how
religious scholarship, under the lead of Hort, went wrong in the 19th century
on the matter of lower criticism and why.
2.
While I have read many articles and some books, and while I will make a number
of references, my views in this particular paper are mostly those of Wilbur M.
Pickering and his excellent and unsurpassed book, The Identity of the New Testament
Text, Revised Edition of 1980, by Thomas Nelson Publishers of Nashville, Tenn.
In this Appendix I have done little beyond editing Pickering and have almost paraphrased
him on occasions. Let it be clear that I have done nothing original here
and the research that I use is that of others, mostly Dr. Pickering and The Identity
of the New Testament Text. Even so, my purpose is neither to plagiarize nor to
direct attention to myself on this subject. It is to condense a very far-reaching
and difficult matter, which gets very esoteric when scholars (even Dr. Pickering)
discuss it, into something that is short enough to be read and simple enough to
be understood by the average pastor and lay-teacher.
3.
This is not at all to claim that Dr. Pickering or Dr. Zane C. Hodges would in
any way agree with my views on lower criticism, the condition of the New Testament
text, or my attitudes about scholarship and apologetics. I express my appreciation
of them (on this subject--as to this paper) and they do not, to my awareness,
know who I am, much less approve of me.
INTRODUCTION
In my view, nothing in the last one hundred years has been more dangerous or detrimental to the Church and Her mission than the attitude toward the Bible and the proliferation of translations, pseudo-translations, and paraphrases that have followed the lead of the Westcott and Hort Greek Text of the late 1800s. Nor do I think that conservative Christian leaders in general understand what motivated this movement and what the true issues are in terms of the Church's mandate to protect the purity of the body and the doctrine.
For more than eighteen hundred years in the Church the Orthodox precept of translating had been observed. A translator was to translate, not interpret. He was to be as true to the original language as it was possible to be. In difficult passages he was to make a literal rending, studiously avoiding any temptation on his part to teach and thereby have the translation clouded by his own views, whatever they might be. He was to preserve the holy and inerrant record and leave the interpretation to the preachers, teachers and prophets of the Church (perhaps one of his own functions, but in another forum). To Orthodoxy the matter of preserving inerrancy was up to God. He who had ordained His Word was also able to preserve it. Copies could be made by anyone who owned a text if it was wearing out and it was becoming unserviceable. But good will must be exhibited. The man must do his best to be faithful to the original. God would do the rest. The same principle followed in translating from one language to another. If godly and capable men would look to God for their sufficiency, trusting in the Holy Ghost for their direction and would do the best they could, God would undertake so that the result would be the preservation of the Word of God.
It was recognized early on that there were copying errors but the Apostles and the ante-Nicene Fathers did not consider these to be of significance. Obviously, God was concerned with preserving the spirit of the Word of Truth, not the mechanics. CERTAINLY THE ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS HAD BEEN INSPIRED AND INERRANT IN EVERY WAY, DOWN TO THE SPELLING AND THE PUNCTUATION MARKS.1 But as God preserved the Word in the Church, it was demonstrated that the Holy Ghost would not rule over the pens of every copyist as He had with the original writers. Still He was preserving His inerrant Word.
The whole basis for the existence and the understanding of the Word was divine intervention, faith, grace, and the leading of the Holy Ghost. If a nationality of people had a Bible in their own language that they could read, that was all they needed. On the basis of that written Word, God, by the Spirit, would reveal truth to them according to their faith and obedience and His good will. It was not dependent upon education and human intellect. Jesus had shown, in His encounters with the scribes and the lawyers, that the letter of truth, haggled out and preserved by the traditionalists, the religionists and the intellectuals, was not what the Bible meant or God had in mind.
But all of that began to change with the Renaissance. Now the emphasis shifted from faith to reason and from revelation to intellectual inspection and discovery. The age of reason began to declare that reason was the test of truth, not the Bible. From the Enlightenment came an assault upon and an infiltration into the Church. This was grabbed with both hands by the proud intellectual elitists of the Church who had long felt that the university and the seminary, not the Church and the preacher, should control the wisdom of the Church. Close on the heels of this re-emphasized human autonomy (from everything including God and His Word--this of course had started in the Garden of Eden) perhaps we should say "because of it," the industrial revolution gathered steam. With each new invention, men, even religious men, turned further and further from God. It was now supposed to have been God, the Bible, and the Church that held us down all of these years. Now we were proving that this was wrong, and were we also proving that God, the Bible, and the Church were wrong too? Hort certainly thought so. It was with the claim that the Bible and its text should be treated like every other book in the world, with no deference made to any super natural involvement or preservation of it through the years. Hort attacked the Authorized Version and subjectively set out to produce a new Greek Text that would "relegate the vile Textus Receptus to obscurity."
Without further prelude, we will look briefly at modern textual perceptions in general and the work of Hort in specific. This Appendix is not offered as being exhaustive, comprehensive, or original. But it does address pertinent and accurately identified issues, and it does open an all-important dialogue.
Most
fundamental and conservative churchmen accept without question the viability of
modern translation along with treatises on modern translations by seminaries and
publishers of new texts. They are supposed to be "improved" texts that
will do beneficial things for the Church. This is stated rather clearly in the
front of most of these Bibles. The preface to the Revised Standard Version, p.
ix, says:
The
King James Version of the New Testament was based upon a Greek text that was marred
by mistakes, containing the accumulated errors of fourteen centuries of manuscript
copying. . . . We now possess many more ancient manuscripts of the New Testament,
and are far better equipped to seek to recover the original wording of the Greek
text."
The
New International Version, p. viii:
The
Greek text used in the work of translation was an eclectic one. No other piece
of ancient literature has so much manuscript support as does the New Testament.
Where existing texts differ, the translators made their choice of readings in
accord with sound principles of textual criticism. Footnotes call attention to
places where there is uncertainty about what constitutes the original text.
Yet there is a curious and disturbing fact to the astute observer. All of these new translations differ greatly, one from the other. Nor is their any certainty as to which Greek text has been used in each case. This is not my statement; it is reflected commonly in the footnotes of these works. On the other hand, there is one thing that they very much have in common, and this, if properly understood, is a very telling condemnation. Their strong point and their claim to fame is a condemnation of the King James and how they all have made a point of differing greatly from it. As to the disparities among themselves, this is explained as the differences in style and translation technique. Yet they claim to be in agreement as to the Greek text they used, "as opposed to that underlying the King James Version." But no two of them are based on an identical Greek text.
The
ways in which the translators differ over the same Greek texts is arbitrary. Some
of them change the wording in very few places while others have made many changes
and have admitted that by no means all the doubts have been recorded. The intended
effect, in short, is that no one in the world today really knows the precise original
wording of the Greek text of the New Testament. Reassurances of dialectic theologians
notwithstanding, this makes many people very uneasy. That is because the current
"wisdom" and "sound principles" are neither wise nor sound
in the view of Orthodoxy. They consist in two stated axioms: 1) choose the reading
that best explains the origin of the competing variants, and 2) choose the variant
that the author is most likely to have written. Bruce Metzger2 says, "It
is understandable that in some cases different scholars will come to different
evaluations of the significance of the evidence."3 "In some cases"
is decidedly an understatement. In fact, even the same scholars will vacillate,
as by demonstrated by the "more than five hundred changes" introduced
into the third edition of the Greek text produced by the United Bible Societies
as compared with the second edition (the same committee of five editors prepared
both).4 It is obvious that these rules simply cannot be applied. No one
knows what happened through the centuries. Scholars who work in the field acknowledge
this. Robert M. Grant, a well-known Biblical scholar, says:
The
primary goal of New Testament textual study remains the recovery of what New Testament
writers wrote. We have already suggested that to achieve this goal is well-nigh
impossible. Therefore we must be content with what Reinhold Niebuhr and others
have called, in other contexts, an "impossible possibility."5
Kenneth
W. Clark, another well-known textual scholar and professor, comments:
. . . the papyrus vividly portrays
a fluid state of the text at about A.D.200(P7s). Such a scribal freedom suggests
that the gospel text was little more stable than the oral tradition, and that
we may be pursuing the retreating mirage of the "original" text.6
Thirty years ago Grant had said, "It is generally recognized that the original text of the Bible cannot be recovered."7 This is not at all satisfactory to Orthodox Theology. Discounting for the moment the preserving work of the Holy Ghost (which we do not discount, of course) and appealing strictly to textual evidence, is this sort of position justified? To answer the question we need to begin with what has been going on in lower criticism and that beginning starts with something called "eclecticism."8
What exactly is this technical word which has taken on such sinister meaning to so many of us. Textual Critic Eldon J. Epp says:9
The
"eclectic" method is, in fact, the 20th century method of NT textual
criticism, and anyone who criticizes it immediately becomes a self-critic, for
we all use it, some of us with a certain measure of reluctance and restraint,
others with complete abandon.
So
the RSV (Revised Standard Version), NEB (New English Bible) and NIV (New International
Version) are all admittedly based upon an eclectic text.
The
two great translation efforts of these years--RSV and NEB--each chose the Greek
text to translate on the basis of the internal evidence of readings. F. C. Grant's
chapter in the expository pamphlet on the RSV made this clear. The translators,
he says, followed two rules: (1) Choose the reading that best fits the context;
(2) Choose the reading which explains the origin of the other readings. Professor
C. H. Dodd informed me that the British translators also used these two principles--Hort's
Intrinsic Probability and Transcriptional Probability. One of the RSV translators
while lecturing to the New Testament Club at the University of Chicago replied
to a question concerning the Greek text he used by saying that it depended on
where he was working: he used Souter at the office and Nestles at home. One of
the British translators in admitting the unevenness of the textual quality of
the NEB translation explained that the quality depended on the ability of the
man who made the first draft-translation of a book. Whether in early Christian
times or today, translators have so often treated the text cavalierly that textual
critics should be hardened to it. But much more serious is the prevalence of this
same dependence on the internal evidence of readings in learned articles on textual
criticism, and in the popularity of manual editions of the Greek New Testament.
These latter, with their limited citations of variants and witnesses, actually
reduce the user to reliance upon the internal evidence of readings. The documents
which these rigorously abbreviated apparatuses cite cannot lead the user to dependence
upon external evidence documents. The editions use documents (to quote Housman)
"as drunkards use lampposts -- not to light them on their way but to dissimulate
their instability."10
The
statement in the preface to the NIV has already been noted: "The Greek text
used in the work of translation was an eclectic one." The introduction to
the recent Greek text put out by the United Bible Societies, pp. x-xi (1966),
says:
By
means of the letters A, B, C, and D, enclosed within "braces" at the
beginning of each set of textual variants, the Committee has sought to indicate
the relative degree of certainty, arrived at on the basis of internal considerations
as well as of external evidence, for the reading adopted as the text. The letter
A signifies that the text is virtually certain, while B indicates that there is
some degree of doubt. The letter C means that there is a considerable degree of
doubt whether the text or the apparatus contains the superior reading, while D
shows that there is a very high degree of doubt concerning the reading selected
for the text.
A review of their apparatus and its lack of pattern in the correlation between degree of certainty assigned and external evidence makes clear that it is eclectic. In Acts 16:12 they have even incorporated a conjecture! It will be remembered that this text was prepared specifically for the use of Bible translators. The TEV (Today's English Version) is translated directly from it, as is the Version Popular, etc. The text-critical conclusions of G. D. Kilpatrick, a thorough-going eclecticist, are finding expression in A Greek-English Diglot for the Use of Translators, issued by the British and Foreign Bible Society. And so on. Enough evidence has been given to show that eclecticism is a major, if not controlling, factor on the textual scene today.
What
exactly does "eclecticism" consist of? Metzger explains that an eclectic
editor "follows now one and now another set of witnesses in accord with what
is deemed to be the author's style or the exigencies of transcriptional hazards."11
E. C. Colwell12 goes further with it and comes to the really sinister and frightening
aspects:
Today
textual criticism turns for its final validation to the appraisal of individual
readings, in a way that involves subjective judgment. The trend has been to emphasize
fewer and fewer canons of criticism. Many moderns emphasize only two. These are:
1) that reading is to be preferred which best suits the context, and 2) that reading
is to be preferred which best explains the origin of all others. (My note: In
other words the textual scholars are interpreting--not just translating!) These
two rules are nothing less than concentrated formulas of all that the textual
critic must know and bring to bear upon the solution of his problem. The first
rule about choosing what suits the context exhorts the student to know the document
he is working on so thoroughly that its idioms are his idioms, its ideas as well
known as a familiar room. The second rule about choosing what could have caused
the other readings requires that the student know everything in Christian history
which could lead to the creation of a variant reading. This involves knowledge
of institutions, doctrines, and events.... This is knowledge of complicated and
often conflicting forces and movements.13
This
is both impossible and ridiculous. No man could know all of that, particularly
since the authors and the conditions under which the texts were produced are lost
permanently to men in this world. In later years, Colwell himself seems to have
had a change of heart.
The
scholars who profess to follow "the Eclectic Method" frequently so define
the term as to restrict evidence to the Internal Evidence of Readings. By "eclectic"
they mean in fact free choice among readings. This choice in many cases is made
solely on the basis of intrinsic probability. The editor chooses that reading
which commends itself to him as fitting the context, whether in style, or idea,
or contextual reference. Such an editor relegates the other manuscripts to the
role of supplier of readings. The weight of the manuscript is ignored. Its place
in the manuscript tradition is not considered. Thus Kilpatrick argues that certain
readings found only in one late Vulgate manuscript should be given the most serious
consideration because they are good readings.14
Another
lower critic, J. K. Elliott, comments on transcriptional probabilities:
By
using criteria such as the above the critic may reach a conclusion in discussing
textual variants and be able to say which variant is the original reading. However,
it is legitimate to ask: can a reading be accepted as genuine if it is supported
by only one ms.? There is no reason why an original reading should not have been
preserved in only one ms. but obviously a reading can be accepted with greater
confidence, when it has stronger support.... Even Aland with his reservation about
eclecticism says: "Theoretically, the original readings can be hidden in
a single ms. thus standing alone against the rest of tradition," and Tasker
has a similar comment: "The possibility must be left open that in some cases
the true reading may have been preserved in only a few witnesses or even in a
single relatively late witness."15
Among
what Elliott calls "positive advantages of the eclectic method" is the
following:
An
attempt is made to reach the true or original text. This is, of course, the ultimate
aim of any textual critic, but the eclectic method, by using different criteria
and by working from a different standpoint, tries to arrive at the true reading,
untrammeled by discussion about the weight of ms. support....
To
this method and its problems, Dr. Epp comments:
This
kind of "eclecticism" becomes the great leveller -- all variants are
equals and equally candidates for the original text, regardless of date, residence,
lineage, or textual context. In this case, would it not be appropriate to suggest,
further, that a few more conjectural readings be added to the available supply
of variants on the assumption that they must have existed but have been lost at
some point in the history of the textual transmission?16
Concerning
eclecticism, Dr. Pickering17 asks cryptically: "What shall we say of such
a method; is it a good thing?" He then goes on to comment:
An
eclecticism based solely on internal considerations is unacceptable for several
reasons. It is unreasonable. It ignores the over 5,000 Greek MSS now extant
to say nothing of patristic and versional evidence, except to cull variant readings
from them. In Elliott's words, it "tries to arrive at the true reading untrammeled
by discussion about the weight of ms. support." It follows that it has no
principled basis for rejecting conjectural emendations. It has no history of the
transmission of the text. Therefore the choice between variants ultimately depends
upon guesswork."
Dr.
Colwell agrees:
In
the last generation we have depreciated external evidence of documents and have
appreciated the internal evidence of readings; but we have blithely assumed that
we were rejecting "conjectural emendation" if our conjectures were supported
by some manuscripts. We need to recognize that the editing of an eclectic text
rests upon conjectures.18
F.
G. Kenyon19 called conjectural emendation "a process precarious in the extreme
and seldom allowing anyone but the guesser to feel confidence in the truth of
its results.''20 Although enthusiasts like Elliott think they can restore the
original wording of the text in this way, it is clear that the result can have
no more authority than that of the scholar(s) involved. Textual criticism ceases
to be a science and we are left wondering what is meant by "solid principles"
in the NIV preface.
Clark and Epp are right in calling eclecticism a secondary, tentative, and temporary method.21 As A.F.J. Klijn22 says, "This method arrives at such varying results that we wonder whether editors of Greek texts and translations can safely follow this road.''23 This procedure seems so unsatisfactory, in fact, that we wonder what gave rise to it.
According
to Dr. Pickering, eclecticism grew out of the Westcott and Hort (hereafter W-H)
theory of textual criticism. A summary of this is given by Dr. Epp:
.
. . the grouping of manuscripts led to the separation of the relatively few early
manuscripts from the mass of later ones, and eventually the process reached its
climactic point of development and its classical statement in the work of Westcott
and Hort (1881-1882), and particularly in their (actually, Hort's) clear and firm
view of the early history of the NT text. This clear picture was formed from Hort's
isolation of essentially three (though he said four) basic textual groups or text-types.
On the basis largely of Greek manuscript evidence from the middle of the 4th century
and later and from the early versional and patristic evidence, two of these, the
so-called Neutral and Western text-types, were regarded as competing texts from
about the middle of the 2nd century, while the third, now designated Byzantine,
was a conflate and polished ecclesiastical text. . . . This left essentially two
basic text-types competing in the earliest traceable period of textual transmission,
the Western and the Neutral, but this historical reconstruction could not be carried
farther so as to reveal -- on historical grounds -- which of the two was closer
to and therefore more likely to represent the original NT text.24 . . . the question
which faced Westcott-Hort remains for us: Is the original text something nearer
to the Neutral or to the Western kind of text? . . . Hort resolved the issue,
not on the basis of the history of the text but in terms of the presumed inner
quality of the texts and on grounds of largely subjective judgments of that quality.25
Hort
preferred the readings of the "Neutral" text-type (the Alexandrian)
and especially those of Codex B, because it had a "ring of genuineness."
Yet other scholars have preferred the readings of the "Western" text-type
and of Codex D, for the same reason. Have we really come to this in the translating
of the Holy Scriptures?
Although
Hort professed to follow external evidence, his prior choice of the "Neutral"
text-type was based on internal (subjective) considerations.26 But clearly Hort
sought to give the general impression that the W-H theory was based on external
(manuscript and historical) evidence. Because of this inequity, which was not
hard for objective scholars to see, various aspects of the theory were resisted
strenuously almost immediately after it was published in 1881. This led to wide
argument and confusion among scholars. It was out of this confusion that eclecticism,
that bastard child, was born.
Dr.
Elliott is candid in admitting his own persuasion and motives:
In
view of the present dilemma and discussion about the relative merits of individual
mss., and of ms. tradition, it is reasonable to depart from a documentary study
and to examine the N.T. text from a purely eclectic standpoint.27
R.V.G.
Tasker is also open about the willful nature of eclecticism:
The
fluid state of textual criticism today makes the adoption of the eclectic method
not only desirable but all but inevitable."28
Metzger
is dissatisfied, as are others he names, "with the results achieved by weighing
the external evidence for variant readings" as the cause.29 Epp faults "the
lack of a definitive theory and history of the early text" and the inevitable
"chaotic situation in the evaluation of variant readings in the NT text."30
Colwell too is critical of "manuscript study without a history."31 Eclecticism
confesses that original wording can never be recovered on the basis of external
evidence. It is therefore unwilling to undertake the hard work of reconstructing
the history of the text, feeling that the exercise is futile. Even so, most modern
lower critics do not follow pure eclecticism. Instead they follow Hort.
As a consequence, the two most popular manual editions of the Greek text today,
Nestle-Aland and UBS (United Bible Society), are very little different from the
W-H text.32 The exact same thing is true of the newer versions such as the RSV,
the NEB, etc.
What
is the reason for this? One would think it would be just the opposite? Dr. Epp
has an answer:
One
response to the fact that our popular critical texts are still so close to that
of Westcott-Hort might be that the kind of text arrived at by them and supported
so widely by subsequent criticism is in fact and without question the best attainable
NT text; yet every textual critic knows that this similarity of text indicates,
rather, that we have made little progress in textual theory since Westcott-Hort;
that we simply do not know how to make a definitive determination as to what the
best text is; that we do not have a clear picture of the transmission and alteration
of the text in the first few centuries; and, accordingly, that the Westcott-Hort
kind of text has maintained its dominant position largely by default. Gunther
Zuntz enforces the point in a slightly different way when he says that "the
agreement between our modern editions does not mean that we have recovered the
original text. It is due to the simple fact that their editors . . . follow one
narrow section of the evidence, namely, the non-Western Old Uncials."33 (My
note: Uncials are large, rounded letters used in ancient Latin and Greek manuscripts.)
Clark
and Zuntz have also agreed on an answer: "All are founded on the same Egyptian
recension, and generally reflect the same assumptions of transmission."34
Clark also enlarges on Epp:
.
. . the Westcott-Hort text has become today our textus receptus. We have been
freed from the one only to become captives to the other.... The psychological
chains so recently broken from our fathers have again been forged upon us, even
more strongly.... Even the textual specialist finds it difficult to break the
habit of evaluating every witness by the norm of this current textus receptus.
His mind may have rejected the Westcott-Hort term "neutral," but his
technical procedure still reflects the general acceptance of the text. The basic
problem today is the technical and psychological factor that the Westcott-Hort
text has become our textus receptus.... Psychologically it is now difficult to
approach the textual problem with free and independent mind.... However great
the attainment in the Westcott-Hort text, the further progress we desiderate (My
note: desiderate means to feel the need for.) can be accomplished only when our
psychological bonds are broken. Herein lies today's foremost problem with the
critical text of the New Testament.35
Even though there is such wide-spread uncertainty and dissatisfaction, when the going gets tough must textual critics fall back on W-H. Hort started it and he has been widely accepted, at least early on when over anxious and ambitious men jumped hastily on his band wagon. It is the safe thing to do. Let him take the heat. Stay with the already-established tradition.36 Elliott, in trying to break with the new tradition, constructed a text of the Pastoral Epistles which differs from the Textus Receptus 160 times, differs from W-H 80 times, and contains 65 readings that have not appeared in any other edition. Even though he has not been able to completely spin out of the gravitational pull of W-H, the result is still entirely unique.37 Though not by design, his printed efforts show the extent to which UBS, NEB, etc. have copied the W-H method and results. To comprehend the treachery that is going on we need a good understanding of the W-H lower critical method and its hidden agenda. I am not really the one to give this, but I will piece together as best I can from others.
The importance of this issue has been widely recognized, of course.38 J. H. Greenlee says. "The textual theory of W-H underlies virtually all subsequent work in NT textual criticism."39
Westcott
is associated with this theory and this text so I will give a little on him and
then we will pass him over, for it is unilaterally accepted that he had no real
input or force in this issue.
Brooke
F. Westcott was born in 1825 and died in 1901. In his own right he was one of
the foremost NT scholars of the nineteenth century (I did not say textual critics
-- he was not one of the foremost in that field). A fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge, for several years as a young man, he spent almost two decades as a
master at the famous Harrow School. In 1870, primarily at the instigation of his
close and learned friend, the renowned NT scholar J. B. Lightfoot, he was invited
to return as Regius Professor of Divinity. Here his greatest NT work was done.
He produced famous commentaries on the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and
the Epistle to the Hebrews. His work reflects the best of the Anglican theological
tradition which he did much to help develop. Based on massive historical and theological
learning, his approach could charitably be considered conservative and spiritual.
Even so, at Cambridge as at Oxford, the social gospel had taken deep root and
the influences of Locke and Hume were strong. Westcott was not entirely unscathed.
He was deeply involved in social issues, and was the first president of the Christian
Social Union. Abhorring the raw brutalities of unfettered capitalism, he found
his answer in an organic view of society based on an incarnational model similar
to that of F. D Maurice (shades of socialism and Marxism are seen upon it). Since
Jesus Christ in his incarnation assumed humanity and then glorified it in His
resurrection, it follows then that all humanity is already bound together in Jesus
Christ. The need is for this corporate reality to be recognized. The sacraments
play an important part in this scheme, for the incarnation of Christ is expressed
through the sacraments which sanctify all of human life in community. Through
this emphasis Westcott became one of the progenitors of the famous school of Anglican
Christian Socialists, which would include Stewart Headlam, Scott Holland, Charles
Gore, and William Temple. After twenty years at Cambridge, Westcott replaced Lightfoot
as Bishop of Durham. In the industrial northeast of England his social consciousness,
as well as his intelligence, scholarship, and spirituality, helped to make him
a great bishop. His involvement with W-H was really at Hort's insistence and for
Hort's benefit and need for a solid and reputable image in an endeavor which was
upstart and arrogant by tradition.
It is generally accepted that it was mainly Fenton John Anthony Hort40who was responsible for the development of the theory and the resulting two-volume work.41 And so we discuss the W-H theory as if it were Hort's alone, which it was in practical fact.
In
late 1851(he was 23 at the time), Hort wrote to his friend:
I
had no idea till the last few weeks of the importance of texts, having read so
little Greek Testament, and dragged on with the "villainous" Textus
Receptus . . . Think of that "vile" Textus Receptus leaning entirely
on late MSS.; it is a blessing there are such early ones.42
About a year later, Hort and B. F. Westcott reached final agreement on "the plan of a joint revision of the text of the Greek Testament.43 A short time later, in 1853, Hort told his friend that he would have the new text out "in little more than a year."44 This was far off the mark. It actually took him twenty-eight years. Many feel that this was to his credit and not a mark against him. Perhaps, but it does not change the fact, that though ignorant of Greek texts (he had been on to this matter for about two weeks) and wholly uninformed by his own admission, Hort conceived a personal animosity for the Textus Receptus,45 referring to the grand, lofty and mighty old King James that had served English speaking-people for nearly 300 years, as "vile and villainous", and only because it was based entirely, as he mistakenly thought, on late manuscripts. The scholarly argument that Hort arrived at his theory through unprejudiced intercourse with the facts, is not only in error, it is deliberately fraudulent. The truth is that he set out to deliberately concoct a theory that would justify his adolescent, unprovoked, and baseless, preconceived animosity for the Received Text. This observation was made by Colwell when he said: "Hort organized his entire argument to depose the Textus Receptus."46 And again, "Westcott and Hort wrote with two things constantly in mind; the Textus Receptus and the Codex Vatacanus. But they did not hold them in mind with that passive objectivity which romanticists ascribe to the scientific mind."47 In other words, Hort did not have a dispassionate, scholarly approach to his mission as he later tried to imply. He had the rash, impetuous attitude of an ambitious young man seeking to make a name for himself and feeling that the best way to do it was to bring down the King. But as the years passed and Hort began to season, he realized that he was in for a much more involved struggle than he had thought. To get anywhere with his fervent endeavor, he had to have a convincing history of the text in order to sell his contrived and convoluted theory that only one type of text was to be found in the mass of later manuscripts and why this justified the rejection of this type of text.
At
this point it must be made clear to all that Hort was not a conservative theologian
(if in fact he was not a theologian at all at the beginning of his crusade). Nothing
is more indicative of that than the method that Hort contrived to bring down the
King James (He thought it was one in the same with the Textus Receptus, but this
was not quite accurate). Hort took the position that the New Testament was to
be treated like any other book.48 This means that Hort discounted any divine providence
as having been connected with the work of the 47 "Divines" appointed
by King James and the fact that this had been the Word of God for God's English-speaking
people for nearly 300 years. To Hort it was solely a question of how scholars
had succeeded or failed in keeping the original text pure and how much careless
or tricky and deceitful men had corrupted it accidentally or by design. These
are valid considerations of course, but they are not the only ones, nor the most
significant ones. But in order to bring down the Textus Receptus, Hort had to
separate it from any notion of God's involvement. Under no considerations is this
Orthodox or conservative in its theology. Said Hort:
The
principles of criticism explained in the foregoing section hold good for all ancient
texts preserved in a plurality of documents. In dealing with the text of the New
Testament no new principle whatever is needed or legitimate.49
In
other words, the Bible was like any other ancient book. In order for a valid criticism
to be made of the text, no different procedure or consideration was necessary
and none could be allowed. If others were used, they were illegitimate:
It
will not be out of place to add here a distinct expression of our belief that
even among the numerous unquestionably spurious readings of the New Testament
there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes.50
Here Hort declares that it is not reasonable to make the accusation that the ancient texts had been deliberately falsified and tampered with to promote and defend heresy. All errors were carelessness or presumption or the part of scribes and copyists. Instead of examining the manuscript for its quality or any hint of devious work, one should look to its history and the path down which it descended. This position made two essential positions acceptable, both of which were vital to Hort. It made it possible for him to use readings that had been corrupted by heretics and thereby rejected by the Fathers as unreliable, in piecing together his imaginary "Alexandrian." This is exactly what he was doing, as we shall see, not only through actual changing of the wording by eclectic principle, but manipulation of the theory to suit his fancy. It was a genius stroke on his part that he was able to successfully appeal to the good will and character of the ancients so as to intimidate scholars away from this consideration. It also laid the ground work for Hort to bring into the textual criticism of the New Testament the family tree method, or genealogy (All changes were accidental or presumptuous and therefore of little importance. History of descent was the real issue), a concept long used by students of the classics. It had never been considered with respect to the Holy Bible for everyone knew that the Bible was not just another ancient book. It is absolutely mystifying that Hort was able to put this over on fundamental and conservative Christian thinkers. How desperate this heady and conceited bunch of young seminarians must have been to break the restraints of Orthodox instruction and tradition so they could each get their name on something original and their grubby little Enlightenment-stained hands on the sacred canon of the Holy Writ.
First,
let us get Hort's own definition of the Genealogical Method:
The proper method of Genealogy consists . . . in the more or less complete recovery of the texts of successive ancestors by analysis and comparison of the varying texts of their respective descendants, each ancestral text so recovered being in its turn used, in conjunction with other similar texts, for the recovery of the text of a yet earlier common ancestor.51
Dr.
Colwell has this comment on Hort's use of Genealogy:
As
the justification of their rejection of the majority, Westcott and Hort found
the possibilities of genealogical method invaluable. Suppose that there are copies
of a document and that nine are all copied from one; then the majority can be
safely rejected. Or suppose that the nine are copied from a lost manuscript and
that this lost manuscript and the other one were both copied from the original;
then the vote of the majority would not outweigh that of the minority. These are
the arguments with which W-H opened their discussion of genealogical method .
. . . They show clearly that a majority of manuscripts is not necessarily to be
preferred as correct. It is this a priori possibility which Westcott and Hort
used to demolish the argument based on the numerical superiority of the adherents
of the Textus Receptus.52
Let us be clear on this point: without the genealogical method there is no Hort theory of textual criticism! This arbitrarily concocted method enabled him to reduce the mass of manuscript testimony to four voices -- "Neutral," "Alexandrian," "Western," and "Syrian."
In summary, the "eclecticist" argued that the "genealogy theory" had proven that the great ancient texts did actually exist and the extant (still existing) documents offer no evidence to support the existence of important textual events previously unknown. If such events had transpired they could alter the interpretation of evidence in Hort's theory, but ''genealogy" has shown that they did not.53
The "great ancient texts" are the Neutral, Alexandrian, Western, and Syrian. New studies show the "Neutral" and "Alexandrian" (Hort's invention) have resulted in only one text which is called "Alexandrian." Another of his self-styled designations the "Syrian" is actually determined to be the "Byzantine." Writers (not textual scholars) like to defer to the "Caesarean," though this is without textual verification. At least three major text-types or recensions pervade the thinking of modern lower critics.
Having (in theory of course) ostensibly succeeded in relegating the enormous volume of Western manuscripts into one text, Hort undertakes to prove that this text was inferior and unimportant. In order to do this he conveniently fathered another orphan: "conflation ."
When
manuscripts are relegated to certain text-types because they possess common variations,
you can use this as a launching point to throw out or disallow any ancient manuscript
at will. Virtually every early manuscript, chosen at complete random, can be found
to contain isolated or non-characteristic variations. Hort called these anomalous
readings diagnostic. On this basis he alienated the ones he didn't want from the
text type. He called them mixtures. There was a cunning design to this.
Hort was leading up to his "conflation" theory, which meant a special
kind of mixture. In his words:
The
clearest evidence for tracing the antecedent factors of mixture in texts is afforded
by readings which are themselves mixed or, as they are sometimes called, 'conflate,'
that is, not simple substitutions of the reading of one document for that of another,
but combinations of the readings of both documents into a composite whole, sometimes
by mere addition with or without a conjunction, sometimes with more or less of
fusion.54
In other words, Hort argued that "conflate readings" must be dated later than the texts which contained the wording from which the "conflations" were made.55 Hort offered eight examples56 to prove his point, which was (remember his preconceived goal was to destroy the Textus Receptus and the English King James) the "Syrian" (Byzantine) text had deliberately fused "Neutral" and "Western" variants into one premeditated and subjective text. It was crucial to Hort's theory and purpose, to show the "Syrian" text to be of a more recent date than the "Neutral" and the "Western" and that there be no evidence of an inversion of the relationships between the three "texts." (An "inversion" would be either the "Neutral" or the "Western" text containing a conflation from the other plus the "Syrian.") Since this could not possibly be factually shown, Hort simply claimed that such inversions do not exist. This subjective and unsubstantiated claim has been widely accepted by the world of modern textual criticism.57 To Vincent Taylor it is "very cogent indeed.''58 Kirsopp acknowledges, agreeably, that it is "the keystone of their theory.59
Hort's
inventive genius did not stop with the fabricating of the conflation theory. After
long and involved dialogue with peers and critics alike, he saw the need for more
support for the W-H theory. It was then that he decided to lay claim to the testimony
of the ante-Nicene Fathers. He was not long in coming to a conclusion:
Before
the middle of the third century, at the very earliest, we have no historical signs
of the existence of readings, conflate or other, that are marked as distinctively
Syrian by the want of attestation from groups of documents which have preserved
the other ancient forms of text. This is a fact of great significance, ascertained
as it is exclusively by external evidence, and therefore supplying an absolutely
independent verification and extension of the result already obtained by comparison
of the internal character of readings as classified by conflation.60
John
Chrysostom was the first Orthodox Father to commonly use the "Syrian"
text, according to Hort.61 Hort seized on this as being very important to his
theory, as recognized by Kenyon:
Hort's
contention, which was the corner-stone of his theory, was that readings characteristic
of the Received Text are never found in the quotations of Christian writers prior
to about A.D. 350. Before that date we find characteristically 'Neutral' and 'Western'
readings, but never 'Syrian.' This is in fact decisive;. . . .62
Lake is also taken in.63 It would appear that Hort had achieved his goal with textual critics of the day. But he is edgy and dissatisfied with the status quo. He looks for still another argument against the "Syrian" text, and comes up with the notion of "internal evidence."
Internal
Evidence Readings has two bases: Intrinsic and transcriptional probability. Intrinsic
probability relies upon the author of the text; what reading makes the best sense,
best fits the context, and conforms to the author's style and purpose? Transcriptional
probability has to do with the person who copied the text; what reading is the
result of carelessness or over-judiciousness on the part of the copyist? Hort
is little concerned with inadvertent mistakes. He presumes that deliberate changes
have been made (remember that the Textus Receptus is Vile and Villainous). This
assumption gives Hort all the reason he needs to establish two important lines
of criticism: brevio lectior potior, "the shorter reading is to be preferred".
(on the assumption that scribes were in the common habit of adding material to
the text), and proclivi lectioni praestat ardua, "the harder reading is to
be preferred" (Hort claimed that this was on the assumption that scribes
automatically tried to simplify the text as to its reading lucidity. In fact this
was at the heart of Hort's whole venture, as we shall see later. It has long been
recognized by friend and foe alike that the King James is the loftiest and most
eloquent document in the English language. This was a hidden, but deliberate,
attempt on Hort's part to prejudice critics against the literary magnificence
of King James. It is a commentary, in the final analysis, of the low quality of
the minds and characters of textual scholars that he succeeded so admirably in
this.) On the bases of these contradictory inventions of his, Hort declared the
"Syrian" text to be characterized by "lucidity and completeness,"
"apparent simplicity," "harmonistic assimilation," and as
being "conspicuously a full text."64 By Hart's theory this was an obvious
condemnation that could not be ignored. He went on to say:
In
themselves Syrian readings hardly ever offend at first. With rare exceptions they
run smoothly and easily in form, and yield at once to even a careless reader a
passable sense, free from surprises and seemingly transparent. But when distinctively
Syrian readings are minutely compared one after the other with the rival variants,
their claim to be regarded as the original readings is found gradually to diminish,
and at last to disappear.65
Hort's character assassination of the "Syrian" text and its authors has been largely accepted by textual scholars who have followed him.66 But even after pronouncing the "Syrian" to be eclectic and recent, Hort was still faced with a large problem. What possible explanation was there as to how and why the "Syrian" existed at all if these be the cases? And how did it become all-popular and all-pervasive from the fifth century on? A Church conspiracy, world wide, to revise and streamline the text to rid it of all problems and make it popular was Hort's answer. Only a mind like his could accuse the holy men of the ages of such nefariousness, sacrilege, and blasphemy. This theory was labeled "The Lucianic Recension and the Peshitta:"
Hort
declared that the Syrian text must in fact be the result of a "recension".
In practical fact this means that the text was changed by editors, not scribes
or critics, deliberately and with a specific goal in mind.67
An
authoritative Revision at Antioch . . . was itself subjected to a second authoritative
Revision carrying out more completely the purposes of the first. At what date
between A.D. 250 and 350 the first process took place, it is impossible to say
with confidence. The final process was apparently completed by A.D. 350 or thereabouts.68
Hort's
claim that Lucian (who died in 311) was the ring leader of this vile conspiracy,
was only tentative. But later scholars have picked up on this (as Hort no doubt
counted on them doing) and have became dogmatic. This has also led to the Syriac-Peshitta
text being closely linked to, and treated the same as the so-called "Lucianic
recension." Because the Peshitta does authenticate the "Byzantine"
it was necessary for Hort to date it later than the second and third centuries.
So he made up a late-recension theory for it too. Again later scholars, such as
F. C. Burkitt, out-did Hort and declared unequivocally that Rabbula, Bishop of
Edessa from A.D. 41 1-435, was the author of the revision.69 Both ideas have been
largely accepted by modern lower criticism. A quote from H. C. Thiessen, quite
representative as to content and dogma, bears this out:
This [Peshitta] was formerly regarded as the oldest of the Syrian versions; but Burkitt has shown that it is in reality a revision of the Old Syriac made by Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa, about the year 425. This view is now held by nearly all Syriac scholars.... The text of the Peshitta is now identified as the Byzantine text, which almost certainly goes back to the revision made by Lucian of Antioch about A. D. 300.70
We
have skimmed the basics of the W-H critical theory. Hort achieved his purpose,
that he set out toward. The King James is indeed in general disfavor (thankfully
there is real indication of solid change on this but we do not yet know where
it will go) with modern textual scholars and churchmen, even though most of them
know nothing at all as to why. The answers that I personally have gotten are conceived
in complete intellectual, scholastic, and spiritual vacuums. In addition
to Hort, men like Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Alford had done much to undermine
the position of the TR (Textus Receptus). But it was Westcott and Hort who
stuck the Brutian dagger in the back (but no doubt they were honorable men!).
In so doing they opened the book on the enlightenment era of irreverency, trickery,
and the ascendancy of the intellect of religious men in the Church above the Scriptures
and the Orthodox precept of faith over reason. Writings to this effect are
legion.71 None express it better than Dr. Colwell:
The
dead hand of Fenton John Anthony Hort lies heavy upon us. In the early years of
this century Kirsopp Lake described Hort's work as a failure, though a glorious
one. But Hort did not fail to reach his major goal. He dethroned the Textus Receptus.
After Hort, the late medieval Greek Vulgate was not used by serious students,
and the text supported by earlier witnesses became the standard text. This was
a sensational achievement, an impressive success. Hort's success in this task
and the cogency of his tightly reasoned theory shaped, and still shapes, the thinking
of those who approach the textual criticism of the NT through the English language.72
This explains the nature and extent to which modern, scholars and editors, with their willful versions, have deliberately, with malice aforethought, departed from the Authorized Version (King James Version). They are all based on the W-H theory and text (even the UBS text of the NIV) whereas the AV is essentially based on the Textus Receptus. But has this mania for criticizing the text (arising from increased materials and "wisdom") achieved any good purpose? Is the RSV for instance, a better text, having made use of the manuscripts? Are these "superior principles of textual criticism" really holier than those employed by the translators of the AV?
The
guiding principles that led to the wholesale adoption of the W-H text are based
on two manuscripts, Codices B and Aleph.73 Hort says:
It
is our belief (1) that the readings of K B should be accepted as the true readings
until strong internal evidence is found to the contrary, and (2) that no readings
of B can safely be rejected absolutely. . .
He goes on to say of B and Aleph, "The fullest comparison does but increase the conviction that their preeminent relative purity is likewise approximately absolute, a true approximate reproduction of the text of the autographs."74 One wonders whether the W-H theory and text would ever have seen the light of day had it not been for Codex B. Hort seems to all but admit this in his discussions on genealogy.
The difficulty of recognizing the ancient texts in the Book of Revelation is greater because of the scarcity of documents, and especially the absence or loss of this book from the Vatican MS (B) which is available for nearly all the rest of the New Testament. Here the effectiveness of using a directly genealogical method is greatly hindered.75
The bottom line of the W-H theory, and the original preconceived purpose, was action of the "Syrian" text and an exclusive reliance on the "Neutral" text (a and Aleph). The notion of a "Neutral" text has been discredited since, but the "Syrian" text hangs on. There seems to be a determination not to reconsider the "Syrian" text even though every single one of the arguments Hort used in relegating the Textus Receptus to oblivion has since been discredited. In commenting on the work of Lake and Streeter, as well as his own, J. N. Birdsall declares: "It is evident that all presuppositions concerning the Byzantine text -- or texts -- except texts inferiority to other types, must be doubted and investigated de novo76 (even though its claimed inferiority was based upon those false presuppositions). Recalling what has already been said in the discussion of eclecticism, it seems evident that Clark is right: "textual theory appears to have reached an impasse in our time."77
But the reason why textual scholars will not return to the AV is obvious to Orthodox Christian leaders who reject the "New Papacy" of scholarship. To do so would brand the whole critical-examination movement as questionable and put textual scholars back under the control of the Elders and the Prophets of the Church where they belong!
Hort's purpose was to get rid of the "Syrian" text. This is the only point of his theory that scholars have usually not questioned. By this self-serving neglect (both benign and militant) they have contributed to -- yea, even fostered -- the present confusion and despair. It is certainly time for the Church to question whether Hort was really right about anything. If the scholars will not do it, the prophets will. After all, no segment of religious leadership could hardly be inspired by motives more righteously suspect, employ tactics more academically contradictory and shoddy, or produce a worse result.
Next
we will take up an evaluation and conclusion about the Westcott and Hort text
and method as scholarship.
Hort insisted -- in fact demanded -- that the New Testament be treated exactly like any other book. Is this in any sense orthodox or acceptable? Is there no difference between Plato and the Holy Writ? Can an understanding be arrived at or possessed by the Church of Jesus Christ of the inerrancy and divine origin and intent of the Bible if applying classic literary criticism to it? If the omniscient, omnipotent God gave it to us and the supernatural enemy of the soul has an eternal interest in trying to confuse us about it, what sort of fool would advance such an argument? How then shall the leadership of the Church, in attempting to insure as best as possible the accuracy of translations, be able to determine our responsibilities, for which we are accountable, in contrast to revelation and divine intervention?
Many things could be said (many of which have not been said and need to be) in endeavoring to answer these questions. We will not at all try to exhaust the possibilities. Nor are the things that we will say necessarily the most important in arriving at the final position of orthodoxy. But that is not our goal at the moment. What we want to do for this limited purpose is say some of the things that bear on the W-H theory and how we answer and evaluate it.
For
one thing, we have some historical eyewitness to help establish a position. As
has become evident with increasing regularity, the facts do not support Hort's
invented claims. He declared that "there are no signs of deliberate falsification
of the text for dogmatic purposes." Yet this is not the witness of
the ante-Nicene Church Fathers:
Irenaeus,
Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Eusebius, and many other Church Fathers accused
the heretics of corrupting the Scriptures in order to have support for their special
views. In the mid-second century, Marcion expunged his copies of the Gospel according
to Luke of all references to the Jewish background of Jesus. Tatian's Harmony
of the Gospels contains several textual alterations which lent support to ascetic
or encratite views.78
Gaius,
an ante-Nicene Father (active in the Church from A.D. 175 to 200) identifies Asclepiades,
Theodotus, Hermophilus, and Apollonides. These were heretics who were leaders
of heretical religious groups. They prepared corrupted copies of the Scriptures
and instructed their followers to make as many copies of these doctored up, deliberately
distorted, and fabricated scriptures as they could and circulate them.79 Are we
to believe that Hort was ignorant of the writing of the Alexandrian churchrman
Origen, who said:
Nowadays,
as is evident, there is a great diversity between the various manuscripts, either
through the negligence of certain copyists, or the perverse audacity shown by
some in correcting the text, or through the fault of those, who, playing the part
of correctors, lengthen or shorten it as they please (In Matth. tom. XV, 14; P.
G. XIII, 1293).80
Orthodoxy
itself had men who changed a reading here and there because of sectarian bias.
According to Epiphanius (ii.36), the orthodox themselves struck the words "He
wept" from Luke 19:41 because they were worried that it would detract from
Christ's deity in the eyes of the people.81 This erroneous position of Hort's
has not escaped notice and it has severely shaken the confidence of some of his
earlier followers. Colwell is one who has had a change of heart and position:
The majority of the variant readings in the New Testament were created for theological or dogmatic reasons. Most of the manuals and handbooks now in print, (including mine!) will tell you that these variations were the fruit of careless treatment which was possible because the books of the New Testament had not yet attained a strong position as "Bible." The reverse is the case. It was because they were the religious treasure of the church that they were changed.82
In
other words, it was recognized by early ambitious religionists that the Word of
God controlled everything. If you wanted to make changes in the thinking of the
religious world for whatever reason, you had to first change the text of the Scriptures.
The
New Testament copies differ widely in nature of errors from copies of the classics.
The percentage of variations due to error in copies of the classics is large.
In the manuscripts of the New Testament most variations, I believe, were made
deliberately.83
Matthew
says with emphasis:
The
difference between sacred writings in constant popular and ecclesiastical use
and the work of a classical author has never been sufficiently emphasized in the
textual criticism of the New Testament. Principles valid for the textual restoration
of Plato or Aristotle cannot be applied to sacred texts such as the Gospels (or
the Pauline Epistles). We cannot assume that it is possible by a sifting of 'scribal
errors' to arrive at the prototype or autograph text of the Biblical writer.84
H.
H. Oliver comments on the recent mass defection from Hort's position.85 W. M.
Pickering comments on deliberate changes in the text, contrary to Hort:
The fact of deliberate, and apparently numerous, alterations in the early years of textual history is a considerable inconvenience to Hort's theory for two reasons: it introduces an unpredictable variable which the canons of internal evidence cannot handle, and it puts the recovery of the Original beyond reach of the genealogical method.86
We commented on Hort's definition and attempted use of genealogy in the last chapter.
According to Hort this all worked out very nicely and as anticipated. But textual
scholars, both pro and con, who have focused on this issue, have only been able
to come up (and they have tried, believe me) with one "parent-child"
set of manuscripts among the 5,000 and more that are extant.87 What does
this say about Hort's claim to have carefully and accurately charted the genealogical
descent of the extant MSS? M. M. Parvis gives us the answer in the kind of plain
talk that is warranted at this point: "Westcott and Hort never applied the
genealogical method to the NT MSS . . ."88 Nor is he alone in this
position by any means. Colwell says:
That
Westcott and Hort did not apply this method to the manuscripts of the New Testament
is obvious. Where are the charts which start with the late manuscripts and climb
back through diminishing generations of ancestors to the Neutral and Western texts?
The answer is that they are nowhere. Look again at the first diagram, and you
will see that a, b, c, etc. are not actual manuscripts of the New Testament, but
hypothetical manuscripts. The demonstrations or illustrations of the genealogical
method as applied to New Testament manuscripts by the followers of Hort, the "Horticuli"
as Lake called them, likewise use hypothetical manuscripts, not actual codices.
Note, for example, the diagrams and discussions in Kenyon's most popular work
on textual criticism, including the most recent edition. All the manuscripts
referred to are imaginary manuscripts, and the later of these charts was printed
sixty years after Hort."89
Yet
Hort speaks assuringly of only "occasional ambiguities" in the evidence
for the genealogical relations. He says, confidently:
So
far as genealogical relations are discovered with perfect certainty, the textual
results which follow from them are perfectly certain, too, being directly involved
in historical facts; and any apparent presumptions against them suggested by other
methods are mere guesses against knowledge.90
In
truth he had not demonstrated the existence of any such relations, much less with
"perfect certainty?" Another challenge to genealogy is "mixture."
Colwell comments on this fabricated rule of Hort's:
The
second limitation upon the application of the genealogical method to the manuscripts
of the New Testament springs from the almost universal presence of mixture in
these manuscripts . . . . The genealogical diagram printed above (p. 110) from
Westcott and Hort shows what happens when there is no mixture. When there is mixture,
and Westcott and Hort state that it is common, in fact almost universal in some
degree, then the genealogical method as applied to manuscripts is useless . Without
mixture a family tree is an ordinary tree-trunk with its branches--standing on
the branches with the single trunk--the original text--at the top. The higher
up--or the further back-- you go from the mass of late manuscripts, the fewer
ancestors you have! With mixture you reverse this in any series of generations.
The number of possible diagram combinations defies computation, let alone the
drawing of diagrams.91
Many
textual scholars now agree that the genealogical method never was applied and
furthermore it cannot be applied to the New Testament. Thus, Zuntz says it is
inapplicable."92 Vaganay that it is "useless,"93 and Aland that
it "cannot be applied to the NT."94 Colwell also declares emphatically
"that it cannot be so applied."95 So what does it tell us about Hort's
scholarship, integrity, or honesty, when he brazenly declares:
For
skepticism as to the possibility of obtaining a trustworthy genealogical interpretation
of documentary phenomena in the New Testament there is, we are persuaded, no justification
either in antecedent probability or in experience . . . . Whatever may be the
ambiguity of the whole evidence in particular passages, the general course of
future criticism must be shaped by the happy circumstance that the fourth century
has bequeathed to us two MSS of which even the less uncorrupt must have been of
exceptional purity among its own contemporaries.96
Here Hort has plainly lied! There is no "experience" on which to base these claims and no one knows it better than he. Whether Hort believed that the genealogy-method could someday, somehow be applied, no one can know. But what we do know is that he told textual scholars what he wanted them to believe, (taking advantage of the fact that no one in the world would have guessed that a churchman of Hort's "apparent" stature would even consider doing such a fell deed) when it simply wasn't true in any sense of the word. This is not only not scholarship, it isn't Christian. God in His sovereignty may have allowed it, just as He allowed Israel to have a king, but He certainly would not have approved.
After leaving the genealogical method of Hort in shambles, Dr. Colwell concludes by saying, "Yet Westcott and Hort's genealogical method slew the Textus Receptus. The a priori demonstration is logically irrefutable."97
In
other words, the eloquent, mighty, timeless Word of God for three hundred years,
the King James Bible, has been widely discredited in the Church -- there are children
in Bible schools making fun of it, there are unwitting preachers in pulpits slandering
it -- by an ambitious 23 year old seminarian armed with an animosity, and ambition
to be famous, a diabolical scheme, and a pack of well thought out lies with no
apparent conscience against telling them when they would suit his purpose. In
his own distempered mind, the end justified the means. Here we can see the religious
situation-ethics of Enlightenment theology at work in our best seminaries in 1860-1890.
Even so, Colwell is "much impressed"98by the built-in conviction by
Hort that genealogy was true, whether demonstrated or not. But this is sentimental
nonsense and scholarly effeteism. The a priori demonstration to which Colwell
pays intellectual homage can have no honor when it has been openly and thoroughly
disproved by later experiences and demonstrations to the complete contrary! It
is remarkable that Dr. Colwell would say this when he himself, more than a decade
earlier, acknowledged that the "a priori demonstration" (that he here
calls logically irrefutable99 ) has in fact been refuted:
The
universal and ruthless dominance of the Middle Ages by one text-type is now recognized
as a myth.... The complexities and perplexities of the mediaeval text have been
brought forcibly to our attention by the work of two great scholars: Hermann von
Soden and Kirsopp Lake.... This invaluable pioneer work of von Soden greatly weakened
the dogma of the dominance of a homogeneous Syrian text. But the fallacy (Hort's
and von Soden's fallacy) received its death blow at the hands of Professor Lake.
In an excursus published with his study of the Caesarean text of Mark, he annihilated
the theory that the Middle Ages were ruled by a single recension (Hort's Syrian)
which attained a high degree of uniformity.100
In
truth Hort produced nothing concrete at all. There were no "demonstrations"
of anything that Hort claimed. They were all just assumptions; nothing more than
that. For this reason if critical examination of ancient texts is to continue
as an arm of the conservative Orthodox Church (there is a better-than-good argument
that it should not, in light of all of this) the genealogical method of Hort may
certainly not be used in NT textual scholarship. Says W. M. Pickering,101 "If
it was Hort's genealogical method that 'slew the 'Textus Receptus' then the TR
must still be alive and well -- the weapon was never used." But Hort
claimed to have used it, and the weapon was so fearsome, and he spoke of the 'results'
with such confidence, that he won the day."102 In the face of all of this
it has and is continuing, stubbornly and deliberately by scholars who are motivated
not by spirituality, accuracy, and service to the Church, but academic freedom,
recognition, monetary considerations and above all rebellion against the rules
and conformities of the Orthodox Christian Church:
Since
Westcott and Hort, the genealogical method has been the canonical method of restoring
the original text of the books of the New Testament. It dominates the handbooks.
Sir Frederick Kenyon, C.R. Gregory, Alexander Souter, and A.T. Robertson are a
few of the many who declare its excellence.103
Colwell
issued this warning twenty years ago and has certainly not lost any of its urgency:
Many
years ago I joined others in pointing out the limitations in Hort's use of genealogy
and the inapplicability of genealogical method -- strictly defined -- to the textual
criticism of the NT. Since then many others have assented to this criticism,
and the building of family trees is only rarely attempted. Therefore we might
assume that the influence of Hort's emphasis upon genealogical method is no longer
a threat. But this assumption is false. Hort's brilliant work still captivates
our minds. So when confronted by a reading whose support is minimal and widely
divorced in time and place, we think first and only of genealogical relationships.
Hort has put genealogical blinders on our eyes.104
Lower Criticism continues on as if the genealogical method can be and has been demonstrated. The foundation of all their work is laid to the corner stone of "Genealogy." What does this tell us about their work and their findings?
Hort completely misrepresented Genealogical Evidence. It is simply undeniable that his claimed "results" were a fabrication. If there is no application of the theory to a manuscript, then there are obviously no "results." One modern scholar declared that Hort's Genealogy Theory claims would only have meaning, carry weight, and be acceptable if the textual critic had first indexed every principal Church Father and reduced MSS to families by a laborious process of induction.105 But Hort's claimed results continue to be accepted anyway, by men who are hooked on them and, like Roseau and his mistresses, simply can't give them up. This is acknowledged by George Salmon, who talks about "the servility with which his [Hort] history of the text has been accepted, and even his nomenclature adopted, as if now the last word had been said on the subject of New Testament criticism. . . ."106
The
discovery of the Papyri has given a closer look at manuscripts. Because of this,
textual scholars have been forced to rethink this matter, whether or not they
want to. This new look has led to some disillusionment and grumbling. Parvis says:
We
have reconstructed text-types and families and subfamilies and in so doing have
created things that never before existed on earth or in heaven. We have assumed
that manuscripts reproduced themselves according to the Mendelian law. But when
we have found that a particular manuscript would not fit into any of our nicely
constructed schemes, we have thrown up our hands and said that it contained a
mixed text.107
This
over-generalization with respect to text-types, especially the "Byzantine,"
is opposed by Wikgren.108 Dr. Colwell later agreed:
The
major mistake is made in thinking of the "old text-types" as frozen
blocks, even after admitting that no one manuscript is a perfect witness to any
text-type. If no one MS is a perfect witness to any type, then all witnesses are
mixed in ancestry (or individually corrupted, and thus parents of mixture).109
Zuntz,
after a detailed study of certain portions of B, came to the following conclusions:
One
would like to think that observations like these must put an end to time-honored
doctrines such as that the text of B is the 'Neutral' text or that the 'Western'
text is 'the' text of the second century. If the factors of each of these equations
are meant to be anything but synonyms, they are wrong; if they are synonyms, they
mean nothing.110
Klijn
does not believe that any grouping of manuscripts has significant meaning,111
and adds:
It
is still customary to divide manuscripts into the four well-known families: the
Alexandrian, the Caesarean, the Western, and the Byzantine. This classical division
can no longer be maintained.... If any progress is to be expected in textual criticism
we have to get rid of the division into local texts. New manuscripts must not
be allotted to a geographically limited area but to their place in the history
of the text.112 (So much for Hort's "Alexandrian Text," so far as Klijn
is concerned.)
Metzger
has come to the reluctant but firm conclusion that the Caesarean text is falling
apart before our very eyes.113 Referring to the importance of P4s, he raises the
question, "Was there a fundamental flaw in the previous investigation which
tolerated so erroneous a grouping? Evidently there was. Could it be the mentality
that insists upon thinking in terms of text-types and recensions as recognized
and recognizable entities?"114 Scholars who have made a sincere and tenacious
effort to collate manuscripts consider Hort's groupings to be a mythological invention.115
Perhaps the most careful of these was H. C. Hoskier. After exasperating and exhausting
work on collating Codex 604 and its relevance to other manuscripts, he concludes:
I defy anyone, after having carefully perused the foregoing lists, and after having noted the almost incomprehensible combinations and permutations of both the uncial and cursive manuscripts, to go back to the teaching of Dr. Hort with any degree of confidence. How useless and superfluous to talk of Evan. 604 having a large "Western element," or of its siding in many places with the "neutral text." The whole question of families and recensions is thus brought prominently before the eye, and with space one could largely comment upon the deeply interesting combinations which thus present themselves to the critic. But do let us realize that we are in the infancy of this part of the science, and not imagine that we have successfully laid certain immutable foundation stones, and can safely continue to build thereon. It is not so, and much, if not all, of these foundation must be demolished.116
Many
scholars have taken to the examination of individual text-types. One of these
is Dr. Kenyon. He comments on the "Western" text:
What
we have called the S-text, indeed, is not so much a text as a congeries of various
readings, not descending from any one archetype, but possessing an infinitely
complicated and intricate parentage. No one manuscript can be taken as even
approximately representing the s-text, if by "text" we mean a form of
the Gospel which once existed in a single manuscript.117
Concerning
the Nestle text (25th edition), Dr. Colwell sees no evidence of an identifiable
"Western" group. To the contrary he says that there is a plain denial
of such, "a denial with which I agree."118 Says Dr. Metzger, "So
diverse are the textual phenomena that von Soden was compelled to posit seventeen
sub-groups of witnesses which are more or less closely related to this text."119
To Klijn, "a 'pure' or 'original' Western Text simply did not exist."120
Colwell says of the present-day "Alexandrian" text, which is Hort's
"Neutral" and "Alexandrian":
After
a careful study of all alleged Beta Text-Type witnesses in the first chapter of
Mark, 6 Greek manuscripts emerged as primary witnesses: ¿ B L 33 892 2427. Therefore,
the weaker Beta manuscripts C D 157 517 579 1241 and 1342 were set aside. Then
on the basis of the 6 primary witnesses an 'average' or mean text was reconstructed
including all the readings supported by the majority of the primary witnesses.
Even on this restricted basis the amount of variation recorded in the apparatus
was dismaying. In this first chapter, each of the 6 witnesses differed from the
'average' Beta Text-type as follows: L, nineteen times (Westcott and Hort, twenty-one
times); Aleph, twenty-six times; 2427, thirty-two times; 33, thirty-three times;
B, thirty-four times; and 892, forty-one times. These results show convincingly
that any attempt to reconstruct an archetype of the Beta Text-type on a quantitative
basis is doomed to failure. The text thus reconstructed is not reconstructed but
constructed; it is an artificial entity that never existed.121
Many
modem scholars refute Hort's typing of the "Byzantine" manuscripts.
"The great bulk of the Byzantine manuscripts defies all attempts to group
them," says Zuntz.122 Dr. Clark agrees:
The
main conclusion regarding the Byzantine text is that it was extremely fluid. Any
single manuscript may be expected to show a score of shifting affinities. Yet
within the variety and confusion, a few textual types have been distinguished
. . . These types are not closely grouped like the families, but are the broad
Milky Way including many members within a general affinity.123
The
net result of modem examination is the rejection of all text-types and recensions
by many of the best scholars today. It is becoming clear and clearer that these
were fanciful inventions of Dr. Hort for which he had scholars believing that
he had firm evidence when in fact he had none! The confession of Dr. Aland helps
put it in perspective:
Earlier, we all shared the opinion, in agreement with our professors and in accord with NT scholarship before and since Westcott and Hort, that in various places, during the fourth century, recensions of the NT text had been made, from which the main text-types then developed.... We spoke of recensions and text-types, and if this was not enough, we referred to pre-Caesarean and other text-types, to mixed texts, and so on.
I,
too, have spoken of mixed texts, in connection with the form of the NT text in
the second and third centuries, but I have always done so with a guilty conscience.
For, according to the rules of linguistic philology it is impossible to speak
of mixed texts before recensions have been made (they only can follow them), whereas,
the NT manuscripts of the second and third centuries which have a "mixed
text" clearly existed before recensions were made.... The simple fact that
all these papyri, with their various distinctive characteristics, did exist side
by side, in the same ecclesiastical province, that is, in Egypt, where they were
found, is the best argument against the existence of any text-types, including
the Alexandrian and the Antiochian. . . the increase of the documentary evidence
and the entirely new areas of research which were opened to us on the discovery
of the papyri, mean the end of Westcott and Hort's conception.124
Modem
scholarship is now prepared to reject the notion of a "Byzantine" recension.
With this comes the rejection of the Westcott and Hort theory and the "superior
Alexandrian" text. The variation among "Byzantine" MSS now seem
trivial compared to the more than 3,000 disagreements, many of them very serious
indeed, between Aleph and B, the chief "Alexandrian" MSS. No wonder
the Orthodox Fathers rejected them as unreliable. The unfortunate part is that
they did not destroy them entirely. This whole sad chapter of Hort and his misrepresentations
might then have been avoided.
We
have just read where Dr. Colwell takes the position that an "Alexandrian"
archetype never existed. Epp, after extensive studies of "Neutral,"
"Western," and "midway", has this comment:
Naturally,
this rough sketch should not be understood to mean that the manuscripts mentioned
under each of the three categories above necessarily had any direct connections
one with another; rather, they stand as randomly surviving members of these three
broad streams of textual tradition.125
The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a "Western" or "Alexandrian" text-type as distinct from other types. There are only individual MSS. The integrity of the Bible rests, as it has always rested, with earnest and honest men doing the best they can, undergirded by the power and watchful eye of God who will not permit failure to those who look to divine providence. It does not rest on the tricky, uncertain, expedient, and often dishonest abilities of religious scholarship and particularly lower critics.
In
the preceding chapter we saw that Hort's entire case against the Textus Receptus
rested upon his eight examples. In addition to being ridiculously few in number,
they only appealed to Mark and Luke. To bring the whole New Testament into condemnation
over such trifling "evidence" is worse than foolish, it is simply an
outrage, not only to the Church in general, but to scholarship itself. As Dr.
Colwell saw it:
No text or document is homogeneous enough to justify judgment on the basis of part of its readings for the rest of its readings. This was Hort's Achilles' heel. He is saying here that since these eight conflate readings occur in the Syrian text that text as a whole is a mixed text; if a manuscript or text lacks these readings, it is in its other readings a witness to a text antecedent to mixture....
Westcott and Hort state this fallacy very clearly in their argument for the importance of the evidence of a document as over against readings:
"Where then one of the documents is found habitually to contain these morally certain or at least strongly preferred readings, and the other habitually to contain their rejected rivals, we can have no doubt, first, that the text of the first has been transmitted in comparative purity, and that the text of the second has suffered comparatively large corruption; and, next, that the superiority of the first must be as great in the variations in which Internal Evidence of Readings has furnished no decisive criterion as in those which have enabled Zuntz to form a comparative appreciation of the two texts"
This
would be true if we knew that there was no mixture involved and that manuscripts
and texts were rigorously homogeneous. Everything we have learned since Hort confirms
the opposite position."126
Most textual scholars have assumed the position that there are many other examples that Hort, or any critic, could call up. But if this is true, where and what are they and why has no one at all, in the long intervening years, brought forth a single one? Why doesn't Harrison, or Kenyon, or Lake produce them? The anomalous effort of E. A. Hutton's An Atlas of Textual Criticism will not work here. His "Triple Variant" fails widely to produce the required phenomena necessary to make a text a conflation by Hort's definition. A few cases of possible "Syrian conflation," such as in Matt. 27:41, John 18:40, Acts 20:28 or Rom. 6:12 have also been arbitrary, anomalous, capricious and unconvincingly put forth. By placing the "Syrian" text in 200 A. D., p66 has disallowed these adventures of Hort and required a legitimate, factual, demonstrative interpretation. The simple fact is, since the Hort theory was willful and theoretical from the start, the "conflation theorists" simply cannot meet these legitimate requirements.
But
if Hutton's list were taken seriously, it proves nothing and actually introduces
new problems. The ratio of "Alexandrian-Western-Byzantine" triple variants
to possible "Syrian conflations" is about 100: 1. In other words, for
every instance where the "Syrian" text is possibly built on the "Neutral"
and "Western" texts there are a hundred where it is not. Where did the
"Syrian" get the incredible volumes of material that were required to
make it "eclectic?" After all, it could not have come from the other
texts. This has not escaped the attention of Dr. Burgon, who says:
It
is impossible to 'conflate' in places where B ¿ 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.127
At
this point Hort's dam begins to break. Fatal cracks are opening up all across
the face. One such is the willful claim that inversions do not exist. The problem
of course is that they do. In spite of his claim, Hort actually identified one
of each kind; D conflates in John 5:37 and B~ conflates in Col. 1:12 and 2 Thess.
3:4.128 (Perhaps he felt that scholars did not know the significance of this,
or that they would not notice or not want to notice. If so he was discouragingly
right.) But these that he identified are far from being the only ones. There
are a substantial number of inverted conflations, concerning D, B, and Aleph,
and the "Western" and "Alexandrian". For example, in Revelation
17:4, Aleph has a conflation of the two main cursive bodies for that book. Marcion
conflates the "Byzantine" and "Neutral-Western" readings in
1 Corinthians 14:19! In Bodmer 11, "Syrian" readings are earlier than
"Neutral" readings from 200 A.D.
The
Bodmer John (p66) is also a witness to the early existence of many of the readings
found in the Alpha text-type (Hort's "Syrian"). Strangely enough to
our previous ideas, the contemporary corrections in that papyrus frequently change
an Alpha-type reading to a Beta-type reading (Hort's "Neutral"). This
indicates that at this early period readings of both kinds were known, and the
Beta-type were supplanting the Alpha-type, at least as far as this witness is
concerned.129
Shortly
after publishing his 450 page findings on Codex B, Hoskier draws this pointed,
almost angry, conclusion:
The
maligned Textus Receptus served in large measure as the base which B tampered
with and changed .130
Plainly Hort's case against the "Syrian" (Textus Receptus-King James) is a hoax in light of the evidence. Shakespeare would have called it "much ado about nothing." It is not, it never was, and it never will be a serious theological or critical issue in terms of importance, fact, and reality. Unfortunately it has become a serious issue in the Church because of the ignorance of pretentious churchmen and the propensity to attempt to project wisdom and importance by latching on to anything that is new and different. Most often, as in the case of Hort, those things are in error and the kind of error that does serious harm to the Church and Her mission. If anyone is a skeptic, the sad, farcical melodrama of Hort and his vendetta against the great King James Bible should remove all doubts about an enemy of the soul and his ability to work his purposes through false religionists and unwitting men.
Another
of Hort's arbitrary claims was the witness of the ante-Nicene Fathers. Again,
this deliberate falsehood is still believed by many churchmen today; how many
out of ignorance and how many out of desire is up for anyone's guess. It follows
then that many scholars still hold that John Chrysostom used the "Byzantine"
text,131 and that he was the first one in the history of the Church to have done
so. But this too is commonly discredited by scholars of all persuasion.
Writers
on the text of the New Testament usually copy directly from one another the statement
that Chrysostom used the Byzantine, or Antiochian, text. But if any investigation
is made it appears evident, even from the printed texts of his works, that there
are many important variations in the text he quotes which was evidently not identical
with that found in the MSS of the Byzantine text.132
Metzger
dissents, citing the findings of Geerlings and New.
It
has often been stated by textual scholars that Chrysostom was one of the first
Fathers to use the Antiochian text. This opinion was examined by Jacob Geerlings
and Silva New in a study based on evidence which, in default of a critical edition,
was taken from Migne's edition of Chrysostom's opera. Their conclusions are that
"Chrysostom's text of Mark is not that of any group of manuscripts so far
discovered and classified.... His text of Mark, or rather the text which can faintly
be perceived through his quotations, is a 'mixed text,' combining some of the
elements of each of the types which had flourished before the end of the fourth
century."133
They
say further: "No known manuscript of Mark has the text found in Chrysostom's
homilies, or anything approaching it. And probably no text which existed
in the fourth century came much nearer to it."134 They did a collation
of Chrysostom's text and observe concerning it:
The
number of variants from the Textus Receptus is not appreciably smaller than the
number of variants from Westcott and Hort's text. This proves that it is no more
a typical representative of the late text (von Soden's K) than it is of the Neutral
text.135
And
is it any more factual or in keeping with the findings to say that Origen used
the "Neutral" text?
It
is impossible to reproduce or restore the text of Origen. Origen had no settled
text. A reference to the innumerable places where he is upon both sides of the
question, as set forth in detail herein, will show this clearly. Add the places
where he is in direct opposition to ¿ and B, and we must reconsider the whole
position.136
Many
modern textual scholars have had to come to this position. Zuntz is one of the
more weighty:
The
insuperable difficulties opposing the establishment of 'the' New Testament text
of Origen and Eusebius are well known to all who have attempted it.... Leaving
aside the common difficulties imposed by uncertainties of the transmission, the
incompleteness of the material, and the frequent freedom of quotation, there is
the incontestable fact that these two Fathers are frequently at variance; that
each of them quotes the same passage differently in different writings; and that
sometimes they do so even within the compass of one and the same work.... Wherever
one and the same passage is extant in more than one quotation by Origen or Eusebius,
variation between them is the rule rather than the exception.137
Dr. Metzger lends the great weight of his findings: "Origen knows of the existence of variant readings which represent each of the main families of manuscripts that modern scholars have isolated."138 (That includes the "Byzantine.') Edward Miller finds that Origen chose the Traditional Text 460 times while siding with the "Neologian" text 491 times.139 (The "Neologian"140 text comprehends both "Neutral" and "Western" readings. The "Traditional Text" is Hort's "Syrian" text.)
In the face of all this it is a startling thing--for which we can simply find no justification--that Hort should have declared: "On the other hand his quotations to the best of our belief exhibit no clear and tangible traces of the Syrian text".141
Hort
further declared that Irenaeus relied exclusively on the "Western" text.
Again, scholarship disputes this self-serving pronouncement. Miller says that
Irenaeus sided with the Traditional Text 63 times and with the "Neologian"
text 41 times,142 and adds:
Hilary
of Poictiers is far from being against the Traditional Text, as has been frequently
said: though in his commentaries he did not use so Traditional a text as in his
De Trinitate and his other works. The texts of Hippolytus, Methodius, Irenaeus,
and even of Justin, are not of that exclusively Western character which Dr. Hort
ascribes to them. Traditional readings occur almost equally with others in Justin's
works, and predominate in the works of the other three.143
Hoskier
challenges the notion that anything whatsoever has been proved by Hort in the
later mss. claims. He questions the meaning of Hippolytus:
Let us take another most interesting witness, viz. Hippolytus, who, like Lucifer, frequently quotes at such length from both Old and New Testaments that it is absolutely beyond question that he was copying from his exemplar of the Scriptures. Hippolytus cites 1 Thess. iv. 13-17, 2 Thess. ii. 1-12, in full. In the face of these quotations it is seen how loosely Turner argues when he says "Hort was the last and perhaps the ablest of a long line of editors of the Greek Testament, commencing in the eighteenth century, who very tentatively at first, but quite ruthlessly in the end, threw over the LATER in favour of the EARLIER Greek MSS, and that issue will never have to be tried again."
But
permit me to ask what Mr. Turner means by this lighthearted sentence. What does
he mean by earlier and later Manuscripts? He cannot mean that Hippolytus' manuscript
was later than that of B? Yet, allow me to state that in the these long passages,
comprising twelve consecutive verses from one epistle and four from the side of
what Turner would call the "later" MSS.144
Dr. Miller finds that the Traditional Text enjoyed a 2:1 advantage over the "Neologian" before Origen. If Justin Martyr, Heracleon, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian are taken into consideration the advantage of the Traditional Text drops to 1.33:1. From Origen to Macarius Magnus it is 1.24:1 while from Macarius to 400 A.D. it is up to 2:1.145
Dr.
Miller has understood the seriousness of Hort's implications as well as anyone
and has phrased it, for one place, in the following cite:
It
is evident that the turning point of the controversy between ourselves and the
Neologian school must lie in the centuries before St. Chrysostom. If, as Dr. Hort
maintains, the Traditional Text not only gained supremacy at that era but did
not exist in the early ages, then our contention is vain.... On the other hand
if it is proved to reach back in unbroken line to the time of the Evangelists,
or to a period as near to them as surviving testimony can prove, then Dr. Hort's
theory of a 'Syrian' text formed by recension or otherwise just as evidently falls
to the ground.146
Miller was a thorough and formidable scholar and, along with Burgon, he plumbed the depths of the testimony of the ante-Nicene Fathers as much as anyone has and perhaps, from a practical point of view, as much as anyone can or will. His findings are in the light of Burgon's massive index of 86,489 citations of the Fathers, from the New Testament. He says:
As
to the alleged absence of readings of the Traditional Text from the writings of
the ante-Nicene Fathers, Dr. Hort draws largely upon his imagination and his wishes.
The persecution of Diocletian is here also the parent of much want of information.
But is there really such a dearth of these readings in the works of the Early
Fathers as is supposed?147
I made a toilsome examination for myself of the quotations occurring in the writings of the Fathers before St. Chrysostom, or as I defined them in order to draw a self-acting line, of those who died before 400 A.D., with the result that the Traditional Text is found to stand in the general proportion of 3:2 against other variations, and in a much higher proportion upon thirty test passages. Afterwards, not being