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THE REVISERS

HE GREEK TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

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OXFORD: BY E. PICKARD HALL. M. A., AND J. H. PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

A BOLD assault has been made In recent numbers of the Quarterly Review upon the whole fabric of criticism which has been built up during the last fifty years by the patient labour of successive editors of the Greek Testament. The subject of the articles to which we refer is the Revised Version ; their undis- guised purpose is to destroy the credit of that Version. The first article is entitled ' The New Greek Text/ the second ' The New English Version :' in both, however, textual questions are discussed, in the first textual questions only. By the ' New Greek Text' the Reviewer must be taken to mean the choice of readings made by the Revisers, as they did not con- struct, or undertake to construct, a continuous and complete Greek text. This ' New Greek Text' (for we will not insist on a verbal question) he pronounces ' entirely undeserving of confidence.' He assails with especial vehemence Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort, whom he represents as the chief guides of the Revisers in this department. He condemns in the strongest terms the edition of the Greek Testament ^ which was pub- lished last year by these two Professors : — a work, we

^ The New Testament in the original Greek— the text revised by Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D., and Fenton John Anthony Hort, D.D. Cambridge and London : Macmillan and Co. 1881.

B 2

4 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.

must observe, wholly Independent of the Revision In its inception and In Its execution. He does not hesi- tate to stigmatise the text printed In that edition as ' a text demonstrably more remote from the Evangelic verity than any which has ever yet seen the light.' The Professors need no defender. An elaborate statement of their case is contained In the second volume of their Greek Testament, which was pub- lished before the Reviewer came into the field, al- though it appeared two or three months later than the first volume. The Reviewer censures their text : in neither article has he attempted a serious examination of the arguments which they allege In Its support.

We do not intend to reply to these articles in detail. To follow the Reviewer through his criticisms, and to show how often they rest ultimately (whether aimed at the ' New Greek Text ' or at the ' New English Ver- sion') upon the notion that it Is little else than sacri- lege to impugn the tradition of the last three hundred years, would be a weary and unprofitable task. There is something, moreover, in his tone which makes con- troversy with him difficult. Silence is the best reply to flouts and gibes. But the questions which are connected with the Greek text of the New Testament are so im- portant, and lie so far out of the track of the ordinary reader, that we cannot allow the Reviewer s observa- tions upon this subject to remain wholly unanswered.

First of all, we desire to call attention to the fact which we mentioned at the outset. The Reviewer's attack is not confined to positions occupied exclusively by the Revisers. His fire Includes in its range a multitude of other scholars also. Some of these he censures by name ; others he does not name at all, or names as though he believed them to share his

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 5

own opinions. A single illustration of this statement will suffice. The Reviewer has devoted five pages to the famous diversity of reading in i Tim. iii. i6. He employs his heaviest artillery against the reading (o? €<pai'€pcoO}]) which the Revisers have adopted in this verse. It would be natural to suppose that here at all events the Revisers (with the two Cambridge Pro- fessors) stand alone. In point of fact, however, the same reading is found in the critical editions of Gries- bach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles ; it was adopted by the late Dean Alford in his Greek Testa- ment ; it was adopted by Bishop ElHcott in his Com- mentary on the Pastoral Epistles, after a personal inspection of the Alexandrian manuscript ; it was adopted by the Bishop of Lincoln (then Canon Words- worth) in his Commentary ; it was adopted again by the Bishop of London in a volume of the Speaker's Commentary which appeared last year. Nor is it matter of surprise that the Reviewers projectiles should strike down friends and foes alike. While he denounces by name Lachmann and Tischendorf and Tregelles, and describes the ancient authorities which they deemed of most importance as *a little handful of suspicious documents,' it would be difficult to find a recent English commentator of any consider- able reputation who has not been influenced, more or less consistently, by one or other of these three editors, or by the evidence which they have brought forward.

We have called these articles an assault on the criticism of the last fifty years. We might call them without injustice an assault on two centuries of cri- ticism. If the Reviewer is right, Mill and Bentley at the beginning of the eighteenth century (not to men- tion any of the critics who came after them) were in

6 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.

pursuit of an ignis fatuus. Mill, the founder (so far as the Greek Testament is concerned) of textual criticism, did not construct a new text himself, but provided materials for the use of others. It was his hope, as he tells us ^ in his Prolegomena, that the large stock of evi- dence which he had accumulated and had placed at the foot of his pages would enable those who used his book to see without difficulty what was the genuine reading of the Sacred Text in almost every passage. Bentley proposed to construct a new Greek text which should be founded exclusively on the most ancient documents then accessible. The plan which he sketched was the very plan which Lachmann carried out in the present century with better materials than Bentley could have obtained. According to the Reviewer there was no room for such hopes or such an ambition. Mill and Bentley had in their hands a text — the Texttcs Receptus — which, though not absolutely perfect, needed at all events but little emendation.

Our concern, however, is not so much with the Reviewer as with his readers. The main task which we propose to ourselves is twofold : — first to supply accurate information, in a popular form, concerning the Greek text of the New Testament ; secondly to establish, by means of the information so supplied, the soundness of the principles on which the Revisers have acted in their choice of readings, and by con- sequence the importance of the 'New Greek Text' (as the Reviewer calls it) of which the Revised Version is a translation. For a full and plain exhibition of this * New Greek Text ' we must refer our readers to the Greek Testaments edited for the University Presses

^ HKAINH AIAGHKH. Novum Testamentum Studio et Lahore Joannis Millii. Oxonii, mdccvii. Prol. p. clxvii b.

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 7

by Archdeacon Palmer at Oxford^ and Dr. Scrivener at Cambridge ^.

I. In reference to the first part of this task, It is absolutely necessary to begin with what is simple and easily understood, and thence to pass onward to the more difficult questions which will present themselves at each successive stage of our progress. Textual criti- cism, it must not be disguised, has become highly technical and intricate, and it is impossible for any one to discuss such a subject properly without a consider- able amount of carefully-digested knowledge as to the facts and details which have been slowly and labo- riously ascertained during the last fifty years.

I. We begin then with a broad question in which every intelligent Christian reader must needs feel him- self especially interested. What is the nature and literary history of that Greek text which presumably underlies our Authorised Version, and which is popularly known by the name of the Received Text ? What is that text, and whence was it derived ? When this question has been answered, we will proceed to consider what, by the nature of the case, would seem to be its critical value, or, in other words, how near it may be considered to approach to the original documents traced, or dic- tated, by Evangelists and Apostles. Those original documents it will be convenient to designate by a single term : we will henceforth entitle them the Ori- ginal Text or Sacred Autograph.

^ H KAINH AIAGHKH. The Greek Testament with the Readings adopted by the Revisers of the Authorised Version. Oxford : at the Clarendon Press. 1881.

* The New Testament in the original Greek according to the Text followed in the Authorised Version, together with the Variations adopted in the Revised Version. Edited for the Syndics of the Cambridge Uni- versity Press by F. H. A. Scrivener, M.A., D.C.L., LL.D., Prebendary of Exeter and Vicar of Hendon ■. Cambridge : at the University Press. 1 88 1 .

8 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.

The Greek text which was used by the Translators of 1611 appears, almost certainly, to have been the fifth edition of Beza's Greek Testament, published in the year 1598. The variations from this edition which are to be traced in the Authorised Version are only about a hundred and ninety in all, and are, compara- tively, of but little importance. The reader will find them set down in the Appendix to that edition of the Greek Testament which we have already mentioned as edited by Dr. Scrivener in 1881 for the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press.

This fifth edition of Beza, which thus becomes our starting-point, may be considered, in common with the other editions of the same learned editor, to have been for the most part a reproduction of the third edition of the famous French printer Robert Estienne (Stephanus), which appeared in 1550, and which has been treated as the standard text of the Greek Testa- ment in this country till very recent times. Both Stephanus and Beza had access to manuscripts, of which two or three at least ^ were of considerable critical value, but of these neither editor made any real or consistent use. The beautiful folio of 1550 at which we have now arrived exhibits indeed in its margin a regular collection of various readings, but they formed little more than the embroidery of a handsome page— though it was an embroidery which gave such offence to the doctors of the Sorbonne^ that the great printer thought it convenient to leave his native city that same year, and to spend the remaining nine years of his honourable life in practical exile at Geneva.

* See Scrivener's Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, pp. 112, 124, 150 (ed. 2). ^ See Nouvelle Biographic G^ndrale (Art. Estienne), vol. v, p. 513.

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 9

This edition of Stephanus leads us another step backward to the fourth and best ^ edition of Erasmus, pubHshed in 1527; and this again to his first edition, pubhshed in 1516, which has the distinction of being the first pubhshed (though not the first printed^) edition of the New Testament in Greek.

On that edition, as the ultimate basis of the Re- ceived Text, the first parent of all the editions which were used by English Translators or Revisers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we may pause to make a few critical comments. It appeared in March 15 16 from the printing-press of John Froben of Basle, little more than ten months from the time when Froben first proposed the undertaking to Eras- mus. The manuscripts from which it was printed (two of which retain to this day the printer's marks and the corrections of the hurried ^ editor) have been all identified, and are all, we believe, with one exception, now to be found in the public library of Basle. The manuscripts principally used were as follows : — for the Gospels a manuscript of the fifteenth century, for the Acts and Epistles a manuscript of the thirteenth or fourteenth. For the Apocalypse, as is now well known, Erasmus had only a mutilated manuscript, said to be of the twelfth century, in which the text is so intermixed with the Commentary of Andrew of Csesarea, that it would have been no matter

' The fifth and last edition, published in 1535, differs from the fourth, according to Mill, only in four places.

"^ The New Testament which is contained in the Complutensian Polyglott was printed in 15 14, but not published till 1522.

^ Wetstein (Prolegomena in N. T. p. 124) says, ' Ouis ipsum eo adegit, ut festinaret .'" He of course knew quite well that good John Froben and Erasmus had one great and common anxiety, to get their book out before the appearance of the splendid Complutensian edition.

lO THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.

of wonder if the representation of it in his first edition had been even worse than it actually was. This manuscript was rediscovered \ twenty years ago, in the library of the Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein, and has been identified beyond all reasonable doubt.

It is proper to add that Erasmus appears to have occasionally referred to two other manuscripts, one of which has been ascertained to be of considerable interest : this last, however, to quote the words of Dr. Scrivener ^, he ' but little used or valued.' The same learned and accurate writer describes ^ the manuscript on which Erasmus relied for the Gospels as 'an inferior manuscript.' Michaelis, he says, went so far as to ex- press an opinion that the two Rhenish florins originally given for it by the monks of Basle were more than it was worth. Dr. Scrivener adds, however, that some at least of the worst errors which Erasmus made in his first edition cannot equitably be referred to this unsatisfactory document.

We have entered into these details, because we desire that the general reader should know fully the true pedigree of that printed text of the Greek Testa- ment which has been in common use for the last three centuries. It will be observed that its documentary origin is not calculated to inspire any great confidence. Its parents, as we have seen, were two or three late manuscripts of little critical value, which accident seems to have brought into the hands of their first editor.

But we shall not do it full justice if we stop here. The text which these manuscripts substantially repre-

^ Scrivener, Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, p. 245. 2 Ibid. p. 165. 3 ibjd^

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. I I

sent has claims on our consideration which must not be passed over in silence. Those claims have been brought out by the most recent opponents of the Re- ceived Text more clearly and forcibly than by any of its defenders. The manuscripts which Erasmus used differ, for the most part, only in small and insignificant details from the bulk of the cursive manuscripts, — that is to say the manuscripts which are written in running hand and not in capital or (as they are technically called) uncial letters. The general character of their text is the same. By this observation the pedigree of the Received Text is carried up beyond the individual manuscripts used by Erasmus to a great body of manuscripts of which the earliest are assigned to the ninth century.

More than this : it may be traced back on good grounds to a still higher antiquity. What those grounds are we will state in the words of Dr. Hort ^ himself : —

* A glance at any tolerably complete apparatus criticus of the Acts or Pauline Epistles reveals the striking fact that an overwhelming proportion of the variants common to the great mass of cursive and late uncial Greek MSS are identical with the readings fol- lowed by Chrysostom (ob. 407) in the composition of his Homilies. The coincidence furnishes evidence as to place as well as time ; for the whole of Chrysostom's life, the last ten years excepted, was spent at Antioch or in its neighbourhood. Little research is needed to show that this is no isolated phenomenon : the same testimony, subject to minor qualifications unimportant for the present purpose, is borne by the scattered

^ Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek, Introduction, § 130, pp. 91 sqq.

12 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.

quotations from these and other books of the New Testament found in his voluminous works generally, and in the fragments of his fellow-pupil Theodorus of Antioch and Mopsuestia, and in those of their teacher Diodorus of Antioch and Tarsus. The fundamental text of late extant Greek MSS generally is beyond all question identical with the dominant Antiochian or Grseco-Syrian text of the second half of the fourth century.'

This remarkable statement completes the pedigree of the Received Text. That pedigree stretches back to a remote antiquity. The first ancestor of the Re- ceived Text was, as Dr. Hort is careful to remind us, at least contemporary with the oldest of our extant manuscripts, if not older than any one of them.

2. At this point a question suggests itself which we cannot refuse to consider. If the pedigree of the Re- ceived Text may be traced back to so early a period, does it not deserve the honour which is given to it by the Quarterly Reviewer ? With him it is a standard by comparison with which all extant documents, how- ever indisputable their antiquity, are measured. It is in his mind when he censures such documents for ' omissions,' ' additions,' ' substitutions,' and the like. He estimates^ the comparative purity and impurity of manuscripts written in the fourth, fifth, and sixth cen- turies by the number of ' deflections from the Received Text ' which may be found in each of them. Why should not we do the same ?

One answer to this question is obvious. The high lineage of the Received Text does not establish its purity. According to all experience of transcription, corruptions must have come in at every step in its long

^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 313.

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK XEXT. 1 3

pedigree. It is only in the general character of their text that the bulk of the cursive manuscripts agree with the Antiochian Fathers. It is only in general character that the Received Text ao^rees with the bulk

o

of the cursive manuscripts. It was immediately de- rived, as we have seen, from inferior representatives of that class. It contains, moreover, false readings which the manuscripts from which it was printed do not justify. A notable instance is the insertion con- cerning the Three Heavenly Witnesses in the First Epistle of S. John, which is unknown to almost all Greek manuscripts, late or early.

But fatal as this answer would be to the contention that the Received Text deserves to be treated as a standard, it does not go to the bottom of the contro- versy with which we are concerned. We have another answer to give, and an answer of a very different character. If there were reason to suppose that the Received Text represented verbatim et literatim the text which was current at Antioch in the days of Chrysostom, it would still be impossible to regard it as a standard from which there was no appeal. The reason why this would be impossible may be stated briefly as follows. In the ancient documents which have come down to us, — amongst which, as is well known, are manuscripts written in the fourth century, — we possess evidence that other texts of the Greek Testament ex- isted in the age of Chrysostom materially different from the text which he and the Antiochian writers generally employed. Moreover, a rigorous examina- tion of extant documents shows that the Antiochian or (as we shall henceforth call it with Dr. Hort) the Syrian text did not represent an earlier tradition than those other texts, but was in fact of later origin than

14 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.

the rest. We cannot accept it, therefore, as a final standard. There are materials in our hands which enable us to approach nearer to the Sacred Autograph than it would carry us.

3. We are aware, of course, that for the general reader this brief statement will require expansion and illustration. It will be necessary for us to give some account of the extant documents upon which all critics, to whatever school they may belong, depend for the ascertainment of the Greek text of the New Testa- ment, and to indicate, in some sufficient manner, the nature of the examination to which these documents must be subjected, and the results to which such an examination will conduct the student. Our task will involve us at once in matters of detail : but it is a task from which we cannot shrink. We shall endeavour to be as brief and plain as the subject permits.

4. The documentary sources of the Greek Text are of three kinds ^ : —

{a) Manuscripts, uncial (or written in capital letters), and cursive (or written in running hand), of the whole or parts of the New Testament.

Of uncial manuscripts we have about ninety, nearly two-thirds of which are copies (whole or fragmentary) of the Gospels. Of cursive manuscripts we have nearly a thousand. In these estimates we take no account of Lectionaries or Service-books containing Lessons from Scripture, known to the learned as Evangelisteria and Praxapostoli'^,

With the exception of one lately-discovered manu-

* See Westcott and Hort, Introduction, §§ 97 sqq., pp. 73 sqq.

"^ For the description of the manuscripts enumerated below and in subsequent pages we must refer the reader to the current handbooks, and especially to Dr. Scrivener's full and accurate Introduction to the "Criticism of the New Testament.

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 1 5

script, all the more important uncials have been pub- lished in continuous texts. The various readings of the others may be found at the foot of the page in the Greek Testaments of Tischendorf and Tregelles. Two of these uncials (B and k) belong to the middle of the fourth century; four (A, C, and the fragments Q and T,) to the fifth century; eight (D, 2, Dg, Eg, and the fragments N, P, R, Z,) to the sixth century; the remainder to the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, — those of the ninth and tenth centuries being nearly as numerous as those of all the foregoing centuries together.

The cursive manuscripts extend from the ninth cen- tury to the sixteenth. They are far less completely known than the uncials. According to Dr. Hort's computation, 'the full contents of about 150 cursives, besides Lectionaries, may be set down as practically known.' A much larger number have been more or less perfectly collated. The Reviewer expresses a desire, with which we heartily sympathise, to see still more work done in the same direction. But there is no reason to suppose that the labours of collators, although they should collate, as he desires, ' 500 more copies of the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, and at least 100 of the ancient Lectionaries \' would disturb in any appreciable degree the conclusions of textual critics. We know already, from a tolerably large induction, that the bulk of the cursives represent upon the whole the Syrian text, while a small minority represent, more or less consistently, texts of an earlier character. If all the cursives were collated, it is in the highest de- gree improbable that the proportion would be reversed, although we might expect to obtain a few more wit-

^ Quarterly Review, No. 305, p. 6.

1 6 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT,

nesses against the Syrian text. On the other hand, that text would gain nothing in point of authority by the addition of 500 newly collated cursive witnesses in its favour. Such a discovery would be no more than a further verification of a conclusion which is regarded by critics as established sufficiently already.

{d) Versions, i. e. early translations of the New Testament into different languages, of which the most Important are the Latin, the Syriac, and the Egyptian. The Latin Version exists in two forms ; the earliest, which can be traced back to the second century and bears usually the name of the Old Latin, and the later form which owes Its existence to the revising labours of Jerome about a.d. 383 and is known as the Vulgate. The Syriac Version exists also in what may be called two forms \ an earlier and a later. Of the earlier, or Old Syriac, we have, unfortunately, only an inadequate representation in the imperfect copy of the Gospels found by Dr. Cureton, and assigned to the fifth cen- tury ; of the later, or Syriac Vulgate, we have the well- known Peshito (or ' Simple ') Version, which bears in- disputable traces of being a revision of the earlier (like the Latin Version of Jerome), and was executed probably in the latter part of the third or in the fourth century. The Egyptian Versions are three : the Mem- phitic, or Version of Lower Egypt, containing the whole of the New Testament; the Thebaic or Sa- hidic, or Version of Upper Egypt, of which only con- siderable fraorments remain ; and the Bashmuric, of which only about 330 verses from S. John's Gospel and the Epistles of S. Paul have as yet been dis- covered.

'} In this popular sketch we do not notice either the Philoxenian Version or what is usually called the Jerusalem Syriac.

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. I7

Beside these great Versions we have the Gothic Version, containing, with many gaps, the Gospels and the Epistles of S. Paul, and dating from the middle of the fourth century ; the Armenian Version made early in the fifth century, but represented by manuscripts of late date, and in itself bearing some traces of having been accommodated to the Latin Vulgate ; and the iEthiopic Version, dating, according to Professor Dillmann, from the fourth century, but, in its present forms, so confused and unequal, and represented by such late manuscripts, that it is practically of very little critical use.

(c) Quotations from the writings of the Greek and Latin Fathers, and especially comments made by them on differences of reading.

On the importance of this source of critical informa- tion it is hardly necessary to enlarge. The evidence, however, derived from these ancient writers requires to be carefully sifted before it is used ; and this for two very sufficient reasons, which have been stated by Dr. Hort^ with great clearness and cogency : — first, the tendency of transcribers to alter the text in con- formity with some current text of the New Testament which was familiar to themselves ; secondly, the loose way in which the writers themselves often refer to the Sacred Text, and the consequent difficulty of de- termining in each case whether we have direct quota- tion or only general allusion.

The Ante-NIcene Fathers are, obviously, of very great importance ; but the only period which is ade- quately represented in the writings that have come down to us is, as Dr. Hort^ notices, the period extend- ing from A.D. 175 to A.D. 250. During that period we

^ Westcott and Hort, Introduction, § 156, p. no. 2 lb. § 158, p. 112.

C

1 8 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.

have the remains of four eminent Greek writers, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement, and Orlgen. We have also, of the Latins, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Novatlan. The Greek Fathers subsequent to Euseblus must plainly be deemed of secondary importance. The quotations in their works exhibit usually such a mixture of different textual traditions that their evidence for or against any reading stands at best on no higher level than the evidence of inferior manuscripts in the uncial class.

5. These then are the materials out of which the text of the Greek Testament has to be constructed; and these materials, as we have already said, furnish evidence of the existence of several distinct types or characters of text besides that type which we call Syrian. It is thought now that they are separable into four groups, each group disclosing a primary text of very great antiquity, to the existence and character of which all the members of the group bear in varying degrees their individual testimony. The process by which this vast mass of documents has been reduced to such simple and manageable dimensions has been going on almost from the very earliest days of sacred criticism. From the year 1716, at all events, when Bentley was corresponding with Wetstein, down to the year 1881, when the elaborately-constructed Text and exhaustive Critical Introduction of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort were given to the world, the problem how to master and use properly the accumulating mate- rials has been that which each generation of critics has been labouring to solve, and labouring (we may fear- lessly say) with steadily increasing success. When we remember how Bentley's hints and prelusive sugges- tions of 1 7 16 and 1720 were expanded by Bengel in

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 1 9

1734, recruited by the materials of Wetstein In 1751, developed and systematised by Griesbach in 1796, practically set forth by Lachmann in the text of his Greek Testament of 1831, and recognised, illustrated, and solidified by Lachmann's great successors Tis- chendorf and Tregelles in our own days, we may cer- tainly feel that we have now reached firm critical ground, and that what were once surmises and theories have become acknowledged facts and verified and ac- cepted principles.

6. The great contribution of our own times to this mastery over materials has been the clearer statement of the method of genealogy, and, by means of it, the corrected distribution of the great mass of documentary evidence which we have just placed in outline before the reader. For the full explanation of the method of genealogy we must refer the reader to the Introduction which we have mentioned as a special feature in the Greek Testament of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort. That method, it will be observed, involves vast re- search, unwearied patience, and great critical sagacity, and will therefore find but little favour with those who adopt the easy method of making the Received Text a standard, or of using some favourite manuscript, or some supposed power of divining the Original Text, as the only necessary agents for correcting the Received Text in the few places where correction is admitted to be necessary. The broad principle of the method is by rigorous investigation of the documents, and close study of their relations to each other, to separate those which can by analysis be proved to owe their origin to some common exemplar, lost or extant; and to con- tinue this process in reference to the ancestral ex- emplars, until the genealogical tree of transmission is

c 2

20 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.

completed, and a point reached where the particular character of text which belongs to the whole family of documents can be traced no further. We have already given a rough illustration of this method in the pedi- gree of the Received Text, which we have found to stretch backward beyond the days of Chrysostom and to link that text to * the dominant Antiochian or Grseco- Syrian text of the second half of the fourth century.'

7. The application of this method has conducted Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort to the following results, all of which, let it be observed, rest upon a searching examination into the contents and character of existing documents, and a severe and rigorous induction from the facts which that examination has brought to light.

Largest^ In bulk of all the groups, into which the documentary authorities for the text of the New Testament are separable, is a group which includes A (the Codex Alexandrinus of the British Museum) in the Gospels but not In other books of the New Testa- ment, the later uncials, the mass of the cursives, the Versions of the fourth century and of later centuries, and the Antiochian writers of the fourth century. We m.ight add perhaps, roughly, the majority of the post-Nicene Greek Fathers, although we find^ in them, as Dr. Hort observes, ' infinitely varying combina- tions of all the ancient forms of text' The author- ities above mentioned present to us. In a more or less pure form, the text which Dr. Hort calls Syrian. He considers this text to have been the result of a de- liberate recension. The sources from which it appears to have been derived are certain other texts, the existence of which is attested by the remainder of our

^ See Westcott and Hort, Introduction, §§ 185-195, pp. 132 sqq. 2 Ibid. §§ 193, 223, pp. 140, 161.

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 21

documentary authorities. We recognise in this Syrian text all the features of a studied combination of various elements, — in short, of an eclectic text. It is copious in matter, rich in connecting particles, smooth, lucid, and complete, but (as might be expected) deficient in vigour when compared with the texts out of which it was formed. This Syrian text, after a period of con- fusion during which different forms of text were often blended together in manuscript copies of Scripture and in the writings of the Fathers, obtained at last the supremacy. It became dominant at Antioch, and passed from Antioch to Constantinople. Once estab- lished there, it soon vindicated its claim to be the New Testament of the East. Under the form of the Texttcs Receptus, or Received Text, it has held for the last three hundred years almost undisputed sway in the West.

After the large group of documents which exhibit generally the Syrian text has been deducted from the sum total of the authorities, no great amount of critical material remains on our hands. The remainder admits, in consequence, of close and minute examination. And such an examination is well repaid. The importance of the material is as great as its bulk is small. A rigorous examination of it discloses, according to Dr. Hort, the presence of three early and comparatively independent texts, from which (as we have already said) the Syrian text appears to have been derived.

{a) The first ^ of these three texts has been called the Western text since the days of Griesbach. It ob- tained that name from the fact that it was most con- spicuous in bilingual (Grsco-Latin) manuscripts and

1 See Westcott and Hort, Introduction, §§ 170-176, pp. 120 sqq.

2 2 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.

in the Old Latin Version. But it seems to have been very widely diffused during the second and third cen- turies, as every ancient Version appears to have been influenced by it, though not all in the same degree. It may be traced back to the beginning of the second century. After the close of the third century its influence waned, and it disappeared rapidly in the East, although it lingered in the West awhile longer. The documentary authorities in which it is chiefly found are D of the Gospels and Acts (the Codex Bezae which is at Cambridge), D^ and G3 of S. Paul's Epistles, E2 of the Acts (the Oxford Codex Laudiamis, which exhibits it in a later and less pure form), a few cursives, the Old Syriac Version, some African and European forms of the Old Latin, the Gothic Version (in part), Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Eusebius, and (to some extent) even Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Its chief characteristics are stated by Dr. Hort to be two in number : — first, a love of paraphrase, which leads to frequent changes of words, clauses, and sen- tences, when the meaning seems capable of being brought out with greater definiteness ; and secondly, a tendency to interpolation from traditional sources, of which the passage at the beginning of the eighth chapter of S. John's Gospel concerning the woman taken in adultery is probably an example.

(d) To the second^ of these three texts Dr. Hort gives the name of Alexandrian, which was employed by Griesbach ^ in a wider sense. This text does not possess equally striking characteristics with those which

^ See Westcott and Hort, §§ 181-184, pp. 130 sqq.

^ Griesbach distinguished only three texts (or, as he called them, recen- sions) in all; Constantinopolitan (which is identical with Dr. Hort's Syrian), Western, and Alexandrian.

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 23

belong to the Western text. ' There is no Incor- poration of matter extraneous to the canonical texts of the Bible, and no habitual or extreme license of para- phrase.' Its variations 'have more to do with language than matter, and are marked by an effort after correct- ness of phrase.' There are also traces, especially in the Gospels, of attempts to harmonise and to assimi- late. ' The only documentary authorities attesting Alexandrian readings with any approach to constancy, and capable of being assigned to a definite locality, are quotations by Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, and oc- casionally other Alexandrian Fathers, and the two principal Egyptian Versions, especially that of Lower Egypt.' No extant Greek manuscript has an approxi- mately unmixed Alexandrian text ; but Alexandrian readings are recognised frequently in the Gospels of L, in the Acts of E^, in the cursive manuscript 6i, and in the Acts and Epistles of A.

(c) The third ^ of these texts is, for critical pur- poses, by far the most interesting and valuable. It is a text which appears to be free alike from Syrian, Western, and Alexandrian characteristics, and is there- fore called Neutral by Dr. Hort. Strong evidence is produced for the existence of a text which deserves this name and character. If the evidence be admitted to be sufficient, it is impossible to exaggerate the im- portance of the phenomenon. It has been brought to light by the only sure method which can be adopted in questions of such intricacy, — the minute examination of documents. What the documents are in which this text is to be found we will state in Dr. Hort's own words ^ : ' B very far exceeds all other documents in

^ See Westcott and Hort, Introduction, §§ 177-iSo, pp. 126 sqq. '^ Ibid. § 235, pp. 171 sq.

24 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.

neutrality of text, being in fact always or nearly always neutral, with the exception of the Western element already ^ mentioned as virtually confined to the Pauline Epistles. At a long interval after B, but hardly a less interval before all other MSS, stands ^. Then come, approximately in the following order, smaller fragments being neglected, T of S. Luke and S. John, S of S. Luke, h, 33, A (in S. Mark), C, Z of S. Matthew, R of S. Luke, Q, and P. It may be said, in general terms, that those documents, B and ^ excepted, which have most Alexandrian readings have also most neutral readings. Thus among Versions by far the largest amount of attestation comes from the Memphitic and Thebaic ; but much also from the Old and Jerusalem Syriac, and from the African Latin ; and more or less from every Version. After the Gospels the number of documents shrinks greatly ; but there is no marked change in the relations of the leading uncials to the neutral text, except that A now stands throughout near C. In Acts 6i comes not far below ^^, 13 being also prominent, though in a much less degree, here and in the Catholic Epistles. The considerable Pre-Syrian element already^ noticed as distinguishing a propor- tionally large number of cursives in this group of books includes many neutral readings. In some of the Catholic Epistles, as also in the subsequent books, an appreciable but varying element of the text of P^ has the same character. For the Pauline Epistles there is little that can be definitely added to ^BAC except 17 and P2 : the best marked neutral readings are due to the second hand of 67.'

As the whole question relating to this third, and (as

^ See Westcott and Hort, Introduction, § 204, p. 150. 2 Ibid. § 212, pp. 154 sq.

THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 25

It is thought) most genuine form of the ancient text is of the greatest critical importance, and as we may have to allude hereafter, in some closing illustrations, to the documents which have been just enumerated, we have deemed it necessary to quote at full length the above technical list of authorities. It is to be observed, moreover, that the manuscripts which hold the place of honour in this list, especially B and ^ (the Codex Vaticaims and Codex Sinaiticus), held the same place,, for the most part, in the estimation of textual critics before the publication of Dr. Hort's treatise on grounds wholly independent of his theory. As we have already said, a description of the manuscripts which are repre- sented, here or elsewhere in these pages, by letters or by Arabic numerals will be found in Dr. Scriveners Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament.

8. Three reasons are given by Dr. Hort for the belief that the Syrian text is posterior in origin to those which he calls Western, Alexandrian, and Neu- tral. The matter is one of so much consequence that we will recapitulate