THE R
HE GREEK TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT '
TWO MEMBERS
THE NEW TESTAMENT COMPANY
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MAC MILL AN AND CO.
1882
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THE REVISERS
HE GREEK TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
TWO MEMBERS
THE NEW TESTAMENT COMPANY
Charl(S5 J. Edicoir
and
Edwin r^lvner
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MACMILLAN AND CO.
1882
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 them briefly.
The first reason appears to us almost sufficient to
settle the question by itself. It is founded on the ob-
servation, to which we have already alluded, that the
Syrian text presents numerous instances of readings
which, according to all textual probability, must be
considered to be combinations of earlier readings still
extant. To illustrate this in detail would not be pos-
sible in an essay like the present. We must refer the
reader to Dr. Hort's own pages. He will find there ^
abundant illustration of it in eight examples rigorously
analysed, which seem to supply a proof, as positive as
the subject admits, that Syrian readings are posterior
1 Westcott and Hort, Introduction, §§ 1 32-1 51, pp. 93 sqq.
26 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
both to Western readings, and to other readings which
may be properly described as Neutral.
The second reason adduced is almost equally cogent.
It is based upon a close observation and a careful
analysis ^ of Ante-Nicene patristic evidence. The testi-
mony which these early writers supply is particularly
striking. While they place before us from separate
and in some cases widely distant countries examples
of Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral readings, it
appears to be certain that before the middle of the
third century we have no historical traces of readings
which can properly be entitled distinctively Syrian,
that is to say of readings which are found in documents
that exhibit pre-eminently the Syrian text, and are
not found in documents that mainly present the other
forms of text.
Yet a third reason is supplied by Internal Evidence,
or, in other words, by considerations (to use Dr. Hort's
language) of Intrinsic or of Transcriptional Probability.
A reading is said to possess intrinsic probability when
it seems on its intrinsic merits the likeliest of two or
more various readings to have been the choice of the
author; it is said to possess transcriptional probability
when it seems the likeliest to have given occasion to
the other reading or readings in competition with it
according to the laws which are observed to govern
transcribers in their aberrations. Here it is obvious
that we enter at once into a very delicate and difficult
domain of textual criticism, and can only draw our
conclusions with the utmost circumspection and re-
serve. Still even here, if the truth-seeking reader will
take the trouble carefully to note down what appear
^ Westcott and Hort, Greek Testament, Introduction, §§ 152-162,
pp. 107 sqq.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 27
to be distinctively Syrian characteristics, as established
by a long induction of instances, and, with this know-
ledge in his mind, will minutely compare readings that
have these characteristics with readings of another type,
in cases in which they come into competition, he will
find that the claim of the Syrian readings to be
considered the true and original readings will gra-
dually melt away under the tests which we have just
mentioned. 'Often,' says Dr. Hort\ 'either the tran-
scriptional or the intrinsic evidence is neutral or divided,
and occasionally the two kinds of evidence appear to
be in conflict. But there are, we believe, no instances
where both are clearly in favour of the Syrian reading,
and innumerable where both are clearly adverse to it.'
These three reasons taken together seem to us to
make up an argument for the posteriority of the Syrian
text which it is impossible to resist. The reasons are
widely different in their character. Each in itself is
strong ; but when taken together they form a threefold
cord of evidence which, we believe, will bear any
amount of aro^umentative strain. Writers like the
o
Reviewer may attempt to cut the cord by reckless and
unverified assertions, but the knife has not yet been
fabricated that can equitably separate any one of its
strands. Till that is done all attempts to elevate the
Syrian text into a standard, whether in the form of the
Texhis Recephis or in any other less adulterated form,
will be found to be hopeless and impossible.
9. It will be remembered that the treatise which we
have quoted so largely, we mean the Introduction to
the Greek Testament of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort,
was not published until after the publication of the
Revised Version. Nor was it at any time, we must ob-
^ Westcott and Hort, Introduction, § 163, p. 116.
28 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
serve, privately communicated to the Revisers. It was
impossible for the Revision Company, therefore, to
pronounce (if it had been so inclined) a corporate
opinion on its merits. In all that we have said of it
we have been speaking for ourselves alone. It is right
to add in this place that the Company never expressed
an opinion on the value of the genealogical method
itself, which was first employed in the last century by
Bengel, and afterwards developed largely by Gries-
bach, although the world is indebted to Dr. Westcott
and Dr. Hort for a full display of its capabilities.
Indeed the Company did not lay down for the govern-
ment of its action any formal theory of textual criticism.
It was impossible, however, to mistake the conviction
upon which its textual decisions were based. It was a
conviction common to all the great critical editors from
Griesbach downwards, however variolisly they might
state this or that argument in its favour. It was a
conviction that the true text was not to be sought
in the Textus Receptits, or in the bulk of the cursive
manuscripts, or in the late uncials (with or without the
support of the Codex Alexandrimcs), or in the Fathers
who lived after Chrysostom, or in Chrysostom himself
and his contemporaries, but in the consentient testi-
mony of the most ancient authorities. That this was
the conviction of Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tre-
gelles, is plain from the character of the texts which
they gave to the world. Those texts show, beyond con-
troversy, how far they were from regarding the
Received Text as a standard, and how high a value
they ascribed to the oldest Manuscripts, Versions, and
Fathers. The consequence of this fundamental agree-
ment is a close similarity in textual results. An over-
whelming majority of the readings adopted by the
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 29
Revisers will be found to have been adopted before them
by one or all of these three editors. A similar relation
will be found to exist between the Revisers' choice of
readinpfs and the Greek text of Dr. Westcott and Dr.
Hort. The ' New Greek Text' (as the Reviewer calls
it) is not based, as he seems to suppose, on the text of
the two Cambridge Professors, nor on the text of any
one of the three great editors who preceded them.
Its similarity to all these four texts is the natural conse-
quence of general agreement in respect of the authority
to be ascribed to the several documents, or classes of
documents, which make up the apparahts critiacs of
every editor of the Greek Testament.
II. We have thus completed the first part of our
undertaking. We have endeavoured to supply the
reader with a few broad outlines of textual criticism,
so as to enable him to form a fair judgment on the
question of the trustworthiness of the readings adopted
by the Revisers. To this question we now more im-
mediately address ourselves.
I. Before we enter into details it will be necesary to
say a few words about the composition of the body
which is responsible for the ' New Greek Text.'
The average number of those who were actually
present each day that the Company met is stated in the
Preface to the Revised Version to have been sixteen.
If the records of the Company were examined they
would show that among the most regular attendants
were to be found most of those persons who were pre-
sumably best acquainted with the subject of textual
criticism.
It Is not for us to appraise our own qualifications or
the qualifications of our colleagues for this or for any
other part of the work. But thus much It may be right
30 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
to say. The number of living scholars in England
who have connected their names with the study of the
textual criticism of the New Testament is exceedingly
small. Three of that exceedingly small number, Dr.
Scrivener, Dr. Westcott, and Dr. Hort, were members
of the Revision Company and constant in their attend-
ance. There were other members of the Company
who had for many years paid special attention to this
subject; and some of these had given evidence of their
familiarity with such questions in published commen-
taries upon parts of the New Testament. The rest
had learned, at all events, in their several departments
of study, one lesson of primary importance, often
reiterated but often forgotten, ponderari debere testes,
non numei^ari.
Further, it must be remembered, that the results at
which the Company arrived were communicated in due
course to the American Committee, on which there
were some textual critics of known eminence, and that
the places in which hat Committee has desired to put
on record a difference in judgment from the English
Revisers in regard of the Greek text are singularly
few and unimportant.
Two more points deserve notice in this connexion.
First, the largeness of -the Company, — though it
might at first sight seem unfavourable to the preserva-
tion of uniformity in the special work of textual criticism,
■ — had at least one great advantage. The fancies and
predilections of individuals were not able to usurp
the place of evidence. The disturbing element which
subjective criticism has introduced into questions re-
lating to the text of the Greek Testament is not con-
fined to the writings of the Reviewer. Even in editions
of great value, like those of Tischendorf, the bias, not
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 3 1
wholly unnatural, in favour of a newly-discovered
manuscript is to be traced with unmistakeable clear-
ness. From such an influence the Company, by its
very constitution, was to a great extent free.
Secondly, there were no corporate prejudices or
preconceptions in favour of any particular school of
criticism, or any particular edition of the text. The
composition of the Revision Company precluded such
a danger. Oxford, Cambridge, London, Dublin, the
Scottish Universities, were all represented. Heads of
Nonconformist Colleges were combined with University
Professors, Bishops, Deans, and Archdeacons. The
Reviewer often speaks as if Dr. Wes'-cott and Dr.
Hort were responsible for all the results at which
the Revisers arrived. This is absolutely contrary to
the facts of the case. These eminent critics did indeed
place instalments of their Greek Text in the hands of
each member of the Company, in the manner that Dr.
Hort specifies ^ By doing this, however, they sought
to help, not to direct the Company. Their kindness
enabled their colleagues to see the readings which they
preferred in full connexion with their context, and thus
to form a better opinion concerning them than it is
possible to form of readings which are suggested only to
the mental eye by critical notes at the foot of a page.
The passages in which the Company arrived at different
results from those that are to be found in the edition
of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort are by no means few,
and would suffice in themselves to prove (if proof were
necessary) the complete independence of the Revisers
in their final determination of the Greek text.
2. We pass next to a subject of more importance,
perhaps, to ourselves than to the generality of our
^ Westcott and Hort, Introduction, § 22, p. 18=
32 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
readers. We have spoken of the composition of the
Revising body, and of their general qualification for
the textual part of their work. We desire now to
speak of the rule under which this part of the work
was to be done, and the manner in which that rule was
carried out in practice.
And here, at the very outset, let it be said that
nothing can be more unjust on the part of the Reviewer
than to suggest, as he has suggested in more than
one passage, that the Revisers exceeded their instruc-
tions in the course which they adopted with regard to
the Greek text. On the contrary, as we shall show,
they adhered most closely to those instructions, and
did neither more nor less than they were required to
do, — unless it is to be brought as a charge against them
that they suffered the University Presses to decide on
the most convenient mode of placing before the public
their deviations from the text presumed to underlie the
Authorised Version, and did not insist upon encumber-
ing the margin of the Revised Version with them.
But let us turn to the rule. It is simply as follows :
* That the text to be adopted be that for which the
evidence is decidedly preponderating ; and that, when
the text so adopted differs from that from which the
Authorised Version was made, the alteration be indi-
cated in the margin.' Of the second portion of this
rule we have already spoken sufficiently. Practical
convenience forbade literal compliance with it. Our
real concern is with the first portion of it, which pre-
scribes ' that the text to be adopted be that for which
the evidence is decidedly preponderating.'
What can these words possibly mean except that
Avhich the Revisers state in their Preface that they
understood them to mean ? Nothing, surely, can have
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 33
been intended by them but that the Revisers were to
follow the weight of evidence and not to hold them-
selves bound by any printed text whatever. By the
nature of the case, as we have shown in the earlier part
of this essay, the Revisers had before them the text of
Beza, since it is his text, practically, which underlies the
Authorised Version ; but it was not suggested in the
rule that they were to pay to this text any critical
deference. Our point will be made still more clear
if we bring into comparison with the rule of which we
are speaking another rule which concerns the amend-
ment of the English translation. There the Revisers
are bidden ' to introduce into the Text of the Au-
thorised Version as few alterations as possible consist-
ently with faithfulness/ In respect of the Greek text
they are bidden 'to adopt that text for which the
evidence is decidedly preponderating.' In the first
case a standard text is mentioned, which is to be pre-
served, so far as possible, unaltered : in the second
case there is no hint of a standard already existing ;
the Revisers are simply bidden to adopt such a text
as the preponderance of evidence may require.
Evidence for texts is of two kinds ; internal and
documentary. Under this rule it was the plain duty
of the Revisers to attend to both. They had to de-
termine in each case, as It came before them, on which
side the evidence decidedly preponderated. We need
not, however, speak here of internal evidence. Great
as its importance is, especially in estimating the value
of documents, its use, when there is occasion to decide
between two or more competing readings, is rather
subsidiary than primary. Moreover the difficulties
which beset its employment in relation to the text of
all authors whatsoever are multiplied Indefinitely when
34 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
the text of Scripture is in question. Documentary
evidence claimed, of necessity, the chief attention of
the Revisers. How were they to determine on which
side it preponderated ? They all knew, as we said
above, that this was no mere arithmetical problem.
It could not be settled by counting the Manuscripts
or Versions or Fathers which were to be found on
this side or on that. The history and characteristics
of the authorities which might be alleged were of
more importance than their number. We have said
already that the genealogical method, which has been
so fruitful in the hands of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort,
was never formally adopted by the Revisers as a Com-
pany. But on the other hand the facts, on which that
method rests, were continually before the Company,
and had a great effect on its decisions. We mean such
facts as the observed alliances of authorities mutually
independent, — the frequently recurring convergence or
divergence of witnesses that occupy representative
positions in regard of the earliest texts, — the plain traces
of a common origin in the case of the greater number
of the later uncials and the large mass of the cursive
manuscripts. All these phenomena were present to
the minds of the Revisers, and they produced deep
and lasting impressions, and led to final adjudications
which it will be found easier to rail at than to disprove.
And this examination of textual evidence extended,
in common with the rest of the Revisers' work, over
eleven years. It is true that the questions which con-
cerned the Greek text were decided for the most part
at the First Revision : but they were often reopened at
the Second Revision, and the critical experience that
had been slowly and surely won was tested by the
requirement of a majority of two-thirds to sustain
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 35
decisions which at the First Revision had been carried
by a simple majority.
Moreover, the course of the work led the Revisers,
naturally, to look further than the settlement of a
Greek text which should be represented in the text
of the Revised Version. Again and again it was
found indispensable to notice in the margin readings
that rested on evidence hardly inferior to that which
supported the readings adopted or retained in the
text. It was felt that, if this course were not followed,
the state of the evidence would not be placed honestly
before the reader. There were three principal cases
in which the presence of such marginal notes appeared
to be necessary. First when the text which seemed to
underlie the Authorised Version was condemned by a
decided preponderance of evidence, but yet was ancient
in its character, and belonged to an early line of trans-
mission. Secondly, when there were such clear tokens
of corruption in the reading on which the Authorised
Version was based, or such a consent of authority
against it, that no one could seriously advocate its
retention, but it was not equally clear which of two
other competing readings had the best claim to occupy
the vacant place. In such a case there was not in
truth decidedly preponderant evidence, except against
the text of Beza, and some notice of this fact seemed
to be required by critical equity. The third and last
case was when the text which was represented in the
Authorised Version was retained because the com-
peting reading had not decidedly preponderant evi-
dence (though the balance of evidence was in its
favour), and so could not, under the rule, be admitted.
In such a case again critical equity required a notice
of the facts in the margin.
D 2
36 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
This is the history of the marginal annotations which
give so much umbrage to the Reviewer. He seems to
forget that Hke annotations are to be found in the
margin of the Authorised Version of 1611, although
the poverty of the apparatus critictis which was then
accessible to scholars and the undeveloped state of
textual criticism made them comparatively few in num-
ber. Dr. Scrivener ^ has counted sixty-seven marginal
annotations which relate to Various Readings in the Old
Testament, a hundred and fifty-four in the Apocrypha,
and thirty-five in the New Testament — besides others
which were added without known authority subsequent
to 161 1. But we do not care to rest upon precedent.
The annotations for which the Reviewer cannot find
sufficiently hard names are in reality guarantees of the
honesty and completeness of the work. They are not
intended, of course, for uneducated readers, nor will
an uneducated reader concern himself with them.
To educated readers they will show that the Revisers
were aware of the facts relative to the Greek text
which are recorded in critical editions of the Greek
Testament, that they did not fail to consider these facts
themselves, and did not desire to conceal their exist-
ence from others.
4. On the exact mode of procedure at the meetings
of the Company it is not necessary for us to enlarge.
It has been correctly described by Principal Newth in
his ' Lectures on Bible Revision.' The Reviewer cites
this description, and takes exception to the fact that
the members who were present at each meeting were
called upon ' to decide at a moment's notice ' upon the
critical questions submitted to them. This is not, we
^ Cambridge Paragraph Bible, edited by F. H. Scrivener, M.A., L.L.D.,
Cambridge, at the University Press, 1873, Introduction, Sect. ii.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 37
must observe, Dr. Newth's description of the process.
* After discussion/ he says, ' the vote of the Company
is taken, and the proposed reading accepted or rejected.'
But we will suppose (for argument's sake) the discus-
sion to have been often brief Our readers will
remember what we have said already about the com-
position of the Company. For many of its members
the particular questions raised on such occasions had
no novelty. Their own studies had made those ques-
tions long familiar to them. Nor did those of whom
this could not be said fail to prepare themselves before-
hand to the best of their power for this as for other
parts of their work. It should be added that readings
of importance were often reserved for consideration on
a future day on which by special notice a full attendance
could be secured.
•III. We may now finally pass to a few critical de-
tails by means of which the trustworthiness of the
Greek text adopted by the Revisers will be more
completely substantiated.
It may be best first to examine two continuous
portions, in order to illustrate the amount of the criti-
cal changes that have been introduced, and the co-
incidence of these changes with the results arrived at
by the best critical editors of our own times. In the
second place we may consider, more in detail, the
chief passages which have been selected by the Re-
viewer as examples of a choice of readings whereby the
true text has been perverted or obliterated. This
would seem to be a fair way of meeting the charges
that have been urged, not without vehemence, against
the readings adopted by the Revisers. When the work
has been tested in these two ways, its general quality
will be brought clearly out, and the justice or injustice
38 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
of the criticisms that have been passed upon it will be
distinctly recognised.
I. The two continuous passages which we have
chosen for our consideration are the Sermon on the
Mount as set forth by S. Matthew, and the First
Epistle of S. Paul to Timothy. In the former portion
of Scripture the documentary authorities available for
settling the text are numerous ; in the latter they
are limited in number. In the former portion the
venerable manuscript on which the Revisers have
been charged with placing an undue reliance — the
Codex Vaticanus known as B — is present ; in the latter
it is absent. We appear therefore to have two portions
sufficiently different in respect of documentary attesta-
tion to supply fair samples of the Greek text adopted
by the Revisers.
In the portion from S. Matthew there are a hundred
and eleven verses. In these verses the Revisers have
changed the Greek text from which the Authorised
Version was made in forty-four places. If we examine
these readings, and compare them with the readings
adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles, we
find that in thirty-eight out of the forty-four places the
reading of the Revisers is identical with that of the
three eminent critics just mentioned ; and that in the
remaining six places the Revisers are in accordance
with two out of the three critics with whom we are
comparing them. There is thus in these one hundred
and eleven verses not a single instance of any change
peculiar to the text adopted by the Revisers.
Let us now turn to the other portion which we have
selected. The First Epistle to Timothy contains as
nearly as possible the same number of verses, and pre-
sents about the same number of changes. There are.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 39
in all, a hundred and thirteen verses, and the changes
introduced by the Revisers in the text from which the
Authorised Version was made are forty-ei'ght. Of these
forty-eight changes, as many as forty-one are found to
have been adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, and
Tregelles : and of the remaining seven there are two
only (koi omitted after woravTMg, ch. ii. 9, and top omitted
before GeoV, ch. v. 5) which are not supported by two
out of the three critics above mentioned. In the former
of the two cases, Lachmann is with the Revisers, —
Tregelles placing the Kal in brackets ; in the latter,
Tischendorf is with the Revisers, — Lachmann placing
the Tou in brackets. In both cases, we would submit,
the Revisers have decided rightly. In the first passage
the combination of A and t^ (not otherwise a strong
combination) receives the support of the important
cursive manuscript^ numbered 17 (33 of the Gospels),
and of the later (palimpsest) uncial P : in the second
passage the union of CFG with P seems to be weighty
as against the division existing among the remaining
authorities.
The above examination must, we think, be accepted
as a sufficient proof that the text of the Revisers is, in
all essential features, the same as that text in which
the best critical editors, during the past fifty years, are
generally agreed ; and that thus any attack made on
the text of the Revisers is really an attack on the
critical principles that have been carefully and labo-
riously established during this last half-century. What
has been found true of these two passages, which have
been taken without any carefully premeditated choice,
would, we believe, be found true, upon the whole, of
every two hundred and twenty-four verses throughout
^ Scrivener, Introduction, pp. 169, 238.
40 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
the Greek Testament. What the Revisers have done
has been simply this, — to decide the questions which
came before them upon the evidence which the labours
and diligence of the eminent critics whom we have
named had accumulated, and on principles which had
been established by their investigations and reasonings.
Results so arrived at can certainly not be set aside by
mere denunciation, nor indeed by anything else than a
refutation of the principles 'of textual criticism which
are accepted and recognised by the great majority of
modern textual critics. We have no right, doubtless,
to assume that these principles are infallible ; but we
have a right to claim that any one who summarily re-
jects them and contends that such a text as the Re-
ceived Text needs but little emendation, and may be
used without emendation as a standard, should confute
the arguments and rebut the evidence on which the
opposite conclusion has been founded. Strong ex-
pressions of individual opinion are not arguments.
2. We now proceed to notice some of the passages
which the Reviewer has selected as containing read-
ings, introduced by the Revisers, which call for especial
condemnation. In thus turning however more par-
ticularly to the Reviewer, we feel it necessary to record,
on three points, our deliberate protest against certain
of his utterances. In the first place we protest against
the Greek text adopted by the Revisers being repre-
sented as a text for which Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort
are in any special way responsible. Such a representa-
tion is unjust alike to the Company and to the two
eminent critics who have been mentioned. It is unjust
to the Company because it implies that all the other
members put themselves, in this most important por-
tion of their labours, into the hands of two individuals
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 4 1
only, and did not attempt to examine and decide con-
scientiously for themselves. It is unjust to the two
editors in question, because it makes them responsible
for a text which is very frequently at variance with
their own. Let a competent reader examine the Greek
text as set forth in the Oxford edition of Archdeacon
Palmer, and as edited by the two Cambridge Pro-
fessors. He will find, we believe, if he looks through
the whole volume, not more than sixty-four readings in
the Greek text of the Revisers which are to be found
in the text of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort, and are not
to be found in the Received Text or in the text of
Lachmann or Tischendorf or Tregelles.
We have, secondly, to protest against the unqualified
charges of textual corruption and depravation made
against certain manuscripts, e. g. ^^BCL, tvhich the
majority of modern critics, after careful and minute in-
vestigation, have declared not only to be wholly unde-
serving of such charges, but, on the contrary, to exhibit a
text of comparative purity. To attempt to sustain such
charges by a rough comparison of these ancient autho-
rities with the Texttcs Receptus, and to measure the de-
gree of their depravation by the amount of their diver-
gence from such a text as we have shown this Received
Text really to be, is to trifle with the subject of sacred
criticism. Nor is much more achieved by a computa-
tion of the number of places in which they differ among
themselves. Without such differences they would lose
the character of independent witnesses which they now
possess. Until the depravation of these ancient manu-
scripts has been demonstrated in a manner more con-
sistent with the recognised principles of criticism, such
charges as those to which we allude must be regarded
as expressions of passion or prejudice, and set aside by
42 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
every impartial reader as assertions for which no
adequate evidence has yet been produced.
The third protest which we have to make is against
the intrusion into purely critical and textual matters of
the imputation of disregard for the religious feelings of
others. Again and again we find the Reviewer asking
with indignation why the faith of readers is to be
disturbed by the statement of critical details which
from his point of view it is wholly superfluous to
notice. If the question is asked in good faith the
answer is easy. The Revisers looked at the matter
from a different point of view. In their eyes the first
thing to be considered was absolute truthfulness in the
setting forth of Holy Scripture. They believed this
principle to lie at the root of the demand for a
Revision. They felt themselves constrained by this
principle to adopt the readings and insert the marginal
notes which displease the Reviewer. Those readings
and those notes are of course open to criticism : nor is
criticism unwelcome to the Revisers. That against
which they protest is not criticism : it is an appeal,
conscious or unconscious, to the passions and prejudices
of readers ; it is the importation of odium theologicum
into discussions from which it ought to be kept as far as
possible away.
3. We now proceed to discuss briefly a few passages
which the Reviewer appears to have singled out as
containing readings especially deserving of censure.
To deal with all the readings which he condemns is
impossible on his own showing. * The Texhis Receptus',
he says\ 'has been departed from by them' (the Re-
visers) 'far more than 5000 times, almost invariably
for the worse! We are forced, therefore, to make a
^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 366.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 43
selection. We select, deliberately, those examples on
which the Reviewer appears to lay the greatest stress.
If they are almost exclusively taken from the Gospels,
the responsibility is with the Reviewer and not
with us.
The first passage, in the order of the sacred volume,
is S. Matthew i. 25, in which the Reviewer notes ^ that
certain ' important words ' have been ' surreptitiously
withdrawn ^.' What are the words in question ? They
are the word t6v before woV, and the words avrrj^ tov
irpwTOTOKov after it. Now, although we are told by the
Reviewer that ' a whole torrent of Fathers attest the
genuineness of the reading,' — in addition to the much
more weighty evidence of C, and (with respect to tov
wpcoTOTOKov) of D, — we cannot hesitate to express our
agreement with Tischendorf and Tregelles who see in
these words an interpolation, derived from S. Luke
ii. 7. The same appears to have been the judgment
of Lachmann. At any rate, he deemed it critically
right to reject the words for which the Reviewer pleads.
These words, be it observed, are unknown to ^^ and
to B, to the important palimpsest fragment Z, to two
good cursive manuscripts, i and 33, to some Old Latin
documents (among which is the valuable Codex Colder-
timis), to the Curetonian Syriac, and to the Memphitic
Version, — save only that this last appears to have read
not f/oV, but TOV vlov.
We have here our two oldest manuscripts (manu-
scripts on which, as we have already said, the vast
- ^ Quarterly Review, No. 305, p. 5.
2 An instructive contrast to this language may be found in Canon
Cook's note in the Speaker's Commentary on this passage. It is as
follows: — '' her firstborn^ Or, "a son," so the two oldest MSS. and later
critical editions.'
44 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
majority of critics set a high value) supported not only
by another uncial and two cursive manuscripts, but by
ancient Versions from Italy, Syria, and Egypt, — a fact
v^hich, though recorded in Tischendorfs notes, is
passed over in silence by the Reviewer. If we con-
sider the internal evidence, it may be said, perhaps,
with truth that either reading is equally probable
intrinsically. But the well-known tendency of tran-
scribers to assimilate parallel passages makes it far
more probable that S. Matthew was assimilated to
S. Luke in the process of transcription than that so
considerable a difference of expression between the
two Evangelists was introduced by transcribers when
it was not found in the Original Text. No impartial
critic, we are persuaded, will doubt that the weight of
evidence is decidedly in favour of the shorter reading.
If this be so, our first example illustrates the weakness
of the Reviewer's main position. A reading may, it
seems, be supported by the bulk of the cursive manu-
scripts, and by some uncials of fair age and authority,
and by 'a whole torrent' of post-Nicene Fathers, and
yet be false.
We pass onward to S. Matthew xvii. 21. The
omission of this verse is strongly condemned by the
Reviewer \ Here it might be thought that the case
for the Revisers was less clear than in the former
instance. Lachmann retains the verse ; Tregelles places
it in brackets ; Tischendorf alone of the three omits it
entirely. But it must be remembered that here Lach-
mann and Tregelles were not acquainted with t^, the first
hand of which omits the verse. They had only before
them the presumption that it might have been an
* Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 357.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 45
interpolation suggested by the common ^ reading of
S. Mark ix. 29, and that documentary evidence for
the omission which was then known. That evidence,
indeed, was strong. It consisted of B, 33, two Old
Latin manuscripts, the Curetonian Syriac, the Thebaic
Version, and some manuscripts of the Memphitic,
besides other authorities. When it was ascertained
that the first hand of ^^ was on the same side, the
majority of the Revisers rightly deemed that there
was a decided preponderance of evidence in favour
of the view that the verse was an interpolation. On
the other hand, they seem to have been also right in
considering this to be a case where a marginal anno-
tation was equitably required.
The reader may profitably compare our statement of
the evidence in this place and in S. Matthew i, 25, and
observe how, in perfectly different passages, we find
nearly the same ancient authorities agreeing in support
of the better reading, while the great bulk of the
cursives and the later uncials, though in both cases
led by C and D, are found together on the side
against which it is impossible to deny that there is
internal evidence of distinctly appreciable weight.
One other omission, censured by the Reviewer^,
may be briefly noticed, — the omission of verse 1 1 in
the eighteenth chapter of S. Matthew. Now here there
is even less room for doubt than in the preceding
cases. The three critical Editors are all agreed in
rejecting this verse. The probability that it was
an interpolation, derived from S. Luke xix. 10, or from
some oral or written source, is certainly strong, and
^ Irx Mark ix. 29 the first hand of ^<, together with B and two other
authorities, omits the words koL vrjcrTeia.
2 Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 358.
46 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
the authorities that reject the verse are of high
character. Again we have the same weighty combi-
nation V^B, and moreover the first hand of L, a late
uncial of well-known value. The two cursives on which
we have already seen some reason to rely, i (first
hand) and 33, and a manuscript rich in various read-
ings, though still imperfectly collated, 13, are on the
same side. With them are the same two Old Latin
manuscripts that we had before us in the last example,
the Jerusalem Syriac, the Memphitic, the Thebaic, and
the ^thiopic, and (apparently) the weighty testimony
of Origen in his comments on the passage. On the
other side there is D and the same aggregation of later
uncials, except that in this case the valuable manu-
script C is not, as in the two preceding examples,
associated with them. There is a gap here in that
unfortunately fragmentary palimpsest.
In this last example we have found for the first time
L in conjunction with t^B. It is, however, a frequent
conjunction, and always deserves attention. Usually,
as in this last case, one or two good cursive manuscripts
and ancient Versions, — Lat'n, Syriac, Egyptian, — espe-
cially the Memphitic, will be found associated with
these three uncials. The Reviewer is naturally hard
upon this group, as it is in frequent conflict with the
Textics Receptus. He calls it 'a little handful of
authorities, of which nothing is known with certainty
except that, when they concur exclusively, it is often
demonstrably only to mislead.' We have already
seen occasion to doubt the correctness of this
dictum, and we shall see more as we proceed. Mean-
time we will only say that other critics think very
differently from him. Dr. Scrivener, for example, in
a passage to which we shall have occasion to refer
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 47
immediately, speaks of ^^BL and the Memphitic as
' first-rate authorities.'
We may now pass to a few instances from the
Gospel of S. Mark.
The first case we have to notice is S. Mark vi. 20,
where the Revisers rightly read ^Tropei, noticing in
the margin that many ancient authorities exhibit the
reading eirolei. Now if ever there was a case^ in
which intrinsic probability was against a reading it is
against eiroleL here. What are the ' many things ' that
Herod did after he had heard S. John the Baptist ?
Meyer tells us that they were the many things which
he heard from S. John, though how this can be
elicited from the words we do not clearly see. That
excellent commentator, however, had far too good a
critical sense not to add^ that the reading rjiropei, though
(as he thought) only weakly attested, had the appear-
ance of being the genuine reading. In this case
again the Revisers have Tischendorf only on their
side, and not Lachmann nor Tregelles ; but it must
be remembered, as we said in the last case, that these
two critics had not the reading of b^ before them.
The four authorities on which the Revisers relied
were ^^BL and the Memphitic Version, and the reader
has probably already seen enough to lead him to doubt
whether such authorities are to be summarily disposed
of as ' all of bad character ^,' or whether such a reading
^ So Dr. Scrivener in his Introduction to the Criticism of the New
Testament, p. 505 sq. His estimate of the evidence in this case, ex-
ternal and internal, is very unlike that of the Reviewer. 'We do not
hesitate,' he says, ' to receive a variation supported by only a few first-
rate authorities, where internal evidence pleads so powerfully in its
favour.'
^ Meyer, Kommentar iiber das Neue Testament, in loco (ed. 4).
^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 345.
48 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
as that adopted by the Revisers deserves in any way
the title of a ' fatal substitution.' If fc^B and L when
conjoined with the Memphitic Version are of the
weight which all critical scholars unanimously assign
to them, — still more, if the union of ^B alone is of the
great critical importance assigned to it by recent
critics ^ — we venture to think that it would not have
been possible for the Revisers, consistently with faith-
fulness, to have retained the more than doubtful read-
ing of the Texttis Receptus,
Let us turn next to a passage in the same Evan-
gelist a little further on, viz. ch. xi. 3, in which the
Reviewer^ seems to consider that the mere enumera-
tion of authorities adverse to the reading of the Re-
visers renders any argument completely unnecessary.
' Quid plura ?' he asks. We will endeavour to answer
his question.
For this purpose, however, we must ask the reader
to look closely at the facts of the case. The verse ends
in the Textus Receptus with the words airocrreKel wSe, in
the Revisers' text with the words uTroa-reWei iraXiv
wSe. Even the Reviewer will not defend the Future
airoa-reXei. But on what authority have the Revisers
added the word ttolXiv ? On the authority of t^BL (a
combination on which we have more than once already
found reason to rely), supported in this instance by
the first hand of C (although it places TrdXiv before and
not after aTroa-TeXXei), by D, and by an important
witness (at any rate in this Gospel) of which we have
not hitherto made use, the Codex Sangallensis, known
as A. Origen also is cited as quoting this passage
^ See Westcott and Hort, Greek Testament, Introduction, §§ 287-303,
pp. 212 sq.
^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 339.
THE REVISERS AND THE,. GREEK TEXT. 49
twice with the word TrdXiv. To this external evidence
we must add two other considerations. First, tran-
scriptional probability is distinctly in favour of the
genuineness of ttoXiv, because it is apparently super-
fluous, and therefore not likely to have been inter-
polated, but very likely to have been omitted by a tran-
scriber who had a turn for correction. Secondly, it is
impossible to be quite confident that in the case of all
the Versions which are cited for the omission of TrdXiv
the word was really absent from the Greek manuscripts
which the translators used. They may have simply
omitted the word in translation, as we have said that
Greek copyists may have omitted it in transcription,
because it was in their judgment superfluous. It is
not, of course, really superfluous. On the contrary,
it is an example of that exactness of detail which has
often been recognised as characteristic of S. Mark.
Upon the whole, we cannot doubt that this adverb was
improperly extruded, and that the Revisers were per-
fectly justified in recalling it, as Tischendorf and Tre-
gelles had done before them.
Five verses lower down, in ch. xi. 8, the Reviewer
avows frankly that he stands alone among critics.
Here, he tells us\ 'the calamitous circumstance is that
the critics have all to a man fallen into the trap.'
Let us look at the place. The text of Beza, which
seems to be followed in the Authorised Version, stands
thus : TToXXof ^e ra IjuLOLTia avrwv ea-Tptocrav elg t*]v oSov"
aXXot Se (TTOi^dSa(} eKOirrov e/c rwv SevSpcav Kai ecrrpwuvvov
eh rhv o^dv. The Revisers have preferred to read, with
Tischendorf and Tregelles, ttoXXoI ^e ra If^dria avrwv
earTpoocrav eig rrjv oSov' aXXoi Se cTTilBdSag, Ko^avre^ e/c twi/
dypwv. There is a manifest gain of terseness and
^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 341.
E
50 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
vigour at all events. Four changes have been made.
'ZiTi^dSag is adopted for a-roilBdSag, Koy^ai/reg for eKOirroVy
aypoou for SevSpcov, and the words Kai ea-rpoowvov eU Trjv
oSov are omitted. All four changes have the support
of SBLA. Moreover cm^dSag has five other uncials
in its favour, and three more practically support it
(since D reads ea-ri^d^aq, EG G-reijSdSas;), while for CTTOi-
^dSag ACSVXr are alleged: Koyl^avres has the sup-
port of Origen : dyp^v is supported by Origen again
(who seems to note it as a point of difference between
S. Mark and the other Evangelists), by C, and by the
Memphitic and Thebaic Versions : the omission of the
last clause is supported by C, the Thebaic, and the
^thiopic Version. On the other side there is the usual
aggregation of the later uncials and the cursive manu-
scripts : and they are supported throughout by A ; in re-
spect of (TToi^dSag and etcoirrov by C ; in respect of ckotttov
and SevSpwv hy ID ; and, generally, by a numerical majority
of the Versions. So stands the documentary evidence.
What is * the trap' into which the critics are supposed to
have fallen ? The Reviewer imagines that S. Mark
wrote (TToipdSag, that some copyist, who was perplexed
by this ' unique word,' changed it into the familiar w^ord
o-TilSdSa^, and then (finding himself confronted by a
fresh difficulty) changed SevSpcov into aypwv, — and finally
made the other two changes to round off his work.
This curious theory rests on two assumptions, (i) that
S. Mark wrote o-roilBdSag, and (2) that the words aroi-
pdSa^ and ornPdSas are ' distinct in sense as in origin.'
We have already seen that there is an overwhelming
preponderance of uncial evidence against a-roi^dSag, —
and this is a case in which no other evidence is of real
importance. We may observe, however, that in Ori-
gen's references to this passage we find o-rot/SdSag in
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 51
one place and a-TijBaSag in another. We must now add
that there is every reason to believe a-roi^ag and a-Tifia^
to be distinct neither in sense nor in origin. The fact
is that o-TOf/Sa? is only ^ known to Lexicographers (i) as
a various reading for an^ag in this very place, and (2)
as a word explained in the Lexicon of Zonaras. His
gloss is as follows : ^TOljBd?. rj a-rpcjOjULvrj' ?7 TpV(prjg
Opv^lng. irapa to cttoi^oCw. Its sense, then, according to
our only authority, is a bed or mattress, — which is the
usual sense of cmPag also. As for its origin, it is
plainly derived from a-Teipw, as is also o-n^dg. In short,
if (TToilSag is a real word at all, and not a mere figment
due to the uncertain orthography of copyists, it is
neither more nor less than a bye-form of a-n^dg. But
the second part of the Reviewer's theory is, to a certain
extent, independent of the first. At all events others
have thought before him that the word a-nlSdSag (or
a-Toi^dSag — for nothing turns on the spelling) may have
suggested the change of SevSpcov into aypcov. Is this
really probable ? lln/Sdg, no doubt, usually meant a
couch or bed ; sometimes a mattress, sometimes (as the
Reviewer says) ' 2. floor-bed constructed of grass, rushes,
straw, brushwood, leaves, &c.' Plato speaks of yew
and myrtle branches as employed for this purpose
(Rep. ii. 372 B, KaraKkivivreg Itc\ (rrilSdScov eo-rpcoiuLevcDu
(T/mlXaKL re Kai imvppivaig^). In Hesychius and Suidas
pdjSSoi and SevSpwu aKpe/moveg (shoots and twigs of
trees) are mentioned among the materials of such a
bed. This being so, we fail to see why any copyist
should have been tempted to alter ShSpcov into aypwv.
^ See Stephani Thesaurus, ed. Dindorf, Paris 1848 -1854 in voce.
^Ti^ds, 2roi3af.
^ Cp. Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake, Canto L xxxiii : —
' The hall was cleared — the stranger's bed
Was there of mountain heather spread.'
E 2
52 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
The difficulty lay in the use of a-nPaSag for materials
which were not intended on that particular occasion to
serve for a bed, not in its use for materials derived
from trees. The employment of SevSpcov in the passage
would lighten this difficulty and not aggravate it.
Moreover it would go well with the word /co\|^ai/Te?, and
would tend to bring S. Mark into closer harmony with
S. Matthew, who has KXdSovg airo twv SevSpcou, and S.
John, who at an earlier point in the same narrative
speaks of ra /3aia twp (poiviKwv. A transcriber, we are
persuaded, was far more likely in this place to change
aypoov into SepSpcov than the reverse.
On the celebrated passage, S. Mark xvi. 9-20, to
which the Reviewer has devoted several pages, we do
not feel it necessary to say much, as the passage is
retained by the Revisers, although it is separated from
the foregoing verses by a small blank space. There is
a critical note appended to it in accordance with the
practice which the Revisers usually followed when
ancient authorities differed to an extent that was deemed
by them to require notice. These being the facts of
the case, we protest very strongly against the language
that has been used by the Reviewer ^ He recognises
' the gravest blot of all' (that in his mind disfigure the
Revised Version) in 'the marks of serious suspicion'
which he finds ' set against the last twelve verses of
S. Mark's Gospel.' What does this language mean ?
The textual facts, as in countless other passages,
have been placed before the reader, because truth
itself demanded it. Can the Reviewer be unwilling
that any allusion should be made to the evidence
against the genuineness of these verses, — evidence suf-
ficient to convince TIschendorf ? Was it really the duty
^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, pp. 325 sqq.
I
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 53
of the Revisers, in his opinion, to suppress all reference
to the existence of textual difficulties in such a passage
as this ?
All that the Revisers have done, we must repeat,
is first by the form of their printed text to indicate
their belief (a belief shared by Tregelles and almost
every critic of eminence who has considered the pas-
sage) that there is a breach of continuity between the
first eight verses of this chapter and the last twelve ;
and in the second place, to notice, as usual, in the
margin facts of textual importance. We totally de-
cline to enter with the Reviewer into topics and ar-
guments irrelevant to the course adopted by the
Revisers. We do not even feel it necessary to place
before our readers the external evidence connected
with this paragraph. A reader who desires to see it
will find it set forth fully and clearly in the Appendix
to Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort's Greek Testament
(Notes on Select Readings, pp. 28-51), — and with it
other arguments, general and transcriptional, which are
of great importance in this passage.
We now turn to a few places in S. Luke's Gospel
in which the Reviewer appears to consider that the Re-
visers have introduced especially censurable readings.
We begin with the well-known reading in ch. ii. 14,
avOpwTToi^ €vSoKLa9, — a change which the Reviewer permits
himself to designate ' a grievous perversion of the truth
of Scriptures' though he must be aware that in so
speaking he is censuring Lachmann, Tischendorf, and
Tregelles, and, we believe, the great majority of the
best modern interpreters — not to mention the entire
Latin Church from the earliest times. That there are
difficulties in this reading, first from the obscurity of
. ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 328.
54 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
the expression, and secondly from the rhythmical In-
equality of the clauses (if the first be considered to end
with Bew), we frankly admit ; but, as both of these diffi-
culties become sensibly diminished by closer considera-
tion, as the transcriptional probabilities are, to say the
very least, in equipoise ^, and as the documentary
evidence is strongly in favour of the genitive, we can
hardly conceive it possible for the Revisers to have
come to any other decision. If this be not a case in
which the evidence is ' decidedly preponderating,' the
cases where such evidence is to be found must indeed
be few. For what is the external evidence ? The first
hand of t^, ABD, all the Latin Versions, the Gothic
Version, the Latin of Irenaeus and Origen, Hilary and
all the Latin Fathers, and the Latin ' Gloria in excelsis,'
— a combination of unusual strength, representing the
convergence of different lines of textual tradition.
To place in opposition to this ' every known copy of
whatever sort ^,' excepting the great manuscripts above
mentioned, is simply to fall back upon the old principle
of number, and to set aside all the critical knowledge
of our materials that has been laboriously acquired
during the last fifty years.
In the next passage on which we have to comment,
S. Luke ix. 55, it is hard to think that the Reviewer
is serious when he censures the Revisers for omitting
the ancient but indisputable interpolation after the
words iireTiiuLtja-ev avroig. When he States that * manu-
scripts, Versions, Fathers from the second century
* The probability that a copyist would change the last word of the
clause into a nominative, so as to conform it to the terminal nominative
of the preceding clause, is, to say the very least, quite as great as the
probabihty that the last letter was mechanically assimilated to the last
letter of the foregoing word. Add to this the natural tendency to sim-
plify a difficult expression. '^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 329.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 55
downwards (as Tischendorf admits) witness eloquently
In its favour ^' are we to understand that the Reviewer
honestly believes the added words to have formed a
part of the Sacred Autograph ? If so, it must be on
the ground of some power of divination which makes
all appeal to documentary evidence idle and unneces-
sary. If however it is to be understood that we are
still in the lower realm of textual criticism, then it must
be enough to remind any candid and Impartial reader
that the authorities which reject the first clause of the
interpolation are b^ABCLXS, six later uncials, several
cursives, copies of the Old Latin and Vulgate, and
copies of the Memphitic and ^thiopic Versions ; and
that, In the case of the second clause, D joins the
foregoing band of witnesses.
It is almost unnecessary to add, except that the
mention of Tischendorf s name by the Reviewer might
possibly mislead, that this eminent critic, like Lachmann
and Tregelles, retains no such interpolated words In
his text. The words probably come from some early
extraneous source, oral or written, but they certainly
form no part of the Gospel according to S. Luke.
We pass onward to a striking passage in the next
chapter, S. Luke x. 15, where in the solemn address
of our Lord to the unhappy town in and around which
so many of His miracles had been wrought, the Re-
visers, with Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles,
adopt the Interrogative form of words, m ewg ovpavoO
vylrcoOva-yj ; Here the Reviewer, after noticing the au-
thorities that have rightly led the above-mentioned
critics and the Revisers to adopt the interrogative,
permits himself to speak of them as * a consensus of
authorities which ought to be held fatal to any reading \'
^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 338.
56 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
Against such misleading and prejudiced language we
are constrained once more to protest. The authorities
thus described are NBDL3, the Old Syriac, the Old
Latin, the Memphitic, and the^thiopic, — a combination
representing convergent textual traditions of the great-
est critical importance. Their consensus, instead of
being fatal to any reading, has been seen to be, even
in the few examples that have come before us in these
pages, in a very high degree confirmatory of its genu-
ineness and truth.
The next passage to which we may properly call
attention is one of great importance and of singularly
instructive critical interest, — the Lord's Prayer as
found in S. Luke xi. 2-4. Here, as might be antici-
pated, the Reviewer^ censures the Revisers for having
adopted a form which differs considerably from that
found in the Received Text, but which, we sincerely be-
lieve, the following considerations will abundantly] ustify.
To put the matter in a form as devoid of technicalities
as the nature of the case will admit, let us suppose
that we had a treatise on the subject of prayer, written
just one hundred years before the probable date of our
earliest manuscript of the Greek Testament, in the
second part of which the forms of the Lord's Prayer as
handed down to us by S. Matthew and by S. Luke were
considered and compared. Let us further suppose that
this treatise was written by one who had especially de-
voted himself to critical and textual studies, and was so
keenly alive to the corruption of the text in his own
days 2 that he had apparently made for himself what he
^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, pp. 324 sq.
^ See Redepenning's Origenes, Part II, pp. 182 sq., where the reader
will find some useful comments on the labours of Origen in the cause of
textual criticism.
I
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 57
deemed to be a truthful copy of the Greek Testament ;
and let us also assume that this supposed treatise was
written at a time when the writer s powers were most
fully matured ^ and after he had had an opportunity of
acquainting himself with more than one leading type of
the Sacred Text and so of forming on the subject a
trustworthy judgment. Let us suppose all this, and
ask ourselves whether express comments on the read-
ings of the passage before us by such a writer and in
such a treatise would not command our especial atten-
tion, and predispose us to accept the readings which he
gave as the nearest approach to the Sacred Autograph
that we could ever hope to attain.
Now we have such comments, such a treatise, and
such a writer. In the treatise of Origen De Oratione^
we have a comparison between the forms of the Lord's
Prayer as handed down to us by S. Matthew and
by S. Luke, and the express statement that the
words riixodv 6 €v Toh ovpavoh, and the two petitions yevrj-
OrjTM TO OeXfjima crov, w? iu ovpavotg kol eirl Trjg yrj^, and aWa
pvarai ^fiag airo rod Trovrjpov, are not a part of the Prayer
as found in the Gospel of S. Luke. With a statement
of such unusual critical importance in our minds we
turn at once to the general documentary evidence.
And what do we find ? In favour of the omission
of the first words {^fxcov k.t.X.) are the important
authorities b^BL, the valuable cursive i, (33 omits
rjiiicou but retains the rest), the Vulgate and Armenian ^
Versions. In favour of the omission of the first of the
* On the probable date of the treatise, see Redepenning, Origenes,
Part II, p. 32, note.
^ Vol. i, pp. 227-265 passim (ed. De la Rue). It may just be added
that if the reader will carefully consider the last-quoted page he will
hardly be able to doubt what gender Origen assigned to rod TroprjpoO,
' This Version retains ^fiwv.
58 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
two petitions {yevijOrjra) K.T.X.) we have BL, i, the
Vulgate, the valuable Old Latin manuscript called the
Codex Coi^beiensis^ the Old (or Curetonian) Syriac and
the Armenian Versions, and Augustine, in a reasoned
passage in his Enchiridion (cap. cxvi). Here it will
be observed that K deserts the authorities with which
it is usually associated ; but its place is supplied by
evidence scarcely less valuable. The second of the
two petitions, which Origen more than once expressly
mentions as not found in S. Luke (aXXa pvdai k.tX), is
omitted by KBL, i, and the Vulgate and Armenian
Versions.
When this evidence is carefully considered there
must, we think, be few impartial critics, and indeed
few readers who have looked through the foregoing
pages of this essay, who will not come to the con-
clusion that the Revisers were fully justified by their
rule, even on external grounds alone, in rejecting, with
Tischendorf and Tregelles, the words and clauses of
which we have been speaking. We have hitherto said
nothing about the internal evidence ; but this, it is
obvious, is here of great weight. The tendency to
assimilate in the Lord's Prayer would have been, by
the very nature of the case, so peculiarly strong, that
we may well wonder that it was ever resisted.
We may notice two other passages in S. Luke, one
of less and the other of greater importance, viz. ch.
xxiii. 38 and 45, in both of which the reading adopted
by the Revisers is censured by the Reviewer.
In the first passage the Reviewer^ objects to the
omission of the words yey pa juLimevtj and ypdjULjuLaa-iv ''EXXtj-
viKoi^ Koi'^oo/uLaLKoif KOL KjSpa'iKotg. Here perhaps some-
thing might be said for the reading e-myey pafxixevri which
^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 355.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 59
is found in the texts of Lachmann and Tregelles,
though the latter editor has enclosed it in brackets ; but,
when the divided state of the authorities is considered,
and the fact that yeypajULimevtjv is found in the parallel
passage of S. Matthew, and eiriyeypaixiJievri in the
parallel passage of S. Mark, and that in neither is
there any difference of reading, the transcriptional
probability (viz. that the reading was derived from the
parallel passage) combined with the documentary
evidence of ^^BL, the Memphitic and the Thebaic
Versions, appears to constitute a clear preponderance
of evidence in favour of the texts of Tischendorf and
of the Revisers.
The omission of the words ypd/uL/uLaa-iv k.t.\. is still
more clearly borne out. Though in this case K deserts
its usual associates, its place is supplied by the first
hand of C, the Old Latin manuscript called the Codex
Vercellensis, and the Old (or Curetonian) Syriac, — the
remaining authorities being, as before, BL and the
Memphitic and Thebaic Versions. When it is re-
membered that these words may very easily have been
suggested by John xix. 20, and that there is some
division among the authorities as to the words them-
selves, there can, we think, be little doubt that the
Revisers were perfectly justified in rejecting them.
The reading in Luke xxiii. 45 is of greater interest
and importance, as the words adopted by the Revisers,
viz. Tov rjklov eKKelirovTO<s (instead of Koi ecrKOTLO-Qr} 6 i]\i09),
might seem to leave the Evangelist open to the charge
of having attributed the darkness to an astronomical
phenomenon (an eclipse of the sun) which could not
by the nature of the case have then taken place. The
Reviewer, in consequence, does not miss the oppor-
tunity of using some of his strongest language and of
60 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
denouncing as a 'gross fabrication^' a reading which,
as we shall soon see, is supported by testimony that
cannot possibly be set aside.
In the first place we emphatically deny that there is
anything in the Greek word iKXel-Treiv when associated
with the sun which involves necessarily the notion of
an eclipse^. It is rightly observed by Dr. Hort^ that
the varied use of this verb in the Septuagint is enough
to show that, when used by a Greek-speaking Jew,
it might easily preserve, when applied to the sun,
its original sense, and not become technical. There
is also evidence that it was understood by some ancient
writers to be so used in this place. Secondly, the great
authority of Origen, who specially comments* upon
these words, and considers that the change from the
ordinary reading was due to enemies of the Church, is
not only attenuated but almost set aside by his remark
that the Evangelists made no mention here at all of
the sun, and further by the fact that in other and con-
temporary portions of his works he certainly adopted
the reading for which we are here contending. We
may therefore not inequitably treat the testimony of
Origen on this passage as inconclusive, save only to
show that ' certain copies ' known to him contained the
reading tov ^Xlou c/cXe/xoi/ro?.
Let us now see what further external testimony can
be adduced. This we find to be t^B, the first hand of
C, L (b^ and L read e/cXtTroVro?), some Lectionaries, the
Memphitic and the Thebaic Versions, and some later
writers, — in itself very important evidence. When
however we add to this the high transcriptional proba-
* Quarterly Review, No. 304, p, 343. ^ Ibid. p. 344.
^ Westcott and Hort, Appendix (Notes on Select Readings, p. 71).
* Here, unfortunately, we have Origen in the Latin translation only.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 6 1
bility that words which, it is clear, had caused a
difficulty in the very earliest times, would be changed
into a known scriptural form of expression (comp.
S. Matthew xxiv. 29, S. Mark xiii. 24) implying
the same thing, and bringing the passage nearer to
the aKOTog of the parallels in S. Matthew and S.
Mark, we can hardly doubt that we have here that
decided preponderance of evidence which the Revisers
were instructed to follow, and that the ' gross fabrica-
tion,' as the Reviewer has termed it, is really a portion
of the Sacred Autograph.
Two or three other passages still remain to be
mentioned. It will be observed that the vast pre-
ponderance of the passages selected by the Reviewer
for censure are from the first three Gospels. It
seems natural for us to follow his example. We think
it enough, therefore, to notice S. John xiv. 4, Acts xviii.
7, and to conclude our essay, as he concluded his first
article, with i Tim. iii. 16.
In S. John xiv. 4 the Reviewer censures the omis-
sion of the word kqI before Trjv 6S6v, and of the word
oiSare after it\ The interpolated words are fairly sup-
ported, since AD, N^ A, and the good cursives i and
69, together with the Vulgate, Syriac (Peshito and
Harklean), Gothic, and Armenian Versions, contain
them, as well as the later uncials, and the mass of the
cursive manuscripts. A careful consideration, how-
ever, of the clause and of the context leads us at once
to surmise that we may here recognise the enfeebling
hand of some early interpolator, who broke up the
vigorous sentence kq). ottov iyw vTrdyw o'lSare rrji/ ooov mto
' Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 348.
"^ A very beautiful manuscript of the sixth century, of which fragments
onlv remain. See Scrivener, Introduction, p. 126.
62 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
two clauses, answering to the two clauses in the en-
suing question of the Apostle. Intrinsic probability is
here certainly strong against the Received Text. But
to trust to this without good documentary evidence
would be utterly uncritical. This evidence, however,
is by no means lacking. For the shorter reading we
have NB, the first hand of C, L, Q (an important but
fragmentary palimpsest of the fifth century), X, the good
cursive 33, one Old Latin Version {Codex Vercellensis),
the Memphitic and (apparently) the ^thiopic Ver-
sions. Here again we have the decided preponder-
ance of evidence by which the Revisers were to be
guided. This passage is a good instance of the im-
prudence of relying too confidently upon mere pre-
ponderance of numbers. It illustrates also the im-
portance of intrinsic evidence when it is employed
with proper caution.
In Acts xviii. 7 we have an interesting example of
diversities of reading. It is a case in which the
two leading authorities ultimately differ, though they
are in harmony as regards the substance of the
correction which has been adopted by the Revisers
against the Received Text. The question relates to
the name of the Corinthian Christian to whose house
S. Paul went after the opposition on the part of the
Jews to his earnest preaching in the synagogue. In
the original text of B, in the corrected Greek text of
the ancient bilingual manuscript D {Codex Bezce),
and in the Harklean Syriac, we have the reading
TiTiov 'lovorrov. In K and in the very valuable manu-
script Eg {Codex Laudianus), and in the Vulgate,
Memphitic, and Armenian Versions, we find T/roy
ToJo-TOf. In the Syriac (Peshito) and the Thebaic
Versions the second word '\ovcttov is dropped ; while
r
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 63
in A, the second hand of B, the first hand of D,
the later uncials HLP, the good cursive manuscripts
13 and 31, the Latin text of D, and the ^thiopic
Version, followed by the Textus Receptus, the word
T/tou is omitted.
On carefully considering this division of authorities
we can hardly doubt the decided preponderance of
the evidence for the fact that this host of the Apostle
bore two names. The evidence that the second of
these two names was Justus is overwhelming. The
Reviewer 1 urges that the first name simply arose from
transcriptional error. It was formed, he thinks, by
the Ti of the ovo/mari and the lov of ToJo-rov, but he
does not tell us how it happened (as it must on this
theory have happened) that the transcriber repeated
not the Ti only but also the initial lov. Transcriptional
evidence may be urged in the question between Tlrov
and Tir/ou, but, so far as we can see, in the question
between two names and one. it cannot be urged with-
out imputation of larger error than seems likely. We
think therefore that the Revisers were perfectly right
in deciding on two names. In the difficult choice and
nicely-balanced evidence between Tlrov and Tirlov we
think they were right in adopting the former, though
Tischendorf and Westcott and Hort adopt the latter :
it appears more probable that the iota was mechani-
cally inserted by a transcriber whose eye rested on
the lov of the 'lova-rov instead of the ov of the Tlrov
than that it was dropped by way of a correction,
because Titius was a well-known family name. The
fact that the Syriac and Thebaic Versions represent
Tlrov may also equitably be claimed in favour of
the Revisers, although these Versions omit 'lova-rov.
^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 336.
64 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
We submit, therefore, that here again the Reviewer
has failed to substantiate his charge.
We come now to i Tim. iii. i6. From what has
been said already^ it might seem almost unnecessary
for us to discuss this celebrated passage. As, how-
ever, the Reviewer has treated it at great length and
has presented the evidence in a manner which we
cannot allow to pass unquestioned, we feel that it may
be well for us, for the sake of the general reader, to
put forward once more the true facts of the case.
Three different readings are found in the extant
documents : Oeog, o?, and o. In uncial manuscripts these
readings are represented by 0C, OC, and O respec-
tively. Only nine uncials are extant which contain
this verse. They are K, A, and C, with which the
reader is already familiar ; and the following which
contain the whole or a portion of S. Paul's Epistles 2,
viz. D {Codex Claro^nont antes) of the sixth century;
F (Cod, Augiensis), G {Cod. Boernerianus), K {Cod.
Mosquensis), L {Cod. Angeliacs), and P [Cod. Porphy-
ria^iics) of the ninth. D, F, and G are bilingual
(Graeco- Latin) manuscripts. F and G are very closely
related ^ in respect of their Greek * text, and must be
taken as the representatives of a single manuscript
now lost. Of these nine uncials three only, KLP,
support 0eo9. Five, NACFG, support o?. One, D,
supports o. On the other hand, all the cursive manu-
scripts which have been collated support ^eo?, except
* Page 3, supra.
^ KLP contain also the Catholic Epistles, to which L adds a part of
the Acts, P the Acts and the Apocalypse. Scrivener, Introduction, p. 150.
^ Scrivener, Cod. Augiensis, Introduction, p. 8.
^ The Latin Versions found in F and G are quite different. But in
this place both exhibit quod.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 65
17, "j^, and 181, which give o?, and i^] (a fourteenth-cen-
tury manuscript now at Leicester) which gives 6 Oeo?.
Turning to the ancient Versions we find them almost
unanimous against Oeo?. All the Latin, all the Syriac,
all the Egyptian agree. The Gothic, Armenian, and
^thiopic Versions are on the same side. In all of
them a relative pronoun is found, never the equivalent
of Oeo?. The gender of this relative pronoun is neuter
in the Latin Versions and some others : in others
again it is indeterminate : in the Memphitic and
Thebaic Versions it is distinctly masculine \ The
Georgian and Slavonic Versions ^ stand alone for the
reading Q^6<i.
We turn next to the Fathers. For the reading ^eo?
the Reviewer professes to call twelve witnesses, of
whom the earliest belong to the latter part of the
fourth century. We have examined his references
carefully. Gregory of Nyssa^ Didymus of Alexandria,
Theodoret, and John Damascene (who died severally
about 394,396,457, and 756 a.d.) seem unquestionably
to have read 0eo?. Severus of Antioch (who died
about 540 A.D.) is not unambiguous. The citations of
the Reviewer from Gregory of Nazianzus are incon-
clusive. We pass over names brought in to swell the
number, — such as Euthalius, for whom no reference is
given ; the second Macedonius, who is claimed on the
^ In these Versions the usage of the language would have required the
adoption of the feminine form, if the translators had wished to re-
present o.
^ Dr. Scrivener (Introduction, p. 271) places these Versions in 'the
third rank ' of importance. The Georgian Version is ascribed to the
fifth century, the Slavonic was made (as is well known) in the ninth by
Methodius the ' Apostle of Bohemia ' and his brother Cyril.
^ In the passage quoted by the Reviewer Gregory has 6 ^cdy, like the
cursive yj.
F
66 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
Strength of a story to which we shall refer pre-
sently; an unknown interpolator^ of Athanasius, and
an equally unknown author^ of a work falsely ascribed
to the same Father. Two celebrated names remain,
on which we must pause for a moment : Chrysostom
and Cyril of Alexandria. We believe that Chrysostom
read Oeh in this place on the faith of his HomiHes ^ on
S. John and on this Epistle, to which the Reviewer
does not refer us. The passage which he does allege *
deserves to be placed before our readers in full as an
illustration of the precarious character of patristic
evidence.
CyriVs case is very different. The Reviewer alleges
a passage^ from that Father's work De Recta Fide,
which would be inconclusive if it stood alone. It does
not stand alone. Earlier in the same treatise our text is
quoted twice on one page ^ in a manner which seems to
show that Cyril had no other reading than o? icpavepcoOtj
in his mind throughout this treatise. If he appears to
quote the text with Oeog elsewhere '^, this shows at the
^ Athanasius, Opp. i. 796 (ed. 1698). The interpolation is found in one
MS only, and there only in the margin.
^ Athan. Opp. ii. 3$. Here the Benedictine editor remarks that the
author seems to have Hved in the times of the Nestorian controversy, i.e.
about 431 A.D. [a.d. 330 in the Review must be a misprint.]
^ Chrys. Opp. ed. Montfaucon, viii. 85, xi. 606.
* i. 497* To 8e 6ebv ovra avOpwnov deXTJaai ycveadai koL ava(TX!£(Tdai KaTa^rjvai
TOcrovTOV ocrov ovSe bidvoia Be^aadai dvvarai, rovTo icm to (^piKOibiararov Koi
€Kn\r}^e0S yefxov. 6 8rj Koi UavXos Oavfid^oiV eXeyev' Koi dixoXoyovfxevcas [xeya
i(TTL TO TTJs evae^ecas fJLva-Trjpiov' rrolov peya', Oeos i(^av€pa>6r) iv aapKi' Koi
TToKiv dWaxov' ov yap drjTTov dyyeXcov emXap^dveTaL 6 deos' dXXd o-ireppaTOS
'A^paa/x emXap^dveTai' odep (w0et\e KaTO. ndvTa Tols ddeXcfiols opoicoOrjvai. If
this passage attests the reading 6e6s in i Tim. iii. 16, does it not also
attest the reading 6 O^os in Heb. iii. 16, where no copyist or translator
has introduced it ?
° Cyril. Alex. ed. Aubert. Opp. vol. v. part ii. p. 154. ^ Ibid. p. 6.
' E. g. De Incarnatione Domini, cap. 29, Nova Bibliotheca Patrum,
Romae 1844, ii. 68.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 67
most the uncertainty of patristic evidence. But we
cannot stop here. Wetstein observed long ago that
Cyril does not produce this text, while he does produce
Rom. ix. 5, in answer to the allegation which he
quotes from Julian ^ that S. Paul never employed the
word 0609 of our Lord. And similarly, in a treatise ^
first published by Mai in 1844, where Cyril is con-
cerned to show on ovK avQpwTTOv 6 Tiavko^ eK^purre rov
Xpia-Tou, he brings in evidence Rom. ix. 5, 2 Cor. iv. 5,
and Tit. ii. 1 1 sqq., but not our text, although twice in
the same context he quotes the First Epistle to
Timothy. We believe that Cyril cannot safely be
cited as an authority for the reading Oeog.
For Oeo?, then, we have Gregory of Nyssa, Didymus,
Chrysostom, and Theodoret, in the fourth and fifth
centuries, besides later Greek writers. We may,
perhaps, add Diodorus of Antioch and Tarsus (who
died about 393 a.d.), on the faith of an extract in
Cramer s Catena ^. For 09 we have Epiphanius *,
whose evidence stands the test of examination, and
Theodorus^ of Mopsuestia, — not to Insist upon our
right to claim Cyril on the ground which we have
mentioned above. For o, as might be expected, all the
Latin Fathers who have occasion to quote the passage
^ Cyril, contra Julian, lib. 10, 0pp. ed. Aubert. vi. p. 327.
'^ Quod Maria sit Deipara, Nov. Bibl. Patr. ii. p. 85 sq.
^ Cram. Cat. Ep. ad Romanes, p. 124.
* Adv. Haereses, lib. iii. 0pp. i. p. 894, ed. 1622.
^ De Incarnatione, lib. 13, in Migne's Patrologia Graeca, torn. 66,
col. 988. We have here the Greek original of the passage which occurs
twice over in Latin in the history of the Second Council of Constan-
tinople. It is worthy of note that in the Acts of the Council itself we find
gui inanifestatus est, while in Pope Vigilius' Constitutmn (which precedes
the Acts) we find quod manifestatum est, though the context plainly
requires the masculine. See Harduin, Concilia, tom. iii. pp. 32, 84
(Paris, 17 14).
F 2
68 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
are witnesses. We will concede to the Reviewer that
the occurrence of the words Qui apparidt in car7ie
justificahcs est in spiritu in Jerome's Commentary on
Isaiah liii. ii is inconclusive as to the gender of the
relative pronoun in the Greek which he had then
before him. Gelasius of Cyzicus, who lived in the
fifth century and wrote a history of the Council of
Nice, reports ^ Macarius of Jerusalem as quoting the
text at that Council in the form o ecjyavepcoOt], and the
same reading occurs in a homily by an unknown author
appended to the works of Chrysostom. This is all the
Greek patristic evidence which is alleged for o. One
quotation of our text remains to be noticed, which is
remarkable as the only unmistakeable reference to it
in an ante-Nicene writer. Origen ^ (as translated and
abridged by Rufinus, who died a.d. 410) has the
following words in his commentary on Rom. i. 5, zs
qui Verbuin caro f aches appartiit positis in carne, sicut
Apostohcs dicit, qttia inanifestatus est in came, jus tifi-
catus in spiritti, appartiit A ngelis. It seems fair to infer
that Origen did not read ^eo? in this place.
The result of this lengthened inquiry is that the
Latin Fathers are entirely for 0, and seem to have
one Greek bishop of the Nicene Council with them,
while the Greek Fathers who lived at the end of the
fourth and the beginning of the fifth century are
divided between 09 and Qe6<i, The majority, however,
of these Greek Fathers, and the mass, perhaps, of those
who followed them, are in favour of Oeo?. We have
jstill a remarkable fact to mention. It was the distinct
belief of Latin writers as early as the sixth century
^ Gelas. Cyzic. Comment. Actorum Nicxni Concilii, pars ii, cap. 24,
p. 152 (Paris, 1590).
2 Orig. Opp. iv. 465; ed. Benedict. 1759.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 69
that the reading of this passage had been corrupted by
the Greeks. Liberatus, a deacon at Carthage cir.
530 A.D., relates^ that Macedonius, the second Constan-
tinopoHtan patriarch of that name, was deposed [cir.
511 A.D.] for falsifying this very passage. The present
text of Liberatus says that Macedonius changed o?
into o)?. But Hincmar of Rheims, who repeats^
the story at length In the ninth century, says expressly
that he changed o? into 6e6g. The story shows, at all
events, that the Latins in the sixth century believed o?
to be the reading of the older Greek manuscripts, and
regarded Oeo^s as a false reading made out of it.
And now we will briefly sum up the evidence. Geo?
rests exclusively on the testimony of three uncial
manuscripts of the ninth century, the mass of the
cursives (which are in this case nearly unanimous), and
a majority of Greek Fathers from the end of the fourth
century downwards. ''O? Is supported by five uncials,
among which are the three oldest, three cursives, the
two Egyptian Versions, and some Greek Fathers of
importance. '^O rests on one uncial manuscript, the
Latin Versions, and the Latin Fathers : but it has a
considerable amount of support In other Versions also,
though an amount which it Is apparently difficult to
determine with exactness. The testimony of the
ancient Versions against Oeog Is In itself almost fatal to
that reading. It seems inconceivable that It should be
represented in none of them (except the Georgian and
Slavonic) If it is genuine. And this consideration gains
additional weight when we remember (i) that Jerome
professedly corrected the Old Latin Versions by the
help of ancient Greek manuscripts, and (2) that the
1 Liberat. Breviarium, cap. 19, Paris 1675.
"^ Hincmar. Opp. torn. ii. p. 465, Paris 1645.
70 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
Latin Version was brought by his revision, and the
Syriac by that revision to which the Peshito is beUeved
to be due, into a degree of conformity with the Greek
text that seems to be represented in Chrysostom's
quotations, which was unknown to the Old Latin
and Old Syriac. When we add to this testimony of
the Versions the unanimity against the reading of
our oldest uncials (for D is with ^^AC as against
Oeog) the evidence against O^og seems conclusive. When
it is considered, moreover, that there is no clear indi-
cation of it in the Fathers before the latter part of the
fourth century, that Athanasius, as his Benedictine
editor observes \ never used it in the controversy with
the Arians, that Cyril (as we have already remarked) did
not use it in his controversial writings on occasions on
which it would have been especially important, and,
finally, that the Greek Fathers who are distinctly
shown to have employed it in the fourth and fifth
centuries are, after all, few in number, it seems im-
possible to question the statement in the Margin of the
Revised Version, that this reading ' rests on no sufficient
evidence.'
It is a harder matter to decide between the claims
of the other two readings. We will give briefly the
grounds which seem to us to turn the scale, i. 00
will account for the reading 00 more easily than O.
Only the insertion ^ and superposition of horizontal
lines was needed to effect this change. If O had been
^ Athanas. 0pp. ii. S3 (ed. 1698).
^ In making such additions a copyist may have honestly thought that
he was correcting an accidental defect in his exemplar, as was no doubt
the case with those who gave its present appearance to the OC of the
Codex Alexandrinus (see Mill in loco, and Wetstein, Prolegg. p. 22).
Moreover theological expressions used by Greek Fathers may have been
construed into authorities for such an emendation.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 7 1
the primitive reading, he who added C must have felt
that he was altering the text. 2. OC will account
more easily for O than O for OC. No theological
importance attached to this change either way. But
the apparent difficulty of construction involved in the
reading OC might easily have tempted a corrector to
accommodate it in gender to the preceding word
/uLvcrrripLov. 3. OC has a decided preponderance of
manuscript evidence. Not only are t^AC combined
against D, but FG are on the same side ; and all
the manuscripts which read 6e6g, from KLP down-
wards, are witnesses in favour of the final consonant.
We have already examined at length the Reviewer's
statement of the patristic evidence. With regard to
the Versions his statement is fair, so far as Oeog is con-
cerned, unfair with respect to 09. 'The Versions,' he
says ^, ' — all but the Georgian and the Slavonic, which
follow the Received Text — favour o unquestionably.'
We have already shown that this is not the case. But
we are content to refer our readers to Tischendorf and
Tregelles, who unhesitatingly claim the Memphitic and
Thebaic for 09, and speak of some other Versions as more
or less doubtful. With his treatment of the manuscript
evidence, however, we cannot deal so briefly. He
states ^ that the reading o? ' is not to be found in more
than ^wo copies (^e and 17) of S. Pauls Epistles.' He
claims for Oeog A, C, F, G, which are alleged by Tischen-
dorf and Tregelles for 09. ' Of the three cursives usually
cited for the same reading' {09), ' the second,' he says,
(i. e. 73) ' proves, on inquiry at Upsala, to be merely an
abridgment of QEcumenius, who certainly read 0€o? ; and
the last ' (181) ' is non-existent' We might be content
1 Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 362.
2 Ibid. p. 364; cp.note 2, p. 362.
72 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
to demand whose word on such matters is entitled to
most credit, — the word of the Reviewer or the word of
the most famous manuscript collators of this century.
But we prefer to go more fully into the matter.
First as regards the two cursives. Those who have
had occasion to seek in public libraries for manuscripts
which are not famous for antiquity or beauty or com-
pleteness know that the answer * 7ion est inventus '
is no conclusive reason for believing that the object of
their quest has not been seen and collated in former
years by those who profess to have actually seen and
collated it. That i8i *is non-existent' must be con-
sidered unproven. In like manner the letter which
the Reviewer seems to have received from Upsala is
quite insufficient to dispose of the cursive numbered ^
73. But this question is of comparatively small im-
portance. We turn, therefore, to the four uncial
manuscripts.
* A and C,' he says 2, * exhibited 00 until ink, dirt, and
the injurious use of chemicals obliterated what once
was patent. It is too late, by full 150 years, to contend
on the negative side of this question.' Some of his
readers may be surprised to learn that, although beyond
all controversy A and C have been made by later hands
to exhibit 00 more or less plainly, there is no sufficient
evidence that there was ever a time when this reading
was * patent ' as the reading which came from their
original scribes. On the contrary it was matter of
dispute throughout the last century whether in either
manuscript any marks were visible, derived from the
hand of the original scribe, which indicated that 0eo?
^ See Scrivener, Introduction, pp. 228, 239.
"^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 362.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. "JT^
was Intended. With regard to A, Mill, as he tells ^
us, thought at first that there were none ; afterwards
he seemed to himself to discover traces of such marks.
And this was nearly a hundred and eighty years ago.
Dr. Berriman, who wrote a Dissertation on the subject
in 1 741, agreed with Mill. Wetstein ^ inspected the
manuscript in 171 7, and saw no such traces. He re-
examined it in 1747 with great care, after he had seen
Berriman's Dissertation, and discovered the real nature
of the 'traces' of which Mill and Berriman had spoken.
When the leaf was held up separately, part of a letter
written on the opposite side of it was seen through the
parchment and appeared to belong to the O in question.
Tischendorf, then, and Tregelles have not * contended
on the negative side of the question a hundred and fifty
years too late.' They have but added their suffrages ^
to those of the best collators in the last century. We
know not whether any scholar of repute in the present
generation has differed from them, save Dr. Scrivener.
The exception is important. We must refer the reader
for his opinion on this point, and on the whole question,
to his Introduction ^ to the Criticism of the New
Testament.
With regard to C the Reviewer's language is still
more surprising. That this manuscript was a palimp-
sest and contained portions of Holy Scripture under
^ Nov. Test. Graec. in loco.
^ Wetstein, Prolegg. in Nov. Test. pp. 20, 22.
^ See especially Tischendorf, Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus, Prolegg.
p. 42, note.
* Page 552 sqq. Dr. Scrivener states the manuscript evidence thus :
*A11 manuscripts (D tertid 77tanu, KLP, some 200 cursives) read eeo?
with the common text, except N* A* (?) C* (?) FG. 17. 7:^. 181, which have
6y, D* which (after the Latin Versions) has 6: the Leicester codex, 37,
gives 6 6s. ^ [The asterisk denotes t\iQ first handoiXhQ manuscript named.]
74
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
its later writing was first discovered by Peter Allix^
about two hundred years ago. Wetstein, who was
informed of the discovery by AlHx himself, collated
thoroughly in 1716 (for Bentley's projected edition)
those parts of it which were concerned with the New
Testament. He tells us himself that he went over it
'once and again' with care. Of course he employed
his collation in his own New Testament of 1751. He
pronounced ^ the original scribe to have written 09, and
not 6€69. A different opinion was expressed after-
wards by Woide and Weber. Griesbach examined
the question minutely, and agreed with Wetstein.
In 1845 Tischendorf published at Leipsic a com-
plete edition of those portions of both Testaments
which were found in the palimpsest. He went into
the question of this reading ^ at great length, and de-
cided unhesitatingly that the original scribe wrote 09,
and not Oeog. If the Reviewer sets aside that verdict
as pronounced ' too late,' we may fairly ask on what
ground he sets aside the judgment which Wetstein
pronounced more than a hundred and sixty years ago.
But in truth the special qualifications of Tischendorf
and his elaborate treatment of this difficult palimpsest
give him a right to be heard* upon its readings to
which no other critic can pretend.
Before we pass to the later manuscripts it is important
to remark that N and D also have been made by cor-
rectors to exhibit the reading Oeog, although in these
two cases the fact that the original scribes wrote 09
and o respectively is so clear that it is not disputed by
the boldest champions of the Received Text.
^ Wetstein, Prolegg. in Nov. Test. p. 27. "^ Nov. Test, m loco,
^ Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus, Prolegg. 39 sqq.
* See Scrivener, Introduction, pp. no, 553.
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 75
F and G are, of course, far less important than A
and C, both because they belong to the ninth century
instead of the fifth, and because they are copies of one
manuscript. But they are of considerable interest, as
they belong to the Western group of documents, of
which the chief, D, exhibits o. Both F and G exhibit
OC. On these manuscripts Dr. Scrivener has a special
right to be heard. He published F (the Codex Au~
giensis) in 1859, and subjoined a careful collation of G
from Matthaei's edition of that MS. ' There are no
signs,' he says ^ ' of the ordinary breathings and accents
in this manuscript. Codex F occasionally, and G more
often, places a straight line nearly horizontal over the
initial vowel of a word, which may be designed for the
aspirate, but is found in some few places where the
vowel takes the lenis. This mark is of some import-
ance from the circumstance that both in F and G it is
placed over OC in i Tim. iii. 16. Yet I do not believe
that the line was intended to denote that OC was the
familiar abbreviation for 0eo9, for not only is there not
the faintest trace of such a line within the O as shall
make it become 0, but the line is placed over too many
initial and aspirated omicrons to render it probable
that anything more was intended here.' He gives a
number of examples, among which we find o represented
twice in one verse (i Tim. vi. 15) by O both in F and
in G. The Reviewer sets aside the editor of the
Codex Atigiensis as boldly as he sets aside the editor
of the Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus, He seems to
think it enough to say that 'there is no single example of
09 written OC in any part of either manuscript I i.e.
either F or G. We will only add that Wetstein (at
whose suggestion Bentley purchased the Codex Au-
^ Codex Augiensis, Introduction, p. 27.
*](> THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
gieiisis), Griesbach, Lachmann, Tregelles, and Tlschen-
dorf agree with Dr. Scrivener in this matter.
We have treated this reading at great length, but
we have been compelled to do so by the Reviewer.
He has made an elaborate effort to shake conclusions
about which, we suppose, no professed scholar has any
doubt whatever, but which an ordinary reader (and to
such we address ourselves) might regard as still open
to reconsideration. Moreover this case is of great im-
portance as an example. It illustrates in a striking
manner the complete isolation of the Reviewer's posi-
tion. If he is right, all other critics are wrong ; —
wrong in their deciphering of manuscripts, wrong in
their interpretation of Versions, wrong in their esti-
mate of patristic testimonies, wrong in the textual
conclusions which they found upon all these different
kinds of evidence taken together. It illustrates also,
no less strikingly, the central point of this essay : we
mean the impossibility of trusting the mass of the
cursive manuscripts, or of making the form of text
with which Chrysostom was familiar — if that were now
recoverable in its entirety — a final standard.
We now bring these remarks to a close. We trust
that we have fully done what we undertook to do.
We have endeavoured to give the general reader such
outlines of a difficult and intricate subject as may
enable him to judge for himself concerning the trust-
worthiness of the Greek text adopted by the Revisers.
We believe that in our discussion of the examples
which we have noticed we have done something towards
disproving the sweeping charges of the Reviewer. In
the choice of those examples we have followed his
guidance. We have addressed ourselves to the con-
sideration of those readings which he himself, so far as
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 77
we could judge from the vehemence of his language,
seemed to regard as worthy of the greatest reproba-
tion.
As to the completeness of our answer the reader
must judge for himself. On two points, however, we
desire to insist. First, if the Revisers are wrong in
the principles which they have applied to the deter-
mination of the text, the principles on which the
textual criticism of the last fifty years has been based
are wrong also. Secondly, no equitable judgment can
be passed on ancient documents until they are care-
fully studied, and closely compared with each other,
and tested by a more scientific process than rough
comparison with a text which (as these pages have
shown concerning the Received Text) was uncritical
and untrustworthy from its origin.
If we have established these two literary facts, we
have substantially answered the Reviewer. We ven-
ture to hope that we have done something more than
this. We hope that we have shown cause for the belief
that the Revised Version does not rest on a foundation
of sand, but on a Greek text which is consistent in its
principles and pure in its general results. In times of
controversy like that in which we live it is not enough
that the vernacular New Testament should be 'a well
of English undefiled : ' it must represent with the
utmost accuracy which is attainable the documents
which were left behind by the Evangelists and the
Apostles. It is true that the Articles of the Christian
Faith do not depend on such variations of the Greek
text as are in controversy between critics of different
schools. The ancient manuscripts and the manuscripts
of the Middle Ages, the printed editions of the six-
teenth and the nineteenth centuries, bear witness to
78 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT.
the same Gospel, to the same Creed. But nothing is in-
significant which concerns the truth of Holy Scripture.
There are grave interpolations in the Received Text
which it would have been worth eleven years of toil
to remove if nothing else had been done. There are
innumerable blemishes and corruptions of less import-
ance which have become known during the last cen-
tury to all careful students. In great things alike and
small it has been the desire of the Revisers to bring
back the text to its original shape. They do not
claim the title of discoverers. They have done little
more than verify and register the most certain con-
clusions of modern textual criticism. In this as in
other respects they have endeavoured to make know-
ledge which has hitherto been accessible only to the
learned a part of the common heritage of Englishmen.
POSTSCRIPT.
Since the foregoing pages were in type, a third
article has appeared in the Quarterly Review entitled
' Westcott and Hort's Textual Theory/ In this con-
troversy it is not for us to interpose. The Revisers, as
we have already stated, are not in any way responsible
for the writings of their learned colleagues. For our-
selves we will only say that our estimate of the im-
portance of those writings remains unshaken. On the
work for which the Revisers are responsible there is
nothing substantially new in this third article. We
observe the admission that there are ' known ^ textual
errors ' in the Received Text, the correction of which
the Reviewer ' eagerly expected ' from the Revisers,
and that ' it cries aloud ^ for Revision in many of its
subordinate details.' The Reviewer did not speak so
plainly on this subject in his former articles : he was
only careful to disclaim the belief that the Received
Text is absolutely faultless. If we have attributed to
him a greater veneration for it than he entertains, the
general tone of his two first articles is our warrant. To
those two articles — so far, at least, as they are con-
cerned with the Greek text adopted by the Revisers —
our essay is intended for an answer. We find nothing
in the Reviewer's third article to require a further
answer from us, or to make this present answer un-
necessary.
^ Quarterly Review, No. 306, p. 311.
^ Ibid. p. 331.
DATE DUE
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