Searching for the Truth in the King James Bible;
Finding it, and passing it on to you.
EDITOR:
Steve
Van Nattan
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When
the language in common use in any country becomes irregular
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Preface I wrote this article in 1993 in response to a request from the editor of Crosswinds magazine. He needed something that was readable and understandable by the average pastor and he had correctly concluded that his need was not met with books written by textual scholars. I know the arguments for, and the importance of, a Biblical commentator staying within his discipline. Even so, it seems to me that I have a God-given mandate to defend the Bible that has been the guiding light of our fathers, mothers, and leaders for three hundred years in the English speaking world, beginning studies in the book of Genesis is the time and place. It is the Mighty and Timeless Old King James upon which we have built our concept of home, church, community, and the Kingdom of God. It is from the Authorized Standard Version that we have gleaned our understanding of what the moral law is and says, and what it requires of us. |
SO,
YOU THINK THE NEW |
The
question we wish to ask here is: Is this true? Will a study of what
Hort and his followers did reveal better evidence, or will it show a manipulation
of the evidence, a decline in reverence, and upsurge in creature worship and power
brokerage? I wish to moderate a discussion of that in this Appendix as best I
am able, but a few things need to be made clear at the outset.
1. I am not, and do not claim to be, a textual scholar. I am not a "scholar" at all in any formal sense of the term, though it may be correct to say that I am an informal scholar. My library consists of less than five hundred volumes, mostly books that I have read in whole or in part. Of course that is not a great number, but I see no reason for books that I do not plan to use, cluttering up the shelves. I am a dedicated reader and enjoy the acquisition of knowledge too much, I fear. Yet my gift and calling in the Church is that of a prophet, not a school man. It is true that I am an expository teacher, but from the perspective of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, not the letters and certificates of the School.
In
the Bible it is fully recognized that there are certain matters which are evident
to even the unregenerate man and a discussion of those matters is useful.
But the goal of Orthodox Christianity and its leaders must ever be to inform by
revelation and faith, not by intellect and sight. I will not defer to discuss
that subject further here (I shall later on) but I refer you to I Corinthians,
Chapters 1 and 2, Ephesians 1:8-23, Colossians 1:9 and 2:2-10. Though we
will look into it a bit to make our point, my purpose is not to critically examine
the Westcott and Hort theory of textual criticism. My goal is to show how
religious scholarship, under the lead of Hort, went wrong in the 19th century
on the matter of lower criticism and why.
2.
While I have read many articles and some books, and while I will make a number
of references, my views in this particular paper are mostly those of Wilbur M.
Pickering and his excellent and unsurpassed book, The Identity of the New Testament
Text, Revised Edition of 1980, by Thomas Nelson Publishers of Nashville, Tenn.
In this Appendix I have done little beyond editing Pickering and have almost paraphrased
him on occasions. Let it be clear that I have done nothing original here
and the research that I use is that of others, mostly Dr. Pickering and The Identity
of the New Testament Text. Even so, my purpose is neither to plagiarize nor to
direct attention to myself on this subject. It is to condense a very far-reaching
and difficult matter, which gets very esoteric when scholars (even Dr. Pickering)
discuss it, into something that is short enough to be read and simple enough to
be understood by the average pastor and lay-teacher.
3.
This is not at all to claim that Dr. Pickering or Dr. Zane C. Hodges would in
any way agree with my views on lower criticism, the condition of the New Testament
text, or my attitudes about scholarship and apologetics. I express my appreciation
of them (on this subject--as to this paper) and they do not, to my awareness,
know who I am, much less approve of me.
INTRODUCTION
In my view, nothing in the last one hundred years has been more dangerous or detrimental to the Church and Her mission than the attitude toward the Bible and the proliferation of translations, pseudo-translations, and paraphrases that have followed the lead of the Westcott and Hort Greek Text of the late 1800s. Nor do I think that conservative Christian leaders in general understand what motivated this movement and what the true issues are in terms of the Church's mandate to protect the purity of the body and the doctrine.
For more than eighteen hundred years in the Church the Orthodox precept of translating had been observed. A translator was to translate, not interpret. He was to be as true to the original language as it was possible to be. In difficult passages he was to make a literal rending, studiously avoiding any temptation on his part to teach and thereby have the translation clouded by his own views, whatever they might be. He was to preserve the holy and inerrant record and leave the interpretation to the preachers, teachers and prophets of the Church (perhaps one of his own functions, but in another forum). To Orthodoxy the matter of preserving inerrancy was up to God. He who had ordained His Word was also able to preserve it. Copies could be made by anyone who owned a text if it was wearing out and it was becoming unserviceable. But good will must be exhibited. The man must do his best to be faithful to the original. God would do the rest. The same principle followed in translating from one language to another. If godly and capable men would look to God for their sufficiency, trusting in the Holy Ghost for their direction and would do the best they could, God would undertake so that the result would be the preservation of the Word of God.
It was recognized early on that there were copying errors but the Apostles and the ante-Nicene Fathers did not consider these to be of significance. Obviously, God was concerned with preserving the spirit of the Word of Truth, not the mechanics. CERTAINLY THE ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS HAD BEEN INSPIRED AND INERRANT IN EVERY WAY, DOWN TO THE SPELLING AND THE PUNCTUATION MARKS.1 But as God preserved the Word in the Church, it was demonstrated that the Holy Ghost would not rule over the pens of every copyist as He had with the original writers. Still He was preserving His inerrant Word.
The whole basis for the existence and the understanding of the Word was divine intervention, faith, grace, and the leading of the Holy Ghost. If a nationality of people had a Bible in their own language that they could read, that was all they needed. On the basis of that written Word, God, by the Spirit, would reveal truth to them according to their faith and obedience and His good will. It was not dependent upon education and human intellect. Jesus had shown, in His encounters with the scribes and the lawyers, that the letter of truth, haggled out and preserved by the traditionalists, the religionists and the intellectuals, was not what the Bible meant or God had in mind.
But all of that began to change with the Renaissance. Now the emphasis shifted from faith to reason and from revelation to intellectual inspection and discovery. The age of reason began to declare that reason was the test of truth, not the Bible. From the Enlightenment came an assault upon and an infiltration into the Church. This was grabbed with both hands by the proud intellectual elitists of the Church who had long felt that the university and the seminary, not the Church and the preacher, should control the wisdom of the Church. Close on the heels of this re-emphasized human autonomy (from everything including God and His Word--this of course had started in the Garden of Eden) perhaps we should say "because of it," the industrial revolution gathered steam. With each new invention, men, even religious men, turned further and further from God. It was now supposed to have been God, the Bible, and the Church that held us down all of these years. Now we were proving that this was wrong, and were we also proving that God, the Bible, and the Church were wrong too? Hort certainly thought so. It was with the claim that the Bible and its text should be treated like every other book in the world, with no deference made to any super natural involvement or preservation of it through the years. Hort attacked the Authorized Version and subjectively set out to produce a new Greek Text that would "relegate the vile Textus Receptus to obscurity."
Without further prelude, we will look briefly at modern textual perceptions in general and the work of Hort in specific. This Appendix is not offered as being exhaustive, comprehensive, or original. But it does address pertinent and accurately identified issues, and it does open an all-important dialogue.
Most
fundamental and conservative churchmen accept without question the viability of
modern translation along with treatises on modern translations by seminaries and
publishers of new texts. They are supposed to be "improved" texts that
will do beneficial things for the Church. This is stated rather clearly in the
front of most of these Bibles. The preface to the Revised Standard Version, p.
ix, says:
The
King James Version of the New Testament was based upon a Greek text that was marred
by mistakes, containing the accumulated errors of fourteen centuries of manuscript
copying. . . . We now possess many more ancient manuscripts of the New Testament,
and are far better equipped to seek to recover the original wording of the Greek
text."
The
New International Version, p. viii:
The
Greek text used in the work of translation was an eclectic one. No other piece
of ancient literature has so much manuscript support as does the New Testament.
Where existing texts differ, the translators made their choice of readings in
accord with sound principles of textual criticism. Footnotes call attention to
places where there is uncertainty about what constitutes the original text.
Yet there is a curious and disturbing fact to the astute observer. All of these new translations differ greatly, one from the other. Nor is their any certainty as to which Greek text has been used in each case. This is not my statement; it is reflected commonly in the footnotes of these works. On the other hand, there is one thing that they very much have in common, and this, if properly understood, is a very telling condemnation. Their strong point and their claim to fame is a condemnation of the King James and how they all have made a point of differing greatly from it. As to the disparities among themselves, this is explained as the differences in style and translation technique. Yet they claim to be in agreement as to the Greek text they used, "as opposed to that underlying the King James Version." But no two of them are based on an identical Greek text.
The
ways in which the translators differ over the same Greek texts is arbitrary. Some
of them change the wording in very few places while others have made many changes
and have admitted that by no means all the doubts have been recorded. The intended
effect, in short, is that no one in the world today really knows the precise original
wording of the Greek text of the New Testament. Reassurances of dialectic theologians
notwithstanding, this makes many people very uneasy. That is because the current
"wisdom" and "sound principles" are neither wise nor sound
in the view of Orthodoxy. They consist in two stated axioms: 1) choose the reading
that best explains the origin of the competing variants, and 2) choose the variant
that the author is most likely to have written. Bruce Metzger2 says, "It
is understandable that in some cases different scholars will come to different
evaluations of the significance of the evidence."3 "In some cases"
is decidedly an understatement. In fact, even the same scholars will vacillate,
as by demonstrated by the "more than five hundred changes" introduced
into the third edition of the Greek text produced by the United Bible Societies
as compared with the second edition (the same committee of five editors prepared
both).4 It is obvious that these rules simply cannot be applied. No one
knows what happened through the centuries. Scholars who work in the field acknowledge
this. Robert M. Grant, a well-known Biblical scholar, says:
The
primary goal of New Testament textual study remains the recovery of what New Testament
writers wrote. We have already suggested that to achieve this goal is well-nigh
impossible. Therefore we must be content with what Reinhold Niebuhr and others
have called, in other contexts, an "impossible possibility."5
Kenneth
W. Clark, another well-known textual scholar and professor, comments:
.
. . the papyrus vividly portrays a fluid state of the text at about A.D.200(P7s).
Such a scribal freedom suggests that the gospel text was little more stable than
the oral tradition, and that we may be pursuing the retreating mirage of the "original"
text.6
Thirty years ago Grant had said, "It is generally recognized that the original text of the Bible cannot be recovered."7 This is not at all satisfactory to Orthodox Theology. Discounting for the moment the preserving work of the Holy Ghost (which we do not discount, of course) and appealing strictly to textual evidence, is this sort of position justified? To answer the question we need to begin with what has been going on in lower criticism and that beginning starts with something called "eclecticism."8
What exactly is this technical word which has taken on such sinister meaning to so many of us. Textual Critic Eldon J. Epp says:9
The
"eclectic" method is, in fact, the 20th century method of NT textual
criticism, and anyone who criticizes it immediately becomes a self-critic, for
we all use it, some of us with a certain measure of reluctance and restraint,
others with complete abandon.
So
the RSV (Revised Standard Version), NEB (New English Bible) and NIV (New International
Version) are all admittedly based upon an eclectic text.
The
two great translation efforts of these years--RSV and NEB--each chose the Greek
text to translate on the basis of the internal evidence of readings. F. C. Grant's
chapter in the expository pamphlet on the RSV made this clear. The translators,
he says, followed two rules: (1) Choose the reading that best fits the context;
(2) Choose the reading which explains the origin of the other readings. Professor
C. H. Dodd informed me that the British translators also used these two principles--Hort's
Intrinsic Probability and Transcriptional Probability. One of the RSV translators
while lecturing to the New Testament Club at the University of Chicago replied
to a question concerning the Greek text he used by saying that it depended on
where he was working: he used Souter at the office and Nestles at home. One of
the British translators in admitting the unevenness of the textual quality of
the NEB translation explained that the quality depended on the ability of the
man who made the first draft-translation of a book. Whether in early Christian
times or today, translators have so often treated the text cavalierly that textual
critics should be hardened to it. But much more serious is the prevalence of this
same dependence on the internal evidence of readings in learned articles on textual
criticism, and in the popularity of manual editions of the Greek New Testament.
These latter, with their limited citations of variants and witnesses, actually
reduce the user to reliance upon the internal evidence of readings. The documents
which these rigorously abbreviated apparatuses cite cannot lead the user to dependence
upon external evidence documents. The editions use documents (to quote Housman)
"as drunkards use lampposts -- not to light them on their way but to dissimulate
their instability."10
The
statement in the preface to the NIV has already been noted: "The Greek text
used in the work of translation was an eclectic one." The introduction to
the recent Greek text put out by the United Bible Societies, pp. x-xi (1966),
says:
By
means of the letters A, B, C, and D, enclosed within "braces" at the
beginning of each set of textual variants, the Committee has sought to indicate
the relative degree of certainty, arrived at on the basis of internal considerations
as well as of external evidence, for the reading adopted as the text. The letter
A signifies that the text is virtually certain, while B indicates that there is
some degree of doubt. The letter C means that there is a considerable degree of
doubt whether the text or the apparatus contains the superior reading, while D
shows that there is a very high degree of doubt concerning the reading selected
for the text.
A review of their apparatus and its lack of pattern in the correlation between degree of certainty assigned and external evidence makes clear that it is eclectic. In Acts 16:12 they have even incorporated a conjecture! It will be remembered that this text was prepared specifically for the use of Bible translators. The TEV (Today's English Version) is translated directly from it, as is the Version Popular, etc. The text-critical conclusions of G. D. Kilpatrick, a thorough-going eclecticist, are finding expression in A Greek-English Diglot for the Use of Translators, issued by the British and Foreign Bible Society. And so on. Enough evidence has been given to show that eclecticism is a major, if not controlling, factor on the textual scene today.
What
exactly does "eclecticism" consist of? Metzger explains that an eclectic
editor "follows now one and now another set of witnesses in accord with what
is deemed to be the author's style or the exigencies of transcriptional hazards."11
E. C. Colwell12 goes further with it and comes to the really sinister and frightening
aspects:
Today
textual criticism turns for its final validation to the appraisal of individual
readings, in a way that involves subjective judgment. The trend has been to emphasize
fewer and fewer canons of criticism. Many moderns emphasize only two. These are:
1) that reading is to be preferred which best suits the context, and 2) that reading
is to be preferred which best explains the origin of all others. (My note: In
other words the textual scholars are interpreting--not just translating!) These
two rules are nothing less than concentrated formulas of all that the textual
critic must know and bring to bear upon the solution of his problem. The first
rule about choosing what suits the context exhorts the student to know the document
he is working on so thoroughly that its idioms are his idioms, its ideas as well
known as a familiar room. The second rule about choosing what could have caused
the other readings requires that the student know everything in Christian history
which could lead to the creation of a variant reading. This involves knowledge
of institutions, doctrines, and events.... This is knowledge of complicated and
often conflicting forces and movements.13
This
is both impossible and ridiculous. No man could know all of that, particularly
since the authors and the conditions under which the texts were produced are lost
permanently to men in this world. In later years, Colwell himself seems to have
had a change of heart.
The
scholars who profess to follow "the Eclectic Method" frequently so define
the term as to restrict evidence to the Internal Evidence of Readings. By "eclectic"
they mean in fact free choice among readings. This choice in many cases is made
solely on the basis of intrinsic probability. The editor chooses that reading
which commends itself to him as fitting the context, whether in style, or idea,
or contextual reference. Such an editor relegates the other manuscripts to the
role of supplier of readings. The weight of the manuscript is ignored. Its place
in the manuscript tradition is not considered. Thus Kilpatrick argues that certain
readings found only in one late Vulgate manuscript should be given the most serious
consideration because they are good readings.14
Another
lower critic, J. K. Elliott, comments on transcriptional probabilities:
By
using criteria such as the above the critic may reach a conclusion in discussing
textual variants and be able to say which variant is the original reading. However,
it is legitimate to ask: can a reading be accepted as genuine if it is supported
by only one ms.? There is no reason why an original reading should not have been
preserved in only one ms. but obviously a reading can be accepted with greater
confidence, when it has stronger support.... Even Aland with his reservation about
eclecticism says: "Theoretically, the original readings can be hidden in
a single ms. thus standing alone against the rest of tradition," and Tasker
has a similar comment: "The possibility must be left open that in some cases
the true reading may have been preserved in only a few witnesses or even in a
single relatively late witness."15
Among
what Elliott calls "positive advantages of the eclectic method" is the
following:
An
attempt is made to reach the true or original text. This is, of course, the ultimate
aim of any textual critic, but the eclectic method, by using different criteria
and by working from a different standpoint, tries to arrive at the true reading,
untrammeled by discussion about the weight of ms. support....
To
this method and its problems, Dr. Epp comments:
This
kind of "eclecticism" becomes the great leveller -- all variants are
equals and equally candidates for the original text, regardless of date, residence,
lineage, or textual context. In this case, would it not be appropriate to suggest,
further, that a few more conjectural readings be added to the available supply
of variants on the assumption that they must have existed but have been lost at
some point in the history of the textual transmission?16
Concerning
eclecticism, Dr. Pickering17 asks cryptically: "What shall we say of such
a method; is it a good thing?" He then goes on to comment:
An
eclecticism based solely on internal considerations is unacceptable for several
reasons. It is unreasonable. It ignores the over 5,000 Greek MSS now extant
to say nothing of patristic and versional evidence, except to cull variant readings
from them. In Elliott's words, it "tries to arrive at the true reading untrammeled
by discussion about the weight of ms. support." It follows that it has no
principled basis for rejecting conjectural emendations. It has no history of the
transmission of the text. Therefore the choice between variants ultimately depends
upon guesswork."
Dr.
Colwell agrees:
In
the last generation we have depreciated external evidence of documents and have
appreciated the internal evidence of readings; but we have blithely assumed that
we were rejecting "conjectural emendation" if our conjectures were supported
by some manuscripts. We need to recognize that the editing of an eclectic text
rests upon conjectures.18
F.
G. Kenyon19 called conjectural emendation "a process precarious in the extreme
and seldom allowing anyone but the guesser to feel confidence in the truth of
its results.''20 Although enthusiasts like Elliott think they can restore the
original wording of the text in this way, it is clear that the result can have
no more authority than that of the scholar(s) involved. Textual criticism ceases
to be a science and we are left wondering what is meant by "solid principles"
in the NIV preface.
Clark and Epp are right in calling eclecticism a secondary, tentative, and temporary method.21 As A.F.J. Klijn22 says, "This method arrives at such varying results that we wonder whether editors of Greek texts and translations can safely follow this road.''23 This procedure seems so unsatisfactory, in fact, that we wonder what gave rise to it.
According
to Dr. Pickering, eclecticism grew out of the Westcott and Hort (hereafter W-H)
theory of textual criticism. A summary of this is given by Dr. Epp:
.
. . the grouping of manuscripts led to the separation of the relatively few early
manuscripts from the mass of later ones, and eventually the process reached its
climactic point of development and its classical statement in the work of Westcott
and Hort (1881-1882), and particularly in their (actually, Hort's) clear and firm
view of the early history of the NT text. This clear picture was formed from Hort's
isolation of essentially three (though he said four) basic textual groups or text-types.
On the basis largely of Greek manuscript evidence from the middle of the 4th century
and later and from the early versional and patristic evidence, two of these, the
so-called Neutral and Western text-types, were regarded as competing texts from
about the middle of the 2nd century, while the third, now designated Byzantine,
was a conflate and polished ecclesiastical text. . . . This left essentially two
basic text-types competing in the earliest traceable period of textual transmission,
the Western and the Neutral, but this historical reconstruction could not be carried
farther so as to reveal -- on historical grounds -- which of the two was closer
to and therefore more likely to represent the original NT text.24 . . . the question
which faced Westcott-Hort remains for us: Is the original text something nearer
to the Neutral or to the Western kind of text? . . . Hort resolved the issue,
not on the basis of the history of the text but in terms of the presumed inner
quality of the texts and on grounds of largely subjective judgments of that quality.25
Hort
preferred the readings of the "Neutral" text-type (the Alexandrian)
and especially those of Codex B, because it had a "ring of genuineness."
Yet other scholars have preferred the readings of the "Western" text-type
and of Codex D, for the same reason. Have we really come to this in the translating
of the Holy Scriptures?
Although
Hort professed to follow external evidence, his prior choice of the "Neutral"
text-type was based on internal (subjective) considerations.26 But clearly Hort
sought to give the general impression that the W-H theory was based on external
(manuscript and historical) evidence. Because of this inequity, which was not
hard for objective scholars to see, various aspects of the theory were resisted
strenuously almost immediately after it was published in 1881. This led to wide
argument and confusion among scholars. It was out of this confusion that eclecticism,
that bastard child, was born.
Dr.
Elliott is candid in admitting his own persuasion and motives:
In
view of the present dilemma and discussion about the relative merits of individual
mss., and of ms. tradition, it is reasonable to depart from a documentary study
and to examine the N.T. text from a purely eclectic standpoint.27
R.V.G.
Tasker is also open about the willful nature of eclecticism:
The
fluid state of textual criticism today makes the adoption of the eclectic method
not only desirable but all but inevitable."28
Metzger
is dissatisfied, as are others he names, "with the results achieved by weighing
the external evidence for variant readings" as the cause.29 Epp faults "the
lack of a definitive theory and history of the early text" and the inevitable
"chaotic situation in the evaluation of variant readings in the NT text."30
Colwell too is critical of "manuscript study without a history."31 Eclecticism
confesses that original wording can never be recovered on the basis of external
evidence. It is therefore unwilling to undertake the hard work of reconstructing
the history of the text, feeling that the exercise is futile. Even so, most modern
lower critics do not follow pure eclecticism. Instead they follow Hort.
As a consequence, the two most popular manual editions of the Greek text today,
Nestle-Aland and UBS (United Bible Society), are very little different from the
W-H text.32 The exact same thing is true of the newer versions such as the RSV,
the NEB, etc.
What
is the reason for this? One would think it would be just the opposite? Dr. Epp
has an answer:
One
response to the fact that our popular critical texts are still so close to that
of Westcott-Hort might be that the kind of text arrived at by them and supported
so widely by subsequent criticism is in fact and without question the best attainable
NT text; yet every textual critic knows that this similarity of text indicates,
rather, that we have made little progress in textual theory since Westcott-Hort;
that we simply do not know how to make a definitive determination as to what the
best text is; that we do not have a clear picture of the transmission and alteration
of the text in the first few centuries; and, accordingly, that the Westcott-Hort
kind of text has maintained its dominant position largely by default. Gunther
Zuntz enforces the point in a slightly different way when he says that "the
agreement between our modern editions does not mean that we have recovered the
original text. It is due to the simple fact that their editors . . . follow one
narrow section of the evidence, namely, the non-Western Old Uncials."33 (My
note: Uncials are large, rounded letters used in ancient Latin and Greek manuscripts.)
Clark
and Zuntz have also agreed on an answer: "All are founded on the same Egyptian
recension, and generally reflect the same assumptions of transmission."34
Clark also enlarges on Epp:
.
. . the Westcott-Hort text has become today our textus receptus. We have been
freed from the one only to become captives to the other.... The psychological
chains so recently broken from our fathers have again been forged upon us, even
more strongly.... Even the textual specialist finds it difficult to break the
habit of evaluating every witness by the norm of this current textus receptus.
His mind may have rejected the Westcott-Hort term "neutral," but his
technical procedure still reflects the general acceptance of the text. The basic
problem today is the technical and psychological factor that the Westcott-Hort
text has become our textus receptus.... Psychologically it is now difficult to
approach the textual problem with free and independent mind.... However great
the attainment in the Westcott-Hort text, the further progress we desiderate (My
note: desiderate means to feel the need for.) can be accomplished only when our
psychological bonds are broken. Herein lies today's foremost problem with the
critical text of the New Testament.35
Even though there is such wide-spread uncertainty and dissatisfaction, when the going gets tough must textual critics fall back on W-H. Hort started it and he has been widely accepted, at least early on when over anxious and ambitious men jumped hastily on his band wagon. It is the safe thing to do. Let him take the heat. Stay with the already-established tradition.36 Elliott, in trying to break with the new tradition, constructed a text of the Pastoral Epistles which differs from the Textus Receptus 160 times, differs from W-H 80 times, and contains 65 readings that have not appeared in any other edition. Even though he has not been able to completely spin out of the gravitational pull of W-H, the result is still entirely unique.37 Though not by design, his printed efforts show the extent to which UBS, NEB, etc. have copied the W-H method and results. To comprehend the treachery that is going on we need a good understanding of the W-H lower critical method and its hidden agenda. I am not really the one to give this, but I will piece together as best I can from others.
The importance of this issue has been widely recognized, of course.38 J. H. Greenlee says. "The textual theory of W-H underlies virtually all subsequent work in NT textual criticism."39
Westcott
is associated with this theory and this text so I will give a little on him and
then we will pass him over, for it is unilaterally accepted that he had no real
input or force in this issue.
Brooke
F. Westcott was born in 1825 and died in 1901. In his own right he was one of
the foremost NT scholars of the nineteenth century (I did not say textual critics
-- he was not one of the foremost in that field). A fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge, for several years as a young man, he spent almost two decades as a
master at the famous Harrow School. In 1870, primarily at the instigation of his
close and learned friend, the renowned NT scholar J. B. Lightfoot, he was invited
to return as Regius Professor of Divinity. Here his greatest NT work was done.
He produced famous commentaries on the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and
the Epistle to the Hebrews. His work reflects the best of the Anglican theological
tradition which he did much to help develop. Based on massive historical and theological
learning, his approach could charitably be considered conservative and spiritual.
Even so, at Cambridge as at Oxford, the social gospel had taken deep root and
the influences of Locke and Hume were strong. Westcott was not entirely unscathed.
He was deeply involved in social issues, and was the first president of the Christian
Social Union. Abhorring the raw brutalities of unfettered capitalism, he found
his answer in an organic view of society based on an incarnational model similar
to that of F. D Maurice (shades of socialism and Marxism are seen upon it). Since
Jesus Christ in his incarnation assumed humanity and then glorified it in His
resurrection, it follows then that all humanity is already bound together in Jesus
Christ. The need is for this corporate reality to be recognized. The sacraments
play an important part in this scheme, for the incarnation of Christ is expressed
through the sacraments which sanctify all of human life in community. Through
this emphasis Westcott became one of the progenitors of the famous school of Anglican
Christian Socialists, which would include Stewart Headlam, Scott Holland, Charles
Gore, and William Temple. After twenty years at Cambridge, Westcott replaced Lightfoot
as Bishop of Durham. In the industrial northeast of England his social consciousness,
as well as his intelligence, scholarship, and spirituality, helped to make him
a great bishop. His involvement with W-H was really at Hort's insistence and for
Hort's benefit and need for a solid and reputable image in an endeavor which was
upstart and arrogant by tradition.
It is generally accepted that it was mainly Fenton John Anthony Hort40who was responsible for the development of the theory and the resulting two-volume work.41 And so we discuss the W-H theory as if it were Hort's alone, which it was in practical fact.
In
late 1851(he was 23 at the time), Hort wrote to his friend:
I
had no idea till the last few weeks of the importance of texts, having read so
little Greek Testament, and dragged on with the "villainous" Textus
Receptus . . . Think of that "vile" Textus Receptus leaning entirely
on late MSS.; it is a blessing there are such early ones.42
About a year later, Hort and B. F. Westcott reached final agreement on "the plan of a joint revision of the text of the Greek Testament.43 A short time later, in 1853, Hort told his friend that he would have the new text out "in little more than a year."44 This was far off the mark. It actually took him twenty-eight years. Many feel that this was to his credit and not a mark against him. Perhaps, but it does not change the fact, that though ignorant of Greek texts (he had been on to this matter for about two weeks) and wholly uninformed by his own admission, Hort conceived a personal animosity for the Textus Receptus,45 referring to the grand, lofty and mighty old King James that had served English speaking-people for nearly 300 years, as "vile and villainous", and only because it was based entirely, as he mistakenly thought, on late manuscripts.
The scholarly argument that Hort arrived at his theory through unprejudiced intercourse with the facts, is not only in error, it is deliberately fraudulent. The truth is that he set out to deliberately concoct a theory that would justify his adolescent, unprovoked, and baseless, preconceived animosity for the Received Text. This observation was made by Colwell when he said: "Hort organized his entire argument to depose the Textus Receptus."46 And again, "Westcott and Hort wrote with two things constantly in mind; the Textus Receptus and the Codex Vatacanus. But they did not hold them in mind with that passive objectivity which romanticists ascribe to the scientific mind."47 In other words, Hort did not have a dispassionate, scholarly approach to his mission as he later tried to imply.
He had the rash, impetuous attitude of an ambitious young man seeking to make a name for himself and feeling that the best way to do it was to bring down the King. But as the years passed and Hort began to season, he realized that he was in for a much more involved struggle than he had thought. To get anywhere with his fervent endeavor, he had to have a convincing history of the text in order to sell his contrived and convoluted theory that only one type of text was to be found in the mass of later manuscripts and why this justified the rejection of this type of text.
At
this point it must be made clear to all that Hort was not a conservative theologian
(if in fact he was not a theologian at all at the beginning of his crusade). Nothing
is more indicative of that than the method that Hort contrived to bring down the
King James (He thought it was one in the same with the Textus Receptus, but this
was not quite accurate). Hort took the position that the New Testament was to
be treated like any other book.48 This means that Hort discounted any divine providence
as having been connected with the work of the 47 "Divines" appointed
by King James and the fact that this had been the Word of God for God's English-speaking
people for nearly 300 years. To Hort it was solely a question of how scholars
had succeeded or failed in keeping the original text pure and how much careless
or tricky and deceitful men had corrupted it accidentally or by design. These
are valid considerations of course, but they are not the only ones, nor the most
significant ones. But in order to bring down the Textus Receptus, Hort had to
separate it from any notion of God's involvement. Under no considerations is this
Orthodox or conservative in its theology. Said Hort:
The
principles of criticism explained in the foregoing section hold good for all ancient
texts preserved in a plurality of documents. In dealing with the text of the New
Testament no new principle whatever is needed or legitimate.49
In
other words, the Bible was like any other ancient book. In order for a valid criticism
to be made of the text, no different procedure or consideration was necessary
and none could be allowed. If others were used, they were illegitimate:
It
will not be out of place to add here a distinct expression of our belief that
even among the numerous unquestionably spurious readings of the New Testament
there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes.50
Here Hort declares that it is not reasonable to make the accusation that the ancient texts had been deliberately falsified and tampered with to promote and defend heresy. All errors were carelessness or presumption or the part of scribes and copyists. Instead of examining the manuscript for its quality or any hint of devious work, one should look to its history and the path down which it descended. This position made two essential positions acceptable, both of which were vital to Hort. It made it possible for him to use readings that had been corrupted by heretics and thereby rejected by the Fathers as unreliable, in piecing together his imaginary "Alexandrian." This is exactly what he was doing, as we shall see, not only through actual changing of the wording by eclectic principle, but manipulation of the theory to suit his fancy.
It was a genius stroke on his part that he was able to successfully appeal to the good will and character of the ancients so as to intimidate scholars away from this consideration. It also laid the ground work for Hort to bring into the textual criticism of the New Testament the family tree method, or genealogy (All changes were accidental or presumptuous and therefore of little importance. History of descent was the real issue), a concept long used by students of the classics. It had never been considered with respect to the Holy Bible for everyone knew that the Bible was not just another ancient book. It is absolutely mystifying that Hort was able to put this over on fundamental and conservative Christian thinkers. How desperate this heady and conceited bunch of young seminarians must have been to break the restraints of Orthodox instruction and tradition so they could each get their name on something original and their grubby little Enlightenment-stained hands on the sacred canon of the Holy Writ.
First,
let us get Hort's own definition of the Genealogical Method:
The proper method of Genealogy consists . . . in the more or less complete recovery of the texts of successive ancestors by analysis and comparison of the varying texts of their respective descendants, each ancestral text so recovered being in its turn used, in conjunction with other similar texts, for the recovery of the text of a yet earlier common ancestor.51
Dr.
Colwell has this comment on Hort's use of Genealogy:
As
the justification of their rejection of the majority, Westcott and Hort found
the possibilities of genealogical method invaluable. Suppose that there are copies
of a document and that nine are all copied from one; then the majority can be
safely rejected. Or suppose that the nine are copied from a lost manuscript and
that this lost manuscript and the other one were both copied from the original;
then the vote of the majority would not outweigh that of the minority. These are
the arguments with which W-H opened their discussion of genealogical method .
. . . They show clearly that a majority of manuscripts is not necessarily to be
preferred as correct. It is this a priori possibility which Westcott and Hort
used to demolish the argument based on the numerical superiority of the adherents
of the Textus Receptus.52
Let us be clear on this point: without the genealogical method there is no Hort theory of textual criticism! This arbitrarily concocted method enabled him to reduce the mass of manuscript testimony to four voices -- "Neutral," "Alexandrian," "Western," and "Syrian."
In summary, the "eclecticist" argued that the "genealogy theory" had proven that the great ancient texts did actually exist and the extant (still existing) documents offer no evidence to support the existence of important textual events previously unknown. If such events had transpired they could alter the interpretation of evidence in Hort's theory, but ''genealogy" has shown that they did not.53
The "great ancient texts" are the Neutral, Alexandrian, Western, and Syrian. New studies show the "Neutral" and "Alexandrian" (Hort's invention) have resulted in only one text which is called "Alexandrian." Another of his self-styled designations the "Syrian" is actually determined to be the "Byzantine." Writers (not textual scholars) like to defer to the "Caesarean," though this is without textual verification. At least three major text-types or recensions pervade the thinking of modern lower critics.
Having (in theory of course) ostensibly succeeded in relegating the enormous volume of Western manuscripts into one text, Hort undertakes to prove that this text was inferior and unimportant. In order to do this he conveniently fathered another orphan: "conflation ."
When
manuscripts are relegated to certain text-types because they possess common variations,
you can use this as a launching point to throw out or disallow any ancient manuscript
at will. Virtually every early manuscript, chosen at complete random, can be found
to contain isolated or non-characteristic variations. Hort called these anomalous
readings diagnostic. On this basis he alienated the ones he didn't want from the
text type. He called them mixtures. There was a cunning design to this.
Hort was leading up to his "conflation" theory, which meant a special
kind of mixture. In his words:
The
clearest evidence for tracing the antecedent factors of mixture in texts is afforded
by readings which are themselves mixed or, as they are sometimes called, 'conflate,'
that is, not simple substitutions of the reading of one document for that of another,
but combinations of the readings of both documents into a composite whole, sometimes
by mere addition with or without a conjunction, sometimes with more or less of
fusion.54
In other words, Hort argued that "conflate readings" must be dated later than the texts which contained the wording from which the "conflations" were made.55 Hort offered eight examples56 to prove his point, which was (remember his preconceived goal was to destroy the Textus Receptus and the English King James) the "Syrian" (Byzantine) text had deliberately fused "Neutral" and "Western" variants into one premeditated and subjective text. It was crucial to Hort's theory and purpose, to show the "Syrian" text to be of a more recent date than the "Neutral" and the "Western" and that there be no evidence of an inversion of the relationships between the three "texts." (An "inversion" would be either the "Neutral" or the "Western" text containing a conflation from the other plus the "Syrian.")
Since this could not possibly be factually shown, Hort simply claimed that such inversions do not exist. This subjective and unsubstantiated claim has been widely accepted by the world of modern textual criticism.57 To Vincent Taylor it is "very cogent indeed.''58 Kirsopp acknowledges, agreeably, that it is "the keystone of their theory.59
Hort's
inventive genius did not stop with the fabricating of the conflation theory. After
long and involved dialogue with peers and critics alike, he saw the need for more
support for the W-H theory. It was then that he decided to lay claim to the testimony
of the ante-Nicene Fathers. He was not long in coming to a conclusion:
Before
the middle of the third century, at the very earliest, we have no historical signs
of the existence of readings, conflate or other, that are marked as distinctively
Syrian by the want of attestation from groups of documents which have preserved
the other ancient forms of text. This is a fact of great significance, ascertained
as it is exclusively by external evidence, and therefore supplying an absolutely
independent verification and extension of the result already obtained by comparison
of the internal character of readings as classified by conflation.60
John
Chrysostom was the first Orthodox Father to commonly use the "Syrian"
text, according to Hort.61 Hort seized on this as being very important to his
theory, as recognized by Kenyon:
Hort's
contention, which was the corner-stone of his theory, was that readings characteristic
of the Received Text are never found in the quotations of Christian writers prior
to about A.D. 350. Before that date we find characteristically 'Neutral' and 'Western'
readings, but never 'Syrian.' This is in fact decisive;. . . .62
Lake is also taken in.63 It would appear that Hort had achieved his goal with textual critics of the day. But he is edgy and dissatisfied with the status quo. He looks for still another argument against the "Syrian" text, and comes up with the notion of "internal evidence."
Internal Evidence Readings has two bases: Intrinsic and transcriptional probability. Intrinsic probability relies upon the author of the text; what reading makes the best sense, best fits the context, and conforms to the author's style and purpose? Transcriptional probability has to do with the person who copied the text; what reading is the result of carelessness or over-judiciousness on the part of the copyist? Hort is little concerned with inadvertent mistakes. He presumes that deliberate changes have been made (remember that the Textus Receptus is Vile and Villainous).
This assumption gives Hort all the reason he needs to establish two important lines of criticism: brevio lectior potior, "the shorter reading is to be preferred". (on the assumption that scribes were in the common habit of adding material to the text), and proclivi lectioni praestat ardua, "the harder reading is to be preferred" (Hort claimed that this was on the assumption that scribes automatically tried to simplify the text as to its reading lucidity. In fact this was at the heart of Hort's whole venture, as we shall see later. It has long been recognized by friend and foe alike that the King James is the loftiest and most eloquent document in the English language.
This
was a hidden, but deliberate, attempt on Hort's part to prejudice critics against
the literary magnificence of King James. It is a commentary, in the final analysis,
of the low quality of the minds and characters of textual scholars that he succeeded
so admirably in this.) On the bases of these contradictory inventions of his,
Hort declared the "Syrian" text to be characterized by "lucidity
and completeness," "apparent simplicity," "harmonistic assimilation,"
and as being "conspicuously a full text."64 By Hart's theory this was
an obvious condemnation that could not be ignored. He went on to say:
In
themselves Syrian readings hardly ever offend at first. With rare exceptions they
run smoothly and easily in form, and yield at once to even a careless reader a
passable sense, free from surprises and seemingly transparent. But when distinctively
Syrian readings are minutely compared one after the other with the rival variants,
their claim to be regarded as the original readings is found gradually to diminish,
and at last to disappear.65
Hort's character assassination of the "Syrian" text and its authors has been largely accepted by textual scholars who have followed him.66 But even after pronouncing the "Syrian" to be eclectic and recent, Hort was still faced with a large problem. What possible explanation was there as to how and why the "Syrian" existed at all if these be the cases? And how did it become all-popular and all-pervasive from the fifth century on? A Church conspiracy, world wide, to revise and streamline the text to rid it of all problems and make it popular was Hort's answer. Only a mind like his could accuse the holy men of the ages of such nefariousness, sacrilege, and blasphemy. This theory was labeled "The Lucianic Recension and the Peshitta:"
Hort
declared that the Syrian text must in fact be the result of a "recension".
In practical fact this means that the text was changed by editors, not scribes
or critics, deliberately and with a specific goal in mind.67
An
authoritative Revision at Antioch . . . was itself subjected to a second authoritative
Revision carrying out more completely the purposes of the first. At what date
between A.D. 250 and 350 the first process took place, it is impossible to say
with confidence. The final process was apparently completed by A.D. 350 or thereabouts.68
Hort's
claim that Lucian (who died in 311) was the ring leader of this vile conspiracy,
was only tentative. But later scholars have picked up on this (as Hort no doubt
counted on them doing) and have became dogmatic. This has also led to the Syriac-Peshitta
text being closely linked to, and treated the same as the so-called "Lucianic
recension." Because the Peshitta does authenticate the "Byzantine"
it was necessary for Hort to date it later than the second and third centuries.
So he made up a late-recension theory for it too. Again later scholars, such as
F. C. Burkitt, out-did Hort and declared unequivocally that Rabbula, Bishop of
Edessa from A.D. 41 1-435, was the author of the revision.69 Both ideas have been
largely accepted by modern lower criticism. A quote from H. C. Thiessen, quite
representative as to content and dogma, bears this out:
This [Peshitta] was formerly regarded as the oldest of the Syrian versions; but Burkitt has shown that it is in reality a revision of the Old Syriac made by Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa, about the year 425. This view is now held by nearly all Syriac scholars.... The text of the Peshitta is now identified as the Byzantine text, which almost certainly goes back to the revision made by Lucian of Antioch about A. D. 300.70
We
have skimmed the basics of the W-H critical theory. Hort achieved his purpose,
that he set out toward. The King James is indeed in general disfavor (thankfully
there is real indication of solid change on this but we do not yet know where
it will go) with modern textual scholars and churchmen, even though most of them
know nothing at all as to why. The answers that I personally have gotten are conceived
in complete intellectual, scholastic, and spiritual vacuums. In addition
to Hort, men like Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Alford had done much to undermine
the position of the TR (Textus Receptus). But it was Westcott and Hort who
stuck the Brutian dagger in the back (but no doubt they were honorable men!).
In so doing they opened the book on the enlightenment era of irreverency, trickery,
and the ascendancy of the intellect of religious men in the Church above the Scriptures
and the Orthodox precept of faith over reason. Writings to this effect are
legion.71 None express it better than Dr. Colwell:
The
dead hand of Fenton John Anthony Hort lies heavy upon us. In the early years of
this century Kirsopp Lake described Hort's work as a failure, though a glorious
one. But Hort did not fail to reach his major goal. He dethroned the Textus Receptus.
After Hort, the late medieval Greek Vulgate was not used by serious students,
and the text supported by earlier witnesses became the standard text. This was
a sensational achievement, an impressive success. Hort's success in this task
and the cogency of his tightly reasoned theory shaped, and still shapes, the thinking
of those who approach the textual criticism of the NT through the English language.72
This explains the nature and extent to which modern, scholars and editors, with their willful versions, have deliberately, with malice aforethought, departed from the Authorized Version (King James Version). They are all based on the W-H theory and text (even the UBS text of the NIV) whereas the AV is essentially based on the Textus Receptus. But has this mania for criticizing the text (arising from increased materials and "wisdom") achieved any good purpose? Is the RSV for instance, a better text, having made use of the manuscripts? Are these "superior principles of textual criticism" really holier than those employed by the translators of the AV?
The
guiding principles that led to the wholesale adoption of the W-H text are based
on two manuscripts, Codices B and Aleph.73 Hort says:
It
is our belief (1) that the readings of K B should be accepted as the true readings
until strong internal evidence is found to the contrary, and (2) that no readings
of B can safely be rejected absolutely. . .
He goes on to say of B and Aleph, "The fullest comparison does but increase the conviction that their preeminent relative purity is likewise approximately absolute, a true approximate reproduction of the text of the autographs."74 One wonders whether the W-H theory and text would ever have seen the light of day had it not been for Codex B. Hort seems to all but admit this in his discussions on genealogy.
The difficulty of recognizing the ancient texts in the Book of Revelation is greater because of the scarcity of documents, and especially the absence or loss of this book from the Vatican MS (B) which is available for nearly all the rest of the New Testament. Here the effectiveness of using a directly genealogical method is greatly hindered.75
The bottom line of the W-H theory, and the original preconceived purpose, was action of the "Syrian" text and an exclusive reliance on the "Neutral" text (a and Aleph). The notion of a "Neutral" text has been discredited since, but the "Syrian" text hangs on. There seems to be a determination not to reconsider the "Syrian" text even though every single one of the arguments Hort used in relegating the Textus Receptus to oblivion has since been discredited. In commenting on the work of Lake and Streeter, as well as his own, J. N. Birdsall declares: "It is evident that all presuppositions concerning the Byzantine text -- or texts -- except texts inferiority to other types, must be doubted and investigated de novo76 (even though its claimed inferiority was based upon those false presuppositions). Recalling what has already been said in the discussion of eclecticism, it seems evident that Clark is right: "textual theory appears to have reached an impasse in our time."77
But the reason why textual scholars will not return to the AV is obvious to Orthodox Christian leaders who reject the "New Papacy" of scholarship. To do so would brand the whole critical-examination movement as questionable and put textual scholars back under the control of the Elders and the Prophets of the Church where they belong!
Hort's purpose was to get rid of the "Syrian" text. This is the only point of his theory that scholars have usually not questioned. By this self-serving neglect (both benign and militant) they have contributed to -- yea, even fostered -- the present confusion and despair. It is certainly time for the Church to question whether Hort was really right about anything. If the scholars will not do it, the prophets will. After all, no segment of religious leadership could hardly be inspired by motives more righteously suspect, employ tactics more academically contradictory and shoddy, or produce a worse result.
Next
we will take up an evaluation and conclusion about the Westcott and Hort text
and method as scholarship.
Hort insisted -- in fact demanded -- that the New Testament be treated exactly like any other book. Is this in any sense orthodox or acceptable? Is there no difference between Plato and the Holy Writ? Can an understanding be arrived at or possessed by the Church of Jesus Christ of the inerrancy and divine origin and intent of the Bible if applying classic literary criticism to it? If the omniscient, omnipotent God gave it to us and the supernatural enemy of the soul has an eternal interest in trying to confuse us about it, what sort of fool would advance such an argument? How then shall the leadership of the Church, in attempting to insure as best as possible the accuracy of translations, be able to determine our responsibilities, for which we are accountable, in contrast to revelation and divine intervention?
Many things could be said (many of which have not been said and need to be) in endeavoring to answer these questions. We will not at all try to exhaust the possibilities. Nor are the things that we will say necessarily the most important in arriving at the final position of orthodoxy. But that is not our goal at the moment. What we want to do for this limited purpose is say some of the things that bear on the W-H theory and how we answer and evaluate it.
For
one thing, we have some historical eyewitness to help establish a position. As
has become evident with increasing regularity, the facts do not support Hort's
invented claims. He declared that "there are no signs of deliberate falsification
of the text for dogmatic purposes." Yet this is not the witness of
the ante-Nicene Church Fathers:
Irenaeus,
Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Eusebius, and many other Church Fathers accused
the heretics of corrupting the Scriptures in order to have support for their special
views. In the mid-second century, Marcion expunged his copies of the Gospel according
to Luke of all references to the Jewish background of Jesus. Tatian's Harmony
of the Gospels contains several textual alterations which lent support to ascetic
or encratite views.78
Gaius,
an ante-Nicene Father (active in the Church from A.D. 175 to 200) identifies Asclepiades,
Theodotus, Hermophilus, and Apollonides. These were heretics who were leaders
of heretical religious groups. They prepared corrupted copies of the Scriptures
and instructed their followers to make as many copies of these doctored up, deliberately
distorted, and fabricated scriptures as they could and circulate them.79 Are we
to believe that Hort was ignorant of the writing of the Alexandrian churchrman
Origen, who said:
Nowadays,
as is evident, there is a great diversity between the various manuscripts, either
through the negligence of certain copyists, or the perverse audacity shown by
some in correcting the text, or through the fault of those, who, playing the part
of correctors, lengthen or shorten it as they please (In Matth. tom. XV, 14; P.
G. XIII, 1293).80
Orthodoxy
itself had men who changed a reading here and there because of sectarian bias.
According to Epiphanius (ii.36), the orthodox themselves struck the words "He
wept" from Luke 19:41 because they were worried that it would detract from
Christ's deity in the eyes of the people.81 This erroneous position of Hort's
has not escaped notice and it has severely shaken the confidence of some of his
earlier followers. Colwell is one who has had a change of heart and position:
The majority of the variant readings in the New Testament were created for theological or dogmatic reasons. Most of the manuals and handbooks now in print, (including mine!) will tell you that these variations were the fruit of careless treatment which was possible because the books of the New Testament had not yet attained a strong position as "Bible." The reverse is the case. It was because they were the religious treasure of the church that they were changed.82
In
other words, it was recognized by early ambitious religionists that the Word of
God controlled everything. If you wanted to make changes in the thinking of the
religious world for whatever reason, you had to first change the text of the Scriptures.
The
New Testament copies differ widely in nature of errors from copies of the classics.
The percentage of variations due to error in copies of the classics is large.
In the manuscripts of the New Testament most variations, I believe, were made
deliberately.83
Matthew
says with emphasis:
The
difference between sacred writings in constant popular and ecclesiastical use
and the work of a classical author has never been sufficiently emphasized in the
textual criticism of the New Testament. Principles valid for the textual restoration
of Plato or Aristotle cannot be applied to sacred texts such as the Gospels (or
the Pauline Epistles). We cannot assume that it is possible by a sifting of 'scribal
errors' to arrive at the prototype or autograph text of the Biblical writer.84
H.
H. Oliver comments on the recent mass defection from Hort's position.85 W. M.
Pickering comments on deliberate changes in the text, contrary to Hort:
We commented on Hort's definition and attempted use of genealogy in the last chapter.
According to Hort this all worked out very nicely and as anticipated. But textual
scholars, both pro and con, who have focused on this issue, have only been able
to come up (and they have tried, believe me) with one "parent-child"
set of manuscripts among the 5,000 and more that are extant.87 What does
this say about Hort's claim to have carefully and accurately charted the genealogical
descent of the extant MSS? M. M. Parvis gives us the answer in the kind of plain
talk that is warranted at this point: "Westcott and Hort never applied the
genealogical method to the NT MSS . . ."88 Nor is he alone in this
position by any means. Colwell says:
That
Westcott and Hort did not apply this method to the manuscripts of the New Testament
is obvious. Where are the charts which start with the late manuscripts and climb
back through diminishing generations of ancestors to the Neutral and Western texts?
The answer is that they are nowhere. Look again at the first diagram, and you
will see that a, b, c, etc. are not actual manuscripts of the New Testament, but
hypothetical manuscripts. The demonstrations or illustrations of the genealogical
method as applied to New Testament manuscripts by the followers of Hort, the "Horticuli"
as Lake called them, likewise use hypothetical manuscripts, not actual codices.
Note, for example, the diagrams and discussions in Kenyon's most popular work
on textual criticism, including the most recent edition. All the manuscripts
referred to are imaginary manuscripts, and the later of these charts was printed
sixty years after Hort."89
Yet
Hort speaks assuringly of only "occasional ambiguities" in the evidence
for the genealogical relations. He says, confidently:
So
far as genealogical relations are discovered with perfect certainty, the textual
results which follow from them are perfectly certain, too, being directly involved
in historical facts; and any apparent presumptions against them suggested by other
methods are mere guesses against knowledge.90
In
truth he had not demonstrated the existence of any such relations, much less with
"perfect certainty?" Another challenge to genealogy is "mixture."
Colwell comments on this fabricated rule of Hort's:
The
second limitation upon the application of the genealogical method to the manuscripts
of the New Testament springs from the almost universal presence of mixture in
these manuscripts . . . . The genealogical diagram printed above (p. 110) from
Westcott and Hort shows what happens when there is no mixture. When there is mixture,
and Westcott and Hort state that it is common, in fact almost universal in some
degree, then the genealogical method as applied to manuscripts is useless . Without
mixture a family tree is an ordinary tree-trunk with its branches--standing on
the branches with the single trunk--the original text--at the top. The higher
up--or the further back-- you go from the mass of late manuscripts, the fewer
ancestors you have! With mixture you reverse this in any series of generations.
The number of possible diagram combinations defies computation, let alone the
drawing of diagrams.91
Many
textual scholars now agree that the genealogical method never was applied and
furthermore it cannot be applied to the New Testament. Thus, Zuntz says it is
inapplicable."92 Vaganay that it is "useless,"93 and Aland that
it "cannot be applied to the NT."94 Colwell also declares emphatically
"that it cannot be so applied."95 So what does it tell us about Hort's
scholarship, integrity, or honesty, when he brazenly declares:
For
skepticism as to the possibility of obtaining a trustworthy genealogical interpretation
of documentary phenomena in the New Testament there is, we are persuaded, no justification
either in antecedent probability or in experience . . . . Whatever may be the
ambiguity of the whole evidence in particular passages, the general course of
future criticism must be shaped by the happy circumstance that the fourth century
has bequeathed to us two MSS of which even the less uncorrupt must have been of
exceptional purity among its own contemporaries.96
Here Hort has plainly lied! There is no "experience" on which to base these claims and no one knows it better than he. Whether Hort believed that the genealogy-method could someday, somehow be applied, no one can know. But what we do know is that he told textual scholars what he wanted them to believe, (taking advantage of the fact that no one in the world would have guessed that a churchman of Hort's "apparent" stature would even consider doing such a fell deed) when it simply wasn't true in any sense of the word. This is not only not scholarship, it isn't Christian. God in His sovereignty may have allowed it, just as He allowed Israel to have a king, but He certainly would not have approved.
After leaving the genealogical method of Hort in shambles, Dr. Colwell concludes by saying, "Yet Westcott and Hort's genealogical method slew the Textus Receptus. The a priori demonstration is logically irrefutable."97
In
other words, the eloquent, mighty, timeless Word of God for three hundred years,
the King James Bible, has been widely discredited in the Church -- there are children
in Bible schools making fun of it, there are unwitting preachers in pulpits slandering
it -- by an ambitious 23 year old seminarian armed with an animosity, and ambition
to be famous, a diabolical scheme, and a pack of well thought out lies with no
apparent conscience against telling them when they would suit his purpose. In
his own distempered mind, the end justified the means. Here we can see the religious
situation-ethics of Enlightenment theology at work in our best seminaries in 1860-1890.
Even so, Colwell is "much impressed"98by the built-in conviction by
Hort that genealogy was true, whether demonstrated or not. But this is sentimental
nonsense and scholarly effeteism. The a priori demonstration to which Colwell
pays intellectual homage can have no honor when it has been openly and thoroughly
disproved by later experiences and demonstrations to the complete contrary! It
is remarkable that Dr. Colwell would say this when he himself, more than a decade
earlier, acknowledged that the "a priori demonstration" (that he here
calls logically irrefutable99 ) has in fact been refuted:
The
universal and ruthless dominance of the Middle Ages by one text-type is now recognized
as a myth.... The complexities and perplexities of the mediaeval text have been
brought forcibly to our attention by the work of two great scholars: Hermann von
Soden and Kirsopp Lake.... This invaluable pioneer work of von Soden greatly weakened
the dogma of the dominance of a homogeneous Syrian text. But the fallacy (Hort's
and von Soden's fallacy) received its death blow at the hands of Professor Lake.
In an excursus published with his study of the Caesarean text of Mark, he annihilated
the theory that the Middle Ages were ruled by a single recension (Hort's Syrian)
which attained a high degree of uniformity.100
In
truth Hort produced nothing concrete at all. There were no "demonstrations"
of anything that Hort claimed. They were all just assumptions; nothing more than
that. For this reason if critical examination of ancient texts is to continue
as an arm of the conservative Orthodox Church (there is a better-than-good argument
that it should not, in light of all of this) the genealogical method of Hort may
certainly not be used in NT textual scholarship. Says W. M. Pickering,101 "If
it was Hort's genealogical method that 'slew the 'Textus Receptus' then the TR
must still be alive and well -- the weapon was never used." But Hort
claimed to have used it, and the weapon was so fearsome, and he spoke of the 'results'
with such confidence, that he won the day."102 In the face of all of this
it has and is continuing, stubbornly and deliberately by scholars who are motivated
not by spirituality, accuracy, and service to the Church, but academic freedom,
recognition, monetary considerations and above all rebellion against the rules
and conformities of the Orthodox Christian Church:
Since
Westcott and Hort, the genealogical method has been the canonical method of restoring
the original text of the books of the New Testament. It dominates the handbooks.
Sir Frederick Kenyon, C.R. Gregory, Alexander Souter, and A.T. Robertson are a
few of the many who declare its excellence.103
Colwell
issued this warning twenty years ago and has certainly not lost any of its urgency:
Many
years ago I joined others in pointing out the limitations in Hort's use of genealogy
and the inapplicability of genealogical method -- strictly defined -- to the textual
criticism of the NT. Since then many others have assented to this criticism,
and the building of family trees is only rarely attempted. Therefore we might
assume that the influence of Hort's emphasis upon genealogical method is no longer
a threat. But this assumption is false. Hort's brilliant work still captivates
our minds. So when confronted by a reading whose support is minimal and widely
divorced in time and place, we think first and only of genealogical relationships.
Hort has put genealogical blinders on our eyes.104
Lower Criticism continues on as if the genealogical method can be and has been demonstrated. The foundation of all their work is laid to the corner stone of "Genealogy." What does this tell us about their work and their findings?
Hort completely misrepresented Genealogical Evidence. It is simply undeniable that his claimed "results" were a fabrication. If there is no application of the theory to a manuscript, then there are obviously no "results." One modern scholar declared that Hort's Genealogy Theory claims would only have meaning, carry weight, and be acceptable if the textual critic had first indexed every principal Church Father and reduced MSS to families by a laborious process of induction.105 But Hort's claimed results continue to be accepted anyway, by men who are hooked on them and, like Roseau and his mistresses, simply can't give them up. This is acknowledged by George Salmon, who talks about "the servility with which his [Hort] history of the text has been accepted, and even his nomenclature adopted, as if now the last word had been said on the subject of New Testament criticism. . . ."106
The
discovery of the Papyri has given a closer look at manuscripts. Because of this,
textual scholars have been forced to rethink this matter, whether or not they
want to. This new look has led to some disillusionment and grumbling. Parvis says:
We
have reconstructed text-types and families and subfamilies and in so doing have
created things that never before existed on earth or in heaven. We have assumed
that manuscripts reproduced themselves according to the Mendelian law. But when
we have found that a particular manuscript would not fit into any of our nicely
constructed schemes, we have thrown up our hands and said that it contained a
mixed text.107
This
over-generalization with respect to text-types, especially the "Byzantine,"
is opposed by Wikgren.108 Dr. Colwell later agreed:
The
major mistake is made in thinking of the "old text-types" as frozen
blocks, even after admitting that no one manuscript is a perfect witness to any
text-type. If no one MS is a perfect witness to any type, then all witnesses are
mixed in ancestry (or individually corrupted, and thus parents of mixture).109
Zuntz,
after a detailed study of certain portions of B, came to the following conclusions:
One
would like to think that observations like these must put an end to time-honored
doctrines such as that the text of B is the 'Neutral' text or that the 'Western'
text is 'the' text of the second century. If the factors of each of these equations
are meant to be anything but synonyms, they are wrong; if they are synonyms, they
mean nothing.110
Klijn
does not believe that any grouping of manuscripts has significant meaning,111
and adds:
It
is still customary to divide manuscripts into the four well-known families: the
Alexandrian, the Caesarean, the Western, and the Byzantine. This classical division
can no longer be maintained.... If any progress is to be expected in textual criticism
we have to get rid of the division into local texts. New manuscripts must not
be allotted to a geographically limited area but to their place in the history
of the text.112 (So much for Hort's "Alexandrian Text," so far as Klijn
is concerned.)
Metzger
has come to the reluctant but firm conclusion that the Caesarean text is falling
apart before our very eyes.113 Referring to the importance of P4s, he raises the
question, "Was there a fundamental flaw in the previous investigation which
tolerated so erroneous a grouping? Evidently there was. Could it be the mentality
that insists upon thinking in terms of text-types and recensions as recognized
and recognizable entities?"114 Scholars who have made a sincere and tenacious
effort to collate manuscripts consider Hort's groupings to be a mythological invention.115
Perhaps the most careful of these was H. C. Hoskier. After exasperating and exhausting
work on collating Codex 604 and its relevance to other manuscripts, he concludes:
I defy anyone, after having carefully perused the foregoing lists, and after having noted the almost incomprehensible combinations and permutations of both the uncial and cursive manuscripts, to go back to the teaching of Dr. Hort with any degree of confidence. How useless and superfluous to talk of Evan. 604 having a large "Western element," or of its siding in many places with the "neutral text." The whole question of families and recensions is thus brought prominently before the eye, and with space one could largely comment upon the deeply interesting combinations which thus present themselves to the critic. But do let us realize that we are in the infancy of this part of the science, and not imagine that we have successfully laid certain immutable foundation stones, and can safely continue to build thereon. It is not so, and much, if not all, of these foundation must be demolished.116
Many
scholars have taken to the examination of individual text-types. One of these
is Dr. Kenyon. He comments on the "Western" text:
What
we have called the S-text, indeed, is not so much a text as a congeries of various
readings, not descending from any one archetype, but possessing an infinitely
complicated and intricate parentage. No one manuscript can be taken as even
approximately representing the s-text, if by "text" we mean a form of
the Gospel which once existed in a single manuscript.117
Concerning
the Nestle text (25th edition), Dr. Colwell sees no evidence of an identifiable
"Western" group. To the contrary he says that there is a plain denial
of such, "a denial with which I agree."118 Says Dr. Metzger, "So
diverse are the textual phenomena that von Soden was compelled to posit seventeen
sub-groups of witnesses which are more or less closely related to this text."119
To Klijn, "a 'pure' or 'original' Western Text simply did not exist."120
Colwell says of the present-day "Alexandrian" text, which is Hort's
"Neutral" and "Alexandrian":
After
a careful study of all alleged Beta Text-Type witnesses in the first chapter of
Mark, 6 Greek manuscripts emerged as primary witnesses: ¿ B L 33 892 2427. Therefore,
the weaker Beta manuscripts C D 157 517 579 1241 and 1342 were set aside. Then
on the basis of the 6 primary witnesses an 'average' or mean text was reconstructed
including all the readings supported by the majority of the primary witnesses.
Even on this restricted basis the amount of variation recorded in the apparatus
was dismaying. In this first chapter, each of the 6 witnesses differed from the
'average' Beta Text-type as follows: L, nineteen times (Westcott and Hort, twenty-one
times); Aleph, twenty-six times; 2427, thirty-two times; 33, thirty-three times;
B, thirty-four times; and 892, forty-one times. These results show convincingly
that any attempt to reconstruct an archetype of the Beta Text-type on a quantitative
basis is doomed to failure. The text thus reconstructed is not reconstructed but
constructed; it is an artificial entity that never existed.121
Many
modem scholars refute Hort's typing of the "Byzantine" manuscripts.
"The great bulk of the Byzantine manuscripts defies all attempts to group
them," says Zuntz.122 Dr. Clark agrees:
The
main conclusion regarding the Byzantine text is that it was extremely fluid. Any
single manuscript may be expected to show a score of shifting affinities. Yet
within the variety and confusion, a few textual types have been distinguished
. . . These types are not closely grouped like the families, but are the broad
Milky Way including many members within a general affinity.123
The
net result of modem examination is the rejection of all text-types and recensions
by many of the best scholars today. It is becoming clear and clearer that these
were fanciful inventions of Dr. Hort for which he had scholars believing that
he had firm evidence when in fact he had none! The confession of Dr. Aland helps
put it in perspective:
Earlier, we all shared the opinion, in agreement with our professors and in accord with NT scholarship before and since Westcott and Hort, that in various places, during the fourth century, recensions of the NT text had been made, from which the main text-types then developed.... We spoke of recensions and text-types, and if this was not enough, we referred to pre-Caesarean and other text-types, to mixed texts, and so on.
I,
too, have spoken of mixed texts, in connection with the form of the NT text in
the second and third centuries, but I have always done so with a guilty conscience.
For, according to the rules of linguistic philology it is impossible to speak
of mixed texts before recensions have been made (they only can follow them), whereas,
the NT manuscripts of the second and third centuries which have a "mixed
text" clearly existed before recensions were made.... The simple fact that
all these papyri, with their various distinctive characteristics, did exist side
by side, in the same ecclesiastical province, that is, in Egypt, where they were
found, is the best argument against the existence of any text-types, including
the Alexandrian and the Antiochian. . . the increase of the documentary evidence
and the entirely new areas of research which were opened to us on the discovery
of the papyri, mean the end of Westcott and Hort's conception.124
Modem
scholarship is now prepared to reject the notion of a "Byzantine" recension.
With this comes the rejection of the Westcott and Hort theory and the "superior
Alexandrian" text. The variation among "Byzantine" MSS now seem
trivial compared to the more than 3,000 disagreements, many of them very serious
indeed, between Aleph and B, the chief "Alexandrian" MSS. No wonder
the Orthodox Fathers rejected them as unreliable. The unfortunate part is that
they did not destroy them entirely. This whole sad chapter of Hort and his misrepresentations
might then have been avoided.
We
have just read where Dr. Colwell takes the position that an "Alexandrian"
archetype never existed. Epp, after extensive studies of "Neutral,"
"Western," and "midway", has this comment:
Naturally,
this rough sketch should not be understood to mean that the manuscripts mentioned
under each of the three categories above necessarily had any direct connections
one with another; rather, they stand as randomly surviving members of these three
broad streams of textual tradition.125
The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a "Western" or "Alexandrian" text-type as distinct from other types. There are only individual MSS. The integrity of the Bible rests, as it has always rested, with earnest and honest men doing the best they can, undergirded by the power and watchful eye of God who will not permit failure to those who look to divine providence. It does not rest on the tricky, uncertain, expedient, and often dishonest abilities of religious scholarship and particularly lower critics.
In
the preceding chapter we saw that Hort's entire case against the Textus Receptus
rested upon his eight examples. In addition to being ridiculously few in number,
they only appealed to Mark and Luke. To bring the whole New Testament into condemnation
over such trifling "evidence" is worse than foolish, it is simply an
outrage, not only to the Church in general, but to scholarship itself. As Dr.
Colwell saw it:
No text or document is homogeneous enough to justify judgment on the basis of part of its readings for the rest of its readings. This was Hort's Achilles' heel. He is saying here that since these eight conflate readings occur in the Syrian text that text as a whole is a mixed text; if a manuscript or text lacks these readings, it is in its other readings a witness to a text antecedent to mixture....
Westcott and Hort state this fallacy very clearly in their argument for the importance of the evidence of a document as over against readings:
"Where then one of the documents is found habitually to contain these morally certain or at least strongly preferred readings, and the other habitually to contain their rejected rivals, we can have no doubt, first, that the text of the first has been transmitted in comparative purity, and that the text of the second has suffered comparatively large corruption; and, next, that the superiority of the first must be as great in the variations in which Internal Evidence of Readings has furnished no decisive criterion as in those which have enabled Zuntz to form a comparative appreciation of the two texts"
This
would be true if we knew that there was no mixture involved and that manuscripts
and texts were rigorously homogeneous. Everything we have learned since Hort confirms
the opposite position."126
Most textual scholars have assumed the position that there are many other examples that Hort, or any critic, could call up. But if this is true, where and what are they and why has no one at all, in the long intervening years, brought forth a single one? Why doesn't Harrison, or Kenyon, or Lake produce them? The anomalous effort of E. A. Hutton's An Atlas of Textual Criticism will not work here. His "Triple Variant" fails widely to produce the required phenomena necessary to make a text a conflation by Hort's definition. A few cases of possible "Syrian conflation," such as in Matt. 27:41, John 18:40, Acts 20:28 or Rom. 6:12 have also been arbitrary, anomalous, capricious and unconvincingly put forth. By placing the "Syrian" text in 200 A. D., p66 has disallowed these adventures of Hort and required a legitimate, factual, demonstrative interpretation. The simple fact is, since the Hort theory was willful and theoretical from the start, the "conflation theorists" simply cannot meet these legitimate requirements.
But
if Hutton's list were taken seriously, it proves nothing and actually introduces
new problems. The ratio of "Alexandrian-Western-Byzantine" triple variants
to possible "Syrian conflations" is about 100: 1. In other words, for
every instance where the "Syrian" text is possibly built on the "Neutral"
and "Western" texts there are a hundred where it is not. Where did the
"Syrian" get the incredible volumes of material that were required to
make it "eclectic?" After all, it could not have come from the other
texts. This has not escaped the attention of Dr. Burgon, who says:
It
is impossible to 'conflate' in places where B ¿ and their associates furnish
no materials for the supposed conflation. Bricks cannot be made without clay.
The materials actually existing are those of the Traditional Text itself.127
At
this point Hort's dam begins to break. Fatal cracks are opening up all across
the face. One such is the willful claim that inversions do not exist. The problem
of course is that they do. In spite of his claim, Hort actually identified one
of each kind; D conflates in John 5:37 and B~ conflates in Col. 1:12 and 2 Thess.
3:4.128 (Perhaps he felt that scholars did not know the significance of this,
or that they would not notice or not want to notice. If so he was discouragingly
right.) But these that he identified are far from being the only ones. There
are a substantial number of inverted conflations, concerning D, B, and Aleph,
and the "Western" and "Alexandrian". For example, in Revelation
17:4, Aleph has a conflation of the two main cursive bodies for that book. Marcion
conflates the "Byzantine" and "Neutral-Western" readings in
1 Corinthians 14:19! In Bodmer 11, "Syrian" readings are earlier than
"Neutral" readings from 200 A.D.
The
Bodmer John (p66) is also a witness to the early existence of many of the readings
found in the Alpha text-type (Hort's "Syrian"). Strangely enough to
our previous ideas, the contemporary corrections in that papyrus frequently change
an Alpha-type reading to a Beta-type reading (Hort's "Neutral"). This
indicates that at this early period readings of both kinds were known, and the
Beta-type were supplanting the Alpha-type, at least as far as this witness is
concerned.129
Shortly
after publishing his 450 page findings on Codex B, Hoskier draws this pointed,
almost angry, conclusion:
The
maligned Textus Receptus served in large measure as the base which B tampered
with and changed .130
Plainly Hort's case against the "Syrian" (Textus Receptus-King James) is a hoax in light of the evidence. Shakespeare would have called it "much ado about nothing." It is not, it never was, and it never will be a serious theological or critical issue in terms of importance, fact, and reality. Unfortunately it has become a serious issue in the Church because of the ignorance of pretentious churchmen and the propensity to attempt to project wisdom and importance by latching on to anything that is new and different. Most often, as in the case of Hort, those things are in error and the kind of error that does serious harm to the Church and Her mission. If anyone is a skeptic, the sad, farcical melodrama of Hort and his vendetta against the great King James Bible should remove all doubts about an enemy of the soul and his ability to work his purposes through false religionists and unwitting men.
Another
of Hort's arbitrary claims was the witness of the ante-Nicene Fathers. Again,
this deliberate falsehood is still believed by many churchmen today; how many
out of ignorance and how many out of desire is up for anyone's guess. It follows
then that many scholars still hold that John Chrysostom used the "Byzantine"
text,131 and that he was the first one in the history of the Church to have done
so. But this too is commonly discredited by scholars of all persuasion.
Writers
on the text of the New Testament usually copy directly from one another the statement
that Chrysostom used the Byzantine, or Antiochian, text. But if any investigation
is made it appears evident, even from the printed texts of his works, that there
are many important variations in the text he quotes which was evidently not identical
with that found in the MSS of the Byzantine text.132
Metzger
dissents, citing the findings of Geerlings and New.
It
has often been stated by textual scholars that Chrysostom was one of the first
Fathers to use the Antiochian text. This opinion was examined by Jacob Geerlings
and Silva New in a study based on evidence which, in default of a critical edition,
was taken from Migne's edition of Chrysostom's opera. Their conclusions are that
"Chrysostom's text of Mark is not that of any group of manuscripts so far
discovered and classified.... His text of Mark, or rather the text which can faintly
be perceived through his quotations, is a 'mixed text,' combining some of the
elements of each of the types which had flourished before the end of the fourth
century."133
They
say further: "No known manuscript of Mark has the text found in Chrysostom's
homilies, or anything approaching it. And probably no text which existed
in the fourth century came much nearer to it."134 They did a collation
of Chrysostom's text and observe concerning it:
The
number of variants from the Textus Receptus is not appreciably smaller than the
number of variants from Westcott and Hort's text. This proves that it is no more
a typical representative of the late text (von Soden's K) than it is of the Neutral
text.135
And
is it any more factual or in keeping with the findings to say that Origen used
the "Neutral" text?
It
is impossible to reproduce or restore the text of Origen. Origen had no settled
text. A reference to the innumerable places where he is upon both sides of the
question, as set forth in detail herein, will show this clearly. Add the places
where he is in direct opposition to ¿ and B, and we must reconsider the whole
position.136
Many
modern textual scholars have had to come to this position. Zuntz is one of the
more weighty:
The
insuperable difficulties opposing the establishment of 'the' New Testament text
of Origen and Eusebius are well known to all who have attempted it.... Leaving
aside the common difficulties imposed by uncertainties of the transmission, the
incompleteness of the material, and the frequent freedom of quotation, there is
the incontestable fact that these two Fathers are frequently at variance; that
each of them quotes the same passage differently in different writings; and that
sometimes they do so even within the compass of one and the same work.... Wherever
one and the same passage is extant in more than one quotation by Origen or Eusebius,
variation between them is the rule rather than the exception.137
Dr. Metzger lends the great weight of his findings: "Origen knows of the existence of variant readings which represent each of the main families of manuscripts that modern scholars have isolated."138 (That includes the "Byzantine.') Edward Miller finds that Origen chose the Traditional Text 460 times while siding with the "Neologian" text 491 times.139 (The "Neologian"140 text comprehends both "Neutral" and "Western" readings. The "Traditional Text" is Hort's "Syrian" text.)
In the face of all this it is a startling thing--for which we can simply find no justification--that Hort should have declared: "On the other hand his quotations to the best of our belief exhibit no clear and tangible traces of the Syrian text".141
Hort
further declared that Irenaeus relied exclusively on the "Western" text.
Again, scholarship disputes this self-serving pronouncement. Miller says that
Irenaeus sided with the Traditional Text 63 times and with the "Neologian"
text 41 times,142 and adds:
Hilary
of Poictiers is far from being against the Traditional Text, as has been frequently
said: though in his commentaries he did not use so Traditional a text as in his
De Trinitate and his other works. The texts of Hippolytus, Methodius, Irenaeus,
and even of Justin, are not of that exclusively Western character which Dr. Hort
ascribes to them. Traditional readings occur almost equally with others in Justin's
works, and predominate in the works of the other three.143
Hoskier
challenges the notion that anything whatsoever has been proved by Hort in the
later mss. claims. He questions the meaning of Hippolytus:
Let us take another most interesting witness, viz. Hippolytus, who, like Lucifer, frequently quotes at such length from both Old and New Testaments that it is absolutely beyond question that he was copying from his exemplar of the Scriptures. Hippolytus cites 1 Thess. iv. 13-17, 2 Thess. ii. 1-12, in full. In the face of these quotations it is seen how loosely Turner argues when he says "Hort was the last and perhaps the ablest of a long line of editors of the Greek Testament, commencing in the eighteenth century, who very tentatively at first, but quite ruthlessly in the end, threw over the LATER in favour of the EARLIER Greek MSS, and that issue will never have to be tried again."
But
permit me to ask what Mr. Turner means by this lighthearted sentence. What does
he mean by earlier and later Manuscripts? He cannot mean that Hippolytus' manuscript
was later than that of B? Yet, allow me to state that in the these long passages,
comprising twelve consecutive verses from one epistle and four from the side of
what Turner would call the "later" MSS.144
Dr. Miller finds that the Traditional Text enjoyed a 2:1 advantage over the "Neologian" before Origen. If Justin Martyr, Heracleon, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian are taken into consideration the advantage of the Traditional Text drops to 1.33:1. From Origen to Macarius Magnus it is 1.24:1 while from Macarius to 400 A.D. it is up to 2:1.145
Dr.
Miller has understood the seriousness of Hort's implications as well as anyone
and has phrased it, for one place, in the following cite:
It
is evident that the turning point of the controversy between ourselves and the
Neologian school must lie in the centuries before St. Chrysostom. If, as Dr. Hort
maintains, the Traditional Text not only gained supremacy at that era but did
not exist in the early ages, then our contention is vain.... On the other hand
if it is proved to reach back in unbroken line to the time of the Evangelists,
or to a period as near to them as surviving testimony can prove, then Dr. Hort's
theory of a 'Syrian' text formed by recension or otherwise just as evidently falls
to the ground.146
Miller was a thorough and formidable scholar and, along with Burgon, he plumbed the depths of the testimony of the ante-Nicene Fathers as much as anyone has and perhaps, from a practical point of view, as much as anyone can or will. His findings are in the light of Burgon's massive index of 86,489 citations of the Fathers, from the New Testament. He says:
As
to the alleged absence of readings of the Traditional Text from the writings of
the ante-Nicene Fathers, Dr. Hort draws largely upon his imagination and his wishes.
The persecution of Diocletian is here also the parent of much want of information.
But is there really such a dearth of these readings in the works of the Early
Fathers as is supposed?147
I
made a toilsome examination for myself of the quotations occurring in the writings
of the Fathers before St. Chrysostom, or as I defined them in order to draw a
self-acting line, of those who died before 400 A.D., with the result that the
Traditional Text is found to stand in the general proportion of 3:2 against other
variations, and in a much higher proportion upon thirty test passages. Afterwards,
not being satisfied with resting the basis of my argument upon one scrutiny, I
went again through the writings of the seventy-six Fathers concerned (with limitations
explained in this book), besides others who yielded no evidence, and I found that
although several more instances were consequently entered in my note-book, the
general results remained almost the same. I do not flatter myself that even now
I have recorded all the instances that could be adduced:-any one who is really
acquainted with this work will know that such a feat is absolutely impossible,
because such perfection cannot be obtained except after many repeated efforts.
But I claim, not only that my attempts have been honest and fair even to self
abnegation, but that the general results which are much more than is required
by my argument, as is explained in the body of this work, abundantly establish
the antiquity of the Traditional Text, by proving the superior acceptance of it
during the period at stake to that of any other.148
In
other words, Miller found that the ante-Nicene Fathers used the Textus Receptus,
and preferred its reading far more than any other text. Kenyon believed that Dr.
Miller's demonstration was conclusive and that he had stated the results
correctly:
Here
is a plain issue. If it can be shown that the readings which Hort calls "Syrian"
existed before the end of the fourth century, the keystone would be knocked out
of the fabric of his theory; and since he produced no statistics in proof of his
assertion [!], his opponents were perfectly at liberty to challenge it. It must
be admitted that Mr. Miller did not shirk the test. A considerable part of his
work as editor of Dean Burgon's papers took the form of a classification of patristic
quotations, based upon the great indices which the Dean left behind him, according
as they testify for or against the Traditional Text of the Gospels. The results
of his examination are stated by him as follows. Taking the Greek and Latin (not
the Syriac) Fathers who died before A.D. 400, their quotations are found to support
the Traditional Text in 2,630 instances, the "neologian" in 1753. Nor
is this majority due solely to the writers who belong to the end of this period.
On the contrary, if only the earliest writers be taken, from Clement of Rome to
Irenaeus and Hippolytus, the majority in favour of the Traditional Text is proportionately
even greater, 151 to 34. Only in the Western and Alexandrian writers do we find
approximate equality of votes on either side. Further, if a select list of thirty
important passages be taken for detailed examination, the preponderance of early
patristic evidence in favour of the Traditional Text is seen to be no less than
530 to 170, a quite overwhelming majority. Now it is clear that if these figures
were trustworthy, there would be an end to Hort's theory, for its premises would
be shown to be thoroughly unsound.149
One
would do well to grasp the crucial nature of this dispute between Kenyon and Miller.
Hort has firmly declared that not a single "strictly Byzantine" reading
is to be found in the extant works of any Church Father who dates before Chrysostom
(A.D. 407). To expose Hort's adventurism, we need only discover one "strictly
Byzantine" reading. This would prove that the "Byzantine" did exist
at the early date. Hort's claim here is not to quality or quantity but that it
simply did not exist. One legitimate cite would put the lie to that claim. Remember
that the issue in this debate is the existence of the "Byzantine" readings,
not necessarily their dominance. Miller states that the "Byzantine"
text not only existed but that was by far the choice of the ante-Nicene Fathers:
As
far as the Fathers who died before 400 A.D. are concerned, the question may now
be put and answered. Do they witness to the Traditional Text as existing from
the first, or do they not? The results of the evidence, both as regards the quantity
and the quality of the testimony, enable us to reply, not only that the Traditional
Text was in existence, but that it was predominant, during the period under review.
Let any one who disputes this conclusion make out for the Western Text, or the
Alexandrian, or for the Text of B and ¿ a case from the evidence of the Fathers
which can equal or surpass that which has been now placed before the reader.150
Neither
Kenyon nor anyone else that we know of has shown, or attempted to show what Miller
requires. Kenyon did answer Miller, but chose to criticize his conclusions rather
than challenge his findings with evidence:
An
examination of them however, shows that they cannot be accepted as representing
in any way the true state of the case. In the first place, it is fairly certain
that critical editions of the several Fathers, if such existed, would show that
in many cases the quotations have been assimilated in later MSS to the Traditional
Text, whereas in the earlier they agree rather with the "Neutral" or
"Western" witnesses. For this defect, however, Mr. Miller cannot be
held responsible. The critical editions of the Greek and Latin Fathers, now in
course of production by the Academies of Berlin and Vienna, had covered very little
of the ground at the time when his materials were compiled, and meanwhile he might
legitimately use the materials accessible to him; and the errors arising from
this source would hardly affect the general result to any very serious extent.151
After
complaining about "critical editions" which Miller used, Kenyon concedes
that "the errors arising from this source would hardly affect the general
result." Then Kenyon, like his mentor Hort, chooses to defend his beliefs
by arbitrary and theoretical claims that the quotations which Miller cites were
"assimilated in later MSS to the Traditional Text." This fanciful argument
has been taken up by many scholars who are grasping at anything that will stem
the rising tide of belief by textual scholars (based upon evidence this time)
of an early "Byzantine" text. But first let us hear the rest of Kenyon's
argument against Miller:
"The
real fallacy in his statistics is different, and is revealed in the detailed examination
of the thirty select passages. From these it is clear that he wholly misunderstood
Hort's contention. The thirty "traditional" readings, which he shows
to be so overwhelmingly vindicated by the Fathers, are not what Hort would call
pure "Syrian" readings at all. In nearly every case they have Western
or Neutral attestation in addition to that of the later authorities.152 [Kenyon
gives examples: Matt. 17:21, Matt. 18:11, Matt. 19:16, Matt. 23:38, Mark 16:9-20,
Luke 24:40, and John 21:25.] In short, Mr. Miller evidently reckoned on his side
every reading which occurs in the Traditional Text, regardless of whether, on
Hort's principles, they are old readings which kept their place in the Syrian
revision, or secondary readings which were then introduced for the first time.
According to Hort, the Traditional Text is the result of a revision in which old
elements were incorporated; and Mr. Miller merely points to some of these old
elements, and argues from there that the whole is old. It is clear that by such
argumentation Hort's theory is untouched."153
Kenyon is not trying to meet the argument head on nor is he sincere in his answer. He is struggling for survival and using the superfluity of clever words to lure the reader off onto a false path. Kenyon could not have replied as intelligently as he did unless he had pored over Miller's findings. He selectively omitted the most telling readings: "to repentance" in Matt. 9:13 and Mark 2:17,154 "vinegar" In Matt. 27:34,"155 "from the door" in Matt. 28:2,156; the prophets" in Mark 1:2,157; "goodwill" in Luke 2:14,158; the Lord's prayer for His murderers in Luke 23:34,159 , and honeycomb" in Luke 24:42,160 and "whom" in John 17:24.161
All of these were included in Millers "The Thirty." They are "strictly Syrian" readings, or at least that which Hort called "Syrian" and labeled a "late" text. Yet Kenyon chose to ignore the traditional readings, as did the Revision Committee of 1881. We cannot help but wonder why. No doubt it is because they are proof-positive of the early existence of the "Syrian" or "Byzantine" text. What are you going to say if you are Kenyon or someone else who refuses to abandon the Hort theory? There is little you can do but what Kenyon did. You can beg the issue on the best ground you can find and refuse to acknowledge that which you simply cannot answer.
Kenyon claims that Miller's figures are misleading and that his argument has not laid a glove on Hort, but he offers no proof or explanation for that statement. It seems to us that Miller knocks Hort into a cocked hat. He also avoids the subject of "secondary readings" that are supported by the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers. Miller has truly and accurately stated his case that the Traditional Text ("Byzantine") receives more support from the early Church Fathers than does the W-H critical text used by the English Revision Committee of the 1881 edition. Additionally, there were many "Western" and "Alexandrian" readings that were used by the ante-Nicene Fathers which were rejected by the 1881 Revision Committee. For that reason they were not at issue so Miller did not include them. Had they been included, the "Alexandrian" readings with the witness of the ante-Nicene Fathers might be more in number than the "Byzantine". But bear in mind that it is not quality or numerical superiority that we are looking for here. It is mere existence! That is all that is necessary to show that Hort's entire theory is wrong on this account alone, as Kenyon himself acknowledged at the beginning of this comment.
Kenyon's
answer, or attempted answer, either creates or at the least identifies another
problem for Hort's theory of Textual Criticism. In talking about "pure
Syrian readings" he appears to argue that the "Syrian" text cannot
contain any reading that comes from, refers to, or has anything in common with
the "Western" or "Alexandrian" texts. But what exactly
is Kenyon referring to? What are the "late Elements" to which
he objects and which he seems to be denying? This very issue was the subject
of an exhaustive study by E. F. Hills, who comes to the conclusion:
The
second accusation commonly urged against the Byzantine text is that it contains
so many late readings. A text with all these late readings, it is said, must be
a late text. But it is remarkable how few actually were the Byzantine readings
which Westcott and Hort designated as late. In his Notes on Select Readings Hort
discussed about 240 instances of variation among the manuscripts of the Gospels,
and in only about twenty of these instances was to characterize the Byzantine
reading as a late reading. Thus it would seem that even on Hort's own admission
only about ten percent of the readings of the Byzantine text are late readings,
and since Hort's day the number of these allegedly late Byzantine readings has
been gradually dwindling.162 (Hort of course claimed that the entire Syrian was
"late".)
Dr.
Wilbur Pickering, the best (in my view) of the current defenders of the traditional
text, sums up this debate between Miller and Kenyon:
It seems clear the "Byzantine" text cannot win in a court presided over by a judge of Kenyon's bent. Whenever an early witness surfaces it is declared to be "Alexandrian" or "Western" or "Caesarean" and thereupon those "Syrian" readings which it contains cease to be "pure Syrian" and are no longer allowed as evidence. Such a procedure is evidently useful to defenders of Hort's theory, but is it right?
It
is commonplace among the many who are determined to despise the "Byzantine"
text to dodge the issue, as Kenyon did above. The postulates of Hort's theory
are assumed to be true and the evidence is interpreted on the basis of these presuppositions.
Apart from the imaginary nature of the "Alexandrian" and "Western"
texts, as strictly definable entities, their priority to the "Byzantine"
text is the very point to be proved and may not be assumed.163
In an enormously gracious effort to be fair (which characterized his scholarship and his work) Miller culled from his list every reading that could possibly be questioned. He was still left with 2,630 quotations, from 76 of the ante-Nicene Fathers, from A. D. 100-400, which supported the "Byzantine" text and differed from the readings chosen by the 1881 Revision Committee. This was a most curious and significant oversight indeed. We wonder at the objectivity of the men who were involved in this decision. Who can sensibly argue that all of these were deliberate alterations? It simply cannot be accepted by any sensible person.
Dr.
Hills, in summarizing the matter, uses the case of the ante-Nicene Father Origen:
In the first fourteen chapters of the Gospel of John (that is, in the area covered by Papyrus Bodmer 11) out of 52 instances in which the Byzantine text stands alone, Origen agrees with the Byzantine text 20 times and disagrees with it 32 times. Thus the assertion of the critics that Origen knew nothing of the Byzantine text becomes difficult indeed to maintain. On the contrary, these statistics suggest that Origen was familiar with the Byzantine text and frequently adopted its readings in preference to those of the Western and Alexandrian texts. Naturalistic critics, it is true, have made a determined effort to explain away the "distinctively" Byzantine readings which appear in the New Testament quotations of Origen (and other ante-Nicene Fathers). It is argued that these Byzantine readings are not really Origen's but represent alterations made by scribes who copied Origen's works.
These
scribes, it is maintained, revised the original quotations of Origen and made
them conform to the Byzantine text. The evidence of Papyrus Bodmer 11, however,
indicates that this is not an adequate explanation of the facts. Certainly it
seems a very unsatisfactory way to account for the phenomena which appear in the
first fourteen chapters of John. In these chapters, 5 out of the 20 "distinctively"
Byzantine readings which occur in Origen occur also in Papyrus Bodmer 11. These
5 readings at least must have been Origen's readings, not those of scribes who
copied Origen's works, and what is true of these 5 readings is probably true of
the other 15, or at least of most of them.164
Hort's claim that John Chrysostom was the first to use the "Syrian" text, which was "obviously eclectic," is made in an historic, theological, and scholarly vacuum. It simply is not true. It was invented by Hort to give theoretical support to his texting scheme, as so many of his claims were. This is becoming clear with increasing regularity.
The "Byzantine" text is testified to and clearly seen in Diognetus, and Justin Martyr in the first half of the second century; Athenagorus, Hegesippus, and very pronouncedly in Irenaeus in the second half; by Clement of Alexander, Tertullian, Clementines, Hippolytus, and Origen in the first half of the third century; Gregory of Thaumaturgus, Novatian, Cyprian, Dionysius of Alexander, and Archelaus in the second half of the third; by Eusebius, Athanasius, Macarius Magnus, Hilary, Didymus, Basil, Titus of Bostra, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius, and Ambrose in the fourth century (along with the Apostolic canons and constitutions). And now we can add the testimony of the early Papyri to that list. And as we have mentioned it, what about the testimony of the early Papyri?
In
Hort's day the early Papyri were not known to exist. The Westcott and Hort theory
of textual criticism would never have seen the light of day if they had been known.
Every one of them (300 A.D. or earlier) gives us some historical record of readings
from the "Byzantine" text. Dr. G. Zuntz made a long and involved study
of p46 (one of the early Papyri). His conclusion was:
To
sum up, a number of Byzantine readings, most of them genuine, which previously
were discarded as 'late', are anticipated by p46, . . How then--so one is tempted
to go on asking--where no Chester Beatty papyrus happens to vouch for the early
existence of a Byzantine reading? Are all Byzantine readings ancient? In the cognate
case of the Homeric tradition, G. Pasquali answers the same question in the affirmative.165
Dr.
Colwell tolls on to Zuntz's comments,166 and says of the "Byzantine"
text, "Most of its readings existed in the second century."167 To Dr.
Hills, the Beatty Papyri Vindicate 26 proves the early existence of the "Byzantine"
readings in the Gospels, 8 in Acts and 31 in Paul's epistles.168 Of p66 he says:
To
be precise, Papyrus Bodmer 11 contains thirteen percent of all the alleged late
readings of the Byzantine text in the area which it covers (18 out of 138). Thirteen
percent of the Byzantine readings which most critics have regarded as late have
now been proved by Papyrus Bodmer 11 to be early readings.169 (This means that
"Byzantine was not a "late"; but an early text--as early as A.
D. 200.)
Literally hundreds of studies -- some exhaustive and complete, some preliminary--are available to show the same conclusions. None are more conclusive that that of H. A. Sturz,170 who surveyed "all the available papyri" to determine whether in fact "papyrus supported" readings of the "Byzantine" really did and do exist. Like most all of the recent proponents of the early date of the "Byzantine" he determined to "err on the conservative side." Some of this is for objectivity's sake, some out of consideration of the very upset feelings of textual scholars who see their glory slipping away, and some for conscience' sake. Except for these charitable considerations, the list could be "many times" longer. (p. 106). Even for all of this, there are more than 150 "distinctively Byzantine" readings that have early (before 300 A.D.) papyrus support (pp. 108-26). There are 170 "Byzantine-Western" readings with early papyrus support (pp. 128-46); 170 "Byzantine-Alexandrian" readings with early papyrus support (pp. 149-64); and 175 further "Byzantine" readings but which have scattered 'Western" or "Alexandrian" support, also supported by the early papyrus.171
There are an additional 195 cites of lesser merit for the "Byzantine" (but nonetheless with papyrus support) which he does not list (apparently feeling that the irresistible weight of what has already been given is sufficient to dispel doubt in fair and reasonable men.).172 The sheer force of this evidence is simply overwhelming. Bear in mind that only about 30 percent of the New Testament has early papyrus attestation, and much of that 30 percent has only one papyrus. Where more than one covers a stretch of text, each new MS discovered bears testimony to Byzantine readings. Following this development, all 5000+ Byzantine readings rejected by the critical (eclectic) texts would be supported by the early papyrus. Thus Hort's claim for thorough treatment of external evidence has no basis in fact and proves to be another deliberately false and misleading tactic with a hidden agenda.
Internal evidence readings is supposed to be Hort's strongest suit but is it? Will study that is acceptable by the true rules of scholarship bear that out? Again the answer is "no", as we shall see.
His
lofty claims notwithstanding, Hort himself recognized its weaknesses. He said
of Intrinsic Evidence of Readings, "equally competent critics often arrive
at contradictory conclusions as to the same variations."173 A bit later in
the same discourse, he stated:
Not
only are mental impulses unsatisfactory subjects for estimates of comparative
force; but a plurality of impulses recognized by ourselves as possible in any
given case by no means implies a plurality of impulses as having been actually
in operation.174
Could
anyone have said it better? No textual scholar, when confronted with a set of
variant readings, can either be certain himself, or prove to others, how these
variants were actually produced or why. Hort made a lot of good statements (this
was one of the ways in which he took so many pretentious and gullible souls with
him) but he was never found to be taking his own advice. Another example is what
follows:
The
summary decisions inspired by an unhesitating instinct as to what an author must
needs have written, or dictated by the supposed authority of "canons of criticism"
as to what transcribers must needs have introduced, are in reality in a large
proportion of cases attempts to dispense with the solution of problems that depend
on genealogical data.175
Still
we will have to rephrase or paraphrase Hort if we are to agree fully with his
statement. Had he said, "external evidence" instead of "genealogical
data" we would all be on the same page (so to speak). Even so, Hort's statement
was not bad, but it was another deceitful cover-up to put observers off of his
track. This has not escaped the notice of Dr. Pee, who observes cryptically:
The
internal evidence of readings was also the predominant factor in the choice of
his "Neutral" text over the "Western" and "Alexandrian"
texts ... and his choice of B....
In
other words, he was guilty of a practice that he himself condemned. Hort did not
come to position on the Byzantines and B by the genealogical method because he
had problems with "external evidence."176 The fact that "Internal
Evidence" is very unsatisfactory at arriving at honest and accurate conclusions
about texts, their age, and their integrity, has been widely recognized over a
long period of time and by scholars of all persuasions. Colwell singles out the
"transcriptional probability" for criticism:
Unfortunately
these two criteria frequently clash in a head-on collision, because ancient scribes
as well as modern editors often preferred the reading which best fits the context.177
If we choose the reading that best explains the origin of the other reading, we
are usually choosing the reading that does not fit the context. The two criteria
cancel each other out.178
Hort's
theory leaves the textual critic free to "choose in terms of his own prejudgments.''179
This, in the final analysis, is what scholars find so maddeningly attractive about
the W-H theory and why they will not give it up. The sense of importance that
comes with messing around with the text of the Holy Scriptures, thus having such
power over the lives of the Church, is more than most egocentric intellectuals
can resist. If the name of the game in society in general is power, multiply that
by a factory of about 100 when it comes to textual scholars. Still its dreadful
deficiencies are evident to most. Burgon comments:
Often
these are the product of personal bias, or limited observation: and where one
scholar approves, another dogmatically condemns. Circumstantial evidence is deservedly
rated low in the courts of justice: and lawyers always produce witnesses when
they can.180
We
venture to declare that inasmuch as one expert's notions of what is 'transcriptionally
probable' prove to be the diametrical reverse of another expert's notions, the
supposed evidence to be derived from this source may, with advantage, be neglected
altogether. Let the study of Documentary Evidence be allowed to take its place.
Notions of 'Probability' are the very best of those departments of Science which
admit of an appeal to Fact.181
Burgon
also warns of the danger of a system of strict canons.
"People
are ordinarily so constituted, that when they have once constructed a system of
Canons they place no limits to the operation, and become slaves to them."182
Nothing in the world could be truer of that adage than the strange case of the continuing loyalty to the completely debunked and discredited textual theory of Fenton J. Hort.
Brevior
lectio potior means "the shorter reading is to be preferred." This has
been one of the most common and successful attacks on the "Byzantine"
text. Hort gives the rationale for this contrived, arbitrary, and self-serving
theory: "In the New Testament, as in almost all prose writings which have
been much copied, corruptions by interpolation are many times more numerous than
corruptions by omission.''183 Accordingly it has been customary since Hort to
condemn the Received Text as being full and interpolated. B and Aleph are honored
as being "non-interpolated" texts.184 But what is the historic, scholarly,
evidentiary basis for the adage that interpolations are "many times more
numerous" than omissions in the transmission of the New Testament, or are
there any? This is an interesting point to ponder for a bit. There are many scholars
who consider this to be another convenient invention of Hort's. Dr. B. H. Streeter
is one of them:
Hort
speaks of "the almost universal tendency of transcribers to make their text
as full as possible, and to eschew omissions"; and infers that copyists would
tend to prefer an interpolated to an uninterpolated text. This may be true of
some of the local texts of the second century; it is the very opposite of the
truth where scribes or editors trained in the tradition of Alexandrian textual
criticism are concerned. The Alexandrian editors of Homer were as eagle-eyed to
detect and obelise (My note: I assume this is obelize, which "means to be
marked with the obelus," an ancient manuscript mark used to indicate a suspect
reading, or one that was at least in doubt) "interpolations" in Homer
as a modern critic .... That Christian scholars and scribes were capable of the
same critical attitude, we have irrefragable evidence.... The notion is completely
refuted that the regular tendency of scribes was to choose the longer reading,
and that therefore the modern editor is quite safe so long as he steadily rejects
.... Now, whoever was responsible for it, the B text has been edited on the Alexandrian
principle.185
A.
C. Clark, Corpus Professor of Latin at Oxford, has put Hort's notion in an entirely
new light recently. In The Descent of Manuscripts, an investigation of the manuscript
tradition of the Greek and Latin Classics, he proves conclusively that the error
to which scribes were most prone was not interpolation but accidental omission....
It had been unilaterally accepted that maxim brevor lectio potior . . .was an
axiom of scientific criticism. Clark has systematically debunked that notion.
In fact, just the opposite is true: the longer the reading, the more apt it is
to be original.186 With evidence that is not as new and refreshing as Clark (because
it came along before, for one thing) but nevertheless honorable in every way,
Burgon had already strongly objected to this most subjective rule.
How
indeed can it possibly be more true to the infirmities of copyists, to the verdict
of evidence on the several passages, and to the origin of the New Testament in
the infancy of the Church and amidst associations which were not literary, to
suppose that a terse production was first produced and afterwards was amplified
in a later age with a view to 'lucidity and completeness,' rather than that words
and clauses and sentences were omitted upon definitely understood principles in
a small class of documents by careless or ignorant or prejudiced scribes?187
Leo
Vaganay says:
As
a rule the copyist, especially when at the work of revision, is inclined to amplify
the text.... But the rule suffers many exceptions.... Distraction of the copyist,
... intentional corrections.... And finally,... the fundamental tendency of some
recension, of which a good example is the Egyptian recension.... And also we must
not forget that the writers of the New Testament were Orientals, who are more
given to length than to brevity.188
Kilpatrick
actually suggests that other imagined restraint, "the longer reading is preferable,"
would do just as well, or better:
On
reflection we do not seem able to find any reason for thinking that the maxim
lectio brevior potior really holds good. We can only hope that a fuller acquaintance
with the problems concerned will enable us increasingly to discern reasons in
each instance why the longer or the shorter reading seems more probable.189
Colwell's
admirable and challenging study of scribal habits (to which we commented before)
uses the illustration of three early papyri: p4S, p66, and P's. The study demonstrates
that generalizations about scribal habits simply cannot accurately and profitably
be made and that ideas about variant readings and text-types based on such hopeful
criteria should by all means be reevaluated:
The characterization of these singular readings can go no further until the individual scribes have been characterized. Their peculiar readings are due to their peculiarities. This has been well said by Dain. He reminds us that although all scribes make mistakes and mistakes of the same kind, yet each scribe has a personal coefficient of the frequency of his mistakes. Each has his own pattern of errors. One scribe is liable to dittography, another to the omission of lines of text; one reads well, another remembers poorly; one is a good speller; etc., etc. In these differences must be included the seriousness of intention of the scribe and the peculiarities of his own basic method of copying.190
In general, P75 copies letters one by one; p66 copies syllables, usually two letters in length. P45 copies phrases and clauses. The accuracy of these assertions can be demonstrated. That P75 copied letters one by one is shown in the pattern of the errors. He has more than sixty readings that involve a single letter, and not more than ten careless readings that involve a syllable. But p66 drops sixty-one syllables (twenty-three of them in "leaps") and omits as well a dozen articles and thirty short words. In P45 there is not one omission of a syllable in a "leap" nor is there any list of "careless" omissions of syllables. P45 omits words and phrases.191
As an editor the scribe of P45 wielded a sharp axe. The most striking aspect of his style is its conciseness. The dispensable word is dispensed with. He omits adverbs, adjectives, nouns, participles, verbs, personal pronouns-- without any compensating habit of addition. He frequently omits phrases and clauses. He prefers the simple to the compound word. In short, he favors brevity. He shortens the text in at least fifty places in singular readings alone. But he does not drop syllables or letters. His shortened text is readable.192
Enough of these have been cited to make the point that p66 editorializes as he does everything else--in a sloppy fashion. He is not guided in his changes by some clearly defined goal which is always kept in view. If he has an inclination toward omission, it is not "according to knowledge," but is whimsical and careless, often leading to nothing but nonsense.193
p66
has 54 leaps forward, and 22 backward; 18 of the forward leaps are haplography.
P75 has 27 leaps forward, and 10 backward. P45 has 16 leaps forward, and 2 backward.
From this it is clear that the scribe looking for his lost place looked ahead
three times as often as he looked back. In other words, the loss of position usually
resulted in a loss of text, an omission194
Again it seems that the truth lies in just the opposite direction from the hopeful and dishonest claims of Dr. Hort. Interpolations are not "many times more numerous" than omissions. Omission is more common as an unintentional error than addition. Furthermore P45 shows that some scribes made deliberate and extensive omissions. And so it turns out that the "fullness" of the Traditional Text proves its superiority, not its inferiority.
Another
weapon in Hort's desperate and all-out war against the "Byzantine" text
was proclivi lectiori praestat ardua. This meant that the harder reading is to
be preferred. This was based upon the unfounded idea that scribes had an ingrained
tendency to streamline and simplify readings, particularly if they had trouble
understanding them. Again Hort offered no statistics, studies, or evidence to
support this pronouncement. He just said that it was so and everyone believed
it. Hort had analyzed well the temperament. He knew that men wanted to believe
him and that if he was positive, and a convincing reasoner (he certainly was that)
they would follow without evidence. In fact, in this kind of a game, the less
evidence the better, for evidence could be a distinct problem. But as in
the case of the shorter-reading notion, the truth almost certainly lay in the
opposite direction. Vaganay was of this persuasion:
But
the more difficult reading is not always the more probably authentic. The rule
does not apply, for instance, in the case of some accidental errors . . . . But,
what is worse, we sometimes find difficult or intricate readings that are the
outcome of intentional corrections. A copyist, through misunderstanding some passage,
or through not taking the context into account, may in all sincerity make something
obscure that he means to make plain.195
Dr.
Metzger notes St. Jerome was in the habit of complaining about this very thing:
Jerome
complained of the copyists who "write down not what they find but what they
think is the meaning; and while they attempt to rectify the errors of others,
they merely expose their own.''196
Anyone
who has ever listened closely to the average preacher or Sunday School teacher
trying to explain an elusive passage, knows exactly what St. Jerome was talking
about. Obviously, most changes would result in harder readings of the text. Apart
from the deductive point of view, changing of the text for any reason was not
allowed by the rules of the Orthodox Fathers. Once a scribe or a copyist took
this upon himself there was no disciplining of him and we have no way of knowing
what he might have done. Certainly a complicating, not a simplifying, of the text
would have resulted in most cases. And in all cases, such a text was rendered
invalid. And then too, a skillful manipulator would have the ingenuity and the
will to doctor the text to make it look valid. What better example of that do
we need than Dr. Hort himself and the so-called "Alexandrian" text?
Hort is a prime example of this sort of imagination and ingenuity. Zuntz points
this up:
Dr.
Hort's dealing with this and the other patristic evidence for this passage [I
Cor. 13:3] requires a word of comment. No one could feel greater respect, nay
reverence, for him than the present writer; but his treatment of this variant,
in making every piece of the evidence say the opposite of its true meaning, shows
to what distortions even a great scholar may be driven by the urge to square the
facts with an erroneous, or at least imperfect theory. Souter, Plummer, and many
others show the aftereffect of Dr. Hort's tenacity.197
Salmon
says:
That
which gained Hort so many adherents had some adverse influence with myself --
I mean his extreme cleverness as an advocate; for I have felt as if there were
no reading so improbable that he could not give good reasons for thinking it to
be the only genuine.198
Samuel
Hemphill commented on Hort's role in the New Testament Committee that produced
the Revised Version of 1881:
Nor
is it difficult to understand that many of their less resolute and decided colleagues
must often have been completely carried off their feet by the persuasiveness and
resourcefulness, and zeal of Hort, . . . In fact, it can hardly be doubted that
Hort's was the strongest will of the whole Company, and his adroitness in debate
was only equaled by his pertinacity.199
Says
Dr. W. M. Pickering:
It
would appear that the composition of the Greek text used by the English Revisers
-- and consequently for the RSV, NASB, etc. -- was determined in large measure
by Hort's cleverness and pertinacity, inspired by his devotion to a single Greek
manuscript.200
Remember
that the twenty-three year old Hort considered -- indeed accused -- the Textus
Receptus to be "villainous" and "vile" at a time when he admittedly
knew nothing of the matter, long before he did comprehensive (if in fact he ever
did) work on the text and when he could not possibly have had an educated opinion
as to variant readings. His life's dedication was to bring down the Textus Receptus.
How honest and objective do you suppose Hort was trying to be with his input on
the committee of 1881? What is true of Hort in this respect is sadly evident with
many of his disciples. Elliott and Kilpatrick, for example, make much of their
open-mindedness. They profess to have no predispositions on text-types. But this
having said, they fly immediately to Hort's "Tree of Descent" and lodge
smugly in the branches of his arbitrarily-contrived canons of internal evidence.
Even so, their conclusions are revealing. Elliott says that the "Byzantine"
text was right about as often as Aleph and D, the chief representatives of the
"Alexandrian" and "Western" texts (in the Pastorals).201
According
to Dr. Kilpatrick:
Our
principal conclusion is that the Syrian text is frequently right. It has avoided
at many points mistakes and deliberate changes found in other witnesses. This
means that at each variation we must look at the readings of the Byzantine manuscripts
with the possibility in mind that they may be right. We cannot dismiss their characteristic
variants as being in principle secondary.202
But while leaving the door ajar to honest inspection, this kind of procedure is not really satisfactory. The inescapable problem with any and all conclusions with subjective criteria as their foundation, is that they are and can only be opinion. There is no objective way to prove their voracity.
The
final plank in Dr. F. J. A. Hort's textual criticism platform (for our discussion
at least) was his "Lucian Recension and Peshitta" theory. Like all of
the others this, as Burgon points out forcefully, was an invention of Hort's fruitful
mind and imagination.
Apart
however from the gross intrinsic improbability of the supposed Recension -- the
utter absence of one particle of evidence, traditional or otherwise, that it ever
did take place -- must be held to be fatal to the hypothesis that it did. It is
simply incredible that an incident of such magnitude and interest would leave
no trace of itself in history.203
It
is pointless for hopeful scholars to claim that the "silence" argument
proves nothing. The truth is that it proves everything concerning the issue of
whether or not such a recension took place. Dr. Kenyon himself could not accept
this self-serving theory of Hort's:
The
absence of evidence points the other way; for it would be very strange, if Lucian
had really edited both Testaments, that only his work on the Old Testament should
be mentioned in after times. The same argument tells against any theory of a deliberate
revision at any definite moment. We know the names of several revisers of the
Septuagint and the Vulgate, and it would be strange if historians and Church writers
had all omitted to record or mention such an event as the deliberate revision
of the New Testament in its original Greek.204
Others
are not as gentle as Kenyon, who tried to delicately balance his appreciation
of Hort against sound scholarship. For example, Colwell says: "The Greek
Vulgate -- the Byzantine or Alpha text-type -- had in its origin no such single
focus as the Latin had in Jerome.''205 F. C. Grant sees the "Byzantine"
text-type as originating in the second century, not the fourth.206 Dr. Jacob Geerlings
agrees, saying: "Its origins as well as those of other so-called text-types
PROBABLY GO BACK TO THE AUTOGRAPHS.''207But Kenyon, too gracious for his own well
being and unflaggingly loyal to Hort's theory, tries to save Hort's face with
the Kenyon "tendency" suggestion:
It
seems probable, therefore, that the Syrian revision was rather the result of a
tendency spread over a considerable period of time than of a definite and authoritative
revision or revisions, such as produced our English Authorized and Revised Versions.
We have only to suppose the principle to be established in Christian circles in
and about Antioch, that in the case of divergent readings being found in the texts
copied, it was better to combine both than to omit either, and that obscurities
and roughness of diction should be smoothed away as much as possible.208
This
may be all well and good for the questionable art of esoteric, Enlightenment philosophizing
about how things may have come into being. The honest and ethical textual critic,
however, chooses not to suppose anything. He wants hard evidence before messing
around (that is a crude but apt expression of what Hort did) with the sacred and
Holy Scriptures. In that regard, the evidence shows that for every occurrence
where the "Syrian" text possibly combines divergent readings there are
scores, even hundreds where this is not the case. Yet Dr. Kenyon looks at this
evidence and thinks he might see a "tendency" toward combining. With
all deference to Kenyon, what does such a hapless claim as this mean and what
can it possibly contribute to the dialogue in terms of useful input. If this were
allowed, anyone at all might well see a "tendency" toward anything at
all which suited his particular bias. We do not want to lose our charity; but
to ask us to believe that hosts of scribes and copyists, in far flung places,
separated by centuries and working with no correlation, innately sensed a need
to use their gifts and abilities to combine the readings into one master text,
is simply more than we can find the grace, the reason, or the permission to do.
In the words of Dr. Hodges: .
It
will be noted in this discussion that in place of the former idea of a specific
revision as the source-point for the Majority text, some critics now wish to posit
the idea of a "process" drawn out over a long period of time. It may
be confidently predicted, however, that this explanation of the Majority text
must likewise eventually collapse. The Majority text, it must be remembered, is
relatively uniform in its general character with comparatively low amounts of
variation between its major representatives. No one has yet explained how a long,
slow process spread out over many centuries as well as over a wide geographical
area, and involving a multitude of copyists, who often knew nothing of the state
of the text outside of their own monasteries or scriptoria, could achieve this
widespread uniformity out of the diversity presented by the earlier forms of text.
Even an official edition of the New Testament -- promoted with ecclesiastical
sanction throughout the known world -- would have had great difficulty achieving
this result as the history of Jerome's Vulgate amply demonstrates. But an unguided
process achieving relative stability and uniformity in the diversified textual,
historical, and cultural circumstances in which the New Testament was copied,
imposes impossible strains on our imagination.209
The normal manner in which texts were transmitted resulted in widening differences, not uniformity. A text will be uniform if it is near-distant to its source and there has been little or no textual transmitting taking place. This principle is universally known by many scholars, yet those who stay with Hort appear to ignore this altogether. Dr. Metzger is a case in point. In 1968 he was still stubbornly clinging to Hort's "Lucian Recension" theory concerning the "Byzantine" text, in the face of the evidence and the axiomatic nature of these long-held principles of texting. This is troubling to many men who wish to be able to disagree and yet hold an affection for and camaraderie with those of opposing persuasions. There must be integrity in order for that to happen. More and more there is a temperamental closing of the mind and a testiness of words as the weight of evidence sags in the walls of Hort's stronghold.
But the textual and scholarship issues are not the only, or even the most serious ones to consider. There are other weighty matters. For example, Lucian was an Arian, which means obviously that he did not believe in Jesus Christ, that the God of Israel was the God of creation and certainly not in the Trinity. Yet men like Dr. Metzger would have us believe that Athanasius deliberately and knowingly used a "Lucian" text. This is not only too much, but it is most worrisome. Apparently now the line between Orthodox conservatism and Enlightenment liberalism is blurred not only by confusion but by insignificance. It is a matter of science, not Christianity. The camaraderie between men of science takes precedence over fellowship between men of the faith when it comes to the Bible. Not only do we hold that today a fundamental scholar may forsake other fundamental scholars and pitch his tent with those who deny Christ's deity, His Virgin Birth, the Creatorship of God, and the Holy Trinity if that is what is required to be textually correct; but we reach back and attribute this same kind of paganry to such honorable ancients as Athanasius. How truly sad indeed, and what an ominous foreboding for the future of the Holy Writ as it pertains to the influences that God permits textual criticism to have. What more graphic illustration is there of St. Paul's great spiritual axiom: "He taketh the wise in their own craftiness (Textus Receptus)."
Fortunately
there are many scholars who have refused to go that far, at least as of now. Dr.
Burgon was one who continued to drum on Hort's complete lack of any kind of evidence.210
Another is Dr. A. Voobus who comments on Burkitt:
Burkitt
has tried to picture the lifespan of Bishop Rabbula as a decisive period in the
development of the New Testament text in the Syrian church. Regardless of the
general acceptance of the axiom, established by him, that "the authority
of Rabbula secured an instant success for the new revised version . . ."
and that "copies of the Peshitta were rapidly multiplied, it soon became
the only text in ecclesiastical use"--this kind of reconstruction of textual
history is pure fiction without a shred of evidence to support it.211
In
fact, Voobus believes his studies to prove that Rabbula himself used the "Old
Syriac type of text." It is clear to him that the Peshitta goes back at least
to the mid-fourth century and that it was not the result of an authoritative revision.212
The
Peshitta is regarded as authoritative Scripture by both the Nestorians and the
Monophysites. It is hard to see how this could have come to pass on the hypothesis
that Rabbula was the author and chief promoter of the Peshitta. For Rabbula was
a decided Monophysite and a determined opponent of the Nestorians. It is almost
contrary to reason, therefore, to suppose that the Nestorian Christians would
adopt so quickly and so unanimously the handiwork of their greatest adversary.213
In the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we are hard pressed to defend the integrity of textual scholars like F. F. Bruce, F. G. Kenyon, etc. who close their eyes and their minds tightly and raise their voices loudly to state dogmatically that Rabbula produced the Peshitta. As the old adage goes: "The weaker the argument, the stronger the words."
Hort's theory is purely and simply arbitrary, contrived, preconceived, and in factual error at every point. It is more than a farce, it is a fraud perpetrated by a non-Christian Western religionist who set out to undermine -- indeed to rob -- the earthly Church's most tangible treasure: The sacred Word of God in written form. It would be interesting to know (there may be studies and theories on this subject but I am unaware of them) who put the virus in the hot head and the pulsating breast of this child-genius to attack Historic Christian Orthodoxy and the there-to-fore immutable principals of preserving the written Word of God.
In the world of scholarship there are some hopeful signs if one looks closely. Dr. Wilbur Pickering and Dr. Zane C. Hodges have done signal work in counteracting Hort and bringing out new support for the Traditional Text (Syrian, Byzantine, Textus Receptus, Stevans Text, etc..). Their insistence that textual criticism must be based on sound evidence and not arbitrary theories is making some friends. Nor are they alone in their fight.
Some less enthusiastic critics of Hort's are helping unwillingly by merit of their integrity. Epp admits that "We simply do not have a theory of the text.''214 There simply is no history to go on, which is the only way that the W-H Greek text could have legitimately made the claims that it has (illegitimately). The exact reading of the text can be achieved only by a reconstruction of the history of that early text. Dr. Colwell comes to this conclusion as well: "Without a knowledge of the history of the text, the original reading cannot be established.''215 Aland states: "Now as in the past, textual criticism without a history of the text is not possible.''216 Paradoxically, even syncretically, no greater lip service could be paid to the truth of this matter than the words of Hort: "All trustworthy restoration of corrupted texts is founded on the study of their history.''217
The
Eclectic Text and the Eclectic Method are so deficient that they simply can not
be seriously considered. It ignores history, it invents scenarios which never
happened and for which there is not the faintest glimmer of evidence, it plays
fast and loose with facts, and it pursues relentlessly a preconceived passion
to achieve the end of nothing short of utter destruction of the "Byzantine
Text." Hort of course claimed to believe in and observe all of these postulates
of textual criticism. But this claim is a false, hollow mockery. Textual Scholars
in general have followed Hort for the results and have chosen to ignore his shoddy
means. Fortunately not all are taken in. One who is not is Dr. Clark, who concludes:
The
textual history that the Westcott-Hort text represents is no longer tenable in
the light of newer discoveries and fuller textual analysis. In the effort to construct
a congruent history, our failure suggests that we have lost the way, that we have
reached a dead end, and that only a new and different insight will enable us to
break through.218
The
W-H theory of textual criticism was a fraud from the beginning. Hort conceived
a plan and at no time along the way did the facts, the truth, or the real history
of the text stand in his way or deter him for a moment. That is clear to us now.
What is not as clear is what the truth and the real history of the text shows.
Scholars, who think that they are far from Hort and have not been touched by him,
have none-the-less fallen into his ditch. They are going to discover the real
text by empiricism, facts, and history; all of the things that Hort started in
the 19th century, which God and the Bible rejects and which Orthodoxy considers
to be a step backwards into the darkness of the fallen creation from which we
emerged in the New Testament dispensation.
I began by making a number of statements, some of which I will briefly reiterate. I am not a textual scholar and the specific views on the matter of textual criticism are concisely and narrowly deduced from recent reading on the subject. Many of the things that I have said in this paper, perhaps most of them, are very reliant upon the words and thoughts of Dr. Wilbur M. Pickering and his excellent and unsurpassed book, The Identity of the New Testament Text. Neither Dr. Pickering nor any of the men whom I have cited have given me any blessing or encouragement in writing this analysis. My purpose, as it pertains to informing about what has gone on in textual criticism through the Westcott and Hort theory, was to condense a study into something readable and understandable for the average pastor or interested Christian layman and concise enough to be used as an appendix here. My comments which link together technical matters concerning the W-H Critical Analysis Theory are in my own words, but the ideas behind them are only-in-part original with me. The introduction is original in words and thoughts which are based, so nearly as I can discern, on the foundation of Historic Orthodox Christian theology. It is upon those thoughts that I build in my conclusion. It is the place where I expect that I part company with Dr. Pickering, Dr. Hodges, and others in the world of textual scholarship, for they will not likely agree with much of my concluding remarks.
I have said that the modern tendency toward more and more translations of the Bible is in my view one of the most dangerous and disastrous to the Church in all of Her long history. The design by the enemy is simple: breed the real Word of God out of existence by releasing all of these sterile texts and flooding the world with them. Since the principal of eclecticism has been retained, even by those who have rejected Hort, each author or group of authors may change the text to suit themselves, and they are doing it. Many would have us believe that this is a tempest in a tea pot. The differences are small and insignificant, and they do not change any essential doctrine. That is simply not true! I will give you three examples, about which I will make no effort to become technical. You can research that for yourself if you are interested.
One is in Romans 5:15, which reads in the Authorized Version: "But not as the offense, so also is the free gift." The Apostle is explaining the subject of the atonement. In due course he comes to this verse. It is admittedly obscure in its wording. To explain its meaning, I will paraphrase, not as a translator but as a pastor and expositor: "but in the case of those who did not commit Adam's sin but died because of it, so also is the free gift." The Apostle is talking about that which Bible teachers often call "Federal Mediation:" the one acts and the many are effected. If you send a representative to the federal government, he acts on your behalf. In this same way, Adam acted, and all of his children were effected by what he did, even though they were not physically there, and they did not do what he did. The free gift functions on exactly the same principle. Christ acted, and all of His children were affected by His actions, just as all of Adam's children were effected by his actions. We were not there in literal, physical form at the Cross (though we were in a spiritual way which we will not attempt to address here). We did not do what Christ did. But we (those of the faith, who have accepted Christ as Savior) were effected anyway. The similarity is not in the nature or the end result of the actions of the two Adams, but in the principle of how federal action on the part of the father effects the children. This is a very important consideration in understanding the atonement. Without this information, no one can possibly understand what St. Paul is saying.
Every modern translation that I have seen, including the NIV, the English Translation of 1881, the paraphrases, and the so-called New King James, have changed this verse to say: "but the free gift is not at all like the offense" or words to that exact effect. (This means that the New King James is an eclectic text. As such, it too is a fraud and a deceit. It is not simply, as billed, an up-dating of old English words. The editors have DELIBERATELY CHANGED THE WORDING TO MAKE YOU THINK THAT IS WHAT IT SAYS BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THEY THINK IT MEANS! In my opinion they have totally missed the meaning. Yet, whether or not they are wrong in their interpretation is not the point. Expositors have the right to their opinion. The point is, translators and revisionists do not have the right to interpret. But this is interpreting, on an eclectic basis. That is the danger that is presented by every so-called "Updated" version, transliteration, paraphrase, or linguistic commentary.) Yet in the Textus Receptus and the W-H Greek Text, the wording is identical in every respect. The Greek word for also is kai. According to Dr. Strong (Strong's Concordance for the King James) it means: ". . . a copulative and sometimes also a cumulative force; and, also, even, so, then, too, etc.; often used in connection (or composition) with other particles or small words: and, also, both, but, even, for, if, indeed, likewise, moreover, or, so, that, then, therefore, when, yea, yet."
In short, this word is put here to bring the accumulated weight of the first argument to bear on the second: "as that -- so this." Yet the eclectic scholars, through ignorance or malice, have ignored it completely to make this passage mean what they want it to mean! In every instance, the authors of these texts know full well that this is not what the ancient text actually says! Only the Revised Standard Version of 1901 left this verse unchanged (they did not do nearly so honorably in other places as we shall see). The simple fact is that the other recent versions have used Hort's principle of eclecticism and put in what they thought it should say -- not what it actually says in the ordained Scriptures. Anyone who thinks that this was a naive accident, is living in a fog. The fact that it not only confused but changed the doctrine of the atonement, is too significant to be an oversight by careful men.
The Authorized Version (King James) says of Christ when He came into this world: "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:"
Again, as a pastor and an expository teacher, not a translator, let me explain. Christ came into this world. He was God; fully equal with God in every way. If, as a man, He had decided that He wanted to make a point of that to be sure that the world never forgot it, and if He chose, while in this world, to exercise all of the prerogatives of God, that was His right. There would have been nothing wrong with that. But He did not choose to do that. He considered it to be incongruous with His mission, which was to identify with the human race and bring about the work of redemption. This was best done if He humbly took upon Himself the form of a servant, and manifested to the world a servant's lowly estate and obedience to his master. And this is exactly what He did. Still, He had equality with God because He was God. And He would not have been robbing God of His glory if He had chosen to found His life and ministry upon that equality.
The ASV of 1901, relying on the eclectic text of Westcott and Hort Greek, has changed the passage to read to the effect: "Who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on equality with God a thing to be grasped." (ASV 1901, differs slightly from some modern English versions, but all retain the words that equality with God was not a thing to be grasped at. In the Preface to the American Edition to the ASV 1901, Nashville, Thomas Nelson Publishers, p. ix, the Revisors promised to make a note in the margin at any point at which they relied on any other text than the Massoretic [the Received Text], but in Philippians 2:6 they failed to do so for whatever reason)
In the Greek interlinear transliteration, the wording is like this: Who in the form of God subsisting, not rapine esteemed it to be equal with God;" (Greek Text of Stevens, 1550, [along with the Elzevir Text of 1624 ] which is commonly called The Textus Receptus,) or:
"Who in form of God existing, not snatching, he considered the to be equal (things) to God." (the New Testament in the Original Greek -- The text Revised by Brooke Foss Westcott D. I. and Fenton John Anthony Hort D. D.) But here as in Romans 5:15, the Greek wording itself is identical in the Textus Receptus and the W-H Greek Text!
Much has already been made of Hort's efforts to slant the meaning of the Byzantine by any and all methods. One of those burdens was to undermine the deity of Christ. It is in this passage that Hort attacks. The word robbery is the Greek harpagmos. It means to plunder or to rob. It rises from the word harpazo, which means to seize, to catch away, to pluck, to pull, or to take by force. All of these words and phrases are to be understood in the sense of "robbery:" To seize your neighbor's goods; to catch away his goose; to pluck up his corn; or to take his gold by force.
The word grasp may be used but only in that sense! But that is not the sense in which Dr. Hort used it. He arbitrarily inserted the parenthesis, "(things)". In this way he opened the door to the possible understanding that it was not personal equality with God that Jesus had, but equality of possessions and things. In other words, perhaps Jesus was no more in the form of God than Adam, when God made man (Adam) in His own image. Adam too had the form of God, but he was not equal with God. On the other hand, Satan thought equality with God a thing to be grasped for and he did grasp for it. In so doing he brought himself down.
There is no ambiguity in the phrase: "He thought it not robbery to be equal with God." For Satan it was robbery; for Christ it would not have been. Christ had equality with God and was equal with God in every way!
In Hort, the understanding is afforded to the reader that Christ did not do what Satan did. Satan thought equality with God a thing to be grasped at. Christ did not. In this way it is possible to use this text (as the Jehovah's Witnesses who use this text do) to argue that Jesus Christ was not equal with God. He knew it and it did not worry Him.
Again, if anyone thinks that this is an innocent difference of opinion -- this sniping away at the deity of Christ -- he is sadly and plainly mistaken. I have had ministers say to me: "I believe in the deity of Christ. I read that passage and it doesn't confuse me. I can see how 'not a thing to be grasped' can mean what you explain the King James to mean." Maybe, but the simple question is this: If that is the case, and that is what Dr. Hort meant, why change it from a clear, clarion expression of deity to this cloudy language that is not at all clear on the matter? I am sorry, my fellow ministers, but you are naive.
This is a cunning, deliberate, carefully crafted, long term plan to corrupt the truth of the Scriptures concerning the true identity of Jesus who is JEHOVAH our Savior. Inasmuch as the wording (in the TR and the W-H) is identical in the two above passages, another very sinister possibility must be considered. Hort, and the other liberal religious humanists before and after him, invented the eclectic-text argument as an excuse to get into the Holy Writ and change it. Perhaps they never thought that the superfluous changes that they made were that important; it may all have been an intellectual cloud of confusion to shut out the light. (Or more likely still they were most interested in doing both.)
Under the cover of that darkness they could be about their real missions: to obscure the doctrines of redemption and atonement, to raise doubts about the deity of Christ, and to undermine the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. If any one of these doctrines is lost to the understanding of any man, salvation is no longer a possibility to him! After all it was Jesus Christ Himself who said, "Before Abraham was, I AM," in John 8:58. Again He said, "For if ye believe not that I AM (the essential construction of the name JEHOVAH), ye shall die in your sins," in St. John 8:24.
The Authorized Version says: "There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."
Because there is not much a heretic can do to change the terse language of this verse, and because there were many Arian texts around in Alexandria, Hort simply left this language out of his text, claiming that it was an inferior reading that was not in "most of the better manuscripts." But Dr. Pickering and others, in their accumulated new support for the Textus Receptus, have exposed that lie also. This was the preferred reading of the ante-Nicene Fathers and fully in keeping with Athanasius, Augustine, and the Creeds of the Church. It was the non-Christian followers of Arius and Lucian who wanted to leave out -- and did leave out -- such words. It is the first point of attack for liberal theologians like Hort. Every group of heretics -- from the Pharisees and the Arians of the early days, the deists like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in the early days of the Republic, to the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses of today -- has the rejection of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity at the center of their theology.
We could get into a long discussion over this and I think you know by now that I could cite many late scholars to prove this point, but it isn't really the point. The point is that Hort was fronting for a growing constituency of non-Christian, Enlightenment intellectuals, who (as part of the false religious world of the false prophet whose mission was to give credence to the beast of humanism whose assignment was to blaspheme God) felt that it was their moment in history. The iron was hot and the time to strike had come. How right they were in their evaluations and the impact that they had on the religious world. The agenda included a whole list of items, not the least of which was to undermine the Biblical doctrine of the Holy Trinity as in the above example.
The real problem is not the true identity of the New Testament text by honest textual scholarship. The problem is the change in the Church, brought about by the Enlightenment, to rely upon science, scholasticism, and proof, instead of the good will of simple men acting under the control of the Holy Ghost. In short, the problem is scholarship itself. By this we do not mean to say that men of keen minds and education, who are under the control of the Holy Ghost, are not needed or useful in the Church. The commandment to study and to show one's self approved, and to seek after wisdom and knowledge are Biblical instructions. This has always been accepted by Orthodoxy. What we are talking about is the theology of scholarship that takes understanding out of the hands of babes and puts it in the hands of the wise and the prudent (intellectual) on the humanistic bases of natural abilities and institutional qualifications. (Cf. St. Luke 10:21-24, John 3:1-3, 7:15, Acts 4:13, I Cor. 1:26-2:16, Heb. 8:10,11, Psalm 119:99.)
This is not a small or contrived matter, but the largest one facing the Church in the world today. It goes to the issue of Enlightenment theology and its impact on the Church's procedure and doctrine. Before the Enlightenment, truth was determined by the Bible. This was preserved by simple copyists and a reliance, by the Church, on the preserving power of God. "He who had been able to ordain His Word through men was also able to preserve it." Translation was entrusted to "Spirit-filled" men whose primary concern was to be guided by God and whose second concern was to be true to the original language. Whenever good and faithful men translated or copied, doing their honest best to be faithful to the literal text, the result was assured to be the inerrant Word of God.
Truth was revealed to us from God, by our faith. God, Who was transcendental in the sense that He was above us and beyond us and that His ways could not be discovered by us on the bases of our native intellectual, philosophical, and religious abilities, had reached out to us in grace and mercy, through our faith and the mediation of His Son Jesus Christ. This was Orthodox. Concerning God and His truth, the eye has not seen it, the ear has not heard it, the mind has not thought it; but God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. (I Cor. 2:7-10) This revelation is only to men who have the Spirit and the mind of Christ and who rely upon those great New Testament truths. (I Cor. 2:11,12,16) The natural mind, scholar or not, cannot know, receive, or pass judgment on the things of God and His Spirit (I Cor. 2:14). Among those things of the Spirit of God is certainly the preservation of the Holy Writ. To entrust the keeping of the Bible to men like Hort is analogous to throwing your baby into a pit of vipers so they can watch it for you while you go to the store--only worse!
The Enlightenment changed forever the way the organized religious world looked at God, truth, and the Bible. It changed the criteria of truth and the knowledge of God from faith to sight and revelation to reason. That this was the position of the Orthodox Fathers is born out by St. Augustine when, in a dispute with Cicero, he referred to ". . . the sacrilegious and impious darings of reason.''219 Nor was it simply the trend and temperament of the times in the early Church to trust in faith and not reason. At no time in history has Gnosticism been stronger.
St. Augustine himself, in the early days of his conversion to Christianity, argued that reason was superior to faith.220 But in his mature years, after yielding his brilliant mind to the control of the Holy Ghost, he renounced reason altogether as a means of knowing God, declaring the Bible to be inerrant in all respects and faith, not reason to be the only way to the knowledge of God.221 Along with reason came the natural sciences as the means of that transmission and application of reason to the various disciplines of knowledge. When this happened, an immediate ascendancy of the intellect of man--not only as to its new found frontiers in science, mathematics, history, and philosophy, but its importance and abilities in the eyes of the religious world -- began. It was not long before it steamrolled and blew up. The technological explosion may be attributed to one basic thing: the age when man threw off the restraints of reverence, fear of God, humility, and faith, and began to trust in himself and his own "sovereign, inalienable" powers.
As long predicted in the Bible, Satan, that old dragon, would seize upon this time when men would run "to and fro and knowledge would increase," to manifest himself through the beast of secular humanism and the second beast of false religion, which may also be identified as religious humanism. Another way of identifying them, according to the Bible is by the number 666 (6 is the number of man. It is the false trinity of the dragon, the beast who is humanism and the false prophet who is false religion). In order to be loved by the world, to be accepted by its in-crowd and to be let into its storehouse of treasures, it is necessary for men to accept the philosophies and works of religious and secular humanism. These would have great powers and would be able to fool multitudes and to draw them into this web. But they would not, (because they could not) fool the elect of God, for they have the mark of God (777) in their foreheads (minds and thinking) and their right hands (deeds).
In the world of high-rolling religious merchandising, mind manipulation, and escapism, many religious men are following the way of false miracles, the carnival barkers, snake oil sellers, and hucksters of the religious midway, the health-wealth-and-fame game and sensual delights, both sexual and emotional. The psychological, sales-oriented, mind manipulation world of Evangelism Explosion, Neo-evangelicalism, Positive Thinking, and Charismatic Humanism have provided people with more ways to escape reality than Timothy Leary's book on psychedelic drugs. But it is important to realize that "the Way" is still narrow and there are still few who find it. God's faithful must resist the ingrained human temptation to think that popularity proves the integrity of the movement. It may be possible to successfully argue that the Bible proves just the opposite, but that is another study.
Now, more than ever, the holy men of the Church must gird their loins and gather their swords. Nowhere is this more crucial than in the way we react to this utter destruction of the Word of God. The other day I said to an interested young man in a restaurant, who was asking questions about what to do: "Get yourself a Bible and begin to read in Romans and the Gospel of John." He looked at me in a puzzled way and asked, "Which one? There are so many anymore, I am not sure which one is right." This is exactly the point. It is the existential, experiential, situation-ethics religion of the liberal world. There are no absolutes. There is no absolute Word of God. There is just the ever-changing scene. What is the "best" Word of God today will not be the best ten years from now. The scholars will make new discoveries and new changes. Don't memorize what you have now, because it will be passé in a few years.
Of course this has not changed truth, but it has changed the way a lot of confused people look at "Christianity." They are not sure if anything is true anymore. "If the Bible that served our fathers and our grandfathers for three hundred years, and upon which they based their homes, their churches, and their faith, was really a vile and villainous document, full of accumulated lies and deliberate distortions, how can I be sure that anything is the inerrant Word of God?" It is a fair question; how do you answer? I will tell you how I answer.
If the above were true, then of course you could not be sure. But it is not true. The mandate, motivation, and procedures for the King James translation -- as feeble as the men who worked on it may have been -- comprised an honest effort to produce a complete Bible from the Hebrew and the Greek into English (as did the Douay-Rheims from the Latin Scriptures by St. Jerome). This was not an egocentric attempt on the part of heady intellectuals with new found liberties, to make names for themselves by bringing down the King, thus becoming "King Makers." Because of that, the King James, along with the Douay-Rheims, are dependable translations. God was in those endeavors. That doctrine is Orthodox in every respect and has been for four hundred years (and for many centuries before the English translation was an issue).
Anyone
who thinks that God was in the mischievous ambitions of Fenton J. Hort, has missed
the whole point of the nefarious ambitions and forces that were driving him and
the danger it presents to men in this world who are seeking, whether or not they
admit it, to find deliverance from death and the secret to immortality. And they
will go on missing it. The Church is the living body of living Christ and the
pillar and ground of truth. The gates of hell cannot and shall not prevail against
it. But what may be said of the true Church, cannot be said of religion or religious
men in general (zeal, commitment, intellect, religious education, and religious
vocation, notwithstanding). The Church will survive. But what of the man who is
still outside the gates of the City, trying to find his way? If the light which
shines in the darkness of this world (II Peter 1:19) becomes invisible, so will
the pathway that leads to life.
FOOTNOTES
In spite of the way that the term "orthodoxy" is being merchandised these days by every religious commentator who wishes to give his views credibility, this is the only view of Historic Orthdox Christianity.
2 Bruce M. Metzger, a senior Textual Critic and for many years a Professor at Princeton, has many published works. In this field his most noteworthy is, The Text of the New Testament.
3 Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 210.
4 K. Aland, M. Black, C. M. Martini, B. M. Metzger, and A. Wikgren, eds. The Greek New Testament, third edition (New York: United Bible Societies, 1975), p. viii. W. M. Pickering comments, "Although this edition is dated 1975, Metzger's commentary upon it appeared in 1971. The second edition is dated 1978. It thus appears that in the space of three years, with no significant accretion of new evidence, the same group of five scholars changed their mind in over five hundred places. It is hard to resist the suspicion that they are guessing." The Identity of the New Testament Text, revised edition, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, p. 209, footnote 5 for chapter 1.
5 R. M. Grant, A Historical Introduction of the New Testament (New York: Harper and Rowe, 1963), p. 51.
6 K. W. Clark "The Testament," Theological Relevance of Textual Variation in Current Criticism of the Greek New Testament," Journal of Biblical Literature, LXXXV 966), p. 15.
7 Grant, "The Bible of Theophilus of Antioch," Journal of Biblical Literature, LXVI (1947), 173. For a most pessimistic statement see E.C. Colwell, "Biblical Criticism: Lower and Higher," Journal of Biblical Literature, LXVII (194), 10-11. See also G. Zuntz, The test of the Epistles, 1953, p. 9; K. And S. Lake, Family 13(The Ferrar Group), 1941, p. Vii; F. C. Conybear, History of New Testament criticism, 1919, p. 129.
8 The term "Eclecticism" refers to the practice of selecting from various sources. In textual criticism there is the added implication that the sources are dissimilar.
9 E. l. Epp, "The twentieth Century Interlude in New Testament Textual criticism" Journal of Biblical Literature, XCIII (1974), p. 403.
1 E C. Colwell, "Hort Redivivus: A Plea and a Program," Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament, E. C. Colwell (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), pp. 152-53. Tasker records the principles followed by the NEB translators: "The Text to be translated will of necessity be eclectic, . . .~ (p. Vii)
2 J Metzger, The Text, pp. 175-76.
To many, Ernest Cadman Colwell was the dean of Lower Critics in the 1950s and 1960s. His operational base was the University of Chicago, having been both a Professor and President. A condensation of his most cogent contributions appears in Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament.
3Colwell, "Biblical Criticism," pp. 4-5. See also K. Lake, The Text of the New Testament, sixth edition revised by Silva (London: Rivingtons, 1959), p. 10 and Metzger, The Text, pp. 216-17.
4Colwell, "Hort Redivivus," p. 154. Cf. pp. 149-54. (Emphases added.)
5J. K. Elliott, "The Greek Text of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus," ed., Jacob Geerlings, Studies and Documents, XXXI (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1968), pp. I0-l l. Cf. K. Aland, "The Significance of the Papyri for Progress in New Testament Research, "The Bible in Modern Scholarship" ed., J. P. Hyatt (New York: Abingdon Press, 1965) p. 340, and Tasker, p. viii.
6Epp, p. 404.
7W. M. Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, revised edition, (Nashville, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1980), p 25. (Emphases added)
8Colwell, "Scribal Habits in Early Papyri: A study in the corruption of the Text," The Bible in Modern Scholarship, ed . J. P. Hyatt (New York: Abingdon Press, 1965), pp. 371-72.
911 Frederick G. Kenyon, a noted British scholar in the early 20th century, was Director and Principal Librarian of the British Museum. His Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, is a frequently used reference book.
10F G. Kenyon, Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, 2nd ed., 1926, p.
11Epp, PP. 403-4 Cf. K. W. Clark, "The Effect of Recent Textual Criticism upon New Testament Studies," The Background of the New Testament and its Eschatology, ed. W. D. Davies and D. Daube (Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 1956), p. 37.
12A. F. ]. Klijn is a foremost critic on the "Western" text-type.
13A. F. J. Klijn has specialized in the study of the "Western" text-type.
14Epp, pp. 391-92.
15Ibid. pp. 398-'71
16Westcott and Hort's criticism is subjective." H. Metzger, The Text, p. 138. Cf. Colwell, Studies In Methodology in Textual criticism of the New Testament (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), pp. 1 2.
17Elliott, pp. 5-6.
18Tasker, p. vii.
19Metzger. The Text. p. 175
E20pp, p. 403
21Colwell, "Hort Redivivus," p. 149.
22See K. W. Clark "Today's Problems with the Critical Text of the New Testament," Transitions in Biblical Scholarship. ed. J. C. R. Rylaarsdam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 159-60. Also see Epp, pp. 388-90.
23EPP, pp. 390-91. Cf. G. Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), p.8.
24Clark, "Today's Problems," p. 159.
25Ibid, pp. 158- Cf. M. M. Parvis, "Text, NT.," The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (4 Vols.; New York: Abingdon Press, 1962), IV, p.602, and D. W. Riddle, "Fifty Years of New Testament Scholarship," The Journal of Bible and Religion X ( 1942), p.139.
26 Cf. Clark, "Today's Problems," p. 166, and especially Colwell, "Scribal Habits," pp. 170-71.
27 By EIIiott's findings, Codex Aleph was right 38% of the time, A was right 38% of the time, C right 41%, D right 35%, F, G right 31%, and the bulk of the minuscules (Byzantine) was right 35% of the time (pp. 241 -43).
28 See K. Aland, "The Significance of the Papyri," p. 325; Colwell, "Scribal Habits," p. 370; Metzger, The Text, p. 137; V. Taylor, The Text of the New Testament (New York: St. Martin's Press Inc., 1961), p. 49; K. Lake, p. 67, F. G. Kenyon, Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eeerdmans Publishing Co., 1951), p. 294; Epp, p. 386, and Riddle, Parvis and Clark, noted above (fn. 27).
29 J. H. Greenlee, Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 19164), p. 78.
30 Hort was a Professor at Cambridge. The W-H Greek text of the N.T. was adopted (essentially) by the committee that produced the English Revised Version of 1881. Westcott wrote a number of commentaries on N.T. books which are still considered to be standard works. His prestige and influence were important to the success of their (W-H) undertaking. Hort worked mainly on the Greek text.
31 B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek (2 Vols.; London: Macmillan and Co., 1881)
32 A. F. Hort, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort (2 Vols.; London: Macmillian and Co. Ltd., 1896).1, p. 211. (emphasis mine.)
33 Ibid., p. 240.
34 Ibid., p. 264
35 The Textus Receptus is one of several printed editions of the Greek text of the N.T. that was close to the text prepared by Erasmus in the sixteenth century. (Of over thirty such editions, few are identical.) It is not the exact text of the AV, though the differences are small enough so that this confusion has often gone unchallenged. . Nor is it completely identical to "Syrian" or "Byzantine" text. Some Textual Scholars such as Zane C. Hodge, Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at the Dallas Theological Seminary, see quite a bit of difference between the Textus Receptus and the Byzantine. The New Byzantine Text authored by Hodges, Arthur Farstad, and associates, and to be published by Thomas Nelson, will claim more than a thousand differences.
36 Colwell, "Hort Redivivus," p. 158.
37 Colwell, "Genealogical Method: Its Achievements and its Limitations," Journal of Biblical Literature LXVI (1947), p. 111.
38 Hort did not hold to an Orthodox, or even an honorable view of inspiration. Cf. A. F. Hort, 1, to an Orthodox, or even an honorable view of inspiration. Cf. A. F. Hort, 1, pp. 419-21 and Westcott and Hort, 11, ''Introduction," pp. 280-81.
39 Westcott and Hort, p. 73.
40 Ibid., p. 282.
41 Ibid., p 57.
42 Colwell, "Genealogical Method," p. 111.
43 Westcott and Hort, pp. 178-9. Hort made little and infrequent use of existing manuscripts. See K. Aland, "The Significance of the Papyri," pp. 327-28. The actual record shows that even Aland gave him too much credit.
44 Westcott and Hort, p. 49.
45 Ibid., p.
46 Mark 6:33; :26; 9:3; 9:49; Luke 9:10; 11:54; 12:18; 24:53.
47 Cf. Kenyon, p. 302; E. F. Harrison, Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1964), p. 73; and Metzger, The Text, pp. 135-6.
48 Taylor, p. 53.
49 Lake, p. 68.
50 Westcott and Hort, p. 115.
51 1bid., p. 91.
52 F. G. Kenyon, Recent Developments in the Textual Criticism of the Greek Bible (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), PP 7-8.
53 Lake, p.72.
54 Westcott and Hort, pp. 134-5
55 Ibid, pp. 115-116.
56 Cf. Kenyon, Recent Developments, p. 66, Metzger, The Text, p. I 31.
57 Westcott and Hort, p. 133.
58 Ibid., p. 137.
59 F. C. Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe (2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904), II, p. 161.
60 H. C. Thiessen, Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1955), pp. 54-55.
61 Cf. Aland, "The Significance of the Papyri," p. 325.
62 Colwell, "Scribal Habits," p. 370.
63 Cf. Colwell, "External Evidence and New Testament Criticism," Studies in the History and Text of the New Testament, eds. B. L. Daniels and M. J. Suggs (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1967), p. 3 Colwell, "Hort Redivivus," p. 162; Clark, "Today's Problems," pp. 159 60; Epp, p. 390.
64 Ibid, p. 276. And, "B very far exceeds all other documents in neutrality of text," p. 171.
65 Ibid, pp. 109-10
66 J. N. Birdsall, "The Text of the Gospels in Photius," Journal of Theological Studies, Vll (1956), p. 43. Some lower critics show the tempestuous, pouting temperament of the unstable 23 year old who was going to rid the world of this fearsome villain, the Textus Receptus. Dr. Epp called it "the tyrannical Textus Receptus" (p.386). Their preoccupation with their own importance and the future of their profession above the needs of the Church and the sanctity of the Holy Writ is too pointed to miss.
67 Clark, "The Effect of Recent Textual Criticism," p. 50.
68 Metzger, The Text, p. 201. For actual examples from Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, and Eusebius, and their significance, see Sturz (pp. 86-89). He says for example, "While scribal blunders were recognized by them as one cause of variation, the strongest and most positive statements, by the Fathers, are in connection with the changes introduced by heretics" (p.89). Again we are put in the position of believing that Hort was either a fool who was ignorant of common history or he was a deliberate concealer, distorter, and deceiver.
69 W. Burgon, The Revision Revised (London: John Murray, 1883), p. 323.
70 Colwell, "The Origin of Text types of New Testament Manuscripts." Early Christian Origins, ed. Allen Wikgren (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961), p. 130.
71 JJ. W. Burgon, The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels, arranged completed and edited by Edward Miller (London: George Bell and Sons, 1896), pp. 211-12. Cf. Martin Rist , "Pseudepigraphy and the Early Christians," Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature, ed. D. E. Aune (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), pp. 78-79.
72 Colwell, What is the Best New Testament? (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952), p. 53.
73 Colwell, What is the Best New Testament. p. 58.
74 M. Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 214 (Emphases added).
75 H. H. Oliver, "Present Trends in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament," The Journal of Bible and Religion, XXX (1962), pp. 311-12. Cf. C. S. C. Williams, Alterations to the Text of the Synoptic Gospels and Acts (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1951), pp. 14-17.
76 Pickering, p. 215, footnote 5, says: The 'inconvenience' referred to is virtually fatal to the W-H theory at least as formulated in their "Introduction." The W-H theory is much like a multistoried building-- each level depends on the one below it. Thus, Hort's simplistic notion of "genealogy" absolutely depends upon the allegation that there was no deliberate alteration of the Text and his notion of "text-types" absolutely depends upon "genealogy," and his arguments concerning "conflation" and "Syrian" readings before Chrysostom absolutely depend upon those "text-types." The foundation for the whole edifice is Hort's position that the New Testament was an ordinary book that enjoyed an ordinary transmission. With its foundation removed, the edifice collapses." (Emphases added)
77 W. M. Pickering, p. 216, footnote 12. He says, "Codex Claromontanus apparently has a child three centuries younger than it (also, minuscule 205 may have been copied from 208). Codices F and G containing Paul's Epistles appear to be almost twin brothers, and groups like family I and family 13 are clearly closely related. Also, in the Apocalypse Hoskier has identified a number of related groups.
78 Parvis p. 611. (Emphasis added)
79 Colwell, "Genealogical Method," pp. 111-12. (Emphases added)
80 Westcott and Hort, p. 63. (Emphases added)
81 Colwell, "Genealogical Method," p. 114. (Emphases added)
82 Zunt, p. 155.
83 L. Vaganay, An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, translated by B. V. Miller (London: Sands and Company, 1937), p. 71.
84 Aland, " The Significance of the Papyri," p. 341.
85 Colwell, ''External Evidence," p. 4.
86 Westcott and Hort, p. 287.
87 Colwell, "Genealogical Method," p. 124.
88 Colwell, "The Complex Character of the Late Byzantine Text of the Gospels," Journal of Biblical Literature, LlV(l935), pp. 212-13.
89 Colwell, "Genealogical Method," p. 109. (Emphasis added)
90 Colwell, "Scribal Habits," pp. 370-71.
91 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, p. 47.
92 Burgon, The Revision Revised, p. 358. Burgon's own index of the Fathers is no doubt still the most extensive in existence -- it contains 86,489 quotations.
93 G. Salmon, Some Thoughts on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (London, 1897), p. 33.
94 M. M. Parvis, "The Nature and Task of New Testament Textual criticism " The Journal of Religion, XXXII (1952), p. 173.
95 A. Wikgren, "Chicago Studies in the Greek Lectionary of the New Testament," Biblical and Patristic Studies in Memory of Robert Pierce Casey, ed. J. N. Birdsall and R. W. Thomson (New York: Herder, 1963), pp. 96121.
96 Colwell, The Origin of Text types," p. 135.
97 M. M. Parvis, "The Nature and Task of New Testament Textual Criticism," The Journal of Religion, XXXII (1952), p. 173.
98 A. Wikgren "Chicago Studies in the Greek Lectionary of the New Testament," Biblical and Patristic Studies in Memory of Robert Pierce Casey, ed. J. N. Birdsall and R. W. Thomson (New York: Herder, 1963), pp. 96 121.
99 Colwell, "The Origin of Text-types," p. 135.
100 Zuntz, p. 240.
101 Klijn, p. 36.
102 Ibid., p. 66.
103 Metzger, Chapters in the History of New Testament Textual Criticism (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1963), p. 67.
104 Klijn seems to be of this opinion (pp. 33-34).
105 Cf. Burgon, The Revision Revised, p. 380.
106 H. C. Hoskier, A Full Account and Collation of the Greek Cursive Codex Evangelium 604 (London: David Nutt, 1890), Introduction, pp. cxv-cxvi.
107 Kenyon, Handbook, p. 356.
108 Colwell, "The Greek New Testament with a Limited Critical Apparatus: its Nature and Uses," Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature, ed. D. E. Aune (Leiden: E. 1. Brill, 1972), p. 33.
109 Metzger, The Text, p. 141.
110 Klijn, p. 64.
111 Colwell, "The Significance of Grouping of New Testament Manuscripts," New Testament Studies, IV (1957-1958), pp. ~87. Cf. also Colwell, "Genealogical Method," pp. 119-123. (Emphases added.)
112 Zuntz, "The Byzantine Text in New Testament Criticism," The Journal of Theological Studies, XLIII (1942), p. 25.
113 Clark, "The Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament," New Testament Manuscript Studies, ed. M. M. Parvis and A. P. Wikgren (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1950), p. 12.
114 Aland, "The Significance of the Papyri," pp. 334-7. (Emphases added.)
115 Epp, p. 398
116 Colwell, "Genealogical Method," p. 118. (Emphases added.)
117 Burgon, The Traditional Text, p. 229.
118 Westcott and Hort, p. 94 and pp. 240- 1.
119 Colwell, "The Origin of Texttypes," pp. 130-31.
120 Hoskier, Codex B, 1, p. 465.
121 Westcott and Hort, p. 91.
122 Lake, p. 53.
123 Metzger, Chapters, p. 21.
124 J Geerlings and S. New, "Chrysostom's Text of the Gospel of Mark," Harvard Theological Review XXIV(1931), p. 135.
125 Ibid., p. 141.
126 Hoskier, Codex B, 1, p. ii-iii.
127 Zuntz, The Text. p. 152.
128 Metzger, Biblical ; and Patristic Studies In Memory Of Robert Pierce Casey, ed. J. NM. Birdsall and R. W. Thompson (New York: Herder, 1963), p. 94.
129 Burgon, The Traditional Text, pp. 100, 121.
130 Actually the Greek Text used by the 1881 English text Revision Committee.
131 W.H., p. 114.
132 Burgon, The Traditional Text, p 199.
133 Ibid, p. 117.
134 Hoskier, Codex B, 1, p. 426-7.
135 Burgon, The Traditional Text, pp. 99-101.
136 Burgon, The Cause of the Corruption, pp. 2-3.
137 E. Miller, A Guide to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (London: George Bell and sons, 1886), p. 53.
138 Burgon, The Traditional Text, pp. ix-x. (Emphases added.).
139 Kenyon, Handbook, pp. 321-2. (Emphases added.).
140 Burgon, The Traditional Text, p. 116.
141 Kenyon, Handbook, pp. 322-3.
142 Ibid, p. 323.
143 Ibid.
144 Burgon, The Traditional Text, Generally from pages 350-450.
145 Ibid.
146 Ibid.
147 Ibid
148 Ibid
149 Ibid.
150 Ibid
151 Ibid.
152 84 E. F. Hills, 771, The King James Version Defended! (Des Moines: The Christian Research Press, 1956), D. 73.
153 Lake, p. 72. (Emphases added.).
154 Burgon, The Last Twelve Verses, p. 58.
155 Zuntz, The Text, p. 55. (Emphases added.).
156 Colwell, "The Origin of Text-types," p. 132.
157 Colwell, What Is the Best New Testament? p. 70.
158 Burgon, The Last Twelve Verses p. 50. (Hills wrote the Introduction.).
159 Ibid. p. 54.
160 H. A. Sturz, The Byzantine Text-Type and New Testament Textual Criticism (Second Syllabus Edition La Mirada, Cal: Biola College Bookstore, 1972 ).
161 Ibid, pp. 189-212.
162 Ibid, p 187. This means that the early Papyri vindicate "Byzantine" readings in 660 (or 885) places where there is significant variation. One might wish that Sturz had also given us the figures for "distinctively Western" and "distinctively Alexandrian" readings, but how are such expressions to be defined? Where is an objective definition for "Western reading," for example?
163 Westcott and Hort, p. 21.
164 Ibid.. p. 25.
165 Ibid. p. 286.
166 Fee, Modern Text Criticism and the Synoptic Problem," 1. l. Griesbach: Synoptic and Text-Critical Studies 1776-1976, ed. B. Orchard and T.R.W. Longstaff (Cambridge: University Press, 1978), p. 156.
167 Colwell, "The Greek New Testament" p 37.
168 Colwell, "External Evidence," p. 4.
169 Ibid., p 3.
170 Burgon, The Traditional Text, p. 67.
171 Burgon, The Revision Revised, p. 251.
172 Burgon, The Traditional Text, p. 66.
173 Westcott and Hort, p. 235.
174 Sturz, p. 184.
175 B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (Landon: Macmillan and Co., 1930), pp. 1224. Cf. W. R. Farmer, The Last Twelve Verses of Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 13P 22.
176 Ibid, p. 131.
177 Burgon, The Case of the Corruption, p. 156
178 Vaganay, pp. 84-5
179 Kilpatrick, p. 196.
180 Colwell, "Scribal Habits," p. 378.
181 Ibid., p. 380.
182 Ibid., p. 383.
183 Ibid., p. 387.
184 Ibid., pp. 376-7.
185 Vaganay, p 86.
186 Metzger, The Text, p. 195.
187 Zuntz The Text, p. 36.
188 Salmon, pp. 33-4.
189 Hemphill, A History of the Revised Version (London: Elliot Stock, 1906), pp. 49-50.
190 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, p. 85.
191 Elliott, pp. 241-3.
192 Kilpatrick, p. 205.
193 Burgon, The Revision Revised, p. 293.
194 Kenyon, Handbook pp. 324-5.
195 Colwell, "The Origin of the Text-types," p. 137.
196 F. C. Grant, "The Citation of Greek Manuscript Evidence in an Apparatus Criticus," New Testament Manuscript Studies, ed. M. M. Parvis and A. P. Wikgren (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1950), DD. 90-1.
197 J. Geerlings, Family E and Its Allies Bl Mark (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1967), p. 1. (Emphasis added.)
198 Kenyon. Handbook. p.325.
199 Hodges p. 42. Cf. Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, appendix C.
200 Burgon, The Revision Revised, pp. 276-77.
201 A. Vööbus, Early Versions of The New Testament, (Stockholm: Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 1954), p. 100.
202 Ibid., pp. 100-102.
203 Burgon, The Last Twelve Verses, p. 56.
204 Epp, P. 403.
205 Colwell, "The Greek New Testament with a Limited Apparatus," p. 37.
206 Aland, "The Present Position," p. 731.
207 Westcott and Hort, p. 40. (Emphases added.).
208 Epp, pp. 391-2.
209 Augustine, The City of God, Book Five, Chapter 9, (Chicago, Augustine, Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952) p. 214. In this passage, St. Augustine refutes Cecil's claim that it is illogical to hold that God is sovereign if there is free moral agency. St. Augustine's answer is that when reason is used to determine the doctrines of Scripture, it is sacrilegious, impious, and daring. It is in the face of this human vice that we assert both that God is Sovereign and man has free moral agency because the Bible tells us both.
210 Warfield, Calvin, and Augustine, (Philadelphia, The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1956), pp. 306-7. There Warfield states that Augustine wrote The City of God some 26 years after he had written the Confessions. See pp. 395-403, St. Augustine sees two ways to knowledge: Reason which is for the strong and is superior, faith which is for the weak and the immature.
211 Ibid, p. 455. Here St. Augustine says that faith, and that alone, in contrast to reason is the way, and the only
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