THE R 
 
 HE GREEK TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT ' 
 
 TWO MEMBERS 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT COMPANY 
 
 BSI88 
 £4(> 
 
 I 
 
 |,' n it) IV 
 
 MAC MILL AN AND CO. 
 
 1882 
 
 Price Two Shillings and Sixpence. 
 
\lr5.S& 
 
 i^v 
 
 Jft^ 
 
 «.<* 
 
 ^^ tVi« ^¥alagir^j ^ 
 
 ^^. 
 
 '* 
 
 ^. 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Division JO...Q.. » OO 
 Section ...y. C . . A.' ^ 
 
THE REVISERS 
 
 HE GREEK TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 
 
 TWO MEMBERS 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT COMPANY 
 
 Charl(S5 J. Edicoir 
 
 and 
 Edwin r^lvner 
 
 1^ n ir n 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1882 
 
OXFORD: 
 BY E. PICKARD HALL. M. A., AND J. H. 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT 
 OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 A BOLD assault has been made In recent numbers 
 of the Quarterly Review upon the whole fabric of 
 criticism which has been built up during the last fifty 
 years by the patient labour of successive editors of 
 the Greek Testament. The subject of the articles to 
 which we refer is the Revised Version ; their undis- 
 guised purpose is to destroy the credit of that Version. 
 The first article is entitled ' The New Greek Text/ 
 the second ' The New English Version :' in both, 
 however, textual questions are discussed, in the first 
 textual questions only. By the ' New Greek Text' 
 the Reviewer must be taken to mean the choice of 
 readings made by the Revisers, as they did not con- 
 struct, or undertake to construct, a continuous and 
 complete Greek text. This ' New Greek Text' (for 
 we will not insist on a verbal question) he pronounces 
 ' entirely undeserving of confidence.' He assails with 
 especial vehemence Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort, whom 
 he represents as the chief guides of the Revisers in 
 this department. He condemns in the strongest terms 
 the edition of the Greek Testament ^ which was pub- 
 lished last year by these two Professors : — a work, we 
 
 ^ The New Testament in the original Greek— the text revised by 
 Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D., and Fenton John Anthony Hort, D.D. 
 Cambridge and London : Macmillan and Co. 1881. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 must observe, wholly Independent of the Revision In 
 its inception and In Its execution. He does not hesi- 
 tate to stigmatise the text printed In that edition as 
 ' a text demonstrably more remote from the Evangelic 
 verity than any which has ever yet seen the light.' 
 The Professors need no defender. An elaborate 
 statement of their case is contained In the second 
 volume of their Greek Testament, which was pub- 
 lished before the Reviewer came into the field, al- 
 though it appeared two or three months later than the 
 first volume. The Reviewer censures their text : in 
 neither article has he attempted a serious examination 
 of the arguments which they allege In Its support. 
 
 We do not intend to reply to these articles in detail. 
 To follow the Reviewer through his criticisms, and to 
 show how often they rest ultimately (whether aimed at 
 the ' New Greek Text ' or at the ' New English Ver- 
 sion') upon the notion that it Is little else than sacri- 
 lege to impugn the tradition of the last three hundred 
 years, would be a weary and unprofitable task. There 
 is something, moreover, in his tone which makes con- 
 troversy with him difficult. Silence is the best reply to 
 flouts and gibes. But the questions which are connected 
 with the Greek text of the New Testament are so im- 
 portant, and lie so far out of the track of the ordinary 
 reader, that we cannot allow the Reviewer s observa- 
 tions upon this subject to remain wholly unanswered. 
 
 First of all, we desire to call attention to the fact 
 which we mentioned at the outset. The Reviewer's 
 attack is not confined to positions occupied exclusively 
 by the Revisers. His fire Includes in its range a 
 multitude of other scholars also. Some of these he 
 censures by name ; others he does not name at all, or 
 names as though he believed them to share his 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 5 
 
 own opinions. A single illustration of this statement 
 will suffice. The Reviewer has devoted five pages to 
 the famous diversity of reading in i Tim. iii. i6. He 
 employs his heaviest artillery against the reading (o? 
 €<pai'€pcoO}]) which the Revisers have adopted in this 
 verse. It would be natural to suppose that here at all 
 events the Revisers (with the two Cambridge Pro- 
 fessors) stand alone. In point of fact, however, the 
 same reading is found in the critical editions of Gries- 
 bach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles ; it was 
 adopted by the late Dean Alford in his Greek Testa- 
 ment ; it was adopted by Bishop ElHcott in his Com- 
 mentary on the Pastoral Epistles, after a personal 
 inspection of the Alexandrian manuscript ; it was 
 adopted by the Bishop of Lincoln (then Canon Words- 
 worth) in his Commentary ; it was adopted again by 
 the Bishop of London in a volume of the Speaker's 
 Commentary which appeared last year. Nor is it 
 matter of surprise that the Reviewers projectiles 
 should strike down friends and foes alike. While 
 he denounces by name Lachmann and Tischendorf 
 and Tregelles, and describes the ancient authorities 
 which they deemed of most importance as *a little 
 handful of suspicious documents,' it would be difficult 
 to find a recent English commentator of any consider- 
 able reputation who has not been influenced, more or 
 less consistently, by one or other of these three editors, 
 or by the evidence which they have brought forward. 
 
 We have called these articles an assault on the 
 criticism of the last fifty years. We might call them 
 without injustice an assault on two centuries of cri- 
 ticism. If the Reviewer is right, Mill and Bentley at 
 the beginning of the eighteenth century (not to men- 
 tion any of the critics who came after them) were in 
 
6 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 pursuit of an ignis fatuus. Mill, the founder (so far as 
 the Greek Testament is concerned) of textual criticism, 
 did not construct a new text himself, but provided 
 materials for the use of others. It was his hope, as he 
 tells us ^ in his Prolegomena, that the large stock of evi- 
 dence which he had accumulated and had placed at the 
 foot of his pages would enable those who used his book 
 to see without difficulty what was the genuine reading 
 of the Sacred Text in almost every passage. Bentley 
 proposed to construct a new Greek text which should 
 be founded exclusively on the most ancient documents 
 then accessible. The plan which he sketched was the 
 very plan which Lachmann carried out in the present 
 century with better materials than Bentley could have 
 obtained. According to the Reviewer there was no 
 room for such hopes or such an ambition. Mill and 
 Bentley had in their hands a text — the Texttcs Receptus 
 — which, though not absolutely perfect, needed at all 
 events but little emendation. 
 
 Our concern, however, is not so much with the 
 Reviewer as with his readers. The main task which 
 we propose to ourselves is twofold : — first to supply 
 accurate information, in a popular form, concerning 
 the Greek text of the New Testament ; secondly to 
 establish, by means of the information so supplied, the 
 soundness of the principles on which the Revisers 
 have acted in their choice of readings, and by con- 
 sequence the importance of the 'New Greek Text' 
 (as the Reviewer calls it) of which the Revised Version 
 is a translation. For a full and plain exhibition of 
 this * New Greek Text ' we must refer our readers to 
 the Greek Testaments edited for the University Presses 
 
 ^ HKAINH AIAGHKH. Novum Testamentum Studio et Lahore Joannis 
 Millii. Oxonii, mdccvii. Prol. p. clxvii b. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 7 
 
 by Archdeacon Palmer at Oxford^ and Dr. Scrivener 
 at Cambridge ^. 
 
 I. In reference to the first part of this task, It is 
 absolutely necessary to begin with what is simple and 
 easily understood, and thence to pass onward to the 
 more difficult questions which will present themselves 
 at each successive stage of our progress. Textual criti- 
 cism, it must not be disguised, has become highly 
 technical and intricate, and it is impossible for any one 
 to discuss such a subject properly without a consider- 
 able amount of carefully-digested knowledge as to the 
 facts and details which have been slowly and labo- 
 riously ascertained during the last fifty years. 
 
 I. We begin then with a broad question in which 
 every intelligent Christian reader must needs feel him- 
 self especially interested. What is the nature and literary 
 history of that Greek text which presumably underlies 
 our Authorised Version, and which is popularly known 
 by the name of the Received Text ? What is that text, 
 and whence was it derived ? When this question has 
 been answered, we will proceed to consider what, by 
 the nature of the case, would seem to be its critical 
 value, or, in other words, how near it may be considered 
 to approach to the original documents traced, or dic- 
 tated, by Evangelists and Apostles. Those original 
 documents it will be convenient to designate by a 
 single term : we will henceforth entitle them the Ori- 
 ginal Text or Sacred Autograph. 
 
 ^ H KAINH AIAGHKH. The Greek Testament with the Readings 
 adopted by the Revisers of the Authorised Version. Oxford : at the 
 Clarendon Press. 1881. 
 
 * The New Testament in the original Greek according to the Text 
 followed in the Authorised Version, together with the Variations adopted 
 in the Revised Version. Edited for the Syndics of the Cambridge Uni- 
 versity Press by F. H. A. Scrivener, M.A., D.C.L., LL.D., Prebendary of 
 Exeter and Vicar of Hendon ■. Cambridge : at the University Press. 1 88 1 . 
 
8 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 The Greek text which was used by the Translators 
 of 1611 appears, almost certainly, to have been the 
 fifth edition of Beza's Greek Testament, published in 
 the year 1598. The variations from this edition which 
 are to be traced in the Authorised Version are only 
 about a hundred and ninety in all, and are, compara- 
 tively, of but little importance. The reader will find 
 them set down in the Appendix to that edition of the 
 Greek Testament which we have already mentioned as 
 edited by Dr. Scrivener in 1881 for the Syndics of the 
 Cambridge University Press. 
 
 This fifth edition of Beza, which thus becomes our 
 starting-point, may be considered, in common with 
 the other editions of the same learned editor, to have 
 been for the most part a reproduction of the third 
 edition of the famous French printer Robert Estienne 
 (Stephanus), which appeared in 1550, and which has 
 been treated as the standard text of the Greek Testa- 
 ment in this country till very recent times. Both 
 Stephanus and Beza had access to manuscripts, of 
 which two or three at least ^ were of considerable 
 critical value, but of these neither editor made any 
 real or consistent use. The beautiful folio of 1550 at 
 which we have now arrived exhibits indeed in its 
 margin a regular collection of various readings, but 
 they formed little more than the embroidery of a 
 handsome page— though it was an embroidery which 
 gave such offence to the doctors of the Sorbonne^ that 
 the great printer thought it convenient to leave his 
 native city that same year, and to spend the remaining 
 nine years of his honourable life in practical exile at 
 Geneva. 
 
 * See Scrivener's Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 
 pp. 112, 124, 150 (ed. 2). 
 ^ See Nouvelle Biographic G^ndrale (Art. Estienne), vol. v, p. 513. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 9 
 
 This edition of Stephanus leads us another step 
 backward to the fourth and best ^ edition of Erasmus, 
 pubHshed in 1527; and this again to his first edition, 
 pubhshed in 1516, which has the distinction of being 
 the first pubhshed (though not the first printed^) 
 edition of the New Testament in Greek. 
 
 On that edition, as the ultimate basis of the Re- 
 ceived Text, the first parent of all the editions which 
 were used by English Translators or Revisers in 
 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we may pause 
 to make a few critical comments. It appeared in 
 March 15 16 from the printing-press of John Froben 
 of Basle, little more than ten months from the time 
 when Froben first proposed the undertaking to Eras- 
 mus. The manuscripts from which it was printed 
 (two of which retain to this day the printer's marks 
 and the corrections of the hurried ^ editor) have 
 been all identified, and are all, we believe, with 
 one exception, now to be found in the public library 
 of Basle. The manuscripts principally used were as 
 follows : — for the Gospels a manuscript of the fifteenth 
 century, for the Acts and Epistles a manuscript of 
 the thirteenth or fourteenth. For the Apocalypse, as 
 is now well known, Erasmus had only a mutilated 
 manuscript, said to be of the twelfth century, in which 
 the text is so intermixed with the Commentary of 
 Andrew of Csesarea, that it would have been no matter 
 
 ' The fifth and last edition, published in 1535, differs from the fourth, 
 according to Mill, only in four places. 
 
 "^ The New Testament which is contained in the Complutensian 
 Polyglott was printed in 15 14, but not published till 1522. 
 
 ^ Wetstein (Prolegomena in N. T. p. 124) says, ' Ouis ipsum eo 
 adegit, ut festinaret .'" He of course knew quite well that good John 
 Froben and Erasmus had one great and common anxiety, to get their 
 book out before the appearance of the splendid Complutensian edition. 
 
lO THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 of wonder if the representation of it in his first edition 
 had been even worse than it actually was. This 
 manuscript was rediscovered \ twenty years ago, in the 
 library of the Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein, and has 
 been identified beyond all reasonable doubt. 
 
 It is proper to add that Erasmus appears to have 
 occasionally referred to two other manuscripts, one of 
 which has been ascertained to be of considerable 
 interest : this last, however, to quote the words of Dr. 
 Scrivener ^, he ' but little used or valued.' The same 
 learned and accurate writer describes ^ the manuscript 
 on which Erasmus relied for the Gospels as 'an inferior 
 manuscript.' Michaelis, he says, went so far as to ex- 
 press an opinion that the two Rhenish florins originally 
 given for it by the monks of Basle were more than it 
 was worth. Dr. Scrivener adds, however, that some 
 at least of the worst errors which Erasmus made in 
 his first edition cannot equitably be referred to this 
 unsatisfactory document. 
 
 We have entered into these details, because we 
 desire that the general reader should know fully the 
 true pedigree of that printed text of the Greek Testa- 
 ment which has been in common use for the last three 
 centuries. It will be observed that its documentary 
 origin is not calculated to inspire any great confidence. 
 Its parents, as we have seen, were two or three late 
 manuscripts of little critical value, which accident 
 seems to have brought into the hands of their first 
 editor. 
 
 But we shall not do it full justice if we stop here. 
 The text which these manuscripts substantially repre- 
 
 ^ Scrivener, Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, p. 245. 
 2 Ibid. p. 165. 3 ibjd^ 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. I I 
 
 sent has claims on our consideration which must not 
 be passed over in silence. Those claims have been 
 brought out by the most recent opponents of the Re- 
 ceived Text more clearly and forcibly than by any of 
 its defenders. The manuscripts which Erasmus used 
 differ, for the most part, only in small and insignificant 
 details from the bulk of the cursive manuscripts, — that 
 is to say the manuscripts which are written in running 
 hand and not in capital or (as they are technically 
 called) uncial letters. The general character of their 
 text is the same. By this observation the pedigree of 
 the Received Text is carried up beyond the individual 
 manuscripts used by Erasmus to a great body of 
 manuscripts of which the earliest are assigned to the 
 ninth century. 
 
 More than this : it may be traced back on good 
 grounds to a still higher antiquity. What those 
 grounds are we will state in the words of Dr. Hort ^ 
 himself : — 
 
 * A glance at any tolerably complete apparatus 
 criticus of the Acts or Pauline Epistles reveals the 
 striking fact that an overwhelming proportion of the 
 variants common to the great mass of cursive and late 
 uncial Greek MSS are identical with the readings fol- 
 lowed by Chrysostom (ob. 407) in the composition of 
 his Homilies. The coincidence furnishes evidence as 
 to place as well as time ; for the whole of Chrysostom's 
 life, the last ten years excepted, was spent at Antioch 
 or in its neighbourhood. Little research is needed to 
 show that this is no isolated phenomenon : the same 
 testimony, subject to minor qualifications unimportant 
 for the present purpose, is borne by the scattered 
 
 ^ Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek, Introduction, 
 § 130, pp. 91 sqq. 
 
12 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 quotations from these and other books of the New 
 Testament found in his voluminous works generally, 
 and in the fragments of his fellow-pupil Theodorus of 
 Antioch and Mopsuestia, and in those of their teacher 
 Diodorus of Antioch and Tarsus. The fundamental 
 text of late extant Greek MSS generally is beyond all 
 question identical with the dominant Antiochian or 
 Grseco-Syrian text of the second half of the fourth 
 century.' 
 
 This remarkable statement completes the pedigree 
 of the Received Text. That pedigree stretches back 
 to a remote antiquity. The first ancestor of the Re- 
 ceived Text was, as Dr. Hort is careful to remind us, 
 at least contemporary with the oldest of our extant 
 manuscripts, if not older than any one of them. 
 
 2. At this point a question suggests itself which we 
 cannot refuse to consider. If the pedigree of the Re- 
 ceived Text may be traced back to so early a period, 
 does it not deserve the honour which is given to it by 
 the Quarterly Reviewer ? With him it is a standard 
 by comparison with which all extant documents, how- 
 ever indisputable their antiquity, are measured. It is 
 in his mind when he censures such documents for 
 ' omissions,' ' additions,' ' substitutions,' and the like. 
 He estimates^ the comparative purity and impurity of 
 manuscripts written in the fourth, fifth, and sixth cen- 
 turies by the number of ' deflections from the Received 
 Text ' which may be found in each of them. Why 
 should not we do the same ? 
 
 One answer to this question is obvious. The high 
 lineage of the Received Text does not establish its 
 purity. According to all experience of transcription, 
 corruptions must have come in at every step in its long 
 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 313. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK XEXT. 1 3 
 
 pedigree. It is only in the general character of their 
 text that the bulk of the cursive manuscripts agree 
 with the Antiochian Fathers. It is only in general 
 character that the Received Text ao^rees with the bulk 
 
 o 
 
 of the cursive manuscripts. It was immediately de- 
 rived, as we have seen, from inferior representatives 
 of that class. It contains, moreover, false readings 
 which the manuscripts from which it was printed do 
 not justify. A notable instance is the insertion con- 
 cerning the Three Heavenly Witnesses in the First 
 Epistle of S. John, which is unknown to almost all 
 Greek manuscripts, late or early. 
 
 But fatal as this answer would be to the contention 
 that the Received Text deserves to be treated as a 
 standard, it does not go to the bottom of the contro- 
 versy with which we are concerned. We have another 
 answer to give, and an answer of a very different 
 character. If there were reason to suppose that the 
 Received Text represented verbatim et literatim the 
 text which was current at Antioch in the days of 
 Chrysostom, it would still be impossible to regard it as 
 a standard from which there was no appeal. The reason 
 why this would be impossible may be stated briefly as 
 follows. In the ancient documents which have come 
 down to us, — amongst which, as is well known, are 
 manuscripts written in the fourth century, — we possess 
 evidence that other texts of the Greek Testament ex- 
 isted in the age of Chrysostom materially different 
 from the text which he and the Antiochian writers 
 generally employed. Moreover, a rigorous examina- 
 tion of extant documents shows that the Antiochian 
 or (as we shall henceforth call it with Dr. Hort) the 
 Syrian text did not represent an earlier tradition than 
 those other texts, but was in fact of later origin than 
 
14 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 the rest. We cannot accept it, therefore, as a final 
 standard. There are materials in our hands which 
 enable us to approach nearer to the Sacred Autograph 
 than it would carry us. 
 
 3. We are aware, of course, that for the general 
 reader this brief statement will require expansion and 
 illustration. It will be necessary for us to give some 
 account of the extant documents upon which all critics, 
 to whatever school they may belong, depend for the 
 ascertainment of the Greek text of the New Testa- 
 ment, and to indicate, in some sufficient manner, the 
 nature of the examination to which these documents 
 must be subjected, and the results to which such an 
 examination will conduct the student. Our task will 
 involve us at once in matters of detail : but it is a task 
 from which we cannot shrink. We shall endeavour 
 to be as brief and plain as the subject permits. 
 
 4. The documentary sources of the Greek Text are 
 of three kinds ^ : — 
 
 {a) Manuscripts, uncial (or written in capital letters), 
 and cursive (or written in running hand), of the whole 
 or parts of the New Testament. 
 
 Of uncial manuscripts we have about ninety, nearly 
 two-thirds of which are copies (whole or fragmentary) 
 of the Gospels. Of cursive manuscripts we have 
 nearly a thousand. In these estimates we take no 
 account of Lectionaries or Service-books containing 
 Lessons from Scripture, known to the learned as 
 Evangelisteria and Praxapostoli'^, 
 
 With the exception of one lately-discovered manu- 
 
 * See Westcott and Hort, Introduction, §§ 97 sqq., pp. 73 sqq. 
 
 "^ For the description of the manuscripts enumerated below and in 
 subsequent pages we must refer the reader to the current handbooks, 
 and especially to Dr. Scrivener's full and accurate Introduction to the 
 "Criticism of the New Testament. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 1 5 
 
 script, all the more important uncials have been pub- 
 lished in continuous texts. The various readings 
 of the others may be found at the foot of the page in 
 the Greek Testaments of Tischendorf and Tregelles. 
 Two of these uncials (B and k) belong to the middle 
 of the fourth century; four (A, C, and the fragments 
 Q and T,) to the fifth century; eight (D, 2, Dg, Eg, 
 and the fragments N, P, R, Z,) to the sixth century; 
 the remainder to the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth 
 centuries, — those of the ninth and tenth centuries 
 being nearly as numerous as those of all the foregoing 
 centuries together. 
 
 The cursive manuscripts extend from the ninth cen- 
 tury to the sixteenth. They are far less completely 
 known than the uncials. According to Dr. Hort's 
 computation, 'the full contents of about 150 cursives, 
 besides Lectionaries, may be set down as practically 
 known.' A much larger number have been more or 
 less perfectly collated. The Reviewer expresses a 
 desire, with which we heartily sympathise, to see still 
 more work done in the same direction. But there is 
 no reason to suppose that the labours of collators, 
 although they should collate, as he desires, ' 500 more 
 copies of the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, and at least 
 100 of the ancient Lectionaries \' would disturb in any 
 appreciable degree the conclusions of textual critics. 
 We know already, from a tolerably large induction, 
 that the bulk of the cursives represent upon the whole 
 the Syrian text, while a small minority represent, more 
 or less consistently, texts of an earlier character. If 
 all the cursives were collated, it is in the highest de- 
 gree improbable that the proportion would be reversed, 
 although we might expect to obtain a few more wit- 
 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 305, p. 6. 
 
1 6 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT, 
 
 nesses against the Syrian text. On the other hand, 
 that text would gain nothing in point of authority by 
 the addition of 500 newly collated cursive witnesses in 
 its favour. Such a discovery would be no more than 
 a further verification of a conclusion which is regarded 
 by critics as established sufficiently already. 
 
 {d) Versions, i. e. early translations of the New 
 Testament into different languages, of which the most 
 Important are the Latin, the Syriac, and the Egyptian. 
 The Latin Version exists in two forms ; the earliest, 
 which can be traced back to the second century and 
 bears usually the name of the Old Latin, and the later 
 form which owes Its existence to the revising labours 
 of Jerome about a.d. 383 and is known as the Vulgate. 
 The Syriac Version exists also in what may be called 
 two forms \ an earlier and a later. Of the earlier, or 
 Old Syriac, we have, unfortunately, only an inadequate 
 representation in the imperfect copy of the Gospels 
 found by Dr. Cureton, and assigned to the fifth cen- 
 tury ; of the later, or Syriac Vulgate, we have the well- 
 known Peshito (or ' Simple ') Version, which bears in- 
 disputable traces of being a revision of the earlier 
 (like the Latin Version of Jerome), and was executed 
 probably in the latter part of the third or in the fourth 
 century. The Egyptian Versions are three : the Mem- 
 phitic, or Version of Lower Egypt, containing the 
 whole of the New Testament; the Thebaic or Sa- 
 hidic, or Version of Upper Egypt, of which only con- 
 siderable fraorments remain ; and the Bashmuric, of 
 which only about 330 verses from S. John's Gospel 
 and the Epistles of S. Paul have as yet been dis- 
 covered. 
 
 '} In this popular sketch we do not notice either the Philoxenian Version 
 or what is usually called the Jerusalem Syriac. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. I7 
 
 Beside these great Versions we have the Gothic 
 Version, containing, with many gaps, the Gospels and 
 the Epistles of S. Paul, and dating from the middle of 
 the fourth century ; the Armenian Version made early 
 in the fifth century, but represented by manuscripts of 
 late date, and in itself bearing some traces of having been 
 accommodated to the Latin Vulgate ; and the iEthiopic 
 Version, dating, according to Professor Dillmann, from 
 the fourth century, but, in its present forms, so confused 
 and unequal, and represented by such late manuscripts, 
 that it is practically of very little critical use. 
 
 (c) Quotations from the writings of the Greek and 
 Latin Fathers, and especially comments made by them 
 on differences of reading. 
 
 On the importance of this source of critical informa- 
 tion it is hardly necessary to enlarge. The evidence, 
 however, derived from these ancient writers requires 
 to be carefully sifted before it is used ; and this for 
 two very sufficient reasons, which have been stated by 
 Dr. Hort^ with great clearness and cogency : — first, 
 the tendency of transcribers to alter the text in con- 
 formity with some current text of the New Testament 
 which was familiar to themselves ; secondly, the loose 
 way in which the writers themselves often refer to 
 the Sacred Text, and the consequent difficulty of de- 
 termining in each case whether we have direct quota- 
 tion or only general allusion. 
 
 The Ante-NIcene Fathers are, obviously, of very 
 great importance ; but the only period which is ade- 
 quately represented in the writings that have come 
 down to us is, as Dr. Hort^ notices, the period extend- 
 ing from A.D. 175 to A.D. 250. During that period we 
 
 ^ Westcott and Hort, Introduction, § 156, p. no. 
 2 lb. § 158, p. 112. 
 
 C 
 
1 8 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 have the remains of four eminent Greek writers, 
 Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement, and Orlgen. We have 
 also, of the Latins, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Novatlan. 
 The Greek Fathers subsequent to Euseblus must 
 plainly be deemed of secondary importance. The 
 quotations in their works exhibit usually such a mixture 
 of different textual traditions that their evidence for or 
 against any reading stands at best on no higher level 
 than the evidence of inferior manuscripts in the uncial 
 class. 
 
 5. These then are the materials out of which the 
 text of the Greek Testament has to be constructed; and 
 these materials, as we have already said, furnish 
 evidence of the existence of several distinct types or 
 characters of text besides that type which we call 
 Syrian. It is thought now that they are separable 
 into four groups, each group disclosing a primary text 
 of very great antiquity, to the existence and character 
 of which all the members of the group bear in varying 
 degrees their individual testimony. The process by 
 which this vast mass of documents has been reduced 
 to such simple and manageable dimensions has been 
 going on almost from the very earliest days of sacred 
 criticism. From the year 1716, at all events, when 
 Bentley was corresponding with Wetstein, down to the 
 year 1881, when the elaborately-constructed Text and 
 exhaustive Critical Introduction of Dr. Westcott and 
 Dr. Hort were given to the world, the problem how 
 to master and use properly the accumulating mate- 
 rials has been that which each generation of critics has 
 been labouring to solve, and labouring (we may fear- 
 lessly say) with steadily increasing success. When we 
 remember how Bentley's hints and prelusive sugges- 
 tions of 1 7 16 and 1720 were expanded by Bengel in 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 1 9 
 
 1734, recruited by the materials of Wetstein In 1751, 
 developed and systematised by Griesbach in 1796, 
 practically set forth by Lachmann in the text of his 
 Greek Testament of 1831, and recognised, illustrated, 
 and solidified by Lachmann's great successors Tis- 
 chendorf and Tregelles in our own days, we may cer- 
 tainly feel that we have now reached firm critical 
 ground, and that what were once surmises and theories 
 have become acknowledged facts and verified and ac- 
 cepted principles. 
 
 6. The great contribution of our own times to this 
 mastery over materials has been the clearer statement 
 of the method of genealogy, and, by means of it, the 
 corrected distribution of the great mass of documentary 
 evidence which we have just placed in outline before 
 the reader. For the full explanation of the method of 
 genealogy we must refer the reader to the Introduction 
 which we have mentioned as a special feature in the 
 Greek Testament of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort. 
 That method, it will be observed, involves vast re- 
 search, unwearied patience, and great critical sagacity, 
 and will therefore find but little favour with those who 
 adopt the easy method of making the Received Text 
 a standard, or of using some favourite manuscript, or 
 some supposed power of divining the Original Text, as 
 the only necessary agents for correcting the Received 
 Text in the few places where correction is admitted to 
 be necessary. The broad principle of the method is 
 by rigorous investigation of the documents, and close 
 study of their relations to each other, to separate those 
 which can by analysis be proved to owe their origin to 
 some common exemplar, lost or extant; and to con- 
 tinue this process in reference to the ancestral ex- 
 emplars, until the genealogical tree of transmission is 
 
 c 2 
 
20 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 completed, and a point reached where the particular 
 character of text which belongs to the whole family of 
 documents can be traced no further. We have already 
 given a rough illustration of this method in the pedi- 
 gree of the Received Text, which we have found to 
 stretch backward beyond the days of Chrysostom and 
 to link that text to * the dominant Antiochian or Grseco- 
 Syrian text of the second half of the fourth century.' 
 
 7. The application of this method has conducted 
 Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort to the following results, all 
 of which, let it be observed, rest upon a searching 
 examination into the contents and character of existing 
 documents, and a severe and rigorous induction from 
 the facts which that examination has brought to light. 
 
 Largest^ In bulk of all the groups, into which the 
 documentary authorities for the text of the New 
 Testament are separable, is a group which includes A 
 (the Codex Alexandrinus of the British Museum) in 
 the Gospels but not In other books of the New Testa- 
 ment, the later uncials, the mass of the cursives, the 
 Versions of the fourth century and of later centuries, 
 and the Antiochian writers of the fourth century. 
 We m.ight add perhaps, roughly, the majority of the 
 post-Nicene Greek Fathers, although we find^ in them, 
 as Dr. Hort observes, ' infinitely varying combina- 
 tions of all the ancient forms of text' The author- 
 ities above mentioned present to us. In a more or less 
 pure form, the text which Dr. Hort calls Syrian. He 
 considers this text to have been the result of a de- 
 liberate recension. The sources from which it appears 
 to have been derived are certain other texts, the 
 existence of which is attested by the remainder of our 
 
 ^ See Westcott and Hort, Introduction, §§ 185-195, pp. 132 sqq. 
 2 Ibid. §§ 193, 223, pp. 140, 161. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 21 
 
 documentary authorities. We recognise in this Syrian 
 text all the features of a studied combination of various 
 elements, — in short, of an eclectic text. It is copious in 
 matter, rich in connecting particles, smooth, lucid, and 
 complete, but (as might be expected) deficient in 
 vigour when compared with the texts out of which it 
 was formed. This Syrian text, after a period of con- 
 fusion during which different forms of text were often 
 blended together in manuscript copies of Scripture and 
 in the writings of the Fathers, obtained at last the 
 supremacy. It became dominant at Antioch, and 
 passed from Antioch to Constantinople. Once estab- 
 lished there, it soon vindicated its claim to be the 
 New Testament of the East. Under the form of the 
 Texttcs Receptus, or Received Text, it has held for the 
 last three hundred years almost undisputed sway in 
 the West. 
 
 After the large group of documents which exhibit 
 generally the Syrian text has been deducted from the 
 sum total of the authorities, no great amount of critical 
 material remains on our hands. The remainder admits, 
 in consequence, of close and minute examination. And 
 such an examination is well repaid. The importance 
 of the material is as great as its bulk is small. A 
 rigorous examination of it discloses, according to Dr. 
 Hort, the presence of three early and comparatively 
 independent texts, from which (as we have already 
 said) the Syrian text appears to have been derived. 
 
 {a) The first ^ of these three texts has been called 
 the Western text since the days of Griesbach. It ob- 
 tained that name from the fact that it was most con- 
 spicuous in bilingual (Grsco-Latin) manuscripts and 
 
 1 See Westcott and Hort, Introduction, §§ 170-176, pp. 120 sqq. 
 
2 2 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 in the Old Latin Version. But it seems to have been 
 very widely diffused during the second and third cen- 
 turies, as every ancient Version appears to have been 
 influenced by it, though not all in the same degree. 
 It may be traced back to the beginning of the second 
 century. After the close of the third century its 
 influence waned, and it disappeared rapidly in the 
 East, although it lingered in the West awhile longer. 
 The documentary authorities in which it is chiefly 
 found are D of the Gospels and Acts (the Codex Bezae 
 which is at Cambridge), D^ and G3 of S. Paul's Epistles, 
 E2 of the Acts (the Oxford Codex Laudiamis, which 
 exhibits it in a later and less pure form), a few cursives, 
 the Old Syriac Version, some African and European 
 forms of the Old Latin, the Gothic Version (in part), 
 Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Eusebius, and (to 
 some extent) even Clement of Alexandria and Origen. 
 Its chief characteristics are stated by Dr. Hort to be 
 two in number : — first, a love of paraphrase, which 
 leads to frequent changes of words, clauses, and sen- 
 tences, when the meaning seems capable of being brought 
 out with greater definiteness ; and secondly, a tendency 
 to interpolation from traditional sources, of which the 
 passage at the beginning of the eighth chapter of 
 S. John's Gospel concerning the woman taken in 
 adultery is probably an example. 
 
 (d) To the second^ of these three texts Dr. Hort 
 gives the name of Alexandrian, which was employed 
 by Griesbach ^ in a wider sense. This text does not 
 possess equally striking characteristics with those which 
 
 ^ See Westcott and Hort, §§ 181-184, pp. 130 sqq. 
 
 ^ Griesbach distinguished only three texts (or, as he called them, recen- 
 sions) in all; Constantinopolitan (which is identical with Dr. Hort's 
 Syrian), Western, and Alexandrian. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 23 
 
 belong to the Western text. ' There is no Incor- 
 poration of matter extraneous to the canonical texts of 
 the Bible, and no habitual or extreme license of para- 
 phrase.' Its variations 'have more to do with language 
 than matter, and are marked by an effort after correct- 
 ness of phrase.' There are also traces, especially in 
 the Gospels, of attempts to harmonise and to assimi- 
 late. ' The only documentary authorities attesting 
 Alexandrian readings with any approach to constancy, 
 and capable of being assigned to a definite locality, are 
 quotations by Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, and oc- 
 casionally other Alexandrian Fathers, and the two 
 principal Egyptian Versions, especially that of Lower 
 Egypt.' No extant Greek manuscript has an approxi- 
 mately unmixed Alexandrian text ; but Alexandrian 
 readings are recognised frequently in the Gospels of L, 
 in the Acts of E^, in the cursive manuscript 6i, and in 
 the Acts and Epistles of A. 
 
 (c) The third ^ of these texts is, for critical pur- 
 poses, by far the most interesting and valuable. It 
 is a text which appears to be free alike from Syrian, 
 Western, and Alexandrian characteristics, and is there- 
 fore called Neutral by Dr. Hort. Strong evidence 
 is produced for the existence of a text which deserves 
 this name and character. If the evidence be admitted 
 to be sufficient, it is impossible to exaggerate the im- 
 portance of the phenomenon. It has been brought to 
 light by the only sure method which can be adopted 
 in questions of such intricacy, — the minute examination 
 of documents. What the documents are in which this 
 text is to be found we will state in Dr. Hort's own 
 words ^ : ' B very far exceeds all other documents in 
 
 ^ See Westcott and Hort, Introduction, §§ 177-iSo, pp. 126 sqq. 
 '^ Ibid. § 235, pp. 171 sq. 
 
24 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 neutrality of text, being in fact always or nearly always 
 neutral, with the exception of the Western element 
 already ^ mentioned as virtually confined to the Pauline 
 Epistles. At a long interval after B, but hardly a less 
 interval before all other MSS, stands ^. Then come, 
 approximately in the following order, smaller fragments 
 being neglected, T of S. Luke and S. John, S of S. 
 Luke, h, 33, A (in S. Mark), C, Z of S. Matthew, R 
 of S. Luke, Q, and P. It may be said, in general 
 terms, that those documents, B and ^ excepted, which 
 have most Alexandrian readings have also most neutral 
 readings. Thus among Versions by far the largest 
 amount of attestation comes from the Memphitic and 
 Thebaic ; but much also from the Old and Jerusalem 
 Syriac, and from the African Latin ; and more or less 
 from every Version. After the Gospels the number 
 of documents shrinks greatly ; but there is no marked 
 change in the relations of the leading uncials to the 
 neutral text, except that A now stands throughout 
 near C. In Acts 6i comes not far below ^^, 13 being 
 also prominent, though in a much less degree, here and 
 in the Catholic Epistles. The considerable Pre-Syrian 
 element already^ noticed as distinguishing a propor- 
 tionally large number of cursives in this group of books 
 includes many neutral readings. In some of the 
 Catholic Epistles, as also in the subsequent books, an 
 appreciable but varying element of the text of P^ has 
 the same character. For the Pauline Epistles there is 
 little that can be definitely added to ^BAC except 17 
 and P2 : the best marked neutral readings are due to 
 the second hand of 67.' 
 
 As the whole question relating to this third, and (as 
 
 ^ See Westcott and Hort, Introduction, § 204, p. 150. 
 2 Ibid. § 212, pp. 154 sq. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 25 
 
 It is thought) most genuine form of the ancient text 
 is of the greatest critical importance, and as we may 
 have to allude hereafter, in some closing illustrations, 
 to the documents which have been just enumerated, we 
 have deemed it necessary to quote at full length the 
 above technical list of authorities. It is to be observed, 
 moreover, that the manuscripts which hold the place of 
 honour in this list, especially B and ^ (the Codex 
 Vaticaims and Codex Sinaiticus), held the same place,, 
 for the most part, in the estimation of textual critics 
 before the publication of Dr. Hort's treatise on grounds 
 wholly independent of his theory. As we have already 
 said, a description of the manuscripts which are repre- 
 sented, here or elsewhere in these pages, by letters or 
 by Arabic numerals will be found in Dr. Scriveners 
 Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament. 
 
 8. Three reasons are given by Dr. Hort for the 
 belief that the Syrian text is posterior in origin to 
 those which he calls Western, Alexandrian, and Neu- 
 tral. The matter is one of so much consequence that 
 we will recapitulate them briefly. 
 
 The first reason appears to us almost sufficient to 
 settle the question by itself. It is founded on the ob- 
 servation, to which we have already alluded, that the 
 Syrian text presents numerous instances of readings 
 which, according to all textual probability, must be 
 considered to be combinations of earlier readings still 
 extant. To illustrate this in detail would not be pos- 
 sible in an essay like the present. We must refer the 
 reader to Dr. Hort's own pages. He will find there ^ 
 abundant illustration of it in eight examples rigorously 
 analysed, which seem to supply a proof, as positive as 
 the subject admits, that Syrian readings are posterior 
 
 1 Westcott and Hort, Introduction, §§ 1 32-1 51, pp. 93 sqq. 
 
26 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 both to Western readings, and to other readings which 
 may be properly described as Neutral. 
 
 The second reason adduced is almost equally cogent. 
 It is based upon a close observation and a careful 
 analysis ^ of Ante-Nicene patristic evidence. The testi- 
 mony which these early writers supply is particularly 
 striking. While they place before us from separate 
 and in some cases widely distant countries examples 
 of Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral readings, it 
 appears to be certain that before the middle of the 
 third century we have no historical traces of readings 
 which can properly be entitled distinctively Syrian, 
 that is to say of readings which are found in documents 
 that exhibit pre-eminently the Syrian text, and are 
 not found in documents that mainly present the other 
 forms of text. 
 
 Yet a third reason is supplied by Internal Evidence, 
 or, in other words, by considerations (to use Dr. Hort's 
 language) of Intrinsic or of Transcriptional Probability. 
 A reading is said to possess intrinsic probability when 
 it seems on its intrinsic merits the likeliest of two or 
 more various readings to have been the choice of the 
 author; it is said to possess transcriptional probability 
 when it seems the likeliest to have given occasion to 
 the other reading or readings in competition with it 
 according to the laws which are observed to govern 
 transcribers in their aberrations. Here it is obvious 
 that we enter at once into a very delicate and difficult 
 domain of textual criticism, and can only draw our 
 conclusions with the utmost circumspection and re- 
 serve. Still even here, if the truth-seeking reader will 
 take the trouble carefully to note down what appear 
 
 ^ Westcott and Hort, Greek Testament, Introduction, §§ 152-162, 
 pp. 107 sqq. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 27 
 
 to be distinctively Syrian characteristics, as established 
 by a long induction of instances, and, with this know- 
 ledge in his mind, will minutely compare readings that 
 have these characteristics with readings of another type, 
 in cases in which they come into competition, he will 
 find that the claim of the Syrian readings to be 
 considered the true and original readings will gra- 
 dually melt away under the tests which we have just 
 mentioned. 'Often,' says Dr. Hort\ 'either the tran- 
 scriptional or the intrinsic evidence is neutral or divided, 
 and occasionally the two kinds of evidence appear to 
 be in conflict. But there are, we believe, no instances 
 where both are clearly in favour of the Syrian reading, 
 and innumerable where both are clearly adverse to it.' 
 These three reasons taken together seem to us to 
 make up an argument for the posteriority of the Syrian 
 text which it is impossible to resist. The reasons are 
 widely different in their character. Each in itself is 
 strong ; but when taken together they form a threefold 
 cord of evidence which, we believe, will bear any 
 amount of aro^umentative strain. Writers like the 
 
 o 
 
 Reviewer may attempt to cut the cord by reckless and 
 unverified assertions, but the knife has not yet been 
 fabricated that can equitably separate any one of its 
 strands. Till that is done all attempts to elevate the 
 Syrian text into a standard, whether in the form of the 
 Texhis Recephis or in any other less adulterated form, 
 will be found to be hopeless and impossible. 
 
 9. It will be remembered that the treatise which we 
 have quoted so largely, we mean the Introduction to 
 the Greek Testament of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort, 
 was not published until after the publication of the 
 Revised Version. Nor was it at any time, we must ob- 
 
 ^ Westcott and Hort, Introduction, § 163, p. 116. 
 
28 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 serve, privately communicated to the Revisers. It was 
 impossible for the Revision Company, therefore, to 
 pronounce (if it had been so inclined) a corporate 
 opinion on its merits. In all that we have said of it 
 we have been speaking for ourselves alone. It is right 
 to add in this place that the Company never expressed 
 an opinion on the value of the genealogical method 
 itself, which was first employed in the last century by 
 Bengel, and afterwards developed largely by Gries- 
 bach, although the world is indebted to Dr. Westcott 
 and Dr. Hort for a full display of its capabilities. 
 Indeed the Company did not lay down for the govern- 
 ment of its action any formal theory of textual criticism. 
 It was impossible, however, to mistake the conviction 
 upon which its textual decisions were based. It was a 
 conviction common to all the great critical editors from 
 Griesbach downwards, however variolisly they might 
 state this or that argument in its favour. It was a 
 conviction that the true text was not to be sought 
 in the Textus Receptits, or in the bulk of the cursive 
 manuscripts, or in the late uncials (with or without the 
 support of the Codex Alexandrimcs), or in the Fathers 
 who lived after Chrysostom, or in Chrysostom himself 
 and his contemporaries, but in the consentient testi- 
 mony of the most ancient authorities. That this was 
 the conviction of Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tre- 
 gelles, is plain from the character of the texts which 
 they gave to the world. Those texts show, beyond con- 
 troversy, how far they were from regarding the 
 Received Text as a standard, and how high a value 
 they ascribed to the oldest Manuscripts, Versions, and 
 Fathers. The consequence of this fundamental agree- 
 ment is a close similarity in textual results. An over- 
 whelming majority of the readings adopted by the 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 29 
 
 Revisers will be found to have been adopted before them 
 by one or all of these three editors. A similar relation 
 will be found to exist between the Revisers' choice of 
 readinpfs and the Greek text of Dr. Westcott and Dr. 
 Hort. The ' New Greek Text' (as the Reviewer calls 
 it) is not based, as he seems to suppose, on the text of 
 the two Cambridge Professors, nor on the text of any 
 one of the three great editors who preceded them. 
 Its similarity to all these four texts is the natural conse- 
 quence of general agreement in respect of the authority 
 to be ascribed to the several documents, or classes of 
 documents, which make up the apparahts critiacs of 
 every editor of the Greek Testament. 
 
 II. We have thus completed the first part of our 
 undertaking. We have endeavoured to supply the 
 reader with a few broad outlines of textual criticism, 
 so as to enable him to form a fair judgment on the 
 question of the trustworthiness of the readings adopted 
 by the Revisers. To this question we now more im- 
 mediately address ourselves. 
 
 I. Before we enter into details it will be necesary to 
 say a few words about the composition of the body 
 which is responsible for the ' New Greek Text.' 
 
 The average number of those who were actually 
 present each day that the Company met is stated in the 
 Preface to the Revised Version to have been sixteen. 
 If the records of the Company were examined they 
 would show that among the most regular attendants 
 were to be found most of those persons who were pre- 
 sumably best acquainted with the subject of textual 
 criticism. 
 
 It Is not for us to appraise our own qualifications or 
 the qualifications of our colleagues for this or for any 
 other part of the work. But thus much It may be right 
 
30 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 to say. The number of living scholars in England 
 who have connected their names with the study of the 
 textual criticism of the New Testament is exceedingly 
 small. Three of that exceedingly small number, Dr. 
 Scrivener, Dr. Westcott, and Dr. Hort, were members 
 of the Revision Company and constant in their attend- 
 ance. There were other members of the Company 
 who had for many years paid special attention to this 
 subject; and some of these had given evidence of their 
 familiarity with such questions in published commen- 
 taries upon parts of the New Testament. The rest 
 had learned, at all events, in their several departments 
 of study, one lesson of primary importance, often 
 reiterated but often forgotten, ponderari debere testes, 
 non numei^ari. 
 
 Further, it must be remembered, that the results at 
 which the Company arrived were communicated in due 
 course to the American Committee, on which there 
 were some textual critics of known eminence, and that 
 the places in which hat Committee has desired to put 
 on record a difference in judgment from the English 
 Revisers in regard of the Greek text are singularly 
 few and unimportant. 
 
 Two more points deserve notice in this connexion. 
 
 First, the largeness of -the Company, — though it 
 might at first sight seem unfavourable to the preserva- 
 tion of uniformity in the special work of textual criticism, 
 ■ — had at least one great advantage. The fancies and 
 predilections of individuals were not able to usurp 
 the place of evidence. The disturbing element which 
 subjective criticism has introduced into questions re- 
 lating to the text of the Greek Testament is not con- 
 fined to the writings of the Reviewer. Even in editions 
 of great value, like those of Tischendorf, the bias, not 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 3 1 
 
 wholly unnatural, in favour of a newly-discovered 
 manuscript is to be traced with unmistakeable clear- 
 ness. From such an influence the Company, by its 
 very constitution, was to a great extent free. 
 
 Secondly, there were no corporate prejudices or 
 preconceptions in favour of any particular school of 
 criticism, or any particular edition of the text. The 
 composition of the Revision Company precluded such 
 a danger. Oxford, Cambridge, London, Dublin, the 
 Scottish Universities, were all represented. Heads of 
 Nonconformist Colleges were combined with University 
 Professors, Bishops, Deans, and Archdeacons. The 
 Reviewer often speaks as if Dr. Wes'-cott and Dr. 
 Hort were responsible for all the results at which 
 the Revisers arrived. This is absolutely contrary to 
 the facts of the case. These eminent critics did indeed 
 place instalments of their Greek Text in the hands of 
 each member of the Company, in the manner that Dr. 
 Hort specifies ^ By doing this, however, they sought 
 to help, not to direct the Company. Their kindness 
 enabled their colleagues to see the readings which they 
 preferred in full connexion with their context, and thus 
 to form a better opinion concerning them than it is 
 possible to form of readings which are suggested only to 
 the mental eye by critical notes at the foot of a page. 
 The passages in which the Company arrived at different 
 results from those that are to be found in the edition 
 of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort are by no means few, 
 and would suffice in themselves to prove (if proof were 
 necessary) the complete independence of the Revisers 
 in their final determination of the Greek text. 
 
 2. We pass next to a subject of more importance, 
 perhaps, to ourselves than to the generality of our 
 ^ Westcott and Hort, Introduction, § 22, p. 18= 
 
32 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 readers. We have spoken of the composition of the 
 Revising body, and of their general qualification for 
 the textual part of their work. We desire now to 
 speak of the rule under which this part of the work 
 was to be done, and the manner in which that rule was 
 carried out in practice. 
 
 And here, at the very outset, let it be said that 
 nothing can be more unjust on the part of the Reviewer 
 than to suggest, as he has suggested in more than 
 one passage, that the Revisers exceeded their instruc- 
 tions in the course which they adopted with regard to 
 the Greek text. On the contrary, as we shall show, 
 they adhered most closely to those instructions, and 
 did neither more nor less than they were required to 
 do, — unless it is to be brought as a charge against them 
 that they suffered the University Presses to decide on 
 the most convenient mode of placing before the public 
 their deviations from the text presumed to underlie the 
 Authorised Version, and did not insist upon encumber- 
 ing the margin of the Revised Version with them. 
 
 But let us turn to the rule. It is simply as follows : 
 * That the text to be adopted be that for which the 
 evidence is decidedly preponderating ; and that, when 
 the text so adopted differs from that from which the 
 Authorised Version was made, the alteration be indi- 
 cated in the margin.' Of the second portion of this 
 rule we have already spoken sufficiently. Practical 
 convenience forbade literal compliance with it. Our 
 real concern is with the first portion of it, which pre- 
 scribes ' that the text to be adopted be that for which 
 the evidence is decidedly preponderating.' 
 
 What can these words possibly mean except that 
 Avhich the Revisers state in their Preface that they 
 understood them to mean ? Nothing, surely, can have 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 33 
 
 been intended by them but that the Revisers were to 
 follow the weight of evidence and not to hold them- 
 selves bound by any printed text whatever. By the 
 nature of the case, as we have shown in the earlier part 
 of this essay, the Revisers had before them the text of 
 Beza, since it is his text, practically, which underlies the 
 Authorised Version ; but it was not suggested in the 
 rule that they were to pay to this text any critical 
 deference. Our point will be made still more clear 
 if we bring into comparison with the rule of which we 
 are speaking another rule which concerns the amend- 
 ment of the English translation. There the Revisers 
 are bidden ' to introduce into the Text of the Au- 
 thorised Version as few alterations as possible consist- 
 ently with faithfulness/ In respect of the Greek text 
 they are bidden 'to adopt that text for which the 
 evidence is decidedly preponderating.' In the first 
 case a standard text is mentioned, which is to be pre- 
 served, so far as possible, unaltered : in the second 
 case there is no hint of a standard already existing ; 
 the Revisers are simply bidden to adopt such a text 
 as the preponderance of evidence may require. 
 
 Evidence for texts is of two kinds ; internal and 
 documentary. Under this rule it was the plain duty 
 of the Revisers to attend to both. They had to de- 
 termine in each case, as It came before them, on which 
 side the evidence decidedly preponderated. We need 
 not, however, speak here of internal evidence. Great 
 as its importance is, especially in estimating the value 
 of documents, its use, when there is occasion to decide 
 between two or more competing readings, is rather 
 subsidiary than primary. Moreover the difficulties 
 which beset its employment in relation to the text of 
 all authors whatsoever are multiplied Indefinitely when 
 
34 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 the text of Scripture is in question. Documentary 
 evidence claimed, of necessity, the chief attention of 
 the Revisers. How were they to determine on which 
 side it preponderated ? They all knew, as we said 
 above, that this was no mere arithmetical problem. 
 It could not be settled by counting the Manuscripts 
 or Versions or Fathers which were to be found on 
 this side or on that. The history and characteristics 
 of the authorities which might be alleged were of 
 more importance than their number. We have said 
 already that the genealogical method, which has been 
 so fruitful in the hands of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort, 
 was never formally adopted by the Revisers as a Com- 
 pany. But on the other hand the facts, on which that 
 method rests, were continually before the Company, 
 and had a great effect on its decisions. We mean such 
 facts as the observed alliances of authorities mutually 
 independent, — the frequently recurring convergence or 
 divergence of witnesses that occupy representative 
 positions in regard of the earliest texts, — the plain traces 
 of a common origin in the case of the greater number 
 of the later uncials and the large mass of the cursive 
 manuscripts. All these phenomena were present to 
 the minds of the Revisers, and they produced deep 
 and lasting impressions, and led to final adjudications 
 which it will be found easier to rail at than to disprove. 
 And this examination of textual evidence extended, 
 in common with the rest of the Revisers' work, over 
 eleven years. It is true that the questions which con- 
 cerned the Greek text were decided for the most part 
 at the First Revision : but they were often reopened at 
 the Second Revision, and the critical experience that 
 had been slowly and surely won was tested by the 
 requirement of a majority of two-thirds to sustain 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 35 
 
 decisions which at the First Revision had been carried 
 by a simple majority. 
 
 Moreover, the course of the work led the Revisers, 
 naturally, to look further than the settlement of a 
 Greek text which should be represented in the text 
 of the Revised Version. Again and again it was 
 found indispensable to notice in the margin readings 
 that rested on evidence hardly inferior to that which 
 supported the readings adopted or retained in the 
 text. It was felt that, if this course were not followed, 
 the state of the evidence would not be placed honestly 
 before the reader. There were three principal cases 
 in which the presence of such marginal notes appeared 
 to be necessary. First when the text which seemed to 
 underlie the Authorised Version was condemned by a 
 decided preponderance of evidence, but yet was ancient 
 in its character, and belonged to an early line of trans- 
 mission. Secondly, when there were such clear tokens 
 of corruption in the reading on which the Authorised 
 Version was based, or such a consent of authority 
 against it, that no one could seriously advocate its 
 retention, but it was not equally clear which of two 
 other competing readings had the best claim to occupy 
 the vacant place. In such a case there was not in 
 truth decidedly preponderant evidence, except against 
 the text of Beza, and some notice of this fact seemed 
 to be required by critical equity. The third and last 
 case was when the text which was represented in the 
 Authorised Version was retained because the com- 
 peting reading had not decidedly preponderant evi- 
 dence (though the balance of evidence was in its 
 favour), and so could not, under the rule, be admitted. 
 In such a case again critical equity required a notice 
 of the facts in the margin. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 This is the history of the marginal annotations which 
 give so much umbrage to the Reviewer. He seems to 
 forget that Hke annotations are to be found in the 
 margin of the Authorised Version of 1611, although 
 the poverty of the apparatus critictis which was then 
 accessible to scholars and the undeveloped state of 
 textual criticism made them comparatively few in num- 
 ber. Dr. Scrivener ^ has counted sixty-seven marginal 
 annotations which relate to Various Readings in the Old 
 Testament, a hundred and fifty-four in the Apocrypha, 
 and thirty-five in the New Testament — besides others 
 which were added without known authority subsequent 
 to 161 1. But we do not care to rest upon precedent. 
 The annotations for which the Reviewer cannot find 
 sufficiently hard names are in reality guarantees of the 
 honesty and completeness of the work. They are not 
 intended, of course, for uneducated readers, nor will 
 an uneducated reader concern himself with them. 
 To educated readers they will show that the Revisers 
 were aware of the facts relative to the Greek text 
 which are recorded in critical editions of the Greek 
 Testament, that they did not fail to consider these facts 
 themselves, and did not desire to conceal their exist- 
 ence from others. 
 
 4. On the exact mode of procedure at the meetings 
 of the Company it is not necessary for us to enlarge. 
 It has been correctly described by Principal Newth in 
 his ' Lectures on Bible Revision.' The Reviewer cites 
 this description, and takes exception to the fact that 
 the members who were present at each meeting were 
 called upon ' to decide at a moment's notice ' upon the 
 critical questions submitted to them. This is not, we 
 
 ^ Cambridge Paragraph Bible, edited by F. H. Scrivener, M.A., L.L.D., 
 Cambridge, at the University Press, 1873, Introduction, Sect. ii. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 37 
 
 must observe, Dr. Newth's description of the process. 
 * After discussion/ he says, ' the vote of the Company 
 is taken, and the proposed reading accepted or rejected.' 
 But we will suppose (for argument's sake) the discus- 
 sion to have been often brief Our readers will 
 remember what we have said already about the com- 
 position of the Company. For many of its members 
 the particular questions raised on such occasions had 
 no novelty. Their own studies had made those ques- 
 tions long familiar to them. Nor did those of whom 
 this could not be said fail to prepare themselves before- 
 hand to the best of their power for this as for other 
 parts of their work. It should be added that readings 
 of importance were often reserved for consideration on 
 a future day on which by special notice a full attendance 
 could be secured. 
 
 •III. We may now finally pass to a few critical de- 
 tails by means of which the trustworthiness of the 
 Greek text adopted by the Revisers will be more 
 completely substantiated. 
 
 It may be best first to examine two continuous 
 portions, in order to illustrate the amount of the criti- 
 cal changes that have been introduced, and the co- 
 incidence of these changes with the results arrived at 
 by the best critical editors of our own times. In the 
 second place we may consider, more in detail, the 
 chief passages which have been selected by the Re- 
 viewer as examples of a choice of readings whereby the 
 true text has been perverted or obliterated. This 
 would seem to be a fair way of meeting the charges 
 that have been urged, not without vehemence, against 
 the readings adopted by the Revisers. When the work 
 has been tested in these two ways, its general quality 
 will be brought clearly out, and the justice or injustice 
 
38 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 of the criticisms that have been passed upon it will be 
 distinctly recognised. 
 
 I. The two continuous passages which we have 
 chosen for our consideration are the Sermon on the 
 Mount as set forth by S. Matthew, and the First 
 Epistle of S. Paul to Timothy. In the former portion 
 of Scripture the documentary authorities available for 
 settling the text are numerous ; in the latter they 
 are limited in number. In the former portion the 
 venerable manuscript on which the Revisers have 
 been charged with placing an undue reliance — the 
 Codex Vaticanus known as B — is present ; in the latter 
 it is absent. We appear therefore to have two portions 
 sufficiently different in respect of documentary attesta- 
 tion to supply fair samples of the Greek text adopted 
 by the Revisers. 
 
 In the portion from S. Matthew there are a hundred 
 and eleven verses. In these verses the Revisers have 
 changed the Greek text from which the Authorised 
 Version was made in forty-four places. If we examine 
 these readings, and compare them with the readings 
 adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles, we 
 find that in thirty-eight out of the forty-four places the 
 reading of the Revisers is identical with that of the 
 three eminent critics just mentioned ; and that in the 
 remaining six places the Revisers are in accordance 
 with two out of the three critics with whom we are 
 comparing them. There is thus in these one hundred 
 and eleven verses not a single instance of any change 
 peculiar to the text adopted by the Revisers. 
 
 Let us now turn to the other portion which we have 
 selected. The First Epistle to Timothy contains as 
 nearly as possible the same number of verses, and pre- 
 sents about the same number of changes. There are. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 39 
 
 in all, a hundred and thirteen verses, and the changes 
 introduced by the Revisers in the text from which the 
 Authorised Version was made are forty-ei'ght. Of these 
 forty-eight changes, as many as forty-one are found to 
 have been adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, and 
 Tregelles : and of the remaining seven there are two 
 only (koi omitted after woravTMg, ch. ii. 9, and top omitted 
 before GeoV, ch. v. 5) which are not supported by two 
 out of the three critics above mentioned. In the former 
 of the two cases, Lachmann is with the Revisers, — 
 Tregelles placing the Kal in brackets ; in the latter, 
 Tischendorf is with the Revisers, — Lachmann placing 
 the Tou in brackets. In both cases, we would submit, 
 the Revisers have decided rightly. In the first passage 
 the combination of A and t^ (not otherwise a strong 
 combination) receives the support of the important 
 cursive manuscript^ numbered 17 (33 of the Gospels), 
 and of the later (palimpsest) uncial P : in the second 
 passage the union of CFG with P seems to be weighty 
 as against the division existing among the remaining 
 authorities. 
 
 The above examination must, we think, be accepted 
 as a sufficient proof that the text of the Revisers is, in 
 all essential features, the same as that text in which 
 the best critical editors, during the past fifty years, are 
 generally agreed ; and that thus any attack made on 
 the text of the Revisers is really an attack on the 
 critical principles that have been carefully and labo- 
 riously established during this last half-century. What 
 has been found true of these two passages, which have 
 been taken without any carefully premeditated choice, 
 would, we believe, be found true, upon the whole, of 
 every two hundred and twenty-four verses throughout 
 
 ^ Scrivener, Introduction, pp. 169, 238. 
 
40 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 the Greek Testament. What the Revisers have done 
 has been simply this, — to decide the questions which 
 came before them upon the evidence which the labours 
 and diligence of the eminent critics whom we have 
 named had accumulated, and on principles which had 
 been established by their investigations and reasonings. 
 Results so arrived at can certainly not be set aside by 
 mere denunciation, nor indeed by anything else than a 
 refutation of the principles 'of textual criticism which 
 are accepted and recognised by the great majority of 
 modern textual critics. We have no right, doubtless, 
 to assume that these principles are infallible ; but we 
 have a right to claim that any one who summarily re- 
 jects them and contends that such a text as the Re- 
 ceived Text needs but little emendation, and may be 
 used without emendation as a standard, should confute 
 the arguments and rebut the evidence on which the 
 opposite conclusion has been founded. Strong ex- 
 pressions of individual opinion are not arguments. 
 
 2. We now proceed to notice some of the passages 
 which the Reviewer has selected as containing read- 
 ings, introduced by the Revisers, which call for especial 
 condemnation. In thus turning however more par- 
 ticularly to the Reviewer, we feel it necessary to record, 
 on three points, our deliberate protest against certain 
 of his utterances. In the first place we protest against 
 the Greek text adopted by the Revisers being repre- 
 sented as a text for which Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort 
 are in any special way responsible. Such a representa- 
 tion is unjust alike to the Company and to the two 
 eminent critics who have been mentioned. It is unjust 
 to the Company because it implies that all the other 
 members put themselves, in this most important por- 
 tion of their labours, into the hands of two individuals 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 4 1 
 
 only, and did not attempt to examine and decide con- 
 scientiously for themselves. It is unjust to the two 
 editors in question, because it makes them responsible 
 for a text which is very frequently at variance with 
 their own. Let a competent reader examine the Greek 
 text as set forth in the Oxford edition of Archdeacon 
 Palmer, and as edited by the two Cambridge Pro- 
 fessors. He will find, we believe, if he looks through 
 the whole volume, not more than sixty-four readings in 
 the Greek text of the Revisers which are to be found 
 in the text of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort, and are not 
 to be found in the Received Text or in the text of 
 Lachmann or Tischendorf or Tregelles. 
 
 We have, secondly, to protest against the unqualified 
 charges of textual corruption and depravation made 
 against certain manuscripts, e. g. ^^BCL, tvhich the 
 majority of modern critics, after careful and minute in- 
 vestigation, have declared not only to be wholly unde- 
 serving of such charges, but, on the contrary, to exhibit a 
 text of comparative purity. To attempt to sustain such 
 charges by a rough comparison of these ancient autho- 
 rities with the Texttcs Receptus, and to measure the de- 
 gree of their depravation by the amount of their diver- 
 gence from such a text as we have shown this Received 
 Text really to be, is to trifle with the subject of sacred 
 criticism. Nor is much more achieved by a computa- 
 tion of the number of places in which they differ among 
 themselves. Without such differences they would lose 
 the character of independent witnesses which they now 
 possess. Until the depravation of these ancient manu- 
 scripts has been demonstrated in a manner more con- 
 sistent with the recognised principles of criticism, such 
 charges as those to which we allude must be regarded 
 as expressions of passion or prejudice, and set aside by 
 
42 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 every impartial reader as assertions for which no 
 adequate evidence has yet been produced. 
 
 The third protest which we have to make is against 
 the intrusion into purely critical and textual matters of 
 the imputation of disregard for the religious feelings of 
 others. Again and again we find the Reviewer asking 
 with indignation why the faith of readers is to be 
 disturbed by the statement of critical details which 
 from his point of view it is wholly superfluous to 
 notice. If the question is asked in good faith the 
 answer is easy. The Revisers looked at the matter 
 from a different point of view. In their eyes the first 
 thing to be considered was absolute truthfulness in the 
 setting forth of Holy Scripture. They believed this 
 principle to lie at the root of the demand for a 
 Revision. They felt themselves constrained by this 
 principle to adopt the readings and insert the marginal 
 notes which displease the Reviewer. Those readings 
 and those notes are of course open to criticism : nor is 
 criticism unwelcome to the Revisers. That against 
 which they protest is not criticism : it is an appeal, 
 conscious or unconscious, to the passions and prejudices 
 of readers ; it is the importation of odium theologicum 
 into discussions from which it ought to be kept as far as 
 possible away. 
 
 3. We now proceed to discuss briefly a few passages 
 which the Reviewer appears to have singled out as 
 containing readings especially deserving of censure. 
 To deal with all the readings which he condemns is 
 impossible on his own showing. * The Texhis Receptus', 
 he says\ 'has been departed from by them' (the Re- 
 visers) 'far more than 5000 times, almost invariably 
 for the worse! We are forced, therefore, to make a 
 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 366. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 43 
 
 selection. We select, deliberately, those examples on 
 which the Reviewer appears to lay the greatest stress. 
 If they are almost exclusively taken from the Gospels, 
 the responsibility is with the Reviewer and not 
 with us. 
 
 The first passage, in the order of the sacred volume, 
 is S. Matthew i. 25, in which the Reviewer notes ^ that 
 certain ' important words ' have been ' surreptitiously 
 withdrawn ^.' What are the words in question ? They 
 are the word t6v before woV, and the words avrrj^ tov 
 irpwTOTOKov after it. Now, although we are told by the 
 Reviewer that ' a whole torrent of Fathers attest the 
 genuineness of the reading,' — in addition to the much 
 more weighty evidence of C, and (with respect to tov 
 wpcoTOTOKov) of D, — we cannot hesitate to express our 
 agreement with Tischendorf and Tregelles who see in 
 these words an interpolation, derived from S. Luke 
 ii. 7. The same appears to have been the judgment 
 of Lachmann. At any rate, he deemed it critically 
 right to reject the words for which the Reviewer pleads. 
 These words, be it observed, are unknown to ^^ and 
 to B, to the important palimpsest fragment Z, to two 
 good cursive manuscripts, i and 33, to some Old Latin 
 documents (among which is the valuable Codex Colder- 
 timis), to the Curetonian Syriac, and to the Memphitic 
 Version, — save only that this last appears to have read 
 not f/oV, but TOV vlov. 
 
 We have here our two oldest manuscripts (manu- 
 scripts on which, as we have already said, the vast 
 
 - ^ Quarterly Review, No. 305, p. 5. 
 
 2 An instructive contrast to this language may be found in Canon 
 Cook's note in the Speaker's Commentary on this passage. It is as 
 follows: — '' her firstborn^ Or, "a son," so the two oldest MSS. and later 
 critical editions.' 
 
44 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 majority of critics set a high value) supported not only 
 by another uncial and two cursive manuscripts, but by 
 ancient Versions from Italy, Syria, and Egypt, — a fact 
 v^hich, though recorded in Tischendorfs notes, is 
 passed over in silence by the Reviewer. If we con- 
 sider the internal evidence, it may be said, perhaps, 
 with truth that either reading is equally probable 
 intrinsically. But the well-known tendency of tran- 
 scribers to assimilate parallel passages makes it far 
 more probable that S. Matthew was assimilated to 
 S. Luke in the process of transcription than that so 
 considerable a difference of expression between the 
 two Evangelists was introduced by transcribers when 
 it was not found in the Original Text. No impartial 
 critic, we are persuaded, will doubt that the weight of 
 evidence is decidedly in favour of the shorter reading. 
 If this be so, our first example illustrates the weakness 
 of the Reviewer's main position. A reading may, it 
 seems, be supported by the bulk of the cursive manu- 
 scripts, and by some uncials of fair age and authority, 
 and by 'a whole torrent' of post-Nicene Fathers, and 
 yet be false. 
 
 We pass onward to S. Matthew xvii. 21. The 
 omission of this verse is strongly condemned by the 
 Reviewer \ Here it might be thought that the case 
 for the Revisers was less clear than in the former 
 instance. Lachmann retains the verse ; Tregelles places 
 it in brackets ; Tischendorf alone of the three omits it 
 entirely. But it must be remembered that here Lach- 
 mann and Tregelles were not acquainted with t^, the first 
 hand of which omits the verse. They had only before 
 them the presumption that it might have been an 
 
 * Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 357. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 45 
 
 interpolation suggested by the common ^ reading of 
 S. Mark ix. 29, and that documentary evidence for 
 the omission which was then known. That evidence, 
 indeed, was strong. It consisted of B, 33, two Old 
 Latin manuscripts, the Curetonian Syriac, the Thebaic 
 Version, and some manuscripts of the Memphitic, 
 besides other authorities. When it was ascertained 
 that the first hand of ^^ was on the same side, the 
 majority of the Revisers rightly deemed that there 
 was a decided preponderance of evidence in favour 
 of the view that the verse was an interpolation. On 
 the other hand, they seem to have been also right in 
 considering this to be a case where a marginal anno- 
 tation was equitably required. 
 
 The reader may profitably compare our statement of 
 the evidence in this place and in S. Matthew i, 25, and 
 observe how, in perfectly different passages, we find 
 nearly the same ancient authorities agreeing in support 
 of the better reading, while the great bulk of the 
 cursives and the later uncials, though in both cases 
 led by C and D, are found together on the side 
 against which it is impossible to deny that there is 
 internal evidence of distinctly appreciable weight. 
 
 One other omission, censured by the Reviewer^, 
 may be briefly noticed, — the omission of verse 1 1 in 
 the eighteenth chapter of S. Matthew. Now here there 
 is even less room for doubt than in the preceding 
 cases. The three critical Editors are all agreed in 
 rejecting this verse. The probability that it was 
 an interpolation, derived from S. Luke xix. 10, or from 
 some oral or written source, is certainly strong, and 
 
 ^ Irx Mark ix. 29 the first hand of ^<, together with B and two other 
 authorities, omits the words koL vrjcrTeia. 
 2 Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 358. 
 
46 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 the authorities that reject the verse are of high 
 character. Again we have the same weighty combi- 
 nation V^B, and moreover the first hand of L, a late 
 uncial of well-known value. The two cursives on which 
 we have already seen some reason to rely, i (first 
 hand) and 33, and a manuscript rich in various read- 
 ings, though still imperfectly collated, 13, are on the 
 same side. With them are the same two Old Latin 
 manuscripts that we had before us in the last example, 
 the Jerusalem Syriac, the Memphitic, the Thebaic, and 
 the ^thiopic, and (apparently) the weighty testimony 
 of Origen in his comments on the passage. On the 
 other side there is D and the same aggregation of later 
 uncials, except that in this case the valuable manu- 
 script C is not, as in the two preceding examples, 
 associated with them. There is a gap here in that 
 unfortunately fragmentary palimpsest. 
 
 In this last example we have found for the first time 
 L in conjunction with t^B. It is, however, a frequent 
 conjunction, and always deserves attention. Usually, 
 as in this last case, one or two good cursive manuscripts 
 and ancient Versions, — Lat'n, Syriac, Egyptian, — espe- 
 cially the Memphitic, will be found associated with 
 these three uncials. The Reviewer is naturally hard 
 upon this group, as it is in frequent conflict with the 
 Textics Receptus. He calls it 'a little handful of 
 authorities, of which nothing is known with certainty 
 except that, when they concur exclusively, it is often 
 demonstrably only to mislead.' We have already 
 seen occasion to doubt the correctness of this 
 dictum, and we shall see more as we proceed. Mean- 
 time we will only say that other critics think very 
 differently from him. Dr. Scrivener, for example, in 
 a passage to which we shall have occasion to refer 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 47 
 
 immediately, speaks of ^^BL and the Memphitic as 
 ' first-rate authorities.' 
 
 We may now pass to a few instances from the 
 Gospel of S. Mark. 
 
 The first case we have to notice is S. Mark vi. 20, 
 where the Revisers rightly read ^Tropei, noticing in 
 the margin that many ancient authorities exhibit the 
 reading eirolei. Now if ever there was a case^ in 
 which intrinsic probability was against a reading it is 
 against eiroleL here. What are the ' many things ' that 
 Herod did after he had heard S. John the Baptist ? 
 Meyer tells us that they were the many things which 
 he heard from S. John, though how this can be 
 elicited from the words we do not clearly see. That 
 excellent commentator, however, had far too good a 
 critical sense not to add^ that the reading rjiropei, though 
 (as he thought) only weakly attested, had the appear- 
 ance of being the genuine reading. In this case 
 again the Revisers have Tischendorf only on their 
 side, and not Lachmann nor Tregelles ; but it must 
 be remembered, as we said in the last case, that these 
 two critics had not the reading of b^ before them. 
 The four authorities on which the Revisers relied 
 were ^^BL and the Memphitic Version, and the reader 
 has probably already seen enough to lead him to doubt 
 whether such authorities are to be summarily disposed 
 of as ' all of bad character ^,' or whether such a reading 
 
 ^ So Dr. Scrivener in his Introduction to the Criticism of the New 
 Testament, p. 505 sq. His estimate of the evidence in this case, ex- 
 ternal and internal, is very unlike that of the Reviewer. 'We do not 
 hesitate,' he says, ' to receive a variation supported by only a few first- 
 rate authorities, where internal evidence pleads so powerfully in its 
 favour.' 
 
 ^ Meyer, Kommentar iiber das Neue Testament, in loco (ed. 4). 
 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 345. 
 
48 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 as that adopted by the Revisers deserves in any way 
 the title of a ' fatal substitution.' If fc^B and L when 
 conjoined with the Memphitic Version are of the 
 weight which all critical scholars unanimously assign 
 to them, — still more, if the union of ^B alone is of the 
 great critical importance assigned to it by recent 
 critics ^ — we venture to think that it would not have 
 been possible for the Revisers, consistently with faith- 
 fulness, to have retained the more than doubtful read- 
 ing of the Texttis Receptus, 
 
 Let us turn next to a passage in the same Evan- 
 gelist a little further on, viz. ch. xi. 3, in which the 
 Reviewer^ seems to consider that the mere enumera- 
 tion of authorities adverse to the reading of the Re- 
 visers renders any argument completely unnecessary. 
 ' Quid plura ?' he asks. We will endeavour to answer 
 his question. 
 
 For this purpose, however, we must ask the reader 
 to look closely at the facts of the case. The verse ends 
 in the Textus Receptus with the words airocrreKel wSe, in 
 the Revisers' text with the words uTroa-reWei iraXiv 
 wSe. Even the Reviewer will not defend the Future 
 airoa-reXei. But on what authority have the Revisers 
 added the word ttolXiv ? On the authority of t^BL (a 
 combination on which we have more than once already 
 found reason to rely), supported in this instance by 
 the first hand of C (although it places TrdXiv before and 
 not after aTroa-TeXXei), by D, and by an important 
 witness (at any rate in this Gospel) of which we have 
 not hitherto made use, the Codex Sangallensis, known 
 as A. Origen also is cited as quoting this passage 
 
 ^ See Westcott and Hort, Greek Testament, Introduction, §§ 287-303, 
 pp. 212 sq. 
 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 339. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE,. GREEK TEXT. 49 
 
 twice with the word TrdXiv. To this external evidence 
 we must add two other considerations. First, tran- 
 scriptional probability is distinctly in favour of the 
 genuineness of ttoXiv, because it is apparently super- 
 fluous, and therefore not likely to have been inter- 
 polated, but very likely to have been omitted by a tran- 
 scriber who had a turn for correction. Secondly, it is 
 impossible to be quite confident that in the case of all 
 the Versions which are cited for the omission of TrdXiv 
 the word was really absent from the Greek manuscripts 
 which the translators used. They may have simply 
 omitted the word in translation, as we have said that 
 Greek copyists may have omitted it in transcription, 
 because it was in their judgment superfluous. It is 
 not, of course, really superfluous. On the contrary, 
 it is an example of that exactness of detail which has 
 often been recognised as characteristic of S. Mark. 
 Upon the whole, we cannot doubt that this adverb was 
 improperly extruded, and that the Revisers were per- 
 fectly justified in recalling it, as Tischendorf and Tre- 
 gelles had done before them. 
 
 Five verses lower down, in ch. xi. 8, the Reviewer 
 avows frankly that he stands alone among critics. 
 Here, he tells us\ 'the calamitous circumstance is that 
 the critics have all to a man fallen into the trap.' 
 
 Let us look at the place. The text of Beza, which 
 seems to be followed in the Authorised Version, stands 
 thus : TToXXof ^e ra IjuLOLTia avrwv ea-Tptocrav elg t*]v oSov" 
 aXXot Se (TTOi^dSa(} eKOirrov e/c rwv SevSpcav Kai ecrrpwuvvov 
 eh rhv o^dv. The Revisers have preferred to read, with 
 Tischendorf and Tregelles, ttoXXoI ^e ra If^dria avrwv 
 earTpoocrav eig rrjv oSov' aXXoi Se cTTilBdSag, Ko^avre^ e/c twi/ 
 dypwv. There is a manifest gain of terseness and 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 341. 
 E 
 
50 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 vigour at all events. Four changes have been made. 
 'ZiTi^dSag is adopted for a-roilBdSag, Koy^ai/reg for eKOirroVy 
 aypoou for SevSpcov, and the words Kai ea-rpoowvov eU Trjv 
 oSov are omitted. All four changes have the support 
 of SBLA. Moreover cm^dSag has five other uncials 
 in its favour, and three more practically support it 
 (since D reads ea-ri^d^aq, EG G-reijSdSas;), while for CTTOi- 
 
 ^dSag ACSVXr are alleged: Koyl^avres has the sup- 
 port of Origen : dyp^v is supported by Origen again 
 (who seems to note it as a point of difference between 
 S. Mark and the other Evangelists), by C, and by the 
 Memphitic and Thebaic Versions : the omission of the 
 last clause is supported by C, the Thebaic, and the 
 ^thiopic Version. On the other side there is the usual 
 aggregation of the later uncials and the cursive manu- 
 scripts : and they are supported throughout by A ; in re- 
 spect of (TToi^dSag and etcoirrov by C ; in respect of ckotttov 
 and SevSpwv hy ID ; and, generally, by a numerical majority 
 of the Versions. So stands the documentary evidence. 
 What is * the trap' into which the critics are supposed to 
 have fallen ? The Reviewer imagines that S. Mark 
 wrote (TToipdSag, that some copyist, who was perplexed 
 by this ' unique word,' changed it into the familiar w^ord 
 o-TilSdSa^, and then (finding himself confronted by a 
 fresh difficulty) changed SevSpcov into aypwv, — and finally 
 made the other two changes to round off his work. 
 This curious theory rests on two assumptions, (i) that 
 S. Mark wrote o-roilBdSag, and (2) that the words aroi- 
 pdSa^ and ornPdSas are ' distinct in sense as in origin.' 
 We have already seen that there is an overwhelming 
 preponderance of uncial evidence against a-roi^dSag, — 
 and this is a case in which no other evidence is of real 
 importance. We may observe, however, that in Ori- 
 gen's references to this passage we find o-rot/SdSag in 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 51 
 
 one place and a-TijBaSag in another. We must now add 
 that there is every reason to believe a-roi^ag and a-Tifia^ 
 to be distinct neither in sense nor in origin. The fact 
 is that o-TOf/Sa? is only ^ known to Lexicographers (i) as 
 a various reading for an^ag in this very place, and (2) 
 as a word explained in the Lexicon of Zonaras. His 
 
 gloss is as follows : ^TOljBd?. rj a-rpcjOjULvrj' ?7 TpV(prjg 
 
 Opv^lng. irapa to cttoi^oCw. Its sense, then, according to 
 our only authority, is a bed or mattress, — which is the 
 usual sense of cmPag also. As for its origin, it is 
 plainly derived from a-Teipw, as is also o-n^dg. In short, 
 if (TToilSag is a real word at all, and not a mere figment 
 due to the uncertain orthography of copyists, it is 
 neither more nor less than a bye-form of a-n^dg. But 
 the second part of the Reviewer's theory is, to a certain 
 extent, independent of the first. At all events others 
 have thought before him that the word a-nlSdSag (or 
 a-Toi^dSag — for nothing turns on the spelling) may have 
 suggested the change of SevSpcov into aypcov. Is this 
 really probable ? lln/Sdg, no doubt, usually meant a 
 couch or bed ; sometimes a mattress, sometimes (as the 
 Reviewer says) ' 2. floor-bed constructed of grass, rushes, 
 straw, brushwood, leaves, &c.' Plato speaks of yew 
 and myrtle branches as employed for this purpose 
 (Rep. ii. 372 B, KaraKkivivreg Itc\ (rrilSdScov eo-rpcoiuLevcDu 
 (T/mlXaKL re Kai imvppivaig^). In Hesychius and Suidas 
 pdjSSoi and SevSpwu aKpe/moveg (shoots and twigs of 
 trees) are mentioned among the materials of such a 
 bed. This being so, we fail to see why any copyist 
 should have been tempted to alter ShSpcov into aypwv. 
 
 ^ See Stephani Thesaurus, ed. Dindorf, Paris 1848 -1854 in voce. 
 ^Ti^ds, 2roi3af. 
 ^ Cp. Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake, Canto L xxxiii : — 
 ' The hall was cleared — the stranger's bed 
 Was there of mountain heather spread.' 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 The difficulty lay in the use of a-nPaSag for materials 
 which were not intended on that particular occasion to 
 serve for a bed, not in its use for materials derived 
 from trees. The employment of SevSpcov in the passage 
 would lighten this difficulty and not aggravate it. 
 Moreover it would go well with the word /co\|^ai/Te?, and 
 would tend to bring S. Mark into closer harmony with 
 S. Matthew, who has KXdSovg airo twv SevSpcou, and S. 
 John, who at an earlier point in the same narrative 
 speaks of ra /3aia twp (poiviKwv. A transcriber, we are 
 persuaded, was far more likely in this place to change 
 aypoov into SepSpcov than the reverse. 
 
 On the celebrated passage, S. Mark xvi. 9-20, to 
 which the Reviewer has devoted several pages, we do 
 not feel it necessary to say much, as the passage is 
 retained by the Revisers, although it is separated from 
 the foregoing verses by a small blank space. There is 
 a critical note appended to it in accordance with the 
 practice which the Revisers usually followed when 
 ancient authorities differed to an extent that was deemed 
 by them to require notice. These being the facts of 
 the case, we protest very strongly against the language 
 that has been used by the Reviewer ^ He recognises 
 ' the gravest blot of all' (that in his mind disfigure the 
 Revised Version) in 'the marks of serious suspicion' 
 which he finds ' set against the last twelve verses of 
 S. Mark's Gospel.' What does this language mean ? 
 The textual facts, as in countless other passages, 
 have been placed before the reader, because truth 
 itself demanded it. Can the Reviewer be unwilling 
 that any allusion should be made to the evidence 
 against the genuineness of these verses, — evidence suf- 
 ficient to convince TIschendorf ? Was it really the duty 
 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, pp. 325 sqq. 
 
I 
 
 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 53 
 
 of the Revisers, in his opinion, to suppress all reference 
 to the existence of textual difficulties in such a passage 
 as this ? 
 
 All that the Revisers have done, we must repeat, 
 is first by the form of their printed text to indicate 
 their belief (a belief shared by Tregelles and almost 
 every critic of eminence who has considered the pas- 
 sage) that there is a breach of continuity between the 
 first eight verses of this chapter and the last twelve ; 
 and in the second place, to notice, as usual, in the 
 margin facts of textual importance. We totally de- 
 cline to enter with the Reviewer into topics and ar- 
 guments irrelevant to the course adopted by the 
 Revisers. We do not even feel it necessary to place 
 before our readers the external evidence connected 
 with this paragraph. A reader who desires to see it 
 will find it set forth fully and clearly in the Appendix 
 to Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort's Greek Testament 
 (Notes on Select Readings, pp. 28-51), — and with it 
 other arguments, general and transcriptional, which are 
 of great importance in this passage. 
 
 We now turn to a few places in S. Luke's Gospel 
 in which the Reviewer appears to consider that the Re- 
 visers have introduced especially censurable readings. 
 
 We begin with the well-known reading in ch. ii. 14, 
 avOpwTToi^ €vSoKLa9, — a change which the Reviewer permits 
 himself to designate ' a grievous perversion of the truth 
 of Scriptures' though he must be aware that in so 
 speaking he is censuring Lachmann, Tischendorf, and 
 Tregelles, and, we believe, the great majority of the 
 best modern interpreters — not to mention the entire 
 Latin Church from the earliest times. That there are 
 difficulties in this reading, first from the obscurity of 
 . ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 328. 
 
54 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 the expression, and secondly from the rhythmical In- 
 equality of the clauses (if the first be considered to end 
 with Bew), we frankly admit ; but, as both of these diffi- 
 culties become sensibly diminished by closer considera- 
 tion, as the transcriptional probabilities are, to say the 
 very least, in equipoise ^, and as the documentary 
 evidence is strongly in favour of the genitive, we can 
 hardly conceive it possible for the Revisers to have 
 come to any other decision. If this be not a case in 
 which the evidence is ' decidedly preponderating,' the 
 cases where such evidence is to be found must indeed 
 be few. For what is the external evidence ? The first 
 hand of t^, ABD, all the Latin Versions, the Gothic 
 Version, the Latin of Irenaeus and Origen, Hilary and 
 all the Latin Fathers, and the Latin ' Gloria in excelsis,' 
 — a combination of unusual strength, representing the 
 convergence of different lines of textual tradition. 
 To place in opposition to this ' every known copy of 
 whatever sort ^,' excepting the great manuscripts above 
 mentioned, is simply to fall back upon the old principle 
 of number, and to set aside all the critical knowledge 
 of our materials that has been laboriously acquired 
 during the last fifty years. 
 
 In the next passage on which we have to comment, 
 S. Luke ix. 55, it is hard to think that the Reviewer 
 is serious when he censures the Revisers for omitting 
 the ancient but indisputable interpolation after the 
 words iireTiiuLtja-ev avroig. When he States that * manu- 
 scripts, Versions, Fathers from the second century 
 
 * The probability that a copyist would change the last word of the 
 clause into a nominative, so as to conform it to the terminal nominative 
 of the preceding clause, is, to say the very least, quite as great as the 
 probabihty that the last letter was mechanically assimilated to the last 
 letter of the foregoing word. Add to this the natural tendency to sim- 
 plify a difficult expression. '^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 329. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 55 
 
 downwards (as Tischendorf admits) witness eloquently 
 In its favour ^' are we to understand that the Reviewer 
 honestly believes the added words to have formed a 
 part of the Sacred Autograph ? If so, it must be on 
 the ground of some power of divination which makes 
 all appeal to documentary evidence idle and unneces- 
 sary. If however it is to be understood that we are 
 still in the lower realm of textual criticism, then it must 
 be enough to remind any candid and Impartial reader 
 that the authorities which reject the first clause of the 
 interpolation are b^ABCLXS, six later uncials, several 
 cursives, copies of the Old Latin and Vulgate, and 
 copies of the Memphitic and ^thiopic Versions ; and 
 that, In the case of the second clause, D joins the 
 foregoing band of witnesses. 
 
 It is almost unnecessary to add, except that the 
 mention of Tischendorf s name by the Reviewer might 
 possibly mislead, that this eminent critic, like Lachmann 
 and Tregelles, retains no such interpolated words In 
 his text. The words probably come from some early 
 extraneous source, oral or written, but they certainly 
 form no part of the Gospel according to S. Luke. 
 
 We pass onward to a striking passage in the next 
 chapter, S. Luke x. 15, where in the solemn address 
 of our Lord to the unhappy town in and around which 
 so many of His miracles had been wrought, the Re- 
 visers, with Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles, 
 adopt the Interrogative form of words, m ewg ovpavoO 
 vylrcoOva-yj ; Here the Reviewer, after noticing the au- 
 thorities that have rightly led the above-mentioned 
 critics and the Revisers to adopt the interrogative, 
 permits himself to speak of them as * a consensus of 
 authorities which ought to be held fatal to any reading \' 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 338. 
 
56 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 Against such misleading and prejudiced language we 
 are constrained once more to protest. The authorities 
 thus described are NBDL3, the Old Syriac, the Old 
 Latin, the Memphitic, and the^thiopic, — a combination 
 representing convergent textual traditions of the great- 
 est critical importance. Their consensus, instead of 
 being fatal to any reading, has been seen to be, even 
 in the few examples that have come before us in these 
 pages, in a very high degree confirmatory of its genu- 
 ineness and truth. 
 
 The next passage to which we may properly call 
 attention is one of great importance and of singularly 
 instructive critical interest, — the Lord's Prayer as 
 found in S. Luke xi. 2-4. Here, as might be antici- 
 pated, the Reviewer^ censures the Revisers for having 
 adopted a form which differs considerably from that 
 found in the Received Text, but which, we sincerely be- 
 lieve, the following considerations will abundantly] ustify. 
 
 To put the matter in a form as devoid of technicalities 
 as the nature of the case will admit, let us suppose 
 that we had a treatise on the subject of prayer, written 
 just one hundred years before the probable date of our 
 earliest manuscript of the Greek Testament, in the 
 second part of which the forms of the Lord's Prayer as 
 handed down to us by S. Matthew and by S. Luke were 
 considered and compared. Let us further suppose that 
 this treatise was written by one who had especially de- 
 voted himself to critical and textual studies, and was so 
 keenly alive to the corruption of the text in his own 
 days 2 that he had apparently made for himself what he 
 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, pp. 324 sq. 
 
 ^ See Redepenning's Origenes, Part II, pp. 182 sq., where the reader 
 will find some useful comments on the labours of Origen in the cause of 
 textual criticism. 
 
I 
 
 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 57 
 
 deemed to be a truthful copy of the Greek Testament ; 
 and let us also assume that this supposed treatise was 
 written at a time when the writer s powers were most 
 fully matured ^ and after he had had an opportunity of 
 acquainting himself with more than one leading type of 
 the Sacred Text and so of forming on the subject a 
 trustworthy judgment. Let us suppose all this, and 
 ask ourselves whether express comments on the read- 
 ings of the passage before us by such a writer and in 
 such a treatise would not command our especial atten- 
 tion, and predispose us to accept the readings which he 
 gave as the nearest approach to the Sacred Autograph 
 that we could ever hope to attain. 
 
 Now we have such comments, such a treatise, and 
 such a writer. In the treatise of Origen De Oratione^ 
 we have a comparison between the forms of the Lord's 
 Prayer as handed down to us by S. Matthew and 
 by S. Luke, and the express statement that the 
 words riixodv 6 €v Toh ovpavoh, and the two petitions yevrj- 
 OrjTM TO OeXfjima crov, w? iu ovpavotg kol eirl Trjg yrj^, and aWa 
 pvarai ^fiag airo rod Trovrjpov, are not a part of the Prayer 
 as found in the Gospel of S. Luke. With a statement 
 of such unusual critical importance in our minds we 
 turn at once to the general documentary evidence. 
 And what do we find ? In favour of the omission 
 of the first words {^fxcov k.t.X.) are the important 
 authorities b^BL, the valuable cursive i, (33 omits 
 rjiiicou but retains the rest), the Vulgate and Armenian ^ 
 Versions. In favour of the omission of the first of the 
 
 * On the probable date of the treatise, see Redepenning, Origenes, 
 Part II, p. 32, note. 
 
 ^ Vol. i, pp. 227-265 passim (ed. De la Rue). It may just be added 
 that if the reader will carefully consider the last-quoted page he will 
 hardly be able to doubt what gender Origen assigned to rod TroprjpoO, 
 
 ' This Version retains ^fiwv. 
 
58 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 two petitions {yevijOrjra) K.T.X.) we have BL, i, the 
 Vulgate, the valuable Old Latin manuscript called the 
 Codex Coi^beiensis^ the Old (or Curetonian) Syriac and 
 the Armenian Versions, and Augustine, in a reasoned 
 passage in his Enchiridion (cap. cxvi). Here it will 
 be observed that K deserts the authorities with which 
 it is usually associated ; but its place is supplied by 
 evidence scarcely less valuable. The second of the 
 two petitions, which Origen more than once expressly 
 mentions as not found in S. Luke (aXXa pvdai k.tX), is 
 omitted by KBL, i, and the Vulgate and Armenian 
 Versions. 
 
 When this evidence is carefully considered there 
 must, we think, be few impartial critics, and indeed 
 few readers who have looked through the foregoing 
 pages of this essay, who will not come to the con- 
 clusion that the Revisers were fully justified by their 
 rule, even on external grounds alone, in rejecting, with 
 Tischendorf and Tregelles, the words and clauses of 
 which we have been speaking. We have hitherto said 
 nothing about the internal evidence ; but this, it is 
 obvious, is here of great weight. The tendency to 
 assimilate in the Lord's Prayer would have been, by 
 the very nature of the case, so peculiarly strong, that 
 we may well wonder that it was ever resisted. 
 
 We may notice two other passages in S. Luke, one 
 of less and the other of greater importance, viz. ch. 
 xxiii. 38 and 45, in both of which the reading adopted 
 by the Revisers is censured by the Reviewer. 
 
 In the first passage the Reviewer^ objects to the 
 omission of the words yey pa juLimevtj and ypdjULjuLaa-iv ''EXXtj- 
 viKoi^ Koi'^oo/uLaLKoif KOL KjSpa'iKotg. Here perhaps some- 
 thing might be said for the reading e-myey pafxixevri which 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 355. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 59 
 
 is found in the texts of Lachmann and Tregelles, 
 though the latter editor has enclosed it in brackets ; but, 
 when the divided state of the authorities is considered, 
 and the fact that yeypajULimevtjv is found in the parallel 
 passage of S. Matthew, and eiriyeypaixiJievri in the 
 parallel passage of S. Mark, and that in neither is 
 there any difference of reading, the transcriptional 
 probability (viz. that the reading was derived from the 
 parallel passage) combined with the documentary 
 evidence of ^^BL, the Memphitic and the Thebaic 
 Versions, appears to constitute a clear preponderance 
 of evidence in favour of the texts of Tischendorf and 
 of the Revisers. 
 
 The omission of the words ypd/uL/uLaa-iv k.t.\. is still 
 more clearly borne out. Though in this case K deserts 
 its usual associates, its place is supplied by the first 
 hand of C, the Old Latin manuscript called the Codex 
 Vercellensis, and the Old (or Curetonian) Syriac, — the 
 remaining authorities being, as before, BL and the 
 Memphitic and Thebaic Versions. When it is re- 
 membered that these words may very easily have been 
 suggested by John xix. 20, and that there is some 
 division among the authorities as to the words them- 
 selves, there can, we think, be little doubt that the 
 Revisers were perfectly justified in rejecting them. 
 
 The reading in Luke xxiii. 45 is of greater interest 
 and importance, as the words adopted by the Revisers, 
 
 viz. Tov rjklov eKKelirovTO<s (instead of Koi ecrKOTLO-Qr} 6 i]\i09), 
 
 might seem to leave the Evangelist open to the charge 
 of having attributed the darkness to an astronomical 
 phenomenon (an eclipse of the sun) which could not 
 by the nature of the case have then taken place. The 
 Reviewer, in consequence, does not miss the oppor- 
 tunity of using some of his strongest language and of 
 
60 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 denouncing as a 'gross fabrication^' a reading which, 
 as we shall soon see, is supported by testimony that 
 cannot possibly be set aside. 
 
 In the first place we emphatically deny that there is 
 anything in the Greek word iKXel-Treiv when associated 
 with the sun which involves necessarily the notion of 
 an eclipse^. It is rightly observed by Dr. Hort^ that 
 the varied use of this verb in the Septuagint is enough 
 to show that, when used by a Greek-speaking Jew, 
 it might easily preserve, when applied to the sun, 
 its original sense, and not become technical. There 
 is also evidence that it was understood by some ancient 
 writers to be so used in this place. Secondly, the great 
 authority of Origen, who specially comments* upon 
 these words, and considers that the change from the 
 ordinary reading was due to enemies of the Church, is 
 not only attenuated but almost set aside by his remark 
 that the Evangelists made no mention here at all of 
 the sun, and further by the fact that in other and con- 
 temporary portions of his works he certainly adopted 
 the reading for which we are here contending. We 
 may therefore not inequitably treat the testimony of 
 Origen on this passage as inconclusive, save only to 
 show that ' certain copies ' known to him contained the 
 reading tov ^Xlou c/cXe/xoi/ro?. 
 
 Let us now see what further external testimony can 
 be adduced. This we find to be t^B, the first hand of 
 C, L (b^ and L read e/cXtTroVro?), some Lectionaries, the 
 Memphitic and the Thebaic Versions, and some later 
 writers, — in itself very important evidence. When 
 however we add to this the high transcriptional proba- 
 
 * Quarterly Review, No. 304, p, 343. ^ Ibid. p. 344. 
 ^ Westcott and Hort, Appendix (Notes on Select Readings, p. 71). 
 
 * Here, unfortunately, we have Origen in the Latin translation only. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 6 1 
 
 bility that words which, it is clear, had caused a 
 difficulty in the very earliest times, would be changed 
 into a known scriptural form of expression (comp. 
 S. Matthew xxiv. 29, S. Mark xiii. 24) implying 
 the same thing, and bringing the passage nearer to 
 the aKOTog of the parallels in S. Matthew and S. 
 Mark, we can hardly doubt that we have here that 
 decided preponderance of evidence which the Revisers 
 were instructed to follow, and that the ' gross fabrica- 
 tion,' as the Reviewer has termed it, is really a portion 
 of the Sacred Autograph. 
 
 Two or three other passages still remain to be 
 mentioned. It will be observed that the vast pre- 
 ponderance of the passages selected by the Reviewer 
 for censure are from the first three Gospels. It 
 seems natural for us to follow his example. We think 
 it enough, therefore, to notice S. John xiv. 4, Acts xviii. 
 7, and to conclude our essay, as he concluded his first 
 article, with i Tim. iii. 16. 
 
 In S. John xiv. 4 the Reviewer censures the omis- 
 sion of the word kqI before Trjv 6S6v, and of the word 
 oiSare after it\ The interpolated words are fairly sup- 
 ported, since AD, N^ A, and the good cursives i and 
 69, together with the Vulgate, Syriac (Peshito and 
 Harklean), Gothic, and Armenian Versions, contain 
 them, as well as the later uncials, and the mass of the 
 cursive manuscripts. A careful consideration, how- 
 ever, of the clause and of the context leads us at once 
 to surmise that we may here recognise the enfeebling 
 hand of some early interpolator, who broke up the 
 vigorous sentence kq). ottov iyw vTrdyw o'lSare rrji/ ooov mto 
 
 ' Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 348. 
 
 "^ A very beautiful manuscript of the sixth century, of which fragments 
 onlv remain. See Scrivener, Introduction, p. 126. 
 
62 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 two clauses, answering to the two clauses in the en- 
 suing question of the Apostle. Intrinsic probability is 
 here certainly strong against the Received Text. But 
 to trust to this without good documentary evidence 
 would be utterly uncritical. This evidence, however, 
 is by no means lacking. For the shorter reading we 
 have NB, the first hand of C, L, Q (an important but 
 fragmentary palimpsest of the fifth century), X, the good 
 cursive 33, one Old Latin Version {Codex Vercellensis), 
 the Memphitic and (apparently) the ^thiopic Ver- 
 sions. Here again we have the decided preponder- 
 ance of evidence by which the Revisers were to be 
 guided. This passage is a good instance of the im- 
 prudence of relying too confidently upon mere pre- 
 ponderance of numbers. It illustrates also the im- 
 portance of intrinsic evidence when it is employed 
 with proper caution. 
 
 In Acts xviii. 7 we have an interesting example of 
 diversities of reading. It is a case in which the 
 two leading authorities ultimately differ, though they 
 are in harmony as regards the substance of the 
 correction which has been adopted by the Revisers 
 against the Received Text. The question relates to 
 the name of the Corinthian Christian to whose house 
 S. Paul went after the opposition on the part of the 
 Jews to his earnest preaching in the synagogue. In 
 the original text of B, in the corrected Greek text of 
 the ancient bilingual manuscript D {Codex Bezce), 
 and in the Harklean Syriac, we have the reading 
 TiTiov 'lovorrov. In K and in the very valuable manu- 
 script Eg {Codex Laudianus), and in the Vulgate, 
 Memphitic, and Armenian Versions, we find T/roy 
 ToJo-TOf. In the Syriac (Peshito) and the Thebaic 
 Versions the second word '\ovcttov is dropped ; while 
 
r 
 
 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 63 
 
 in A, the second hand of B, the first hand of D, 
 the later uncials HLP, the good cursive manuscripts 
 13 and 31, the Latin text of D, and the ^thiopic 
 Version, followed by the Textus Receptus, the word 
 T/tou is omitted. 
 
 On carefully considering this division of authorities 
 we can hardly doubt the decided preponderance of 
 the evidence for the fact that this host of the Apostle 
 bore two names. The evidence that the second of 
 these two names was Justus is overwhelming. The 
 Reviewer 1 urges that the first name simply arose from 
 transcriptional error. It was formed, he thinks, by 
 the Ti of the ovo/mari and the lov of ToJo-rov, but he 
 does not tell us how it happened (as it must on this 
 theory have happened) that the transcriber repeated 
 not the Ti only but also the initial lov. Transcriptional 
 evidence may be urged in the question between Tlrov 
 and Tir/ou, but, so far as we can see, in the question 
 between two names and one. it cannot be urged with- 
 out imputation of larger error than seems likely. We 
 think therefore that the Revisers were perfectly right 
 in deciding on two names. In the difficult choice and 
 nicely-balanced evidence between Tlrov and Tirlov we 
 think they were right in adopting the former, though 
 Tischendorf and Westcott and Hort adopt the latter : 
 it appears more probable that the iota was mechani- 
 cally inserted by a transcriber whose eye rested on 
 the lov of the 'lova-rov instead of the ov of the Tlrov 
 than that it was dropped by way of a correction, 
 because Titius was a well-known family name. The 
 fact that the Syriac and Thebaic Versions represent 
 Tlrov may also equitably be claimed in favour of 
 the Revisers, although these Versions omit 'lova-rov. 
 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 336. 
 
64 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 We submit, therefore, that here again the Reviewer 
 has failed to substantiate his charge. 
 
 We come now to i Tim. iii. i6. From what has 
 been said already^ it might seem almost unnecessary 
 for us to discuss this celebrated passage. As, how- 
 ever, the Reviewer has treated it at great length and 
 has presented the evidence in a manner which we 
 cannot allow to pass unquestioned, we feel that it may 
 be well for us, for the sake of the general reader, to 
 put forward once more the true facts of the case. 
 
 Three different readings are found in the extant 
 documents : Oeog, o?, and o. In uncial manuscripts these 
 readings are represented by 0C, OC, and O respec- 
 tively. Only nine uncials are extant which contain 
 this verse. They are K, A, and C, with which the 
 reader is already familiar ; and the following which 
 contain the whole or a portion of S. Paul's Epistles 2, 
 viz. D {Codex Claro^nont antes) of the sixth century; 
 F (Cod, Augiensis), G {Cod. Boernerianus), K {Cod. 
 Mosquensis), L {Cod. Angeliacs), and P [Cod. Porphy- 
 ria^iics) of the ninth. D, F, and G are bilingual 
 (Graeco- Latin) manuscripts. F and G are very closely 
 related ^ in respect of their Greek * text, and must be 
 taken as the representatives of a single manuscript 
 now lost. Of these nine uncials three only, KLP, 
 support 0eo9. Five, NACFG, support o?. One, D, 
 supports o. On the other hand, all the cursive manu- 
 scripts which have been collated support ^eo?, except 
 
 * Page 3, supra. 
 
 ^ KLP contain also the Catholic Epistles, to which L adds a part of 
 the Acts, P the Acts and the Apocalypse. Scrivener, Introduction, p. 150. 
 
 ^ Scrivener, Cod. Augiensis, Introduction, p. 8. 
 
 ^ The Latin Versions found in F and G are quite different. But in 
 this place both exhibit quod. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 65 
 
 17, "j^, and 181, which give o?, and i^] (a fourteenth-cen- 
 tury manuscript now at Leicester) which gives 6 Oeo?. 
 
 Turning to the ancient Versions we find them almost 
 unanimous against Oeo?. All the Latin, all the Syriac, 
 all the Egyptian agree. The Gothic, Armenian, and 
 ^thiopic Versions are on the same side. In all of 
 them a relative pronoun is found, never the equivalent 
 of Oeo?. The gender of this relative pronoun is neuter 
 in the Latin Versions and some others : in others 
 again it is indeterminate : in the Memphitic and 
 Thebaic Versions it is distinctly masculine \ The 
 Georgian and Slavonic Versions ^ stand alone for the 
 reading Q^6<i. 
 
 We turn next to the Fathers. For the reading ^eo? 
 the Reviewer professes to call twelve witnesses, of 
 whom the earliest belong to the latter part of the 
 fourth century. We have examined his references 
 carefully. Gregory of Nyssa^ Didymus of Alexandria, 
 Theodoret, and John Damascene (who died severally 
 about 394,396,457, and 756 a.d.) seem unquestionably 
 to have read 0eo?. Severus of Antioch (who died 
 about 540 A.D.) is not unambiguous. The citations of 
 the Reviewer from Gregory of Nazianzus are incon- 
 clusive. We pass over names brought in to swell the 
 number, — such as Euthalius, for whom no reference is 
 given ; the second Macedonius, who is claimed on the 
 
 ^ In these Versions the usage of the language would have required the 
 adoption of the feminine form, if the translators had wished to re- 
 present o. 
 
 ^ Dr. Scrivener (Introduction, p. 271) places these Versions in 'the 
 third rank ' of importance. The Georgian Version is ascribed to the 
 fifth century, the Slavonic was made (as is well known) in the ninth by 
 Methodius the ' Apostle of Bohemia ' and his brother Cyril. 
 
 ^ In the passage quoted by the Reviewer Gregory has 6 ^cdy, like the 
 cursive yj. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 Strength of a story to which we shall refer pre- 
 sently; an unknown interpolator^ of Athanasius, and 
 an equally unknown author^ of a work falsely ascribed 
 to the same Father. Two celebrated names remain, 
 on which we must pause for a moment : Chrysostom 
 and Cyril of Alexandria. We believe that Chrysostom 
 read Oeh in this place on the faith of his HomiHes ^ on 
 S. John and on this Epistle, to which the Reviewer 
 does not refer us. The passage which he does allege * 
 deserves to be placed before our readers in full as an 
 illustration of the precarious character of patristic 
 evidence. 
 
 CyriVs case is very different. The Reviewer alleges 
 a passage^ from that Father's work De Recta Fide, 
 which would be inconclusive if it stood alone. It does 
 not stand alone. Earlier in the same treatise our text is 
 quoted twice on one page ^ in a manner which seems to 
 show that Cyril had no other reading than o? icpavepcoOtj 
 in his mind throughout this treatise. If he appears to 
 quote the text with Oeog elsewhere '^, this shows at the 
 
 ^ Athanasius, Opp. i. 796 (ed. 1698). The interpolation is found in one 
 MS only, and there only in the margin. 
 
 ^ Athan. Opp. ii. 3$. Here the Benedictine editor remarks that the 
 author seems to have Hved in the times of the Nestorian controversy, i.e. 
 about 431 A.D. [a.d. 330 in the Review must be a misprint.] 
 
 ^ Chrys. Opp. ed. Montfaucon, viii. 85, xi. 606. 
 
 * i. 497* To 8e 6ebv ovra avOpwnov deXTJaai ycveadai koL ava(TX!£(Tdai KaTa^rjvai 
 TOcrovTOV ocrov ovSe bidvoia Be^aadai dvvarai, rovTo icm to (^piKOibiararov Koi 
 €Kn\r}^e0S yefxov. 6 8rj Koi UavXos Oavfid^oiV eXeyev' Koi dixoXoyovfxevcas [xeya 
 i(TTL TO TTJs evae^ecas fJLva-Trjpiov' rrolov peya', Oeos i(^av€pa>6r) iv aapKi' Koi 
 TToKiv dWaxov' ov yap drjTTov dyyeXcov emXap^dveTaL 6 deos' dXXd o-ireppaTOS 
 'A^paa/x emXap^dveTai' odep (w0et\e KaTO. ndvTa Tols ddeXcfiols opoicoOrjvai. If 
 this passage attests the reading 6e6s in i Tim. iii. 16, does it not also 
 attest the reading 6 O^os in Heb. iii. 16, where no copyist or translator 
 has introduced it ? 
 
 ° Cyril. Alex. ed. Aubert. Opp. vol. v. part ii. p. 154. ^ Ibid. p. 6. 
 
 ' E. g. De Incarnatione Domini, cap. 29, Nova Bibliotheca Patrum, 
 Romae 1844, ii. 68. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 67 
 
 most the uncertainty of patristic evidence. But we 
 cannot stop here. Wetstein observed long ago that 
 Cyril does not produce this text, while he does produce 
 Rom. ix. 5, in answer to the allegation which he 
 quotes from Julian ^ that S. Paul never employed the 
 word 0609 of our Lord. And similarly, in a treatise ^ 
 first published by Mai in 1844, where Cyril is con- 
 cerned to show on ovK avQpwTTOv 6 Tiavko^ eK^purre rov 
 Xpia-Tou, he brings in evidence Rom. ix. 5, 2 Cor. iv. 5, 
 and Tit. ii. 1 1 sqq., but not our text, although twice in 
 the same context he quotes the First Epistle to 
 Timothy. We believe that Cyril cannot safely be 
 cited as an authority for the reading Oeog. 
 
 For Oeo?, then, we have Gregory of Nyssa, Didymus, 
 Chrysostom, and Theodoret, in the fourth and fifth 
 centuries, besides later Greek writers. We may, 
 perhaps, add Diodorus of Antioch and Tarsus (who 
 died about 393 a.d.), on the faith of an extract in 
 Cramer s Catena ^. For 09 we have Epiphanius *, 
 whose evidence stands the test of examination, and 
 Theodorus^ of Mopsuestia, — not to Insist upon our 
 right to claim Cyril on the ground which we have 
 mentioned above. For o, as might be expected, all the 
 Latin Fathers who have occasion to quote the passage 
 
 ^ Cyril, contra Julian, lib. 10, 0pp. ed. Aubert. vi. p. 327. 
 
 '^ Quod Maria sit Deipara, Nov. Bibl. Patr. ii. p. 85 sq. 
 
 ^ Cram. Cat. Ep. ad Romanes, p. 124. 
 
 * Adv. Haereses, lib. iii. 0pp. i. p. 894, ed. 1622. 
 
 ^ De Incarnatione, lib. 13, in Migne's Patrologia Graeca, torn. 66, 
 col. 988. We have here the Greek original of the passage which occurs 
 twice over in Latin in the history of the Second Council of Constan- 
 tinople. It is worthy of note that in the Acts of the Council itself we find 
 gui inanifestatus est, while in Pope Vigilius' Constitutmn (which precedes 
 the Acts) we find quod manifestatum est, though the context plainly 
 requires the masculine. See Harduin, Concilia, tom. iii. pp. 32, 84 
 (Paris, 17 14). 
 
 F 2 
 
68 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 are witnesses. We will concede to the Reviewer that 
 the occurrence of the words Qui apparidt in car7ie 
 justificahcs est in spiritu in Jerome's Commentary on 
 Isaiah liii. ii is inconclusive as to the gender of the 
 relative pronoun in the Greek which he had then 
 before him. Gelasius of Cyzicus, who lived in the 
 fifth century and wrote a history of the Council of 
 Nice, reports ^ Macarius of Jerusalem as quoting the 
 text at that Council in the form o ecjyavepcoOt], and the 
 same reading occurs in a homily by an unknown author 
 appended to the works of Chrysostom. This is all the 
 Greek patristic evidence which is alleged for o. One 
 quotation of our text remains to be noticed, which is 
 remarkable as the only unmistakeable reference to it 
 in an ante-Nicene writer. Origen ^ (as translated and 
 abridged by Rufinus, who died a.d. 410) has the 
 following words in his commentary on Rom. i. 5, zs 
 qui Verbuin caro f aches appartiit positis in carne, sicut 
 Apostohcs dicit, qttia inanifestatus est in came, jus tifi- 
 catus in spiritti, appartiit A ngelis. It seems fair to infer 
 that Origen did not read ^eo? in this place. 
 
 The result of this lengthened inquiry is that the 
 Latin Fathers are entirely for 0, and seem to have 
 one Greek bishop of the Nicene Council with them, 
 while the Greek Fathers who lived at the end of the 
 fourth and the beginning of the fifth century are 
 divided between 09 and Qe6<i, The majority, however, 
 of these Greek Fathers, and the mass, perhaps, of those 
 who followed them, are in favour of Oeo?. We have 
 jstill a remarkable fact to mention. It was the distinct 
 belief of Latin writers as early as the sixth century 
 
 ^ Gelas. Cyzic. Comment. Actorum Nicxni Concilii, pars ii, cap. 24, 
 p. 152 (Paris, 1590). 
 
 2 Orig. Opp. iv. 465; ed. Benedict. 1759. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 69 
 
 that the reading of this passage had been corrupted by 
 the Greeks. Liberatus, a deacon at Carthage cir. 
 530 A.D., relates^ that Macedonius, the second Constan- 
 tinopoHtan patriarch of that name, was deposed [cir. 
 511 A.D.] for falsifying this very passage. The present 
 text of Liberatus says that Macedonius changed o? 
 into o)?. But Hincmar of Rheims, who repeats^ 
 the story at length In the ninth century, says expressly 
 that he changed o? into 6e6g. The story shows, at all 
 events, that the Latins in the sixth century believed o? 
 to be the reading of the older Greek manuscripts, and 
 regarded Oeo^s as a false reading made out of it. 
 
 And now we will briefly sum up the evidence. Geo? 
 rests exclusively on the testimony of three uncial 
 manuscripts of the ninth century, the mass of the 
 cursives (which are in this case nearly unanimous), and 
 a majority of Greek Fathers from the end of the fourth 
 century downwards. ''O? Is supported by five uncials, 
 among which are the three oldest, three cursives, the 
 two Egyptian Versions, and some Greek Fathers of 
 importance. '^O rests on one uncial manuscript, the 
 Latin Versions, and the Latin Fathers : but it has a 
 considerable amount of support In other Versions also, 
 though an amount which it Is apparently difficult to 
 determine with exactness. The testimony of the 
 ancient Versions against Oeog Is In itself almost fatal to 
 that reading. It seems inconceivable that It should be 
 represented in none of them (except the Georgian and 
 Slavonic) If it is genuine. And this consideration gains 
 additional weight when we remember (i) that Jerome 
 professedly corrected the Old Latin Versions by the 
 help of ancient Greek manuscripts, and (2) that the 
 
 1 Liberat. Breviarium, cap. 19, Paris 1675. 
 "^ Hincmar. Opp. torn. ii. p. 465, Paris 1645. 
 
70 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 Latin Version was brought by his revision, and the 
 Syriac by that revision to which the Peshito is beUeved 
 to be due, into a degree of conformity with the Greek 
 text that seems to be represented in Chrysostom's 
 quotations, which was unknown to the Old Latin 
 and Old Syriac. When we add to this testimony of 
 the Versions the unanimity against the reading of 
 our oldest uncials (for D is with ^^AC as against 
 Oeog) the evidence against O^og seems conclusive. When 
 it is considered, moreover, that there is no clear indi- 
 cation of it in the Fathers before the latter part of the 
 fourth century, that Athanasius, as his Benedictine 
 editor observes \ never used it in the controversy with 
 the Arians, that Cyril (as we have already remarked) did 
 not use it in his controversial writings on occasions on 
 which it would have been especially important, and, 
 finally, that the Greek Fathers who are distinctly 
 shown to have employed it in the fourth and fifth 
 centuries are, after all, few in number, it seems im- 
 possible to question the statement in the Margin of the 
 Revised Version, that this reading ' rests on no sufficient 
 evidence.' 
 
 It is a harder matter to decide between the claims 
 of the other two readings. We will give briefly the 
 grounds which seem to us to turn the scale, i. 00 
 will account for the reading 00 more easily than O. 
 Only the insertion ^ and superposition of horizontal 
 lines was needed to effect this change. If O had been 
 
 ^ Athanas. 0pp. ii. S3 (ed. 1698). 
 
 ^ In making such additions a copyist may have honestly thought that 
 he was correcting an accidental defect in his exemplar, as was no doubt 
 the case with those who gave its present appearance to the OC of the 
 Codex Alexandrinus (see Mill in loco, and Wetstein, Prolegg. p. 22). 
 Moreover theological expressions used by Greek Fathers may have been 
 construed into authorities for such an emendation. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 7 1 
 
 the primitive reading, he who added C must have felt 
 that he was altering the text. 2. OC will account 
 more easily for O than O for OC. No theological 
 importance attached to this change either way. But 
 the apparent difficulty of construction involved in the 
 reading OC might easily have tempted a corrector to 
 accommodate it in gender to the preceding word 
 /uLvcrrripLov. 3. OC has a decided preponderance of 
 manuscript evidence. Not only are t^AC combined 
 against D, but FG are on the same side ; and all 
 the manuscripts which read 6e6g, from KLP down- 
 wards, are witnesses in favour of the final consonant. 
 
 We have already examined at length the Reviewer's 
 statement of the patristic evidence. With regard to 
 the Versions his statement is fair, so far as Oeog is con- 
 cerned, unfair with respect to 09. 'The Versions,' he 
 says ^, ' — all but the Georgian and the Slavonic, which 
 follow the Received Text — favour o unquestionably.' 
 We have already shown that this is not the case. But 
 we are content to refer our readers to Tischendorf and 
 Tregelles, who unhesitatingly claim the Memphitic and 
 Thebaic for 09, and speak of some other Versions as more 
 or less doubtful. With his treatment of the manuscript 
 evidence, however, we cannot deal so briefly. He 
 states ^ that the reading o? ' is not to be found in more 
 than ^wo copies (^e and 17) of S. Pauls Epistles.' He 
 claims for Oeog A, C, F, G, which are alleged by Tischen- 
 dorf and Tregelles for 09. ' Of the three cursives usually 
 cited for the same reading' {09), ' the second,' he says, 
 (i. e. 73) ' proves, on inquiry at Upsala, to be merely an 
 abridgment of QEcumenius, who certainly read 0€o? ; and 
 the last ' (181) ' is non-existent' We might be content 
 
 1 Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 362. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 364; cp.note 2, p. 362. 
 
72 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 to demand whose word on such matters is entitled to 
 most credit, — the word of the Reviewer or the word of 
 the most famous manuscript collators of this century. 
 But we prefer to go more fully into the matter. 
 
 First as regards the two cursives. Those who have 
 had occasion to seek in public libraries for manuscripts 
 which are not famous for antiquity or beauty or com- 
 pleteness know that the answer * 7ion est inventus ' 
 is no conclusive reason for believing that the object of 
 their quest has not been seen and collated in former 
 years by those who profess to have actually seen and 
 collated it. That i8i *is non-existent' must be con- 
 sidered unproven. In like manner the letter which 
 the Reviewer seems to have received from Upsala is 
 quite insufficient to dispose of the cursive numbered ^ 
 73. But this question is of comparatively small im- 
 portance. We turn, therefore, to the four uncial 
 manuscripts. 
 
 * A and C,' he says 2, * exhibited 00 until ink, dirt, and 
 the injurious use of chemicals obliterated what once 
 was patent. It is too late, by full 150 years, to contend 
 on the negative side of this question.' Some of his 
 readers may be surprised to learn that, although beyond 
 all controversy A and C have been made by later hands 
 to exhibit 00 more or less plainly, there is no sufficient 
 evidence that there was ever a time when this reading 
 was * patent ' as the reading which came from their 
 original scribes. On the contrary it was matter of 
 dispute throughout the last century whether in either 
 manuscript any marks were visible, derived from the 
 hand of the original scribe, which indicated that 0eo? 
 
 ^ See Scrivener, Introduction, pp. 228, 239. 
 "^ Quarterly Review, No. 304, p. 362. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. "JT^ 
 
 was Intended. With regard to A, Mill, as he tells ^ 
 us, thought at first that there were none ; afterwards 
 he seemed to himself to discover traces of such marks. 
 And this was nearly a hundred and eighty years ago. 
 Dr. Berriman, who wrote a Dissertation on the subject 
 in 1 741, agreed with Mill. Wetstein ^ inspected the 
 manuscript in 171 7, and saw no such traces. He re- 
 examined it in 1747 with great care, after he had seen 
 Berriman's Dissertation, and discovered the real nature 
 of the 'traces' of which Mill and Berriman had spoken. 
 When the leaf was held up separately, part of a letter 
 written on the opposite side of it was seen through the 
 parchment and appeared to belong to the O in question. 
 Tischendorf, then, and Tregelles have not * contended 
 on the negative side of the question a hundred and fifty 
 years too late.' They have but added their suffrages ^ 
 to those of the best collators in the last century. We 
 know not whether any scholar of repute in the present 
 generation has differed from them, save Dr. Scrivener. 
 The exception is important. We must refer the reader 
 for his opinion on this point, and on the whole question, 
 to his Introduction ^ to the Criticism of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 With regard to C the Reviewer's language is still 
 more surprising. That this manuscript was a palimp- 
 sest and contained portions of Holy Scripture under 
 
 ^ Nov. Test. Graec. in loco. 
 
 ^ Wetstein, Prolegg. in Nov. Test. pp. 20, 22. 
 
 ^ See especially Tischendorf, Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus, Prolegg. 
 p. 42, note. 
 
 * Page 552 sqq. Dr. Scrivener states the manuscript evidence thus : 
 *A11 manuscripts (D tertid 77tanu, KLP, some 200 cursives) read eeo? 
 with the common text, except N* A* (?) C* (?) FG. 17. 7:^. 181, which have 
 6y, D* which (after the Latin Versions) has 6: the Leicester codex, 37, 
 gives 6 6s. ^ [The asterisk denotes t\iQ first handoiXhQ manuscript named.] 
 
74 
 
 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 its later writing was first discovered by Peter Allix^ 
 about two hundred years ago. Wetstein, who was 
 informed of the discovery by AlHx himself, collated 
 thoroughly in 1716 (for Bentley's projected edition) 
 those parts of it which were concerned with the New 
 Testament. He tells us himself that he went over it 
 'once and again' with care. Of course he employed 
 his collation in his own New Testament of 1751. He 
 pronounced ^ the original scribe to have written 09, and 
 not 6€69. A different opinion was expressed after- 
 wards by Woide and Weber. Griesbach examined 
 the question minutely, and agreed with Wetstein. 
 In 1845 Tischendorf published at Leipsic a com- 
 plete edition of those portions of both Testaments 
 which were found in the palimpsest. He went into 
 the question of this reading ^ at great length, and de- 
 cided unhesitatingly that the original scribe wrote 09, 
 and not Oeog. If the Reviewer sets aside that verdict 
 as pronounced ' too late,' we may fairly ask on what 
 ground he sets aside the judgment which Wetstein 
 pronounced more than a hundred and sixty years ago. 
 But in truth the special qualifications of Tischendorf 
 and his elaborate treatment of this difficult palimpsest 
 give him a right to be heard* upon its readings to 
 which no other critic can pretend. 
 
 Before we pass to the later manuscripts it is important 
 to remark that N and D also have been made by cor- 
 rectors to exhibit the reading Oeog, although in these 
 two cases the fact that the original scribes wrote 09 
 and o respectively is so clear that it is not disputed by 
 the boldest champions of the Received Text. 
 
 ^ Wetstein, Prolegg. in Nov. Test. p. 27. "^ Nov. Test, m loco, 
 
 ^ Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus, Prolegg. 39 sqq. 
 * See Scrivener, Introduction, pp. no, 553. 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 75 
 
 F and G are, of course, far less important than A 
 and C, both because they belong to the ninth century 
 instead of the fifth, and because they are copies of one 
 manuscript. But they are of considerable interest, as 
 they belong to the Western group of documents, of 
 which the chief, D, exhibits o. Both F and G exhibit 
 OC. On these manuscripts Dr. Scrivener has a special 
 right to be heard. He published F (the Codex Au~ 
 giensis) in 1859, and subjoined a careful collation of G 
 from Matthaei's edition of that MS. ' There are no 
 signs,' he says ^ ' of the ordinary breathings and accents 
 in this manuscript. Codex F occasionally, and G more 
 often, places a straight line nearly horizontal over the 
 initial vowel of a word, which may be designed for the 
 aspirate, but is found in some few places where the 
 vowel takes the lenis. This mark is of some import- 
 ance from the circumstance that both in F and G it is 
 placed over OC in i Tim. iii. 16. Yet I do not believe 
 that the line was intended to denote that OC was the 
 familiar abbreviation for 0eo9, for not only is there not 
 the faintest trace of such a line within the O as shall 
 make it become 0, but the line is placed over too many 
 initial and aspirated omicrons to render it probable 
 that anything more was intended here.' He gives a 
 number of examples, among which we find o represented 
 twice in one verse (i Tim. vi. 15) by O both in F and 
 in G. The Reviewer sets aside the editor of the 
 Codex Atigiensis as boldly as he sets aside the editor 
 of the Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus, He seems to 
 think it enough to say that 'there is no single example of 
 09 written OC in any part of either manuscript I i.e. 
 either F or G. We will only add that Wetstein (at 
 whose suggestion Bentley purchased the Codex Au- 
 ^ Codex Augiensis, Introduction, p. 27. 
 
*](> THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 gieiisis), Griesbach, Lachmann, Tregelles, and Tlschen- 
 dorf agree with Dr. Scrivener in this matter. 
 
 We have treated this reading at great length, but 
 we have been compelled to do so by the Reviewer. 
 He has made an elaborate effort to shake conclusions 
 about which, we suppose, no professed scholar has any 
 doubt whatever, but which an ordinary reader (and to 
 such we address ourselves) might regard as still open 
 to reconsideration. Moreover this case is of great im- 
 portance as an example. It illustrates in a striking 
 manner the complete isolation of the Reviewer's posi- 
 tion. If he is right, all other critics are wrong ; — 
 wrong in their deciphering of manuscripts, wrong in 
 their interpretation of Versions, wrong in their esti- 
 mate of patristic testimonies, wrong in the textual 
 conclusions which they found upon all these different 
 kinds of evidence taken together. It illustrates also, 
 no less strikingly, the central point of this essay : we 
 mean the impossibility of trusting the mass of the 
 cursive manuscripts, or of making the form of text 
 with which Chrysostom was familiar — if that were now 
 recoverable in its entirety — a final standard. 
 
 We now bring these remarks to a close. We trust 
 that we have fully done what we undertook to do. 
 We have endeavoured to give the general reader such 
 outlines of a difficult and intricate subject as may 
 enable him to judge for himself concerning the trust- 
 worthiness of the Greek text adopted by the Revisers. 
 We believe that in our discussion of the examples 
 which we have noticed we have done something towards 
 disproving the sweeping charges of the Reviewer. In 
 the choice of those examples we have followed his 
 guidance. We have addressed ourselves to the con- 
 sideration of those readings which he himself, so far as 
 
THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 77 
 
 we could judge from the vehemence of his language, 
 seemed to regard as worthy of the greatest reproba- 
 tion. 
 
 As to the completeness of our answer the reader 
 must judge for himself. On two points, however, we 
 desire to insist. First, if the Revisers are wrong in 
 the principles which they have applied to the deter- 
 mination of the text, the principles on which the 
 textual criticism of the last fifty years has been based 
 are wrong also. Secondly, no equitable judgment can 
 be passed on ancient documents until they are care- 
 fully studied, and closely compared with each other, 
 and tested by a more scientific process than rough 
 comparison with a text which (as these pages have 
 shown concerning the Received Text) was uncritical 
 and untrustworthy from its origin. 
 
 If we have established these two literary facts, we 
 have substantially answered the Reviewer. We ven- 
 ture to hope that we have done something more than 
 this. We hope that we have shown cause for the belief 
 that the Revised Version does not rest on a foundation 
 of sand, but on a Greek text which is consistent in its 
 principles and pure in its general results. In times of 
 controversy like that in which we live it is not enough 
 that the vernacular New Testament should be 'a well 
 of English undefiled : ' it must represent with the 
 utmost accuracy which is attainable the documents 
 which were left behind by the Evangelists and the 
 Apostles. It is true that the Articles of the Christian 
 Faith do not depend on such variations of the Greek 
 text as are in controversy between critics of different 
 schools. The ancient manuscripts and the manuscripts 
 of the Middle Ages, the printed editions of the six- 
 teenth and the nineteenth centuries, bear witness to 
 
78 THE REVISERS AND THE GREEK TEXT. 
 
 the same Gospel, to the same Creed. But nothing is in- 
 significant which concerns the truth of Holy Scripture. 
 There are grave interpolations in the Received Text 
 which it would have been worth eleven years of toil 
 to remove if nothing else had been done. There are 
 innumerable blemishes and corruptions of less import- 
 ance which have become known during the last cen- 
 tury to all careful students. In great things alike and 
 small it has been the desire of the Revisers to bring 
 back the text to its original shape. They do not 
 claim the title of discoverers. They have done little 
 more than verify and register the most certain con- 
 clusions of modern textual criticism. In this as in 
 other respects they have endeavoured to make know- 
 ledge which has hitherto been accessible only to the 
 learned a part of the common heritage of Englishmen. 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 Since the foregoing pages were in type, a third 
 article has appeared in the Quarterly Review entitled 
 ' Westcott and Hort's Textual Theory/ In this con- 
 troversy it is not for us to interpose. The Revisers, as 
 we have already stated, are not in any way responsible 
 for the writings of their learned colleagues. For our- 
 selves we will only say that our estimate of the im- 
 portance of those writings remains unshaken. On the 
 work for which the Revisers are responsible there is 
 nothing substantially new in this third article. We 
 observe the admission that there are ' known ^ textual 
 errors ' in the Received Text, the correction of which 
 the Reviewer ' eagerly expected ' from the Revisers, 
 and that ' it cries aloud ^ for Revision in many of its 
 subordinate details.' The Reviewer did not speak so 
 plainly on this subject in his former articles : he was 
 only careful to disclaim the belief that the Received 
 Text is absolutely faultless. If we have attributed to 
 him a greater veneration for it than he entertains, the 
 general tone of his two first articles is our warrant. To 
 those two articles — so far, at least, as they are con- 
 cerned with the Greek text adopted by the Revisers — 
 our essay is intended for an answer. We find nothing 
 in the Reviewer's third article to require a further 
 answer from us, or to make this present answer un- 
 necessary. 
 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 306, p. 311. 
 ^ Ibid. p. 331. 
 
DATE DUE 
 
 ^^**^^'ffr 
 
 
 
 
 ^^•■^ 
 
 k 
 
 
 
 fmmm 
 
 m 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 

 The revisers and the Greek text of the 
 
 Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00061 5254