Home | List of MSS | synopsis | the fallacy of the shorter text | some notable readings | assimilation of parallels | conclusion | (pages 129-148)
Prof, Dark's criticism of the maxim brevior lectio potior ;
in classical
authors accidental omission is more common than interpolation, hence the
presumption is in favour of the genuineness of the longer reading.
This principle cannot be applied without reservation to the text of the Gospel.
But it has an important bearing on the general discredit attached to the
Western text, as interpolated and as at times paraphrasing the true text.
The number of omissions in א through
homoioteleuton illustrates the possibility of accidental omissions having
occurred in the earliest copy that reached Alexandria.
The very conscientiousness
of Alexandrian scribes would prevent the restoration at a later date of
the omitted passages.
Accidental omission would be soon repaired in the place where a book was
originally published, more slowly elsewhere;
but an insertion found in a
local text remote from the place of writing may be suspected as an interpolation.
Consideration of some famous readings in the light of this principle.
"Neither the Son," |
Mt.xxiv.36; |
Jesus Barabbas, |
Mt.xxvii.17; |
the spear thrust, |
Mt.xxvii.49; |
"Seek to rise," etc., |
Mt.xx.28; |
"The Light at the Baptism," |
Mt.iii.16; |
"The Bloody Sweat," |
Lk.xi.43 f.; |
"Father, forgive them," |
Lk.xxiv.34. |
The tendency of scribes to make small verbal alterations in the direction
of bringing passages where the Gospels already resemble one another into
a still closer resemblance.
This assimilation of parallels the main cause
of textual corruption and has affected all lines of transmission.
The B text
has suffered less in this way than any other but is by no means immune.
"Western non-interpolations," the name given by Hort to some nine
conspicuous readings, found in B, but absent from D or
the Old Lat.
He regarded these as harmonistic
interpolations;
but he unduly isolated these nine from a large number of
additions in the B text, which, though less striking,
are much more obviously due to assimilation to parallel passages.
Nevertheless it is fallacious to suppose that every omission by the Western text is right; thus the omission of the words "He was taken up into heaven," Lk.xxiv.51, is quite possibly an attempt to harmonise the Gospel with the Acts, and not vice versa.
The Voice at the Baptism, Lk.iii.22, is another case where the Western text
is probably original.
B and its allies (here followed
by T.R.)
assimilate the text in Luke to the parallel version in Mark and Matthew.
In the main, however, the Western text has suffered most, and the Alexandrian
least, from assimilation.
A notable set of variants illustrating three principles:
Although we may think that Hort relied too exclusively upon the B text, and that an "eclectic" text following now one, now another, of the old local texts is theoretically a sounder basis, it in no way follows either
For most practical purposes Westcott and Hort's edition is satisfactory;
but there is a real need for a new thesaurus of variants to take the place
of Tischendorf's great edition.
In conclusion, the delimitation of local texts shows that our evidence for
the substantial integrity of the text of the Gospels as a whole rests on
a wide and multiple basis.
When, however, fine points of scholarship or the
niceties of evidence bearing on the Synoptic problem are at issue, we may
have at times to go behind the text found in the best modern printed editions
of Greek Testament.
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THE whole question of interpolations in ancient MSS. has been set in an
entirely new light by the researches of Mr. A. C. Clark, Corpus Professor
of Latin at Oxford, quem honoris causa nomino.
In The Descent of
Manuscripts,
[Oxford 1918] an investigation of the
manuscript tradition of the Greek and Latin Classics, he proves conclusively
that the error to which scribes were most prone was not interpolation but
accidental omission.
It is not too much to say that this conclusion entails
a revolution in accepted critical methods.
Hitherto the maxim brevior
lectio potior, that is, that the shorter reading of two readings is probably
the original, has been assumed as a postulate of scientific criticism.
Clark
has shown that, so far as classical texts are concerned, the facts point
entirely the other way.
"A text," as he puts it, "is like a traveller who loses a
portion of his luggage every time he changes trains."
Once this is stated,
its truth is self-evident; any one who has ever sent his own MS. to a typist
knows that the accidental omission of words, lines, or sentences is a constant
occurrence, while interpolation is not.
Of course marginal notes, various
readings, etc., do constantly creep into the text of ancient MSS.
But while
intentional interpolation is quite exceptional, omission—
commonly accidental,
but sometimes, it would seem, intentional—
is a constant phenomenon.
In a smaller work
[The Primitive Text of the Gospels
and Acts, Oxford, 1914.
The main argument of this book is very conveniently
summarised and in some ways strengthened in an article in J.T.S.,
Jan. 1915.],
Clark applies to the Gospels and Acts the principles which
he had worked out in the sphere of classical studies.
So far as the Acts
are concerned, he goes a long way towards proving his case.
But, if I
may take it upon me to pronounce upon the work of so eminent an authority,
I would say that he underestimates the difference between the textual
traditions of the Gospels and of classical literature in two important
respects.
First, it so happens that the omission of passages found in
other texts is specially characteristic of B, and next to B of א, fam. Θ, Syr. S., and k, i.e. of
the authorities which in other respects preserve good and ancient texts.
Secondly, the antecedent probability that some traditions as to the sayings
or deeds of Christ, not included in any of the Gospels, would have been
in circulation in the early Church is high;
and it would be very natural
to record them in the margin of a Gospel, from whence they might easily
slip into the text.
For these two reasons the principle that "the
longer text is probably the more original" cannot be applied without
considerable reservation to the particular case of the Four Gospels.
This principle, however, has an indirect bearing on the "bad name" given
to
"Western" readings as such.
It was not merely on account of its
alleged abundance of interpolation that Hort attached a general discredit
to the "Western" text.
It was even more on account of a supposed
tendency to "paraphrase."
The text of B א,
being held innocent of this free treatment of the original, acquired the
credit that always attaches to a respectable witness as against one known
to be in some respects disreputable
[So
far was this preference carried that, even in cases where the
"Western" reading, on the face of it, appears more probable, Hort
rejects it.
Perhaps the clearest example is the preference of the reading,
which makes nonsense, to "Ἑλλησας Acts
xi. 20.].
But to speak of a passage in one MS. as being a "paraphrase" of
the text found in another implies that we know already the answer to the
prior question, which of the two represents the original. In the case of
the B and D texts this was supposed to
be settled in principle by the phenomena of Acts. Here the D text is almost invariably the longer, and, if we accept as a self-evident
principle brevier lectio potior, it follows that it is a paraphrastic
expansion of the shorter text. But ever since Prof. Ramsay wrote his St.
Paul the Traveller, scholars on purely historical grounds have been emphasising
the claims of quite a number of the Bezan additions to be authentic. Clark
shows in a large number of these cases, that, if we accept the longer text
of D as original, [Cf. J.T.S., Jan. 1915, p. 226 ff.]
we can explain the origin of the shorter B text. All we need suppose is that one or more ancestors of B had suffered considerably from what is, after all, the commonest of all mistakes of careless scribes, the accidental omission of lines. Wherever the grammar of a sentence was destroyed by the omission, some conjectural emendation of the injured text was made to restore sense. The result of this process would inevitably be the production of a shorter text, by the side of which the original would look like a paraphrastic expansion.
But, if the riot of "paraphrase" supposed to be characteristic
of the Western text of Acts is otherwise explained, the accusation of paraphrase
in regard to the text of the Gospels must be given a rehearing.
In the Gospels
the difference between the text of B and D is
much less striking.
Except occasionally in Luke, there are very few readings
to which, without exaggeration, the name paraphrase can be applied.
There
are variations in the order of words, in the use of tenses, prepositions,
conjunctions, there is an occasional substitution of synonyms.
But, as we
shall see later (p. 328 f.), differences of this sort are to be found even
between MSS. as closely related as א B
L.
The differences between D and any one
of these MSS. are far more numerous and more conspicuous than their differences
from one another;
but they are not such as to entitle us to assert that the D text
is a paraphrase of the B, while the text of L is not.
And
if we once admit an element of corruption in B,
then both B and D might, though in a very different degree, be described as
"paraphrasing" the original text.
But the question whether in other respects the B or the D text is the purer has
really very little to do with the value of their evidence for insertions
or omissions.
Take a MS. like א.
In this, in the Gospels alone, there are no less than 46 instances of accidental
omission, which probably formed one or more complete lines of the exemplar
from which it was copied, due to homoioteleuton.
There are other omissions,
presumably of lines in the exemplar, where homoioteleuton cannot be invoked
in extenuation of the error.
And there are innumerable omissions of single
words.
Almost all the longer and many of the shorter omissions have been
added in the margin, by the first corrector or sometimes by the original
scribe.
If one glances through the photographic facsimile of א,
there is hardly a page without such correction.
But א is
a handsome expensive copy produced in a regular scriptorium, written by
a professional scribe and corrected by a careful διορθωτής.
Now let us suppose that the original text of Acts was something like D,
and that the first copy which reached Alexandria was separated from the
autograph by half a dozen ancestors.
And suppose that two or three of these
ancestors had been copied by scribes neither better nor worse than the
scribe of א, but had not been gone over
by a διορθωτής.
At each stage where the omission made nonsense or bad grammar the owner
would make the minimum of conjectural emendation that would make the construction
grammatical or restore what from the context appeared to be the sense intended.
This process of omission and correction repeated two or three times would
result in a copy of the Acts with a text like that of B.
[The hypothesis that accidental omission
was supplemented by intentional omission of what seemed unimportant detail
is not to be entirely excluded.
Probably a longer period elapsed before
the Acts was regarded as inspired scripture than was the case with the
Gospels.]
If this was the first copy of the book to reach Alexandria, the
original, being on papyrus, would soon be worn out; but all the earliest
copies known in Alexandria would be derived from it.
It follows that the
more scrupulously subsequent scribes copied these, and the more anxious
Alexandrian scholars were to go back to the earliest copies, the less
chance would there be of the original omissions being repaired from MSS.
brought in from outside.
Even if a copy of the more complete text was brought
from Rome, the Alexandrian scholar, like Hort, would condemn it as a corrupt
and paraphrastic text.
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This leads me to suggest a principle of criticism, which so far as I am
aware, has not hitherto been formulated.
Accidental omissions are most likely
to be made good in the place where a book was first given to the world;
for
there more than one copy made from the autograph will be in circulation.
On the other hand, in a city far removed from the place of publication the
higher the local standard of textual purity, the greater the likelihood
that an accidental omission in the earliest copy that had arrived there would
remain unrepaired.
The principle, of course, must not be pressed too far.
Indeed it only applies to omissions that contained something of a more or
less interesting character.
Omissions of words that added little to the sense,
or which people would prefer to think spurious, would be as likely to remain
unrepaired in the Church where a Gospel was first published as in any other.
The omission, for example, by Syr. S. of the words οἰδὲ ὁ υἱος Mt.xxiv.36,
cannot be defended, even if proof positive was produced that this was the
old text of Antioch and that Matthew was written there.
But the principle
does give a new importance to the identification of local texts.
If, as I
think probable, Luke and Acts were written either at Rome or Corinth, omissions
in B א will carry less weight than those which occur
in the Western text.
In that case, we shall be inclined to follow Hort in
suspecting what he calls the "Western, non-interpolations" of Luke,
on the ground that they are absent from the Roman text of Luke;
but we shall
hesitate to agree with him in rejecting passages for which Western evidence
is good, simply because they are absent from B.
Again, if Matthew, as I believe, was written in Antioch, passages found only
in Alexandrian or geographically Western authorities will be regarded with
suspicion, but we shall look with special favour on any insertion attested
by Syr. S.;
and so far as this Gospel is concerned
we shall not be in too great a hurry to reject readings which are only attested
by the Lucianic text.
This principle works out well in practice.
The most interesting addition in Syr. S. is in
Mt.xxvii.17.
Pilate says to the Jews,
"Whom will ye that I release unto you?
Jesus Barabbas,
or Jesus whom they call Christ?"
Thus phrased the alternative offer made by Pilate has an extraordinarily
original look.
The omission of the name "Jesus" before Barabbas
might easily be accidental, ὑμῖν Ἰσοῦν in Θ is
written ΥΜΙΝΙΝ—
the
omission of the second IN would be an instance of an error so common in ancient
MSS. that a technical term
"haplography" has been invented to describe it.
Once omitted, motives
of reverence would come into play;
and the dislike of the idea that a brigand
bore the sacred name, would lead to the preference of the shorter text.
This
is not mere conjecture;
Origen, we have seen, found it in the text of Caesarea,
but tries to reject it on the ground that the name Jesus could not have belonged
to one who was a sinner.
[Cf. the discussion by Burkitt, Evangelion da Mepharreshê,
vol. ii p. 277.]
And the weight of his name would lead to its wholesale excision
in other texts.
On the other hand there are three striking additions in Matthew found in
the non-Antiochene types of text represented by B and D Old
Latin respectively, which do not commend themselves as genuine.
The spear-thrust at the Crucifixion (Mt.xxvii.49) in B א, etc., is easily explicable as an attempt
at harmonising Matthew and John.
The saying "Seek to rise, etc.," found
in D Φ Syr. C. after Mt.xx.28 is a feebler and, I would add, less
Christian way, of putting the maxim "take the lowest place" as
found in Lk.xiv.8 f.
The Light at the Baptism, inserted by the Old Lat. MSS. e
g (Mt.iii.16), which was known to Justin and Tatian (and therefore
may be early Roman), is obviously legendary embellishment.
Similar results appear when we compare and contrast the additions made to
Luke in the Western and Alexandrian texts respectively.
We have already noted
that a study of the Acts tends on the whole—
there are exceptions in all statements
with regard to MSS.—
to confirm the originality of the longer Western text.
Of the additions to the Gospel, the longest and the best attested outside
is the incident of the Bloody Sweat and the comforting angel in Gethsemane,
Lk.xi.43-44:
Justin Martyr, c. 153, alludes to this and expressly says that
it occurs "in the memoirs," his term for the Gospels.
It was in
the text known to Irenaeus, Tatian, and Hippolytus.
Thus it must have stood
in the Roman text at a very early date.
The fact that it was known to Dionysius
of Alexandria, c. 250, and occurs in א L suggests
that it may have belonged to that very early state of the Western text which
had invaded Alexandria at the time of Clement c. 200.
True it is omitted
by Syr.
S., but it occurs in Syr. C., and in the
oldest MS. of the Armenian there is a note saying that it occurred in the "first
translations" but was omitted in the "newly issued translations."
Since
the oldest Armenian seems to have been made from the Syriac, it is not impossible
that it has been "revised out" in Syr.
S.
Linguistically, as I think Harnack was the first to point out,
the passage, short as it is, betrays several characteristically Lucan expressions.
Lastly, we gather from Epiphanius, who defends the reading on account of
its antiquity, that it caused serious perplexity to some orthodox persons
as seemingly derogatory to the full Divinity of our Lord.
Presumably it seemed
beneath the dignity of the Uncreated Word Incarnate to evince such a degree
of πάθος;
and still more to require a created angel as a comforter.
Hence there was
every reason, if not for excising it from the text, at least for regarding
MSS. in which it had been accidentally omitted as original.
We conclude then
that B W 579, etc., which omit the words, though they may possibly
give the earliest Alexandrian text, do not preserve the original words of
Luke.
Another famous omission attested not only by B W 579 but also by fam. Θ and Syr. S. is the cry from the Cross,
"Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do",
Lk.xi.34.
Here we cannot be quite sure that the reading stood in the earliest form
of the Roman text;
for, though found in c e and
known to Irenaeus and Tatian, it is omitted by D a b.
But c e, though mixed MSS., probably
represent the African Latin, which on the whole seems nearer than a
b to the oldest Roman text.
And the reading is found in Origen
(Lat. trans.) as well as א L
Syr. C. Arm.
Some years ago the suggestion was made, I think by Dr.
Rendel Harris, that the passage had been deleted because some Christian in
the second century found it hard to believe that God could or ought to forgive
the Jews, since they were the chief instigators in all the persecutions,
and, unlike the Gentiles, had no excuse for their villainous conduct—
being
originally called to be the chosen people and the possessors of the scriptures
that spoke of Christ.
One might add, it would have appeared to a second-century
Christian that, as a mere matter of fact, God had not forgiven the Jews.
Twice within seventy years Jerusalem had been destroyed and hundreds of thousands
of Jews massacred and enslaved.
It followed that, if Christ had prayed that
prayer, God had declined to grant it.
How much simpler to surmise the words
to be an interpolation?
And, if even a single copy could be found lacking
the words, the surmise would become a certainty.
From the MS. evidence we
must infer that the omission, if it be an omission, must have been made at
an earlier date than that of the Bloody Sweat.
The words, of course, may
well have been handed down in a genuine tradition, even if they were not
recorded by Luke.
But their claim to be an authentic part of the text of
the Third Gospel deserves serious consideration;
and, whatever may be the
final verdict, it will be worth while to have stated the case, if only to
illustrate the fact that absence from certain MSS. is not necessarily evidence
of interpolation.
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Jerome in his preface to the Vulgate Gospels mentions assimilation of the
texts of the Gospels to one another in parallel passages as one of the chief
sources of corruption of the text.
The remark was an acute one, and a study
of the existing MSS. shows that it is the commonest of all forms of error.
The best known example is the Lord's prayer, which in the oldest MSS. occurs
in a shorter form in Luke;
in the Byzantine text it is assimilated to Matthew.
As a textual phenomenon assimilation is not peculiar to the Gospels.
It occurs
to a small extent in Homer, where it is found that recurrent phrases tend
to resemble one another more closely in the inferior than they do in the
better MSS.
It has also operated as a corrupting influence on the text of
the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians.
But the Gospels are a special
case, since such a large proportion of their total contents, expressed in
language often all but identical, occurs in more than one of them, so that
the opportunity they afford for assimilation of parallel passages is quite
unique.
The danger of this particular form of corruption would be still further
increased by the fact that, not only would most scribes know the Gospels
almost by heart, but a scribe who was copying Mark or Luke was usually one
who had just refreshed his memory by copying out the text as it stands in
Matthew.
With the words of one Gospel running in his head it would be exceedingly
difficult to copy accurately passages in another Gospel that were almost
but not quite the same.
But assimilation is not only the commonest source of corruption of the
text of the Gospels, it is also the one most difficult to check.
Other forms
of corruption would result in each separate local text having its own special
set of wrong readings;
these can be detected by comparison with other texts.
But assimilation of parallels, being a process, which must have gone on independently
in all local texts, might easily result in identical errors along different
lines of transmission.
Hence, though each text will have its own special
set of assimilations, there is no security that occasionally, especially
in certain striking passages, all texts may not have coincided upon the same
assimilation.
This is a possibility that neither textual critics nor students
of the Synoptic Problem have ever really faced.
Now the strongest argument for the general purity of the B text is that it is free from so many of the assimilations
that are found in the Later Alexandrian, the "Western," or the
Byzantine texts.
But, though far freer from assimilation of parallels than
any other text, B is not entirely immune.
And there
are quite a number of cases where the Western text—
though on the whole it
has suffered far more than any other in this way—
is free from particular
assimilations which have infected B.
Detailed
evidence on this point I shall reserve for the chapter on the Minor Agreements
of Matthew and Luke against Mark.
In this place I propose merely to call
attention to the importance in regard to this particular issue of the set
of readings called by Hort "Western non-interpolations," and
to connect it with the previous discussion of the Roman and Alexandrian
texts of Luke.
Eight of the nine readings to which Hort gave the name "Western non-interpolations" occur
towards the end of Luke, no less than six being in the last chapter (the
ninth is the spear thrust, Mt. xxvii. 49).
These are omitted by D and the Old Latin, but, with
two exceptions, by no other MS.
Hort coined the complicated title "Western non-interpolation," in
order to avoid smirching the fair name of the "Neutral" text by
speaking of these readings as " Neutral interpolations";
but, assuming
them not to be genuine, that is what they really are.
All the same I believe
he was right in rejecting at any rate the majority of them.
Firstly, if Luke
was written in the West, it is hard to suppose that the omission of so many
passages, all of an interesting character and all crowded into the same context,
would have escaped notice at Rome, where presumably other copies from which
the gaps could be refilled would be available.
Secondly, as Hort saw, most
of these additions are of the nature of harmonisations between Luke and other
parts of the New Testament.
But Hort was, I think, mistaken in his emphasis
on these nine out of a large number of omissions by the same Western authorities.
Besides the eight striking readings in the last three chapters of Luke and
the one in Matthew to which Hort gives the special title "Western non-interpolations," there
are a large number of smaller omissions in the Old Latin,
sometimes supported by D, of words or sentences
found in the B text.
To some of these Hort himself calls attention (ii.
p. 176), and he puts them in single brackets in his text—
whereas the selected
nine are distinguished by double brackets.
[The "Western non-interpolations" in
double brackets are in Lk.x.19-20, xxiv.3, 6, 12, 36, 40, 51, 52;
also the
mention of the spear thrust not found in the T.R., Mt.xxvii.49.
Those in
single brackets, sometimes consisting of only a few words, occur in Mt.vi.15,
25, ix.34, i.33, xxi.44, xi.26; Mk.ii.22, x.2, xiv.39; Lk.v.39, x.41 f.,
.19, 21, 39, x.62, xxiv.9; Jn.iii.32, iv.9 (of. W.H. ii. p. 176).
Among those
not noted in Hort's text are Mt.xxi.23 διδάσκοντι,
(om. a b c e Syr. S. C.);
Mk.ix.35 (om. D k );
Mk.xiv.65 καὶ περικαλύπτειν (om. D a f );
Lk.viii.44 τοῦ κρασπέδου (om. D
Lat.);
Jn..8 (om. D Syr.
S.);
others are discussed below, Chap. XI.]
But there are other omissions consisting only of a word or two which he ignores.
But, if Hort was right in definitely rejecting as assimilations the major "non-interpolations" in
Matthew and Luke (which merely reproduce the general sense of something
found in another Gospel), he ought to have rejected more than twenty other
passages in most of which the insertion reproduces in one Gospel the actual
words of a parallel passage in another.
To the student of the Synoptic Problem
these minor omissions in the Western text are all important, though it would
be unsafe to assume that the omission is in every case original;
D is
no more infallible when it omits than when it inserts.
I emphasise this point
because Hort's isolation of these nine passages very much obscures the extent
to which the B text has suffered from assimilation,
not only as between Matthew and Luke, but also between the Synoptics and
John.
Nevertheless it is worthwhile to protest against a too ready inference that,
in regard to genuineness, the whole series, whether of major or minor "non-interpolations," must
stand or fall together.
This is a fallacy.
What the MS. evidence proves is
that these passages were, as a matter of fact, absent from the ancestor of D and
the Old Latin, but present in an ultimate ancestor
of all other texts.
The tacit assumption that either the one or the other
of these ancestors was in every case correct is quite unwarranted.
No MS.
or group of MSS. is even approximately infallible;
and all have suffered
from some accidental omissions.
It is more probable that in some cases B is correct in retaining the words, even if in the majority D is
right in omitting them.
The real case against the genuineness of these readings
rests, I must repeat, not on their omission in one line of the MS. tradition,
but in the fact that they look like attempts at harmonisation, especially
between the Synoptics and John.
But there is one of Hort's nine passages where the argument from assimilation
seems to me to cut the other way.
Can the sentence,
and he was taken up into heaven,
Lk.xxiv.51,
really be regarded as due to "assimilation" from the story of
the Ascension in the Acts?
If so, it is an assimilation of an incredibly unskilful kind; for it makes
the Ascension take place on Easter Day instead of forty days later as the
Acts relates.
Besides, the words "he was taken up into heaven" seem
required to explain the back reference in Acts i.2, which implies that the
Gospel contained an account of what Jesus began to do and to teach "until
the day when he was taken up."
This is rather pointless unless the Gospel
contained an account of the Ascension.
On linguistic grounds it is probable [Of.
Hawkins' Hor. Syn. p. 177 ff.] that a considerable interval
elapsed between the writing of the Gospel and Acts.
In the interval the author
may have come across a fresh cycle of tradition.
If so, Acts i.2 should be
read as an attempt by the author to recall his former statement with the
object of correcting it in favour of the account of the Ascension forty days
later which immediately follows.
In that case the omission of the words in
Lk.xxiv.51 is an attempt to remove a contradiction between the Gospel and
the Acts;
it is the text which omits, not that which inserts, that has suffered
harmonistic correction.
Another clear example of the avoidance by the Roman text of Luke of an assimilation found in the Alexandrian is the Voice at the Baptism, Lk.iii.22. In B א, etc., the words are practically identical with those in Mark and Matthew, i.e.
"Thou art my beloved Son,
in thee I am well pleased."
But D a b c ff 2, etc., with the notable support of Clement of Alexandria, read
"Thou art my beloved Son,
this day have I begotten thee."
Now this reading is quite definitely that cited by Justin and was therefore
current in Rome c. 155.
Again, on grounds of internal probability it is clearly
to be preferred for two reasons,
I would not, however, leave the reader with the impression that the D text
has suffered less from assimilation than that of B.
Quite the contrary.
Assimilation is not only more frequent, but more thoroughgoing.
Take, for example, μὴ φοβοῦ: ἀπὸ τοῦ
νῦν ἀνθρώπους ἐσῃ
ζωγρῶν. Lk.v.10.
Here D,
with the partial support of e, reads
δεῦτε καὶ μὴ γένεσθε ἁλεῖς ἰχθύων‧
Ποιήσω γὰρ ὑμᾶς ἁλιεῖς ἀνθρώπων,
which is
very much closer to the language of Matthew.
But it is unnecessary to labour
this point, since everybody admits that, not only the "Western" and
the Byzantine texts as a whole, but each different sub-group of MSS. of these
texts, have in different ways and in different places suffered assimilation.
The text of B alone has been placed by critics on a pedestal by itself, and,
because it has undoubtedly suffered less than any other MS., has been supposed
to be immune.
And this unfounded supposition has played havoc with the scientific
study of the Synoptic Problem.
The history of the text of the Gospels is, as it were, concentrated into
a single passage in the set of variants in the lists of the Twelve Apostles
(Mt.x.2-4, Mk.iii.16-19, Lk.vi.14-16).
It would appear that in the first
century local traditions varied as to the twelfth name;
and each of the Synoptics
embodies a different tradition.
Origen remarks, [Com.
in Rom. praef.]
"The same man whom Matthew calls Lebbaeus and Mark Thaddaeus,
Luke writes as Judas of James."
It appears, then, that in
the text he used, obviously in this instance the correct one, each Gospel
gave a different name.
In Syr. S. Judas, in a
b h (but not in D k ) Judas Zelotes is
substituted for Lebbaeus in Matthew, though not in Mark.
For this part of
Matthew, e is missing, but in this
MS. the name Judas is substituted in Mark also.
If we remember that Judas,
not Iscariot, is mentioned as one of the Twelve by John, we understand why
the list, which contained his name, should be supposed the more authentic.
Clearly the discrepancy troubled scribes.
We turn to the Greek uncials and
what do we find?
There is no variant in Luke;
but B א read Thaddaeus in both
Matthew and Mark;
[124 (probably also the Ferrar ancestor) supports B א.
Other
members of fam. Θ have
the Byzantine conflation.]
D reads Lebbaeus in both Gospels;
while the Byzantine text
reads
"Lebbaeus who is called Thaddaeus"
in Matthew,
but is content to follow B א in Mark.
We notice three points.
Hort, we have argued, was right in regarding the Textus Receptus as a descendant of the revision made by Lucian
of Antioch about AD 300.
And he was right in his contention that in the main
this revision was based on earlier texts that we can still identify.
We group these earlier texts into an EGYPTIAN, admirably
preserved in א B L;
an ITALIAN & GALLIC, represented, with many
corruptions, in D a b ff 2;
an AFRICAN (perhaps = earlier Roman), found in k,
e, WMk.;
an ANTIOCHENE, less adequately known to us
through the Old Syriac;
and a CAESAREAN, fairly well preserved in
the non-Byzantine readings of fam. Θ.
[See Table: “The Manuscript Tradition”]
This grouping of the older texts differs radically from Hort's, but not in
a way that seriously affects his view of the methods of Lucian's revision,
though we may feel a little less confident than he that Lucian possessed
no MS. containing ancient and possibly correct readings not found in our
surviving authorities.
But then comes the really fundamental question:
was
Hort right in reprinting almost in its entirety the oldest Egyptian text?
Or was Lucian right in the principle, if not in its detailed application,
of framing an eclectic text, adopting readings now from one text, now from
another, presumably on the combined grounds of extent and antiquity of attestation
and of "internal probability"?
To this question one must, I think, answer that the eclectic principle of
deciding in each separate case on grounds of "internal probability" what
appears to be the best reading is, in spite of its subjectivity, theoretically
sounder than the almost slavish following of a single text which Hort preferred.
But
this in no way means that we return to the Textus Receptus.
Lucian's canons of "internal probability" differed fundamentally
from ours.
For example, his eye would be inclined to look
with most favour on that one of two readings, which attributed to an evangelist
a more smooth, graceful, and stately style.
To us, roughness, within limits,
is a sign of originality.
Again, to him it would seem more
likely that a reading, supposing it was found in MSS. sufficiently numerous
and ancient, which brought two evangelists into closer agreement with one
another was more likely to be original than one which enhanced the difference
between them.
We should judge otherwise.
Hence,
even if we accept the necessity of an eclectic text, the selection of readings
admitted to it would differ very considerably from that made by Lucian.
On
the other hand, while realising that B has
more wrong readings than Hort was ready to admit, due weight must be given
to Hort's principle that the authority of a MS., which in a majority of cases
supports what is clearly the right reading, counts for more than that of
others in cases where decision is more difficult.
Hence
a critical text of the Gospels will still, like that of Westcott and Hort,
be primarily based on the text of Alexandria as preserved in our two oldest
MSS. B א.
But
a future editor will be on the look out for evidence that will enable him
to detect instances where these, like all other MSS., have been corrupted
by assimilation of parallel passages, and he will be ready to accept a far
larger number of readings found in those authorities that represent the local
texts of other churches.
In particular he will give special
weight to the readings of fam. Θ.
The rejection, however, of a theory, which enabled Hort to attribute supreme
authority to the B text, complicates in practice
the task of the textual critic.
Textual criticism is not the only department
of life where an infallible guide, if such existed, would save us trouble
and uncertainty.
No purely external mechanical test of the genuineness of
readings has yet been devised.
Where important variants exist, and can be
shown to have existed as early as the third century, we can in the last resort
only fall back on the exercise of insight and common sense to make our choice.
Those qualities being rare, or, at any rate, hard to recognise by any objective
test in a matter of this kind, there will always remain a difference of opinion
on many points.
It follows that, if by a
"scientific" text is meant one reached by some mechanical and objective
principles, which completely rule out the subjective vagaries of the individual
editor, such cannot be attained.
In this department of knowledge the appeal
is in the last resort to the insight, judgement, and common sense of the
individual scholar, which are necessarily "subjective."
What, however, is most wanted at the present moment is not a new critical
text—for most purposes Westcott and Hort is good enough.
The real need is
for an edition of an entirely different character—
a thesaurus of various
readings to bring up to date Tischendorf's large edition of 1869. von Soden
attempted this and failed;
his edition is not only full of inaccuracies,
it is often actually unintelligible.
But, I would insist, in such an edition,
it is of quite fundamental importance that the text printed above the Apparatus
Criticus should be, not an eclectic text constructed by the editor himself,
but the Byzantine text.
[For this purpose the Byzantine
text should be determined by some purely objective criterion, such as the
agreement of two out of the three MSS. S V Ω,
or, perhaps better, E S V.]
The reason is obvious.
The number of MSS. which have altogether escaped revision
from the Byzantine standard is extremely small, yet the readings which the
critic most wants to know are those of older texts which differ from the
Byzantine text;
if, then, the Byzantine text is printed above the Apparatus
Criticus, the readings the critic first wants are those which first strike
the eye.
Again the Apparatus itself would be enormously simplified;
for it
need only contain readings that differ from that text. Any MS. not cited
in the Apparatus would be understood, either to agree with the text printed
at the top of the page, or not to be extant for that passage; and accordingly
the extent of hiatus in important MSS. should be noted on each page.
MSS.
should be cited in separate groups, according as they habitually agree with
the Alexandrian, Eastern or Western type of text.
Lastly, since textual criticism
under the most favourable circumstances involves great strain on the eyesight,
small print and small numbers and letters above the line, such as von Soden
delights in, should be resolutely eschewed.
In conclusion it is worthwhile
to note that those same investigations that have compelled us to reject Hort’s
theory have shown that the authorities available for determining the text
are more numerous and more independent of one another than that theory would
allow.
It follows, therefore, that, though on minor points of reading absolute
certainty may often be unobtainable, a text of the Gospels can be reached,
the freedom of which from serious modification or interpolation is guaranteed
by the concurrence of different lines of ancient and independent evidence.
For the historian, as well as for the ordinary Christian reader, a text like
that of Hort or Tischendorf, or that used in preparing the Revised Version,
may be taken as reliable for all ordinary purposes.
But for fine points of
scholarship, or when dealing with the Synoptic Problem, where the settlement
of a question of great import may depend on the minutest verbal resemblances
or differences between the Gospels, it is vital to realise that in our search
for the original reading we must, on occasion, go behind the printed texts.
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