Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener

“ But in the case of Scholz's Greek Testament the fair indulgence we must all hope for is abused beyond the bounds of reason or moderation. The student who has had much experience of his volumes, especially if he has ever compared the collations there given with the original manuscripts, will never dream of resorting to them for information he can expect to gain elsewhere, or rest with confidence on a statement of fact merely because Scholz asserts it. ”

“ Those who devote themselves to the criticism of the text of the New Testament have only of late come to understand the full importance of attending closely to the mutual connexion subsisting between their several materials of every description, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers. ”

“ Even if the reader has not gone with me in every case, more than enough has been alleged to prove to demonstration that the true and pure text of the sacred writers is not to be looked for in א or B, in אB, or BD, or BL, or any like combination of a select few authorities, but demands, in every fresh case as it arises, the free and impartial use of every available source of information. Yet after all, Cod. B is a document of such value, that it grows by experience even upon those who may have been a little prejudiced against it by reason of the excessive claims of its too zealous friends321. ”

“ I know of no person who has affected to construct a text of the N. T. on diplomatic grounds exclusively, without paying some regard to the character of the sense produced; nor, were the experiment tried, would any one find it easy to dispense with discretion and the dictates of good sense: nature would prove too strong for the dogmas of a wayward theory. “It is difficult not to indulge in subjectiveness, at least in some measure,” writes Dr. Tregelles (Account of Printed Text, p. 109) : and, thus qualified, we may add that it is one of those difficulties a sane man would not wish to overcome. ”

“ It is impossible to exhibit any adequate abridgement of an investigation which owes all its cogency to the number and variety of minute particulars, each one weak enough by itself, the whole comprising a mass of evidence which cannot be gainsaid. In the works of Apuleius and of the African Fathers, Tertullian [150?-220?] , Cyprian [† 258] , and in the following century, Arnobius, Lactantius, Augustine, we obtain a glimpse into the genius and character of the dialect in which the earliest form of the Old Latin version is composed. ”

“ It would have been a grievous thing indeed if we really had no better means of ascertaining the true readings of the New Testament than are contained in this editor's scanty roll; and he who, for the sake of some private theory, shall presume to shut out from his mind the great mass of information God's Providence has preserved for our use, will hardly be thought to have chosen the most hopeful method for bringing himself or others to the knowledge of the truth. ”

“ We would rather comprise in our own system all that is sound and exact in them, while we withstand the attempt to carry them beyond the limits which they may legitimately occupy, and refuse to generalize on the strength of facts which are only partially true.
We have already laid down the axiom admitted by all, that manuscripts of the original hold the first rank among our critical materials; versions, and, yet more, the citations of ecclesiastical authors being subordinate to them. ”

“ For the other functions of an editor accuracy and learning, diligence and zeal are sufficient: but the delicate adjustment of conflicting probabilities calls for no mean exercise of a critical genius. This innate faculty we lack in Wetstein, and notably in Scholz; it was highly developed in Mill and Bengel, and still more in Griesbach. His well-known power in this respect is the main cause of our deep regret for the failure of Bentley's projected work, with all its faults whether of plan or execution. ”

“ Where the earliest Greek authorities waver as to the particles by which the parts of the narrative shall be connected—some, e.g. giving καί, others δέ, others οὖν—the Georgian constantly passes abruptly to the new matter without any connecting particle at all—and this, although as a language [pg 158] Georgian is richer in such connecting particles than is Greek. This peculiarity of the version, which is also shared by the old Armenian version, seems to prove that it was made from a primitive text, in which editors had not yet begun to smooth away the sudden transitions. ”

“ Yet while refusing without hesitation the claim of the monstra which follow to be regarded as a part of the sacred text, we are by no means insensible to the fact impressed upon us by the Dean of Llandaff, that there are readings which conciliate favour the more we think over them: it being the special privilege of Truth always to grow upon candid minds. ”

“ It is no less true to fact than paradoxical in sound, that the worst corruptions to which the New Testament has ever been subjected, originated within a hundred years after it was composed; that Irenaeus and the African Fathers and the whole Western, with a portion of the Syrian Church, used far inferior manuscripts to those employed by Stunica, or Erasmus, or Stephen thirteen centuries later, when [pg 265] moulding the Textus Receptus. What passage in the Holy Gospels would be more jealously guarded than the record of the heavenly voice at the Lord's Baptism? ”

“ To Griesbach must be assigned the merit of being the earliest editor of the Greek Testament who saw, or at least who acted upon the principle, that it is far more profitable as well as more scholarlike to do one thing well, than to attempt more than can be performed completely and with accuracy. ”

“ The advantage of some such arrangement is sufficiently manifest, if only it could be made to rest on grounds in themselves certain, or, at all events, fairly probable. We should then possess some better guide in our choice between conflicting readings, than the very rough and unsatisfactory process of counting the number of witnesses produced on either side. It is not that such a mode of conducting critical enquiries would not be very convenient, that Griesbach's theory is universally abandoned by modern scholars, but because there is no valid reason for believing it to be true. ”

“ The collation of the New Testament in the eighth edition of Tischendorf's N. T. is accurate so far as it goes, but is far from being exhaustive or based on a consensus of the oldest MSS. Old codices of the Armenian Gospels are very common, and the present writer knows of as many as eight, none of them later than the year a.d. 1000; of four of these he has complete collations. The rest of the N. T. is only found in codices of the whole Bible, which are rare and always written in minuscules, never in uncials as are the Gospels. ”

“ The reader has but to open the first recent critical work he shall meet with, to see them scarcely ever in unison; perpetually divided two against three, or perhaps four against one. All the readings these venerable monuments contain must of course be ancient, or they would not be found where they are; but they cannot all be true. So again, if our search be extended to the versions and primitive Fathers, the same phenomenon unfolds itself, to our grievous perplexity and disappointment. How much is contained in Cureton's Syriac and the Old Latin for which no Greek original can now be alleged? ”

“ It may readily be supposed that the very few manuscripts which, being ancient themselves, are regarded by the school of Lachmann as alone preserving an ancient and genuine form, have not been selected as virtually the sole authorities for the settling of the sacred text, except for reasons which those who thus adopt them regard as weighty, and which merit at any rate our best consideration before we put them aside as insufficient. ”

“ No living man, possessed of a tincture of scholarship, would dream of setting up testimony exclusively modern against the unanimous voice of antiquity. The point on which we insist is briefly this:—that the evidence of ancient authorities is anything but unanimous; that they are perpetually at variance with each other, even if we limit the term ancient within the narrowest bounds. Shall it include, among the manuscripts of the Gospels, none but the five oldest copies Codd. ”

“ Yet whatever other disadvantages the Patristic writings may labour under, we are at [pg 279] any rate certain respecting the age in which they were composed, the works themselves being assumed to be authentic. If Irenaeus, or Tertullian, or Origen, expressly assure us that particular words which they name were read in their copies of Scripture, we cannot withstand their testimony that such words were really found in manuscripts of the New Testament in the second and third centuries, one or two hundred years before Codd. אB were in existence. ”

“ We have already confessed that there is a tendency on the part of copyists to assimilate the narratives of the several Gospels to each other; and that such Harmonies as that of Tatian would facilitate the process; that synonymous words are liable to be exchanged and harsh constructions supplied. Part of the value of the older codices arises from their comparative freedom from such corrections: but then this modernizing process is on the part of copyists unsystematic, almost unconscious; it is wholly different from the deliberate formal emendations implied throughout Dr. Hort's volume. ”

“ At this remote period, during the first half of the second century, must have originated the wide variations from the prevailing text on the part of our primary authorities, both manuscripts and versions, which survive in Cod. Bezae of the Greek, and in the Old Latin codices or at least in some of them. The text they exhibit is distinguished as Western, and they have been joined by a powerful ally, the Curetonian Syriac. Critics of every school agree in admitting the primitive existence of this Western recension, and in their estimate of its general spirit. ”

“ Every one must honour the reverential temper in which these eminent men approached their delicate task; yet, if their sentiments be true, where is the place for internal evidence at all? A more “overwhelming weight” of manuscript authority upholds καρδίαις in 2 Cor. iii. 3: shall we place it in the text, “leaving the real Word of God to vindicate its own meaning”? Ought we to assume that the reading found in the few most ancient codices—not, in the case of Rom. ”

“ The various readings in the Peshitto in the eighteen verses amount to at least thirty-one; but the majority are the merest minutiae of spelling and pronunciation. Only one deserves serious attention; and even that, more for accuracy than in relation to the sense of the context; so little has the Syriac New Testament been altered, or corrupted, in the course of ages of transcription. ”

“ He seldom notices at all such various readings as arise from the transposition of words, the insertion or omission of the Greek article, from homoeoteleuta, or itacisms, or from manifest errors of the pen; while in respect to general accuracy he is as much inferior to those who have trod in his steps, as he rises above Stephen and Ussher, or the persons employed by Walton and Fell. It has been my fortune to collate not a few manuscripts after this great critic, and I have elsewhere been obliged to notice these plain facts, I would fain trust in no disparaging temper. ”

“ By omitting δῆλον of the Received text, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, produce a Greek sentence as inconsequential as the most thorough votaries of the “harder reading” can wish for: “For we brought nothing into the world, because neither can we carry anything out.” Dr. Hort sees, of course, that St. Paul could not reason in this fashion, and says that “The text [i.e. his text, without δῆλον] is manifestly the parent of all the other readings, which are futile attempts to smooth away its difficulty. ”

“ The Bodleian Syriac has yet another variation, ὁ Θεός, in support of which we have the important second hand of C, 5, 8, 68, tol. of the Vulgate, the Armenian (with ισ in the margin) , the Arabic of Erpenius, Clement of Alexandria, and Lucifer. The Greek of Didymus has κσ ισ, but his Latin translation ισ, which Jerome also recognized, although he wrongly supposed that Joshua was meant. While we acknowledge that the Person who saved Israel out of Egypt was indeed the Saviour of the world, we should rather expect that He would be called the Christ (1 Cor. x. 4) than Jesus. ”

“ Badness in Latin texts is just what we should expect amongst people who were poor Greek scholars, and lived at a distance. The Syrians on the contrary were close to Judea, and Greek had been known among them for centuries. It was not likely that within reach of the Apostles and almost within their lifetime a version should be made so bad as to require to be thrown off afterwards. ”

“ In the place then of the two or three dialects known until recent years, we have now at least five: the Bohairic, Sahidic, Fayoumic, Middle Egyptian, and Akhmimic, not to speak of the Bashmuric, in which no literary remains exist. The exact relations of these dialects to one another have not yet been satisfactorily worked out, and the problem is complicated by the fact that most of them had no fixed or standard form, and that papyri (especially those containing documents in the popular speech) vary in every locality and every age. ”

“ Questions, however, are perpetually arising, when we come to examine the oldest manuscripts of Scripture, which cannot be resolved unless we bear in mind the leading particulars wherein the diction of the Evangelists and Apostles differs not only from that of pure classical models, but also of their own contemporaries who composed in the Greek language, or used it as their ordinary tongue. ”

“ L and the Bohairic version stand to Cod. B is too close to allow them their full value as independent witnesses unless when they are at variance with that great uncial, wheresoever it may have been written: the same might be said of the beautiful Latin fragment k from Bobbio. To whatever nations they belong, their resemblances are too strong and perpetual not to compel us to withhold from them a part of the consideration their concord would otherwise lay claim to. The same is incontestably the case with the Curetonian and margin of the Harkleian Syriac in connexion with Cod. ”

“ Hort say (Notes, p. 76) , “It remains no easy matter to explain how the verse as it stands can be reasonably understood without ἤ, or how such a mere slip as the loss of Η after ΕΙ should have so much excellent Greek authority, more especially as the absence of ἤ increases the obvious no less than the real difficulty of the verse.”
John vii. 39. One of the worst faults a manuscript (the same is not true of a version) can have is a habit of supplying, either from the margin or from the scribe's misplaced ingenuity, some word that may clear up a difficulty, or limit the writer's meaning. ”

“ If Greek had spread so little in the Delta in the fourth or fifth century as to make a Bohairic version necessary, it is not likely to have been more widely prevalent in the third. On these grounds then we should naturally expect Christianity to spread earliest among the native populations of the districts round Alexandria, and also that the New Testament or a portion of it would be translated very early into their language. Nor again does there seem any evidence for deriving the Bohairic dialect from the Akhmimish. ”

“ For π we find the Vulgate and a Greek note set in the Harkleian margin, for φ the Peshitto and Harkleian Syriac, both Egyptian, the Armenian, and both Ethiopic, with Erpenius' Arabic: the Arabic of the Polyglott gives both renderings. Thus the majority of the versions incline one way, the oldest and most numerous manuscripts the other. It is useless to cite Greek writers, except they show from the context which word they favour. The form with φ was doubtless read in the Apostolic Constitutions, and twice in Cyril of Alexandria, and that word is supported as well by 2 Macc. vii. ”

“ If (as we firmly believe) the less ancient codices ought to have their proper weight and appreciable influence in fixing the true text of Scripture, our favourable estimate of them must rest on other arguments than Scholz has urged in their behalf. ”