John William Burgon

“ But we respectfully submit that “Syrian,” “Western,” “Western and Syrian,” as Critical expressions, are absolutely without meaning, as well as without use to a student in this difficult department of sacred Science. They supply no information. They are never supported by a particle of intelligible evidence. They are often demonstrably wrong, and always unreasonable. They are Dictation, not Criticism. When at last it is discovered that they do but signify that certain words are not found in codex b,—they are perceived to be the veriest foolishness also. ”

“ What else but a real calamity would be the sentence of perpetual banishment passed by our Revisionists on “that most excellent gift, the gift of Charity,” and the general substitution of “Love” in its place? Do not these learned men perceive that “Love” is not an equivalent term? Can they require to be told that, because of S. Paul's exquisite and life-like portrait of “Charity,” and the use which has been made of the word in sacred literature in consequence, it has come to pass that the word “Charity” connotes many ideas to which the word “Love” is an entire stranger? ”

“ You have learned to employ freely Drs. Westcott and Hort's peculiar terminology. You adopt their scarcely-intelligible phrases: their wild hypotheses: their arbitrary notions about “Intrinsic” and “Transcriptional Probability:” their baseless theory of “Conflation:” their shallow “Method of Genealogy.” You have, in short, evidently swallowed their novel invention whole. I can no longer wonder at the result arrived at by the body of Revisionists. Well may Dr. Scrivener have pleaded in vain! He found Drs. Ellicott and Westcott and Hort too many for him.... ”

“ Always instructive, it is sometimes even entertaining to trace the history of a mistake which, dating from the IInd or IIIrd century, has remained without a patron all down the subsequent ages, until at last it has been suddenly taken up in our own times by an Editor of the sacred Text, and straightway palmed off upon an unlearned generation as the genuine work of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ If ever a severe expression escapes us, it is because our Revisionists themselves seem to have so very imperfectly realized the responsibility of their undertaking, and the peculiar difficulties by which it is unavoidably beset. The truth is,—as all who have given real thought to the subject must be aware,—the phenomena of Language are among the most subtle and delicate imaginable: the problem of Translation, one of the most manysided and difficult that can be named. ”

“ Scrivener is the most accomplished living exponent. We hear it confidently asserted that the contention is nothing else but an irrational endeavour on the one part to set up the many modern against the few ancient Witnesses;—the later cursive copies against the “old Uncials;”—inveterate traditional Error against undoubted primitive Truth. The disciples of the new popular school, on the contrary, are represented as relying exclusively on Antiquity. We respectfully assure as many as require the assurance, that the actual contention is of an entirely different nature. ”

“ Whenever the evidence is about evenly balanced, few it is hoped will deny that the Text which has been “in possession” for three centuries and a half, and which rests on infinitely better manuscript evidence than that of any ancient work which can be named,—should, for every reason, be let alone.52
But, (we shall perhaps be asked,) has any critical Editor of the N. T. seriously taught the reverse of all this? Yes indeed, we answer. Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf,—the most recent and most famous of modern editors,—have all three adopted a directly opposite theory of textual revision. ”

“ Apostles,” (says the learned editor of the codex in question, Dr. Scrivener,47) —
“We find ourselves confronted with a text, the like to which we have no experience of elsewhere. It is hardly an exaggeration to assert that codex d reproduces the Textus receptus much in the same way that one of the best Chaldee Targums does the Hebrew of the Old Testament: so wide are the variations in the diction, so constant and inveterate the practice of expounding the narrative by means of interpolations which seldom recommend themselves as genuine by even a semblance of internal probability.” ”

“ I am saying that the systematic, and sometimes serious,—always inexcusable,—liberties which have been taken with the Greek Text by the Revisionists of 1881, constitute a ground of offence against their work for which no pretext was afforded by the Revision of 1611. To argue therefore from what has been the fate of the one, to what is likely to be the fate of the other, is illogical. The cases are not only not parallel: they are even wholly dissimilar.
[pg 513] The cheapest copies of our Authorized Version at least exhibit the Word of God faithfully and helpfully. ”

“ But to ignore the “Traditional Text,” is impossible. Equally impossible is it to overlook its practical identity with the Text of Chrysostom, who lived and taught at Antioch till a.d. 398, when he became Abp. of Constantinople. Now this is a very awkward circumstance, and must in some way be got over; for it transports us, at a bound, from the stifling atmosphere of Basle and Alcala,—from Erasmus and Stunica, Stephens and Beza and the Elzevirs,—to Antioch and Constantinople in the latter part of the IVth century. What is to be done? ”

“ Whatever is found in one of these ancient authorities must confessedly be an ‘ancient Reading:’ but it does not therefore follow that it is the ancient Reading of the place. Now, it is the ancient Reading, of which we are always in search. And he who sincerely desires to ascertain what actually is the Witness of Antiquity,— (i.e., what is the prevailing testimony of all the oldest documents,) —will begin by casting his prejudices and his predilections to the winds, and will devote himself conscientiously to an impartial survey of the whole field of Evidence. ”

“ Whatever may be urged in favour of Biblical Revision, it is at least undeniable that the undertaking involves a tremendous risk. Our Authorized Version is the one religious link which at present binds together ninety millions of English-speaking men scattered over the earth's surface. Is it reasonable that so unutterably precious, so sacred a bond should be endangered, for the sake of representing certain words more accurately,—here and there translating a tense with greater precision,—getting rid of a few archaisms? ”

“ In the meantime, we repeat that this question has now to be fought out: for to ignore it any longer is impossible. Compromise of any sort between the two conflicting parties, is impossible also; for they simply contradict one another. Codd. b and א are either among the purest of manuscripts,—or else they are among the very foulest. The Text of Drs. Westcott and Hort is either the very best which has ever appeared,—or else it is the very worst; the nearest to the sacred Autographs,—or the furthest from them. There is no room for both opinions; and there cannot exist any middle view. ”

“ They must have been clever people certainly if they “cut branches from” anything except trees. Was it because our Revisionists felt this, that in the margin they volunteer the information, that the Greek for “branches” is in strictness “layers of leaves”? But what are “layers of leaves”? and what proof is there that στοιβάδες has that meaning? and how could “layers of leaves” have been suddenly procured from such a quarter? We turn to our Authorized Version, and are refreshed by the familiar and intelligible words: “And others cut down branches off the trees and strawed them in the way.” ”

“ You assume that you possess a power of divination which enables you to dispense with laborious processes of Induction; while I, on the contrary, insist that the Truth of the Text of Scripture is to be elicited exclusively from the consentient testimony of the largest number of the best Copies, Fathers, Versions.1149 There is, I am persuaded, no royal road to the attainment of Truth in this department of Knowledge. Only through the lowly portal of humility,—only by self-renouncing labour,—may we ever hope to reach the innermost shrine. ”

“ Undeniable at all events it is, that the effect which these ever-recurring announcements produce on the devout reader of Scripture is the reverse of edifying: is never helpful: is always bewildering. A man of ordinary acuteness can but exclaim,—“Yes, very likely. But what of it? My eye happens to alight on ‘Bethesda’ (in S. John v. 2) ; against which I find in the margin,—‘Some ancient authorities read Bethsaida, others Bethzatha.’ Am I then to understand that in the judgment of the Revisionists it is uncertain which of those three names is right?”... ”

“ Q. R. “You are not at liberty, logically, to draw any such inference from the premisses. The purest documents of all existed perforce in the first century: must have then existed. The spring is perforce purest at its source. My whole contention has been, and is,—That there is nothing at all unreasonable in the supposition that two stray copies of the IVth century,—coming down to our own times without a history and without a character,—may exhibit a thoroughly depraved text. More than this does not follow lawfully from the premisses. ”

“ Our business is exclusively with the result at which the Revisionists of the New Testament have arrived: and it is to this that we now address ourselves; with the mere avowal of our grave anxiety at the spectacle of an assembly of scholars, appointed to revise an English Translation, finding themselves called upon, as every fresh difficulty emerged, to develop the skill requisite for critically revising the original Greek Text. ”

“ Not the Quarterly Reviewer certainly. “The honour which is given to the Textus Receptus by the Quarterly Reviewer” is no other than the honour which it has enjoyed at the hands of scholars, by universal consent, for the last three centuries. That is to say, he uses it as a standard of comparison, and employs it for habitual reference. So do you. You did so, at least, in the year 1870. You did more; for you proposed “to proceed with the work of Revision, whether of text or translation, making the current ‘Textus Receptus’ the standard.”880 We are perfectly agreed therefore. ”

“ It can never be any question among scholars, that a fatal error was committed when a body of Divines, appointed to revise the Authorized English Version of the New Testament Scriptures, addressed themselves to the solution of an entirely different and far more intricate problem, namely the re-construction of the Greek Text. We are content to pass over much that is distressing in the antecedent history of their enterprise. ”

“ Without the remotest intention of imposing views of our own on the general Reader, but only to enable him to give his intelligent assent to much that is to follow, we find ourselves constrained in the first instance,—before conducting him over any part of the domain which the Revisionists have ventured uninvited to occupy,—to premise a few ordinary facts which lie on the threshold of the science of Textual Criticism. ”

“ But when I find them hopelessly at variance among themselves: above all, when I find (1) all other Manuscripts of whatever date,— (2) the most ancient Versions,—and (3) , the whole body of the primitive Fathers, decidedly opposed to them,—I am (to speak plainly) at a loss to understand how any man of sound understanding, acquainted with all the facts of the case and accustomed to exact reasoning, can hesitate to regard the unsupported (or the slenderly supported) testimony of one or other of them as simply worthless. ”

“ This,—which I venture to style the unscientific method,—reached its culminating point when Professors Westcott and Hort recently put forth their Recension of the Greek Text. Their work is indeed quite a psychological curiosity. Incomprehensible to me is it how two able men of disciplined understandings can have seriously put forth the volume which they call “Introduction—Appendix.” It is the very Reductio ad absurdum of the uncritical method of the last fifty years. ”

“ It has been constructed throughout on an utterly erroneous hypothesis. And I inscribe this Volume to you, my friend, as a conspicuous member of that body of faithful and learned Laity by whose deliberate verdict, when the whole of the evidence has been produced and the case has been fully argued out, I shall be quite willing that my contention may stand or fall.
The English (as well as the Greek) of the newly “Revised Version” is hopelessly at fault. It is to me simply unintelligible how a company of Scholars can have spent ten years in elaborating such a very unsatisfactory production. ”

“ Assemble rather an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scot; a Frenchman, a German, a Spaniard; a Russian, a Pole, an Hungarian; an Italian, a Greek, a Turk. From Noah these 12 are all confessedly descended; but if they are silent, and you know nothing whatever about their antecedents,—your remarks about their respective “genealogies” must needs prove as barren—as Dr. Hort's about the “genealogies” of copies of Scripture. “The factor of Genealogy,” in short, in this discussion, represents a mere phantom of the brain: is the name of an imagination—not of a fact. ”

“ There is absolutely no room for such Criticism in respect of a reading which is found in every known MS.,—in every known Version,—in every Father who quotes the place: a reading which Divines, and Scholars who were not Divines,—Critics of the Text, and grammarians who were without prepossessions concerning Scripture,—Editors of the Greek and Translators of the Greek into other languages,—all alike have acquiesced in, from the beginning until now. ”

“ If mankind can afford to do without either consent of Copies or of Fathers, why does mankind any longer adhere to the ancient methods of proof? Why do Critics of every school still accumulate references to [pg 292] MSS., explore the ancient Versions, and ransack the Patristic writings in search of neglected citations of Scripture? That the ancients were indifferent Textual Critics, is true enough. The mischief done by Origen in this department,—through his fondness for a branch of Learning in which his remarks show that he was all unskilled,—is not to be told. ”