John William Burgon

“ And when, as in the present instance, Antiquity, Variety of testimony, Respectability of witnesses, and Number are overwhelmingly in favour of the Traditional Text, what else is it but an outrage on the laws of evidence to claim that the same little band of documents which have already come before us so often, and always been found in error, even though aided by speculative suppositions, shall be permitted to outweigh all other testimony? ”

“ It was only to have been anticipated that the Author of the Everlasting Gospel—that masterpiece of Divine Wisdom, that miracle of superhuman skill—would shew Himself supremely careful for the protection and preservation of His own chiefest work. Every fresh discovery of the beauty and preciousness of the Deposit in its essential structure does but serve to deepen the conviction that a marvellous provision must needs have been made in God's eternal counsels for the effectual conservation of the inspired Text. ”

“ But Textual Science, like all Science, is concerned, not with the superficial, but with the real;—not with the dress in which the text is presented, but with the text itself;—not again with the bare fact of antiquity, since age alone is no sure test of excellence, but with the character of the testimony which from the nature of the subject-matter is within reach. Judging then the later Uncials, and comparing them with the Cursives, we make the discovery that the texts of both are mainly the same. ”

“ We are all, I trust, agreed at least in this,—That the thing which we are always in search of is the Text of Scripture as it actually proceeded from the inspired writers themselves. It is never, I mean, “ancient readings” which we propose as the ultimate object of our inquiries. It is always the oldest Reading of all which we desire to ascertain; in other words, the original Text, nothing else or less than the very words of the holy Evangelists and Apostles themselves. ”

“ Is that to be our fundamental principle? Are we, in other words, to put up with the transparent fallacy that the oldest reading must of necessity be found in the oldest document? Well, if we have made up our minds [pg 042] that such is to be our method, then let us proceed to construct our text chiefly by the aid of the Old Latin and Peshitto Versions,—the oldest authorities extant of a continuous text: and certainly, wherever these are observed to agree in respect of any given reading, let us hear nothing about the conflicting testimony of א or B, which are of the fourth century ”

“ But this accession of knowledge which puts our opponents in the wrong, has no effect on us except to confirm our position with new proof. Indeed, we welcome the unlocking of the all but boundless treasury of ancient wealth, since our theory, being as open as possible, and resting upon the visible and real, remains not only uninjured but strengthened. If it were to require any re-arrangement, that would be only a re-ordering of particulars, not of our principles which are capacious enough to admit of any addition of materials of judgement. ”

“ Like Serapion and Titus, Basil and Cyril of Jerusalem are in fact reproducing Origen: but unlike the former two, the two last-named quote the Gospel elliptically. The liberty indeed which the ancient Fathers freely exercised, when quoting Scripture for a purpose,—of leaving out whatever was irrelevant; of retaining just so much of the text as made for their argument,—may never be let slip out of sight. ”

“ It will be readily understood how easily the text of the Holy Gospels might have come to be corrupted in oral teaching whether from the pulpit or otherwise, and how corruptions must have so embedded themselves in the memories and in the copies of many Christians of the day, that it needed centuries before they could be cast out. That they were thus rooted out to a large extent must have been due to the loving zeal and accuracy of the majority. Such was a great though by no means the sole cause of corruption. ”

“ II. The term “various readings” conveys an entirely incorrect impression of the grave discrepancies discoverable between a little handful of documents—of which Codexes B-א of the fourth century, D of the sixth, L of the eighth, are the most conspicuous samples—and the Traditional Text of the New Testament. The expression “various readings” belongs to secular literature and refers to phenomena essentially different from those exhibited by the copies just mentioned. Not but what “various readings,” properly so called, are as plentiful in sacred as in profane codexes. ”

“ In fact all traditional teaching which is not continuous must be like the detached pieces of a disunited chain.
To put the question in the most moderate form, my meaning is, that although it is possible that no trace may be discoverable in any later document of what is already attested by documents of the fourth century to be the true reading of any given place of Scripture, yet it is a highly improbable circumstance that the evidence should entirely disappear at such a very early period. ”

“ Let men think of this matter as they will,—whatever in fact may prove to be the history of that peculiar Text which finds its chief exponents in Codd. BאDL, in some copies of the Old Latin, and in the Curetonian Version, in Origen, and to a lesser extent in the Bohairic and Sahidic Translations,—all must admit, as a matter of fact, that it differs essentially from the Traditional Text, and is no mere variation of it.
But why, it will be asked, may it not be the genuine article? Why may not the “Traditional Text” be the fabrication?
1. The burden of proof, we reply, rests with our opponents. ”

“ Fathers, Versions? This fundamental truth, strangely overlooked in these last days, remains unshaken. For if the universal consent of Copies, when sustained by a free appeal to antiquity, is not to be held definitive,—what in the world is? Were the subject less solemn there would be something diverting in the naïveté of the marginal note of the revisers of 1881,—“Some ancient authorities read ... ‘None is good save one [even] God.’ ” How many “ancient authorities” did the Revisers suppose exhibit anything else? ”

“ The reasonableness of suspecting its genuineness (he says) is heightened by the fact that neither in St. Mark's nor yet in St. Luke's parallel narrative, are the words found about “loving one's neighbour as oneself.” As if that were not rather a reason for presuming it to be genuine! To be sure (proceeds Origen) it would be monstrous to regard these words, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” as an interpolation, were it not for the existence of so many other discrepancies hereabouts. The copies of St. Matthew are in fact all at strife among themselves. ”

“ The advocates of the old uncials—for it is the text exhibited by one or more of five Uncial Codexes known as ABאCD which is set up with so much confidence—are observed to claim that the truth must needs reside exclusively with the objects of their choice. They seem to base their claim on “antiquity”; but the real confidence of many of them lies evidently in a claim to subtle divination, which enables them to recognize a true reading or the true text when they see it. Strange, that it does not seem to have struck such critics that they assume the very thing which has to be proved. ”

“ The object of Textual Criticism, when applied to the Scriptures of the New Testament, is to determine what the Apostles and Evangelists of Christ actually wrote—the precise words they employed, and the very order of them. It is therefore one of the most important subjects which can be proposed for examination; and unless handled unskilfully, ought to prove by no means wanting in living interest. Moreover, it clearly takes precedence, in synthetical order of thought, of every other department of Sacred Science, so far as that rests upon the great pillar of Holy Scripture. ”

“ Familiar as all such details as the present must of necessity prove to those who have made Textual Criticism their study, they may on no account be withheld. I am not addressing learned persons only. I propose, before I lay down my pen, to make educated persons, wherever they may be found, partakers of my own profound conviction that for the most part certainty is attainable on this subject-matter; but that the decrees of the popular school—at the head of which stand many of the great critics of Christendom—are utterly mistaken. ”

“ Variety it is which imparts virtue to mere Number, prevents the witness-box from being filled with packed deponents, ensures genuine testimony. False witness is thus detected and condemned, because it agrees not with the rest. Variety is the consent of independent witnesses, and is therefore eminently Catholic. Origen or the Vatican and the Sinaitic, often stand all but alone, because there are scarce any in the assembly who do not hail from other parts with testimony different from theirs, whilst their own evidence finds little or no verification. ”

“ Therefore by Antiquity as a principle involving more or less authority must be meant the greater age of the earlier Copies, Versions, or Fathers. That which is older will possess more authority than that which is more recent: but age will not confer any exclusive, or indeed paramount, power of decision. Antiquity is one Note of Truth: but even if it is divorced from the arbitrary selection of Authorities which has regulated too much the employment of it in Textual Criticism, it cannot be said to cover the whole ground. ”

“ One has but to inspect Scrivener's Full and Exact Collation of about Twenty Greek Manuscripts of the Gospels (1853) to be convinced of the fact. But when we study the New Testament by the light of such Codexes as BאDL, we find ourselves in an entirely new region of experience; confronted by phenomena not only unique but even portentous. The text has undergone apparently an habitual, if not systematic, depravation; has been manipulated throughout in a wild way. Influences have been demonstrably at work which altogether perplex the judgement. ”

“ The critics of this century have been in too great a hurry. They have rushed to conclusions, trusting to the evidence which was already in their hands, forgetting that only those conclusions can be scientifically sound which are drawn from all the materials that exist. ”

“ A small minority of the Cursives, just as a small minority of the Uncials, are probably the depositaries of peculiar recensions.
It is at least as reasonable to assert that we can afford entirely to disregard the testimony of the Uncials, as to pretend that we can afford entirely to disregard the testimony of the Cursives. In fact of the two, the former assertion would be a vast deal nearer to the truth. Our inductions would in many cases be so fatally narrowed, if we might not look beyond one little handful of Uncial Copies. ”

“ It cannot be vanquished by theories grounded upon internal considerations—often only another name for personal tastes—, or for scholarly likes or dislikes, or upon fictitious recensions, or upon any arbitrary choice of favourite manuscripts, or upon a strained division of authorities into families or groups, or upon a warped application of the principle of genealogy. In the ascertainment of the facts of the Sacred Text, the laws of evidence must be strictly followed. In questions relating to the inspired Word, mere speculation and unreason have no place. ”

“ It is only the love of reducing all knowledge of intricate questions to the compass of the proverbial nutshell, and the glamour that hangs over a very old relic, which has led people, when they had dropped their grasp of B, to clutch at the ancient treasure in the British Museum. ”

“ But there is a manifest danger, when critics forsake those considerations which depend upon clear and definite points, and build their own inventions and theories into a system of strict canons which they apply in the teeth of manifold evidence that has really everything to recommend it. The extent to which some critics are ready to go may be seen in the monstrous Canon proposed by Griesbach, that where there are more readings than one of any place, that reading which favours orthodoxy is an object of suspicion70. ”

“ They are confined with regard to the countries from which their testimony comes. They would supply Christians with a shortened text, and educate them under a cast-iron system. We on the contrary champion the many against the few: we welcome all witnesses, and weigh all testimony: we uphold all the ages against one or two, and [pg 238] all the countries against a narrow space. We maintain the genuine and all-round Catholicism of real Christendom against a discarded sectarianism exhumed from the fourth century. If we condemn, it is because the evidence condemns. ”

“ That it is not by any means always so is a familiar fact. To quote the known dictum of a competent judge: “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 Syriac Church, used far inferior manuscripts to those employed by Stunica, or Erasmus, or Stephen, thirteen centuries after, when moulding the Textus Receptus27.” ”

“ In like manner, whether men would or would not have it so, it is a plain fact that the Traditional Greek Text of the New Testament is neither more nor less than the probat of the orthodox Greek Christian bishops, and those, if not as we maintain of the first and second, or the third, yet unquestionably of the fourth and fifth, and even subsequent centuries. ”