2. Burgon. The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels Vindicated and Established
By the late John William Burgon, B.D. Edited by Edward Miller, M.A. London: George Bell & Sons; New York:
Macmillan & Co. 1896.
The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels. By the late John William Burgon, B.D. Edited by Edward Miller, M.A. London: George Bell & Sons; New
York: Macmillan & Co. 1896.
Some Thoughts on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. By George Salmon, D.D. London: John Murray.
1897.
Adversaria Critica Sacra. By Frederick H. A. Scrivener, M.
A., D.C.L., LL.D. Cambridge: University Press; New York:
Macmillan & Co. 1893.
The Old Syriac Element in the Text of Codex Bezae. By Frederic Henry Chase, B.D. London and New York:
Macmillan & Co. 1893.
The Syro-Latin Text of the Gospels. By Frederic Henry Chase, B.D., D.D. London and New York: Macmillan &
Co. 1895.
Four Lectures on the Western Text of the New Testament.
By J. Rendel Harris, M.A., D.Litt. (Dubl.). London: C. J.
Clay & Sons; New York: Macmillan & Co. 1894. 1 he most solid and immediately effective work done of late years on T the text of the New Testament is doubtless that which the veteran
New Testament scholar, Dr. B. Weiss, has lavished upon the determination of the actual text, the first fruits of which he gave us in his study of the text of the Apocalypse published in 1891 (see this Review, iii. 1892, p. 543), followed by similar studies of the text of the Catholic Epistles (1892), Acts
(1893), and Paul (1896). The thoroughness of these studies is what would be expected from their distinguished author; and it is satisfactory to observe that, though he proceeds by a method of his own and exhibits a rare independence in both processes and conclusions, the results at which he arrives are in general confirmatory of those reached by the great editors of the text who have immediately preceded him (cf. Dr. C. R. Gregory's extended paper on Weiss's labors, published in the initial number of The American Journal of Theology, i. 1897, pp. 16 ff.). But though to this extent it must needs be said that the center of gravity of textual study of the New
Testament has once more "left the shores of England," this is in no other
sense true. The impulse given by the epoch-making publication of Dr.
Hort's "Introduction," so far from having expended itself, may be said to be only now issuing in its natural results: and the list of titles given above bears witness to the facts not only that textual problems still engage the attention of British scholars, but also that recent English work on textual criticism is largely devoted to questions which have been raised by Dr.
Hort's theories.
Dr. Scrivener's final volume is the only one of the list the whole contents of which are not in this sense the outgrowth of Dr. Hort's work.
Its object is rather to preserve, for the benefit of the public, the critical collections of one of the most painstaking and deservedly honored of the scholars of our generation, accumulated, as he pathetically tells us, "during the broken and scanty leisure of forty years," and, at length, in weak health and dimness of sight, passed "laboriously through the press." The very title which he gives them modestly labels them as but the contents of a critic's
"wastebook." As everybody acquainted with Dr. Scrivener's work will understand, this modest description in no wise implies that the work he offers to the public is not supremely well done of its kind. The volume is made up of a collation of Evan. 556, by which its affinities with 13, 69, 124,
346 are exhibited; a collation of a number of cursive copies of the Gospels, and of a number of the early printed editions; a collation of some MSS. of the Apocalypse; and the full text of a few fragments of Old and New
Testament texts. In all, some sixty-three documents are here reported on; and though the value of the whole may not be very great, it is a welcome addition to our detailed knowledge of the documents.
The two volumes published by Mr. Miller from Dean Burgon's remains remove us at once from the calm atmosphere of the cloister into the arena where contending theories strive for the mastery. "It seemed like waking up after fifteen years' sleep," remarks Dr. Salmon, "to find, on
looking at the new theological publications, that the controversy, Burgon versus Westcott and Hort, was still raging" (p. 1). It is inevitable, however, that the controversy should continue to "rage" until it is fought to a finish.
The question at issue between the parties to it is the fundamental question of the textual criticism of the New Testament; and it is well that it should not be allowed to pass out of public sight so long as there is a single thing which is even plausible remaining to be said upon either side. Certainly the purity of Dean Burgon's motives, the enthusiasm of his research, the breadth and accuracy of his scholarship, and the vigor of the style in which he was accustomed to present his views, would make us loath to miss anything he might have had it in mind to say on so fundamental a problem.
And it is certainly not those alone who hold with him in this controversy that are the losers by the incompleteness of the great project on which he was employed when death cut him off and added "another name to the … melancholy list of unfinished work." "He had been engaged," says Dr.
Scrivener (p. vi.), "day and night for years, in making a complete index or view of the manuscripts used by the Nicene (and ante-Nicene) Fathers, by way of showing that they were not identical with those copied in Codd. א and B, and, inasmuch as they were older, they must needs be purer and more authentic than these overvalued uncials." The accomplished fragment of this uncompleted enterprise, filling sixteen thick volumes, is now in the British Museum, to make us grieve that the mind that directed the work was not spared to see it finished and to estimate its teaching. No doubt, disappointment was in store for him. The problem of the use of such collectanea is something other than Mr. Miller at least conceives it, and would involve work and reach results essentially different from what we have outlined for us in the hopelessly slight chapters in which he attacks the problem of "The Antiquity of the Traditional Text" (I. chaps. v. vi. vii. viii.). Dr. Scrivener appears to have foreseen the difficulty. For though he
tells us (p. vi.) that the effect of even this fragmentary collection "on the stability of the opposite system is direct and cannot be shaken," he adds in a postscript (following p. ci.) the salutary warning: "The Dean's capital argument arising from the fact that the text used by Patristic writers is often purer than primary manuscripts written one or two centuries younger than they … needs, of course, much care in its application, and can only be insisted on when the context renders it quite clear what the reading before the elder writer actually was."
Besides this vast collection of Indexes to the Fathers, a large body of fragmentary papers were placed in Mr. Miller's care, together with the text of a recension of the Gospels. Mr. Miller has piously undertaken to raise out of these materials a monument to his friend's memory, and hopes ultimately to give us: (1) the text of Dean Burgon's recension of the Gospels, concerning which he informs us that it departs from the Received text in the Gospel of Matthew in about a hundred and fifty cases (I. p. 5);
(2) the portion of the Indexes to the Fathers which relates to the Gospels, as some indication of the extent of "his apparatus criticus in that province of Textual Criticism, in which he has shown himself so facile princeps, that no one in England, or Germany, or elsewhere, has been as yet able to come near him" (I. p. viii.)—Mr. Miller meaning, in the copious adduction of patristic quotations as witnesses to the text; and (3) a treatise in two volumes in which an explanation is made of Dean Burgon's system, and his general case against the recent editors and in favor of the "Traditional Text" is presented. He has begun with this last-named item and the two handsome volumes now before us are the result. Unfortunately, the material left for them was in a very fragmentary state, and Mr. Miller has been obliged to supplement it continually. He has succeeded, however, in forming out of it a tolerably complete presentation of Dean Burgon's position, with a good
body of that illustrative material in the way of the discussion of special readings which no one ever knew how to make more effective.
Dean Burgon was incapable of writing a dull page, and there is much that is valuable as well as interesting in these two volumes. Especially would we not willingly miss the charming discussions of individual readings at length, such as those of the "honeycomb" of Luke 24:42, the "vinegar" of Matt. 27:34, the "rich young man," and "the Son of God" of Mark 1:1, which are gathered into an Appendix to Vol. I, and the numerous briefer discussions scattered through Vol. II. culminating in the long Appendix on the periscope concerning the adulteress. It is not merely that these discussions give us a completer and more sifted view of the witnesses for the readings discussed, and bring together a mass of interesting information as to the use and understanding of these texts in the early Church; nor is it merely that they reopen the question as to the right reading in a number of very important passages of Scripture, and sometimes present considerations which cast doubt upon or reverse previous decisions—as we think is the case in a number of instances, as for example in Acts 20:24; Mark 6:22;
Matt. 27:17; Titus 2:5 (see Vol. II. pp. 28, 32, 54, 65). Such detailed discussions as these perform the far more salutary office of keeping us aware that every reading in the New Testament requires to be discussed separately and to be determined on the merits of its own evidence. It may be true that, as Dr. Salmon complains (p. 33), a certain "servility" has been exhibited in the acceptance of Dr. Hort's results, and it may well be that his theory as to the history of the text and of the consequent general value of the several
MSS. and other witnesses has not only been embraced sometimes with "servility," but applied often with a dull mechanicalness which is wholly alien to its very nature. But nothing can be more certain than that Dr.
Hort's determinations of the relative value of witnesses are determinations of average values only, and that nothing could more sadly confound the
whole system of criticism which he has given the world than to treat them as absolute and invariable. It may possibly be true that he himself used his materials a little too mechanically in the actual framing of his text, and that there may be some color to the reproach that he looked upon B as an infallible voice proceeding from the Vatican and upon the combination Bא as a manifest deliverance from heaven itself: it may possibly be true, also, that others, following him, have dismissed with too cavalier a contempt all the readings of the mass of the MSS. and have shown a disposition to prefer nonsense to sense when it was BאACD which babbled it. But such extremes of treatment of the authorities are not only not inherent in Dr.
Hort's system, but are distinctly contradictory to his system. Neither on genealogical considerations, nor on considerations derived from the verdict of internal evidence of groups, can we suppose that everything in B or Bא, or in the "Neutral" or the "Neutral + Western" stirps is genuine, and everything in the later uncials and cursives or in the earlier Fathers is corrupt. This whole method of criticism is founded rather on averages and probabilities. The combination Bא, on genealogical principles, carries us back to an exceptionally good MS., but not to a perfect one: a perfect MS. never existed, and even a very bad one may sometimes correct the best. The group of MSS. classed as "Neutral," by the test of internal evidence of groups, evinces itself as exceptionally good; and that classed as "Western" exhibits itself as exceptionally bad. But the one group remains human—and humanum est errare; and the other group remains a group of witnesses to the New Testament text, and is not transformed into a body of MSS. of another work—and it therefore may sometimes give good witness. In a word, there is not only left place here for exceptions, but exceptions are to be expected. Discussions of individual passages like those which Principal
Brown and Dean Burgon gave us, therefore, must be expected to bear good fruit and to aid substantially in the better settlement of the text. The
discovery of the exceptions to the validity of the general rules for applying the testimony may, indeed, be even said to be now the chief task of the actual work of the textual criticism of the New Testament. It is with no reserves, therefore, that we can welcome the rich discussions of separate readings such as Dean Burgon's writings bring us.
Nor do we need to make reserves in welcoming the discussion which he gives us of the main grounds of difference in critical principles between himself and Dr. Hort. We do not, it is true, expect to see made good the principles advocated by Dean Burgon and Mr. Miller (with whom Dr.
Scrivener only partially agreed, cf. I. p. 35). There is, of course, much that they contend for with which we are in hearty accord. That, for example, all witnesses to the text are to be taken into consideration and the restored text built upon the broad basis of the whole testimony, who will doubt? But who can doubt, either, that in taking all witnesses to the text into consideration, each is to receive a valuation proportionate to its relative importance and weight? And here we touch upon the real difference between the two schools. It is found in the relative value and weight which they severally ascribe to the two great groups of MSS.—represented roughly the one by the oldest uncials, BאACD, and the other by the great mass of codices. Accordingly the controversy is often said to be between the older few and the later many, as if the one party were determined in their preference chiefly by a predilection for antiquity, and the other by a predilection for numbers. Were this the case it would surely be an interminable controversy—for de gustibus non disputandum. But, of course, each offers a more rational basis for his procedure. Dr. Hort follows the old uncials not merely because they are the oldest MSS. which have come down to us, but because he thinks the text which they present is the most trustworthy and the best text, exhibited as such under the tests of genealogical evidence and the internal evidence of groups. Dean Burgon
follows the mass of copies, not merely because of their overwhelming numbers, but because he thinks the text they present the most trustworthy transmission, evinced as such by the richness and fullness and variety of its attestation—coming from all ages, all parts of the Church, all classes of witnesses—and by the fact that, in the conflict of texts in the Church, it was this text which drove all competitors from the field and established itself as the single text recognized by the Church and (what appears to him an unavoidable corollary from this fact) by the Church's God, who surely may be supposed to have busied Himself in His providence with preserving to His Church in its purity the Word He had bestowed upon it by His inspiration. The grounds of Dr. Hort's preference, if with great succinctness and somewhat abstractly, yet clearly and unmistakably, were set forth in his "Introduction." We have lacked hitherto anything like an adequate presentation of the grounds of the preference of the school represented by Dean Burgon. It is to be regretted that the hand that planned this presentation was not permitted to complete it: even after the pious care expended by Mr. Miller upon the fragments left in his hands, the arguments retain an incompleteness unavoidable in the circumstances. But they enable us to see clearly the basis of the contention of the school they represent, and thus draw the issue between the two schools more exactly than ever before. In doing this, they distinctly advance the controversy towards its conclusion.
It may be suspected that Dean Burgon was nerved for the gigantic task of indexing the Fathers, partly, by the mistaken notion that the preference for the primary MSS. of the school he was opposing turned chiefly on their superior antiquity: he wished to turn its flank by showing that the Fathers who wrote at a date earlier than that of the origin of these MSS. familiarly used a different text. So far, we may say with Dr. Salmon, that "he might have spared himself much of this trouble if he had known how freely the
facts which he brings forward were acknowledged by WH": he has engaged so far in "contradicting what had not been asserted, and laboriously proving what had not been denied" (p. 16). But in another aspect this investigation of the antiquity of the "Traditional Text" is an essential element in Dean Burgon's case. For the head and front of Dr. Hort's offending relatively to the "Traditional Text" is that he denies to it the rights of an original witness altogether, and explains it as a text which has not simply "grown," but has been "made"—assigning to its manufacture a somewhat definite date. If it can be shown to have been in existence and in common use prior to the date thus assigned for its origin, this contention, at least, of Dr. Hort's falls to the ground. It would not follow, indeed, that the "Traditional Text" is a preferable text to that transmitted by the primary uncials; but it could no longer be put summarily out of court as no simple witness to the contents of the autographs, but a critically constructed text of the third or fourth century. Our authors have therefore laid out their strength on what they call "the Pre-manuscriptural Period,—hitherto the dark age of Sacred Textualism," and they fancy that they have "abundantly established the antiquity of the Traditional Text, by proving the superior acceptance of it during the period at stake to that of any other" (I. pp. ix. and x.). Their argument, however, is vitiated by a series of fatal misapprehensions. Dr. Hort does not doubt that the "Traditional Text" was already predominant in Chrysostom's day, or that it was in existence probably a century earlier. Nor does he doubt that the elements out of which it was composed existed before its formation; he does not think of it as a pure invention of its originators—a kind of New Testament freely composed out of the whole cloth by the Antiochian critics. Nor does he consider that the text which he derives from the primary uncials (if one wishes so to describe it) was the text in predominant use up to the date which he assigns for the origin of the "Traditional Text." It does not avail to
set aside his conclusions relative to the "Syrian Text," therefore, to show that certain elements of it were in currency long before the date which he assigns for its origination, or were in far more predominant use than the corresponding elements which enter into his own text. What we need, and what we do not in the least get, is some evidence that that composite entity which he calls the "Syrian Text" antedates the date he assigns for its origination, or (in order to satisfy the contention of our authors) antedates the origination of the text presented in the primary uncials.
For our authors are not content with an assault on Dr. Hort's construction of the history of the transmission of the text: they set over against it an antagonistic construction of their own. And it is just in this that the value of their contribution to the settlement of the controversy lies, since thus the precise alternative is laid clearly before us. The really telling objection to Dr. Hort's construction, heretofore, has been, that his whole theory stands or falls with a piece of wholly speculative history. It assumes a formal revision of the text of the New Testament, carried through with skill and completeness, by which its whole complexion was changed, and yet for which there is not a scintilla of historical evidence. This, it has been plausibly said, is incredible, and can be admitted on no other than purely inferential grounds. This form of attack on Dr. Hort's construction is abandoned by our authors. That the New Testament text passed through some such history as is outlined by him they explicitly allow. Mr. Miller, for instance, tells us (I. p. 197) that:
"The Tradition of the Church does not take shape after the model of a stream or streams rolling in mechanical movement and unvaried flow from the fountain down the valley and over the plain. Like most mundane things, it has a career. It has passed through a stage when one manuscript
was copied as if mechanically from another that happened to be at hand. Thus accuracy except under human infirmity produced accuracy; and error was surely procreative of error.
Afterwards came a period when both bad and good exemplars offered themselves in rivalry, and the power of refusing the evil and choosing the good was in exercise, often with much want of success. As soon as this stage was accomplished, which may be said roughly to have reached from Origen till the middle of the fourth century, another period commenced, when a definite course was adopted, which was followed with increasing advantage till the whole career was fixed irrevocably in the right direction. The period of the two Gregories, Basil, Chrysostom, and others, was the time when the Catholic Church took stock of truth and corruption, and had in hand the duty of thoroughly casting out error and cleansing her faith."
Is there not here allowed, in full conformity with Dr. Hort's construction of the history, (1) a period of naive copying, with growing corruption; (2) a period of critical discrimination, "from Origen to the middle of the fourth century"; and (3) a period of the dominance of the critically chosen text? And is it not the problem of criticism, in such circumstances, to get behind this critically chosen to the naively transmitted text—that is, of course, to get to the text which underlies the total transmission?
Not, however, to press the implications of chance passages like this, in which, after all, more may be conceded than the writer would like to be held to, the mode in which our authors draw the lines of the debate implies the admission of some such history as that which Dr. Hort has suggested.
For the very center of their contention rests on the supposition that there was a quasi-ecclesiastical critical revision of the New Testament text consummated in the period between Origen and Eusebius. Only, they represent the primary uncials and not the "Traditional Text" as the product of this revision: and it is therefore that they would discard the testimony of these primary uncials, which present, as they say, a "fabricated text," not a text which has grown up naturally in the ordinary course of copying, but a text which has been deliberately framed, and that not merely with critical but with sinister intent and effect. "Inadvertency," we are told, "may be made to bear the blame of some omissions: it cannot bear the blame of shrewd and significant omissions of clauses, which invariably leave the sense complete. A systematic and perpetual mutilation of the inspired Text must needs be the result of design, not of accident" (II. p. 23). Accordingly it is deemed to be in no other way than by the assumption of deliberate heretical depravation, possible "to account for such systematic mutilations as are found in Cod. B, such monstrous additions as are found in Cod. D, such gross perturbations as are continually met with in one or more, but never in all, of the earliest Codices extant, as well as in the oldest Versions and Fathers" (II. p. 201). Therefore they recognize in B and א "the characteristic features of a lost family of (once well known) second or thirdcentury documents, which owed their existence to the misguided zeal of some well-intentioned but utterly incompetent persons who devoted themselves to the task of correcting the Text of Scripture, but were entirely unfit for the undertaking" (I. p. 234). "The fact is," we are told, "that B and א were the products of the school of philosophy and teaching which found its vent in semi-Arian or Homoean opinions" (I. p. 160). They are therefore among "the most corrupt copies in existence" (I. p. 25); "a reading vouched for by only B א C is safe to be a fabrication" (II. pp. 30 f.); and the proper mental attitude towards B is one of "habitual distrust" (II. p. 27). Now the
result of this theory of the origination of the text presented by the primary uncials in a formal revision by which a "corrected text" characterized by abridgment was given the world by "some person or persons of great influence and authority," "in the age immediately succeeding that of the Apostles" (II. p. 22, note), is to draw the issue between Dr. Hort and Dean
Burgon with unwonted sharpness. It is by it admitted that the differences between the "Traditional Text" and that of the primary uncials are not fully accounted for by the simple unwary corruption of copying: a formal revision has taken place. The issue is, Which text—that of the uncials or that of tradition—is the "corrected text," and which is the simply transmitted text? When the issue is drawn thus exactly, its decision cannot lie far off.
We know the grounds on which Dr. Hort relies for the decision of this question. He attempts to show by a critical examination of the "Syrian
Text" that it presents the features of a composite text and that it presupposes the text of the primary uncials: that this latter text is one of the constituent elements out of which it was made. He attempts to show historically that the "Syrian Text," in its characteristic features, runs out, as we ascend the stream of time, in the early fourth or third century. He attempts to show by internal evidence of groups that the "Syrian Text" is inferior to that of the primary uncials. The grounds on which our present authors rely for their decision of the question are given in these volumes.
They seek to rebut some of Dr. Hort's arguments: by an attempt to meet his critical argument from the phenomena of "conflation" as exhibited in the "Syrian Text"; by an effort to show out of the earlier Fathers the early prevalence of elements which enter into the "Syrian Text"; and by an exhibition of the subtle beauty of a number of "Syrian" readings. As positive grounds for their preference they appeal on the one hand to the curtailed and "clipped" character of the text presented by the great uncials,
which they endeavor to show to be both deliberate and heretical in purpose and thus to discredit their witness; and on the other hand to the widespread and varied testimony to the "Traditional Text," and above all to the fact that it is the "Traditional Text" and thus must be considered, rationally, to have the presumption in its favor and, religiously, to represent the providentially preserved Word of God.
We would not willingly underestimate any item of the case for the "Traditional Text" thus presented. But we are bound to bear witness that after an honest attempt to weigh it impartially, in its entirety and in its several parts, it seems to us to halt fatally. We cannot indeed fail to be impressed when we read such a statement as this: "The advocates of the Traditional Text urge that the Consent without Concert of so many hundreds of copies, executed by different persons, at diverse times, in widely sundered regions of the Church, is a presumptive proof of their trustworthiness, which nothing can invalidate but some sort of demonstration that they are untrustworthy guides after all" (I. p. 17; cf. p.
33). But we observe that its whole force turns on the phrase "Consent without Concert," which is the very point in dispute. Dr. Hort seems to have shown that the consent is due just to concert, and his exhibition of that fact, as yet unrebutted, transfers the presumption at once to the older though fewer witnesses, which, on the test of internal evidence of groups, evince themselves also as the better. So, again, we are far from accounting the appeal to Providence either illegitimate or without force. We do believe that God has in His Providence been active in preserving His inspired Word to His Church. We do not believe that, after giving the Scriptures of Truth to mankind, He "straightway abdicated His office; took no further care of His work; abandoned those precious writings to their fate" (I. p. 11). But just because we believe in God's continuous care over the purity of His
Word, we are able to look upon the labors of the great critics of the
nineteenth century—a Tregelles, a Tischendorf, a Westcott, a Hort—as well as those of a Gregory and a Basil and a Chrysostom, as instruments of Providence in preserving the Scriptures pure for the use of God's people.
Dean Burgon and Mr. Miller are able to reconcile with their appeal to Providence the early prevalence of a corrupt text which needed purifying in the fourth century: why cannot they reconcile with it also a further purification of this same text in the nineteenth century? The fact is, their point of view is determined not so much by a religious as by an ecclesiastical presumption. And when we probe their fundamental principle to the bottom, it is found to rest really on a high doctrine of the Church. Their prime consideration is, in a word, that "a certain exhibition of the Sacred
Text—that exhibition of it with which we are all most familiar—rests on ecclesiastical authority" (p. 13). Their confidence in the "Traditional Text" is due to their view that that text "rests on the authority of the Church
Catholic"; and they are strenuous in its defense because they cannot believe that the "probat of the Orthodox … Christian bishops "through so many years can be mistaken (p. 14): and therefore they fully recognize that the force of their appeal can be felt in its fullness only by "Churchmen." "How
Churchmen of eminence and ability, who in other respects hold the truths involved in Churchmanship," they exclaim (p. 59), "are able to maintain and propagate such opinions" as those advocated by Dr. Hort, "without surrendering their Churchmanship, we are unable to explain." In a word, the root of the opinions here set forth as to the purity of the "Traditional
Text" of the New Testament is to be found, not in considerations drawn from the history of the transmission of that text or from a critical estimate of the relative value of its actual witnesses, but in considerations which lie outside of the text itself and its own history in a general doctrine of the continuous authority of the Church, which itself rests on a special theory of the Church peculiar to certain sections of the Christian body. There is
truth therefore in the judgment sometimes expressed that the two schools of criticism may be not inaptly discriminated as the Catholic and Protestant schools, a truth that lies deeper than what was in the mind of Dr. Salmon when he speaks of Dr. Hort's text as "a thoroughly Protestant
New Testament" (p. 86). It may be doubted, at least, whether a thoroughgoing Protestant could find sufficient grounds for adopting Dean
Burgon's conclusions; in any event the reasons which are only secondary with Dean Burgon and Mr. Miller must needs in his case be palmary, while what is determining in their case is out of court with him.
To decline the leadership of Dean Burgon and Mr. Miller is not quite the same, however, with throwing oneself unreservedly into the arms of Dr.
Hort, as Dr. Salmon's little book shows us. His remarks were occasioned, in a sense, by the publication of Mr. Miller's earlier volume; and they take up its note in so far as they are mainly critical of Dr. Hort. But they in no wise echo its contentions. Dr. Salmon has no expectation of ever seeing Burgon
"set on his legs again" (p. 33); he is "unable to accept his principles" and feels no confidence in his mode of conducting an investigation (p. 5). But he thinks that "in Dr. Hort's work will be found some rash decisions which calmer followers will regard as at least doubtful" (p. 33). His tone and manner of setting forth his own doubts as to certain of Dr. Hort's positions are so unobtrusive and modest and withal so winsome, that we are led to ask ourselves whether, as Dr. Salmon sometimes seems to think that clever advocacy supplies a ground for doubting the validity of the conclusions commended by it, we would not do well to stop our ears at once to his siren voice. With some of his criticisms on Dr. Hort's methods we find ourselves at all events at once in substantial agreement. With the strictures which he makes, for example, upon Dr. Hort's "question-begging nomenclature" (p.
43), we cannot help sympathizing; the "Old Syrian" version would have been just as "old" under a less controversy-inviting name; the "neutral" text
just as "neutral" under a more "neutral" title. We are also in sympathy with Dr. Salmon's animadversions on Dr. Hort's overfreedom in conjectural emendation (p. 81); and, with more reserve, with his condemnation of his overstrained critical tendency to omissions in framing his text. The criticisms on Dr. Hort's account of the origin of the "Syrian Text" (pp. 73 f.), by which his theory is not rejected but simplified, we have also read with much general agreement.
With reference to the more important strictures which Dr. Salmon brings against Dr. Hort's procedure, we must express, however, more hesitation. The one of these concerns the end which Dr. Hort set before himself, viz., to get back to the autographic text. This Dr. Salmon considers far too ambitious a project (p. 40). The other, which is closely related to this, concerns the neglect of the Synoptic problem on Dr. Hort's part. Dr.
Salmon thinks that Dr. Hort ought not to speak of "the individual words of the individual author" with reference to compositions like the Synoptic
Gospels (p. 104); and criticizes Dr. Hort's words elsewhere where he speaks of "the genuine text of the extant form of St. Matthew," as if the two forms of expression involved an inconsistency. The confusion seems to us, however, to be Dr. Salmon's own. Surely, no matter how the Synoptics came into being, each of them, as a completed work, bearing traces of individuality in the object, methods, and modes of speech of its author (or "compiler," if you will), had an "autograph"; and it is to the recovery of this that textual criticism looks as its goal. To be sure, if we hold that our present
Gospels were not "made" in any sense, but "grew,"—are but the products of gradual accretion, silently and undirectedly made—in that case it would be a misnomer to speak of their having had "an autograph." But though
Dr. Salmon speaks (p. 148) as if something in a minor way like this may have happened with reference to them, he surely would not push such a hypothesis so far as to confound the oral and written stages of Gospel
composition. The expression of the judgment, moreover, that Westcott and Hort have actually not attained the autographic text, but have given us only the text of an early Alexandrian MS. of probably the early third century (p.
52, cf. p. 155), and that their method could lead them to nothing else, ought not to carry with it the dictum that the autographic text is unattainable and that it is too ambitious to seek it. In any event, we find ourselves out of harmony with Dr. Salmon in both of these main contentions. Nor can we go with him in his partial accord with Blass's theory of a twofold recension of Luke—Gospel and Acts—as the explanation, so far, of the origin of the "Western Text."
But on approaching the problem of the origin of the "Western Text," it behooves us to take account of the remaining titles set at the head of this review. If the problem as to the origin and value of the "Syrian Text" may rightly be said to be the fundamental problem of the textual criticism of the New Testament, the problem of the origin and value of the "Western Text" may equally rightly be said to be its cardinal problem. To the investigation of this problem, therefore, much of the most acute and painstaking work of scholars has of late been given; and the books by Dr. Chase and Dr. Harris named above are among the most recent fruitage of these labors. Four chief theories as to the origin of the "Western Text," as Dr. Harris tells us (p. vii.), are now in the field. There is Resch's theory, "that the bifurcation in the primitive text of the New Testament is due to independent translations from a Semitic document (probably Hebrew)." There is Blass's theory that, in the Lucan writings at least, "they are due to the issue of two separate drafts from the hand of the original writer." These two theories have in common that they look upon the "Western Text" as having similar if not equal claims to originality with the rival transmission, and in sharing this common conception they share inevitable failure. For if there is anything certain in the textual criticism of the New Testament, it is that the "Western
Text" is a corrupted text. A Semitic influence may well be traced at the root of the whole New Testament transmission: the men who wrote the New
Testament were Jews; it may very well be that the men who first copied its books were Jews, or, when Gentiles, Semites of the first center of Gentile
Christianity, Antioch: who shall say what depth of Semitic stain the various lines of transmission may not have received before they got well out of Semitic hands and from under Semitic influences—influences which were not localized, but were, if not dominant, yet certainly present in the first age in every Christian church in the world? Knowledge of additional incidents, and of additional details of the recorded incidents, in the life and work of our Lord and His apostles, may very well have been current in more centers of Christian teaching than one; and may very well have found their way into the text of Gospels and Acts, giving a color of authenticity to many a gloss. But any careful examination of the peculiarities of the "Western Text" will show again, as it has often shown heretofore, that they have distinctly the character of corruptions and not of original inheritances. "We thus arrive at the conclusion," Dr. Harris says in the last of his "Four Lectures"
(which is devoted to this subject), "that 'the glosses in the Codex Bezae show signs of having been inserted from the margin' … and further 'the displacement which is observable in certain of the glosses, is a strong though not a conclusive argument, against the theory that those glosses formed a part of a primitive redaction of the text' " (p. 81). If we may thus summarily set these two first theories aside and assume that the "Western
Text" is a corrupt text, and that the only problem regarding it is to account for and trace the origin of this corruption, we have in the books of Dr.
Chase and Dr. Harris exceptionally happy advocacy of the two most likely hypotheses, viz., that this corruption is derived from Syriac and that it is derived from Latin influences, entering into and corrupting the original text.
Dr. Harris was first in this very inviting field of investigation. In his brochure on "The Diatessaron of Tatian," published as long ago as 1890, he was evidently testing the hypothesis that in the Diatessaron we might discover a source of the "Western" corruption. Failing to obtain standing ground for such a hypothesis, he turned to the opposite quarter and in his
"A Study of Codex Bezae," published the next year, sought to explain the "Western Text" as due to corruption derived from the influence of a Latin version upon its parallel Greek text. In the enthusiasm of discovery he naturally at first pushed this theory to extremes, as he now candidly allows
(p. viii.). But he still contends that much is explained by "reaction on the Greek text from the primitive Latin translations," adding "as well as, occasionally, from the Syriac Version" (p. viii.). The general theory of the origination of the "Western Text" substantially through Syriac corruption, which Dr. Harris had thus early discarded, has been enthusiastically taken up by Dr. Chase, and is advocated in detail in the two volumes named above. Dr. Harris' "Lectures," with which our list of titles closes, contains a series of sprightly criticisms on the more recent deliverances upon the subject, with a view to defending himself from criticisms made, orienting himself relatively to the work done, and in general advancing the subject.
The first lecture explains why he cannot take Resch's advice and go back to Credner's crudities; the second criticizes Dr. Chase's book on the Acts; the third treats of Corssen and Blass on the "Western Text" of Acts; and the last investigates the character of the glosses in the "Western Text" of Acts.
We shall not enter here into any detailed account of the investigations and conclusions of either Dr. Harris or Dr. Chase. They are both engaged in pioneer work, and, as the one has found, so the other will find, need to abate the extremity of his claims. For, in his enthusiasm, Dr. Chase, too, announced in his former volume that he had discovered "the true solution of the problem of the Western Text"—or of the "Syro-Latin" text as he now
wishes it called. That Syriasms are found in the "Western Text" we believe has been shown, as that Latinisms are found in it has also been shown; but the problem of the "Western Text" is a great problem and, as befits a great problem, its solution lags. That hopeful advances towards its solution are being made, and that valuable contributions towards its solution are offered both by Dr. Chase and Dr. Harris, is thankfully to be recognized; that it never was so near to its solution as now seems likely enough. But when it is solved, it will surely be found that so complex a problem has not an absolutely simple solution, but that a variety of factors have entered into its making and must be unraveled for its explanation. Some of these days, however, Dr. Harris will no doubt surprise us again, and this time, doubtless, with its real solution. Meanwhile there is no place to which one can go for more stimulating notes on the problem than to his brilliant brochures upon it (cf. this Review, ii. 1891, p. 688; iii. 1892, p. 543; and The Critical Review, ii. 1892, p. 130).
1. 1 The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, viii. 1897, pp. 779–790.