7. Kenyon. Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts.
By Frederic G. Kenyon, M.A., D.Litt., Hon. Ph.D. With Twenty-six Facsimiles.
Second Edition.
Eyre and Spottiswoode, etc. 1896.
Third Edition, revised and enlarged, with Twenty-nine Facsimiles and an Appendix on Recent Biblical Discoveries.
1898.
The Palaeography of Greek Papyri. By Frederic G. Kenyon, M.A., Hon. Ph.D. (Halle), Hon. D. Litt. (Durham). With Twenty Facsimiles and a Table of Alphabets. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. 1899.
Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament.
By Frederic G. Kenyon, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts, British Museum. With Sixteen Facsimiles. London:
Macmillan and Co., Limited; New York: The Macmillan Company. 1901. 1 he publication of Dr. Kenyon's "Handbook to the Textual Criticism
T of the New Testament" furnishes a fit occasion for bringing together for cursory remark the chief contributions he has hitherto made to the better or wider understanding of the history and state of the text of the New Testament. We have accordingly associated with this latest of his works on the subject two earlier publications, one more popular, one more scientific in its scope, to both of which the present volume bears a somewhat close relation. We have observed the attribution to him of yet another volume which would naturally fall into the same series—a collection of "Facsimiles of Biblical Manuscripts in the British Museum"
(1900): but this happens not to have fallen in our way. There is also, of course, the somewhat long list of his editions of Greek texts from the British Museum papyri, which more remotely bear upon his work on the problems of the New Testament text. These began, it will be remembered, with almost the unexpectedness of an explosion, in the simultaneous publication in 1891 of the text and translation of Aristotle's "Constitution of the Athenians" and the volume of "Classical Texts from Papyri in the British Museum," containing fragments of Demosthenes, Herodas,
Homer, Hyperides, Isocates, etc. Certainly here was an achievement for a young man under thirty, whose scientific expression hitherto had been practically confined to the preparation of the earlier parts of the "Catalogue of Additions to the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum"
(1888–1893). A separate facsimile edition of Herodas and an edition of the "Orations of Hyperides against Athenogenes and Philippides" (1892) quickly followed. Later there was added an edition of the Odes of Bacchylides (1897), while other papyri fragments have been from time to
time given to the world through the periodical press ( Class. Rev., vi. 436; Rev. de Phil., xvi. 181, xxi. 1; Journal of Philology, xxi. 296; Mélanges Weil,
1898, p. 243), and still others in those beautiful volumes, "Greek Papyri in the British Museum, Catalogue with Texts"—the first of which with one hundred fifty plates appeared in 1893, and the second with one hundred twenty-three plates in 1898. In the comprehensive Introduction to this lastnamed work, we find much which has been drawn upon—with appropriate amplifications and modifications, of course—in the books which we have placed at the head of this article, and to this extent this
"Catalogue" might readily be looked upon as part of Dr. Kenyon's direct preparation for writing his latest book, with which we are now more immediately concerned. But it is not unfair to treat the whole series as bearing witness rather to Dr. Kenyon's general palæographical learning, and thus as only indirectly facilitating the preparation of his treatise on New
Testament Textual Criticism. With the two earlier books, which we have placed at the head of this article, the case is different: in different ways and degrees, it is true, but equally really, both stand immediately at the root of the "Textual Criticism" and contribute directly to its pages. It might almost be said, in fact, that this treatise is but an amplified, enriched, and scientifically heightened recension of the portion of "Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts" dealing with the New Testament text, which, among other additions, has incorporated also the cream of "The Palaeography of Greek Papyri," so far as it is applicable to the New Testament.
It is not our purpose, however, to revert to these volumes more than is necessary to call attention to them and place them in their right relation to the volume more particularly in hand. The earlier of them is a remarkably successful attempt to put into the hands of educated Bible readers a readable and accurate account of how the Bible has come down to us. It opens with three general chapters on Variations in the Bible Text, The
Authorities for the Bible Text, and The Original Manuscripts of the Bible.
The Hebrew Text and the Versions of the Old Testament are then treated in two chapters; and these are succeeded by three in which the Text,
Manuscripts, and Versions of the New Testament are dealt with. A single chapter is given to the Vulgate in the Middle Ages: and then the book closes with two chapters tracing the fortunes of the English Bible, in its
Manuscript and Printed Forms. No pretension is made to originality: the book is frankly based on the work of others, which it only proposes to popularize. It's note is sobriety and judiciousness. Only in a single matter has it gone astray by accepting bad guidance. This is a very serious matter in itself, though here of less importance because forming no essential part of the book: it concerns the account given of the origin and history of the Canon, both Old Testament and New (cf. pp. 27, 95). One wonders, again, that Dr. Kenyon, of all men, with his first-hand knowledge of papyrus documents, should not have known in 1898 how the papyrus-paper was manufactured (p. 19: the matter is set right in the later books—"Papyri," p.
15; "Handbook," p. 19). But (with the exception of the matter of the Canon) they are only minute flaws that can be picked in this good book. It easily takes rank with the best popular expositions we have.
The treatise on "The Palaeography of Greek Papyri" stands at the opposite pole from "Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts" in point of originality. This is original or nothing: it pretends to be only an essay, but it undertakes to break entirely new ground. Though strictly scientific in contents, it is so clearly written and marshals its material with such skill that its interest is by no means dependent solely on its novelty. The brief opening chapter, entitled "The Range of the Subject," contains a welcome précis of the history of the recovery of papyrus documents, chiefly from the sands of Egypt. The second chapter summarizes what is known of papyrus as a writing material, and provides what we may call the archæology of the
subject. The palæography of the non-literary papyri is briefly surveyed in the third chapter; this branch of the general subject being passed over succinctly because it is not new. The proper subject of the book is reached in the fourth and fifth chapters, in which the palæography of the literary papyri is for the first time worked out systematically. Finally the transition to vellum is described in a sixth chapter, and some useful tables and lists are added in an Appendix. The quality of sobriety and judiciousness which characterized the more popular volume are equally in evidence in this, and gives an air of fine restraint to the whole which vastly adds to the comfortable confidence of the reader: he is easily persuaded that he is in the hands of a competent and safe guide and passes on from page to page in a docile spirit. For a book breaking new ground this is a noticeably modest and eminently satisfying one.
On turning to the "Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament," one notes at once the same qualities of style, tone, manner which characterized its predecessors. It is an eminently well-written book: it is a markedly calm and sober book: it is a thoroughly well-informed book.
The same tone of moderation and good judgment which met the reader in the former volumes delights him here also. It is a positive pleasure to read these quiet, judicious pages, so free from all special pleading, and so aloof from all whimsical extravagances. One feels assured from the outset that he is getting a fair summary of the present attainment of the art in which he is being instructed. Perhaps he will miss a little the individual note; will feel the lack of the stimulus that attends enthusiastic advocacy; and will scarcely avoid receiving an impression that he is getting an essentially outside view of the subject—something like the summing up of a judge in a case in which he has had no personal part to play. His consolation will be that he feels himself in the hands of a fair-minded and well-informed judge whose guidance he can trust.
The eminent sobriety of the book is at once brought to the attention of the reader in the opening chapter, where the function of criticism is expounded. He will note for example with satisfaction the circumspect position taken up with reference to the practice of conjectural emendation
(pp. 2, 6, 14–15). It is "a process precarious in the extreme, and seldom allowing any one but the guesser to feel confident in the truth of its results." "Where documentary evidence is plentiful, conjecture will be scarce; but where the former is wanting, the latter will have to try to take its place to the best of its ability. In the case of the New Testament the documentary evidence is so full that conjecture is almost excluded."
"Where the evidence is so plentiful and varied as it is for the New Testament, the chances that the true reading should have been lost by all are plainly very much smaller.… It is universally agreed … that the sphere of conjecture in the case of the New Testament is infinitesimal; and it may further be added that for practical purposes it may be treated as nonexistent. No authority could be attached to words which rested only upon conjecture." This is eminently prudent. But the reader may be pardoned for wondering whether it goes to the bottom of the matter. He will certainly desiderate some account of the nature of the conjectural process and the natural limitations of its use. This he does not get.
For it will not suffice him to be told that exceptionally plentiful or early attestation will exclude it. If he is a receiver of letters, he knows from his own experience that autographs themselves constantly contain errors which conjecture both can and must remove. If he is a reader of popular literature, he knows from repeated observation that such errors may persist through a million copies issued in scores of editions. He has himself corrected hundreds of them. He opens, we will say, the fifth volume of the English
Translation of Harnack's "History of Dogma," at chapter vi. (p. 274), and he reads in the title of the chapter of "The Cralovingian Renaissance." Will
he hesitate to correct this at once to "Carlovingian"? A few lines lower down he reads of "the Neoplatonic type of thouoht": and with as little hesitation corrects the errant second "o" into a "g." He turns the page and on p. 277 the word "activitv" meets his eye and is at once made "activity": and when a little lower down he reads "the king-emperor of the Franks and Romans was the successor of Augustine and Constantine," he as promptly corrects the "Augustine" into "Augustus." Nor does he hesitate on p. 285 when he reads that "Christ was as man sacrificed for sakes" to insert
"men's" before "sakes," nor a little lower down to change the order of the words "the then Incarnation" to "then the Incarnation." Neither does he do all this with fear and trembling, but with confidence and assurance.
Nor will he be satisfied by being told that the sacred text is too holy to be thus corrected by conjecture. If it is obviously wrong he will be apt to think it too holy not to be corrected, whether by conjecture or what not, so only it be corrected. He takes up, for example, the Brevier 16mo edition of the Revised New Testament, issued at the Cambridge University Press in 1881, and at 1 Cor. 3:5, he reads: "What then is Apollos? and what is Paul?
Ministers through whom ye Lord believed; and each as the gave to him."
Because this is a sacred text, will he decline to transfer the word "Lord" to its proper place before the word "gave"? Or he takes up the "Editio critica minor ex viii. maiore desumpta" of Tischendorf, published in 1877, and on p. 945 he runs into mere nonsense, due to the misplacement of a whole line from the first to the seventh place on the page. Sacred as the text is, he is not likely to wait to consult the MSS. before he readjusts the lines and goes on his way in entire confidence both in his readjustment and in the authority of the text as readjusted. Or if he takes up the Barker and Bill Bible of 1631 and reads at Exod. 20:14, "Thou shalt commit adultery," will he decline to insert at once the "not" so obviously required, or to act on the thus amended text, because forsooth "no authority can be attached to words
which rest only upon conjecture"? Would he have to wait until he consulted other copies (which are happily extant and accessible in these cases) before he gave full confidence to such conjectures and assigned full authority to them? We must not confuse the authority due to the Biblical text with the method of procedure by which the Biblical text is ascertained.
When once ascertained, it has the authority that belongs to it as the Biblical text: and the only valid question is, Whether it is really ascertained. This question clearly has nothing to do with the nature of the text ascertained, but purely with the nature of the processes by which it is ascertained.
Processes that are valid for the ascertainment of a secular are equally valid for the ascertainment of a sacred text, and it has no bearing on their validity that the texts when thus validly ascertained have the imperative of law in them, or the authority of God's holy word.
Enough has doubtless been said, however, to make it manifest that appeals to the sacredness of the New Testament text, to the multitude of its depositories, to the antiquity of its attestation, do not really touch the question of the applicability of conjectural criticism to it. There are limits to the successful use of conjectural emendation: but Dr. Kenyon's comfortable remarks do not even hint to us what they are or where they are to be found. Roughly speaking, they may be suggested by the broad remark that a bad text may be successfully emended by conjecture; a good text, not.
That is to say, in proportion as a text is really bad—in proportion as gross errors are sown thickly through it—in that proportion does conjectural emendation find its opportunity; just as anyone, looking over a "dirty proof-sheet," will find numerous opportunities to correct it without consulting the "copy"—errors of spelling, errors of grammar, errors of transposition, omission, insertion, and the like. On the other hand, in proportion as a text is good, in that proportion does the sphere of the safe application of conjectural emendation shrink. This is because in a good text
all the grosser errors have been eliminated, and such errors as remain belong to a different order: it is no longer a question of mere blunders of careless reproduction but a subtle question of style or meaning—and here tastes differ and the fear lies near at hand that we are not correcting the scribe but the author himself, and hence not restoring but corrupting his text. The reason why the New Testament text is inaccessible to conjectural emendation is then, not because we have so many witnesses to it, nor because we have such early witness to it, nor yet because it is so sacred— though each of these facts doubtless enters, in its own way, into the production of the correctness which has secured the result—but shortly because it has been so excellently transmitted to us. The New Testament text, as it comes into our hands, is so good a text that there has been eliminated from it the fomes conjecturæ.
Even here, however, we need to make distinctions. The New Testament text as it lies in any given single manuscript is certainly not removed from correction by conjecture; it rather gives occasion for even the easiest and most obvious conjectures. No manuscript in existence is free from a set of incuria which any and every reader of it will correct as he reads—just as he will correct the incuria of any printed book, as we illustrated above from a few pages of Harnack's "History of Dogma." If we needed to print the New Testament from a single codex—as many of the classical authors have been from time to time printed—we should need cursorily to correct it, as we cursorily correct them, by conjecture pure and simple, without raising any question about the propriety of the process. When we speak of the inapplicability or the practical inapplicability of conjectural emendation to the New Testament text, we are having in mind not that text as it lies actually in this or that single document, but an already emended text derived from a comparison of witnesses and already editorially revised. And the reason why this already castigated text is inaccessible to conjectural
emendation is simply because it is so good a text that the opportunity for conjectural emendation has been removed. Still another distinction, however, must be made at this point. If the New Testament text is removed by its excellence from the chance of emendation by conjecture, it is still not removed from the application of conjectural criticism. No text can be too good to be criticized: the only proof we can have of its excellence is through criticism. The autograph itself, if we had it, and whatever approach to the autographic text we may have attained by our most careful and wise use of the documentary evidence, must be subject to the further critical scrutiny of our best powers to betray its shortcomings or certify its correctness. The last resort in any process of criticism, bestowed on any text whatever, is just conjectural criticism. That is to say, the final step in settling any text is the careful scrutiny of the text as provisionally determined, with a view to learning whether it commends itself to the critical judgment as the very text of its author. This is essentially the application of the conjectural process to the entire text: and it is just as essentially this if no errors are detected by the process or no remedies for detected errors suggested, as it would be if it were found still full of difficulties and impossibilities, cures for which we proceed to suggest. So far is it then from true to say that conjectural criticism has no place in the text of the New Testament, and that we must have some surer foundation for the authoritative Word of Life than conjecture can supply, that it would be truer to say that the final establishment of every word of the New Testament is due to the application of this mode of criticism, and that it is on its authority that our ultimate confidence is built that what we have in our hands is the veritable Word of Life that God has given us through His servants the apostles. It may sound paradoxical: it is in truth a paradox of just the same order as the fundamental philosophical truth that all knowledge is built on faith: and it is just as true as that undeniable proposition. No more can the
documentary critic boast himself as over against the "conjectural critic," than can the sensationalist boast himself over the "believer."
We have permitted ourselves to run beyond all reason in these remarks on conjectural criticism because we have fancied they might so illustrate the matter as to permit us to say more intelligibly what we wish to say in the way of criticism of Dr. Kenyon's book. We have already remarked that he seems to approach the subject of the textual criticism of the New
Testament a little too much from the outside—as if he had not after all entered sympathetically into its processes. We wish to add that accordingly far too preponderant a place is in this volume given to the externalia of the art with which it deals. Dr. Kenyon tells us all about the Manuscripts, and the Versions, and the Patristic quotations; he tells us all about the history of the art in the past; he outlines the present state of the textual problem as it is discussed in the schools: and all with admirable skill. Nobody could do it better. But as to the art of textual criticism itself—the reader will rise from the book but little wiser than he opened it. He has not read a page without pleasure; he has not read a page without profit; he has not read a page without admiration. For all that Dr. Kenyon has set out to tell us, we could not have had a better guide. But Dr. Kenyon has not elected to tell us how we must proceed in undertaking the great and, to each of us, indeed necessary task of actually criticizing the text of the New Testament. He informs us (pp. 15, 16) that "the function of the textual critic is, first, to collect documentary evidence, and, secondly, to examine it and estimate its value." There is not a word about applying it to the actual formation of the text! Accordingly, he goes on to say: "The object of the present volume is to show what has been done in both these directions." It is no part of its object, then, to teach us how to exercise the art of textual criticism. Its point of view is purely historical and at most it provides us with an estimate of a condition attained. "In chapters ii.–vi.," he proceeds, "an account will
be given of the available textual material—the copies of the New Testament in the original Greek, the ancient translations of it into other languages, and the quotations from it which are found in the early writers of the Christian Church. The materials having been thus passed in review, an attempt will be made in chapters vii. and viii. to summarise what has hitherto been done in the way of using these materials, to discuss the principal theories now current with regard to the early history of the New
Testament text, and to estimate the general position of the textual problem at the present day." This is an exact record of the contents of the volume.
All this is done and done admirably. But when all this is done there yet remains the whole subject of the textual criticism of the New Testament. In a word, Dr. Kenyon's volume is devoted to the externalia of the subject and treats these externalia exceedingly well. He does not profess to do more. He does not do more.
It will be observed that our criticism of the volume turns rather on what it does not contain than on what it does contain. The volume is indeed somewhat remarkable for its omissions. There are minor surprises in this regard as well as the great surprise we have tried to suggest. We read over the Table of Contents: I. The Function of Textual Criticism; II. The Autographs of the New Testament; III. The Uncial Manuscripts; IV. The Minuscule Manuscripts; V. The Ancient Versions; VI. Patristic Quotations;
VII. Textual Criticism in the Past; VIII. The Textual Problem. Where shall we find what we may call the archæology of the subject discussed? Where shall we look for some sufficing account of various readings, their ordinary character, their several modes of origination? Where shall we discover the proper modes of dealing with these variations outlined: the different kinds of evidence, internal, whether intrinsic or transcriptional, and external, in its various modes of application? What has become of the Lectionaries? But we pause in the long list of inevitable questions. Compare the Table of
Contents of a contemporaneously appearing primer on "The Text of the New Testament"—almost in its contents as defective as this—we mean the Rev. K. Lake's contribution to the "Oxford Church Text Books" (London,
1901)—and we shall see at least how odd it is that some of these topics are not formally recognized as substantial constituents of a "Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament." Mr. Lake's table runs: The Object and Method of Textual Criticism; The Apparatus Criticus of the New Testament—the Greek MSS., the Versions, Patristic Quotations,
Liturgical Evidence; Chapter Divisions and Stichometry; History of Modern Criticism; The Western Text.
No doubt some of the topics left unrecognized in Dr. Kenyon's Table of Contents are nevertheless to be found tucked away in some corner or other of the book. The Index helps us to discover an incidental mention of the Lectionaries among the pages devoted to the Minuscule MSS. (pp. 109,
122). Some classes of variations and some canons of criticism are cursorily mentioned and even criticized in the opening chapter on "The Function of Textual Criticism." Some archæological and palæographical details are given in connection with the descriptions of the MSS. And perhaps some suggestions as to the method of procedure in criticism may be picked up in the course of the historical remarks that occupy the concluding chapters.
But this only advises us that there is not only an insufficiency in the treatment of these things, but also a confusion of formal arrangement of the material. This formal confusion emerges even in the captions of the chapters. What are we to make of the caption of the second chapter, for instance: "The Autographs of the New Testament"? Of course this chapter does not treat of "the autographs of the New Testament." It is, on the contrary, a very illuminating description of the first period of "The Manuscript History of the New Testament"—the period during which it was propagated on papyrus, a period of which Dr. Kenyon has a special
right to speak with authority and on which he writes most interestingly and instructively. It is with something like irritation that we see hidden under such a misleading title this admirable chapter, in some respects the most welcome in the volume, outlining as it does the history of the New
Testament for nearly four centuries and adding a new chapter to that history from first-hand knowledge.
Next after this chapter on the Papyrus period, the two closing chapters of the book are likely to commend themselves to the reader. The intermediate chapters leave little to be desired in the presentation of their own subjects: but they are necessarily more of the nature of compilations and have less of the attraction of novelty. The penultimate chapter surveys the history of textual criticism in the past; the last one, under the title of "The Textual Problem," really summarizes recent discussion regarding the families of text precised by Dr. Hort. Both turn as on a pivot upon Dr.
Hort's textual theory, and provide a most useful account of the debates that have raged of late around it,—especially with reference to the origin and value of the so-called "Western" text—giving a singularly judicial summing up of the results so far. Dr. Kenyon finds Dr. Hort's working out of the history of the text essentially unaffected by more recent investigation. His own view he represents as "substantially the same as that of Hort, though with some modifications." He outlines it as follows: "The early history of the New Testament text presents itself to us as an irregular diffusion of the various books among the individuals and communities which embraced
Christianity, with few safeguards against alteration, whether deliberate or unintentional. To that stage, which follows very soon on the production of the original autographs, belong the various readings, early in their attestation yet comparatively rarely convincing in themselves, which we call the δ-text, and which Hort terms 'Western,' and Blass (in the case of the two books of St. Luke) 'Roman.' In Egypt alone (or principally) a higher
standard of textual fidelity prevailed, and in the literary atmosphere of Alexandria and the other great towns a comparatively pure text was preserved. This has come down to us (possibly by way of Origen and his pupils) in the Codex Vaticanus and its allies, and is what we have called the β-text, and what Hort calls 'Neutral.' Another text, also found in Egyptian authorities, and differing from the last only in minor details, is that which we call the γ-text, and Hort 'Alexandrian.' Finally there is the text which, originating in the neighbourhood of Antioch about the end of the third century, drew together many of the various readings then in existence, and with many minor editorial modifications developed into a form which was generally adopted as satisfactory throughout the Eastern Church. This is the α-text of our nomenclature, Hort's 'Syrian'; the text which monopolised our printed editions until the nineteenth century, but which is now abandoned by all but a few scholars" (pp. 309–310). Dr. Kenyon rightly represents this as substantially Dr. Hort's construction of the history.
The modification of Dr. Hort's position which he thinks recent research points to consists in a slight abatement of the hegemony which Dr.
Hort ascribed to the "Neutral" text, and a consequent admission of the probability that "among much that is supposititious there is also something that is original" preserved in the "Western" text. Put in this general way there is nothing in this proposition which Dr. Hort could ever have thought of denying: as Dr. Kenyon at once points out, instancing the case of the readings which Dr. Hort awkwardly called "Western noninterpolations." Apparently what Dr. Kenyon means to suggest is simply that more "Western" readings may ultimately have to be accepted as over against "Neutral" readings than Dr. Hort supposed. Certainly this may well be true; it may easily be true under Dr. Hort's reading of the history of the text. But it is worth while to keep in mind that it was not alone on
"genealogical" principles that Dr. Hort's preference for the "Neutral" text was based. It was equally on the verdict of "internal evidence of classes" and "internal evidence of groups." And here we must call attention to the neglect of these powerful instruments of criticism of which both Dr.
Kenyon and Mr. Lake are guilty in their exposition of Dr. Hort's theory of criticism. They seem to have focused their attention so exclusively on Dr.
Hort's genealogical distribution of the texts that they have permitted to slip out of view his exposition of the critical processes which he calls by these names. No doubt there are faint echoes of them left even in Dr. Kenyon's exposition: but they are so faint that they give no proper account of themselves and pass practically off the stage altogether. The consequence is that Dr. Hort's theory appears as practically only a theory of the history of the text, and even his genealogical method falls back into practically little more as an engine of criticism than Dr. Tregelles' "comparative criticism."
It is much more than this; and supplies, by its attention to the force of attestation consisting of cross-witnesses, an organon of a value not known before his day. When further reinforced by the results of his "internal evidence of groups" and "internal evidence of classes" it has a value and decisiveness which no reader of Dr. Kenyon's account of it would be likely to perceive. The essence of the matter may be summed up in a word by saying that Dr. Hort trusts his "Neutral" text so fully not merely because he adjudges it the earliest and most carefully transmitted text, but because he has thoroughly tested it and finds it in any case supereminently the best text. The "Western" text is treated as a corrupt text, not in forgetfulness of its early and wide distribution, but because on testing it betrays itself, whatever its origin, intrinsically a depraved text. Dr. Hort has solid reasons to give for this judgment: it is a pity to permit these reasons to fall out of notice and to treat the question as if it were chiefly one of age and distribution and external attestation.
This neglect of the elaborate processes of "internal evidence of groups" and "internal evidence of classes" in the exposition and estimate of Dr.
Hort's theory is symptomatic of the age as well as peculiarly characteristic of the external tone of Dr. Kenyon's book. Dr. Kenyon almost seems to fancy that we can get along in reconstructing the text of the New
Testament very much with the external evidence alone. Nothing could be more mistaken. The use of internal evidence, recognized or unrecognized— both intrinsic and transcriptional—accompanies every step of the process, and it is not the least of the merits of Dr. Hort's method that this constant dependence of critical procedure on internal evidence is drawn out from obscurity and made explicit. Had Dr. Kenyon given us such a chapter as no one could have written better and as ought to have been included in his excellent treatise, on the methods and processes, the philosophy and the practice of criticism, he would have been forced to acknowledge and expound the place of internal evidence in every step of the work; and he could never have left his readers in ignorance of the large part it plays in Dr.
Hort's methods and the unavoidably constant use made of it by every critic who actually forms a text. Neither could he have left his readers supposing that the ultimate question of the "Western" text is the question of its origin rather than the question of its value. We do not know when, where, or how it came into being; but there is an organon of criticism in our hands by which, pending the settlement of these questions, we can already assure ourselves that it is not the original text of the New Testament, just because it can be shown to be a corrupt text—the most corrupt text, in fact, that has ever had a large circulation in the Church.
It does not follow, naturally, that the question of the origin of the "Western" text is of little interest or of little importance. It has rightly become the leading question of post-Hortian investigation. But the very character of the text itself excludes, from the beginning, all hypotheses
concerning its origin which would make it out to be the original text of the New Testament. We do not ourselves see why the most likely hypothesis of its origin may not be found in a modification of Prof. Ramsay's theory of its origination in a revision by an Asiatic scribe, or, to speak more exactly, in a multiplication and distribution of his glossator. In his admirable chapter on the Papyrus period of the New Testament transmission, Dr. Kenyon draws a vivid picture of how we must suppose that the New Testament circulated in this period. He has, wholly unnecessarily, introduced into this account some highly unsupported and insupportable views as to the origin and history of the New Testament canon (pp. 23, 39–40, 270). There never was a time when the New Testament books were "regarded as ordinary books and not as sacred"—at least if we are to let history decide the question for us. There never was a time when the text, because so looked upon, was treated with a certain contempt by those who yet valued it sufficiently to copy it. The character of the monuments of the text is enough to assure us of that—choose we even designedly the worst text extant as a witness. But there was a time when the multiplication of the New Testament manuscripts was in the hands not of professional
"publishers," but of private zeal: when it was circulated from hand to hand and, as it were, subterraneously, as believer after believer sought and obtained this or that fragment of it for his own use—a single book or, at most, group of books—possibly laboriously copied by himself from a companion's cherished exemplar, almost certainly secured painfully at the hand of some amateur copyist. This mode of propagating itself belonged to that "servant form" which the New Testament shares with Christianity itself and Christianity's Founder; it must needs so make its way among the humble of the earth, whose names are written in heaven.
Consider how the Book of Acts, for instance, thus passed from hand to hand—laboriously, unskillfully, but most lovingly copied out by unwonted
fingers on the cheapest of material, from the cherished manuscript of some humble Christian "evangelist" or "prophet" perchance—long carried in his bosom, often thumbed with clumsy, work-worn fingers, rubbed, frayed, annotated with loving care to mark its sense and preserve items of information picked up here and there and thought fitted to illuminate the narrative, perhaps even to enrich it. How could such a text as the "Western" fail to grow up in such circumstances? In a region like the Mediterranean littoral from Cæsarea to Rome, full of humble Christians of whom some had known Paul (many, those who had known Paul) and all knew something of an intimate character of this or that locality or of the origin and history of this or that church touched on in the narrative—can it surprise us that the text so framing itself should be filled with bits of authentic information possessing every mark of original and first-hand knowledge? Consider how notes first put into the margin by a Mnason or a Tychicus, or some one who had known such "ancient believers," would be cherished by the humble copyist who was "privileged" to transcribe them.
And consider at the same time how less "authentic" annotations would inevitably become confused in the course of time with these. For ourselves we do not see how a text like the "Western" text of Acts could fail to grow up in the conditions in which this book was certainly circulated through the first four hundred years. And the character of the "Western" text of Acts is in our judgment the standing and shining testimony, not to the license with which the text of the book was treated, but to the amazing care with which it was dealt with, the real reverence with which it must have been handled. It is, after all is said, a great wonder that the text did not come out of these four centuries of private multiplication mangled and mauled beyond recognition. Nothing could have preserved it so pure except such a reverential handling as comported with its sacred character.
In a word the glossator who made the "Western" text—which is not a uniform text in all documents representing it, it must be remembered, but has its local and temporal variations—may well have been the Christian community itself from Jerusalem to Rome, working with "local knowledge" at its disposal as well as with loving zeal. The "Western" text in this view would be just the "popular" text of the first four centuries.
Alongside of it would coexist, of course, what we may venture, for the sake of a distinction, to call the "ecclesiastical" or the "official" text, provided we do not read into these terms later connotations: we mean a text propagated for the use of churches rather than of individuals, and therefore much more carefully, or perhaps we should rather say effectually, guarded, copied doubtless by professional hands, taken from old and well-preserved copies in use in mother-churches and the like. This transmission would continue a line of descent for the text of a more "aristocratic" and of a more trustworthy kind, and would naturally provide a text to which other texts in circulation would stand related as either corrupt popular parallels or artificial scholastic revisions. If we do not mistake we have in this general scheme the real nature of the "Neutral," "Western," and "Alexandrian" texts suggested. And looking at the whole problem from some such point of view, no discovery of the antiquity of the "Western" text, its wide extension, the exactness and air of original information of many of its distinctive readings, and the like, can disturb us: it is all just what we should expect and we are thoroughly prepared for it. It is all full of interest to us: all full of instruction: historically we expect to profit much from it: but we shall be slow in preferring the "popular" text to the "official" text.
Meanwhile, let us repeat that even with the "Western" text in view, we can scarcely emphasize too strongly the excellence of the transmitted text of the New Testament. Dr. Kenyon has some admirable remarks in his opening chapter on the superiority of the New Testament transmission to
that of classical authors, in point both of number of witnesses and relative closeness of testimony. Its superiority in exactness of textual transmission is even more marked. Dr. Hort's estimate is that in seven-eighths of the New
Testament we have the actual autographic text in hand, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of it practically so. This is no exaggeration. We may read nine hundred and ninety-nine words consecutively with the comfortable feeling that we are reading the author's own words: and then we may put our finger on the thousandth word and estimate precisely the amount of doubt that attaches to it and the amount of difference in sense that would result in the settlement of the doubt in any possible way. This is of the providence of God, and ought to be recognized as such. What actually printed text is nearest to the autographic text, it may meanwhile be somewhat difficult to decide. We certainly should not with Dr. Kenyon recommend the text that underlies the Revision of the English
Bible made in 1881, as a standard text for common use. This text does not even pretend to provide a standard text: but is essentially a compromise text altered from the Receptus only where compulsion was laid on the Revisers.
Mr. Weymouth's or Dr. Nestle's "resultant" text would be better: Westcott and Hort or Weiss better still. What the practical worker really needs is a good text, say Westcott and Hort's; a good digest of readings, either full or such as is given in Dr. Hort's "Introduction" or Dr. Sanday's "Appendix"; and a brief practical outline of how to use the evidence, such as is given, for example, at the end of Dr. Hort's first volume. So equipped even the beginner may hopefully enter into the work of scrutinizing the text of the New Testament. If now he wishes to know all the important things about the externalia of the art of textual criticism as applied to the New
Testament, what can he do better than add this admirable volume of Dr.
Kenyon's? Only he must not expect to get out of it anything very helpful
outside the limits of the externalia. For Dr. Kenyon has not designed to put, and has not put, anything beyond the externalia into it.
1. 1 The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, xiii. 1902, pp. 463–473.