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| F. H. A. Scrivener |
But are we not discussing a purely abstract proposition? Do we ever find the “united” testimony of the ancients drawing us one way, that of the juniors another? I will not assert that such instances may not occur, though at this moment I can hardly remember one. It is enough to say that principles broad as those laid down by Tregelles must be designed to meet the rule, not the exception. In the seven texts we have been reviewing, in the sixty-five that remain on his list, in the yet more numerous cases he tells us he has passed over, the uncial MSS are not unequally divided; or where there is a preponderance, it is not often in our adversary’s favor. The elder authorities being thus at variance, common sense seems to dictate an appeal to those later authorities, respecting which one thing is clear, that they were not copied immediately from the uncials still extant. Such later codices thus become the representatives of others that have perished, as old, and (to borrow Davidson’s suggestion, p. viii) not improbably more old than any now remaining. These views appear so reasonable and sober, that they have approved themselves to the judgment even of Dr. Tregelles: for he does not by any means disdain the aid of the few cursive copies (e. g. 1. 33. 69. etc.) which “preserve an ancient text,” whereby of course is implied one coinciding with his preconceived opinion of what an ancient text ought to be.1
[1 – Dean Alford had constructed the text of his first volume of the Greek Testament (1st edition) on nearly the same plan as Tregelles would, and thoroughly was he dissatisfied with the result. “The adoption of that test,” he writes with admirable frankness, “was, I do not hesitate to confess, a great mistake. It proceeded on altogether too high an estimate of the most ancient existing MSS, and too low an one of the importance of internal evidence.” (N. T. Vol. II. Proleg. p. 58.)]
Bentley’s
theory, as most of my readers will remember, was built on the idea, that the
oldest MSS of the Greek original and of Jerome’s Latin version, resemble each
other so marvelously, even in the very order of the words, that by means of
this agreement he could restore the text as it stood in the fourth century, “so
that there shall not be twenty words, or even particles, difference!” “By taking two thousand errors out of the Pope’s
[Clementine] Vulgate, and as many out of the Protestant Pope Stephens’s [1550],
I can set out an edition of each in columns, without using any book under nine
hundred years old, that shall so exactly agree word for word, and, what at
first amazed me, order for order, that no two tallies, nor two indentures, can
agree better.” Thus wrote Bentley to
Archbishop Wake in 1716; the tone of his “Proposals,” in 1720, after
considerable progress had been made in the work of collation, is not materially less confident.
Yet to those
who have calmly examined the subject, the wonder is not the closeness of
agreement between the Greek and Latin Codices, but that a man of so vast
erudition and ability should have imagined that he perceived it, to any thing
approaching the extent the lowest sense of his words demands. Accordingly when his collations came to be
examined, and compared, and weighed, keen indeed must have been the
disappointment of our English Aristarchus. With characteristic fearlessness he had been
at no trouble to select his materials
(at least I trace no indication of such choice in his surviving papers), and
thus the truth would burst upon him all the sooner, that the theory on which he
had staked a noble reputation, in the face of watchful enemies, must either be
abandoned or extensively modified. We
can well ‘understand the struggle which silently agitated that proud spirit. Had the subject of his labors been Terence or
Milton, it would be easy to conjecture the course he would have adopted: if MSS
refused to support his system, they must have been forced to yield to it.
But Bentley,
with all his faults of temper, was an honest and a pious man; he dared not make
the text of Holy Scripture the victim of his sportive ingenuity; and so, soon
after the year 1721, we come to hear less and less of his projected Greek
Testament. Though he lived till 1742, it
does not appear that he ever made serious progress in arranging the stores
collected by himself and his coadjutors. As I have turned over his papers in the
Library of Trinity College, with a heart saddened by the spectacle of so much
labor lost, I could not persuade myself that the wretched dissensions which
embittered his declining days had, of themselves, power enough over Bentley’s
mind to break off in the midst a work that he had once regarded as his best
passport to undying fame.
From the facts we have been discussing I feel entitled to
draw two or three practical inferences.
(a). That the true readings of the Greek New
Testament cannot safely be derived from any one set of authorities, whether
MSS, versions, or Fathers, but ought to be the result of a patient comparison
and careful estimate of the evidence given by them all.
(b). That where there is a real agreement between
all the documents prior to the tenth century, the testimony of later MSS,
though not to be rejected unheard, is to be regarded with much suspicion, and,
unless supported by strong internal evidence,1 can hardly be
adopted.
(c). That in the far more numerous cases where the
most ancient documents are at variance with each other, the later or cursive
copies are of great importance, as the surviving representatives of other
codices, very probably as early, possibly even earlier, than any now extant.2
I do not lay down these
propositions as any new discovery of my own, but as being (even the second of them) the principles on which all reasonable
defenders of the Textus Receptus have
upheld its GENERAL INTEGRITY.
[1 – If I have hitherto said nothing on
the important head of internal evidence, it is from no wish to disparage its
temperate and legitimate use. Yet how
difficult it is to hinder its degenerating, even in skillful hands, into vague and arbitrary conjecture!]
[2 – Even Mr. Green, from whom I fear I
differ widely on some of the topics discussed in this chapter, does not shrink
from saying, “In a review of authorities special regard will reasonably be paid
to antiquity; but this must not be over-strained into a summary neglect of more
recent witnesses, as offering nothing worthy of notice,” finally adding, “The
critic should not suffer himself to be encumbered by prepossessions or
assumptions, nor bind himself to the routine of a mechanical method of
procedure. If he allows himself to be
thus warped and trammelled, instead of ever maintaining the free employment
of a watchful, calm, and unfettered mind, he abandons his duty and mars his
work” (Course of Developed Criticism,
Introduction, p. x.).]
IV. I have a good hope that the
foregoing investigation of the laws of Comparative Criticism will have
convinced an impartial reader, that the cursive or junior copies of the Greek
New Testament have, in their proper place and due subordination, a real and
appreciable influence in questions relating to doubtful readings. If I have succeeded thus far, it results that
the time and pains I have bestowed on studying them have not been wasted: the
collations I have accumulated cannot fail to be of some service to the Biblical
critic, even though he may think I have a little exaggerated their value and
importance. I am not so sanguine as to
the degree of popular acceptance my views may obtain, nor (without affecting
absolute indifference on the subject) am I by any means so anxious on this
head. I have always thought that the
researches and labors of the scholar – of the theological scholar above all
others – are their own highest and purest reward.1
Let me plead guilty to having read with
sensations akin to scorn, the manuscript note appended by Caesar de Missy (a
person who might have known better) to the copy of Hearne’s scarce edition of
the Codex Laudianus (published in 1715), now preserved in the British Museum. To Hearne’s miserable list of just forty-one subscribers to his book, De
Missy subjoins the sarcastic comment “Après
cela, Docteur, va pâlir sur la Bible!” Yet why should he not have grown pale in the
study of God’s Word? Why not have handed
down to happier times a treasure of sacred learning which the princes and
prelates of George the First’s reign (that nadir-point of public virtue and
intellectual cultivation in
[1 – I should have wished to add some
noble sentiments of Dr. Dobbin (Codex
Montfortianus, Preface, p. xx.) on this point, but that I trust they are
known to my readers, as they well deserve to be.]
