An adequate discussion of the subject of the present chapter would need a
treatise by itself, and has been the single theme of several elaborate
works. We shall here limit ourselves to the examination of those more
prominent topics, a clear understanding of which is essential for the
establishment of trustworthy principles in the application of _external_
evidence to the correction of the text of the New Testament.
1. It was stated at the commencement of this volume that the autographs of
the sacred writers “perished utterly in the very infancy of Christian
history:” nor can any other conclusion be safely drawn from the general
silence of the earliest Fathers, and from their constant habit of
appealing to “ancient and approved copies(262),” when a reference to the
originals, if extant, would have put an end to all controversy on the
subject of various readings. Dismissing one passage in the genuine
Epistles of Ignatius (d. 107), which has no real connexion with the
matter(263), the only allusion to the autographs of Scripture met with in
the primitive ages is the well-known declaration of Tertullian (fl. 200):
“Percurre Ecclesias Apostolicas, apud quas ipsae adhuc Cathedrae
Apostolorum suis locis praesident, apud quas ipsae Authenticae Literae
eorum recitantur, sonantes vocem, et repraesentantes faciem uniuscujusque.
Proximè est tibi Achaia, habes Corinthum. Si non longè es a Macedoniâ,
habes Philippos, habes Thessalonicenses. Si potes in Asiam tendere, habes
Ephesum. Si autem Italiae adjaces, habes Romam ...” (De Praescriptione
Haereticorum, c. 36.) Attempts have been made, indeed, and that by eminent
writers, to reduce the term “Authenticae Literae” so as to mean nothing
more than “genuine, unadulterated Epistles,” or even the authentic Greek
as opposed to the Latin translation(264). It seems enough to reply with
Ernesti, that any such non-natural sense is absolutely excluded by the
word “ipsae,” which would be utterly absurd, if “genuine” only were
intended (Institutes, Pt. iii. Ch. ii. 3)(265): yet the African Tertullian
was too little likely to be well informed on this subject, to entitle his
rhetorical statement to any real attention(266). We need not try to
explain away his obvious meaning, but we may fairly demur to the evidence
of this honest, but impetuous and wrong-headed man. We have no faith in
the continued existence of autographs which are vouched for on no better
authority than the real or apparent exigency of _his_ argument(267).
2. Besides the undesigned and, to a great extent, unavoidable differences
subsisting between manuscripts of the New Testament within a century of
its being written, the wilful corruptions introduced by heretics soon
became a cause of loud complaint in the primitive ages of the Church(268).
Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, addressing the Church of Rome and Soter its
Bishop (A.D. 168-176), complains that even his own letters had been
tampered with: καὶ ταύτας οἱ τοῦ διαβόλου ἀπόστολοι ζιζανίων γεγέμικαν, ἃ
μὲν ἐξαιροῦντες, ἃ δὲ προστιθέντες; οἷς τὸ οὐαὶ κεῖται: adding, however,
the far graver offence, οὐ θαυμαστὸν ἄρα εἰ καὶ τῶν κυριακῶν ῥαδιουργῆσαί
τινες ἐπιβέβληνται γραφῶν (Euseb., Eccl. Hist., iv. 23), where αἱ κυριακαὶ
γραφαί can be none other than the Holy Scriptures. Nor was the evil new in
the age of Dionysius. Not to mention Asclepiades, or Theodotus, or
Hermophylus, or Apollonides, who all under the excuse of correcting the
sacred text corrupted it(269), or the Gnostics Basilides (A.D. 130?) and
Valentinus (A.D. 150?) who published additions to the sacred text which
were avowedly of their own composition, Marcion of Pontus, the
arch-heretic of that period, coming to Rome on the death of its Bishop
Hyginus (A.D. 142)(270), brought with him that mutilated and falsified
copy of the New Testament, against which the Fathers of the second century
and later exerted all their powers, and whose general contents are known
to us chiefly through the writings of Tertullian and subsequently of
Epiphanius. It can hardly be said that Marcion deserves very particular
mention in relating the history of the sacred text(271). Some of the
variations from the common readings which his opponents detected were
doubtless taken from manuscripts in circulation at the time, and, being
adopted through no private preferences of his own, are justly available
for critical purposes. Thus in 1 Thess. ii. 15, Tertullian, who saw only
τοὺς προφήτας in his own copies, objects to Marcion’s reading τοὺς ἰδίους
προφήτας (“licet _suos_ adjectio sit haeretici”), although ἰδίους stands
in the received text, in Evann. KL (DE in later hands) and all cursives
except eight, in the Gothic and both (?) Syriac versions, in Chrysostom,
Theodoret, and John Damascenus. Here the heretic’s testimony is useful in
showing the high antiquity of ἰδίους, even though אABDEFGP, eight
cursives, Origen thrice, the Vulgate, Armenian, Ethiopic, and all three
Egyptian versions, join with Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott
and Hort in rejecting it, some of them perhaps in compliance with
Tertullian’s decision. In similar instances the evidence of Marcion, as to
matters of fact to which he could attach no kind of importance, is well
worth recording(272): but where on the contrary the dogmas of his own
miserable system are touched, or no codices or other witnesses countenance
his changes (as is perpetually the case in his edition of St. Luke, the
only Gospel—and that maimed or interpolated from the others—he seems to
have acknowledged at all), his blasphemous extravagance may very well be
forgotten. In such cases he does not so much as profess to follow anything
more respectable than the capricious devices of his misguided fancy.
3. Nothing throws so strong a light on the real state of the text in the
latter half of the second century as the single notice of Irenaeus (fl.
178) on Apoc. xiii. 18. This eminent person, the glory of the Western
Church in his own age, whose five books against Heresies (though chiefly
extant but in a bald old Latin version) are among the most precious
reliques of Christian antiquity, had been privileged in his youth to enjoy
the friendly intercourse of his master Polycarp, who himself had conversed
familiarly with St. John and others that had seen the Lord (Euseb., Eccl.
Hist., v. 20). Yet even Irenaeus, though removed but by one stage from the
very Apostles, possessed (if we except a bare tradition) no other means of
settling discordant readings than are now open to ourselves; namely, to
search out the best copies and exercise the judgement on their contents.
His _locus classicus_ must needs be cited in full, the Latin throughout,
the Greek in such portions as survive. The question is whether St. John
wrote χξιϛ᾽ (666), or χιϛ᾽ (616).
“Hic autem sic se habentibus, et in omnibus antiquis et
probatissimis et veteribus scripturis numero hoc posito, et
testimonium perhibentibus his qui facie ad faciem Johannem
viderunt (τούτων δὲ οὕτως ἐχόντων, καὶ ἐν πᾶσι δὲ τοῖς σπουδαίοις
καὶ ἀρχαίοις ἀντιγράφοις τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τούτου κειμένου, καὶ
μαρτυρούντων ἀυτῶν ἐκείνων τῶν κατ᾽ ὄψιν τὸν Ἰωάννην ἑωρακότων,
καὶ τοῦ λόγου διδάσκοντος ἡμᾶς ὅτι ὁ ἀριθμὸς τοῦ ὀνόματος τοῦ
θηρίου κατὰ τὴν τῶν Ἑλλήνων ψῆφον διὰ τῶν ἐν ἀυτῷ γραμμάτων
[ἐμφαίνεται]), et ratione docente nos quoniam numerus nominis
bestiae, secundum Graecorum computationem, per literas quae in eo
sunt sexcentos habebit et sexaginta et sex: ignoro quomodo
erraverunt quidam sequentes idiotismum et medium frustrantes
numerum nominis, quinquaginta numeros deducentes, pro sex decadis
unam decadem volentes esse (οὐκ οἶδα πῶς ἐσφάλησάν τινες
ἐπακολουθήσαντες ἰδιωτισμῷ καὶ τὸν μέσον ἠθέτησαν ἀριθμὸν τοῦ
ὀνόματος, ν᾽ ψήφισμα ὑφελόντες καὶ ἀντὶ τῶν ἓξ δεκάδων μίαν δεκάδα
βουλόμενοι εἶναι). Hoc autem arbitror scriptorum peccatum fuisse,
ut solet fieri, quoniam et per literas numeri ponuntur, facilè
literam Graecam quae sexaginta enuntiat numerum, in iota Graecorum
literam expansam.... Sed his quidem qui simpliciter et sine
malitia hoc fecerunt, arbitramur veniam dari a Deo.” (Contra
Haeres. v. 30. 1: Harvey, vol. ii. pp. 406-7.)
Here we obtain at once the authority of Irenaeus for receiving the
Apocalypse as the work of St. John; we discern the living interest its
contents had for the Christians of the second century, even up to the
_traditional_ preservation of its minutest readings; we recognize the fact
that numbers were then represented by letters(273); and the far more
important one that the original autograph of the Apocalypse was already so
completely lost, that a thought of it never entered the mind of the
writer, though the book had not been composed one hundred years, perhaps
not more than seventy(274).
4. Clement of Alexandria is the next writer who claims our attention (fl.
194). Though his works abound with citations from Scripture, on the whole
not too carefully made (“in adducendis N. T. locis creber est et
_castus_,” is rather too high praise, Mill, Proleg. § 627), the most has
not yet been made of the information he supplies. He too complains of
those who tamper with (or metaphrase) the Gospels for their own sinister
ends, and affords us one specimen of their evil diligence(275). His pupil
Origen’s [185-253] is the highest name among the critics and expositors of
the early Church; he is perpetually engaged in the discussion of various
readings of the New Testament, and employs language in describing the then
existing state of the text, which would be deemed strong if applied even
to its present condition, after the changes which sixteen more centuries
must needs have produced. His statements are familiar enough to Biblical
enquirers, but, though often repeated, cannot be rightly omitted here.
Seldom have such warmth of fancy and so bold a grasp of mind been united
with the life-long patient industry which procured for this famous man the
honourable appellation of _Adamantius_. Respecting the sacred autographs,
their fate or their continued existence, he seems to have had no
information, and to have entertained no curiosity: they had simply passed
by and were out of reach. Had it not been for the diversities of copies in
all the Gospels on other points (he writes)—καὶ εἰ μὲν μὴ καὶ περὶ ἄλλων
πολλῶν διαφωνία ἦν πρὸς ἄλληλα τῶν ἀντιγράφων—he should not have ventured
to object to the authenticity of a certain passage (Matt. xix. 19) on
internal grounds: νυνὶ δὲ δηλονότι πολλὴ γέγονεν ἡ τῶν ἀντιγράφων διαφορά,
εἴτε ἀπὸ ῥαθυμίας τινῶν γραφέων, εἴτε ἀπὸ τόλμης τινῶν μοχθηρᾶς τῆς
διορθώσεως τῶν γραφομένων, εἴτε καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν τὰ ἑαυτοῖς δοκοῦντα ἐν τῇ
διορθώσει προστιθέντων ἢ ἀφαιρούντων (Comment. on Matt., Tom. iii. p. 671,
_De la Rue_). “But now,” saith he, “great in truth has become the
diversity of copies, be it from the negligence of certain scribes, or from
the evil daring of some who correct what is written, or from those who in
correcting add or take away what they think fit(276):” just like Irenaeus
had previously described revisers of the text as persons “qui peritiores
apostolis volunt esse” (Contra Haeres. iv. 6. 1).
5. Nor can it easily be denied that the various readings of the New
Testament current from the middle of the second to the middle of the third
century, were neither fewer nor less considerable than such language would
lead us to anticipate. Though no surviving manuscript of the Old Latin
version, or versions, dates before the fourth century, and most of them
belong to a still later age, yet the general correspondence of their text
with that used by the first Latin Fathers is a sufficient voucher for its
high antiquity. The connexion subsisting between this Latin version, the
Curetonian Syriac, and Codex Bezae, proves that the text of these
documents is considerably older than the vellum on which they are written;
the Peshitto Syriac also, most probably the very earliest of all
translations, though approaching far nearer to the received text than
they, sufficiently resembles these authorities in many peculiar readings
to exhibit the general tone and character of one class of manuscripts
extant in the second century, two hundred years anterior to Codd. אB. Now
it may be said without extravagance that no set of Scriptural records
affords a text less probable in itself or less sustained by any rational
principles of external evidence, than that of Cod. D, of the Latin
codices, and (so far as it accords with them) of Cureton’s Syriac.
Interpolations, as insipid in themselves as unsupported by other evidence,
abound in them all(277): additions so little in accordance with the
genuine spirit of Holy Writ that some critics (though I, for one, profess
no skill in such alchemy) have declared them to be as easily separable
from the text which they encumber, as the foot-notes appended to a modern
book are from the main body of the work (Tregelles, An Account of the
Printed Text, p. 138, note). It is no less true to fact than paradoxical
in sound, that the worst corruptions to which the New Testament has ever
been subjected, originated within a hundred years after it was composed;
that Irenaeus and the African Fathers and the whole Western, with a
portion of the Syrian Church, used far inferior manuscripts to those
employed by Stunica, or Erasmus, or Stephen thirteen centuries later, when
moulding the Textus Receptus. What passage in the Holy Gospels would be
more jealously guarded than the record of the heavenly voice at the Lord’s
Baptism? Yet Augustine (De Consensu Evangelist, ii. 14) marked a variation
which he thought might be found “in aliquibus fide dignis exemplaribus,”
though not “in antiquioribus codicibus Graecis,” where, in the place of ἐν
σοὶ ἠυδόκησα (Luke iii. 22), the words ἐγὼ σήμερον γεγέννηκά σε are
substituted from Psalm ii. 7: so also reads the Manichaean Faustus apud
Augustin.; Enchiridion ad Laurentium, c. 49. The only Greek copy which
maintains this important reading is D: it is met with moreover in _abc_
(in _d_ of course), in _ff_1 _primâ manu_, and in _l_, whose united
evidence leaves not a doubt of its existence in the primitive Old Latin;
whence it is cited by Hilary three times, by Lactantius and Juvencus, to
which list Abbot adds Hilary the deacon (Quaestiones V. et N. T.). Among
the Greeks it is known but to Methodius, and to those very early writers,
Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, who seem to have derived the
corruption (for such it must doubtless be regarded) from the Ebionite
Gospel (Epiphan., Haeres., xxi. 13)(278). So again of a doubtful passage
which we shall examine in Chapter XII, Irenaeus cites Acts viii. 37
without the least misgiving, though the spuriousness of the verse can
hardly be doubted; and expressly testifies to a reading in Matt. i. 18
which has not till lately found many advocates. It is hard to believe that
1 John v. 7, 8 was not cited by Cyprian, and even the interpolation in
Matt. xx. 28 was widely known and received. Many other examples might be
produced from the most venerable Christian writers, in which they
countenance variations (and those not arbitrary, but resting on some sort
of authority) which no modern critic has ever attempted to vindicate.
6. When we come down to the fourth century, our information grows at once
more definite and more trustworthy. Copies of Scripture had been
extensively destroyed during the long and terrible period of affliction
that preceded the conversion of Constantine. In the very edict which
marked the beginning of Diocletian’s persecution, it is ordered that the
holy writings should be burnt (τὰς γραφὰς ἀφανεῖς πυρὶ γενέσθαι, Eusebius,
Eccl. Hist., viii. 2); and the cruel decree was so rigidly enforced that a
special name of reproach (_traditores_), together with the heaviest
censures of the Church, was laid upon those Christians who betrayed the
sacred trust (Bingham, Antiquities, book xvi. ch. vi. 25). At such a
period critical revision or even the ordinary care of devout transcribers
must have disappeared before the pressure of the times. Fresh copies of
the New Testament would have to be made in haste to supply the room of
those seized by the enemies of our Faith; and, when made, they had to
circulate by stealth among persons whose lives were in jeopardy every
hour. Hence arose the need, when the tempest was overpast, of transcribing
many new manuscripts of the Holy Bible, the rather as the Church was now
receiving vast accessions of converts within her pale. Eusebius of
Caesarea, the ecclesiastical historian, seems to have taken the lead in
this happy labour; his extensive learning, which by the aid of certain
other less commendable qualities had placed him high in Constantine’s
favour, rendered it natural that the emperor should employ his services
for furnishing with fifty copies of Scripture the churches of his new
capital, Constantinople. Eusebius’ deep interest in Biblical studies is
exhibited in several of his surviving works, as well as in his Canons for
harmonizing the Gospels: and he would naturally betake himself for the
text of his fifty codices to the Library founded at his Episcopal city of
Caesarea by the martyr Pamphilus, the dear friend and teacher from whom he
derived his own familiar appellation _Eusebius Pamphili_. Into this
Library Pamphilus had gathered manuscripts of Origen as well as of other
theologians, and of these Eusebius made an index (τοὺς πίνακας παρεθέμην:
Eccles. Hist., vi. 32). From this collection Cod. H of St. Paul and others
are stated to have been derived, nay even Cod. א in its Old Testament
portion (_see_ vol. I. p. 55 and note), which is expressly declared to
have been corrected to the Hexapla of Origen. Indeed we know from Jerome
(Comment. in Epist. ad Tit.) that the very autograph (“ipsa authentica”)
of Origen’s Hexapla was used by himself at Caesarea, and Montfaucon
(Praeliminaria in Hexapl., chap. i. 5) cites from one manuscript the
following subscription to Ezekiel, Ὁ Εὐσέβιος ἐγὼ σχόλια παρέθηκα.
Πάμφιλος καὶ Εὐσέβιος ἐδιωρθώσαντο.
7. We are thus warranted, as well from direct evidence as from the analogy
of the Old Testament, to believe that Eusebius mainly resorted for his
Constantinopolitan Church-books to the codices of Pamphilus, which might
once have belonged to Origen. What critical corrections (if any) he
ventured to make in the text on his own judgement is not so clear. Not
that there is the least cause to believe, with Dr. Nolan (Inquiry into the
Integrity of the Greek Vulgate, p. 27), that Eusebius had either the power
or the will to suppress or tamper with the great doctrinal texts 1 John v.
7, 8; 1 Tim. iii. 16; Acts xx. 28; yet we cannot deny that his
prepossessions may have tempted him to arbitrary alterations in other
passages, which had no direct bearing on the controversies of his
age(279). Codd. אB are quite old enough to have been copied under his
inspection(280), and it is certainly very remarkable that these two early
manuscripts omit one whole paragraph (Mark xvi. 9-20) with his sanction,
if not after his example (_see_ below, Chap. XII). Thus also in Matt,
xxiii. 35 Cod. א, with the countenance only of Evan. 59, Evst. 6, 13, 222
(see under Evst. 222), discards υἱοῦ βαραχίον, for which change Eusebius
(_silentio_) is literally the only authority among the Fathers, Irenaeus
and even Origen retaining the words, in spite of their obvious difficulty.
The relation in which Cod. א stands to the other four chief manuscripts of
the Gospels, may be roughly estimated from analyzing the transcript of
four pages first published by Tischendorf(281), as well as in any other
way. Of the 312 variations from the common text therein noted, א stands
alone in forty-five, in eight agrees with ABCD united (much of C, however,
is lost in these passages), with ABC together thirty-one times, with ABD
fourteen, with AB thirteen, with D alone ten, with B alone but once (Mark
i. 27), with C alone once: with several authorities against AB thirty-nine
times, with A against B fifty-two, with B against A ninety-eight. Hence,
while the discovery of this precious document has unquestionably done much
to uphold Cod. B (which is the more correctly written, and doubtless the
more valuable of the two) in many of its more characteristic and singular
readings, it has made the mutual divergencies of the very oldest critical
authorities more patent and perplexing than ever(282).
8. Codd. אB were apparently anterior to the age of Jerome, the latest
ecclesiastical writer whose testimony need be dwelt upon, since from his
time downwards the stream of extant and direct manuscript evidence,
beginning with Codd. AC, flows on without interruption. Jerome’s attention
was directed to the criticism of the Greek Testament by his early Biblical
studies, and the knowledge he thus obtained had full scope for its
exercise when he was engaged on revising the Old Latin version. In his
so-often cited “Praefatio ad Damasum,” prefixed to his recension of the
Gospels, he complains of certain “codices, quos a Luciano et Hesychio
nuncupatos, paucorum hominum asserit perversa contentio,” and those not of
the Old Testament alone, but also of the New. This obscure and passing
notice of corrupt and (apparently) interpolated copies has been made the
foundation of more than one theory as fanciful as ingenious. Jerome
further informs us that he had adopted in his translation the canons which
Eusebius “Alexandrium secutus Ammonium” (_but __ see_ Vol. I. pp. 59, &c.)
had invented or first brought into vogue; stating, and, in his usual
fashion, somewhat exaggerating(283), an evil these canons helped to
remedy, the mixing up of the matter peculiar to one Evangelist with the
narrative of another. Hence we might naturally expect that the Greek
manuscripts he would view with special favour, were the same as Eusebius
had approved before him. In the scattered notices throughout his works,
Jerome sometimes speaks but vaguely of “quaedam exemplaria tam Graeca quam
Latina” (Luke xxii. 43-4, almost in the words of Hilary, his senior); or
appeals to readings “in quibusdam exemplaribus et maximè in Graecis
codicibus” (Mark xvi. 14). Occasionally we hear of “multi et Graeci et
Latini codices” (John vii. 53), or “vera exemplaria” (Matt. v. 22; xxi.
31), or “antiqua exemplaria” (Luke ix. 23), without specifying in which
language: Mark xvi. 9-20 “in raris fertur Evangeliis,” since “omnes
Graeciae libri paene” do not contain it(284). In two places, however, he
gives a more definite account of the copies he most regarded. In Galat.
iii. 1 τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι is omitted by Jerome, because it is not
contained “in exemplaribus Adamantii,” although (as he elsewhere informs
us) “et Graeca exemplaria hoc errore confusa sint.” In the other of the
two passages Jerome remarks that in some Latin copies of Matt. xxiv. 36
_neque filius_ is added, “quum in Graecis, et maxime Adamantii et Pierii
exemplaribus, hoc non habeatur adscriptum.” Pierius the presbyter of
Alexandria, elsewhere called by Jerome “the younger Origen” (Cat. Scriptt.
Eccl., i. p. 128), has been deprived by fortune of the honour due to his
merit and learning. A contemporary, perhaps the teacher of Pamphilus
(Euseb., Eccl. Hist., vii. 32) at Caesarea, his copies of Scripture would
naturally be preserved with those of Origen in the great Library of that
city. Here they were doubtless seen by Jerome when, to his deep joy, he
found Origen’s writings copied in Pamphilus’ hand (Cat. Scriptt. Eccl.,
_ubi supra_), which volumes Acacius and Euzoius, elder contemporaries of
Jerome himself, had taken pious care to repair and renew (_ibid._ i. p.
131; ad Marcell. Ep. cxli). It is not therefore wonderful if, employing as
they did and setting a high value on precisely the same manuscripts of the
N. T., the readings approved by Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome should
closely agree.
9. Epiphanius [d. 403], who wrote at about the same period as Jerome,
distinguishes in his note on Luke xix. 41 or xxii. 44 (Tom. ii. p. 36)
between the uncorrected copies (ἀδιορθώτοις), and those used by the
Orthodox(285). Of the function of the “corrector” (διορθωτής) of an
ancient manuscript we have spoken several times before: but a system was
devised by Professor J. L. Hug of Freyburg (Einleitung, 1808), and
maintained, though with some modifications, by J. G. Eichhorn, which
assigned to these occasional, and (as they would seem to be) unsystematic
labours of the reviser, a foremost place in the criticism of the N. T. Hug
conceived that the process of corruption had been going on so rapidly and
uniformly from the Apostolic age downwards, that by the middle of the
third century the state of the text in the general mass of codices had
degenerated into the form exhibited in Codd. D, 1, 13, 69, 124 of the
Gospels, the Old Latin and Sahidic (he would now have added the Curetonian
Syriac) versions, and to some extent in the Peshitto and in the citations
of Clement of Alexandria and of Origen in his early works. To this
uncorrected text he gave the name of κοινὴ ἔκδοσις, and that it existed,
substantially in the interpolated shape now seen in Cod. D, the Old Latin,
and Cureton’s Syriac, as early as the second century, need not be doubted.
There is some foundation for this position, but it was marred by Hug’s
lack of sobriety of judgement. What we may fairly dispute is that this
text ever had extensive circulation or good repute in the Churches whose
vernacular language was Greek. This “common edition” Hug supposes to have
received three separate emendations in the middle of the third century;
one made by Origen in Palestine, which he thinks Jerome adopted and
approved; two others by Hesychius and Lucian (a presbyter of Antioch and
Martyr), in Egypt and Syria respectively, both which Jerome condemned, and
Pope Gelasius (A.D. 492-6) declared to be apocryphal(286). To Origen’s
recension he referred such copies as AKM, 42, 106, 114, 116, 253 of the
Gospels, the Harkleian Syriac, the quotations of Chrysostom and Theodoret;
to Hesychius the Alexandrian codices BCL; to Lucian the Byzantine
documents EFGHSV and the mass of later books. The practical effect of this
elaborate theory would be to accord to Cod. A a higher place among our
authorities than some recent editors have granted it, even than it quite
deserves, yet its correspondence with Origen in many characteristic
readings would thus be admitted and accounted for (_but see_ p. 226). But
in truth Hug’s whole scheme is utterly baseless as regards historical
fact, and most insufficiently sustained by internal proof. Jerome’s slight
and solitary mention of the copies of Lucian and Hesychius abundantly
evinces their narrow circulation and the low esteem in which they were
held; and even Eichhorn perceived that there was no evidence whatever to
show that Origen had attempted a formal revision of the text. The passages
cited above, both from Eusebius and Jerome—and no others are known to bear
on the subject—will carry us no further than this:—that these Fathers had
access to codices of the N. T. once possessed by Adamantius, and here and
there, perhaps, retouched by his hand. The manuscripts copied by Pamphilus
were those of Origen’s own works; and while we have full and detailed
accounts of what he accomplished for the Greek versions of the Old
Testament, no hint has been thrown out by any ancient writer that he
carried his pious labour into the criticism of the New. On the contrary,
he seems to disclaim the task in a sentence now extant chiefly in the old
Latin version of his works, wherein, to a notice of his attempt to remove
diversity of reading from codices of the Septuagint by the help of “the
other editions” (κριτηρίῳ χρησάμενοι ταῖς λοιπαῖς ἐκδόσεσιν, i.e. the
versions of Aquila and the rest), he is represented as adding, “In
exemplaribus autem Novi Testamenti, hoc ipsum me posse facere sine
periculo non putavi” (Origen, Tom. iii. p. 671).
10. Hug’s system of recensions was devised as a corrective to those of
Bengel and of Griesbach, which have been adequately discussed in Chapter
VII. The veteran Griesbach spent his last effort as a writer in bringing
to notice the weak points of Hug’s case, and in claiming him, where he
rightly could, as a welcome ally(287). But neither did Hug’s scheme, nor
that propounded by Scholz some years later, obtain the general credit and
acceptance which had once been conceded to Griesbach’s. It was by this
time plainly seen that not only were such theories unsupported by
historical testimony (to which indeed the Professor of Halle had been too
wise to lay claim), but that they failed to account for more than a part,
and that usually a small part, of the phenomena disclosed by minute study
of our critical materials. All that can be inferred from searching into
the history of the sacred text amounts to no more than this: that
extensive variations, arising no doubt from the wide circulation of the
New Testament in different regions and among nations of diverse languages,
subsisted from the earliest period to which our records extend. Beyond
this point our investigations cannot be carried, without indulging in
pleasant speculations which may amuse the fancy, but cannot inform the
sober judgement. Such is the conclusion to which we are reluctantly
brought after examining the principles laid down, as well by the critics
we have named above, as by Lachmann, by his disciple Tregelles, and even
by the _par nobile_ of Cambridge Doctors, Professor Hort and Bishop
(formerly Canon) Westcott, of whose labours we shall speak presently.