champion, "which we employ against unbelieving criticism." And what are
these weapons? We have shown in the preceding pages, the _suppressio
veri_ and the _suggestio falsi_ are amongst the weapons used. The
Religious Tract Society directors are parties to fabrication of
evidence, and they permit a learned charlatan to forward the cause of
Christ with craft and chicane. But even this is not enough; they need,
according to their pamphlet, "a new weapon;" they want "to find out the
very words the Apostles used." True believers have been in a state
of delusion; they were credulous enough to fancy that the authorised
version of the Scriptures tolerably faithfully represented God's
revelation to humankind. But no, says Dr. Tischendorf, it has been so
seriously modified in the copying and re-copying that it ought to be set
aside altogether, and a fresh text constructed. Glorious news this for
the Bible Society. Listen to it, Exeter Hall! Glad tidings to be issued
by the Paternoster Row saints! After spending hundreds of thousands of
pounds in giving away Bibles to soldiers, in placing them in hotels and
lodging-houses, and shipping them off to negroes and savages, it appears
that the wrong text has been sent through the world, the true version
being all the time in a waste-paper heap at Mount Sinai, watched over
by an "invisible eye." But, adds Dr. Tischendorf, "if you ask me whether
any popular version contains the original text, my answer is Yes and No.
I say Yes as far as concerns your soul's salvation." If these are enough
for the soul's salvation, why try to improve the matter? If we really
need the "full and clear light" of the Sinaitic Bible to show us "what
is the Word written by God," then most certainly our present Bible is
not believed by the Religious Tract Society to be the Word written by
God. The Christian advocates are in this dilemma: either the received,
text is insufficient, or the proposed improvement is unnecessary.
Dr. Tischendorf says that "The Gospels, like the only begotten of the
Father, will endure as long as human nature itself," yet he says "there
is a great diversity among the texts," and that the Gospel in use
amongst the Ebionites and that used amongst the Nazarenes have been
"disfigured here and there with certain arbitrary changes." He admits,
moreover, that "in early times, when the Church was not so critical in
distinguishing the true from the false," spurious Gospels obtained a
credit which they did not deserve. And while arguing for the enduring
character of the Gospel, he requests you to set aside the received text
altogether, and to try to construct a new revelation by the aid of Dr.
Tischendorf's patent Sinaitic invention.
We congratulate the Religious Tract Society upon their manifesto, and
on the victory it secures them over German Rationalism and English
Infidelity. The Society's translator, in his introductory remarks,
declares that "circumstantial evidence when complete, and when every
link in the chain has been thoroughly tested, is as strong as direct
testimony;" and, adds the Society's penman, "This is the kind of
evidence which Dr. Tischendorf brings for the genuineness of our
Gospels." It would be difficult to imagine a more inaccurate description
of Dr. Tischendorf's work. Do we find the circumstantial evidence
carefully tested in the Doctor's boasting and curious narrative of his
journeys commenced on a pecuniary deficiency and culminating in much
cash? Do we find it in Dr. Tischendorf s concealment for fifteen years
of the place, watched over by an invisible eye, in which was hidden the
greatest biblical treasure in the world? Is the circumstantial evidence
shown in the sneers at Renan? or is each link in the chain tested by the
strange jumbling together of names and conjectures in the first chapter?
What tests are used in the cases of Valentinus and Basilides in the
second chapter? How is the circumstantial testimony aided by the
references in the third chapter to the Apocryphal Gospels? Is there
a pretence even of critical testing in the chapter devoted to the
apostolic fathers? All that Dr. Tischendorf has done is in effect
to declare that our authorised version of the New Testament is so
unreliable, that it ought to be got rid of altogether, and a new text
constructed. And this declaration is circulated by the Religious Tract
Society, which sends the sixpenny edition of the Gospel with one hand,
and in the other the shilling Tischendorf pamphlet, declaring that many
passages of the Religious Tract Society's New Testament have undergone
such serious modifications of meaning as to leave us in painful
uncertainty as to what was originally written.
The very latest contribution from orthodox sources to the study of the
Gospels, as contained in the authorised version, is to be found in the
very candid preface to the recently-issued revised version of the New
Testament, where the ordinary Bible receives a condemnation of the most
sweeping description. Here, on the high authority of the revisers, we
are told that, with regard to the Greek text, the translators of the
authorised version had for their guides "manuscripts of late date, few
in number and used with little critical skill." The revisers add what
Freethinkers have long maintained, and have been denounced from pulpits
for maintaining, viz., "that the commonly received text needed thorough
revision," and, what is even more important, they candidly avow that "it
is but recently that materials have been acquired for executing such a
work with even approximate completeness." So that not only "God's Word"
has admittedly for generations not been "God's Word" at all, but even
now, and with materials not formerly known, it has only been revised
with "approximate completeness," whatever those two words may mean. If
they have any significance at all, they must convey the belief of the
new and at present final revisers of the Gospel, that, even after all
their toil, they are not quite sure that god's revelation is quite
exactly rendered into English. So far as the ordinary authorised version
of the New Testament goes--and it is this, the law-recognised, version
which is still used in administering oaths--we are told that the old
translators "used considerable freedom," and "studiously adopted a
variety of expressions which would now be deemed hardly consistent with
the requirements of faithful translation." This is a pleasant euphemism,
but a real and direct charge of dishonest translation by the authorised
translators. The new revisers add, with sadness, that "it cannot be
doubted that they (the translators of the authorised version) carried
this liberty too far, and that the studied avoidance of uniformity
in the rendering of the same words, even when occurring in the same
context, is one of the blemishes of their work." These blemishes the new
revisers think were increased by the fact that the translation of the
authorised version of the New Testament was assigned to two separate
companies, who never sat together, which "was beyond doubt the cause of
many inconsistencies," and, although there was a final supervision,
the new revisers add, most mournfully: "When it is remembered that
the supervision was completed in nine months, we may wonder that the
incongruities which remain-are not more numerous."
Nor are the revisers by any means free from doubt and misgiving on their
own work. They had the "laborious task" of "deciding between the rival
claims of various readings which might properly affect the translation,"
and, as they tell us, "Textual criticism, as applied to the Greek New
Testament, forms a special study of much intricacy and difficulty, and
even now leaves room for considerable variety of opinion among competent
critics." Next they say: "the frequent inconsistencies in the authorised
version have caused us much embarrassment," and that there are "numerous
passages in the authorised version in which.... the studied
variety adopted by the Translators of 1611 has produced a degree
of inconsistency that cannot be reconciled with the principle of
faithfulness." So little are the new revisers always certain as to
what god means that they provide "alternative readings in difficult or
debateable passages," and say "the notes of this last group are numerous
and largely in excess of those which were admitted by our predecessors."
And with reference to the pronouns and other words in italics we are
told that "some of these cases.... are of singular intricacy, and make
it impossible to maintain rigid uniformity." The new revisers conclude
by declaring that "through our manifold experience of its abounding
difficulties we have felt more and more as we went onward that such a
work can never be accomplished by organised efforts of scholarship and
criticism unless assisted by divine help." Apparently the new revisers
are conscious that they did not receive this divine help in their
attempt at revision, for they go on: "We know full well that defects
must have their place in a work so long and so arduous as this which has
now come to an end. Blemishes and imperfections there are in the noble
translation which we have been called upon to revise; blemishes and
imperfections will assuredly be found in our own revision;... we cannot
forget how often we have failed in expressing some finer shade of
meaning which we recognised in the original, how often idiom has stood
in the way of a perfect rendering, and how often the attempt to preserve
a familiar form of words, or even a familiar cadence, has only added
another perplexity to those which have already beset us."
THE END.