calamity,—namely, that men will at last require that the Textual problem
shall be fairly threshed out. They will insist on having it proved to
their satisfaction,—(1) That Codices B and א are indeed the oracular
documents which their admirers pretend; and—(2) That a narrow selection of
ancient documents is a secure foundation on which to build the Text of
Scripture. Failing this,—(and the _onus probandi_ rests wholly with those
who are for setting aside the Traditional Text in favour of another,
_entirely dissimilar in character_,)—failing this, we say, it is
reasonable to hope that the counsels of the “_Quarterly Review_” will be
suffered to prevail. In the meantime, we repeat that this question has now
to be fought out: for to ignore it any longer is impossible. Compromise of
any sort between the two conflicting parties, is impossible also; for they
simply contradict one another. Codd. B and א are either among the purest
of manuscripts,—or else they are among the very foulest. The Text of Drs.
Westcott and Hort is either the very best which has ever appeared,—or else
it is the very worst; the nearest to the sacred Autographs,—or the
furthest from them. There is no room for _both_ opinions; and there cannot
exist any middle view.
The question will have to be fought out; and it must be fought out fairly.
It may not be magisterially settled; but must be advocated, on either
side, by the old logical method. If Continental Scholars join in the fray,
England,—which in the last century took the lead in these studies,—will,
it is to be hoped, maintain her ancient reputation and again occupy the
front rank. The combatants may be sure that, in consequence of all that
has happened, the public will be no longer indifferent spectators of the
fray; for the issue concerns the inner life of the whole
community,—touches men’s very heart of hearts. Certain it is that—“GOD
defend _the Right_!” will be the one aspiration of every faithful spirit
among us. THE TRUTH,—(we avow it on behalf of Drs. Westcott and Hort as
eagerly as on our own behalf,)—GOD’S TRUTH will be, as it has been
throughout, the one object of all our striving. Αἴλινον αἴλινον εἰπέ, τὸ
δ᾽ εὖ νικάτω.
*I HAVE BEEN VERY JEALOUS FOR THE LORD GOD OF HOSTS.*
LETTER TO BISHOP ELLICOTT, IN REPLY TO HIS PAMPHLET.
“Nothing is more satisfactory at the present time than the evident
feelings of veneration for our Authorized Version, and the very
generally-felt desire for _as little change as possible_.”—BISHOP
ELLICOTT.(839)
“We may be satisfied with the attempt to correct _plain and clear
errors_, but _there it is our duty to stop_.”—BISHOP
ELLICOTT.(840)
“We have now, at all events, no fear of _an over-corrected
Version_.”—BISHOP ELLICOTT.(841)
“I fear we must say in candour that in the Revised Version we meet
in every page with small _changes, which are vexatious, teasing,
and irritating, even the more so because they are small; which
seem almost to be made for the sake of change_.”—BISHOP
WORDSWORTH.(842)
[The question arises,]—“Whether the Church of England,—which in
her Synod, so far as this Province is concerned, sanctioned a
Revision of her Authorized Version _under the express condition_,
which she most wisely imposed, that _no Changes should be made in
it except what were absolutely necessary_,—could consistently
accept a Version in which 36,000 changes have been made; _not a
fiftieth of which can be shown to be needed, or even
desirable_.”—BISHOP WORDSWORTH.(843)
Letter To
The Right Rev. Charles John Ellicott, D.D.,
Bishop Of Gloucester And Bristol,
In Reply To His Pamphlet In Defence Of
The Revisers And Their Greek Text Of
The New Testament.
“WHAT COURSE WOULD REVISERS HAVE US TO FOLLOW?... WOULD IT BE WELL
FOR THEM TO AGREE ON A CRITICAL GREEK TEXT? _TO THIS QUESTION WE
VENTURE TO ANSWER VERY UNHESITATINGLY IN THE NEGATIVE._
“THOUGH WE HAVE MUCH CRITICAL MATERIAL, AND A VERY FAIR AMOUNT OF
CRITICAL KNOWLEDGE, _WE HAVE CERTAINLY NOT YET ACQUIRED SUFFICIENT
CRITICAL JUDGMENT_ FOR ANY BODY OF REVISERS HOPEFULLY TO UNDERTAKE
SUCH A WORK AS THIS.”
BISHOP ELLICOTT.(844)
MY LORD BISHOP,
Last May, you published a pamphlet of seventy-nine pages(845) in
vindication of the Greek Text recently put forth by the New Testament
Company of Revisers. It was (you said) your Answer to the first and second
of my Articles in the _Quarterly Review_:(846)—all three of which,
corrected and enlarged, are now submitted to the public for the second
time. See above, from page 1 to page 367.
[1] Preliminary Statement.
You may be quite sure that I examined your pamphlet as soon as it
appeared, with attention. I have since read it through several times:
and—I must add—with ever-increasing astonishment. First, because it is so
evidently the production of one who has never made Textual Criticism
seriously his study. Next, because your pamphlet is no refutation whatever
of my two Articles. You flout me: you scold me: you lecture me. But I do
not find that you ever _answer_ me. You reproduce the theory of Drs.
Westcott and Hort,—which I claim to have demolished.(847) You seek to put
me down by flourishing in my face the decrees of Lachmann, Tischendorf and
Tregelles,—which, as you are well aware, I entirely disallow.
Denunciation, my lord Bishop, is not Argument; neither is Reiteration,
Proof. And then,—Why do you impute to me opinions which I do not hold? and
charge me with a method of procedure of which I have never been guilty?
Above all, why do you seek to prejudice the question at issue between us
by importing irrelevant matter which can only impose upon the ignorant and
mislead the unwary? Forgive my plainness, but really you are so
conspicuously unfair,—and at the same time so manifestly unacquainted,
(except at second-hand and only in an elementary way,) with the points
actually under discussion,—that, were it not for the adventitious
importance attaching to any utterance of yours, deliberately put forth at
this time as Chairman of the New Testament body of Revisers, I should have
taken no notice of your pamphlet.
[2] The Bishop’s pamphlet was anticipated and effectually disposed of,
three weeks before it appeared, by the Reviewer’s Third Article.
I am bound, at the same time, to acknowledge that you have been singularly
unlucky. While _you_ were penning your Defence, (namely, throughout the
first four months of 1882,) _I_ was making a fatal inroad into your
position, by showing how utterly without foundation is the “Textual
Theory” to which you and your co-Revisers have been so rash as to commit
yourselves.(848) This fact I find duly recognized in your “Postscript.”
“Since the foregoing pages were in print” (you say,) “a third article has
appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, entitled ‘Westcott and Hort’s Textual
Theory.’ ”(849) Yes. _I_ came before the public on the 16th of April;
_you_ on the 4th of May, 1882. In this way, your pamphlet was
anticipated,—had in fact been fully disposed of, three weeks before it
appeared. “The Reviewer,” (you complain at page 4,) “censures their
[Westcott and Hort’s] Text: _in neither Article has he attempted a serious
examination of the arguments which they allege in its support_.” But, (as
explained,) the “serious examination” which you reproach me with having
hitherto failed to produce,—had been already three weeks in the hands of
readers of the _Quarterly_ before your pamphlet saw the light. You would,
in consequence, have best consulted your own reputation, I am persuaded,
had you instantly recalled and suppressed your printed sheets. _What_, at
all events, you can have possibly meant, while publishing them, by adding
(in your “Postscript” at page 79,)—“_In this controversy it is not for us
to interpose:_” and again,—“_We find nothing in the Reviewer’s third
article to require further answer from us:_”—passes my comprehension;
seeing that your pamphlet (page 11 to page 29) is an elaborate avowal that
you have made Westcott and Hort’s theory entirely your own. The Editor of
the _Speaker’s Commentary_, I observe, takes precisely the same view of
your position. “The two Revisers” (says Canon Cook) “actually add a
Postscript to their pamphlet of a single short page noticing their
unexpected anticipation by the third _Quarterly Review_ article; with the
remark that ‘in this controversy (between Westcott and Hort and the
Reviewer) it is not for us to interfere:’—as if Westcott and Hort’s theory
of Greek Revision could be refuted, or seriously damaged, without _cutting
the ground from under the Committee of Revisers on the whole of this
subject_.”(850)
[3] Bp. Ellicott remonstrated with for his unfair method of procedure.
I should enter at once on an examination of your Reply, but that I am
constrained at the outset to remonstrate with you on the exceeding
unfairness of your entire method of procedure. Your business was to make
it plain to the public that you have dealt faithfully with the Deposit:
have strictly fulfilled the covenant into which you entered twelve years
ago with the Convocation of the Southern Province: have corrected only
“_plain and clear errors_.” Instead of this, you labour to enlist vulgar
prejudice against me:—partly, by insisting that I am for determining
disputed Readings by an appeal to the “Textus Receptus,”—which (according
to you) I look upon as faultless:—partly, by exhibiting me in disagreement
with Lachmann, Tischendorf and Tregelles. The irrelevancy of this latter
contention,—the groundlessness of the former,—may not be passed over
without a few words of serious remonstrance. For I claim that, in
discussing the Greek Text, I have invariably filled my pages as full of
_Authorities_ for the opinions I advocate, as the limits of the page would
allow. I may have been tediously demonstrative sometimes: but no one can
fairly tax me with having shrunk from the severest method of evidential
proof. To find myself therefore charged with “mere
denunciation,”(851)—with substituting “strong expressions of individual
opinion” for “arguments,”(852)—and with “attempting to cut the cord by
reckless and unverified assertions,” (p. 25,)—astonishes me. Such language
is in fact even ridiculously unfair.
The misrepresentation of which I complain is not only conspicuous, but
systematic. It runs through your whole pamphlet: is admitted by yourself
at the close,—(viz. at p. 77,)—_to be half the sum of your entire
contention_. Besides cropping up repeatedly,(853) it finds deliberate and
detailed expression when you reach the middle of your essay,—viz. at p.
41: where, with reference to certain charges which I not only bring
against codices א B C L, but laboriously substantiate by a free appeal to
the contemporary evidence of Copies, Versions, and Fathers,—you venture to
express yourself concerning me as follows:—
“To attempt to sustain such charges by a rough comparison of these
ancient authorities with the TEXTUS RECEPTUS, and to measure the
degree of their depravation _by the amount of their divergence
from such a text as we have shown this Received Text really to
be_, is to trifle with the subject of sacred Criticism.”—p. 41.
You add:—
“Until the depravation of these ancient Manuscripts has been
demonstrated in a manner more consistent with _the recognized
principles of Criticism_, such charges as those to which we allude
must be regarded as expressions of passion, or prejudice, and set
aside by every impartial reader as assertions for which no
adequate evidence has yet been produced.”—pp. 41-2.
[4] (Which be “the recognized principles of Textual Criticism”?—a question
asked in passing.)
But give me leave to ask in passing,—_Which_, pray, _are_ “the recognized
principles of Criticism” to which you refer? I profess I have never met
with them yet; and I am sure it has not been for want of diligent enquiry.
You have publicly charged me before your Diocese with being “innocently
ignorant of the _now established principles_ of Textual Criticism.”(854)
But why do you not state which those principles _are_? I am surprised. You
are for ever vaunting “_principles_ which have been established by the
investigations and reasonings” of Lachmann, Tischendorf and
Tregelles:(855)—“the _principles_ of Textual Criticism which are accepted
and recognized by the great majority of modern Textual Critics:”(856)—“the
_principles_ on which the Textual Criticism of the last fifty years has
been based:”(857)—but you never condescend to explain _which be_ the
“principles” you refer to. For the last time,—_Who_ established those
“Principles”? and, _Where_ are they to be seen “established”?
I will be so candid with you as frankly to avow that the _only two_
“principles” with which I am acquainted as held, with anything like
consent, by “the modern Textual Critics” to whom you have surrendered your
judgment, are—(1st) A robust confidence in the revelations of their own
inner consciousness: and (2ndly) A superstitious partiality for two
codices written in the uncial character,—for which partiality they are
able to assign no intelligible reason. You put the matter as neatly as I
could desire at page 19 of your Essay,—where you condemn, with excusable
warmth, “those who adopt the easy method of _using some favourite
Manuscript_,”—or of exercising “_some supposed power of divining the
original Text;_”—as if those were “the only necessary agents for
correcting the Received Text.” _Why_ the evidence of codices B and א,—and
perhaps the evidence of the VIth-century codex D,—(“the singular codex” as
you call it; and it is certainly a very singular codex indeed:)—_why_, I
say, the evidence of these two or three codices should be thought to
outweigh the evidence of all other documents in existence,—whether Copies,
Versions, or Fathers,—I have never been able to discover, nor have their
admirers ever been able to tell me.
[5] Bp. Ellicott’s and the Reviewer’s respective methods, contrasted.
Waiving this however, (for it is beside the point,) I venture to ask,—With
what show of reason can you pretend that I “_sustain my charges_” against
codices א B C L, “_by a rough comparison of these ancient authorities with
the_ Textus Receptus”?(858)... Will you deny that it is a mere
misrepresentation of the plain facts of the case, to say so? Have I not,
on the contrary, _on every occasion_ referred Readings in dispute,—the
reading of א B C L on the one hand, the reading of the _Textus Receptus_
on the other,—simultaneously to one and the same external standard? Have I
not persistently enquired for the verdict—so far as it has been
obtainable—of CONSENTIENT ANTIQUITY? If I have sometimes spoken of certain
famous manuscripts (א B C D namely,) as exhibiting fabricated Texts, have
I not been at the pains to establish the reasonableness of my assertion by
showing that they yield divergent,—that is _contradictory_, testimony?
The task of laboriously collating the five “old uncials” throughout the
Gospels, occupied me for five-and-a-half years, and taxed me severely. But
I was rewarded. I rose from the investigation profoundly convinced that,
however important they may be as instruments of Criticism, codices א B C D
are among the most corrupt documents extant. It was a conviction derived
from exact _Knowledge_ and based on solid grounds of _Reason_. You, my
lord Bishop, who have never gone deeply into the subject, repose simply on
_Prejudice_. Never having at any time collated codices א A B C D for
yourself, you are unable to gainsay a single statement of mine by a
counter-appeal to _facts_. Your textual learning proves to have been all
obtained at second-hand,—taken on trust. And so, instead of marshalling
against me a corresponding array of ANCIENT AUTHORITIES,—you invariably
attempt to put me down by an appeal to MODERN OPINION. “The _majority of
modern Critics_” (you say) have declared the manuscripts in question “not
only to be wholly undeserving of such charges, but, on the contrary, to
exhibit a text of comparative purity.”(859)
The sum of the difference therefore between our respective methods, my
lord Bishop, proves to be this:—that whereas _I_ endeavour by a laborious
accumulation of _ancient Evidence_ to demonstrate that the decrees of
Lachmann, of Tischendorf and of Tregelles, _are untrustworthy_; _your_ way
of reducing me to silence, is to cast Lachmann, Tregelles and Tischendorf
at every instant in my teeth. You make your appeal exclusively to _them_.
“It would be difficult” (you say) “to find a recent English Commentator of
any considerable reputation who has not been influenced, more or less
consistently, by _one or the other of these three Editors_:”(860) (as if
_that_ were any reason why I should do the same!) Because I pronounce the
Revised reading of S. Luke ii. 14, “a grievous perversion of the truth of
Scripture,” you bid me consider “that in so speaking I am _censuring
Lachmann, Tischendorf and Tregelles_.” You seem in fact to have utterly
missed the point of my contention: which is, that the ancient Fathers
collectively (A.D. 150 to A.D. 450),—inasmuch as they must needs have
known far better than Lachmann, Tregelles, or Tischendorf, (A.D. 1830 to
A.D. 1880,) what was the Text of the New Testament in the earliest
ages,—are perforce far more trustworthy guides than they. And further,
that whenever it can be clearly shown that the Ancients as a body say one
thing, and the Moderns another, the opinion of the Moderns may be safely
disregarded.
When therefore I open your pamphlet at the first page, and read as
follows:—“A bold assault has been made in recent numbers of the _Quarterly
Review_ upon the whole fabric of Criticism which has been built up _during
the last fifty years_ by the patient labour of successive editors of the
New Testament,”(861)—I fail to discover that any practical inconvenience
results to myself from your announcement. The same plaintive strain
reappears at p. 39; where, having pointed out “that the text of the
Revisers is, in all essential features, the same as that text in which the
best critical editors, _during the past fifty years_, are generally
agreed,”—you insist “that thus, any attack made on the text of the
Revisers is really an attack on the critical principles that have been
carefully and laboriously established _during the last half-century_.”
With the self-same pathetic remonstrance you conclude your labours. “If,”
(you say) “the Revisers are wrong in the principles which they have
applied to the determination of the Text, _the principles_ on which the
Textual Criticism of _the last fifty years_ has been based, are wrong
also.”(862)... Are you then not yet aware that the alternative which seems
to you so alarming is in fact my whole contention? What else do you
imagine it is that I am proposing to myself throughout, but effectually to
dispel the vulgar prejudice,—say rather, to plant my heel upon the weak
superstition,—which “_for the last fifty years_” has proved fatal to
progress in this department of learning; and which, if it be suffered to
prevail, will make _a science_ of Textual Criticism impossible? A shallow
empiricism has been the prevailing result, up to this hour, of the
teaching of Lachmann, and Tischendorf, and Tregelles.
[6] Bp. Ellicott in May 1870, and in May 1882.
A word in your private ear, (by your leave) in passing. You seem to have
forgotten that, at the time when you entered on the work of Revision,
_your own_ estimate of the Texts put forth by these Editors was the
reverse of favourable; _i.e._ was scarcely distinguishable from that of
your present correspondent. Lachmann’s you described as “a text composed
on _the narrowest and most exclusive_ principles,”—“really based on
_little more than four manuscripts_.”—“The case of Tischendorf” (you said)
“is still more easily disposed of. Which of this most inconstant Critic’s
texts are we to select? Surely not the last, in which an exaggerated
preference for a single manuscript has betrayed him into _an almost
childlike infirmity of judgment_. Surely also not the seventh edition,
which exhibits all the instability which a comparatively recent
recognition of the authority of cursive manuscripts might be supposed
likely to introduce.”—As for poor Tregelles, you said:—“His critical
principles ... are now, perhaps justly, called in question.” His text “is
rigid and mechanical, and sometimes fails to disclose _that critical
instinct and peculiar scholarly sagacity which_”(863) have since evidently
disclosed themselves in perfection in those Members of the Revising body
who, with Bp. Ellicott at their head, systematically outvoted Prebendary
Scrivener in the Jerusalem Chamber. But with what consistency, my lord
Bishop, do you to-day vaunt “the principles” of the very men whom
yesterday you vilipended precisely because _their _“principles” then
seemed to yourself so utterly unsatisfactory?
[7] “The fabric of modern Textual Criticism” (1831-81) rests on an
insecure basis.
I have been guilty of little else than sacrilege, it seems, because I have
ventured to send a shower of shot and shell into the flimsy decrees of
these three Critics which now you are pleased grandiloquently to designate
and describe as “_the whole fabric of Criticism which has been built up
within the last fifty years_.” Permit me to remind you that the “fabric”
you speak of,—(confessedly a creation of yesterday,)—rests upon a
foundation of sand; and has been already so formidably assailed, or else
so gravely condemned by a succession of famous Critics, that as “_a
fabric_,” its very existence may be reasonably called in question.
Tischendorf insists on the general depravity (“_universa vitiositas_”) of
codex B; on which codex nevertheless Drs. Westcott and Hort chiefly
rely,—regarding it as unique in its pre-eminent purity. The same pair of
Critics depreciate the Traditional Text as “beyond all question identical
with the dominant [Greek] Text _of the second half of the fourth
century_:”—whereas, “_to bring the sacred text back to the condition in
which it existed during the fourth century_,”(864) was Lachmann’s one
object; the sum and substance of his striving. “The fancy of a
Constantinopolitan text, and every inference that has been grounded on its
presumed existence,”(865) Tregelles declares to have been “swept away at
once and for ever,” by Scrivener’s published Collations. And yet, what
else but _this_ is “the fancy,” (as already explained,) on which Drs.
Westcott and Hort have been for thirty years building up their visionary
Theory of Textual Criticism?—What Griesbach attempted [1774-1805], was
denounced [1782-1805] by C. F. Matthæi;—disapproved by
Scholz;—demonstrated to be untenable by Abp. Laurence. Finally, in 1847,
the learned J. G. Reiche, in some Observations prefixed to his Collations
of MSS. in the Paris Library, eloquently and ably exposed the
unreasonableness of _any_ theory of “Recension,”—properly so called;(866)
thereby effectually anticipating Westcott and Hort’s weak imagination of a
“_Syrian_ Text,” while he was demolishing the airy speculations of
Griesbach and Hug. “There is no royal road” (he said) “to the Criticism of
the N. T.: no plain and easy method, at once reposing on a firm
foundation, and conducting securely to the wished for goal.”(867)...
Scarcely therefore in Germany had the basement-story been laid of that
“fabric of Criticism which has been built up during the last fifty years,”
and which _you_ superstitiously admire,—when a famous German scholar was
heard denouncing the fabric as insecure. He foretold that the “_regia
via_” of codices B and א would prove a deceit and a snare: which thing, at
the end of four-and-thirty years, has punctually come to pass.