Appendix To Chapter X.

om. αἰνοῦντες καὶ אBCL*, Bohairic (Hort), Jerusalem Syriac. This is the Neutral and Alexandrian text.om. καὶ εὐλογοῦντες D,abeffl,gat.bodl., Bohairic (Tischendorf). This is the Western text.The assumption of course is that the Syrian reading is aconflationof those of the other two classes, so forming a full but not overburdened clause. But if thispraejudiciumbe met with the plea that D and the Latins perpetually, B and its allies very often, seek to abridge the sacred original, it would be hard to demonstrate that the latter explanation is more improbable than the former. Beyond this point of subjective feeling the matter cannot well be carried, whether on one side or the other.Dr. Hort's other examples of conflation have the same double edge as Luke xxiv. 53, and there is no doubt that Dr. Sanday is right in asserting that like instances may be found wheresoever they are looked for; but they prove nothing to any one who has not made up his mind beforehand as to what the reading ought to be. We have already confessed that there is a tendency on the part of copyists to assimilate the narratives of the several Gospels to each other; and that such Harmonies as that of Tatian would facilitate the process; that synonymous words are liable to be exchanged and harsh constructions supplied. Part of the value of the older codices arises from their comparative freedom from such corrections: but then this modernizing process is on the part of copyists unsystematic, almost unconscious; it is wholly different from the deliberate formal emendations implied throughout Dr. Hort's volume.(β) The second reason adduced by theTwo Revisers“is almost equally cogent”in their estimation. It is that while the Ante-Nicene Fathers“place before us from separate and in some cases widely distant countries examples of Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral readings, it appears to be certain that before the middle of the third century we have no historical traces of readings which can properly be entitled distinctively Syrian”(The Revisers, &c., p. 26). Now the middle of the third century is the earliest period assigned by Dr. Hort for the inception of his phantom scheme of Syrian revision, and we feel[pg 294]sure that the epoch of Patristic evidence was not put thus early, in order to exclude Origen, whose support of his Alexandrian readings Griesbach found so partial and precarious (seeabove, p.226). In fact Dr. Hort expressly states that“The only period for which we have anything like a sufficiency of representative knowledge consists roughly of three-quarters of a century from about 175 to 250: but the remains of four eminent Greek Fathers, which range through this period, cast a strong light on textual history backward and forward. They are Irenaeus, of Asia Minor, Rome, and Lyons; his disciple Hippolytus, of Rome; Clement, of Athens and Alexandria; and his disciple, Origen, of Alexandria and Palestine”(Hort, p. 112). Even if the extant writings of these Fathers had been as rigorously examined and as thoroughly known as they certainly are not,“their scantiness and the comparative vagueness of the textual materials contained in them”(ibid.) would hinder our drawing at present any positive conclusions regarding the sacred text as known to them. Even the slender specimens of controverted readings collected in our Chap.XIIwould suffice to prove that their evidence is by no means exclusively favourable to Dr. Hort's opinions, a fact for which we will allege but one instance out of many, the support given to the Received text by Hippolytus in that grand passage, John iii. 13300.There are three considerable works relating to the criticism of the N. T. still open to the enterprise of scholars, and they can hardly be taken up at all except by the fresh hopefulness of scholars yet young. We need a fuller and more comprehensive collation of the cursive manuscripts (Hort, pp. 76-7):“a complete collection of all the fragments of the Thebaic New Testament is now the most pressing want in the province of textual criticism,”writes Bp. Lightfoot, and he might have added a better edition of the Bohairic also: but for the demands of the present controversy we must set in the first rank the necessity for a complete survey of the Patristic literature of the first five centuries at the least. While we concede to Dr. Hort that as[pg 295]a rule“negative patristic evidence”—that derived from the mere silence of the writer,“is of no force at all”(Hort, p. 201), and attach very slight importance to citations which are not express, it is from this source that we must look for any stable decision regarding the comparative purity in reference to the sacred autographs of the several classes of documents which have passed under our review.(γ) Hence the second reason for supporting the text of Westcott and Hort urged by theTwo Revisersrelates to an investigation of facts hitherto but partially ascertained: the third, like the first, involves only matters of opinion, in which individual judgements and prepossessions bear the chief part.“Yet a third reason is supplied by Internal Evidence, or, in other words, by considerations ... of intrinsic or of Transcriptional Probability”(The Revisers &c., p. 26): and“here,”they very justly add,“it is obvious that we enter at once into a very delicate and difficult domain of textual criticism, and can only draw our conclusions with the utmost circumspection and reserve”(ibid.). On the subject of Internal Evidence enough for our present purpose has been said, and Dr. Hort's Transcriptional head appears to be Bp. Ellicott'sparadiplomaticunder a more convenient name. Our author's discussion of what he calls the“rudimental criticism”of Internal evidence (Hort, Part ii. pp. 19-72), if necessarily somewhat abstruse, is one of the most elaborate and interesting in his admirable volume. It is sometimes said that all reasoning is analytical, not synthetical; the reducing a foregone conclusion to the first principles on which it rests, rather than the building upon those first principles the materials wherewith to construct the conclusion. Of this portion of Dr. Hort's labours thedictumis emphatically true. Cod. B and its characteristic peculiarities are never out of the author's mind, and those lines of thought are closely followed which most readily lead up to the theory of that manuscript's practical impeccability. We allege this statement in no disparaging spirit, and it may be that Dr. Hort will not wholly disagree with us. Not only is he duly sensible of the precariousness of Intrinsic evidence, inasmuch as“the uncertainty of the decision in ordinary cases is shown by the great diversity of judgement which is actually found to exist”(Hort, p. 21), but he boldly,[pg 296]and no less boldly than truly, intimates that in such cases the ultimate decision must rest with the individual critic:“in almost all texts variations occur where personal judgement inevitably takes a large part in the final decision.... Different minds will be impressed by different parts of the evidence as clearer than the rest, and so virtually ruling the rest: here therefore personal discernment would seem the surest ground for confidence”(ibid.p. 65). For the critic's confidence perhaps, not for that of his reader.The process of grouping authorities, whether by considerations of their geographical distribution or (more uncertainly) according to their genealogy as inferred from internal considerations (ibid.pp. 49-65), occupies a large measure of Dr. Hort's attention. The idea has not indeed originated with him, and its occasional value will be frankly acknowledged in the ensuing pages, so that on this head we need not further enlarge. In conclusion we will say, that the more our Cambridge Professor's“Introduction”is studied the more it grows upon our esteem for fulness of learning, for patience of research, for keenness of intellectual power, and especially for a certain marvellous readiness in accounting after some fashion for every new phenomenon which occurs, however apparently adverse to the acceptance of his own theory. With all our reverence for his genius, and gratitude for much that we have learnt from him in the course of our studies, we are compelled to repeat as emphatically as ever our strong conviction that the hypothesis to whose proof he has devoted so many laborious years, is destitute not only of historical foundation, but of all probability resulting from the internal goodness of the text which its adoption would force upon us301.This last assertion we will try to verify by subjoining a select[pg 297]number of those many passages in the N. T. wherein the two great codices א and B, one or both of them, are witnesses for readings, nearly all of which, to the best of our judgement, are corruptions of the sacred originals302.6. Those who devote themselves to the criticism of the text of the New Testament have only of late come to understand the full importance of attending closely to the mutual connexion subsisting between their several materials of every description, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers. The study ofgroupinghas been recently and not untruly said to be the foundation of all enduring criticism303. Now that theories about the formal recensions of whole classes of these documents have generally been given up as purely visionary, and the very wordfamilieshas come into disrepute by reason of the exploded fancies it recalls, we can discern not the less clearly that certain groups of them have in common not only a general resemblance in regard to the readings they exhibit, but characteristic peculiarities attaching themselves to each group. Systematic or wilful corruption of the sacred text, at least on a scale worth taking into account, there would seem to have been almost none; yet the tendency to licentious paraphrase and unwarranted additions distinguished one set of our witnesses from the second century downwards; a bias towards grammatical and critical purism and needless omissions appertained to another; while[pg 298]a third was only too apt to soften what might seem harsh, to smooth over difficulties, and to bring passages, especially of the Synoptic Gospels, into unnatural harmony with each other. All these changes appear to have been going on without notice during the whole of the third and fourth centuries, and except that the great name of Origen is associated (not always happily) with one class of them, were rather the work of transcribers than of scholars. Eusebius and Jerome, in their judgements about Scripture texts, are more the echoes of Origen than independent investigators.Now, as a first approximation to the actual state of the case, the several classes of changes which we have enumerated admit of a certain rude geographical distribution, one of them appertaining to Western Christendom and the earliest Fathers of the African and Gallic Churches (including North Italy under the latter appellation); a second to Egypt and its neighbourhood; the third originally to Syria and Christian Antioch, in later times to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. We have here, no doubt, much to remind us of Griesbach and his scheme of triple recensions, but with this broad distinction between his conclusions and those of modern critics, that whereas he regarded the existence of his families as a patent fact, and grounded upon it precise and mechanical rules for the arrangement of the text, we are now content to perceive no more than unconscious tendencies, liable to be modified or diverted by a thousand occult influences, of which in each single case it is impossible to form an estimate beforehand. Even that marked bias in the direction of adding to the record, which is the reproach of Codex Bezae and some of its compeers, and renders the text of the Acts as exhibited by DE, by the cursive 137, and the margin of the Harkleian Syriac, as unlike that commonly read as can well be imagined304, is mixed up with a proneness to omissions which we should look for rather from another class of documents (e.g. the rejection of ψευδόμενοι Matt. v. 11), and which in the latter part of St. Luke's Gospel almost suggests the idea of representing an earlier edition than that now in ordinary use,[pg 299]yet proceeding from the Evangelist's own hand (seep.18)305. Again, the process whereby the rough places are made plain and abrupt constructions rounded, is abundantly exemplified in the readings of the great uncial A, supported as it is by the mass of later manuscripts (e.g. Mark i. 27; Acts xv. 17, 18; xx. 24); yet in innumerable instances (seeAppendixto this chapter) these self-same codices retain the genuine text of the sacred writers which their more illustrious compeers have lost or impaired.Hence it follows that in judging of the character of a various reading proposed for our acceptance, we must carefully mark whether it comes to us from many directions or from one. And herein the native country of the several documents, even when we can make sure of it, is only a precarious guide. If the Ethiopic or the Armenian versions have really been corrected by the Latin Vulgate, the geographical remoteness of their origin must go for nothing where they agree with the latter version. The relation in which Cod. L and the Bohairic version stand to Cod. B is too close to allow them their full value as independent witnesses unless when they are at variance with that great uncial, wheresoever it may have been written: the same might be said of the beautiful Latin fragmentkfrom Bobbio. To whatever nations they belong, their resemblances are too strong and perpetual not to compel us to withhold from them a part of the consideration their concord would otherwise lay claim to. The same is incontestably the case with the Curetonian and margin of the Harkleian Syriac in connexion with Cod. D. Wide as is the region which separates Syria from Gaul, there[pg 300]must have been in very early times some remote communication by which the stream of Eastern testimony or tradition, like another Alpheus, rose up again with fresh strength to irrigate the regions of the distant West. The Peshitto Syriac leans at times in the same direction, although both in nation and character it most assimilates to the same class as Cod. A.With these, and it may be with some further reservations which experience and study shall hereafter suggest, the principle of grouping must be acknowledged to be a sound one, and those lines of evidence to be least likely to lead us astray which converge from the most varied quarters to the same point. It is strange, but not more strange than needful, that we are compelled in the cause of truth to make one stipulation more: namely, that this rule be henceforth applied impartially in all cases, as well when it will tell in favour of the Received text, as when it shall help to set it aside. To assign a high value to cursive manuscripts of the best description (such as 1, 33, 69, 157, Evst. 259, or 61 of the Acts), and to such uncials as LRΔ, or even as א or C, whensoever they happen to agree with Cod. B, and to treat their refined silver as though it had been suddenly transmuted into dross when they come to contradict it, is a practice too plainly unreasonable to admit of serious defence, and can only lead to results which those who uphold it would be the first to deplore306.7. It is hoped that the general issue of the foregoing discussion may now be embodied in these four practical rules307:—(1) That the true readings of the Greek New Testament cannot safely be derived from any one set of authorities, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers, but ought to be the result of[pg 301]a patient comparison and careful estimate of the evidence supplied by them all.(2) That where there is a real agreement between all documents containing the Gospels up to the sixth century, and in other parts of the New Testament up to the ninth, the testimony of later manuscripts and versions, though not to be rejected unheard, must be regarded with great suspicion, and,unless upheld by strong internal evidence, can hardly be adopted308.(3) That where the more ancient documents are at variance with each other, the later uncial and cursive copies, especially those of approved merit, are of real importance, as being the surviving representatives of other codices, very probably as early, perhaps even earlier, than any now extant.(4) That in weighing conflicting evidence we must assign the highest value not to those readings which are attested by the greatest number of witnesses, but to those which come to us from several remote and independent sources, and which bear the least likeness to each other in respect to genius and general character.[pg 302]Appendix To Chapter X.Matt. vi. 8. The transparent gloss ὁ θεός is inserted before ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν by Codd. א*B and the Sahidic version309.Ver. 22. Ὁ λύχνος τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου B,abcff1n1.2hl, the printed Vulgate, some Latin writers, and the Ethiopic. The addition of σου is more strongly attested in Luke xi. 34 by א*ABCDM, but is intolerable in either place.Matt. xvi. 21. Ἀπὸ τότε ἤρξατο ἰησοῦς χριστός: so the first hands of א and B, with the Bohairic version only, their very frequent companion.Matt. xxvii. 28. On the impossible reading of אcBD,abcff2q, and a few others, enough has been said in Chap. VII. p.234.Ver. 49. We are here brought face to face with the gravest interpolation yet laid to the charge of B, whose tendency is usually in the opposite direction. Westcott and Hort alone among the editors feel constrained to insert in the text, though enclosed in their double brackets and regarded as“most probably an interpolation,”a sentence which neither they nor any other competent scholar can easily believe that the Evangelist ever wrote310. After σώσων αὐτόν are set the following words borrowed from John xix. 34, with a slight verbal change, and representing that the Saviour was pierced before his death: ἄλλος δὲ λαβὼν λόγχην ἔνυξεν αὐτοῦ τὴν πλευράν, καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ὕδωρ καὶ ἁῖμα. Thus we read in אBCLU (which has εὐθέως before ἐξῆλθεν αἷμα καὶ ὕδωρ) Γ, 5, 48, 67, 115, 127*, five good manuscripts of the Vulgate,Kells,gat.,mm.,chad.,mac-regol., andOxon.,C. C.(notinBodl.),Harl.1023 and 1802*, and the margin of 1 E.vi, the Jerusalem Syriac once when the Lesson occurs, and the Ethiopic. Chrysostom thus read in his copy, but used the clause with so little reflection that he regarded the Lord as dead already. Severus of Antioch [d. 539], who himself protested against this gross corruption, tells us that Cyril of Alexandria as well as Chrysostom received it. A scholion found in Cod. 72 refers this addition εἰς τὸ καθ᾽ ἱστορίαν εὐαγγέλιον Διοδώρου καὶ Τατιάνου καὶ ἄλλων διαφόρων ἁγίων πατέρων, on the authority of Chrysostom; and from the unintentional blunders of Harmonists like Tatian such an insertion might very well have crept in. The marvel is that it found favour so widely as it did311.[pg 303]Matt. xxviii. 19. βαπτίσαντες occurs only in BD (whose Latin hasbaptizantes), as though Baptism were to precede instruction in the faith. Tregelles alone dares to place this reading in the text: Westcott and Hort have it in their margin.Mark iii. 14, 16. After noticing the evidence which supported the corrupt sentence in Matt. xxvii. 49, we are little disposed to accept what is in substance the same for such feeble glosses as are afforded us in these two verses; namely, οὓς καὶ ἀποστόλους ὠνόμασεν after δώδεκα in ver. 14 (derived from Luke vi. 13), and καὶ ἐποίησε τοὺς δώδεκα at the beginning of ver. 16. Westcott and Hort receive both clauses, Tischendorf only the latter, with אBC*Δ and an Ethiopic manuscript: yet the former, if less likely to be genuine, is the better supported. It is found in אBC*Δ (with some variation), in 13, 28, 69, 124, 238, 346, the Bohairic, the margin of the Harkleian Syriac, the Ethiopic, the Arabic of the Polyglott: a goodly array from divers sources to uphold so bad a reading.Mark vi. 2. οἱ πολλοί is read by Westcott and Hort (so Tischendorf) instead of πολλοί with BL, 13, 28, 69, 346. Three out of the four cursives belong to Professor Ferrar's group.Ver. 22. In the room of τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτῆς τῆς Ἡρωδιάδος a serious variation of אBDLΔ, 238, 473, 558 is admitted into the text by Westcott and Hort, τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ (+ τῆς 238, 558) Ἡρῳδιάδος, thus bringing St. Mark into direct contradiction with Josephus, who expressly states that the wretched girl was named Salome, and was the daughter of Herod Philip by Herodias, who did not leave her husband till after Salome's birth (Josephus, Antiq., lib. xviii. ch. v. § 4). Add to this the extreme improbability that even Herod the Tetrarch should have allowed his own child to degrade herself in such wise as Salome did here, or that she could not have carried her point with her father without resorting to licentious allurements. We must therefore regard αὐτοῦ as certainly false, while αὐτῆς strongly expresses the writer's feeling that even Herodias could stoop so low, and being used emphatically has so much offended a few that they omit it altogether. Such are 1, 118, 209, and some versions (bcf, the Bohairic, Armenian, Ethiopic, and Gothic) which did not understand it. Tischendorf was hardly right in adding the Peshitto to the list312.Mark ix. 1. ὧδε τῶν for τῶν ὧδε (ἑστηκότων) is the almost impossible reading of BD*,ck* (adqnare uncertain), adopted the more readily by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, because all have the proper order τῶν ὧδε in Matt. xvi. 28.Mark xiii. 33. Lachmann, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort reject (Tregelles more fitly sets within brackets) καὶ προσεύχεσθε with BD, 122, and the Latinackandtol.* of the Vulgate only. It is in the favour of the two words that they cannot have come from the parallel place in[pg 304]St. Matthew (ch. xxiv. 42), nor is the preceding verb the same in ch. xiv. 38. Here even אLΔ side against B with AC and all other authorities, including the Egyptian and most Latin, as well as the Syriac versions.Luke iv. 44. The wonderful variation Ἰουδαίας is brought into the text of Hort and Westcott, the true reading Γαλιλαίας being banished to their margin. Their change is upheld by a strong phalanx indeed: אNBCLQR, 1, 21, 71, Evst. 222, 259 and some twenty other cursives (Evan. 503 and two Lectionaries read αὐτῶν instead of either), the Bohairic and the text of the Harkleian: authorities enough to prove anything not in itself impossible, as Ἰουδαίας is in this place. Not only is Galilee the scene of the events recorded immediately before and after the present verse, but the passage is manifestly parallel to Mark i. 39. The three Synoptic Gospels are broadly distinguished from that of St. John by their silence respecting the Lord's ministry in Judaea before He went up to the last passover. Yet Alfordin loco, while admitting that“our narrative is thus brought into the more startling discrepancy with that of St. Mark, in which unquestionably the same portion of the sacred history is related,”most strangely adds,“Still these are considerations which must not weigh in the least degree with the critic. It is his province simply to track out what is the sacred text, not what, in his own feeble and partial judgement,it ought to have been.”Luke vi. 48. It is surprising how a gloss so frigid as διὰ τὸ καλῶς οἰκοδομῆσθαι αὐτήν could have been accepted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, in the room of τεθελεμίωτο γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν, chiefly, it may be presumed, because the latter is the expression of St. Matthew (ch. vii. 25). Yet such is the reading of אBLΞ, of the two best cursives 33, 157, of the Bohairic (with some variation in its copies), of the margin of the Harkleian, and of Cyril of Alexandria. The Ethiopic preserves both forms. As the present οἰκοδόμοῦντι early in the verse involves a plain contradiction when compared with the perfect οἰκοδομῆσθαι at the end, Tregelles changes the latter into οἰκοδομεῖσθαι on the feeble authority of the third hand of B, of 33, and possibly of 157.Luke viii. 40. For αὐτόν after προσδοκῶντες we find τὸν θεόν in א only. Of course the variation is quite wrong, but it is hard to see the pertinency of Dr. Vance Smith's hint (Theological Review, July, 1875)“that it cannot have got in by accident.”Luke x. 1. This case is interesting, as being one wherein B (not א) is at variance with the very express evidence of the earliest ecclesiastical writers, while it makes the number of these disciples, not seventy, but seventy-two313. With B are DM, also R (“ita enim certè omnino videtur,”[pg 305]Tisch., Monum. sacra inedita, vol. ii. Proleg. p. xviii), in the prefixed table of τίτλοι (Vol. I. p. 57,n), its text being lost, Codd. 1, 42,a c e g1.2?l, the Vulgate, Curetonian Syriac, and Armenian. Lachmann with Westcott and Hort insert δύο, but within brackets, for the evidence against it is overwhelming both in number and in weight: namely, Codd. אACEGHKLSUVXΓΔΛΞΠ, all other cursives,b f gof the Old Latin, the Bohairic, the three other Syriac, the Gothic, and Ethiopic versions.Luke xiv. 5. Here again we have a strong conviction that א, though now in the minority, is more correct than B, supported as the latter is by a dense array of witnesses of every age and country. In the clause τίνος ὑμῶν ὄνος ἢ βοῦς of the Received text all the critical editors substitute υἱὸς for ὄνος, which introduces a bathos so tasteless as to be almost ludicrous314. Yet υἱὸς is found with or without ὁ before it in AB (hiantCF)EGHMSUVΓΔΛ, in no less than 125 cursive copies already cited by name315(also υἱὸς ὑμῶν Evst. 259), ine f g, the Sahidic, Peshitto and Harkleian316Syriac versions: Cod. 508 and the Curetonian combine both forms υἱὸς ἢ βοῦς ἢ ὄνος, and Cod. 215 has υἱὸς ἢ ὄνος without βοῦς. Add to these Cyril of Alexandria (whose words are cited in catenas, as in the scholia to X, 253, 259), Titus of Bostra the commentator, Euthymius, and Theophylact. For ὄνος are אKLXΠ, 1, 33, 66secundâ manu, 69 (ὄρος), 71, 207sec. man., 211, 213, 407, 413, 492, 509, 512, 549, 550, 555, 556, 569, 570, 599, 602, and doubtless others not cited: also the text of X, 253, 259 in spite of the annexed commentary; of the versionsa b c i lof the Old Latin, the Vulgate, Bohairic, Jerusalem Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopic (bos eius aut asinus), though the Slavonic codices and Persic of the Polyglott make for υἱός. Cod. 52 (sic) and the Arabic of the Polyglott omit ὄνος ἤ, while D has πρόβατον (ovis d) for ὄνος (comp. Matt. xii. 11), and 557 exhibits βοῦς ἢ ὄνος. ΥΣ or ΟΙΣ mistaken as the contraction for ΥΙΟΣ is a mere guess, and we are safest here in clinging to common sense against a preponderance of outward evidence.Luke xv. 21. Here by adding from ver. 19 ποίησόν με ὡς ἕνα τῶν μισθίων σου (placed in the text by Westcott and Hort within brackets) the great codices אBD, with UX, 33, 512, 543, 558, 571, a catena, and four manuscripts of the Vulgate (bodl. gat. mm. tol.), manage to keep out of sight that delicate touch of true nature which Augustine points out, that the son never carried out his purpose of offering himself for a hireling,“quod post osculum patris generosissime jam dedignatur.”Luke xvi. 12. It is hard to tell how far thorough scholars and able critics are prepared to push a favourite theory, when Westcott and Hort place τὸ ἡμέτερον τίς δώσει ὑμῖν in the text, reserving ὑμέτερον for the margin. Not to mention that the interchange of η and υ in these pronouns[pg 306]is the most obstinate of all known itacisms, and one to which B is especially prone (e.g. Acts xvii. 28; 1 Pet. ii. 24; 1 John ii. 25; iii. 1, Vol. I. p. 11), ἡμέτερον is found only in BL, Evst. 21, and Origen once: in 157,e i l, and in Tertullian twice it is softened down to ἐμόν.Luke XXI. 24: ἄχρι οὗ πληρωθῶσιν [καὶ ἔσονται] kairoὶ ἐthnῶn. The words within brackets appear thus in Westcott and Hort's text alone; what possible meaning can be assigned to them in the position they there occupy it is hard to see. They are obviously derived by an error of the scribe's eye from καὶ ἔσονται (the reading of אBD, &c.) at the beginning of ver. 25. This unintelligible insertion is due to B; but L, the Bohairic, and a codex cited in the Harkleian margin also have it with another καιροί prefixed to καὶ ἔσονται. D runs on thus: ἄχρις οὗ πληρωθῶσιν καὶ ἔσονται σημεῖα (om. καιροὶ ἐθνῶν). Those who discover some recondite beauty in the reading of B compare with this the genuine addition καὶ ἐσμέν after κληθῶμεν in 1 John iii. 1.Nempè amatorem turpia decipiunt caecum vitia, aut etiam ipsa haec delectant.Luke xxiii. 32. For ἕτεροι δύο κακοῦργοι, which is unobjectionable in the Greek, though a little hard in a close English translation, אB and the two Egyptian versions, followed by Westcott and Hort, have the wholly impossible ἕτεροι κακοῦργοι δύο.John ii. 3. The loose paraphrase of Cod. א in place of ὑστερήσαντος οἴνου commends itself to no one but Tischendorf, who in his turn admires the worst deformities of his favourite: it runs καὶ οἶνον οὐκ εἶχον ὅτι συνετελέσθη ὁ οἶνος τοῦ γάμου, in which few readers will be able to discern with him the manner and style of St. John. The Old Latina b ff2and Gaudentius [iv]; alsoe l, the Ethiopic, and the margin of the Harkleian in part, exhibit the same vapid circumlocution. Cod. א in this Gospel, and sometimes elsewhere, has a good deal in common with the Western codices and Latin Fathers, and some of its glosses are simply deplorable: e.g. καλοκαγαθίας for κακοπαθείας, James v. 10; συνομιλοῦντες for συνοικοῦντες, 1 Pet. iii. 7; ἀποθανόντος for παθόντος, 1 Pet. iv. 1 after ch. ii. 21, where it does not stand alone, as here. Of a better character is its bold supplement of ἐκκλησία before συνεκλεκτή in 1 Pet. v. 13, apparently borrowed from primitive tradition, and supported by the Peshitto, Vulgate (in its best manuscripts and editions), and Armenian versions.John iv. 1. After βαπτίζει we find ἤ omitted in AB* (though it is added in what Tischendorf considers an ancient hand, his B2) GLΓ, 262, Origen and Epiphanius, but appears in אCD and all the rest. Tregelles rejects ἤ in his margin, Hort and Westcott put it within brackets. Well may Dr. Hort say (Notes, p. 76),“It remains no easy matter to explain how the verse as it stands can be reasonably understood without ἤ, or how such a mere slip as the loss of Η after ΕΙ should have so much excellent Greek authority, more especially as the absence of ἤ increases the obvious no less than the real difficulty of the verse.”John vii. 39. One of the worst faults a manuscript (the same is not true of a version) can have is a habit of supplying, either from the margin or from the scribe's misplaced ingenuity, some word that may clear up a difficulty, or limit the writer's meaning. Certainly this is not a common fault with Cod. B, but we have here a conspicuous example of it. It[pg 307]stands almost alone in receiving δεδομένον after πνεῦμα: one cursive (254) has δοθέν, and so reada b c e ff2g l q, the Vulgate, the Peshitto, and the Georgian (Malan, St. John), the Jerusalem Syriac, the Polyglott Persic, a catena, Eusebius and Origen in a Latin version: the margin of the Harkleian Syriac makes a yet further addition. The Sahidic, Ethiopic, and Erpenius' Arabic also supply some word. But the versions and commentators, like our own English translations, probably meant no more than a bold exposition. The whole blame of this evident corruption rests with the two manuscripts. No editor follows B here.John ix. 4. Most readers will think with Dean Burgon that the reading ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πέμψαντος (whether followed by με or ἡμᾶς)“carries with it its own sufficient condemnation”(Last Twelve Verses, &c., p. 81). The single or double ἡμᾶς, turning the whole clause into a general statement, applicable to every one, is found in א*BDL, the two Egyptian, Jerusalem Syriac, Erpenius' Arabic, and Roman Ethiopic versions, in the younger Cyril and the versifier Nonnus. Origen and Jerome cite the passage as if the reading were ἐργάζεσθε, which, by a familiaritacism(seep.11), is the reading of the first hand of B. The first ἡμᾶς is adopted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort: the second by Tischendorf alone after א*L, the Bohairic, Roman Ethiopic, Erpenius' Arabic, and Cyril. Certainly με of BD, the Sahidic, and Jerusalem Syriac, is very harsh.John x. 22. For δέ after ἐγένετο Westcott and Hort read τότε with BL, 33, the Sahidic, Gothic, Slavonic, and Armenian versions. No such use of τότε in this order, and without another particle, will be found in the New Testament, or easily elsewhere. The Bohairic andgat.of the Vulgate have δὲ τότε, which is a different thing. Moreover, the sense will not admit so sharp a definition of sameness in time as τότε implies. Three months intervened between the feast of Tabernacles, in and after which all the events named from ch. vii downwards took place, and this winter feast of Dedication.John xviii. 5. For λέγει αὐτοῖς ὁ ἰησοῦς ἐγώ ἐιμι, B and a have the miserable variation λέγει αὐτοῖς ἐγώ ἐιμι ἰησοῦς, which Westcott and Hort advance to a place in their margin. The first ΙΣ (omitting ὁ) was absorbed in the last syllable of ΑΥΤΟΙΣ, the second being a mere repetition of the first syllable of ΙΣΤΗΚΕΙ (sicBprimâ manu). Compare Vol. I. p. 10. With so little care was this capital document written317.Acts iv. 25. We have here, upheld by nearly all the authorities to which students usually defer, that which cannot possibly be right, though critical editors, in mere helplessness, feel obliged to put it in their text: ὁ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου στόματος δαυεὶδ παιδός σου εἰπών. Thus read אABE, 13, 15, 27, 29, 36, 38. Apost. 12, a catena and Athanasius. The Vulgate and Latin Fathers, the Harkleian Syriac and Armenian versions conspire, but with such wide variations as only serve to display their perplexity. We have here two several[pg 308]readings, either of which might be true, combined into one that cannot. We might either adopt with D ὃς διὰμνςἁγίου διὰ τοῦ στόματος λαλήσας δαυεὶδ παιδός σου (butdavid puero tuod), or better with Didymus ὁ διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου στόματος δὲ δαυεὶδ παιδός σου εἰπών (which will fairly suit the Peshitto and Bohairic); or we might prefer the easier form of the Received text ὁ διὰ στόματος δαβὶδ τοῦ παιδός σου εἰπών, which has no support except from P318and the cursives 1, 31, 40, 220, 221, &c. (the valuable copy 224 reads ὁ διὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν ἐνδαδ), and from Theophylact, Chrysostom being doubtful. Tischendorf justly pleads for the form he edits that it has second, third, and fourth century authority, adding“singula verba praeter morem sed non sine caussâ collocata sunt.”Praeter moremthey certainly are, andnon sine caussâtoo, if this and like examples shall lead us to a higher style of criticism than will be attained by setting up one or more of the oldest copies as objects of unreasonable idolatry.Acts vii. 46. ᾐτήσατο εὑρεῖν σκήνωμα τῷ θεῷ Ἰακώβ. The portentous variant οἴκῳ for θεῷ is adopted by Lachmann, and by Tischendorf, who observes of it“minimè sensu caret:”even Tregelles sets it in the margin, but Westcott and Hort simply obelize θεῷ as if they would read τῷ Ἰακώβ (compare Psalm xxiv. 6, cxxxii. 5 with Gen. xlix. 24). Yet οἴκῳ appears in א*BDH against אcACEP, all cursives (including 13, 31, 61, 220, 221), all versions. Observe also in ch. viii. 5 καισαρίας in א* for σαμαρείας on account of ver. 40 and ch. xxi. 8.Acts x. 19. Ἰδοὺ ἄνδρες δύο is the reading of Westcott and Hort's text ([τρεῖς] margin) after B only, the true number being three (ver. 7): in ch. xi. 11 Epiphanius only has δύο. There might be some grounds for omitting τρεῖς here, as Tischendorf does, and Tregelles more doubtfully in his margin (with DHLP, 24, 31, 111, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 220, 221, 224,m, the later Syriac, the Apostolical Constitutions, the elder Cyril, Chrysostom and Theophylact, Augustine and Ambrose), no reason surely for representing the Spirit as speaking only of the δύο οἰκέται.Acts xii. 25. An important passage for our present purpose. That the two Apostles returned from, not to, Jerusalem is too plain for argument (ch. xi. 29, 30), yet εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ (which in its present order surely cannot be joined with πληρώσαντες) is the reading of Westcott and Hort's text (ἐξ and the fatal obelus [Glyph: dagger] being in their margin) after אBHLP, 61, four of Matthaei's copies, Codd. 2, 4, 14, 24, 26, 34, 64, 78, 80, 95, 224, and perhaps twenty other cursives, but besides these only the margin of the Harkleian, the Roman Ethiopic, the Polyglott Arabic, some copies of the Slavonic and of Chrysostom, with Theophylact and Erasmus' first two editions, who says in his notes“ita legunt Graeci,”i.e. his Codd. 2, 4. A few which substitute“Antioch”for“Jerusalem”(28, 38, 66marg., 67**, 97marg., Apost. 5) are witnesses for εἰς, but not so those which, reading ἐξ or ἀπό, add with the Complutensian εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν (E, 7, 14**, 27, 29, 32, 42, 57, 69, 98marg., 100, 105, 106,[pg 309]111, 126**, 182, 183, 186, 220, 221, the Sahidic, Peshitto, and Erpenius' Arabic): Cod. 76 has εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν ἀπὸ Ἱερουσαλήμ. C is defective here, and the only three remaining uncials are divided between ἐξ (A, 13, 27, 29, 69, 214, Apost. 54, Chrysostom sometimes) and ἀπό (DE, 15, 18, 36, 40, 68, 73, 76, 81, 93, 98, 100, 105, 106, 111, 113, 180, 183, 184, a copy of Chrysostom, and the Vulgateab). The two Egyptian, the Peshitto, the Philoxenian text, the Armenian and Pell Platt's Ethiopic have“from,”the only possible sense, in spite of אB. Tischendorf in his N. T. Vaticanum 1867 alleges that in that codex“litterae εισ ιερου primâ ut videtur manu rescriptae. Videtur primum απο pro εισ scriptum fuisse.”But since he did not repeat the statement three years later in his eighth edition, he may have come to feel doubtful about it. Dr. Hort conjectures that the original order was τὴν εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ πληρώσαντες διακονίαν.Acts xvii. 28. Here Westcott and Hort place ὑμᾶς in their text, ἡμᾶς in the margin. For ἡμᾶς we find only B, 33, 68, 95, 96, 105, 137, and rather wonder than otherwise that the itacism is not met with in more cursives than six. The Bohairic has been cited in error on the same side. It needs not a word to explain that the stress of St. Paul's argument rests on ὑμᾶς. To the Athenians he quotes not the Hebrew Scriptures, but the poets of whom they were proud. Compare Luke xvi. 12, above.An itacism not quite so gross in ch. xx. 10 μὴ θορυβεῖσθαι (B*, 185, 224*) is likewise honoured with a place in Westcott and Hort's margin. In Matt. xi. 16 they follow Tischendorf and Tregelles in adopting ἑτέροις for ἑταίροις with BCDZ, and indeed the mass of copies. This last itacism (for it can be nothing better) was admitted so early as to affect many of the chief versions.Acts xx. 30. Cod. B omits αὐτῶν after ὑμῶν, where it is much wanted, apparently with no countenance except from Cod. 186, for this is just a point in which versions (the Sahidic and both Ethiopic) can be little trusted. The present is one of the countless examples of Cod. B's inclination to abridge, which in the Old Testament is carried so far as to eject from the text of the Septuagint words that are, and always must have been, in the original Hebrew. Westcott and Hort include αὐτῶν within brackets.Acts xxv. 13. Agrippa and Bernice went to Caesarea to greet the new governor (ἀσπασόμενοι), not surely after they had sent their greeting before them (ἀσπασάμενοι), which, if it had been a fact, would not have been worth mentioning. Yet, though the reading is so manifestly false, the evidence for the aorist seems overwhelming (אABHLP, the Greek of E, 13, 24*, 31, 68, 105, 180, 220, 224*, a few more copies, and the Coptic and Ethiopic versions). The future is found possibly in C, certainly in 61, 221, and the mass of cursives, ineand other versions, in Chrysostom, and in one form of Theophylact's commentary. Here again Dr. Hort suspects some kind of prior corruption (Notes, p. 100).Acts xxviii. 13. For περιελθόντες of all other manuscripts and versions א*B have περιελόντες, evidently borrowed from ch. xxvii. 40. Even this vile error of transcription is set in Westcott and Hort's text, the alternative not even in their margin. In ver. 15 they once set οἱ within[pg 310]brackets319on the evidence of B, 96 only. Cod. B is very prone to omit the article, especially, but not exclusively, with proper names.Rom. vii. 22. The substitution of τοῦ νοός (cf. ver. 23) for τοῦ θεοῦ seems peculiar to Cod. B.Rom. xv. 31. Lachmann and Tregelles (in his margin only) accept the manifest gloss δωροφορία for διακονία with B (seeVol. I. p. 290 for its“Westernelement”) D*FG (dehaveremuneratio) and Ambrosiaster (munerum meorum ministratio). But διακονία is found in אACD2and3and consequently in E (seeVol. I. p. 176),f(ministratio),g(administratio), Vulg. (obsequii mei oblatio), sod***,fuld.and Origen in the Latin (ministerium), with both Syriac, the Bohairic, Armenian and Ethiopic versions, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and John Damascene.1 Cor. xiii. 5. Never was a noble speech more cruelly pared down to a trite commonplace than by the reading of B and Clement of Alexandria (very expressly) οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ μὴ ἑαυτῆς, in the place of οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ (or τὸ) ἑαυτῆς of the self-same Clement just as expressly elsewhere (seep.262and note 3), and of all other authorities of every description. Here Westcott and Hort place τὸ μή in their margin.Col. iv. 15. For αὐτοῦ Lachmann, Tregelles' margin, Hort and Westcott have αὐτῆς from B, 676**, and the text of the later Syriac, thus implying that νύμφα is the Doric feminine form, which is very unlikely.1 Thess. v. 4. Lachmann with Hort and Westcott (but not their margin) reads κλέπτας for κλέπτης with AB and the Bohairic, but this cannot be right.Heb. vii. 1. For ὁ συναντήσας Lachmann, Tregelles, Hort and Westcott's text have ὃς συναντήσας with אABC**DEK, 17, a broken sentence: but this is too much even for Dr. Hort, who says, in the language habitual to him, that ὁ seems“a right emendation of the Syrian revisers”(Notes, p. 130).James i. 17. What can be meant by ἀποσκιάσματος of א*B it is hard to say. The versions are not clear as to the sense, butffalone seems to suggest the genitive (modicum obumbrationis). That valuable Cod. 184, now known only by Sanderson's collation at Lambeth (No. 1255, 10-14)320, is said by him toaddto the end of the verse οὐδὲ μέχρι ὑπονοίας τινὸς ὑποβολὴ ἀποσκιάσματος, which seems like a scholion on the preceding clause, and is found also in Cod. 221.Nor will any one praise certain readings of Cod. B in James i. 9; 1 Pet. i. 9; 11; ii. 1; 12; 25; iii. 7; 14; 18 (om.τῷ θεῷ); iv. 1; v. 3;[pg 311]2 Pet. i. 17; 1 John i. 2; ii. 14; 20; 25; 27; iii. 15; 3 John 4; 9; Jude 9, which passages the student may work out for himself.Enough of the weary and ungracious task of finding fault. The foregoing list of errors patent in the most ancient codices might be largely increased: two or three more will occur incidentally in ChapterXII(1 Cor. xiii. 3; Phil. ii. 1; 1 Pet. i. 23;seealso pp.254,319). Even if the reader has not gone with me in every case, more than enough has been alleged to prove to demonstration that the true and pure text of the sacred writers is not to be looked for in א or B, in אB, or BD, or BL, or any like combination of a select few authorities, but demands, in every fresh case as it arises, the free and impartial use of every available source of information. Yet after all, Cod. B is a document of such value, that it grows by experience even upon those who may have been a little prejudiced against it by reason of the excessive claims of its too zealous friends321. Its best associate, in our judgement, is Cod. C, where the testimony of that precious palimpsest can be had. BC together will often carry us safe through difficulties of the most complicated character, as for instance, through that vexatious passage John xiii. 25, 26. Compare also Acts xxvi. 16. Yet even here it is necessary to commend with reserve: BC stand almost alone in maintaining the ingenious but improbable variation ἐκσῶσαι in Acts xxvii. 39 (seeChap.XII), and the frigid gloss κρίνοντι in 1 Pet. iv. 5: they unite with others in foisting on St. Matthew's text its worst corruption, ch. xxvii. 49. In Gal. iii. 1, C against AB contains the gloss τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι. Again, since no fact relating to these pursuits is more certain than the absolute independence of the sources from which A and B are derived, it is manifest that their occasional agreement is always of the greatest weight, and is little less than conclusive in those portions of the N. T. where other evidence is slender in amount or consideration, e.g. 1 Pet. i. 21 and v. 10 (with the Vulgate); v. 11: also supported by those admirable cursives 27, 29, in 1 Pet. v. 14; 1 John iv. 3; 19; 2 John 3; 12. See also 1 John v. 18, to be discussed in Chap.XII.

om. αἰνοῦντες καὶ אBCL*, Bohairic (Hort), Jerusalem Syriac. This is the Neutral and Alexandrian text.om. καὶ εὐλογοῦντες D,abeffl,gat.bodl., Bohairic (Tischendorf). This is the Western text.The assumption of course is that the Syrian reading is aconflationof those of the other two classes, so forming a full but not overburdened clause. But if thispraejudiciumbe met with the plea that D and the Latins perpetually, B and its allies very often, seek to abridge the sacred original, it would be hard to demonstrate that the latter explanation is more improbable than the former. Beyond this point of subjective feeling the matter cannot well be carried, whether on one side or the other.Dr. Hort's other examples of conflation have the same double edge as Luke xxiv. 53, and there is no doubt that Dr. Sanday is right in asserting that like instances may be found wheresoever they are looked for; but they prove nothing to any one who has not made up his mind beforehand as to what the reading ought to be. We have already confessed that there is a tendency on the part of copyists to assimilate the narratives of the several Gospels to each other; and that such Harmonies as that of Tatian would facilitate the process; that synonymous words are liable to be exchanged and harsh constructions supplied. Part of the value of the older codices arises from their comparative freedom from such corrections: but then this modernizing process is on the part of copyists unsystematic, almost unconscious; it is wholly different from the deliberate formal emendations implied throughout Dr. Hort's volume.(β) The second reason adduced by theTwo Revisers“is almost equally cogent”in their estimation. It is that while the Ante-Nicene Fathers“place before us from separate and in some cases widely distant countries examples of Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral readings, it appears to be certain that before the middle of the third century we have no historical traces of readings which can properly be entitled distinctively Syrian”(The Revisers, &c., p. 26). Now the middle of the third century is the earliest period assigned by Dr. Hort for the inception of his phantom scheme of Syrian revision, and we feel[pg 294]sure that the epoch of Patristic evidence was not put thus early, in order to exclude Origen, whose support of his Alexandrian readings Griesbach found so partial and precarious (seeabove, p.226). In fact Dr. Hort expressly states that“The only period for which we have anything like a sufficiency of representative knowledge consists roughly of three-quarters of a century from about 175 to 250: but the remains of four eminent Greek Fathers, which range through this period, cast a strong light on textual history backward and forward. They are Irenaeus, of Asia Minor, Rome, and Lyons; his disciple Hippolytus, of Rome; Clement, of Athens and Alexandria; and his disciple, Origen, of Alexandria and Palestine”(Hort, p. 112). Even if the extant writings of these Fathers had been as rigorously examined and as thoroughly known as they certainly are not,“their scantiness and the comparative vagueness of the textual materials contained in them”(ibid.) would hinder our drawing at present any positive conclusions regarding the sacred text as known to them. Even the slender specimens of controverted readings collected in our Chap.XIIwould suffice to prove that their evidence is by no means exclusively favourable to Dr. Hort's opinions, a fact for which we will allege but one instance out of many, the support given to the Received text by Hippolytus in that grand passage, John iii. 13300.There are three considerable works relating to the criticism of the N. T. still open to the enterprise of scholars, and they can hardly be taken up at all except by the fresh hopefulness of scholars yet young. We need a fuller and more comprehensive collation of the cursive manuscripts (Hort, pp. 76-7):“a complete collection of all the fragments of the Thebaic New Testament is now the most pressing want in the province of textual criticism,”writes Bp. Lightfoot, and he might have added a better edition of the Bohairic also: but for the demands of the present controversy we must set in the first rank the necessity for a complete survey of the Patristic literature of the first five centuries at the least. While we concede to Dr. Hort that as[pg 295]a rule“negative patristic evidence”—that derived from the mere silence of the writer,“is of no force at all”(Hort, p. 201), and attach very slight importance to citations which are not express, it is from this source that we must look for any stable decision regarding the comparative purity in reference to the sacred autographs of the several classes of documents which have passed under our review.(γ) Hence the second reason for supporting the text of Westcott and Hort urged by theTwo Revisersrelates to an investigation of facts hitherto but partially ascertained: the third, like the first, involves only matters of opinion, in which individual judgements and prepossessions bear the chief part.“Yet a third reason is supplied by Internal Evidence, or, in other words, by considerations ... of intrinsic or of Transcriptional Probability”(The Revisers &c., p. 26): and“here,”they very justly add,“it is obvious that we enter at once into a very delicate and difficult domain of textual criticism, and can only draw our conclusions with the utmost circumspection and reserve”(ibid.). On the subject of Internal Evidence enough for our present purpose has been said, and Dr. Hort's Transcriptional head appears to be Bp. Ellicott'sparadiplomaticunder a more convenient name. Our author's discussion of what he calls the“rudimental criticism”of Internal evidence (Hort, Part ii. pp. 19-72), if necessarily somewhat abstruse, is one of the most elaborate and interesting in his admirable volume. It is sometimes said that all reasoning is analytical, not synthetical; the reducing a foregone conclusion to the first principles on which it rests, rather than the building upon those first principles the materials wherewith to construct the conclusion. Of this portion of Dr. Hort's labours thedictumis emphatically true. Cod. B and its characteristic peculiarities are never out of the author's mind, and those lines of thought are closely followed which most readily lead up to the theory of that manuscript's practical impeccability. We allege this statement in no disparaging spirit, and it may be that Dr. Hort will not wholly disagree with us. Not only is he duly sensible of the precariousness of Intrinsic evidence, inasmuch as“the uncertainty of the decision in ordinary cases is shown by the great diversity of judgement which is actually found to exist”(Hort, p. 21), but he boldly,[pg 296]and no less boldly than truly, intimates that in such cases the ultimate decision must rest with the individual critic:“in almost all texts variations occur where personal judgement inevitably takes a large part in the final decision.... Different minds will be impressed by different parts of the evidence as clearer than the rest, and so virtually ruling the rest: here therefore personal discernment would seem the surest ground for confidence”(ibid.p. 65). For the critic's confidence perhaps, not for that of his reader.The process of grouping authorities, whether by considerations of their geographical distribution or (more uncertainly) according to their genealogy as inferred from internal considerations (ibid.pp. 49-65), occupies a large measure of Dr. Hort's attention. The idea has not indeed originated with him, and its occasional value will be frankly acknowledged in the ensuing pages, so that on this head we need not further enlarge. In conclusion we will say, that the more our Cambridge Professor's“Introduction”is studied the more it grows upon our esteem for fulness of learning, for patience of research, for keenness of intellectual power, and especially for a certain marvellous readiness in accounting after some fashion for every new phenomenon which occurs, however apparently adverse to the acceptance of his own theory. With all our reverence for his genius, and gratitude for much that we have learnt from him in the course of our studies, we are compelled to repeat as emphatically as ever our strong conviction that the hypothesis to whose proof he has devoted so many laborious years, is destitute not only of historical foundation, but of all probability resulting from the internal goodness of the text which its adoption would force upon us301.This last assertion we will try to verify by subjoining a select[pg 297]number of those many passages in the N. T. wherein the two great codices א and B, one or both of them, are witnesses for readings, nearly all of which, to the best of our judgement, are corruptions of the sacred originals302.6. Those who devote themselves to the criticism of the text of the New Testament have only of late come to understand the full importance of attending closely to the mutual connexion subsisting between their several materials of every description, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers. The study ofgroupinghas been recently and not untruly said to be the foundation of all enduring criticism303. Now that theories about the formal recensions of whole classes of these documents have generally been given up as purely visionary, and the very wordfamilieshas come into disrepute by reason of the exploded fancies it recalls, we can discern not the less clearly that certain groups of them have in common not only a general resemblance in regard to the readings they exhibit, but characteristic peculiarities attaching themselves to each group. Systematic or wilful corruption of the sacred text, at least on a scale worth taking into account, there would seem to have been almost none; yet the tendency to licentious paraphrase and unwarranted additions distinguished one set of our witnesses from the second century downwards; a bias towards grammatical and critical purism and needless omissions appertained to another; while[pg 298]a third was only too apt to soften what might seem harsh, to smooth over difficulties, and to bring passages, especially of the Synoptic Gospels, into unnatural harmony with each other. All these changes appear to have been going on without notice during the whole of the third and fourth centuries, and except that the great name of Origen is associated (not always happily) with one class of them, were rather the work of transcribers than of scholars. Eusebius and Jerome, in their judgements about Scripture texts, are more the echoes of Origen than independent investigators.Now, as a first approximation to the actual state of the case, the several classes of changes which we have enumerated admit of a certain rude geographical distribution, one of them appertaining to Western Christendom and the earliest Fathers of the African and Gallic Churches (including North Italy under the latter appellation); a second to Egypt and its neighbourhood; the third originally to Syria and Christian Antioch, in later times to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. We have here, no doubt, much to remind us of Griesbach and his scheme of triple recensions, but with this broad distinction between his conclusions and those of modern critics, that whereas he regarded the existence of his families as a patent fact, and grounded upon it precise and mechanical rules for the arrangement of the text, we are now content to perceive no more than unconscious tendencies, liable to be modified or diverted by a thousand occult influences, of which in each single case it is impossible to form an estimate beforehand. Even that marked bias in the direction of adding to the record, which is the reproach of Codex Bezae and some of its compeers, and renders the text of the Acts as exhibited by DE, by the cursive 137, and the margin of the Harkleian Syriac, as unlike that commonly read as can well be imagined304, is mixed up with a proneness to omissions which we should look for rather from another class of documents (e.g. the rejection of ψευδόμενοι Matt. v. 11), and which in the latter part of St. Luke's Gospel almost suggests the idea of representing an earlier edition than that now in ordinary use,[pg 299]yet proceeding from the Evangelist's own hand (seep.18)305. Again, the process whereby the rough places are made plain and abrupt constructions rounded, is abundantly exemplified in the readings of the great uncial A, supported as it is by the mass of later manuscripts (e.g. Mark i. 27; Acts xv. 17, 18; xx. 24); yet in innumerable instances (seeAppendixto this chapter) these self-same codices retain the genuine text of the sacred writers which their more illustrious compeers have lost or impaired.Hence it follows that in judging of the character of a various reading proposed for our acceptance, we must carefully mark whether it comes to us from many directions or from one. And herein the native country of the several documents, even when we can make sure of it, is only a precarious guide. If the Ethiopic or the Armenian versions have really been corrected by the Latin Vulgate, the geographical remoteness of their origin must go for nothing where they agree with the latter version. The relation in which Cod. L and the Bohairic version stand to Cod. B is too close to allow them their full value as independent witnesses unless when they are at variance with that great uncial, wheresoever it may have been written: the same might be said of the beautiful Latin fragmentkfrom Bobbio. To whatever nations they belong, their resemblances are too strong and perpetual not to compel us to withhold from them a part of the consideration their concord would otherwise lay claim to. The same is incontestably the case with the Curetonian and margin of the Harkleian Syriac in connexion with Cod. D. Wide as is the region which separates Syria from Gaul, there[pg 300]must have been in very early times some remote communication by which the stream of Eastern testimony or tradition, like another Alpheus, rose up again with fresh strength to irrigate the regions of the distant West. The Peshitto Syriac leans at times in the same direction, although both in nation and character it most assimilates to the same class as Cod. A.With these, and it may be with some further reservations which experience and study shall hereafter suggest, the principle of grouping must be acknowledged to be a sound one, and those lines of evidence to be least likely to lead us astray which converge from the most varied quarters to the same point. It is strange, but not more strange than needful, that we are compelled in the cause of truth to make one stipulation more: namely, that this rule be henceforth applied impartially in all cases, as well when it will tell in favour of the Received text, as when it shall help to set it aside. To assign a high value to cursive manuscripts of the best description (such as 1, 33, 69, 157, Evst. 259, or 61 of the Acts), and to such uncials as LRΔ, or even as א or C, whensoever they happen to agree with Cod. B, and to treat their refined silver as though it had been suddenly transmuted into dross when they come to contradict it, is a practice too plainly unreasonable to admit of serious defence, and can only lead to results which those who uphold it would be the first to deplore306.7. It is hoped that the general issue of the foregoing discussion may now be embodied in these four practical rules307:—(1) That the true readings of the Greek New Testament cannot safely be derived from any one set of authorities, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers, but ought to be the result of[pg 301]a patient comparison and careful estimate of the evidence supplied by them all.(2) That where there is a real agreement between all documents containing the Gospels up to the sixth century, and in other parts of the New Testament up to the ninth, the testimony of later manuscripts and versions, though not to be rejected unheard, must be regarded with great suspicion, and,unless upheld by strong internal evidence, can hardly be adopted308.(3) That where the more ancient documents are at variance with each other, the later uncial and cursive copies, especially those of approved merit, are of real importance, as being the surviving representatives of other codices, very probably as early, perhaps even earlier, than any now extant.(4) That in weighing conflicting evidence we must assign the highest value not to those readings which are attested by the greatest number of witnesses, but to those which come to us from several remote and independent sources, and which bear the least likeness to each other in respect to genius and general character.[pg 302]Appendix To Chapter X.Matt. vi. 8. The transparent gloss ὁ θεός is inserted before ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν by Codd. א*B and the Sahidic version309.Ver. 22. Ὁ λύχνος τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου B,abcff1n1.2hl, the printed Vulgate, some Latin writers, and the Ethiopic. The addition of σου is more strongly attested in Luke xi. 34 by א*ABCDM, but is intolerable in either place.Matt. xvi. 21. Ἀπὸ τότε ἤρξατο ἰησοῦς χριστός: so the first hands of א and B, with the Bohairic version only, their very frequent companion.Matt. xxvii. 28. On the impossible reading of אcBD,abcff2q, and a few others, enough has been said in Chap. VII. p.234.Ver. 49. We are here brought face to face with the gravest interpolation yet laid to the charge of B, whose tendency is usually in the opposite direction. Westcott and Hort alone among the editors feel constrained to insert in the text, though enclosed in their double brackets and regarded as“most probably an interpolation,”a sentence which neither they nor any other competent scholar can easily believe that the Evangelist ever wrote310. After σώσων αὐτόν are set the following words borrowed from John xix. 34, with a slight verbal change, and representing that the Saviour was pierced before his death: ἄλλος δὲ λαβὼν λόγχην ἔνυξεν αὐτοῦ τὴν πλευράν, καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ὕδωρ καὶ ἁῖμα. Thus we read in אBCLU (which has εὐθέως before ἐξῆλθεν αἷμα καὶ ὕδωρ) Γ, 5, 48, 67, 115, 127*, five good manuscripts of the Vulgate,Kells,gat.,mm.,chad.,mac-regol., andOxon.,C. C.(notinBodl.),Harl.1023 and 1802*, and the margin of 1 E.vi, the Jerusalem Syriac once when the Lesson occurs, and the Ethiopic. Chrysostom thus read in his copy, but used the clause with so little reflection that he regarded the Lord as dead already. Severus of Antioch [d. 539], who himself protested against this gross corruption, tells us that Cyril of Alexandria as well as Chrysostom received it. A scholion found in Cod. 72 refers this addition εἰς τὸ καθ᾽ ἱστορίαν εὐαγγέλιον Διοδώρου καὶ Τατιάνου καὶ ἄλλων διαφόρων ἁγίων πατέρων, on the authority of Chrysostom; and from the unintentional blunders of Harmonists like Tatian such an insertion might very well have crept in. The marvel is that it found favour so widely as it did311.[pg 303]Matt. xxviii. 19. βαπτίσαντες occurs only in BD (whose Latin hasbaptizantes), as though Baptism were to precede instruction in the faith. Tregelles alone dares to place this reading in the text: Westcott and Hort have it in their margin.Mark iii. 14, 16. After noticing the evidence which supported the corrupt sentence in Matt. xxvii. 49, we are little disposed to accept what is in substance the same for such feeble glosses as are afforded us in these two verses; namely, οὓς καὶ ἀποστόλους ὠνόμασεν after δώδεκα in ver. 14 (derived from Luke vi. 13), and καὶ ἐποίησε τοὺς δώδεκα at the beginning of ver. 16. Westcott and Hort receive both clauses, Tischendorf only the latter, with אBC*Δ and an Ethiopic manuscript: yet the former, if less likely to be genuine, is the better supported. It is found in אBC*Δ (with some variation), in 13, 28, 69, 124, 238, 346, the Bohairic, the margin of the Harkleian Syriac, the Ethiopic, the Arabic of the Polyglott: a goodly array from divers sources to uphold so bad a reading.Mark vi. 2. οἱ πολλοί is read by Westcott and Hort (so Tischendorf) instead of πολλοί with BL, 13, 28, 69, 346. Three out of the four cursives belong to Professor Ferrar's group.Ver. 22. In the room of τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτῆς τῆς Ἡρωδιάδος a serious variation of אBDLΔ, 238, 473, 558 is admitted into the text by Westcott and Hort, τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ (+ τῆς 238, 558) Ἡρῳδιάδος, thus bringing St. Mark into direct contradiction with Josephus, who expressly states that the wretched girl was named Salome, and was the daughter of Herod Philip by Herodias, who did not leave her husband till after Salome's birth (Josephus, Antiq., lib. xviii. ch. v. § 4). Add to this the extreme improbability that even Herod the Tetrarch should have allowed his own child to degrade herself in such wise as Salome did here, or that she could not have carried her point with her father without resorting to licentious allurements. We must therefore regard αὐτοῦ as certainly false, while αὐτῆς strongly expresses the writer's feeling that even Herodias could stoop so low, and being used emphatically has so much offended a few that they omit it altogether. Such are 1, 118, 209, and some versions (bcf, the Bohairic, Armenian, Ethiopic, and Gothic) which did not understand it. Tischendorf was hardly right in adding the Peshitto to the list312.Mark ix. 1. ὧδε τῶν for τῶν ὧδε (ἑστηκότων) is the almost impossible reading of BD*,ck* (adqnare uncertain), adopted the more readily by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, because all have the proper order τῶν ὧδε in Matt. xvi. 28.Mark xiii. 33. Lachmann, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort reject (Tregelles more fitly sets within brackets) καὶ προσεύχεσθε with BD, 122, and the Latinackandtol.* of the Vulgate only. It is in the favour of the two words that they cannot have come from the parallel place in[pg 304]St. Matthew (ch. xxiv. 42), nor is the preceding verb the same in ch. xiv. 38. Here even אLΔ side against B with AC and all other authorities, including the Egyptian and most Latin, as well as the Syriac versions.Luke iv. 44. The wonderful variation Ἰουδαίας is brought into the text of Hort and Westcott, the true reading Γαλιλαίας being banished to their margin. Their change is upheld by a strong phalanx indeed: אNBCLQR, 1, 21, 71, Evst. 222, 259 and some twenty other cursives (Evan. 503 and two Lectionaries read αὐτῶν instead of either), the Bohairic and the text of the Harkleian: authorities enough to prove anything not in itself impossible, as Ἰουδαίας is in this place. Not only is Galilee the scene of the events recorded immediately before and after the present verse, but the passage is manifestly parallel to Mark i. 39. The three Synoptic Gospels are broadly distinguished from that of St. John by their silence respecting the Lord's ministry in Judaea before He went up to the last passover. Yet Alfordin loco, while admitting that“our narrative is thus brought into the more startling discrepancy with that of St. Mark, in which unquestionably the same portion of the sacred history is related,”most strangely adds,“Still these are considerations which must not weigh in the least degree with the critic. It is his province simply to track out what is the sacred text, not what, in his own feeble and partial judgement,it ought to have been.”Luke vi. 48. It is surprising how a gloss so frigid as διὰ τὸ καλῶς οἰκοδομῆσθαι αὐτήν could have been accepted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, in the room of τεθελεμίωτο γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν, chiefly, it may be presumed, because the latter is the expression of St. Matthew (ch. vii. 25). Yet such is the reading of אBLΞ, of the two best cursives 33, 157, of the Bohairic (with some variation in its copies), of the margin of the Harkleian, and of Cyril of Alexandria. The Ethiopic preserves both forms. As the present οἰκοδόμοῦντι early in the verse involves a plain contradiction when compared with the perfect οἰκοδομῆσθαι at the end, Tregelles changes the latter into οἰκοδομεῖσθαι on the feeble authority of the third hand of B, of 33, and possibly of 157.Luke viii. 40. For αὐτόν after προσδοκῶντες we find τὸν θεόν in א only. Of course the variation is quite wrong, but it is hard to see the pertinency of Dr. Vance Smith's hint (Theological Review, July, 1875)“that it cannot have got in by accident.”Luke x. 1. This case is interesting, as being one wherein B (not א) is at variance with the very express evidence of the earliest ecclesiastical writers, while it makes the number of these disciples, not seventy, but seventy-two313. With B are DM, also R (“ita enim certè omnino videtur,”[pg 305]Tisch., Monum. sacra inedita, vol. ii. Proleg. p. xviii), in the prefixed table of τίτλοι (Vol. I. p. 57,n), its text being lost, Codd. 1, 42,a c e g1.2?l, the Vulgate, Curetonian Syriac, and Armenian. Lachmann with Westcott and Hort insert δύο, but within brackets, for the evidence against it is overwhelming both in number and in weight: namely, Codd. אACEGHKLSUVXΓΔΛΞΠ, all other cursives,b f gof the Old Latin, the Bohairic, the three other Syriac, the Gothic, and Ethiopic versions.Luke xiv. 5. Here again we have a strong conviction that א, though now in the minority, is more correct than B, supported as the latter is by a dense array of witnesses of every age and country. In the clause τίνος ὑμῶν ὄνος ἢ βοῦς of the Received text all the critical editors substitute υἱὸς for ὄνος, which introduces a bathos so tasteless as to be almost ludicrous314. Yet υἱὸς is found with or without ὁ before it in AB (hiantCF)EGHMSUVΓΔΛ, in no less than 125 cursive copies already cited by name315(also υἱὸς ὑμῶν Evst. 259), ine f g, the Sahidic, Peshitto and Harkleian316Syriac versions: Cod. 508 and the Curetonian combine both forms υἱὸς ἢ βοῦς ἢ ὄνος, and Cod. 215 has υἱὸς ἢ ὄνος without βοῦς. Add to these Cyril of Alexandria (whose words are cited in catenas, as in the scholia to X, 253, 259), Titus of Bostra the commentator, Euthymius, and Theophylact. For ὄνος are אKLXΠ, 1, 33, 66secundâ manu, 69 (ὄρος), 71, 207sec. man., 211, 213, 407, 413, 492, 509, 512, 549, 550, 555, 556, 569, 570, 599, 602, and doubtless others not cited: also the text of X, 253, 259 in spite of the annexed commentary; of the versionsa b c i lof the Old Latin, the Vulgate, Bohairic, Jerusalem Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopic (bos eius aut asinus), though the Slavonic codices and Persic of the Polyglott make for υἱός. Cod. 52 (sic) and the Arabic of the Polyglott omit ὄνος ἤ, while D has πρόβατον (ovis d) for ὄνος (comp. Matt. xii. 11), and 557 exhibits βοῦς ἢ ὄνος. ΥΣ or ΟΙΣ mistaken as the contraction for ΥΙΟΣ is a mere guess, and we are safest here in clinging to common sense against a preponderance of outward evidence.Luke xv. 21. Here by adding from ver. 19 ποίησόν με ὡς ἕνα τῶν μισθίων σου (placed in the text by Westcott and Hort within brackets) the great codices אBD, with UX, 33, 512, 543, 558, 571, a catena, and four manuscripts of the Vulgate (bodl. gat. mm. tol.), manage to keep out of sight that delicate touch of true nature which Augustine points out, that the son never carried out his purpose of offering himself for a hireling,“quod post osculum patris generosissime jam dedignatur.”Luke xvi. 12. It is hard to tell how far thorough scholars and able critics are prepared to push a favourite theory, when Westcott and Hort place τὸ ἡμέτερον τίς δώσει ὑμῖν in the text, reserving ὑμέτερον for the margin. Not to mention that the interchange of η and υ in these pronouns[pg 306]is the most obstinate of all known itacisms, and one to which B is especially prone (e.g. Acts xvii. 28; 1 Pet. ii. 24; 1 John ii. 25; iii. 1, Vol. I. p. 11), ἡμέτερον is found only in BL, Evst. 21, and Origen once: in 157,e i l, and in Tertullian twice it is softened down to ἐμόν.Luke XXI. 24: ἄχρι οὗ πληρωθῶσιν [καὶ ἔσονται] kairoὶ ἐthnῶn. The words within brackets appear thus in Westcott and Hort's text alone; what possible meaning can be assigned to them in the position they there occupy it is hard to see. They are obviously derived by an error of the scribe's eye from καὶ ἔσονται (the reading of אBD, &c.) at the beginning of ver. 25. This unintelligible insertion is due to B; but L, the Bohairic, and a codex cited in the Harkleian margin also have it with another καιροί prefixed to καὶ ἔσονται. D runs on thus: ἄχρις οὗ πληρωθῶσιν καὶ ἔσονται σημεῖα (om. καιροὶ ἐθνῶν). Those who discover some recondite beauty in the reading of B compare with this the genuine addition καὶ ἐσμέν after κληθῶμεν in 1 John iii. 1.Nempè amatorem turpia decipiunt caecum vitia, aut etiam ipsa haec delectant.Luke xxiii. 32. For ἕτεροι δύο κακοῦργοι, which is unobjectionable in the Greek, though a little hard in a close English translation, אB and the two Egyptian versions, followed by Westcott and Hort, have the wholly impossible ἕτεροι κακοῦργοι δύο.John ii. 3. The loose paraphrase of Cod. א in place of ὑστερήσαντος οἴνου commends itself to no one but Tischendorf, who in his turn admires the worst deformities of his favourite: it runs καὶ οἶνον οὐκ εἶχον ὅτι συνετελέσθη ὁ οἶνος τοῦ γάμου, in which few readers will be able to discern with him the manner and style of St. John. The Old Latina b ff2and Gaudentius [iv]; alsoe l, the Ethiopic, and the margin of the Harkleian in part, exhibit the same vapid circumlocution. Cod. א in this Gospel, and sometimes elsewhere, has a good deal in common with the Western codices and Latin Fathers, and some of its glosses are simply deplorable: e.g. καλοκαγαθίας for κακοπαθείας, James v. 10; συνομιλοῦντες for συνοικοῦντες, 1 Pet. iii. 7; ἀποθανόντος for παθόντος, 1 Pet. iv. 1 after ch. ii. 21, where it does not stand alone, as here. Of a better character is its bold supplement of ἐκκλησία before συνεκλεκτή in 1 Pet. v. 13, apparently borrowed from primitive tradition, and supported by the Peshitto, Vulgate (in its best manuscripts and editions), and Armenian versions.John iv. 1. After βαπτίζει we find ἤ omitted in AB* (though it is added in what Tischendorf considers an ancient hand, his B2) GLΓ, 262, Origen and Epiphanius, but appears in אCD and all the rest. Tregelles rejects ἤ in his margin, Hort and Westcott put it within brackets. Well may Dr. Hort say (Notes, p. 76),“It remains no easy matter to explain how the verse as it stands can be reasonably understood without ἤ, or how such a mere slip as the loss of Η after ΕΙ should have so much excellent Greek authority, more especially as the absence of ἤ increases the obvious no less than the real difficulty of the verse.”John vii. 39. One of the worst faults a manuscript (the same is not true of a version) can have is a habit of supplying, either from the margin or from the scribe's misplaced ingenuity, some word that may clear up a difficulty, or limit the writer's meaning. Certainly this is not a common fault with Cod. B, but we have here a conspicuous example of it. It[pg 307]stands almost alone in receiving δεδομένον after πνεῦμα: one cursive (254) has δοθέν, and so reada b c e ff2g l q, the Vulgate, the Peshitto, and the Georgian (Malan, St. John), the Jerusalem Syriac, the Polyglott Persic, a catena, Eusebius and Origen in a Latin version: the margin of the Harkleian Syriac makes a yet further addition. The Sahidic, Ethiopic, and Erpenius' Arabic also supply some word. But the versions and commentators, like our own English translations, probably meant no more than a bold exposition. The whole blame of this evident corruption rests with the two manuscripts. No editor follows B here.John ix. 4. Most readers will think with Dean Burgon that the reading ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πέμψαντος (whether followed by με or ἡμᾶς)“carries with it its own sufficient condemnation”(Last Twelve Verses, &c., p. 81). The single or double ἡμᾶς, turning the whole clause into a general statement, applicable to every one, is found in א*BDL, the two Egyptian, Jerusalem Syriac, Erpenius' Arabic, and Roman Ethiopic versions, in the younger Cyril and the versifier Nonnus. Origen and Jerome cite the passage as if the reading were ἐργάζεσθε, which, by a familiaritacism(seep.11), is the reading of the first hand of B. The first ἡμᾶς is adopted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort: the second by Tischendorf alone after א*L, the Bohairic, Roman Ethiopic, Erpenius' Arabic, and Cyril. Certainly με of BD, the Sahidic, and Jerusalem Syriac, is very harsh.John x. 22. For δέ after ἐγένετο Westcott and Hort read τότε with BL, 33, the Sahidic, Gothic, Slavonic, and Armenian versions. No such use of τότε in this order, and without another particle, will be found in the New Testament, or easily elsewhere. The Bohairic andgat.of the Vulgate have δὲ τότε, which is a different thing. Moreover, the sense will not admit so sharp a definition of sameness in time as τότε implies. Three months intervened between the feast of Tabernacles, in and after which all the events named from ch. vii downwards took place, and this winter feast of Dedication.John xviii. 5. For λέγει αὐτοῖς ὁ ἰησοῦς ἐγώ ἐιμι, B and a have the miserable variation λέγει αὐτοῖς ἐγώ ἐιμι ἰησοῦς, which Westcott and Hort advance to a place in their margin. The first ΙΣ (omitting ὁ) was absorbed in the last syllable of ΑΥΤΟΙΣ, the second being a mere repetition of the first syllable of ΙΣΤΗΚΕΙ (sicBprimâ manu). Compare Vol. I. p. 10. With so little care was this capital document written317.Acts iv. 25. We have here, upheld by nearly all the authorities to which students usually defer, that which cannot possibly be right, though critical editors, in mere helplessness, feel obliged to put it in their text: ὁ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου στόματος δαυεὶδ παιδός σου εἰπών. Thus read אABE, 13, 15, 27, 29, 36, 38. Apost. 12, a catena and Athanasius. The Vulgate and Latin Fathers, the Harkleian Syriac and Armenian versions conspire, but with such wide variations as only serve to display their perplexity. We have here two several[pg 308]readings, either of which might be true, combined into one that cannot. We might either adopt with D ὃς διὰμνςἁγίου διὰ τοῦ στόματος λαλήσας δαυεὶδ παιδός σου (butdavid puero tuod), or better with Didymus ὁ διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου στόματος δὲ δαυεὶδ παιδός σου εἰπών (which will fairly suit the Peshitto and Bohairic); or we might prefer the easier form of the Received text ὁ διὰ στόματος δαβὶδ τοῦ παιδός σου εἰπών, which has no support except from P318and the cursives 1, 31, 40, 220, 221, &c. (the valuable copy 224 reads ὁ διὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν ἐνδαδ), and from Theophylact, Chrysostom being doubtful. Tischendorf justly pleads for the form he edits that it has second, third, and fourth century authority, adding“singula verba praeter morem sed non sine caussâ collocata sunt.”Praeter moremthey certainly are, andnon sine caussâtoo, if this and like examples shall lead us to a higher style of criticism than will be attained by setting up one or more of the oldest copies as objects of unreasonable idolatry.Acts vii. 46. ᾐτήσατο εὑρεῖν σκήνωμα τῷ θεῷ Ἰακώβ. The portentous variant οἴκῳ for θεῷ is adopted by Lachmann, and by Tischendorf, who observes of it“minimè sensu caret:”even Tregelles sets it in the margin, but Westcott and Hort simply obelize θεῷ as if they would read τῷ Ἰακώβ (compare Psalm xxiv. 6, cxxxii. 5 with Gen. xlix. 24). Yet οἴκῳ appears in א*BDH against אcACEP, all cursives (including 13, 31, 61, 220, 221), all versions. Observe also in ch. viii. 5 καισαρίας in א* for σαμαρείας on account of ver. 40 and ch. xxi. 8.Acts x. 19. Ἰδοὺ ἄνδρες δύο is the reading of Westcott and Hort's text ([τρεῖς] margin) after B only, the true number being three (ver. 7): in ch. xi. 11 Epiphanius only has δύο. There might be some grounds for omitting τρεῖς here, as Tischendorf does, and Tregelles more doubtfully in his margin (with DHLP, 24, 31, 111, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 220, 221, 224,m, the later Syriac, the Apostolical Constitutions, the elder Cyril, Chrysostom and Theophylact, Augustine and Ambrose), no reason surely for representing the Spirit as speaking only of the δύο οἰκέται.Acts xii. 25. An important passage for our present purpose. That the two Apostles returned from, not to, Jerusalem is too plain for argument (ch. xi. 29, 30), yet εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ (which in its present order surely cannot be joined with πληρώσαντες) is the reading of Westcott and Hort's text (ἐξ and the fatal obelus [Glyph: dagger] being in their margin) after אBHLP, 61, four of Matthaei's copies, Codd. 2, 4, 14, 24, 26, 34, 64, 78, 80, 95, 224, and perhaps twenty other cursives, but besides these only the margin of the Harkleian, the Roman Ethiopic, the Polyglott Arabic, some copies of the Slavonic and of Chrysostom, with Theophylact and Erasmus' first two editions, who says in his notes“ita legunt Graeci,”i.e. his Codd. 2, 4. A few which substitute“Antioch”for“Jerusalem”(28, 38, 66marg., 67**, 97marg., Apost. 5) are witnesses for εἰς, but not so those which, reading ἐξ or ἀπό, add with the Complutensian εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν (E, 7, 14**, 27, 29, 32, 42, 57, 69, 98marg., 100, 105, 106,[pg 309]111, 126**, 182, 183, 186, 220, 221, the Sahidic, Peshitto, and Erpenius' Arabic): Cod. 76 has εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν ἀπὸ Ἱερουσαλήμ. C is defective here, and the only three remaining uncials are divided between ἐξ (A, 13, 27, 29, 69, 214, Apost. 54, Chrysostom sometimes) and ἀπό (DE, 15, 18, 36, 40, 68, 73, 76, 81, 93, 98, 100, 105, 106, 111, 113, 180, 183, 184, a copy of Chrysostom, and the Vulgateab). The two Egyptian, the Peshitto, the Philoxenian text, the Armenian and Pell Platt's Ethiopic have“from,”the only possible sense, in spite of אB. Tischendorf in his N. T. Vaticanum 1867 alleges that in that codex“litterae εισ ιερου primâ ut videtur manu rescriptae. Videtur primum απο pro εισ scriptum fuisse.”But since he did not repeat the statement three years later in his eighth edition, he may have come to feel doubtful about it. Dr. Hort conjectures that the original order was τὴν εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ πληρώσαντες διακονίαν.Acts xvii. 28. Here Westcott and Hort place ὑμᾶς in their text, ἡμᾶς in the margin. For ἡμᾶς we find only B, 33, 68, 95, 96, 105, 137, and rather wonder than otherwise that the itacism is not met with in more cursives than six. The Bohairic has been cited in error on the same side. It needs not a word to explain that the stress of St. Paul's argument rests on ὑμᾶς. To the Athenians he quotes not the Hebrew Scriptures, but the poets of whom they were proud. Compare Luke xvi. 12, above.An itacism not quite so gross in ch. xx. 10 μὴ θορυβεῖσθαι (B*, 185, 224*) is likewise honoured with a place in Westcott and Hort's margin. In Matt. xi. 16 they follow Tischendorf and Tregelles in adopting ἑτέροις for ἑταίροις with BCDZ, and indeed the mass of copies. This last itacism (for it can be nothing better) was admitted so early as to affect many of the chief versions.Acts xx. 30. Cod. B omits αὐτῶν after ὑμῶν, where it is much wanted, apparently with no countenance except from Cod. 186, for this is just a point in which versions (the Sahidic and both Ethiopic) can be little trusted. The present is one of the countless examples of Cod. B's inclination to abridge, which in the Old Testament is carried so far as to eject from the text of the Septuagint words that are, and always must have been, in the original Hebrew. Westcott and Hort include αὐτῶν within brackets.Acts xxv. 13. Agrippa and Bernice went to Caesarea to greet the new governor (ἀσπασόμενοι), not surely after they had sent their greeting before them (ἀσπασάμενοι), which, if it had been a fact, would not have been worth mentioning. Yet, though the reading is so manifestly false, the evidence for the aorist seems overwhelming (אABHLP, the Greek of E, 13, 24*, 31, 68, 105, 180, 220, 224*, a few more copies, and the Coptic and Ethiopic versions). The future is found possibly in C, certainly in 61, 221, and the mass of cursives, ineand other versions, in Chrysostom, and in one form of Theophylact's commentary. Here again Dr. Hort suspects some kind of prior corruption (Notes, p. 100).Acts xxviii. 13. For περιελθόντες of all other manuscripts and versions א*B have περιελόντες, evidently borrowed from ch. xxvii. 40. Even this vile error of transcription is set in Westcott and Hort's text, the alternative not even in their margin. In ver. 15 they once set οἱ within[pg 310]brackets319on the evidence of B, 96 only. Cod. B is very prone to omit the article, especially, but not exclusively, with proper names.Rom. vii. 22. The substitution of τοῦ νοός (cf. ver. 23) for τοῦ θεοῦ seems peculiar to Cod. B.Rom. xv. 31. Lachmann and Tregelles (in his margin only) accept the manifest gloss δωροφορία for διακονία with B (seeVol. I. p. 290 for its“Westernelement”) D*FG (dehaveremuneratio) and Ambrosiaster (munerum meorum ministratio). But διακονία is found in אACD2and3and consequently in E (seeVol. I. p. 176),f(ministratio),g(administratio), Vulg. (obsequii mei oblatio), sod***,fuld.and Origen in the Latin (ministerium), with both Syriac, the Bohairic, Armenian and Ethiopic versions, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and John Damascene.1 Cor. xiii. 5. Never was a noble speech more cruelly pared down to a trite commonplace than by the reading of B and Clement of Alexandria (very expressly) οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ μὴ ἑαυτῆς, in the place of οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ (or τὸ) ἑαυτῆς of the self-same Clement just as expressly elsewhere (seep.262and note 3), and of all other authorities of every description. Here Westcott and Hort place τὸ μή in their margin.Col. iv. 15. For αὐτοῦ Lachmann, Tregelles' margin, Hort and Westcott have αὐτῆς from B, 676**, and the text of the later Syriac, thus implying that νύμφα is the Doric feminine form, which is very unlikely.1 Thess. v. 4. Lachmann with Hort and Westcott (but not their margin) reads κλέπτας for κλέπτης with AB and the Bohairic, but this cannot be right.Heb. vii. 1. For ὁ συναντήσας Lachmann, Tregelles, Hort and Westcott's text have ὃς συναντήσας with אABC**DEK, 17, a broken sentence: but this is too much even for Dr. Hort, who says, in the language habitual to him, that ὁ seems“a right emendation of the Syrian revisers”(Notes, p. 130).James i. 17. What can be meant by ἀποσκιάσματος of א*B it is hard to say. The versions are not clear as to the sense, butffalone seems to suggest the genitive (modicum obumbrationis). That valuable Cod. 184, now known only by Sanderson's collation at Lambeth (No. 1255, 10-14)320, is said by him toaddto the end of the verse οὐδὲ μέχρι ὑπονοίας τινὸς ὑποβολὴ ἀποσκιάσματος, which seems like a scholion on the preceding clause, and is found also in Cod. 221.Nor will any one praise certain readings of Cod. B in James i. 9; 1 Pet. i. 9; 11; ii. 1; 12; 25; iii. 7; 14; 18 (om.τῷ θεῷ); iv. 1; v. 3;[pg 311]2 Pet. i. 17; 1 John i. 2; ii. 14; 20; 25; 27; iii. 15; 3 John 4; 9; Jude 9, which passages the student may work out for himself.Enough of the weary and ungracious task of finding fault. The foregoing list of errors patent in the most ancient codices might be largely increased: two or three more will occur incidentally in ChapterXII(1 Cor. xiii. 3; Phil. ii. 1; 1 Pet. i. 23;seealso pp.254,319). Even if the reader has not gone with me in every case, more than enough has been alleged to prove to demonstration that the true and pure text of the sacred writers is not to be looked for in א or B, in אB, or BD, or BL, or any like combination of a select few authorities, but demands, in every fresh case as it arises, the free and impartial use of every available source of information. Yet after all, Cod. B is a document of such value, that it grows by experience even upon those who may have been a little prejudiced against it by reason of the excessive claims of its too zealous friends321. Its best associate, in our judgement, is Cod. C, where the testimony of that precious palimpsest can be had. BC together will often carry us safe through difficulties of the most complicated character, as for instance, through that vexatious passage John xiii. 25, 26. Compare also Acts xxvi. 16. Yet even here it is necessary to commend with reserve: BC stand almost alone in maintaining the ingenious but improbable variation ἐκσῶσαι in Acts xxvii. 39 (seeChap.XII), and the frigid gloss κρίνοντι in 1 Pet. iv. 5: they unite with others in foisting on St. Matthew's text its worst corruption, ch. xxvii. 49. In Gal. iii. 1, C against AB contains the gloss τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι. Again, since no fact relating to these pursuits is more certain than the absolute independence of the sources from which A and B are derived, it is manifest that their occasional agreement is always of the greatest weight, and is little less than conclusive in those portions of the N. T. where other evidence is slender in amount or consideration, e.g. 1 Pet. i. 21 and v. 10 (with the Vulgate); v. 11: also supported by those admirable cursives 27, 29, in 1 Pet. v. 14; 1 John iv. 3; 19; 2 John 3; 12. See also 1 John v. 18, to be discussed in Chap.XII.

om. αἰνοῦντες καὶ אBCL*, Bohairic (Hort), Jerusalem Syriac. This is the Neutral and Alexandrian text.om. καὶ εὐλογοῦντες D,abeffl,gat.bodl., Bohairic (Tischendorf). This is the Western text.The assumption of course is that the Syrian reading is aconflationof those of the other two classes, so forming a full but not overburdened clause. But if thispraejudiciumbe met with the plea that D and the Latins perpetually, B and its allies very often, seek to abridge the sacred original, it would be hard to demonstrate that the latter explanation is more improbable than the former. Beyond this point of subjective feeling the matter cannot well be carried, whether on one side or the other.Dr. Hort's other examples of conflation have the same double edge as Luke xxiv. 53, and there is no doubt that Dr. Sanday is right in asserting that like instances may be found wheresoever they are looked for; but they prove nothing to any one who has not made up his mind beforehand as to what the reading ought to be. We have already confessed that there is a tendency on the part of copyists to assimilate the narratives of the several Gospels to each other; and that such Harmonies as that of Tatian would facilitate the process; that synonymous words are liable to be exchanged and harsh constructions supplied. Part of the value of the older codices arises from their comparative freedom from such corrections: but then this modernizing process is on the part of copyists unsystematic, almost unconscious; it is wholly different from the deliberate formal emendations implied throughout Dr. Hort's volume.(β) The second reason adduced by theTwo Revisers“is almost equally cogent”in their estimation. It is that while the Ante-Nicene Fathers“place before us from separate and in some cases widely distant countries examples of Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral readings, it appears to be certain that before the middle of the third century we have no historical traces of readings which can properly be entitled distinctively Syrian”(The Revisers, &c., p. 26). Now the middle of the third century is the earliest period assigned by Dr. Hort for the inception of his phantom scheme of Syrian revision, and we feel[pg 294]sure that the epoch of Patristic evidence was not put thus early, in order to exclude Origen, whose support of his Alexandrian readings Griesbach found so partial and precarious (seeabove, p.226). In fact Dr. Hort expressly states that“The only period for which we have anything like a sufficiency of representative knowledge consists roughly of three-quarters of a century from about 175 to 250: but the remains of four eminent Greek Fathers, which range through this period, cast a strong light on textual history backward and forward. They are Irenaeus, of Asia Minor, Rome, and Lyons; his disciple Hippolytus, of Rome; Clement, of Athens and Alexandria; and his disciple, Origen, of Alexandria and Palestine”(Hort, p. 112). Even if the extant writings of these Fathers had been as rigorously examined and as thoroughly known as they certainly are not,“their scantiness and the comparative vagueness of the textual materials contained in them”(ibid.) would hinder our drawing at present any positive conclusions regarding the sacred text as known to them. Even the slender specimens of controverted readings collected in our Chap.XIIwould suffice to prove that their evidence is by no means exclusively favourable to Dr. Hort's opinions, a fact for which we will allege but one instance out of many, the support given to the Received text by Hippolytus in that grand passage, John iii. 13300.There are three considerable works relating to the criticism of the N. T. still open to the enterprise of scholars, and they can hardly be taken up at all except by the fresh hopefulness of scholars yet young. We need a fuller and more comprehensive collation of the cursive manuscripts (Hort, pp. 76-7):“a complete collection of all the fragments of the Thebaic New Testament is now the most pressing want in the province of textual criticism,”writes Bp. Lightfoot, and he might have added a better edition of the Bohairic also: but for the demands of the present controversy we must set in the first rank the necessity for a complete survey of the Patristic literature of the first five centuries at the least. While we concede to Dr. Hort that as[pg 295]a rule“negative patristic evidence”—that derived from the mere silence of the writer,“is of no force at all”(Hort, p. 201), and attach very slight importance to citations which are not express, it is from this source that we must look for any stable decision regarding the comparative purity in reference to the sacred autographs of the several classes of documents which have passed under our review.(γ) Hence the second reason for supporting the text of Westcott and Hort urged by theTwo Revisersrelates to an investigation of facts hitherto but partially ascertained: the third, like the first, involves only matters of opinion, in which individual judgements and prepossessions bear the chief part.“Yet a third reason is supplied by Internal Evidence, or, in other words, by considerations ... of intrinsic or of Transcriptional Probability”(The Revisers &c., p. 26): and“here,”they very justly add,“it is obvious that we enter at once into a very delicate and difficult domain of textual criticism, and can only draw our conclusions with the utmost circumspection and reserve”(ibid.). On the subject of Internal Evidence enough for our present purpose has been said, and Dr. Hort's Transcriptional head appears to be Bp. Ellicott'sparadiplomaticunder a more convenient name. Our author's discussion of what he calls the“rudimental criticism”of Internal evidence (Hort, Part ii. pp. 19-72), if necessarily somewhat abstruse, is one of the most elaborate and interesting in his admirable volume. It is sometimes said that all reasoning is analytical, not synthetical; the reducing a foregone conclusion to the first principles on which it rests, rather than the building upon those first principles the materials wherewith to construct the conclusion. Of this portion of Dr. Hort's labours thedictumis emphatically true. Cod. B and its characteristic peculiarities are never out of the author's mind, and those lines of thought are closely followed which most readily lead up to the theory of that manuscript's practical impeccability. We allege this statement in no disparaging spirit, and it may be that Dr. Hort will not wholly disagree with us. Not only is he duly sensible of the precariousness of Intrinsic evidence, inasmuch as“the uncertainty of the decision in ordinary cases is shown by the great diversity of judgement which is actually found to exist”(Hort, p. 21), but he boldly,[pg 296]and no less boldly than truly, intimates that in such cases the ultimate decision must rest with the individual critic:“in almost all texts variations occur where personal judgement inevitably takes a large part in the final decision.... Different minds will be impressed by different parts of the evidence as clearer than the rest, and so virtually ruling the rest: here therefore personal discernment would seem the surest ground for confidence”(ibid.p. 65). For the critic's confidence perhaps, not for that of his reader.The process of grouping authorities, whether by considerations of their geographical distribution or (more uncertainly) according to their genealogy as inferred from internal considerations (ibid.pp. 49-65), occupies a large measure of Dr. Hort's attention. The idea has not indeed originated with him, and its occasional value will be frankly acknowledged in the ensuing pages, so that on this head we need not further enlarge. In conclusion we will say, that the more our Cambridge Professor's“Introduction”is studied the more it grows upon our esteem for fulness of learning, for patience of research, for keenness of intellectual power, and especially for a certain marvellous readiness in accounting after some fashion for every new phenomenon which occurs, however apparently adverse to the acceptance of his own theory. With all our reverence for his genius, and gratitude for much that we have learnt from him in the course of our studies, we are compelled to repeat as emphatically as ever our strong conviction that the hypothesis to whose proof he has devoted so many laborious years, is destitute not only of historical foundation, but of all probability resulting from the internal goodness of the text which its adoption would force upon us301.This last assertion we will try to verify by subjoining a select[pg 297]number of those many passages in the N. T. wherein the two great codices א and B, one or both of them, are witnesses for readings, nearly all of which, to the best of our judgement, are corruptions of the sacred originals302.6. Those who devote themselves to the criticism of the text of the New Testament have only of late come to understand the full importance of attending closely to the mutual connexion subsisting between their several materials of every description, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers. The study ofgroupinghas been recently and not untruly said to be the foundation of all enduring criticism303. Now that theories about the formal recensions of whole classes of these documents have generally been given up as purely visionary, and the very wordfamilieshas come into disrepute by reason of the exploded fancies it recalls, we can discern not the less clearly that certain groups of them have in common not only a general resemblance in regard to the readings they exhibit, but characteristic peculiarities attaching themselves to each group. Systematic or wilful corruption of the sacred text, at least on a scale worth taking into account, there would seem to have been almost none; yet the tendency to licentious paraphrase and unwarranted additions distinguished one set of our witnesses from the second century downwards; a bias towards grammatical and critical purism and needless omissions appertained to another; while[pg 298]a third was only too apt to soften what might seem harsh, to smooth over difficulties, and to bring passages, especially of the Synoptic Gospels, into unnatural harmony with each other. All these changes appear to have been going on without notice during the whole of the third and fourth centuries, and except that the great name of Origen is associated (not always happily) with one class of them, were rather the work of transcribers than of scholars. Eusebius and Jerome, in their judgements about Scripture texts, are more the echoes of Origen than independent investigators.Now, as a first approximation to the actual state of the case, the several classes of changes which we have enumerated admit of a certain rude geographical distribution, one of them appertaining to Western Christendom and the earliest Fathers of the African and Gallic Churches (including North Italy under the latter appellation); a second to Egypt and its neighbourhood; the third originally to Syria and Christian Antioch, in later times to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. We have here, no doubt, much to remind us of Griesbach and his scheme of triple recensions, but with this broad distinction between his conclusions and those of modern critics, that whereas he regarded the existence of his families as a patent fact, and grounded upon it precise and mechanical rules for the arrangement of the text, we are now content to perceive no more than unconscious tendencies, liable to be modified or diverted by a thousand occult influences, of which in each single case it is impossible to form an estimate beforehand. Even that marked bias in the direction of adding to the record, which is the reproach of Codex Bezae and some of its compeers, and renders the text of the Acts as exhibited by DE, by the cursive 137, and the margin of the Harkleian Syriac, as unlike that commonly read as can well be imagined304, is mixed up with a proneness to omissions which we should look for rather from another class of documents (e.g. the rejection of ψευδόμενοι Matt. v. 11), and which in the latter part of St. Luke's Gospel almost suggests the idea of representing an earlier edition than that now in ordinary use,[pg 299]yet proceeding from the Evangelist's own hand (seep.18)305. Again, the process whereby the rough places are made plain and abrupt constructions rounded, is abundantly exemplified in the readings of the great uncial A, supported as it is by the mass of later manuscripts (e.g. Mark i. 27; Acts xv. 17, 18; xx. 24); yet in innumerable instances (seeAppendixto this chapter) these self-same codices retain the genuine text of the sacred writers which their more illustrious compeers have lost or impaired.Hence it follows that in judging of the character of a various reading proposed for our acceptance, we must carefully mark whether it comes to us from many directions or from one. And herein the native country of the several documents, even when we can make sure of it, is only a precarious guide. If the Ethiopic or the Armenian versions have really been corrected by the Latin Vulgate, the geographical remoteness of their origin must go for nothing where they agree with the latter version. The relation in which Cod. L and the Bohairic version stand to Cod. B is too close to allow them their full value as independent witnesses unless when they are at variance with that great uncial, wheresoever it may have been written: the same might be said of the beautiful Latin fragmentkfrom Bobbio. To whatever nations they belong, their resemblances are too strong and perpetual not to compel us to withhold from them a part of the consideration their concord would otherwise lay claim to. The same is incontestably the case with the Curetonian and margin of the Harkleian Syriac in connexion with Cod. D. Wide as is the region which separates Syria from Gaul, there[pg 300]must have been in very early times some remote communication by which the stream of Eastern testimony or tradition, like another Alpheus, rose up again with fresh strength to irrigate the regions of the distant West. The Peshitto Syriac leans at times in the same direction, although both in nation and character it most assimilates to the same class as Cod. A.With these, and it may be with some further reservations which experience and study shall hereafter suggest, the principle of grouping must be acknowledged to be a sound one, and those lines of evidence to be least likely to lead us astray which converge from the most varied quarters to the same point. It is strange, but not more strange than needful, that we are compelled in the cause of truth to make one stipulation more: namely, that this rule be henceforth applied impartially in all cases, as well when it will tell in favour of the Received text, as when it shall help to set it aside. To assign a high value to cursive manuscripts of the best description (such as 1, 33, 69, 157, Evst. 259, or 61 of the Acts), and to such uncials as LRΔ, or even as א or C, whensoever they happen to agree with Cod. B, and to treat their refined silver as though it had been suddenly transmuted into dross when they come to contradict it, is a practice too plainly unreasonable to admit of serious defence, and can only lead to results which those who uphold it would be the first to deplore306.7. It is hoped that the general issue of the foregoing discussion may now be embodied in these four practical rules307:—(1) That the true readings of the Greek New Testament cannot safely be derived from any one set of authorities, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers, but ought to be the result of[pg 301]a patient comparison and careful estimate of the evidence supplied by them all.(2) That where there is a real agreement between all documents containing the Gospels up to the sixth century, and in other parts of the New Testament up to the ninth, the testimony of later manuscripts and versions, though not to be rejected unheard, must be regarded with great suspicion, and,unless upheld by strong internal evidence, can hardly be adopted308.(3) That where the more ancient documents are at variance with each other, the later uncial and cursive copies, especially those of approved merit, are of real importance, as being the surviving representatives of other codices, very probably as early, perhaps even earlier, than any now extant.(4) That in weighing conflicting evidence we must assign the highest value not to those readings which are attested by the greatest number of witnesses, but to those which come to us from several remote and independent sources, and which bear the least likeness to each other in respect to genius and general character.[pg 302]Appendix To Chapter X.Matt. vi. 8. The transparent gloss ὁ θεός is inserted before ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν by Codd. א*B and the Sahidic version309.Ver. 22. Ὁ λύχνος τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου B,abcff1n1.2hl, the printed Vulgate, some Latin writers, and the Ethiopic. The addition of σου is more strongly attested in Luke xi. 34 by א*ABCDM, but is intolerable in either place.Matt. xvi. 21. Ἀπὸ τότε ἤρξατο ἰησοῦς χριστός: so the first hands of א and B, with the Bohairic version only, their very frequent companion.Matt. xxvii. 28. On the impossible reading of אcBD,abcff2q, and a few others, enough has been said in Chap. VII. p.234.Ver. 49. We are here brought face to face with the gravest interpolation yet laid to the charge of B, whose tendency is usually in the opposite direction. Westcott and Hort alone among the editors feel constrained to insert in the text, though enclosed in their double brackets and regarded as“most probably an interpolation,”a sentence which neither they nor any other competent scholar can easily believe that the Evangelist ever wrote310. After σώσων αὐτόν are set the following words borrowed from John xix. 34, with a slight verbal change, and representing that the Saviour was pierced before his death: ἄλλος δὲ λαβὼν λόγχην ἔνυξεν αὐτοῦ τὴν πλευράν, καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ὕδωρ καὶ ἁῖμα. Thus we read in אBCLU (which has εὐθέως before ἐξῆλθεν αἷμα καὶ ὕδωρ) Γ, 5, 48, 67, 115, 127*, five good manuscripts of the Vulgate,Kells,gat.,mm.,chad.,mac-regol., andOxon.,C. C.(notinBodl.),Harl.1023 and 1802*, and the margin of 1 E.vi, the Jerusalem Syriac once when the Lesson occurs, and the Ethiopic. Chrysostom thus read in his copy, but used the clause with so little reflection that he regarded the Lord as dead already. Severus of Antioch [d. 539], who himself protested against this gross corruption, tells us that Cyril of Alexandria as well as Chrysostom received it. A scholion found in Cod. 72 refers this addition εἰς τὸ καθ᾽ ἱστορίαν εὐαγγέλιον Διοδώρου καὶ Τατιάνου καὶ ἄλλων διαφόρων ἁγίων πατέρων, on the authority of Chrysostom; and from the unintentional blunders of Harmonists like Tatian such an insertion might very well have crept in. The marvel is that it found favour so widely as it did311.[pg 303]Matt. xxviii. 19. βαπτίσαντες occurs only in BD (whose Latin hasbaptizantes), as though Baptism were to precede instruction in the faith. Tregelles alone dares to place this reading in the text: Westcott and Hort have it in their margin.Mark iii. 14, 16. After noticing the evidence which supported the corrupt sentence in Matt. xxvii. 49, we are little disposed to accept what is in substance the same for such feeble glosses as are afforded us in these two verses; namely, οὓς καὶ ἀποστόλους ὠνόμασεν after δώδεκα in ver. 14 (derived from Luke vi. 13), and καὶ ἐποίησε τοὺς δώδεκα at the beginning of ver. 16. Westcott and Hort receive both clauses, Tischendorf only the latter, with אBC*Δ and an Ethiopic manuscript: yet the former, if less likely to be genuine, is the better supported. It is found in אBC*Δ (with some variation), in 13, 28, 69, 124, 238, 346, the Bohairic, the margin of the Harkleian Syriac, the Ethiopic, the Arabic of the Polyglott: a goodly array from divers sources to uphold so bad a reading.Mark vi. 2. οἱ πολλοί is read by Westcott and Hort (so Tischendorf) instead of πολλοί with BL, 13, 28, 69, 346. Three out of the four cursives belong to Professor Ferrar's group.Ver. 22. In the room of τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτῆς τῆς Ἡρωδιάδος a serious variation of אBDLΔ, 238, 473, 558 is admitted into the text by Westcott and Hort, τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ (+ τῆς 238, 558) Ἡρῳδιάδος, thus bringing St. Mark into direct contradiction with Josephus, who expressly states that the wretched girl was named Salome, and was the daughter of Herod Philip by Herodias, who did not leave her husband till after Salome's birth (Josephus, Antiq., lib. xviii. ch. v. § 4). Add to this the extreme improbability that even Herod the Tetrarch should have allowed his own child to degrade herself in such wise as Salome did here, or that she could not have carried her point with her father without resorting to licentious allurements. We must therefore regard αὐτοῦ as certainly false, while αὐτῆς strongly expresses the writer's feeling that even Herodias could stoop so low, and being used emphatically has so much offended a few that they omit it altogether. Such are 1, 118, 209, and some versions (bcf, the Bohairic, Armenian, Ethiopic, and Gothic) which did not understand it. Tischendorf was hardly right in adding the Peshitto to the list312.Mark ix. 1. ὧδε τῶν for τῶν ὧδε (ἑστηκότων) is the almost impossible reading of BD*,ck* (adqnare uncertain), adopted the more readily by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, because all have the proper order τῶν ὧδε in Matt. xvi. 28.Mark xiii. 33. Lachmann, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort reject (Tregelles more fitly sets within brackets) καὶ προσεύχεσθε with BD, 122, and the Latinackandtol.* of the Vulgate only. It is in the favour of the two words that they cannot have come from the parallel place in[pg 304]St. Matthew (ch. xxiv. 42), nor is the preceding verb the same in ch. xiv. 38. Here even אLΔ side against B with AC and all other authorities, including the Egyptian and most Latin, as well as the Syriac versions.Luke iv. 44. The wonderful variation Ἰουδαίας is brought into the text of Hort and Westcott, the true reading Γαλιλαίας being banished to their margin. Their change is upheld by a strong phalanx indeed: אNBCLQR, 1, 21, 71, Evst. 222, 259 and some twenty other cursives (Evan. 503 and two Lectionaries read αὐτῶν instead of either), the Bohairic and the text of the Harkleian: authorities enough to prove anything not in itself impossible, as Ἰουδαίας is in this place. Not only is Galilee the scene of the events recorded immediately before and after the present verse, but the passage is manifestly parallel to Mark i. 39. The three Synoptic Gospels are broadly distinguished from that of St. John by their silence respecting the Lord's ministry in Judaea before He went up to the last passover. Yet Alfordin loco, while admitting that“our narrative is thus brought into the more startling discrepancy with that of St. Mark, in which unquestionably the same portion of the sacred history is related,”most strangely adds,“Still these are considerations which must not weigh in the least degree with the critic. It is his province simply to track out what is the sacred text, not what, in his own feeble and partial judgement,it ought to have been.”Luke vi. 48. It is surprising how a gloss so frigid as διὰ τὸ καλῶς οἰκοδομῆσθαι αὐτήν could have been accepted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, in the room of τεθελεμίωτο γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν, chiefly, it may be presumed, because the latter is the expression of St. Matthew (ch. vii. 25). Yet such is the reading of אBLΞ, of the two best cursives 33, 157, of the Bohairic (with some variation in its copies), of the margin of the Harkleian, and of Cyril of Alexandria. The Ethiopic preserves both forms. As the present οἰκοδόμοῦντι early in the verse involves a plain contradiction when compared with the perfect οἰκοδομῆσθαι at the end, Tregelles changes the latter into οἰκοδομεῖσθαι on the feeble authority of the third hand of B, of 33, and possibly of 157.Luke viii. 40. For αὐτόν after προσδοκῶντες we find τὸν θεόν in א only. Of course the variation is quite wrong, but it is hard to see the pertinency of Dr. Vance Smith's hint (Theological Review, July, 1875)“that it cannot have got in by accident.”Luke x. 1. This case is interesting, as being one wherein B (not א) is at variance with the very express evidence of the earliest ecclesiastical writers, while it makes the number of these disciples, not seventy, but seventy-two313. With B are DM, also R (“ita enim certè omnino videtur,”[pg 305]Tisch., Monum. sacra inedita, vol. ii. Proleg. p. xviii), in the prefixed table of τίτλοι (Vol. I. p. 57,n), its text being lost, Codd. 1, 42,a c e g1.2?l, the Vulgate, Curetonian Syriac, and Armenian. Lachmann with Westcott and Hort insert δύο, but within brackets, for the evidence against it is overwhelming both in number and in weight: namely, Codd. אACEGHKLSUVXΓΔΛΞΠ, all other cursives,b f gof the Old Latin, the Bohairic, the three other Syriac, the Gothic, and Ethiopic versions.Luke xiv. 5. Here again we have a strong conviction that א, though now in the minority, is more correct than B, supported as the latter is by a dense array of witnesses of every age and country. In the clause τίνος ὑμῶν ὄνος ἢ βοῦς of the Received text all the critical editors substitute υἱὸς for ὄνος, which introduces a bathos so tasteless as to be almost ludicrous314. Yet υἱὸς is found with or without ὁ before it in AB (hiantCF)EGHMSUVΓΔΛ, in no less than 125 cursive copies already cited by name315(also υἱὸς ὑμῶν Evst. 259), ine f g, the Sahidic, Peshitto and Harkleian316Syriac versions: Cod. 508 and the Curetonian combine both forms υἱὸς ἢ βοῦς ἢ ὄνος, and Cod. 215 has υἱὸς ἢ ὄνος without βοῦς. Add to these Cyril of Alexandria (whose words are cited in catenas, as in the scholia to X, 253, 259), Titus of Bostra the commentator, Euthymius, and Theophylact. For ὄνος are אKLXΠ, 1, 33, 66secundâ manu, 69 (ὄρος), 71, 207sec. man., 211, 213, 407, 413, 492, 509, 512, 549, 550, 555, 556, 569, 570, 599, 602, and doubtless others not cited: also the text of X, 253, 259 in spite of the annexed commentary; of the versionsa b c i lof the Old Latin, the Vulgate, Bohairic, Jerusalem Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopic (bos eius aut asinus), though the Slavonic codices and Persic of the Polyglott make for υἱός. Cod. 52 (sic) and the Arabic of the Polyglott omit ὄνος ἤ, while D has πρόβατον (ovis d) for ὄνος (comp. Matt. xii. 11), and 557 exhibits βοῦς ἢ ὄνος. ΥΣ or ΟΙΣ mistaken as the contraction for ΥΙΟΣ is a mere guess, and we are safest here in clinging to common sense against a preponderance of outward evidence.Luke xv. 21. Here by adding from ver. 19 ποίησόν με ὡς ἕνα τῶν μισθίων σου (placed in the text by Westcott and Hort within brackets) the great codices אBD, with UX, 33, 512, 543, 558, 571, a catena, and four manuscripts of the Vulgate (bodl. gat. mm. tol.), manage to keep out of sight that delicate touch of true nature which Augustine points out, that the son never carried out his purpose of offering himself for a hireling,“quod post osculum patris generosissime jam dedignatur.”Luke xvi. 12. It is hard to tell how far thorough scholars and able critics are prepared to push a favourite theory, when Westcott and Hort place τὸ ἡμέτερον τίς δώσει ὑμῖν in the text, reserving ὑμέτερον for the margin. Not to mention that the interchange of η and υ in these pronouns[pg 306]is the most obstinate of all known itacisms, and one to which B is especially prone (e.g. Acts xvii. 28; 1 Pet. ii. 24; 1 John ii. 25; iii. 1, Vol. I. p. 11), ἡμέτερον is found only in BL, Evst. 21, and Origen once: in 157,e i l, and in Tertullian twice it is softened down to ἐμόν.Luke XXI. 24: ἄχρι οὗ πληρωθῶσιν [καὶ ἔσονται] kairoὶ ἐthnῶn. The words within brackets appear thus in Westcott and Hort's text alone; what possible meaning can be assigned to them in the position they there occupy it is hard to see. They are obviously derived by an error of the scribe's eye from καὶ ἔσονται (the reading of אBD, &c.) at the beginning of ver. 25. This unintelligible insertion is due to B; but L, the Bohairic, and a codex cited in the Harkleian margin also have it with another καιροί prefixed to καὶ ἔσονται. D runs on thus: ἄχρις οὗ πληρωθῶσιν καὶ ἔσονται σημεῖα (om. καιροὶ ἐθνῶν). Those who discover some recondite beauty in the reading of B compare with this the genuine addition καὶ ἐσμέν after κληθῶμεν in 1 John iii. 1.Nempè amatorem turpia decipiunt caecum vitia, aut etiam ipsa haec delectant.Luke xxiii. 32. For ἕτεροι δύο κακοῦργοι, which is unobjectionable in the Greek, though a little hard in a close English translation, אB and the two Egyptian versions, followed by Westcott and Hort, have the wholly impossible ἕτεροι κακοῦργοι δύο.John ii. 3. The loose paraphrase of Cod. א in place of ὑστερήσαντος οἴνου commends itself to no one but Tischendorf, who in his turn admires the worst deformities of his favourite: it runs καὶ οἶνον οὐκ εἶχον ὅτι συνετελέσθη ὁ οἶνος τοῦ γάμου, in which few readers will be able to discern with him the manner and style of St. John. The Old Latina b ff2and Gaudentius [iv]; alsoe l, the Ethiopic, and the margin of the Harkleian in part, exhibit the same vapid circumlocution. Cod. א in this Gospel, and sometimes elsewhere, has a good deal in common with the Western codices and Latin Fathers, and some of its glosses are simply deplorable: e.g. καλοκαγαθίας for κακοπαθείας, James v. 10; συνομιλοῦντες for συνοικοῦντες, 1 Pet. iii. 7; ἀποθανόντος for παθόντος, 1 Pet. iv. 1 after ch. ii. 21, where it does not stand alone, as here. Of a better character is its bold supplement of ἐκκλησία before συνεκλεκτή in 1 Pet. v. 13, apparently borrowed from primitive tradition, and supported by the Peshitto, Vulgate (in its best manuscripts and editions), and Armenian versions.John iv. 1. After βαπτίζει we find ἤ omitted in AB* (though it is added in what Tischendorf considers an ancient hand, his B2) GLΓ, 262, Origen and Epiphanius, but appears in אCD and all the rest. Tregelles rejects ἤ in his margin, Hort and Westcott put it within brackets. Well may Dr. Hort say (Notes, p. 76),“It remains no easy matter to explain how the verse as it stands can be reasonably understood without ἤ, or how such a mere slip as the loss of Η after ΕΙ should have so much excellent Greek authority, more especially as the absence of ἤ increases the obvious no less than the real difficulty of the verse.”John vii. 39. One of the worst faults a manuscript (the same is not true of a version) can have is a habit of supplying, either from the margin or from the scribe's misplaced ingenuity, some word that may clear up a difficulty, or limit the writer's meaning. Certainly this is not a common fault with Cod. B, but we have here a conspicuous example of it. It[pg 307]stands almost alone in receiving δεδομένον after πνεῦμα: one cursive (254) has δοθέν, and so reada b c e ff2g l q, the Vulgate, the Peshitto, and the Georgian (Malan, St. John), the Jerusalem Syriac, the Polyglott Persic, a catena, Eusebius and Origen in a Latin version: the margin of the Harkleian Syriac makes a yet further addition. The Sahidic, Ethiopic, and Erpenius' Arabic also supply some word. But the versions and commentators, like our own English translations, probably meant no more than a bold exposition. The whole blame of this evident corruption rests with the two manuscripts. No editor follows B here.John ix. 4. Most readers will think with Dean Burgon that the reading ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πέμψαντος (whether followed by με or ἡμᾶς)“carries with it its own sufficient condemnation”(Last Twelve Verses, &c., p. 81). The single or double ἡμᾶς, turning the whole clause into a general statement, applicable to every one, is found in א*BDL, the two Egyptian, Jerusalem Syriac, Erpenius' Arabic, and Roman Ethiopic versions, in the younger Cyril and the versifier Nonnus. Origen and Jerome cite the passage as if the reading were ἐργάζεσθε, which, by a familiaritacism(seep.11), is the reading of the first hand of B. The first ἡμᾶς is adopted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort: the second by Tischendorf alone after א*L, the Bohairic, Roman Ethiopic, Erpenius' Arabic, and Cyril. Certainly με of BD, the Sahidic, and Jerusalem Syriac, is very harsh.John x. 22. For δέ after ἐγένετο Westcott and Hort read τότε with BL, 33, the Sahidic, Gothic, Slavonic, and Armenian versions. No such use of τότε in this order, and without another particle, will be found in the New Testament, or easily elsewhere. The Bohairic andgat.of the Vulgate have δὲ τότε, which is a different thing. Moreover, the sense will not admit so sharp a definition of sameness in time as τότε implies. Three months intervened between the feast of Tabernacles, in and after which all the events named from ch. vii downwards took place, and this winter feast of Dedication.John xviii. 5. For λέγει αὐτοῖς ὁ ἰησοῦς ἐγώ ἐιμι, B and a have the miserable variation λέγει αὐτοῖς ἐγώ ἐιμι ἰησοῦς, which Westcott and Hort advance to a place in their margin. The first ΙΣ (omitting ὁ) was absorbed in the last syllable of ΑΥΤΟΙΣ, the second being a mere repetition of the first syllable of ΙΣΤΗΚΕΙ (sicBprimâ manu). Compare Vol. I. p. 10. With so little care was this capital document written317.Acts iv. 25. We have here, upheld by nearly all the authorities to which students usually defer, that which cannot possibly be right, though critical editors, in mere helplessness, feel obliged to put it in their text: ὁ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου στόματος δαυεὶδ παιδός σου εἰπών. Thus read אABE, 13, 15, 27, 29, 36, 38. Apost. 12, a catena and Athanasius. The Vulgate and Latin Fathers, the Harkleian Syriac and Armenian versions conspire, but with such wide variations as only serve to display their perplexity. We have here two several[pg 308]readings, either of which might be true, combined into one that cannot. We might either adopt with D ὃς διὰμνςἁγίου διὰ τοῦ στόματος λαλήσας δαυεὶδ παιδός σου (butdavid puero tuod), or better with Didymus ὁ διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου στόματος δὲ δαυεὶδ παιδός σου εἰπών (which will fairly suit the Peshitto and Bohairic); or we might prefer the easier form of the Received text ὁ διὰ στόματος δαβὶδ τοῦ παιδός σου εἰπών, which has no support except from P318and the cursives 1, 31, 40, 220, 221, &c. (the valuable copy 224 reads ὁ διὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν ἐνδαδ), and from Theophylact, Chrysostom being doubtful. Tischendorf justly pleads for the form he edits that it has second, third, and fourth century authority, adding“singula verba praeter morem sed non sine caussâ collocata sunt.”Praeter moremthey certainly are, andnon sine caussâtoo, if this and like examples shall lead us to a higher style of criticism than will be attained by setting up one or more of the oldest copies as objects of unreasonable idolatry.Acts vii. 46. ᾐτήσατο εὑρεῖν σκήνωμα τῷ θεῷ Ἰακώβ. The portentous variant οἴκῳ for θεῷ is adopted by Lachmann, and by Tischendorf, who observes of it“minimè sensu caret:”even Tregelles sets it in the margin, but Westcott and Hort simply obelize θεῷ as if they would read τῷ Ἰακώβ (compare Psalm xxiv. 6, cxxxii. 5 with Gen. xlix. 24). Yet οἴκῳ appears in א*BDH against אcACEP, all cursives (including 13, 31, 61, 220, 221), all versions. Observe also in ch. viii. 5 καισαρίας in א* for σαμαρείας on account of ver. 40 and ch. xxi. 8.Acts x. 19. Ἰδοὺ ἄνδρες δύο is the reading of Westcott and Hort's text ([τρεῖς] margin) after B only, the true number being three (ver. 7): in ch. xi. 11 Epiphanius only has δύο. There might be some grounds for omitting τρεῖς here, as Tischendorf does, and Tregelles more doubtfully in his margin (with DHLP, 24, 31, 111, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 220, 221, 224,m, the later Syriac, the Apostolical Constitutions, the elder Cyril, Chrysostom and Theophylact, Augustine and Ambrose), no reason surely for representing the Spirit as speaking only of the δύο οἰκέται.Acts xii. 25. An important passage for our present purpose. That the two Apostles returned from, not to, Jerusalem is too plain for argument (ch. xi. 29, 30), yet εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ (which in its present order surely cannot be joined with πληρώσαντες) is the reading of Westcott and Hort's text (ἐξ and the fatal obelus [Glyph: dagger] being in their margin) after אBHLP, 61, four of Matthaei's copies, Codd. 2, 4, 14, 24, 26, 34, 64, 78, 80, 95, 224, and perhaps twenty other cursives, but besides these only the margin of the Harkleian, the Roman Ethiopic, the Polyglott Arabic, some copies of the Slavonic and of Chrysostom, with Theophylact and Erasmus' first two editions, who says in his notes“ita legunt Graeci,”i.e. his Codd. 2, 4. A few which substitute“Antioch”for“Jerusalem”(28, 38, 66marg., 67**, 97marg., Apost. 5) are witnesses for εἰς, but not so those which, reading ἐξ or ἀπό, add with the Complutensian εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν (E, 7, 14**, 27, 29, 32, 42, 57, 69, 98marg., 100, 105, 106,[pg 309]111, 126**, 182, 183, 186, 220, 221, the Sahidic, Peshitto, and Erpenius' Arabic): Cod. 76 has εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν ἀπὸ Ἱερουσαλήμ. C is defective here, and the only three remaining uncials are divided between ἐξ (A, 13, 27, 29, 69, 214, Apost. 54, Chrysostom sometimes) and ἀπό (DE, 15, 18, 36, 40, 68, 73, 76, 81, 93, 98, 100, 105, 106, 111, 113, 180, 183, 184, a copy of Chrysostom, and the Vulgateab). The two Egyptian, the Peshitto, the Philoxenian text, the Armenian and Pell Platt's Ethiopic have“from,”the only possible sense, in spite of אB. Tischendorf in his N. T. Vaticanum 1867 alleges that in that codex“litterae εισ ιερου primâ ut videtur manu rescriptae. Videtur primum απο pro εισ scriptum fuisse.”But since he did not repeat the statement three years later in his eighth edition, he may have come to feel doubtful about it. Dr. Hort conjectures that the original order was τὴν εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ πληρώσαντες διακονίαν.Acts xvii. 28. Here Westcott and Hort place ὑμᾶς in their text, ἡμᾶς in the margin. For ἡμᾶς we find only B, 33, 68, 95, 96, 105, 137, and rather wonder than otherwise that the itacism is not met with in more cursives than six. The Bohairic has been cited in error on the same side. It needs not a word to explain that the stress of St. Paul's argument rests on ὑμᾶς. To the Athenians he quotes not the Hebrew Scriptures, but the poets of whom they were proud. Compare Luke xvi. 12, above.An itacism not quite so gross in ch. xx. 10 μὴ θορυβεῖσθαι (B*, 185, 224*) is likewise honoured with a place in Westcott and Hort's margin. In Matt. xi. 16 they follow Tischendorf and Tregelles in adopting ἑτέροις for ἑταίροις with BCDZ, and indeed the mass of copies. This last itacism (for it can be nothing better) was admitted so early as to affect many of the chief versions.Acts xx. 30. Cod. B omits αὐτῶν after ὑμῶν, where it is much wanted, apparently with no countenance except from Cod. 186, for this is just a point in which versions (the Sahidic and both Ethiopic) can be little trusted. The present is one of the countless examples of Cod. B's inclination to abridge, which in the Old Testament is carried so far as to eject from the text of the Septuagint words that are, and always must have been, in the original Hebrew. Westcott and Hort include αὐτῶν within brackets.Acts xxv. 13. Agrippa and Bernice went to Caesarea to greet the new governor (ἀσπασόμενοι), not surely after they had sent their greeting before them (ἀσπασάμενοι), which, if it had been a fact, would not have been worth mentioning. Yet, though the reading is so manifestly false, the evidence for the aorist seems overwhelming (אABHLP, the Greek of E, 13, 24*, 31, 68, 105, 180, 220, 224*, a few more copies, and the Coptic and Ethiopic versions). The future is found possibly in C, certainly in 61, 221, and the mass of cursives, ineand other versions, in Chrysostom, and in one form of Theophylact's commentary. Here again Dr. Hort suspects some kind of prior corruption (Notes, p. 100).Acts xxviii. 13. For περιελθόντες of all other manuscripts and versions א*B have περιελόντες, evidently borrowed from ch. xxvii. 40. Even this vile error of transcription is set in Westcott and Hort's text, the alternative not even in their margin. In ver. 15 they once set οἱ within[pg 310]brackets319on the evidence of B, 96 only. Cod. B is very prone to omit the article, especially, but not exclusively, with proper names.Rom. vii. 22. The substitution of τοῦ νοός (cf. ver. 23) for τοῦ θεοῦ seems peculiar to Cod. B.Rom. xv. 31. Lachmann and Tregelles (in his margin only) accept the manifest gloss δωροφορία for διακονία with B (seeVol. I. p. 290 for its“Westernelement”) D*FG (dehaveremuneratio) and Ambrosiaster (munerum meorum ministratio). But διακονία is found in אACD2and3and consequently in E (seeVol. I. p. 176),f(ministratio),g(administratio), Vulg. (obsequii mei oblatio), sod***,fuld.and Origen in the Latin (ministerium), with both Syriac, the Bohairic, Armenian and Ethiopic versions, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and John Damascene.1 Cor. xiii. 5. Never was a noble speech more cruelly pared down to a trite commonplace than by the reading of B and Clement of Alexandria (very expressly) οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ μὴ ἑαυτῆς, in the place of οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ (or τὸ) ἑαυτῆς of the self-same Clement just as expressly elsewhere (seep.262and note 3), and of all other authorities of every description. Here Westcott and Hort place τὸ μή in their margin.Col. iv. 15. For αὐτοῦ Lachmann, Tregelles' margin, Hort and Westcott have αὐτῆς from B, 676**, and the text of the later Syriac, thus implying that νύμφα is the Doric feminine form, which is very unlikely.1 Thess. v. 4. Lachmann with Hort and Westcott (but not their margin) reads κλέπτας for κλέπτης with AB and the Bohairic, but this cannot be right.Heb. vii. 1. For ὁ συναντήσας Lachmann, Tregelles, Hort and Westcott's text have ὃς συναντήσας with אABC**DEK, 17, a broken sentence: but this is too much even for Dr. Hort, who says, in the language habitual to him, that ὁ seems“a right emendation of the Syrian revisers”(Notes, p. 130).James i. 17. What can be meant by ἀποσκιάσματος of א*B it is hard to say. The versions are not clear as to the sense, butffalone seems to suggest the genitive (modicum obumbrationis). That valuable Cod. 184, now known only by Sanderson's collation at Lambeth (No. 1255, 10-14)320, is said by him toaddto the end of the verse οὐδὲ μέχρι ὑπονοίας τινὸς ὑποβολὴ ἀποσκιάσματος, which seems like a scholion on the preceding clause, and is found also in Cod. 221.Nor will any one praise certain readings of Cod. B in James i. 9; 1 Pet. i. 9; 11; ii. 1; 12; 25; iii. 7; 14; 18 (om.τῷ θεῷ); iv. 1; v. 3;[pg 311]2 Pet. i. 17; 1 John i. 2; ii. 14; 20; 25; 27; iii. 15; 3 John 4; 9; Jude 9, which passages the student may work out for himself.Enough of the weary and ungracious task of finding fault. The foregoing list of errors patent in the most ancient codices might be largely increased: two or three more will occur incidentally in ChapterXII(1 Cor. xiii. 3; Phil. ii. 1; 1 Pet. i. 23;seealso pp.254,319). Even if the reader has not gone with me in every case, more than enough has been alleged to prove to demonstration that the true and pure text of the sacred writers is not to be looked for in א or B, in אB, or BD, or BL, or any like combination of a select few authorities, but demands, in every fresh case as it arises, the free and impartial use of every available source of information. Yet after all, Cod. B is a document of such value, that it grows by experience even upon those who may have been a little prejudiced against it by reason of the excessive claims of its too zealous friends321. Its best associate, in our judgement, is Cod. C, where the testimony of that precious palimpsest can be had. BC together will often carry us safe through difficulties of the most complicated character, as for instance, through that vexatious passage John xiii. 25, 26. Compare also Acts xxvi. 16. Yet even here it is necessary to commend with reserve: BC stand almost alone in maintaining the ingenious but improbable variation ἐκσῶσαι in Acts xxvii. 39 (seeChap.XII), and the frigid gloss κρίνοντι in 1 Pet. iv. 5: they unite with others in foisting on St. Matthew's text its worst corruption, ch. xxvii. 49. In Gal. iii. 1, C against AB contains the gloss τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι. Again, since no fact relating to these pursuits is more certain than the absolute independence of the sources from which A and B are derived, it is manifest that their occasional agreement is always of the greatest weight, and is little less than conclusive in those portions of the N. T. where other evidence is slender in amount or consideration, e.g. 1 Pet. i. 21 and v. 10 (with the Vulgate); v. 11: also supported by those admirable cursives 27, 29, in 1 Pet. v. 14; 1 John iv. 3; 19; 2 John 3; 12. See also 1 John v. 18, to be discussed in Chap.XII.

om. αἰνοῦντες καὶ אBCL*, Bohairic (Hort), Jerusalem Syriac. This is the Neutral and Alexandrian text.om. καὶ εὐλογοῦντες D,abeffl,gat.bodl., Bohairic (Tischendorf). This is the Western text.

om. αἰνοῦντες καὶ אBCL*, Bohairic (Hort), Jerusalem Syriac. This is the Neutral and Alexandrian text.

om. καὶ εὐλογοῦντες D,abeffl,gat.bodl., Bohairic (Tischendorf). This is the Western text.

The assumption of course is that the Syrian reading is aconflationof those of the other two classes, so forming a full but not overburdened clause. But if thispraejudiciumbe met with the plea that D and the Latins perpetually, B and its allies very often, seek to abridge the sacred original, it would be hard to demonstrate that the latter explanation is more improbable than the former. Beyond this point of subjective feeling the matter cannot well be carried, whether on one side or the other.

Dr. Hort's other examples of conflation have the same double edge as Luke xxiv. 53, and there is no doubt that Dr. Sanday is right in asserting that like instances may be found wheresoever they are looked for; but they prove nothing to any one who has not made up his mind beforehand as to what the reading ought to be. We have already confessed that there is a tendency on the part of copyists to assimilate the narratives of the several Gospels to each other; and that such Harmonies as that of Tatian would facilitate the process; that synonymous words are liable to be exchanged and harsh constructions supplied. Part of the value of the older codices arises from their comparative freedom from such corrections: but then this modernizing process is on the part of copyists unsystematic, almost unconscious; it is wholly different from the deliberate formal emendations implied throughout Dr. Hort's volume.

(β) The second reason adduced by theTwo Revisers“is almost equally cogent”in their estimation. It is that while the Ante-Nicene Fathers“place before us from separate and in some cases widely distant countries examples of Western, Alexandrian, and Neutral readings, it appears to be certain that before the middle of the third century we have no historical traces of readings which can properly be entitled distinctively Syrian”(The Revisers, &c., p. 26). Now the middle of the third century is the earliest period assigned by Dr. Hort for the inception of his phantom scheme of Syrian revision, and we feel[pg 294]sure that the epoch of Patristic evidence was not put thus early, in order to exclude Origen, whose support of his Alexandrian readings Griesbach found so partial and precarious (seeabove, p.226). In fact Dr. Hort expressly states that“The only period for which we have anything like a sufficiency of representative knowledge consists roughly of three-quarters of a century from about 175 to 250: but the remains of four eminent Greek Fathers, which range through this period, cast a strong light on textual history backward and forward. They are Irenaeus, of Asia Minor, Rome, and Lyons; his disciple Hippolytus, of Rome; Clement, of Athens and Alexandria; and his disciple, Origen, of Alexandria and Palestine”(Hort, p. 112). Even if the extant writings of these Fathers had been as rigorously examined and as thoroughly known as they certainly are not,“their scantiness and the comparative vagueness of the textual materials contained in them”(ibid.) would hinder our drawing at present any positive conclusions regarding the sacred text as known to them. Even the slender specimens of controverted readings collected in our Chap.XIIwould suffice to prove that their evidence is by no means exclusively favourable to Dr. Hort's opinions, a fact for which we will allege but one instance out of many, the support given to the Received text by Hippolytus in that grand passage, John iii. 13300.

There are three considerable works relating to the criticism of the N. T. still open to the enterprise of scholars, and they can hardly be taken up at all except by the fresh hopefulness of scholars yet young. We need a fuller and more comprehensive collation of the cursive manuscripts (Hort, pp. 76-7):“a complete collection of all the fragments of the Thebaic New Testament is now the most pressing want in the province of textual criticism,”writes Bp. Lightfoot, and he might have added a better edition of the Bohairic also: but for the demands of the present controversy we must set in the first rank the necessity for a complete survey of the Patristic literature of the first five centuries at the least. While we concede to Dr. Hort that as[pg 295]a rule“negative patristic evidence”—that derived from the mere silence of the writer,“is of no force at all”(Hort, p. 201), and attach very slight importance to citations which are not express, it is from this source that we must look for any stable decision regarding the comparative purity in reference to the sacred autographs of the several classes of documents which have passed under our review.

(γ) Hence the second reason for supporting the text of Westcott and Hort urged by theTwo Revisersrelates to an investigation of facts hitherto but partially ascertained: the third, like the first, involves only matters of opinion, in which individual judgements and prepossessions bear the chief part.“Yet a third reason is supplied by Internal Evidence, or, in other words, by considerations ... of intrinsic or of Transcriptional Probability”(The Revisers &c., p. 26): and“here,”they very justly add,“it is obvious that we enter at once into a very delicate and difficult domain of textual criticism, and can only draw our conclusions with the utmost circumspection and reserve”(ibid.). On the subject of Internal Evidence enough for our present purpose has been said, and Dr. Hort's Transcriptional head appears to be Bp. Ellicott'sparadiplomaticunder a more convenient name. Our author's discussion of what he calls the“rudimental criticism”of Internal evidence (Hort, Part ii. pp. 19-72), if necessarily somewhat abstruse, is one of the most elaborate and interesting in his admirable volume. It is sometimes said that all reasoning is analytical, not synthetical; the reducing a foregone conclusion to the first principles on which it rests, rather than the building upon those first principles the materials wherewith to construct the conclusion. Of this portion of Dr. Hort's labours thedictumis emphatically true. Cod. B and its characteristic peculiarities are never out of the author's mind, and those lines of thought are closely followed which most readily lead up to the theory of that manuscript's practical impeccability. We allege this statement in no disparaging spirit, and it may be that Dr. Hort will not wholly disagree with us. Not only is he duly sensible of the precariousness of Intrinsic evidence, inasmuch as“the uncertainty of the decision in ordinary cases is shown by the great diversity of judgement which is actually found to exist”(Hort, p. 21), but he boldly,[pg 296]and no less boldly than truly, intimates that in such cases the ultimate decision must rest with the individual critic:“in almost all texts variations occur where personal judgement inevitably takes a large part in the final decision.... Different minds will be impressed by different parts of the evidence as clearer than the rest, and so virtually ruling the rest: here therefore personal discernment would seem the surest ground for confidence”(ibid.p. 65). For the critic's confidence perhaps, not for that of his reader.

The process of grouping authorities, whether by considerations of their geographical distribution or (more uncertainly) according to their genealogy as inferred from internal considerations (ibid.pp. 49-65), occupies a large measure of Dr. Hort's attention. The idea has not indeed originated with him, and its occasional value will be frankly acknowledged in the ensuing pages, so that on this head we need not further enlarge. In conclusion we will say, that the more our Cambridge Professor's“Introduction”is studied the more it grows upon our esteem for fulness of learning, for patience of research, for keenness of intellectual power, and especially for a certain marvellous readiness in accounting after some fashion for every new phenomenon which occurs, however apparently adverse to the acceptance of his own theory. With all our reverence for his genius, and gratitude for much that we have learnt from him in the course of our studies, we are compelled to repeat as emphatically as ever our strong conviction that the hypothesis to whose proof he has devoted so many laborious years, is destitute not only of historical foundation, but of all probability resulting from the internal goodness of the text which its adoption would force upon us301.

This last assertion we will try to verify by subjoining a select[pg 297]number of those many passages in the N. T. wherein the two great codices א and B, one or both of them, are witnesses for readings, nearly all of which, to the best of our judgement, are corruptions of the sacred originals302.

6. Those who devote themselves to the criticism of the text of the New Testament have only of late come to understand the full importance of attending closely to the mutual connexion subsisting between their several materials of every description, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers. The study ofgroupinghas been recently and not untruly said to be the foundation of all enduring criticism303. Now that theories about the formal recensions of whole classes of these documents have generally been given up as purely visionary, and the very wordfamilieshas come into disrepute by reason of the exploded fancies it recalls, we can discern not the less clearly that certain groups of them have in common not only a general resemblance in regard to the readings they exhibit, but characteristic peculiarities attaching themselves to each group. Systematic or wilful corruption of the sacred text, at least on a scale worth taking into account, there would seem to have been almost none; yet the tendency to licentious paraphrase and unwarranted additions distinguished one set of our witnesses from the second century downwards; a bias towards grammatical and critical purism and needless omissions appertained to another; while[pg 298]a third was only too apt to soften what might seem harsh, to smooth over difficulties, and to bring passages, especially of the Synoptic Gospels, into unnatural harmony with each other. All these changes appear to have been going on without notice during the whole of the third and fourth centuries, and except that the great name of Origen is associated (not always happily) with one class of them, were rather the work of transcribers than of scholars. Eusebius and Jerome, in their judgements about Scripture texts, are more the echoes of Origen than independent investigators.

Now, as a first approximation to the actual state of the case, the several classes of changes which we have enumerated admit of a certain rude geographical distribution, one of them appertaining to Western Christendom and the earliest Fathers of the African and Gallic Churches (including North Italy under the latter appellation); a second to Egypt and its neighbourhood; the third originally to Syria and Christian Antioch, in later times to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. We have here, no doubt, much to remind us of Griesbach and his scheme of triple recensions, but with this broad distinction between his conclusions and those of modern critics, that whereas he regarded the existence of his families as a patent fact, and grounded upon it precise and mechanical rules for the arrangement of the text, we are now content to perceive no more than unconscious tendencies, liable to be modified or diverted by a thousand occult influences, of which in each single case it is impossible to form an estimate beforehand. Even that marked bias in the direction of adding to the record, which is the reproach of Codex Bezae and some of its compeers, and renders the text of the Acts as exhibited by DE, by the cursive 137, and the margin of the Harkleian Syriac, as unlike that commonly read as can well be imagined304, is mixed up with a proneness to omissions which we should look for rather from another class of documents (e.g. the rejection of ψευδόμενοι Matt. v. 11), and which in the latter part of St. Luke's Gospel almost suggests the idea of representing an earlier edition than that now in ordinary use,[pg 299]yet proceeding from the Evangelist's own hand (seep.18)305. Again, the process whereby the rough places are made plain and abrupt constructions rounded, is abundantly exemplified in the readings of the great uncial A, supported as it is by the mass of later manuscripts (e.g. Mark i. 27; Acts xv. 17, 18; xx. 24); yet in innumerable instances (seeAppendixto this chapter) these self-same codices retain the genuine text of the sacred writers which their more illustrious compeers have lost or impaired.

Hence it follows that in judging of the character of a various reading proposed for our acceptance, we must carefully mark whether it comes to us from many directions or from one. And herein the native country of the several documents, even when we can make sure of it, is only a precarious guide. If the Ethiopic or the Armenian versions have really been corrected by the Latin Vulgate, the geographical remoteness of their origin must go for nothing where they agree with the latter version. The relation in which Cod. L and the Bohairic version stand to Cod. B is too close to allow them their full value as independent witnesses unless when they are at variance with that great uncial, wheresoever it may have been written: the same might be said of the beautiful Latin fragmentkfrom Bobbio. To whatever nations they belong, their resemblances are too strong and perpetual not to compel us to withhold from them a part of the consideration their concord would otherwise lay claim to. The same is incontestably the case with the Curetonian and margin of the Harkleian Syriac in connexion with Cod. D. Wide as is the region which separates Syria from Gaul, there[pg 300]must have been in very early times some remote communication by which the stream of Eastern testimony or tradition, like another Alpheus, rose up again with fresh strength to irrigate the regions of the distant West. The Peshitto Syriac leans at times in the same direction, although both in nation and character it most assimilates to the same class as Cod. A.

With these, and it may be with some further reservations which experience and study shall hereafter suggest, the principle of grouping must be acknowledged to be a sound one, and those lines of evidence to be least likely to lead us astray which converge from the most varied quarters to the same point. It is strange, but not more strange than needful, that we are compelled in the cause of truth to make one stipulation more: namely, that this rule be henceforth applied impartially in all cases, as well when it will tell in favour of the Received text, as when it shall help to set it aside. To assign a high value to cursive manuscripts of the best description (such as 1, 33, 69, 157, Evst. 259, or 61 of the Acts), and to such uncials as LRΔ, or even as א or C, whensoever they happen to agree with Cod. B, and to treat their refined silver as though it had been suddenly transmuted into dross when they come to contradict it, is a practice too plainly unreasonable to admit of serious defence, and can only lead to results which those who uphold it would be the first to deplore306.

7. It is hoped that the general issue of the foregoing discussion may now be embodied in these four practical rules307:—

(1) That the true readings of the Greek New Testament cannot safely be derived from any one set of authorities, whether manuscripts, versions, or Fathers, but ought to be the result of[pg 301]a patient comparison and careful estimate of the evidence supplied by them all.

(2) That where there is a real agreement between all documents containing the Gospels up to the sixth century, and in other parts of the New Testament up to the ninth, the testimony of later manuscripts and versions, though not to be rejected unheard, must be regarded with great suspicion, and,unless upheld by strong internal evidence, can hardly be adopted308.

(3) That where the more ancient documents are at variance with each other, the later uncial and cursive copies, especially those of approved merit, are of real importance, as being the surviving representatives of other codices, very probably as early, perhaps even earlier, than any now extant.

(4) That in weighing conflicting evidence we must assign the highest value not to those readings which are attested by the greatest number of witnesses, but to those which come to us from several remote and independent sources, and which bear the least likeness to each other in respect to genius and general character.

Appendix To Chapter X.Matt. vi. 8. The transparent gloss ὁ θεός is inserted before ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν by Codd. א*B and the Sahidic version309.Ver. 22. Ὁ λύχνος τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου B,abcff1n1.2hl, the printed Vulgate, some Latin writers, and the Ethiopic. The addition of σου is more strongly attested in Luke xi. 34 by א*ABCDM, but is intolerable in either place.Matt. xvi. 21. Ἀπὸ τότε ἤρξατο ἰησοῦς χριστός: so the first hands of א and B, with the Bohairic version only, their very frequent companion.Matt. xxvii. 28. On the impossible reading of אcBD,abcff2q, and a few others, enough has been said in Chap. VII. p.234.Ver. 49. We are here brought face to face with the gravest interpolation yet laid to the charge of B, whose tendency is usually in the opposite direction. Westcott and Hort alone among the editors feel constrained to insert in the text, though enclosed in their double brackets and regarded as“most probably an interpolation,”a sentence which neither they nor any other competent scholar can easily believe that the Evangelist ever wrote310. After σώσων αὐτόν are set the following words borrowed from John xix. 34, with a slight verbal change, and representing that the Saviour was pierced before his death: ἄλλος δὲ λαβὼν λόγχην ἔνυξεν αὐτοῦ τὴν πλευράν, καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ὕδωρ καὶ ἁῖμα. Thus we read in אBCLU (which has εὐθέως before ἐξῆλθεν αἷμα καὶ ὕδωρ) Γ, 5, 48, 67, 115, 127*, five good manuscripts of the Vulgate,Kells,gat.,mm.,chad.,mac-regol., andOxon.,C. C.(notinBodl.),Harl.1023 and 1802*, and the margin of 1 E.vi, the Jerusalem Syriac once when the Lesson occurs, and the Ethiopic. Chrysostom thus read in his copy, but used the clause with so little reflection that he regarded the Lord as dead already. Severus of Antioch [d. 539], who himself protested against this gross corruption, tells us that Cyril of Alexandria as well as Chrysostom received it. A scholion found in Cod. 72 refers this addition εἰς τὸ καθ᾽ ἱστορίαν εὐαγγέλιον Διοδώρου καὶ Τατιάνου καὶ ἄλλων διαφόρων ἁγίων πατέρων, on the authority of Chrysostom; and from the unintentional blunders of Harmonists like Tatian such an insertion might very well have crept in. The marvel is that it found favour so widely as it did311.[pg 303]Matt. xxviii. 19. βαπτίσαντες occurs only in BD (whose Latin hasbaptizantes), as though Baptism were to precede instruction in the faith. Tregelles alone dares to place this reading in the text: Westcott and Hort have it in their margin.Mark iii. 14, 16. After noticing the evidence which supported the corrupt sentence in Matt. xxvii. 49, we are little disposed to accept what is in substance the same for such feeble glosses as are afforded us in these two verses; namely, οὓς καὶ ἀποστόλους ὠνόμασεν after δώδεκα in ver. 14 (derived from Luke vi. 13), and καὶ ἐποίησε τοὺς δώδεκα at the beginning of ver. 16. Westcott and Hort receive both clauses, Tischendorf only the latter, with אBC*Δ and an Ethiopic manuscript: yet the former, if less likely to be genuine, is the better supported. It is found in אBC*Δ (with some variation), in 13, 28, 69, 124, 238, 346, the Bohairic, the margin of the Harkleian Syriac, the Ethiopic, the Arabic of the Polyglott: a goodly array from divers sources to uphold so bad a reading.Mark vi. 2. οἱ πολλοί is read by Westcott and Hort (so Tischendorf) instead of πολλοί with BL, 13, 28, 69, 346. Three out of the four cursives belong to Professor Ferrar's group.Ver. 22. In the room of τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτῆς τῆς Ἡρωδιάδος a serious variation of אBDLΔ, 238, 473, 558 is admitted into the text by Westcott and Hort, τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ (+ τῆς 238, 558) Ἡρῳδιάδος, thus bringing St. Mark into direct contradiction with Josephus, who expressly states that the wretched girl was named Salome, and was the daughter of Herod Philip by Herodias, who did not leave her husband till after Salome's birth (Josephus, Antiq., lib. xviii. ch. v. § 4). Add to this the extreme improbability that even Herod the Tetrarch should have allowed his own child to degrade herself in such wise as Salome did here, or that she could not have carried her point with her father without resorting to licentious allurements. We must therefore regard αὐτοῦ as certainly false, while αὐτῆς strongly expresses the writer's feeling that even Herodias could stoop so low, and being used emphatically has so much offended a few that they omit it altogether. Such are 1, 118, 209, and some versions (bcf, the Bohairic, Armenian, Ethiopic, and Gothic) which did not understand it. Tischendorf was hardly right in adding the Peshitto to the list312.Mark ix. 1. ὧδε τῶν for τῶν ὧδε (ἑστηκότων) is the almost impossible reading of BD*,ck* (adqnare uncertain), adopted the more readily by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, because all have the proper order τῶν ὧδε in Matt. xvi. 28.Mark xiii. 33. Lachmann, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort reject (Tregelles more fitly sets within brackets) καὶ προσεύχεσθε with BD, 122, and the Latinackandtol.* of the Vulgate only. It is in the favour of the two words that they cannot have come from the parallel place in[pg 304]St. Matthew (ch. xxiv. 42), nor is the preceding verb the same in ch. xiv. 38. Here even אLΔ side against B with AC and all other authorities, including the Egyptian and most Latin, as well as the Syriac versions.Luke iv. 44. The wonderful variation Ἰουδαίας is brought into the text of Hort and Westcott, the true reading Γαλιλαίας being banished to their margin. Their change is upheld by a strong phalanx indeed: אNBCLQR, 1, 21, 71, Evst. 222, 259 and some twenty other cursives (Evan. 503 and two Lectionaries read αὐτῶν instead of either), the Bohairic and the text of the Harkleian: authorities enough to prove anything not in itself impossible, as Ἰουδαίας is in this place. Not only is Galilee the scene of the events recorded immediately before and after the present verse, but the passage is manifestly parallel to Mark i. 39. The three Synoptic Gospels are broadly distinguished from that of St. John by their silence respecting the Lord's ministry in Judaea before He went up to the last passover. Yet Alfordin loco, while admitting that“our narrative is thus brought into the more startling discrepancy with that of St. Mark, in which unquestionably the same portion of the sacred history is related,”most strangely adds,“Still these are considerations which must not weigh in the least degree with the critic. It is his province simply to track out what is the sacred text, not what, in his own feeble and partial judgement,it ought to have been.”Luke vi. 48. It is surprising how a gloss so frigid as διὰ τὸ καλῶς οἰκοδομῆσθαι αὐτήν could have been accepted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, in the room of τεθελεμίωτο γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν, chiefly, it may be presumed, because the latter is the expression of St. Matthew (ch. vii. 25). Yet such is the reading of אBLΞ, of the two best cursives 33, 157, of the Bohairic (with some variation in its copies), of the margin of the Harkleian, and of Cyril of Alexandria. The Ethiopic preserves both forms. As the present οἰκοδόμοῦντι early in the verse involves a plain contradiction when compared with the perfect οἰκοδομῆσθαι at the end, Tregelles changes the latter into οἰκοδομεῖσθαι on the feeble authority of the third hand of B, of 33, and possibly of 157.Luke viii. 40. For αὐτόν after προσδοκῶντες we find τὸν θεόν in א only. Of course the variation is quite wrong, but it is hard to see the pertinency of Dr. Vance Smith's hint (Theological Review, July, 1875)“that it cannot have got in by accident.”Luke x. 1. This case is interesting, as being one wherein B (not א) is at variance with the very express evidence of the earliest ecclesiastical writers, while it makes the number of these disciples, not seventy, but seventy-two313. With B are DM, also R (“ita enim certè omnino videtur,”[pg 305]Tisch., Monum. sacra inedita, vol. ii. Proleg. p. xviii), in the prefixed table of τίτλοι (Vol. I. p. 57,n), its text being lost, Codd. 1, 42,a c e g1.2?l, the Vulgate, Curetonian Syriac, and Armenian. Lachmann with Westcott and Hort insert δύο, but within brackets, for the evidence against it is overwhelming both in number and in weight: namely, Codd. אACEGHKLSUVXΓΔΛΞΠ, all other cursives,b f gof the Old Latin, the Bohairic, the three other Syriac, the Gothic, and Ethiopic versions.Luke xiv. 5. Here again we have a strong conviction that א, though now in the minority, is more correct than B, supported as the latter is by a dense array of witnesses of every age and country. In the clause τίνος ὑμῶν ὄνος ἢ βοῦς of the Received text all the critical editors substitute υἱὸς for ὄνος, which introduces a bathos so tasteless as to be almost ludicrous314. Yet υἱὸς is found with or without ὁ before it in AB (hiantCF)EGHMSUVΓΔΛ, in no less than 125 cursive copies already cited by name315(also υἱὸς ὑμῶν Evst. 259), ine f g, the Sahidic, Peshitto and Harkleian316Syriac versions: Cod. 508 and the Curetonian combine both forms υἱὸς ἢ βοῦς ἢ ὄνος, and Cod. 215 has υἱὸς ἢ ὄνος without βοῦς. Add to these Cyril of Alexandria (whose words are cited in catenas, as in the scholia to X, 253, 259), Titus of Bostra the commentator, Euthymius, and Theophylact. For ὄνος are אKLXΠ, 1, 33, 66secundâ manu, 69 (ὄρος), 71, 207sec. man., 211, 213, 407, 413, 492, 509, 512, 549, 550, 555, 556, 569, 570, 599, 602, and doubtless others not cited: also the text of X, 253, 259 in spite of the annexed commentary; of the versionsa b c i lof the Old Latin, the Vulgate, Bohairic, Jerusalem Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopic (bos eius aut asinus), though the Slavonic codices and Persic of the Polyglott make for υἱός. Cod. 52 (sic) and the Arabic of the Polyglott omit ὄνος ἤ, while D has πρόβατον (ovis d) for ὄνος (comp. Matt. xii. 11), and 557 exhibits βοῦς ἢ ὄνος. ΥΣ or ΟΙΣ mistaken as the contraction for ΥΙΟΣ is a mere guess, and we are safest here in clinging to common sense against a preponderance of outward evidence.Luke xv. 21. Here by adding from ver. 19 ποίησόν με ὡς ἕνα τῶν μισθίων σου (placed in the text by Westcott and Hort within brackets) the great codices אBD, with UX, 33, 512, 543, 558, 571, a catena, and four manuscripts of the Vulgate (bodl. gat. mm. tol.), manage to keep out of sight that delicate touch of true nature which Augustine points out, that the son never carried out his purpose of offering himself for a hireling,“quod post osculum patris generosissime jam dedignatur.”Luke xvi. 12. It is hard to tell how far thorough scholars and able critics are prepared to push a favourite theory, when Westcott and Hort place τὸ ἡμέτερον τίς δώσει ὑμῖν in the text, reserving ὑμέτερον for the margin. Not to mention that the interchange of η and υ in these pronouns[pg 306]is the most obstinate of all known itacisms, and one to which B is especially prone (e.g. Acts xvii. 28; 1 Pet. ii. 24; 1 John ii. 25; iii. 1, Vol. I. p. 11), ἡμέτερον is found only in BL, Evst. 21, and Origen once: in 157,e i l, and in Tertullian twice it is softened down to ἐμόν.Luke XXI. 24: ἄχρι οὗ πληρωθῶσιν [καὶ ἔσονται] kairoὶ ἐthnῶn. The words within brackets appear thus in Westcott and Hort's text alone; what possible meaning can be assigned to them in the position they there occupy it is hard to see. They are obviously derived by an error of the scribe's eye from καὶ ἔσονται (the reading of אBD, &c.) at the beginning of ver. 25. This unintelligible insertion is due to B; but L, the Bohairic, and a codex cited in the Harkleian margin also have it with another καιροί prefixed to καὶ ἔσονται. D runs on thus: ἄχρις οὗ πληρωθῶσιν καὶ ἔσονται σημεῖα (om. καιροὶ ἐθνῶν). Those who discover some recondite beauty in the reading of B compare with this the genuine addition καὶ ἐσμέν after κληθῶμεν in 1 John iii. 1.Nempè amatorem turpia decipiunt caecum vitia, aut etiam ipsa haec delectant.Luke xxiii. 32. For ἕτεροι δύο κακοῦργοι, which is unobjectionable in the Greek, though a little hard in a close English translation, אB and the two Egyptian versions, followed by Westcott and Hort, have the wholly impossible ἕτεροι κακοῦργοι δύο.John ii. 3. The loose paraphrase of Cod. א in place of ὑστερήσαντος οἴνου commends itself to no one but Tischendorf, who in his turn admires the worst deformities of his favourite: it runs καὶ οἶνον οὐκ εἶχον ὅτι συνετελέσθη ὁ οἶνος τοῦ γάμου, in which few readers will be able to discern with him the manner and style of St. John. The Old Latina b ff2and Gaudentius [iv]; alsoe l, the Ethiopic, and the margin of the Harkleian in part, exhibit the same vapid circumlocution. Cod. א in this Gospel, and sometimes elsewhere, has a good deal in common with the Western codices and Latin Fathers, and some of its glosses are simply deplorable: e.g. καλοκαγαθίας for κακοπαθείας, James v. 10; συνομιλοῦντες for συνοικοῦντες, 1 Pet. iii. 7; ἀποθανόντος for παθόντος, 1 Pet. iv. 1 after ch. ii. 21, where it does not stand alone, as here. Of a better character is its bold supplement of ἐκκλησία before συνεκλεκτή in 1 Pet. v. 13, apparently borrowed from primitive tradition, and supported by the Peshitto, Vulgate (in its best manuscripts and editions), and Armenian versions.John iv. 1. After βαπτίζει we find ἤ omitted in AB* (though it is added in what Tischendorf considers an ancient hand, his B2) GLΓ, 262, Origen and Epiphanius, but appears in אCD and all the rest. Tregelles rejects ἤ in his margin, Hort and Westcott put it within brackets. Well may Dr. Hort say (Notes, p. 76),“It remains no easy matter to explain how the verse as it stands can be reasonably understood without ἤ, or how such a mere slip as the loss of Η after ΕΙ should have so much excellent Greek authority, more especially as the absence of ἤ increases the obvious no less than the real difficulty of the verse.”John vii. 39. One of the worst faults a manuscript (the same is not true of a version) can have is a habit of supplying, either from the margin or from the scribe's misplaced ingenuity, some word that may clear up a difficulty, or limit the writer's meaning. Certainly this is not a common fault with Cod. B, but we have here a conspicuous example of it. It[pg 307]stands almost alone in receiving δεδομένον after πνεῦμα: one cursive (254) has δοθέν, and so reada b c e ff2g l q, the Vulgate, the Peshitto, and the Georgian (Malan, St. John), the Jerusalem Syriac, the Polyglott Persic, a catena, Eusebius and Origen in a Latin version: the margin of the Harkleian Syriac makes a yet further addition. The Sahidic, Ethiopic, and Erpenius' Arabic also supply some word. But the versions and commentators, like our own English translations, probably meant no more than a bold exposition. The whole blame of this evident corruption rests with the two manuscripts. No editor follows B here.John ix. 4. Most readers will think with Dean Burgon that the reading ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πέμψαντος (whether followed by με or ἡμᾶς)“carries with it its own sufficient condemnation”(Last Twelve Verses, &c., p. 81). The single or double ἡμᾶς, turning the whole clause into a general statement, applicable to every one, is found in א*BDL, the two Egyptian, Jerusalem Syriac, Erpenius' Arabic, and Roman Ethiopic versions, in the younger Cyril and the versifier Nonnus. Origen and Jerome cite the passage as if the reading were ἐργάζεσθε, which, by a familiaritacism(seep.11), is the reading of the first hand of B. The first ἡμᾶς is adopted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort: the second by Tischendorf alone after א*L, the Bohairic, Roman Ethiopic, Erpenius' Arabic, and Cyril. Certainly με of BD, the Sahidic, and Jerusalem Syriac, is very harsh.John x. 22. For δέ after ἐγένετο Westcott and Hort read τότε with BL, 33, the Sahidic, Gothic, Slavonic, and Armenian versions. No such use of τότε in this order, and without another particle, will be found in the New Testament, or easily elsewhere. The Bohairic andgat.of the Vulgate have δὲ τότε, which is a different thing. Moreover, the sense will not admit so sharp a definition of sameness in time as τότε implies. Three months intervened between the feast of Tabernacles, in and after which all the events named from ch. vii downwards took place, and this winter feast of Dedication.John xviii. 5. For λέγει αὐτοῖς ὁ ἰησοῦς ἐγώ ἐιμι, B and a have the miserable variation λέγει αὐτοῖς ἐγώ ἐιμι ἰησοῦς, which Westcott and Hort advance to a place in their margin. The first ΙΣ (omitting ὁ) was absorbed in the last syllable of ΑΥΤΟΙΣ, the second being a mere repetition of the first syllable of ΙΣΤΗΚΕΙ (sicBprimâ manu). Compare Vol. I. p. 10. With so little care was this capital document written317.Acts iv. 25. We have here, upheld by nearly all the authorities to which students usually defer, that which cannot possibly be right, though critical editors, in mere helplessness, feel obliged to put it in their text: ὁ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου στόματος δαυεὶδ παιδός σου εἰπών. Thus read אABE, 13, 15, 27, 29, 36, 38. Apost. 12, a catena and Athanasius. The Vulgate and Latin Fathers, the Harkleian Syriac and Armenian versions conspire, but with such wide variations as only serve to display their perplexity. We have here two several[pg 308]readings, either of which might be true, combined into one that cannot. We might either adopt with D ὃς διὰμνςἁγίου διὰ τοῦ στόματος λαλήσας δαυεὶδ παιδός σου (butdavid puero tuod), or better with Didymus ὁ διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου στόματος δὲ δαυεὶδ παιδός σου εἰπών (which will fairly suit the Peshitto and Bohairic); or we might prefer the easier form of the Received text ὁ διὰ στόματος δαβὶδ τοῦ παιδός σου εἰπών, which has no support except from P318and the cursives 1, 31, 40, 220, 221, &c. (the valuable copy 224 reads ὁ διὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν ἐνδαδ), and from Theophylact, Chrysostom being doubtful. Tischendorf justly pleads for the form he edits that it has second, third, and fourth century authority, adding“singula verba praeter morem sed non sine caussâ collocata sunt.”Praeter moremthey certainly are, andnon sine caussâtoo, if this and like examples shall lead us to a higher style of criticism than will be attained by setting up one or more of the oldest copies as objects of unreasonable idolatry.Acts vii. 46. ᾐτήσατο εὑρεῖν σκήνωμα τῷ θεῷ Ἰακώβ. The portentous variant οἴκῳ for θεῷ is adopted by Lachmann, and by Tischendorf, who observes of it“minimè sensu caret:”even Tregelles sets it in the margin, but Westcott and Hort simply obelize θεῷ as if they would read τῷ Ἰακώβ (compare Psalm xxiv. 6, cxxxii. 5 with Gen. xlix. 24). Yet οἴκῳ appears in א*BDH against אcACEP, all cursives (including 13, 31, 61, 220, 221), all versions. Observe also in ch. viii. 5 καισαρίας in א* for σαμαρείας on account of ver. 40 and ch. xxi. 8.Acts x. 19. Ἰδοὺ ἄνδρες δύο is the reading of Westcott and Hort's text ([τρεῖς] margin) after B only, the true number being three (ver. 7): in ch. xi. 11 Epiphanius only has δύο. There might be some grounds for omitting τρεῖς here, as Tischendorf does, and Tregelles more doubtfully in his margin (with DHLP, 24, 31, 111, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 220, 221, 224,m, the later Syriac, the Apostolical Constitutions, the elder Cyril, Chrysostom and Theophylact, Augustine and Ambrose), no reason surely for representing the Spirit as speaking only of the δύο οἰκέται.Acts xii. 25. An important passage for our present purpose. That the two Apostles returned from, not to, Jerusalem is too plain for argument (ch. xi. 29, 30), yet εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ (which in its present order surely cannot be joined with πληρώσαντες) is the reading of Westcott and Hort's text (ἐξ and the fatal obelus [Glyph: dagger] being in their margin) after אBHLP, 61, four of Matthaei's copies, Codd. 2, 4, 14, 24, 26, 34, 64, 78, 80, 95, 224, and perhaps twenty other cursives, but besides these only the margin of the Harkleian, the Roman Ethiopic, the Polyglott Arabic, some copies of the Slavonic and of Chrysostom, with Theophylact and Erasmus' first two editions, who says in his notes“ita legunt Graeci,”i.e. his Codd. 2, 4. A few which substitute“Antioch”for“Jerusalem”(28, 38, 66marg., 67**, 97marg., Apost. 5) are witnesses for εἰς, but not so those which, reading ἐξ or ἀπό, add with the Complutensian εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν (E, 7, 14**, 27, 29, 32, 42, 57, 69, 98marg., 100, 105, 106,[pg 309]111, 126**, 182, 183, 186, 220, 221, the Sahidic, Peshitto, and Erpenius' Arabic): Cod. 76 has εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν ἀπὸ Ἱερουσαλήμ. C is defective here, and the only three remaining uncials are divided between ἐξ (A, 13, 27, 29, 69, 214, Apost. 54, Chrysostom sometimes) and ἀπό (DE, 15, 18, 36, 40, 68, 73, 76, 81, 93, 98, 100, 105, 106, 111, 113, 180, 183, 184, a copy of Chrysostom, and the Vulgateab). The two Egyptian, the Peshitto, the Philoxenian text, the Armenian and Pell Platt's Ethiopic have“from,”the only possible sense, in spite of אB. Tischendorf in his N. T. Vaticanum 1867 alleges that in that codex“litterae εισ ιερου primâ ut videtur manu rescriptae. Videtur primum απο pro εισ scriptum fuisse.”But since he did not repeat the statement three years later in his eighth edition, he may have come to feel doubtful about it. Dr. Hort conjectures that the original order was τὴν εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ πληρώσαντες διακονίαν.Acts xvii. 28. Here Westcott and Hort place ὑμᾶς in their text, ἡμᾶς in the margin. For ἡμᾶς we find only B, 33, 68, 95, 96, 105, 137, and rather wonder than otherwise that the itacism is not met with in more cursives than six. The Bohairic has been cited in error on the same side. It needs not a word to explain that the stress of St. Paul's argument rests on ὑμᾶς. To the Athenians he quotes not the Hebrew Scriptures, but the poets of whom they were proud. Compare Luke xvi. 12, above.An itacism not quite so gross in ch. xx. 10 μὴ θορυβεῖσθαι (B*, 185, 224*) is likewise honoured with a place in Westcott and Hort's margin. In Matt. xi. 16 they follow Tischendorf and Tregelles in adopting ἑτέροις for ἑταίροις with BCDZ, and indeed the mass of copies. This last itacism (for it can be nothing better) was admitted so early as to affect many of the chief versions.Acts xx. 30. Cod. B omits αὐτῶν after ὑμῶν, where it is much wanted, apparently with no countenance except from Cod. 186, for this is just a point in which versions (the Sahidic and both Ethiopic) can be little trusted. The present is one of the countless examples of Cod. B's inclination to abridge, which in the Old Testament is carried so far as to eject from the text of the Septuagint words that are, and always must have been, in the original Hebrew. Westcott and Hort include αὐτῶν within brackets.Acts xxv. 13. Agrippa and Bernice went to Caesarea to greet the new governor (ἀσπασόμενοι), not surely after they had sent their greeting before them (ἀσπασάμενοι), which, if it had been a fact, would not have been worth mentioning. Yet, though the reading is so manifestly false, the evidence for the aorist seems overwhelming (אABHLP, the Greek of E, 13, 24*, 31, 68, 105, 180, 220, 224*, a few more copies, and the Coptic and Ethiopic versions). The future is found possibly in C, certainly in 61, 221, and the mass of cursives, ineand other versions, in Chrysostom, and in one form of Theophylact's commentary. Here again Dr. Hort suspects some kind of prior corruption (Notes, p. 100).Acts xxviii. 13. For περιελθόντες of all other manuscripts and versions א*B have περιελόντες, evidently borrowed from ch. xxvii. 40. Even this vile error of transcription is set in Westcott and Hort's text, the alternative not even in their margin. In ver. 15 they once set οἱ within[pg 310]brackets319on the evidence of B, 96 only. Cod. B is very prone to omit the article, especially, but not exclusively, with proper names.Rom. vii. 22. The substitution of τοῦ νοός (cf. ver. 23) for τοῦ θεοῦ seems peculiar to Cod. B.Rom. xv. 31. Lachmann and Tregelles (in his margin only) accept the manifest gloss δωροφορία for διακονία with B (seeVol. I. p. 290 for its“Westernelement”) D*FG (dehaveremuneratio) and Ambrosiaster (munerum meorum ministratio). But διακονία is found in אACD2and3and consequently in E (seeVol. I. p. 176),f(ministratio),g(administratio), Vulg. (obsequii mei oblatio), sod***,fuld.and Origen in the Latin (ministerium), with both Syriac, the Bohairic, Armenian and Ethiopic versions, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and John Damascene.1 Cor. xiii. 5. Never was a noble speech more cruelly pared down to a trite commonplace than by the reading of B and Clement of Alexandria (very expressly) οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ μὴ ἑαυτῆς, in the place of οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ (or τὸ) ἑαυτῆς of the self-same Clement just as expressly elsewhere (seep.262and note 3), and of all other authorities of every description. Here Westcott and Hort place τὸ μή in their margin.Col. iv. 15. For αὐτοῦ Lachmann, Tregelles' margin, Hort and Westcott have αὐτῆς from B, 676**, and the text of the later Syriac, thus implying that νύμφα is the Doric feminine form, which is very unlikely.1 Thess. v. 4. Lachmann with Hort and Westcott (but not their margin) reads κλέπτας for κλέπτης with AB and the Bohairic, but this cannot be right.Heb. vii. 1. For ὁ συναντήσας Lachmann, Tregelles, Hort and Westcott's text have ὃς συναντήσας with אABC**DEK, 17, a broken sentence: but this is too much even for Dr. Hort, who says, in the language habitual to him, that ὁ seems“a right emendation of the Syrian revisers”(Notes, p. 130).James i. 17. What can be meant by ἀποσκιάσματος of א*B it is hard to say. The versions are not clear as to the sense, butffalone seems to suggest the genitive (modicum obumbrationis). That valuable Cod. 184, now known only by Sanderson's collation at Lambeth (No. 1255, 10-14)320, is said by him toaddto the end of the verse οὐδὲ μέχρι ὑπονοίας τινὸς ὑποβολὴ ἀποσκιάσματος, which seems like a scholion on the preceding clause, and is found also in Cod. 221.Nor will any one praise certain readings of Cod. B in James i. 9; 1 Pet. i. 9; 11; ii. 1; 12; 25; iii. 7; 14; 18 (om.τῷ θεῷ); iv. 1; v. 3;[pg 311]2 Pet. i. 17; 1 John i. 2; ii. 14; 20; 25; 27; iii. 15; 3 John 4; 9; Jude 9, which passages the student may work out for himself.Enough of the weary and ungracious task of finding fault. The foregoing list of errors patent in the most ancient codices might be largely increased: two or three more will occur incidentally in ChapterXII(1 Cor. xiii. 3; Phil. ii. 1; 1 Pet. i. 23;seealso pp.254,319). Even if the reader has not gone with me in every case, more than enough has been alleged to prove to demonstration that the true and pure text of the sacred writers is not to be looked for in א or B, in אB, or BD, or BL, or any like combination of a select few authorities, but demands, in every fresh case as it arises, the free and impartial use of every available source of information. Yet after all, Cod. B is a document of such value, that it grows by experience even upon those who may have been a little prejudiced against it by reason of the excessive claims of its too zealous friends321. Its best associate, in our judgement, is Cod. C, where the testimony of that precious palimpsest can be had. BC together will often carry us safe through difficulties of the most complicated character, as for instance, through that vexatious passage John xiii. 25, 26. Compare also Acts xxvi. 16. Yet even here it is necessary to commend with reserve: BC stand almost alone in maintaining the ingenious but improbable variation ἐκσῶσαι in Acts xxvii. 39 (seeChap.XII), and the frigid gloss κρίνοντι in 1 Pet. iv. 5: they unite with others in foisting on St. Matthew's text its worst corruption, ch. xxvii. 49. In Gal. iii. 1, C against AB contains the gloss τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι. Again, since no fact relating to these pursuits is more certain than the absolute independence of the sources from which A and B are derived, it is manifest that their occasional agreement is always of the greatest weight, and is little less than conclusive in those portions of the N. T. where other evidence is slender in amount or consideration, e.g. 1 Pet. i. 21 and v. 10 (with the Vulgate); v. 11: also supported by those admirable cursives 27, 29, in 1 Pet. v. 14; 1 John iv. 3; 19; 2 John 3; 12. See also 1 John v. 18, to be discussed in Chap.XII.

Matt. vi. 8. The transparent gloss ὁ θεός is inserted before ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν by Codd. א*B and the Sahidic version309.

Ver. 22. Ὁ λύχνος τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου B,abcff1n1.2hl, the printed Vulgate, some Latin writers, and the Ethiopic. The addition of σου is more strongly attested in Luke xi. 34 by א*ABCDM, but is intolerable in either place.

Matt. xvi. 21. Ἀπὸ τότε ἤρξατο ἰησοῦς χριστός: so the first hands of א and B, with the Bohairic version only, their very frequent companion.

Matt. xxvii. 28. On the impossible reading of אcBD,abcff2q, and a few others, enough has been said in Chap. VII. p.234.

Ver. 49. We are here brought face to face with the gravest interpolation yet laid to the charge of B, whose tendency is usually in the opposite direction. Westcott and Hort alone among the editors feel constrained to insert in the text, though enclosed in their double brackets and regarded as“most probably an interpolation,”a sentence which neither they nor any other competent scholar can easily believe that the Evangelist ever wrote310. After σώσων αὐτόν are set the following words borrowed from John xix. 34, with a slight verbal change, and representing that the Saviour was pierced before his death: ἄλλος δὲ λαβὼν λόγχην ἔνυξεν αὐτοῦ τὴν πλευράν, καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ὕδωρ καὶ ἁῖμα. Thus we read in אBCLU (which has εὐθέως before ἐξῆλθεν αἷμα καὶ ὕδωρ) Γ, 5, 48, 67, 115, 127*, five good manuscripts of the Vulgate,Kells,gat.,mm.,chad.,mac-regol., andOxon.,C. C.(notinBodl.),Harl.1023 and 1802*, and the margin of 1 E.vi, the Jerusalem Syriac once when the Lesson occurs, and the Ethiopic. Chrysostom thus read in his copy, but used the clause with so little reflection that he regarded the Lord as dead already. Severus of Antioch [d. 539], who himself protested against this gross corruption, tells us that Cyril of Alexandria as well as Chrysostom received it. A scholion found in Cod. 72 refers this addition εἰς τὸ καθ᾽ ἱστορίαν εὐαγγέλιον Διοδώρου καὶ Τατιάνου καὶ ἄλλων διαφόρων ἁγίων πατέρων, on the authority of Chrysostom; and from the unintentional blunders of Harmonists like Tatian such an insertion might very well have crept in. The marvel is that it found favour so widely as it did311.

Matt. xxviii. 19. βαπτίσαντες occurs only in BD (whose Latin hasbaptizantes), as though Baptism were to precede instruction in the faith. Tregelles alone dares to place this reading in the text: Westcott and Hort have it in their margin.

Mark iii. 14, 16. After noticing the evidence which supported the corrupt sentence in Matt. xxvii. 49, we are little disposed to accept what is in substance the same for such feeble glosses as are afforded us in these two verses; namely, οὓς καὶ ἀποστόλους ὠνόμασεν after δώδεκα in ver. 14 (derived from Luke vi. 13), and καὶ ἐποίησε τοὺς δώδεκα at the beginning of ver. 16. Westcott and Hort receive both clauses, Tischendorf only the latter, with אBC*Δ and an Ethiopic manuscript: yet the former, if less likely to be genuine, is the better supported. It is found in אBC*Δ (with some variation), in 13, 28, 69, 124, 238, 346, the Bohairic, the margin of the Harkleian Syriac, the Ethiopic, the Arabic of the Polyglott: a goodly array from divers sources to uphold so bad a reading.

Mark vi. 2. οἱ πολλοί is read by Westcott and Hort (so Tischendorf) instead of πολλοί with BL, 13, 28, 69, 346. Three out of the four cursives belong to Professor Ferrar's group.

Ver. 22. In the room of τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτῆς τῆς Ἡρωδιάδος a serious variation of אBDLΔ, 238, 473, 558 is admitted into the text by Westcott and Hort, τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ (+ τῆς 238, 558) Ἡρῳδιάδος, thus bringing St. Mark into direct contradiction with Josephus, who expressly states that the wretched girl was named Salome, and was the daughter of Herod Philip by Herodias, who did not leave her husband till after Salome's birth (Josephus, Antiq., lib. xviii. ch. v. § 4). Add to this the extreme improbability that even Herod the Tetrarch should have allowed his own child to degrade herself in such wise as Salome did here, or that she could not have carried her point with her father without resorting to licentious allurements. We must therefore regard αὐτοῦ as certainly false, while αὐτῆς strongly expresses the writer's feeling that even Herodias could stoop so low, and being used emphatically has so much offended a few that they omit it altogether. Such are 1, 118, 209, and some versions (bcf, the Bohairic, Armenian, Ethiopic, and Gothic) which did not understand it. Tischendorf was hardly right in adding the Peshitto to the list312.

Mark ix. 1. ὧδε τῶν for τῶν ὧδε (ἑστηκότων) is the almost impossible reading of BD*,ck* (adqnare uncertain), adopted the more readily by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, because all have the proper order τῶν ὧδε in Matt. xvi. 28.

Mark xiii. 33. Lachmann, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort reject (Tregelles more fitly sets within brackets) καὶ προσεύχεσθε with BD, 122, and the Latinackandtol.* of the Vulgate only. It is in the favour of the two words that they cannot have come from the parallel place in[pg 304]St. Matthew (ch. xxiv. 42), nor is the preceding verb the same in ch. xiv. 38. Here even אLΔ side against B with AC and all other authorities, including the Egyptian and most Latin, as well as the Syriac versions.

Luke iv. 44. The wonderful variation Ἰουδαίας is brought into the text of Hort and Westcott, the true reading Γαλιλαίας being banished to their margin. Their change is upheld by a strong phalanx indeed: אNBCLQR, 1, 21, 71, Evst. 222, 259 and some twenty other cursives (Evan. 503 and two Lectionaries read αὐτῶν instead of either), the Bohairic and the text of the Harkleian: authorities enough to prove anything not in itself impossible, as Ἰουδαίας is in this place. Not only is Galilee the scene of the events recorded immediately before and after the present verse, but the passage is manifestly parallel to Mark i. 39. The three Synoptic Gospels are broadly distinguished from that of St. John by their silence respecting the Lord's ministry in Judaea before He went up to the last passover. Yet Alfordin loco, while admitting that“our narrative is thus brought into the more startling discrepancy with that of St. Mark, in which unquestionably the same portion of the sacred history is related,”most strangely adds,“Still these are considerations which must not weigh in the least degree with the critic. It is his province simply to track out what is the sacred text, not what, in his own feeble and partial judgement,it ought to have been.”

Luke vi. 48. It is surprising how a gloss so frigid as διὰ τὸ καλῶς οἰκοδομῆσθαι αὐτήν could have been accepted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, in the room of τεθελεμίωτο γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν, chiefly, it may be presumed, because the latter is the expression of St. Matthew (ch. vii. 25). Yet such is the reading of אBLΞ, of the two best cursives 33, 157, of the Bohairic (with some variation in its copies), of the margin of the Harkleian, and of Cyril of Alexandria. The Ethiopic preserves both forms. As the present οἰκοδόμοῦντι early in the verse involves a plain contradiction when compared with the perfect οἰκοδομῆσθαι at the end, Tregelles changes the latter into οἰκοδομεῖσθαι on the feeble authority of the third hand of B, of 33, and possibly of 157.

Luke viii. 40. For αὐτόν after προσδοκῶντες we find τὸν θεόν in א only. Of course the variation is quite wrong, but it is hard to see the pertinency of Dr. Vance Smith's hint (Theological Review, July, 1875)“that it cannot have got in by accident.”

Luke x. 1. This case is interesting, as being one wherein B (not א) is at variance with the very express evidence of the earliest ecclesiastical writers, while it makes the number of these disciples, not seventy, but seventy-two313. With B are DM, also R (“ita enim certè omnino videtur,”[pg 305]Tisch., Monum. sacra inedita, vol. ii. Proleg. p. xviii), in the prefixed table of τίτλοι (Vol. I. p. 57,n), its text being lost, Codd. 1, 42,a c e g1.2?l, the Vulgate, Curetonian Syriac, and Armenian. Lachmann with Westcott and Hort insert δύο, but within brackets, for the evidence against it is overwhelming both in number and in weight: namely, Codd. אACEGHKLSUVXΓΔΛΞΠ, all other cursives,b f gof the Old Latin, the Bohairic, the three other Syriac, the Gothic, and Ethiopic versions.

Luke xiv. 5. Here again we have a strong conviction that א, though now in the minority, is more correct than B, supported as the latter is by a dense array of witnesses of every age and country. In the clause τίνος ὑμῶν ὄνος ἢ βοῦς of the Received text all the critical editors substitute υἱὸς for ὄνος, which introduces a bathos so tasteless as to be almost ludicrous314. Yet υἱὸς is found with or without ὁ before it in AB (hiantCF)EGHMSUVΓΔΛ, in no less than 125 cursive copies already cited by name315(also υἱὸς ὑμῶν Evst. 259), ine f g, the Sahidic, Peshitto and Harkleian316Syriac versions: Cod. 508 and the Curetonian combine both forms υἱὸς ἢ βοῦς ἢ ὄνος, and Cod. 215 has υἱὸς ἢ ὄνος without βοῦς. Add to these Cyril of Alexandria (whose words are cited in catenas, as in the scholia to X, 253, 259), Titus of Bostra the commentator, Euthymius, and Theophylact. For ὄνος are אKLXΠ, 1, 33, 66secundâ manu, 69 (ὄρος), 71, 207sec. man., 211, 213, 407, 413, 492, 509, 512, 549, 550, 555, 556, 569, 570, 599, 602, and doubtless others not cited: also the text of X, 253, 259 in spite of the annexed commentary; of the versionsa b c i lof the Old Latin, the Vulgate, Bohairic, Jerusalem Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopic (bos eius aut asinus), though the Slavonic codices and Persic of the Polyglott make for υἱός. Cod. 52 (sic) and the Arabic of the Polyglott omit ὄνος ἤ, while D has πρόβατον (ovis d) for ὄνος (comp. Matt. xii. 11), and 557 exhibits βοῦς ἢ ὄνος. ΥΣ or ΟΙΣ mistaken as the contraction for ΥΙΟΣ is a mere guess, and we are safest here in clinging to common sense against a preponderance of outward evidence.

Luke xv. 21. Here by adding from ver. 19 ποίησόν με ὡς ἕνα τῶν μισθίων σου (placed in the text by Westcott and Hort within brackets) the great codices אBD, with UX, 33, 512, 543, 558, 571, a catena, and four manuscripts of the Vulgate (bodl. gat. mm. tol.), manage to keep out of sight that delicate touch of true nature which Augustine points out, that the son never carried out his purpose of offering himself for a hireling,“quod post osculum patris generosissime jam dedignatur.”

Luke xvi. 12. It is hard to tell how far thorough scholars and able critics are prepared to push a favourite theory, when Westcott and Hort place τὸ ἡμέτερον τίς δώσει ὑμῖν in the text, reserving ὑμέτερον for the margin. Not to mention that the interchange of η and υ in these pronouns[pg 306]is the most obstinate of all known itacisms, and one to which B is especially prone (e.g. Acts xvii. 28; 1 Pet. ii. 24; 1 John ii. 25; iii. 1, Vol. I. p. 11), ἡμέτερον is found only in BL, Evst. 21, and Origen once: in 157,e i l, and in Tertullian twice it is softened down to ἐμόν.

Luke XXI. 24: ἄχρι οὗ πληρωθῶσιν [καὶ ἔσονται] kairoὶ ἐthnῶn. The words within brackets appear thus in Westcott and Hort's text alone; what possible meaning can be assigned to them in the position they there occupy it is hard to see. They are obviously derived by an error of the scribe's eye from καὶ ἔσονται (the reading of אBD, &c.) at the beginning of ver. 25. This unintelligible insertion is due to B; but L, the Bohairic, and a codex cited in the Harkleian margin also have it with another καιροί prefixed to καὶ ἔσονται. D runs on thus: ἄχρις οὗ πληρωθῶσιν καὶ ἔσονται σημεῖα (om. καιροὶ ἐθνῶν). Those who discover some recondite beauty in the reading of B compare with this the genuine addition καὶ ἐσμέν after κληθῶμεν in 1 John iii. 1.Nempè amatorem turpia decipiunt caecum vitia, aut etiam ipsa haec delectant.

Luke xxiii. 32. For ἕτεροι δύο κακοῦργοι, which is unobjectionable in the Greek, though a little hard in a close English translation, אB and the two Egyptian versions, followed by Westcott and Hort, have the wholly impossible ἕτεροι κακοῦργοι δύο.

John ii. 3. The loose paraphrase of Cod. א in place of ὑστερήσαντος οἴνου commends itself to no one but Tischendorf, who in his turn admires the worst deformities of his favourite: it runs καὶ οἶνον οὐκ εἶχον ὅτι συνετελέσθη ὁ οἶνος τοῦ γάμου, in which few readers will be able to discern with him the manner and style of St. John. The Old Latina b ff2and Gaudentius [iv]; alsoe l, the Ethiopic, and the margin of the Harkleian in part, exhibit the same vapid circumlocution. Cod. א in this Gospel, and sometimes elsewhere, has a good deal in common with the Western codices and Latin Fathers, and some of its glosses are simply deplorable: e.g. καλοκαγαθίας for κακοπαθείας, James v. 10; συνομιλοῦντες for συνοικοῦντες, 1 Pet. iii. 7; ἀποθανόντος for παθόντος, 1 Pet. iv. 1 after ch. ii. 21, where it does not stand alone, as here. Of a better character is its bold supplement of ἐκκλησία before συνεκλεκτή in 1 Pet. v. 13, apparently borrowed from primitive tradition, and supported by the Peshitto, Vulgate (in its best manuscripts and editions), and Armenian versions.

John iv. 1. After βαπτίζει we find ἤ omitted in AB* (though it is added in what Tischendorf considers an ancient hand, his B2) GLΓ, 262, Origen and Epiphanius, but appears in אCD and all the rest. Tregelles rejects ἤ in his margin, Hort and Westcott put it within brackets. Well may Dr. Hort say (Notes, p. 76),“It remains no easy matter to explain how the verse as it stands can be reasonably understood without ἤ, or how such a mere slip as the loss of Η after ΕΙ should have so much excellent Greek authority, more especially as the absence of ἤ increases the obvious no less than the real difficulty of the verse.”

John vii. 39. One of the worst faults a manuscript (the same is not true of a version) can have is a habit of supplying, either from the margin or from the scribe's misplaced ingenuity, some word that may clear up a difficulty, or limit the writer's meaning. Certainly this is not a common fault with Cod. B, but we have here a conspicuous example of it. It[pg 307]stands almost alone in receiving δεδομένον after πνεῦμα: one cursive (254) has δοθέν, and so reada b c e ff2g l q, the Vulgate, the Peshitto, and the Georgian (Malan, St. John), the Jerusalem Syriac, the Polyglott Persic, a catena, Eusebius and Origen in a Latin version: the margin of the Harkleian Syriac makes a yet further addition. The Sahidic, Ethiopic, and Erpenius' Arabic also supply some word. But the versions and commentators, like our own English translations, probably meant no more than a bold exposition. The whole blame of this evident corruption rests with the two manuscripts. No editor follows B here.

John ix. 4. Most readers will think with Dean Burgon that the reading ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πέμψαντος (whether followed by με or ἡμᾶς)“carries with it its own sufficient condemnation”(Last Twelve Verses, &c., p. 81). The single or double ἡμᾶς, turning the whole clause into a general statement, applicable to every one, is found in א*BDL, the two Egyptian, Jerusalem Syriac, Erpenius' Arabic, and Roman Ethiopic versions, in the younger Cyril and the versifier Nonnus. Origen and Jerome cite the passage as if the reading were ἐργάζεσθε, which, by a familiaritacism(seep.11), is the reading of the first hand of B. The first ἡμᾶς is adopted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort: the second by Tischendorf alone after א*L, the Bohairic, Roman Ethiopic, Erpenius' Arabic, and Cyril. Certainly με of BD, the Sahidic, and Jerusalem Syriac, is very harsh.

John x. 22. For δέ after ἐγένετο Westcott and Hort read τότε with BL, 33, the Sahidic, Gothic, Slavonic, and Armenian versions. No such use of τότε in this order, and without another particle, will be found in the New Testament, or easily elsewhere. The Bohairic andgat.of the Vulgate have δὲ τότε, which is a different thing. Moreover, the sense will not admit so sharp a definition of sameness in time as τότε implies. Three months intervened between the feast of Tabernacles, in and after which all the events named from ch. vii downwards took place, and this winter feast of Dedication.

John xviii. 5. For λέγει αὐτοῖς ὁ ἰησοῦς ἐγώ ἐιμι, B and a have the miserable variation λέγει αὐτοῖς ἐγώ ἐιμι ἰησοῦς, which Westcott and Hort advance to a place in their margin. The first ΙΣ (omitting ὁ) was absorbed in the last syllable of ΑΥΤΟΙΣ, the second being a mere repetition of the first syllable of ΙΣΤΗΚΕΙ (sicBprimâ manu). Compare Vol. I. p. 10. With so little care was this capital document written317.

Acts iv. 25. We have here, upheld by nearly all the authorities to which students usually defer, that which cannot possibly be right, though critical editors, in mere helplessness, feel obliged to put it in their text: ὁ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου στόματος δαυεὶδ παιδός σου εἰπών. Thus read אABE, 13, 15, 27, 29, 36, 38. Apost. 12, a catena and Athanasius. The Vulgate and Latin Fathers, the Harkleian Syriac and Armenian versions conspire, but with such wide variations as only serve to display their perplexity. We have here two several[pg 308]readings, either of which might be true, combined into one that cannot. We might either adopt with D ὃς διὰμνςἁγίου διὰ τοῦ στόματος λαλήσας δαυεὶδ παιδός σου (butdavid puero tuod), or better with Didymus ὁ διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου στόματος δὲ δαυεὶδ παιδός σου εἰπών (which will fairly suit the Peshitto and Bohairic); or we might prefer the easier form of the Received text ὁ διὰ στόματος δαβὶδ τοῦ παιδός σου εἰπών, which has no support except from P318and the cursives 1, 31, 40, 220, 221, &c. (the valuable copy 224 reads ὁ διὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν ἐνδαδ), and from Theophylact, Chrysostom being doubtful. Tischendorf justly pleads for the form he edits that it has second, third, and fourth century authority, adding“singula verba praeter morem sed non sine caussâ collocata sunt.”Praeter moremthey certainly are, andnon sine caussâtoo, if this and like examples shall lead us to a higher style of criticism than will be attained by setting up one or more of the oldest copies as objects of unreasonable idolatry.

Acts vii. 46. ᾐτήσατο εὑρεῖν σκήνωμα τῷ θεῷ Ἰακώβ. The portentous variant οἴκῳ for θεῷ is adopted by Lachmann, and by Tischendorf, who observes of it“minimè sensu caret:”even Tregelles sets it in the margin, but Westcott and Hort simply obelize θεῷ as if they would read τῷ Ἰακώβ (compare Psalm xxiv. 6, cxxxii. 5 with Gen. xlix. 24). Yet οἴκῳ appears in א*BDH against אcACEP, all cursives (including 13, 31, 61, 220, 221), all versions. Observe also in ch. viii. 5 καισαρίας in א* for σαμαρείας on account of ver. 40 and ch. xxi. 8.

Acts x. 19. Ἰδοὺ ἄνδρες δύο is the reading of Westcott and Hort's text ([τρεῖς] margin) after B only, the true number being three (ver. 7): in ch. xi. 11 Epiphanius only has δύο. There might be some grounds for omitting τρεῖς here, as Tischendorf does, and Tregelles more doubtfully in his margin (with DHLP, 24, 31, 111, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 220, 221, 224,m, the later Syriac, the Apostolical Constitutions, the elder Cyril, Chrysostom and Theophylact, Augustine and Ambrose), no reason surely for representing the Spirit as speaking only of the δύο οἰκέται.

Acts xii. 25. An important passage for our present purpose. That the two Apostles returned from, not to, Jerusalem is too plain for argument (ch. xi. 29, 30), yet εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ (which in its present order surely cannot be joined with πληρώσαντες) is the reading of Westcott and Hort's text (ἐξ and the fatal obelus [Glyph: dagger] being in their margin) after אBHLP, 61, four of Matthaei's copies, Codd. 2, 4, 14, 24, 26, 34, 64, 78, 80, 95, 224, and perhaps twenty other cursives, but besides these only the margin of the Harkleian, the Roman Ethiopic, the Polyglott Arabic, some copies of the Slavonic and of Chrysostom, with Theophylact and Erasmus' first two editions, who says in his notes“ita legunt Graeci,”i.e. his Codd. 2, 4. A few which substitute“Antioch”for“Jerusalem”(28, 38, 66marg., 67**, 97marg., Apost. 5) are witnesses for εἰς, but not so those which, reading ἐξ or ἀπό, add with the Complutensian εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν (E, 7, 14**, 27, 29, 32, 42, 57, 69, 98marg., 100, 105, 106,[pg 309]111, 126**, 182, 183, 186, 220, 221, the Sahidic, Peshitto, and Erpenius' Arabic): Cod. 76 has εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν ἀπὸ Ἱερουσαλήμ. C is defective here, and the only three remaining uncials are divided between ἐξ (A, 13, 27, 29, 69, 214, Apost. 54, Chrysostom sometimes) and ἀπό (DE, 15, 18, 36, 40, 68, 73, 76, 81, 93, 98, 100, 105, 106, 111, 113, 180, 183, 184, a copy of Chrysostom, and the Vulgateab). The two Egyptian, the Peshitto, the Philoxenian text, the Armenian and Pell Platt's Ethiopic have“from,”the only possible sense, in spite of אB. Tischendorf in his N. T. Vaticanum 1867 alleges that in that codex“litterae εισ ιερου primâ ut videtur manu rescriptae. Videtur primum απο pro εισ scriptum fuisse.”But since he did not repeat the statement three years later in his eighth edition, he may have come to feel doubtful about it. Dr. Hort conjectures that the original order was τὴν εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ πληρώσαντες διακονίαν.

Acts xvii. 28. Here Westcott and Hort place ὑμᾶς in their text, ἡμᾶς in the margin. For ἡμᾶς we find only B, 33, 68, 95, 96, 105, 137, and rather wonder than otherwise that the itacism is not met with in more cursives than six. The Bohairic has been cited in error on the same side. It needs not a word to explain that the stress of St. Paul's argument rests on ὑμᾶς. To the Athenians he quotes not the Hebrew Scriptures, but the poets of whom they were proud. Compare Luke xvi. 12, above.

An itacism not quite so gross in ch. xx. 10 μὴ θορυβεῖσθαι (B*, 185, 224*) is likewise honoured with a place in Westcott and Hort's margin. In Matt. xi. 16 they follow Tischendorf and Tregelles in adopting ἑτέροις for ἑταίροις with BCDZ, and indeed the mass of copies. This last itacism (for it can be nothing better) was admitted so early as to affect many of the chief versions.

Acts xx. 30. Cod. B omits αὐτῶν after ὑμῶν, where it is much wanted, apparently with no countenance except from Cod. 186, for this is just a point in which versions (the Sahidic and both Ethiopic) can be little trusted. The present is one of the countless examples of Cod. B's inclination to abridge, which in the Old Testament is carried so far as to eject from the text of the Septuagint words that are, and always must have been, in the original Hebrew. Westcott and Hort include αὐτῶν within brackets.

Acts xxv. 13. Agrippa and Bernice went to Caesarea to greet the new governor (ἀσπασόμενοι), not surely after they had sent their greeting before them (ἀσπασάμενοι), which, if it had been a fact, would not have been worth mentioning. Yet, though the reading is so manifestly false, the evidence for the aorist seems overwhelming (אABHLP, the Greek of E, 13, 24*, 31, 68, 105, 180, 220, 224*, a few more copies, and the Coptic and Ethiopic versions). The future is found possibly in C, certainly in 61, 221, and the mass of cursives, ineand other versions, in Chrysostom, and in one form of Theophylact's commentary. Here again Dr. Hort suspects some kind of prior corruption (Notes, p. 100).

Acts xxviii. 13. For περιελθόντες of all other manuscripts and versions א*B have περιελόντες, evidently borrowed from ch. xxvii. 40. Even this vile error of transcription is set in Westcott and Hort's text, the alternative not even in their margin. In ver. 15 they once set οἱ within[pg 310]brackets319on the evidence of B, 96 only. Cod. B is very prone to omit the article, especially, but not exclusively, with proper names.

Rom. vii. 22. The substitution of τοῦ νοός (cf. ver. 23) for τοῦ θεοῦ seems peculiar to Cod. B.

Rom. xv. 31. Lachmann and Tregelles (in his margin only) accept the manifest gloss δωροφορία for διακονία with B (seeVol. I. p. 290 for its“Westernelement”) D*FG (dehaveremuneratio) and Ambrosiaster (munerum meorum ministratio). But διακονία is found in אACD2and3and consequently in E (seeVol. I. p. 176),f(ministratio),g(administratio), Vulg. (obsequii mei oblatio), sod***,fuld.and Origen in the Latin (ministerium), with both Syriac, the Bohairic, Armenian and Ethiopic versions, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and John Damascene.

1 Cor. xiii. 5. Never was a noble speech more cruelly pared down to a trite commonplace than by the reading of B and Clement of Alexandria (very expressly) οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ μὴ ἑαυτῆς, in the place of οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ (or τὸ) ἑαυτῆς of the self-same Clement just as expressly elsewhere (seep.262and note 3), and of all other authorities of every description. Here Westcott and Hort place τὸ μή in their margin.

Col. iv. 15. For αὐτοῦ Lachmann, Tregelles' margin, Hort and Westcott have αὐτῆς from B, 676**, and the text of the later Syriac, thus implying that νύμφα is the Doric feminine form, which is very unlikely.

1 Thess. v. 4. Lachmann with Hort and Westcott (but not their margin) reads κλέπτας for κλέπτης with AB and the Bohairic, but this cannot be right.

Heb. vii. 1. For ὁ συναντήσας Lachmann, Tregelles, Hort and Westcott's text have ὃς συναντήσας with אABC**DEK, 17, a broken sentence: but this is too much even for Dr. Hort, who says, in the language habitual to him, that ὁ seems“a right emendation of the Syrian revisers”(Notes, p. 130).

James i. 17. What can be meant by ἀποσκιάσματος of א*B it is hard to say. The versions are not clear as to the sense, butffalone seems to suggest the genitive (modicum obumbrationis). That valuable Cod. 184, now known only by Sanderson's collation at Lambeth (No. 1255, 10-14)320, is said by him toaddto the end of the verse οὐδὲ μέχρι ὑπονοίας τινὸς ὑποβολὴ ἀποσκιάσματος, which seems like a scholion on the preceding clause, and is found also in Cod. 221.

Nor will any one praise certain readings of Cod. B in James i. 9; 1 Pet. i. 9; 11; ii. 1; 12; 25; iii. 7; 14; 18 (om.τῷ θεῷ); iv. 1; v. 3;[pg 311]2 Pet. i. 17; 1 John i. 2; ii. 14; 20; 25; 27; iii. 15; 3 John 4; 9; Jude 9, which passages the student may work out for himself.

Enough of the weary and ungracious task of finding fault. The foregoing list of errors patent in the most ancient codices might be largely increased: two or three more will occur incidentally in ChapterXII(1 Cor. xiii. 3; Phil. ii. 1; 1 Pet. i. 23;seealso pp.254,319). Even if the reader has not gone with me in every case, more than enough has been alleged to prove to demonstration that the true and pure text of the sacred writers is not to be looked for in א or B, in אB, or BD, or BL, or any like combination of a select few authorities, but demands, in every fresh case as it arises, the free and impartial use of every available source of information. Yet after all, Cod. B is a document of such value, that it grows by experience even upon those who may have been a little prejudiced against it by reason of the excessive claims of its too zealous friends321. Its best associate, in our judgement, is Cod. C, where the testimony of that precious palimpsest can be had. BC together will often carry us safe through difficulties of the most complicated character, as for instance, through that vexatious passage John xiii. 25, 26. Compare also Acts xxvi. 16. Yet even here it is necessary to commend with reserve: BC stand almost alone in maintaining the ingenious but improbable variation ἐκσῶσαι in Acts xxvii. 39 (seeChap.XII), and the frigid gloss κρίνοντι in 1 Pet. iv. 5: they unite with others in foisting on St. Matthew's text its worst corruption, ch. xxvii. 49. In Gal. iii. 1, C against AB contains the gloss τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι. Again, since no fact relating to these pursuits is more certain than the absolute independence of the sources from which A and B are derived, it is manifest that their occasional agreement is always of the greatest weight, and is little less than conclusive in those portions of the N. T. where other evidence is slender in amount or consideration, e.g. 1 Pet. i. 21 and v. 10 (with the Vulgate); v. 11: also supported by those admirable cursives 27, 29, in 1 Pet. v. 14; 1 John iv. 3; 19; 2 John 3; 12. See also 1 John v. 18, to be discussed in Chap.XII.

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