Chapter XII. Conclusion.

Chapter XII. Conclusion.The Traditional Text has now been traced, from the earliest years of Christianity of which any record of the New Testament remains, to the period when it was enshrined in a large number of carefully-written manuscripts in main accord with one another. Proof has been given from the writings of the early Fathers, that the idea that the Traditional Text arose in the middle of the fourth century is a mere hallucination, prompted by only a partial acquaintance with those writings. And witness to the existence and predominance of that form of Text has been found in the Peshitto Version and in the best of the Latin Versions, which themselves also have been followed back to the beginning of the second century or the end of the first. We have also discovered the truth, that the settlement of the Text, though mainly made in the fourth century, was not finally accomplished till the eighth century at the earliest; and that the later Uncials, not the oldest, together with the cursives express, not singly, not in small batches or companies, but in their main agreement, the decisions which had grown up in the Church. In so doing, attention has been paid to all the existing evidence: none has been omitted.Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, has been the underlying principle. The foundations of the building have been laid as deeply and as broadly as our power would allow. No other course would be in consonance with scientific procedure. The[pg 225]seven notes of truth have been made as comprehensive as possible. Antiquity, number, variety, weight, continuity, context, and internal evidence, include all points of view and all methods of examination which are really sound. The characters of the Vatican, Sinaitic, and Bezan manuscripts have been shewn to be bad, and the streams which led to their production from Syrio-Old-Latin and Alexandrian sources to the temporary school of Caesarea have been traced and explained. It has been also shewn to be probable that corruption began and took root even before the Gospels were written. The general conclusion which has grown upon our minds has been that the affections of Christians have not been misdirected; that the strongest exercise of reason has proved their instincts to have been sound and true; that the Text which we have used and loved rests upon a vast and varied support; that the multiform record of Manuscripts, Versions, and Fathers, is found to defend by large majorities in almost all instances those precious words of Holy Writ, which have been called in question during the latter half of this century.We submit that it cannot be denied that we have presented a strong case, and naturally we look to see what has been said against it, since except in some features it has been before the World and the Church for some years. We submit that it has not received due attention from opposing critics. If indeed the opinions of the other School had been preceded by, or grounded upon, a searching examination, such as we have made in the case of B and א, of the vast mass of evidence upon which we rest,—if this great body of testimony had been proved to be bad from overbalancing testimony or otherwise,—we should have found reason for doubt, or even for a reversal of our decisions. But Lachmann, Tregelles, and Tischendorf laid down principles chiefly, if not exclusively, on the score[pg 226]of their intrinsic probability. Westcott and Hort built up their own theory upon reasoning internal to it, without clearing the ground first by any careful and detailed scrutiny. Besides which, all of them constructed their buildings before travellers by railways and steamships had placed within their reach the larger part of the materials which are now ready for use. We hear constantly the proclamation made in dogmatic tones that they are right: no proof adequate to the strength of our contention has been worked out to shew that we are wrong.Nevertheless, it may be best to listen for a moment to such objections as have been advanced against conclusions like these, and which it may be presumed will be urged again.1.“After all it cannot be denied that B and א are the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament in existence, and that they must therefore be entitled to the deference due to their age.”Now the earlier part of this allegation is conceded by us entirely:prima facieit constitutes a very strong argument. But it is really found on examination to be superficial. Fathers and Versions are virtually older, and, as has been demonstrated, are dead against the claim set up on behalf of those ancient manuscripts, that they are the possessors of the true text of the Gospels. Besides which antiquity is not the sole note of truth any more than number is. So much has been already said on this part of the subject, that it is needless to enter into longer discussion here.2.“The testimony of witnesses ought to be weighed before it is reckoned.”Doubtless: this also is a truism, and allowance has been made for it in the various“notes of truth.”But this argument, apparently so simple, is really intended to carry a huge assumption involved in an elaborate maintenance of the (supposed) excellent character of B and א and their associates. After so much[pg 227]that has been brought to the charge of those two MSS. in this treatise, it is unnecessary now to urge more than that they appeared in strange times, when the Church was convulsed to her centre; that, as has been demonstrated, their peculiar readings were in a very decided minority in the period before them; and, as all admit, were rejected in the ages that passed after the time of their date.3. It is stated that the Traditional is a conflate text, i.e. that passages have been put together from more than one other text, so that they are composite in construction instead of being simple. We have already treated this allegation, but we reply now that it has not been established: the opinion of Canon Cooke who analysed all the examples quoted by Hort373, of Scrivener who said they proved nothing374, and of many other critics and scholars has been against it. The converse position is maintained, that the text of B and א is clipped and mutilated. Take the following passage, which is fairly typical of the large class in question:“For we are members of His Body”(writes St. Paul375)“of His flesh and of His bones”(ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων αἰτοῦ). But those last 9 words are disallowed by recent editors, because they are absent from B-א, A, 8, and 17, and the margin of 67, besides the Bohairic version. Yet are the words genuine. They are found in DFGKLP and the whole body of the cursives: in the Old Latin and Vulgate and the two Syriac versions: in Irenaeus376,—in Theodorus of Mopsuestia377,—in Nilus378,—in Chrysostom379more than four times,—in Severianus380,—in Theodoret381,—in Anastasius Sinaita382,—and in John Damascene383. They were probably read by[pg 228]Origen384and by Methodius385. Many Latin Fathers, viz. Ambrose386,—Pacian387,—Esaias abb.388,—Victorinus389,—Jerome390,—Augustine391—and Leo P.392recognise them.Such ample and such varied attestation is not to be set aside by the vapid and unsound dictum“Western and Syrian,”—or by the weak suggestion that the words in dispute are an unauthorized gloss, fabricated from the LXX version of Gen. ii. 23. That St. Paul's allusion is to the oracular utterance of our first father Adam, is true enough: but, as Alford after Bengel well points out, it is incredible that any forger can have been at work here.Such questions however, as we must again and again insist, are not to be determined by internal considerations: no,—nor by dictation, nor by prejudice, nor by divination, nor by any subjective theory of conflation on which experts and critics may be hopelessly at issue: but by the weight of the definite evidence actually producible and[pg 229]produced on either side. And when, as in the present instance, Antiquity, Variety of testimony, Respectability of witnesses, and Number are overwhelmingly in favour of the Traditional Text, what else is it but an outrage on the laws of evidence to claim that the same little band of documents which have already come before us so often, and always been found in error, even though aided by speculative suppositions, shall be permitted to outweigh all other testimony?To build therefore upon a conflate or composite character in a set of readings would be contrary to the evidence:—or at any rate, it would at the best be to lay foundations upon ground which is approved by one school of critics and disputed by the other in every case. The determination of the text of Holy Scripture has not been handed over to a mere conflict of opposite opinions, or to the uncertain sands of conjecture.Besides, as has been already stated, no amount of conflation would supply passages which the destructive school would wholly leave out. It is impossible to“conflate”in places where Bא and their associates furnish no materials for the supposed conflation. Bricks cannot be made without clay. The materials actually existing are those of the Traditional Text itself. But in fact these questions are not to be settled by the scholarly taste or opinions of either school, even of that which we advocate. They must rest upon the verdict found by the facts in evidence: and those facts have been already placed in array.4. Again, stress is laid upon Genealogy. Indeed, as Dean Burgon himself goes on to say, so much has lately been written about“the principle”and“the method”“of genealogy,”that it becomes in a high degree desirable that we should ascertain precisely what those expressions lawfully mean. No fair controversialist would willingly fail to assign its legitimate place and value to any principle for[pg 230]which he observes an opponent eagerly contending. But here is a“principle”and here is a“method”which are declared to be of even paramount importance.“Documents ... are all fragments, usually casual and scattered fragments, of a genealogical tree of transmission, sometimes of vast extent and intricacy. The more exactly we are able to trace the chief ramifications of the tree, and to determine the places of the several documents among the branches, the more secure will be the foundations laid for a criticism capable of distinguishing the original text from its successive corruptions393.”The expression is metaphorical; belonging of right to families of men, but transferred to Textual Science as indicative that similar phenomena attend families of manuscripts. Unfortunately the phenomena attending transmission,—of Natures on the one hand, of Texts on the other,—are essentially dissimilar. A diminutive couple may give birth to a race of giants. A genius has been known to beget a dunce. A brood of children exhibiting extraordinary diversities of character, aspect, ability, sometimes spring from the same pair. Nothing like this is possible in the case of honestly-made copies of MSS. The analogy breaks down therefore in respect of its most essential feature. And yet, there can be no objection to the use of the term“Genealogy”in connexion with manuscripts, provided always that nothing more is meant thereby than derivation by the process of copying: nothing else claimed but that“Identity of reading implies identity of origin394.”Only in this limited way are we able to avail ourselves of the principle referred to. Of course if it were a well-ascertained fact concerning three copies (XYZ), that Z was copied from Y, and Y from X, XYZ might reasonably be spoken of as representing three descents in a pedigree; although the interval between Z and Y were only six[pg 231]months,—the interval between Y and X, six hundred years. Moreover, these would be not three independent authorities, but only one. Such a case, however,—(the fact cannot be too clearly apprehended),—is simply non-existent. What is known commonly lies on the surface:—viz. that occasionally between two or more copies there exists such an amount of peculiar textual affinity as to constrain us to adopt the supposition that they have been derived from a common original. These peculiarities of text, we tell ourselves, cannot be fortuitous. Taking our stand on the true principle that“identity of reading implies identity of origin,”we insist on reasoning from the known to the unknown: and (at our humble distance) we are fully as confident of our scientific fact as Adams and Le Verrier would have been of the existence of Neptune had they never actually obtained sight of that planet.So far are we therefore from denying the value and importance of the principle under discussion that we are able to demonstrate its efficacy in the resolution of some textual problems which have been given in this work. Thus E, the uncial copy of St. Paul, is“nothing better,”says Scrivener,“than a transcript of the Cod. Claromontanus”D.“The Greek is manifestly worthless, and should long since have been removed from the list of authorities395.”Tischendorf nevertheless, not Tregelles, quotes it on every page. He has no business to do so, Codexes D and E, to all intents and purposes, beingstrictly one Codex. This case, like the two next, happily does not admit of diversity of opinion. Next, F and G of St. Paul's Epistles, inasmuch as they are confessedly derived from one and the same archetype, are not to be reckoned as two authorities, but as one.Again, the correspondence between the nine MSS. of the Ferrar group—Evann. 13 at Paris, 69 at Leicester, 124 at[pg 232]Vienna, 346 at Milan, 556 in the British Museum, 561 at Bank House, Wisbech,—and in a lesser degree, 348 at Milan, 624 at Crypta Ferrata, 788 at Athens,—is so extraordinary as to render it certain that these copies are in the main derived from one common archetype396. Hence, though one of them (788) is of the tenth century, three (348, 561, 624) are of the eleventh, four (13, 124, 346, 556) of the twelfth, and one (69) of the fourteenth, their joint evidence is held to be tantamount to the recovery of a lost uncial or papyrus of very early date,—which uncial or papyrus, by the way, it would be convenient to indicate by a new symbol, as Fr. standing for Ferrar, since Φ which was once attributed to them is now appropriated to the Codex Beratinus. If indicated numerically, the figures should at all events be connected by a hyphen (13-69-124-346-&c.); not as if they were independent witnesses, as Tischendorf quotes them. And lastly, B and א are undeniably, more than any other two Codexes which can be named, the depositaries of one and the same peculiar, all but unique, text.I propose to apply the foregoing remarks to the solution of one of the most important of Textual problems. That a controversy has raged around the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel is known to all. Known also it is that a laborious treatise was published on the subject in 1871, which, in the opinion of competent judges, has had the effect of removing the“Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark”beyond the reach of suspicion. Notwithstanding this, at the end of ten years an attempt was made to revive the old plea. The passage, say Drs. Westcott and Hort,“manifestly cannot claim any Apostolic authority; but is doubtless founded on some tradition of the Apostolic age,”of which the“precise date must remain unknown.”It is“a very early interpolation”(pp. 51, 46). In a word,“the[pg 233]last twelve verses”of St. Mark's Gospel, according to Drs. Westcott and Hort, are spurious. But what is their ground of confidence? for we claim to be as competent to judge of testimony as they. It proves to be“the unique criterion supplied by the concord of the independent attestations of א and B”(p. 46).“Independent attestations”! But when two copies of the Gospel are confessedly derived from one and the same original, how can their“attestations”be called“independent”? This is however greatly to understate the case. The non-independence of B and א in respect of St. Mark xvi. 9-20 is absolutely unique: for, strange to relate, it so happens that the very leaf on which the end of St. Mark's Gospel and the beginning of St. Luke's is written (St. Mark xvi. 2-Luke i. 56), is one of the six leaves of Cod. א which are held to have been written by the scribe of Cod. B.“The inference,”remarks Scrivener,“is simple and direct, that at least in these leaves Codd. Bא make but one witness, not two397.”The principle of Genealogy admits of a more extended and a more important application to this case, because B and א do not stand quite alone, but are exclusively associated with three or four other manuscripts which may be regarded as being descended from them. As far as we can judge, they may be regarded as the founders, or at least as prominent members of a family, whose descendants were few, because they were generally condemned by the generations which came after them. Not they, but other families upon other genealogical stems, were the more like to the patriarch whose progeny was to equal the stars of heaven in multitude.Least of all shall I be so simple as to pretend to fix the[pg 234]precise date and assign a definite locality to the fontal source, or sources, of our present perplexity and distress. But I suspect that in the little handful of authorities which have acquired such a notoriety in the annals of recent Textual Criticism, at the head of which stand Codexes B and א, are to be recognized the characteristic features of a lost family of (once well known) second or third-century documents, which owed their existence to the misguided zeal of some well-intentioned but utterly incompetent persons who devoted themselves to the task of correcting the Text of Scripture; but were entirely unfit for the undertaking398.Yet I venture also to think that it was in a great measure at Alexandria that the text in question was fabricated. My chief reasons for thinking so are the following: (1) There is a marked resemblance between the peculiar readings of Bא and the two Egyptian Versions,—the Bohairic or Version of Lower Egypt especially. (2) No one can fail to have been struck by the evident sympathy between Origen,—who at all events had passed more than half his life at Alexandria,—and the text in question. (3) I notice that Nonnus also, who lived in the Thebaid, exhibits considerable sympathy with the text which I deem so corrupt. (4) I cannot overlook the fact that Cod. א was discovered in a monastery under the sway of the patriarch of Alexandria, though how it got there no evidence remains to point out. (5) The licentious handling so characteristic of the Septuagint Version of the O. T.,—the work of Alexandrian Jews,—points in the same direction, and leads me to suspect that Alexandria was the final source of the text of B-א. (6) I further observe that the sacred Text (κείμενον) in Cyril's Homilies[pg 235]on St. John is often similar to B-א; and this, I take for granted, was the effect of the school of Alexandria,—not of the patriarch himself. (7) Dionysius of Alexandria complains bitterly of the corrupt Codexes of his day: and certainly (8) Clemens habitually employed copies of a similar kind. He too was of Alexandria399.Such are the chief considerations which incline me to suspect that Alexandria contributed largely to our Textual troubles.The readings of B-א are the consequence of a junction of two or more streams and then of derivation from a single archetype. This inference is confirmed by the fact that the same general text which B exhibits is exhibited also by the eighth-century Codex L, the work probably of an Egyptian scribe400: and by the tenth-century Codex 33: and by the eleventh-century Codex 1: and to some extent by the twelfth-century Codex 69.We have already been able to advance to another and a very important step. There is nothing in the history of the earliest times of the Church to prove that vellum manuscripts of the New Testament existed in any number before the fourth century. No such documents have come down to us. But we do know, as has been shewn above401, that writings on papyrus were transcribed on vellum in the library of Caesarea. What must we then conclude? That, as has been already suggested, papyrus MSS. are mainly the progenitors of the Uncials, and probably of the oldest Uncials. Besides this inference, we have seen that it is also most probable that many of the Cursives were transcribed directly from papyrus books or rolls. So that the Genealogy of manuscripts of the New Testament includes a vast number of descendants, and many lines of descent, which ramified from one stem on the original start from[pg 236]the autograph of each book. The Vatican and the Sinaitic do not stand pre-eminent because of any great line of parentage passing through them to a multitudinous posterity inheriting the earth, but they are members of a condemned family of which the issue has been small. The rejected of the fourth century has been spurned by succeeding centuries. And surely now also the fourth century, rich in a roll of men conspicuous ever since for capacity and learning, may be permitted to proclaim its real sentiments and to be judged from its own decisions, without being disfranchised by critics of the nineteenth.The history of the Traditional Text, on the contrary, is continuous and complete under the view of Genealogy. The pedigree of it may be commended to the examination of the Heralds' College. It goes step by step in unbroken succession regularly back to the earliest time. The present printed editions may be compared for extreme accuracy with the text passed by the Elzevirs or Beza as the text received by all of their time. Erasmus followed his few MSS. because he knew them to be good representatives of the mind of the Church which had been informed under the ceaseless and loving care of mediaeval transcribers: and the text of Erasmus printed at Basle agreed in but little variation with the text of the Complutensian editors published in Spain, for which Cardinal Ximenes procured MSS. at whatever cost he could. No one doubts the coincidence in all essential points of the printed text with the text of the Cursives. Dr. Hort certifies the Cursive Text as far back as the middle of the fourth century. It depends upon various lines of descent, and rests on the testimony supplied by numerous contemporary Fathers before the year 1000a.d., when co-existing MSS. failed to bear witness in multitudes. The acceptance of it by the Church of the fifth century, which saw the settlement of the great doctrinal controversies either made or confirmed, proves[pg 237]that the seal was set upon the validity of the earliest pedigrees by the illustrious intellects and the sound faith of those days. And in the fifth chapter of this work, contemporary witness is carried back to the first days. There is thus a cluster of pedigrees, not in one line but in many parallel courses of descent, not in one country but in several, ranging over the whole Catholic Church where Greek was understood, attested by Versions, and illustrated copiously by Fathers, along which without break in the continuity the Traditional Text in its main features has been transmitted. Doubtless something still remains for the Church to do under the present extraordinary wealth of authorities in the verification of some particulars issuing in a small number of alterations, not in challenging or changing like the other school anything approaching to one-eighth of the New Testament402: for that we now possess in the main the very Words of the Holy Gospels as they issued from their inspired authors, we are taught under the principle of Genealogy that there is no valid reason to doubt.To conclude, the system which we advocate will be seen to contrast strikingly with that which is upheld by the opposing school, in three general ways:I. We have with us width and depth against the narrowness on their side. They are conspicuously contracted in the fewness of the witnesses which they deem worthy of credence. They are restricted as to the period of history which alone they consider to deserve attention. They are confined with regard to the countries from which their testimony comes. They would supply Christians with a shortened text, and educate them under a cast-iron system. We on the contrary champion the many against the few: we welcome all witnesses, and weigh all testimony: we uphold all the ages against one or two, and[pg 238]all the countries against a narrow space. We maintain the genuine and all-round Catholicism of real Christendom against a discarded sectarianism exhumed from the fourth century. If we condemn, it is because the evidence condemns. We cling to all the precious Words that have come down to us, because they have been so preserved to our days under verdicts depending upon overwhelming proof.II. We oppose facts to their speculation. They exalt B and א and D because in their own opinion those copies are the best. They weave ingenious webs, and invent subtle theories, because their paradox of a few against the many requires ingenuity and subtlety for its support. Dr. Hort revelled in finespun theories and technical terms, such as“Intrinsic Probability,”“Transcriptional Probability,”“Internal evidence of Readings,”“Internal evidence of Documents,”which of course connote a certain amount of evidence, but are weak pillars of a heavy structure. Even conjectural emendation403and inconsistent decrees404are not rejected. They are infected with the theorizing which spoils some of the best German work, and with the idealism which is the bane of many academic minds, especially at Oxford and Cambridge. In contrast with this sojourn in cloudland, we are essentially of the earth though not earthy. We are nothing, if we are not grounded in facts: our appeal is to facts, our test lies in facts, so far as we can we build testimonies upon testimonies and pile facts on facts. We imitate the procedure of the courts of justice in decisions resulting from the converging product of all the evidence, when it has been cross-examined and sifted. As men of business, not less than students, we endeavour to pursue the studies of the library according to the best methods of the world.III. Our opponents are gradually getting out of date: the world is drifting away from them. Thousands of[pg 239]manuscripts have been added to the known stores since Tischendorf formed his system, and Hort began to theorize, and their handful of favourite documents has become by comparison less and less. Since the deaths of both of those eminent critics, the treasures dug up in Egypt and elsewhere have put back the date of the science of palaeography from the fourth century after the Christian era to at least the third century before, and papyrus has sprung up into unexpected prominence in the ancient and mediaeval history of writing. It is discovered that there was no uncial period through which the genealogy of cursives has necessarily passed. Old theories on those points must generally be reconstructed if they are to tally with known facts. But this accession of knowledge which puts our opponents in the wrong, has no effect on us except to confirm our position with new proof. Indeed, we welcome the unlocking of the all but boundless treasury of ancient wealth, since our theory, being as open as possible, and resting upon the visible and real, remains not only uninjured but strengthened. If it were to require any re-arrangement, that would be only a re-ordering of particulars, not of our principles which are capacious enough to admit of any addition of materials of judgement. We trust to the Church of all the ages as the keeper and witness of Holy Writ, we bow to the teaching of theHoly Ghost, as conveyed in all wisdom by facts and evidence: and we are certain, that, following no preconceived notions of our own, but led under such guidance, moved by principles so reasonable and comprehensive, and observing rules and instructions appealing to us with such authority, we are in all main respectsstanding upon the Rock.[pg 240]Appendix I. Honeycomb—ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου.[The Dean left positive instructions for the publication of this Dissertation, as being finished for Press.]I propose next to call attention to the omission from St. Luke xxiv. 42 of a precious incident in the history of our Lord's Resurrection. It was in order effectually to convince the Disciples that it was Himself, in His human body, who stood before them in the upper chamber on the evening of the first Easter Day, that He inquired, [ver. 41]“Have ye here any meat? [ver. 42] and they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish,and of an honeycomb.”But those four last words (καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου) because they are not found in six copies of the Gospel, are by Westcott and Hort ejected from the text. Calamitous to relate, the Revisers of 1881 were by those critics persuaded to exclude them also. How do men suppose that such a clause as that established itself universally in the sacred text, if it be spurious?“How do you suppose,”I shall be asked in reply,“if it be genuine, that such a clause became omitted from any manuscript at all?”I answer,—The omission is due to the prevalence in the earliest age of fabricated exhibitions of the Gospel narrative; in which, singular to relate, the incident recorded in St. Luke xxiv. 41-43 was identified with that other mysterious repast which St. John describes in his last chapter405.[pg 241]It seems incredible, at first sight, that an attempt would ever be made to establish an enforced harmony between incidents exhibiting so many points of marked contrast: for St. Luke speaks of (1)“broiled fish [ἰχθύος ὀπτοῦ] and honeycomb,”(2) which“theygaveHim,”(3)“andHedid eat”(4) on the first Easter Day, (5) at evening, (6) in a chamber, (7) at Jerusalem:—whereas St. John specifies (1)“bread, and fish [ὀψάριον] likewise,”(2) whichHegave them, (3) and of which it is not related that Himself partook. (4) The occasion was subsequent: (5) the time, early morning: (6) the scene, the sea-shore: (7) the country, Galilee.Let it be candidly admitted on the other hand, in the way of excuse for those ancient men, that“broiled fish”was common to both repasts; that they both belong to the period subsequent to the Resurrection: that the same parties, ourLordnamely and His Apostles, were concerned in either transaction; and that both are prefaced by similar words of inquiry. Waiving this, it is a plain fact that Eusebius in his 9th Canon, makes the two incidents parallel; numbering St. Luke (xxix. 41-3), § 341; and St. John (xxi. 9, 10, 12, first half, and 13), severally §§ 221, 223, 225. The Syriac sections which have hitherto escaped the attention of critical scholars406are yet more precise. Let the intention of their venerable compiler—whoever he may have been—be exhibited in full. It has never been done before:—“(St. Lukexxiv.)“(St. Johnxxi.)”“§ 397. [Jesus] said unto them, Have ye here any meat? (ver. 41.)“§ 255. Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered Him, No. (ver. 5.)“Id....“§ 259 ... As soon then as they were come to land, they saw[pg 242]a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. (ver. 9.)“§ 398. And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb. (ver. 42.)“§ 264. Jesus then cometh and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise. (ver. 13.)“§ 399. And He took it and did eat before them. (ver. 43.)”“§ 262. Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. (ver. 12.)”The intention of all this is unmistakable. The places are deliberately identified. But the mischief is of much older date than the Eusebian Canons, and must have been derived in the first instance from a distinct source. Eusebius, as he himself informs us, did but follow in the wake of others. Should the Diatessaron cf Ammonius or that of Tatian ever be recovered, a flood of light will for the first time be poured over a department of evidence where at present we must be content to grope our way407.But another element of confusion I suspect is derived from that lost Commentary on the Song of Solomon in which Origen is said to have surpassed himself408. Certain of the ancients insist on discovering in St. Luke xxiv. 42 the literal fulfilment of the Greek version of Cant. v. 1,“I ate mybreadwithhoney.”Cyril of Jerusalem remarks that those words of the spouse“were fulfilled”when“they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb409”: while Gregory Nyss. points out (alluding to the same place) that“the true Bread,”when He appeared to His Disciples,“was by honeycomb made sweet410.”Little did those[pg 243]Fathers imagine the perplexity which at the end of 15 centuries their fervid and sometimes fanciful references to Scripture would occasion!I proceed to shew how inveterately the ancients have confused these two narratives, or rather these two distinct occasions.“Who knows not,”asks Epiphanius,“that ourSaviourate, after His Resurrection from the dead? As the holy Gospels of Truth have it,‘There was given unto Him’[which is a reference to St. Luke],‘bread and part of a broiled fish.’[but it is St. John who mentions the bread];—‘and He took and ate’[but only according to St. Luke],‘and gave to His disciples,’[but only according to St. John. And yet the reference must be to St. Luke's narrative, for Epiphanius straightway adds,]‘as Healsodid at the sea of Tiberias; both eating,’[althoughnoeating on His part is recorded concerningthatmeal,]‘and distributing411.’”Ephraem Syrus makes the same mis-statement.“If He was not flesh,”he asks,“who was it, at the sea of Tiberias, who ate412?”“While Peter is fishing,”says Hesychius413, (with plain reference to the narrative in St. John),“behold in theLord'shands bread and honeycomb414”: where the“honeycomb”has clearly lost its way, and has thrust out the“fish.”Epiphanius elsewhere even more fatally confuses the two incidents.“Jesus”(he says)“on a second occasion after His Resurrection ate both a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb415.”One would have set this down to sheer inadvertence, but that[pg 244]Jerome circumstantially makes the self-same assertion:—“In John we read that while the Apostles were fishing, He stood upon the shore, and ate part of a broiled fish and honeycomb. At Jerusalem He is not related to have done anything of the kind416.”From whom can Jerome have derived that wild statement417? It is certainly not his own. It occurs in his letter to Hedibia where he is clearly a translator only418. In another place, Jerome says,“He sought fish broiled upon the coals, in order to confirm the faith of His doubting Apostles, who were afraid to approach Him, because they thought they saw a spirit,—not a solid body419”: which is a mixing up of St. John's narrative with that of St Luke. Clemens Alex., in a passage which has hitherto escaped notice, deliberately affirms that“theLordblessed the loaves and the broiled fishes with which He feasted His Disciples420.”Where did he find that piece of information?One thing more in connexion with the“broiled fishand honeycomb.”Athanasius—and Cyril Alex.421after him—rehearse the incident with entire accuracy; but Athanasius adds the apocryphal statement that“He took what remained over, and gave it unto them422”: which tasteless appendix is found besides in Cureton's Syriac [not in the Lewis],—in the Bohairic, Harkleian, Armenian, and Ethiopic Versions; and must once have prevailed to a formidable extent, for[pg 245]it has even established itself in the Vulgate423. It is witnessed to, besides, by two ninth-century uncials (ΚΠ) and ten cursive copies424. The thoughtful reader will say to himself,—“Had only Cod. B joined itself to this formidable conspiracy of primitive witnesses, we should have had this also thrust upon us by the new school as indubitable Gospel: and remonstrances would have been in vain!”Now, as all must see, it is simply incredible that these many Fathers, had they employed honestly-made copies of St. Luke's and of St. John's Gospel, could have fallen into such frequent and such strange misrepresentations of what those Evangelists actually say. From some fabricated Gospel—from some“Diatessaron”or“Life of Christ,”once famous in the Church, long since utterly forgotten,—from some unauthentic narrative of our Saviour's Death and Resurrection, I say, these several depravations of the sacred story must needs have been imported into St. Luke's Gospel. And lo, out of all that farrago, the only manuscript traces which survive at this distant day, are found in the notorious B-א, with A, D, L, and Π,—one copy each of the Old Latin (e) and the Bohairic [and the Lewis],—which exclusively enjoy the unenviable distinction of omitting the incident of the“honeycomb”: while the confessedly spurious appendix,“He gave them what remained over,”enjoys a far more ancient, more varied, and more respectable attestation,—and yet has found favour with no single Editor of the Sacred Text: no, nor have our Revisers seen fit by a marginal note to apprize the ordinary English reader that“many uncial authorities”are disfigured in this particular way. With this latter accretion to the inspired verity, therefore, we need not delay ourselves: but that, so[pg 246]many disturbing influences having resulted, at the end of seventeen centuries, in the elimination of the clause καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου from six corrupt copies of St. Luke's Gospel,—a fixed determination or a blundering tendency should now be exhibited to mutilate the Evangelical narrative in respect of the incident which those four words embody,—this may well create anxiety. It makes critical inquiry an imperative duty: not indeed for our own satisfaction, but for that of others.Upon ourselves, the only effect produced by the sight of half a dozen Evangelia,—whether written in the uncial or in the cursive character we deem a matter of small account,—opposing themselves to the whole body of the copies, uncial and cursive alike, is simply to make us suspicious of those six Evangelia. Shew us that they have been repeatedly tried already and as often have been condemned, and our suspicion becomes intense. Add such evidence of the operation of a disturbing force as has been already set before the reader; and further inquiry in our own minds we deem superfluous. But we must answer those distinguished Critics who have ruled that Codexes B-א, D, L, can hardly if ever err.The silence of the Fathers is really not of much account. Some critics quote Clemens Alexandrinus. But let that Father be allowed to speak for himself. He is inveighing against gluttony.“Is not variety consistent with simplicity of diet?”(he asks); and he enumerates olives, vegetables, milk, cheese, &c. If it must be flesh, he proceeds, let the flesh be merely broiled.“‘Have ye here any meat?’said our Lord to His disciples after His Resurrection. Whereupon, having been by Him taught frugality in respect of diet,‘they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish.’... Yet may the fact not be overlooked that those who sup as The Word approves may partake besides of‘honeycomb.’The fittest food, in a word, we consider to be that which requires no[pg 247]cooking: next, as I began by explaining, cheap and ordinary articles of diet425.”Shall I be thought unreasonable if I insist that so far from allowing that Clemens is“silent”concerning the“honeycomb,”I even regard his testimony to the traditionary reading of St. Luke xxiv. 42 as express? At the end of 1700 years, I am as sure that“honeycomb”was found in his copy, as if I had seen it with my eyes.Origen, who is next adduced, in one place remarks concerning ourSaviour—“It is plain that after His Resurrection, He ate of a fish426.”The same Father elsewhere interprets mystically the circumstance that the Disciples“gave Him a piece of a broiled fish427.”Eusebius in like manner thrice mentions the fact that ourLordpartook of“broiled fish428”after His Resurrection. And because these writers do not also mention“honeycomb,”it is assumed by Tischendorf and his school that the words καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου cannot have existed in their copies of St. Luke429. The proposed inference is plainly inadmissible. Cyril, after quoting accurately St. Luke xxiv. 36 to 43 (“honeycomb”and all)430, proceeds to remark exclusively on the incident of the“fish”431. Ambrose and Augustine certainly recognized the incident of“the honeycomb”: yet the latter merely remarks that“to eat fish with theLordis better than to eat lentiles with Esau432;”while the former draws a mystical inference from“the record in the Gospel thatJesusatebroiled fishes433.”Is it[pg 248]not obvious that the more conspicuous incident,—that of the“broiled fish,”—being common to both repasts, stands for all that was partaken of on either occasion? in other words, represents the entire meal? It excludes neither the“honeycomb”of the upper chamber, nor the“bread”which was eaten beside the Galilean lake. Tertullian434, intending no slight either to the“broiled fish”or to the“bread,”makes mention only of our Lord's having“eaten honeycomb”after His Resurrection. And so Jerome, addressing John, bishop of Jerusalem, exclaims—“Why did the Lord eat honeycomb? Not in order to give thee licence to eat honey, but in order to demonstrate the truth of His Resurrection435.”To draw inferences from the rhetoricalsilenceof the Fathers as if we were dealing with a mathematical problem or an Act of Parliament, can only result in misconceptions of the meaning of those ancient men.As for Origen, there is nothing in either of the two places commonly cited from his writings436, where he only mentions the partaking of“fish,”to preclude the belief that Origen knew of the“honeycomb”also in St. Luke xxiv. 42. We have but fragments of his Commentary on St. Luke437, and an abridged translation of his famous Commentary on Canticles. Should these works of his be hereafter recovered in their entirety, I strongly suspect that a certain scholium in Cordier's Catena on St. Luke438, which contains a very elaborate recognition of the“honeycomb,”will be found to be nothing else but an excerpt from one or other of them. At foot the learned reader will be gratified by the sight of the original Greek of the scholium referred to439,[pg 249]which Cordier so infelicitously exhibits in Latin. He will at least be made aware that if it be not Origen who there speaks to us, it is some other very ancient father, whose testimony to the genuineness of the clause now under consideration is positive evidence in its favour which greatly outweighs the negative evidence of the archetype of B-א. But in fact as a specimen of mystical interpretation, the passage in question is quite in Origen's way440—has all his fervid wildness,—in all probability is actuallyhis.[pg 250]The question however to be decided is clearly not whether certain ancient copies of St. Luke were without the incident of the honeycomb; but only whether it is reasonable to infer from the premisses that the Evangelist made no mention of it. And I venture to anticipate that readers will decide this question with me in the negative. That, from a period of the remotest antiquity, certain disturbing forces have exercised a baneful influence over this portion of Scripture is a plain fact: and that their combined agency should have resulted in the elimination of the incident of the“honeycomb”from a few copies of St. Luke xxiv. 42, need create no surprise. On the other hand, this Evangelical incident is attested by the following witnesses:—In the second century, by Justin M.441,—by Clemens Alexandrinus442,—by Tertullian443,—by the Old-Latin,—and by the Peshitto Version:In the third century, by Cureton's Syriac,—and by the Bohairic:In the fourth century, by Athanasius444,—by Gregory of Nyssa445,—by Epiphanius446,—by Cyril of Jerusalem447,—by Jerome448,—by Augustine449,—and by the Vulgate:In the fifth century, by Cyril of Alexandria450,—by Proclus451,—by Vigilius Tapsensis452,—by the Armenian,—and Ethiopic Versions:In the sixth century, by Hesychius and Cod. N453:In the seventh century, by the Harkleian Version.Surely an Evangelical incident attested by so many, such respectable, and such venerable witnesses as these, is clearly above suspicion. Besides its recognition in the[pg 251]ancient scholium to which attention has been largely invited already454, we find the incident of the“honeycomb”recognized by 13 ancient Fathers,—by 8 ancient Versions,—by the unfaltering Tradition of the universal Church,—above all, by every copy of St. Luke's Gospel in existence (as far as is known), uncial as well as cursive—exceptsix. That it carries on its front the impress of its own genuineness, is what no one will deny455. Yet was Dr. Hort for dismissing it without ceremony.“A singular interpolation evidently from an extraneous source, written or oral,”he says. A singular hallucination, we venture to reply, based on ideal grounds and“a system [of Textual Criticism] hopelessly self-condemned456;”seeing that that ingenious and learned critic has nothing to urge except that the words in dispute are omitted by B-א,—by A seldom found in the Gospels in such association,—by D of the sixth century,—by L of the eighth,—by Π of the ninth.I have been so diffuse on this place because I desire to exhibit an instance shewing that certain perturbations of the sacred Text demand laborious investigation,—have a singular history of their own,—may on no account be disposed of in a high-handed way, by applying to them any cut and dried treatment,—nay I must say, any arbitrary shibboleth. The clause in dispute enjoys in perfection every note of a genuine reading: viz. number, antiquity, variety, respectability of witnesses, besides continuity of attestation: every one of which notes are away from that exhibition of the text which is contended for by my opponents457. Tischendorf conjectures that the“honeycomb”[pg 252]may have been first brought in from the“Gospel of the Hebrews.”What if, on the contrary, by the Valentinian“Gospel of Truth,”—a composition of the second century,—the“honeycomb”should have been first thrust out458? The plain statement of Epiphanius (quoted above459) seems to establish the fact that his maimed citation was derived from that suspicious source.Let the foregoing be accepted as a specimen of the injury occasionally sustained by the Evangelical text in a very remote age from the evil influence of the fabricated narratives, orDiatessarons, which anciently abounded. The genuineness of the clause καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου, it is hoped, will never more be seriously called in question. Surely it has been demonstrated to be quite above suspicion460.[pg 253]

Chapter XII. Conclusion.The Traditional Text has now been traced, from the earliest years of Christianity of which any record of the New Testament remains, to the period when it was enshrined in a large number of carefully-written manuscripts in main accord with one another. Proof has been given from the writings of the early Fathers, that the idea that the Traditional Text arose in the middle of the fourth century is a mere hallucination, prompted by only a partial acquaintance with those writings. And witness to the existence and predominance of that form of Text has been found in the Peshitto Version and in the best of the Latin Versions, which themselves also have been followed back to the beginning of the second century or the end of the first. We have also discovered the truth, that the settlement of the Text, though mainly made in the fourth century, was not finally accomplished till the eighth century at the earliest; and that the later Uncials, not the oldest, together with the cursives express, not singly, not in small batches or companies, but in their main agreement, the decisions which had grown up in the Church. In so doing, attention has been paid to all the existing evidence: none has been omitted.Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, has been the underlying principle. The foundations of the building have been laid as deeply and as broadly as our power would allow. No other course would be in consonance with scientific procedure. The[pg 225]seven notes of truth have been made as comprehensive as possible. Antiquity, number, variety, weight, continuity, context, and internal evidence, include all points of view and all methods of examination which are really sound. The characters of the Vatican, Sinaitic, and Bezan manuscripts have been shewn to be bad, and the streams which led to their production from Syrio-Old-Latin and Alexandrian sources to the temporary school of Caesarea have been traced and explained. It has been also shewn to be probable that corruption began and took root even before the Gospels were written. The general conclusion which has grown upon our minds has been that the affections of Christians have not been misdirected; that the strongest exercise of reason has proved their instincts to have been sound and true; that the Text which we have used and loved rests upon a vast and varied support; that the multiform record of Manuscripts, Versions, and Fathers, is found to defend by large majorities in almost all instances those precious words of Holy Writ, which have been called in question during the latter half of this century.We submit that it cannot be denied that we have presented a strong case, and naturally we look to see what has been said against it, since except in some features it has been before the World and the Church for some years. We submit that it has not received due attention from opposing critics. If indeed the opinions of the other School had been preceded by, or grounded upon, a searching examination, such as we have made in the case of B and א, of the vast mass of evidence upon which we rest,—if this great body of testimony had been proved to be bad from overbalancing testimony or otherwise,—we should have found reason for doubt, or even for a reversal of our decisions. But Lachmann, Tregelles, and Tischendorf laid down principles chiefly, if not exclusively, on the score[pg 226]of their intrinsic probability. Westcott and Hort built up their own theory upon reasoning internal to it, without clearing the ground first by any careful and detailed scrutiny. Besides which, all of them constructed their buildings before travellers by railways and steamships had placed within their reach the larger part of the materials which are now ready for use. We hear constantly the proclamation made in dogmatic tones that they are right: no proof adequate to the strength of our contention has been worked out to shew that we are wrong.Nevertheless, it may be best to listen for a moment to such objections as have been advanced against conclusions like these, and which it may be presumed will be urged again.1.“After all it cannot be denied that B and א are the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament in existence, and that they must therefore be entitled to the deference due to their age.”Now the earlier part of this allegation is conceded by us entirely:prima facieit constitutes a very strong argument. But it is really found on examination to be superficial. Fathers and Versions are virtually older, and, as has been demonstrated, are dead against the claim set up on behalf of those ancient manuscripts, that they are the possessors of the true text of the Gospels. Besides which antiquity is not the sole note of truth any more than number is. So much has been already said on this part of the subject, that it is needless to enter into longer discussion here.2.“The testimony of witnesses ought to be weighed before it is reckoned.”Doubtless: this also is a truism, and allowance has been made for it in the various“notes of truth.”But this argument, apparently so simple, is really intended to carry a huge assumption involved in an elaborate maintenance of the (supposed) excellent character of B and א and their associates. After so much[pg 227]that has been brought to the charge of those two MSS. in this treatise, it is unnecessary now to urge more than that they appeared in strange times, when the Church was convulsed to her centre; that, as has been demonstrated, their peculiar readings were in a very decided minority in the period before them; and, as all admit, were rejected in the ages that passed after the time of their date.3. It is stated that the Traditional is a conflate text, i.e. that passages have been put together from more than one other text, so that they are composite in construction instead of being simple. We have already treated this allegation, but we reply now that it has not been established: the opinion of Canon Cooke who analysed all the examples quoted by Hort373, of Scrivener who said they proved nothing374, and of many other critics and scholars has been against it. The converse position is maintained, that the text of B and א is clipped and mutilated. Take the following passage, which is fairly typical of the large class in question:“For we are members of His Body”(writes St. Paul375)“of His flesh and of His bones”(ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων αἰτοῦ). But those last 9 words are disallowed by recent editors, because they are absent from B-א, A, 8, and 17, and the margin of 67, besides the Bohairic version. Yet are the words genuine. They are found in DFGKLP and the whole body of the cursives: in the Old Latin and Vulgate and the two Syriac versions: in Irenaeus376,—in Theodorus of Mopsuestia377,—in Nilus378,—in Chrysostom379more than four times,—in Severianus380,—in Theodoret381,—in Anastasius Sinaita382,—and in John Damascene383. They were probably read by[pg 228]Origen384and by Methodius385. Many Latin Fathers, viz. Ambrose386,—Pacian387,—Esaias abb.388,—Victorinus389,—Jerome390,—Augustine391—and Leo P.392recognise them.Such ample and such varied attestation is not to be set aside by the vapid and unsound dictum“Western and Syrian,”—or by the weak suggestion that the words in dispute are an unauthorized gloss, fabricated from the LXX version of Gen. ii. 23. That St. Paul's allusion is to the oracular utterance of our first father Adam, is true enough: but, as Alford after Bengel well points out, it is incredible that any forger can have been at work here.Such questions however, as we must again and again insist, are not to be determined by internal considerations: no,—nor by dictation, nor by prejudice, nor by divination, nor by any subjective theory of conflation on which experts and critics may be hopelessly at issue: but by the weight of the definite evidence actually producible and[pg 229]produced on either side. And when, as in the present instance, Antiquity, Variety of testimony, Respectability of witnesses, and Number are overwhelmingly in favour of the Traditional Text, what else is it but an outrage on the laws of evidence to claim that the same little band of documents which have already come before us so often, and always been found in error, even though aided by speculative suppositions, shall be permitted to outweigh all other testimony?To build therefore upon a conflate or composite character in a set of readings would be contrary to the evidence:—or at any rate, it would at the best be to lay foundations upon ground which is approved by one school of critics and disputed by the other in every case. The determination of the text of Holy Scripture has not been handed over to a mere conflict of opposite opinions, or to the uncertain sands of conjecture.Besides, as has been already stated, no amount of conflation would supply passages which the destructive school would wholly leave out. It is impossible to“conflate”in places where Bא and their associates furnish no materials for the supposed conflation. Bricks cannot be made without clay. The materials actually existing are those of the Traditional Text itself. But in fact these questions are not to be settled by the scholarly taste or opinions of either school, even of that which we advocate. They must rest upon the verdict found by the facts in evidence: and those facts have been already placed in array.4. Again, stress is laid upon Genealogy. Indeed, as Dean Burgon himself goes on to say, so much has lately been written about“the principle”and“the method”“of genealogy,”that it becomes in a high degree desirable that we should ascertain precisely what those expressions lawfully mean. No fair controversialist would willingly fail to assign its legitimate place and value to any principle for[pg 230]which he observes an opponent eagerly contending. But here is a“principle”and here is a“method”which are declared to be of even paramount importance.“Documents ... are all fragments, usually casual and scattered fragments, of a genealogical tree of transmission, sometimes of vast extent and intricacy. The more exactly we are able to trace the chief ramifications of the tree, and to determine the places of the several documents among the branches, the more secure will be the foundations laid for a criticism capable of distinguishing the original text from its successive corruptions393.”The expression is metaphorical; belonging of right to families of men, but transferred to Textual Science as indicative that similar phenomena attend families of manuscripts. Unfortunately the phenomena attending transmission,—of Natures on the one hand, of Texts on the other,—are essentially dissimilar. A diminutive couple may give birth to a race of giants. A genius has been known to beget a dunce. A brood of children exhibiting extraordinary diversities of character, aspect, ability, sometimes spring from the same pair. Nothing like this is possible in the case of honestly-made copies of MSS. The analogy breaks down therefore in respect of its most essential feature. And yet, there can be no objection to the use of the term“Genealogy”in connexion with manuscripts, provided always that nothing more is meant thereby than derivation by the process of copying: nothing else claimed but that“Identity of reading implies identity of origin394.”Only in this limited way are we able to avail ourselves of the principle referred to. Of course if it were a well-ascertained fact concerning three copies (XYZ), that Z was copied from Y, and Y from X, XYZ might reasonably be spoken of as representing three descents in a pedigree; although the interval between Z and Y were only six[pg 231]months,—the interval between Y and X, six hundred years. Moreover, these would be not three independent authorities, but only one. Such a case, however,—(the fact cannot be too clearly apprehended),—is simply non-existent. What is known commonly lies on the surface:—viz. that occasionally between two or more copies there exists such an amount of peculiar textual affinity as to constrain us to adopt the supposition that they have been derived from a common original. These peculiarities of text, we tell ourselves, cannot be fortuitous. Taking our stand on the true principle that“identity of reading implies identity of origin,”we insist on reasoning from the known to the unknown: and (at our humble distance) we are fully as confident of our scientific fact as Adams and Le Verrier would have been of the existence of Neptune had they never actually obtained sight of that planet.So far are we therefore from denying the value and importance of the principle under discussion that we are able to demonstrate its efficacy in the resolution of some textual problems which have been given in this work. Thus E, the uncial copy of St. Paul, is“nothing better,”says Scrivener,“than a transcript of the Cod. Claromontanus”D.“The Greek is manifestly worthless, and should long since have been removed from the list of authorities395.”Tischendorf nevertheless, not Tregelles, quotes it on every page. He has no business to do so, Codexes D and E, to all intents and purposes, beingstrictly one Codex. This case, like the two next, happily does not admit of diversity of opinion. Next, F and G of St. Paul's Epistles, inasmuch as they are confessedly derived from one and the same archetype, are not to be reckoned as two authorities, but as one.Again, the correspondence between the nine MSS. of the Ferrar group—Evann. 13 at Paris, 69 at Leicester, 124 at[pg 232]Vienna, 346 at Milan, 556 in the British Museum, 561 at Bank House, Wisbech,—and in a lesser degree, 348 at Milan, 624 at Crypta Ferrata, 788 at Athens,—is so extraordinary as to render it certain that these copies are in the main derived from one common archetype396. Hence, though one of them (788) is of the tenth century, three (348, 561, 624) are of the eleventh, four (13, 124, 346, 556) of the twelfth, and one (69) of the fourteenth, their joint evidence is held to be tantamount to the recovery of a lost uncial or papyrus of very early date,—which uncial or papyrus, by the way, it would be convenient to indicate by a new symbol, as Fr. standing for Ferrar, since Φ which was once attributed to them is now appropriated to the Codex Beratinus. If indicated numerically, the figures should at all events be connected by a hyphen (13-69-124-346-&c.); not as if they were independent witnesses, as Tischendorf quotes them. And lastly, B and א are undeniably, more than any other two Codexes which can be named, the depositaries of one and the same peculiar, all but unique, text.I propose to apply the foregoing remarks to the solution of one of the most important of Textual problems. That a controversy has raged around the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel is known to all. Known also it is that a laborious treatise was published on the subject in 1871, which, in the opinion of competent judges, has had the effect of removing the“Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark”beyond the reach of suspicion. Notwithstanding this, at the end of ten years an attempt was made to revive the old plea. The passage, say Drs. Westcott and Hort,“manifestly cannot claim any Apostolic authority; but is doubtless founded on some tradition of the Apostolic age,”of which the“precise date must remain unknown.”It is“a very early interpolation”(pp. 51, 46). In a word,“the[pg 233]last twelve verses”of St. Mark's Gospel, according to Drs. Westcott and Hort, are spurious. But what is their ground of confidence? for we claim to be as competent to judge of testimony as they. It proves to be“the unique criterion supplied by the concord of the independent attestations of א and B”(p. 46).“Independent attestations”! But when two copies of the Gospel are confessedly derived from one and the same original, how can their“attestations”be called“independent”? This is however greatly to understate the case. The non-independence of B and א in respect of St. Mark xvi. 9-20 is absolutely unique: for, strange to relate, it so happens that the very leaf on which the end of St. Mark's Gospel and the beginning of St. Luke's is written (St. Mark xvi. 2-Luke i. 56), is one of the six leaves of Cod. א which are held to have been written by the scribe of Cod. B.“The inference,”remarks Scrivener,“is simple and direct, that at least in these leaves Codd. Bא make but one witness, not two397.”The principle of Genealogy admits of a more extended and a more important application to this case, because B and א do not stand quite alone, but are exclusively associated with three or four other manuscripts which may be regarded as being descended from them. As far as we can judge, they may be regarded as the founders, or at least as prominent members of a family, whose descendants were few, because they were generally condemned by the generations which came after them. Not they, but other families upon other genealogical stems, were the more like to the patriarch whose progeny was to equal the stars of heaven in multitude.Least of all shall I be so simple as to pretend to fix the[pg 234]precise date and assign a definite locality to the fontal source, or sources, of our present perplexity and distress. But I suspect that in the little handful of authorities which have acquired such a notoriety in the annals of recent Textual Criticism, at the head of which stand Codexes B and א, are to be recognized the characteristic features of a lost family of (once well known) second or third-century documents, which owed their existence to the misguided zeal of some well-intentioned but utterly incompetent persons who devoted themselves to the task of correcting the Text of Scripture; but were entirely unfit for the undertaking398.Yet I venture also to think that it was in a great measure at Alexandria that the text in question was fabricated. My chief reasons for thinking so are the following: (1) There is a marked resemblance between the peculiar readings of Bא and the two Egyptian Versions,—the Bohairic or Version of Lower Egypt especially. (2) No one can fail to have been struck by the evident sympathy between Origen,—who at all events had passed more than half his life at Alexandria,—and the text in question. (3) I notice that Nonnus also, who lived in the Thebaid, exhibits considerable sympathy with the text which I deem so corrupt. (4) I cannot overlook the fact that Cod. א was discovered in a monastery under the sway of the patriarch of Alexandria, though how it got there no evidence remains to point out. (5) The licentious handling so characteristic of the Septuagint Version of the O. T.,—the work of Alexandrian Jews,—points in the same direction, and leads me to suspect that Alexandria was the final source of the text of B-א. (6) I further observe that the sacred Text (κείμενον) in Cyril's Homilies[pg 235]on St. John is often similar to B-א; and this, I take for granted, was the effect of the school of Alexandria,—not of the patriarch himself. (7) Dionysius of Alexandria complains bitterly of the corrupt Codexes of his day: and certainly (8) Clemens habitually employed copies of a similar kind. He too was of Alexandria399.Such are the chief considerations which incline me to suspect that Alexandria contributed largely to our Textual troubles.The readings of B-א are the consequence of a junction of two or more streams and then of derivation from a single archetype. This inference is confirmed by the fact that the same general text which B exhibits is exhibited also by the eighth-century Codex L, the work probably of an Egyptian scribe400: and by the tenth-century Codex 33: and by the eleventh-century Codex 1: and to some extent by the twelfth-century Codex 69.We have already been able to advance to another and a very important step. There is nothing in the history of the earliest times of the Church to prove that vellum manuscripts of the New Testament existed in any number before the fourth century. No such documents have come down to us. But we do know, as has been shewn above401, that writings on papyrus were transcribed on vellum in the library of Caesarea. What must we then conclude? That, as has been already suggested, papyrus MSS. are mainly the progenitors of the Uncials, and probably of the oldest Uncials. Besides this inference, we have seen that it is also most probable that many of the Cursives were transcribed directly from papyrus books or rolls. So that the Genealogy of manuscripts of the New Testament includes a vast number of descendants, and many lines of descent, which ramified from one stem on the original start from[pg 236]the autograph of each book. The Vatican and the Sinaitic do not stand pre-eminent because of any great line of parentage passing through them to a multitudinous posterity inheriting the earth, but they are members of a condemned family of which the issue has been small. The rejected of the fourth century has been spurned by succeeding centuries. And surely now also the fourth century, rich in a roll of men conspicuous ever since for capacity and learning, may be permitted to proclaim its real sentiments and to be judged from its own decisions, without being disfranchised by critics of the nineteenth.The history of the Traditional Text, on the contrary, is continuous and complete under the view of Genealogy. The pedigree of it may be commended to the examination of the Heralds' College. It goes step by step in unbroken succession regularly back to the earliest time. The present printed editions may be compared for extreme accuracy with the text passed by the Elzevirs or Beza as the text received by all of their time. Erasmus followed his few MSS. because he knew them to be good representatives of the mind of the Church which had been informed under the ceaseless and loving care of mediaeval transcribers: and the text of Erasmus printed at Basle agreed in but little variation with the text of the Complutensian editors published in Spain, for which Cardinal Ximenes procured MSS. at whatever cost he could. No one doubts the coincidence in all essential points of the printed text with the text of the Cursives. Dr. Hort certifies the Cursive Text as far back as the middle of the fourth century. It depends upon various lines of descent, and rests on the testimony supplied by numerous contemporary Fathers before the year 1000a.d., when co-existing MSS. failed to bear witness in multitudes. The acceptance of it by the Church of the fifth century, which saw the settlement of the great doctrinal controversies either made or confirmed, proves[pg 237]that the seal was set upon the validity of the earliest pedigrees by the illustrious intellects and the sound faith of those days. And in the fifth chapter of this work, contemporary witness is carried back to the first days. There is thus a cluster of pedigrees, not in one line but in many parallel courses of descent, not in one country but in several, ranging over the whole Catholic Church where Greek was understood, attested by Versions, and illustrated copiously by Fathers, along which without break in the continuity the Traditional Text in its main features has been transmitted. Doubtless something still remains for the Church to do under the present extraordinary wealth of authorities in the verification of some particulars issuing in a small number of alterations, not in challenging or changing like the other school anything approaching to one-eighth of the New Testament402: for that we now possess in the main the very Words of the Holy Gospels as they issued from their inspired authors, we are taught under the principle of Genealogy that there is no valid reason to doubt.To conclude, the system which we advocate will be seen to contrast strikingly with that which is upheld by the opposing school, in three general ways:I. We have with us width and depth against the narrowness on their side. They are conspicuously contracted in the fewness of the witnesses which they deem worthy of credence. They are restricted as to the period of history which alone they consider to deserve attention. They are confined with regard to the countries from which their testimony comes. They would supply Christians with a shortened text, and educate them under a cast-iron system. We on the contrary champion the many against the few: we welcome all witnesses, and weigh all testimony: we uphold all the ages against one or two, and[pg 238]all the countries against a narrow space. We maintain the genuine and all-round Catholicism of real Christendom against a discarded sectarianism exhumed from the fourth century. If we condemn, it is because the evidence condemns. We cling to all the precious Words that have come down to us, because they have been so preserved to our days under verdicts depending upon overwhelming proof.II. We oppose facts to their speculation. They exalt B and א and D because in their own opinion those copies are the best. They weave ingenious webs, and invent subtle theories, because their paradox of a few against the many requires ingenuity and subtlety for its support. Dr. Hort revelled in finespun theories and technical terms, such as“Intrinsic Probability,”“Transcriptional Probability,”“Internal evidence of Readings,”“Internal evidence of Documents,”which of course connote a certain amount of evidence, but are weak pillars of a heavy structure. Even conjectural emendation403and inconsistent decrees404are not rejected. They are infected with the theorizing which spoils some of the best German work, and with the idealism which is the bane of many academic minds, especially at Oxford and Cambridge. In contrast with this sojourn in cloudland, we are essentially of the earth though not earthy. We are nothing, if we are not grounded in facts: our appeal is to facts, our test lies in facts, so far as we can we build testimonies upon testimonies and pile facts on facts. We imitate the procedure of the courts of justice in decisions resulting from the converging product of all the evidence, when it has been cross-examined and sifted. As men of business, not less than students, we endeavour to pursue the studies of the library according to the best methods of the world.III. Our opponents are gradually getting out of date: the world is drifting away from them. Thousands of[pg 239]manuscripts have been added to the known stores since Tischendorf formed his system, and Hort began to theorize, and their handful of favourite documents has become by comparison less and less. Since the deaths of both of those eminent critics, the treasures dug up in Egypt and elsewhere have put back the date of the science of palaeography from the fourth century after the Christian era to at least the third century before, and papyrus has sprung up into unexpected prominence in the ancient and mediaeval history of writing. It is discovered that there was no uncial period through which the genealogy of cursives has necessarily passed. Old theories on those points must generally be reconstructed if they are to tally with known facts. But this accession of knowledge which puts our opponents in the wrong, has no effect on us except to confirm our position with new proof. Indeed, we welcome the unlocking of the all but boundless treasury of ancient wealth, since our theory, being as open as possible, and resting upon the visible and real, remains not only uninjured but strengthened. If it were to require any re-arrangement, that would be only a re-ordering of particulars, not of our principles which are capacious enough to admit of any addition of materials of judgement. We trust to the Church of all the ages as the keeper and witness of Holy Writ, we bow to the teaching of theHoly Ghost, as conveyed in all wisdom by facts and evidence: and we are certain, that, following no preconceived notions of our own, but led under such guidance, moved by principles so reasonable and comprehensive, and observing rules and instructions appealing to us with such authority, we are in all main respectsstanding upon the Rock.[pg 240]Appendix I. Honeycomb—ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου.[The Dean left positive instructions for the publication of this Dissertation, as being finished for Press.]I propose next to call attention to the omission from St. Luke xxiv. 42 of a precious incident in the history of our Lord's Resurrection. It was in order effectually to convince the Disciples that it was Himself, in His human body, who stood before them in the upper chamber on the evening of the first Easter Day, that He inquired, [ver. 41]“Have ye here any meat? [ver. 42] and they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish,and of an honeycomb.”But those four last words (καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου) because they are not found in six copies of the Gospel, are by Westcott and Hort ejected from the text. Calamitous to relate, the Revisers of 1881 were by those critics persuaded to exclude them also. How do men suppose that such a clause as that established itself universally in the sacred text, if it be spurious?“How do you suppose,”I shall be asked in reply,“if it be genuine, that such a clause became omitted from any manuscript at all?”I answer,—The omission is due to the prevalence in the earliest age of fabricated exhibitions of the Gospel narrative; in which, singular to relate, the incident recorded in St. Luke xxiv. 41-43 was identified with that other mysterious repast which St. John describes in his last chapter405.[pg 241]It seems incredible, at first sight, that an attempt would ever be made to establish an enforced harmony between incidents exhibiting so many points of marked contrast: for St. Luke speaks of (1)“broiled fish [ἰχθύος ὀπτοῦ] and honeycomb,”(2) which“theygaveHim,”(3)“andHedid eat”(4) on the first Easter Day, (5) at evening, (6) in a chamber, (7) at Jerusalem:—whereas St. John specifies (1)“bread, and fish [ὀψάριον] likewise,”(2) whichHegave them, (3) and of which it is not related that Himself partook. (4) The occasion was subsequent: (5) the time, early morning: (6) the scene, the sea-shore: (7) the country, Galilee.Let it be candidly admitted on the other hand, in the way of excuse for those ancient men, that“broiled fish”was common to both repasts; that they both belong to the period subsequent to the Resurrection: that the same parties, ourLordnamely and His Apostles, were concerned in either transaction; and that both are prefaced by similar words of inquiry. Waiving this, it is a plain fact that Eusebius in his 9th Canon, makes the two incidents parallel; numbering St. Luke (xxix. 41-3), § 341; and St. John (xxi. 9, 10, 12, first half, and 13), severally §§ 221, 223, 225. The Syriac sections which have hitherto escaped the attention of critical scholars406are yet more precise. Let the intention of their venerable compiler—whoever he may have been—be exhibited in full. It has never been done before:—“(St. Lukexxiv.)“(St. Johnxxi.)”“§ 397. [Jesus] said unto them, Have ye here any meat? (ver. 41.)“§ 255. Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered Him, No. (ver. 5.)“Id....“§ 259 ... As soon then as they were come to land, they saw[pg 242]a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. (ver. 9.)“§ 398. And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb. (ver. 42.)“§ 264. Jesus then cometh and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise. (ver. 13.)“§ 399. And He took it and did eat before them. (ver. 43.)”“§ 262. Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. (ver. 12.)”The intention of all this is unmistakable. The places are deliberately identified. But the mischief is of much older date than the Eusebian Canons, and must have been derived in the first instance from a distinct source. Eusebius, as he himself informs us, did but follow in the wake of others. Should the Diatessaron cf Ammonius or that of Tatian ever be recovered, a flood of light will for the first time be poured over a department of evidence where at present we must be content to grope our way407.But another element of confusion I suspect is derived from that lost Commentary on the Song of Solomon in which Origen is said to have surpassed himself408. Certain of the ancients insist on discovering in St. Luke xxiv. 42 the literal fulfilment of the Greek version of Cant. v. 1,“I ate mybreadwithhoney.”Cyril of Jerusalem remarks that those words of the spouse“were fulfilled”when“they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb409”: while Gregory Nyss. points out (alluding to the same place) that“the true Bread,”when He appeared to His Disciples,“was by honeycomb made sweet410.”Little did those[pg 243]Fathers imagine the perplexity which at the end of 15 centuries their fervid and sometimes fanciful references to Scripture would occasion!I proceed to shew how inveterately the ancients have confused these two narratives, or rather these two distinct occasions.“Who knows not,”asks Epiphanius,“that ourSaviourate, after His Resurrection from the dead? As the holy Gospels of Truth have it,‘There was given unto Him’[which is a reference to St. Luke],‘bread and part of a broiled fish.’[but it is St. John who mentions the bread];—‘and He took and ate’[but only according to St. Luke],‘and gave to His disciples,’[but only according to St. John. And yet the reference must be to St. Luke's narrative, for Epiphanius straightway adds,]‘as Healsodid at the sea of Tiberias; both eating,’[althoughnoeating on His part is recorded concerningthatmeal,]‘and distributing411.’”Ephraem Syrus makes the same mis-statement.“If He was not flesh,”he asks,“who was it, at the sea of Tiberias, who ate412?”“While Peter is fishing,”says Hesychius413, (with plain reference to the narrative in St. John),“behold in theLord'shands bread and honeycomb414”: where the“honeycomb”has clearly lost its way, and has thrust out the“fish.”Epiphanius elsewhere even more fatally confuses the two incidents.“Jesus”(he says)“on a second occasion after His Resurrection ate both a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb415.”One would have set this down to sheer inadvertence, but that[pg 244]Jerome circumstantially makes the self-same assertion:—“In John we read that while the Apostles were fishing, He stood upon the shore, and ate part of a broiled fish and honeycomb. At Jerusalem He is not related to have done anything of the kind416.”From whom can Jerome have derived that wild statement417? It is certainly not his own. It occurs in his letter to Hedibia where he is clearly a translator only418. In another place, Jerome says,“He sought fish broiled upon the coals, in order to confirm the faith of His doubting Apostles, who were afraid to approach Him, because they thought they saw a spirit,—not a solid body419”: which is a mixing up of St. John's narrative with that of St Luke. Clemens Alex., in a passage which has hitherto escaped notice, deliberately affirms that“theLordblessed the loaves and the broiled fishes with which He feasted His Disciples420.”Where did he find that piece of information?One thing more in connexion with the“broiled fishand honeycomb.”Athanasius—and Cyril Alex.421after him—rehearse the incident with entire accuracy; but Athanasius adds the apocryphal statement that“He took what remained over, and gave it unto them422”: which tasteless appendix is found besides in Cureton's Syriac [not in the Lewis],—in the Bohairic, Harkleian, Armenian, and Ethiopic Versions; and must once have prevailed to a formidable extent, for[pg 245]it has even established itself in the Vulgate423. It is witnessed to, besides, by two ninth-century uncials (ΚΠ) and ten cursive copies424. The thoughtful reader will say to himself,—“Had only Cod. B joined itself to this formidable conspiracy of primitive witnesses, we should have had this also thrust upon us by the new school as indubitable Gospel: and remonstrances would have been in vain!”Now, as all must see, it is simply incredible that these many Fathers, had they employed honestly-made copies of St. Luke's and of St. John's Gospel, could have fallen into such frequent and such strange misrepresentations of what those Evangelists actually say. From some fabricated Gospel—from some“Diatessaron”or“Life of Christ,”once famous in the Church, long since utterly forgotten,—from some unauthentic narrative of our Saviour's Death and Resurrection, I say, these several depravations of the sacred story must needs have been imported into St. Luke's Gospel. And lo, out of all that farrago, the only manuscript traces which survive at this distant day, are found in the notorious B-א, with A, D, L, and Π,—one copy each of the Old Latin (e) and the Bohairic [and the Lewis],—which exclusively enjoy the unenviable distinction of omitting the incident of the“honeycomb”: while the confessedly spurious appendix,“He gave them what remained over,”enjoys a far more ancient, more varied, and more respectable attestation,—and yet has found favour with no single Editor of the Sacred Text: no, nor have our Revisers seen fit by a marginal note to apprize the ordinary English reader that“many uncial authorities”are disfigured in this particular way. With this latter accretion to the inspired verity, therefore, we need not delay ourselves: but that, so[pg 246]many disturbing influences having resulted, at the end of seventeen centuries, in the elimination of the clause καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου from six corrupt copies of St. Luke's Gospel,—a fixed determination or a blundering tendency should now be exhibited to mutilate the Evangelical narrative in respect of the incident which those four words embody,—this may well create anxiety. It makes critical inquiry an imperative duty: not indeed for our own satisfaction, but for that of others.Upon ourselves, the only effect produced by the sight of half a dozen Evangelia,—whether written in the uncial or in the cursive character we deem a matter of small account,—opposing themselves to the whole body of the copies, uncial and cursive alike, is simply to make us suspicious of those six Evangelia. Shew us that they have been repeatedly tried already and as often have been condemned, and our suspicion becomes intense. Add such evidence of the operation of a disturbing force as has been already set before the reader; and further inquiry in our own minds we deem superfluous. But we must answer those distinguished Critics who have ruled that Codexes B-א, D, L, can hardly if ever err.The silence of the Fathers is really not of much account. Some critics quote Clemens Alexandrinus. But let that Father be allowed to speak for himself. He is inveighing against gluttony.“Is not variety consistent with simplicity of diet?”(he asks); and he enumerates olives, vegetables, milk, cheese, &c. If it must be flesh, he proceeds, let the flesh be merely broiled.“‘Have ye here any meat?’said our Lord to His disciples after His Resurrection. Whereupon, having been by Him taught frugality in respect of diet,‘they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish.’... Yet may the fact not be overlooked that those who sup as The Word approves may partake besides of‘honeycomb.’The fittest food, in a word, we consider to be that which requires no[pg 247]cooking: next, as I began by explaining, cheap and ordinary articles of diet425.”Shall I be thought unreasonable if I insist that so far from allowing that Clemens is“silent”concerning the“honeycomb,”I even regard his testimony to the traditionary reading of St. Luke xxiv. 42 as express? At the end of 1700 years, I am as sure that“honeycomb”was found in his copy, as if I had seen it with my eyes.Origen, who is next adduced, in one place remarks concerning ourSaviour—“It is plain that after His Resurrection, He ate of a fish426.”The same Father elsewhere interprets mystically the circumstance that the Disciples“gave Him a piece of a broiled fish427.”Eusebius in like manner thrice mentions the fact that ourLordpartook of“broiled fish428”after His Resurrection. And because these writers do not also mention“honeycomb,”it is assumed by Tischendorf and his school that the words καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου cannot have existed in their copies of St. Luke429. The proposed inference is plainly inadmissible. Cyril, after quoting accurately St. Luke xxiv. 36 to 43 (“honeycomb”and all)430, proceeds to remark exclusively on the incident of the“fish”431. Ambrose and Augustine certainly recognized the incident of“the honeycomb”: yet the latter merely remarks that“to eat fish with theLordis better than to eat lentiles with Esau432;”while the former draws a mystical inference from“the record in the Gospel thatJesusatebroiled fishes433.”Is it[pg 248]not obvious that the more conspicuous incident,—that of the“broiled fish,”—being common to both repasts, stands for all that was partaken of on either occasion? in other words, represents the entire meal? It excludes neither the“honeycomb”of the upper chamber, nor the“bread”which was eaten beside the Galilean lake. Tertullian434, intending no slight either to the“broiled fish”or to the“bread,”makes mention only of our Lord's having“eaten honeycomb”after His Resurrection. And so Jerome, addressing John, bishop of Jerusalem, exclaims—“Why did the Lord eat honeycomb? Not in order to give thee licence to eat honey, but in order to demonstrate the truth of His Resurrection435.”To draw inferences from the rhetoricalsilenceof the Fathers as if we were dealing with a mathematical problem or an Act of Parliament, can only result in misconceptions of the meaning of those ancient men.As for Origen, there is nothing in either of the two places commonly cited from his writings436, where he only mentions the partaking of“fish,”to preclude the belief that Origen knew of the“honeycomb”also in St. Luke xxiv. 42. We have but fragments of his Commentary on St. Luke437, and an abridged translation of his famous Commentary on Canticles. Should these works of his be hereafter recovered in their entirety, I strongly suspect that a certain scholium in Cordier's Catena on St. Luke438, which contains a very elaborate recognition of the“honeycomb,”will be found to be nothing else but an excerpt from one or other of them. At foot the learned reader will be gratified by the sight of the original Greek of the scholium referred to439,[pg 249]which Cordier so infelicitously exhibits in Latin. He will at least be made aware that if it be not Origen who there speaks to us, it is some other very ancient father, whose testimony to the genuineness of the clause now under consideration is positive evidence in its favour which greatly outweighs the negative evidence of the archetype of B-א. But in fact as a specimen of mystical interpretation, the passage in question is quite in Origen's way440—has all his fervid wildness,—in all probability is actuallyhis.[pg 250]The question however to be decided is clearly not whether certain ancient copies of St. Luke were without the incident of the honeycomb; but only whether it is reasonable to infer from the premisses that the Evangelist made no mention of it. And I venture to anticipate that readers will decide this question with me in the negative. That, from a period of the remotest antiquity, certain disturbing forces have exercised a baneful influence over this portion of Scripture is a plain fact: and that their combined agency should have resulted in the elimination of the incident of the“honeycomb”from a few copies of St. Luke xxiv. 42, need create no surprise. On the other hand, this Evangelical incident is attested by the following witnesses:—In the second century, by Justin M.441,—by Clemens Alexandrinus442,—by Tertullian443,—by the Old-Latin,—and by the Peshitto Version:In the third century, by Cureton's Syriac,—and by the Bohairic:In the fourth century, by Athanasius444,—by Gregory of Nyssa445,—by Epiphanius446,—by Cyril of Jerusalem447,—by Jerome448,—by Augustine449,—and by the Vulgate:In the fifth century, by Cyril of Alexandria450,—by Proclus451,—by Vigilius Tapsensis452,—by the Armenian,—and Ethiopic Versions:In the sixth century, by Hesychius and Cod. N453:In the seventh century, by the Harkleian Version.Surely an Evangelical incident attested by so many, such respectable, and such venerable witnesses as these, is clearly above suspicion. Besides its recognition in the[pg 251]ancient scholium to which attention has been largely invited already454, we find the incident of the“honeycomb”recognized by 13 ancient Fathers,—by 8 ancient Versions,—by the unfaltering Tradition of the universal Church,—above all, by every copy of St. Luke's Gospel in existence (as far as is known), uncial as well as cursive—exceptsix. That it carries on its front the impress of its own genuineness, is what no one will deny455. Yet was Dr. Hort for dismissing it without ceremony.“A singular interpolation evidently from an extraneous source, written or oral,”he says. A singular hallucination, we venture to reply, based on ideal grounds and“a system [of Textual Criticism] hopelessly self-condemned456;”seeing that that ingenious and learned critic has nothing to urge except that the words in dispute are omitted by B-א,—by A seldom found in the Gospels in such association,—by D of the sixth century,—by L of the eighth,—by Π of the ninth.I have been so diffuse on this place because I desire to exhibit an instance shewing that certain perturbations of the sacred Text demand laborious investigation,—have a singular history of their own,—may on no account be disposed of in a high-handed way, by applying to them any cut and dried treatment,—nay I must say, any arbitrary shibboleth. The clause in dispute enjoys in perfection every note of a genuine reading: viz. number, antiquity, variety, respectability of witnesses, besides continuity of attestation: every one of which notes are away from that exhibition of the text which is contended for by my opponents457. Tischendorf conjectures that the“honeycomb”[pg 252]may have been first brought in from the“Gospel of the Hebrews.”What if, on the contrary, by the Valentinian“Gospel of Truth,”—a composition of the second century,—the“honeycomb”should have been first thrust out458? The plain statement of Epiphanius (quoted above459) seems to establish the fact that his maimed citation was derived from that suspicious source.Let the foregoing be accepted as a specimen of the injury occasionally sustained by the Evangelical text in a very remote age from the evil influence of the fabricated narratives, orDiatessarons, which anciently abounded. The genuineness of the clause καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου, it is hoped, will never more be seriously called in question. Surely it has been demonstrated to be quite above suspicion460.[pg 253]

Chapter XII. Conclusion.The Traditional Text has now been traced, from the earliest years of Christianity of which any record of the New Testament remains, to the period when it was enshrined in a large number of carefully-written manuscripts in main accord with one another. Proof has been given from the writings of the early Fathers, that the idea that the Traditional Text arose in the middle of the fourth century is a mere hallucination, prompted by only a partial acquaintance with those writings. And witness to the existence and predominance of that form of Text has been found in the Peshitto Version and in the best of the Latin Versions, which themselves also have been followed back to the beginning of the second century or the end of the first. We have also discovered the truth, that the settlement of the Text, though mainly made in the fourth century, was not finally accomplished till the eighth century at the earliest; and that the later Uncials, not the oldest, together with the cursives express, not singly, not in small batches or companies, but in their main agreement, the decisions which had grown up in the Church. In so doing, attention has been paid to all the existing evidence: none has been omitted.Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, has been the underlying principle. The foundations of the building have been laid as deeply and as broadly as our power would allow. No other course would be in consonance with scientific procedure. The[pg 225]seven notes of truth have been made as comprehensive as possible. Antiquity, number, variety, weight, continuity, context, and internal evidence, include all points of view and all methods of examination which are really sound. The characters of the Vatican, Sinaitic, and Bezan manuscripts have been shewn to be bad, and the streams which led to their production from Syrio-Old-Latin and Alexandrian sources to the temporary school of Caesarea have been traced and explained. It has been also shewn to be probable that corruption began and took root even before the Gospels were written. The general conclusion which has grown upon our minds has been that the affections of Christians have not been misdirected; that the strongest exercise of reason has proved their instincts to have been sound and true; that the Text which we have used and loved rests upon a vast and varied support; that the multiform record of Manuscripts, Versions, and Fathers, is found to defend by large majorities in almost all instances those precious words of Holy Writ, which have been called in question during the latter half of this century.We submit that it cannot be denied that we have presented a strong case, and naturally we look to see what has been said against it, since except in some features it has been before the World and the Church for some years. We submit that it has not received due attention from opposing critics. If indeed the opinions of the other School had been preceded by, or grounded upon, a searching examination, such as we have made in the case of B and א, of the vast mass of evidence upon which we rest,—if this great body of testimony had been proved to be bad from overbalancing testimony or otherwise,—we should have found reason for doubt, or even for a reversal of our decisions. But Lachmann, Tregelles, and Tischendorf laid down principles chiefly, if not exclusively, on the score[pg 226]of their intrinsic probability. Westcott and Hort built up their own theory upon reasoning internal to it, without clearing the ground first by any careful and detailed scrutiny. Besides which, all of them constructed their buildings before travellers by railways and steamships had placed within their reach the larger part of the materials which are now ready for use. We hear constantly the proclamation made in dogmatic tones that they are right: no proof adequate to the strength of our contention has been worked out to shew that we are wrong.Nevertheless, it may be best to listen for a moment to such objections as have been advanced against conclusions like these, and which it may be presumed will be urged again.1.“After all it cannot be denied that B and א are the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament in existence, and that they must therefore be entitled to the deference due to their age.”Now the earlier part of this allegation is conceded by us entirely:prima facieit constitutes a very strong argument. But it is really found on examination to be superficial. Fathers and Versions are virtually older, and, as has been demonstrated, are dead against the claim set up on behalf of those ancient manuscripts, that they are the possessors of the true text of the Gospels. Besides which antiquity is not the sole note of truth any more than number is. So much has been already said on this part of the subject, that it is needless to enter into longer discussion here.2.“The testimony of witnesses ought to be weighed before it is reckoned.”Doubtless: this also is a truism, and allowance has been made for it in the various“notes of truth.”But this argument, apparently so simple, is really intended to carry a huge assumption involved in an elaborate maintenance of the (supposed) excellent character of B and א and their associates. After so much[pg 227]that has been brought to the charge of those two MSS. in this treatise, it is unnecessary now to urge more than that they appeared in strange times, when the Church was convulsed to her centre; that, as has been demonstrated, their peculiar readings were in a very decided minority in the period before them; and, as all admit, were rejected in the ages that passed after the time of their date.3. It is stated that the Traditional is a conflate text, i.e. that passages have been put together from more than one other text, so that they are composite in construction instead of being simple. We have already treated this allegation, but we reply now that it has not been established: the opinion of Canon Cooke who analysed all the examples quoted by Hort373, of Scrivener who said they proved nothing374, and of many other critics and scholars has been against it. The converse position is maintained, that the text of B and א is clipped and mutilated. Take the following passage, which is fairly typical of the large class in question:“For we are members of His Body”(writes St. Paul375)“of His flesh and of His bones”(ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων αἰτοῦ). But those last 9 words are disallowed by recent editors, because they are absent from B-א, A, 8, and 17, and the margin of 67, besides the Bohairic version. Yet are the words genuine. They are found in DFGKLP and the whole body of the cursives: in the Old Latin and Vulgate and the two Syriac versions: in Irenaeus376,—in Theodorus of Mopsuestia377,—in Nilus378,—in Chrysostom379more than four times,—in Severianus380,—in Theodoret381,—in Anastasius Sinaita382,—and in John Damascene383. They were probably read by[pg 228]Origen384and by Methodius385. Many Latin Fathers, viz. Ambrose386,—Pacian387,—Esaias abb.388,—Victorinus389,—Jerome390,—Augustine391—and Leo P.392recognise them.Such ample and such varied attestation is not to be set aside by the vapid and unsound dictum“Western and Syrian,”—or by the weak suggestion that the words in dispute are an unauthorized gloss, fabricated from the LXX version of Gen. ii. 23. That St. Paul's allusion is to the oracular utterance of our first father Adam, is true enough: but, as Alford after Bengel well points out, it is incredible that any forger can have been at work here.Such questions however, as we must again and again insist, are not to be determined by internal considerations: no,—nor by dictation, nor by prejudice, nor by divination, nor by any subjective theory of conflation on which experts and critics may be hopelessly at issue: but by the weight of the definite evidence actually producible and[pg 229]produced on either side. And when, as in the present instance, Antiquity, Variety of testimony, Respectability of witnesses, and Number are overwhelmingly in favour of the Traditional Text, what else is it but an outrage on the laws of evidence to claim that the same little band of documents which have already come before us so often, and always been found in error, even though aided by speculative suppositions, shall be permitted to outweigh all other testimony?To build therefore upon a conflate or composite character in a set of readings would be contrary to the evidence:—or at any rate, it would at the best be to lay foundations upon ground which is approved by one school of critics and disputed by the other in every case. The determination of the text of Holy Scripture has not been handed over to a mere conflict of opposite opinions, or to the uncertain sands of conjecture.Besides, as has been already stated, no amount of conflation would supply passages which the destructive school would wholly leave out. It is impossible to“conflate”in places where Bא and their associates furnish no materials for the supposed conflation. Bricks cannot be made without clay. The materials actually existing are those of the Traditional Text itself. But in fact these questions are not to be settled by the scholarly taste or opinions of either school, even of that which we advocate. They must rest upon the verdict found by the facts in evidence: and those facts have been already placed in array.4. Again, stress is laid upon Genealogy. Indeed, as Dean Burgon himself goes on to say, so much has lately been written about“the principle”and“the method”“of genealogy,”that it becomes in a high degree desirable that we should ascertain precisely what those expressions lawfully mean. No fair controversialist would willingly fail to assign its legitimate place and value to any principle for[pg 230]which he observes an opponent eagerly contending. But here is a“principle”and here is a“method”which are declared to be of even paramount importance.“Documents ... are all fragments, usually casual and scattered fragments, of a genealogical tree of transmission, sometimes of vast extent and intricacy. The more exactly we are able to trace the chief ramifications of the tree, and to determine the places of the several documents among the branches, the more secure will be the foundations laid for a criticism capable of distinguishing the original text from its successive corruptions393.”The expression is metaphorical; belonging of right to families of men, but transferred to Textual Science as indicative that similar phenomena attend families of manuscripts. Unfortunately the phenomena attending transmission,—of Natures on the one hand, of Texts on the other,—are essentially dissimilar. A diminutive couple may give birth to a race of giants. A genius has been known to beget a dunce. A brood of children exhibiting extraordinary diversities of character, aspect, ability, sometimes spring from the same pair. Nothing like this is possible in the case of honestly-made copies of MSS. The analogy breaks down therefore in respect of its most essential feature. And yet, there can be no objection to the use of the term“Genealogy”in connexion with manuscripts, provided always that nothing more is meant thereby than derivation by the process of copying: nothing else claimed but that“Identity of reading implies identity of origin394.”Only in this limited way are we able to avail ourselves of the principle referred to. Of course if it were a well-ascertained fact concerning three copies (XYZ), that Z was copied from Y, and Y from X, XYZ might reasonably be spoken of as representing three descents in a pedigree; although the interval between Z and Y were only six[pg 231]months,—the interval between Y and X, six hundred years. Moreover, these would be not three independent authorities, but only one. Such a case, however,—(the fact cannot be too clearly apprehended),—is simply non-existent. What is known commonly lies on the surface:—viz. that occasionally between two or more copies there exists such an amount of peculiar textual affinity as to constrain us to adopt the supposition that they have been derived from a common original. These peculiarities of text, we tell ourselves, cannot be fortuitous. Taking our stand on the true principle that“identity of reading implies identity of origin,”we insist on reasoning from the known to the unknown: and (at our humble distance) we are fully as confident of our scientific fact as Adams and Le Verrier would have been of the existence of Neptune had they never actually obtained sight of that planet.So far are we therefore from denying the value and importance of the principle under discussion that we are able to demonstrate its efficacy in the resolution of some textual problems which have been given in this work. Thus E, the uncial copy of St. Paul, is“nothing better,”says Scrivener,“than a transcript of the Cod. Claromontanus”D.“The Greek is manifestly worthless, and should long since have been removed from the list of authorities395.”Tischendorf nevertheless, not Tregelles, quotes it on every page. He has no business to do so, Codexes D and E, to all intents and purposes, beingstrictly one Codex. This case, like the two next, happily does not admit of diversity of opinion. Next, F and G of St. Paul's Epistles, inasmuch as they are confessedly derived from one and the same archetype, are not to be reckoned as two authorities, but as one.Again, the correspondence between the nine MSS. of the Ferrar group—Evann. 13 at Paris, 69 at Leicester, 124 at[pg 232]Vienna, 346 at Milan, 556 in the British Museum, 561 at Bank House, Wisbech,—and in a lesser degree, 348 at Milan, 624 at Crypta Ferrata, 788 at Athens,—is so extraordinary as to render it certain that these copies are in the main derived from one common archetype396. Hence, though one of them (788) is of the tenth century, three (348, 561, 624) are of the eleventh, four (13, 124, 346, 556) of the twelfth, and one (69) of the fourteenth, their joint evidence is held to be tantamount to the recovery of a lost uncial or papyrus of very early date,—which uncial or papyrus, by the way, it would be convenient to indicate by a new symbol, as Fr. standing for Ferrar, since Φ which was once attributed to them is now appropriated to the Codex Beratinus. If indicated numerically, the figures should at all events be connected by a hyphen (13-69-124-346-&c.); not as if they were independent witnesses, as Tischendorf quotes them. And lastly, B and א are undeniably, more than any other two Codexes which can be named, the depositaries of one and the same peculiar, all but unique, text.I propose to apply the foregoing remarks to the solution of one of the most important of Textual problems. That a controversy has raged around the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel is known to all. Known also it is that a laborious treatise was published on the subject in 1871, which, in the opinion of competent judges, has had the effect of removing the“Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark”beyond the reach of suspicion. Notwithstanding this, at the end of ten years an attempt was made to revive the old plea. The passage, say Drs. Westcott and Hort,“manifestly cannot claim any Apostolic authority; but is doubtless founded on some tradition of the Apostolic age,”of which the“precise date must remain unknown.”It is“a very early interpolation”(pp. 51, 46). In a word,“the[pg 233]last twelve verses”of St. Mark's Gospel, according to Drs. Westcott and Hort, are spurious. But what is their ground of confidence? for we claim to be as competent to judge of testimony as they. It proves to be“the unique criterion supplied by the concord of the independent attestations of א and B”(p. 46).“Independent attestations”! But when two copies of the Gospel are confessedly derived from one and the same original, how can their“attestations”be called“independent”? This is however greatly to understate the case. The non-independence of B and א in respect of St. Mark xvi. 9-20 is absolutely unique: for, strange to relate, it so happens that the very leaf on which the end of St. Mark's Gospel and the beginning of St. Luke's is written (St. Mark xvi. 2-Luke i. 56), is one of the six leaves of Cod. א which are held to have been written by the scribe of Cod. B.“The inference,”remarks Scrivener,“is simple and direct, that at least in these leaves Codd. Bא make but one witness, not two397.”The principle of Genealogy admits of a more extended and a more important application to this case, because B and א do not stand quite alone, but are exclusively associated with three or four other manuscripts which may be regarded as being descended from them. As far as we can judge, they may be regarded as the founders, or at least as prominent members of a family, whose descendants were few, because they were generally condemned by the generations which came after them. Not they, but other families upon other genealogical stems, were the more like to the patriarch whose progeny was to equal the stars of heaven in multitude.Least of all shall I be so simple as to pretend to fix the[pg 234]precise date and assign a definite locality to the fontal source, or sources, of our present perplexity and distress. But I suspect that in the little handful of authorities which have acquired such a notoriety in the annals of recent Textual Criticism, at the head of which stand Codexes B and א, are to be recognized the characteristic features of a lost family of (once well known) second or third-century documents, which owed their existence to the misguided zeal of some well-intentioned but utterly incompetent persons who devoted themselves to the task of correcting the Text of Scripture; but were entirely unfit for the undertaking398.Yet I venture also to think that it was in a great measure at Alexandria that the text in question was fabricated. My chief reasons for thinking so are the following: (1) There is a marked resemblance between the peculiar readings of Bא and the two Egyptian Versions,—the Bohairic or Version of Lower Egypt especially. (2) No one can fail to have been struck by the evident sympathy between Origen,—who at all events had passed more than half his life at Alexandria,—and the text in question. (3) I notice that Nonnus also, who lived in the Thebaid, exhibits considerable sympathy with the text which I deem so corrupt. (4) I cannot overlook the fact that Cod. א was discovered in a monastery under the sway of the patriarch of Alexandria, though how it got there no evidence remains to point out. (5) The licentious handling so characteristic of the Septuagint Version of the O. T.,—the work of Alexandrian Jews,—points in the same direction, and leads me to suspect that Alexandria was the final source of the text of B-א. (6) I further observe that the sacred Text (κείμενον) in Cyril's Homilies[pg 235]on St. John is often similar to B-א; and this, I take for granted, was the effect of the school of Alexandria,—not of the patriarch himself. (7) Dionysius of Alexandria complains bitterly of the corrupt Codexes of his day: and certainly (8) Clemens habitually employed copies of a similar kind. He too was of Alexandria399.Such are the chief considerations which incline me to suspect that Alexandria contributed largely to our Textual troubles.The readings of B-א are the consequence of a junction of two or more streams and then of derivation from a single archetype. This inference is confirmed by the fact that the same general text which B exhibits is exhibited also by the eighth-century Codex L, the work probably of an Egyptian scribe400: and by the tenth-century Codex 33: and by the eleventh-century Codex 1: and to some extent by the twelfth-century Codex 69.We have already been able to advance to another and a very important step. There is nothing in the history of the earliest times of the Church to prove that vellum manuscripts of the New Testament existed in any number before the fourth century. No such documents have come down to us. But we do know, as has been shewn above401, that writings on papyrus were transcribed on vellum in the library of Caesarea. What must we then conclude? That, as has been already suggested, papyrus MSS. are mainly the progenitors of the Uncials, and probably of the oldest Uncials. Besides this inference, we have seen that it is also most probable that many of the Cursives were transcribed directly from papyrus books or rolls. So that the Genealogy of manuscripts of the New Testament includes a vast number of descendants, and many lines of descent, which ramified from one stem on the original start from[pg 236]the autograph of each book. The Vatican and the Sinaitic do not stand pre-eminent because of any great line of parentage passing through them to a multitudinous posterity inheriting the earth, but they are members of a condemned family of which the issue has been small. The rejected of the fourth century has been spurned by succeeding centuries. And surely now also the fourth century, rich in a roll of men conspicuous ever since for capacity and learning, may be permitted to proclaim its real sentiments and to be judged from its own decisions, without being disfranchised by critics of the nineteenth.The history of the Traditional Text, on the contrary, is continuous and complete under the view of Genealogy. The pedigree of it may be commended to the examination of the Heralds' College. It goes step by step in unbroken succession regularly back to the earliest time. The present printed editions may be compared for extreme accuracy with the text passed by the Elzevirs or Beza as the text received by all of their time. Erasmus followed his few MSS. because he knew them to be good representatives of the mind of the Church which had been informed under the ceaseless and loving care of mediaeval transcribers: and the text of Erasmus printed at Basle agreed in but little variation with the text of the Complutensian editors published in Spain, for which Cardinal Ximenes procured MSS. at whatever cost he could. No one doubts the coincidence in all essential points of the printed text with the text of the Cursives. Dr. Hort certifies the Cursive Text as far back as the middle of the fourth century. It depends upon various lines of descent, and rests on the testimony supplied by numerous contemporary Fathers before the year 1000a.d., when co-existing MSS. failed to bear witness in multitudes. The acceptance of it by the Church of the fifth century, which saw the settlement of the great doctrinal controversies either made or confirmed, proves[pg 237]that the seal was set upon the validity of the earliest pedigrees by the illustrious intellects and the sound faith of those days. And in the fifth chapter of this work, contemporary witness is carried back to the first days. There is thus a cluster of pedigrees, not in one line but in many parallel courses of descent, not in one country but in several, ranging over the whole Catholic Church where Greek was understood, attested by Versions, and illustrated copiously by Fathers, along which without break in the continuity the Traditional Text in its main features has been transmitted. Doubtless something still remains for the Church to do under the present extraordinary wealth of authorities in the verification of some particulars issuing in a small number of alterations, not in challenging or changing like the other school anything approaching to one-eighth of the New Testament402: for that we now possess in the main the very Words of the Holy Gospels as they issued from their inspired authors, we are taught under the principle of Genealogy that there is no valid reason to doubt.To conclude, the system which we advocate will be seen to contrast strikingly with that which is upheld by the opposing school, in three general ways:I. We have with us width and depth against the narrowness on their side. They are conspicuously contracted in the fewness of the witnesses which they deem worthy of credence. They are restricted as to the period of history which alone they consider to deserve attention. They are confined with regard to the countries from which their testimony comes. They would supply Christians with a shortened text, and educate them under a cast-iron system. We on the contrary champion the many against the few: we welcome all witnesses, and weigh all testimony: we uphold all the ages against one or two, and[pg 238]all the countries against a narrow space. We maintain the genuine and all-round Catholicism of real Christendom against a discarded sectarianism exhumed from the fourth century. If we condemn, it is because the evidence condemns. We cling to all the precious Words that have come down to us, because they have been so preserved to our days under verdicts depending upon overwhelming proof.II. We oppose facts to their speculation. They exalt B and א and D because in their own opinion those copies are the best. They weave ingenious webs, and invent subtle theories, because their paradox of a few against the many requires ingenuity and subtlety for its support. Dr. Hort revelled in finespun theories and technical terms, such as“Intrinsic Probability,”“Transcriptional Probability,”“Internal evidence of Readings,”“Internal evidence of Documents,”which of course connote a certain amount of evidence, but are weak pillars of a heavy structure. Even conjectural emendation403and inconsistent decrees404are not rejected. They are infected with the theorizing which spoils some of the best German work, and with the idealism which is the bane of many academic minds, especially at Oxford and Cambridge. In contrast with this sojourn in cloudland, we are essentially of the earth though not earthy. We are nothing, if we are not grounded in facts: our appeal is to facts, our test lies in facts, so far as we can we build testimonies upon testimonies and pile facts on facts. We imitate the procedure of the courts of justice in decisions resulting from the converging product of all the evidence, when it has been cross-examined and sifted. As men of business, not less than students, we endeavour to pursue the studies of the library according to the best methods of the world.III. Our opponents are gradually getting out of date: the world is drifting away from them. Thousands of[pg 239]manuscripts have been added to the known stores since Tischendorf formed his system, and Hort began to theorize, and their handful of favourite documents has become by comparison less and less. Since the deaths of both of those eminent critics, the treasures dug up in Egypt and elsewhere have put back the date of the science of palaeography from the fourth century after the Christian era to at least the third century before, and papyrus has sprung up into unexpected prominence in the ancient and mediaeval history of writing. It is discovered that there was no uncial period through which the genealogy of cursives has necessarily passed. Old theories on those points must generally be reconstructed if they are to tally with known facts. But this accession of knowledge which puts our opponents in the wrong, has no effect on us except to confirm our position with new proof. Indeed, we welcome the unlocking of the all but boundless treasury of ancient wealth, since our theory, being as open as possible, and resting upon the visible and real, remains not only uninjured but strengthened. If it were to require any re-arrangement, that would be only a re-ordering of particulars, not of our principles which are capacious enough to admit of any addition of materials of judgement. We trust to the Church of all the ages as the keeper and witness of Holy Writ, we bow to the teaching of theHoly Ghost, as conveyed in all wisdom by facts and evidence: and we are certain, that, following no preconceived notions of our own, but led under such guidance, moved by principles so reasonable and comprehensive, and observing rules and instructions appealing to us with such authority, we are in all main respectsstanding upon the Rock.

The Traditional Text has now been traced, from the earliest years of Christianity of which any record of the New Testament remains, to the period when it was enshrined in a large number of carefully-written manuscripts in main accord with one another. Proof has been given from the writings of the early Fathers, that the idea that the Traditional Text arose in the middle of the fourth century is a mere hallucination, prompted by only a partial acquaintance with those writings. And witness to the existence and predominance of that form of Text has been found in the Peshitto Version and in the best of the Latin Versions, which themselves also have been followed back to the beginning of the second century or the end of the first. We have also discovered the truth, that the settlement of the Text, though mainly made in the fourth century, was not finally accomplished till the eighth century at the earliest; and that the later Uncials, not the oldest, together with the cursives express, not singly, not in small batches or companies, but in their main agreement, the decisions which had grown up in the Church. In so doing, attention has been paid to all the existing evidence: none has been omitted.Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, has been the underlying principle. The foundations of the building have been laid as deeply and as broadly as our power would allow. No other course would be in consonance with scientific procedure. The[pg 225]seven notes of truth have been made as comprehensive as possible. Antiquity, number, variety, weight, continuity, context, and internal evidence, include all points of view and all methods of examination which are really sound. The characters of the Vatican, Sinaitic, and Bezan manuscripts have been shewn to be bad, and the streams which led to their production from Syrio-Old-Latin and Alexandrian sources to the temporary school of Caesarea have been traced and explained. It has been also shewn to be probable that corruption began and took root even before the Gospels were written. The general conclusion which has grown upon our minds has been that the affections of Christians have not been misdirected; that the strongest exercise of reason has proved their instincts to have been sound and true; that the Text which we have used and loved rests upon a vast and varied support; that the multiform record of Manuscripts, Versions, and Fathers, is found to defend by large majorities in almost all instances those precious words of Holy Writ, which have been called in question during the latter half of this century.

We submit that it cannot be denied that we have presented a strong case, and naturally we look to see what has been said against it, since except in some features it has been before the World and the Church for some years. We submit that it has not received due attention from opposing critics. If indeed the opinions of the other School had been preceded by, or grounded upon, a searching examination, such as we have made in the case of B and א, of the vast mass of evidence upon which we rest,—if this great body of testimony had been proved to be bad from overbalancing testimony or otherwise,—we should have found reason for doubt, or even for a reversal of our decisions. But Lachmann, Tregelles, and Tischendorf laid down principles chiefly, if not exclusively, on the score[pg 226]of their intrinsic probability. Westcott and Hort built up their own theory upon reasoning internal to it, without clearing the ground first by any careful and detailed scrutiny. Besides which, all of them constructed their buildings before travellers by railways and steamships had placed within their reach the larger part of the materials which are now ready for use. We hear constantly the proclamation made in dogmatic tones that they are right: no proof adequate to the strength of our contention has been worked out to shew that we are wrong.

Nevertheless, it may be best to listen for a moment to such objections as have been advanced against conclusions like these, and which it may be presumed will be urged again.

1.“After all it cannot be denied that B and א are the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament in existence, and that they must therefore be entitled to the deference due to their age.”Now the earlier part of this allegation is conceded by us entirely:prima facieit constitutes a very strong argument. But it is really found on examination to be superficial. Fathers and Versions are virtually older, and, as has been demonstrated, are dead against the claim set up on behalf of those ancient manuscripts, that they are the possessors of the true text of the Gospels. Besides which antiquity is not the sole note of truth any more than number is. So much has been already said on this part of the subject, that it is needless to enter into longer discussion here.

2.“The testimony of witnesses ought to be weighed before it is reckoned.”Doubtless: this also is a truism, and allowance has been made for it in the various“notes of truth.”But this argument, apparently so simple, is really intended to carry a huge assumption involved in an elaborate maintenance of the (supposed) excellent character of B and א and their associates. After so much[pg 227]that has been brought to the charge of those two MSS. in this treatise, it is unnecessary now to urge more than that they appeared in strange times, when the Church was convulsed to her centre; that, as has been demonstrated, their peculiar readings were in a very decided minority in the period before them; and, as all admit, were rejected in the ages that passed after the time of their date.

3. It is stated that the Traditional is a conflate text, i.e. that passages have been put together from more than one other text, so that they are composite in construction instead of being simple. We have already treated this allegation, but we reply now that it has not been established: the opinion of Canon Cooke who analysed all the examples quoted by Hort373, of Scrivener who said they proved nothing374, and of many other critics and scholars has been against it. The converse position is maintained, that the text of B and א is clipped and mutilated. Take the following passage, which is fairly typical of the large class in question:“For we are members of His Body”(writes St. Paul375)“of His flesh and of His bones”(ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐκ τῶν ὀστέων αἰτοῦ). But those last 9 words are disallowed by recent editors, because they are absent from B-א, A, 8, and 17, and the margin of 67, besides the Bohairic version. Yet are the words genuine. They are found in DFGKLP and the whole body of the cursives: in the Old Latin and Vulgate and the two Syriac versions: in Irenaeus376,—in Theodorus of Mopsuestia377,—in Nilus378,—in Chrysostom379more than four times,—in Severianus380,—in Theodoret381,—in Anastasius Sinaita382,—and in John Damascene383. They were probably read by[pg 228]Origen384and by Methodius385. Many Latin Fathers, viz. Ambrose386,—Pacian387,—Esaias abb.388,—Victorinus389,—Jerome390,—Augustine391—and Leo P.392recognise them.

Such ample and such varied attestation is not to be set aside by the vapid and unsound dictum“Western and Syrian,”—or by the weak suggestion that the words in dispute are an unauthorized gloss, fabricated from the LXX version of Gen. ii. 23. That St. Paul's allusion is to the oracular utterance of our first father Adam, is true enough: but, as Alford after Bengel well points out, it is incredible that any forger can have been at work here.

Such questions however, as we must again and again insist, are not to be determined by internal considerations: no,—nor by dictation, nor by prejudice, nor by divination, nor by any subjective theory of conflation on which experts and critics may be hopelessly at issue: but by the weight of the definite evidence actually producible and[pg 229]produced on either side. And when, as in the present instance, Antiquity, Variety of testimony, Respectability of witnesses, and Number are overwhelmingly in favour of the Traditional Text, what else is it but an outrage on the laws of evidence to claim that the same little band of documents which have already come before us so often, and always been found in error, even though aided by speculative suppositions, shall be permitted to outweigh all other testimony?

To build therefore upon a conflate or composite character in a set of readings would be contrary to the evidence:—or at any rate, it would at the best be to lay foundations upon ground which is approved by one school of critics and disputed by the other in every case. The determination of the text of Holy Scripture has not been handed over to a mere conflict of opposite opinions, or to the uncertain sands of conjecture.

Besides, as has been already stated, no amount of conflation would supply passages which the destructive school would wholly leave out. It is impossible to“conflate”in places where Bא and their associates furnish no materials for the supposed conflation. Bricks cannot be made without clay. The materials actually existing are those of the Traditional Text itself. But in fact these questions are not to be settled by the scholarly taste or opinions of either school, even of that which we advocate. They must rest upon the verdict found by the facts in evidence: and those facts have been already placed in array.

4. Again, stress is laid upon Genealogy. Indeed, as Dean Burgon himself goes on to say, so much has lately been written about“the principle”and“the method”“of genealogy,”that it becomes in a high degree desirable that we should ascertain precisely what those expressions lawfully mean. No fair controversialist would willingly fail to assign its legitimate place and value to any principle for[pg 230]which he observes an opponent eagerly contending. But here is a“principle”and here is a“method”which are declared to be of even paramount importance.“Documents ... are all fragments, usually casual and scattered fragments, of a genealogical tree of transmission, sometimes of vast extent and intricacy. The more exactly we are able to trace the chief ramifications of the tree, and to determine the places of the several documents among the branches, the more secure will be the foundations laid for a criticism capable of distinguishing the original text from its successive corruptions393.”

The expression is metaphorical; belonging of right to families of men, but transferred to Textual Science as indicative that similar phenomena attend families of manuscripts. Unfortunately the phenomena attending transmission,—of Natures on the one hand, of Texts on the other,—are essentially dissimilar. A diminutive couple may give birth to a race of giants. A genius has been known to beget a dunce. A brood of children exhibiting extraordinary diversities of character, aspect, ability, sometimes spring from the same pair. Nothing like this is possible in the case of honestly-made copies of MSS. The analogy breaks down therefore in respect of its most essential feature. And yet, there can be no objection to the use of the term“Genealogy”in connexion with manuscripts, provided always that nothing more is meant thereby than derivation by the process of copying: nothing else claimed but that“Identity of reading implies identity of origin394.”

Only in this limited way are we able to avail ourselves of the principle referred to. Of course if it were a well-ascertained fact concerning three copies (XYZ), that Z was copied from Y, and Y from X, XYZ might reasonably be spoken of as representing three descents in a pedigree; although the interval between Z and Y were only six[pg 231]months,—the interval between Y and X, six hundred years. Moreover, these would be not three independent authorities, but only one. Such a case, however,—(the fact cannot be too clearly apprehended),—is simply non-existent. What is known commonly lies on the surface:—viz. that occasionally between two or more copies there exists such an amount of peculiar textual affinity as to constrain us to adopt the supposition that they have been derived from a common original. These peculiarities of text, we tell ourselves, cannot be fortuitous. Taking our stand on the true principle that“identity of reading implies identity of origin,”we insist on reasoning from the known to the unknown: and (at our humble distance) we are fully as confident of our scientific fact as Adams and Le Verrier would have been of the existence of Neptune had they never actually obtained sight of that planet.

So far are we therefore from denying the value and importance of the principle under discussion that we are able to demonstrate its efficacy in the resolution of some textual problems which have been given in this work. Thus E, the uncial copy of St. Paul, is“nothing better,”says Scrivener,“than a transcript of the Cod. Claromontanus”D.“The Greek is manifestly worthless, and should long since have been removed from the list of authorities395.”Tischendorf nevertheless, not Tregelles, quotes it on every page. He has no business to do so, Codexes D and E, to all intents and purposes, beingstrictly one Codex. This case, like the two next, happily does not admit of diversity of opinion. Next, F and G of St. Paul's Epistles, inasmuch as they are confessedly derived from one and the same archetype, are not to be reckoned as two authorities, but as one.

Again, the correspondence between the nine MSS. of the Ferrar group—Evann. 13 at Paris, 69 at Leicester, 124 at[pg 232]Vienna, 346 at Milan, 556 in the British Museum, 561 at Bank House, Wisbech,—and in a lesser degree, 348 at Milan, 624 at Crypta Ferrata, 788 at Athens,—is so extraordinary as to render it certain that these copies are in the main derived from one common archetype396. Hence, though one of them (788) is of the tenth century, three (348, 561, 624) are of the eleventh, four (13, 124, 346, 556) of the twelfth, and one (69) of the fourteenth, their joint evidence is held to be tantamount to the recovery of a lost uncial or papyrus of very early date,—which uncial or papyrus, by the way, it would be convenient to indicate by a new symbol, as Fr. standing for Ferrar, since Φ which was once attributed to them is now appropriated to the Codex Beratinus. If indicated numerically, the figures should at all events be connected by a hyphen (13-69-124-346-&c.); not as if they were independent witnesses, as Tischendorf quotes them. And lastly, B and א are undeniably, more than any other two Codexes which can be named, the depositaries of one and the same peculiar, all but unique, text.

I propose to apply the foregoing remarks to the solution of one of the most important of Textual problems. That a controversy has raged around the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel is known to all. Known also it is that a laborious treatise was published on the subject in 1871, which, in the opinion of competent judges, has had the effect of removing the“Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark”beyond the reach of suspicion. Notwithstanding this, at the end of ten years an attempt was made to revive the old plea. The passage, say Drs. Westcott and Hort,“manifestly cannot claim any Apostolic authority; but is doubtless founded on some tradition of the Apostolic age,”of which the“precise date must remain unknown.”It is“a very early interpolation”(pp. 51, 46). In a word,“the[pg 233]last twelve verses”of St. Mark's Gospel, according to Drs. Westcott and Hort, are spurious. But what is their ground of confidence? for we claim to be as competent to judge of testimony as they. It proves to be“the unique criterion supplied by the concord of the independent attestations of א and B”(p. 46).

“Independent attestations”! But when two copies of the Gospel are confessedly derived from one and the same original, how can their“attestations”be called“independent”? This is however greatly to understate the case. The non-independence of B and א in respect of St. Mark xvi. 9-20 is absolutely unique: for, strange to relate, it so happens that the very leaf on which the end of St. Mark's Gospel and the beginning of St. Luke's is written (St. Mark xvi. 2-Luke i. 56), is one of the six leaves of Cod. א which are held to have been written by the scribe of Cod. B.“The inference,”remarks Scrivener,“is simple and direct, that at least in these leaves Codd. Bא make but one witness, not two397.”

The principle of Genealogy admits of a more extended and a more important application to this case, because B and א do not stand quite alone, but are exclusively associated with three or four other manuscripts which may be regarded as being descended from them. As far as we can judge, they may be regarded as the founders, or at least as prominent members of a family, whose descendants were few, because they were generally condemned by the generations which came after them. Not they, but other families upon other genealogical stems, were the more like to the patriarch whose progeny was to equal the stars of heaven in multitude.

Least of all shall I be so simple as to pretend to fix the[pg 234]precise date and assign a definite locality to the fontal source, or sources, of our present perplexity and distress. But I suspect that in the little handful of authorities which have acquired such a notoriety in the annals of recent Textual Criticism, at the head of which stand Codexes B and א, are to be recognized the characteristic features of a lost family of (once well known) second or third-century documents, which owed their existence to the misguided zeal of some well-intentioned but utterly incompetent persons who devoted themselves to the task of correcting the Text of Scripture; but were entirely unfit for the undertaking398.

Yet I venture also to think that it was in a great measure at Alexandria that the text in question was fabricated. My chief reasons for thinking so are the following: (1) There is a marked resemblance between the peculiar readings of Bא and the two Egyptian Versions,—the Bohairic or Version of Lower Egypt especially. (2) No one can fail to have been struck by the evident sympathy between Origen,—who at all events had passed more than half his life at Alexandria,—and the text in question. (3) I notice that Nonnus also, who lived in the Thebaid, exhibits considerable sympathy with the text which I deem so corrupt. (4) I cannot overlook the fact that Cod. א was discovered in a monastery under the sway of the patriarch of Alexandria, though how it got there no evidence remains to point out. (5) The licentious handling so characteristic of the Septuagint Version of the O. T.,—the work of Alexandrian Jews,—points in the same direction, and leads me to suspect that Alexandria was the final source of the text of B-א. (6) I further observe that the sacred Text (κείμενον) in Cyril's Homilies[pg 235]on St. John is often similar to B-א; and this, I take for granted, was the effect of the school of Alexandria,—not of the patriarch himself. (7) Dionysius of Alexandria complains bitterly of the corrupt Codexes of his day: and certainly (8) Clemens habitually employed copies of a similar kind. He too was of Alexandria399.

Such are the chief considerations which incline me to suspect that Alexandria contributed largely to our Textual troubles.

The readings of B-א are the consequence of a junction of two or more streams and then of derivation from a single archetype. This inference is confirmed by the fact that the same general text which B exhibits is exhibited also by the eighth-century Codex L, the work probably of an Egyptian scribe400: and by the tenth-century Codex 33: and by the eleventh-century Codex 1: and to some extent by the twelfth-century Codex 69.

We have already been able to advance to another and a very important step. There is nothing in the history of the earliest times of the Church to prove that vellum manuscripts of the New Testament existed in any number before the fourth century. No such documents have come down to us. But we do know, as has been shewn above401, that writings on papyrus were transcribed on vellum in the library of Caesarea. What must we then conclude? That, as has been already suggested, papyrus MSS. are mainly the progenitors of the Uncials, and probably of the oldest Uncials. Besides this inference, we have seen that it is also most probable that many of the Cursives were transcribed directly from papyrus books or rolls. So that the Genealogy of manuscripts of the New Testament includes a vast number of descendants, and many lines of descent, which ramified from one stem on the original start from[pg 236]the autograph of each book. The Vatican and the Sinaitic do not stand pre-eminent because of any great line of parentage passing through them to a multitudinous posterity inheriting the earth, but they are members of a condemned family of which the issue has been small. The rejected of the fourth century has been spurned by succeeding centuries. And surely now also the fourth century, rich in a roll of men conspicuous ever since for capacity and learning, may be permitted to proclaim its real sentiments and to be judged from its own decisions, without being disfranchised by critics of the nineteenth.

The history of the Traditional Text, on the contrary, is continuous and complete under the view of Genealogy. The pedigree of it may be commended to the examination of the Heralds' College. It goes step by step in unbroken succession regularly back to the earliest time. The present printed editions may be compared for extreme accuracy with the text passed by the Elzevirs or Beza as the text received by all of their time. Erasmus followed his few MSS. because he knew them to be good representatives of the mind of the Church which had been informed under the ceaseless and loving care of mediaeval transcribers: and the text of Erasmus printed at Basle agreed in but little variation with the text of the Complutensian editors published in Spain, for which Cardinal Ximenes procured MSS. at whatever cost he could. No one doubts the coincidence in all essential points of the printed text with the text of the Cursives. Dr. Hort certifies the Cursive Text as far back as the middle of the fourth century. It depends upon various lines of descent, and rests on the testimony supplied by numerous contemporary Fathers before the year 1000a.d., when co-existing MSS. failed to bear witness in multitudes. The acceptance of it by the Church of the fifth century, which saw the settlement of the great doctrinal controversies either made or confirmed, proves[pg 237]that the seal was set upon the validity of the earliest pedigrees by the illustrious intellects and the sound faith of those days. And in the fifth chapter of this work, contemporary witness is carried back to the first days. There is thus a cluster of pedigrees, not in one line but in many parallel courses of descent, not in one country but in several, ranging over the whole Catholic Church where Greek was understood, attested by Versions, and illustrated copiously by Fathers, along which without break in the continuity the Traditional Text in its main features has been transmitted. Doubtless something still remains for the Church to do under the present extraordinary wealth of authorities in the verification of some particulars issuing in a small number of alterations, not in challenging or changing like the other school anything approaching to one-eighth of the New Testament402: for that we now possess in the main the very Words of the Holy Gospels as they issued from their inspired authors, we are taught under the principle of Genealogy that there is no valid reason to doubt.

To conclude, the system which we advocate will be seen to contrast strikingly with that which is upheld by the opposing school, in three general ways:

I. We have with us width and depth against the narrowness on their side. They are conspicuously contracted in the fewness of the witnesses which they deem worthy of credence. They are restricted as to the period of history which alone they consider to deserve attention. They are confined with regard to the countries from which their testimony comes. They would supply Christians with a shortened text, and educate them under a cast-iron system. We on the contrary champion the many against the few: we welcome all witnesses, and weigh all testimony: we uphold all the ages against one or two, and[pg 238]all the countries against a narrow space. We maintain the genuine and all-round Catholicism of real Christendom against a discarded sectarianism exhumed from the fourth century. If we condemn, it is because the evidence condemns. We cling to all the precious Words that have come down to us, because they have been so preserved to our days under verdicts depending upon overwhelming proof.

II. We oppose facts to their speculation. They exalt B and א and D because in their own opinion those copies are the best. They weave ingenious webs, and invent subtle theories, because their paradox of a few against the many requires ingenuity and subtlety for its support. Dr. Hort revelled in finespun theories and technical terms, such as“Intrinsic Probability,”“Transcriptional Probability,”“Internal evidence of Readings,”“Internal evidence of Documents,”which of course connote a certain amount of evidence, but are weak pillars of a heavy structure. Even conjectural emendation403and inconsistent decrees404are not rejected. They are infected with the theorizing which spoils some of the best German work, and with the idealism which is the bane of many academic minds, especially at Oxford and Cambridge. In contrast with this sojourn in cloudland, we are essentially of the earth though not earthy. We are nothing, if we are not grounded in facts: our appeal is to facts, our test lies in facts, so far as we can we build testimonies upon testimonies and pile facts on facts. We imitate the procedure of the courts of justice in decisions resulting from the converging product of all the evidence, when it has been cross-examined and sifted. As men of business, not less than students, we endeavour to pursue the studies of the library according to the best methods of the world.

III. Our opponents are gradually getting out of date: the world is drifting away from them. Thousands of[pg 239]manuscripts have been added to the known stores since Tischendorf formed his system, and Hort began to theorize, and their handful of favourite documents has become by comparison less and less. Since the deaths of both of those eminent critics, the treasures dug up in Egypt and elsewhere have put back the date of the science of palaeography from the fourth century after the Christian era to at least the third century before, and papyrus has sprung up into unexpected prominence in the ancient and mediaeval history of writing. It is discovered that there was no uncial period through which the genealogy of cursives has necessarily passed. Old theories on those points must generally be reconstructed if they are to tally with known facts. But this accession of knowledge which puts our opponents in the wrong, has no effect on us except to confirm our position with new proof. Indeed, we welcome the unlocking of the all but boundless treasury of ancient wealth, since our theory, being as open as possible, and resting upon the visible and real, remains not only uninjured but strengthened. If it were to require any re-arrangement, that would be only a re-ordering of particulars, not of our principles which are capacious enough to admit of any addition of materials of judgement. We trust to the Church of all the ages as the keeper and witness of Holy Writ, we bow to the teaching of theHoly Ghost, as conveyed in all wisdom by facts and evidence: and we are certain, that, following no preconceived notions of our own, but led under such guidance, moved by principles so reasonable and comprehensive, and observing rules and instructions appealing to us with such authority, we are in all main respects

standing upon the Rock.

Appendix I. Honeycomb—ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου.[The Dean left positive instructions for the publication of this Dissertation, as being finished for Press.]I propose next to call attention to the omission from St. Luke xxiv. 42 of a precious incident in the history of our Lord's Resurrection. It was in order effectually to convince the Disciples that it was Himself, in His human body, who stood before them in the upper chamber on the evening of the first Easter Day, that He inquired, [ver. 41]“Have ye here any meat? [ver. 42] and they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish,and of an honeycomb.”But those four last words (καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου) because they are not found in six copies of the Gospel, are by Westcott and Hort ejected from the text. Calamitous to relate, the Revisers of 1881 were by those critics persuaded to exclude them also. How do men suppose that such a clause as that established itself universally in the sacred text, if it be spurious?“How do you suppose,”I shall be asked in reply,“if it be genuine, that such a clause became omitted from any manuscript at all?”I answer,—The omission is due to the prevalence in the earliest age of fabricated exhibitions of the Gospel narrative; in which, singular to relate, the incident recorded in St. Luke xxiv. 41-43 was identified with that other mysterious repast which St. John describes in his last chapter405.[pg 241]It seems incredible, at first sight, that an attempt would ever be made to establish an enforced harmony between incidents exhibiting so many points of marked contrast: for St. Luke speaks of (1)“broiled fish [ἰχθύος ὀπτοῦ] and honeycomb,”(2) which“theygaveHim,”(3)“andHedid eat”(4) on the first Easter Day, (5) at evening, (6) in a chamber, (7) at Jerusalem:—whereas St. John specifies (1)“bread, and fish [ὀψάριον] likewise,”(2) whichHegave them, (3) and of which it is not related that Himself partook. (4) The occasion was subsequent: (5) the time, early morning: (6) the scene, the sea-shore: (7) the country, Galilee.Let it be candidly admitted on the other hand, in the way of excuse for those ancient men, that“broiled fish”was common to both repasts; that they both belong to the period subsequent to the Resurrection: that the same parties, ourLordnamely and His Apostles, were concerned in either transaction; and that both are prefaced by similar words of inquiry. Waiving this, it is a plain fact that Eusebius in his 9th Canon, makes the two incidents parallel; numbering St. Luke (xxix. 41-3), § 341; and St. John (xxi. 9, 10, 12, first half, and 13), severally §§ 221, 223, 225. The Syriac sections which have hitherto escaped the attention of critical scholars406are yet more precise. Let the intention of their venerable compiler—whoever he may have been—be exhibited in full. It has never been done before:—“(St. Lukexxiv.)“(St. Johnxxi.)”“§ 397. [Jesus] said unto them, Have ye here any meat? (ver. 41.)“§ 255. Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered Him, No. (ver. 5.)“Id....“§ 259 ... As soon then as they were come to land, they saw[pg 242]a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. (ver. 9.)“§ 398. And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb. (ver. 42.)“§ 264. Jesus then cometh and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise. (ver. 13.)“§ 399. And He took it and did eat before them. (ver. 43.)”“§ 262. Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. (ver. 12.)”The intention of all this is unmistakable. The places are deliberately identified. But the mischief is of much older date than the Eusebian Canons, and must have been derived in the first instance from a distinct source. Eusebius, as he himself informs us, did but follow in the wake of others. Should the Diatessaron cf Ammonius or that of Tatian ever be recovered, a flood of light will for the first time be poured over a department of evidence where at present we must be content to grope our way407.But another element of confusion I suspect is derived from that lost Commentary on the Song of Solomon in which Origen is said to have surpassed himself408. Certain of the ancients insist on discovering in St. Luke xxiv. 42 the literal fulfilment of the Greek version of Cant. v. 1,“I ate mybreadwithhoney.”Cyril of Jerusalem remarks that those words of the spouse“were fulfilled”when“they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb409”: while Gregory Nyss. points out (alluding to the same place) that“the true Bread,”when He appeared to His Disciples,“was by honeycomb made sweet410.”Little did those[pg 243]Fathers imagine the perplexity which at the end of 15 centuries their fervid and sometimes fanciful references to Scripture would occasion!I proceed to shew how inveterately the ancients have confused these two narratives, or rather these two distinct occasions.“Who knows not,”asks Epiphanius,“that ourSaviourate, after His Resurrection from the dead? As the holy Gospels of Truth have it,‘There was given unto Him’[which is a reference to St. Luke],‘bread and part of a broiled fish.’[but it is St. John who mentions the bread];—‘and He took and ate’[but only according to St. Luke],‘and gave to His disciples,’[but only according to St. John. And yet the reference must be to St. Luke's narrative, for Epiphanius straightway adds,]‘as Healsodid at the sea of Tiberias; both eating,’[althoughnoeating on His part is recorded concerningthatmeal,]‘and distributing411.’”Ephraem Syrus makes the same mis-statement.“If He was not flesh,”he asks,“who was it, at the sea of Tiberias, who ate412?”“While Peter is fishing,”says Hesychius413, (with plain reference to the narrative in St. John),“behold in theLord'shands bread and honeycomb414”: where the“honeycomb”has clearly lost its way, and has thrust out the“fish.”Epiphanius elsewhere even more fatally confuses the two incidents.“Jesus”(he says)“on a second occasion after His Resurrection ate both a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb415.”One would have set this down to sheer inadvertence, but that[pg 244]Jerome circumstantially makes the self-same assertion:—“In John we read that while the Apostles were fishing, He stood upon the shore, and ate part of a broiled fish and honeycomb. At Jerusalem He is not related to have done anything of the kind416.”From whom can Jerome have derived that wild statement417? It is certainly not his own. It occurs in his letter to Hedibia where he is clearly a translator only418. In another place, Jerome says,“He sought fish broiled upon the coals, in order to confirm the faith of His doubting Apostles, who were afraid to approach Him, because they thought they saw a spirit,—not a solid body419”: which is a mixing up of St. John's narrative with that of St Luke. Clemens Alex., in a passage which has hitherto escaped notice, deliberately affirms that“theLordblessed the loaves and the broiled fishes with which He feasted His Disciples420.”Where did he find that piece of information?One thing more in connexion with the“broiled fishand honeycomb.”Athanasius—and Cyril Alex.421after him—rehearse the incident with entire accuracy; but Athanasius adds the apocryphal statement that“He took what remained over, and gave it unto them422”: which tasteless appendix is found besides in Cureton's Syriac [not in the Lewis],—in the Bohairic, Harkleian, Armenian, and Ethiopic Versions; and must once have prevailed to a formidable extent, for[pg 245]it has even established itself in the Vulgate423. It is witnessed to, besides, by two ninth-century uncials (ΚΠ) and ten cursive copies424. The thoughtful reader will say to himself,—“Had only Cod. B joined itself to this formidable conspiracy of primitive witnesses, we should have had this also thrust upon us by the new school as indubitable Gospel: and remonstrances would have been in vain!”Now, as all must see, it is simply incredible that these many Fathers, had they employed honestly-made copies of St. Luke's and of St. John's Gospel, could have fallen into such frequent and such strange misrepresentations of what those Evangelists actually say. From some fabricated Gospel—from some“Diatessaron”or“Life of Christ,”once famous in the Church, long since utterly forgotten,—from some unauthentic narrative of our Saviour's Death and Resurrection, I say, these several depravations of the sacred story must needs have been imported into St. Luke's Gospel. And lo, out of all that farrago, the only manuscript traces which survive at this distant day, are found in the notorious B-א, with A, D, L, and Π,—one copy each of the Old Latin (e) and the Bohairic [and the Lewis],—which exclusively enjoy the unenviable distinction of omitting the incident of the“honeycomb”: while the confessedly spurious appendix,“He gave them what remained over,”enjoys a far more ancient, more varied, and more respectable attestation,—and yet has found favour with no single Editor of the Sacred Text: no, nor have our Revisers seen fit by a marginal note to apprize the ordinary English reader that“many uncial authorities”are disfigured in this particular way. With this latter accretion to the inspired verity, therefore, we need not delay ourselves: but that, so[pg 246]many disturbing influences having resulted, at the end of seventeen centuries, in the elimination of the clause καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου from six corrupt copies of St. Luke's Gospel,—a fixed determination or a blundering tendency should now be exhibited to mutilate the Evangelical narrative in respect of the incident which those four words embody,—this may well create anxiety. It makes critical inquiry an imperative duty: not indeed for our own satisfaction, but for that of others.Upon ourselves, the only effect produced by the sight of half a dozen Evangelia,—whether written in the uncial or in the cursive character we deem a matter of small account,—opposing themselves to the whole body of the copies, uncial and cursive alike, is simply to make us suspicious of those six Evangelia. Shew us that they have been repeatedly tried already and as often have been condemned, and our suspicion becomes intense. Add such evidence of the operation of a disturbing force as has been already set before the reader; and further inquiry in our own minds we deem superfluous. But we must answer those distinguished Critics who have ruled that Codexes B-א, D, L, can hardly if ever err.The silence of the Fathers is really not of much account. Some critics quote Clemens Alexandrinus. But let that Father be allowed to speak for himself. He is inveighing against gluttony.“Is not variety consistent with simplicity of diet?”(he asks); and he enumerates olives, vegetables, milk, cheese, &c. If it must be flesh, he proceeds, let the flesh be merely broiled.“‘Have ye here any meat?’said our Lord to His disciples after His Resurrection. Whereupon, having been by Him taught frugality in respect of diet,‘they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish.’... Yet may the fact not be overlooked that those who sup as The Word approves may partake besides of‘honeycomb.’The fittest food, in a word, we consider to be that which requires no[pg 247]cooking: next, as I began by explaining, cheap and ordinary articles of diet425.”Shall I be thought unreasonable if I insist that so far from allowing that Clemens is“silent”concerning the“honeycomb,”I even regard his testimony to the traditionary reading of St. Luke xxiv. 42 as express? At the end of 1700 years, I am as sure that“honeycomb”was found in his copy, as if I had seen it with my eyes.Origen, who is next adduced, in one place remarks concerning ourSaviour—“It is plain that after His Resurrection, He ate of a fish426.”The same Father elsewhere interprets mystically the circumstance that the Disciples“gave Him a piece of a broiled fish427.”Eusebius in like manner thrice mentions the fact that ourLordpartook of“broiled fish428”after His Resurrection. And because these writers do not also mention“honeycomb,”it is assumed by Tischendorf and his school that the words καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου cannot have existed in their copies of St. Luke429. The proposed inference is plainly inadmissible. Cyril, after quoting accurately St. Luke xxiv. 36 to 43 (“honeycomb”and all)430, proceeds to remark exclusively on the incident of the“fish”431. Ambrose and Augustine certainly recognized the incident of“the honeycomb”: yet the latter merely remarks that“to eat fish with theLordis better than to eat lentiles with Esau432;”while the former draws a mystical inference from“the record in the Gospel thatJesusatebroiled fishes433.”Is it[pg 248]not obvious that the more conspicuous incident,—that of the“broiled fish,”—being common to both repasts, stands for all that was partaken of on either occasion? in other words, represents the entire meal? It excludes neither the“honeycomb”of the upper chamber, nor the“bread”which was eaten beside the Galilean lake. Tertullian434, intending no slight either to the“broiled fish”or to the“bread,”makes mention only of our Lord's having“eaten honeycomb”after His Resurrection. And so Jerome, addressing John, bishop of Jerusalem, exclaims—“Why did the Lord eat honeycomb? Not in order to give thee licence to eat honey, but in order to demonstrate the truth of His Resurrection435.”To draw inferences from the rhetoricalsilenceof the Fathers as if we were dealing with a mathematical problem or an Act of Parliament, can only result in misconceptions of the meaning of those ancient men.As for Origen, there is nothing in either of the two places commonly cited from his writings436, where he only mentions the partaking of“fish,”to preclude the belief that Origen knew of the“honeycomb”also in St. Luke xxiv. 42. We have but fragments of his Commentary on St. Luke437, and an abridged translation of his famous Commentary on Canticles. Should these works of his be hereafter recovered in their entirety, I strongly suspect that a certain scholium in Cordier's Catena on St. Luke438, which contains a very elaborate recognition of the“honeycomb,”will be found to be nothing else but an excerpt from one or other of them. At foot the learned reader will be gratified by the sight of the original Greek of the scholium referred to439,[pg 249]which Cordier so infelicitously exhibits in Latin. He will at least be made aware that if it be not Origen who there speaks to us, it is some other very ancient father, whose testimony to the genuineness of the clause now under consideration is positive evidence in its favour which greatly outweighs the negative evidence of the archetype of B-א. But in fact as a specimen of mystical interpretation, the passage in question is quite in Origen's way440—has all his fervid wildness,—in all probability is actuallyhis.[pg 250]The question however to be decided is clearly not whether certain ancient copies of St. Luke were without the incident of the honeycomb; but only whether it is reasonable to infer from the premisses that the Evangelist made no mention of it. And I venture to anticipate that readers will decide this question with me in the negative. That, from a period of the remotest antiquity, certain disturbing forces have exercised a baneful influence over this portion of Scripture is a plain fact: and that their combined agency should have resulted in the elimination of the incident of the“honeycomb”from a few copies of St. Luke xxiv. 42, need create no surprise. On the other hand, this Evangelical incident is attested by the following witnesses:—In the second century, by Justin M.441,—by Clemens Alexandrinus442,—by Tertullian443,—by the Old-Latin,—and by the Peshitto Version:In the third century, by Cureton's Syriac,—and by the Bohairic:In the fourth century, by Athanasius444,—by Gregory of Nyssa445,—by Epiphanius446,—by Cyril of Jerusalem447,—by Jerome448,—by Augustine449,—and by the Vulgate:In the fifth century, by Cyril of Alexandria450,—by Proclus451,—by Vigilius Tapsensis452,—by the Armenian,—and Ethiopic Versions:In the sixth century, by Hesychius and Cod. N453:In the seventh century, by the Harkleian Version.Surely an Evangelical incident attested by so many, such respectable, and such venerable witnesses as these, is clearly above suspicion. Besides its recognition in the[pg 251]ancient scholium to which attention has been largely invited already454, we find the incident of the“honeycomb”recognized by 13 ancient Fathers,—by 8 ancient Versions,—by the unfaltering Tradition of the universal Church,—above all, by every copy of St. Luke's Gospel in existence (as far as is known), uncial as well as cursive—exceptsix. That it carries on its front the impress of its own genuineness, is what no one will deny455. Yet was Dr. Hort for dismissing it without ceremony.“A singular interpolation evidently from an extraneous source, written or oral,”he says. A singular hallucination, we venture to reply, based on ideal grounds and“a system [of Textual Criticism] hopelessly self-condemned456;”seeing that that ingenious and learned critic has nothing to urge except that the words in dispute are omitted by B-א,—by A seldom found in the Gospels in such association,—by D of the sixth century,—by L of the eighth,—by Π of the ninth.I have been so diffuse on this place because I desire to exhibit an instance shewing that certain perturbations of the sacred Text demand laborious investigation,—have a singular history of their own,—may on no account be disposed of in a high-handed way, by applying to them any cut and dried treatment,—nay I must say, any arbitrary shibboleth. The clause in dispute enjoys in perfection every note of a genuine reading: viz. number, antiquity, variety, respectability of witnesses, besides continuity of attestation: every one of which notes are away from that exhibition of the text which is contended for by my opponents457. Tischendorf conjectures that the“honeycomb”[pg 252]may have been first brought in from the“Gospel of the Hebrews.”What if, on the contrary, by the Valentinian“Gospel of Truth,”—a composition of the second century,—the“honeycomb”should have been first thrust out458? The plain statement of Epiphanius (quoted above459) seems to establish the fact that his maimed citation was derived from that suspicious source.Let the foregoing be accepted as a specimen of the injury occasionally sustained by the Evangelical text in a very remote age from the evil influence of the fabricated narratives, orDiatessarons, which anciently abounded. The genuineness of the clause καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου, it is hoped, will never more be seriously called in question. Surely it has been demonstrated to be quite above suspicion460.

[The Dean left positive instructions for the publication of this Dissertation, as being finished for Press.]

I propose next to call attention to the omission from St. Luke xxiv. 42 of a precious incident in the history of our Lord's Resurrection. It was in order effectually to convince the Disciples that it was Himself, in His human body, who stood before them in the upper chamber on the evening of the first Easter Day, that He inquired, [ver. 41]“Have ye here any meat? [ver. 42] and they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish,and of an honeycomb.”But those four last words (καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου) because they are not found in six copies of the Gospel, are by Westcott and Hort ejected from the text. Calamitous to relate, the Revisers of 1881 were by those critics persuaded to exclude them also. How do men suppose that such a clause as that established itself universally in the sacred text, if it be spurious?“How do you suppose,”I shall be asked in reply,“if it be genuine, that such a clause became omitted from any manuscript at all?”

I answer,—The omission is due to the prevalence in the earliest age of fabricated exhibitions of the Gospel narrative; in which, singular to relate, the incident recorded in St. Luke xxiv. 41-43 was identified with that other mysterious repast which St. John describes in his last chapter405.[pg 241]It seems incredible, at first sight, that an attempt would ever be made to establish an enforced harmony between incidents exhibiting so many points of marked contrast: for St. Luke speaks of (1)“broiled fish [ἰχθύος ὀπτοῦ] and honeycomb,”(2) which“theygaveHim,”(3)“andHedid eat”(4) on the first Easter Day, (5) at evening, (6) in a chamber, (7) at Jerusalem:—whereas St. John specifies (1)“bread, and fish [ὀψάριον] likewise,”(2) whichHegave them, (3) and of which it is not related that Himself partook. (4) The occasion was subsequent: (5) the time, early morning: (6) the scene, the sea-shore: (7) the country, Galilee.

Let it be candidly admitted on the other hand, in the way of excuse for those ancient men, that“broiled fish”was common to both repasts; that they both belong to the period subsequent to the Resurrection: that the same parties, ourLordnamely and His Apostles, were concerned in either transaction; and that both are prefaced by similar words of inquiry. Waiving this, it is a plain fact that Eusebius in his 9th Canon, makes the two incidents parallel; numbering St. Luke (xxix. 41-3), § 341; and St. John (xxi. 9, 10, 12, first half, and 13), severally §§ 221, 223, 225. The Syriac sections which have hitherto escaped the attention of critical scholars406are yet more precise. Let the intention of their venerable compiler—whoever he may have been—be exhibited in full. It has never been done before:—

The intention of all this is unmistakable. The places are deliberately identified. But the mischief is of much older date than the Eusebian Canons, and must have been derived in the first instance from a distinct source. Eusebius, as he himself informs us, did but follow in the wake of others. Should the Diatessaron cf Ammonius or that of Tatian ever be recovered, a flood of light will for the first time be poured over a department of evidence where at present we must be content to grope our way407.

But another element of confusion I suspect is derived from that lost Commentary on the Song of Solomon in which Origen is said to have surpassed himself408. Certain of the ancients insist on discovering in St. Luke xxiv. 42 the literal fulfilment of the Greek version of Cant. v. 1,“I ate mybreadwithhoney.”Cyril of Jerusalem remarks that those words of the spouse“were fulfilled”when“they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb409”: while Gregory Nyss. points out (alluding to the same place) that“the true Bread,”when He appeared to His Disciples,“was by honeycomb made sweet410.”Little did those[pg 243]Fathers imagine the perplexity which at the end of 15 centuries their fervid and sometimes fanciful references to Scripture would occasion!

I proceed to shew how inveterately the ancients have confused these two narratives, or rather these two distinct occasions.“Who knows not,”asks Epiphanius,“that ourSaviourate, after His Resurrection from the dead? As the holy Gospels of Truth have it,‘There was given unto Him’[which is a reference to St. Luke],‘bread and part of a broiled fish.’[but it is St. John who mentions the bread];—‘and He took and ate’[but only according to St. Luke],‘and gave to His disciples,’[but only according to St. John. And yet the reference must be to St. Luke's narrative, for Epiphanius straightway adds,]‘as Healsodid at the sea of Tiberias; both eating,’[althoughnoeating on His part is recorded concerningthatmeal,]‘and distributing411.’”Ephraem Syrus makes the same mis-statement.“If He was not flesh,”he asks,“who was it, at the sea of Tiberias, who ate412?”“While Peter is fishing,”says Hesychius413, (with plain reference to the narrative in St. John),“behold in theLord'shands bread and honeycomb414”: where the“honeycomb”has clearly lost its way, and has thrust out the“fish.”Epiphanius elsewhere even more fatally confuses the two incidents.“Jesus”(he says)“on a second occasion after His Resurrection ate both a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb415.”One would have set this down to sheer inadvertence, but that[pg 244]Jerome circumstantially makes the self-same assertion:—“In John we read that while the Apostles were fishing, He stood upon the shore, and ate part of a broiled fish and honeycomb. At Jerusalem He is not related to have done anything of the kind416.”From whom can Jerome have derived that wild statement417? It is certainly not his own. It occurs in his letter to Hedibia where he is clearly a translator only418. In another place, Jerome says,“He sought fish broiled upon the coals, in order to confirm the faith of His doubting Apostles, who were afraid to approach Him, because they thought they saw a spirit,—not a solid body419”: which is a mixing up of St. John's narrative with that of St Luke. Clemens Alex., in a passage which has hitherto escaped notice, deliberately affirms that“theLordblessed the loaves and the broiled fishes with which He feasted His Disciples420.”Where did he find that piece of information?

One thing more in connexion with the“broiled fishand honeycomb.”Athanasius—and Cyril Alex.421after him—rehearse the incident with entire accuracy; but Athanasius adds the apocryphal statement that“He took what remained over, and gave it unto them422”: which tasteless appendix is found besides in Cureton's Syriac [not in the Lewis],—in the Bohairic, Harkleian, Armenian, and Ethiopic Versions; and must once have prevailed to a formidable extent, for[pg 245]it has even established itself in the Vulgate423. It is witnessed to, besides, by two ninth-century uncials (ΚΠ) and ten cursive copies424. The thoughtful reader will say to himself,—“Had only Cod. B joined itself to this formidable conspiracy of primitive witnesses, we should have had this also thrust upon us by the new school as indubitable Gospel: and remonstrances would have been in vain!”

Now, as all must see, it is simply incredible that these many Fathers, had they employed honestly-made copies of St. Luke's and of St. John's Gospel, could have fallen into such frequent and such strange misrepresentations of what those Evangelists actually say. From some fabricated Gospel—from some“Diatessaron”or“Life of Christ,”once famous in the Church, long since utterly forgotten,—from some unauthentic narrative of our Saviour's Death and Resurrection, I say, these several depravations of the sacred story must needs have been imported into St. Luke's Gospel. And lo, out of all that farrago, the only manuscript traces which survive at this distant day, are found in the notorious B-א, with A, D, L, and Π,—one copy each of the Old Latin (e) and the Bohairic [and the Lewis],—which exclusively enjoy the unenviable distinction of omitting the incident of the“honeycomb”: while the confessedly spurious appendix,“He gave them what remained over,”enjoys a far more ancient, more varied, and more respectable attestation,—and yet has found favour with no single Editor of the Sacred Text: no, nor have our Revisers seen fit by a marginal note to apprize the ordinary English reader that“many uncial authorities”are disfigured in this particular way. With this latter accretion to the inspired verity, therefore, we need not delay ourselves: but that, so[pg 246]many disturbing influences having resulted, at the end of seventeen centuries, in the elimination of the clause καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου from six corrupt copies of St. Luke's Gospel,—a fixed determination or a blundering tendency should now be exhibited to mutilate the Evangelical narrative in respect of the incident which those four words embody,—this may well create anxiety. It makes critical inquiry an imperative duty: not indeed for our own satisfaction, but for that of others.

Upon ourselves, the only effect produced by the sight of half a dozen Evangelia,—whether written in the uncial or in the cursive character we deem a matter of small account,—opposing themselves to the whole body of the copies, uncial and cursive alike, is simply to make us suspicious of those six Evangelia. Shew us that they have been repeatedly tried already and as often have been condemned, and our suspicion becomes intense. Add such evidence of the operation of a disturbing force as has been already set before the reader; and further inquiry in our own minds we deem superfluous. But we must answer those distinguished Critics who have ruled that Codexes B-א, D, L, can hardly if ever err.

The silence of the Fathers is really not of much account. Some critics quote Clemens Alexandrinus. But let that Father be allowed to speak for himself. He is inveighing against gluttony.“Is not variety consistent with simplicity of diet?”(he asks); and he enumerates olives, vegetables, milk, cheese, &c. If it must be flesh, he proceeds, let the flesh be merely broiled.“‘Have ye here any meat?’said our Lord to His disciples after His Resurrection. Whereupon, having been by Him taught frugality in respect of diet,‘they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish.’... Yet may the fact not be overlooked that those who sup as The Word approves may partake besides of‘honeycomb.’The fittest food, in a word, we consider to be that which requires no[pg 247]cooking: next, as I began by explaining, cheap and ordinary articles of diet425.”Shall I be thought unreasonable if I insist that so far from allowing that Clemens is“silent”concerning the“honeycomb,”I even regard his testimony to the traditionary reading of St. Luke xxiv. 42 as express? At the end of 1700 years, I am as sure that“honeycomb”was found in his copy, as if I had seen it with my eyes.

Origen, who is next adduced, in one place remarks concerning ourSaviour—“It is plain that after His Resurrection, He ate of a fish426.”The same Father elsewhere interprets mystically the circumstance that the Disciples“gave Him a piece of a broiled fish427.”Eusebius in like manner thrice mentions the fact that ourLordpartook of“broiled fish428”after His Resurrection. And because these writers do not also mention“honeycomb,”it is assumed by Tischendorf and his school that the words καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου cannot have existed in their copies of St. Luke429. The proposed inference is plainly inadmissible. Cyril, after quoting accurately St. Luke xxiv. 36 to 43 (“honeycomb”and all)430, proceeds to remark exclusively on the incident of the“fish”431. Ambrose and Augustine certainly recognized the incident of“the honeycomb”: yet the latter merely remarks that“to eat fish with theLordis better than to eat lentiles with Esau432;”while the former draws a mystical inference from“the record in the Gospel thatJesusatebroiled fishes433.”Is it[pg 248]not obvious that the more conspicuous incident,—that of the“broiled fish,”—being common to both repasts, stands for all that was partaken of on either occasion? in other words, represents the entire meal? It excludes neither the“honeycomb”of the upper chamber, nor the“bread”which was eaten beside the Galilean lake. Tertullian434, intending no slight either to the“broiled fish”or to the“bread,”makes mention only of our Lord's having“eaten honeycomb”after His Resurrection. And so Jerome, addressing John, bishop of Jerusalem, exclaims—“Why did the Lord eat honeycomb? Not in order to give thee licence to eat honey, but in order to demonstrate the truth of His Resurrection435.”To draw inferences from the rhetoricalsilenceof the Fathers as if we were dealing with a mathematical problem or an Act of Parliament, can only result in misconceptions of the meaning of those ancient men.

As for Origen, there is nothing in either of the two places commonly cited from his writings436, where he only mentions the partaking of“fish,”to preclude the belief that Origen knew of the“honeycomb”also in St. Luke xxiv. 42. We have but fragments of his Commentary on St. Luke437, and an abridged translation of his famous Commentary on Canticles. Should these works of his be hereafter recovered in their entirety, I strongly suspect that a certain scholium in Cordier's Catena on St. Luke438, which contains a very elaborate recognition of the“honeycomb,”will be found to be nothing else but an excerpt from one or other of them. At foot the learned reader will be gratified by the sight of the original Greek of the scholium referred to439,[pg 249]which Cordier so infelicitously exhibits in Latin. He will at least be made aware that if it be not Origen who there speaks to us, it is some other very ancient father, whose testimony to the genuineness of the clause now under consideration is positive evidence in its favour which greatly outweighs the negative evidence of the archetype of B-א. But in fact as a specimen of mystical interpretation, the passage in question is quite in Origen's way440—has all his fervid wildness,—in all probability is actuallyhis.

The question however to be decided is clearly not whether certain ancient copies of St. Luke were without the incident of the honeycomb; but only whether it is reasonable to infer from the premisses that the Evangelist made no mention of it. And I venture to anticipate that readers will decide this question with me in the negative. That, from a period of the remotest antiquity, certain disturbing forces have exercised a baneful influence over this portion of Scripture is a plain fact: and that their combined agency should have resulted in the elimination of the incident of the“honeycomb”from a few copies of St. Luke xxiv. 42, need create no surprise. On the other hand, this Evangelical incident is attested by the following witnesses:—

In the second century, by Justin M.441,—by Clemens Alexandrinus442,—by Tertullian443,—by the Old-Latin,—and by the Peshitto Version:

In the third century, by Cureton's Syriac,—and by the Bohairic:

In the fourth century, by Athanasius444,—by Gregory of Nyssa445,—by Epiphanius446,—by Cyril of Jerusalem447,—by Jerome448,—by Augustine449,—and by the Vulgate:

In the fifth century, by Cyril of Alexandria450,—by Proclus451,—by Vigilius Tapsensis452,—by the Armenian,—and Ethiopic Versions:

In the sixth century, by Hesychius and Cod. N453:

In the seventh century, by the Harkleian Version.

Surely an Evangelical incident attested by so many, such respectable, and such venerable witnesses as these, is clearly above suspicion. Besides its recognition in the[pg 251]ancient scholium to which attention has been largely invited already454, we find the incident of the“honeycomb”recognized by 13 ancient Fathers,—by 8 ancient Versions,—by the unfaltering Tradition of the universal Church,—above all, by every copy of St. Luke's Gospel in existence (as far as is known), uncial as well as cursive—exceptsix. That it carries on its front the impress of its own genuineness, is what no one will deny455. Yet was Dr. Hort for dismissing it without ceremony.“A singular interpolation evidently from an extraneous source, written or oral,”he says. A singular hallucination, we venture to reply, based on ideal grounds and“a system [of Textual Criticism] hopelessly self-condemned456;”seeing that that ingenious and learned critic has nothing to urge except that the words in dispute are omitted by B-א,—by A seldom found in the Gospels in such association,—by D of the sixth century,—by L of the eighth,—by Π of the ninth.

I have been so diffuse on this place because I desire to exhibit an instance shewing that certain perturbations of the sacred Text demand laborious investigation,—have a singular history of their own,—may on no account be disposed of in a high-handed way, by applying to them any cut and dried treatment,—nay I must say, any arbitrary shibboleth. The clause in dispute enjoys in perfection every note of a genuine reading: viz. number, antiquity, variety, respectability of witnesses, besides continuity of attestation: every one of which notes are away from that exhibition of the text which is contended for by my opponents457. Tischendorf conjectures that the“honeycomb”[pg 252]may have been first brought in from the“Gospel of the Hebrews.”What if, on the contrary, by the Valentinian“Gospel of Truth,”—a composition of the second century,—the“honeycomb”should have been first thrust out458? The plain statement of Epiphanius (quoted above459) seems to establish the fact that his maimed citation was derived from that suspicious source.

Let the foregoing be accepted as a specimen of the injury occasionally sustained by the Evangelical text in a very remote age from the evil influence of the fabricated narratives, orDiatessarons, which anciently abounded. The genuineness of the clause καὶ ἀπὸ μελισσίου κηρίου, it is hoped, will never more be seriously called in question. Surely it has been demonstrated to be quite above suspicion460.

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