015. Chapter 13 - The Text of the Gospels

Chapter 13 - The Text of the Gospels The Renaissance When the world finally awoke from the long sleep of a thousand years and leaped into the blazing glory of the Renaissance, the Bible was one of the chief factors in this rebirth of civilization. The rediscovery of the ancient learning through the long-lost manuscripts, which had been brought into the Western world by scholars fleeing from Constantinople to escape the Turks, enlightened the minds of men. The thrilling discovery of the new world by Columbus kindled the imagination of men and set the nations on fire with activity. But when Martin Luther stood up with his Bible in his hand and defied the pope, the souls of men were touched and the Dark Ages were no more. The Attitude toward the Bible For long centuries the Bible had been practically lost to the world. Ridden away in churches and monasteries, the precious manuscripts were covered with dust and little known or used. The Reformation discounted the authority of the pope and caused the Bible to be exalted as the true source of authority in religion, since it is the Word of God; and to be studied eagerly by all, since it is directed to the whole of mankind. The invention of printing opened the gates of knowledge to the common people and placed the Bible in every man’s hands. William Tyndale, who suffered endless persecution and finally died a martyr to his work of translating the Bible into English for his fellow countrymen, expressed the spirit of the age when he declared with impassioned utterance that he intended that the common plowboy should know more about the Bible than the ignorant priest with whom he was debating.

Recovery of the Manuscripts When the scholars began to rescue the precious manuscripts of the Bible from their obscure hiding places, they discovered to their dismay that the manuscripts did not agree. The very text of the sacred Book had been corrupted by the errors of the scribes who had copied it and passed it down through the centuries. After recovering from the first shock, scholars began with patient and tireless effort to collect and compare every available copy of the Scriptures, that by the most painstaking study of all, the original might be restored. This gave rise to two great branches of science: Lower Criticism which undertakes to study the most minute differences in the text, and by such a microscopic study to find the true reading in each passage; Higher Criticism which seeks to supplement the conclusions based upon different readings of manuscripts by a study of the meaning of the passages, and to help correct the text by weighing the probabilities of the meaning.

Methods of Writing

Man’s first efforts at writing appear to have been cut in stone or scratched on pottery. A board covered with wax or sand was used for temporary writing. The effort to produce records both permanent and convenient led to the invention of a kind of paper made from papyrus which grew in the Nile Valley (and the Plain of Huleh in Palestine). Thin sections of this pithy weed were cut and pressed together with the grain arranged in cross sections like the ply furniture which is so common today. This material was too fragile to stand much turning as leaves in a book, and the papyrus was usually made into a long roll by pasting sections together. Such a manuscript was rolled on two rods which reduced the wear and tear on the papyrus as it was unrolled for reading. Manuscripts in the form of a book with leaves were made from the skins of animals, very skillfully prepared. These were very costly. The skins of sheep and goats were used to produce “parchments,” and the skins of very young calves and antelopes, “vellum,” which was much finer and more durable. The ink which was used was made’ from lampblack, boneblack, or some sort of vegetable compound; red, purple, or yellow inks were also made. For pens they used split reeds and later, bronze pens. The Oldest Manuscripts The autograph copy of each Gospel was undoubtedly made of the most precious and durable material — parchment or vellum. Many subsequent copies were made of papyrus. The immensely important find of a papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John which dates from the first part of the second century has already been discussed in the section “The Synoptics and John’s Gospel.” The autograph copies doubtless perished in the early centuries, and there is slight chance that any of them will ever be recovered. Until the recent discovery of this fragment of the Gospel of John in Egypt, the oldest manuscripts in our possession were papyrus fragments found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Concerning the famous Rylands fragment of the Gospel of John, Sir Frederic Kenyon, one of the world’s greatest textual critics, writes: In the middle years of the nineteenth century if this scrap could have been produced and its date established, it would have created a profound sensation; for it would have convincingly refuted those who contended that the Fourth Gospel was not written until the second century was far advanced. Now we see that it was not only written, but had spread to a provincial town in Egypt, by the middle of the second century, which goes far toward confirming the traditional date of composition in the last years of the first century (Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, pp. 127, 128). The diligent search for even small fragments of copies of the Scriptures continues.

It is often said that one of the most important discoveries of recent decades has been the Chester Beatty Papyri. These consist of two leaves of a codex of Jeremiah, twenty-nine leaves of a codex of Ezekiel, and of Daniel and Esther. Chester Beatty Papyrus I has thirty leaves of a codex which originally had 220 leaves and contained all four Gospels and Acts. The papyri discovered consist of two leaves from Matthew, six from Mark, seven from Luke, two from John, and thirteen from Acts. The leaves from Luke and John were more complete and legible. They cannot be assigned to any of the groups or families of texts known to us. Mark seems nearer to the Caesarean type of text than to the Neutral or Western; Luke and John appear to be between Neutral and Western. The oldest extant uncials date from the middle of the fourth century. Scholars are able to date manuscripts with a great degree of accuracy by a study of the materials used, the style of handwriting, the use of punctuation, the adornment of manuscripts by fancy letters or little pictures, and the relation of the text of one manuscript to others. The oldest manuscripts were written in capital letters without punctuation or spaces between words; they are called uncials or majuscules. About the ninth century a smooth, flowing, longhand style began to be used, and the manuscripts from this date forward were written in this manner; these are called cursives or minuscules. We possess more than 160 uncials and more than three thousand cursives which contain various books or sections of Scripture from the Old and New Testaments.

Kenyon says that in 1941 there were 2,429 cursives officially listed, and that there were many more not so listed. Others give an estimate of more than 3,000. There were only forty-six complete copies of the New Testament in minuscule form in 1926, according to Kenyon. The cursives are later than the uncials and as a rule less dependable. They date from the ninth century to the sixteenth. But some cursives are more scholarly and important than some uncials. Cursive 1 and cursive 33 are usually named as the most important. The Ferrar group of cursives are so called because W. H. Ferrar of Dublin first investigated them and proved they were of one family (Family 13:13, 69, 124, 346). Eight other minuscules are now included in this family. Minuscule I is now declared to be a group, minuscule 1 having been joined with 118, 131, and 209. More recently minuscule 1582 has been added to this group. This last minuscule has a marginal note to Mark 16:9-20 stating: “Irenaeus, who was near to the apostles, in the third book against heresies quotes this saying as found in Mark” (Streeter, The Four Gospels, p. 224). This is important evidence that in the second century the close of the Gospel of Mark was as we now have it. Thus a minuscule carries evidence that reaches back two centuries earlier than any extant uncial of Mark. Cursives 157 and 565 are also important for the study of the Gospel narratives. The most important uncials are: (1) Vaticanus (B) at Rome, made of vellum, containing 1,518 pages (10 1/2 inches by 10) with the Old Testament in Greek (Septuagint Translation). It lacks the first forty-six chapters of Genesis and Psalm 105-135, and the closing pages of the New Testament from Hebrews 9:14 to the end. (2) Sinaiticus ) found by Tischendorf in the Monastery of St. Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai in 1859, and secured by the Russian government; sold by the Soviets to England, and now in the British Museum, London. It is the only uncial which contains all the New Testament, and also has a large part of the Old Testament (Septuagint). It also appends at the close, The Epistle of Barnabas and The Shepherd of Hermas. It has 790 (out of an original 1,460) pages, and is made of vellum. (3) Alexandrinus (A), presented to Charles I of England by the patriarch of Constantinople in 1628. It contains nearly all of the Old Testament (Septuagint), all the New Testament except Matthew 1-24; Matthew 25:1-6; John 6:50-71; John 7:1-53; John 8:1-52; 1 Corinthians 4:13-21; 1 Corinthians 5:1-13; 1 Corinthians 6:1-20; 1 Corinthians 7:1-40; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; 1 Corinthians 9:1-27; 1 Corinthians 10:1-33; 1 Corinthians 11:1-34; 1 Corinthians 12:1-6. It appends I Clement and part of II Clement, and has 793 pages. It is now in the London Museum. (4) Ephraemi (C) at Paris. It contains some of the Old Testament and about two-thirds of the New Testament. It is a palimpsest and the original writing had to be recovered by removing with chemicals the accumulated blur (copy of a work of Ephraim of Cyrus was written over the original about the twelfth century). This uncial is also made of vellum. (5) Bezae (D), given by the French theologian, Theodore Beza, to the University of Cambridge, England. It contains the Gospels and Acts with some pages missing, and carries the Greek text with the Latin translation opposite. It comes from the early sixth century. (6) Washington (W), discovered in Egypt in 1906 and presented to America by Mr. Freer of Detroit. It contains the Gospels in the following order: Matthew, John, Luke, Mark. It belongs to the “Western Text.” In the newer arrangement of groups of manuscripts, it is now called Byzantine, with some sections called Alexandrian, and some, Caesarean. W has only the four Gospels; it contains 187 leaves. It is generally held to be from the fourth or fifth century. (See Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, p 251.) Errors in the Manuscripts The extant manuscripts show various errors in transmission, both accidental and intentional, but the latter are very few and unimportant. Scrivener estimated that there are more than 120,000 variant readings in the manuscripts. The discovery of these variations at first alarmed the Christian world, but a closer study of them showed that the vast majority were insignificant matters of spelling, transposition of words or differences represented in English by “the,” “and,” “of,” or such words in places where they had no importance. The best proof available to the untrained student of the Bible that the manuscript differences are nearly all unimportant is obtained from a comparison of the King James and the American Standard Versions. The King James or Authorized Version was made from the Textus Receptus (Erasmus had made the text from a few late Greek manuscripts of about the fourteenth century). The American Standard Version was made from a painstaking comparison of all the available Greek manuscripts and versions with the greatest weight given to the great uncials, especially Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. In spite of this, the comparison of the text of the Authorized Version and the American Standard Version (the marginal notes assist greatly in pointing out the important manuscript differences) will show that the text of the late manuscripts and that of the earliest are practically identical. The omission of Acts 8:37 is one of the most important of the differences, and it remains to be seen whether the revisers acted in too great haste in removing this verse. Most of the differences seen in the Authorized Version and the American Standard Version are matters of translation and not of textual variations. The Greek manuscripts which Erasmus used were based on the “Syrian Text” of which Alexandrinus is the most valuable example. The textual critic Gregory declares that “this text is the worst text in existence.” If this judgment is correct, we have between the Authorized Version and the American Standard Version the widest variation which the groups of manuscripts afford. The Authorized Version is declared to be based on the worst text (Syrian); the American Standard Version is based on the best text, with a painstaking comparison of all existing texts, and yet the resulting differences are no more than can be seen readily in the comparison of these two versions — Authorized Version and American Standard Version. The differences are rarely of any vital importance. Truly we can be grateful to the devoted scribes who copied the sacred text with such care through the centuries.

Origen The first and one of the greatest of all the textual critics was Origen (a.d. 185-254). A sketch of his career and an example of his work give a view of the entire field of textual criticism. Origen was such a brilliant student that he was made head of the famous Catechetical School in Alexandria in Egypt at the age of eighteen, when persecution drove the regular members of the faculty into hiding. Persecution forced Origen to leave Alexandria a.d. 215. Most of his life was spent at Caesarea working in the great library there. Day and night with the most incessant and meticulous collation of manuscripts he labored for years to recover as nearly as he could the original Hebrew text and the Septuagint text. His Hexapla is one of the most extraordinary documents in the history of textual criticism. Origen had studied Greek and Hebrew from childhood and was a mighty master of both languages. The chart on the Hexapla illustrates the immense amount of minute, detailed work which is required in the field of textual criticism. The chart appears on pages 62 and 63 of Swete’s Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek. It was constructed from a fragment of the Hexapla found in Milan, Italy, in 1896. The fragment did not have the column of the Hebrew text; this had to be supplied in the chart. Previous to this discovery, and that of a similar fragment from Cairo (both of them fragments of the Psalms), the Hexapla had no longer been extant, although a number of quotations from it, including readings from Aquila, had been found in the form of marginal notes in various manuscripts of the Septuagint or in the writings of early Christian scholars. The Hexapla From Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek by H.B. Swete, pp. 62-63, copyright, 1900, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England. Used by permission.

It will be seen that Origen first copied the Hebrew text with no more than two Hebrew words to a line in order to leave abundant space for his critical apparatus. In the next column he transliterated the Hebrew words into the parallel of the Greek alphabet. This may seem like a strange process, since the Greek letters did not form words or make sense. But his column has been of interest in showing the correct pronunciation of the Hebrew consonants and the vowel pointing which developed. Origen’s Hebrew text was different in many places from the Masoretic text. In the third and fourth columns Origen placed the Jewish translations by Aquila and Symmachus, both of whom were translating the Hebrew text. In the fifth column Origen placed the Septuagint, which was four hundred years earlier than the other translations and represents the impartial scholarship of the Jewish nation in 285 b.c. and had been accepted by Jews and Christians alike before furious controversy enveloped them. It is self-evident that Origen regarded the Septuagint as the standard of excellence, since his lifetime objective was to bring this version as near to perfection as possible. We hardly need the explicit declaration of Epiphanius to assure us that Origen regarded the Septuagint as the standard translation of the Old Testament into Greek. Theodotion’s translation, since it was a revision of the Septuagint, was naturally placed in the sixth column.

Notice the careful markings that Origen used (asterisk, obelus, and metobelus) to indicate differences in the Hebrew and Septuagint texts. The Hexapla was probably finished about a.d. 240. Dr. Swete figures that if written in one massive codex, it would have contained 3,250 leaves or 6,500 pages. He conjectures that it would have been on papyrus, since the cost of such volumes in parchment (sheep or goat skin) or vellum (calf or antelope skin) would have been prohibitive. But it is hard to imagine that Origen would have spent a lifetime on such a work and not been able to put it on permanent material. Origen left this great critical product in the library of Pamphilus at Caesarea. We profit today by this prodigious work of Origen’s, particularly in the use which Jerome made of the Hexapla in producing the Vulgate translation. The original — and the accompanying Tetrapla, Quinta, and Sexta — probably never were copied, except only in part. They seem to have perished in the Saracen conquest of Palestine in the seventh century. A study of this sample of Origen’s great work to which he gave his life should increase our appreciation of the devoted labors of the textual critics, most of whom died from brain fever brought on by their incredible labors.

Thiessen gives a good summary of the materials and the methods of textual criticism in his Introduction to the New Testament. Sir Frederic Kenyon offers a great amount of technical information in readable form (Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts).

Palimpsest

See photo, Palimpsest fragments bearing portions of Aquila’s Greek version of the Old Testament. The large Greek uncial letters are from the Aquila text. The small Hebrew lettering was superimposed by a later writer. A palimpsest is a manuscript, either parchment or vellum, on which a second author wrote his work after the original manuscript had become so old that the first writing had become illegible. Sometimes centuries elapsed between the first and second writings on the same material. The cost of leather manuscripts was so great and their durability so remarkable that writers in the middle ages frequently resorted to this use of ancient manuscripts in their libraries. Both of the fragments of Origen’s Hexapla, found at Milan and Cairo respectively, are palimpsests. The scientists long ago discovered means of removing the dust and dirt of centuries so that the original writing could be read. The English scholar, Dr. F. C. Burkitt, discovered in 1897 some fragments of Aquila’s Greek translation of the Old Testament. Dr. Schechter and Dr. C. Taylor had secured from the old storage room of the famous synagogue of Cairo a great mass of loose leaves which contained parts of two codices (vellum) of Aquila’s translation. Three leaves were from a codex of 1 Kings and 2 Kings; three leaves from a codex of the Psalms. The former contain 1 Kings 20:7-17 and 2 Kings 23:11-27; the latter, Psalms 90:17; Psalms 91:1-16; Psalms 92:1-15; Psalms 93:1-5; Psalms 94:1-23; Psalms 95:1-11; Psalms 96:1-13; Psalms 97:1-12; Psalms 98:1-9; Psalms 99:1-9; Psalms 100:1-5; Psalms 101:1-8; Psalms 102:1-28; Psalms 103:1-17, with some breaks.

Fragments of Aquila The fragments do not bear the name of Aquila, but the style was so peculiar because of its Hebraisms that it was possible to identify it. Jerome said that Aquila’s translation read like a Hebrew dictionary. The pages are about twice the length and width of an ordinary modern book. The handwriting is of a Greek uncial of the sixth century. Two photographs of these fragments accompany this discussion. The reader will immediately observe the two documents that have been written on the same material: the first, Aquila’s version, is in the large Greek uncial writing; the second is the smaller Hebrew lettering of a later writer. It will be apparent how difficult is the task of the textual critic trying to decipher such a maze of double writing. These pages that are herewith published were two pages where the original Greek uncial was the clearest. It will be seen that the scientists’ chemical did not remove the second writing, but only removed the dirt so that both writings are clearer. On some of the pages the writing was so faded and only visible in such a small fragment that it was just possible for the textual expert to be sure it was originally a part of the same manuscript. A study of these photographs will show why so few scholars in any given generation ever attain the enormous learning and technical skill to be considered textual critics.

See photo, Fragments of I and 2 Kings According to Aquila The Dead Sea Scrolls The oldest manuscripts now in our possession are the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dr. Miller Burrows of Yale Divinity School, with the assistance of Dr. Trever and Dr. Brownlee, published in 1950 The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark’s Monastery with beautifully photographed pages of the Isaiah Scroll. The author declared that the text of the Isaiah Scroll is substantially that of the Masoretic text. They do not seem to rate the scholarship of the scribe who copied this manuscript too highly, but point Out that he did observe and correct a number of his own errors. A study of the photographs readily corroborates this analysis of the manner in which the scribe wrote in his corrections — usually in the space just above the line.

See photograph of Isaiah Scroll and restored jars from the caves of Qumran. The jars are like those in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were preserved.

Observe how clear and even the lines are written in the manuscript, and note the bulk of the document which would make it a laborious task to handle such a book or to turn to the proper place in it by unrolling patiently until the place could be found. The Isaiah Scroll B was purchased from the Arabs by Professor Sukenik of the University of Jerusalem. “When it was acquired in November, 1947, by Professor Sukenik, the leather pages were so dried up that it was practically impossible to unroll it. It was therefore necessary to submit it to a special preparation, and it was only during the summer of 1949 that it could at length be unrolled. The pages were covered with an opaque deposit caused by the disintegration of the leather; thanks to the infra red photography, however, there is hope that even the most illegible lines will be successfully revealed” (A. Dupont-Sommer, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 1952, p. 19). Since this time the scroll has been successfully photographed. The Jars The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has furnished a vivid illustration of the entire process by which textual criticism has sought to recover as many manuscripts as possible and to regain as nearly as possible the original text. Even tiny fragments of pages have been kept and minutely examined to see whether any item of information can be obtained. The pictures of jars found in the cave at Ain Feska, which overlooks the Dead Sea from the northwest corner, show the care with which the manuscripts were originally deposited in the cave and the care with which modern scholars have sought to restore them to their original condition. The picture of the jar now in the museum of the University of Chicago shows the lines revealing the broken fragments that were patiently and skillfully pieced together by the scientists. A. Dupont-Sommer, after telling how the scrolls were found by Bedouin Arabs and purchased by the scholars through a Bethlehem merchant who acted as go-between, describes further exploration and excavation in the cave by Mr. L. Harding and Father de Vaux: The excavators found many remains of the greatest interest. In the first place they found some pieces of linen which had been used to wrap the scrolls. These pieces of linen, of a very closely woven texture, were coated with wax or pitch or asphalt, which proves the scrolls were hidden in the cave for safe preservation, to be recovered and used again later. In the second place there were a great number of fragments of earthware….The pottery fragments which have been gathered up make it clear that the cave housed at least fifty jars, as we have already pointed out. As each jar could hold an average of four or five scrolls, it would seem that the hiding place originally concealed a minimum of 200 or 250 scrolls…. In the third place about 600 manuscript fragments broken off the leather scrolls were found.

Small Fragments For the most part, they are extremely small, bearing only a few letters or a few words in the square Hebrew script. Nevertheless they are of great interest; indeed, by examining them it has been possible to recognize that certain of these small fragments definitely belonged to the scrolls which were already known, that is, to those which the Bedouins said they had discovered in the cave. This, then, is definite proof of the authenticity of these manuscripts (A. Dupont-Sommer, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 1952, pp. 14-17).

Future Discoveries The intensity of the search for so many years and the fact that for the last fifty years so little new material has been found to throw further light on the text of the Gospels would seem to indicate the probable limits of our future advances in this direction. When it is said that the Chester Beatty papyri are exceedingly important in the recent discoveries and when it is seen how few are the pages of the Gospel narratives that are contained in these papyri and how slight any textual evidence on any matters of importance, then the degree of probability is increased that we can hardly expect further sensational discoveries of very ancient manuscripts of the Gospel accounts.

Size of the Scrolls The size of the scrolls in use by the ancients is a matter of interest. Obviously it would be very difficult to handle a scroll of too great bulk. Therefore separate books of any considerable length were recorded in separate scrolls. Small books were put together in the same scroll or included in a scroll with a large book. Very extraordinary was the copper roll found in another cave near Ain Feska; it had the Hebrew letters stamped or engraved upon it. The roll was from twelve to fourteen inches wide and ninety-four and a half inches long (The Biblical Archaeologist, May, 1952). Some papyri discovered in Egypt were forty centimeters in height. Dr. Kraeling suggests that the Dead Sea jars were designed to preserve manuscripts of about thirty-four centimeters, which is an average height (Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, February, 1952). There is extant a copy of the entire Pentateuch in one scroll (the Hebrew Pentateuch of Brussels, ninth century, on fifty-seven skins, forty yards in length). Imagine trying to manage such an immense bulk and to turn clear through this long scroll to get to a passage in Deuteronomy. It is not known the exact time when the ancient scribes ceased using a scroll and began to use pages of a book such as we have. When Jesus read from the Book of Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth, it was a scroll which was brought to Him by the attendant in charge of these most precious possessions of each synagogue. In rendering Luke 4:17 : “And when he had opened the book he found the place...,” the American Standard Version has a footnote reading “roll” instead of “book.” A. Dupont-Sommer translates: “And unrolling the book, he found...then he rolled up the book” (The Dead Sea Scrolls, 1952, p. 18). The Dead Sea Scrolls help us to understand just what the books of the Scripture were like in Palestine in the first century.

Manuscript Groups

Scholars have undertaken to divide the manuscripts into groups or great families. Omissions, additions, or changes of any kind which are similar, show a common origin for many manuscripts. (1) The Syrian or Antiochian text was so named from the opinion that it originated in Syria. It is sometimes called “The Official Text.” Alexandrinus and Ephraemi belong to this group. Westcott and Hort claim that it shows evidence of effort on the part of scribes to smooth out difficult places in the text for the ordinary reader and to combine instructive matter found in various texts. The Syrian text was that generally accepted and used in the line of manuscripts from which the Greek Bibles were made, when the invention of printing made the transmission more exact, and from which the Authorized Version was made. (2) The Alexandrian text is supposed to have arisen at Alexandria in Egypt, where extraordinary Christian scholarship was concentrated early in the third century. Gregory calls this “The Polished Text,” and it is sometimes called “the literary revision of the text.” Westcott and Hort say that the changes introduced into this text were more of language than of matter, seeking correction of phraseology. (3) The Western text was so called from the mistaken idea that it was used only in the West (Italy and the North African coast opposite Italy, etc.). Critics have decided, however, that it was used as much in the East as the West. Gregory calls this “The Rewrought Text”; Westcott and Hort say that it is characterized by a free rendering of the text. Codex Bezae (D) and the Washington manuscript (W) are two great uncials considered to be examples of this text. When Beza presented D to the University of Cambridge, he requested that it be preserved but not published because of many differences which it contained from the Syrian text (A C). Most of these variations, however, are very slight. A study of the marginal references in the American Standard Version will find statements concerning some important variations — the omission of Luke 22:19, Luke 22:20 and several passages in Luke 24:1-53 from some ancient manuscripts; these refer to the Western text. Hill remarks that the Western text throws no new light of any importance upon the life of Christ, but that Ramsay holds it has considerable importance for the study of the life of Paul. (4) The Neutral text was so named by Westcott and Hort because it was their opinion that it was more free from deliberate changes and that it seems to have been copied directly or from a more careful line of manuscripts than any other group. This text is represented by Vaticanus (B) and Sinaiticus ()). Westcott and Hort tended to follow this group: whenever they found B and) in agreement on a disputed reading, they felt they had the strongest sort of support for adopting this “Neutral” reading. Hort estimated that all four of the great uncials (B,), A, C) were in agreement seven-eighths of the time, and there was no question or dispute as to what should be the reading. They declare that substantial variations in the New Testament text “can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text.”

Validity of This Grouping

Griesbach first attempted a grouping of manuscripts in something of this fashion: Alexandrian, Western, Byzantine. J. W. McGarvey has furnished as fine a popular summary of facts and problems of the text in his Evidences of Christianity, pp. 1-56, as can be found. He devotes but five lines to the above grouping of manuscripts, but since his day there has been an immense amount of discussion concerning them. He remarks concerning Griesbach’s grouping: “This was the most distinctive feature of his critical theory, and it is one which has received the greatest amount of adverse criticism from more recent critics.” More than a half century has passed since McGarvey wrote this summary, and it has been true during these years that it is still the most discussed feature of lower criticism. The most decided differences of opinion still exist among the textual critics as to the validity of the grouping or the value of the groups. Many would not admit that the Alexandrian is really a separate group or family of manuscripts. Many textual critics tend to give less value to the Syrian text than was formerly done and more value to the Western text than Westcott and Hort did. Whether this is merely an evidence of a more radical trend in the theological background of the critics or is solidly based on manuscript evidence remains to be seen.

Kenyon and Streeter have argued for a Caesarean text which they hold is midway between the Alexandrian and the Western texts. It is held that the Caesarean text is found in W from Mark 6:1-56 to the end of that book and in the uncial Theta and in various minuscules and some of the Chester Beatty papyri. The family of manuscripts, which Westcott and Hort called Syrian, has been called Byzantine. Griesbach used this title. Kenyon and Streeter prefer it. Griesbach’s Alexandrian text is another name for Westcott and Hort’s Neutral family. It is now thought that this text originated in Alexandria. Origen was familiar with all the various families of manuscripts known to us. In his earlier writings he used the Alexandrian family. Kenyon and Streeter think that he used the Caesarean text in his later writing. The Western text is found in D, some African Old Latin manuscripts, and quotations from Cyprian and other early Christian writers.

Later Arrangements As has been mentioned before, D has some erratic differences from the Neutral or Alexandrian family. Since evidence of use of the Western text has also been found in the East, the effort has been made to limit the term “Western” to a text known to have been used in the West. Kenyon argues for a Syrian family which is divided off from what was formerly called Western. The Syriac text is held to be the text used in the Old Syriac version and in various quotations. The method of Tregelles in basing the text only on the uncials or such cursives as give evidence of extraordinary value (Cursives 1, 33, 69 in the Gospels and 61 in Acts) was sharply criticized by Scrivener as making entirely too narrow a basis for decision as to text. The method of Tregelles was largely followed by Westcott who exercised the deciding influence in the committee which produced the American Standard Version, and it is subject to the same criticism today: Did Westcott and his colleagues give too narrow a basis for their textual criticism when they practically excluded so many hundreds of manuscripts by their emphasis upon a few uncials and especially upon B and )? For instance, was their omission of Acts 8:37 justified? J W. McGarvey has been criticized by radicals as having simply accepted the American Standard Version as final, but a reading of Evidences of Christianity would hardly support this conclusion. After all has been said, the flood of modern versions which has come forth in recent years has been futile, exotic, radical, or utterly lacking in dignity and in no sense a rival for the American Standard Version. The Authorized Version has a sublime beauty of diction which probably never will be excelled, for something of the spirit of the martyrs, like William Tyndale, who died to give their translation to the world, has indelibly imprinted itself in the choice of words and expressions. The American Standard Version, however, has the advantage of the larger textual background, and of a more accurate rendering of the Greek.

Modern Translations A good example of the flimsy character of much of the modern translations is seen in Moffatt’s rendering of certain passages in the first chapter of Matthew, where he rests upon practically a single manuscript of an early version against all the hundreds of Greek manuscripts in order to support his hostility to the virgin birth. The early versions are of considerable importance in determining the text and have been diligently compared with the Greek manuscripts in the production of the American Standard Version. The more important early versions are: (1) The Old Latin, of which we have about forty manuscripts including the Latin portion of D. The Old Latin is Western text; in fact, this group was called Western largely because the use of it in the Old Latin led to the belief that it was exclusively used in the West. (2) The Vulgate, which was made by Jerome in 382-385 on the basis of what he called “ancient Greek manuscripts,” is the Latin version which is the basis for all subsequent translations used by the Roman Catholic Church. (3) The Egyptian-Bohairic and Sahidic; the former, the more important, represents the Neutral and Alexandrian texts. (4) The Syriac was formerly called the “Queen of Versions” and its great antiquity used to prove the value of the Syrian group of Greek manuscripts, but this is much disputed today. Some very interesting manuscripts of this version have been found: the Curetonian, found by Dr. Cureton about one hundred years ago; the Lewis or Sinaitic-Syriac, found by Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson in St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai (where Tischendorf found)); the Hardean; and the Palestinian. The text of the Curetonian, and of the Sinaitic-Syriac is declared to be Western. The Lewis manuscript was the one used by Moffatt to discredit the virgin birth. This manuscript reads in Matthew 1:16 : “Joseph, to whom was espoused the virgin Mary, begat Jesus who is called the Christ.” Matthew 1:21 reads: “She shall bear thee a son.” Matthew 1:25 : “She bare him a son, and he called his name Jesus.” This manuscript is self-contradictory since it left unchanged the remainder of the account which flatly declares the conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. It looks as if this was a deliberate change by someone of heretical tendency who dared to change some of the text but lacked the courage to rewrite the whole passage. A cursive of the twelfth century (346), a few other late cursives, and the Diatessaron (two manuscripts in Arabic) read like the Sinaitic-Syriac; but the whole evidence is very flimsy when compared to the great Greek uncials and the thousands of Greek cursives. Moffatt followed his prejudice instead of the evidence.

Guiding Principles

Textual critics attribute the manuscript errors to the following causes: (1) Momentary inattention of the scribe; (2) Diversion of attention from the words to the subject matter; (3) Writing from dictation; (4) Homoioteleuton (similar ending of sentences or lines); (5) Change of pronunciation; (6) Trusting to memory; (7) Absence of spaces and punctuation — these all accidental; (8) To correct a supposed mistake; (9) To secure fullness of expression; (10) To support a doctrine — these are intentional (cf. McGarvey, Evidences of Christianity, pp. 19-24). In undertaking to restore the exact original, the reading given in the largest number of manuscripts is not necessarily taken, for a large number of extant manuscripts may have been copied from one single original, and hence are entitled to but one vote. The reading of the oldest manuscripts is not necessarily followed, because the oldest we have are copies, and a manuscript not so old might have come more directly from the original or from a more accurate scribe or line of copyists. The higher critics who give more emphasis to a restoration of the text by a study of its meaning have two principles which they especially emphasize: (1) The shorter reading is to be preferred over the longer; (2) The more difficult is to be preferred over the easier. They reason that it is more likely that a passage should be lengthened by explanation, paraphrase or addition than that it should be shortened; and that it is more likely that a scribe tried to simplify and make easier a difficult Greek construction or a profoundly difficult content in a passage than that he should have made an easy one into a hard one. Few scholars in any generation ever attain to the highly specialized knowledge which would make them authorities in this field, but it is quite clear to even the untrained student that both of the above principles place a profound emphasis on intentional rather than accidental mistakes. The underlying assumption of both principles, wherever they are applied, is that the differences arose from intentional mistakes, for a passage might as readily be shortened by accidental omission as being lengthened by intent to explain, and it might as easily be made more difficult by accidental omission of an important word or clause as made easier by an intentional change. The radical theology of many critics who have been constantly urging these two principles naturally leads one to examine with greater care the actual facts and the validity of their conclusions. McGarvey well says concerning the manuscript errors in our present text of the Bible: “Nothing short of a miracle could have prevented their existence, and nothing short of reverence for divine things can have so limited their number and character.”

Conclusions

God inspired His messengers to reveal and record His will; once delivered, the understanding, preservation, and transmission of the message rested upon the devotion and fidelity of those who chose to do His will. Where men failed of accurate preservation, or of intelligent interpretation, or of faithful proclamation to all men, God did not intervene by a miracle; else every time a translation of the Scripture was made to another language, every time a sermon was preached, immediate miraculous guidance would have been necessary. God delivered the divine truth to man; the responsibility is man’s for the fulfillment of its purpose. We owe a profound debt of gratitude to the long line of martyrs and scholars who have preserved and transmitted the sacred text. The more one studies in the field of textual criticism, the stronger the conviction that the church was moved from the beginning by a profound devotion to the Word of God, and that the written Word has been preserved for us intact in every important phase of the gospel.