INTEGRITY OF THE TEXT

INTEGRITY OF THE TEXT
The sacred books which were written, as we have seen, in Hebrew, the language of the patriarchs, have been preserved down to our days without any corruption; and the same judgment may also be formed of those other books of Scripture which have been since written in Greek. But before proving the purity and integrity of these original texts, it may be necessary to remove a prejudice which may arise from the variety of different readings that are found in the manuscript and printed copies of the Bible.
VARIOUS READINGS
The different manner in which some passages are expressed in different manuscripts, together with the omission or insertion of a word, or of a clause, constitute what are called various readings. This was occasioned by the oversights or mistakes of transcribers, who deviated from the copy before them, these persons not being, as some have supposed, supernaturally guarded against the possibility of error; and a mistake in one copy would, of course, be propagated through all that were taken from it, each of which copies might likewise have peculiar faults of its own, so that various readings would thus be increased in proportion to the number of transcripts that were made. Besides actual oversights, transcribers might have occasioned various readings by substituting, through ignorance, one word, or even letter, in place of another; they might have mistaken the line on which the copy before them was written, for part of a letter, or they might have mistaken the lower stroke of a letter for the line, and thus have altered the reading; at the same time they were unwilling to correct such mistakes as they detected, lest their pages should appear blotted or defaced; and thus they sacrificed the correctness of their copy to its fair appearance. Copiers seem not infrequently, to have added letters to the last word in their lines, in order to preserve them even, and marginal notes have been sometimes introduced into the text. These different circumstances, as well as others with which we may not be acquainted, did no doubt contribute very much to produce and multiply mistakes and variations in the manuscripts of the Hebrew scriptures. This language is more susceptible of corruption, and any alteration would be more detrimental in it than in others. In English, if a letter be omitted, or altered, the mistake can be easily corrected, because the word thus corrupted may have no meaning; but in Hebrew, almost every combination of the letters forms a new word, so that an alteration of even one letter of any description is likely to produce a new word and a new meaning. Thus putting all alterations made knowingly--for the purpose of corrupting the text, out of the question--we must allow that from these circumstances connected with the transcribing, some errata may have found their way into it, and that the sacred Scriptures have in this case suffered the fate of other productions of antiquity.
When we have collected all the differences that are found in manuscripts of the original text, and have selected from them what are really various readings, we are able to determine, from the number and authority of the manuscripts, with tolerable correctness, what is the genuine reading. Beside the authority of the manuscript, we must also be guided in determining the true reading by the scope of the passage, by the interpretations and quotations of ancient writers, by the old versions, and not infrequently by Scripture itself; for similar or parallel passages will often be found useful for this purpose. When all these things are considered, it will seldom happen that the true reading of a passage will be doubtful; yet should it continue so, either reading may contain a truth, though certainly both can not be authentic, and in a theological point of view, either of them may be followed without involving a doctrinal error; and in such a case, the common reading should not be relinquished.
To a person who has not considered the subject closely, it may appear sufficient to overthrow the authority of the text, that no less than thirty thousand various readings of the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments have been discovered. But when these are examined closely, and all that are not properly various readings are rejected, the number will be considerably diminished; from these again let all be deducted which make no alteration in the several passages to which they refer, and the reduction will be much greater; and out of the remainder there are none found that can invalidate the authority of those doctrines that have been esteemed fundamental, or that can shake a single portion of that internal evidence whereby the divine origin of the Scriptures is supported; so that the friends of revelation had no grounds for the alarm they felt at the time when the subject of various readings began to be discussed. These observations apply strongly to the New Testament, which, as it has been transcribed more frequently, and probably by less skilful transcribers than the Old, has, in proportion, many more various readings. Respecting these, however, it has been said, that “all the omissions of the ancient manuscripts put together, would not countenance the omission of any essential doctrine of the gospel, relative to faith of morals; and all the additions countenanced by the whole mass of manuscripts already collated, do not introduce a single point essential either to faith or morals, beyond what may be found in the Complutensian or Elzevir editions.[4] Vide Dr. Adam Clarke's Tract on the Editions of the New Testament, and also the Critical Editions of the New Testament, by Tichendorf, Dr. Henry Alford, and Dr. S. P. Tregelles--Ed.
HEBREW SCRIPTURE INTEGRITY
The manner in which the original text of the Scriptures, particularly the Hebrew, has been preserved free from all material corruption, and handed down pure through such a long succession of ages, may now form the subject of our especial consideration.
It has been supposed by many that the Christian fathers accused the Jews of corrupting the text; but from an examination of such passages as seem to imply this, it appears that they spoke not of corrupting the text, but of adopting unfaithful translations. Justin Martyr, one of the most celebrated of the Christian fathers, defends the Jews very well as to this point, and proves that they have not corrupted the Scriptures; and it is past doubt that they have not; for, as St. Jerome observes, before the birth of Jesus Christ they had certainly made no malicious alterations in them. If they had done so, our Savior and his apostles, who cast so many reproaches upon the scribes and Pharisees, would not have passed over in silence so great a crime. To suppose such a thing, indeed, were to know little of the attachment of the Jews for the Scriptures. Josephus and Philo assure us that they would have undergone all sorts of torments rather than have taken a letter from the Scripture, or altered a word in it. A copy which had only one fault in it was by them thought polluted, and was not suffered to be kept above thirty days; and one that had four faults was ordered to be hid in the earth. In the Babylonian Talmud it is laid down as a regulation, that “the books of the law which have been written by a heretic, a traitor, one who is a stranger to the Jewish religion, an idolatrous minister--by which they mean a monk--a slave, a woman, one under age, a Cuthæan, or Christian, or an apostate Israelite, are unlawful.”
“This,” says St. Augustine, “is a most visible effect of the providence of God over his church. It pleased him that the Jews should be our librarians; that, when the Pagans reject the oracles of the ancient prophets concerning Jesus Christ, which we quote against them as being invented by us, we might refer them to the enemies of our religion, who will show them in their books the same prophecies which we quote against them.”
MASSORITES
The class of Jewish doctors called Massorites were grammarians, who engaged with peculiar ardor in the revisal of the Hebrew scriptures. The Massoritic notes and criticisms relate to the verses, words, letters, vowel-points, and accents. All the verses of each book and of each section are numbered, and the amount placed at the end of each in numerical letters, or in some symbolical word formed out of them; the middle verse of each book is also marked, and even the very letters are numbered; and all this is done to preserve the text from any alteration, by either fraud or negligence. For instance, Bereshith, or Genesis, is marked as containing 1,534 verses, and the middle one is at--“And by thy sword thou shalt live” (Genesis 27:40). The lines are 4,395; its columns are 43, and its chapters 50. The number of its words is 27,713, and its letters are 78,100. The Massoritic notes, or Massorah, as the work is called, contain also observations on the words and letters of the verses; for instance, how many verses end with the letter samech; how many there are in which the same word is repeated twice or thrice; and other remarks of a similar nature.
It seems now generally agreed upon that the Massorites of Tiberias, during the fourth century of the Christian era, were the inventors of the system of the vowel-points and accents in the Hebrew Bible; and although they multiply them very unnecessarily, it must be allowed that this is the most useful of their works. From the points learn how the text was read in their time, as we know they were guided in affixing them by the mode of reading which then prevailed, and which they supposed to have been traditionally conveyed down from the sacred writers.
The Massoritic notes were at first written in separate rolls, but they are now usually placed in the margin, or at the top and bottom of the page in printed copies. Many opinions are entertained about the authors of them; some think they were begun by Moses; others regard them as the work of Ezra and the members of the great synagogue, among whom were the later prophets; while others refer them entirely to the rabbins of Tiberias, who are usually styled the Massorites, and suppose that they commenced this system, which was augmented and continued at different times by various authors, so that it was not the work of one man, nor of one age. It is not improbable that these notes were begun about the time of the Maccabees, when the Pharisees, who were called the masters of tradition, first began to make their observations on the letter of the law though they were regardless of its spirit. They might have commenced by numbering first the verses, next the words and letters; and then, when the vowel-points were added, others continued the system by making observations on them. On the whole, then it appears that what is called the Massorah is entitled to no greater reverence or attention than may be claimed by any other human compilation; but, at the same time, it must be allowed that it has preserved the Hebrew text from the time it was formed, and conveyed it to us as perfect as any ancient work could be given.
KERI AND CATIB
The various readings given in the Hebrew Bibles, and which are technically denominated by the Jews the Keri and Cetib, are not to be ascribed to Moses or the prophets, for it can not be supposed that inspired writers were ignorant of what was the true reading of the scripture text. One principal occasion of the notes of the Keri and Cetib is, that there are several words which the Jews, either from superstitious reverence or from contempt, are never allowed to pronounce. When they meet with them in the text, instead of pronouncing them, they pronounce others that are marked by certain vowels or consonants in the margin. The chief of these is the great name of God JEHOVAH, instead of which they always read Adonai, Lord, or Elohim, God. This is the word called Tetragrammaton, or the ineffable name of God, consisting of the four letters, Yod, He, Wau, He. The people were not suffered to pronounce it; the high-priest alone had that privilege, and that only in the temple once a year, when he blessed the people on the great day of atonement; and hence it is, that, as this holy name has not been pronounced since the destruction of the temple, its true pronunciation is now lost. Galatinus in the sixteenth century, was the first who thought fit to say, that it ought to be pronounced Jehovah; “which did not happen,” says Pere l'Amy, “without a very particular providence of God, who was pleased, that when the Jews lost the temple in which the true God was worshipped, they should at the same time lose the true pronunciation of his august name. It happened, I say, because, being no longer willing to be their God (for the destruction of the temple was an authentic testimony of the divorce which he gave them), he would not leave them the power of so much as pronouncing his name.”[5] Vide “Apparatus Biblicus, or an Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures.”
Josephus, himself a priest, says it was unlawful for him to speak of the name whereby God was made known to Moses; and if it be true that the pronunciation of it was connected with the temple service, it is not surprising that all trace of it should be lost when the temple was destroyed, and when the Jews grew every day more superstitiously afraid of pronouncing it. Leusden, the great orientalist, is said to have offered a Jew at Amsterdam a considerable sum of money if he would pronounce it only once, but in vain.
EASTERN AND WESTERN READINGS
Besides the various readings called the Keri and Cetib, which the Jews admit to be the oldest, there are two other kinds of various readings which deserve our notice, because they are given in some printed bibles. The first are those of the eastern and western Jews; the second, those between the manuscripts of Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali. By the eastern Jews we are to understand those of Babylon; by the western, those of Palestine. At Babylon and in Palestine, after the destruction of the city and temple, there were famous schools for many ages, and between the learned men of these places much rivalship existed; so that each party, by following their own copies, gave rise to a collection of various readings, or corrections of the text, whose antiquity is acknowledged, though it does not appear exactly at what time it was made.
The other collection is called after the heads of two celebrated schools--Ben Asher, at Tiberias, and Ben Naphtali, at Babylon, who were two famous Massorites, that lived about the year 1,030, and were the last of them. Both of these rabbis labored to produce a correct copy of the Scriptures, and the followers of each corrected theirs by that of their master. The variations between them relate to the points, and in but one instance is there any difference in the writing of a word; so that they do not affect the integrity of the text.
What has been said of the integrity of the text of the Old Testament, may be applied also to the New, in so far as it may he charged with corruptions, in consequence of the negligence of transcribers, as also in consequence of the attempt of heretics to make it conform to their erroneous sentiments. Though it must be admitted that the New Testament text, by being more frequently transcribed than that of the Old, became liable to a greater proportion of various readings, originating from the mistakes of the transcribers; yet thus very circumstance was likewise a sure protection against willful perversion or corruption; for in proportion as copies were multiplied, the difficulty of effecting a general corruption was increased. No such system as that of the Massorites was ever adopted to preserve the purity of the New Testament text; but we have it in our power to use various means for ascertaining what is the true reading of the text, without having recourse to such a plan as that of the Massorah; and concordances, which are now brought to an uncommon degree of perfection, are of great use in preserving it from corruption; in fact, the single one of Buxtorf has done more toward fixing the genuine reading, and pointing out the true meaning of Scripture, than the entire body of the Massoritic notes. We have the consent of the church, in all ages and countries, to prove our copies of the New Testament scriptures authentic, and the authenticity of the Hebrew text is confirmed by Christ and his apostles; and, in concluding this part of the subject, it may be remarked, that the general integrity of the Hebrew text receives additional confirmation from the ancient versions, as will more fully appear hereafter.