Biblical Student. Because they are the most ancient of our Codexes.

Dean Burgon. This answer evidently seems to you to convey an axiomatic truth: but not to me. I must trouble you to explain to me why “the most ancient of our Codexes” must needs be the purest?

B. S. I have not said that they “must needs be the purest”: and I request you will not impute to me anything which I do not actually say.

The Dean. Thank you for a most just reproof. Let us only proceed in the same spirit to the end, and we shall arrive at important results. Kindly explain yourself therefore in your own way.

B. S. I meant to say that because it is a reasonable presumption that the oldest Codexes will prove the purest, therefore B?—being the oldest Codexes of the Gospels—may reasonably be expected to be the best.

The Dean. So far happily we are agreed. You mean, I presume, that inasmuch as it is an admitted principle that the stream is purest at its source, the antiquity of B and ? creates a reasonable presumption in their favour. Is that what you mean?

B. S. Something of the kind, no doubt. You may go on.

The Dean. Yes, but it would be a great satisfaction to me to know for certain, whether you actually do, or actually do not mean what I suppose:—viz., to apply the principle, id verum esse quod primum, I take you to mean that in B and ? we have the nearest approach to the autographs of the Evangelists, and that therefore in them we have the best evidence that is at present within reach of what those autographs actually were. I will now go on as you bid me. And I take leave to point out to you, that it is high time that we should have the facts of the case definitely before us, and that we should keep them steadily [pg 071] in view throughout our subsequent discussion. Now all critics are agreed, that B and ? were not written earlier than about 340, or say before 330 a.d. You will admit that, I suppose?

B. S. I have no reason to doubt it.

The Dean. There was therefore an interval of not far short of three hundred years between the writing of the original autographs and the copying of the Gospels in B and ?73. Those two oldest Codexes, or the earliest of them, are thus found to be separated by nearly three centuries from the original writings,—or to speak more accurately,—by about two centuries and three-quarters from three of the great autographs, and by about 250 years from the fourth. Therefore these MSS. cannot be said to be so closely connected with the original autographs as to be entitled to decide about disputed passages what they were or were not. Corruption largely infected the several writings74, as I shall shew at some length in some subsequent chapters, during the great interval to which I have alluded.

B. S. But I am surprised to hear you say this. You must surely recollect that B and ? were derived from one and the same archetype, and that that archetype was produced “in the early part of the second century if not earlier75,” and was very close to the autographs, and that they must be accordingly accurate transcripts of the autographs, and—

The Dean. I must really pray you to pause:—you have left facts far behind, and have mounted into cloudland. I must beg you not to let slip from your mind, that we start with a fact, so far as it can be ascertained, viz. the production of B and ?, about the middle of the fourth [pg 072] century. You have advanced from that fact to what is only a probable opinion, in which however I am agreed with you, viz. that B and ? are derived from one and the same older manuscript. Together therefore, I pray you will not forget, they only count nearly as one. But as to the age of that archetype—forgive me for saying, that—unintentionally no doubt but none the less really—you have taken a most audacious leap. May I ask, however, whether you can quote any ancient authority for the date which you have affixed?

B. S. I cannot recollect one at the present moment.

The Dean. No, nor Dr. Hort either,—for I perceive that you adopt his speculation. And I utterly deny that there is any probability at all for such a suggestion:—nay, the chances are greatly, if not decisively, against the original from which the lines of B and ? diverged, being anything like so old as the second century. These MSS. bear traces of the Origenistic school, as I shall afterwards shew76. They have too much method in their error for it to have arisen in the earliest age: its systematic character proves it to have been the growth of time. They evince effects, as I shall demonstrate in due course, of heretical teaching, Lectionary practice, and regular editing, which no manuscript could have contracted in the first ages of the Church.

B. S. But surely the differences between B and ?, which are many, prove that they were not derived immediately from their common ancestor, but that some generations elapsed between them. Do you deny that?

The Dean. I grant you entirely that there are many differences between them,—so much the worse for the value of their evidence. But you must not suffer yourself to be misled by the figure of genealogy upon points where it presents no parallel. There were in manuscripts no [pg 073] periods of infancy, childhood, and youth, which must elapse before they could have a progeny. As soon as a manuscript was completed, and was examined and passed, it could be copied: and it could be copied, not only once a year, but as often as copyists could find time to write and complete their copies77. You must take also another circumstance into consideration. After the destruction of manuscripts in the persecution of Diocletian, and when the learned were pressing from all quarters into the Church, copies must have been multiplied with great rapidity. There was all the more room for carelessness, inaccuracy, incompetency, and capricious recension. Several generations of manuscripts might have been given off in two or three years.—But indeed all this idea of fixing the date of the common ancestor of B and ? is based upon pure speculation—Textual Science cannot rest her conclusions upon foundations of sand like that. I must bring you back to the Rock: I must recall you to facts. B and ? were produced in the early middle, so to speak, of the fourth century. Further than this, we cannot go, except to say—and this especially is the point to which I must now request your attention,—that we are in the possession of evidence older than they are.

B. S. But you do not surely mean to tell me that other Uncials have been discovered which are earlier than these?

The Dean. No: not yet: though it is possible, and perhaps probable, that such MSS. may come to light, not in vellum but in papyrus; for as far as we know, [pg 074] B and ? mark the emergence into prominence of the “Uncial” class of great manuscripts78. But though there are in our hands as yet no older manuscripts, yet we have in the first place various Versions, viz., the Peshitto of the second century79, the group of Latin Versions80 which begin from about the same time, the Bohairic and the Thebaic of the third century, not to speak of the Gothic which was about contemporary with your friends the Vatican and Sinaitic MSS. Next, there are the numerous Fathers who quoted passages in the earliest ages, and thus witnessed to the MSS. which they used. To take an illustration, I have cited upon the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel no less than twelve authorities before the end of the third century, that is down to a date which is nearly half a century before B and ? appeared. The general mass of quotations found in the books of the early Fathers witnesses to what I say81. So that there is absolutely no reason to place these two MSS. upon a pedestal by themselves on the score of supreme antiquity. They are eclipsed in this respect by many other authorities older than they are. Such, I must beg you to observe, is the verdict, not of uncertain speculation, but of stubborn facts.

B. S. But if I am not permitted to plead the highest antiquity on behalf of the evidence of the two oldest Uncials,—

The Dean. Stop, I pray you. Do not imagine for a single instant that I wish to prevent your pleading anything at all that you may fairly plead. Facts, which refuse to be explained out of existence, not myself, bar your way. Forgive me, but you must not run your head against a brick wall.

B. S. Well then82, I will meet you at once by asking [pg 075] a question of my own. Do you deny that B and ? are the most precious monuments of their class in existence?

The Dean. So far from denying, I eagerly assert that they are. Were they offered for sale to-morrow, they would command a fabulous sum. They might fetch perhaps £100,000. For aught I know or care they may be worth it. More than one cotton-spinner is worth—or possibly several times as much.

B. S. But I did not mean that. I spoke of their importance as instruments of criticism.

The Dean. Again we are happily agreed. Their importance is unquestionably first-rate. But to come to the point, will you state plainly, whether you mean to assert that their text is in your judgement of exceptional purity?

B. S. I do.

The Dean. At last there we understand one another. I on the contrary insist, and am prepared to prove, that the text of these two Codexes is very nearly the foulest in existence. On what, pray, do you rely for your opinion which proves to be diametrically the reverse of mine83?

B. S. The best scholars tell me that their text, and especially the text of B, is of a purer character than any other: and indeed I myself, after reading B in Mai's edition, think that it deserves the high praise given to it.

The Dean. My dear friend, I see that you have been taken in by Mai's edition, printed at Leipzig, and published in England by Williams & Norgate and D. Nutt. Let me tell you that it is a most faulty representation of B. It mixes later hands with the first hand. It abounds in mistakes. It inserts perpetually passages which are nowhere found in the copy. In short, people at the time fancied that in the text of the mysterious manuscript in [pg 076] the Vatican they would find the verba ipsissima of the Gospels: but when Cardinal Mai was set to gratify them, he found that B would be unreadable unless it were edited with a plentiful correction of errors. So the world then received at least two recensions of B mixed up in this edition, whilst B itself remained behind. The world was generally satisfied, and taken in. But I am sorry that you have shared in the delusion.

B. S. Well, of course I may be wrong: but surely you will respect the opinion of the great scholars.

The Dean. Of course I respect deeply the opinion of any great scholars: but before I adopt it, I must know and approve the grounds of their opinion. Pray, what in this instance are they?

B. S. They say that the text is better and purer than any other.

The Dean. And I say that it is nearly the most corrupt known. If they give no special grounds except the fact that they think so, it is a conflict of opinion. There is a balance between us. But from this deadlock I proceed to facts. Take for example, as before, the last twelve verses of St. Mark. On the one side are alleged B and ?,—of which B by the exhibition of a blank space mutely confesses its omission, and ? betrays that it is double-minded84; one Old Latin MS. (k), two Armenian MSS., two Ethiopic, and an Arabic Lectionary; an expression of Eusebius, who elsewhere quotes the passage, which was copied by Jerome and Severus of Antioch, saying that the verses were omitted in some copies. L of the eighth century, and a few Cursives, give a brief, but impossible, termination. On the other side I have referred to85 six witnesses of the second century, six of the third, fifteen of the fourth, nine of the fifth, eight of the sixth and seventh, [pg 077] all the other Uncials, and all the other Cursives, including the universal and immemorial Liturgical use. Here, as you must see, B and ?, in faltering tones, and with only an insignificant following, are met by an array of authorities, which is triumphantly superior, not only in antiquity, but also in number, variety, and continuousness. I claim also the superiority as to context, internal considerations, and in weight too.

B. S. But surely weight is the ground of contention between us.

The Dean. Certainly, and therefore I do not assume my claim till I substantiate it. But before I go on to do so, may I ask whether you can dispute the fact of the four first Notes of Truth being on my side?

B. S. No: you are entitled to so much allowance.

The Dean. That is a very candid admission, and just what I expected from you. Now as to Weight. The passage just quoted is only one instance out of many. More will abound later on in this book: and even then many more must of necessity remain behind. In point of hard and unmistakable fact, there is a continual conflict going on all through the Gospels between B and ? and a few adherents of theirs on the one side, and the bulk of the Authorities on the other, and the nature and weight of these two Codexes may be inferred from it. They will be found to have been proved over and over again to be bad witnesses, who were left to survive in their handsome dresses whilst attention was hardly ever accorded to any services of theirs. Fifteen centuries, in which the art of copying the Bible was brought to perfection, and printing invented, have by unceasing rejection of their claims scaled for ever the condemnation of their character, and so detracted from their weight.

B. S. Still, whilst I acknowledge the justice of much that you have said, I cannot quite understand how the [pg 078] text of later copies can be really older than the text of earlier ones.

The Dean. You should know that such a thing is quite possible. Copies much more numerous and much older than B and ? live in their surviving descendants. The pedigree of the Queen is in no wise discredited because William the Conqueror is not alive. But then further than this. The difference between the text of B and ? on the one side and that which is generally represented by A and F and S on the other is not of a kind depending upon date, but upon recension or dissemination of readings. No amplification of B and ? could by any process of natural development have issued in the last twelve verses of St. Mark. But it was easy enough for the scribe of B not to write, and the scribe of ? consciously86 and deliberately to omit, verses found in the copy before him, if it were determined that they should severally do so. So with respect to the 2,556 omissions of B. The original text could without any difficulty have been spoilt by leaving out the words, clauses, and sentences thus omitted: but something much more than the shortened text of B was absolutely essential for the production of the longer manuscripts. This is an important point, and I must say something more upon it.

First then87, Cod. B is discovered not to contain in the Gospels alone 237 words, 452 clauses, 748 whole sentences, which the later copies are observed to exhibit in the same places and in the same words. By what possible hypothesis will such a correspondence of the Copies be accounted for, if these words, clauses, and sentences are indeed, as is pretended, nothing else but spurious accretions to the text?

Secondly, the same Codex throughout the Gospels [pg 079] exhibits 394 times words in a certain order, which however is not the order advocated by the great bulk of the Copies. In consequence of what subtle influence will it be pretended, that all over the world for a thousand years the scribes were universally induced to deflect from the authentic collocation of the same inspired words, and always to deflect in precisely the same way?

But Cod. B also contains 937 Gospel words, of which by common consent the great bulk of the Cursive Copies know nothing. Will it be pretended that in any part of the Church for seven hundred years copyists of Evangelia entered into a grand conspiracy to thrust out of every fresh copy of the Gospel self-same words in the self-same places88?

You will see therefore that B, and so ?, since the same arguments concern one as the other, must have been derived from the Traditional Text, and not the Traditional Text from those two Codexes.

B. S. You forget that Recensions were made at Edessa or Nisibis and Antioch which issued in the Syrian Texts, and that that was the manner in which the change which you find so difficult to understand was brought about.

The Dean. Excuse me, I forget no such thing; and for a very good reason, because such Recensions never occurred. Why, there is not a trace of them in history: it is a mere dream of Dr. Hort: they must be “phantom recensions,” as Dr. Scrivener terms them. The Church of the time was not so unconscious of such matters as Dr. Hort imagines. Supposing for a moment that such Recensions, took place, they must have been either merely local occurrences, in which case after a controversy on which history is silent they would have been inevitably rejected by the other Churches in Christendom; or they must have been general operations of the Universal Church, and then inasmuch as [pg 080] they would have been sealed with the concurrence of fifteen centuries, I can hardly conceive greater condemnations of B and ?. Besides, how could a text which has been in fact Universal be “Syrian”? We are on terra firma, let me remind you, not in the clouds. The undisputed action of fifteen centuries is not to be set aside by a nickname.

B. S. But there is another way of describing the process of change which may have occurred in the reverse direction to that which you advocate. Expressions which had been introduced in different groups of readings were combined by “Conflation” into a more diffuse and weaker passage. Thus in St. Mark vi. 33, the two clauses ?a? p??????? a?t???, ?a? s??????? a?t??, are made into one conflate passage, of which the last clause is “otiose” after s???d?a?? ??e? occurring immediately before89.

The Dean. Excuse me, but I entirely disagree with you. The whole passage appears to me to savour of the simplicity of early narratives. Take for example the well-known words in Gen. xii. 5, “and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came90.” A clumsy criticism, bereft of any fine appreciation of times and habits unlike the present, might I suppose attempt to remove the latter clause from that place as being “otiose.” But besides, your explanation entirely breaks down when it is applied to other instances. How could conflation, or mixture, account for occurrence of the last cry in St. Mark xv. 39, or of vv. 43-44 in St. Luke xxii describing the Agony and Bloody Sweat, or of the first Word from the Cross in St. Luke xxiii. 34, or of the descending angel and the working of the cure in St. John v. 3-4, or of St. Peter's visit to the sepulchre in St. Luke xxiv. 12, or what would be the foisting of verses or passages of different lengths into [pg 081] the numerous and similar places that I might easily adduce? If these were all transcribed from some previous text into which they had been interpolated, they would only thrust the difficulty further back. How did they come there? The clipped text of B and ?—so to call it—could not have been the source of them. If they were interpolated by scribes or revisers, the interpolations are so good that, at least in many cases, they must have shared inspiration with the Evangelists. Contrast, for example, the real interpolations of D and the Curetonian. It is at the least demonstrated that that hypothesis requires another source of the Traditional Text, and this is the argument now insisted on. On the contrary, if you will discard your reverse process, and for “Conflation” will substitute “Omission” through carelessness, or ignorance of Greek, or misplaced assiduity, or heretical bias, or through some of the other causes which I shall explain later on, all will be as plain and easy as possible. Do you not see that? No explanation can stand which does not account for all the instances existing. Conflation or mixture is utterly incapable of meeting the larger number of cases. But you will find before this treatise is ended that various methods will be described herein with care, and traced in their actual operation, under which debased texts of various kinds were produced from the Traditional Text.

B. S. I see that there is much probability in what you say: but I retain still some lingering doubt.

The Dean. That doubt, I think, will be removed by the next point which I will now endeavour to elucidate. You must know that there is no agreement amongst the allies, except so far as the denial of truth is concerned. As soon as the battle is over, they at once turn their arms against one another. Now it is a phenomenon full of suggestion, that such a Concordia discors is conspicuous amongst B and ? and their associates. Indeed these two Codexes are [pg 082] individually at variance with themselves, since each of them has undergone later correction, and in fact no less than eleven hands from first to last have been at work on ?, which has been corrected and re-corrected backwards and forwards like the faulty document that it is. This by the way, but as to the continual quarrels of these dissentients91, which are patent when an attempt is made to ascertain how far they agree amongst themselves, I must request your attention to a few points and passages92.