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TRENT ΙΝ ΕΚ LIBRARY
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Canon W.T. Newby
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THE FOUR GOSPELS
A STUDY OF ORIGINS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK + BOSTON - CHICAGO - DALLAS ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN ἃ CO., Lrmtep LONDON + BOMBAY + CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
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THE FOUR GOSPELS A STUDY OF ORIGINS
TREATING OF
THE MANUSCRIPT TRADITION, SOURCES, AUTHORSHIP, & DATES
BY
BURNETT HILLMAN STREETER Hon. D.D. Evin. FELLOW OF QUEEN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD ; CANON OF HEREFORD
EDITOR OF ‘ FOUNDATIONS, ‘CONCERNING PRAYER, ‘IMMORTALITY’ ‘THE SPIRIT, ‘GOD AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE’ AUTHOR OF ‘RESTATEMENT AND REUNION ” CONTRIBUTOR TO ‘OXFORD STUDIES IN THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM ” JOINT-AUTHOR OF ‘THE SADHU’
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1925
All Rights Reserved
«ες Ae π᾿ γος te
Copyricut, 1925, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED, JANUARY. 1925.
Printed in the United States of America by WYNKOOP HALLENBECK CRAWFORD CO., NEW YORK
$n Memoriam
GULIELMI SANDAY, S.T.P.
INSIGNISSIMI APUD OXONIENSES HORUM STUDIORUM FAUTORIS
446440
The inquiry of truth, which is the love-makin knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; which is the enjoying of it—is the sovereign good of
8 Or wooing of it; the and the belief in truth, human nature.
Bacon,
Quis nescit primam esse _historiae legem ne quid f
alsi dicere audeat. deinde ne quid veri non audeat.
CICERO.
Men disparage not Antiquity, who prudently exalt new Enquiries.
Sir Tuomas Browne,
vi
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ERRATA
p. 29, last line, also p. 45,1. 1, for ‘‘two thousand” read ‘twelve hundred.” oe 33, ll. 14 and 16, for “2300” read “1300”; for “1500” read 1300.”
p. 48, 1. 19, for “2000” read “1200.”
p. 56, ll. 5 and 6, for “£1913” read 1923”; for ““E. Maunde” read “ Herbert.”
p. 69, 1. 6, for “Lk. VII. 13” read “Lk. VIII. 13.”
p. 78, 1. 18, after “text” insert “of Luke.”
p. 79, footnote, transpose “in reduced facsimile” and “with Mark.” . 91, 1. 6, for “from” read ‘‘for.’”’ . 116, ll. 4 and 6, for “7@” read ‘“‘r7.” . 140, 1. 28, for “six” read “‘seven.”’ » L70,1.23, for)“ XT Vr read XT” . 174, 1. 14, for “VII. 32-34” read ‘VIII. 22-26.” . 196, footnote, for “Mk. XIII. 4” read “Mk. IV. 23, but.” . 209, 1. 9, read “from Lk. XXII. 14” after “story.” . 214, last line, read ‘‘clearly non-Marcan”’ before “Call off.” . 254, 1. 26, for “Mt. X. 86-38” read “Mt. X. 26-38.” . 255, 1. 25, for “‘If we choose the latter” read ‘‘We should also have to say.”
p. 258, footnote, for “Lk. VII. 30” read “Lk. XII. 30,” twice.
p. 259, 1. 3, for “XVIII. 17” read “XVIII. 18.”
p. 263, 1. 12, for “36-39” read “26-39.”
p. 278, 1. 10, insert ‘XVII. 22-37.
p. 280, 1. 20, for “in Mark” read “in Matthew.”
“ “footnote, for “Mt.” read ‘ Mk.”
p. 287, footnote, for ‘XVI. 17” read “XVI. 16.”
p. 349, ll. 9 and 15, for “Jesus” read “‘Joses”; for ‘‘Shorter” read ‘‘ Longer.”
p. 415, 1. 26, for “X XVII” read “XXVIII.”
p. 416, 1. 12, for “ΣΧ ΧΊ read ‘ XXTIT.”
p. 425, footnote, for “X XVII” read “‘X XVI.”
p. 440, 1. 1, for “witness” read ‘‘ writer.”
p. 464, 1. 3, for “fulfilment” read ‘‘non-fulfilment.”
p. 476, 1. 22, for ‘‘agreed” read “argued.”
p. 504, 1. 23, for ‘‘Di-drachmae” read “drachmae.”
p. 562, 1. 2, for “‘Memories” read ‘‘ Memoirs.”
Ὁ Ὁ Ὁ Ὁ For FS Sits,
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
THE SELECTED Four
SxetcH Map (showing chief places mentioned in this book) .
PART I.—THE MANUSORIPT TRADITION
DiagraMs—(I.) Toe Tuzory or “Locat Texts”; (11) West-
cort AND Hort’s THEORY
CHAPTER II
LocaL AND STANDARD TEXTS
CHAPTER III
THe ΤΈΧΤΒ oF THE GREAT SEES
CHAPTER IV
Tue Korriverat MS. anp THE TExT OF CAESAREA TaBLE—TueE MSS. anp THE Loca ΤΈΧΤΥΒ
CHAPTER V
Tue Revis—D VERSIONS OF ANTIQUITY .
CHAPTER VI
INTERPOLATION AND ASSIMILATION vii
PAGE
24
26
27
51
77 108
109
129
viii THE FOUR GOSPELS
PART I]L—THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM
DIaGRAM—THE SYNOPTICS AND THEIR SOURCES
CHAPTER VII
THE FUNDAMENTAL SOLUTION
AppitionaL Norrs—Owmissions FROM MARK: PARALLELS or ΜΑΤΤΗΒῪ AND LUKE: PAssaGkES PECULIAR TO MaTTHEW AND LUKE
CHAPTER VIII
Proto-Luke ADDITIONAL NotE—PassaGES ASSIGNED TO Proto-LUKE
CHAPTER IX
A Four Document HyporTHeEsis
CHAPTER X
THe RECONSTRUCTION oF Ὁ (Passages assigned to Q)
CHAPTER XI THe Minor AGREEMENTS OF MatTHEW AND LUKE List oF PARABLES
CHAPTER XII
Tue Lost Enp or Mark
PART IIIL—THE FOURTH GOSPEL
CHAPTER XIII
Joun, Mystic anD PROPHET
CHAPTER XIV
JOHN AND THE SyYNOPTICS
PAGE
150
151
195
199 222
223
333
363
393
(Parallels of Mark and John) : : : . 398 "
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XV
THE PROBLEM OF AUTHORSHIP .
CHAPTER XVI
An Otp Man’s FAREWELL
PART IV.—SYNOPTIC ORIGINS CHAPTER XVII
DatE anp LocaL ΟΒΙΘῚΝ oF MarRK and MatTTHEew AppITIoNAL NotE—THE Date oF 1 CLEMENT CHAPTER XVIII
ΠΥ ΚΕ AnD Acts
APPENDICES
I. THe ΟΒΙΘΙΝ ΟΕ Various READINGS 11. Tue Text or tHe O Faniiy Ill. Toe Text or ΟΕΙΘῈΝ on MattrHew
IV. JEROME AND THE CopDEX SINAITICUS
INDICES
Inpex or MSS, (with dates and von Soden’s notition) InpDEx oF SuBJEctTs InDEX OF PROPER NAMES
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
ΙΧ
PAGE
427
463
485 527
529
565 572 585 590
601 607 611 615
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INTRODUCTION
THE obscurity, commonly supposed to veil the origin of the Gospels, is due not so much to the scantiness of the evidence available as to the difficulty of focussing on this one point the fresh evidence which has been accumulated during the last half-century. Students in various specialised branches of research, such as textual criticism, source-analysis, the cultural background of the early Church, and the psychology of Mysti- cism, have worked at these subjects more or less in isolation ; and without intensive specialisation the advance made would have been impossible. But the time is now ripe for an attempt to co-ordinate the results reached—so far as they bear on the origin of the Gospels—and see them in their true relation in a single organic process of historical evolution. In this volume I have set out some researches of my own in two of these fields of study, which, I believe, throw new light on certain aspects of the problem; but my main aim has been that co-ordination of the results achieved along different lines of investigation which, by using these to illuminate and consolidate one another, provides a basis for further conclusions.
In the writing of the book I have had in view readers of three quite different kinds. (1) There is the educated layman who is sufficiently interested in the origin of the Gospels, the manuscript authority for their text, the sources of information possessed by their authors, and in the relation of the mystical to the historical elements in the Fourth Gospel, to undertake a
piece of rather solid reading—provided that the book can be xi
ΧΙ THE FOUR GOSPELS
understood without any previous technical knowledge. (2) I have had in mind the divinity student or minister of religion who desires an introduction to Textual Criticism, to the Synoptic Problem, and the Johannine question, but who does not know of any book which takes cognisance of the MS. discoveries, and light from other directions, which have become available in the last few years. (3) I desire to submit to the judgement of expert scholars the results of my own original research.
Accordingly I have endeavoured, wherever possible, to arrange the material in such a way that the argument and the nature of the evidence shall be clear to a reader who is unacquainted with Greek; and I have relegated to footnotes matter with which the general reader (or the divinity student on a first reading) can afford to dispense ; I have also been at considerable pains to present a clear outline of the argument in the Synopsis at the head of each chapter, and in the Diagrams at the beginning of Parts I. and II. The reader to whom the whole subject is quite new would perhaps do well, at the first reading, to omit Ch. ΠΙ.-ΥἹ., VIII.-XII. and XIV.
The expert will, I believe, find in every chapter suggestions which, whatever their value, have not previously been put for- ward ; but the most original conclusion, and perhaps the most important, is the identification of the text found in the new Koridethi MS. ©, and its allies, with the text in use at Caesarea about a.p. 230. This identification supplies, as it were, the coping stone of the arch in that reconstruction of the various local texts of the Gospels current in the early Church at which scholars have been working for a generation ; it also leads on to @ new conception of the history of the text during the first three centuries—differing as much from that held by Westcott and Hort as from the more recent view put forward by von Soden. The result is materially to broaden the basis of early evidence for the recovery of an authentic text.
The Synoptic Problem is another large issue in regard to which I have attempted to break new ground. While accepting,
INTRODUCTION xiii
and indeed further consolidating, the received theory that Mark was one of the sources made use of by Matthew and Luke, I adventure a new approach towards the question of their other sources. Here, from the nature of the case, evidence of a demonstrative character is not forthcoming. Nevertheless, partly by bringing to bear on this problem results gained in the field of textual criticism, partly by considering anew the nature of parallelism in oral tradition and the probable connection of our Gospels, and also of their sources, with definite localities, I reach conclusions which seem to be sufficiently probable to justify my submitting them—under the conceptions of “ Proto- Luke” and “A Four Document Hypothesis ’’—to the serious consideration of students. If correct, these conclusions are important, as enhancing our estimate of the historical value of much of the material which is preserved by Matthew or Luke only. I have also, I hope—by a new use of the MS. evidence available—finally disposed of the troublesome phantom of an **Ur-Marcus”’ (or earlier version of Mark) which has for too long haunted the minds of scholars.
The problem of the Fourth Gospel must, I am convinced, be approached from two sides. The results of historical and source criticism must be supplemented and interpreted in the light of a study of the psychology of the mystic mind. This done, the question of its authorship can be profitably discussed. My conclusions in regard to this Gospel are avowedly of a tentative character, and it is as a personal impression only that I put forward Part III. of this book. I feel sure, however, that, even if the conclusions reached are in some points erroneous, the method of approach is sound.
The questions treated of in Parts II. and III. cannot be considered entirely in isolation and apart from some considera- tion of the evidence as to the early circulation of the Gospels and their collection into a Canon of inspired writings; accord- ingly I begin with a chapter, “The Selected Four,” summarising as briefly as possible the main facts bearing on this point. And
ΧΙΥ͂ THE FOUR GOSPELS
I conclude in Part IV.—on the basis of the results reached in the previous sections of the book—with an endeavour to deter- mine more exactly the dates and place of writing of the first three Gospels, and also to dispose of the difficulties still felt by some scholars in accepting the Lucan authorship of the Third Gospel and the Acts.
I should perhaps add that I have refrained from discussing recent attempts to reach by critical analysis the sources used by Mark; brilliant as some of these are, for reasons of the kind indicated p. 378 ff., they leave me unconvinced. I have also ventured to ignore many interesting theories, even though put forward by eminent scholars, which seem to me to have been adequately refuted by other writers. Very few dead hypotheses deserve the honour of a monument.
The Bibliographies in Moffatt’s Introduction to the N.T. and for textual criticism—in Gregory’s Teatkritik are so excellent and so well known that I early abandoned the idea of com- piling one of my own, thinking it would be of more practical utility to supplement these by references in the notes to the best, or the most accessible, authority on each particular point as it arose.
I have to acknowledge gratefully assistance received from various friends—in particular from Dr. R. P. Blake of Harvard, Prof. Burkitt of Cambridge, Prof. Dodd of Mansfield College, Oxford, Miss Earp of Cumnor, and Archdeacon Lilley of Hereford, in careful reading of the proofs; to all of these I owe valuable suggestions. I have to thank Mrs. V. J. Brook of Oxford, for very great help in working out points of textual evidence, verifying references, and compiling Tables ; the Rev. J. 5. Bezzant, Vice-Principal of Ripon Hall, Oxford, and the Rev. R. D. Richardson; for the compilation of the Indices, and Mr. Norman Ault for drawing the Diagrams and Map.
B. H. STREETER. Oxrorp, Sept. 1924.
I THE SELECTED FOUR
SYNOPSIS
THE ΙΡΕΑ or A NEw TESTAMENT
The circulation of Gnostic Gospel and Acts and the still more dangerous competition of a compact New Testament put out by the semi-Gnostic Marcion forced the Church in self-defence to assign an exclusive canonical authority—not inferior to that heretofore ascribed to the Old Testament—to those older lives of Christ which it regarded as specially authentic. Thus ὁ. a.p. 180 we find the Four Gospel Canon firmly established.
LocaL GosPELs
But a variety of considerations suggest that originally the Gospels were local Gospels circulated separately, and authoritative only in certain areas. The tradition which assigns Mark to Rome and John to Ephesus may safely be accepted. That connecting Luke with Achaea (i.e. Greece) and Matthew with Palestine is perhaps no more than conjecture ; Matthew may with greater probability be connected with Antioch.
The destruction of Jerusalem a.p. 70 deprived the Church of its natural centre. The capitals of the larger provinces of the Roman Empire succeeded to the place left vacant; and among these the tradition οἱ Apostolic foundation gave special prestige to Antioch, Ephesus, and Rome. The result was a period of about eighty years of more or less independent development, in doctrinal emphasis, in church organisation, and in the production of religious literature. Hence the history of the three succeeding centuries of Catholic Christianity is largely the story of a progressive standardisation of a diversity which had its roots in this period. The delimitation of the Four Gospel Canon was the first step in this process.
1 B
2 THE FOUR GOSPELS
Tue TwiticHt PERIop
The dearth of early Christian literature outside the New Testa- ment makes the eighty years after a.pD. 64 the most obscure in the whole history of the Church. Hence the importance of supplement- ing the scanty evidence as to the existence and circulation of the Gospels during this period by the results of that critical comparison of the Gospels themselves which leads up to the identification of the sources used by their authors. Not infrequently, by bringing the external literary evidence into relation with the results of source- criticism, an unexpected degree of precision and definiteness can be reached. This point illustrated by examples bearing upon the evidence as to the early circulation of each of the four Gospels—a new interpretation being suggested of the evidence of Papias in regard to Matthew.
SourcE AND TEXTUAL CRITICISM
Why these are important to the historian. The study of them can be made interesting, if approached from the right standpoint. Analogy between the method of these investigations and that of the science of Geology.
CHAPTER I THE SELECTED FOUR
Tue IpEA oF A New TESTAMENT
THE primitive Church had all the advantages, without any of the disadvantages, of an authoritative collection of sacred books. Some temperaments are attracted by the idea of novelty, others by the appeal of an immemorial antiquity. The early Church could provide for both. Only yesterday, it taught, under Pontius Pilate, God had sent His Son to die for man; but this recent event was but the culminating point of an eternal purpose revealed to man by a line of Prophets in a sacred literature of prodigious age. On the one hand the Gospel was preached as a new salvation ; on the other—the point is elaborated in all the early defences of Christianity \—its truth was demonstrated by the exact conformity of events in the life of Christ to what had been foretold by writers of an antiquity immensely greater than the poets, philosophers and historians of the Greeks. Yet, though the Church had the advantage of resting on a basis of ancient revelation, its free development was not, as has so often happened in religious history, fettered by its past. For with the coming of the Messiah the Law of Moses, to the Jews the most inspired portion of the whole Old Testament, was ‘abrogated to a large extent—though exactly to what extent was a matter of much controversy—and while the Church of Christ was
1 Cf. Theophilus (a.p. 180), Ad Autolycum, iii. 20, “The Hebrews . . . from
whom we have those sacred books which are older than all authors,” 3
4 THE FOUR GOSPELS CHAP.
understood to be in a sense identical with the “‘ Church in the wilderness,” ! it was no less clearly understood to have been, as it were, refounded ; it had received a further revelation and had made a fresh start.
But, since, for practical purposes, no revelation is complete unless there is an authentic record of it, there was logically implicit from the first, in the idea of a “ further revelation,” the conception of a New Testament to supplement the Old. The Church was intellectually in a weak position until and unless it could support its specific doctrines by the appeal to a collection of sacred books which could be regarded as no less authoritative and inspired than the ancient Jewish Bible. But, although a canonised New Testament was necessary, the need for it was only slowly realised. Nor, had the need been felt, could it have been satisfied all at once. A community can only invest with canonical authority literature which is already ancient, and which has already, by its own intrinsic merit, attained to a high degree of authority and repute. Official canonisation cannot create scripture ; it can only recognise as inspired books which already enjoy considerable prestige. The Epistle traditionally attributed to Clement of Rome? is in this respect particularly illuminating. The writer’s theology is largely taken over from the Epistle to the Hebrews, while Romans and 1 Corinthians are quoted in a way which implies that they are classics ; but, quite clearly, the Old Testament alone is regarded as inspired Scripture.
The formation of an authoritative Canon of the New Testa- ment would in any case have been a natural and obvious development. It was enormously accelerated owing to the wide prevalence of various schools of fantastic theosophy, classed together under the general name of Gnosticism, which seem to have had an extraordinary fascination for the half-educated mind
1 Acts vii. 38.
2 Usually dated a.p. 96; cf. add. note to Ch. XVII. below. As I hold that it is indubitably quoted by Polycarp c. 115, I cannot accept the late date recently proposed by E. T. Merrill, Hssays in Harly Church History (Macmillan, 1924), p. 217 ff.
Te, THE SELECTED FOUR 5
in the second century. In points of detail the systems of the various Gnostic leaders differed immensely. But common to them all is the idea that matter is essentially evil, and that therefore the material universe cannot be the creation of the Supreme Good God, but of some inferior Power from whose grip Christ, the emissary of the Good God, came to deliver man. Gospels, Acts, and other writings claiming to be by Apostles were circulated everywhere, in which Christ was represented as a Divine Being not having a real body of flesh and blood, and as having therefore suffered only in semblance on the cross; or in which, alternatively, it was recorded that the Divine Christ came down upon the man Jesus at the baptism, and was taken up again to heaven at the Crucifixion. ‘‘ My Power, My Power, why hast thou forsaken Me?” says Jesus in the Apocryphal Gospel of Peter; and, adds the author, “immediately he (1.6. the Divine Christ) was taken up.’ It was because this kind of thing, grotesque as it appears to us, had a wide appeal in that age, that the Church was compelled, sooner than might otherwise have been the case, to draw a line between books which might, and books which might not, be “read,” that is, accepted as authorities for true and Apostolic doctrine.
The necessity for an official list of accepted books was more especially brought home to the Church by the extraordinary success of the semi-Gnostic Marcion. Marcion came to Rome from Pontus on the Black Sea in A.p. 139, and lived there for about four years in communion with the Church. Being unable to convert the Roman Church to his peculiar views, he proceeded to found a new church, of which a fundamental tenet was the existence of two Gods. The Old Testament he rejected, as being the revelation of the inferior of these two deities who was the Creator of this evil world. The Good God, the deliverer of mankind, was first revealed in Christ; but the original Apostles had unfortunately misunderstood Christ, and supposed the God whom He revealed to be the Creator, the inferior deity who inspired the Old Testament. Christ’s new revelation was
6 THE FOUR GOSPELS CHAP.
therefore repeated to Paul. Hence his Epistles and the Gospel of Luke—with all passages conflicting with Marcion’s views carefully expurgated as Jewish-Christian interpolations—constituted the sole authentic record of the new revelation made by Christ. Thus Marcion for the first time emphatically presented, both to the Jewish and to the Christian world, the conception of a fixed and definite collection of Christian literature conceived of as having canonical authority over against and in distinction from the Old Testament. Marcion combined the dualistic explanation of the problem of evil, which was the main attraction of all types of Gnosticism, with the simplicity and fervour of the specifically Pauline type of Christianity. He himself united intense religious conviction with great organising capacity ; and within his own lifetime he had founded a compactly organised church extending throughout the Roman Empire. Its members, in the asceticism of their lives and their readiness for martyrdom, equalled and claimed to excel those of the Catholic Church. Earlier Gnostics had maintained that their particular tenets had been originally a mystic revelation, too precious to be committed to the vulgar, and had been handed down to them by a secret tradition from some one or other of the Apostles. Marcion made a new point when he averred that the Twelve Apostles themselves had been in error. To the Gnostics in general the answer of the Church was to appeal to the unbroken tradition of the great sees founded by Apostles and to the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles recognised by those Churches ; against Marcion in particular the tradition of the Church of Rome gained special importance from its claim to represent the united tradition of both Peter and Paul—whom Marcion’s theory set at variance with one another.
Marcion was the most formidable, precisely because he was the most Christian, of all the Gnostics. The existence of his canon forced the Church explicitly to canonise the books which it accepted ; for his position could not effectively be opposed if the Church ascribed to its own Gospels, and to its own version of the Epistles, a degree of plenary inspiration less than that
I THE SELECTED FOUR 7
attributed by Marcion to the books in his collection. But when the Church had taken this step it found its position unexpectedly strong. After all, four Gospels does sound more imposing than one; and a collection of books which included the Acts, and works attributed to Matthew, John, Peter, and Paul could colourably be regarded as representative of the concurrence of all the Apostles. Once this collection was definitely regarded as scripture, as a New Testament on the same level of inspiration as the Old, the apologetic of the Church was provided with a far broader foundation than the one Gospel and single Apostle to which Marcion appealed. Incidentally the possession of a New Testament made it possible to reply more effectively than hereto- fore to the more damaging arguments of Jewish opponents ; for the difference between Jew and Christian was no longer a matter of the correct interpretation of the prophecies of the ancient scriptures, but of the recognition of the new. Whether the explicit recognition of the New Testament writings as inspired scripture was the result of some official pronouncement agreed upon by the authorities ef the Great Churches we do not know. What we do know is that by about the year a.p. 180 the Four Gospels had attained this recognition in Antioch, Ephesus, and Rome.
For Antioch our evidence is the statement of Jerome that Theophilus, bishop of that church c. 180, wrote a commentary on the Four Gospels, coupled with the fact that, in his one surviv- ing treatise, Theophilus quotes the Fourth Gospel as “ inspired scripture,” and by the name of John.t_ For Ephesus and Rome combined our authority is Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons. He had listened to Polycarp in Smyrna as a boy, had resided and lectured in Rome in 177, and played the mediator between Ephesus and
1 Ad Autolycum, ii. 22. Jerome’s language in his Epistle to Algarsia (Vallarsi, i. 858) may imply that Theophilus made a Harmony of the Gospels before commenting on them. Some think he may actually have used Tatian’s Diatessaron; but, even so, the fact that this was a harmony of ““ the Four,” along with the ascription of scriptural authority to John, justifies the inference that the Four were regarded by him as the inspired Four.
8 THE FOUR GOSPELS CHAP.
Rome in 191, when Victor of Rome had excommunicated the churches of Asia—‘ Asia ” is the Roman name for one province of Asia Minor—over a difference as to the manner and time of keeping Easter. The main argument in Irenaeus’ comprehensive Refutation of the Knowledge falsely so called (usually cited as Adversus Haereses) is the appeal, against the Gnostic claim to possess secret Apostolic traditions, to the uninterrupted public tradition of the bishops of the Apostolic sees of Rome and Asia. Accordingly we may be certain that what he says about the Gospels represents the official view at Rome and Ephesus at the time he wrote (c. 185). What that view was the following extracts will sufficiently indicate.
“ Matthew published his written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own language, while Peter and Paul were preaching and founding the church in Rome. After their decease Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also transmitted to us in writing those things which Peter had preached ; and Luke, the attendant of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel which Paul had declared. Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also reclined on his bosom, published the Gospel, while residing at Ephesus in Asia.” 1
“It is impossible that the Gospels should be in number either more or fewer than these. For since there are four regions of the world wherein we are, and four principal winds, and the Church is as seed sown in the whole earth, and the Gospel is the Church’s pillar and ground, and the breath of life: it is natural that it should have four pillars, from all quarters breathing incorruption, and kindling men into life. Whereby it is evident, that the Artificer of all things, the Word, who sitteth upon the Cherubim, and keepeth all together, when He was made manifest unto men, gave us His Gospel in four forms, kept together by one Spirit. . . . For indeed the Cherubim had four faces, and their faces are images of the dispensation of the Son of God. . . . For the Living Creatures are quadriform, and the Gospel also is quadriform.” 2
1 Tren. Adv. Haer. iii. 1. 1, 2 Tbid. iii. 11. 8.
I THE SELECTED FOUR 9
To the modern reader, language like this seems fantastic ; but it is supremely interesting for what it implies. No one, even in that age, could have used it except about books whose sacrosanctity was already affirmed by a long tradition.
Locat GosPELs
The existence of four Gospels is so familiar that we are apt to take it as a matter of course; to us, as to Irenaeus (though for different reasons), it seems almost part of the nature of things. But once we begin to reflect upon it, the acceptance by the Church of four different official Lives of Christ is a fact which cries out for an explanation. To begin with, the practical inconvenience of having so many Lives is very great, especially as these alter- nately agree and differ from one another in a way which makes it extremely hard to get a consistent view of the story as a whole. The inconvenience has been felt by every one who has tried to give practical religious instruction. Again, already in the second century heretics were making capital out of the discrepancies between the Gospels.1_ So far as we can judge from the solutions produced by later writers, it would appear that criticism was principally directed to the divergence between the genealogies of our Lord in Matthew and Luke and between the chronology of the Fourth Gospel and that of the Synoptics. But there are other hardly less striking divergences which, then as since, must have given trouble to the apologist.
Tatian (who left Rome for Mesopotamia c. 4.D. 172) tried to overcome these difficulties by combining the Gospels into a single connected narrative. And until about 430 his Diatessaron, or Harmony,? which carefully weaves the four Gospels into a
1 Tren. Adv. Haer. iii. 2.1. The Muratorian Canon (c. a.D. 200), / 16-25, seems to glance at the same debate. Julius Africanus, c. a.D. 230, reconciles the genealogies by a theory of Levirate marriages. Eusebius, perhaps following Hippolytus (cf. B. W. Bagon, The Fourth Gospel in Research and Debate, pp.
226 ff.), discusses the reconciliation of the Synoptic and Johannine chronology. H.E. iii. 24.
2 The original of this is lost, but we have Arabic, Latin, and Old Dutch
10 THE FOUR GOSPELS OHAP.
continuous story, while preserving as far as possible their original wording, seems to have been the only form in which the Gospels were publicly read in the Churches (and even commented on by theologians) among the Syriac-speaking Christians. In that part of the world the “‘ Separate Gospels ” were very little used, while the Diatessaron was commonly spoken of simply as “ the Gospel.” Fortunately for the historian, though perhaps less so for the Sunday School teacher, the experiment of substituting a single official Life for the four separate Gospels did not commend itself to the Greek and Latin Churches, otherwise our Gospels might have survived only as conjectured “ sources ” of the Diatessaron.
Another thing that requires explanation is the inclusion of Mark among the selected Four. Modern scholars, it is true, are unanimous in accepting the view that Mark is the oldest of the Gospels, and was one of the main sources from which Matthew and Luke drew their information. And Mark preserves a number of small details, omitted or blurred in the other Gospels, which, to the historical instinct of the twentieth century, are of the utmost interest. But the very fact that these details were not reproduced in the later Gospels shows that they were uninterest- ing, or even positively distasteful, to the Church of that age, Again, Mark has no account of the Infancy, nor (in the text as given in the oldest MSS. and versions) of the Resurrection Appearances, and it contains comparatively little of the teaching of our Lord. Apart from the minor details already mentioned, it includes only two miracles and one parable not in Matthew or Luke, and most of its contents are to be found in both the other two. It is the Gospel least valued, least quoted, and most rarely commented on by the Fathers. Augustine can even venture to speak of Mark as “a sort of lackey and abridger of Matthew.” + And in the Western Church, till Jerome’s Vulgate,
versions, besides an Armenian version of a commentary on it by Ephraem the Syrian (c. 360). The most recent discussion of the comparative value of these authorities is by F. C. Burkitt, J.7.8., Jan. 1924.
* “Marcus eum (sc. Matthaeum) subsecutus tanquam pedisequus et breviator ejus videtur,” Aug. De cons. evan. ii.
1 THE SELECTED FOUR 11
in spite of the fact that tradition averred that the Gospels were written in the sequence Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, they were officially arranged in the order Matthew, John, Luke, Mark,} so as to put the least important Gospel last. They so stand in many Old Latin MSS. and in the Greek MSS. D and W, which give a definitely Western text. Why, then, was it thought necessary to ascribe to it canonical authority at all? Why did not Mark, like the other ancient sources used by Matthew and Luke, cease to be copied—being superseded by its incorporation in these fuller and more popular works ?
The foregoing considerations prove that the inclusion of four Gospels, and of these particular four, in the Canon, was not determined by considerations of practical convenience; and it involved the Church in obvious apologetic difficulties. Thus it can only be accounted for on the hypothesis that, at the time when the Canon was definitely settled, each of the four had acquired such a degree of prestige that no one-of them could be excluded, or could even have its text substantially altered in order to bring it into harmony with the rest.
Certain of the divergences between the Gospels, in particular those between Matthew and Luke, are of such a character that it is difficult to believe that these books originated in the same church, or even in the same neighbourhood. The contrast between the Jewish atmosphere of Matthew and the even more markedly Gentile proclivities of Luke is enhanced by a still more notable contrast between the divergent cycles of tradition on which they draw. The formal contradiction between the two gene- alogies is really less significant than the extraordinarily meagre contacts between their two accounts of the Infancy and of the Resurrection Appearances, for these were matters of much more.
1 This order is explained and stated to be official in the so-called Monarchian Prologues: “‘ Qui (sc. Johannes) etsi post omnes evangelium scrip- sisse dicitur, tamen dispositione canonis ordinati post Matthaeum ponitur.”’ These Prologues to the Gospels, found in some Latin MSS., are printed in Wordsworth and White’s Vulgate; also in convenient pamphlet form in Kleine Texte. P. Corssan, in Texte und Untersuchungen, xv. 1, dates them as third century ; others attribute them to Priscillian - 380.
12 THE FOUR GOSPELS ORAP.
general interest. Churches in which the traditions current were 80 completely independent in regard to points of such absorbing interest as these must, one would suppose, have been geographically remote from one another. Again, the survival of Mark would be adequately explained if it had had time to become an established classic in one or more important churches some time before its popularity was threatened by competition with the richer Gospels produced in other centres,
Thus we are led on to the view that the Gospels were written in and for different churches, and that each of the Gospels must have attained local recognition as a religious classic, if not yet as inspired scripture, before the four were combined into a collection recognised by the whole Church. The tradition, for what it is worth, decidedly supports this view. Mark is assigned to Rome, John to Ephesus, Luke to Achaea, and Matthew to Palestine. The tradition connecting the Gospels of Mark and John with Rome and Ephesus is so early and fits in so well with other pieces of evidence that it may safely be accepted. In particular, the view that Mark was the old Gospel of the all- important Church of Rome would completely account for its inclusion in the Canon. The tradition connecting Luke, the most Hellenic of the Gospels, with old Greece cannot be traced earlier than the (probably third century) Monarchian Prologues to the Latin Gospels. It may be only a conjecture—if so, it is a happy one. The evidence connecting Matthew with Palestine must be largely discounted, insomuch as it is bound up with the statement that it was written in Hebrew, which does not seem to hold good of our present Gospel. I shall shortly return to this question ; but, at any rate, the tradition constitutes prima facie evidence that the Gospel originated in. the East—probably at Antioch.1
All four Gospels were cettainly known in Rome by a.p. 155, if not before. Justin Martyr, who was writing in Rome,
1 So Foakes-Jackson and Lake, Beginnings of Christianity, i. p. 329 f. (Macmillan, 1920.)
I THE SELECTED FOUR 13
150 years—he himself says—after the birth of Christ, speaks of “ Memoirs which are called Gospels,” 1 and again of ““ Memoirs composed by the Apostles and their followers.” These he says were read at the weekly service of the Church. And in his writings are to be found something like a hundred quotations or reminiscences of Matthew and Luke, and some of Mark and John. There is so very little in Mark which does not also occur in Matthew or Luke that we should expect the allusions to matter peculiar to Mark to be few. But the paucity of his quotations from John is a little strange when set side by side with the central position in his apologetic system of the Johannine doctrine of the Logos. From this, some scholars have inferred that, while Justin himself—who had been converted to Christi- anity in Ephesus—accepted the Ephesian Gospel, the Roman public for which he wrote did not put it on quite the same level as the other three. Moreover, it is possible, though not I think probable, that he made occasional use of other Lives of Christ besides the four we have. If so, he used them only as sub- ordinate authorities. But although Justin’s evidence shows that by a.p. 155 all four Gospels have reached Rome, once the idea that the Gospels were originally local Gospels is presented to us, we realise that each of the Gospels must have an earlier history, which requires to be separately investigated and must go back a considerable period before the date when the collection of Four was made. But the separate histories of the Gospels cannot be properly appreciated if considered apart from the histories of the several churches in which they were produced. In this connection I would stress a considera- tion to which scholars in general have, I think, given too little attention.
The original capital of Christianity was the mother Church of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in
1 Justin, Apol. i. 66; Dial. 103. Convenient tables illustrating Justin’s use of the Gospels are given by W. Sanday, The Gospels in the Second Century, pp. 91 ff., 113 ff.
14 THE FOUR GOSPELS CHAP.
A.D. 70, after a long and peculiarly horrible siege. By that time most, if not all, of the original Apostles had died. Naturally, therefore, Christians in the smaller cities of the Roman Empire tended more and more to look for guidance and direction to those other ancient capitals upon which in secular affairs they and their ancestors had been most directly dependent. Rome, the political centre of the civilised world, was in a more special sense the capital of the West. In the East the old capitals of conquered states were still the headquarters of provincial administration, the most important being Alexandria and Antioch on the Orontes, the capitals respectively of the old Egyptian Empire of the Ptolemies and of the old Seleucid Empire of Syria. Of the lesser kingdoms which had been in- corporated into the Roman Empire, one of the most prosperous was that province of Asia Minor known by the Romans and in the New Testament as “Asia,” of which Pergamum was the official capital but Ephesus the most notable city. Two other provinces which for special reasons are important in the history of the early Church were Achaea and Palestine, of which the administrative capitals were Corinth and Caesarea. The Church in all these cities could claim special association with, if not actual foundation by, Apostles. Hence during the second century, when Gnosticism seriously menaced the essential char- acter of Christianity, and when it seemed that it could only effectively be resisted by the appeal to Apostolic tradition, their Apostolic connection gave these churches—and especially the three most important of them—Antioch, Ephesus, and Rome—a prestige which made their influence for the time being determinant in the development of Christianity. It is notable that it was not until after a.p. 190, by which time the Four Gospel Canon seems to have been universally accepted, that Alexandria began to exercise any considerable influence on the Church at large. During the century or more after the death of the original Apostles and the fall of Jerusalem there was no unifying authority, no world-wide organisation, however informal, to check the
I THE SELECTED FOUR 15
independent development of the various local churches each on its own lines. Inevitably this independence resulted in local diversity—in regard to doctrinal emphasis, Church organisation, the religious literature most valued, and also, as we shall see, in regard to the manuscript tradition of such books as they had in common. Thus the history of Catholic Christianity during the first five centuries is very largely the history of a progressive standardisation of a diversity the roots of which were planted in the sub-Apostolic age. It was during the earlier part of this period of maximum independence that the Gospels were written ; and the delimitation of the Four Gospel Canon was the first step in the process of standardising.
Tue TwiticuHt PERIOD
The story of the Acts of the Apostles leaves Paul in Rome a couple of years or so before the persecution under Nero (a.D. 64), in or shortly after which probably Paul, and possibly Peter, fell. Owing to the extreme paucity of early Christian literature (apart from the New Testament) the ninety years which separate this event from the writings of Justin is the most obscure in the history of the Church. It was during this period that the Gospels were written, and during the earlier part of it each must have had a separate history. In the last three chapters of this book I attempt to trace something of this history. By a scrutiny of the evidence sufficiently minute, more especially by the piecing together of results gained along different lines of research, it is, I believe, possible to do this, and to determine the dates, author- ship, and place of origin of the several Gospels with a greater degsee of assurance than is commonly supposed. But for the moment the point I desire to emphasise is that among the most important of the facts on which these larger historical conclu- sions must be based are the results attained by a critical study of the mutual relations of the Gospels to one another and the light which this throws on the sources which their authors used.
16 THE FOUR GOSPELS OHAP.
In order to illustrate this point, and at the same time to make an opportunity of setting down certain facts to which I may have occasion to refer back later on, I will cite four pieces of evidence bearing on the origin and dates of the Gospels—indicating the way in which they are amplified or reinforced by the result of the critical studies upon which the reader of this volume is about to embark.
(1) Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom in the Colosseum at Rome, 6. A.D. 115, wrote seven short letters. In these we find a dozen or more reminiscences of material found in the Synoptic Gospels. But, if these allusions are critically examined by a student of the Synoptic Problem, he will note that while all of them may, some of them must, be regarded as reminiscences of Matthew ; for in certain cases the language of Ignatius implies a knowledge of passages which such a student recognises as attributable to the editor of that Gospel and not his sources.! Matthew, then, was a standard work at Antioch before 115. This would fit in with the tradition of Palestinian origin; but, for reasons I shall develop later, I think it more probable that, though it may incorporate a Palestinian source, the Gospel itself is really the local Gospel of the important Church of Antioch. At any rate, its use by Ignatius fixes a point in the history of the Gospels.
(2) I have already mentioned how, after a four years’ member- ship of the Roman Church, Marcion founded the most vigorous of all the early sects, and how, rejecting the Old Testament, he elevated to the rank of inspired Scripture the Epistles of Paul (the only Apostle who had really understood Christ) and the Gospel of Luke—all heavily bowdlerised to accord with his own views. Now even so forcible a person as Marcion could hardly have induced his followers to attribute plenary inspiration to an existing document unless it was one which enjoyed considerable
» #.g. Ignatius clearly alludes to Mt. iii. 14-15 (Smyrn. i. 1) and to Mt. viii. 17 (Polye. i. 2-3). In Ch. XVII. below I comment on the more striking allu- sions in Ignatius to passages in the Gospel.
I THE SELECTED FOUR 17
prestige ; hence we may infer that, at any rate in Rome, the Gospel of Luke was, by a.p. 140, already a Church classic of some years’ standing. If, however, we wish to trace the history of the Gospel further back, we find that, though possible reminis- cences of it (and its sequel, the Acts) may be found in the scanty literature of the period, they fall short of certainty. At once the importance is seen of the question whether or no Luke was known to the author of the Fourth Gospel, since (if the view maintained in Ch. XV. be correct) this cannot be later than A.D. 100 and may quite possibly be as early as 90. Thus the problem of the sources of the Fourth Gospel bears also on the history of the Third.
(3) Eusebius, the father of Church History, c. 325, had a fortunate habit of quoting his authorities verbatim; and, as we can check his accuracy by those which still survive, we can trust it in regard to those which do not. Among the most interesting of these are two passages from Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, one of the “ seven churches of Asia.’ As to the date at which Papias wrote his Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, from which Eusebius quotes, there has been much dispute; but the limits on either side would seem to be 135 and 165. It runs as follows :
“And the Elder said this also: Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately everything that he remembered, without however recording in order! what was either said or done by Christ. For neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow Him, but afterwards as I said (attended) Peter who adapted his instructions to the need (of his hearers) but had no design of giving a connected account of the Lord’s oracles. So then Mark made no mistake while he thus wrote down some things as he remembered them ; for he made it his one care not to omit anything that he heard or to set down any false statement therein” (Eus. H.£. iii. 39).
1 J dissent from F. H. Colson (J.7'.S., xiv. 62 f.) that rhetorical, rather than chronological, τάξις is meant.
Cc
18 THE FOUR GOSPELS CHAP.
From the context in Eusebius it would appear that the Elder spoken of was the Elder John. His identity must be inferred from another quotation by Eusebius, this time from the Preface of Papias’ work.
“ And again, on any occasion when a person came in my way who had been a follower of the Elders, I would enquire about the discourses of the Elders—what was said by Andrew, or by Peter, or by Philip, or by Thomas or James, or by John or Matthew, or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and what Aristion and the Elder John, the disciples of the Lord, say.”
Aristion and the Elder John, it appears from this, were in the unique position of being “disciples of the Lord” who ranked after the Apostles themselves as depositories of authentic tradition. Presumably they must at least have seen the Lord in the flesh. Irenaeus ! tells us how in his youth he heard Polycarp speak of ‘‘ John and the others who had seen the Lord,” and it is not impossible that Polycarp was alluding to John the Elder, though Irenaeus seems to have understood him to mean the Apostle John. Some critics wish to emend the Greek in the quotation from Papias so as to make Aristion and the Elder disciples, not of the Lord, but of the Apostles. In my own view the emendation is arbitrary and improbable. But, even so, Aristion and the Elder John are left as immediate followers of the Apostles—like Mark or Luke. That is to say, on any view, the statement of the Elder John as to the origin of Mark is the evidence of a contemporary.
Contemporary evidence as to the origin of the oldest of our Gospels is of the utmost historical importance. But the question has been raised, Was the Gospel of Mark of which the Elder spoke the Gospel we possess or some earlier edition? The answer to this question is bound up with the answer to the other question, whether the extant Gospel of Mark, or some earlier edition of it, was known to, and used by, the authors of Matthew and Luke. Further, it will appear (in Chap. XI.) that this last point
1 Tn his letter to Florinus, quoted p. 443 below.
I THE SELECTED FOUR 19
cannot satisfactorily be decided without a correct estimate of the comparative value of the several lines in the manuscript tradition of the text of the Gospels. That is to say, the question as to the original Mark can only’ be settled on the basis of the combined results of both Synoptic and Textual criticism.
(4) To the quotation from Papias about Mark, Eusebius adds one about Matthew: ‘‘So then Matthew composed the oracles (τὰ λόγια) in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as he could.”” Volumes have been written on this enigmatic fragment. In this place all I can do is to state in a seemingly dogmatic way an hypothesis, which I believe to be original, and which I shall attempt to justify at greater length in the sequel.
(a) Irenaeus is known to have read Papias; we infer that his statement about the Hebrew original of Matthew, and all the similar statements by later Fathers, are probably derived from Papias. Since, then, the credibility of any statement depends on its origin, not on the number of persons who repeat it, the statements of the later authors can be ignored, if only we can find what exactly is the meaning and authority of this passage in Papias.
(Ὁ) Whoever was the author of the Fourth Gospel, there can be no reasonable doubt that it. was written in Ephesus. And at the date at which Papias wrote—and the later we make this date, the stronger the argument—it must have been officially recognised in Papias’ own province of Asia. Further, as Light- foot pointed out, in the list of Apostles mentioned in the previously quoted fragment of Papias, the order and selection of names is that of their occurrence in the Fourth Gospel, not of the Synoptic lists. We are bound, then, to consider the curiously disparaging tone of Papias’ remarks about Matthew and Mark in the light of this presumption that Papias knew the Fourth Gospel.
Of Mark, Papias, or rather the Elder his informant, says in effect “the facts are correct—that follows from Mark’s connection with Peter—but, as Mark had only his memory to rely upon, he has got them in the wrong order.” In regard to Matthew he
20 THE FOUR GOSPELS CHAP.
says that “the original of the discourses (τὰ λόγια) was in Hebrew and there is no authorised translation.” Now this depreciation of Gospels used in the Church is quite unaccountable unless it seemed necessary in order to defend the superior accuracy of some other Gospel which was in conflict with them in regard to certain points.
Now obviously the Fourth Gospel is in violent conflict with Mark in regard to the order of events. But it has not, I think, hitherto been realised, in this particular connection, that the Fourth Gospel is equally in conflict with Matthew in regard to the “ prophetic utterances”—that is the strict meaning of τὰ λόγια--οἱ our Lord. Matthew is the Gospel which lays most emphasis ori the idea of an early visible Second Coming ; John is the Gospel which all but substitutes for this visible return of Christ the coming of the Paraclete. Papias himself was a Millennarian ; but it is probable—Eusebius is ambiguous here—that the passage about Matthew, like that about Mark, is quoted from the Elder John. In that case the two fragments of Papias represent what Asian tradition recollected of John the Elder’s reply to critics who impugned the accuracy of the Fourth Gospel on the ground of its divergence from Matthew and Mark.
Heretofore scholars have taken it for granted that τὰ λόγια was the title of a book—differing only in their view as to whether the book referred to was our Gospel of Matthew, a lost collection of sayings of the Lord, or a collection of proof-texts. I submit that if—in the lost context of the fragment—Papias was talking, not about books, but their subject-matter, ra λόγια would be the natural phrase to use in speaking of the sayings of Christ which form so conspicuous an element in the existing Gospel of Matthew. The Elder—thinking, partly of the Judaistic, but. mainly of the Apocalyptic, sayings in Matthew—says that the discourses in this Greek Gospel cannot always be relied on as accurately representing the original Hebrew (cf. p. 416).
If this explanation is correct, the Elder may have known of the existence of a Hebrew (prob.=Aramaic) collection of
I THE SELECTED FOUR 21
sayings of Christ by Matthew (though he need not actually have seen it), and he does not wish to deny that this had been used by the author of the Greek Gospel. But he declines to regard as a wholly apostolic, and therefore in all points authoritative, work the Greek Gospel which, at the time when he was speaking, was in all probability a new arrival in Ephesus and not yet generally accepted in that church. But, supposing the fragment represents a protest on behalf of the local Ephesian Gospel against the superior claims made by certain persons in favour of a Gospel recently introduced from outside, we are not entitled to infer from the expression “each one translated them as he could” that the Elder knew of any other Greek versions of Matthew's Hebrew work. More probably his language is a slightly contemptuous exaggeration intended to assert that the particular Greek version (1.6. our Gospel of Matthew), to the authority of which the critics of the Fourth Gospel were appealing, was aN anonymous version having no claim to direct apostolic authority. What he is anxious to assert is that the Greek Gospel of Matthew, like that of Mark, is only deutero-apostolic, and that, therefore, its authority cannot be quoted as final where it conflicts with the Fourth Gospel. This does not necessarily imply that he attributed the Fourth Gospel to an Apostle. On the contrary, supposing that the Elder knew that this Gospel was by an unknown disciple of John, or supposing that he were himself (as I shall argue) the author, it would only be the more necessary to point out that Gospels like Matthew and Mark, which were at times in confliet with it, were no more directly apostolic than itself.
In the interpretation of the meaning of a fragment, torn from its original context, there must always be an element of doubt. But the above interpretation has two great merits. First, it explains the extraordinary fact that the earliest allusion in Christian literature to the Gospels is an endeavour to minimise their accuracy and Apostolic authority. Secondly, the view that the Elder John meant to affirm that the Greek Matthew
22 THE FOUR GOSPELS OHAP.
was not the work of an Apostle, though embodying a work originally written in Hebrew by the Apostle Matthew, fits in admirably with the result of a critical comparison of the Synoptic Gospels, which suggests that the author of our First Gospel used Mark and at least one other source mainly consisting of dis- course. There is not, however, I may incidentally remark, any reason to suppose that the Hebrew work of Matthew was ever known by the title “ Logia.”
Source anp ΤΈΧΤΟΑΙ, Criticism
These examples will suffice to show how the critical study of the internal relations of the Gospels to one another may illuminate the external evidence as to their authorship, date, or locality of origin. But, if we are to pass on from the history of the Gospels themselves to a consideration of their value as historical authorities for the life of Christ, the analysis of sources is still more important. For our estimate of the historical value of the Gospels depends in the last resort upon the opinion we frame as to the sources of information upon which the several authors relied, and of the degree of accuracy with which they reproduced them.
The historian, moreover, must go on to ask the question, How far does the text of the Gospels that has come down to us represent what the authors wrote? The earliest MSS. we possess, apart from a few papyrus fragments, are separated by a matter of two and a half centuries from the authors’ original. Since absolute accuracy is an ideal not attainable by mortal man, every time a MS. is copied some errors will get into the text. But the errors which will arise and be propagated along one line of transmission will not be the same as those along another. Thus by a comparison of MSS. representing different textual traditions the errors of one can be corrected from another. But if this is to be done, it is vital to ascertain the number and character of these different traditions and how far they are
I THE SELECTED FOUR 23
independent of one another. I have already indicated how in certain ways the study of textual criticism, in the light of recent MS. discoveries, throws unexpected light on some of the obscurer aspects of the Synoptic Problem ; incidentally it provides further evidence of the necessity of studying the history of the Gospels in each of the Great Churches separately.
Many of those who recognise that both textual criticism and the analysis of sources are an essential preliminary to a truly historical investigation are nevertheless inclined to recoil from the study of these problems, fearing lest they may become choked by the dust of multifarious detail. To such I would venture to suggest that whether a particular investigation is instinct with interest or fraught with tedium depends very much on the spirit in which it is approached. The problems discussed in the present volume have, if one cares to look at it in that light, much the same kind of intellectual appeal as the quest for the solution of a difficult acrostic or of a problem in chess. An even better analogy would be the science of Geology; for that is recognised as truly a science, though a science which, from the nature of the case, is compelled to dispense with the method of experiment and relies solely on observation. Geology attempts to reconstruct the history of the past by a highly scientific application of the method of observation. Facts, over as wide a range as possible, are collected, sifted, and compared, in order that hypotheses may be framed which will satisfactorily account for the observed phenomena. The critical investigations pursued in this volume are of a precisely similar character. And the student who enters upon these problems in the same spirit of scientific inquiry as he would if they were problems of Geology will find the method not without interest and the results well worth the trouble.
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THE MANUSCRIPT TRADITION
25
(1) THE THEORY OF “LOCAL TEXTS”
Original Autographs
ALEXANDRIAN EASTERN WESTERN
ITALY~-GAUL AFRICA
ANTIOCH
CAESAREA
Dab W"*ke CL33 Boh Revised Text of Lucian ¢ AD.310 Byzantine (orStandard’)Text. (A)E ete. ete. Textus Receptus (II) WESTCOTT δ᾽ HORT’'S THEORY Original Autographs ALEXANDRIAN NEUTRAL WESTERN (ΟἹ, ὅδ Sah.Boh) ΒΝ D. Old Lat. Syr.C.
( fam.® so far as known)
Syrian Revision ¢.A.D. 310 “Syrian” @Byzantine) Text. (A) Ε ete.
Textus Receptus
II
LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS
SYNOPSIS
A Brrp’s Eye VIEw
The Received Text represents approximately the Byzantine text found in the majority of MSS. But the earliest MSS. and Versions afford evidence of the existence at an early date of a number of local texts, differing considerably from one another, which in the course of time were gradually submerged by the Byzantine standard text. Recent discovery and investigation necessitates considerable modi- fications of the theories put forward by Westcott and Hort.
(1) The two oldest MSS., Bs (on which W.H. mainly based their edition of the Greek Testament), represent the local text of Alexandria. (2) What is called the ‘‘ Western ”’ text is really not a single text, but a group of distinct local texts within which an Kastern type (with two sub-varieties current in Antioch and Caesarea respectively) must be clearly distinguished from the Western type (used with some slight differences in Africa and Italy).
The materials for the textual criticism of the Gospels contrasted with those available for classical authors. Note on von Soden’s edition.
Loca TExts
Brief survey of the conditions of copying and correcting MSS. which led to the development of local texts. The maximum of divergence between local texts probably reached ὁ. a.p. 200. This is reflected in the oldest Latin, Syriac and Egyptian Versions.
The great majority of various readings are, in regard to points of grammar, order of words, etc., so small as to make no essential differ- ence to the sense ; but for the identification of the various local texts, the concurrence in a group of MSS. of a large number ofthese minute ° variants is of chief significance. Large omissions or interpolations, though more striking, are for this purpose less important, since in the period when the churches were comparing different texts and correct- ing one by another, the more conspicuous variants would be the first
27
28 THE FOUR GOSPELS
to attract attention, and would thus be adopted from one text into another. STANDARDISATION
As Constantinople came more and more to dominate the Greek- speaking Church, MSS. representing the old local texts were gradu- ally by a series of corrections brought into conformity with the Byzantine standard text. An analogy from the history of ancient liturgies. Similarly MSS. of the Old Latin version were corrected into conformity with the revised version produced by Jerome at the command of Pope Damasus in 381. The result of this standardising process was the production of “ mixed ” texts, 1.6. of MSS. in which one set of readings survive from ancestors representing an old local text, while others agree with the standard text. In mixed MSS. the only readings that need be noticed are those which differ from the standard text.
THe FATHERS AND THE STANDARD TEXT
Since later scribes who copied the works of the Fathers were themselves familiar with the standard text of the Gospels, there was an inevitable tendency for them to correct quotations from the Gospels occurring in an early Father so as to make them conform to the standard text. Two striking illustrations of this process. It follows that when in the printed editions of an early Father (few Fathers have been critically edited from the best MSS.) a quotation from the Gospels is found to agree with the Byzantine text against the local text which that Father elsewhere seems to use, there is a presumption against that particular reading being what that Father originally wrote ; it is more likely to be the result of a scribal correc- tion in the MS. of the Father.
An ILLusion aBout MSS.
The distinction between MSS. written in uncial (i.e. capital) letters, or in a cursive (1.6. small running) hand, in no way corresponds to a difference in their value to the textual critic. Many cursives are quite as important as any uncials after the first five, SBLDO; the practice of citing uncials by a capital letter, cursives by a number, makes the difference between them appear far greater than it really is. After a.p. 600 MSS. with a substantial mixture of the old local texts were rarely copied except in out-of-the-way places or by some accident, and this might occur at quite a late date; also a late cursive may be a direct copy of an early uncial. Of special interest are 88, 579 (allies of BN); also 1, 28, 565, 700, and the “Ferrar Group” (13 &c.), which, together with 0, form a family (fam, Θ) preserving the text of Caesarea.
CHAPTER II LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS
A Birp’s Eve VIEw
To those who read the Gospels in order to obtain a general idea of the life and teaching of Christ, or who value them mainly for devotional purposes, it makes very little difference whether they use the Authorised or the Revised Version. All they want the textual critic to tell them is within what limits of error the text of either version represents what the authors wrote. Any one, however, who wishes to study the subtler shades of meaning in particular passages, or who is interested in the evidence for every detail of the life and teaching of our Lord, will be more exact- ing, and will demand the most accurate text that a scientific study of the MSS. can produce; while to the student of the Synoptic Problem, endeavouring by a microscopic comparison of the Gospels to determine the sources which their authors used, the minutest variant may be of the utmost significance. Indeed, as will appear in a later chapter, it is precisely because most writers on the Synoptic Problem have been content to use without question Synopses of the Gospels in Greek, based either on the text of Tischendorf or on that of Westcott and Hort, that a completely satisfactory explanation of the relation of Matthew and Luke to Mark has not sooner been attained.
The facts which constitute the main difficulty in our quest for the original text may be summed up in a paragraph.
There are over two thousand manuscripts of the Gospels in 29
80 THE FOUR GOSPELS Pr. I
Greek, beginning with the eighth century MS., commonly cited as E, which present a text of aremarkably uniform character. This text was named by Griesbach the “ Byzantine text ”»—a name preferable to that of “ Syrian ” given it by Hort, since, whatever its origin, it was indubitably the standard text of the Byzantine Empire all through the Middle Ages. In sharp contrast to the general uniformity of the Byzantine text is the extent of varia- tion exhibited by the half-dozen Greek MSS. that survive from the fourth and fifth centuries, and by the Greek texts under- lying the Old Latin, the Old Syriac and the older Egyptian, Versions, of which we possess MSS. of an equally early date. Of the six oldest Greek MSS. only one, A, has a text that in all four Gospels approximates to the Byzantine standard. The other five, x BCD W,}! and the three ancient Versions just mentioned have texts which differ to a remarkable extent both from one another and from the Byzantine text. What is even more significant— the quotations from the Gospels made by all Christian writers up to about A.D. 360 almost invariably agree with one or other of these older MSS. or Versions rather than with the Byzantine text.
Thus there is forced upon our notice evidence that in the earlier period there was great diversity between the texts of the New Testament current in the Church—a diversity which was succeeded later on by a high degree of uniformity. We notice at once an analogy between the history of the text and that of the settlement of the canon and the formulation of doctrine. Here, as elsewhere, the final result, it would seem, is a standardisa- tion of an earlier variety.
The problems which the textual critic has to solve are three. (1) He must account for the great divergence between the types of text current in the second, third and fourth centuries. (2) He must explain the origin of the Byzantine standard text and the process by which it replaced the other types. (3) Finally, in the light of the conclusions reached on these two points, he
1 T accept the date (fifth century) assigned to D, the Codex Bezae, by F. C. Burkitt and Ἐς. A. Loew. Cf. J.7.8., July 1902 and April 1913.
OH. II LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS 31
must endeavour to determine which of these types of text, or what kind of combination of them, will represent most nearly the text of the Gospels as they left the hands of their several authors. The third problem is of course much the most im- portant; but he cannot hope to solve it rightly unless he has first found a reasonably satisfactory solution to the other two.
The relation of our printed Greek Testaments and of the English versions to the types of text found in the MSS. may be summarily stated in a very few words. Erasmus was the first to produce an edition of the Greek Testament in print; a subsequent revision of his edition by the Paris printer Stephanus, 1550, became the standard printed text or Textus Receptus. Readings of this text are commonly cited by the abbreviation T.R. or the Greek letter ¢ (= st). Since both Erasmus and Stephanus used (all but exclusively) late Byzantine MSS., the English Authorised Version, which was translated from the Textus Receptus, represents a late stage of the Byzantine text. On the other hand, in the great critical editions of Westcott and Hort and Tischendorf the Byzantine tradition is entirely abandoned and the text is based almost entirely on the two oldest MSS. of all, Β (Vaticanus) and δὶ (Sinaiticus)—of which the first prob- ably, the second possibly, dates from the reign of Constantine (d. A.D. 337). Where these two MSS. differ, Westcott and Hort usually follow B; Tischendorf more often prefers x (Aleph), his own discovery. The “ Revisers’ text,” from which the Revised Version was translated, and which is published by the Oxford University Press, represents a compromise, on the whole a very reasonable one, between the views of Hort, who championed a text based on B, and those of the more conservative members of the Committee who defended the Byzantine text.
At that time neither party was concerned to put in a plea for any readings (except a few omissions) supported only by D (Codex Bezae), by the then known MSS. of the Old Latin and Old Syriac version, or by certain late Greek MSS. exhibiting texts of an unusual type. These authorities were all lumped together
32 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
under the general name of the “ Western text,” and their readings were treated as interesting eccentricities. But investi- gations by more recent scholars and fresh discoveries—of which the Sinaitic Syriac (ὅσ. 8.), the Koridethi MS. ©, the Freer MS. W, and 700 are the most notable—have changed this. (1) It is now generally realised that Β δὶ represent, not, as Hort held, some almost impeccable ‘“‘ Neutral’? text connected- with no particular locality, but the text of Alexandria in its purest form. (2) The question has been raised whether, under the misleading name ‘“ Western,” Griesbach and Hort did not group together what in reality are several distinct local texts.
In Chapters III. and IV. I shall submit an outline of the evidence which compels us to recognise in what they called the “ Western”’ text two distinct types, an Eastern and a strictly (in a geographical sense) Western text. Hach of these types can be further divided into at least two distinct local texts. Indeed it can, I think, be shown that recently discovered MSS., if properly used, enable us to get a fairly clear idea of the different types of text current about a.p. 230, not only in Alexandria, but in Caesarea and Antioch in the East, and in Italy and Carthage in the West.
If this is established, obviously the basis of evidence on which the text of the Gospels rest is greatly widened. Of these five early local texts that of Alexandria (B x) is, as we should expect from the traditidn of textual scholarship native to the place, undoubtedly the best; but no MS. and no line of textual tradition is infallible, and it will not infrequently appear that the true reading of a particular passage, lost at Alexandria, has been preserved in one or other of the rival texts.
It is, however, quite impossible for the student to interpret rightly the evidence by which the identification of local texts is achieved unless he has previously considered (a) the condi- tions which originally gave rise to the existence of these local texts, and (b) the exact nature of that process of progressive correction into conformity with the Byzantine standard text
cH. π' LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS 33
to which many of our most important authorities have been subjected. The present chapter, therefore, will be mainly devoted to a discussion of these two points.
In the field of classical literature the main difficulty of the textual critic, except in the case of a few extremely popular authors like Homer or Virgil, is the paucity and late date of MSS. No portion of Tacitus, for example, survived the Dark Ages in more than one; and the number of famous works of which, apart from Renaissance reproductions, there are less than half a dozen MSS. is very large. Again, apart from fragments, there are no MSS. of the Greek classics earlier than the ninth century, and very few older than the twelfth. The student of the text of the Gospels is confronted with a difficulty of an opposite character. There are more than 2300 Greek MSS., about forty of which are more than a thousand years old; there are over 1500 Lectionaries which contain the greater part of the text of the Gospels arranged as lessons for the year; there are fifteen Versions in ancient languages, which are evidence of the Greek text used by their translators. In addition, there are innumerable quotations by early Fathers, which are, in effect, fragments of other early MSS. now lost. The mass of material to be con- sidered is crushing. The consequences of this are twofold. On the one hand the degree of security that, in its broad outlines, the text has been handed down to us in a reliable form is prima facie very high. On the other, the problem of sorting the material in order to determine those minuter points which interest the critical student is proportionately complex—how complex is only known to those who have given considerable attention to the study. Nevertheless so much has been accomplished in this way by the labours of generations of scholars, that it is now possible—if we disregard minor issues and accept as provision- ally established certain conclusions to which a minority of experts might demur—to present “a bird’s eye view” of the history of the text, which will be both intelligible to the plain man and at the same time in principle scientific. Such a view will be in one
D
84 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. 1
sense a further development of, in another an attempt to super- sede, the theory put forward by Westcott and Hort in the Introduction to their famous edition of the Greek Testament. Thus it will frequently be necessary to criticise certain of the views of Hort—by whom that Introduction was written. I wish, therefore, once and for all to affirm that this implies no undervaluing of the truly epoch-making character of the work of that great scholar. There is no greater name in the history of Textual Criticism. But for Hort, no such thing as what I am here attempting would be possible; and such modification of his views as seems to be necessary is mainly due to discoveries made since the time he wrote.
1 Of the views of H. von Soden it is impossible to speak in such terms as I should wish, retaining, as I do, pleasant recollections of a personal interview with him a few years before his tragic death. Soden had at his disposal a large sum of money given to enable him to employ numerous assistants, in order to scour the libraries of the East for MSS. hitherto either unknown or not carefully examined ; but unfortunately not much of the first importance was discovered. The Byzantine text he styles K (=«xow7), the Alexandrian H (= Hesychian) ; all other authorities, whether Eastern or Western, are assigned to an I (=Jerusalem) text. In Chapter IV. I shall attempt to discriminate between the almost equally balanced elements of truth and falsehood in his conception of an I text.
In his colossal Introduction he has succeeded in illuminating the grouping of late MSS. and the history of the Byzantine text. But his theories of the influence of Tatian and of a 119". I—H—K text are, if I may borrow a phrase once used by Dr. Sanday, “ποῦ only wrong but wrong-headed.” I am informed by one of the leading scholars in Germany that Soden’s theories, in so far as they are original, are universally rejected in that country, and that his grouping of the MSS. is considered arbitrary. Of his cumbrously conceived attempt to introduce an entirely new naming and numbering of the MSS. I need say nothing, as the vast majority of scholars in Europe and America have agreed that they will not accept it, but will henceforth use Gregory’s revision of the old notation. Advanced students, however, must have some acquaintance with his views, for without that the Apparatus Criticus of his edition cannot be deciphered, much less understood. They should, however, be warned that it is very inaccurate. (On this point there is some damaging evidence in the Introduction to the ‘* New Collation of Codex 22” by Prof. H. A. Sanders, Journal of Biblical Studies, xxxiii. p. 91 ff.) Such students I would refer to an invaluable pamphlet by Prof. K. Lake, Prof. H. von Soden’s Treatment of the Text of the Gospels (Otto Schultze, Edin.; a reprint of articles in Review of Theology and Philosophy, Oct.-Nov. 1908). This paper gives an extremely clear account of Soden’s grouping of the MSS. and a sympathetic exposition of his very complicated views, followed by a very courteous but, in effect, annihilating criticism of them.
cH. 0 LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS 35
Loca TExts
The invention of printing made it possible that every copy of a book should be exactly the same. This was a new thing in the history of literature. So long as books were copied by hand, no two copies could be exactly the same; every copy included certain scribal errors. In the scriptoria of the great libraries it was customary in antiquity for a corrector, διορθωτής, to go over a MS., sometimes with the original from which it was copied, more often, apparently, with another copy. The most obvious mistakes, including accidental omissions, would thus to a large extent be rectified. But this is unlikely to have been done in the earliest MSS. of the Gospels, which would be cheap copies and often made by amateur scribes. In that case an error which made nonsense or spoilt the grammar of a sentence would be subsequently corrected by the.owner of the book—probably, from lack of another copy, by conjecture. If, however, the error was one which left a reading which still made sense, it would be likely to escape notice altogether. In either case the new reading would be reproduced by all subsequent scribes who used this copy as an exemplar. Now as soon as there were numerous copies of a book in circulation in the same area, one copy would constantly be corrected by another, and thus within that area a general standard of text would be preserved. But what we have to consider is that it is unlikely that the errors in the first copy of the Gospel of John, for example, which reached Rome would be the same as those in the first copy which came to Alexandria; and as each of these would become the parent of most other copies used in those respective cities, there would, from the very beginning, be some difference between the local texts of Rome and Alexandria.
Once the Gospels were regarded as inspired, they were copied with scrupulous accuracy and by the most skilful scribes avail- able. But during the first and most of the second century they
86 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
would be, for the most part, copied by amateurs—for Christians were a poor community and a secret society under the ban of the police. It was during this period that all the really important various readings arose. Both insertion and omission would be more possible then than at a later date. For, on the one hand, it was a time when incidents or sayings not included in the original Gospels would still survive in oral tradition, and when their inclusion in a text not yet regarded as sacred would be least resented. On the other hand, accidental omissions—the commonest of all errors in copying, whether in ancient or modern times—-would most easily become permanent; for at a period when the churches were relatively isolated, a passage once omitted from the earliest copy which reached a particular church would not for a long while, if ever, be replaced. This is the ex- planation of what is the most conspicuous difference between one text and another, that caused by the presence in some MSS. of sentences or paragraphs not found in others. Of these variants the so-called Pericope Adulterae, 1.6. the story of the woman taken in adultery (Jn. vii. 53 ff.), and the last twelve verses of Mark are much the most considerable; but there are quite a number of other interesting passages, from half a verse to a couple of verses in extent, which are found in some MSS., but omitted in others. The textual critic is called upon to decide in each particular case whether the reading is the result of accidental omission in the texts which lack, or of interpolation in the texts which contain, these passages. The principles on which such decisions can be made will be discussed later.
But variants of this kind, though the most conspicuous, are not the most important to the critic who is seeking to identify early local texts, for the simple reason that they are so conspicu- ous that they would be the first passages to strike the eye of later scribes or editors who wished to correct or supplement their own text by that of another church. A convincing proof that a group of MSS. represents the text of a particular locality is only forthcoming if they are found to concur in a large number of
ΟΕ. 1 LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS 37
minor variants which are either not found at all or found but rarely in other MSS.
For a discussion, with illustrative-examples, of the causes and exact character of these minor variants I refer the reader to Appendix I., ‘The Origin of Variants.” In this place I need only say that the number of such variants is immense. Between the Textus Receptus and Westcott and Hort, that is, practically between the Byzantine text and that of B, there are, in the Gospels alone, about 4000 differences. And the number of differences between the text of B and that of D would, I imagine, be quite twice as many. JBut no less remarkable is the in- finitesimal character of the vast majority of these differences. For the most part they consist in variations in the relative order of words in a sentence, in the use of different prepositions, con- junctions and particles, in differences in the preposition with which verbs are compounded, or in slight modifications of a grammatical nature.2 Indeed the great majority of them can- not be represented in an English translation.
The main influences which operate to produce differences of text are illustrated by the passages discussed in Appendix I. These are all influences which would operate in every locality. Where a change would effect an obvious grammatical improve- ment or tend to assimilate the text of one Gospel to another, the same alteration might easily be made independently in two different neighbourhoods. But only rarely would any of the other causes of corruption result in a coincident alteration of exactly the same kind along two different lines of textual trans- mission. On the contrary, corruption as a rule causes texts to become in the course of time more and more different. In this way local texts would inevitably develop, not only in the greater,
1 Any one who would like to study these may find a collation of the two texts in W. Sanday, Appendices ad Novum Testamentum, Oxford, 1889.
3 Such phenomena are by no means confined to the toxt of the New Testament. They are a conspicuous feature of the texts of the Fathers; they are found, though to a much less extent, in the texts of some classical writers. See the remarks about MSS. of Augustine quoted by F. G. Kenyon, The Textual Criticism of the New Testament (Macmillan, 1912), p. 355 note.
38 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
but also in the smaller centres of Christianity. But, along with a growing veneration for the text as that of inspired Scripture, there would come a tendency, whenever a new copy of the Gospels for official use in the public services was wanted, to lay more and more stress on the importance of having an accurate text. This would naturally result in the smaller churches obtaining new copies from the greater metropolitan sees, since these would be thought likely to possess a pure text. From these any copies in private hands in the smaller churches would be corrected. Thus the local texts of smaller churches would tend to become assimilated to those of the greater centres in their immediate neighbourhood. The next stage would be for the great churches to compare their texts and endeavour to reach a standard text which would be universally accepted.
To this process the history of the text of Homer, obscure though it is in certain ways, presents some analogies. The quotations of ancient authors and the earliest papyrus fragments attest readings not found in the κοινή, or standard text, which has come down to us; and grammarians often cite readings of other texts which are described as κατὰ πόλεις, that is, appar- ently, local texts onee current in certain famous cities.
In the light of these antecedent probabilities we should expect to find the maximum of diversity between local texts of the Gospels in the early part of the third century. After that date, with the increasing possibilities of communication between churches and the rapid spread of Christianity among the more educated classes, there would gradually arise a demand for a standard text. All the evidence points in this direction. The oldest Greek MSS., the oldest versions, the quotations of the oldest Fathers, all attest diversity. Scholars like Rendel Harris, Chase and Hoskier have made ingenious attempts to discount the evidence of the ancient Versions and to discredit, as due to retranslation, the text of the Greek MSS. like D or B which are most closely allied to them. Such attempts are inspired by the assumption, only half conscious but wholly fallacious, that
on. 1 LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS 39
at the beginning of the third century there was anything approaching a uniform Greek text in use throughout the Church. On the contrary, antecedent probability and the evidence of Patristic quotations alike point to the period + a.p. 200, when the older Versions were produced, as that of maximum local diversity. And it is precisely because they preserve this diversity that these versions are of primary importance to the critic as evidence for the older local texts.
The ultimate aim of textual criticism is to get back behind the diverse local texts to a single text, viz. to that which the authors originally wrote. But the high road to that conclusion is first to recover the local texts of the great churches, and then to work back to a common original that will explain them all.
STANDARDISATION
The Byzantine text, we shall see later, most probably origin- ated in a revision based on older local texts made by Lucian of Antioch about a.p. 300. The fact of such revision, and still more the precise relation of it to the older texts, is a matter on which opinions may differ. What is not open to question is that this type of text, whatever its origin and whatever its value, did gradually oust all other types and become the standard text in the Greek-speaking Church. It is therefore important to recognise the difference which the invention of printing has made in the mechanism, so to speak, of the process by which a standard text can be introduced where it was not previously in use. If the proper authorities in the Church of England should decide that henceforth the Lessons be read from the Revised Version instead of from the Authorised, the change would for the most part be made in three months. A certain number of clergy might resist it; in that case, some churches would henceforth be using the one version, and some the other. But by no possibility could a mixed version be anywhere used. In antiquity it was just the reverse. From the end of the third century the
40 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
relatively cheap papyrus roll was replaced by the magnificent “codex” (1.e. MS. in book form) written on parchment. It was not practicable, except in the largest cities, to discard the Bibles already in use and obtain new ones. No doubt this would be done in the great cathedrals and in the larger monas- teries. Elsewhere existing MSS. would be corrected more or less carefully from some copy of the standard text—much as an incumbent is still legally bound to correct the copies of the Prayer Book belonging to the parish, when the names in the prayers for the King and Royal Family require to be changed on the accession of a new monarch. This is no mere con- jecture. In some of our oldest MSS. we can see the process actually at work. δὰ, for example, has been corrected by several hands at different dates, and (apart from corrections by the διορθωτής and an all but contemporary scribe) the great majority of corrections are into conformity with the standard text; the same thing holds good of the corrections in W.1
Doubtless the wealthier and more important churches or monasteries would get from Antioch or Constantinople com- pletely new copies of the approved text. Bishops and priests in smaller towns would bring their old MSS. with them next time they had occasion to visit the provincial capitals and take the opportunity of making the necessary corrections. Let us suppose that the text of the Gospels in a particular city or monastery was of the B type, and that the Bishop or Archimandrite, on a visit to Constantinople, wished to correct it to the standard text. He would bring his own copy with him and tell off one of his attendant priests or monks to collate it with the model. Two-thirds of the 4000 or more differences which the micro- scopic eye of a Tischendorf, trained by a lifetime of such com- parison, would detect, this man would never notice. Of the
* This can be conveniently verified in Scrivener’s A Full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus (Cambridge, 1864), passim, and in H. A. Sanders, The N.T7. MSS. in the Freer Collection (Macmillan Co., New York, 1912), pp. 31, 36.
OH, πὶ LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS 41
rest, at least half would seem to him too unimportant to record, since they make no real difference to the sense. If the corrector were more than usually careful, and had plenty of leisure for the work, he might make 500 corrections ; if careless or pressed for time, perhaps only 50. The copy thus corrected would be taken back; and from it other local copies would be made, embodying these corrections in the text. What then would be the character of the resultant text ? It would be a mized text, some of its readings being Alexandrian, others Byzantine. Some actual examples of mixed texts of this type are discussed below (p. 61 ff.) and in Ch. IV.
This sort of thing would be going on everywhere; but the results would differ in every case. For instance, a priest from another town might also bring a B text to be corrected ; but the list of differences which he happened to notice, or to think worth correcting, would be quite a different one. This time the result- ant text, although equally a mixture of B and the standard text, would be a different mixture. Again, from other centres the MSS. brought for correction might be of one of the types of text commonly called ‘ Western.” Descendants of these MSS., as corrected, would show a mixture of “‘ Western”’ and Byzantine readings. And now suppose that, a century or so later, some conscientious bishop or monk arose who again compared his partially corrected local text by the Byzantine standard. The same process would be repeated; but it would result in a still further diminution of the Alexandrian or ‘“‘ Western ” elements in the text current in that locality. Since this process of succes- sive standardisation was going on for centuries, the remains of the pre-Byzantine texts would gradually get revised away.
In the later period of classical antiquity a text more or less pure of the great authors was preserved by the tradition of scrupulous accuracy and careful correction maintained in the great libraries—especially that of Alexandria. And, as every one who wanted a good text resorted to these centres, a standard text gradually supplanted that of cheap popular copies. In the
42 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
Middle Ages the library tradition passed to some of the greater monasteries, and doubtless this had a similar effect in fixing and propagating the standard text. Thus after the eighth century it was only here and there, in small monasteries in remote districts, that MSS. would be copied which still contained a substantial proportion of readings characteristic of the older texts.
According to Hort there are (not counting fragments) only three MSS., B, » and D, which have altogether escaped some measure of correction to the Byzantine standard; and it is significant that two of them are a century older than any others. It is also noticeable that D was written by an ill-educated scribe, and that the same thing applies to other important MSS. with a large non-Byzantine element, e.g. L, A, 28 and, still more con- spicuously, Θ. This suggests that they were written in out-of- the-way places, where the Byzantine text had not yet penetrated or had only recently done so. Zoology presents us with an analogy ; the last survivors of species, once widely prevalent but now on the way to extinction, are found in remote and isolated spots.
The slow and haphazard working of this process of standard- isation explains the comparative failure of any standard revision of the Old Testament to oust the older texts. In the first place, anxiety to correct and recorrect, in the endeavour to attain what was regarded as the purest text, would be much less acute for the Old Testament than the Gospels. Secondly, the Old Testament being so much longer, and therefore so much more expensive to copy, than the New, many even of the cathedrals and larger monasteries would prefer to correct old, rather than to purchase new, copies. Thirdly, only selections of the Old Testament were
1 The reputation of Origen’s Hexapla, a work we shall speak of later (p. 111 f.), which was preserved at Caesarea till the city was sacked by the Saracens, made that, as the scholia prove, an alternative to the revision of Lucian of Antioch as a standard of correction. The majority of MSS. of the LXX give a mixed text; though it is believed that in B we have an early Alexandrian, in a few other MSS. a text derived from the Hexapla, in rather more the text
of Lucian, and in some few a text which is thought to represent the revision by Hesychius alluded to by Jerome.
oH. I LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS 43
read in the Church services, and for this purpose Lectionaries were used. The complete Old Testament was a work of reference for theologians, copies of it not being subject to the wear and tear of daily use lasted a long while. Indeed this is the probable explanation of the fact that, although MSS. containing the whole New Testament are comparatively rare and MSS. containing the whole of the Old Testament rarer still, the four oldest MSS. we possess, Bx AC, originally contained the whole Bible. There must always have been an overwhelming proportion of MSS. containing the four Gospels only ; but, while most early copies of the Gospels were worn out by constant use, the four great Bibles survived because they were kept in libraries as works of reference.
To this standardisation of the text of the New Testament there is an illuminating parallel in the history of the Greek liturgies during the same period. In the sixth centuries the Patriarchates of Antioch and Alexandria had each its own liturgy, known respectively by the names of St. James and St. Mark; and there were various other local rites in use. But gradually the later Byzantine rite superseded all others within the remains of the old empire. Then the churches of Syria and Egypt, which survived under Mohammedan rule, gradually assimilated the Liturgies of St. James and St. Mark to the Byzantine standard. Thus all the surviving Greek texts of these liturgies have been, to a large extent, standardised. But the original form can be recovered by means of the vernacular liturgies of the Syriac and Coptic churches.’ It is an interesting reflexion that, had no Greek MSS. earlier than the tenth century survived, we should in the same way be dependent on Latin, Syriac, and Coptic translations for our knowledge of the older forms of the text of the Greek Testament.
Precisely the same process of standardisation can be traced in the Latin church. In 381 Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damasus to produce a revised translation of the New Testament
1 Cf. F. E. Brightman, The English Rite, i. p. xx ff. (Rivington, 1915).
44 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
in order to remedy the confusion arising from the great diversity in the text and renderings of the Old Latin version at that time current. Two years later his translation of the Gospels was formally presented to the Pope as a first instalment. Revised versions are rarely popular at first, and for some little time copies of the old version continued to be reproduced. Indeed, Pope Gregory, writing in 595, lays down that both versions are recognised by the Catholic Church. Gradually, however, the text of Jerome’s translation, which we know as “the Vulgate,” prevailed. But its influence spread quite as much through the correction of old copies by the new standard as by the substitu- tion of new text for old. The result is that we have a number of MSS. the text of which is a mixture, in varying proportions, of Old Latin and of Vulgate elements. Indeed, just as the Greek Textus Receptus includes certain readings (e.g. the Pericope in John) which, though found in some pre-Byzantine MSS., are absent from the earliest MSS. of the Byzantine text, so in the “received ” text of the Vulgate certain Old Latin readings are found which Jerome had discarded. Fortunately, however, our MSS. of the Vulgate are so numerous and ancient that the text of the version as it left Jerome’s hands can be recovered with approximate certainty. This has been done in the magnificent edition of Wordsworth and White. With a copy of this edition in hjs hands, the student can readily distinguish in any mixed MS. the readings characteristic of the Old Latin.
We may now formulate a canon of criticism of the first im- portance. Of MSS., whether Greek or Latin, later than the fifth century, only those readings need be noted which differ from the standard text. That does not mean that readings of the Byzantine Greek or the Vulgate Latin are necessarily wrong ; most of them are to be found in one or other of the earlier texts. It means that, since the authorities for any reading
1 ἐς Sedes apostolica, cui auctore Deo praesideo, utraque utitur (ν.1. utrique nititur),’’ Moralia in Job, Pref. Ep. ad fin. It is possible, however, that Gregory’s remark only applies to the Old Testament.
cH, Ππ LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS 45
adopted in the standard text number in Greek two thousand, in Latin five thousand, a few hundred more or less makes no difference. But, as will shortly appear, our knowledge of the earlier types of text current in the East, not counting Egypt, depends mainly on the fragments of older MSS. which survive in mixed texts, and these fragments can only be identified by noting those readings which differ from the standard text.
THE FATHERS AND THE STANDARD TEXT
The standard text has also influenced the textual tradition of quotations from the New Testament in the works of the Greek and Latin Fathers. As a general rule it may be laid down that in late and inferior MSS. of the Fathers the Biblical quotations accord much more closely with the Byzantine text or the Latin Vulgate, as the case may be, than in good or early MSS. That is to say, that same process of assimilating earlier texts to the later standard, which we find in our MSS. of the Gospels, can also be traced in the quotations from the Gospels found in the works of the Fathers. Seeing that quotations by early Fathers are the principal means by which we identify and localise the type of texts found in pre-Byzantine or pre-Vulgate MSS., this considera- tion is of great importance. It may be illustrated by a concrete example. Hort had detected a connection between the text of the Old Latin Codex Bobiensis, known as k, and the text of Cyprian. Dr. Sanday pressed the investigation a stage further. Working from the printed texts of Cyprian he found that, in general, the quotations of Cyprian agreed with k ; but, especially in the work entitled Testimonia, they frequently agreed with the Vulgate against k. He noticed, however, that in a number of cases when a quotation in the Testimonia agreed with the Vulgate, the same quotation occurred in other works of Cyprian in a form which agreed with k. Pursuing the subject further he studied the MSS. of the works in question, and made the illuminating discovery that the quotations as given in one group of MSS.
46 THE FOUR GOSPELS Pr. I
accorded with the text of k. The MS. which had been followed in Hartel’s edition of Cyprian had suffered some correction from the standard text.1 A precisely similar thing happened in regard to the recently recovered Expositions of XIII. Epistles of St. Paul by Pelagius. The first MS. identified gave an almost pure Vulgate text, which led one famous scholar to conjecture that the Vulgate revision of the Epistles was the work of Pelagius, not of Jerome. Sub- sequently the Balliol MS. of the commentary was discovered, in which the text commented on by Pelagius is clearly not the Vulgate, but the Old Latin.?
For a very large number of the Fathers the only printed texts available are the Benedictine editions or the reprint by Migne. These are frequently based on late MSS. Hence confidence can be placed in their texts of the quotations from the Gospels in the earlier Fathers only where these give a reading which differs from the standard text. I give an illustration of this from Origen’s Commentary on Matthew—a work I shall have occasion to refer to again. Origen quotes Mt. xxvi. 3-5 and then proceeds to comment on the passage. In his quotation according to the Benedictine edition the words “and the scribes ”’ occur, as in the Byzantine text; but his comment makes it clear that these words were absent from the MS. he was using, as they are from Bw 1 &c., 18 &., and many other extant MSS.
The Ante-Nicene Fathers survive in so few MSS. that caution must be exercised even in regard to the texts of those Fathers of whom modern critical editions are available. For example, all our authorities for Origen’s Commentary on John® go back to a single X°™* MS. This, on the whole, is a reason-
Old Latin Biblical Texts: No. 11. (Oxford, 1386), p. xliii ff., p. Lxii ff., and p. 123 ff.
2 A. Souter, Texts and Studies, ix. 1, p. 157 (Cambridge, 1922),
8. Of this there are two excellent critical editions, that of A. E. Brooke (Cambridge, 1896), and that of E. Preuschen (Berlin Corpus, 1903). There is no critical text of the equally important Commentary on Matthew, the Berlin Corpus not yet having reached this work.
oH. Π LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS 47
ably good MS., and in this work of his we very rarely find quotations of the Gospels by Origen agreeing with the Byzantine against one or other of the pre-Byzantine texts. This shows that the quotations have suffered very little from scribal assimilation to the standard text; but it does not constitute even an ante- cedent presumption that they have not suffered at all. Here and there Origen quotes a verse with a reading characteristic of the Byzantine text. But it is quite unsafe for the critic to build upon these exceptional cases. A tenth-century scribe, presumably a monk, must have known the Gospels—at any rate, Matthew, Luke, and John, from which the: Church lessons were mostly taken—almost by heart, and that according to the Byzantine text. However faithfully he tried to copy the text before him, there is always an interval between reading and writing in which, in moments of inadvertence, the human memory has time enough to substitute a familiar for an un- familiar phrase. Hort was well alive to the danger of taking for granted the texts of the Fathers, but it seems necessary to reiterate the caution since, for all practical purposes, it has been ignored by von Soden, with disastrous consequences to- his evaluation of patristic evidence for the pre-Byzantine texts.
ΑΝ Itiusion aBout MSS.
The student who desires detailed information about the dates, history, and paieography of individual MSS., I must refer to the standard text-books.1 But it will be well to begin the discussion of the whole subject by clearing out of the way a misapprehension which has affected the practice, if not the conscious theory, of even distinguished scholars. Before the
1 #.g. Sir F. G. Kenyon’s Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the N.T'. (Macmillan, 1912); C. R. Gregory, Textkrittk des N.T. (Leipzig, 1909); Hb. Nestles Hinfiihrung—rewritten and brought up to date by E. von Dobschiitz (Géttingen, 1923)—is excellent on a smaller scale. A bare list of select MSS., with dates and with von Soden’s enumeration, is to be found in the Introduction to A. Souter’s
edition of the Revisers’ Greek Testament, which also has a selected Apparatus Criticus (Oxford, 1910).
48 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. 1
year A.D. 800 Greek books were written in capital letters or “uncials,” but shortly after that date a “ minuscule” or “ cur- sive’ hand—previously only used for informal writing—began to come into use for books also. The modern printed Greek characters, it may be remarked, bear much the same relation to this cursive script as printed italics do to ordinary handwriting. But it took a couple of centuries before the cursive finally sup- planted the uncial style, and an actual majority of the uncials of the Gospels which survive in at all a complete state belong to this transitional period. Now Greek uncial MSS. are commonly cited by the capital letters of the English or Greek alphabet, except the Codex Sinaiticus, to which is assigned the Hebrew x (aleph). Cursives, on the other hand, are cited by a number. Now, it is much easier for most people to individualise a MS. which is cited by a letter. But, through the overlapping of the English and Greek alphabets, there are only about forty letters available ; and some of these have been traditionally assigned to MSS. of the Gospels which are mere fragments. Thus over 2000 MSS. remain to be cited by anumber. But, while a letter has something of the quality of a proper name, a number is a “mere number.”’ Hence an illusion of the superior importance of uncial testimony is created, which subtly infects the judgement and the practice even of commentators and others who should know better. The illusion is fostered by the practice, which on principle I discard, of referring to uncials as MSS., but to cursives as mss. The leading MSS. are By D; next in importance come L and the newly discovered ©. These five are all uncials. Again the three γ᾽ θη. uncials, ACW, have from their antiquity claim to special consideration. But there are several cursives which are quite as important as these three, and which are of decidedly greater value than any uncial after the first eight.
A cursive is not necessarily later than an uncial. There is a curious ninth-century MS. of which the first part (cited as 566), containing Matthew and Mark, is written in a cursive hand,
oH. 1 LOCAL AND STANDARD TEXTS 49
while the second half (cited as A) is uncial. To the same century belong 33, “the queen of cursives,” one of the main supporters of the Bx text; and 565, the gold and purple “ Empress Theodora’s Codex,” the most important ally of ©, so far as Mark is concerned. These two are actually earlier in date than some, and they contain a more important text than any of those fifteen uncials which, being designated by the capital letters E F, etc., look so much more impressive in an Apparatus Criticus. Of course the mass of cursives are considerably later than the mass of uncials ; but a notable fact about the authorities for the text of the New Testament is that, once we get past the year 600, the value of a MS. for determining the text is very little affected by the date at which it was written. The explanation of this is that the Byzantine text, except perhaps in Egypt, became more and more the universally accepted standard, and, as we have already pointed out, only in out-of-the-way places, or by some oversight, could a MS. which did not (as regards the bulk of its readings) conform to this type be copied without drastic corrections being first made.1 And when such a MBS. did get copied, it was an accident which might occur at practically any date. Thus, to take an extreme instance, the readings of the XV": Leicester cursive 69—one of the best representatives of the so-called “ Ferrar Group” (13 &c.)—are of the greatest interest to critics. It seems to have been copied from an ancient uncial surviving in a monastery in S. Italy which had long lost
1 An apparent exception is the specially fine illuminated XII°™* MS. 157. The text of this, regarded by Hort as the cursive next in importance to 33, cannot be due to an oversight, since it was written for the reigning Emperor. It is to be explained, I believe, by the colophons at the end of all four Gospels stating that it was “copied and corrected from ancient exemplars from Jerusalem preserved on the Holy Mountain.’”’ As the same colophons are found also in the much older MS. A-566, they must have been in the ancestor from which 157 was copied. I suggest that a mediaeval Emperor seeing or hearing of a MS. purporting to represent the old text of Jerusalem might well wish to possess a copy, although aware that it differed from the standard text. The “Jerusalem colophon”’ occurs also in 565, another “ imperial” MS., but only after Mark; here, too, it may explain the preservation in that Gospel of an older text. New collation of 157 by Hoskier, J.7.9., xiv. p. 78 ff,
E
50 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
contact with the main stream of Greek Christianity. Again, it has been shown! that the XIII°"* Paris cursive 579 was (in Mk., Lk., Jn.) almost certainly copied directly from a VI%™ uncial having a text akin to Bx (cf. p. 62). Hence for all practical purposes these late cursives must be treated as if they were among our older uncials. The same thing applies to the XI-XII°"*: cursives numbered 1, 28 and 700. These, as we shall see later, are—along with @ 565 and the Ferrar Group— the most important members of the family of MSS. (fam. ©) in which is preserved the ancient text of Caesarea. The precedence of MSS. depends, not on their age, but on their pedigree.
1 A. Schmidtke, Die Evangelien eines alten Unzialcodex (Leipzig, 1903).
ΠῚ THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES
SYNOPSIS
THE VERSIONS AS A CLUE
The antecedent probability that the oldest torms of the Coptic, Latin and Syriac versions were derived respectively from the Greek texts current in Alexandria, Rome and Antioch is confirmed in the first two cases by quotations of early Fathers, in the third by less cogent evidence.
THe Text oF ALEXANDRIA
Summary of evidence that B & represent, not what Hort called a “ Neutral” text, but the purest type of Alexandrian text.
The text found in Clement, which is largely Western, probably not really Alexandrian. The B δὰ text used in Origen’s Com- mentary on John begun at Alexandria before α.Ὁ. 230.
Doubt whether the “ partially degenerate form of the B text” (found especially in CL and the Bohairic), to which Hort gave the name ‘“‘ Alexandrian,” ever existed as a definite recension.
The distinction between degeneration of a text caused (a) by scribal blunders or stylistic emendation, which are necessarily wrong readings, (6) through infiltration of occasional readings from other ancient local texts, which, in certain cases, may preserve a true reading.
CoRRECTED ALEXANDRIAN TEXTS
The survival of Β καὶ side by side with certain MSS. which represent the Alexandrian text partially corrected to the Byzantine standard, enables us to study the actual process of standardisation. Tt appears (a) that the revision was often very irregular, (6) that the text of Mark has frequently escaped with much less revision than that of the other Gospels. Hence emerges the canon of criticism—
5)
52 THE FOUR GOSPELS Pr. I
‘research into the pedigree of a MS. should begin with the study of its text of Mark.”
THE WESTERN TEXT
The Old Latin version survives in some few MSS. in a very pure form, in others with a greater or larger amount of correction to the standard of Jerome’s Vulgate. There are two main families: (1) the African, best preserved in & (shown by Hort and Sanday to preserve the text used by Cyprian of Carthage, ὁ. 250) ; (2) the European, of which bis the type MS. It is possible that a may represent a third local type. The probability is that the African Latin (k supported by e) was translated from a very old form of the Roman text. The Codex Bezae D for all four Gospels, and the recently discovered W for Mark only, give, roughly speaking, the Greek equivalent of the type of text found in the Old Latin, and in the quotations of Irenaeus of Lyons, c. 185.
Ture Text or EpHesus
Our evidence far too scanty to justify a definite conclusion ; but, such as it is, it suggests that the old text of Ephesus may have been allied to that of D.
THE Text or ANTIOCH
The new evidence discovered since Hort wrote makes it possible to make a clear distinction between an Eastern and a Western text. The Old Syriac and the mixed cursives can no longer be treated as authorities for the “ Western ”’ text.
Summary of reasons for supposing that the Old Syriac represents approximately the ancient text of Antioch. Relation of this to the later Syriac and to the Armenian versions.
CHAPTER III THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES THE VERSIONS AS A CLUE
Our jumping-off point, so to speak, for a scientific study of the text of the New Testament is the consideration that the churches of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch were the frontier stations of Greek-speaking Christianity. After the fall of Jeru- salem, these naturally became the “home base ” of missions to the peoples whose native speech was Latin, Coptic or Syriac. This fact facilitates our quest for the early local texts of the Gospels ; for there is obviously a presumption that the Latin, Egyptian and Syriac versions were derived from the Greek texts current respectively in Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. In the case of Rome and Alexandria this is more than a presumption. Marcion c. 140, Justin .c. 150, and Hippolytus c. 190-236 wrote in Rome, and Tatian about a.p. 172 compiled the Harmony of the Four Gospels, known as the Diatessaron, either at, or immediately after leaving, Rome. All these wrote theological works in Greek and so presumably read the Gospels in Greek, especially as this was the language of the liturgy of the Roman Church. But their quotations show that the text they used was similar to that which appears in the surviving MSS. of the Old Latin. A similar inference may be drawn from the general coincidence between quotations of the Gospels by Origen, Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria with the type of text found
in the Coptic (1.6. Egyptian) versions. 53
δ4 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
Unfortunately we cannot test the early text of Antioch in the same way. Theophilus, 4.pD. 180, is said to have composed a commentary on the Four Gospels, but in his one surviving work his quotations of them are too rare to be of use to the textual critic ; and the next writer of this church is Chrysostom, 360. Nevertheless reasons, less than demonstrative but still cogent, can be produced in support of the view, in itself antecedently probable, that the Old Syriac approximately represents an early text of Antioch. The identification of the old text of Caesarea, which is the main contribution which I personally have to make to the subject, will be discussed in the following chapter. But in the course of this chapter I venture in regard to the text of Ephesus to put forward a suggestion which avowedly is no more than mere conjecture.
THe Text oF ALEXANDRIA
Our first step is to scrutinise the Greek MSS., especially those of early date, to see if the text of any of them exhibits any close connection with that of one or other of the three types which the early versions attest. At once our search is rewarded by the discovery that the text of the two oldest MSS. Bs and their VIII": ally, L, is closely connected with that of the Coptic version —which exists complete in two dialects, the Sahidic and Bobairic —and to that implied in quotations of the New Testament by Origen and Cyril of Alexandria. Moreover, a text identical with that found in x B L is found in the fifth century fragments of Luke and John, known as T. T is bilingual, Graeco-Sahidic, so that this alone would, as it were, anchor this type of text in Egypt. Besides this, papyrus fragments of the third and fourth centuries have been found at Oxyrhynchus agreeing closely with Bx, while the text found in later papyri is predominantly,
1 Cf. esp. the fragments of John in Oxyrhynchus Papyri 208 and 1781, probable date a.p, 250-300. Though printed in different volumes (ii. and xv.)
these are part of the same MS. This is the oldest known MS. of any part of the Gospels and is in book (not roll) form.
OH. 1 THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES 55
though not exclusively, of this type. Additional evidence may be found in the fact that readings found in the Bw text are sometimes spoken of as “‘ Alexandrian” in the scholia in certain MSS.1 Lastly, the readings specially characteristic of this text are not found in the quotations of any early Fathers outside Egypt.
Bousset has compiled a series of half a dozen tables of various readings to illustrate the relation between the text of x BL and the various Graeco-Sahidic fragments T. As these tables also serve to illustrate the relations of x L to one another and to B, I reproduce the first of them,” in which he analyses the 104 variants occurring in the fragment containing Lk. xxii. 20- xxiii. 20. The left-hand column shows the number of variants supported by each of the four MSS.; the others show the number of times that T is supported by B, δὶ and L respectively.
Be X. L. BrLT 64 64 64 64 BrTt 7 Tf 7 ΒΊΤ' 11 ΤΙ 11 Bie 15 10 ΝΤ 4 4 xLT 1 1 1 iT 2
Total 104 BT 97 x T 76 LT 76
This table is fairly typical of the series, and it shows not only the close relation of this group of MSS., but the central position occupied by B. When we find that in 97 out of 104 variants the reading of B has the support of one or more of the other MSS.,
1 #.g. in c, to Mt. xxv. 1, there is the note, “‘sponsa non in omnibus exemplariis invenitur, nominatim in Alexandrino’’; to Lk. xxii. 43-44, in Syr. Hier™#, ‘This section is not found in the Gospels among the Alex- andrians.”’ Cf. Tischendorf, ad loc.
2 W. Bousset, Textkritische Studien zum Neuen Testament (Leipzig, 1894), p. 77.
56 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
while there are only five cases in which the others combine against B, the inference that in at least 90 % of its readings B preserves the text of the common ancestor of the group can hardly be resisted.
In 1913 a IV" MS. of John, representing an older form of the Sahidic, was found in Egypt. Sir E. Maunde Thompson courteously informed me that, so far as he could judge from a first rapid examination, its text is akin to Bx.
The Sahidic, the older of the two complete Egyptian versions, has only recently been made known to the world? in a reliable form in the magnificent edition of Dr. Horner, along with the fullest Apparatus Criticus of the Greek text at present available in English. The Sahidic, it is now clear, goes in the main with the By text; but in an important minority of readings it goes over to the side of the text represented by D and the Old Latin version especially in its African form. From the figures given in Dr. Horner’s analysis of readings it would appear (op. cit. 111. p. 387) that for all four Gospels the Sahidic has 505 readings characteristic of D (with or without Latin support) and 157 distinctively Old Latin. The meaning of this ‘‘ Western”’ element in the Sahidic cannot be appreciated if considered in isolation. It must be studied in connection with the appearance of Western readings in x, in L, and in the other MSS. which have a text akin to B. Of these the most: important are C 33, and, for Mark, A Ψ.32 Again, Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria c. 260, seems also to have used a form of the B text which had an
1 The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, otherwise called Sahidic and Thebaic (no name), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1921.
2 Actually the closest supporters of §% BLT are the two fragments Z 2, which contain respectively about one-third of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Z being nearer akin to αὶ and = to L. C and 33 have a considerable mixture of other texts. With a very much greater amount of mixture the Alexandrian text is preserved in four cursives, 157, 579, 892 (esp. in Mk.), and 1241 (=Sod. ¢371). A few notable readings of the later Alexandrian type are found in X. Soden, somewhat perversely I think, classes 157 as a supporter of the “‘I text.’’ He does the same (here I have not checked him) with the uncial fragments P Q R, except that for John he regards Q as Alexandrian. For 157 see pp. 49 and 76 note. 892 was collated by J. Rendel Harris, Journal
of Biblical Literature, 1890.
OH. ΠῚ THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES 57
infusion of Western readings. The notable fact, however, is that whenever one or more of these authorities desert B to give a Western reading, almost always there are others of them found ranged in support of B. The natural conclusion to draw from this is that B represents approximately the oldest text of Alexandria, but that at a very early date MSS. with a Western text were in circulation in Egypt. Considering the close connec- tion between Alexandria and Rome, which was mainly dependent on Egypt for its corn supply, there must frequently have been Christians from Rome coming to Egypt on business and bring- ing with them copies of their Gospels. Odd variants from these would naturally be entered on the margin of local MSS., and would thus creep into the text. But, since this happened in a haphazard way, one set of Western readings would get into one Egyptian MS., a quite different set into another.
To the view that B represents, not merely the Alexandrian text but also the earliest form of it, an objection, at first serious, arises from the Gospel quotations of Clement of Alexandria, 190-200, since these are found to have a specially large infusion of Western readings.! It ought not, however, to be taken for granted that these quotations represent an average Alexandrian text of that date. (1) It is thought by some that his extant writings were composed after he had left Alexandria. (2) Clement was not a native of Alexandria, but came there fairly late in life. He had lived for many years in 8. Italy. Is it likely that, when he migrated from thence, he left his copy of the Gospels behind? Clement usually quoted from memory ; now in regard to the vagaries of the human memory an appeal to personal experience is valid. I am myself in the habit of reading the New Testament in the Revised Version, but I was “brought up” on the Authorised, and it is still the version commonly read publicly in the Church of England. As a result of this I find, when revising MS. for the press, that, when I have quoted from memory, the resultant is nearly always a
1 P. M. Barnard in Texts and Studies, v. 5 (Cambridge, 1899).
58 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
mixture of the old and the new versions. Now, if Clement’s own copy of the Gospels represented an early form of Western text but he commonly heard them read in church from a text akin to B, it would be inevitable—seeing that he was apparently not interested in textual criticism—that his quota- tions would represent now one, now the other, type of text. I would go further and suggest that, as Clement was head of the catechetical school, his pupils would be likely to note on the margins of their own copies notable variants from the master’s; and as these pupils subsequently became leaders of the Church, the readings from their copies would tend to get into the texts used in some of the principal churches. In that case the text of Clement, so far from representing the earliest text of Alexandria, would be a main source of its decline.
But the determining piece of evidence (cf. p. 93 ff.) that the B text represents the early text of Alexandria is its use by Origen in the earlier books (the limitation is intentional) of the series of homiletical lectures known as his Commentary on John. Of course the MS. used by Origen was not absolutely identical in text with B. No two MSS. are exactly identical. Sometimes Origen agrees with § against B; more rarely he agrees with one of the other manuscripts belonging to the same family; occasion- ally he has a reading characteristic of D. The few readings in which he appears to support the Byzantine text may be suspected as probably the result of corruption in the text of our only MS. of this work of his. But, all said and done, it would be safe to say that the manuscript used by Origen for the first ten books of his Commentary on John differed from B less than B and x differ from one another. This evidence is highly important for three reasons.
(1) The Fathers, including Origen himself, frequently quote from memory ; but in this work, which contains a long series of quotations from John with a running commentary upon them, we have absolute security that, in regard at any rate to the longer quotations, Origen is not quoting from memory but reproducing a written MS.
on. UI THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SHES 59
(2) Textual criticism belonged to the tradition of Alexandrian scholarship and it was a subject in which Origen himself was supremely interested. He had already spent some years on his famous Hexapla—a critical edition cf the Greek Old Testament. There is no reason to suppose that at this time he contemplated a critical edition of the New Testament. But it would be in- credible that he should not have provided himself with the best text of the Gospels available, before starting his Commentary on them. To an Alexandrian critic the best text meant one based on the oldest MS. procurable. But the oldest MS. which Origen could procure would have gone behind the time of Clement, his immediate predecessor in the Catechetical School. Indeed, its date may well have been nearer the middle than the end of the second century.
(3) We can exactly date the evidence. Origen himself tells us that the first five books of the Commentary on John were written before he left Alexandria for good and migrated to Caesarea. This took place in the year 231. We have therefore a fixed point for the textual criticism of the Gospels. The text of the Gospels preserved in B (practically, that is, the text printed by Westcott and Hort) is to all intents and purposes the text on which Origen lectured in Alexandria in the year 230.
In the quotations of the Alexandrian fathers, especially in Cyril (ἃ. 444), and in the Bohairic version—which on the whole is © even closer to B than is the Sahidic—occur a number of readings which look like attempts at grammatical and stylistic improve- ments of the B text. Readings of this class crop up in all the Alexandrian MSS., except B. Some are found even in §; but they occur most thickly in L, and next to that ἴῃ Ὁ 88 Ξ A™* pM. An importance greater than either their number or their char- acter deserves was attributed to them by Hort. Hort declined to recognise any connection of Bx with Alexandria; the Bx text he named the “ Neutral text,” and assigned it to no definite locality. And he gave the name “ Alexandrian” to a text conceived of as the B text modified by the minor stylistic
60 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. 1
improvements found in the readings of C L 33, etc., wherever these differ from both B and the ‘“‘ Western” texts in any readings not also found in the “Syrian” (=Byzantine) text. This so-called ‘‘ Alexandrian ” text he described as “ a partially degenerate form of the B text.” While admitting that no single MS. preserved this text entire, he ranged it alongside the “Neutral” and “ Western” as one of three great families of pre-Byzantine, or, to use his own title, “ pre-Syrian,” texts. It is generally recognised that this was a mistake. MSS. in which readings of this type are found may well be described in Hort’s words as exhibiting “a partially degenerate form of the B text.” But all of them include a number of Western readings ; and there is no evidence that any MS. ever existed which con- tained what Hort calls the “ Alexandrian ” readings but did not also include many Western readings. Nor is it certain that the whole number of the ‘“ Alexandrian” readings ever coexisted in any single MS. It is quite as likely that ‘‘ Alexandrian ” stylistic correction and infiltration of Western readings were two concurrent processes gradual in character acting upon individual MSS. in the natural course of textual corruption, and thus affecting different MSS. in different degrees.
If, however, we use a word like “ corruption ” or “ degenera- tion’ in this connection, we must be on our guard against an easy fallacy. Any departures in these MSS. from the B type, which are of the nature of grammatical and stylistic correction, are ‘‘ corruptions ” in the strictest sense of the term ; that is to say, they are alterations, intentional or accidental, of what the original authors wrote. But departures from the B text which consist in the substitution of a reading found in ancient authorities belonging to the Western family are corruptions in a quite different sense. In so far as they are departures from the oldest form of the Egyptian text they are a degeneration of that particular textual tradition. But the Western authorities represent a textual tradition of great antiquity belonging to a different locality, and it may well happen that they sometimes
oH. 1π THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES 61
preserve a true reading which has been lost in the B text. This is a point on which clear thinking is extremely necessary. To say that the text of B is a purer representative of its type than x is by no means the same thing as saying that it is a purer representative of the original text of the Gospels as the authors wrote it. That is quite a different question. For example, the incident of the Bloody Sweat (Lk. xxi. 43 f.) was, I am inclined to think, in the original copy of Luke’s Gospel. If so, δ, which contains the passage, preserves the true text; B, which omits it, does not. But a comparison of the MSS. and Versions which contain or reject the passage shows that its absence is char- acteristic of the particular line of textual transmission which x B on the whole represent. If so, its presence in & is due to “ contamination” with a MS. of the ‘“ Western” type. But what follows? Whenever δαὶ has a “ Western” reading, it ceases to be an authority for the Alexandrian text ; but it becomes for the time being the oldest Greek MS. with a “‘ Western”’ text. To put it metaphorically, B is a thoroughbred ; y is a cross, but a cross between two thoroughbreds of different stocks. Hence, as evidence for what the authors wrote, the ‘ Western ”’ readings of καὶ are a most valuable authority ; but, if we mistake them for evidence of the primitive text of Alexandria, we fall into hopeless confusion. The reader may ejaculate that he is not interested in the primitive text of Alexandria, but only in what the original authors wrote. In textual criticism there are no short cuts; and, since local texts of the Gospels came into existence in the second century, it will not be till we have got back to these in their most primitive form that we have all the materials on which to base our judgement as to what the original authors wrote.
CoRRECTED ALEXANDRIAN TEXTS
The fortunate preservation of representatives of the Alex- andrian text so ancient and relatively pure as By presents us with an exceptionally favourable opportunity of studying the
62 THE FOUR GOSPELS Pr. I
phenomenon of correction of MSS. of an ancient local text to the Byzantine standard. It will be instructive to consider some examples of this.
The first point to notice is that correction was often ex- tremely “patchy” and unsystematic. Thus the corrector of s, whom Tischendorf styles ΝΡ, corrected the earlier chapters of Matthew with scrupulous care; ‘ut his interest in the work seems to have flagged, and he makes few corrections in the latter part and hardly any in the other Gospels. This actual instance of a corrector’s work explains at once a peculiarity of L, an ancestor of which must have suffered a similar fate; for the text of L is almost the Byzantine in Mt. i.-xvii., but it has only a thin sprinkling of Byzantine readings in the latter part of Matthew and in the other Gospels The V or VI°™* correctors of δ, however, whom Tischendorf calls x° and »°, were more systematic than x. Indeed, if s had been copied after these various correctors had finished, the result would have been a mixed text of components and general character very like C, which has a large proportion of Byzantine (and a few miscellaneous) readings in all four Gospels, but more so in Matthew and Luke than in Mark and John.
The XIII°** cursive 579 (cf. p. 50) has in Matthew an ordinary Byzantine text. In the other Gospels, especially in Luke, it has a considerable number of Alexandrian readings. In the Introduction to his edition of this MS., Schmidtke gives a list of readings in which it differs from the Byzantine text in order to support one or other member of the Alexandrian group. On the basis of these lists 1 have compiled the following figures : agreements with Bx, 31; with B against x, 132; with x against B, 111; with one or other of the group C L 33 A Ψ 892 against both B and x, 134. We must, however, recollect that the Byzantine text is much more closely allied to the Alexandrian than to the Western. Hence the great majority of the agree-
1 Interesting figures as to Byzantine correction in L, C and A may be found in E. A. Hutton, An Atlas of Textual Criticism, p. 13 (Cambridge, 1911).
CH. I THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES 63
ments of 579 with » B C L 33 are necessarily excluded from a list of readings which purports to include only differences between 579 and the Byzantine text. Again, many of the readings in which Bs agree against that text are of a conspicuous nature, and therefore would be particularly likely to attract the notice of the corrector. Bearing this in mind, the interest of the above figures is the demonstrative proof they afford that, although the majority of readings in 579 are in agreement with the Byzantine text, an ancestor must have been a MS. the text of which stood right in the middle of the Egyptian group of MSS. The value of a MS. of this kind appears where it supports a reading of B, s or L, which otherwise is unsupported. Every MS. has a larger or smaller number of errors due to mistakes by the scribe who wrote it or one of its immediate ancestors. Such errors in no sense constitute readings characteristic of the local text which the MS. as a whole represents. If, however, a “‘ singular ”’ reading of any MS. is supported by another MS., which on other grounds we can connect with the same family, we have sufficient proof that the reading in question is not an accident or idiosyncrasy of the particular MS. in which it occurs. If that MS. happens to be B or x, such support for “ singular ” readings is of special interest.
Another point about mixed texts is illustrated from the Egyptian group. Except in Mark, A and W have the ordinary Byzantine text with a few scattered readings of the later Alexandrian type; but in Mark this state of things is exactly reversed. The fundamental text is the later Alexandrian with a few scattered Byzantine readings—the proportion of Alex- andrian readings in the other Gospels being rather larger in VY than in A. If these two MSS. stood alone we should infer that Mark was copied from an exemplar belonging to a different family from that used for the other Gospels. But these two MSS. are only an extreme example of a regularly recurrent phenomenon. A study of mixed texts belonging to other families than the Alexandrian shows that it is not the
64 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
exception but the rule for the Gospel of Mark to have a much smaller proportion of Byzantine readings than the other Gospels. Nearly every one of the MSS. of which the text is discussed in our next chapter exhibits this—more especially the Codex Theo- dorae 565. The phenomenon must, therefore, be explained on the hypothesis that these MSS. were copied from exemplars in which the text in all four Gospels had originally been pre- Byzantine, but which had been more thoroughly corrected to the standard text in the first three Gospels than in Mark. Mark provided very few lessons for the selection read in the public services of the Church. It was much less used and much less commented on than the other Gospels; of this an interesting illustration is the X°°"* MS. X, which has a marginal commentary on the three longer Gospels, but merely gives the bare text of Mark. Hence the comparative carelessness shown in correcting Mark to the fashionable type of text is easily accounted for.
There emerges a principle of some importance, but one which heretofore has been insufficiently emphasised. Seeing that the Gospel of Mark has escaped Byzantine revision in more copies and to a greater extent than the other Gospels, it follows that our materials for reconstructing the old local texts are far more abundant and more trustworthy in this Gospel. From this we deduce the following canon of textual criticism. Research into the pedigree of a MS. should begin with a study of its text of Mark.
THe WESTERN TEXT
Jerome’s Vulgate, as has been already indicated, played in the Latin Church the same part as the Byzantine text in the Greek. The process of haphazard correction of older MSS. to the standard text resulted in the production of a number of copies having a mixed text, partly Vulgate, partly Old Latin. Fortun- ately, besides these, a few MSS. with a text entirely Old Latin, or with only a small admixture of Vulgate readings, still survive. These differ from one another very considerably ; and they differ
on. I THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES 65
even more in the Latin words chosen to represent the Greek than in the underlying Greek text they presuppose. Hence many scholars think there must have originally been two independent translations from the Greek, which subsequently have become somewhat confused by mixture with one another as a result of sporadic correction of MSS. of the one translation by MSS. of the other. However this may be, it is the fact that the Old Latin MSS.—which it is customary fo cite by small italic letters—sort themselves roughly into two main groups, of which the most typical representatives are k (Bobiensis) and ὦ (Veronensis).
One of the most important contributions to the criticism of the Gospels made in recent years was the demonstration by Dr. Sanday that the text of ὦ is to all intents and purposes identical with that used by Cyprian of Carthage c. 250. This gives us another fixed point towards the determination of early local texts. Accordingly the type of text found in kis commonly spoken of as the ‘“‘ African Latin.” Unfortunately & is only extant for Mk. viii.-xvi. and Matt. i-xv. But another MS. e (Palatinus), also incomplete, while overlapping with k& to some small extent, contains those parts of the Four Gospels which in ἦς are missing. In e we have a somewhat later form of the same text as kh, with a slight mixture of European Latin readings. In fact the type of text in e has much the same relation to that of k as L bears to B. The African text, so far as Mark and Luke are concerned, is also supported by’c, a twelfth-century MS. which has a text, roughly speaking, half Vulgate and half Old Latin, though in the other Gospels the Old Latin approximates nearer to the type of b.} The Speculum, a collection of proof-texts, cited as m, perhaps of Spanish origin, helps to eke out our scanty authorities for this African Latin text.
Tertullian, the predecessor of Cyprian at Carthage, speaks of the Apostolic Sees, with special reference to Rome, as the “ wombs
1 Cf. F. C. Burkitt, J.7'.S., Jan. 1908, p. 307 ff. The Old Latin and the Itala (Texts and Studies, iv. 3, 1896) by the same author must be read by all students of the Latin versions.
F
66 THE FOUR GOSPELS pT. I
of the Catholic Church.” ! From this and from the general probabilities of the case we may tentatively infer that African Christianity came from Rome, and that the African Latin was ultimately derived from an early form of Roman text. Further evidence, slight but pointing in the same direction, may be seen in the noticeable points of contact between the African Latin MSS. and Fathers and what little we know of the text of Marcion, who was in Rome 140-144. The African Latin, it is important to notice, in many of its readings agrees with B s against the type of Old Latin of which I will now proceed to speak.
The other type of the Old Latin is called by some scholars the “ Kuropean,” by others the “ Italic.” The MS. that occupies the same sort of central position among the European Latin MSS. as B does among the Alexandrian is, curiously enough, denoted by the letter b (Veronensis). As the Dean of Christ Church puts it, “δ᾽ indeed seems to be almost a typical European MS.; as the other MSS. of European and of Italian origin, such asa fhiqr, all resemble ὃ more closely than they resemble each other.” 2. The most constant supporter of ὁ is ff? (Corbiensis II.). Of the MS. mentioned above the oldest 8 is a (Vercellensis) [V°°"*. This MS., supported by the fragment n, stands a little apart from the others. The difference between a and ὦ is at its maximum in Mark, so that the critical canon just enunciated justifies the suspicion that it may possibly represent a third local type, intermediate between b and k, which in the other Gospels has been partially conformed to the b text.4
1 De Praescr. Haer, 21.
2H. J. White, Old Latin Biblical Texts, ii. Ὁ. xxii., Oxford, 1888. This vol. contains an edition of qg, the Introduction to which is invaluable to the student of Old Latin texts.
3 Burkitt argues that k also is [Vet (J.7'.8., Oct. 1903, p. 107); 6 and e are uniformly dated Vt., ff? V or VIcent.,
4 The VIeent. MS. f (Brixianus) has a large number of readings which occur in the Byzantine text but not in other Old Latin MSS. ; many of these occur in the Vulgate. There is a difference of opinion among experts as to whether this MS. represents an attempt earlier than Jerome’s to revise the
Latin by comparison with the Greek, or whether it is a Vulgate MS. corrupted by the influence of the text of the Gothic version, as it seems to have been
CH. ΠῚ THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES 67
Of the European Latin as a whole it may be said that it repre- sents a type of text at the furthest remove from that of B. And even the African Latin, which in small points frequently deserts the European to support B, is conspicuous for the number of strik- ing additions—“ interpolations’? Hort calls them—to the B text.
The Roman theologians, up to and including Hippolytus, d. 236, wrote in Greek ; and the liturgy of the Roman Church was in Greek possibly till an even later date. The number of quotations in the fragments of Marcion or in the writings of Justin and Hippolytus sufficiently definite to be used for critical purposes is not very large, but such as they are they imply the use of a Greek text, roughly speaking, corresponding to the Old Latin. We know also that the Diatessaron or Harmony of the Four Gospels com- piled by Tatian was produced about 170, either during, or im- mediately after, his long residence in Rome ; and this had a text of the same character. But the use of the Greek language slowly died out in the West. Hence it is not surprising that we have few MSS. which preserve the type of Greek text used in the West during the period when Greek was still spoken there. For the Epistles of St. Paul four such survive ; but for the Gospels until tecently there was only one, the Codex Bezae D.
Being practically the sole representative of the Greek text used in the West towards the end of the second century, D has a quite unique importance, and a large literature has come into existence about it. Its text stands fairly well in the middle of the various MSS. of the Old Latin. Where these differ from one another, D sometimes supports one type, sometimes another ; but on the whole it is nearer to the European than to the African type. In a certain number of readings it supports B against the Old Latin; in a much larger number it agrees with B against the Byzantine text. Its date, according to the latest authority, is fifth century.
copied from the Latin side of a bilingual Gothic-Latin MS. Cf. Wordsworth and White, Nov. Test... . Hieronymt, p. 656, and Ἐς C. Burkitt, J.7.S., Oct. 1899.
68 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT.
D is a bilingual MS., having the Greek on the left, the Latin on the right-hand page.1_ Theodore Beza, who presented the MS. to the University of Cambridge, states that it was found in the monastery of St. Irenaeus at Lyons; and Dr. E. A. Lowe 2 produces good reasons for the belief that it was already in Lyons in the ninth century. Where it was originally written is a question on which there is at present no agreement among experts. Southern Italy, Sardinia, or the Rhone valley are the favourite guesses. In favour of the last-mentioned locality is the close relation of the text of D to that used by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons c. 177-195. This relation was noted long ago, but is re-affirmed with further confirmation in Sanday and Turner’s recent edition of the New Testament Text of Irenaeus. We may, however, infer that it was written in some rather out-of-the-way church or monastery, for two reasons. First, the corruptions in the text imply an ignorant scribe. Secondly, the story of the man working on the Sabbath inserted by D after Lk. vi. 4, and the attempt to assimilate the genealogy of our Lord in Luke to that found in Matthew, are readings so remarkable that they almost demand comment. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, no allusion is made to either by any ecclesiastical writer. This is easily explicable if these readings were current only in some out-of-the-way church.
The solitary position of D as the Greek representative of the Old Latin text has been partially relieved, so far as the Gospel of Mark is concerned, by the discovery in 1906 of W (the Freer MS. V°""-), the possession of which gives the library of Washington the distinction of containing one of the six most ancient copies of the Gospels. The text of W presents a unique problem. Its editor, Prof. A. T. Sanders,‘ thinks it is descended from an ancestor
1 Tt is customary to cite the Latin half of D, which not infrequently differs from the Greek, as d. Similarly the (far less important) interlinear Latin of A is cited as δ.
* J.T.8., April 1924, p. 270 ff.
3 Novum Testamentum S. Irenaei (Oxford, 1923).
4 Cf. the elaborate introduction to his collation of W, The New Testament MSS. in the Freer Collection, Part I. (The Macmillan Co., New York, 1912),
CH, I THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES 69
made up of fragments from different rolls of the Gospels pieced together in some district where the attempt of Diocletian to crush Christianity by destroying the sacred books had been more than usually successful. Some portions seem to have been drastically revised to conform to the B x, others to the Byzantine, text. In, the whole of Matthew and in Lk. vii. 13 to the end it presents a text mainly Byzantine; since most of Matthew is wanting in A (the only other MS. as early as the fifth century which gives a text closely allied to the Byzantine) we have in W a welcome accession to the early evidence for this type of text. For the first seven chapters of Luke and in John (v. 12 to the end) the text of W is mainly of the Alexandrian type. But the most notable feature of W is its text of Mk. i.-v. 30. This is almost word for word identical with the Greek text underlying the African Latin e. Unfortunately hardly anything of Mark after vi. 9 is preserved ἴῃ 6 ; sono comparison of W and eis possible in the later chapters ; but in the rest of Mark W is still found to agree, though less closely, with the Old Latin and especially with &. So far, then, as the Gospel of Mark is concerned we have in W a valuable addition to the evidence afforded by D for the ancient Greek text current in the West—to which text alone the title ‘“‘ Western ” will in these chapters be applied.
Tue Text or EPHEsus
Constantinople, as we shall see shortly, appears to have adopted its text as well as its theology from Antioch. It was inevitable, therefore, that at Ephesus, situated as it was between these two dominant patriarchates, the old local text should succumb at an early date to the standard text used by both these Sees. There is reason to believe that some time in the fourth century Ephesus was compelled to surrender its ancient liturgy in favour of the Byzantine.1 But there is a certain amount of evidence that in the second century the text used at Ephesus was akin to that found in D and the European Latin.
1 W. Palmer, Origines Liturgicae, i. 106.
70 THE FOUR GOSPELS pr. 1
(1) The recently discovered second-century document known as the Epistula Apostolorum is supposed by its editor Carl Schmidt! to be of Ephesian origin. The evidence adduced is not conclusive, but this view is more probable than any other. The author of this work is clearly familiar with all four Gospels. But for our present purpose the most interesting point is that he seems to have read them in a text like-that we call Western in the strictest geographical sense.
(a) In ch. 2 he has a very remarkable list of the apostles in which the name of John stands first ; and one of the names is Judas Zelotes. It might have been imagined that this was due to a conjectural combination, made by the author himself, between the names of the two apostles mentioned in Lk. vi. 16, Judas of James and Simon Zelotes: but this same combination, Judas Zelotes, occurs (Mt. x. 3) as a substitute for the ordinary Thadaeus=Lebbaeus in the Old Latin abhqetc. It also occurs in the fifth-century mosaics in the Baptistry of the Orthodox at Ravenna, which are in another respect connected with the Western text, in so much as they arrange the evan- gelists in the order Matthew, John, Luke, Mark, found in D, W, several Old Latin MSS., and in the Monarchian Prologues (p. 11).
(b) In ch. 3 ad fin. we read ‘“ He is the word made flesh, born in the sacred Virgin’s womb, conceived by the Holy Ghost, not by carnal lust, but by the will of God.” This seems to imply the famous Western reading of Jn. i. 13, which substitutes ds... ἐγενήθη for οὗ... ἐγενήθησαν and thereby makes the fourth Gospel also assert the Virgin Birth of Christ. This reading is found in ὦ, in three quotations of Irenaeus, two of Tertullian, and was also known to Ambrose, Augustine, and probably to Justin Martyr.
(c) Possibly his text also included the Longer Conclusion of Mark.? This is a characteristic Gallic and Italian reading.
1 In Texte und Untersuchungen, 1919. 2 Cf. C. Schmidt, op. cit. pp. 219, 224, also below, p. 348.
CH. ΠῚ THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES 71
It is absent from the African Latin, from the oldest Alexandrian MSS., from the majority and the oldest MSS. known to Eusebius of Caesarea, from Syr. 8., which seems to represent the old text of Antioch, and from the Eastern authorities mentioned p. 88. But it is found in D, in all Old Latin MSS. except &, and in the text used by Irenaeus and Tatian.
These striking agreements between the text quoted in a document of the second century, probably Ephesian, and the text used in Italy and Gaul, compel us to review the nature of the patristic evidence for the Western text. We notice at once a special connection between most of our earliest authorities for the Western text and the Roman province of Asia of which Ephesus was the capital.
(a) Justin Martyr was converted to Christianity in Ephesus ; and according to the evidence given by himself at his trial, though he had lived and taught in Rome, he had done so without any very close affiliation to the local Church.! The text of the Gospels he used is therefore more likely than not to have been the one he brought from Ephesus. Tatian was a pupil of Justin, and may well have used his master’s text.
(b) Irenaeus as a boy sat at the feet of Polycarp of Smyrna, and never tires of emphasising the value of the apostolic tradition of the Churches of Asia and Rome. But the con- nection between Asia and the Church of Lyons, of which Irenaeus was a member and ultimately bishop, was in no sense personal to Irenaeus himself. Eusebius preserves the letter written by the Churches of Lyons and Vienne to the Church of Ephesus to tell them the story of the martyrdoms in the perse- cution of 177. This implies a special affiliation of these Gallic Churches to the Church of Asia. The Greek-speaking com- munities of the Rhone valley seem always to have kept up a connection, mainly no doubt for trade purposes, with the cities
1 Cf. the Martyrdom of Justin and the discussion by K. Lake, Landmarks of Early Christianity, p. 127 (Macmillan, 1920).
72 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
of Ionia, of which they had originally been colonies. [Ὁ is, there- fore, exceedingly probable that the Christianity of the Rhone valley was derived from Ephesus. In that case the text of the Gospels used there would naturally be the Ephesian text.
(c) Since Justin, Tatian, and Irenaeus all resided and taught in Rome, some readings from the text they used would get into the local text. The text of Irenaeus, we have seen is closely related to that of D and the Old Latin. This suggests the possibility that the earliest Latin translation used in Gaul was derived, not from the Greek text used in Rome, but from that used in the Rhone valley. This translation might have spread thence into Gallia Cisalpina, the consanguineous district of N. Italy.
The evidence available is quite insufficient to justify any definite conclusion, but it at least suggests the tentative hypothesis that while regarding the African Latin as a de- scendant of the older Roman text, we should look on D and the European Latin as representing a mixture, varying with individual MSS., between the Roman and the Ephesian text.
THe Op Text or ANTIOCH
We pass on to consider a field of inquiry which more than any other has been illuminated by recent discovery—the old local texts of the Asiatic provinces of the Roman Empire. When Hort wrote, the materials at the disposal of critics were insufficient to justify any definite conclusion, and we are still hampered by the lack of ecclesiastical writers from whose quotations of the New Testament the type of text current in these provinces can be ascertained. In fact the only early writer native to these provinces of whom enough survives to be of any practical use for this purpose is the historian, Eusebius.of Caesarea, c. 325. It had
1 Three inscriptions have been found in Lyons set up by persons described as natione Graeca, and one by a lady, natione Asiana. Cf. Vasile Parvan, Die Nationalitdt der Kaufleute im romischen Kaiserreiche, pp. 90, 107 (Breslau, 1919).
ou. ΤΠ THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES 73
long been recognised that Eusebius used a ‘“‘ Western”’ text, but one of a peculiar kind, that is to say, a text which, although more closely allied to D than to x B L, is markedly distinct from D. But the only MS. giving a continuous text of early date which could be certainly assigned to the Eastern provinces was the fragmentary Cureton MS. of the Old Syriac version (Syr. C.), which contains less than half the total contents of the Gospels, and of Mark only four verses. Hence Hort was justified in including the Old Syriac and the sporadic non-Byzantine readings of a similar character found in cursives like 565 or the Ferrar group under the general designation of the ‘‘ Western text ”—a title which he inherited from Griesbach,—although he quite recognised the geo- graphical inappropriateness of this extended use of the adjective.
Since Hort wrote, the situation has been completely changed by a series of discoveries. Of these the one which has opened up the prospect of our obtaining at least a general idea of the ancient text of Antioch was the discovery in 1892 of the Sinaitic Syriac (which I shall cite as ὅσ. 8.), a fourth-century palimpsest con- taining, with some lacunae, a fairly complete text of the Four Gospels in the Old Syriac version. The Syriac text of Syr. 8S. and Syr. C., along with an English translation, purposely so literal that even the order of words in the original can often be followed, was published in 1904 by F. C. Burkitt under the title Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe =“ Gospel of the Separate,’ as distinguished from the Diatessaron or ‘“‘ Gospel of the Mixed.” The Intro- duction and Notes to this edition form a contribution to textual criticism the value of which to the advanced student cannot be over-estimated.
It appears that Syr. 8S. and Syr. C. represent fundamentally the same version, but that one or the other must have been revised partially from a Greek MS. having a slightly different type of text. Burkitt thinks that Syr. S. gives the version most nearly in its original form, while Syr. C. has been revised here and there by a Greek MS. more or less similar to the Codex Bezae. However this may be, the fact remains that the version as a
74 THE FOUR GOSPELS pr. I
whole is more closely allied to the Western text than to B, although Syr. S., especially in the matter of omission, frequently supports B against both Syr. C. and D. For instance, it omits the last twelve verses of Mark and the two notable passages Lk. xxii. 43 (the Bloody Sweat) and Lk. xxiii. 34 (“ Father, forgive them’’). But, though on the whole it ranges itself on the side of D and the Old Latin against B and its allies, the Old Syriac has a sufficiently large number of distinctive readings found neither in D nor B to justify our regarding it as a third type of text.
Burkitt was, I believe, the first to work out in any detail the suggestion that the Greek text underlying the version of the Old Syriac preserved in Syr. S. was derived from the older text of Antioch.!_ His argument, briefly, is as follows. Tatian, who seems to have been the first effectively to plant Christianity in Mesopotamia, introduced there, not the Four Gospels, but the Syriac Diatessaron—which for centuries was spoken of as “ the Gospel.” The Four Gospels, known by contrast to the Diates- saron as “‘ the Gospel of the Separate,” were a later introduction. Syr. S. seems to be an earlier form than Syr. C. of the Syriac version of the Separate Gospels. Its translator was familiar with the Diatessaron, and its readings, as well as its renderings, may sometimes have been affected by that fact; hence the original Greek text from which Syr. 8. was translated will have differed from the Diatessaron even more than does the transla- tion. Now the text of the Diatessaron is closely akin to D and the Old Latin. This resemblance, coupled with the fact that Tatian came from Rome about a.p. 172, makes it highly probable that the text used for the Diatessaron was the Roman text. Where, then, did the text of Syr. S. come from ? Geographically, the province of which Antioch is capital marched with the Syriac-speaking district. More than this, there is evidence that, after the disorganisation caused by a period of persecution, Serapion the Patriarch of Antioch, c. A.p. 200, re-established the
1 Hvangelion Da-Mepharreshe, ii. p. 254.
CH. ΠῚ THE TEXTS OF THE GREAT SEES 15
Syriac Church by consecrating Palit, the bishop from whom in after years that Church reckoned its episcopal succession. Thus the revived Syriac-speaking Church was in a special way a daughter church of Antioch, and would naturally obtain there- from the text of the “separate’’ Gospels which hitherto it did not possess. The presumption, then, that the Old Syriac represents the second-century text of Antioch is decidedly high. Moreover, I would observe, to any one who prefers the view of certain scholars that the old Syriac version of the Gospels is earlier than the Diatessaron, the presumption that its text came from Antioch is considerably enhanced ; for the only reasonable ground for doubting the Antiochene origin of the Syriac text arises from the known connection of Tatian with Rome.
Burkitt points out that a number of readings of the Old Syriac, which are not found in any other Greek MS., occur in one or more of the cursives 1 &c., 18 &c., 28, 565, 700. Those MSS., I shall argue in the next chapter, preserve (with much Byzantine admixture) the old text of Caesarea. Seeing that Caesarea and Antioch were the capitals of adjoining provinces. the discovery that those MSS. represent the text of Caesarea cannot but add weight to the view that the cognate text implied in the Old Syriac has some special connection with the neighbouring Church of Antioch.
Any evidence is welcome which throws further light on the true text of a version which survives only in two MSS., both im- perfect. For this purpose some use can be made of the Peshitta —the Syriac version used at the present day in all branches of the Syriac-speaking Church. Of this we have MSS. as early as the fifth century. Burkitt} hasshown that the Peshitta represents a vevision of the Old Syriac made by Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa, about 425. The MSS. used by Rabbula evidently represented the Byzantine text, and his revision was fairly thorough. Nevertheless the number of readings of the Old Syriac which
1 «8S. Ephraim’s Quotations from the Gospels,” in J'exts and Studies, vii. 2 (Cambridge, 1901).
76 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. [
survive in the Peshitta is considerable, though the proportion which these bear to the whole is less than that borne by the Old Latin readings surviving in Jerome’s Vulgate. Wherever, therefore, the reading implied in the Peshitta differs from that of the Byzantine text, there is a fair presumption that it repre- sents the reading of an Old Syriac MS.
The other Syriac versions are of less value as evidence for the text of the Old Syriac. We have a number of MSS. of a revision made for the Jacobite sect by Thomas of Harkel in 616 ; but this revision went still further in the direction of assimilating the Syriac to the Byzantine Greek text. He noted in the margin the readings of three old Greek MSS. in the Gospels and of one in the Acts which differed from the Byzantine text. These read- ings (cited as Syr. Hcl™®:) are of considerable interest ; but their importance lies in the evidence they afford for pre-Byzantine Greek texts, not for the light they throw on the Old Syriac.
Much the same may be said of the “ Palestinian’ or “ Jerusalem ” Syriac (cited as Syr. Hier.). Burkitt has shown that this was not a native Palestinian product.!_ It was produced in a monastery near Antioch as part of an effort of Justinian to combat Nestorianism in Palestine by providing orthodox litera- ture in the vernacular. It is probable that the translators made some use of previous Syriac versions, but Syr. Hier. cannot be safely quoted as an authority for the Old Syriac—still less, as von Soden thought, for the Greek text used at Jerusalem.?
The Armenian version is held by Dean Armitage Robinson ὃ to have been originally made, wholly or in part, from the Old Syriac. In that case it may be used as supplementary evidence for the original form of that version. This view, however, has lately been disputed (cf. p. 104); I shall venture later on (p. 104 f.) to put forward a suggestion of my own in regard to the most debateable point.
1 J.T.8., Jan. 1901, pp. 174 ff.
2 Hoskier, J.7'.8., Jan. 1913, p. 242, notes points of contact between the text of this version and the mixed cursive 157.
3 Cf. ‘‘ Kuthaliana ᾿ in Teats and Studies, iii. 3 (1895).
IV THE KORIDETHI MS. AND THE TEXT OF CAESAREA
SYNOPSIS
THe O FamILy
The new Koridethi MS. Θ has been shown by K. Lake to be the most important member of a family of MSS. of which the most important are the cursives 1 &c., 18 &c., 28, 585, 700. Accordingly the whole group may appropriately be styled fam.9@. Hach member of this family has been partially corrected to the Byzantine standard ; but, since in each a different set of passages has been so corrected, we can, by the simple expedient of ignoring the Byzantine readings, approximately restore the text of the original ancestor. This illustrated by a Table. In an Appendix evidence is adduced for assigning to fam. 9 certain other less important MSS., in particular the group 1424 &c.
RELATION TO OTHER ANCIENT TEXTS
(1) The text of fam. 9 is slightly, but only slightly, nearer to the Western than to the Alexandrian type; also it has a large and clearly defined set of readings peculiar to itself.
(2) In ἔχηι. are found certain striking additions to the T.R. which the Syriac shares with D and the Old Latin, beside others found only in the Syriac or Armenian.
(3) As regards, however, the longer omissions from the T.R. found in B and Syr. 8., fam. 0 nearly always supports the shorter text.
(4) Fam. 9 is nearer to the Old Syriac than is any other surviving Greek text, but it is by no means identical ; it is frequently supported by the Armenian against the Syriac. Most frequently of all it is supported by the oldest MSS. of the Georgian version.
0 AND THE ΤΈΧΤ oF ORIGEN
Griesbach discovered that Origen used two different texts of Mark ; but, owing to the paucity of MS. evidence then available, he 77
78 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT.
slightly misinterpreted the facts. These are as follows. In the surviving portions of the first ten books of his Commentary on John, Origen used the B & text of Mark; but in the later books of this work, in his Commentary on Matthew and his Exhortation to Martyrdom, he used a text practically identical with that of fam. 0. The Com- mentary on John was begun in Alexandria but finished at Caesarea, and both the other works mentioned were written at Caesarea.
It further appears that the text of Matthew used by Origen in his Commentary on that Gospel was the fam. © text—-a fact partly disguised in the printed editions in which the text of fam. 0 has been sporadically corrected to the Byzantine standard. Throughout the Commentary on John, Origen used an Alexandrian text of John, but in the later books he changed his text for one of the O type. These conclusions tested against tables drawn up by Preuschen. At a later date Origen seems to have used the © text for John also.
Reasons for believing that the fam. Θ text was already in possession at Caesarea when Origen arrived and was not a recension which he made himself.
Tue MSS. sent TO CONSTANTINE
The possibility that the fifty copies supplied by Eusebius to Constantine in 331 represented the old text of Caesarea. By 380 Constantinople had adopted the revised text of Lucian. This would lead to the correction of the older MSS. to the Lucianie (7.e., practi- cally, to the Byzantine) standard. Some of these partially corrected copies would get into the provinces, and may be the parents of some existing MSS. of fam. 0. Possibility that the Greek texts used by SS. Mesrop and Sahak to revise the Armenian were of this character.
ConcLUDING SURVEY
Significant fact that the local texts identified above form a series corresponding to the geographical propinquity of the churches with which they are connected.
Practical bearing of these results. The textual critic, in weighing the amount of external evidence in favour of any reading, should consider primarily, not the number or age of the MSS. which support it, but the number and geographical distribution of the ancient local texts in which it can be traced.
It follows that MSS. should be cited, not in alphabetical or numerical order, but in groups corresponding to the local texts which they represent. When at least three of the leading representatives of any local text support a reading, very little is gained by citing the additional evidence of MSS. which normally support the same local text.
CHAPTER IV THE KORIDETHI MS. AND THE TEXT OF CAESAREA
THe © FamILy
THE uncial MS. to which the letter © is assigned was discovered in a remote valley in the Caucasus, where it had long been a kind of village fetish ; but at a much earlier date it belonged to a monastery at Koridethi—at the far end of the Black Sea just inside the old frontier between Russia and Turkey. Owing to a chapter of accidents—including a disappearance for thirty years—its complete text only became available to scholars in 1913.1 Dr. R. P. Blake, in a joint article by himself and Prof. K. Lake in the Harvard Theological Review for July 1923, argues that the scribe was a Georgian, familiar with the Coptic script, but extremely ignorant of Greek. At any rate the ordinary tests by which the handwriting of MSS. can be dated are difficult to apply ; but it probably belongs to the eighth century.
The discovery is comparable in importance to that of x or the Sinaitic Syriac—but for a different reason. The importance of x and Syr. S. depends on their early date and the relative purity of the types of text they respectively preserve. © is neither so old nor so pure: it has suffered considerably from Byzantine revision. Its importance lies in the fact that it supplies a
1 In the edition by G. Beerman and C. R. Gregory, Leipzig, 1913. The student should be warned that the Appendix which gives the MS. support of all variants in 6 is quite unreliable so far as its cursive supporters are con- cerned. As the MSS. most closely allied to © are all cursives, this is a serious defect. An edition of ©,*in reduced facsimile, with Mark was published by
the Moscow Archeological Society, 1907 ; but this is not easily procured. 79
80 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
missing Jink and enables us to see the real connection between certain cursives, the exceptional character of which has long been an enigma to the critic. In the demonstration of the relation between © and this group of cursives, the first and most important step was made by Lake in the brilliant article referred to above in the Harvard Theological Review.
The.cursives in question are the following: (a) Codex 1 and its allies, commonly cited as fam.1, or 1 &c. Of this family of MSS. the only one comparable in importance to 1 is 1582 (X°""-) recently discovered in the Vatopedi Monastery on Mt. Athos. But the inferior members occasionally preserve original readings which have been revised out in the two better MSS.! (δ) The “ Ferrar group ” (cited as fam. 18 or 13 &c.), extended by later discovery from the four MSS. 183—69—124—846, edited by Ferrar and Abbott, to twelve, all of which are probably derived from a single lost uncial. Within this group 69, 124, and 983 are specially important as often preserving readings not found in other members.2 (c) The Paris MS. 28. (d) The
1 Codex 1 of the Gospels and its Allies, by K. Lake, Texts and Studies, vol. vii. (Cambridge, 1902), contains the full text of 1 collated with its inferior supporters 118—131—209, along with a very valuable Introduction. No collation of 1582 has yet been published, but it is quoted by Soden (as e 183). Soden also quotes from two others of much less importance, 7.e. for Mark, Luke, John 2193 (Sod. ε 1131), for Mark only 872 (Sod. ε 203). Soden also includes 22 and 1278 in this family; the case of 22 is discussed by H. A. Sanders in “A New Collation of Codex 22” (Journal of Biblical Studies, xxxiii., pt. 2) who in general agrees. As nearly all the readings of 22 not found in 1—118—131—209 occur in other members of fam. 0, it matters little whether it is classed with fam. 1 or as an independent member of the larger family.
2 A large literature has arisen round the Ferrar group (cf. Further Researches into the History of the Ferrar Group, pp. 1-8, by J. Rendel Harris, Cambridge Press, 1900). It would appear that most of the group 13—69— 124—230—346— 543788826828 98316891709 are descended from a MS. which in the twelfth century was preserved either in some monastery in Calabria in the “heel’’ of Italy, or in some allied monastery in Sicily. In the classical period, S. Italy was not Italian but Greek; but by the end of the sixth century, apart from a few coast towns, it had become Latin. But in the eighth and following centuries there was an immense immigration of Greek-speaking monks—refugees from the Mohammedan invasions. In the twelfth century, under Norman rule, there was an intellectual revival in the Greek monasteries of S. Italy. There is excellent evidence (cf. K. Lake, J.7.S., Jan. 1904, p. 189 ff.) that MSS. were collected at con-
ox.1v KORIDETHI MS. AND TEXT OF CAESAREA 8ιΙ
“Empress Theodora’s Codex ᾿ 565 (cited by Tischendorf as 2°° and by Hort as 81).1_ For Mark this is the most, for the other Gospels the least, important of the MSS. here mentioned. (6) The very interesting British Museum MS. 700, acquired in 1882 but not fully made known to the world till 1890.?
Lake made the all-important discovery that © and these notable cursives, taken all together, form in reality a single family. True © and the five other sets of authorities mentioned do not on the face of it exhibit a single type of text; but that is because each of them has been heavily corrected to the Byzantine standard, and in each case a dafferent set of correc- tions has been made. If, however, we eliminate from the text of all these manuscripts those variants which are found in the Byzantine text, we find that the residuary readings of the six different representatives of the family support one another to a quite remarkable extent. Lake illustrates this by a table analysing the variants in the first chapter of Mark.
In order to indicate the nature of his argument and at the same time to test its validity in regard to Luke and John, I have compiled similar tables (p. 83 and App. II.), only with an additional column for the readings of fam. 1424. On the left are printed the readings found in one or more MSS. of the family which differ from the Textus Receptus; on the right are the corresponding readings of the T.R. The letter f stands wherever the MS. (or group) indicated at the head of the column supports the family reading, the symbol $ when it siderable expense from different parts of Greece and from Constantinople to found, or refound, libraries. The magnificent purple Codex &, still preserved at Rossano, must have been written either in Constantinople or in Cappadocia. Accordingly, it is probable that the ancestor of the Ferrar group was brought to Italy from the East; there is no reason for connecting it with the primitive text of S. Italy, which in all probability was akin to D.
1 Edited by J. Belsheim, Christiania, 1885; corrections by H. 8. Cronin in an Appendix to his edition of N, Texts and Studies, vol. iv. p. 106 ff. Scrivener and Hoskier cite as 473.
2 Collation by H. C. Hoskier, as Codex 604 (Scrivener’s number); with
Appendix containing a collation of 1278, which Soden reckons a weak member of fam. 1 (Ὁ. Nutt, 1890).
G
82 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
agrees with the T.R. If any MS. supports a third reading, this is indicated in the column appropriate to that MS. by the symbol “3.” The readings of 8 B and D are also given in order to show how each of them alternately supports and deserts the fam. © text.
From Lake’s table of variants in Mk. i. it appears that there are 76 instances in which at least two members of the family agree with one another in exhibiting readings not found in the Byzantine text; while there are only 5 instances where a member of the family gives a non-Byzantine reading other than that supported by the family. The significance of these figures is made clearer when it is noted that in regard to this same set of 76 variants in Mk. i. & and B differ from one another no less than 12 times. It follows that the ancestors from which Θ᾽ and the five sets of allies were derived must have differed from one another in this chapter considerably less than x does from B. Clearly we are justified henceforth in referring to this group of MSS. by the convenient title of fam. ©
In the article in the Harvard Theological Review the authors confined their discussion to the text of Mark—the Gospel in which, as we have seen before, the key to the history of the text of any particular MS. is usually to be found. But as I happened to have been exercising myself with the problem presented by the text of ©, I could not rest until I had explored their solution a little further. The evidence that convinced me that Lake’s conclusion holds good in regard to the other Gospels also is presented in Appendix II.
In the course of this investigation I came upon evidence that the family of which © is the head has numerous poor relations. That is to say, there are a large number of MSS. which appear to be ultimately descended from ancestors the
1 When a reading is cited as occurring in fam. 13 or the like, this does not mean that it is found in all MSS. of that group, but that it occurs in at least two, and that practically all MSS. of the group which do not give it follow the Byzantine text instead.
GO ae
88
cx.1v KORIDETHI MS. AND TEXT OF CAESAREA
“480 = "ἃ “0288 -- "Ἔ τς pue ‘wof {106 101} BuLIEeyIp = pig “pig easy sioquieu euros = f *1aTYsOY 10 uleysjeg ul you 4nq “~pog= 1 *AyUO "Sg (049 10) OO I= αὶ sakhat+ GGN .9 Ss Ss Ss a} S Ss sakha— % (‘sq ‘d) ptavs via γ Ss 4} Ss τ 1 } (1atpusrdvu "8) Dinvt via aan Tey ae 3 55 5 5 5 5 ES vov— ΤΑ as ~+ Gan Ss Ss s } S S Ss 432 — ao + Nos 5 5 5 4} Ξ 5 am — α8 “gigndpu aoLap N } Ss Ss Ss J Ss J aoLnn maA0gi9nd vu 4,44 asyyarl a Ὁ 43 43 } } } } 49.979 as (pig 4) 441m py 0] Ss Ss Ss Ss a} Ss τ -- aoimadvy oun εὐ aoL+ aq 5s Ss 1 Ss Ss } Ss (avgnoy 8) ποι -- Τῇ awn amma 39 w¥+ CGN .5 Ss any 5S Ss Ss Ss aona 33 ΤῸΝ — (ρυϑρῶρ -d) "39.939. 648 : 9 - (pig) «} ΞΘ - (sorlq “8) αἰ! 39 939 sioran ΤΕῸΝ S Ss 5 5S J Ss Ss ian stot dads 5 43 5 } 5 .} aS ST 9- OL SoLamy not + i Ss τ & & } δ᾽ SoLam$ noL— aawx ao+ GaN 5 } S Ss το .5 .5 (13 8) ao— tyoaha 5 + * spun ΤΑΝ ty} (3) Ss Ss Ss κι aS wasLoruan * * * *y¥mAaha 60 ano + aq +} 5S: } =5 I 3 } (ugrdyaxn “4) ano— 89 as swikgod- GQqnN 5 & ΝΕ Ss } Ss } (pyagmg ‘d) sroslgp+ 19 (am1 -e) γί } Ss Ly 5S } } j (aoan *d) aogyuun aan w- qn Ss Ss ly (σον) } j Ss (amt “8) 94+ "ἢ a Ano — ἘΠ = 5S <$ = } 8 } (ao1n01 “4) ano+ gg ta ue gn 5 40 SONIGVEY HET τω Γ OOL 999 8ζ «st wf το wot Θ ΑἼΠΑΥ ἢ HHL 10 ΒΘΝΙΑΥ͂ΒΣΙ
© ‘AFA NI NOILOMUUOO ANIINVZAG ONILVULSATI ATAVL
84 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
same or similar to those of fam. ®, but by lines of descent which have suffered far more correction to the Byzantine standard. For details I refer to Appendix II. Such MSS. are of interest in that they occasionally preserve apparently genuine readings of the family text which have been revised out of the (generally speaking) better representatives. Of these MSS. the most important is the group which von Soden styles I*®, but which by parity of nomenclature I propose to cite as fam. 1424, since the X°"* Kosinitza MS. 1424 (Scrivener’s ) is its oldest representative.
RELATION TO OTHER ANCIENT TEXTS
But before attempting to inquire further into the origin of the text represented in fam. ©, we must clear up its relation to other ancient texts, especially to those of B, D and the Old Syriac. This is the more necessary as von Soden has mis- represented and confused the evidence, by putting D into the same sub-family as ©, and by making the Old Syriac another witness to the same type of text.
My investigation of this question leads me to formulate four main conclusions :
(1) So far as minor variants are concerned—and these are much the most numerous, and are of course the most significant for the study of the relationship of different texts —the text of fam. Θ᾽ is almost equidistant from both the Alexandrian and the Western texts. The balance inclines slightly, but only slightly, to the Western side, while there are a very large proportion of readings found neither in D nor in the typical Alexandrian MSS. We have therefore in fam. Θ a clearly defined and distinctive text which may properly be ranked side by side with the three great texts, Alexandrian, Western and Byzantine (=Hort’s “ Neutral,” ‘“ Western” and “ Syrian ”) hitherto recognised.
(2) In fam, ® are found certain striking additions to the
on. τὖ KORIDETHI MS. AND TEXT OF CAESAREA = 85
T.R. which the Syriac shares with D and the Old Lat., besides others found only in the Syriac or the Armenian.
(3) On the other hand, as regards the longer omissions from the T.R. which are so conspicuous a feature of the con- junction of B with Syr. S., fam. © nearly always supports the shorter text.
(4) Though the text of fam. Θ is nearer than any other surviving Greek text to the Old Syriac, it is by no means its exact equivalent; and it frequently goes with the Armenian against the Syriac. Further, it would appear that it is sup- ported most frequently of all by the oldest MSS. of the Georgian version.
I proceed to summarise the evidence on which these con- clusions are based. But the reader who has not previously made a study of textual criticism is advised on a first reading to skip this and pass on to the next subsection, “Θ and the Text of Origen.”
(1) Lake’s. table shows that in Mk. i., in cases where B and D differ, B supports fam. @ against D 16 times, while D supports the family against B 15 times, also that in 9 cases fam. © is supported against BD combined by one or more of the later Alexandrian group x L A ¥ 33579. That is to say, the text of fam. Θ, in this chapter of Mark, is somewhat more closely allied to that of Alexandria than it is to D and the Old Latin. But how far, we ask, is this proportion maintained throughout the four Gospels? To make a count of all the readings in all four Gospels is obviously impossible ; but in four different ways I have been able to compile statistics which give some indica- tion of the proportion which prevails elsewhere between the number of Egyptian and D readings.
(a) Hoskier in his edition of 700 (p. ix) sets out all the agree- ments of that MS. with the great uncials against the Byzantine text. From these it appears that 700 is supported by B against D 63 times, by one or more members of the group xLCA against B D combined 34 times, while it joins D against B 111
86 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT |
times. (b) In the Introduction to Ferrar and Abbott’s historic edition of 183—69—124—346 (p. xlviii) will be found an analysis of the variants in Mt. xix.-xx. and Mk.i.-ix. Only those variants are counted in which the four cursives agree against the T.R. Out of 25 variants in Mt. xix.-xx., 13 &c. agree 18 times with B, 17 with Ὁ. Out of 215 in Mk. i.-ix. they agree 88 times with B, 90 with D. Further, it appears that in a series of selected passages from all four Gospels fam. 13 differs 376 times from x, 367 from B, 496 from D. That is to say, while 700 is slightly nearer to D than to the Egyptian group, the Ferrar group is distinctly nearer to By than to D. (c) The statistics given below (p. 90), compiled from tke lists in Lake’s Codex 1 and its Allies, show the numbers of agreements of fam.1 with the principal authorities in turn, and show that fam. 1 is only a very little nearer to B x than it is to the Old Lat.and Ὁ. (ἃ) For © there are no such statistics to refer to, but a study of the MS. support for variants in Mk. xiv. and xv. as set out in the Appendix of Gregory and Beerman’s edition of Θ᾽ shows that for these two chapters the proportion of Alexandrian to Western readings is approximately as 3 to 4. All these several sets of statistics, it will be observed, come to much the same thing. It so happens that in fam. 1 and fam. 13 the Byzantine revisers have spared a slightly larger proportion of Alexandrian than Western read- ings, while in © and 700 the opposite has occurred; but, considered as a whole, the text of fam. © is not very much nearer to D than it is to B. Thus the von Soden grouping, which puts D in the same group as ©, 28, 565, 700, while ex- cluding from that group fam. 1 and fam. 18, is a complete mis- apprehension of the evidence.
(2) More interesting, if not more important, is the relation of fam. @ to the Syriac and the Armenian versions. This may be illustrated by selecting a few striking readings in which fam. Θ agrees with Syr. S., and usually Arm. also, against B.
Mt. i. 16. “laxaP δὲ ἐγέννησεν ᾿Ιωσὴφ τὸν ἄνδρα Μαρίας, ἐξ ἧς ἐγεννήθη ᾿Ιησοῦς is the ordinary reading. Instead of this
cx.tv KORIDETHI MS. AND TEXT OF CAESAREA 87
Ἰακὼβ δὲ ἐγέννησεν ᾿Ιωσηφ, ᾧ μνηστευθεῖσα παρθένος Μαριὰμ ἐγέννησεν ᾿Ιησοῦν τὸν λεγόμενον Χριστόν is found in Θ and the Ferrar MSS. 346—543—826—828 (hiat. 69), Old Lat. (incl. d. hiat. D°*). Syr. C. agrees with this, approximately. The Armenian combines both readings—a sure sign that it is a mixed text— and reads “‘the husband of Mariam, to whom was betrothed Mariam the virgin, from whom was born Jesus.” Syr. S. has a reading which would correspond to ᾿Ιακὼβ Se ἐγέννησεν τὸν Ἰωσήφ' Ἰωσὴφ ᾧ μνηστευθεῖσα παρθένος Μαριὰμ ἐγέννησεν Ἰησοῦν κτὰ. To me the reading of Syr. 8. looks as if it was translated from a Greek MS. of the Θ 13 &c. type in which by accident the name Ἰωσήφ had been written twice. Dittography is a very common scribal error; and seeing that every one of the preceding 39 names in the genealogy had been written twice, the repetition of this particular word would have been exceptionally easy. The reading of Syr. C. will then be explained as one among many other attempts to correct this MS. by a MS. of the D type.
Mt. xxvii. 16,17. The name of Barabbas is Jesus Barabbas, Θ, 1 &c., Syr. S., Arm., Orig. in Mat.
Mt. xxviii. 18. After γῆς add καθὼς ἀπέστειλέν pe ὁ πατήρ, κἀγὼ ἀποστέλλω ὑμᾶς @, 1604, Syr. Pesh. (hiant Syr. S. and C.), Arm. (hiat. Orig.™*),
Mk. x. 14. Before εἶπεν add ἐπιτιμήσας Θ, 1 ὅτο., 13 &c., 28, 565, Syr. 8., Arm.
Jn. xi. 39, om. ἡ ἀδελφὴ τοῦ τετελευκηκότος O, Syr. S. Arm.; Old Lat.
Jn. xix. 13. For TaSSa0a=pavement καπῳῴαθᾶ =arch 1 &c., 565, Αττη. 94. Syr. S. and C. are both lacking; but Syr. Pesh. does not favour either Γαβ βαθᾶ or the reading of 1&c. © has (χιφβαθα).
Jn. xx. 16. After διδάσκαλε add καὶ προσέδραμεν ἅψασθαι αὐτοῦ Θ, 18 &c., ὅγε. 8.; Old Lat.
Note, however, that fam. © gives no support to the Syriac in certain other conspicuous additions, e.g. in Lk. xxiii. 48, Jn.
88 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT, I
iii. 6, Jn. xi. 39, Jn. xii. 12. Further we note that the Armenian also deserts the Syriac here.
(3) It would appear that fam. © agrees with Syr. 8. in a number of notable omissions wherein Syr. S. has the support of B.
Mt. xvi. 2-3, “ Signs of the times,” om. 13 &c., Arm., Orig.™*.
Mt. xvii. 21, “This kind goeth not forth,” &c., om. ©, 1604 (Arm., Orig.™* habent) ; 6.
Mt. xviii. 11, “For the son of man came,” &c., om. Θ, 1 &c., 18 &., Orig. ™* (Arm. habet).
Mt. xxiii. 14, whole verse om. @, 1 &c., 28, Arm., Dae, Ong. τ
Mk. ix. 44, 46, “ Where the worm dieth not” (1st and 2nd time), om. 1, 28, 565, Arm.; k.
Mk. ix. 49, ‘“‘ And every sacrifice shall be salted with salt,” om. 1, 565, 700, Arm. ; k.
Mk. xvi. 9-20. That this was originally absent from fam. Θ may be inferred from the scholion to ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ, Mk. xvi. 8, in certain members of the family. In the newly discovered Vatopedi MS. 1582—the oldest MS. of fam. 1—there is a con- cluding ornamentation after ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ, Mk. xvi. 8, followed by a scholion:! “In some copies the Gospel ends here, up to which point also Eusebius Pamphili made his canons, but in many (copies) there is also found this.” Then follows xvi. 9-16. An identical scholion occurs in 1, in the margin ; but Dr. Blake informs me that in 1582, which he has photographed, this note is written right across the page in uncial letters as a colophon. In 22 the word τέλος is written after ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ and the same scholion, only with the allusion to Eusebius omitted, follows. In three of the oldest Armenian MSS. the Gospel ends at this point. So also does the oldest (Adysh) MS. of the Georgian version.
Lk. ix. 55, “‘ Ye know not of what spirit ye are,” &c., om. 28, 1424 &c. (Arm. hab.).
Lk. xxii. 43-44. The angel and the Bloody Sweat, om. N
1 Cf. Gregory, Tezxtkritik, iii. p. 1160.
cx.tv KORIDETHI MS. AND TEXT OF CAESAREA 89
1071. In fam. 13 it is omitted here but inserted after Mt. xxvi. 39, where it occurs in Greek Lectionaries as a Good Friday Lesson. This is explicable only if it was originally absent from the text of the family in Luke, and was inserted in Matthew by a scribe who supposed the Lectionary to represent the true reading of that Gospel. Some MSS. of Arm. omit.
Lk. xxiii. 34, “ Father, forgive them,” om. © (Arm. hab.) ; Dab.
Jn. vil. 53-vili. 11. Pericope Adulterae, om. ©, 22, 2193, 565, 1424 &., Arm.; a fq; in1 and 1582 at the end of the Gospel—with a note that it is found in some copies but not commented upon by the holy Fathers Chrysostom, Cyril Alex., and Theodore of Mopsuestia ; inserted by 13 &c. after Lk. xxi. 38. It is absent from all old Georgian MSS., having been introduced by George the Athonite in his revision, c. 1045.
In view of this concurrence between B, Syr. 8. and fam. Θ, in the omission of conspicuous passages, three points require notice. (a) There is no evidence that fam. © omitted Lk. xxiii. 38, “in Jetters of Greek and Latin and Hebrew,” with B, Syr. S. and C. (Arm. hab.); or Jn. v. 4 (the moving of the waters) with B, Syr. C. (hiat. Syr. S.), Arm.°°", Though, of course, the words may have been inserted in all MSS. of the family by Byzantine revisers. (b) Fam. © agrees with Syr. S. in certain conspicuous insertions, which are found also in D. By reference to any good Apparatus Criticus the student may verify this under the references Mt. v. 22, Mt. x. 23, Mt. xxv. 1, Mk. x.24. (ὁ) Fam. © seems to support B against both Syr. ὃ. and D in omissions in Mt. iv. 10, Mt. xx. 16, Lk. xx. 34.
(4) It is clear that the Greek text from which the Old Syriac was translated is more closely related to that of fam. © than to any other extant Greek MSS. ; but it would be a great mistake to suppose that it is in any sense the same text. Indeed a notable feature of the fam. © text is the number of its agree- ments with B against the Syriac. It is also noteworthy that the fam. © is frequently supported by the Armenian against
90 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
the Old Syriac. The lists of readings in Lake’s edition of Codex 1 provide materials on which a rough estimate may be based. From these lists I have compiled the following statistics:
Variants quoted in which fam. 1differsfrom T.R. . . . 520 Of these, number peculiar to fam.1 . . . . . . 68 452
Readings of fam. 1 found in Syr. 8. or C. but notin Arm.. . 57 + bs δ Syr. 3. οὐ C. supported by Arm. . 46
103
᾿ς ᾿ ΝΣ Arm. but notin OldSyr. . . 49
ΩΝ + ἧς, D or Old Lat. but not ἴῃ δὶ, Bor L 85
re Ἧ 4 s or B but not in D or Old Lat.. 90
In considering these statistics it should be remembered that many variants in the Greek cannot be represented in Syriac or Armenian, and therefore the proportion of agreements with these versions as contrasted with B, καὶ D or L, etc., is necessarily understated. Nevertheless they show clearly (a) that fam. 1 (which previous statistics have shown is a typical representation of fam. @) does not by any means stand to the Old Syriac in the same relation as does D to the Old Latin. (8) That its affinities with the Armenian are almost as numerous (95 as against 103) as those with the Old Syriac.
When this chapter was already in slip proof Dr. R. P. Blake, who is working on the text of the Georgian version, showed me a collation of Mk. i. in the Adysh MS. (dated a.p. 897) and in the recently discovered X°™* Chanmeti fragments, which appear to represent an older form of that version than that reproduced in the printed editions. The MSS. frequently differ from one another; but the remarkable fact stands out that in the majority of cases in which one or more of these Old Georgian
1 Of the Adysh Gospels there is a photographic facsimile by E. 5. Tagaishoibi
(Moscow, 1916). The two Chanmeti fragments are dated respectively a.p. 914 and 995; edited by V. N. Benedevié (Petropoli, 1908-9).
αη. τ᾿ KORIDETHI MS. AND TEXT OF CAESAREA = 91
MSS. differs from the T.R., its reading is supported by fam. Θ. In Mk. i. in the Georgian there are altogether 83 variants from the T.R. Of these 28 are found nowhere else; and most of them look as if they were due to a translator’s freedom. Of the remaining 55, no less than 38 occur in one or more of the seven main authorities from fam. @ ; and 5 others occur in MSS. classed by von Soden as minor supporters of the I text.1 If, on further investigation, it should appear that this close relation between fam. © and the Georgian holds throughout all four Gospels, the Old Georgian version will become an authority of the first importance for the text of the Gospels; for it will enable us to check and supplement the evidence of © and its allies much as the Old Latin does for that of D.
© AND THE TEXT OF ORIGEN
Seeing that fam. © includes the main authorities for what von Soden calls the “I text,” with the three all-important exceptions of D, the Old Latin and the Old Syriac, it seemed worth while to ask whether his theory that this text represents a recension by Pamphilus, the friend of Eusebius, would hold good, provided the authorities for it were restricted to fam Θ. I, therefore, turned to his discussion (vol. i. p. 1494) of the quotations of Eusebius of Caesarea, whom he regards as the leading patristic authority for the I text. It appeared, however, that, though a majority of the readings quoted from Eusebius are to be found in fam. ©, a notable feature of the text of Eusebius is the number of passages in which he gives a reading found only in D. From this follows the important negative conclusion—fam. © does not represent the text of Eusebius. The facts, however, would be quite consistent with the hypothesis that the text of Eusebius had much the same relation to that of fam. © as x ΟἿ, 33 bear to B, 1.6. that the text of Eusebius represents a somewhat degenerate form of the text found in
1 Old Georgian has the notable readings (p. 87) in Mt. xxvii. 16-17, xxviii. 18; Mk.x.14. Lacking photographs of the MSS. those in John were not checked.
92 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
fam. @—a degeneration largely due to mixture with a text of the D type.
At this point there flashed across my mind the distinction between the two texts used by Origen which was worked out as long ago as 1811 by Griesbach in his Commentarius Criticus \— a book to which my attention had been called by Prof. C. H. Turner some months before. Griesbach’s thesis was that Origen in his Commentary on John used an “ Alexandrian ”’ text of Mark for Mk. i.-xi., and a ‘‘ mixed text” for the remainder of the Gospel, but that he used a ‘‘ Western” text of Mark in his Commentary on Matthew and in his Ezhortation to Martyrdom, both of which belong entirely to the period when he lived in Caesarea. It occurred to me to review the evidence submitted by Griesbach in the light of MSS. of the Gospels which have only been discovered or properly edited since his time. The results were astonishing.
Two points became clear. (a) The difference noticed by Gries- bach between the use of an “ Alexandrian ” and of a “ mixed” text of Mark corresponds to the change, not from the earlier to the later chapters of Mark, but from the earlier to the later books of the Commentary on John. (Ὁ) Both this “ mixed” text of Mark and the so-called “ Western ” text used in the Commentary on Matthew and in the Exhortation to Martyrdom are practically identical with the text of fam.@. At once we notice the salient fact that the change in the text used corresponds, roughly speaking, to a change of residence. Origen himself tells us that the first five books of the Commentary on John were written before he left Alexandria for Caesarea, in 231. The Hxhortation to Martyrdom was written shortly after the outbreak of the persecution of 235; the Commentary on Matthew (about 240) is probably one of the works taken down by shorthand from lectures delivered on week-days in the church at Caesarea.
I proceed to submit statistics in support of the above con- clusions.
1 Part 11. pp. x-xxxvi,
cx.tv KORIDETHI MS. AND TEXT OF CAESAREA 98
(1) In books i.-x. of the Commentary on John, Origen quotes the greater part of Mk. i. 1-27 and the whole of Mk. xi. 1-12, besides a few odd verses. The number of variants in Mk. i. 1-27 cited by Griesbach is 36. For 2 of these there is no support in MSS. of the Gospels; but in one, and perhaps both, of these cases Origen seems to be paraphrasing rather than quoting his text. In the remaining 34 readings Origen is supported 31 times by one or both of the MSS. B καὶ and once each by the other Alexandrian MSS. C, L, A; but in only117 of the 34 is he supported by fam. ®. From the shorter passages quoted in books i.-x. (1.6. Mk. vi. 16; x.18; xi. 15-17; xii. 26-27; xiv. 60) Griesbach cites 16 variants. Origen is supported in 10 of these by B, and in 1 each by C, A; for 3 there is no MS. support, and 1 occurs in the T.R. The continuous passage Mk. xi. 1-12 is specially important, for it is so long that by no possibility can it be a quotation from memory; it must therefore represent the third- century MS. of the Gospel used by Origen. Apart from an accidental omission (I think in some ancestor of our copy of Origen on John) 2 the variants noted by Griesbach number 31 ; in 29 of these the reading of Origen is supported by one or both of the MSS. Bs; in 1 by fam. Θ, and in 1 by the T.R., where these texts differ from Bx. It may be of interest to note that in the passages examined. above, where B and » differ, Origen has 6 agreements with B as against 7 with x.
(2) The number of variants in Mark cited by Griesbach from the later books of the Commentary on John is 43. For 5 of these the text of Origen has no MS. support ; in 6 cases it agrees with the T.R. We have seen (p. 45 ff.) that when a quotation by an
1 Of these readings 16 occur in B or δὲ and the remaining 1 in D; so there are none distinctive of fam. 0. N.B.—In two cases, where Griesbach, using the Benedictine text, cites variants of Origen which differ from Β &, in Brooke’s edition Origen’s reading agrees with those MSS.
2 In Mk. xi. 7-8 Origen omits καὶ ἐκάθισεν. . . ὅδον, but to make sense adds the last four words after ἀγρῶν. Burkitt (J.7.S. xvii. p. 151) thinks this was a defect in Origon’s MS. of the Gospel. As, however, there is a similar omission (through homoioteleuton) in the quotation of Mt. xxi. 8 on the same page in Brooke’s edition (i. p. 208), it seems to me more likely to be a defect in the MS. of the Commentary on John, an ancestor of which was prone to omission.
94 THE FOUR GOSPELS PT. I
ante-Nicene Father agrees with the T.R. against earlier texts, there is always a possibility that this may be the result of later scribal alteration in the MS. of that Father; again, whenever a reading in a patristic quotation is not supported by a single MS. of the Gospels, there is a presumption, either that the author is quoting from memory or paraphrasing, or that it is an error in the MSS. of his work. [ἢ view of these considerations it is highly significant that of the remaining 32 variants no less than 30 are found in fam. © (10 occurring only in the MSS. of this family), while Origen is supported only once each by x and D, and never by B, against the family.
(3) From Origen’s Commentary on