CHAPTER VII.

ON THE HISTORY OF THE TEXT AND OF THE PRINCIPAL SCHEMES THAT HAVE BEEN PROPOSED FOR RESTORING IT TO ITS PRIMITIVE STATE, INCLUDING RECENT VIEWS OF COMPARATIVE CRITICISM.

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N adequate discussion of the subject of the present Chapter would need a treatise by itself, and has been the single theme of several elaborate works. We shall here limit ourselves to the examination of those more prominent topics, a clear understanding of which is essential for the establishment of trustworthy principles in the application of external evidence to the correction of the text of the New Testament. The use of internal evidence has been sufficiently considered in the preceding Chapter.

1. It was stated at the commencement of this volume that the autographs of the sacred writers "perished utterly in the very infancy of Christian history" (p. 2): nor can any other conclusion be safely drawn from the general silence of the earliest Fathers, and from their constant habit of appealing to "ancient and approved copies1," when a reference to the originals, if extant, would have put an end to all controversy on the subject of various readings. Dismissing one passage in the genuine Epistles of Ignatius (d. 107), which has no real connexion with the matter2, the only allusion to the autographs of Scripture

1 e. g. Irenaeus, Contra Haereses, V. 30. 1, for which see below, p. 383: the early date renders this testimony most weighty.

2 In deference to Lardner and others, who have supposed that Ignatius refers to the sacred autographs, we subjoin the sentence in dispute. 'Eπel йкovσά Twvwv λεγόντων, ὅτι ἐὰν μὴ ἐν τοῖς ἀρχαίοις εὕρω, ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ οὐ πιστεύω· καὶ λέγοντός

met with in the primitive ages is the well-known declaration of Tertullian (fl. 200). "Percurre Ecclesias Apostolicas, apud quas ipsae adhuc Cathedrae Apostolorum suis locis praesident, apud quas ipsae Authenticae Literae eorum recitantur, sonantes vocem, et repraesentantes faciem uniuscujusque. Proximè est tibi Achaia, habes Corinthum. Si non longè es a Macedoniâ, habes Philippos, habes Thessalonicenses. Si potes in Asiam tendere, habes Ephesum. Si autem Italiae adjaces, habes Romam... (De Praescriptione Haereticorum, c. 36). Attempts have been made, indeed, and that by very eminent writers, to reduce the term "Authenticae Literae" to mean nothing more than "genuine, unadulterated Epistles," or even the authentic Greek as opposed to the Latin translation. It seems enough to reply with Ernesti, that any such non-natural sense is absolutely excluded by the word "ipsae," which would be utterly absurd, if "genuine" only were intended (Institutes, Pt. III. Ch. II. 3)1: yet the African Tertullian was too little likely to be well informed on this subject, to entitle his rhetorical statement to any real attention. We need not try to explain away

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μου αὐτοῖς, ὅτι γέγραπται, ἀπεκρίθησάν μοι, ὅτι πρόκειται. Ἐμοὶ δὲ ἀρχεῖα ἐστιν Ἰησοῦς Χριστός κ.τ.λ. (Ad Philadelph. c. 8). On account of ἀρχεῖα in the succeeding clause, åpxcíois has been suggested as a substitute for the manuscript reading apxalois, and so the interpolators of the genuine Epistle have written: but without denying that a play on the words was designed between apxalois and apxeîa, both copies of the old Latin version maintain the distinction made in the Medicaean Greek (“si non in veteribus invenio" and "Mihi autem principium est Jesus Christus"), and any difficulty as to the sense lies not in ȧpxalois but in πрókеITαι. Chevallier's translation of the passage is perfectly intelligible, “Because I have heard some say, Unless I find it in the ancient writings, I will not believe in the Gospel. And when I said to them, It is written [in the Gospel], they answered me 'It is found written before [in the Law]."" Gainsayers set the first covenant in opposition to the second and better one.

1 Compare too Jerome's expression "ipsa authentica" (Comment. in Epist. ad Titum), when speaking of the autographs of Origen's Hexapla: below p. 388. 2 The view I take is Coleridge's too (Table Talk, p. 89, 2nd ed.). "I beg Tertullian's pardon; but among his many bravuras, he says something about St Paul's autograph. Origen expressly declares the reverse;" referring, I suppose, to the passage cited below, p. 384. Bp. Kaye, the very excellencies of whose character almost unfitted him for entering into the spirit of Tertullian, observes: "Since the whole passage is evidently nothing more than a declamatory mode of stating the weight which he attached to the authority of the Apostolic Churches; to infer from it that the very chairs in which the Apostles sat, or that the very Epistles which they wrote, then actually existed at Corinth, Ephesus, Rome, &c., would be only to betray a total ignorance of Tertullian's style" (Kaye's Ecclesias

his obvious meaning, but may fairly demur to the evidence of this honest, but impetuous and wrong-headed man. We have no faith in the continued existence of autographs, which are vouched for on no better authority than the real or apparent exigency of his argument1.

2. Besides the undesigned and, to a great extent, unavoidable differences subsisting between manuscripts of the New Testament within a century of its being written, the wilful corruptions introduced by heretics soon became a cause of loud complaint in the primitive ages of the Church. Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, addressing the Church of Rome and Soter its Bishop (168—176), complains that even his own letters had been tampered with: καὶ ταύτας οἱ τοῦ διαβόλου ἀπόστολοι ζιζανίων γεγέμικαν, ἃ μὲν ἐξαιροῦντες, ἃ δὲ προστιθέντες οἷς τὸ oval Keira: adding, however, the far graver offence, où lavpaστὸν ἄρα εἰ καὶ τῶν κυριακῶν ῥαδιουργῆσαί τινες ἐπιβέβληνται γραφων (Euseb. Ecc. Hist. IV. 23), where αἱ κυριακαί γραφαί can be no other than the Holy Scriptures. Nor was the evil new in the age of Dionysius. Not to mention the Gnostics Basilides (A.D. 130?) and Valentinus (150?) who published additions to the sacred text which were avowedly of their own composition, Marcion of Pontus, the arch-heretic of that period, coming

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tical History...illustrated from the writings of Tertullian, p. 313, 2nd ed.). Just so the autographs were no more in those cities than the chairs were: but it suited the purpose of the moment to suppose that they were extant; and, knowing nothing to the contrary, he boldly sends the reader in search of them.

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1 I do not observe, as some have thought, that Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. v. 10) intimates that the copy of St Matthew's Gospel in Hebrew letters, left by St Bartholomew in India, was the Evangelist's autograph; and the notion that St Mark wrote with his own hand the Latin fragments now at Venice (for., see p. 265) is unworthy of serious notice. The statement twice made in the Chronicon Paschale of Alexandria, compiled in the sixth century, but full of ancient frag“ καθὼς τὰ ἀκριβῆ ments, that woel Tpirn was the true reading of John xix. 14 βιβλία περιέχει, αυτό τε τὸ ἰδιόχειρον τοῦ εὐαγγελιστοῦ ὅπερ μέχρι τοῦ νῦν πεφύλακται χάριτι Θεοῦ ἐν τῇ ἐφεσίων ἁγιωτάτῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν TɩOTŵV Èkeîσe πрoσкuveîтaι” (Dindorf, Chron. Pasch. pp. 11 and 411) is simply incredible. Isaac Casaubon, however, a most unimpeachable witness, says that this passage, and another which he cites, were found by himself in a fine fragment of the Paschal treatise of Peter Bp. of Alexandria and martyr [d. 311], which he got from Andrew Darmarius, a Greek merchant. Casaubon adds to the assertion of Peter "Hec ille. Ego non ignoro quid adversus hanc sententiam possit disputari: de quo judicium esto eruditorum" (Exercit. in Annal. Eccles. pp. 464, 670, London 1614).

to Rome on the death of its Bishop Hyginus (142)1, brought with him that mutilated and falsified copy of the New Testament, against which the Fathers of the second century exerted all their powers, and whose general contents are known to us chiefly through the writings of Tertullian and subsequently of Epiphanius. It can hardly be said that Marcion deserves very particular mention in relating the history of the sacred text. Some of the variations from the common readings which his opponents detected were doubtless taken from manuscripts in circulation at the time, and, being adopted through no private preferences of his own, are justly available for critical purposes. Thus in 1 Thess. ii. 15 Tertullian, who saw only roùs πρоþýτas in his own copies, objects to Marcion's reading Toùs idíovs πρоþýτas (“licet suos adjectio sit haeretici”), although idíovs stands in the received text, in Codd. KL (DE in later hands) and all cursives except seven, the Gothic, both Syriac versions, Chrysostom and Theodoret. Here the heretic's testimony is useful in shewing the high antiquity of idious, even though ABDEFG, seven cursives, the Vulgate, Armenian, Æthiopic, and all three Egyptian versions, join with Origen, Lachmann and Tischendorf in rejecting it, some of them perhaps in compliance with Tertullian's decision. In similar instances the evidence of Marcion, as to a matter of fact to which he could attach no kind of importance, is well worth recording: but where on the contrary the dogmas of his own miserable system are touched, or no codices or other witnesses countenance his changes (as is perpetually the case in his edition of St Luke, the only Gospel-and that maimed and interpolated from the others—he seems to have acknowledged at all) his blasphemous extravagance may very well be forgotten. In such cases he does not so much as profess to follow anything more respectable than the capricious devices of his misguided fancy.

3. Nothing throws so strong a light on the real state of the text in the latter half of the second century as the single notice of Irenaeus (d. 178) on Apoc.xiii. 18 (see above, p. 379, note 1). This eminent person, the glory of the Western Church in his own age, whose five books against Heresies (though chiefly extant but in a bald old Latin version) are among the most precious

1 "Necdum quoque Marcion Ponticus de Ponto emersisset, cujus magister Cerdon sub Hygino tunc episcopo, qui in Urbe nonus fuit, Romam venit: quem Marcion secutus..." Cyprian. Epist. 74. Cf. Euseb. Eccl. Hist. IV. 10, II.

reliques of Christian antiquity, had been privileged in his youth to enjoy the friendly intercourse of his master Polycarp, who himself had conversed familiarly with St John and others that had seen the Lord (Euseb. Ecc. Hist. v. 20). Yet even Irenaeus, though removed but by one stage from the very Apostles, possessed (if we except a bare tradition) no other means of settling discordant readings than are now open to ourselves; to search out the best copies and exercise the judgment on their contents. His locus classicus must needs be cited in full, the Latin throughout, the Greek in such portions as survive. The question is whether St John wrote x§5' (666), or xı5′ (616).

"His autem sic se habentibus, et in omnibus antiquis et probatissimis et veteribus scripturis numero hoc posito, et testimonium perhibentibus his qui facie ad faciem Johannem viderunt (ToÚTwv dè ovτως ἐχόντων, καὶ ἐν πᾶσι δὲ τοῖς σπουδαίοις καὶ ἀρχαίοις ἀντιγράφοις τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ τούτου κειμένου, καὶ μαρτυρούντων αὐτῶν ἐκείνων τῶν κατ ̓ ὄψιν τὸν Ἰωάννην ἑωρακότων, καὶ τοῦ λόγου διδάσκοντος ἡμᾶς ὅτι ὁ ἀριθμὸς τοῦ ὀνόματος τοῦ θηρίου κατὰ τὴν τῶν Ἑλλήνων ψῆφον διὰ τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ ypaμμáтwv Èμpaívera), et ratione docente nos quoniam numerus nominis bestiae, secundum Graecorum computationem, per literas quae in eo sunt sexcentos habebit et sexaginta et sex (ẻσpáλŋσáv TIVES ἐπακολουθήσαντες ἰδιωτισμῷ καὶ τὸν μέσον ἠθέτησαν, ἀριθμὸν τοῦ ὀνό ματος ν' ψήφισμα ἀφελόντες καὶ ἀντὶ τῶν ἓξ δεκάδων μίαν δεκάδα βουλόμevoi elva): ignoro quomodo erraverunt quidam sequentes idiotismum et medium frustrantes numerum nominis, quinquaginta numeros deducentes, pro sex decadis unam decadem volentes esse. Hoc autem arbitror scriptorum peccatum fuisse, ut solet fieri, quoniam et per literas numeri ponuntur, facilè literam Graecam quae sexaginta enuntiat numerum, in iota Graecorum literam expansam. Sed his quidem qui simpliciter et sine malitia hoc fecerunt, arbitramur veniam dari a Deo." (Contr. Haeres. v. 30. 1: Harvey, Vol. II. pp. 406—7.)

Here we obtain at once the authority of Irenaeus for receiving the Apocalypse as the work of St John; we discern the living interest its contents had for the Christians of the second century, up to the traditional preservation of its minutest readings; we recognise the fact that numbers even then were represented by letters; and the far more important one that the original autograph of the Apocalypse was already so completely lost, that a thought of it never entered the mind of the writer, though the book had not been composed one hundred years, perhaps not more than seventy1.

1 Irenaeus' anxiety that his own works should be kept free from corruption, and the value then attached to the labours of the corrector, are plainly seen in a