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1851.

Lachmann's Method generally satisfactory.

29

These examples will be sufficient, we think, to exhibit to the reader the beauty and satisfactory nature of the method pursued by Lachmann. It is undoubtedly true that he makes use of very few MSS.,- a necessary consequence of confining himself to those which are of extreme antiquity, and which are clearly defined in their character. But his highest praise is, that what he has done needs not to be done over again. Each separate portion of his work may be improved upon without pulling the whole to pieces. Such scholars as share the views of Matthæi and Scholz,-valuing highly the evidence of the modern manuscripts,-have only to pursue the process we have pointed out above, until they shall have concentrated the testimony of the individual codices in one or more clearly defined groups, indicating severally the text which prevailed at a given time in a given place, and approved by citations from the ecclesiastical writers belonging to the same era and locality. A similar course may be pursued with the different codices containing the pure Versions, and thus evidence elicited as to the condition of the Greek Text in Greece Proper, Syria, Upper and Lower Egypt, and the countries lying on the south bank of the Lower Danube. This will be tantamount to producing the testimony of the whole Christian world as to the condition of their copies of the New Testament during the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era; a result which, as is obvious, will involve the collateral advantage of determining, with extreme accuracy, the limits within which all variations from the very autographs must be included.

The publication of Tischendorf is of a much more ambitious character in its critical pretensions; but, in its practical excellence, we are disposed to place it far below the edition of Lachmann. The apparatus criticus is of enormous extent, so great as to baffle all attempt at a systematic classification. Besides the Syrian and Egyptian Versions, the editor professes to give the variations (in their Greek equivalents) of the Ethiopic, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Gothic, Persian, AngloSaxon, and Sclavonic Versions. Of these the two last were not made until the eighth and ninth centuries respectively; and all, with the exception of the Gothic, were derived not from Greek codices exclusively, but partially or wholly from Syrian, Coptic, and Latin Versions. This mixed and indefinite character renders them of very little use in the present stage of critical investigation of the text. Just as the smaller planetary bodies must be thrown out of consideration by the mathematician in his first determination of the moon's orbit, so must the hybrid versions be discarded by the sacred critic, until, from the purer materials,

he has succeeded in laying the solid foundations of his work. At a later period they will perhaps be of service in furnishing him here and there with a clue to some residual difficulty. But to marshal their evidence side by side with that of the authorities exhibited by Lachmann, is to fill up the ranks of a regiment of British grenadiers by a draft of Bosjeman recruits armed with their bows and arrows.

A yet more serious defect in this edition is the laxity with which it cites the authority of ecclesiastical writers for or against any given reading. The most ancient Fathers continually quote from memory, as is manifest by the same passage sometimes appearing three or four times with as many variations in the same writer. Of course this only occurs where the change involves no substantial alteration of the sense, and therefore, doctrinally speaking, is of no importance. But, as a matter of verbal criticism, the substantial importance of a variation is nothing to the purpose; while, on the other hand, all verbal changes, which proceeded from variations in the codices really used by an ecclesiastical writer, ought to be most carefully noted. It is a vital point, therefore, in recording the testimony of the Fathers, to make a distinction between those cases in which they may be quoting from memory, and those in which they must be quoting from manuscripts; and this can, in very few instances, be learnt from the margin of Tischendorf. Lachmann, on the other hand, where there is any doubt about the citation being a genuine quotation, gives a definite reference to the passage in which it occurs; so that the reader has it in his power to judge for himself of the merits of the case. This is a matter in which too great caution cannot be employed. Unless the argument of the writer shows unequivocally the text which he used, a complete certainty is never attainable as to his citations, it having been a continual temptation to transcribers to correct (as they fancied) these to a conformity with the copies of the New Testament which they themselves happened to use."

*

Tischendorf has not only published an edition of the New Testament, but has likewise earned the gratitude of biblical

* A lamentable instance of this folly in the case of a Pagan author was furnished some years ago by Cardinal Maii. He published some exceedingly ancient Scholia on the Odyssey, and altered the quotations of the poet, which were imbedded in them, to suit the common printed text; thus acting as a man would do, who on finding an oyster should throw away the fish and put the shells in his pocket. It is singularly to be regretted, that the long-expected edition of the Vatican MS. is coming out at last under the auspices of so unfortunate a scholar.

1851.

Transcripts of Ancient MSS. should be made.

31

scholars by a course which it is much to be regretted should not have been more generally adopted-the printing accurate transcripts, accompanied by specimen fac-similes, of some very important manuscripts. The Codex rescriptus (C) mentioned by Bentley in his letter to Archbishop Wake, is one of these. An ancient manuscript of the Gospels, in the old Latin version, discovered by himself at Vienna, is another. The rest are mere fragments, but of such an antiquity as to render their testimony very valuable as far as it extends. It is a remarkable circumstance that in a country so distinguished as England for associations of all kinds, not one should have sprung up for the special purpose of preserving in security, by means of the art of printing, these inestimable documents. With few exceptions, their evidence is available only in collations which have in many cases been very inaccurately made, while the original codices are every day becoming more and more impaired by the ravages of time, which in some cases are hastened by wantonness or culpable neglect. The Codex Boreeli (F) was lost soon after its collation by Wetstein, having probably been stolen. It was afterwards found in obscurity in a private collection at Arnheim, and is now deposited in the public library at Utrecht. But several leaves have in the mean time been torn out. The Alexandrine Codex nearly perished soon after its arrival in England. A fire occurred in the King's Library, and the book was saved, not without having suffered some damage, by being thrown out of window into the courtyard. The writing of the Vatican MS. was described by Bentley's nephew in the year 1726 as being very white, although very legible. The legibility had perhaps been to a certain extent preserved by that possessor of the volume who added the accents, which, although ancient, are much more recent than the text. 'He has taken,' says the younger Bentley, a strange piece of pains, to retouch every letter in the book; one side only sometimes when he thought 'the other side very plain; also, when he thought a letter 'superfluous, as in σdelete, penfavres, &c., he leaves the e un

' touched.'

The business of collation is one extremely trying, both to the eyes and to the patience; and it is no matter of wonder that later editors should discover errors in the work of their predecessors. Tischendorf accuses Scholz of extraordinary carelessness in this respect, and professes likewise to have detected several oversights in Lachmann. He himself, however, has taken a course which entirely destroys the scientific character of his own apparatus criticus,— that is, often to abstain from giving the variations of codices in cases where he conceives

such variations to be undoubtedly interpolated. It is really difficult to conceive how any one who has ever had occasion to take the general character of a manuscript into consideration, and has therefore become aware how instructive even manifest

errors are for this purpose, should have been tempted to this absurd step. Even supposing his judgment correct in the condemnation of each particular reading, its tacit exclusion from the margin vitiates the fundamental principle of a critical edition, which is valuable, not in proportion to the correctness of the text on which the editor happens to decide, but in proportion to the means for deciding on a correct text which it furnishes to the competent reader,-that is to say, in proportion to the completeness of its collations, and the clearness with which they are arranged. If these two principles be carried out, the natural consequence will be that every reading will appear, whether in the text or in the margin, supported by the amount of evidence belonging to it, and the student will be able (should he desire it) accurately to reconstruct out of the apparatus criticus, every one of the MSS. of which it is the résumé. But Tischendorf indulges in these reticences of various readings, not only when there is good ground for suspecting them to be interpolations, but even where it is positively certain that they have arisen from divergency in the archetypal codices, that is, exactly in such cases as are most important when the problem of the primeval condition of the text has to be solved.

There is another very interesting point, to which it would be desirable that the attention of scholars should be more carefully directed than has hitherto been the case, viz., the alteration of Greek manuscripts from Latin ones. Some years ago an ingenious, but paradoxical, writer published a work which produced a great excitement at the time, in which he endeavoured to prove that the contents of the New Testament were originally written in Latin, or, at any rate, that the Greek copies which we have at present were re-translations from the Latin Vulgate. This theory was maintained with extraordinary cleverness, and an abundance of learned illustration; but in reading the book it is difficult to conceive that its author really believed it himself; although, like many other bold paradoxes, its refutation was scarcely an easier task than its reception. We believe that the substratum of plausibility which really existed as a foundation for this airy superstructure, is due entirely to the

* Palæoromaica, or Historical and Philological Disquisitions. Murray, 1822.

1851.

Alteration of Greek MSS. from Latin ones.

33

fact to which we have just alluded. The main origin of the comparison of Greek MSS. with Latin ones is probably to be looked for in the intercourse which took place between some of the principal ecclesiastics of the Greek Church and the Church of Rome during the time of the Arian troubles. Among others, Athanasius and his successor Peter, in the fourth century, and John, also Bishop of Alexandria, in the fifth, passed a considerable time at Rome, and probably brought from thence not only an intimacy with the Latin language, but also copies of the Scriptures as used in the Latin Churches. Now nothing would be more natural than for the possessor of any one of these, when he found a discrepancy between the Greek Codex used in his own church and his new acquisition, to note the variation in the margin, either in Latin (as it existed), or in its Greek equivalent, or perhaps in both, the former for his own satisfaction, the latter for the information of his successors who might not be docti sermones utriusque linguæ.' The following examples may serve to show the manner in which this disturbing influence operated, and to direct the eye of the student to the many instances of it which exist as yet unnoticed.

I. — Marc. i. 41., ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς σπλαγχνισθεὶς ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ ἥψατο, κ.τ.λ. The Codex Beza has the extraordinary variation ὀργισθεὶς instead of σπλαγχνισθείς. The Codex Veronensis omits the word altogether. The antiquity of the reading opytoeìs ('iratus') is confirmed by some of the old ante-Hieronymian versions. But it is manifestly an absurd one: and it is a plausible conjecture that it sprang up from a retranslation of the Latin word 'commotus,' which itself is indifferently the equivalent of ὀργισθεὶς and σπλαγχνισθείς. This is the notion of the paradoxical writer we have just spoken of. To us it appears more likely that iratus' is the relic of mise'ratus,' a marginal Latin interpretation of oλayxvioleìs (Vulg. misertus), of which the first two or three letters were worn away, and the rest obscured, in the copy from which the transcript of the MSS. a, d, and some others, was made. 'Opyioleìs is, of course, the regular Greek equivalent of iratus.'

II.-Marc. xi. 8., the Textus Receptus has Toλλoi dì (Kai πολλοὶ· Β.C.) τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτῶν ἔστρωσαν εἰς τὴν ὁδὸν, ἄλλοι δὲ στιβάδας ἔκοπτον ἐκ τῶν δένδρων καὶ ἔστρωσαν (ἐστρώννυον· D. a. b. c.) eis Tv ódóv. For the last clause the Vatican Codex (B.) has the variation ἄλλοι δὲ στιβάδας κόψαντες ἐκ τῶν ἀγρῶν. Now it is not at all difficult to conceive how both these readings might be derived from a common original, if it were not for the strange discrepancy between dypov and dévopov. But these words can never have been directly interchanged with one

VOL. XCIV. NO. CXCI.

D

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