The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels. John William Burgon

The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels - John William Burgon


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Shall we wonder more at the badness of the Codexes to which we are just now invited to pin our faith; or at the infatuation of our guides?

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      I do not find that sufficient attention has been paid to grave disturbances of the Text which have resulted from a slight clerical error. While we are enumerating the various causes of Textual depravity, we may not fail to specify this. Once trace a serious Textual disturbance back to (what for convenience may be called) a 'clerical error,' and you are supplied with an effectual answer to a form of inquiry which else is sometimes very perplexing: viz. If the true meaning of this passage be what you suppose, for what conceivable reason should the scribe have misrepresented it in this strange way—made nonsense, in short, of the place? … I will further remark, that it is always interesting, sometimes instructive, after detecting the remote origin of an ancient blunder, to note what has been its subsequent history and progress.

      Attention is therefore invited to a case of attraction in Acts xx. 24. It is but the change of a single letter (λογοΥ for λογοΝ), yet has that minute deflection from the truth led to a complete mangling of the most affecting perhaps of St. Paul's utterances. I refer to the famous words αλλ' ουδενος λογον ποιουμαι, ουδε εχω την ψυχην μου τιμιαν εμαυτω, 'ως τελειωσαι τον δρομον μου μετα χαρας: excellently, because idiomatically, rendered by our Translators of 1611—'But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy.'

      The words of the last-named eminent scholar on the reading just cited are so valuable in themselves, and are observed to be so often in point, that they shall find place here:—'Modern Critics,' he says, 'in deference to the authority of the older MSS., and to certain critical canons which prescribe that preference should be given to the shorter and more difficult reading over the longer and easier one, have decided that the T.R. in this passage is to be replaced by that which is contained in those older MSS.

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      We now come to the inattention of those long-since-forgotten Ist or IInd century scribes who, beguiled by the similarity of the letters ΕΝ and ΑΝ (in the expression ΕΝΑΝθρωποις ευδοκια, St. Luke ii. 14), left out the preposition. An unintelligible clause was the consequence, as has been explained above (p. 21): which some one next sought to remedy by adding to ευδοκια the sign of the genitive (Σ). Thus the Old Latin translations were made.


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