The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels. John William Burgon
Another minute but interesting indication of the accuracy and fidelity with which the cursive copies were made, is supplied by the constancy with which they witness to the preposition εν (not the numeral 'εν) in St. Mark iv. 8. Our Lord says that the seed which 'fell into the good ground' 'yielded by (εν) thirty, and by (εν) sixty, and by (εν) an hundred.' Tischendorf notes that besides all the uncials which are furnished with accents and breathings (viz. EFGHKMUVΠ) 'nearly 100 cursives' exhibit εν here and in ver. 20. But this is to misrepresent the case. All the cursives may be declared to exhibit εν, e.g. all Matthaei's and all Scrivener's. I have myself with this object examined a large number of Evangelia, and found εν in all. The Basle MS. from which Erasmus derived his text[127] exhibits εν—though he printed 'εν out of respect for the Vulgate. The Complutensian having 'εν, the reading of the Textus Receptus follows in consequence: but the Traditional reading has been shewn to be εν—which is doubtless intended by ΕΝ in Cod. A.
Codd. [Symbol: Aleph]CΔ (two ever licentious and Δ similarly so throughout St. Mark) substitute for the preposition εν the preposition εις—(a sufficient proof to me that they understand ΕΝ to represent εν, not 'εν): and are followed by Tischendorf, Tregelles, and the Revisers. As for the chartered libertine B (and its servile henchman L), for the first εν (but not for the second and third) it substitutes the preposition ΕΙΣ: while, in ver. 20, it retains the first εν, but omits the other two. In all these vagaries Cod. B is followed by Westcott and Hort[128].
§ 4.
St. Paul[129] in his Epistle to Titus [ii. 5] directs that young women shall be 'keepers at home,' οικουρους. So, (with five exceptions,) every known Codex[130], including the corrected [Symbol: Aleph] and D—HKLP; besides 17, 37, 47. So also Clemens Alex.[131] (A.D. 180)—Theodore of Mopsuestia[132]—Basil[133]—Chrysostom[134]—Theodoret[135]—Damascene[136]. So again the Old Latin (domum custodientes[137])—the Vulgate (domus curam habentes[138])—and Jerome (habentes domus diligentiam[139]): and so the Peshitto and the Harkleian versions—besides the Bohairic. There evidently can be no doubt whatever about such a reading so supported. To be οικουρος was held to be a woman's chiefest praise[140]: καλλιστον εργον γυνη οικουρος, writes Clemens Alex.[141]; assigning to the wife οικουρια as her proper province[142]. On the contrary, 'gadding about from house to house' is what the Apostle, writing to Timothy[143], expressly condemns. But of course the decisive consideration is not the support derived from internal evidence; but the plain fact that antiquity, variety, respectability, numbers, continuity of attestation, are all in favour of the Traditional reading.
Notwithstanding this, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, because they find οικουργους in [Symbol: Aleph]*ACD*F-G, are for thrusting that 'barbarous and scarcely intelligible' word, if it be not even a non-existent[144], into Titus ii. 5. The Revised Version in consequence exhibits 'workers at home'—which Dr. Field may well call an 'unnecessary and most tasteless innovation.' But it is insufficiently attested as well, besides being a plain perversion of the Apostle's teaching. [And the error must have arisen from carelessness and ignorance, probably in the West where Greek was not properly understood.]
So again, in the cry of the demoniacs, τι 'ημιν και σοι, Ιησου, 'υιε του Θεου; (St. Matt. viii. 29) the name Ιησου is omitted by B[Symbol: Aleph].
The reason is plain the instant an ancient MS. is inspected:—ΚΑΙΣΟΙΙΥΥΙΕΤΟΥΘΥ:—the recurrence of the same letters caused too great a strain to scribes, and the omission of two of them was the result of ordinary human infirmity.
Indeed, to this same source are to be attributed an extraordinary number of so-called 'various readings'; but which in reality, as has already been shewn, are nothing else but a collection of mistakes—the surviving tokens that anciently, as now, copying clerks left out words; whether misled by the fatal proximity of a like ending, or by the speedy recurrence of the like letters, or by some other phenomenon with which most men's acquaintance with books have long since made them familiar.
FOOTNOTES:
[96] St. Mark xi. 4. See Revision Revised, pp. 57–58.
[97] St. Mark vii. 19, καθαριζων for καθαριζον. See below, pp. 61–3.
[98] St. Luke ii. 14.
[99] St. Luke xxiii. 42.
[100] St. Matt. xx. 9. See also St. Mark xi. 9, 10.
[101] 'Quae quidem orationis prolixitas non conveniens esset si 'οτε legendum esset.'
[102] iv. 577: 'quando.'
[103] Dem. Ev. 310, 312, 454 bis.
[104] i. 301.
[105] ii. 488, and ap. Gall. vi. 580.
[106] Trin. 59, 99, 242.
[107] viii. 406, 407. Also ps.-Chrysost. v. 613. Note, that 'Apolinarius' in Cramer's Cat. 332 is Chrys. viii. 407.
[108] Ap. Chrys. vi. 453.
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