The Criticism of the New Testament. Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener
other sources, although the fact is duly notified146; sometimes the readings of the first hand are put in the margin, while those of the second stand in the text, sometimes the contrary: in a word, the plan of the work exhibits all the faults such a performance well can have. Nor is the execution at all less objectionable. Although the five volumes were ten years in printing (1828–38), Mai devoted to their superintendence only his scanty spare hours, and even then worked so carelessly that after cancelling a hundred pages for their incurable want of exactness, he was reduced to the shift of making manual corrections with moveable types, and projected huge tables of errata, which Vercellone has in some measure tried to supply. When once it is stated that the type was set up from the common Elzevir or from some other printed Greek Testament, the readings of the Codex itself being inserted as corrections, and the whole revised by means of an assistant who read the proof-sheets to the Cardinal while he inspected the manuscript; no one will look for accuracy from a method which could not possibly lead to it. Accordingly, when Mai's text came to be compared with the collations of Bartolocci, of Mico, of Rulotta, and of Birch, or with the scattered readings which had been extracted by others, it was soon discovered that while this edition added very considerably to our knowledge of the Codex Vaticanus, and often enabled us to form a decision on its readings when the others were at variance; it was in its turn convicted by them of so many errors, oversights, and inconsistencies, that its single evidence could never be used with confidence, especially when it agreed with the commonly received Greek text. Immediately after the appearance of Mai's expensive quartos, an octavo reprint of the New Testament was struck off at Leipsic for certain London booksellers, which proved but a hasty, slovenly, unscholarlike performance, and was put aside in 1859 by a cheap Roman edition in octavo, prepared, as was the quarto, by Mai, prefaced by another graceful and sensible epistle of Vercellone147. This last edition was undertaken by the Cardinal, after sad experience had taught him the defects of his larger work, and he took good care to avoid some of the worst of them: the readings of the second hand are usually, though not always, banished to the margin, their number on the whole is increased, gross errors are corrected, omissions supplied, and the Vatican chapters are given faithfully and in full. But Mai's whole procedure in this matter is so truly unfortunate, that in a person whose fame was less solidly grounded, we should impute it to mere helpless incapacity148. Not only did he split up the paragraphs of his quarto into the modern chapters and verses (in itself a most undesirable change, see above, p. 70), but by omitting some things and altering others, he introduced almost as many errors as he removed. When Dean Burgon was permitted to examine the Codex for an hour and a half in 1860, on consulting it for sixteen passages out of hundreds wherein the two are utterly at variance, he discovered that the quarto was right in seven of them, the octavo in nine: as if Mai were determined that neither of his editions should supersede the use of the other. Dean Alford also collated numerous passages in 1861149, and his secretary Mr. Cure in 1862, especially with reference to the several correcting hands: “in errorem quidem et ipse haud raro inductus,” is Tischendorf's verdict on his labours. Thus critics of every shade of opinion became unanimous on one point, that a new edition of the Codex Vaticanus was as imperatively needed as ever; one which should preserve with accuracy all that the first hand has written (transcriptural errors included), should note in every instance the corrections made by the second hand, and, wherever any one of the previous collators might be found in error, should expressly state the true reading.
It would have been a grievous reproach had no efforts been made to supply so great and acknowledged a want. Early in 1866, Tischendorf again visited Rome, and when admitted into the presence of Pope Pius IX, boldly sought permission to edit at his own cost such an edition of Cod. B as he had already published of Cod. א. The request was denied by his Holiness, who obscurely hinted his intention of carrying out the same design on his own account. Tischendorf, however, obtained permission to use the manuscript so far as to consult it in such parts of the New Testament as presented any special difficulty, or respecting which previous collators were at variance. He commenced his task February 28, and in the course of it could not refrain from copying at length twenty pages of the great Codex—nineteen from the New Testament, and one from the Old. This licence was not unnaturally regarded as a breach of his contract, so that, after he had used the manuscript for eight days, it was abruptly withdrawn from him on March 12. An appeal to the generosity of Vercellone, who had been entrusted with the care of the forthcoming edition, procured for him the sight of this coveted treasure for six days longer between March 20 and 26, the Italian being always present on these latter occasions, and receiving instruction for the preparation of his own work by watching the processes of a master hand. Thus fourteen days of three hours each, used zealously and skilfully, enabled Tischendorf to put forth an edition of Cod. B far superior to any that preceded it150. The Prolegomena are full of matter from which we have drawn freely in the foregoing description, the text is in cursive type, the nineteen pages which cost him so dearly being arranged in their proper lines, the remainder according to columns. Much that ought to have been noted was doubtless passed over by Tischendorf for mere pressure of time; but he takes great pains to distinguish the readings of the original writer or his διορθωτής (see p. 55)151, both of whom supplied words or letters here and there in the margin or between the lines152, from the corrections of a second yet ancient scribe (B2), and those of the person (B3) who retraced the faded writing at a later period153. One notion, taken up by Tischendorf in the course of his collation in 1866, was received at first with general incredulity by other scholars. He has pronounced a decided opinion, not only that Codd. א and B are documents of the same age, but that the scribe who wrote the latter is one of the four [D] to whose diligence we owe the former. That there should be a general similarity in the style of the two great codices is probable enough, although the letters in Cod. א are about half as large again as those of its fellow, but such as are aware of the difficulty of arriving at a safe conclusion as to identity of penmanship after close and repeated comparison of one document with another, will hardly attach much weight to the impression of any person, however large his experience, who has nothing but memory to trust to. Tregelles, who has also seen both copies, states that Cod. א looks much the fresher and clearer of the two. Yet the reasons alleged above, which are quite independent of the appearance of the handwriting, leave scarcely a doubt that Tischendorf's judgement was correct.
The Roman edition, projected by Vercellone and Cozza under the auspices of Pius IX, was designed to consist of six volumes, four containing the Old Testament, one the New, another being devoted to the notes and discrimination of corrections by later hands. The New Testament appeared in 1868154, a second volume in 1869, containing the text from Genesis to Joshua; three more have since completed the Old Testament (1870, 1871, 1872). The learned, genial, and modest Vercellone (b. 1814) died early in 1869, so that the later volumes bear on their title-page the mournful inscription “Carolum Vercellone excepit Caietanus Sergio Sodalis Barnabites” as Cozza's associate. These editors fared but ill whether as Biblical critics or as general scholars, under the rough handling of Tischendorf, whom the wiser policy of Vercellone had kept in good humour, but whose powers his successors greatly undervalued. There seems, however, to be no great cause, in spite of their adversary's minute diligence in fault-finding (Appendix N. T. Vatic. 1869, p. xi, &c.)155, for doubting their general correctness, although they persist in placing on the page with the rest of their text readings which are known or credibly stated to be of decidedly later date, in spite of the incongruousness of the mixture of what was original with matter plainly adscititious156. Thus in the Roman edition αδελφων μου των Matt. xxv. 40, imputed by Tischendorf to B2 and B3, stands in the margin just in the same way as ο γαμος Matt. xxii. 10, which he refers to the first hand. But this is only one instance of a lack of judgement which deforms every page of their performance: e.g. Matt. xix. 12; xxiii. 26; 37; xxv. 16; xxvii. 12; 13; 45; xxviii. 15; Acts xv. 1: all which places exhibit, undistinguished from emendations of the original scribe or his “corrector,” readings in the margin or between the lines which Tischendorf asserts to belong mostly to B3, a few to B2.157
At length, after baffling delays only too readily accounted for by the public calamities of the Papal state, the concluding volume of this sumptuous and important work was published late in 1881. Sergius had now retired through failing eyesight, and his place was taken by “Henricus Canonicus Fabiani,” Cozza (who is now Abbot of the Grotta Ferrata at Tusculum near Frascati, the chief seat of the monks of the Greek order of St. Basil) still holding the second place.