The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark. John William Burgon
revision of the Authorized Version (1870) to “the oldest MSS.” (meaning thereby generally Codd. א and B with one or two others134), is an abler endeavour to familiarize the public mind with the same belief. I am bent on shewing that there is nothing whatever in the character of either of the Codices in question to warrant this servile deference.
(a) And first—Ought it not sensibly to detract from our [pg 078] opinion of the value of their evidence to discover that it is easier to find two consecutive verses in which the two MSS. differ, the one from the other, than two consecutive verses in which they entirely agree? Now this is a plain matter of fact, of which any one who pleases may easily convince himself. But the character of two witnesses who habitually contradict one another has been accounted, in every age, precarious. On every such occasion, only one of them can possibly be speaking the truth. Shall I be thought unreasonable if I confess that these perpetual inconsistencies between Codd. B and א—grave inconsistencies, and occasionally even gross ones—altogether destroy my confidence in either?
(b) On the other hand, discrepant as the testimony of these two MSS. is throughout, they yet, strange to say, conspire every here and there in exhibiting minute corruptions of such an unique and peculiar kind as to betray a (probably not very remote) common corrupt original. These coincidences in fact are so numerous and so extraordinary as to establish a real connexion between those two codices; and that connexion is fatal to any claim which might be set up on their behalf as wholly independent witnesses.135
(c) Further, it is evident that both alike have been subjected, probably during the process of transcription, to the same depraving influences. But because such statements require to be established by an induction of instances, the reader's attention must now be invited to a few samples of the grave blemishes which disfigure our two oldest copies of the Gospel.
1. And first, since it is the omission of the end of S. Mark's Gospel which has given rise to the present discussion, it becomes a highly significant circumstance that the original [pg 079] scribe of Cod. א had also omitted the end of the Gospel according to S. John.136 In this suppression of ver. 25, Cod. א stands alone among MSS. A cloud of primitive witnesses vouch for the genuineness of the verse. Surely, it is nothing else but the reductio ad absurdum of a theory of recension, (with Tischendorf in his last edition,) to accommodate our printed text to the vicious standard of the original penman of Cod. א and bring the last chapter of S. John's Gospel to a close at ver. 24!
Cod. B, on the other hand, omits the whole of those two solemn verses wherein S. Luke describes our Lord's “Agony and bloody Sweat,” together with the act of the ministering Angel.137 As to the genuineness of those verses, recognised as they are by Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Didymus, Gregory of Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Theodoret, by all the oldest versions, and by almost every MS. in existence, including Cod. א—it admits of no doubt. Here then is proof positive that in order to account for omissions from the Gospel in the oldest of the uncials, there is no need whatever to resort to the hypothesis that such portions of the Gospel are not the genuine work of the Evangelist. “The admitted error of Cod. B in this place,” (to quote the words of Scrivener,) “ought to make some of its advocates more chary of their confidence in cases where it is less countenanced by other witnesses than in the instance before us.”
Cod. B (not Cod. א) is further guilty of the “grave error” (as Dean Alford justly styles it,) of omitting that solemn record of the Evangelist:—“Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” It also withholds the statement that the inscription on the Cross was “in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew.”138 Cod. א, on the other hand, omits the confession of the man born blind (ὁ δὲ ἔφη, πιστεύω, κύριε; καὶ προσεκύνησεν αὐτῷ) in S. John ix. 38.—Both Cod. א and Cod. B retain nothing but the [pg 080] word υἱόν of the expression τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῆς τὸν πρωτότοκον, in S. Matth. i. 25; and suppress altogether the important doctrinal statement ὁ ὠν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, in S. John iii. 13: as well as the clause διελθὼν διὰ μέσου αὐτῶν; καὶ παρῆγεν οὕτως, in S. John viii. 59. Concerning all of which, let it be observed that I am neither imputing motives nor pretending to explain the design with which these several serious omissions were made. All that is asserted is, that they cannot be imputed to the carelessness of a copyist, but were intentional: and I insist that they effectually dispose of the presumption that when an important passage is observed to be wanting from Cod. B or Cod. א, its absence is to be accounted for by assuming that it was also absent from the inspired autograph of the Evangelist.
2. To the foregoing must be added the many places where the text of B or of א, or of both, has clearly been interpolated. There does not exist in the whole compass of the New Testament a more monstrous instance of this than is furnished by the transfer of the incident of the piercing of our Redeemer's side from S. John xix. 24 to S. Matth. xxvii., in Cod. B and Cod. א, where it is introduced at the end of ver. 49—in defiance of reason as well as of authority.139 “This interpolation” (remarks Mr. Scrivener) “which would represent the Saviour as pierced while yet living, is a good example of the fact that some of our highest authorities may combine in attesting a reading unquestionably false.”140 Another singularly gross specimen of interpolation, in my judgment, is supplied by the purely apocryphal statement which is met with in Cod. א, at the end of S. Matthew's account of the healing of the Centurion's servant—και υποστρεψας ο εκατονταρχος εις τον οικον αυτου εν αυτη τη ωρα, ευρεν τον παιδα υγιαινοντα (viii. 13.)—Nor can anything well be weaker than the substitution (for ὑστερήσαντος οἴνου, in S. John ii. 3) of the following,141 which is found only in Cod. א:—οινον ουκ ειχον, οτι συνετελεσθε ο οινος του γαμου.
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But the inspired text has been depraved in the same licentious way throughout, by the responsible authors of Cod. B and Cod. א, although such corruptions have attracted little notice from their comparative unimportance. Thus, the reading (in א) ημας δει εργαζεσθαι τα εργα του πεμψαντος ημας (S. John ix. 4) carries with it its own sufficient condemnation; being scarcely rendered more tolerable by B's substitution of με for the second ημας.—Instead of τεθεμελίωτο γὰρ ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν (S. Luke vi. 48), B and א present us with the insipid gloss, δια το καλως οικοδομεισθαι αυτην.—In the last-named codex, we find the name of “Isaiah” (ησαιου) thrust into S. Matth. xiii. 35, in defiance of authority and of fact.—Can I be wrong in asserting that the reading ο μονογενης θεος (for υἱός) in S. John i. 18, (a reading found in Cod. B and Cod. א alike,) is undeserving of serious attention?—May it not also be confidently declared that, in the face of all MS. evidence,142 no future Editors of the New Testament will be found to accept the highly improbable reading ο ανθρωπος ο λεγομενος Ιησους, in S. John ix. 11, although the same two Codices conspire in exhibiting it?—or, on the authority of one of them (א), to read εν αυτῳ ζωη εστιν143 (for ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἣν) in S. John i. 4?—Certain at least it is that no one will ever be found to read (with B) εβδομηκοντα δϙο in S. Luke x. 1—or (with א) ο εκλεκτος του θεου (instead of ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ) in S. John i. 34.—But let me ask, With what show of reason can the pretence of Infallibility, (as well as the plea of Primacy), be set up on behalf of a pair of MSS. licentiously corrupt as these have already been proved to be? For the readings above enumerated, be it observed, are either critical depravations of the inspired Text, or else unwarrantable interpolations. They cannot have resulted from careless transcription.
3. Not a few of the foregoing instances are in fact of a kind [pg 082] to convince me that the text with