* As this distinction is of primary importance in estimating the weight to be attached to a document, and as beginners in Textual Criticism sometimes find a difficulty in understanding it, it may be worth while to explain that the ‘date of a docu- ment’ is, strictly speaking, the date at which it was written, and, when the MS is not expressly dated by the scribe, is settled by paleographical considerations, ‘The date of the text con- tained in the document’ is, of course, primarily the date of the autograph, But in the case of a text like that of NT, which has a continuous history, the ‘date of the text’ refers naturally to the time when the particular form of text contained in the document was current, either generally or in some particular district. #.g. D (Codex Bez) is a document of cent. vi, but its text represents a type which was widely prevalent in cent. ii. ‘k’ (Bobiensis) is usually assigned to cent. v. Mr. Burkitt has recently given strong grounds for dating it early in cent. iv, but the text of ‘k’ is the text current in Africa in the days of Cyprian, a.D. 250 (see Old-Latin Biblical Texts, ii.). , eas ree:
It is interesting to notice that Mr. Miller is alive to this dis- tinction in regard to Syr-cur and Syr-sin (p. xviii of Tear. Com.). But he habitually ignores it in the case of & and B. The confusion in this case goes back to Scrivener, who writes in a note (p. vi, Advers. Crit. Sacr.), describing the work of Dean Burgon, which underlies Miller's Teat. Com.: ‘He had been engaged day and night for years in making a complete index or view of the MSS used by the Nicene (and ante-Nicene) Fathers, by way of showing that they were not identical with those copied in Codd. 8 and B, and, inasmuch as they were older, they must needs be purer and more authentic than those overvalued uncials’ [italics are the present writer's}. He also quotes, ‘as helping to annul much of Dr. Hort’s erroneous theories’ (p. xxviii), an extract from Mr. Rendel Harris, which exactly expresses Dr. Hort’s fundamental contention on the matter. ‘It is not a little curious to the person who com- mences the critical study of the documents of the NT to find that he can discover no settled proportion between the age of a MS and the critical weight attached to it. . .. A little study soon convinces the tyro of the impossibility of determining any law by which the value of a codex can be determined in terms of its age only without reference to its history.’ ,
This quotation can have no point in Scrivener’s note, except on the assumption, which Mr. Miller adopts without hesitation, that Westcott and Hort attached fundamental importance to the dates at which 8 and B were written in arriving at their estimate of the weight to be ascribed to them,
TEXTUAL CRITICISM (OF NT) 911
that the almost universal prevalence of the Tradi- tional Text in the Greek Church after the end of cent. iv proves that text to be Apostolic, frees him from any qualms arising from the demonstrable antiquity of those witnesses which he is content to disregard.
9. At this point it will be well to examine a little more minutely the claim of the Traditionalists to be the only school that takes account of the whole available evidence. It would, no doubt, be a strong point in their favour if they could sub- stantiate it. Unfortunately for them, the assertion is utterly baseless. Their most formidable anta- gonist, Dr. Hort, framed his text, as any one who has read his Introduction must know, at least as directly as any Traditionalist, on a patient exami- nation of all the evidence. And he lays at least as much stress on the importance of bringing the knowledge gained by the examination of all the facts to bear on the interpretation of the evidence in each case that comes up for decision. When at last a choice has to be made between two rival groups of authorities, the one or the other must be rejected. But it does not follow that its claims have not been fully considered. Otherwise, the Traditionalists themselves would be open to the charge of ‘taking no account’ of what seems to others the most significant part of the evidence. This charge would, of course, be untrue. And it 1s an encouraging sign of a rapprochement be- tween the two schools, that the Traditionalists are beginning to admit the necessity for accounting for the existence of the various readings which they reject, on some more satisfactory theory than that of the blind or malignant perversity of the
individual scribe of 8, B, or D. A great step to- wards ultimate agreement will have been made when it is admitted on both sides that no solution of a textual problem can be final which does not leave room for a rational account of the origin of all the extant variants.
10. The cause of corruption on which Mr. Miller is at present inclined (Oxford Debate, p. xv) to lay most stress, isa striking admission of the antiquity of the texts affected by it. He traces it back to forms of the oral Gospel which may have been in existence ‘even before the Gospels were written.’ A similar source was suggested long ago by Dr. Hort as a possible explanation of certain remark- able insertions in the text of D and its allies. It remains to be seen whether the characteristic differences between the text of NB and the text of the later Gospel MSS are best explained on the same hypothesis. The suggestion does not at first sight commend itself. In the text of NB the separate Gospels stand before us, each with a marked individuality of its own. In the Tradi- tional Text the specific differences in the several reports of the same utterance or the same incident which help to define this individuality, are con- stantly Gbliterated. Now, of course, it is @ priori possible that this uniformity was original, and that the variations came from a corrupting force, which may well have been very potent while it lasted, but which can, ew hypothesi, only have been in operation during a very limited period. Only in that case it is diflicult to see why it should not have affected all the Gospels equally.