It is true that in neither case has any record of this work of revision survived in historical tradi- tion. Mr. Burkitt,* however, has shown, by re- ference to a far more complete transformation in a biblical text—the exchange of the LXX version of Daniel for Theodotion’s by the Church of Africa during the 3rd cent.—that no conclusion unfavour- able to Dr. Hort’s hypothesis can be based on this silence.
55. For the sub-Apostolic period, to which Mr. Miller would relegate us, historical evidence is at its scantiest, so that the absence of any allusion to the revision which he postulates has virtually no weight at all. Such writings, however, as have survived to show what manner of men the Church produced during that period do not indicate any very high degree of literary power or intellectual distince- tion. What a delightful surprise it would be, if among the Egyptian papyri even a fragment could come to light representing original work by some leading member of this early - second- century school of critics, who, unlike any other Greek writers of their time, loved Thucydidean
* The Old Latin and the Itala, pp. 7, 8.
228 TEXTUAL CRITICISM (OF NT)
TEXTUAL CRITICISM (OF NT)
compactness of style, not wisely, indeed, if it betrayed them into tampering with the text of Scripture, but with a masterful power of reproduc- ing it, and who anticipated by seventeen centuries modern scientific perplexities. It might do far more to shake the foundations of Dr. Hort’s posi- tion than the discovery of the early history of the cursive script, which seems to Mr. Miller so clear a proof that the world is drifting away from his opponents (Trad. Teat, p. 238 f.).
56. The points that remain under this head de- mand reverent handling. They belong to that side of the subject where the textual critic is bound to give an account of the position that he occupies on fundamental articles of Christian faith. Dean Burgon claims that faith in the Inspiration of Scripture carries with it, as a corollary, faith in a special Providence watching over the transmission of the text, and that the same ecclesiastical tradi- tion which guarantees the list of books which are to be accepted as Canonical must be held also to guarantee the type of text which all believers in the authority of the Church are bound to uphold (Trad. Text, ch. i.).
57. Let us take these points in order. If there is one doctrine more than another that has in the Providence of God been forced on the attention of Christian students during the course of the last century, it is the doctrine of Inspiration. And if any result with regard to it may claim to be established by the trial through which God has seen fit to test and discipline the faith of those that believe in Him, it is surely this: that there is no subject on which @ priori arguments are so liable to be upset when they are brought to the test of facts. Here as elsewhere we are forced to acknowledge that God’s ways are not as our ways. The course of events has followed again and again a very different line from that which we should naturally have anticipated. And while we may, I think, confidently affirm that the result of this last century of freest discussion has been to deepen and strengthen the faith of men in the reality of the inspiration of the Prophets of the Old Cove- nant, and of the Apostles and Evangelists of the New, it has shown that there is no royal road to the discovery of the laws by which Inspiration works, except through the most patient and atten- tive study of the books which owe their form and their contents to its influence.
58. The Church in the 2nd cent. was led by pro- cesses, which we have no reason to distrust because they were to a large extent ‘instinctive,’ to make a provisional selection of the books that had a claim to be regarded as Canonical. The list of books ‘of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church,’ is amply sufficient as a standard by which we can estimate the claims of those whose ereden- tials are lesscomplete. Centuries of pious use and devout meditation, even if sometimes ‘not accord- ing to knowledge,’ have shown the rich stores of: spititual fruit which can be drawn from them. But the Church, as a whole, has never attempted to put forward an authoritative definition of In- spiration. This being so, we are clearly not in a position to formulate any theory with regard to the course which the Providence of God may be assumed to have followed in regard to the preserva- tion, in literal exactness through the ages, of the text as it left the hands of the inspired writers, Even the languages in which the books are written are living languages no more. Not one Christian in 10,000 can read either Testament in the original. We have therefore no grounds @ priori to expect that kind of accuracy in the Traditional Text which Dean Burgon would postulate for it.
59. ‘ But,’ it will be said, ¢ you must at least admit that the claims of the Traditional Text on our
acceptance rest on the same Church authority that guarantees the Canon.’ Supposing the contention to be true, the patent differences which exist to-day in point of actual content between the Greek, Latin, Syriac, and English Bibles would show that we must expect to find in Textual Criticism, as we find in regard to the contents of the Canon, many questions which cannot be foreclosed by an appeal to ‘authority.’ The text recognized by the most explicit conciliar decision as alone authoritative for the Latin part of Western Christendom is fundamentally distinct from that for which Dean Burgon claims the prescriptive sanction of undis- puted and universal possession. But the con- tention itself will not bear examination. The differences of use between the different centres of Christendom in regard to the contents of the Canon at the beginning of the 4th cent. were perfectly definite, and the problems arising out of the differences claimed immediate and special atten- tion. The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius is a permanent memorial of the interest taken in them, and of the general principles that were applied, at least in some quarters, to their solu- tion. But there is nothing even remotely parallel to this in regard to the development of thought on the problems of Textual Criticism. If it is true, as Dean Burgon asserts (Trad. Text, p. 11), ‘that in the time of Origen the first principles of the science were not understood,’ it would hardly be rash to hazard the assertion that Origen at least shows more interest in the subject, and takes more pains to compare the readings of different MSS, and to mention any variants that he found existing, than all the Greek Fathers from Athanasius to Chry- sostom put together.*