Introduction, by Westcott and Hort

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

270.....This distribution of Western and Non-Western texts among versions is reflected in the range of support which the primary Greek manuscripts (in opposition to D in the Gospels and Acts, D₂G₃ in the Pauline Epistles) most usually receive from the several versions. Their most constant allies are, as we should expect, one or both of the Egyptian versions. Next to them probably come documents essentially Western, but preserving much of the earlier state of text which existed when many of the Western readings had not yet arisen, such as the Old Syriac and the African Latin. But, as we have said, the primary Greek manuscripts likewise receive in turn the support of every other version, sometimes of several at once, not seldom even where all or nearly all other Greek manuscripts stand in opposition.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

271.....On the other hand the support of versions is sometimes wholly wanting. Before however this distribution can be rightly judged, a very large majority of the variations prima facie belonging to it must be cleared away. The causes of the irrelevance fall under two principal heads, inability to express Greek distinctions, and freedom of rendering. Where the variation lies between two approximately synonymous words, it is often impossible to say which it was that the author of a given version had before him. Such version cannot therefore be cited for either variant, and the necessary absence of a version from the side of the primary Greek manuscripts in an apparatus criticus leaves it undecided whether the Greek original of the version had or had not their reading. A similar uncertainty attends grammatical forms partially identical in meaning, such as the aorist and perfect verbs; and also, though not in all cases, the presence or absence of the article. The ambiguity caused by freedom of reading is sometimes not essentially different from the preceding cases, namely, where the genius of the translator's language would have rendered literal translation of one of the Greek readings unendurably stiff, or even impossible, and the most obvious rendering of it coincides with what would be a literal representation of the other Greek reading.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

272.....But apart from this involuntary license, most translators are liable to deviate from their original by slight verbal paraphrase in just the same way as transcribers of the fundamental text: in other words, many associations of versions with Greek evidence in support of changes of diction are due to accidental coincidence. Every paraphrastic impulse which affects a transcriber is not less likely to affect a translator, who has a strong additional temptation to indulge the impulse in the fact that he is creating a new set of words, not copying words set one after another before him. One of the commonest forms of paraphrase is a change of order; and a large proportion of the readings in which the primary Greek manuscripts stand alone differ from the rival readings in order only. How little reliance can be placed on the adverse testimony of versions in such a matter is indeed proved by the absence of Greek or any other authority for numberless scattered inversions of order, to be found in manuscripts of so literal a version as the Old Latin. Other changes of a paraphrastic kind, in which versions may have the appearance of supplying attestation in another language to similar Greek readings, but which doubtless were often in fact made by the translators and the Greek scribes independently, are the insertion of expletives, more especially pronouns (very liberally added as suffixes by Syriac translators), καί after οὕτως, and the like; the resolution or introduction of participial constructions; and permutations of conjectures, and introductory language generally. In some of these cases a peculiarity of form in one Greek reading renders it probable that versions which attest it are faithfully reproducing their original, while it remains uncertain which original underlies any or all of the versions of the opposite side: in other cases either Greek reading might so easily be paraphrased by the other, either in Greek or in any other language, that no single version can be safely taken to represent exactly its original; though it is usually probable that some only of the versions have disguised their fundamental reading.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

273.....But, when allowance has been made for all these cases in which the apparent isolation of the primary Greek manuscripts is possibly or probably delusive, a certain number of variations remain in which the isolation must in the present state of our evidence be counted as unambiguous. For the reasons given above, the supposition that readings thus unattested by any version may yet be original is consistent with the known facts of transmission; and continuous examination of the readings attested by the primary Greek manuscripts without a version fails to detect any difference of internal character between them and readings in which the primary Greek manuscripts are sustained by versions. While therefore so narrow a range of attestation renders special caution imperative with respect to these readings, and some of them cannot be held certain enough to render all recognition of their rivals superfluous, we have found no sufficient reasons either for distrusting them generally or for rejecting them absolutely.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

F.....274―279....Absence of Fathers from Groups containing Primary Greek manuscripts

274.....The presence or absence of Fathers as allies of the primary Greek manuscripts is evidently to a great extent fortuitous, depending as it does so much on the nature of the passage, as causing it to be quoted often, seldom, or not at all. Except therefore in the comparatively few cases in which it is morally certain that a passage must have been quoted by one or more given Fathers in given contexts, had it stood with a particular reading in the text used by him or them, negative patristic evidence is of no force at all.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

275.....This universal rule is completely applicable to the variations which we are now considering, where neither variant is attested by any Father who does not habitually follow a Syrian text: it is applicable in principle, but subject to more or less qualification, where the reading opposed to that of the primary Greek manuscripts has patristic attestation not obviously Syrian, and their reading has none. The extent of its applicability must be affected by the unusual character of the text of the Fathers who cite the passage. Almost all Greek Fathers after Eusebius have texts so deeply affected by mixture that their dissent, however clearly established, cannot at most count for more than the dissent of so many secondary Greek uncial manuscripts, inferior in most cases to the better sort of secondary uncial manuscripts now existing. The patristic evidence which can appreciably come into account must thus be limited to that of Ante-Nicene Fathers, and those very few later Fathers who used approximately Ante-Nicene texts.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

276.....But further, the apparent patristic evidence literally or virtually Ante-Nicene requires in its turn critical sifting. All the possible sources of error explained in former pages (§§ 156, 157), have to be kept constantly in mind; with the additional consideration that here we are dealing with detached variations, in which, except in the way of observation of analogies, we can obtain no corrective help from other variations. Positive grounds for distrusting the faithful transmission of a patristic attestation concordant with the Syrian text may very often be found, for instance in a recorded variation of manuscripts or in the clear implication of the context. Where this is the case, there is nothing arbitrary in ignoring the printed testimony, or even, if the evidence is strong enough, in reckoning it as favorable to the rival reading. Wherever a transcriber of a patristic treatise was copying a quotation differing from the text to which he was accustomed, he had virtually two originals before him, one present to his eyes, the other to his mind, and, if the difference struck him, he was not unlikely to treat the written exemplar as having blundered. But since the text familiar to nearly all transcribers after the earlier ages, to say nothing of editors, was surely the Syrian text, this doubleness of original could arise only where the true patristic reading was Non-Syrian. For the converse supposition there is no similar justification: for the only known causes that can be assigned for the appearance of a Non-Syrian reading in a patristic quotation was faithful transmission and accidental error; and where the reading is independently known to be of high antiquity, the chance of accidental coincidence in error is in an immense preponderance of cases too minute to come to account.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

277.....Even where there is no obvious positive internal ground for doubting whether the words written by a Father have been faithfully preserved, some slight uncertainty must always rest on a patristic attestation of a variant adopted by the Syrian text, since the supposed doubleness of original remains equally possible, and equally likely, whether the circumstances of the individual quotation do or do not happen to contain suspicious indications. This uncertainty ceases to be slight when the apparent position of the patristic testimony creates a grouping unlike any of the groupings into which it habitually enters, and when if transferred to the other side it would find itself in accustomed company.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

278.....Again, there is often reason to doubt whether what a Father wrote was identical with what he had read: positive grounds may be found for distrusting a free quotation as faithfully representing the biblical text used, provided that the difference between one variant and another is such as might readily be reproduced accidentally by the free manner of the special purpose of the citation. Patristic quotations in short, like versions, may easily seem to make up a complete attestation, when it is really nothing more than an accidental coincidence. Such deceptive attestations might conceivably arise in either direction: but in a large majority of cases they would be due to a paraphrastic impulse such as that which we find working in scribes; that is, for either process the original peculiarities of order or diction which tempt to modification would be the same. In like manner the intermingling of unconscious reminiscences of parallel or similar passages, a specially fruitful cause of corruption in patristic quotations, may easily result in readings identical with readings due in manuscripts to harmonistic or other assimilations, and thus produce a deceptive semblance of joint attestation. Accordingly quotations apparently opposed to the primary Greek manuscripts are oftener found to be for these reasons questionable representatives of the texts used by the patristic writers than those which seem to support the primary Greek manuscripts. Suspicions as to fidelity of quotations, unsustained by other evidence, by the nature of the case can never transpose attestation from one side to the other; they can only create uncertainty: but uncertainty suffices to destroy the force of the prima facie contrast between the presence of patristic attestation on the one side and its absence on the other.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

279.....Lastly, even the presence of tried and verified Pre-Syrian patristic evidence in opposition to the primary Greek manuscripts, in conjunction with its absence from their side, loses much of the weight to which it would otherwise be entitled, when the actual texts employed in the extant writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers are taken into consideration. Western readings, it will be remembered, are abundant in Clement and Origen, much more in Eusebius; and these are only Ante-Nicene Fathers, represented to us by more than petty fragments, whose texts are not approximately Western. Now the readings of primary Greek manuscripts with which we are now concerned have opposed to them D in the Gospels and Acts, D₂G₃ in the Pauline Epistles and almost always other Western documents as well, making up a clear Western element in the attestation, whether the origin be 'Western' or not. If therefore even Clement or Origen swell the array, the source of their readings in these passage, as in many others where no doubt is possible, may be Western; and if so, they contribute nothing toward showing that these readings were only preserved by the Western text, not originated by it. Nevertheless, since the greater part of the texts of the Alexandrian Fathers is Non-Western (see § 159), their certified opposition to a reading of the primary Greek manuscripts ought to forbid its unqualified acceptance except after the fullest consideration.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

G.....280.....Absence of Versions and Fathers from Groups containing Primary Greek manuscripts.

280.....We have spoken separately of the absence of Versions and of Fathers from the company of the primary Greek manuscripts; it remains to consider the rare and extreme cases in which Versions and Fathers are absent together. Independently of the special utility of versions and patristic quotations in supplying the landmarks of textual history their certified testimony has a high corroborative worth. The unknown Greek manuscripts from which they all derive their authority preceded our earliest extant manuscripts in several cases by long periods eventful in textual history, and thus at least rescue any reading of our manuscripts which they undoubtedly attest from the suspicion of having come into existence at any recent stage of transcription, in the century, we may say, preceding 350. This ancillary aid of Versions and Fathers in individual variations is invaluable, not withstanding their unfitness to supply a primary and continuous standard of text as compared with our best Greek manuscripts. But, though the security of verification is withdrawn where Versions and Fathers are both absent, it by no means follows that a positive insecurity takes its place. Every version, so far as it is at present known to us, contains so many readings which it is morally impossible to believe to be right, and a certain proportion of these readings are scattered in such apparent irregularity, that we have no right to assume either that the deficiencies of one version, as the Memphitic, would in every case be made up by some other version, or that deficiencies of all versions and deficiencies of all extant patristic evidence would never happen to coincide. Moreover the transition to total absence of Versions and Fathers is bridged over by the many places in which a secondary version, as the Æthiopic or Armenian, supplies the only accessory authority. The whole number of cases where the primary Greek manuscripts stand alone is extremely small, when the deceptive variations mentioned above (§§ 271, 272), have been set aside; and neither in their internal character nor in their external relations to other documents have we found reason to deny to such readings the favorable presumption which their attestation by the better of the extant Greek manuscripts would confer.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

SECTION II.....DOCUMENTARY GROUPS AS LIMITED BY REFERENCE TO THE BEST PRIMARY GREEK MANUSCRIPTS

281―355

A.....281―283.....Relation of variations between Primary Greek manuscripts in the chief ancient texts

281.....After this examination of the relation of evidence of Versions and Fathers to that of the primary Greek manuscripts in retrospect of the final process of determining the text, we must now resume the consideration of the numerous variations in which the primary Greek manuscripts differ widely among the themselves. Here, in investigating Internal Evidence of Groups for each individual group or class of groups, we lose clear and obvious parallelism with the great ancient texts. But the distribution of attestation for most of the groups must as a matter of fact have in most cases been determined by the great ancient texts, with or without subsequent mixture, whether it be in our power to assign each document to a definite text or not (see § 243 V); and therefore that cannot be the right reading which would render the documentary distribution incompatible with known genealogies. It is not indeed requisite that we should be able to decide between two or more possible histories of a variation; but an important confirmation is wanting when we are unable to suggest at least one such history consistent alike with the composition of documents as known through the simpler and more normal distributions of attestation, and with the genuineness of the reading commended by Internal Evidence of Groups and other considerations. Before therefore we proceed to enquire into the character of special groups in detail, it will be right to examine a little more closely the probable relation of the primary ancient lines of transmission to many important variations now to be considered.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

282.....The principle difficulty with which we have to deal arises from an apparent combination of Western and Alexandrian attestations in opposition to a group of documents which bears no clear and obvious marks of compositeness of attestation, but which is commended by Internal Evidence of Groups; so that the preference accorded to this group seems to involve the paradox of a preference of a single line of descent to two concordant lines of descent. Given the independence of the Western and Alexandrian texts, the supposed preference is genealogically untenable as regards readings which could not owe their place in both texts to accidental coincidence in error. Now, though no contradiction is involved in the hypothesis of the adoption of early Alexandrian readings into a late Western text or of early Western readings into a late Alexandrian text, the actual evidence contains comparatively few traces of any such relation of dependence; while the definite original parallelism of the two texts is evinced by the many places in which they smooth away difficulties of language by entirely different devices. Either therefore (1) the readings of which we are now speaking as found only in the better of the primary Greek manuscripts must be of Alexandrian origin; or (2) they must have originated in some indeterminate equally aberrant text, assignation of them to Western origin being in most cases clearly impossible; or (3) the opposed attestation cannot rightly be said to combine the two primary aberrant texts.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

283.....The two former suppositions stand in so flagrant opposition to the suggestions of internal evidence, however obtained, and harmonize so ill with the results furnished by other groupings, that nothing but the proved inadmissibility of the third supposition could justify their acceptance. The third supposition is however natural enough, as soon as we recognize on the one hand the wide and early prevalence of Western readings, and on the other the mixed composition of the Greek manuscripts which are the chief extant representatives of the Alexandrian text (compare § 269). The Alexandrian text of the Gospels for instance would have been hopelessly obscure but for the very large Alexandrian elements which ‏אCL(Δ) 33 contain in various places and proportions: yet the presence of a Western element in these manuscripts is equally indubitable, and it furnishes what must be in most cases the true key to the paradox. The readings attested by the best primary Greek manuscripts are as a rule simply Non-Western readings which are extant in an exceptionally small number of existing documents because the Western corruptions of them obtained an exceptionally early and wide popularity in one or other of the eclectic texts of the third and fourth centuries. That one of these eclectic texts arose at Alexandria, the text of Hesychius (see § 249) being indeed probably of this character, is likely enough; and, if so, it might be called a late Alexandrian text: but such a fact would only serve to illustrate the conclusion just stated. This conclusion harmonizes in every respect with all known facts; and we are unable to think of any other interpretation which can be consistently applied without startling incongruities alike of external and of internal evidence.

[John Reece]

Please read and heed the OP.

B.....284―286.....General relations of B and ‏א to other documents.

284..... When the various subordinate groupings which arise by the defection of one or another member of the leading groups of primary Greek manuscripts described as mainly Non-Western are tested by the prevalent character of their readings, the results thus obtained are for most of them as well marked as in the cases where the primary Greek manuscripts agree together. Two striking facts here successively come out with special clearness. Every group containing both ‏א and B is found, where Internal Evidence is tolerably unambiguous, to have an apparently more original text than every opposed group containing neither; and every group containing B, with the exception of such Western groups as include B in the Pauline Epistles, is found in a large preponderance of cases, though by no means universally, to have an apparently more original text than every opposed group containing ‏א.