Dean John Burgon demolishes Westcott-Hort textual theories

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

The Westcott and Hort stuff is turgid and confusing. Dean John Burgon saw right through it and wrote sharply and cogently.

Fortunately you can read his superb writing online .. on issues like the so-called "neutral text", the "Lucian recension", "western non-interpolations", their methods of hand-waving and ignoring the incredible evidences of the early church writers, the conflation theories (also see appendix in Causes of Corruption) their not understanding the nature of Aleph and B as abbreviated texts with lots of omissions, the trickery of the 1871 secret text, etc.

Sidenote:, on p. 276 of W-H NT in the Original Greek you get a double doozy .. the wonderland of primitive corruptions and a discussion of ad hominem (used in the more proper classical sense).

One of the best articles by Dean John Burgon is here:

The Quartely Review (1882)
Westcott and Hort's Textual Theory
http://books.google.com/books?id=vVgAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA309

And in:

Revision Revised (1883)
http://books.google.com/books?id=nXkw1TAatV8C&pg=PA1

You can work back and forth between W & H and the Dean and really enjoy and appreciate the excellent analysis of Dean John Burgon. That can even be done topic by topic .. e.g. the so-called Neutral Text or the Lucian Recension .. and you learn a lot.

Feel free to have edifying and searching discussion on this thread.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

[John Reece]

The OP provides links to the writings of John Burgon contra Westcott and Hort.

Notice the difference in the nature and tone of Westcott and Hort's introduction (here) compared to the nature and tone of Burgon's reaction to it in the links provided by Steven in the OP.

Steven says the "Westcott and Hort stuff is turgid and confusing"; well, so far (as of September 11, 2010), I have presented only 8 of the 425 paragraphs of Westcott and Hort's Introduction; however, I doubt readers have found what has been posted so far either 'confusing' or 'turgid'.

W&H were not controversialists; they ignored John Burgon's diatribes, trusting that their work would speak for itself and withstand the tests of time and peer review by competent, objective scholars, as it has.

A younger contemporary of W&H and Burgon was Frederick G. Kenyon, late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, who wrote a masterpiece book relevant to the work of W&H: Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts: Being a History of the Text and Its Translations, the first 56 of 277 pages is available online via Google Books here.

If, after looking at the Google Books 56-page preview, anyone is interested to have me post excerpts relevant to the work of Westcott and Hort (beginning at page 93, therefore not accessible in the Google online 56-page preview), I'll be happy to do so in a separate non-debate thread.

Or, the book can be purchased from Amazon.com here.

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

Most of their theories are long discarded. That is why so many people pretend that the methodology today is different in the eclectic text, trying to separate today's text from W-H, unsuccessfully.

Basically .. nobody defends the "Lucian recension" .. the major and necessary underpinning attempt (flawed as it was even if it were true, as Dean Burgon very astutely demonstrated) of the W-H theory. "Western non-interpolations" are essentially discarded. The "question-begging" "neutral text" idea is known to be a disaster and is totally unused. "Primitive corruptions" are long discarded as a Hort fantasy, no evidence ever came up supporting this nonsense. Their ideas about the early writers were clearly inconsistent and false, as Dean Burgon showed, W&H frequently ignoring powerful evidences from Cyprian, Tertullian, Irenaeus and many other early church writers. This was a huge blunder. Professor Maurice Robinson and others have shown their blunder in the stemmata question of the Greek manuscripts, where hundreds of hand-written Greek manuscripts definitely indicate antiquity. On top of that, W&H often even ignore the incredible Latin evidences, the ancient early Old Latin line and the Vulgate evidences, since their basic concept was the insipid Vaticanus and Sinaiticus über alles. The proof-text concept based on two wild and corrupt manuscripts. Turnip truck dumb.

Although their theoretical base is destroyed, there is a flimsy edifice remaining .. where some people, often based on seminary training and connections (Bible publishing is a big industry), still place the two ultra-corrupt (scribally and textually) and wildly differing manuscripts at the center of textual theory, against overwhelming evidence. (Luke 23:34 is a good example to examine, often a close examination of one verse can be worth gold-weight.) .. often ignoring evidence much earlier than the two corrupt manuscripts, since there is a spiritual blindness towards lifting up two weird, corrupt manuscripts, sometimes called the Alexandrian Cult.

This is why Dean Burgon spoke dynamically, forcefully ("bombastic" per his critics) .. Dean John Burgon was defending the word of God against insipid attacks. Thank God for enthusiasm and clarity and demonstration of conviction in defending the word of God !

1 Corinthians 2:4-5
And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom,
but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:
That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

This is why folks should read the comparable sections themselves and see the W-H disaster.

(Why this disaster arose is an interesting question .. and their opposition to the pure Reformation Bible as "vile" and "villanous" before any studies and real knowledge of the GNT is the first smoking gun, the seances and dabblings and occult connections are nother, also the strange mysticism and doctrines and ... the quick rcc acceptance of the counter-reformation text should also be noted.)

Ephesians 6:11-12
Put on the whole armour of God,
that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood,
but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places.

At least any hungry-to-learn reader should read both sides carefully on these textual issues, how did it come to pass that dozens of verses were (snipped) out of the Bible simply based on two abbreviated manuscripts .. ie. if they can get through the turgid and confusing prose of W-H. Even on a weird concept like "neutral text" their writing is essentially a joke. Extract the sections and try to figger out what they are saying, what they mean by the "pure" "neutral text" .. and why it is "neutral" and what is the text. Then report back.

Or simply enter on a thread what is easily readable online from W&H. Keeps you from other mischief, so go right ahead. The biggest enemy of W&H are their own writings.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

[headheart]

Dear Steven Avery,

With a meagre 173 posts to Theology Web Campus, since 2003, it is no wonder that your mind has been allowed to remain blinded by controversy. I look forward to your freedom, and shall pray unto that end.

Sincerely in Christ,
Eric J. Sawyer

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

Dear Steven Avery, With a meagre 173 posts to Theology Web Campus, since 2003, it is no wonder that your mind has been allowed to remain blinded by controversy.

Thanks for your thoughts, Erik ..whatever you are trying to say :) .

And feel free to also discuss the principle competing New Testament textual ideas, the Reformation Bible (close to the Dean Burgon "Traditional Text") contra the various Westcott-Hort and eclectic text concepts. Clearly, controversial or not, only one can be true !

Shalom,
Steven Avery

[Guido Biebaut]

Hi,

If any of you read Dutch he or she may have an article of 26 pages against Westcott-Hort by myself. Ask in my mail. I have done serious studies in this field ever since the 1970.
Do you know that in these days only the Jehovah Witnesses stick by this Greek text? They are the only people who made an English version of the Bible based on WH since the 1950. All others have later Greek texts.

And read these:
Wilbur N. Pickering: ‘Identity of the New Testament text’ on http://www.esgm.org/ingles/ The Appendix D is against the critique of Bart Ehrman a recent defender of WH.
David Norton, A Textual History of The King James Bible, Cambridge University Press, 2004, This is free on: http://depositfiles.com/en/files/8jil2ly7l

[John Reece]

Do you know that in these days only the Jehovah Witnesses stick by this Greek text? They are the only people who made an English version of the Bible based on WH since the 1950. All others have later Greek texts.

Of course the Westcott-Hort Greek text has been superseded by 'later Greek texts': after all, the W-H text was published first in 1881 and finally in 1885.

From the Forward to the Hendrickson 2007 reprint of the 1885 edition of the W-H text, by Eldon J. Epp:

Currently then, the basic scheme of text-forms devised by Westcott-Hort survives, though slightly modified in its components and enhanced by myriad manuscript discoveries, resulting in two (rather than three) early competing text-types (the B-Text and the D-Text) and a later, derivative text-type (the Byzantine Text). The influence of Westcott and Hort on virtually all subsequent textual criticism is one reason why their Greek text (with Hort's companion volume of introduction) became a landmark of large proportions in the modern history of New Testament studies and particularly in the development and establishment of its early (and many would say) earliest text-form.

The text was a landmark in another way as well. Karl Lachmann's 1831 edition represented the decisive break with and the triumph, at least in principle, over the centuries-long reign of the textus receptus or "received text" (i.e., the Byzantine text), both in the text he presented ― which Lachmann claimed only to be the New Testament text of the fourth century ― and in the principles he enunciated for establishing the text. Basically his method involved a reliance on the fewer early witnesses rather than on the numerically superior later manuscripts. The fulsome textus receptus had evolved from the fourth century until printing was well established, and, as manuscripts containing it multiplied to meet the needs of the church, it became the widespread and almost universally used "ecclesiastical" text. After the invention of printing, it constituted the text of Erasmus's Greek New Testament (1516), the first one published, and of innumerable printed editions thereafter. To break the fourteen-hundred-year hold of this text on the church was no small achievement, despite the fact that Lachmann's work built upon the pioneering labors of Richard Bentley (1721), J. A. Bengal (1725-1734), J. J. Wettstein (1751-1752), and J. J. Griesbach (1775-1807). Following Lachmann, editors of the Greek New Testament continued down this well-trod path until, just prior to Westcott-Hort, the emphasis on early manuscripts and on concomitant principles for accrediting readings to be placed in one's text attained a high degree of refinement with Tischendorf's Greek New Testament (1869-1872) and its magisterial Prolegomena (1894) by his colleague Caspar René Gregory, and with the work of S. P. Tregelles (1856-1872).

.... To be sure, the textual heroes just mentioned who preceded and followed Lachmann were impressed by early manuscripts as they came to light and were utilizing them to question the seemingly indomitable reign of the textus receptus. .... Yet no one, not even Tischendorf, had presented a comprehensive and compelling theory to explain how the late text had developed from the earlier ones, or how the early texts were related to one another. Westcott-Hort provided such a history, and thus their text represents a final and finely refined triumph over the textus receptus.

[themuzicman]

Hi,

If any of you read Dutch he or she may have an article of 26 pages against Westcott-Hort by myself. Ask in my mail. I have done serious studies in this field ever since the 1970.
Do you know that in these days only the Jehovah Witnesses stick by this Greek text? They are the only people who made an English version of the Bible based on WH since the 1950. All others have later Greek texts.

And read these:
Wilbur N. Pickering: ‘Identity of the New Testament text’ on http://www.esgm.org/ingles/ The Appendix D is against the critique of Bart Ehrman a recent defender of WH.
David Norton, A Textual History of The King James Bible, Cambridge University Press, 2004, This is free on: http://depositfiles.com/en/files/8jil2ly7l

This is part of the reason why Mr. Avery's rants are quite meaningless today. No one uses the W&H text. It certainly represented an important step forward from a text compiled 300 years earlier by a single individual who didn't even have the entire NT at hand when he compiled it.

However, as time has moved on, more evidence has been uncovered, and better Greek New Testaments have been produced based upon a better informed scholarship.

Many of the objections from the KJVO (or "Reformation Text Only") crowd will center around verses that have proven to be incorrect in the TR, and as a result, those changes have affected the theology of the KJVOer (this is why this crowd is pretty much limited to one small theological corner of Christian-dome.)

The problem with this approach is that they wind up having their theology inform the text, rather than the text informing their theology.

Michael

[RBerman]

The biggest enemy of W&H are their own writings.

And the biggest enemy of their enemies is you. Go back and read the emotionally charged rants you've given us above. You're not engaging in scholarly debate. You come across as a raving zealot. If you want to convince anyone, you'd do well to dial back your rhetoric about twelve notches.

[headheart]

Hunting the Snark - Lewis Carroll.jpg

Are you guys bored? 'The Hunting of the Snark' by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

[John Reece]

Of course the Westcott-Hort Greek text has been superseded by 'later Greek texts': after all, the W-H text was published first in 1881 and finally in 1885.

From the Forward to the Hendrickson 2007 reprint of the 1885 edition of the W-H text, by Eldon J. Epp:

Currently then, the basic scheme of text-forms devised by Westcott-Hort survives, though slightly modified in its components and enhanced by myriad manuscript discoveries, resulting in two (rather than three) early competing text-types (the B-Text and the D-Text) and a later, derivative text-type (the Byzantine Text). The influence of Westcott and Hort on virtually all subsequent textual criticism is one reason why their Greek text (with Hort's companion volume of introduction) became a landmark of large proportions in the modern history of New Testament studies and particularly in the development and establishment of its early (and many would say) earliest text-form.

The text was a landmark in another way as well. Karl Lachmann's 1831 edition represented the decisive break with and the triumph, at least in principle, over the centuries-long reign of the textus receptus or "received text" (i.e., the Byzantine text), both in the text he presented ― which Lachmann claimed only to be the New Testament text of the fourth century ― and in the principles he enunciated for establishing the text. Basically his method involved a reliance on the fewer early witnesses rather than on the numerically superior later manuscripts. The fulsome textus receptus had evolved from the fourth century until printing was well established, and, as manuscripts containing it multiplied to meet the needs of the church, it became the widespread and almost universally used "ecclesiastical" text. After the invention of printing, it constituted the text of Erasmus's Greek New Testament (1516), the first one published, and of innumerable printed editions thereafter. To break the fourteen-hundred-year hold of this text on the church was no small achievement, despite the fact that Lachmann's work built upon the pioneering labors of Richard Bentley (1721), J. A. Bengal (1725-1734), J. J. Wettstein (1751-1752), and J. J. Griesbach (1775-1807). Following Lachmann, editors of the Greek New Testament continued down this well-trod path until, just prior to Westcott-Hort, the emphasis on early manuscripts and on concomitant principles for accrediting readings to be placed in one's text attained a high degree of refinement with Tischendorf's Greek New Testament (1869-1872) and its magisterial Prolegomena (1894) by his colleague Caspar René Gregory, and with the work of S. P. Tregelles (1856-1872).

.... To be sure, the textual heroes just mentioned who preceded and followed Lachmann were impressed by early manuscripts as they came to light and were utilizing them to question the seemingly indomitable reign of the textus receptus. .... Yet no one, not even Tischendorf, had presented a comprehensive and compelling theory to explain how the late text had developed from the earlier ones, or how the early texts were related to one another. Westcott-Hort provided such a history, and thus their text represents a final and finely refined triumph over the textus receptus.

As an addendum to the post above, although the W-H text has naturally (of course) been superseded by later texts ― given the progress made in manuscript discoveries and improvements in the science of textual criticism since the closing decades of the 19th century ― as recently as the first decade of the 21st century their 1882 Introduction to their first edition of the W-H text (1881) has been used in a major theological seminary to introduce a class on textual criticism (see here).

In terms of the science of textual criticism, that's an example of excellent scholarship withstanding the tests of scientific peer review as well as the tests of time.

[Guido Biebaut]

John Reece you surprise me with this statement: “In terms of the science of textual criticism, that's an example of excellent scholarship withstanding the tests of scientific peer review as well as the tests of time.”

This is not true! H. Hoskier, who died in 1936, was one of the great specialists in the field of Bible manuscripts of his time. His main work "Codex B and Its Allies" clearly illustrates that the Alexandrian texts, those used in the later editions of Tischendorf and WH, are not reliable. On the first page of the second part, he notes that the Gospels alone have 3036 differences between the reading of Vaticanus (Codex B) and Sinaiticus (Codex Aleph). And Hoskier, in this work, shows, by his expertise, that these 3036 differences, have underlining errors in themselves. So that an older manuscript does not have any guaranty of being better then one that is hundred years older.

[headheart]

[RonC]

John Reece you surprise me with this statement: “In terms of the science of textual criticism, that's an example of excellent scholarship withstanding the tests of scientific peer review as well as the tests of time.”

This is not true! H. Hoskier, who died in 1936, was one of the great specialists in the field of Bible manuscripts of his time. His main work "Codex B and Its Allies" clearly illustrates that the Alexandrian texts, those used in the later editions of Tischendorf and WH, are not reliable. On the first page of the second part, he notes that the Gospels alone have 3036 differences between the reading of Vaticanus (Codex B) and Sinaiticus (Codex Aleph). And Hoskier, in this work, shows, by his expertise, that these 3036 differences, have underlining errors in themselves. So that an older manuscript does not have any guaranty of being better then one that is hundred years older.

Mr. Reece's statement is definitely true. He does not say that their conclusions are 100% correct or perfect, he simply makes the obviously accurate statement that the work is an example of excellent scholarship which is still respected by scholars today... not perfect, but good, solid work for its time which still garners the respect of their peers today... Think of it like Freud... whose theories many today acknowledge as flawed... but who is still studied in academic circles because the contribution still has great merit and we have much to learn from it. BTW, the same can be said of Hoskier though many have found flaws in his work (see H. Oliver of Emory University's comments on Hoskier's Apocalypse). Most scholars will agree with M. Robinson's thoughts on textual criticism:

...no MS or text fails in its aggregate to reflect an authoritative witness to God’s written revelation of truth. Textual criticism exists primarily to sort out the differences, and out of many reasonably good and accurate texts to determine more precisely which sequence of readings appears most closely to reflect the original form of that text as given by revelation." (Maurice Robinson)

RonC

[John Reece]

John Reece you surprise me with this statement: “In terms of the science of textual criticism, that's an example of excellent scholarship withstanding the tests of scientific peer review as well as the tests of time.”

This is not true! H. Hoskier, who died in 1936, was one of the great specialists in the field of Bible manuscripts of his time. His main work "Codex B and Its Allies" clearly illustrates that the Alexandrian texts, those used in the later editions of Tischendorf and WH, are not reliable. On the first page of the second part, he notes that the Gospels alone have 3036 differences between the reading of Vaticanus (Codex B) and Sinaiticus (Codex Aleph). And Hoskier, in this work, shows, by his expertise, that these 3036 differences, have underlining errors in themselves. So that an older manuscript does not have any guaranty of being better then one that is hundred years older.

Hoskier's work does not invalidate my statement which you quoted above.

Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman were quite familiar with the work of Hoskier, as indicated by the fact that they referenced his works a number of times in their co-authored The Text of the New Testament, Fourth Edition (London: Oxford, 2005); in no instance do they cite anything worthy of note indicating that Hoskier had in any way successfully called into question any of the work produced by Westcott and Hort ― meaning that Hoskier's work does not stand as a peer-review not withstood by the work of W & H.

As an example of the work of Westcott and Hort withstanding peer-review and the tests of time, here is an extended comment by Metzger and Ehrman (op. cit. above, pages 179-183):

The Neutral text, as its question-begging name implies, is, in the opinion of Westcott and Hort, the most free from later corruptions and mixture and the nearest to the text of the autographs. It is best represented by Codex Vaticanus (B) and next by Codex Sinaiticus (‏א). The concurrence of these two manuscripts is very strong and shows that they cannot be far from the original text. With the exception of a few passages, which they specify, Westcott and Hort declare:

It is our belief (1) that the readings of ‏א B should be accepted as the true readings until strong internal evidence is found to the contrary, and (2) that no readings of ‏א B can safely be rejected absolutely, though it is sometimes right to place them on an alternative footing, especially where they receive no support from Versions or the Fathers.

The exceptions to their preferences for the Neutral text are several passages that they term "Western non-interpolations." They doubtless chose this cumbersome nomenclature simply because they could not bring themselves to refer to "Neutral interpolations," which is exactly what, on their own reconstruction, is involved in these readings. In several passages in the last three chapters of Luke and one in Matthew, the Western text is regarded by Westcott and Hort as preserving the original form. The reason they abandon the testimony of ‏א and B in those passages is that here the Western text, which normally is the fuller and more circumstantial form, has resisted (so they believe) the impulse to add material, whereas it is the Neutral text that presents the expanded reading. ....

By way of retrospect and evaluation, it may be said that scholars today generally agree that one of chief contributions made by Westcott and Hort was their clear demonstration that the Syrian (or Byzantine) text is later than the other types of text. Three types of evidence support their judgment: (1) the Syrian text contains combined or conflate readings that are clearly composed of elements in earlier forms of text; (2) no ante-Nicene father quotes a distinctively Syrian reading; and (3) when the Syrian readings are compared with the rival readings, their claim to be regarded as original is found gradually to diminish and at last to disappear.

It was perhaps not surprising that Westcott and Hort's total rejection of the claims of the Textus Receptus to be the original text of the New Testament should have been viewed with alarm by many in the church. During the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the traditional text found a doughty defender in the person of John W. Burgon (1803-88), dean of Chichester. He has been described as "a High-churchman of the old school," who became notorious as "a leading champion of lost causes and impossible beliefs; but the vehemence of his advocacy somewhat impaired its effect." His conservatism can be gauged from a sermon he preached at Oxford in 1884 in which he denounced the higher education of "young women as young men" as "a thing inexpedient and immodest"; the occasion was the admission of women to university examinations!

The publication in 1881 of the Revised Version of the King James, or Authorized, Version of 1611 aroused Burgon's indignation not only on the score of its unidiomatic English but even more because the revisers had followed an underlying Greek text substantially identical with that of Westcott and Hort. In a series of three learned article in the (London) Quarterly Review, which were reprinted in a volume entitled The Revision Revised (London, 1883), Burgon used every rhetorical device at his disposal to attack both the English revision and the Greek Testament of Westcott and Hort. Burgon's argument was basically theological and speculative. As an ardent high churchman, he could not imagine that, if the words of Scripture had been dictated by the Holy Spirit, God would not have providentially prevented them from being seriously corrupted during the course of their transmission. Consequently, it was inconceivable to Burgon that the Textus Receptus, which had been used by the Church for centuries, could be in need of the drastic revision that Westcott and Hort had administered to it.

What Burgon was apparently unable to comprehend was the force of the genealogical method, by which the later, conflated text is demonstrated to be secondary and corrupt. Instead of following the text of the earlier manuscripts, Burgon preferred the readings supported by the majority of the later witnesses. Consequently, so far from sharing Westcott and Hort's high regard for the testimony of Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, Burgon maintained that, with the single exception of D, which exhibits the wildest text of all, the two manuscripts honored by Westcott and Hort are the most depraved. He assures his readers

without a particle of hesitation, that ‏א B D are three of the most scandalously corrupt copies extant ― exhibit the most shamefully mutilated texts which are anywhere to be met with: ― have become, by whatever process (for their history is entirely unknown), the depositories of the largest amount of fabricated readings, ancient blunders, and intentional perversions of the Truth, ― which are discoverable in any known copies of the Word of God.*

*The Revision Revised (London, 1883), page 16 (italics are Burgon's).

Two other British scholars, F. H. A. Scrivener and George Salmon, were also critical of Westcott and Hort's theories but were far more temperate than Burgon in the expression of their dissent. The former objected to Hort's total rejection of the testimony of the Syrian text, and the latter complained that more consideration should have been given to the weight of purely Western readings.

This somewhat lengthy account of the work of Westcott and Hort may be concluded with the observation that the overwhelming consensus of scholarly opinion recognizes that their critical edition was truly epoch-making. They presented what was doubtless the oldest and purest text that could be attained on the basis of information available in their day. Though the discovery of additional manuscripts has required the realignment of certain groups of witnesses, the general validity of their critical principles and procedures is widely acknowledged by textual scholars today.

The last paragraph validates my comment charactorizing the work of W&H as "excellent scholarship withstanding the tests of scientific peer review as well as the tests of time."