The Cambridge Critical Greek Testament.

1885 207 (The New Testament in the original Greek: the text revised by Brooke Foss Westcott D.D. and Fenton John Anthony Hort D.D. 2 Vols., cr. 8vo., Cambridge and London, Macmillan and Co. 1881.)

Having brought to a close the examination of the Revised Version with the American Suggestions, I may now turn to a review of these volumes on which two very able and learned men have spent the ungrudging labour of some twenty-seven years. Their outward appearance is at once unpretending and elegant; and the Editors have certainly given the most decisive proof that the old interest of our Island in the study of this, the latest nearest and deepest portion of divine revelation, has revived and extended notably. More strictly than the well-known works of Dean Alford and Bp. Wordsworth, is it a critical contribution, which stands rather with the late Dr. Tregelles' book, and challenges comparison, not so much with Lachmann's latest Edition merely, as with Tischendorf's eighth, scarcely yet completed. The difference however is so marked between them, that, while no careful scholar can dispense with the fulness of information furnished only by the great German Editor, it is surely incumbent on him to weigh this W H Testament, not only for its text in Vol. i. framed with scrupulous care on a full consideration of all ancient evidence, but for its distinctive conclusions according to the principles and their application discussed elaborately in Vol. ii. with notes on select readings throughout. Characterised very differently, they are both indispensable to those who would have before them the variants in the MSS. as well as the judgment arrived at by the most recent Editors on the evidence. Perhaps no edition of the Greek New Testament has exhibited greater boldness than the one before us; yet it may relieve some to know that, According to the estimate of our Editors, not more than one eighth of the text affords questions to all the critics; that much the largest part of that eighth consists of most trivial differences; and that, setting aside orthographical discrepancies, one-sixtieth part might cover what is debatable.

Nevertheless I confess to no small surprise that, whatever may be the value of their book in the hands of competent scholars, the Editors should conceive it to be at all adapted for popular use as a manual text of the New Testament, as intimated in ii. 289: why, will appear in the sequel. This notice may suffice as an introduction to a detailed test.

Their method is thus described (ii. 17, 18), "The mode adopted from the first was to work out our results independently of each other, and to hold no counsel together except upon results already provisionally obtained. Such differences as then appeared, usually bearing a very small proportion to the points of immediate agreement, were discussed on paper, and where necessary repeatedly discussed; till either agreement or final difference was reached. These ultimate differences have found expression among the alternative readings. No rule of precedence has been adopted; but documentary attestation has been in most cases allowed to confer the place of honour as against internal evidence, range of attestation being further taken into account as between one well attested reading and another. This combination of completely independent operations permits us to place far more confidence in the results than either of us could have presumed to cherish had they rested on his own sole responsibility. No individual mind can ever act with perfect uniformity, or free itself completely from its own idiosyncracies: the danger of unconscious caprice is inseparable from personal judgment. We venture to hope that the present text has escaped some risks of this kind by being the production of two editors of different habits of mind, working independently and to a great extent on different plans, and then giving and receiving free and full criticism wherever their first conclusion had not agreed together. For the principles, arguments, and conclusions set forth in the Introduction and Appendix both editors are alike responsible. It was however for various reasons expedient that their exposition and illustration should proceed throughout from a single hand; and [? therefore] the writing of this volume [ii] and the other accompaniments of the text has devolved on Dr. Hort." This will explain some singular results which appear here and there from first to last throughout he work and will in due time call for notice.

The effort throughout is to reduce all to the level of "the scientific." How this works practically remains to be seen.

The following table, copied from p. 15, will be found in several ways helpful to the student and not without interest to every christian reader who will bear in mind that the great Uncials are conventionally cited under capitals, Roman, Greek, or Hebrew.

This, compared with the various editions since the Complut. and Erasmian, may serve to show "the disadvantages under which the Greek text of the New Testament was first printed from late and inferior MSS.; the long neglect to take serious measures amending it; the slow process of the accumulation and study of evidence; the late date at which any considerable number of corrections on ancient authority were admitted into the slightly modified Erasmian text that reigned by an accidental prescription, and the very late date at which ancient authority was allowed to furnish not scattered touchings but the whole body of text from beginning to end; and lastly the advantage enjoyed by the present generation in the possession of a store of evidence largely augmented in amount and still more in value, as well as in the ample instruction afforded by previous criticism and previous texts."

The resources of textual criticism are shown to rise, in judging between variants, from Internal Evidence of "readings" (intrinsic and transcriptional) to that of "documents" and "groups of documents," as well as to what is called "genealogical" evidence (sometimes complicated by "mixture"); yet there are confessedly rival early readings which do not yield to what is here designated "the highest evidence" but are intrinsically to be condemned. The chief faults in this description are two, and they are very grave to a believer: (1) the reasoning proceeds as if the New Testament stood on no better grounds than any other book; and (2) that the Spirit of God has nothing to do with enabling the believer to form a sound judgment!