The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels Part 34

Repair in thought to any collection of MSS. you please; suppose to the British Museum. Request to be shewn their seventy-three copies of St.

John's Gospel, and turn to the close of his seventh chapter. At that particular place you will find, in sixty-one of these copies, these twelve verses: and in thirty-five of them you will discover, after the words [Greek: Prophetes ek tes Galilaias ouk eg.] a rubrical note to the effect that 'on Whitsunday, these twelve verses are to be dropped; and the reader is to go on at ch. viii. 12.' What can be the meaning of this respectful treatment of the Pericope in question? How can it ever have come to pa.s.s that it has been thus ceremoniously handled all down the ages? Surely on no possible view of the matter but one can the phenomenon just now described be accounted for. Else, will any one gravely pretend to tell me that at some indefinitely remote period, (1) These verses were fabricated: (2) Were thrust into the place they at present occupy in the sacred text: (3) Were unsuspectingly believed to be genuine by the Church; and in consequence of which they were at once pa.s.sed over by her direction on Whitsunday as incongruous, and appointed by the Church to be read on October 8, as appropriate to the occasion?

(3) But further. How is it proposed to explain why _one_ of St. John's after-thoughts should have fared so badly at the Church's hands;--another, so well? I find it suggested that perhaps the subject-matter may sufficiently account for all that has happened to the _pericope_ de adultera: And so it may, no doubt. But then, once admit _this_, and the hypothesis under consideration becomes simply nugatory: fails even to _touch_ the difficulty which it professes to remove. For if men were capable of thinking scorn of these twelve verses when they found them in the 'second and improved edition of St. John's Gospel,'

why may they not have been just as irreverent in respect of the same verses, when they appeared in the _first_ edition? How is it one whit more probable that every Greek Father for a thousand years should have systematically overlooked the twelve verses in dispute when they appeared in the second edition of St. John's Gospel, than that the same Fathers should have done the same thing when they appeared in the first[615]?

(4) But the hypothesis is gratuitous and nugatory: for it has been invented in order to account for the phenomenon that whereas twelve verses of St. John's Gospel are found in the large majority of the later Copies,--the same verses are observed to be absent from all but one of the five oldest Codexes. But how, (I wish to be informed,) is that hypothesis supposed to square with these phenomena? It cannot be meant that the 'second edition' of St. John did not come abroad until after Codd. [Symbol: Aleph]ABCT were written? For we know that the old Italic version (a doc.u.ment of the second century) contains all the three portions of narrative which are claimed for the second edition. But if this is not meant, it is plain that some further hypothesis must be invented in order to explain why certain Greek MSS. of the fourth and fifth centuries are without the verses in dispute. And this fresh hypothesis will render that under consideration (as I said) nugatory and shew that it was gratuitous.

What chiefly offends me however in this extraordinary suggestion is its _irreverence_. It a.s.sumes that the Gospel according to St. John was composed like any ordinary modern book: capable therefore of being improved in the second edition, by recension, addition, omission, retractation, or what not. For we may not presume to limit the changes effected in a second edition. And yet the true Author of the Gospel is confessedly G.o.d the Holy Ghost: and I know of no reason for supposing that His works are imperfect when they proceed forth from His Hands.

The cogency of what precedes has in fact weighed so powerfully with thoughtful and learned Divines that they have felt themselves constrained, as their last resource, to cast about for some hypothesis which shall at once account for the absence of these verses from so many copies of St. John's Gospel, and yet retain them for their rightful owner and author,--St. John. Singular to relate, the a.s.sumption which has best approved itself to their judgement has been, that there must have existed two editions of St. John's Gospel,--the earlier edition without, the later edition with, the incident under discussion. It is I presume, in order to conciliate favour to this singular hypothesis, that it has been further proposed to regard St. John v. 3, 4 and the whole of St. John xxi, (besides St. John vii. 53-viii. 11), as after-thoughts of the Evangelist.

1. But this is unreasonable: for nothing else but _the absence_ of St.

John vii. 53-viii. 11, from so many copies of the Gospel has constrained the Critics to regard those verses with suspicion. Whereas, on the contrary, there is not known to exist a copy in the world which omits so much as a single verse of chap. xxi. Why then are we to a.s.sume that the whole of that chapter was away from the original draft of the Gospel?

Where is the evidence for so extravagant an a.s.sumption?

2. So, concerning St. John v. 3, 4: to which there really attaches no manner of doubt, as I have elsewhere shewn[616]. Thirty-two precious words in that place are indeed omitted by [Symbol: Aleph]BC: twenty-seven by D. But by this time the reader knows what degree of importance is to be attached to such an amount of evidence. On the other hand, they are found in _all other copies_: are vouched for by the Syriac[617] and the Latin versions: in the Apostolic Const.i.tutions, by Chrysostom, Cyril, Didymus, and Ammonius, among the Greeks,--by Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine among the Latins. Why a pa.s.sage so attested is to be a.s.sumed to be an after-thought of the Evangelist has never yet been explained: no, nor ever will be.

(5) a.s.suming, however, just for a moment the hypothesis correct for argument's sake, viz. that in the second edition of St. John's Gospel the history of the woman taken in adultery appeared for the first time.

Invite the authors of that hypothesis to consider what follows. The discovery that five out of six of the oldest uncials extant (to reckon here the fragment T) are without the verses in question; which yet are contained in ninety-nine out of every hundred of the despised cursives:--what other inference can be drawn from such premisses, but that the cursives fortified by other evidence are by far the more trustworthy witnesses of what St. John in his old age actually entrusted to the Church's keeping?

[The MS. here leaves off, except that a few pencilled words are added in an incomplete form. I have been afraid to finish so clever and characteristic an essay.]

FOOTNOTES:

[576] Compare 1 Sam. xxiv. 22:--'And Saul went home: _but David and his men gat them up into the hold_.' 1 Kings xviii. 42:--'So Ahab went up to eat and to drink: _and Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees_.'

Esther iii. 15:--'And the king and Haman sat down to drink; _but the city of Shushan was perplexed_.' Such are the idioms of the Bible.

[577] Ammonius (Cord. Cat. p. 216), with evident reference to it, remarks that our Lord's words in verses 37 and 38 were intended as a _viatic.u.m_ which all might take home with them, at the close of this, 'the last, the great day of the feast.'

[578] So Eusebius:--- [Greek: Ote kata to auto synachthentes hoi ton Ioudaion ethnous archontes epi tes Hierousalem, synedrion epoiesanto kai skepsin opos auton apolesosin en ho hoi men thanaton autou katepsephisanto; heteroi de antelegon, os ho Nikodemos, k.t.l.] (in Psalmos, p. 230 a).

[579] Westcott and Hort's prefatory matter (1870) to their revised Text of the New Testament, p. xxvii.

[580] So in the LXX. See Num. v. 11-31.

[581] Ver. 17. So the LXX.

[582] 2 Cor. iv. 7: v. 1.

[583] Compare ch. vi. 6, 71: vii. 39: xi. 13, 51: xii. 6, 33: xiii. 11, 28: xxi. 19.

[584] Consider ch. xix. 19, 20, 21, 22: xx. 30, 31: xxi. 24, 25.--1 John i. 4: ii. 1, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 21, 26: v. 13.--2 John 5, 12.--3 John 9, 13.--Rev. _pa.s.sim_, especially i. 11, 19: ii. 1, &c.: x. 4: xiv. 13: xvii. 8: xix. 9: xx. 12, 15: xxi. 5, 27: xxii. 18, 19.

[585] Westcott and Hort, ibid. pp. xxvii, xxvi.

[586] Novum Testamentum, 1869, p. 829.

[587] Plain Introduction, 1894, ii. 364.

[588] Printed Texts, 1854, p. 341.

[589] Developed Criticism, p. 82.

[590] Outlines, &c., p. 103.

[591] Nicholson's Gospel according to the Hebrews, p. 141.

[592] Scrivener, ut supra, ii. 368.

[593] I insert this epithet on sufficient authority. Mr. Edw. A. Guy, an intelligent young American,--himself a very accurate observer and a competent judge,--collated a considerable part of Cod. A in 1875, and a.s.sured me that he scarcely ever found any discrepancy between the Codex and Woide's reprint. One instance of _italicism_ was in fact all that had been overlooked in the course of many pages.

[594] It is inaccurate also. His five lines contain eight mistakes.

Praefat. p. x.x.x, -- 86.

[595] ii. 630, addressing Rufinus, A.D. 403. Also ii. 748-9.

[596] i. 291, 692, 707, 1367: ii. 668, 894, 1082: iii. 892-3, 896-7.

[597] i. 30: ii. 527, 529-30: iii^{1}. 774: iii^{2}. 158, 183, 531-2 (where he quotes the place largely and comments upon it): iv. 149, 466 (largely quoted), 1120: v. 80, 1230 (largely quoted in both places): vi.

407, 413: viii. 377, 574.

[598] Pacian (A.D. 372) refers the Novations to the narrative as something which all men knew. 'Nolite in Evangelio legere quod pepercerit Dominus etiam adulterae confitenti, quam nemo d.a.m.narat?'

Pacia.n.u.s, Op. Epist. iii. Contr. Novat. (A.D. 372). _Ap._ Galland. vii.

267.

[599] _Ap._ Augustin. viii. 463.

[600] In his translation of Eusebius. Nicholson, p. 53.

[601] Chrysologus, A.D. 433, Abp. of Ravenna. Venet. 1742. He mystically explains the entire incident. Serm. cxv. -- 5.

[602] Sedulius (A.D. 435) makes it the subject of a poem, and devotes a whole chapter to it. _Ap._ Galland. ix. 553 and 590.

[603] 'Promiss.' De Promissionibus dimid. temp. (saec. iv). Quotes viii.

4, 5, 9. P. 2, c. 22, col. 147 b. Ignot. Auct., De Vocatione omnium Gentium (circa, A.D. 440), _ap._ Opp. Prosper. Aquit. (1782), i. p.

460-1:--'Adulteram ex legis const.i.tutione lapidandam ... liberavit ...

c.u.m executores praecepti de conscientiis territi, trementem ream sub illius iudicio reliquissent.... Et inclinatus, id est ad humana dimissus ... "digito scribebat in terram," ut legem mandatorum per gratiae decreta vacuaret,' &c.

[604] Wrongly ascribed to Idacius.

[605] Gelasius P. A.D. 492. Conc. iv. 1235. Quotes viii. 3, 7, 10, 11.

[606] Ca.s.siodorus, A.D. 514. Venet. 1729. Quotes viii. 11. See ii. p.

96, 3, 5-180.

[607] Dialogues, xiv. 15.

[608] ii. 748:--In evangelio secundum Ioannem in multis et Graecis et Latinis codicibus invenitur de adultera muliere, quae accusata est apud Dominum.