A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. II.

sake of consistency he may be forced to uphold it. Westcott and Hort set μονογενὴς θεός in the text, but concede to ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός a place in their margin.

Those who will resort to “ancient evidence exclusively” for the recension of the text may well be perplexed in dealing with this passage. The oldest manuscripts, versions, and writers are hopelessly divided, so that we can well understand how some critics (not very unreasonably, perhaps, yet without a shadow of authority worth notice) have come to suspect both θεός and υἱός to be accretions or spurious additions to μονογενής. If the principles advocated in Vol. II. Ch. X be true, the present is just such a case as calls for the interposition of the more recent uncial and cursive codices; and when we find that they all, with the single exception of Cod. 33, defend the reading ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός, we feel safe in concluding that for once Codd. אBC and the Peshitto do not approach the autograph of St. John so nearly as Cod. A, the Harkleian Syriac, and Old Latin versions(392).

19. JOHN iii. 13. Westcott and Hort remove from the text to the margin the weighty and doubtless difficult, but on that account only the more certainly genuine, words ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ. Tischendorf rejected them (as indeed does Professor Milligan) in his “Synopsis Evangelica,” 1864, but afterwards repented of his decision. The authorities for omission are אBL (which read μονογενὴς θεός in ch. i. 18) Tb [vi], 33 alone among manuscripts. CDF are defective here: but the clause is contained in AEGHKMSUVΓΔΛΠ, and in all cursives save one, A* and one Evangelistarium (44) omitting ὤν. No versions can be cited against the clause except one manuscript of the Bohairic: it appears in every one else, including the Latin, the four Syriac, the Ethiopic, the Georgian, and the Armenian. There is really no Patristic evidence to set up against it, for it amounts to nothing that the words are not found in the Armenian versions of Ephraem’s Exposition of Tatian’s Harmony (see Vol. I. p. 59, note 2); that Eusebius might have cited them twice and did not; that Cyril of Alexandria, who alleges them once, passed over them once; that Origen also (in the Latin translation) neglected them once, inasmuch as he quotes them twice, once very expressly. Hippolytus [220] is the prime witness in their behalf, for he draws the theological inference from the passage (ἀποσταλεὶς ἵνα δείξῃ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ γῆς ὄντα εἶναι καὶ ἐν οὐρανῷ), wherein he is followed in two places by Hilary and by Epiphanius. To these add Dionysius of Alexandria [iii], Novatian [iii], Aphraates the Persian, Didymus, Lucifer, Athanasius, Basil, besides Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and by John Damascene (thrice), by Cyril of Alexandria, Chrysostom, and Theodoret each four times,—indeed, as Dean Burgon has shown(393), more than fifty passages from thirty-eight ecclesiastical writers; and we then have a consensus of versions and ecclesiastical writers from every part of the Christian world, joining Cod. A and the later manuscripts in convicting אBL, &c., or the common sources from which they were derived, of the deliberate suppression of one of the most mysterious, yet one of the most glorious, glimpses afforded to us in Scripture of the nature of the Saviour, on the side of His Proper Divinity.