HKB
no one will venture to predicate concerning any single Critical Edition of the N. T. which has been published since the days of Griesbach, by the disciples of Griesbach’s school.
XIV. In marked contrast to the Text we speak of,—(which is identical with the Text of every extant Lectionary of the Greek Church, and may therefore reasonably claim to be spoken of as the Traditional Text,)—is that contained in a little handful of documents of which the most famous are codices B א, and the Coptic Version (as far as it is known), on the one hand,—cod. D and the old Latin copies, on the other. To magnify the merits of these, as helps and guides, and to ignore their many patent and scandalous defects and blemishes:—per fas et nefas to vindicate their paramount authority wherever it is in any way possible to do so; and when that is clearly impossible, then to treat their errors as the ancient Egyptians treated their cats, dogs, monkeys, and other vermin,—namely, to embalm them, and pay them Divine honours:—such for the last 50 years has been the practice of the dominant school of Textual Criticism among ourselves. The natural and even necessary correlative of this, has been the disparagement of the merits of the commonly Received Text: which has come to be spoken of, (we know not why,) as contemptuously, almost as bitterly, as if it had been at last ascertained to be untrustworthy in every respect: a thing undeserving alike of a place and of a name among the monuments of the Past. Even to have “used the Received Text as a basis for correction” (p. 184) is stigmatized by Dr. Hort as one “great cause” why Griesbach went astray.
XV. Drs. Westcott and Hort have in fact outstripped their predecessors in this singular race. Their absolute contempt for the Traditional Text,—their superstitious veneration for a few ancient documents; (which documents however they freely confess are not more ancient than the “Traditional Text” which they despise;)—knows no bounds. But the thing just now to be attended to is the argumentative process whereby they seek to justify their preference.—LACHMANN avowedly took his stand on a very few of the oldest known documents: and though TREGELLES slightly enlarged the area of his predecessor’s observations, his method was practically identical with that of Lachmann.—TISCHENDORF, appealing to every known authority, invariably shows himself regardless of the evidence he has himself accumulated. Where certain of the uncials are,—there his verdict is sure also to be.... Anything more unscientific, more unphilosophical, more transparently foolish than such a method, can scarcely be conceived: but it has prevailed for 50 years, and is now at last more hotly than ever advocated by Drs. WESTCOTT and HORT. Only, (to their credit be it recorded,) they have had the sense to perceive that it must needs be recommended by Arguments of some sort, or else it will inevitably fall to pieces the first fine day any one is found to charge it, with the necessary knowledge of the subject, and with sufficient resoluteness of purpose, to make him a formidable foe.
XVI. Their expedient has been as follows.—Aware that the Received or Traditional Greek Text (to quote their own words,) “is virtually identical with that used by Chrysostom and other Antiochian Fathers in the latter part of the IVth century:” and fully alive to the fact that it “must therefore have been represented by Manuscripts as old as any which are now surviving*” (*Text, p. 547),—they have invented an extraordinary Hypothesis in order to account for its existence:—