HKB
reading attested by B,)—we place in our margin. “Sumpsimus,” apparently the right reading, we place in the text within ††; in token that it is probably “a successful ancient conjecture.”
We smile, and resume:—But how is the fact to be accounted for that the text of Chrysostom and (in the main) of the rest of the IVth-century Fathers, to whom we are so largely indebted for our critical materials, and who must have employed codices fully as old as B and א: how is it, we ask, that the text of all these, including codex A, differs essentially from the text exhibited by codices B and א?—The editors reply,—The text of Chrysostom and the rest, we designate “Syrian,” and assume to have been the result of an “editorial Revision,” which we conjecturally assign to the second half of the IIIrd century. It is the “Pre-Syrian” text that we are in search of; and we recognize the object of our search in codex B.
We stare, and smile again. But how then does it come to pass (we rejoin) that the Peschito, or primitive Syriac, which is older by full a century and a half than the last-named date, is practically still the same text?—This fatal circumstance (not overlooked by the learned Editors) they encounter with another conjectural assumption. “A Revision” (say they) “of the Old Syriac version appears to have taken place early in the IVth century, or sooner; and doubtless in some connexion with the Syrian revision of the Greek text, the readings being to a very great extent coincident.”
And pray, where is “the Old Syriac version” of which you speak?—It is (reply the Editors) our way of designating the fragmentary Syriac MS. commonly known as “Cureton’s.”—Your way (we rejoin) of manipulating facts, and disposing of evidence is certainly the most convenient, as it is the most extraordinary, imaginable: yet is it altogether inadmissible in a grave enquiry like the present. Syriac scholars are of a widely different opinion from yourselves. Do you not perceive that you have been drawing upon your imagination for every one of your facts?
We decline in short on the mere conjectural ipse dixit of these two respected scholars to admit either that the Peschito is a Revision of Cureton’s Syriac Version;—or that it was executed about A.D. 325;—or that the text of Chrysostom and the other principal IVth-century Fathers is the result of an unrecorded “Antiochian Revision” which took place about the year A.D. 275.
[But instead of troubling ourselves with removing the upper story of the visionary structure before us,—which reminds us painfully of a house which we once remember building with playing-cards,—we begin by removing the basement-story, which brings the entire superstructure in an instant to the ground.]
For we decline to admit that the texts exhibited by B א can have “diverged from a point near the sacred autographs, and never come into contact subsequently.” We are able to show, on the contrary, that the readings they jointly embody afford the strongest presumption that the MSS. which contain them are nothing else but specimens of those “corrected,” i.e. corrupted copies, which are known to have abounded in the earliest ages of the Church. From the prevalence of identical depravations in either, we infer that they are, on the contrary, derived from the same not very remote depraved original: and therefore, that their coincidence, when they differ from all (or nearly all) other MSS., so far from marking “two primitive and entirely separate lines of transmission” of the inspired autographs, does but mark what was derived from the same corrupt common ancestor; whereby the supposed two independent witnesses to the Evangelic verity become resolved into a single witness to a fabricated text of the IIIrd century.