No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Historical Revisionism and the Majority Text Theory: The Cases of F. H. A. Scrivener and Herman C. Hoskier1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Abstract
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
- Type
- Short Studies
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995
References
2 See Shields, D. D., ‘Recent Attempts to Defend the Byzantine Text of the Greek New Testament’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, TX, 1985).Google Scholar The first three chapters are entitled ‘The Popular Defenders of the Textus Receptus’, ‘The Scholarly Defenders of the Textus Receptus’, and ‘The Defenders of the Majority Text’. In each chapter there is a section or two on Burgon and the impetus he provided for the various groups. Today there is even a Dean Burgon Society which has virtually canonized his views. David Otis Fuller, Jay P. Green, Sr, D. A. Waite, and others continue to reprint his works. In addition, the most recent tome from MT quarters, The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Byzantine/Majority Textform (Atlanta: Original Word, 1991)Google Scholar, edited by W. G. Pierpont and M. A. Robinson, is explicitly and thoroughly Burgonian.
3 What was barely excusable in 1951 (cf. Alfred Martin, ‘A Critical Examination of the Westcott-Hort Textual Theory’ [Th.D. dissertation, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1951]) becomes intolerable in 1980: in Pickering, Wilbur N., The Identity of the New Testament Text (2nd ed.; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1980)Google Scholar, two chapters, comprising almost 70 pages of text, are dedicated to a critique of the Westcott-Hort theory; the seventh chapter, ‘Determining the Identity of the Text’, is merely a rehash of Burgon's seven tests of truth. So out-of-date are the author's arguments that Gordon D. Fee, in reviewing this work, could speak of Pickering's ‘neglect of literally scores of scholarly studies that contravene his assertions’, adding that ‘The overlooked bibliography here is so large that it can hardly be given in a footnote. For example, I know of eleven different studies on Origen alone that contradict all of Pickering's discussion, and not one of them is even recognized to have existed’ (‘A Critique of Pickering's, W. N.The Identity of the New Testament Text: A Review Article’, WTJ 41 [1978–1979] 415).Google Scholar
4 Westcott, B. F. and Hort, F. J. A., The New Testament in the Original Greek 2: Introduction [and] Appendix (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1881) 93–119.Google Scholar
5 Burgon published three articles in the Quarterly Review which were later incorporated and slightly revised in a book, The Revision Revised (London: John Murray, 1883)Google Scholar. This work has been reprinted in whole or in part several times by followers of Burgon. As well, he wrote several other volumes, including The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel according to St Mark: Vindicated against Recent Critical Objectors and Established (Oxford: James Parker, 1871)Google Scholar, and two volumes completed by Edward Miller: The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels Vindicated and Established (London: George Bell and Sons, 1896)Google Scholar, and The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels (London: George Bell and Sons, 1896).Google Scholar
6 Burgon articulated his method in ‘seven Tests of Truth’: ‘1. Antiquity, or Primitiveness; 2. Consent of Witnesses, or Number; 3. Variety of Evidence, or Catholicity; 4. Respectability of Witnesses, or Weight; 5. Continuity, or Unbroken Tradition; 6. Evidence of the Entire Passage, or Context; 7. Internal Considerations, or Reasonableness’ (Traditional Text, 28–9). The net result of this approach is, in reality, a support of the majority text almost all the time. Gary R. Hudson notes that Burgon's resultant text differs little from the Majority Text (‘Changes That Burgon Made in the TR’ [unpublished paper circulated to members of the Majority Text Society, 1990]). Burgon was able to apply his text-critical principles toward the creation of his own NT text only to Matthew 1–14. But here, of the 52 variations between the TR and the Majority Text, Burgon sides with the Majority Text 47 times, with the TR twice (both where there is a significant split in the majority of MSS), and opts for three readings not shared by either TR or Majority Text. We may note further that Pickering tacitly equates Burgon's seven notes of truth with majority rule. In his concluding summary on Burgon's method he states: ‘I submit that due process requires us to receive as original that form of the text which is supported by the majority of those witnesses’ (Identity, 148).
7 Traditional Text, 9.
8 Traditional Text, 11–12.
9 ‘… in spite of Mr. Miller's devotion to the task he had taken up, his scholarship and judgment were not equal to the demands made on them’ (Sir Kenyon, Frederic G., Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament [2nd ed.London: Macmillan, 1913] 308Google Scholar, n. 1).
10 In addition to his job as editor of Burgon's (and Scrivener's) works, Miller wrote a slender volume entitled, A Guide to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (London: Bell, 1886).Google Scholar
11 A corrected edition of Stephanus' third edition (1550) with textual variants taken from Lachmann's, Tischendorf's, and Tregelles' editions (‘Καινὴ, H ἩΔιαθήκη [Cambridge: Bell, 1892])Google Scholar.
12 Cf. Martin, , ‘Westcott-Hort’, 54–7; Robert Anderson, ‘The Bible and Modern Criticism’, in Which Bible? (ed. Fuller, David Otis; Grand Rapids: Grand Rapids International, 1970; 5th ed., 1975) 120Google Scholar; Hills, E. F., The King James Version Defended! (Des Moines: Christian Research, 4th ed. 1984) 192Google Scholar; Waite, D. A, Defending the King James Bible (Collingswood, NJ: The Bible for Today, 1992) 45–6, 139, 298, 307.Google Scholar
13 E.g., Alexander Souter says of Scrivener: ‘They [Burgon and Scrivener] were both, on the whole, defenders of the textus receptus …’ (The Text and Canon of the New Testament [New York: Scribner's, 1913] 102)Google Scholar. Greenlee, J. H. echoes this opinion: ‘This defense [of the TR] rested largely in the hands of F. H. A. Scrivener and especially J. W. Burgon and Edward Miller’ (Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964] 81)Google Scholar. Cf. also Carson, D. A., The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979) 40Google Scholar, n. 3; Duplacy, Jean, Études de critique textuelle du Nouveau Testament (ed. Joël, Delobel; Leuven: University, 1987) 130, 355Google Scholar; Shields, ‘Recent Attempts’, 7.
14 Six Lectures on the Text of the New Testament and the Ancient Manuscripts Which Contain It (Cambridge: Bell, 1875) 118–209Google Scholar. Of the fifty-three passages discussed, NA26 disagrees with Majority Text thirty-three times (not counting those places where Scrivener adopts a reading found in neither). Of these thirty-three instances, Scrivener adopts the NA26 reading twenty-two times, the Majority Text reading eleven. In his A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament (4th ed.; 2 vols.; rev. Edward Miller; London: Bell, 1894)Google Scholar, he discusses virtually the same passages with almost identical conclusions (2.321–412).
15 Plain Introduction, 2.244–56; cf. his specific discussion in Six Lectures of 1 Cor 15.49 (183–6), Col 2.2 (187–9); Jas 2.18 (198–9).
16 Six Lectures, 188 (in commenting on Col 2.2). Other statements are equally illuminating: ‘That where there is a real agreement between all documents containing the Gospels up to the sixth century, and in other parts of the New Testament up to the ninth, the testimony of later manuscripts and versions, though not to be rejected unheard, must be regarded with great suspicion, and UNLESS UPHELD BY STRONG INTERNAL EVIDENCE, can hardly be adopted’; ‘… we must assign the highest value not to those readings which are attested by the greatest number of witnesses …’ (Plain Introduction, 2.301). Scrivener even admitted the force of Hort's evidence for conflation in the Byzantine text, producing an example of his own: in Acts 20.28 the MT has ‘the Church of the Lord and God’ which is ‘manifestly a composite reading’ (Six Lectures, 172).
17 ‘… we prefer to fall back on Doc. B in the last resort …’ (commenting on Col 2.2 in Six Lectures, 189); Sinaiticus is called a ‘first-rate uncial’ (Ibid., 193 [commenting on 1 Tim 3.16]).
18 ‘… the two great codices N and B, one or both of them, are witnesses for readings, nearly all of which, to the best of our judgement, are corruptions of the sacred originals’ (Plain Introduction, 2.297). This statement needs to be balanced by another: ‘… we shall meet with not a few cases [in B] wherein, seconded by the Sinai copy and by that copy almost alone, the intrinsic goodness of the reading it exhibits will hardly lead us to hesitate to receive it as true’ (Six Lectures, 49).
19 Six Lectures, 178.
20 Plain Introduction, 2.297.
21 E.g., Robert Anderson says that, in opposition to Westcott and Hort in the revision committee, there was ‘the very able and weighty minority led by Dr. Scrivener, the most capable and eminent “textual critic” of the whole company …’ (‘The Bible and Modern Criticism’, 120). Cf. also Waite, Defending the King James Bible, who repeatedly misrepresents Scrivener's views (45–6,139) – even going so far as to offer reprints of Scrivener's works as ‘Titles Defending the King James Bible’ (298, 307)!
22 Abbé P. Martin became the defender of the TR in France, but he did little more than echo Burgon's voice. Cf. Martin, J.-P.-P., Introduction a la critique textuelle du Nouveau Testament (7 vols.; Paris, 1883–6)Google Scholar. Mention can also be made here of two other little known writers: Benjamin Wilkinson, G., whose Our Authorized Bible Vindicated (Washington, D.C.: n.p., 1930)Google Scholar was reprinted in Which Bible?, 176–318; and A. Ivanov, whose Russian Orthodox views are quite compatible with the traditional text. His essays from the Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarchii (1954–6) are summarized by Casey, Robert P. in ‘A Russian Orthodox View of New Testament Textual Criticism’, Theology 60 (1957) 50–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 Lake, Kirsopp, The Text of the New Testament (6th ed.; rev. Silva New; London: Rivingtons, 1933) 76.Google Scholar
24 He also adopted much of the dean's vehement spirit, as virtually any page in his Codex B and Its Allies: A Study and an Indictment will reveal.
25 Cf., e.g., Pickering, Identity, 60, 145; Alfred Martin, ‘Examination of the Westcott-Hort Textual Theory’, in Which Bible?, 153, 164,166.
26 Codex B and its Allies: A Study and an Indictment (2 vols.; London: Bernard Quaritch, 1914)1.415.Google Scholar
27 Cf., e.g., Martin, ‘Examination’, 153.
28 He is here referring to Burgon's assessment of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.
29 Hoskier amended this remark with a footnote, arguing that ‘we must revise his position’ in that Burgon incorrectly used patristic evidence and undervalued D.
30 Cf. Concerning the Genesis of the Versions of the N.T. (2 vols.; London: Bernard Quaritch, 1910–1911) 1.23–4Google Scholar; Codex B 1.460; Ibid., 1.435 (though Hoskier quickly added, ‘This does not commit me to the “shorter” text theory in its fullest sense’).
31 Cf. his general statements in Codex B, l.vi, 406, 414, 460 (‘Bezae, being free from extraneous text influences, has a large value when used in connection with the Syriac documents’); 469. More specifically, he adopts Western and/or minority readings for Luke 11.52 (Ibid., 421); Acts 2.24 (Ibid.); Acts 21.14 (Ibid.); Matt 17.20 (Ibid., 435); Matt 17.25 (Ibid.); Luke 23.8 (Ibid., 456–60; here Hoskier adopts the word order found only in ψ, 241, six lectionaries and one other Greek witness).
32 Codex B, l.iv, 467.
33 Ibid., 1.465: ‘The claims put forward by us are that B does not exhibit a “neutral” text, but is found to be tinged, as are most other documents, with Coptic, Latin and Syriac colours …’
34 Codex B, 1.434, 467.
35 Genesis of the Versions, 1.21 (he even includes Luke in the list!).
36 Codex B, 1.468–87 is a litany of ‘Hortian heresies’.