The real stuff on Hort is in the Luke book starting around p. 308
A Critical and Historical Enquiry Into the Origin of the Third Gospel
By P. C. Sense
- p. 308 -
"The peculiar volubility of this writer renders him barely intelligible in numerous passages, so that it is often difficult to extract the grains of wheat from the heaps of words"
endeavoured to the best of my ability, after repeated perusal, to
analyse the arguments of the author. These arguments appear to
me to be
mere sophistry to prove what is incapable of proof, or to
induce belief in that which cannot be proved. It is impossible to
guarantee the accuracy of the sacred text from documents supposed
to date two or three centuries after the publication of the former,
when these documents themselves are without credentials. There
is, further, no evidence whatever that any care or precautions were
taken to preserve the integrity of the sacred text. And finally, there
is actual proof that the sacred text had been tampered with in
various ways in the second and third centuries. Even after the
text had obtained some stability from the authorised version pre-
pared by Jerome late in the fourth century, we know that changes
had been subsequently made in it; and hence the probability is
very great, and in fact there can be no rational doubt, that the text
had been materially changed in the prior period by additions and
alterations, made for different objects, in which deceit, fraud and
other immorality entered, during the active period of the life of the
Church preceding the fourth century.
The conclusion to which
Dr Hort has arrived by inconsequential arguments is one that is
not consistent with fact and truth. Dr Hort’s conclusion will be
inadmissible even if he had stated, which he has religiously avoided
to do, the means employed and the precautions taken to preserve
the sacred text from corruption. My investigation of the Fourth
and Third Gospels has brought to light numerous additions and
alterations made to these Gospels before the fourth century; and
the strong presumption, if not the absolute certainty, is that such
additions and changes were made by official authority. Against the
force of such facts it is futile to bring forward sophistical arguments
and assertions to demonstrate that manuscripts alleged to date so
late as the fourth and later centuries, and which are, further, destitute
of credentials, are reliable guides to the original text. These
manuscripts are absolutely useless for the object and purpose of
textual criticism, which our two learned theologians themselves say
is “ the approximation towards recovering an exact copy of what was
actually written on parchment or papyrus by the author of the book
or his amanuensis” (sect. 3). Though absolutely useless for this
purpose, it may be conceded that these manuscripts may be useful
for another purpose. I have already compared them to derelict
dead bodies; these latter, though useless for the purpose of identi-
fication in the absence of all knowledge regarding them, may be
utilised for anatomical purposes. And for cognate purposes of that
p. 314
version of the New Testament is to my mind simply ludicrous. It
is a form of verbal tergiversation which I consider beneath and
unbecoming to the erudition of Bishop Westcott, about which there
can be no mistake. The bishop has not translated, but paraphrased
Tertullian, and inoculated the not over-clear language of this Latin
writer with the meaning which he desired. Of the art of changing
the meaning of an author this learned prelate of the Anglican Church
is a past master; and I have given a striking example of his pro-
ficiency in the art in his exegesis of John xx. 21-23, on the remission
of sins. See the Bishop's Commentary on John, and my remarks
in my work On the Origin of the Fourth Gospel', p. 309 ff.
361—370 Approximate sufficiency of existing documents
for the recovery of the genuine text, notwithstanding
the existence of some primitive corruptions
p. 276
https://books.google.com/books?id=gZ4HAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA276
MADR and Tertullian
