Steven Avery
Administrator
Some Thoughts on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament
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instincts was the number of cases in which
these editors attribute to the Evangelists them-
selves erroneous statements which their pre-
decessors had regarded as copyists’ blunders.
There was indeed but a little rhetorical
exaggeration in the statement that the canon of
these editors was that Codex B was infallible and
that the Evangelists were not. Nay, it seemed
as if Hort regarded it as a note of genuine-
ness if a reading implies error on the part
of a sacred writer. In one case (Matt. xiii. 35),
where B unites with every extant MS. but one
in giving a text free from error, Hort is willing
to accept the testimony of a single MS. that
Matthew ascribed to Isaiah a passage really
taken from the Psalms. This apparently per-
verse decision was suggested by the no doubt
true principle that if an intelligent copyist found
in his archetype what seemed a plain mistake
he would be under a temptation to correct it
in his transcript, whereas he would be very
unlikely to impute to the sacred writer a
mistake which he had not committed. Conse-
quently the presumption would be that blunders
had been made rather by the original author
than by the transcribers ; and that a text free
from blunders would be likely to have owed
its correctness to its copyists. At all events,
there was much in the new edition to stagger
even one who takes a very liberal view of the
possibility of error in the evangelic narrative.
I will not lay over-much stress on such cases
as that WH make St. Mark say, not that
David ate the shewbread in the time of
Abiathar, who was afterwards high priest, but
in the high priesthood of Abiathar, which was
not the case ; that the girl who danced before