The Procedure of the Revision Committee
Some of our readers will perhaps be asking how it was
possible that the learned men who composed the Revision Committee could have
allowed the great mass of testimony which sustains the authenticity of the
Received Text to be set aside upon the sole authority of two Codices so dubious
as the two we have been discussing?
The explanation is that the
Revisionists did not consider these matters at all. They were not supposed to
undertake the refashioning of the Greek Text - for that lay entirely outside
their instructions - and they had therefore no occasion to go into the many
intricate matters involved in the weighing of the evidence for and against the
Received Text. Neither was it their province to decide upon the soundness of
the principle of following ancient Mss. only; and the account of their
proceedings (published by Dr. Newth, one of the Revisers) makes it quite plain
that they did not have before them, or give any consideration to, the weighty
matters of fact, affecting the character of those two "ancient witnesses,"
which we are now putting before our readers.
It is therefore to be noted
(and it is an important point) that in regard to the underlying Greek Text of
the R.V. and the principles that controlled its formation, no appeal can
properly be made to the scholarship of the Committee, however great it might
be. In view of all the facts it seems clear that, not until after the Committee
had disbanded, and their work had come under the scrutiny of able scholars and
faithful men, were they themselves aware that they had seemingly given their
official sanction to the substitution of the "New Greek Text" of Westcott and
Hort for the Textus Receptus. The Westcott and Hort Text had not yet been
published, and hence had never been subjected to scrutiny and criticism; nor
had the principles upon which it was constructed been investigated. Only after
it was too late were the facts realized, even by the Revisers themselves.
The mischief has thus been traced back to those two scholars, and to a Text
that had not yet seen the light of day and been subjected to the scrutiny of
other scholars. And we now know that not until after the R.V. of the New
Testament had been published was it known that the Westcott and Hort Text had
been quietly imposed upon the Revisers, and that it was conformed to the two
old Codices, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.
Dean Burgon was one of the first to
call attention to the fact that the most radical departures in the R.V. were
not new translations of the Received Text, but were departures that arose from
changes in the Greek Text itself. No announcement of this important fact had
been made by the Committee; and indeed there was seemingly a disposition to
throw a veil over this part of the proceedings in Committee. "But," says Dean
Burgon, "I traced the mischief home to its two authors - Dr. Westcott and Hort
- a copy of whose unpublished text, the most vicious in existence, had been
confidentially and under pledges of the strictest secrecy, placed in the hands
of every member of the revising body."
Dean Burgon thereupon proceeded to
publish some of these facts in a series of articles which appeared in the
Quarterly Review in 1883; and subsequent events have amply proved the
correctness of his anticipations at that time, namely that the effect of
careful investigations would eventually convince all competent judges that the
principles on which the "New Greek Text" was constructed were "radically
unsound;" and that "the Revision of 1881 must come to be universally regarded
as what it most certainly is - the most astonishing, as well as the most
calamitous, literary blunder of the age!"
Dean Burgon had undertaken the
examination of the R.V. upon the supposition that that work was what its name
implies, and what its authors had been charged to produce, namely, a "Revision
of the Authorized Version" But, as he puts it, "we speedily found that an
entirely different problem awaited us. We made the distressing discovery that
the underlying Greek Text had been completely refashioned throughout." This is
the more serious because no one, upon reading the preface to the R. V. would
find any hint at such a thing. But, thanks to the thorough investigations of
scholars of the first rank (some of whom are quoted in this essay) it is now
possible for all who are interested in this great and solemn question, to
satisfy themselves that Drs. Westcott and Hort have indeed, as Dean Burgon
said, " succeeded in producing a Text vastly more remote from the inspired
autographs of the evangelists and apostles of our Lord, than any which has
appeared since the invention of printing."
"A revision of the English
Authorized Version (not, be it observed, a revision of the Greek Text having
been sanctioned by the Convention of the Southern Province of the Church of
England in 1871, the opportunity was eagerly grasped by two irresponsible
scholars of the University of Cambridge (meaning Dr. Westcott and Hort) for
obtaining the general sanction of the Revision body, and thus indirectly of the
Convocation itself, for a private venture of their own - their privately
devised Revision of the Greek Text. On that Greek Text of theirs (which I hold
to be the most depraved that has ever appeared in print) with some slight
modifications, our English Authorized Version has been silently revised:
silently, I say, for in the margin of the English no record is preserved of the
underlying Textual changes introduced by the Revisionists. On the contrary, use
has been made of that margin to insinuate suspicion and distrust, in countless
particulars as to the authenticity of parts of the Text which have been
suffered to remain unaltered."
An account of the mode of procedure of the
Revision Committee, whereby they settled the final reading of the English Text
has been published by one of the members (Dr. Newth); and as detailed by him it
is certainly not calculated to inspire us with confidence in the results
thereby arrived at. This was the mode: A passage being under consideration, the
Chairman asks, "Are any Textual changes proposed?" If a change be proposed then
"the evidence for and against is briefly stated." This is done by "two members
of the Company - Dr. Scrivener and Dr. Hort." And if those two members disagree
"The vote of the Company is taken, and the proposed Reading accepted or
rejected. The Text being thus settled, the Chairman asks for proposals on the
Rendering" (i.e., the Translation).
Thus it appears that there was no
attempt whatever on the part of the Revisionists to examine the evidence
bearing upon the many disputed readings. They only listened to the views of two
of their number (one of whom as we have seen, was fatally obsessed by a vicious
theory) and thereupon, in summary fashion, they "settled" the Text by a
majority vote. Can we possibly have any confidence in a Text that was "settled"
by such a slap-dash method? Sir Edmund Beckett in his book, 'Should the Revised
Be Authorized?' (p.42) aptly remarks concerning the above that, if Dr. Newth's
description "of the process whereby the Revisionists 'settled' the Greek
alterations is not a kind of joke, it is quite enough to 'settle' this Revised
Greek Testament in a very different sense."
Canon Cook ( R. V. of the First
Three Gospels Considered ) says concerning the above explanation by Dr. Newth,
"Such a proceeding appeared to me so strange that I fully expected the account
would be corrected, or that some explanation would be given which might remove
the very unpleasant impression." But not so. On the contrary, the Chairman
himself (Bishop Ellicott) is authority for the fact that Dr. Newth's account of
the method whereby the Greek Text was "settled" is quite correct. Sir Edmund
Beckett has, we think, put the matter very well when he said that Dr. Newth's
account of the way the Committee on Revision "settled" the Greek Text "Is quite
enough to 'settle' the Revised Version in a very different sense." For in the
production of the "New Greek Text" the Revisers have departed from the Textus
Receptus nearly 36,000 times. The question of every proposed change should have
been made a matter of careful investigation, and should have been reached
according to the weight of the evidence, for and against. But from the
published account of the proceedings, vouched for by the Chairman (Bishop
]Ellicott) as correct, we understand that in no case was there any examination
of the question, or weighing of the evidence by the Committee.
Upon this
state of things Bishop Wordsworth remarks. "The question arises whether the
Church of England, which sanctioned a revision of her Authorized Version under
the express condition (which she most wisely imposed) that no changes should be
made in it except such as were absolute necessary, could consistently accept a
Version in which 36,000 changes have been made, not a fiftieth of which can be
shown to be needed or even desirable.'
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