Chapter XII

, Irenaeus cites Acts viii. 37 without the least misgiving, though the spuriousness of the verse can hardly be doubted; and expressly testifies to a reading in Matt. i. 18 which has not till lately found many advocates. It is hard to believe that 1 John v. 7, 8 was not cited by Cyprian, and even the interpolation in Matt. xx. 28 was widely known and received. Many other examples might be produced from the most venerable Christian writers, in which they countenance variations (and those not arbitrary, but resting on some sort of authority) which no modern critic has ever attempted to vindicate.

6. When we come down to the fourth century, our information grows at once more definite and more trustworthy. Copies of Scripture had been extensively destroyed during the long and terrible period of affliction that preceded the conversion of Constantine. In the very edict which marked the beginning of Diocletian’s persecution, it is ordered that the holy writings should be burnt (τὰς γραφὰς ἀφανεῖς πυρὶ γενέσθαι, Eusebius, Eccl. Hist., viii. 2); and the cruel decree was so rigidly enforced that a special name of reproach (_traditores_), together with the heaviest censures of the Church, was laid upon those Christians who betrayed the sacred trust (Bingham, Antiquities, book xvi. ch. vi. 25). At such a period critical revision or even the ordinary care of devout transcribers must have disappeared before the pressure of the times. Fresh copies of the New Testament would have to be made in haste to supply the room of those seized by the enemies of our Faith; and, when made, they had to circulate by stealth among persons whose lives were in jeopardy every hour. Hence arose the need, when the tempest was overpast, of transcribing many new manuscripts of the Holy Bible, the rather as the Church was now receiving vast accessions of converts within her pale. Eusebius of Caesarea, the ecclesiastical historian, seems to have taken the lead in this happy labour; his extensive learning, which by the aid of certain other less commendable qualities had placed him high in Constantine’s favour, rendered it natural that the emperor should employ his services for furnishing with fifty copies of Scripture the churches of his new capital, Constantinople. Eusebius’ deep interest in Biblical studies is exhibited in several of his surviving works, as well as in his Canons for harmonizing the Gospels: and he would naturally betake himself for the text of his fifty codices to the Library founded at his Episcopal city of Caesarea by the martyr Pamphilus, the dear friend and teacher from whom he derived his own familiar appellation _Eusebius Pamphili_. Into this Library Pamphilus had gathered manuscripts of Origen as well as of other theologians, and of these Eusebius made an index (τοὺς πίνακας παρεθέμην: Eccles. Hist., vi. 32). From this collection Cod. H of St. Paul and others are stated to have been derived, nay even Cod. א in its Old Testament portion (_see_ vol. I. p. 55 and note), which is expressly declared to have been corrected to the Hexapla of Origen. Indeed we know from Jerome (Comment. in Epist. ad Tit.) that the very autograph (“ipsa authentica”) of Origen’s Hexapla was used by himself at Caesarea, and Montfaucon (Praeliminaria in Hexapl., chap. i. 5) cites from one manuscript the following subscription to Ezekiel, Ὁ Εὐσέβιος ἐγὼ σχόλια παρέθηκα. Πάμφιλος καὶ Εὐσέβιος ἐδιωρθώσαντο.

7. We are thus warranted, as well from direct evidence as from the analogy of the Old Testament, to believe that Eusebius mainly resorted for his Constantinopolitan Church-books to the codices of Pamphilus, which might once have belonged to Origen. What critical corrections (if any) he ventured to make in the text on his own judgement is not so clear. Not that there is the least cause to believe, with Dr. Nolan (Inquiry into the Integrity of the Greek Vulgate, p. 27), that Eusebius had either the power or the will to suppress or tamper with the great doctrinal texts 1 John v. 7, 8; 1 Tim. iii. 16; Acts xx. 28; yet we cannot deny that his prepossessions may have tempted him to arbitrary alterations in other passages, which had no direct bearing on the controversies of his age(279). Codd. אB are quite old enough to have been copied under his inspection(280), and it is certainly very remarkable that these two early manuscripts omit one whole paragraph (Mark xvi. 9-20) with his sanction, if not after his example (_see_ below, Chap. XII). Thus also in Matt, xxiii. 35 Cod. א, with the countenance only of Evan. 59, Evst. 6, 13, 222 (see under Evst. 222), discards υἱοῦ βαραχίον, for which change Eusebius (_silentio_) is literally the only authority among the Fathers, Irenaeus and even Origen retaining the words, in spite of their obvious difficulty. The relation in which Cod. א stands to the other four chief manuscripts of the Gospels, may be roughly estimated from analyzing the transcript of four pages first published by Tischendorf(281), as well as in any other way. Of the 312 variations from the common text therein noted, א stands alone in forty-five, in eight agrees with ABCD united (much of C, however, is lost in these passages), with ABC together thirty-one times, with ABD fourteen, with AB thirteen, with D alone ten, with B alone but once (Mark i. 27), with C alone once: with several authorities against AB thirty-nine times, with A against B fifty-two, with B against A ninety-eight. Hence, while the discovery of this precious document has unquestionably done much to uphold Cod. B (which is the more correctly written, and doubtless the more valuable of the two) in many of its more characteristic and singular readings, it has made the mutual divergencies of the very oldest critical authorities more patent and perplexing than ever(282).

8. Codd. אB were apparently anterior to the age of Jerome, the latest ecclesiastical writer whose testimony need be dwelt upon, since from his time downwards the stream of extant and direct manuscript evidence, beginning with Codd. AC, flows on without interruption. Jerome’s attention was directed to the criticism of the Greek Testament by his early Biblical studies, and the knowledge he thus obtained had full scope for its exercise when he was engaged on revising the Old Latin version. In his so-often cited “Praefatio ad Damasum,” prefixed to his recension of the Gospels, he complains of certain “codices, quos a Luciano et Hesychio nuncupatos, paucorum hominum asserit perversa contentio,” and those not of the Old Testament alone, but also of the New. This obscure and passing notice of corrupt and (apparently) interpolated copies has been made the foundation of more than one theory as fanciful as ingenious. Jerome further informs us that he had adopted in his translation the canons which Eusebius “Alexandrium secutus Ammonium” (_but __ see_ Vol. I. pp. 59, &c.) had invented or first brought into vogue; stating, and, in his usual fashion, somewhat exaggerating(283), an evil these canons helped to remedy, the mixing up of the matter peculiar to one Evangelist with the narrative of another. Hence we might naturally expect that the Greek manuscripts he would view with special favour, were the same as Eusebius had approved before him. In the scattered notices throughout his works, Jerome sometimes speaks but vaguely of “quaedam exemplaria tam Graeca quam Latina” (Luke xxii. 43-4, almost in the words of Hilary, his senior); or appeals to readings “in quibusdam exemplaribus et maximè in Graecis codicibus” (Mark xvi. 14). Occasionally we hear of “multi et Graeci et Latini codices” (John vii. 53), or “vera exemplaria” (Matt. v. 22; xxi. 31), or “antiqua exemplaria” (Luke ix. 23), without specifying in which language: Mark xvi. 9-20 “in raris fertur Evangeliis,” since “omnes Graeciae libri paene” do not contain it(284). In two places, however, he gives a more definite account of the copies he most regarded. In Galat. iii. 1 τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι is omitted by Jerome, because it is not contained “in exemplaribus Adamantii,” although (as he elsewhere informs us) “et Graeca exemplaria hoc errore confusa sint.” In the other of the two passages Jerome remarks that in some Latin copies of Matt. xxiv. 36 _neque filius_ is added, “quum in Graecis, et maxime Adamantii et Pierii exemplaribus, hoc non habeatur adscriptum.” Pierius the presbyter of Alexandria, elsewhere called by Jerome “the younger Origen” (Cat. Scriptt. Eccl., i. p. 128), has been deprived by fortune of the honour due to his merit and learning. A contemporary, perhaps the teacher of Pamphilus (Euseb., Eccl. Hist., vii. 32) at Caesarea, his copies of Scripture would naturally be preserved with those of Origen in the great Library of that city. Here they were doubtless seen by Jerome when, to his deep joy, he found Origen’s writings copied in Pamphilus’ hand (Cat. Scriptt. Eccl., _ubi supra_), which volumes Acacius and Euzoius, elder contemporaries of Jerome himself, had taken pious care to repair and renew (_ibid._ i. p. 131; ad Marcell. Ep. cxli). It is not therefore wonderful if, employing as they did and setting a high value on precisely the same manuscripts of the N. T., the readings approved by Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome should closely agree.

9. Epiphanius [d. 403], who wrote at about the same period as Jerome, distinguishes in his note on Luke xix. 41 or xxii. 44 (Tom. ii. p. 36) between the uncorrected copies (ἀδιορθώτοις), and those used by the Orthodox(285). Of the function of the “corrector” (διορθωτής) of an ancient manuscript we have spoken several times before: but a system was devised by Professor J. L. Hug of Freyburg (Einleitung, 1808), and maintained, though with some modifications, by J. G. Eichhorn, which assigned to these occasional, and (as they would seem to be) unsystematic labours of the reviser, a foremost place in the criticism of the N. T. Hug conceived that the process of corruption had been going on so rapidly and uniformly from the Apostolic age downwards, that by the middle of the third century the state of the text in the general mass of codices had degenerated into the form exhibited in Codd. D, 1, 13, 69, 124 of the Gospels, the Old Latin and Sahidic (he would now have added the Curetonian Syriac) versions, and to some extent in the Peshitto and in the citations of Clement of Alexandria and of Origen in his early works. To this uncorrected text he gave the name of κοινὴ ἔκδοσις, and that it existed, substantially in the interpolated shape now seen in Cod. D, the Old Latin, and Cureton’s Syriac, as early as the second century, need not be doubted. There is some foundation for this position, but it was marred by Hug’s lack of sobriety of judgement. What we may fairly dispute is that this text ever had extensive circulation or good repute in the Churches whose vernacular language was Greek. This “common edition” Hug supposes to have received three separate emendations in the middle of the third century; one made by Origen in Palestine, which he thinks Jerome adopted and approved; two others by Hesychius and Lucian (a presbyter of Antioch and Martyr), in Egypt and Syria respectively, both which Jerome condemned, and Pope Gelasius (A.D. 492-6) declared to be apocryphal(286). To Origen’s recension he referred such copies as AKM, 42, 106, 114, 116, 253 of the Gospels, the Harkleian Syriac, the quotations of Chrysostom and Theodoret; to Hesychius the Alexandrian codices BCL; to Lucian the Byzantine documents EFGHSV and the mass of later books. The practical effect of this elaborate theory would be to accord to Cod. A a higher place among our authorities than some recent editors have granted it, even than it quite deserves, yet its correspondence with Origen in many characteristic readings would thus be admitted and accounted for (_but see_ p. 226). But in truth Hug’s whole scheme is utterly baseless as regards historical fact, and most insufficiently sustained by internal proof. Jerome’s slight and solitary mention of the copies of Lucian and Hesychius abundantly evinces their narrow circulation and the low esteem in which they were held; and even Eichhorn perceived that there was no evidence whatever to show that Origen had attempted a formal revision of the text. The passages cited above, both from Eusebius and Jerome—and no others are known to bear on the subject—will carry us no further than this:—that these Fathers had access to codices of the N. T. once possessed by Adamantius, and here and there, perhaps, retouched by his hand. The manuscripts copied by Pamphilus were those of Origen’s own works; and while we have full and detailed accounts of what he accomplished for the Greek versions of the Old Testament, no hint has been thrown out by any ancient writer that he carried his pious labour into the criticism of the New. On the contrary, he seems to disclaim the task in a sentence now extant chiefly in the old Latin version of his works, wherein, to a notice of his attempt to remove diversity of reading from codices of the Septuagint by the help of “the other editions” (κριτηρίῳ χρησάμενοι ταῖς λοιπαῖς ἐκδόσεσιν, i.e. the versions of Aquila and the rest), he is represented as adding, “In exemplaribus autem Novi Testamenti, hoc ipsum me posse facere sine periculo non putavi” (Origen, Tom. iii. p. 671).

10. Hug’s system of recensions was devised as a corrective to those of Bengel and of Griesbach, which have been adequately discussed in