Chapter VIII

Hen Xerxes issued his great proclamation in favour of the Jews, it was sent, we are told, to each of the hundred and twenty-seven provinces of the Empire, from India to Ethiopia, ‘“‘and unto every people after their language.”! Could any of the nations have pleaded a wrong or a disability because the royal commands reached them only in their own dialect or tongue? Was this not altogether an advantage and a benefit? We may be sure that the great king would have made short work of such a grievance, and of those who urged it. He would have judged, and rightly judged, that the objection was merely an excuse for disaffection or disobedience. And yet one of the popular objections urged against “verbal inspiration” as a practical truth is that ordinary Christians being ignorant of the

t Esther viii. 9. 95 language in which the revelation was given are entirely dependent on translations. But this is only another phase of the very difficulty discussed in the preceding chapter. It is based upon the fallacy of supposing that words have any intrinsic or essential meaning. As we have seen, the ablest Hebraist in Christendom has not necessarily any better knowledge of the Old Testament revelation than the humblest Christian who enjoys the benefit of his learned labours. And if he be not spiritually enlightened, it may be confidently assumed that the humble Christian will have the advantage. The pundit indeed can trace words to their roots, but this sort of inquiry, important and interesting though it be to the philologist, may for practical purposes prove misleading. The meaning of a word depends, not upon its origin, but upon its use; and its use may vary at different periods of a language’s development. For example, one whom we call an uncultured peasant our forefathers would have described as a “lewd villain”; and a clever youth they would have called a “crafty knave.”

Every ancient language has a history; but while the history of modern English, and, to a certain extent, of New Testament Greek, is open to our view, the steps by which the language of

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Moses and the prophets had reached the stage of what we call sacred Hebrew, are unknown. One thing is certain, namely, that the language of the Old Testament, like that of the New, was an adaptation to high and sacred uses of words which had been current in pagan communities. - And this being so, it might be plausibly contended that our own language, having been formed and moulded upon Christian thought, is a fitter vehicle for the communication of Divine truth even than the Hebrew of the prophets or the Greek of the apostles and evangelists. Words are but counters; and counters which were rescued from base or vulgar uses may not be so fit to stand for the gold of revealed truth as ours which never have been thus prostituted.

Take an illustration. The English peasant who hears of eternal life through faith in Christ may grasp fully and at once the truth those words convey; while the Jewish peasant was much in the position of an Englishman with some newfangled translation which tells him of “age-enduring life through faith in the Anointed One.”

As a matter of fact the heresies of the eschatological controversy largely depend on the undoubted fact that neither ancient Hebrew nor classical Greek had any term equivalent to our English word “Eternal.” The Pagan mind had no such conception. Their highest thought was of prolonged existence in time, whereas eternal life in Christ is outside the sphere of time both in its origin and in its continuance.

Or take a different sort of case. If thé word “priest” suggests a false conception to a man’s mind, the study of its Hebrew or Greek equivalent will in no way correct the error. During a summer holiday in the West of Ireland I once had opportunities of addressing Roman Catholics, and I conceived the plan of weaning them from the errors of their creed by speaking of the priesthood of Christ. But I found that while my words were Scriptural and right, the meaning they conveyed to my hearers was wholly false and wrong. ‘They understood me to mean that what Roman Catholic priests were and did, Christ was and did.

And this experience gave me the clew to the meaning of the closing verses of the fifth chapter of Hebrews. The Hebrew. Christians, in ignorance, as the writer says, of the rudiments even of revealed religion, assumed that there was a necessary connection between the office of a priest

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and the offering of sacrifices for sins ;! and therefore the doctrine of the priesthood of Christ operated in their case to undermine one of the great truths of the Epistle, that “there is no more offering for sin.” 2

All objections to verbal inspiration which are based on the phenomena of language may be ruled out, for they rest on no substantial foundation. That a revelation could be made only in human language is a necessity from the limitations of human thought; and how there can be language without words — how there can be inspiration

* Ignorance which the most elementary knowledge of Scripture ought to have removed; for there were sacrifices long before there were priests. The words of Heb. v. 12 (R.V.) are, “Ye have need that one teach you again which be the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God.” The words of vi. 1 are, “the first principles of Christ.” The one refers to revealed religion generally, the other to the special revelation of Judaism.

2 At Professor Sanday’s Oxford Conference on this subject, the Rev. Mr. Puller, of the “Cowley Fathers,” was the only member who seemed to grasp the elementary truth that the work of priesthood began after the sacrifice had been killed, and that the priesthood of Christ dates from His ascension. “On earth He could not be a priest at all” (Heb. viii. 4, R.V.).

The R.V. of Heb. v. 1 makes havoc of the truth. It tells us that every high priest is taken from among men, and is appointed to offer sacrifices for sins. The teaching of the verse is correctly given in A.V., that every high-priest-taken-from-among-men (i.e., every Aaronic priest) is appointed for that purpose. But our High Priest is “the Son of God” (iv. 14), and His priesthood is ‘based upon the Sacrifice which has for ever put away sin, so that now “there is no more offering for sin” (x. 18).

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other than verbal inspiration — is a metaphysical problem which I confess I am not clever enough to be able to solve.t And the question whether a revelation gains or loses by being translated from one language into another depends on whether the language into which it is rendered is better or worse fitted to clothe and express the thoughts contained in it.

The objections which some writers urge against verbal inspiration are analogous to those which other writers urge against belief in a personal God who thinks and loves. They call this ‘“‘anthropomorphism.” But let no one be scared at being called by such a hard name. They who use it — very superior persons. they are — are like silly children who ape full-grown people. When the silly children discover their folly by some disaster, they can be whipped and put to bed; but the philosophers may not discover theirs until it be too late for repentance. We do not assume that God really has ears and nostrils and hands and feet, any more than that He has a language of His own. But the wisest and best of us are like children — very young and very foolish children, — and as He pities us as

* Of course a revelation may be by way of visions, as in the: Apocalypse; but this only puts the question one step back.

Cu. VIII.] ORIGINAL RECORDS LOST 101

a father pities his children, He speaks to us about Himself in a way we can understand. Let no one, then, be cajoled or browbeaten into the mingled pedantry and silliness and sin of thinking we are wiser than He is, or that we can do without verbal inspiration and the God of the Bible.

But an objection of another kind remains. The original records of the Divine revelation have been lost, and vast periods of time separate us from them. For example, some five and thirty centuries have passed since Moses wrote, and yet the oldest Hebrew record we possess of his writings was probably written after the time of Alfred the Great of England. We deem it a disadvantage to have access only to a copy of an important document, but here it is a case of repeated copying during thousands of years, and in circumstances of which we know but little.

Now this objection is a real one, and it must be owned that at first sight it seems extremely formidable. But its fAvactzcal importance grows less and less the more closely we examine it.

In the first place, the special importance to us of the Hebrew Scriptures depends on their relation to Christianity; and as the Jew was the custodian of them, it is certain that if they

JS

1oz2 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM

have been wilfully tampered with, the change has not been made in the interests of Christian truth. But in the second place, the extreme reverence with which the Jews regarded their Scriptures affords a powerful guarantee against any deliberate corruption of the text. It may be taken as certain that any errors which have crept in are errors accidentally made in copying the manuscripts. And when estimating the number and, what is of more importance, the character of such errors, the Jewish reverence for the text claims very special consideration. For it insured such care in copying as to make any blunder of a really serious kind improbable in the extreme.

We know, for example, that in the days of the Massoretes, to whom we practically owe our text of the Old Testament, not only the words, but the very letters, contained in the sacred books were counted. And we know also that even when words were believed to have been erroneously inserted or omitted, the scribes never dared to make a correction save by a marginal note. And there is no reason to doubt that these practices were based on the habits and traditions of earlier days.

Hostile critics have sometimes sought to score

Cu. VIII.] TEXTUAL CRITICISM 103

a point by appealing to the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint version. But not even a hostile critic would deny that if the Massoretic text were revised in the light of those authorities, the result would be prejudicial to accuracy; and, further, that even if the revision were drastic and reckless, it would not affect a single question of morals or a single point of Christian truth or doctrine. And this being so, the whole question, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, is one of purely academic interest.

And a kindred remark applies equally in regard to the New Testament. <A fact which is all the more striking and important because the materials for hostile criticism here are vastly greater than in the case of the Old Testament. All our leading commentators have grappled with the question. Ass it has been well said, “All of them face that formidable phantom of textual criticism, with its 120,000 various readings in the New Testament alone, and will enable us to march up to it, and discover that it is empty air; that still we may say with the boldest and acutest of English critics, Bentley, ‘choose (out of the whole MSS.) as awkwardly as you will, choose the worst by design out of the whole lump of readings, and not one article of faith or moral precept is either perverted or lost in them. Put them into the hands of a knave or a fool, and even with the most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not extinguish the light of any one chapter, or so disguise Christianity but that every feature of it will still be the same.’”

These words have since received most striking confirmation, In the Revised Version of the New Testament textual criticism has done its worst. It is inconceivable that it will ever again be allowed to run riot as in the work of the Revisers of 1881. When that version appeared, Bishop Wordsworth of Lincoln raised the question “whether the Church of England, — which in her Synod, so far as this Province is concerned, sanctioned a Revision of her Authorised Version under the express condition, which she most wisely imposed, that xo changes should be made in wt except what were absolutely necessary, — could consistently accept a version in which 36,000 changes have been made; xot a fiftieth of which can be shown to be needed, or even desirable.”

But what concerns us here is not the changes in the translation, but the far more serious matter of the changes in the ¢er¢. The question at issue between the majority of the Revisers, who followed Doctors Hort and Westcott, and the very able and weighty minority led by Dr. Scrivener, the most capable and eminent ‘textual critic” of the whole company, was one with which every lawyer is familiar, but of which the Revisers may have had no experience, and with which they were not competent to deal.

We have a far greater number of MSS. of the New Testament than of the heathen classics; but, strange to say, with four exceptions, none of these are older than the sixth century of our era. But we possess “versions” (or translations) which are older than any known MSS.; and the writings of the early Fathers abound in quotations from the New Testament.! We are thus enabled indirectly to reach MSS. much older than the oldest that have survived. And: as the Fathers were scattered over the Christendom of their time, their acquaintance with the text was derived, of course, from very many independent sources. And when their quotations agree with one another, and also with the ‘‘ versions,” as well as with our later MSS., many of which must have been copied from MSS. more ancient than any

t It has been said that if the Gospels were lost the text could be regained, with trifling gaps, from the writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. (Dr. Sinker’s Higher Criticism, p. 177.)

which have survived, this agreement will satisfy any one who is versed in the rudiments of the science of evidence.

But while the lawyer understands the value of indirect evidence, the layman is always inclined to disparage it in favour of the direct. Witnesses of credit and repute testify that they saw the accused commit the crime with which ‘he is charged. What more can any one want? The average juryman is ready at once to convict; and he cannot imagine why the judge should allow further time to be spent upon the case. But the judge knows well that evidence of this kind is apt to err, and needs to be tested with the utmost care.! Now the old MSS. are the witnesses of credit and repute, and the Revisers played the part of the average juryman; and there being unfortunately no one to check them, they convicted the Authorised Version of inaccuracy in numberless instances. But, in the opinion of the greatest critical authority among the Revisers, whose protests were unavailing to prevent this deplorable mutilation of the sacred text, the

* Of course, if the accused is seized at the time, the evidence of eye-witnesses is conclusive. The conflict between direct and indirect evidence arises where the accused is arrested after an interval, and his identity becomes the salient question in the case. system on which these changes were made ‘“‘is entirely destitute of historical foundation.”!

If the Revisers had kept to the terms of their commission, and been content with the correction of “manifest errors,” a very few sessions would have sufficed to produce a text which might have commanded universal acceptance. But it is certain that errors were not manzfest when many of the greatest of contemporary critics and scholars could not regard them as errors at all — men like the minority upon their own company, men like the eminent prelate I have quoted, and the learned editor of Zhe Speaker’s Commentary. And as several of the Revisers themselves have explained in detail the principles on which the revision of the text was conducted, and those principles are found to be unsound when judged by the science of evidence, our confidence in the result of their labours is destroyed.

The “argument” of the present volume demands a reference to this question, but -a fuller discussion of it would be out of place. I will therefore dismiss it by citing a single illustrative instance of reckless and erroneous

t Dr. Scrivener, Plain Introduction, &c.

alteration of the text. And instances of the kind abound, especially in the Gospels. The instance I select is ‘the Herald Angels’ song,” and I choose it not only as being thoroughly typical of the methods of the Revisers, but also because of its importance and the interest attaching to it. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” :! for these words, which hold such a place in the memory and heart of every English-speaking Christian, the miserable substitute offered us is, ‘‘ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men in whom He is well pleased.” This one piece of mutilation might suffice to discredit the work of the Revisers. Two questions are here involved, the altered text, and the translation of that text. The English of the Revisers, says one of the most eminent of their own number, “can be arrived at only through some process which would make any phrase bear almost any meaning the translator might like to put upon it.”2 “‘Men in whom He is well pleased,” says the editor of The Speaker’s Commentary, ‘seems to me impossible as a translation of a@vOpwro edvdoxiac.

* Luke ii. 14. 2 Dr. Scrivener’s Introduction (Ed. Miller), vol. ii., p. 347.

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do not know whether those Greek words have any meaning, but if they have they must designate men of a certain quality or character.”! Then as regards the text, the whole difference is the addition of the letter s to the word eudohia ;: and the manuscript authority for this addition is the reading of four ancient Greek MSS.,? every other known copy of the Gospels being against tt.

Now this is precisely the sort of question in respect of which any one who has practical acquaintance with the science of evidence would appeal to Patristic authority, and that appeal would dispose of the whole matter; for the testimony of the Greek Fathers in favour of the familiar reading is overwhelming.3

RV. of the First Three Gospels, p. 30. Canon Cook adds, “What is meant by the marginal rendering ‘men of good pleasure’ I am utterly at a loss to conjecture.”

2 Canon Cook enumerates them as the Sinaitic, and A, B, and D, and he adds that the text of the first and third of these “was noted as incorrect by a critical scholar at the time when the manuscript was written” (Ibid., pp. 27, 28).

3 In The Revision Revised (pp. 42-44), Dean Burgon gives the list of Fathers from the second to the sixth century, indicating that the words as known to us, i.¢., as given in our A.V., were quoted by them fifty-eight times. Speaking generally, the Greek authorities are on the side of the A.V.; while the R.V. can appeal to the Latin versions. This is remarkable, but the explanation of it is simple. Some ancient MS. upon which the first Latin version was based, evidently omitted the preposition from the sentence, and as this destroyed its meaning the s was added to eudokia to make the words intelligible.

“On earth peace, good will toward men ’” — the Christian may still rejoice in these hallowed and most precious words. And he may assume with confidence that here, as in so many other instances, the Revisers’ changes in the text are new errors, and not the correction of old errors. And yet the fact remains — indeed it is universally acknowledged — that even a révision conducted so unwisely and on a system so opposed to all the principles and rules of evidence, has not destroyed a single truth of Christianity or left a single point of Christian doctrine or practice in jeopardy. The sceptical taunt that textual criticism undermines the truth of Inspiration is for ever silenced by the Revised Version of the New Testament.!

* See App. Note II.