“Aleph B D are three of the most scandalously corrupt copies extant: exhibit the most shamefully mutilated texts which are anywhere to be met with: have become, by whatever process (for their history is wholly unknown), the depositories of the largest amount of fabricated readings, ancient blunders, and intentional perversions of Truth which are discoverable in any known copies of the Word of God.” Revision Revised, p 16 |
"How ready the most recent editors of the New Testament have shewn themselves to hammer the sacred text on the anvil of Codices B and Aleph... I am bent on shewing that there is nothing whatever in the character of either of the Codices in question to warrant this servile deference... it is easier to find two consecutive verses in which the two MSS differ, the one from the other, than two consecutive verses in which they entirely agree. Now this is a plain matter of fact, of which any one who pleases may easily convince himself." The Last Twelve Verses Of Mark, p 77-78 |
"Codex B... bears traces of careless transcription in every page. The mistakes which the original transcriber made are of perpetual recurrence." The Last Twelve Verses Of Mark, p 72 |
"My apology for bestowing so large a portion of my time on Textual Criticism, is David's he was reproached by his brethren for appearing on the field of battle - 'Is there not a cause?'" Revision Revised, p xxix |
"If all this does not constitute a valid reason for descending into the arena of controversy, it would in my judgment be impossible to indicate an occasion when the Christian soldier is called upon to do so - the rather, because certain of those who, from their rank and station in the Church, ought to be the champions of the Truth, are at this time found to be among its most vigorous assailants." Revision Revised, p xxx |
"Dr. Hort is for conjecturally thrusting into Acts 20:28, "Uiou" (after "tou idiou"), an imagination to which he devotes a column and half, but for which he is not able to produce a particle of evidence. It would result in reading, 'to feed the Church of God, which He purchased' - not 'with HIS OWN blood,' but - 'with the blood of His OWN SON:' which has evidently been suggested by nothing so much as by the supposed necessity of getting rid of a text which unequivocally asserts that Christ is God. This is the TRUE reason of the eagerness which has been displayed in certain quarters to find "who" (not "GOD") in 1 Timothy 3:16." Revision Revised, p 353 |
"Numerous as were the heresies of the first two or
three centuries of the Christian era, they almost all agreed in this -
that they involved a denial of the eternal Godhead of the Son of Man -
denied that He is essentially very and eternal God... It
is a memorable circumstance that it is precisely those very texts
which relate either to the eternal generation of the Son, to His
Incarnation, or to the circumstances of His Nativity, which have
suffered most severely, and retain to this hour traces of having been in
various ways tampered with." The Causes of the Corruption of The Traditional
Text of The Holy Gospels, p 196-197
|
"To raise an irrelevant discussion at the outset concerning the Textus Receptus -- to describe the haste with which Erasmus produced the first published edition of the N. T. -- to make sport about copies which he employed -- all this kind of thing is the proceeding of one who seeks to mislead his readers -- to throw dust into their eyes -- to divert their attention from the problem actually before them -- not, as we confidently expect when we have to do with such writers as these -- the method of a sincere lover of Truth." Revision Revised, p 18 |
"Verily, those men [the translators of the 1611 Authorised Version] understood their craft! 'There were giants in those days.' As little would they submit to be bound by the new cords of the Philistines as by their green withes. Upon occasion, they could shake themselves free from either. And why? For the selfsame reason: viz., because the Spirit of their God was mightily upon them." Revision Revised, p 196 |
"But then it speedily becomes evident that, at the bottom of all this, there existed in the minds of the Revisionists of 1611 a profound (shall we not rather say a prophetic?) consciousness, that the fate of the English Language itself was bound up with the fate of their Translation." Revision Revised, p 188 |
"Our business as Critics is not to invent theories to account for the errors of Copyists." The Last Twelve Verses Of Mark, p 100 |
"Marcion the heretic, (AD 140) is distinctly charged by Tertullian (AD 200), and by Jerome a century and a half later, with having abundantly mutilated the text of Scripture, and of S. Paul's Epistles in particular. Epiphanius compares the writing which Marcion tampered with to a moth-eaten coat. "Instead of a stylus," says Tertullian, "Marcion employed a knife. What wonder if he omits syllables, since often he omits whole pages?" S. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, Tertullian even singles out by name, accusing Marcion of having furnished it with a new title." The Last Twelve Verses Of Mark, p 106 |
"It is absolutely unreasonable for men to go out of their way to invent a theory wanting every element of probability in order to account for the omission of the words "en Epheso" from S. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians while they have under their eyes the express testimony of a competent witness of the 2nd century that a certain heretic, named Marcion, "presumed to prefix an unauthorized title to that very Epistle," - "Marcion ei titulum aliquando interpolare gestiit," - which title obviously could not stand unless these two words were first erased from the text." The Last Twelve Verses Of Mark, p 108 |
"To say that the Vatican Codex (B)... ends abruptly at the 8th verse of the 16th chapter [of Mark's Gospel], and that the customary subscription (kata Markon) follows, is true - but it is far from being the whole truth. It requires to be stated in addition that the scribe, whose plan is found to have been to begin every fresh book of the Bible at the top of the next ensuing column to that which contained the concluding words of the preceding book, has at the close of S. Mark's Gospel deviated from his else invariable practice. He has left in this place one column entirely vacant. It is the only column in the whole manuscript - a blank space abundantly sufficient to contain the twelve verses which he nevertheless withheld... The older MS from Codex B was copied must have infallibly contained the twelve verses in dispute. The copyist was instructed to leave them out, and he obeyed, but he prudently left a blank space in memorian rei. Never was blank more intelligible! Never was silence more eloquent! By this simple expedient, strange to relate, the Vatican Codex is made to refute itself... By leaving room for the verses it omits, it brings into prominent notice at the end of fifteen centuries and a half, a more ancient witness than itself. The venerable author of the original Codex from which Codex B was copied, is thereby brought into view. And thus, our supposed adversary (Codex B) proves our most useful ally: for it procures us the testimony of an hitherto unsuspected witness." The Last Twelve Verses Of Mark, p 86-87 |
"In Matthew 21:31... some ancient scribe, who can have been but slenderly acquainted with the Greek language, seems to have conceived the notion that a more precise way of identifying the son who "afterwards repented and went," would be to designate him as "the latter." Accordingly, in reply to the question - "which of the two did the will of his Father" - we are presented - but only in Codex B - with the astonishing information - "they said, the latter." And yet seeing clearly that this made nonsense of the parable, some subsequent critic is found to have transposed the order of the two sons, and in that queer condition the parable comes down to us in the famous Vatican Codex B." The Last Twelve Verses Of Mark, p 83 |
"The task of laboriously collating the
five 'old uncials' throughout the Gospels, occupied me for
five-and-a-half years, and taxed me severely. But I was rewarded. I rose
from the investigation profoundly convinced that, however important they
may be as instruments of Criticism, codices
|
"High time however is it to declare that, in strictness, all this talk about 'Genealogical evidence,' when applied to Manuscripts, is moonshine... It happens, unfortunately, that we are unacquainted with one single instance of a known MS copied from another known MS. And perforce all talk about 'Genealogical evidence,' where no single step in the descent can be produced - in other words, where no Genealogical evidence exists - is absurd." Revision Revised, p 255-256 |
"It is entirely to misunderstand the question, to object that the preceding Collation has been made with the Text of Stephanus open before us. Robert Etienne [Stephanus] in the 16th century was not the cause why codex B in the 4th century, and codex D in the 6th, are so widely discordant from one another; A and C, so utterly at variance with both. The simplest explanation of the phenomena is the truest; namely, that B and D exhibit grossly depraved Texts - a circumstance of which it is impossible that the ordinary Reader should be too soon or too often reminded." Revision Revised, p 249-250 |
"Drs. Westcott and Hort's New Testament in the original Greek was discovered to partake inconveniently of the nature of a work of the Imagination... We became easily convinced that those accomplished Scholars had 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." Revision Revised, p 240 |
"Claiming to be an attempt to determine the Truth of Scripture on scientific principles, the work before us [Westcott-Hort Text] may be regarded as the latest outcome of that violent recoil from the Traditional Greek Text - that strange impatience of its authority - or rather denial that it possesses any authority at all - which began with Lachmann just 50 years ago (viz. in 1831), and has prevailed ever since; its most conspicuous promoters being Tregelles (1857-72) and Tischendorf (1865-72)." Revision Revised, p 241-242 |
"It becomes evident that, by this ill-advised proceeding our Revisionists [Westcott & Hort] would convert every Englishman's copy of the New Testament into a one-sided Introduction to the Critical difficulties of the Greek Text; a labyrinth out of which they have not been at the pains to supply him with a single hint as to how he may find his way. On the contrary. By candidly avowing that they find themselves enveloped in the same Stygian darkness with the ordinary English Reader, they give him to understand that there is absolutely no escape from the difficulty. What else must be the result of all this but general uncertainty, confusion, distress? A hazy mistrust of all Scripture has been insinuated into the hearts and minds of countless millions, who in this way have been forced to become doubters - yes, doubters in the Truth of Revelation itself. One recalls sorrowfully the terrible woe denounced by the Author of Scripture on those who minister occasions of falling to others - 'It must needs be that offences come, but WOE to that man by whom the offence cometh!'" Revision Revised, p 236-237 |
"It has been also proved that instead of there being discovered twenty-seven suspicious words and phrases scattered up and down these [last] twelve verses of the Gospel [of Mark], there actually exist exactly as many words and phrases which attest with more or less certainty that those verses are nothing else but the work of the Evangelist." Last Twelve Verses, p 173 |
"The reader will be perhaps interested with the following passage in the pages of Professor Broadus already alluded to - 'It occurred to me to examine the twelve just preceding verses (15:44 - 16:8), and by a curious coincidence, the words and expressions not elsewhere employed by Mark, footed up precisely the same number - seventeen.'" Last Twelve Verses, p 174 |
"I hesitate not to avow my personal conviction that abundant and striking evidence is garnered up within the brief compass of these [last] Twelve Verses [of Mark] that they are identical in respect of fabric with the rest of the Gospel; were clearly manufactured out of the same Divine materials - wrought in the same heavenly loom." Last Twelve Verses, p 181 |
"It was of course foreseen by Almighty God from the beginning that this portion of His Word would be - like its Divine Author - in these last days cavilled at, reviled, hated, rejected, denied - that the Spirit would not leave Himself without witness in this place. It was to have been anticipated, I say, that Eternal Wisdom... would carefully make provision: meet the coming unbelief - as His Angel met Balaam - with a drawn sword: plant up and down throughout these [last] Twelve Verses of the Gospel [of Mark], sure indications of their Divine Original - unmistakable notes of purpose and design, mysterious traces and tokens of Himself; not visible indeed to the scornful and arrogant, the impatient and irreverent; yet clear as if written with a sunbeam to the patient and humble student, the man who trembleth at God's Word." Last Twelve Verses, p 181 |
“Vanquished by THE WORD Incarnate, Satan next directed his subtle malice against THE WORD Written… My apology for bestowing so large a portion of my time on Textual Criticism, is David’s when he was reproached by his brethren for appearing on the field of battle,—’Is there not a cause?’” Revision Revised |
B C D are
among the most corrupt documents extant."
Revision Revised, p 376