3 Quotations
Our third source of material for the restoration of the text of the New Testament is Quotations found in other books. These are of great value, because they represent, for the most part, definite manuscripts existing in certain places at the time of the writer quoting them, and also because a large number of them belong to a time from which no codices have come down to us. The value of their testimony depends, of course, on the conditions already mentioned (p. 32)—viz., that the author quoted accurately, and the copyist copied faithfully, and the editor edited correctly. Quotations made by Jewish writers as well as by Christian will fall to be considered, only it is doubtful if in their case we have more than one or two uncertain allusions to Matthew v. 17. So, too, will the quotations made by pagan opponents of Christianity, particularly those of Celsus in the second century, and of the Emperor Julian. But here again we are not in possession of their complete works, which can only be restored by a similar process and with more or less uncertainty from the quotations from them found in the writings of the Apologists.114 The books of those Christian Churches which were isolated from the main church will also be valuable. Even a verse of Scripture carved upon a stone in an old ruin may have something to tell us.
Brief quotations were usually made from memory. It was not so convenient to turn up the passage in an old manuscript as it is now in our handy printed editions.115 In the case of longer passages and verbal quotations generally, indolent copyists were sometimes content with simply adding καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς. In the Apostolic Constitutions, ii. 22, for example, where the entire prayer of Manasses was meant to be given, the copyist of a certain manuscript,116 after writing the opening words from Κύριε down to δικαίου, omitted all the rest, amounting to thirty-one lines of print, substituting simply καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς τῆς εὐχῆς ἃ ὑμεῖς οὐκ ἀγνοεῖτε. (See further, Apost. Const., i. 7, Lagarde, p. 8, 23; ii. 14, p. 28, 7. 11; 29, 2). This, however, is not without its parallel in modern times. As late as 1872, an Oxford editor, in bringing out Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, wrote down only the initial and final words of the quotations in his manuscript, and allowed the compositor to set up the rest from a printed edition of the Textus Receptus. Another editor in Vienna, in preparing an edition of Cyprian’s Works, preferred those very manuscripts in which the Scriptural quotations had been accommodated to the current text of later times. Only when a quotation is given by an author several times in exactly the same form is it safe to depend on the actual wording, or when in a Commentary, e.g., the context agrees with the quoted text. Collections of Scriptural passages like the Testimonia of Cyprian and the so-called Speculum of Augustine are also taken directly from manuscripts of the Bible.
Francis Lucas of Brügge was the first to explore the writings of the Church Fathers for the express purposes of textual criticism. They are referred to in four notes found in the Complutensian Polyglot. In his edition of 1516, Erasmus cites a whole series of Patristic witnesses—Ambrosius, Athanasius, Augustine, Cyprian, Gregory of Nazianzen, Origen, and Theodoret. Since that time all judicious critics have paid attention to them. Valuable service has been rendered for Tertullian by Rönsch, and for Origen by Griesbach. For Augustine, Lagarde is specially to be mentioned. Most of the Fathers were thus cared for by Burgon, who indexed the New Testament quotations in sixteen large volumes, which were deposited in the British Museum after his death. The only pity is that the works of those very Fathers that are of most importance are not yet satisfactorily edited. All the more welcome, therefore, is the appearance of the Vienna Academy’s Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, of which forty volumes have been issued since 1867, and of the Berlin Academy’s edition of the Ante-Nicene Greek Fathers, of which one volume of Hippolytus and two of Origen have made their appearance.117
The earliest Fathers are valuable chiefly for the history of the Canon. That is to say, their evidence must be taken simply as showing what New Testament writings they were acquainted with, and here the argumentum ex silentio is to be applied with caution. This is the case with Barnabas and Clement118 in the first century, and Ignatius and Hermas in the first half of the second. Even with the much more extensive writings of Justin, there is still considerable dispute—e.g., as to what Gospels he made use of.119 Irenæus of Lyons is valuable on account of his extreme carefulness, and would be particularly so if it could be proved that he brought his New Testament with him from Smyrna120 and if his writings were extant in Greek, and not, as is the case with most of them, in Latin only. In Egypt Clement of Alexandria holds a prominent place, but by far the most distinguished of all is the great Biblical scholar of antiquity, Origen (d. 248). Already we find these writers appealing to manuscripts, and distinguishing them by such epithets as “good,” “old,” “emended,” “most,” or “few.” In the case of the Ante-Nicene Fathers their locality is an important consideration, whether Antioch, Cæsarea (Eusebius), Egypt, Constantinople (Chrysostom), or Cappadocia (Theodore), etc. Their expositions of Scripture are preserved in the so-called Catenæ, or continuous commentaries, in which the interpretations of different Fathers are arranged continuously like the links of a chain. It not unfrequently happens in these Catenæ that the words of one writer are cited under the name of another. The evidence afforded by the writings of the Heretics is no less valuable, if we except those passages, which are not numerous, in which they are understood to have altered the text of the Scriptures. The works of Marcion have been preserved for the most part in Latin by Tertullian. They have recently been collected and restored by Zahn. The Latin translator of Irenæus also belongs, in all probability, to the time of Tertullian, and not to the fourth century. This unknown translator seems to have preserved the Scriptural quotations of Irenæus with greater fidelity than the later Church Fathers who cite them in the Greek. Of Latin writers contemporary with or subsequent to Tertullian, those of most importance for the text of the Old Latin Bible are Cyprian, Hilary of Poictiers, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine and his opponent Pelagius, and for the Apocalypse, Tyconius and Primasius. From the works of Augustine Lagarde collected no fewer than 29540 quotations from the New Testament in addition to 13276 from the Old.
Valuable testimony is also afforded by Syrian and Armenian writers. It is only with their assistance, e.g., that it has been possible to restore one of our oldest authorities—the Diatessaron of Tatian—which dates from the second century.
(1) Further examples might be adduced of the unreliable nature of manuscripts and printed editions.
We find, e.g., in the voluminous commentary of the so-called Ambrosiaster,121 the following note on the quotation in 1 Cor. ii. 9:—“Eye hath not seen, etc.”—“hoc est scriptum in Apocalypsi Heliae in apocryphis.” In place of the last five words, two manuscripts and all the printed editions previous to that of St. Maur—i.e. prior to the year 1690—have “in Esaia propheta aliis verbis.”
Compare also what Zahn says in his Einleitung, ii. 314. “A comparison of the quotations in Matthew with the LXX. is rendered more difficult by the fact that in manuscripts of the latter written by Christians, and especially in Cod. Alexandrinus, the text of the O. T. has been accommodated to the form in which it is cited in the N. T. Cf., also, p. 563 on the quotation from Zechariah xii. 10, found in John xix. 37.” The same writer says (p. 465): “In the Chronicle of Georgios Hamartolos (circa 860), all the manuscripts save one assert the peaceful death of John (ἐν εἰρήνῃ ἀνεπαύσατο), but this one says the very opposite, μαρτυρίου κατηξίωται, and goes on to make certain other additions.” On the other hand, we must not forget in this connection the testimony preserved by Eusebius to the scrupulous care taken by Irenæus for the propagation of his writings in the identical form in which he wrote them. According to that historian, he wrote at the end of one of his works the following note:—Ὁρκίζω σε τὸν μεταγραψόμενον τὸ βιβλίον τοῦτο κατὰ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ κατὰ τῆς ἐνδόξου παρουσίας αὐτοῦ, ἧς ἔρχεται κρῖναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς, ἵνα ἀντιβάλλῃς ὃ μετεγράψω καὶ κατορθώσῃς αὐτὸ πρὸς τὸ ἀντίγραφον τοῦτο ὅθεν μετεγράψω ἐπιμελῶς, καὶ τὸν ὅρκον τοῦτον ὁμοίως μεταγράψῃς καὶ θήσεις ἐν τῷ ἀντιγράφῳ.122
(2) It was Lagarde who most clearly recognised and pointed out the unsatisfactory way in which the Fathers had previously been edited. How much care is necessary in the matter of the text is shown by the discussions connected with the treatment of Scriptural quotations in the new Vienna edition of Augustine (see Urt., 76, 94; Preuschen, in the ThLz. for 1897, 24, col. 630). Even in the new Berlin edition one cannot absolutely rely on the form of the Scriptural quotations exhibited in the text, but must always verify it by means of an independent examination of the apparatus. A few passages from the first volume of Origen recently published will show this, and prove at the same time how faulty the editions have been hitherto. This first volume of Koetschau’s new edition of Origen opens with the Exhortation to Martyrdom (εἰς μαρτύριον προτρεπτικός), a work which is to be assigned to the year 235. The text of previous editions is grounded solely on a manuscript at Basel written in the sixteenth century (No. 31, A. iii. 9), which is itself a copy, and a not altogether correct copy, of a Parisian manuscript written in the year 1339, not known to the first editors of Origen (P = suppl. grec. 616). Moreover, the Basel manuscript was not transcribed with sufficient accuracy, or the print was not superintended with sufficient care by the scholar who prepared the first printed edition of 1674. With the help of a fresh manuscript (M = Venetus Marc. 45, of the fourteenth century) it is now established that the writer of P arbitrarily altered the text in a great number of passages, and, above all, abridged it mainly by the excision of Scriptural quotations. Where Origen, e.g., in citing a passage gives all three Synoptists, P quite calmly drops one of them. The Panegyric of Gregory Thaumaturgus is treated in the same way, this manuscript omitting about 100 out of some 1200 lines of print. And these were the texts to which till the present we were referred for our Patristic quotations! To take an example:
On τοὺς ἐμοὺς λόγους, Luke ix. 26, Tischendorf, who in his seventh edition gave τοὺς ἐμούς (= my followers) as the correct reading, observed that this reading, without λόγους, was supported by Dael Or., i. 298. But he added—and this is a proof of the carefulness with which the quotation from Origen is employed here—sed præcedit ουτε επαισχυντεον αυτον η τους λογους αυτου. But if we turn up this passage in the new edition, we find that it now reads (i. 34, 9 ff.): ουτ’ επαισχυντεον αυτον η τους οικειους αυτου η τους λογους αυτου, and then the three parallel passages are quoted in the order frequently found in Origen—viz., Matthew x. 33 = Luke ix. 26 = Mark viii. 38. Previous editions entirely omitted this last quotation, as well as the words in the context, η τους οικειους αυτου. But now everything is in order. The words ουτ’ επαισχυντεον αυτον refer to οστις δ’ αν απαρνησηται με in Matt. x. 33; η τους οικειους αυτου to ος γαρ αν επαισχυνθη με και τους εμους in Luke ix. 26; and η τους λογους αυτου to ος γαρ αν επαισχυνθη με και τους εμους λογους, in Mark viii. 38. So that whereas, on the ground of previous editions, Tischendorf was obliged to point out a discrepancy between Origen’s context and his peculiar quotation from Luke, the context of the new edition serves to confirm this peculiar quotation, and shows at the same time that we can accept it on the authority of this very passage, as against a former passage (p. 296 = 31, 7), where the verse in Luke is found in the newly-employed manuscript also with the words τους εμους λογους. That the editor should have put λογους in the first passage within brackets, or at least have pointed out the discrepancy between it and the quotation further down, would have been too much to expect, seeing that his manuscripts of Origen gave no manner of ground for doing so; it is the duty of those who investigate the Scriptural quotations in Origen to pay attention to such things. But there are also passages where the editor has actually gone in the face of his manuscripts, and wrongly altered the text of his Scriptural quotations, having evidently allowed himself to be influenced by the printed text of the N. T., and paying too little respect to the manuscripts.
An attentive reader will have observed that the reading in Luke ix. 26, τους εμους = my followers, which is now established for Origen, is at present supported by D alone of the Greek manuscripts and by three Old Latin witnesses. (It is also found in the Curetonian Syriac, but unfortunately the corresponding words in the Sinai-Syriac could not be made out with certainty by Mrs. Lewis; see Some Pages, p. 72 = p. 168 in the first edition). Now, look at the passage in Origen’s work, i. 25, 26 ff. (p. 293 in De la Rue’s edition): ο μεν γαρ Ματθαιος ανεγραφε λεγοντα τον κυριον... ο δε Λουκας... ο δε Μαρκος· ἀββᾶ ὁ πατὴρ, δυνατά σοι πάντα· παρένεγκε κ.τ.λ. The passage is printed thus by Koetschau, agreeing exactly with the earlier printed editions and our texts of the N. T. in Mark xiv. 36. But in this he is far wrong. Because, as his own apparatus shows us, the Venetian manuscript, which he rightly follows elsewhere, reads the words in the order δυνατὰ πάντα σοί, which is exactly the order of the words (Mark xiv. 36) in D, but again in no other Greek manuscript with the solitary exception of the cursive 473.123 But there are even passages where Koetschau follows the printed text of the N. T. in the scriptural quotations in despite of both his manuscripts. In i. 29, 13 (i. 295 De la Rue), where Matt. x. 17-23 is quoted, he inserts after πῶς ἢ τί λαλήσητε the clause δοθήσεται γὰρ ὑμῖν ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ὥρᾳ τί λαλήσητε from Matt. x. 19, on the supposition that these words may have dropped out of the archetype of M P on account of the homoioteleuton. But they are also omitted in Cod. D of the N. T. And this, moreover, is not the only point of agreement between this manuscript and the text given in this quotation. There is, e.g., the omission of δέ in v. 17, the reading παραδώσουσιν in v. 19, which Koetschau has altered to the more grammatical παραδῶσιν, again without sufficient reason and in defiance of both his manuscripts, and the omission of ὑμῶν in v. 20, of which there is no mention in Tischendorf (see the Collation of D in my Supplementum). Origen also agrees with D, though not verbally, in reading κἂν ἐκ ταύτης διώκωσιν φεύγετε εἰς τὴν ἄλλην further down (v. 23), where again Koetschau seems to me to have unnecessarily inserted τὴν, which is omitted in his principal manuscript and also in D. Compare, also, i. 22, 12, where Origen agrees with D in reading φέρωσιν (Luke xii. 11) instead of εἰσφέρωσιν, read by our critical editions on the authority of א B L X, or προσφέρωσιν by the textus receptus with A Q R, etc. Both concur, also, in the omission of the first ἢ τί in the same verse.
What is here said as to the close affinity of Origen’s Bible with Codex D is corroborated by the testimony of the Athos manuscript discovered by von der Goltz (see above, p. 90). This manuscript confirms what we knew before—viz. that Marcion’s text had χριστὸν and not κύριον or θεὸν in 1 Cor. x. 9. But it also tells us what we did not know—viz. that χριστὸν was the only reading known to Origen, and that κύριον in the Synodical Epistle addressed to Paul of Samosata, published by Turrianus (in Routh’s Reliquiæ Sacræ, iii.2 299), is not the original reading but a later substitute for χριστόν. This is made out by Zahn in the ThLbl., 1899, col. 180, who concludes by saying that Clement, Ecl. Proph., 49, should not be omitted in a proper apparatus, and that κύριον ought never again to be printed in the text. Our most recent editors, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, Weiss, and Baljon, put κύριον in their text without so much as mentioning χριστόν in the margin, or among the Noteworthy Rejected Readings, or in the list of Interchanged Words (Weiss, p. 7). In the Stuttgart edition the text is determined by a consensus of previous editions, and I was obliged to let κύριον stand in the text, but I have put χριστόν in the margin, as Tregelles also did. In this instance the textus receptus is actually better than our critical editions. The rejected reading is again the Western, and Zahn, in commenting on the newly-discovered testimony as to the text of 1 John iv. 3 (see below, p. 327), pertinently remarks that “here again it is perfectly evident, as any discerning person might have known, that many important readings which were wont to be contemptuously dismissed as Western, were long prevalent in the East as well, not only among the Syrians but also among the Alexandrians, and were only discarded by the official recensions of the text that were made subsequent to the time of Origen.” These illustrations will serve to show that not only is the editing of the Patristic texts no easy matter, but also that the employment even of the best editions is not unaccompanied with risks. See Koetschau, Bibelcitate bei Origenes, ZfwTh., 1900, pp. 321-378.
(3) The Rev. Prebendary Ed. Miller is at present at work on a Textual Commentary upon the Holy Gospels, on the ground of Burgon’s Collection and his own researches. A specimen of this work (Matthew v. 44) is given in his Present State of the Textual Controversy respecting the Holy Gospels, which was printed for private circulation, and may be had of the author.124 In this little pamphlet he takes up the question (p. 30) whether Origen in the De Oratione 1 (De la Rue, i. 198; Koetschau, ii. 299, 22) quotes from Luke (vi. 28) or Matthew (v. 44), and decides for the latter. Koetschau is of the opposite opinion, giving “Luke vi. 28 (Matthew v. 44).” In the case of Patristic quotations, it will be seen that matters are frequently very complicated. It must be borne in mind, too, that the various writers did not use the same copy of the Scriptures all their life long. At different times and in different localities they must necessarily have had different copies before them.
(4) It is further to be observed that in the case of controversial writings, such as those of Origen against Celsus, and Augustine against the Manichæans, the question must always be considered whether the Scriptural quotations found in them are quotations made by Origen and Augustine themselves, or taken by them from the writings they assail or refer to; and also whether the quotations have been made directly from a manuscript of the Bible, or from the works of a previous writer. Borrowing from an author without acknowledgment may have been a much more common thing in olden times than it is even at present.
In Clement of Rome (c. 13), in Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, ii. p. 476), and partly also in the Epistle of Polycarp (c. 2), we find the following quotation:—“Be ye merciful that ye may obtain mercy: forgive that ye may be forgiven: as ye do, so shall it be done to you: as ye give, so shall it be given to you: as ye judge, so shall ye be judged: as ye are kind, so shall kindness be shown to you: with what measure ye mete, it shall be meted unto you.” We find also in Clement of Rome (c. 46), and in Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, iii. p. 561), the quotation: “Woe to that man: it were good for him if he had never been born, rather than that he should offend one of my elect: it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he be drowned in the depth of the sea, than that he should offend one of my little ones.” Neither of these quotations is found literally in our canonical Gospels. Accordingly, Rendel Harris concludes from the testimony of these various witnesses that they must have been taken from an Urevangelium, now perished (Contemporary Review, Sept. 1897). This view is combated, it seems to me rightly, by H. T. Andrews in the Expository Times for November 1897, p. 94 f. He thinks it probable that Clement of Alexandria and Polycarp are both dependent on Clement of Rome.125
(5) In spite of all these difficulties, a systematic examination of the Patristic quotations remains one of the most important tasks for the textual criticism of the N. T. We have most useful collections, both ancient and modern, of passages from the Fathers to illustrate the history of the Canon, and their use of the Scriptures has been scrutinised in the interests of dogmatic history, but there are not yet, so far as I know, any collections of Patristic quotations to elucidate the history of the text. Two things are specially wanted at present. One is a collection, arranged according to time and locality, of all the passages in which the Fathers appeal to ἀντίγραφα. In the new volumes of Origen, e.g., we find two such references—κατά τινα τῶν ἀντιγράφων τοῦ κατὰ Μάρκον εὐαγγελίου (i. 113), and κατὰ τὰ κοινὰ τῶν ἀντιγράφων (ii. 52).126 The other desideratum is a collection of all the passages in the biographies of the Saints where mention is made of the writing of Biblical manuscripts. It is said of Evagrius, e.g., in the Historia Lausiaca (c. 28 in Preuschen, Palladius, p. 111), εὐφυῶς γὰρ ἔγραφε τὸν ὀξύρυγχον χαρακτῆρα, and the preparation of Biblical manuscripts is also referred to in the Vita Epiphanii (ed. Petav. ii.), and in Cassiodorus, De Institutione Divinarum Literarum (see above, p. 50). On the use hitherto made of Patristic testimony see the section De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis in TiGr., 1129-1230. An abridged list of those mentioned there will be found in Baljon’s New Testament, pp. xv.-xxiii. A catalogue of the names and dates of the Patristic writers most frequently cited in critical editions of the N. T. is given in Scrivener, ii. pp. 172-174.127 See also Urt., p. 22, 56 f., 94. On the Old Latin Didascalia, see Ed. Hauler in the W.S.B., 1895, vol. cxxxiv. p. 40 ff., and the Mitteilungen of B. G. Teubner, 1897, ii. p. 52.128 On the Biblical text of Filastrius (C.S.E., vol. xxxviii., 1898), see Kroll in the notice of Marx’s edition in the Berlin. Phil. Wochenschrift, 1898, 27. On Jovinian, see TU., New Series, ii. 1, etc. On the quotations from the Gospels in Novatian (Pseudo-Cyprian) see Harnack in TU., xiii. 4.