Читать книгу The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels - John William Burgon - Страница 42

Table of Contents

St. Paul[129] in his Epistle to Titus [ii. 5] directs that young women shall be 'keepers at home,' οικουρους. So, (with five exceptions,) every known Codex[130], including the corrected [Symbol: Aleph] and D—HKLP; besides 17, 37, 47. So also Clemens Alex.[131] (A.D. 180)—Theodore of Mopsuestia[132]—Basil[133]—Chrysostom[134]—Theodoret[135]—Damascene[136]. So again the Old Latin (domum custodientes[137])—the Vulgate (domus curam habentes[138])—and Jerome (habentes domus diligentiam[139]): and so the Peshitto and the Harkleian versions—besides the Bohairic. There evidently can be no doubt whatever about such a reading so supported. To be οικουρος was held to be a woman's chiefest praise[140]: καλλιστον εργον γυνη οικουρος, writes Clemens Alex.[141]; assigning to the wife οικουρια as her proper province[142]. On the contrary, 'gadding about from house to house' is what the Apostle, writing to Timothy[143], expressly condemns. But of course the decisive consideration is not the support derived from internal evidence; but the plain fact that antiquity, variety, respectability, numbers, continuity of attestation, are all in favour of the Traditional reading.

Notwithstanding this, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, because they find οικουργους in [Symbol: Aleph]*ACD*F-G, are for thrusting that 'barbarous and scarcely intelligible' word, if it be not even a non-existent[144], into Titus ii. 5. The Revised Version in consequence exhibits 'workers at home'—which Dr. Field may well call an 'unnecessary and most tasteless innovation.' But it is insufficiently attested as well, besides being a plain perversion of the Apostle's teaching. [And the error must have arisen from carelessness and ignorance, probably in the West where Greek was not properly understood.]

So again, in the cry of the demoniacs, τι 'ημιν και σοι, Ιησου, 'υιε του Θεου; (St. Matt. viii. 29) the name Ιησου is omitted by B[Symbol: Aleph].

The reason is plain the instant an ancient MS. is inspected:—ΚΑΙΣΟΙΙΥΥΙΕΤΟΥΘΥ:—the recurrence of the same letters caused too great a strain to scribes, and the omission of two of them was the result of ordinary human infirmity.

Indeed, to this same source are to be attributed an extraordinary number of so-called 'various readings'; but which in reality, as has already been shewn, are nothing else but a collection of mistakes—the surviving tokens that anciently, as now, copying clerks left out words; whether misled by the fatal proximity of a like ending, or by the speedy recurrence of the like letters, or by some other phenomenon with which most men's acquaintance with books have long since made them familiar.

FOOTNOTES:

[96] St. Mark xi. 4. See Revision Revised, pp. 57–58.

[97] St. Mark vii. 19, καθαριζων for καθαριζον. See below, pp. 61–3.

[98] St. Luke ii. 14.

[99] St. Luke xxiii. 42.

[100] St. Matt. xx. 9. See also St. Mark xi. 9, 10.

[101] 'Quae quidem orationis prolixitas non conveniens esset si 'οτε legendum esset.'

[102] iv. 577: 'quando.'

[103] Dem. Ev. 310, 312, 454 bis.

[104] i. 301.

[105] ii. 488, and ap. Gall. vi. 580.

[106] Trin. 59, 99, 242.

[107] viii. 406, 407. Also ps.-Chrysost. v. 613. Note, that 'Apolinarius' in Cramer's Cat. 332 is Chrys. viii. 407.

[108] Ap. Chrys. vi. 453.