CRITICISM
501
CRITICISM
t;i\ ing the preference to that which appears to have
I In- advantage, or of rejecting a reading absolutely for
\ inlation of one or more of the congruities, or of
- Hlc.|iting a reading absolutely for perfection of con-
m uity." The application of tliis rule rarely produces crriainty; it usually leads onlj' to a presumption, more or less strong, which the documentarj' evidence confirms or annuls as the case may be. It would be sn|>histical to suppose that the ancient authors are always consistent with themselves, always correct in tin ir language and happy in their expressions. The n a.l(>r is all too liable to imagine that he penetrates th. ir thought, and to make them talk as he himself w uld have talked on a like occasion. It is but a St. |i from this to conjectural criticism which has been SI' much abused.
Kiile2. Arrwng several readings that is preferable v^.i.h explains all others and is explained by none. — (lnt;(iry, in his "Prolegomena" (8th critical ed. of the New Testament by Tischendorf, p. 63), says apro- p IS i]f this rule: "Hoc si latiore vel latissimo sensu ar( i|.ietur, omnium regularum principium haberi jM 1. rit ; sed est ejusmodi quod alius aliter jurequidem sii.i, ut cuique videtur, definiat sequaturque." It is, in fact, subject to arlsitrarj' applications, which only pro\es that it must be employed with prudence and circumspection.
Rule 3. The more diffUuU reading is also the more prob- able. — "Proclivi scriptioni proestat ardua" (Bengel). — Although it may seem entirely paradoxical, this rule is, in a certain measure, founded on reason, and those who have contested it most vigorously, like W'etstein, have been obliged to replace it with pome- thing similar. But it is true only on condition that the clause be added, all other things being equal; else we should have to prefer the barbarisms and absurdi- ties of copyists solely because they are more difficult to understand than the correct expression or the in- telligently turned phrase. Indeed copyists never change tlieir text merely for the pleasure of rendering it obscure or of corrupting it; on the contrary, they rather try to explain or correct it. Hence a harsh expression, an irregular phr:i.se, and an unlooked-for thought are possibly primitive, but always, as we have said, on this condition: ceteris paribus. Nor must it be forgotten that the difficulty of the reading may arise from other causes, such as the ignorance of the scribe or the defects of the exemplar which he copies.
Rule 4. The ■'shortest reading is, in general, the best. — "Rrevior lectio, nisi festium vetustorum et gravium auctoritate penitus destituatur, prieferenda est ver- bosiori. Librarii enim multo proniores ad addendum fuerunt, quam ad omittendum (Gricsbach). " The reason given by Griesbach, author of this rule, is con- firmed by experience. But it should not be too gen- erally applied; if certain copyists are inclined to put in an insufficiently authorized interpolation, others, in their haste to finish the task, are cither deliberately or unknowingly guilty of omissions or abbreviations.
We see that the rules of internal criticism, in so far as they can be of any use, are suggested by common sense. Other norms fomuilated by certain critics are based on nothing but their own imaginations. Such is the following proposed by Griesbach: "Inter plures unius loci lectiones ea pro suspecta merito habe- tur quae orthodoxonmi dogmatibus manifeste prae ceteris favet." It would then follow that the variants suspected of heresy have all the probabilities in tlieir favour, and th.at heretics were more careful of the integrity of the sacred text than were the orthodox. History and re:ison combined protest against this paradox.
C. Conjectural Criticism. — .\s a principle, conjec- tural criticism is not inadmissible. In fact it is pos- sible that in all existing documents, manuscripts, ver- sions, and quotations, there are primitive errors which can only be corrected by conjecture. The phrase
primitive errors is here used to denote those that w'ere
committed by the scribe himself in dictated works or
that crept into one of the first copies on which de-
pend all the documents that have come down to us.
Scrivener, therefore, seems too positive when he
writes ("Introduction", 189-1, Vol. II, p. 244): "It
is now agreed among competent judges that Conjec-
tural Emendation must never be resorted to even in
passages of acknowledged difficulty; the absence of
proof that a reading proposed to be substituted for
the conmion one is actually supported by some trust-
worthy document being of itself a fatal objection to
our receiving it." Many critics would not go thus
far, as there are passages that remain doubtful even
after the efforts of documentary criticism have been
exhausted, and we cannot see why it should be for-
bidden to seek a remedy in conjectural criticism.
Thus Hort justly remarks ("Introduction", 1896, p.
71) : " The evidence for corruption is often irresistible,
imposing on an editor the duty of indicating the pre-
sumed unsoundness of the text, although he may be
wholly unable to propose any endurable way of cor-
recting it, or have to offer only suggestions in which
he cannot place full confidence." But he adds that,
in the New Testament, the role of conjectural emen-
dation is extremely weak, because of the abundance
and variety of documentary evidence, and he agrees
with Scrivener in admitting that the conjectures pre-
sented are often entirely arbitrary, almost always un-
fortunate, and of such a nature as to satisfy only their
own inventor. To sum up, conjectural criticism
should only be applied as a last resort, after eveiy
other means has been exhausted, and then only with
prudent scepticism.
D. Application of the principles and processes of textual criticism. — It remains briefly to explain the modifications w'hieh the principles of textual criti- cism imdergo in their application to Biblical texts, to enmnerate the chief critical editions, and to indi- cate the methods followed by the editors. We shall here speak only of the Hebrew text of the Old Testa- ment and of the Greek text of the New.
1. Hebrew text of the Old Testament, (a) The critical apparatus. — The number of Hebrew manu- scripts is very great. Kennicott ("Dissertatio gene- ralis in Vet. Test, hebraicuni", Oxford, 1780) and De Rossi ("VarisE lectiones Vet. Testamenti", Parma, 1784-88) have catalogued over 1300. Since their day this figure has greatly increased, thanks to discoveries made in Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and above all in the Crimea. Unfortvmately, for the reason given above under A. Necessili/ ami Processes, the Hebrew manuscripts are comparatively recent; none is an- terior to the tenth century or at any rate the ninth. The "Codex Babylonicus" of the Prophets, now at St. Petersburg and bearing the date 916, generally passes for the oldest. According to Ginsburg, how- ever, the manuscript numbered "Oriental 4445" of the British Museum dates back to thi? middle of the ninth century. But the dates inscribed on certain manuscripts are not to be trusted. (See on this sub- ject, Neubauer, " Earliest MSS. of the ( )ld Testament" in "Studia Biblica", III, Oxford, 1891, pp. 22-.36.) When the Hebrew maiuiscri[)ts are compared with one another, it is amazing to find how strong a re- semblance exists. Kennicott and De Ro.s8i, who col- lected the variants, found hardly any of importance. This fact produces at first a favourable impression, and we are inclined to believe that it is very eiusy to restore the primitive text of the Hebrew Bible, so carefully have the copyists performed their task. But this impression is modified when we consider that the manuscripts agree even in material imperfections and in the most conspicuous errors. Thus tiiey all present, in the same places, letters that are larger or smaller than usual, that are placed above or below the line, that are inverted, and sometimes unfinished or broken.
