# George Smeaton and TR



## ThomasCartwright (May 21, 2010)

Scottish Free Church Professor, George Smeaton (1814-1889) was said to have “the best constituted theological intellect in Christendom.” He was a master of the original languages. Sinclair Ferguson writes: “Smeaton was an outstanding scholar with a brilliant mind and a deep love for Christ.” John Keddie says, “Not only had he the ordinary acquirements of a teacher of exegesis, exact scholarship and acquaintance with modern criticism, but he had a quite exceptional theological learning” (according to Marcus Dods, strangely enough); “I do not know if any man is left among us who is so much at home as he was in the patristic and mediaeval writers.”

Keddie writes:

“There is very little to indicate what interest George Smeaton took in matters of textual criticism. But he lived in the era of the Revised Version translation and the theories of B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort which every bit as much as the higher critical theories constituted a sharp departure from the previously held consensus in the Reformed churches in these areas. It is perhaps of interest that Smeaton, such a recognized Greek scholar, took no part in the committee brought together to produce a Revised Version…Though only suggestive of his attitude, it is perhaps significant that in a comment on Luke 1:35 in his work on the Holy Spirit, he challenges the Revised Version translation. In the same work, with a reference to Luke 2:40, Smeaton follows the textus receptus reading behind the Authorized Version translation: ‘And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom.’ In a footnote (in both editions of his work) he says: ‘This reading has a predominance of authority in its favour’.…….Smeaton in one place also quoted with approval Dean John William Burgon’s support of the genuineness of the phrase “the Son of man which is in heaven” from John 3:13. Smeaton notably does not use the Revised Version in the 1889 edition of his work on the Holy Spirit. It appears he took a conservative line on matters of textual criticism, as he most certainly did on the question of the higher criticism and the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures.”

Cited in John Keddie, George Smeaton (Darlington: Evangelical Press, 2007) 135-136.

Interesting that Keddie states that the Critical Text position was “a sharp departure from the previously held consensus in the Reformed churches in these areas.”


----------



## MW (May 21, 2010)

The Disruption theologians as a class were generally open to the work of textual criticism but conservative as to the changes they adopted. George Smeaton considered 1 John 5:7 to be a probable marginal insert (Holy Spirit, 97fn.). The conservative Free Church professors tended towards what is today called a Byzantine majority text position.


----------

