Hello again, Jake,
My focus here is not primarily upon the Alexandrian mss (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus [Aleph]) but on the Critical Greek Text produced by the CoE Revision committee headed by Hort and Westcott (W&H), starting around 1871 until 1881. They used B and Aleph – even though these two differed extensively between themselves – as the basis for what they would later call “a neutral text”. So it is not these two mss, but the Revision Committee’s separate production.
Most modern Bibles use the 1881 CT as their general basis. (Sturtzians, such as our Rev. Lane Keister, are not to be typed as holding to any one camp, as they are genuinely eclectic and painstaking in their textual choices.)
My focus at present is on two men who headed the committee, and dominated it, according to the reports of some who were there and wrote on it. Here – in the first link – is some info on what these men thought and said, noted in a recent post from another thread. Below that is an excerpt from a paper on the committee and a Unitarian pastor, Dr. Vance Smith, also on the committee. These are recorded and documented facts.
I do see some worth in the two mss, B and Aleph, as they are ancient and extensive documents of alternate text. Despite their variances they are, in the main, sufficiently preserved Bibles. Even the 1881 revision underlying most modern Bibles which contain most of the B and Aleph variants – all are preserved in the main.
The doings of said committee were a scandal in England of their day, and much that is unsavory was accepted and approved by it.
This is my issue in this discussion, in a nutshell: I much rather choose the judgment of the Reformation scholars and editors in their textual choices, than those by Catholics and Anglo-Catholics. It’s a no-brainer to me.
W&H Post # 175
https://www.puritanboard.com/thread...-critique-question.109224/page-6#post-1315302
Excerpts from a paper:
It was the scandal of England at the time that the openly Arian, Unitarian pastor Dr. Vance Smith was on the [Westcott and Hort] Revision Committee. When he was told by the Church of England he must resign his position Westcott threatened to resign himself if Smith were forced to leave.[1] Vance Smith caused an uproar when he attended a Communion Service and refused to say the Nicene Creed (affirming that Christ is God), although Hort loved it! He says,
…that marvelous Communion…It is, one can hardly doubt, the beginning of a new period in Church history. So far the angry objectors have reason for their astonishment. But it is strange that they should not ask themselves…what is really lost…by the union, for once, of all English Christians around the altar of the Church…[2]
For the unregenerate Hort the Christ-denying Unitarian was a true “English Christian,” part of the good-ol’-boys’ religious club of academics and intellectuals who wear the frock, and not to be denied either the Lord’s Supper or a place in determining genuine Scripture. When Hort said, “So far the angry objectors have reason for their astonishment,” he wasn’t referring only to the Communion service, but to the results of the Unitarian on the Committee for Revision. There were many small but highly significant changes to the text they would eventually be publishing. Regarding the Revision, he said,
“It is quite impossible to judge of the value of what appear to be trifling alterations merely by reading them one after another. Taken together, they have often important bearing which few would think of at first…the difference between a picture say of Raffaelle and a feeble copy of it is made up of a number of trivial differences.”[3] [emphasis added]
One of these highly significant changes – “trifling alterations” Hort would say, perhaps – was the unwarranted deletion of the word “God” in the text of 1 Timothy 3:16, where the Scripture in speaking of Jesus talks of “the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh”. The Revisers replaced it with “who”. The Unitarian Dr. Smith later wrote,
The old reading is pronounced untenable by the Revisers, as it has long been known to be by all careful students of the New Testament…It is in truth another example of the facility with which ancient copiers could introduce the word God into their manuscripts,—a reading which was the natural result of the growing tendency in early Christian times…to look upon the humble Teacher as the incarnate Word, and therefore as “God manifested in the flesh”.[4] …It has been frequently said that the changes of translation…are of little importance from a doctrinal point of view…[A]ny such statement [is]…contrary to the facts.[5]
The only instance in the N.T. in which the religious worship or adoration of Christ was apparently implied, has been altered by the Revision: ‘At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow,’ [Philippians 2:10] is now to be read ‘in the name.’ Moreover, no alteration of text or of translation will be found anywhere to make up for this loss; as indeed it is well understood that the N.T. contains neither precept nor example which really sanctions the religious worship of Jesus Christ.[6] [Emphasis added]
A.G. Hobbs, in his Forward to the reprint of Burgon’s
The Revision Revised, wrote,
Here is a real shocker: Dean Stanley, Westcott, Hort, and Bishop Thirwall all refused to serve if Smith were dismissed [in the face of the public outcry at his presence on the Revision Committee]. Let us remember that the Bible teaches that those who uphold and bid a false teacher God speed are equally guilty. ‘For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds’ (2 John 9-11). No wonder that the Deity of Christ is played down in so many passages.[7]
Does it not make sense what was happening? Unregenerate men had infiltrated the church, and not only the church, but the inner precincts of scholarship and textual reproduction. The enemy had taken the inner stronghold, and put unholy hands on the written Word of God, to alter it.
_____
[1]
Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, by his son Arthur Westcott (Macmillan, London, 1903) Reprint by the Bible for Today. Volume I, page 394.
[2]
Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, by his son, Arthur Fenton Hort (Macmillan, London, 1896) Reprint by the Bible for Today. Volume II, page 139.
[3] Ibid.
[4]
Texts and Margins of the Revised New Testament Affecting Theological Doctrine Briefly Reviewed, by Dr. Vance Smith (London: 1881), pages 39, 47. Cited in
Revision Revised, by Burgon, pages 515, 513.
[5] Ibid., page 45.
[6]
Texts and Margins, Smith, page 47. Cited in,
For Love of the Bible: The Battle for the King James Version and the Received Text from 1800 to Present, by David W. Cloud (WA: Way of Life Literature, 1997), page 31.
[7]
The Revision Revised, by John William Burgon (Centennial Edition, Fifth printing, 1991), Forward [no page #]. See also,
Life of Westcott, Vol I, page 394.
