Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/560

 CRITICISM

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CRITICISM

Scrivener 584", 228"^, 269^1"' /J?"?"' (i.e. the 584tii MS of the Gospel on his list, the 228th of Acts, etc.), and for Gregory 498'", 198""', 255'"'"', QT'V'^. To remedy this confusion Von Soden lays down as a principle that uncials should not have a tlifferent notation from the cursives and that each manuscript should be designated by a single abbreviation. Hence he assigns to each manuscript an Arabic figure pre- ceded by one of the three Greek initial letters, e, a, or S, according as it contains the Gospels only (£i5o77^- 'Kiov), or does not contain the Gospels ((■ir^ffToXos), or contains both the Gospels and some other part of the New Testament (SioS^ki;). The number is chosen so as to indicate the approximate age of the manuscript. This notation is UTiquestionably better than the other; the main point is to secure its vmi- versal acceptance, without which endless confusion will arise.

For the Vulgate the most famous manuscripts are designated either by a conventional name or its ab- breviation (am=" Amiatinus", /uW="Fuldensis"); the other manuscripts have no generally admitted symbol. (The present nomenclature is altogether imperfect and deficient. Critics should come to terms and settle upon special symbols for the geneal- ogical groupings for manuscripts which are as yet al- most entirely deprived of them. On this subject see the present writer's article, " Mamiscrits bibliques" in Vigouroux, "Diet, de la Bible", IV, 666-698).

(b) Versions. — The importance of the ancient ver- sions in the textual criticism of the Sacred Books arises from the fact that the versions are often far anterior to the most ancient manuscripts. Thus the translation of the Septuagint antedated by ten or twelve centuries the oldest copies of the Hebrew text that have come down to us. And for the New Testament the Italic and the Peshito versions are of the second century, and the Coptic of the third, while the " Vat- icanus and the "Sinaiticus", which are our oldest manuscripts, date only from the fourth. These trans- lations, moreover, made on the initiative and under the superintendence of the ecclesiastical authorities, or at least approved and sanctioned by the Churches that made public use of them, have undoubtedly fol- lowed the exemplars which were esteemed the best and most correct; and this is a guarantee in favour of the purity of the text they represent. Unfortu- nately, the use of versions in textual criticism offers numerous and sometimes insurmountable difficulties. First of all, unless the version be quite literal and scrupulously faithful, one is often at a loss to deter- mine with certainty which reading it represents. And besides, we have few or no ancient versions edited according to the exigencies of rigorous criticism ; the manuscripts of these versions differ from one another considerably, and it is often hard to trace the primi- tive reading. When there have been several versions in the same language, as is the case, for example, in Latin, Syriac, and Coptic, it is seldom that one version has not in the long run reacted on the other. Again, the different copies of a version have frequently been retouched or corrected according to the original, and at various epochs some sort of recensions have been made. The case of the Septuagint is well enough known by what St. Jerome tells of it, and by the ex- amination of the manuscripts themselves, which offer a striking diversity. For these various reasons the use of the versions in textual criticism is rather a deli- cate matter, and many critics try to evade the diffi- culty by not taking them into account. But in this they are decidedly wTong, and later it will be shown to what use the Sejituagint version may be put in the reconstruction of the primitive text of the Old Tes- tament.

(c) Quotations. — Tliat the textual criticism of the Greek New Testament, the Septuagint and the Vul- gate has profited by quotations from the Fathers is

beyond question; but in using this authority there is need of caution and reserve. Very often Biblical texts are quoted from memory, and many writers have the habit of quoting inaccurately. In his Pro- legomena to the eighth edition of Tischendorf (pp. 1141-1142), Gregory gives three very instructive e.x- amples on this subject. Charles Hodge, the author of highly esteemed commentaries, when informed that his quotation from Genesis, iii, 15, "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head", was a serious inaccuracy, refused to change it on the ground that this translation had passed into use. In his history of the Vulgate the learned Kaulen twice quoted the well-known saying of St. Augustine, once accurately: "verborum tenacior cum perspicuitate sentientise ", and once inaccurately: "verborum tenacior cum ser- monis perspicuitate". Finally, out of nine quota- tions from John, iii, 3-5, made by Jeremy Taylor, the celebrated theologian, only two agree, and not one of the nine gives the words of the Anglican version which the author meant to follow. Surely we should not look for greater rigour or accuracy from the Fathers, many of whom lacked the critical spirit. Furthermore, it should be noted that the text of our editions is not always to be depended upon. We know that copyists, when transcribing the works of the Fathers, whether Greek or Latin, frequently sub- stitute for Biblical quotations that form of text with which they are most familiar, and even the editors of former times were not very scrupulous in this respect. Would anyone have suspected that in the edition of the commentary of St. Cyril of Alexandria on the fourth Gospel, published by Pusey in 1872, the te.xt of St. John, instead of being reproduced from St. Cyril's manuscript, is borrowed from the New Testa- ment printed at Oxford? From this standpoint the edition of the Latin Fathers undertaken in .\ustria and that of the ante-Nicene Greek Fathers published at Berlin, are worthy of entire confidence. Quota- tations have a greater value in the eyes of the critic when a commentary fully guarantees the text; and the authority of a quotation is highest when a writer whose reputation for critical habits is well established, such as Origen or St. Jerome, formally attests that a given reading was to be found in the best or most ancient manuscripts of his time. It is obvious that such evidence overrules that furnished by a simple manuscript of the same epoch.

(2) Internal or Paradiplomatic Evidence. — It fre- quently happens that the testimony of documents is uncertain because it is discordant, but even when it is unanimous, it may be open to suspicion because it leads to improbable or impossible results. It is then that internal evidence must be resorted to, and, al- though of itself it seldom suffices for a firm decision, it nevertheless corroborates, and sometimes modifies, the verdict of the documents. The rules of internal criticism are simply the axioms of good sense, whose application calls for large experience and consummate judgment to ward off the danger of arbitrariness and subjectivism. We shall briefly formulate and ex- pound the most important of these rules.

Rule 1. Among several variants that is to be preferred which best agrees with the context and most closeti/ con- /orms to the style and rnental habits of the author. — This rule is thus explained by Hort ("The New Testa- ment in the Original Greek", Introduction, London, 1896, p. 20): "The decision may be made either by an immediate and as it were intuitive judgment, or by weighing cautiously various elements which go to make up what is called sense, such as conformity to gramm:ir ami congruity to the purport of the rest of the sentence and of the larger context; to which may rightly be added congruity to the usual style of the autlior and to his matter in other passages. The process may take the form either of simply cofnparin| two or more rival readings under these heads, ani


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