PART III PART III
III. THE FAMILIES OF HORT
(1). Conflate Readings. Hort did not originate the idea of blended readings; 48 his distinction lies in the use made of them to evince the lateness and eclectic nature of the Byzantine Text. The passages chosen are--Mark 6:33;
8:26; 9:38, 49; Luke 9:10, 54; 12:18; 24:53. 49
(2). Patristic Quotations. Claiming that Chrysostom (who died in A. D. 407) first revea1s use of this class of readings,. Hort <iecided that there were no dis-
tinctively S,yrian readings before the middle of the third century.50
(3). Internal Evidence •. By this process Hort arrived at the conclusion that the Syrian Text was "not only partly but wholly derived from the other known ancient
texts,n51 not they from it, and is "only a modified eclectic combination of earlier texts independently attested,n52 char- acterized by the traits of smoothness53 and completeness. 54
48 Simon, Griesbach, Marsh, Nolan, and Tischendorf hinted it.
49 Hort, .QE. cit., sections 134-146
50 Ibid., p. 114c 51 Ibid., p. 117c
52 Ibid., p. 118a; cf. p. 133 53 Ibid., p. ll4c
54 Ibid., p. l34f
2. The. Western. Judging that the Syrian vdt- nesses may evidently in most cases be safely neglected55 and confining himself accordingly to the earlier evidence, Hort outlined three Pre-Syrian texts. ~uestioning the fitness of the customary name for the Western Text since its witnesses come from the East as well as the West, this critic suspected that it "took its rise in North-western Syria or Asia Minorn56 and then spread gener&lly, being headed by D and other Greek- Latin manuscripts, the Old Latin, and the Latin Fathers. Hort thus summed up the patristic attestation,
Thus the text used by all those Ante-Nicene Greek writers, not being connected with Alexandria, who have left con-
siderable remains is subste.ntially Western. Even in
Clement of Alexandria and in Origen, especially in some of his writings, Western quotations hold a prominent place.57 The two chief characteristics of this type of vd tnesses are wide divergence from other families58 and "predominantly Latin attestation.n59 Other traits are "love of paraphrase,n60
11a disposition to enrich the text at the cost of its purity by alterations or additions taken from traditional and perhaps
55 Ibid., p. l92a 56 Ibid., p. 108 57 Ibid., p. 113b
58 Ibid., p. 178a, "most licentious"
59 Kenyon, The Text of the Greek Bible, p. 167a 60 Hort, .2£.· cit., p • 122c
from aJ:.iocryphal. or other non-biblical. sources,n 61 and "fondness for assimil.ation. n62
In the early and widespread variants of this text Hort saw the early process of deterioration in transmission at work.
Though "the ear~iest readings which can be fixed chronologically belong to itn63 and though it nwas the most widely spread text of Ante-Nicene times,n64 yet continuous study of its internal.
character evinces that it owes "its differences in a great measure to a perilous confusion between transcription and re- production, and even between the preservation of a record and its supposed improvement.n 65 Thus it is evident that it cannot be rejected on the lateness of its text as the Syrian but on grounds of intrinsic })robability,66 or evidence of groups. 67 Hort further concluded that the Western Text suddenly collapsed after Eusebius. 68
61. Ibid., p. l23b •
62 Ibid., p. l24c 63 Ibid., p. l.20a
64 Ibid.; cf. warfiel.d, .2£· cit., p. 220b 65 Ibid., p. l2lb
66 Kenyon, The Text of the Greek Bible, p. 168 67 Hort, .QP.. cit., p. 194a
68 Ibid., p. 14la
3. The Alexandrian. Hort saw a stylistic revision which, because of the local relations of its ha- bitual representatives, 69 he called Alexandrian. "The changes made have usually more to do with language than matter, and are marked by an effort after correctness of phrase,n70 "being formed by skilfu1 but most petty cor-
rections,n71 "and not seldom display a delicate philological tact.n72
our critic assigned it a character and weight "some- what intermediaten73 between the corrupt Western and the correct Neutral, being in fact "an offshoot fromn 74 the Neu- tral Text. It is "a small group, not embodied wholly in any one MS. or group of MSS., but normally akin to the Neutral family but differing from the leading representatives of that familyn75 and to be "discerned when some members of that group, notably X CLX 33 and the Bohairic version, differ from the
other members headed by B.n76 "Hort's 'Alexandrian' is a
69 70 71 72 73
Ibid., p.
Ibid., p.
Ibid., p.
Ibid., p.
Warfield,
109a; cf. p.
13lc 178a 131c
.Q.E.. cit., p.
74 Hort, Q£. cit., p. l76c 230a
160a
75 Kenyon, The Text of the Greek Bible, p. 167a 76 Ibid., Intro. to Text. Crit~, p. 298b
variation from his 'Neutral.' with occasional Western mixture.n 77 The readings are "consequently of minor importance, and are
not a1way s distinctl.y recognisable. n78
Admitting that the process is a delicate one, Hort proposed to detect Alexandrian readings by a "comparison of contrasted groupings in successive variationsn79 and rated
CL and the Bohairic Version as the most constant witnesses. 80 On the grounds of Intrinsic and Transcriptional. Probability Hort valued the Alexandrian readings "certainly as a rule derived from the other Non-Western Pre-Syrian readings, and not vice versan 81 and rejected all distinctively Alexandrian readings when otherwise unattested. 82
Thus Hort judged both Pre-S,yrian Non-Neutral texts as wholes "aberrant,n83 that in the case of exclusively Western or exclusively Alexandrian readings a strong presumption lies against them,84 and that the number of readings to be accepted
77 Robertson, 2.£· cit., 2nd ed., 1928, p. 244
78 Kenyon,. Our Bible and the Anc. Mss., 1903, 4 pp. 78, llla
79 Hort, 2..2· cit., p. 167a 80 Ibid., p. 166b
81 Ibid., p. 130c 82 Ibid., p. 177c
83 Ibid., p. 173a 84 Ibid., p. 173b
f~om these is exceedingly sma11. 85
4. The Neutral. Hort thought this type of text was unedited or at least relatively pure from editorial revision86 and therefore fitly termed Neutral. He listed B the Egyptian Versions,. and Origen as the chief witnesses, 87 followed B first of all, but expressed some diffidence on what he strangely termed 'Western non-interpolations.• 88 He
'
ov.'lled that Alexandria was a l.eader in the perpetuation of this 'incorrupt text,' but emphasized that it was by "no means con- fined to A~exancirian89 but rather that Non-Western Pre-Syrian texts persisted in varying degrees of purity in various regions throughout the Ante-Nicene period.9° In testing the character of the Neutral Text Hort took binary and ternary variations and found these groups favoring the Neutral against the aber- rant Western and Alexandrian texts. 91
Thus this critic decided that the Syrian may in most cases be safely neglected, that the Western and Alexandrian
85 Ibid., p. 174a; cf. 208c 86 Ibid., p. 224c
87 For fuller statement of witnesses, see ibid., p. 192b, and compare Schaff, CompaniQ!! to Greek Testament, 4th ed., p.
422c.
88 Hort, Q£. cit., pf. 175-77 89 Ibid.., p. l.28b
90 Ibid., p. ~29b
91 Ibid., p. 170f; cf. p. 172c
are ancient but aberrant texts, and that the Neutral is the best family, XB the best group, and B the best single doc- ument. He did this by the use of the fathers "whose quo- tations enab1e us to locate these groups approximately both in time and in space.n 92
92 Kenyon, Intro. to Text. Crit:, p. 298c
ANTECEDENTS TO STREETER: FERRAR TO LAKE
- -
Hug had given incipient observations on local texts1 and Tregelles 2 and Alford 3 had pointed out that later mi- nuscules may contain texts far older than their age. Modern research may well bear in mind as almost prophetic that, with the exception of new discoveries of materials, basi- cally most of the investigation that isolated the Caesarean Family is hinted in embryo in Hort's section 211. 4 That
section includes reference to Families 1 and 13 and Codex 565 or 2pe. Hence this chapter will trace the study of local texts from Ferrar in 1868 to Lake in 1923, just one year be- fore Streeter's great book. The mainspring of such investi- gations has been the family idea of manuscript study.