Aramaic Peshitta
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page LXI - LXIV
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He asserts that, with certain exceptions, the Peshito "is to be esteemed to be amongst the best and firmest aids for the right construction of the [Greek] text." (pg. 270.)
The Rev. EZRA STILES, D. D., President of Yale College, in the United States of America, said, in an Inaugural Oration, "In Syriac, THE GREATER PART of the New Testament (I believe) was ORIGINALLY WRITTEN, and not merely translated, IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE.... The Syriac Testament, therefore, is of high authority; nay, with me, of THE SAME AUTHORITY AS THE GREEK." (Appendix to Dr. Murdock's English Translation of the Peshito, New York, 1851, pg. 499.)
Dr. JAMES MURDOCK, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, at New Haven, Connecticut, USA, and Author of an English Translation of the Peshito, 1851, says that Dr. Ezra Stiles was not the only person who believed that "the books of the greater part of the New Testament WERE ORIGINALLY WRITTEN in Syriac." He thinks that the Peshito "MAY BE something more than a mere translation; that it may have nearly, or quite equal authority with the Greek." (pg. 500.)
DEAN JOHN W. BURGON, B. D., was the author of three articles in the Quarterly Review, which, he says, were "wrung out of me by the publication on May 17th, 1881, of the Revision of our Authorised Version of the New Testament." In compliance with much solicitation, he published them separately in 1883, under the title of "The Revision Revised." (Pref. pg. ix.) He felt conscious, after the publication of his first article in October, 1881, that enough was even then on record, "to secure the ultimate rejection of the Revision of 1881," and that "in the end, it must be universally regarded as -- what it most certainly is -- the most astonishing, as well as THE MOST CALAMITOUS literary blunder of the age." (Pref. pp. x. - xi.) He knew that "by demonstrating the worthlessness of THE NEW GREEK TEXT of the Revisionists," he had proved that "the English translation of it must be incorrect." He soon found that "the Revised ENGLISH, would have been in itself intolerable, even had the Greek been let alone." (pg. xii.)
Dean Burgon says, "I am able to prove that this Revision of the Sacred Text is untrustworthy from beginning to end." (pg. v.) "The systematic depravation of the underlying Greek, is nothing but A POISONING OF THE RIVER OF LIFE AT ITS SACRED SOURCE. Our Revisers, (with the best and purest intentions, no doubt), stand convicted of having DELIBERATELY REJECTED THE WORDS OF INSPIRATION in every page, and of having substituted for them fabricated readings, which the church has long since refused to acknowledge, or else has rejected with abhorrence, and which only survive at this time in A LITTLE HANDFUL OF DOCUMENTS OF THE MOST DEPRAVED TYPE.... The Revisers have, in fact, been the dupes of an ingenious Theorist.... If any complain that I have sometimes hit my opponents rather hard, I take leave to point out, that..... when THE WORDS OF INSPIRATION ARE SERIOUSLY IMPERILLED, AS NOW THEY ARE, it is scarcely possible for one who is determined effectually to preserve the Deposit in its integrity, to hit either too straight, or too hard." (pp. vi. - viii.) "I traced the mischief" (done by the New Greek Text of the Revisers) "home to its true authors, -- Drs. Westcott and Hort, a copy of whose unpublished text of the [Greek] N. T., THE MOST VICIOUS IN EXISTENCE, had been confidentially, and under pledges of the strictest secrecy, placed in the hands of every member of the revising Body." (pg. xi.)
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In answer to Dean Burgon, it was insinuated that he could not disprove THE THEORY of Drs. Westcott and Hort. This, he says, compelled him to demonstrate that "in their solemn pages," there is only "a series of UNSUPPORTED ASSUMPTIONS ;.... a tissue as flimsy and as worthless as any spider's web." (pg. xiv.)
Dean Burgon says that the Greek Text, which is commonly called "THE RECEIVED GREEK TEXT," is confessedly, at least 1,530 years old." (pg. xx.) Dr. Hort admits (see his Intro. to Grk. Test., pg. 92), that "The fundamental text of late extant Greek manuscripts generally," that is, of copies which have had THE APPROVAL OF CHRISTIAN BODIES, on which bodies we have to rely, as on well-informed and credible witnesses to the truth; he says that the text of their "manuscripts generally, is, beyond all question, identical with the dominant Greco-Syrian text of the second half of the fourth century;" that is, with the text approved by both Greeks and Syrians, from A. D. 350 - 400. Of this text the Peshito is one member. This is the text which Dean Burgon says is 1,530 years old.
But the THEORY or CONJECTURE which it has pleased Drs. Westcott and Hort to adopt, is, that the original Greek text was VERY DIFFERENT FROM THIS, and is contained in A FEW COPIES of the fourth, or next following centuries, which are not known to have been APPROVED BY ANY LARGE BODIES free from any serious error. To account for the fact that the text of these few copies was "generally" rejected by Greeks and Syrians, Drs. Westcott and Hort gamble with conjecture. They cannot find history to quote, and therefore invent fictions. Their chief fiction is, that "a NEW text" was formed, "different from all" preceding texts, of which there had grown up three; and that this new text was "a work of attempted criticism, performed deliberately by editors," (Intro. to Grk. Test., pg. 133); that there was "an authoritative revision of GREEK texts at Antioch, which revision was then taken as a standard for a similar authoritative revision of THE [PESHITO] SYRIAC text; that the Greek text was itself at a later time subjected to a second authoritative revision; but that the Vulgate [Peshito] Syriac did not undergo any corresponding second revision." (Intro. to Grk. Test., pg. 137.)
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The invention of what is unsaid in history, under pretence of PROVING the facts of history, and with respect to infallible truth, is as rash as it is wrong. But the use made of this invention of revisions which never took place, is more rash still, for it is assumed that the best text of Greek and Syriac copies was rejected by the Revisers in both cases; that the purer texts were abandoned, and the more corrupt adopted throughout both Greek and Syrian bodies in all following ages. Drs. Westcoyy and Hort conjecture that the leading Christians in those bodies were so weak, or so wicked, that they preferred "acceptability" to "purity of text," and were so "capricious," that their "new interpolations," their forged additions, "were abundant." (pp. 134-35.) On the ground of this slanderous assumption, they please to decide, that any reading which is "distinctly Syrian, is to be rejected at once," (pg. 163); and that the whole line of Greek and Syriac manuscripts in which this alleged "new" text is found, is to be rejected also. What evil influence can possibly have so possessed and blinded minds trained to reason rightly, that they can say what is so unreasonable?
On this subject Dean Burgon says: -- "We are invited to make our election between FACT and FICTION." (pg. 293.) If there had been such a revision, "we should insist that no important deviation from such a TEXTUS RECEPTUS as THAT, would deserve to be listened to. In other words, if Dr. Hort's theory about the origin of the TEXTUS RECEPTUS have any foundation at all in fact, it is 'all up' with Dr. Hort. He is absolutely nowhere." (pg. 293.) But no such authoritative revision is recorded as having ever occurred. "As a mere effort of the imagination," says Dean Burgon, "it is entitled to no manner of consideration or respect at our hands." (pg. 277.) But if it had occurred, then, according to Dr. Hort's theory, we should behold ON ONE SIDE the "choice representatives of the wisdom, the piety, the learning of the Eastern Church, from A. D. 250 to A. D. 350. ON THIS SIDE sits Dr. Hort. An interval of 1,532 years separates these two parties." (pg. 288.) "According to Dr. Hort, by a strange fatality, -- a most unaccountable and truly disastrous proclivity to error, -- these illustrious fathers of the church have been at every instant SUBSTITUTING THE SPURIOUS FOR THE GENUINE, -- a fabricated text in place of the Evangelical verity. Miserable men!" (pg. 289.) "The self-same iniquity [was] perpetrated," Dr. Hort supposes, in the case of the Peshito, as in the case of the Greek text. "One solitary witness" to the true text, "Cureton's fragmentary Syriac, is suffered to escape, and alone remains to exhibit to mankind the outlines of primitive truth;" a fragment which is in reality "utterly depraved." (Revision Revised, pp. 279, 289.) "Who is it who gravely puts forth all this egregious nonsense? It is Dr. Hort, at pp. 134, 135," of his Introduction. According to him, those primitive fathers have been the great falsifiers of Scripture, have proved the worst enemies of the Word of God. And (by the hypothesis), "Dr. Hort, at the end of 1,532 years, aided by codex B, and his own self-evolved powers of divination, has found them out, and now holds them up to the contempt and scorn of the British public." (Revision Revised, pg. 290.)
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Dean Burgon says that the admission by Drs. Westcott and Hort of "the practical identity of 99 out of 100 of our extant Greek manuscripts," with what they call "the Greco-Syrian text of the second half of the fourth century," makes the following the only question to be answered, "How is this resemblance to be accounted for ?" and he replies, "Certainly not by putting forward so violent and improbable -- so irrational a conjecture as that....an authoritative standard text was FABRICATED at Antioch;" but by owning that in the similar text of those Greek copies of 350 -- 400 A. D., and of the Peshito-Syriac version, and the mass of Greek manuscripts, there is probably a "GENERAL FIDELITY TO THE INSPIRED EXEMPLARS THEMSELVES, from which remotely they are confessedly descended." (Revision Revised, 295.)
"THE VERY LITTLE HANDFUL" of Greek copies to which Dean Burgon refers as those on which Drs. Westcott and Hort chiefly rely in opposition to all other sources of information, are those four which are called B, Aleph, C, and D. He says, it matters nothing to these editors "that all four are discovered, on careful scrutiny, to differ essentially, not only from 99 out of 100 of the whole body of other extant manuscripts, but even FROM ONE ANOTHER; the last circumstance being obviously fatal to their corporate pretensions," because it proves that "in different degrees they all exhibit a fabricated text." He says, "that when compared with THE COMMONLY RECEIVED GREEK TEXT, B and Aleph have 8,972 omissions, additions, substitutions, transpositions, and modifications; that these are by no means the same in both;" and that "these four codices, be it remembered, come to us without a character." (Revision Revised, pp. 11, 12, 14.)
The Rev. F. C. COOK, M. A., Canon of Exeter, and Editor of the Speaker's Commentary, published in 1882, a valuable work on "The Revised Version of the First Three Gospels." He mentions the Peshito thus: -- "The Peshito, an independent version, and of THE HIGHEST VALUE." (pg. 37.) "Occupying the highest place among ancient versions." (pg. 81.) He names it as being one of the "authorities to which, in some cases, A HIGHER VALUE IS TO BE ASSIGNED, THAN TO ANY MANUSCRIPTS," because it is "more ancient, and better attested" than these. He says that it is "the version which probably comes NEAREST TO THE AUTOGRAPHS of the Evangelists, especially of Matthew;" and that "It supports the old Received [Grk.] Text in the passages which he dwells upon, as of special importance." "For my own part," he says, "I do not doubt that this version is more trustworthy than manuscript B, especially as evidence against omissions. In fact, in the great majority of disputed readings, that which has its decided support, has a PRIMA FACIE claim to PREFERENCE, IF NOT TO ABSOLUTE ACCEPTANCE." (pp. 143-44.)