V. THE GREEK TEXT OF WESTCOTT AND HORT

THE MEN WHO CONTROLLED THE 1881 REVISION

Let us return to the 1881 Revision Committee and examine the lives (and the the text which they produced) of two of its leading members - Westcott and Hort. These two men had been working in secret prior to the revision for over twenty years putting together a theretofore unpublished Greek text of the New Testament which was based almost exclusively upon one manuscript, Vaticanus B. Their New Testament altered the 140,521 word text of the Textus Receptus at 5,604 places involving 9,970 Greek words.¹ Representing 7 percent of the total word count, these 9,970 included Greek words that were either added, subtracted, or changed.

When the Committee initiated its revision process in 1870, W-H succeeded in getting it to agree to a secrecy pledge concerning the actual product of the revision. On this committee was Vance Smith, a Unitarian scholar who did not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ and had so stated in writing. At the initial meeting, Westcott and Hort insisted that Smith be included in the inaugural communion service. This speaks loudly as to the true commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ that these two "professors" of the faith actually held forth.

In 185l, Mr. Hort wrote:

"I had no idea until the last few weeks of the importance of texts having read so little Greek Testament and dragged on with the villainous Textus Receptus. Think of that vile Textus Receptus leaning entirely on late manuscripts."² Thus at only age twenty-three and having admitted he had almost no preparatory background, Hort concluded that the Textus Receptus was "vile" and "villainous". At that time he dedicated his life to its overthrow, intending to supplant it with another text. The text he eventually replaced the TR with was Codex Vaticanus B.

At the time of this decision, young Hort had been schooled in Classical Greek and was unaware that the New Testament had not been written in that form of the Greek language. Since the Greek of the New Testament as recorded in the Textus Receptus did not rigidly follow the syntax of the Greek of the classics, Hort deemed it as an inferior quality of Greek.3 This misconception was responsible for his having rashly termed the TR as "vile" and "villanious". Indeed, the Egyptian papyri which proved that the N.T. had been written in Koine (common) Greek rather than Classical Greek had not yet been discovered.

Vaticanus B had been "discovered" in 1481 on the library shelf of the Vatican. To understand Vaticanus B, we have to go back to approximately 200 A.D. to an early so-called "Father" of the church named Origen. If the student researches encyclopedias and other reference materials, he will find Origen, Westcott, and Hort spoken of as having been great men of God - men of faith. They will state how much the Church is indebted to them, that Origen was the first scientific textual exegete of the Scriptures, etc. However, such is not what one finds upon close examination of the facts.

1 D.A. Waite, Defending the King James Bible, op. cit., pp. 41-42. Missionary Dr. Jack Moorman personally counted every word in the TR, and Dr. Waite numerated the 5,604 changes made in it by W-H.

2 A.F. Hort, Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 211.

3 Jay P. Green, Sr. (ed.), Unholy Hands on the Bible, Vol. II, (Lafayette, IN: Sovereign Grace Trust Fund Pub., 1992), p. 454.

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