Which version Is The Bible? Page 75

VI. HOW HORT CONTROLLED AND SEDUCED THE 1881 COMMITTEE

HORT "INVENTS" A HISTORY OF THE BIBLICAL TEXT

Remember that Westcott and Hort joined this revision committee having worked secretly for over twenty years preparing their own private New Testament. Recall that they violated the charge which the church laid upon them regarding the kind of changes that were to be made in the revision. The church said to make only "minor" alterations, such as, capital letters, punctuation, and the removal of archaic words. But Westcott and Hort seduced the committee into a covenant of secrecy, meeting and working in this clandestine fashion for eleven years. Now contrast that with the openness of the King James Committee. The entire nation of England knew what was forthcoming having been kept informed by the translators as the work progressed. There were no surprises in 1611. But in 1881, suddenly there appeared a radically different Greek text.

Dr. F.H.A. Scrivener - a very learned man of God and the most capable, eminent textual critic of his day with regard to the N.T. manuscripts as well as the history of the Text - served on the committee and tried to stem the tide, but he was systematically out voted.¹ Hort was such a tremendous advocate that he convinced the majority of the members to accept his and Westcott's translation almost to the exclusion of any other opinion. Few of the other translators were familiar with the techniques and nuances of textual criticism. Point by point they fell under Hort's persuasive spell, a talent of near legendary proportion which Hort is reported by many to have possessed². It was said that he would have made an unbeatable lawyer.

Time and again, Hort's side would out vote Scrivener. When Scrivener realized what was happening, he should have broken the foolish vow of secrecy and exposed the entire affair to the world. Thus he failed the Lord and the Church in this whole matter. Bishop Wilberforce, originally appointed to chair the committee, saw what was happening at the very onset. Unable to bear the situation, he systematically absented himself after the first meeting and refused to take part in the proceedings.³ Yet, inconceivably, he also remained silent as to what he had seen and heard during the remaining three years of his life.

Nearly every Bible written in English since 1881 has used as its basic New Testament text the Westcott-Hort edition (Origen's privately "edited" N.T.). This text has passed down to us via Eusebius through the copies which he prepared for Constantine. The two remaining products of this "recension" are known today as codices Vaticanus B and Sinaiticus Aleph.

Hort's problem was how to overthrow the Textus Receptus and supplant it with Codex Vaticanus B, thereby elevating that manuscript above the sum total of all other extant manuscripts - even though 90-95% agreed in text with the Textus Receptus and yet were different from B. To achieve this goal he had to produce a convincing history of the text in order to explain why essentially only one type of text had survived and been preserved in all the later manuscripts from the fourth and fifth centuries on. Then he had to show and explain how this "historical account" justified the rejection of the dominant text, the Textus Receptus.

1 D.O. Fuller, Which Bible?, op. cit., pp. 290-295. Also see p. 120 where Dr. Fuller quotes from Sir Robert Anderson's The Bible and Modern Criticism, 5th ed., (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1905), pp. 104-105.

2 Ibid., p. 291.

3 Ibid.

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