As W/H read through the manuscripts, they would determine (often quite subjectively) that a given ms read like the ones at Alexandria, Rome, or those at Antioch (which are referred to as Syrian or Byzantine) whereas others they deemed purely neutral (because they supposedly did not embellish or "detract" concerning Jesus, i.e., Vaticanus or Sinaiticus). Reducing the manuscripts into four families enabled them to lump large masses of the extant manuscripts into only one voice or one witness. Next, Hort set about to prove that the Syrian family was an inferior witness, even inconsequential. How did he accomplish that goal - how did he "prove" that all the Syrian manuscripts were unimportant?
CONFLATION3 Hort did so by his second contrivance - his conflation theory. Once a manuscript had been assigned to a family (or text type) on the basis of characteristic variants (readings) which were shared in common, any manuscript which exhibited readings of another family was declared to be "a mixture". "Conflation" was supposed to be a special mixture - not merely the result of simple substitutions of the reading of one document for another - but combinations of both readings in order to form a composite whole.4 Thus the conflate readings would always be longer. Logic demanded that a text with a conflate reading had to be younger than the text which contained the various components of the conflate reading. In other words, you had to have had older pre-existing texts from which to make the combination reading - and if they were older, they were judged to be more faithful to the original writing.
Hort then offered eight examples of conflation where, by his interpretation, the Syrian text had combined the Neutral and Western readings. Modern textual critics reject Hort's "Neutral" family; hence they only recognize three voices, saying that the Neutral and Alexandrian are the same. Thus to the Modern, the Syrian text is not pure but a combination of the Alexandrian and Western readings. The entire conflate theory is substantiated by only eight readings taken from just two books of the twenty-seven in the New Testament! This conflate theory has been proven false about fifteen times in the past. The problem is that all the books proving it false are no longer in print, it having been believed that the fallacious theory had once and for all been laid to rest. The eight passages offered as conflations are Mark 6:33, 8:26, 9:38, 9:49 and Luke 9:10, 11:54, 12:18 and 24:53. These pitiful few were all that they could offer to prove their theory, yet there are 7,957 verses in the New Testament! In other words, they could only detect eight verses out of almost 8,000 as proof to support their theory! Actually the entire concept of putting the manuscripts into different families is artificial and synthetic.
2 The liberal "Father of German rationalism" who originated the idea of "family classification". Johann Salomo Semler taught that the formation of the Biblical canon and text was entirely a human process, an accident of history totally apart from the guiding hand of God. He also was the author of the "accommodation theory" which set forth the principle that it is morally permissible to lie about one's beliefs when speaking publicly because the audience doesn't have the background to "understand" the full truth. Thus it was taught that the minister could assert from the pulpit that the Scriptures were verbally inspired, inerrant, etc., in order to "accommodate" his congregation who was unlearned in matters of text criticism so as not to upset or unsettle them thereby creating a "misunderstanding" and/or an imbroglio. Such is the meat upon which liberal text critics and liberal pastors chew.
3 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., pp. 34-35.
4 Westcott and Hort, Introduction, op. cit., p. 49.
