It was essential in demonstrating the Syrian text to be a younger conflation that no inversions be found - that is, where either the Neutral or Western text contained a conflation of the other plus a Syrian reading. If inversions existed, one would be unable to tell which reading was the original. How did they so demonstrate? It was done by merely stating dogmatically that no inversions existed.1 These men had prepared for so long and delivered their conclusions and conjectures with such vigor and authority, that their views were accepted by most without reservation or challenge. Yet little actual documentation was presented to support the theory.

THE LETTERS OF THE "FATHERS" - EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL EVIDENCE2

As further "proof" that the Textus Receptus was inferior, Hort contended that the readings characteristic of the Syrian text did not occur in the early church fathers' writings prior to A.D. 350. W-H claimed that Chrysostom (died c.407 A.D.) was the first "father" who habitually used the Syrian. This was the keystone in their theory - the crucial external evidence. It was decisive for it apparently confirmed and supported the "no inversion" pillar.

Next Westcott and Hort devised two criteria of internal evidence as additional supports for their theory. They called one such prop "intrinsic probability" and the other "transcriptual probability".3

Intrinsic probability was author oriented. In other words, which readings make the best sense, fit the context best? What reading was that which the New Testament writer most probably would have written? The extremely subjective nature of such a technique is obvious even to the non-textual critic for this attributes ability to the critic's intellect beyond that which is credible!

Transcriptual probability was scribe or copyist oriented. Which readings, out of two or more probabilities, would most probably account for the origin of the other readings in successive stages of copying? This, of course, was based on the genealogical presumption (the family tree of mss) and held that no malice had taken place - aside from inadvertent mistakes.

However, these two internal evidences, transcriptual and intrinsic probabilities, often cancel each other due to their highly subjective natures.4 The mind of the critic thus becomes the final judge.5

Having already declared that any deliberate changes were not done for doctrinal purposes, the question arises as to how Westcott and Hort knew this. Aside from inadvertent copying mistakes, the presumed deliberate changes gave rise to two textual canons.6

The first canon was "the shorter reading is preferred". This was based on an assumed propensity of scribes to add to the text. However, A.C. Clarke, Professor of Latin at Oxford, showed in a study of classical text that scribes were most prone to accidentally omit rather than add (Pickering p. 80). Once conflation had been accepted as factual, this canon became necessary and natural in order to disallow the longer, fuller Syrian (TR) readings.

The second canon was that "the harder reading is to be preferred." Thus, if there existed five or six variant readings of a text, the harder reading was presumed to be the correct one. This was based on the assumed propensity of the scribes to simplify a difficult text. But such is highly conjectural!

1 Westcott and Hort, Introduction, op. cit., p. 106.

2 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., p. 36.

3 Ibid.

4 E.C. Colwell, "External Evidence and New Testament Criticism", Studies in the History and Text of the New Testament, eds. B.L. Daniels and M.J. Suggs, (Salt Lake City UT: Uni. of Utah Press, 1967), p. 4.

5 John Burgon, The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels Vindicated and Established, ed. Edward Miller, (London: George Bell and Sons, 1896), p. 67.

6 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., pp. 79-85.

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