Albeit, Hort's problem was not yet totally solved. He had to explain how this Syrian (Byzantine - Textus Receptus) text came into being in the first place, and then explain how it came to dominate the field from the fifth century unto the present. Why did this so-called "inferior" text totally dominate in number such that nearly all of the extant Greek mss, about 95%, contain the same text?
THE "EARLY REVISION"1 Hort's solution was an organized ecclesiastical revision performed by editors and not merely by scribes.2 In other words, Hort proposed that in the early church of the third and fourth century, the Alexandrian, Neutral, and Western translations were competing with each other for acceptance. Hort promulgated the theory that an official text had been created by the church with ecclesiastical backing for the purpose of resolving the conflict, it having been completed by the middle of the fourth century (c.350 A.D.).
Westcott and Hort theorized that this text was a deliberate creation by scholarly Christians for the purpose of producing a text in which the readings reflected a compromise to end the turmoil over which of the three competing texts should be accepted as authoritative. They proposed that the Traditional Text was the product of an "official revision" (or "recension") of the New Testament which supposedly took place at Antioch in two stages between 250 and 350 A.D.3 Thus their theory was that the T.T. had ecclesiastical backing for the purpose of constructing a text on which all could agree, and that it was because of this official backing that it overcame all rival texts and ultimately became the standard New Testament of the Greek Church. Hort portrayed Lucian (Bishop of Antioch, died 311 A.D.) as its probable initiator and overseer.
Thus Westcott and Hort advanced that it was the Christians themselves who deliberately altered the Biblical text! This vacuous and specious proposal borders on the preposterous for a genuine Christian would never do such a wicked thing. Being believers in the infallibility of God's Word and in God's promises to preserve that same Word, they would fear altering the Holy Text believing literally that there is a curse from God on anyone who dares to so do.4
It is amazing that Westcott and Hort could seriously suggest that it was the Christians who had deliberately altered the Scriptures instead of men like Origen or Marcion who were gnostics or docetists and either did not believe in the deity of Jesus or believed Him to have been a phantom. These were the type of men who altered the Scriptures, not the Christians, for they believed them to be true and God breathed. W-H would have us believe that orthodox Christians corrupted the New Testament text; that the text type used by the Protestant reformers was the most unreliable of all and that the true text was not restored until the nineteenth century when it was brought out of the Pope's library and rescued out of a waste basket at Mt. Sinai.5 Modern textual critics would also have us believe, themselves being so deluded and deceived, that Westcott and Hort were providentially guided to construct a theory of the true text ignoring God's special providence and treating the text of the New Testament as that of any other book. These critics envision that the true text has been lost to the church for centuries and that they themselves, as prophets, are
2 Westcott and Hort, Introduction, op. cit., p. 133.
3 Ibid., pp. 137-138.
4 Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32; Proverbs 30:5-6; Psalms 12:6-7 and Revelation 22:18-19.
5 Hills, The King James Version Defended, op. cit., p. 110.
