Greeco-Syrian text from 350 to 450 A.D.1 Since these dates go back to the time of the production of Vaticanus B and Sinaiticus A, why is the authority of these two spurious MSS always being flaunted by reason of their supposed superior age?
Again, Hort's problem was that he had to account not only for the agreement of the majority but also for the deviations in the other manuscripts, as well as their departures from the old versions and the voice of the Fathers.2 We have already disclosed that there is no historical proof of the revisions which Westcott and Hort allege. Thus, if Westcott and Hort were wrong in their basic premise, it is necessary that we go back prior to W-H to take up the study afresh for if the direction were wrong then, further supposed progress would only lead us farther from the truth.3
If there were no official Syrian text (and there could not be one without a revision as Hort imagines) then there is no Westcott-Hort theory.4 There is a traditional text, but it is not the result of an official ecclesiastical Syrian revision. Indeed, if the theory of Syrian recensions of official text were true, there would not be so much variety in the cursive manuscripts. Their differences indicate that they have been copied from different ancestors, as pointed out, and therefore they are all orphans.
Therefore, the Traditional Text and Vaticanus B cannot BOTH be the Word of God! If the Traditional Text is as ancient as Vaticanus B, and Hort admitted that it was when he and Westcott wrote:
"The fundamental text of late extant Greek MSS generally is beyond all question identical with the dominant Antiochian or Graeco-Syrian text of the second half of the fourth century."5 (author's emphasis)
why should the authority of one manuscript be acknowledged against a host of manuscripts, versions, and "Fathers" which support the Textus Receptus?6 Bishop C. J. Ellicott, chairman of the 1881 Revision Committee, issued a pamphlet that same year in which he likewise admitted that the Traditional or Received Text was as ancient as Vaticanus B:
"The manuscripts which Erasmus used differ, for the most part, only in small and insignificant details from the bulk of the cursive (Byzantine) manuscripts. The general character of their text is the same. By this observation the pedigree of the Received Text is carried up beyond the individual manuscripts used by Erasmus ... That pedigree stretches back to a remote antiquity. The first ancestor of the Received Text was at least contemporary with the oldest of our extant manuscripts (i.e., Codices B, Aleph, A, C, and D), if not older that any one of them."7 (author's parenthesis)
As we have learned, age alone cannot prove that a manuscript is correct! In fact, the main reasons Vaticanus B is still preserved is that it was written on very expensive vellum (animal skins) whereas most other documents of the period were written on papyrus and, having been rejected by the Church as spurious, it was not read or copied but lay relatively undisturbed on the library
1 Burgon, The Traditional Text, op. cit., pp. 116, 121.
2 Fuller, Which Bible?, op. cit., p. 147.
3 Ibid., p. 146.
4 Ibid., p. 162.
5 Westcott and Hort, Introduction, op. cit., p. 92.
6 Fuller, Which Bible?, op. cit., p. 163.
7 Burgon, The Revision Revised, op. cit., p. 390.
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