Part 33 (1/2)

And now, who sees not that the Holy One dealt with His hypocritical a.s.sailants, as if they had been the accused parties? Into the presence of incarnate Jehovah verily they had been brought: and perhaps when He stooped down and wrote upon the ground, it was a bitter sentence against the adulterer and adulteress which He wrote. We have but to a.s.sume some connexion between the curse which He thus traced 'in the dust of the floor of the tabernacle' and the words which He uttered with His lips, and He may with truth be declared to have 'taken of the dust and put in on the water,' and 'caused them to drink of the bitter water which causeth the curse.' For when, by His Holy Spirit, our great High Priest in His human flesh addressed these adulterers,--what did He but present them with living water[581] 'in an earthen vessel[582]'? Did He not further charge them with an oath of cursing, saying, 'If ye have not gone aside to uncleanness, be ye free from this bitter water: but if ye be defiled'--On being presented with which alternative, did they not, self-convicted, go out one by one? And what else was this but their own acquittal of the sinful woman, for whose condemnation they shewed themselves so impatient? Surely it was 'the water of conviction'

([Greek: to hydor tou elegmou]) as it is six times called, which _they_ had been compelled to drink; whereupon, 'convicted ([Greek: elegchomenoi]) by their own conscience,' as St. John relates, they had p.r.o.nounced the other's acquittal. Finally, note that by Himself declining to 'condemn' the accused woman, our Lord also did in effect blot out those curses which He had already written against her in the dust,--when He made the floor of the sanctuary His 'book.'

Whatever may be thought of the foregoing exposition--and I am not concerned to defend it in every detail,--on turning to the opposite contention, we are struck with the slender amount of actual proof with which the a.s.sailants of this pa.s.sage seem to be furnished. Their evidence is mostly negative--a proceeding which is constantly observed to attend a bad cause: and they are p.r.o.ne to make up for the feebleness of their facts by the strength of their a.s.sertions. But my experience, as one who has given a considerable amount of attention to such subjects, tells me that the narrative before us carries on its front the impress of Divine origin. I venture to think that it vindicates for itself a high, unearthly meaning. It seems to me that it cannot be the work of a fabricator. The more I study it, the more I am impressed with its Divinity. And in what goes before I have been trying to make the reader a partaker of my own conviction.

To come now to particulars, we may readily see from its very texture that it must needs have been woven in a heavenly loom. Only too obvious is the remark that the very subject-matter of the chief transaction recorded in these twelve verses, would be sufficient in and by itself to preclude the suspicion that these twelve verses are a spurious addition to the genuine Gospel. And then we note how entirely in St. John's manner is the little explanatory clause in ver. 6,--'This they said, tempting Him, that they might have to accuse Him[583].' We are struck besides by the prominence given in verses 6 and 8 to the act of writing,--allusions to which, are met with in every work of the last Evangelist[584]. It does not of course escape us how utterly beyond the reach of a Western interpolator would have been the insertion of the article so faithfully retained to this hour before [Greek: lithon] in ver. 7. On completing our survey, as to the a.s.sertions that the _pericope de adultera_ 'has no right to a place in the text of the four Gospels,'--is 'clearly a Western interpolation, though not Western of the earliest type[585],' (whatever _that_ may mean), and so forth,--we can but suspect that the authors very imperfectly realize the difficulty of the problem with which they have to deal. Dr. Hort finally a.s.sures us that 'no accompanying marks would prevent' this portion of Scripture 'from fatally interrupting the course of St. John's Gospel if retained in the text': and when they relegate it accordingly to a blank page at the end of the Gospels within 'double brackets,' in order 'to shew its inferior authority';--we can but read and wonder at the want of perception, not to speak of the coolness, which they display. _Quousque tandem?_

But it is time to turn from such considerations as the foregoing, and to inquire for the direct testimony, which is a.s.sumed by recent Editors and Critics to be fatal to these twelve verses. Tischendorf p.r.o.nounces it 'absolutely certain that this narrative was not written by St.

John[586].' One, vastly his superior in judgement (Dr. Scrivener) declares that 'on all intelligent principles of mere Criticism, the pa.s.sage must needs be abandoned[587].' Tregelles is 'fully satisfied that this narrative is not a genuine part of St. John's Gospel[588].'

Alford shuts it up in brackets, and like Tregelles puts it into his footnotes. Westcott and Hort, harsher than any of their predecessors, will not, as we have seen, allow it to appear even at the foot of the page. To reproduce all that has been written in disparagement of this precious portion of G.o.d's written Word would be a joyless and an unprofitable task. According to Green, 'the genuineness of the pa.s.sage cannot be maintained[589].' Hammond is of opinion that 'it would be more satisfactory to separate it from its present context, and place it by itself as an appendix to the Gospel[590].' A yet more recent critic 'sums up,' that 'the external evidence must be held fatal to the genuineness of the pa.s.sage[591].' The opinions of Bishops Wordsworth, Ellicott, and Lightfoot, shall be respectfully commented upon by-and-by.

In the meantime, I venture to join issue with every one of these learned persons. I contend that on all intelligent principles of sound Criticism the pa.s.sage before us must be maintained to be genuine Scripture; and that without a particle of doubt I cannot even admit that 'it has been transmitted to us under circ.u.mstances widely different from those connected with any other pa.s.sage of Scripture whatever[592].' I contend that it has been transmitted in precisely the same way as all the rest of Scripture, and therefore exhibits the same notes of genuineness as any other twelve verses of the same Gospel which can be named: but--like countless other places--it is found for whatever reason to have given offence in certain quarters: and in consequence has experienced very ill usage at the hands of the ancients and of the moderns also:--but especially of the latter. In other words, these twelve verses exhibit the required notes of genuineness _less conspicuously_ than any other twelve consecutive verses in the same Gospel. But that is all. The one only question to be decided is the following:--On a review of the whole of the evidence,--is it more reasonable to stigmatize these twelve verses as a spurious accretion to the Gospel? Or to admit that they must needs be accounted to be genuine?... I shall shew that they are at this hour supported by a weight of testimony which is absolutely overwhelming. I read with satisfaction that my own convictions were shared by Mill, Matthaei, Adler, Scholz, Vercellone. I have also the learned Ceriani on my side. I should have been just as confident had I stood alone:--such is the imperative strength of the evidence.

To begin then. Tischendorf--(who may be taken as a fair sample of the a.s.sailants of this pa.s.sage)--commences by stating roundly that the Pericope is omitted by [Symbol: Aleph]ABCLTX[Symbol: Delta], and about seventy cursives. I will say at once, that no sincere inquirer after truth could so state the evidence. It is in fact not a true statement. A and C are hereabout defective. No longer possible therefore is it to know with certainty what they either did, or did not, contain. But this is not merely all. I proceed to offer a few words concerning Cod. A.

Woide, the learned and accurate[593] editor of the Codex Alexandrinus, remarked (in 1785)--'Historia adulterae _videtur_ in hoc codice defuisse.' But this modest inference of his, subsequent Critics have represented as an ascertained fact, Tischendorf announces it as 'certissimum.' Let me be allowed to investigate the problem for myself.

Woide's calculation,--(which has pa.s.sed unchallenged for nearly a hundred years, and on the strength of which it is now-a-days a.s.sumed that Cod. A must have exactly resembled Codd. [Symbol: Aleph]B in _omitting_ the _pericope de adultera_,)--was far too roughly made to be of any critical use[594].

Two leaves of Cod. A have been here lost: viz. from the word [Greek: katabainon] in vi. 50 to the word [Greek: legeis] in viii. 52: a _lacuna_ (as I find by counting the letters in a copy of the ordinary text) of as nearly as possible 8,805 letters,--allowing for contractions, and of course not reckoning St. John vii. 53 to viii. 11.

Now, in order to estimate fairly how many letters the two lost leaves actually contained, I have inquired for the sums of the letters on the leaf immediately preceding, and also on the leaf immediately succeeding the hiatus; and I find them to be respectively 4,337 and 4,303: together, 8,640 letters. But this, it will be seen, is insufficient by 165 letters, or eight lines, for the a.s.sumed contents of these two missing leaves. Are we then to suppose that one leaf exhibited somewhere a blank s.p.a.ce equivalent to eight lines? Impossible, I answer. There existed, on the contrary, a considerable redundancy of matter in at least the second of those two lost leaves. This is proved by the circ.u.mstance that the first column on the next ensuing leaf exhibits the unique phenomenon of being enc.u.mbered, at its summit, by two very long lines (containing together fifty-eight letters), for which evidently no room could be found on the page which immediately preceded. But why should there have been any redundancy of matter at all? Something extraordinary must have produced it. What if the _Pericope de adultera_, without being actually inserted in full, was recognized by Cod. A? What if the scribe had proceeded as far as the fourth word of St. John viii.

3, and then had suddenly checked himself? We cannot tell what appearance St. John vii. 53-viii. 11 presented in Codex A, simply because the entire leaf which should have contained it is lost. Enough however has been said already to prove that it is incorrect and unfair to throw [Symbol: Aleph]AB into one and the same category,--with a 'certissimum,'--as Tischendorf does.

As for L and [Symbol: Delta], they exhibit a vacant s.p.a.ce after St. John vii. 52,--which testifies to the consciousness of the copyists that they were leaving out something. These are therefore witnesses _for_,--not witnesses _against_,--the pa.s.sage under discussion.--X being a Commentary on the Gospel as it was read in Church, of course leaves the pa.s.sage out.--The only uncial MSS. therefore which _simply_ leave out the pericope, are the three following--[Symbol: Aleph]BT: and the degree of attention to which such an amount of evidence is ent.i.tled, has been already proved to be wondrous small. We cannot forget moreover that the two former of these copies enjoy the unenviable distinction of standing alone on a memorable occasion:--they _alone_ exhibit St. Mark's Gospel mutilated in respect of its twelve concluding verses.

But I shall be reminded that about seventy MSS. of later date are without the _pericope de adultera_: that the first Greek Father who quotes the pericope is Euthymius in the twelfth century: that Tertullian, Origen, Chrysostom, Cyril, Nonnus, Cosmas, Theophylact, knew nothing of it: and that it is not contained in the Syriac, the Gothic, or the Egyptian versions. Concerning every one of which statements I remark over again that no sincere lover of Truth, supposing him to understand the matter about which he is disputing, could so exhibit the evidence for this particular problem. First, because so to state it is to misrepresent the entire case. Next, because some of the articles of indictment are only half true:--in fact are _untrue_. But chiefly, because in the foregoing enumeration certain considerations are actually suppressed which, had they been fairly stated, would have been found to reverse the issue. Let me now be permitted to conduct this inquiry in my own way.

The first thing to be done is to enable the reader clearly to understand what the problem before him actually is. Twelve verses then, which, as a matter of fact, are found dovetailed into a certain context of St.

John's Gospel, the Critics insist must now be dislodged. But do the Critics in question prove that they must? For unless they do, there is no help for it but the _pericope de adultera_ must be left where it is.

I proceed to shew first, that it is impossible, on any rational principle to dislodge these twelve verses from their actual context.--Next, I shall point out that the facts adduced in evidence and relied on by the a.s.sailants of the pa.s.sage, do not by any means prove the point they are intended to prove; but admit of a sufficient and satisfactory explanation.--Thirdly, it shall be shewn that the said explanation carries with it, and implies, a weight of testimony in support of the twelve verses in dispute, which is absolutely overwhelming.--Lastly, the positive evidence in favour of these twelve verses shall be proved to outweigh largely the negative evidence, which is relied upon by those who contend for their removal. To some people I may seem to express myself with too much confidence. Let it then be said once for all, that my confidence is inspired by the strength of the arguments which are now to be unfolded. When the Author of Holy Scripture supplies such proofs of His intentions, I cannot do otherwise than rest implicit confidence in them.

Now I begin by establis.h.i.+ng as my first proposition that,

(1) _These twelve verses occupied precisely the same position which they now occupy from the earliest period to which evidence concerning the Gospels reaches._

And this, because it is a mere matter of fact, is sufficiently established by reference to the ancient Latin version of St. John's Gospel. We are thus carried back to the second century of our era: beyond which, testimony does not reach. The pericope is observed to stand _in situ_ in Codd. b c e ff^{2} g h j. Jerome (A.D. 385), after a careful survey of older Greek copies, did not hesitate to retain it in the Vulgate. It is freely referred to and commented on by himself[595]

in Palestine: while Ambrose at Milan (374) quotes it at least nine times[596]; as well as Augustine in North Africa (396) about twice as often[597]. It is quoted besides by Pacian[598], in the north of Spain (370),--by Faustus[599] the African (400),--by Rufinus[600] at Aquileia (400),--by Chrysologus[601] at Ravenna (433),--by Sedulius[602] a Scot (434). The unknown authors of two famous treatises[603] written at the same period, largely quote this portion of the narrative. It is referred to by Victorius or Victorinus (457),--by Vigilius of Tapsus[604] (484) in North Africa,--by Gelasius[605], bp. of Rome (492),--by Ca.s.siodorus[606] in Southern Italy,--by Gregory the Great[607], and by other Fathers of the Western Church.

To this it is idle to object that the authors cited all wrote in Latin.

For the purpose in hand their evidence is every bit as conclusive as if they had written in Greek,--from which language no one doubts that they derived their knowledge, through a translation. But in fact we are not left to Latin authorities. [Out of thirty-eight copies of the Bohairic version the _pericope de adultera_ is read in fifteen, but in three forms which will be printed in the Oxford edition. In the remaining twenty-three, it is left out.] How is it intelligible that this pa.s.sage is thus found in nearly half the copies--except on the hypothesis that they formed an integral part of the Memphitic version? They might have been easily omitted: but how could they have been inserted?

Once more. The Ethiopic version (fifth century),--the Palestinian Syriac (which is referred to the fifth century),--the Georgian (probably fifth or sixth century),--to say nothing of the Slavonic, Arabic and Persian versions, which are of later date,--all contain the portion of narrative in dispute. The Armenian version also (fourth-fifth century) originally contained it; though it survives at present in only a few copies. Add that it is found in Cod. D, and it will be seen that in all parts of ancient Christendom this portion of Scripture was familiarly known in early times.

But even this is not all. Jerome, who was familiar with Greek MSS. (and who handled none of later date than B and [Symbol: Aleph]), expressly relates (380) that the _pericope de adultera_ 'is found in many copies both Greek and Latin[608].' He calls attention to the fact that what is rendered 'sine peccato' is [Greek: anamartetos] in the Greek: and lets fall an exegetical remark which shews that he was familiar with copies which exhibited (in ver. 8) [Greek: egraphan enos ekastou auton tas amartias],--a reading which survives to this day in one uncial (U) and at least eighteen cursive copies of the fourth Gospel[609]. Whence is it--let me ask in pa.s.sing--that so many Critics fail to see that _positive_ testimony like the foregoing far outweighs the adverse _negative_ testimony of [Symbol: Aleph]BT,--aye, and of AC to boot if they were producible on this point? How comes it to pa.s.s that the two Codexes, [Symbol: Aleph] and B, have obtained such a mastery--rather exercise such a tyranny--over the imagination of many Critics as quite to overpower their practical judgement? We have at all events established our first proposition: viz. that from the earliest period to which testimony reaches, the incident of 'the woman taken in adultery'

occupied its present place in St. John's Gospel. The Critics eagerly remind us that in four cursive copies (13, 69, 124, 346), the verses in question are found tacked on to the end of St. Luke xxi. But have they then forgotten that 'these four Codexes are derived from a common archetype,' and therefore represent one and the same ancient and, I may add, corrupt copy? The same Critics are reminded that in the same four Codexes [commonly called the Ferrar Group] 'the agony and b.l.o.o.d.y sweat'

(St. Luke xxii. 43, 44) is found thrust into St. Matthew's Gospel between ch. xxvi. 39 and 40. Such licentiousness on the part of a solitary exemplar of the Gospels no more affects the proper place of these or of those verses than the superfluous digits of a certain man of Gath avail to disturb the induction that to either hand of a human being appertain but five fingers, and to either foot but five toes.

It must be admitted then that as far back as testimony reaches the pa.s.sage under discussion stood where it now stands in St. John's Gospel.

And this is my first position. But indeed, to be candid, hardly any one has seriously called that fact in question. No, nor do any (except Dr.

Hort[610]) doubt that the pa.s.sage is also of the remotest antiquity.