Essays on the Work Entitled Supernatural Religion | Page 5

reader is curious to see how he can drive his ploughshare through a Greek sentence, he may refer for instance to the translations of Basilides (II. p. 46) [8:1], or of Valentinus (II. p. 63) [8:2], or of Philo (II. p. 265 sq) [8:3]. Or he may draw his inferences from such renderings as [Greek; ho logos ed��lou], 'Scripture declares,' [8:4] or [Greek: kata korr��s prop��lakizein], [8:5] 'to inflict a blow on one side'; or from such perversions of meaning as 'did no wrong,' twice repeated [8:6] as a translation of [Greek: ouden h��marte] in an important passage of Papias relating to St Mark, where this Father really means that the Evangelist, though his narrative was not complete, yet 'made no mistake' in what he did record.
Nor does our author's Latin fare any better than his Greek, as may be inferred from the fact that he can translate 'nihil tamen differt credentium fidei,' 'nothing nevertheless differs in the faith of believers,' [8:7] instead of 'it makes no difference to the faith of believers,' thus sacrificing sense and grammar alike [8:8]. Or it is still better illustrated by the following example:--
'Nam ex iis commentatoribus | 'For of the Commentators quos habemus, Lucam videtur | whom we possess, Marcion seems Marcion elegisse quem caederet.' | (videtur) to have selected Luke, Tertull. adv. Marc. iv. 2. | which he mutilates.' S.R. | II. p. 99. [8:9]
Here again tenses and moods are quite indifferent, an imperfect subjunctive being treated as a present indicative; while at the same time our author fails to perceive that the "commentatores" are the Evangelists themselves. His mind seems to be running on the Commentaries of De Wette and Alford, and he has forgotten the Commentaries of C?sar [9:1].
Having shown that the author does not possess the elementary knowledge which is indispensable in a critical scholar, I shall not stop to inquire how far he exhibits those higher qualifications of a critic, which are far more rare--whether for instance he has the discriminating tact and nice balance of judgment necessary for such a work, or whether again he realizes how men in actual life do speak and write now, and might be expected to speak and write sixteen or seventeen centuries ago--without which qualifications the most painful study and reproduction of German and Dutch criticism is valueless. These qualifications cannot be weighed or measured, and I must trust to my subsequent investigations to put the reader in possession of data for forming a judgment on these points. At present it will be sufficient to remark that a scholarly writer might at least be expected not to contradict himself on a highly important question of Biblical criticism. Yet this is what our author does. Speaking of the descent of the angel at the pool of Bethesda (John v. 3, 4) in his first part, he writes: 'The passage is not found in the older MSS of the Fourth Gospel, and it was probably a later interpolation.' [9:2] But, having occasion towards the end of his work to refer again to this same passage, he entirely forgets his previously expressed opinion, and is very positive on the other side. 'We must believe,' he writes, 'that this passage did originally belong to the text, and has from an early period been omitted from the MSS on account of the difficulty it presents.' [10:1] And, to make the contradiction more flagrant, he proceeds to give a reason why the disputed words must have formed part of the original text.
It must be evident by this time to any 'impartial mind,' that the Supernatural Religion of the reviewers cannot be our _Supernatural Religion_. The higher criticism has taught me that poor foolish Papias, an extreme specimen of 'the most deplorable carelessness and want of critical judgment' displayed by the Fathers on all occasions, cannot possibly have had our St Mark's Gospel before him [10:2], because he says that his St Mark recorded only 'some' of our Lord's sayings and doings, and did not record them in order (though by the way no one maintains that everything said and done by Christ is recorded in our Second Gospel, or that the events follow in strict chronological sequence); and how then is it possible to resist the conclusion, which is forced upon the mind by the concurrent testimony of so many able reviewers, the leaders of intellectual thought in this critical nineteenth century, to the consummate scholarship of the writer, that they must be referring to a different recension, probably more authentic and certainly far more satisfactory than the book which lies before me?
2. And the difficulty of the popular identification will be found to increase as the investigation proceeds. There is a second point, also, on which our critics are unanimous. Our first reviewer describes the author