Introduction to the textual criticism of the Greek New TestamentNestle, Eberhard
Religion
Introduction to the textual criticism of the Greek New Testament
Nestle, Eberhard
Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, Textual
the word δειπνοκλήτωρ, _e.g._, which strikes me as it did Chase, as
being particularly strange. I admit that I should not care to build a
hypothesis of this magnitude on this one word and this one passage
alone. I would merely submit it generally as a question to be kept in
view in further investigations. And I would supplement it by another
question whether, in the case of the first being negatived, it may not
be true after all, _pace_ Zahn, that there was a Greek Harmony alongside
the Syriac and probably going back to the same author. May not the close
resemblances traceable between Tatian and the Western text be also
accounted for on the supposition that instead of Tatian being influenced
by the latter, it really goes back to Tatian?
I would ask this question specially in regard to the Western text of the
_Pauline Epistles_. What is meant by the statement of Eusebius cited
above as to Tatian’s treatment of these Epistles? Μεταφράσαι may
certainly mean to translate, but then one translates an entire text and
not φωνάς τινας merely, and, moreover, one does not translate ὡς
ἐπιδιορθούμενος αὐτῶν τὴν τῆς φράσεως σύνταξιν “with a view to improving
the phraseology and syntax.” Do not our Western witnesses present us
with a work of this description? I am well aware that such hypotheses
are like that regarding the author of the _Nibelungenlied_ where there
was a great poem without a name and one or two great names without
poems, and so various combinations were made, for each of which
something could be said, while none of them could be said to be proved.
That may be the case here too. But at present I feel disposed to
attribute a considerable share in this peculiar “Western” text to
Tatian. [Sidenote: Syro-Latin.] And as this name “Western,” the
inappropriateness of which has long been recognised, becomes on this
supposition more inappropriate still, I am inclined to recommend the
freer adoption of the nomenclature familiarised by the work of Chase, I
mean that of “Syro-Latin.” In his preface Chase puts in a plea for its
use, citing a sentence from the _Dublin Review_ of July 1894, p. 52, in
which H. Lucas says: “The time is, we hope, not far distant, when the
term Western will give place to the term Syro-Latin, the only one which
truly represents, in our opinion, the facts of the case.” Just as when
we wish to indicate those languages and tribes that extend from the
Indian to the German and Keltic we say Indo-Germanic, or Indo-Keltic, if
we wish to be more exact and avoid wounding the sensibilities of the
French, so the term Syro-Latin would be the best designation for a form
of text whose characteristics are as distinctly traceable among the
Syrians in the East as among the Greeks in the centre and the Latins in
the West. But be that as it may, one thing is clear, that many problems
here await solution. But they will not for ever defy methodical
investigation.
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