Wescott and Hort

[Prince of Preachers]

Are these men great translators of the Bible or great idiots?

 

[Siegfried]

Neither. They edited a Greek text of the New Testament.

Did they ever translate the Bible? If so, I've never heard of it.

 

[BrianT]

I can understand why someone would think they were great translators, because they were highly skilled in Greek. But why would anyone ever think they were "great idiots"???

 

[Pastor_Bob]

Originally posted by Prince of Preachers:
Are these men great translators of the Bible or great idiots?

I think they were neither. Westcott in particular, IMO, was a deceptive individual who tried to convince his colleagues that he was orthodox in his theology when in fact he was not.

This is important because the Nestle-Aland text used as the basis for the MVs differs in less than 400 places from the Westcott/Hort text.

Some would argue that Westcott's theology does not matter and did not affect his choice of Greek manuscripts. I believe that it does matter and that his theology influenced his choice of Codices Aleph, B, and D as sources for his Greek text.

...the Broad Church party with Maurice, Arnold, Kingsley, Stanley, and a little later Westcott, as its leaders. These were all, though in a different measure, philosophers and mystics. they belong to the great tradition which can be traced back through the Cambridge Platonists, the Mystics of the Middle Ages, St. Augustine, Origen, and St. John, and still further through Ammonius Saccas and his predecessors to Pluto and unknown mystics whose names have been forgotten.

To those who belong to this tradition the world in which we live is surrounded by another, above time and space, in which values rather than events are real...To emphasise this seems to me to have the essential contribution of the Broad Churchmen...

The result was the Westcottian theology, in which a deep and true mysticism is combined with an amazingly artificial construction of doctrine; and the skill of the writer is so great that the reader often fails to perceive that the words of the historic theology somehow mean exactly what they were originally intended to deny.

The Religion of Yesterday and Tommorrow Kirsopp Lake 1925 pp. 61-62

 

[Daniel David]

Pastor Bob, we don't reject the KJV for the bad doctrine of the one's who translated it? Actually, I do just to be consistent.

 

[Rev. Joshua]

I can see certain benefits to textual critics who are not Christians - since presumably they would not approach the text with preconceived notions about what the text should say.

That's not to say I think Westcott and Hort weren't Christians. I simply don't think it's relevant to the quality of their scholarship.

Joshua

 

[romanbear]

Hi Pastor Bob 63;

Amen and Amen

May God bless you.
Romanbear
Peace

 

[Pastor Larry]

Originally posted by Pastor Bob 63:
and the skill of the writer is so great that the reader often fails to perceive that the words of the historic theology somehow mean exactly what they were originally intended to deny.

The Religion of Yesterday and Tommorrow Kirsopp Lake 1925 pp. 61-62[/QUOTE]Did anything stop to think about this statement???? How can a writer's skill be great if he communicates the exact opposite of what he intended. That is not skill; that is ineptitude. For the record, the reports of Westcott and Hort's doctrine are greatly exaggerated, have been shown on many cases to so, and yet these things keep getting repeated.

The reality is that there is no such thing as "believing" or "unbelieving" textual criticism. It is a matter of looking at the material in front of you, using the canons of textual criticism (whatever form you may prefer) and making a choice. Everyone who has more than one manuscript or translation is involved in "textual criticism" of some sort or another. Some do it from solid bases and other from weak bases. It would be good for these issues to be thought through more carefully.

 

[BrianT]

Originally posted by Pastor Bob 63:

Westcott in particular, IMO, was a deceptive individual who tried to convince his colleagues that he was orthodox in his theology when in fact he was not.

Do you have any evidence supporting this, besides what appears to be unsupported slander written after he was dead (as if we didn't already have enough of that)?

 

[Johnv]

I can see certain benefits to textual critics who are not Christians - since presumably they would not approach the text with preconceived notions about what the text should say.

I'm inclined to agree. This has happenned even with the KJV. For example, "Jesus" appears in the 1611 KJV in Heb. 4, when it should have been "Joshua". Many believe that this was an attempt by the KJV translators to "Christianize" the OT. Personally, the OT does a good job of speaking to Christ on its own. It does not need anyone's help.

Perhaps having a translation that is done by outside observers would serve us better.

 

[AV Defender]

I read in years past that they were "closet catholics."

[ December 06, 2002, 06:47 PM: Message edited by: JYD ]

 

[Johnv]

I dunno... ever try kneeling in a closet? And the incense... whew!!! A closet is just too small of a place to be a catholic.

 

[Ransom]

JYD said:

I read in years past that they were "closet catholics."

And when you actually read the works where the "closet Catholicism" supposedly comes from, you find out quite the opposite. Sam Gipp's mangling of a letter of Westcott's to prove he was a Mariolator is a particularly egregious example.

 

[AV Defender]

Take it for what it is worth, I read it some time ago.Personaly I dont think they are any more credible that Origen was.

 

[Pastor_Bob]

Originally posted by BrianT:
Do you have any evidence supporting this, besides what appears to be unsupported slander written after he was dead...?

To save me some time, what kind of evidence do you need? Statements by contemporaries or direct quotes by Westcott himself?

 

[BrianT]

Originally posted by Pastor Bob 63:
To save me some time, what kind of evidence do you need? Statements by contemporaries or direct quotes by Westcott himself?

Statements by contemporaries would be good (as long as they're not just "opinion", but discuss specifics), and statements by Westcott himself would be better.

 

[Pastor_Bob]

Dr. Westcott taught that the Resurrection was a “spiritual event” by which the Tabernacle of God’s presence was restored to men.

“The Revelation of the Resurrection was a Revelation to believers…That which is of the earth can perceive only that which is of the earth. Our senses can only grasp that which is kindred to themselves…the world could not see Christ, and Christ could not – there is a divine impossibility – shew himself to the world. To have proved by incontestable evidence that Christ rose again as Lazarus rose again, would have been not to confirm our faith but to destroy it irretrievably.”

The Revelation of the Risen Lord B.F. Westcott 1891 pp. 11-12

“The Resurrection, to set the matter in another light, is not an isolated event. It was and is an abiding fact. It was the beginning of a new and living revelation between the Lord and His people. He came to them while He went. The idea may be expressed by saying that the apostolic conception of the Resurrection is rather ‘the Lord lives,’ than ‘the Lord was raised.’ This important truth is entirely overlooked by critics who lay stress on the point that ‘there was no eye-witness of the Resurrection.’ It is impossible to see what we should have gained by the testimony of such a witness, or what he could have established by the intercourse of the living Lord with His disciples.”

The Gospel of the Resurrection B.F. Westcott 1888 p.294

Westcott slyly cautions critics who say that there was no eye-witness to the Resurrection, while at the same time he advances a giant step toward their conclusions by spiritualizing the Resurrection himself.

In 1867, Westcott wrote a pamphlet for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.), entitled The Resurrection as a Fact and as a Revelation, A Tract Written for the S.P.C.K. , which, on account of its heretical views of the subject, could not be published by that organization. This account may be found in Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott A. Westcott 1903 p. 256

On page 13 of Westcott’s tract he writes:

“It may indeed be said that the Church was founded upon the belief in the Resurrection and not upon the Resurrection itself; and that the testimony must therefore be limited to the attestation of the belief, and cannot reach to the attestation of the fact.”

On page 19 he writes:

“For us the appearance to St. Paul would certainly in itself fail to satisfy in some respects the conditions of historic reality – it might have been an internal revelation – but for him it was essentially objective and outward.”

Westcott's view of the Resurrection was tentative and spiritualized at best.

 

[BrianT]

Pastor Bob, I don't think those passages you quoted are to be understood as you are understanding them. The first seems to me to simply be an argument *for* faith (ie. "faith" is not needed if "proof" exists). The third quote is similar to the first, and the last does is not even dealing with the resurrection, but Christ's appearance to Paul on the road to Damascus.

About the second quote, I have that book so I looked it up. The passage is arguing *for* Christ real resurrection (not denying it), because the rest of the paragraph says "That which had to be made clear as to Christ, was the reality of His new life. This was first established for the apostles by their complete experience of the continuity of His manifestation to them, and for the church in all ages through the signs of His power. And it is here that the 'proof' of the Resurrection is to be found. Christ lives, for He works still." The same section (pages 298-299) says "We have, in the Synoptic Gospels and the appendix to St Mark (to summarise results which appear to me to be unquestionable), a general view of the oral teaching of the Twelve, which was the foundation of the Church: we have in the writings of St Paul, who must have been well acquainted with the earliest belief of Christians, and explicit statement of what he 'received' and taught with intense personal conviction won through experience: we have in the Gospel of St John the personal testimony of one who had actually seen and heard the Risen Lord; and these three distinct lines of evidence are in complete accordance as to the reality, the nature, and the effects of the Resurrection of Christ. It is utterly unhistorical to say that 'the whole of the evidence for the Resurrection reduces itself to and undefined belief on the part of a few persons, in a notoriously superstitious age, that after Jesus had died and had been buried they had seen him alive.'" In fact, the entire appendix this quote appears in affirms over and over and over Christ's bodily resurrection. Whomever supplied your quote went to considerable effort to ignore (deliberately?) all the surrounding pages.

Here's some more quotes I found, dealing with the *physical* aspect of resurrection:

"But it was not possible that He should be holden of deat: His flesh saw no corruption: His soul was not left in Hades. And we confess that the third day He rose again from the dead. If death, as I said, is presented to us as the separation of soul and body, the Resurrection is the most complete, nay the eternal, union of the two. Being raised from the dead Christ dieth no more. The human life which He had before lived under the conditions of space and time, of decay and dissolution, was not gained subject to no changed and free from the limitations of earth. At the same time nothing was laid aside or lost which belongs to the fulness of our human nature." (The Historic Faith, Westcott, p.78)

"...how the man whom we know is identified in part by scars in soul and body, we may ask how he, the friend of our human affection, will survive this glorious change when it is consummated in heaven. Therefore in regarding the future we complete our confession and say: I believe in the resurrection of the body, or, as it is in the original without variation, the resurrection of the flesh....I believe that body soul and spirit, the manifold powers of which I act and feel and think and hold communion with the unseen here in a condition of humiliation, will be preserved entire in the day of the Lord and find a new expression in a condition of glory." (Ibid, pg. 135)

"Believing this we repeat one for another, each for all, the apostle's prayer: The God of peach Himself sanctify you wholly: and my your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame, at the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ."

I can provide plenty more quotes, but the length of this post is already getting out of hand.

 

[BrianT]

Bump. There's some stuff in this thread relevant to recent discussions.

 

[Steve K.]

Amen Pastor Bob!