Note 200 — Chapter III · THEORY AND PRAXIS OF THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.[129]

It seems worth while to quote here Harnack’s words on these notices of the earliest attempts at textual criticism. He says (ibid., p. 189): “The charge preferred against the disciples of that erudite Tanner (Theodotus) by the author of the Little Labyrinth is threefold. He complains of their formal and grammatical exegesis of Scripture, of their arbitrary system of textual criticism, and of the extent to which they were engrossed in Logic, Mathematics, and empirical Science. At the first glance, therefore, it would appear that these people had no interest to spare for Theology. But the very opposite is the case. The complainant himself has to confess that they employed the method of grammatical exegesis ‘with the object of establishing their godless conclusions,’ and textual criticism in order to correct the manuscripts of the holy Scriptures. In place of the allegorical method of exposition, the grammatical is the only right one, and we have here an attempt to discover a text more nearly resembling the original instead of simply accepting the traditional form. How inimitable and charming really are these notices!... These scholars had to be generals without an army, because their grammar and textual criticism and logic might only discredit in the eyes of the churches that christological method which long tradition had invested with admiration and respect.... As ‘genuine’ scholars—this is an exceedingly characteristic description that is given of them—they also took a jealous care that none of them lost the credit of his conjectures and emendations. No remnants have been preserved of the works of these the first scholarly exegetes of the Christian Church (the Syntagma knows of the existence of such; cf. Epiph. lv. c. 1).” So writes Harnack. Nothing, however, is said in the text of Eusebius of a jealous watch over the priority of the conjectures. In the sentence which Harnack renders “for their disciples have with an ambitious zeal recorded what each one has corrected as they call it, that is corrupted (deleted?),” φιλοτίμως ἐγγεγράφθαι is to be understood simply of a diligent record of “corrections” undertaken solely out of an interest in their contents. According to the Syriac ἠφανισμένα is not to be rendered by “deleted,” but as Harnack translates it: cf. the various Syriac versions in Matthew vi. verse 16 (Syrp), verses 19 and 20 (Syrpc). On the validity of the charge of inventing false Scriptures, see Zahn, GK. 1, 296 f.