Note 351 — Chapter XI

An opposite fate, strange to say, has attended a short clause in the same narrative, which however is even worse authenticated. Instead of ουδε εν τω Ισραηλ τοσαυτην πιστιν ευρον (St. Matt. viii. 10), we are invited henceforth to read παρ' ουδενι τοσαυτην πιστιν εν τω Ισραηλ ευρον;—a tame and tasteless gloss, witnessed to by only B, and five cursives,—but having no other effect, if it should chance to be inserted, than to mar and obscure the Divine utterance.

For when our Saviour declares 'Not even in Israel have I found so great faith,' He is clearly contrasting this proficiency of an earnest Gentile against whatever of a like nature He had experienced in His dealing with the Jewish people; and declaring the result. He is contrasting Jacob's descendants, the heirs of so many lofty privileges, with this Gentile soldier: their spiritual attainments with his; and assigning the palm to him. Substitute 'With no one in Israel have I found so great faith,' and the contrast disappears. Nothing else is predicated but a greater measure of faith in one man than in any other. The author of this feeble attempt to improve upon St. Matthew's Gospel is found to have also tried his hand on the parallel place in St. Luke, but with even inferior success: for there his misdirected efforts survive only in certain copies of the Old Latin. Ambrose notices his officiousness, remarking that it yields an intelligible sense; but that, 'juxta Graecos,' the place is to be read differently (i. 1376.)

It is notorious that a few copies of the Old Latin (Augustine once (iv. 322), though he quotes the place nearly twenty times in the usual way) and the Egyptian versions exhibit the same depravation. Cyril habitually employed an Evangelium which was disfigured in the same way (iii. 833, also Opp. v. 544, ed. Pusey.). But are we out of such materials as these to set about reconstructing the text of Scripture?