THE history of the earlier periods of the text of the New Testament is naturally enough a history of progressive corruption. The multiplication of copies was the chief concern of an ever-increasing body of readers; and though we early hear complaints of corruption, as well we might from the rapidity with which corruption seems to have grown, and from the grossness of the corruptions which found their way particularly into the Gospels, we hear of little serious effort to secure a correct text. Nevertheless, the earliest fathers show themselves in some sense guardians of the text, and ready to distinguish between the common and the best and oldest copies. The autographs of the sacred writings disappeared exceedingly early, and an Irenæus and an Origen were already without appeal to aught but the more accurate copies. Already by their time the current type of text had long been that which is now known as the Western, and which attained early in the second century the position and circulation of a virtual textus receptus, and retained this position for about two centuries. A purer and more carefully guarded text was, nevertheless, throughout this whole period in use in various places, apparently most commonly at Alexandria, where also in one line of its transmission it suffered before the middle of the third century sufficient deflection from the absolute standard to give rise to another strongly marked type of text—that which is now called the Alexandrian. Tradition has not handed down to us account of any very early attempts to provide a standard edition. Although Jerome tells us that Origen in Palestine, Lucian at Antioch, and Hesychius in Egypt, each revised the text of the New Testament, as well as that of the Greek Old Testament, it is not clear how much dependence can be placed on this statement, which is not free from difficulties. The scribes give us occasional notes which betray a belief in the existence of something like a standard copy in the library of “the holy martyr Pamphilus” at Cæsarea, conformity with which was the norm of correctness; but of this we know nothing but this fact. Nevertheless, the more unmistakable evidence of the textual remains that have come down to us prove that at least one set revision of the text was made in Syria, and probably at Antioch, at about the time that would fall in with the period of Lucian’s activity. The object of this revision,—the earliest attempt to issue a critical edition of the New Testament text of which we can be sure, and of which we possess documentary knowledge,—seems to have been to furnish for the use of the Syrian churches a sounder substitute for the very corrupt Western text which had for so long held the ground. The revision was well done for the purpose in view and for the times. It is an honour to the scholarship and good judgment of the school of Antioch, and presents characteristics quite in keeping with the exegetical reputation of that school. It was impossible at that time and under the ruling views of criticism to form a sound text; but these scholars succeeded in substituting in popular use for the exceedingly corrupt textus receptus then current, a text free from all the gross corruptions that disfigured it, smooth and readable in structure, and competently exact for all practical purposes.
The Christian world, which has been the heir of their labours for a millennium and a half, owes a debt of thanks to a superintending Providence for the good work done thus in a corner, and probably with only a local intent. For the scholars of Antioch were, in God’s grace, doing a greater work than they knew. Soon the persecutions of the dying heathenism broke out with redoubled fury, and everywhere the Christian books were sought and destroyed. Then came Constantine and the Christian empire, established with its seat on the Bosphorus. Antioch became ecclesiastically the mother of Constantinople, and the revised text of Antioch the ecclesiastical text of the centre of the world. The preparation of the magnificent copies of Scripture ordered by Constantine for the churches of Constantinople was intrusted to Eusebius of Cæsarea, whose affiliations were with Antioch; and everywhere the Syrian text began to make its way. The separation of the Eastern and Western Empires was followed by the separation of the Eastern and Western Churches, with the effect of confining the use of Greek to narrower limits, and giving increased power to the Constantinople tradition wherever the Greek Scriptures were used. Though some serious alterations were suffered by it in the process of time, it was, thus, the Constantinopolitan text that became the text of the Greek world, and with the revival of Greek letters in the West, under the teaching of Byzantine refugees, of the whole world. How the process of substitution took place it is not necessary to trace. Sometimes it was, no doubt, by direct importation of copies from the capital. At others it was by the correction of copies of other types by Syrian models, which secured that their descendants should be Syrian. Thus, Codex E of Paul is largely Syrian, although it is a copy of the purely Western D; and thus, too, probably, is it to be explained that Codex Δ in the other Gospels is Syrian, while in Mark it remains mostly pre-Syrian. The great popularity of the Antiochian exegetes and of the homilies of such orators as Chrysostom carried with it a preference for their text. What effect on this process the edition of Euthalius had, in the last half of the fifth century, which was rather a handy edition than a purified text, it is impossible to determine. At all events, traces of other texts became rarer and rarer as time passed; although mixed texts were exceedingly abundant at first, even these gradually gave way; and throughout the middle ages and down to the invention of printing the Syrian text reigned everywhere, as indisputably the received text of the Church universal, as the Western text had been from the second to the fourth century.