Wescott and Hort

Created Date: 27-Jul-2024

Most likely were not Christians

Last updated: 30-Jul-2024
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Sections:
 
1 Great Works
2 Not Christians as Believed by Many
3 Their Diaries let us know Wescott and Hort's Beliefs
4 Alexandrian Manuscripts compared against the Textus Receptus and Other Sources

This author is making this very brief topic reference for the purpose of informing the work of two men

that are often held in justifiable high regard for their linguistic works, but unfortunately:

  1. Made choice fallacies based on incomplete information that appears to be intentional based on their views against Christianity. 
  2. In modern-day terms, the two men would be described as
    (a) Infiltrators into Christianity Believing Denominations,     and
    (b) Recognized as peers in Christian Academia based on their work accomplishment.
  3. It is the opinion often heard, which this author agrees with, that: 
    (a) They most likely enjoyed the limelight and prestige of linguistic scholars.
    (b) Were automatically assumed to be Born-Again, but when reading their Diaries (excerpts listed below) show they were not.  Notice one of entries that is a comparison between Jesus Christ and Mary, the earthly vessel/mother of Jesus Christ, as worship achieving the same thing.
    (c) It is the hope that one or both of them did eventually be Born-Again which is possible for everyone like a Death Bed Confession or the best example of the Thief on the Cross.

Regarding their linguistic translation work, Wescott and Hort used a textual ancient source called as the Alexandrian Codices, discussed later in this topic, for their 1881 "New Testament in the Original Greek".   The Alexandrian Codices has been discredited for some specific discrepancies, changes and omissions.

With more modern scholarship, since the 1960s, with literally thousands of copies for ancient scripture manuscripts (codex), unfortunately in fragments that many cases do predate the Alexandrian manuscripts used by Wescott and Hort, have proved their work did use inferior and deliberately changed manuscripts.  A key additional point is early writers in the first few centuries reference scriptural verses that are not in the Alexandrian Codices.

The manuscripts used by Wescott and Hort were:

  1. Considered the oldest and most complete, (not having any missing pages) along with being in great condition to use, which is the reason many believe they initially favored the use of the newer manuscripts while ignoring the others that were potentially older manuscripts sets of fragments. 
  2. The discrepancies in their choice of the Alexandrian Codices have additionally many believing that is the primary reason of their choice knowing that their work would give them notoriety and fame with the academic groups in the world with the groups thinking these two men found something revolutionary against God.

Notes:

  1. When collecting all of the older manuscripts that can be in partial fragments that combined with others did give a complete manuscripts that predated the choices of Wescott and Hort 
  2. Many earlier well-known writing of recognized ancient New Testament Era Church Writers reference scriptures
    (a) That do not match, or
    (b) were omitted
    in the Alexandrian Codices which prove the Alexandrian Codices in some places is not reliable.

As two analogies:

Great Works

There can be many accolades and accomplishments attributed to Westcott and Hort.  The two men are like many people in history that researched in different areas of science and even in the areas of religion where Wescott and Hort's area was in linguistics.

Not Christians as Believed by Many

When doing analysis of their collection of works and writing, it appears to many and this author that both Wescott and Hort:

Their Diaries let us know Wescott and Hort's Beliefs

The following is a wonderful summary excerpt from Saved by Grace:

The following quotes from the diaries and letters of Westcott and Hort demonstrate their serious departures from orthodoxy, revealing their opposition to evangelical Protestantism and sympathies with Rome and ritualism. Many more could be given. Their views on Scripture and the Text are highlighted.

1846 Oct. 25th – Westcott: “Is there not that in the principles of the “Evangelical” school which must lead to the exaltation of the individual minister, and does not that help to prove their unsoundness? If preaching is the chief means of grace, it must emanate not from the church, but from the preacher, and besides placing him in a false position, it places him in a fearfully dangerous one.” (Life, Vol.I, pp.44,45).

Oct., 22nd after Trinity Sunday – Westcott: “Do you not understand the meaning of Theological ‘Development’? It is briefly this, that in an early time some doctrine is proposed in a simple or obscure form, or even but darkly hinted at, which in succeeding ages, as the wants of men’s minds grow, grows with them – in fact, that Christianity is always progressive in its principles and doctrines” (Life, Vol.I, p.78).

Dec. 23rd – Westcott: “My faith is still wavering. I cannot determine how much we must believe; how much, in fact, is necessarily required of a member of the Church.” (Life, Vol.I, p.46).

1847 Jan., 2nd Sunday after Epiphany – Westcott: “After leaving the monastery we shaped our course to a little oratory…It is very small, with one kneeling-place; and behind a screen was a ‘Pieta’ the size of life (i.e. a Virgin and dead Christ)…I could not help thinking on the grandeur of the Romish Church, on her zeal even in error, on her earnestness and self-devotion, which we might, with nobler views and a purer end, strive to imitate. Had I been alone I could have knelt there for hours.” (Life, Vol.I, p.81).

1848 July 6th – Hort: “One of the things, I think, which shows the falsity of the Evangelical notion of this subject (baptism), is that it is so trim and precise…no deep spiritual truths of the Reason are thus logically harmonious and systematic…the pure Romish view seems to me nearer, and more likely to lead to, the truth than the Evangelical…the fanaticism of the bibliolaters, among whom reading so many ‘chapters’ seems exactly to correspond to the Romish superstition of telling so many dozen beads on a rosary…still we dare not forsake the Sacraments, or God will forsake us…I am inclined to think that no such state as ‘Eden’ (I mean the popular notion) ever existed, and that Adam’s fall in no degree differed from the fall of each of his descendants” (Life, Vol.I, pp.76-78).

Aug. 11th – Westcott: “I never read an account of a miracle (in Scripture?) but I seem instinctively to feel its improbability, and discover some want of evidence in the account of it.” (Life, Vol.I, p.52).

Nov., Advent Sunday – Westcott: “All stigmatize him (a Dr. Hampden) as a ‘heretic,’…I thought myself that he was grievously in error, but yesterday I read over the selections from his writings which his adversaries make, and in them I found systematically expressed the very strains of thought which I have been endeavoring to trace out for the last two or three years. If he be condemned, what will become of me?” (Life, Vol.I,p.94).

1850 May 12th – Hort: “You ask me about the liberty to be allowed to clergymen in their views of Baptism. For my own part, I would gladly admit to the ministry such as hold Gorham’s view, much more such as hold the ordinary confused Evangelical notions” (Life, Vol.I, p.148).

July 31st – Hort: “I spoke of the gloomy prospect, should the Evangelicals carry on their present victory so as to alter the Services.” (Life, Vol.I, p.160).

1851 Feb. 7th – Hort: “Westcott is just coming out with his Norrisian on ‘The Elements of the Gospel Harmony.’ I have seen the first sheet on Inspiration, which is a wonderful step in advance of common orthodox heresy.” (Life, Vol.I, p.181).

1858 Oct. 21st – Further I agree with them in condemning many leading specific doctrines of the popular theology as, to say the least, containing much superstition and immorality of a very pernicious kind…The positive doctrines even of the Evangelicals seem to me perverted rather than untrue…There are, I fear, still more serious differences between us on the subject of authority, and especially the authority of the Bible” (Life, Vol.I, p.400).

1860 Apr. 3rd – Hort: “But the book which has most engaged me is Darwin. Whatever may be thought of it, it is a book that one is proud to be contemporary with. I must work out and examine the argument in more detail, but at present my feeling is strong that the theory is unanswerable.” (Life, Vol.I, p.416).

Oct. 15th – Hort: “I entirely agree – correcting one word – with what you there say on the Atonement, having for many years believed that “the absolute union of the Christian (or rather, of man) with Christ Himself” is the spiritual truth of which the popular doctrine of substitution is an immoral and material counterfeit…Certainly nothing can be more unscriptural than the modern limiting of Christ’s bearing our sins and sufferings to His death; but indeed that is only one aspect of an almost universal heresy.” (Life, Vol.I, p.430).

1864 Sept. 23rd – Hort: “I believe Coleridge was quite right in saying that Christianity without a substantial Church is vanity and dissolution; and I remember shocking you and Lightfoot not so very long ago by expressing a belief that ‘Protestantism’ is only parenthetical and temporary. In short, the Irvingite creed (minus the belief in the superior claims of the Irvingite communion) seems to me unassailable in things ecclesiastical.” (Life, Vol.II, p.30,31).

1865 Sept. 27th – Westcott: “I have been trying to recall my impressions of La Salette (a Marian shrine). I wish I could see to what forgotten truth Mariolatry bears witness; and how we can practically set forth the teaching of the miracles”.

Nov. 17th – Westcott: “As far as I could judge, the ‘idea’ of La Salette was that of God revealing Himself now, and not in one form but in many.” (Life, Vol.I. pp.251,252).

Oct. 17th – Hort: “I have been persuaded for many years that Mary-worship and ‘Jesus’-worship have very much in common in their causes and their results.” (Life, Vol.II, p.50).

1867 Oct. 17th – Hort: “I wish we were more agreed on the doctrinal part; but you know I am a staunch sacerdotalist, and there is not much profit in arguing about first principles.” (Life, Vol.II, p.86).

1890 Mar. 4th – Westcott: “No one now, I suppose, holds that the first three chapters of Genesis, for example, give a literal history – I could never understand how any one reading them with open eyes could think they did – yet they disclose to us a Gospel. So it is probably elsewhere.”

Alexandrian Manuscripts compared against the Textus Receptus and other Sources

These are a few points of the Alexandrian Manuscripts:
  1. The Codex Alexandrinus consisted of
    (a) Codex Vaticanus
    (b) Codex Sinaiticus
  2. Both Codices were
    (a) In excellent condition and found in the Vatican Library and a monastery in the Sinai.
    (b) Are Coptic Translations, an early Egyptian Language
    (c) Most scholars believe their origin was the region of Alexandria, Egypt which thus gives the two Codices their names as the Alexandrian Manuscripts.
    (d) At the time of finding, many scholars believed the Codices predated the Textus Receptus 5,000 sources.
  3. The Alexandrian Codex difference are many that include:
    (a) Book of Mark had fewer verses in Chapter 16.  The last twelve verses are supposedly added later, which is proven in the Book of Mark Chapter 16 topic.
    (b) Book of Acts has a missing Ethiopian Eunuch confessing Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
    Acts 8:37
    Based on Textus Receptus    		 And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
    Notice in the American Standard Version (ASV), which is based on Wescott and Hort's Alexandria translation that verse 37 is missing:
    34 And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other? 35 And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this scripture, [c]preached unto him Jesus. 36 And as they went on the way, they came unto a certain water; and the eunuch saith, Behold, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? 38 And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.
  4. The location of the Alexandrian Codices was the area of the Gnostic faith that did believed in a hybrid type of religious system that could be summarized as not believing the Deity of Jesus Christ while still honoring parts of the Christian Scriptures.

These are a few points of the Textus Receptus manuscripts and Others Source Codices:

  1. The Textus Receptus is based mostly on many Byzantine Codices but also includes several others Western and Cesarean Codices
  2. The Peshitta Syriac Bible Scriptures which is Second Century contains the twelve verses.
    From the WIKIPEDIA link:
    he consensus within biblical scholarship, although not universal, is that the Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated into Syriac from Biblical Hebrew, probably in the 2nd century CE, and that the New Testament of the Peshitta was translated from Koine Greek, probably in the early 5th century.
  3. The Curetonian Gospels contains the twelve verses of Mark 16:9-20 and Acts 8:37 that the Alexandrian text deleted.
  4. There are an approximate 5,800 Byzantine Texts that when gathered together represent the entirety of the New Testament and have only very minor differences.  These Byzantine Texts are mostly newer than the Alexandrian Codices where the trust is in the thousands of copies that do not have the deletions and changes that un-glorify Jesus Christ.
In summary, if we are using a Bible that has its source from either the Alexandrian or Textus Receptus, excluding the Catholic Vulgate Version, then the Bible is almost 99% accurate in comparison with unfortunately the exceptions already noted in this topic and others that can be found on Internet searches.  Many new editions of Bibles are having corrections made and even include verses that were deleted in Wescott and Hort's source Texts.

In our maturity, when reading and studying the scriptures, we should meditate on God as the target of our relationship knowing that each and every "jot or one tittle" is written from the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  This means having the best translational version is very important.

Matthew 5:18-19 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

What to read next?

The Crucifixion Psalm, Abraham's Location with Isaac,  Risen - 4 Gospels and is there a discrepancy on Easter? and Noah's Ark rests the day before Christ's Resurrection.  What is Salvation?  Is it is possible to lose Salvation?  We have eternal life.  Evolution is not real.  When a Christian suffers is there benefits from it.  Rewards in heaven.  Do we Tithe?  What does the 3rd Commandment tell us?  What is Grace and Mercy?  Is there an Age of Accountability?  Is there a place of unending punishment and exile form God?