What Version Authorised Or Revised

26 What we now refer to is the fact that, since this document was first inscribed, it has been made the subject of no less than ten different attempts at revision and correction. The number of these attempts is witnessed by the different choreographics of the revisers, and the centuries in which they were respectively made can be approximated by the character of the different hand-writings by which the several sets of corrections were carried out. Dr. Scrivener published (in 1864) “A Full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus,” with an explanatory introduction in which he states, among other facts of interest, that “The Codex is covered with such alterations” — i. e., Alterations of an obviously correctional character— “brought in by at least ten different revisers, some of them systematically spread over every page, others occasional, or limited to separate portions of the Ms., many of these being contemporaneous with the first writer, but for the greater part belonging to the sixth or seventh century.

“We are sure that every intelligent reader will perceive, and with little effort, the immense significance of this feature of the Sinaitic Codex. Here is a document which the Revisers have esteemed (and that solely because of its antiquity) to be so pure that it should be taken as a standard whereby all other copies of the Scriptures are to be tested and corrected. Such is the estimate of certain scholars of the 19th century. But it bears upon its face the proof that those in whose possession it had been, from the very first, and for some hundreds of years thereafter, esteemed it to be so impure as to require correction in every part.

Considering the great value to its owner of such a manuscript (it is on vellum of the finest quality) and that he would be most reluctant to consent to alterations in it except the need was clearly apparent, it is plain that this much ad mired Codex bears upon its face the most incontestable proof of its corrupt and defective character But more than that, Dr. Scrivener tells us that the evident purpose of the thorough-going re vision which he places in the 6th or 7th century was to make the Ms. conform to manuscripts in vogue at that time which were “far nearer to our modern Textus Receptus.”

The evidential value of these numerous at tempts at correcting the Sinaitic Codex, and of the plainly discernible purpose of the most important of those attempts is such that, by all the sound rules and principles of evidence, this “ancient witness,” so far from tending to raise doubts as to the trustworthiness and textual purity of the Received Text, should be regarded as affording strong confirmation thereof.

From these facts therefore we deduce: first that the impurity of the Codex Sinaiticus, in every part of it, was fully recognized by those best acquainted