Comments that aged poorly

Digging through some of Maurice Robinson's writings for a doctoral independent study on the Byzantine Priority position this Spring, I came across a reference to a 1908 work of Kirsopp Lake entitled "Professor H. von Soden's Treatment of the Text of the Gospels." I did some digging and was able to find that it was a two-part review/article in the "Review of Theology & Philosophy Edited by Professor Allan Menzies, D.D., vol. IV (July 1908–June 1909)." In this wonderful age of digital availability, Google Books has it here. Lake's review is on pp. 201–217 and pp. 277–295. I haven't read that part yet, because I was distracted by something else by Kirsopp Lake in this volume.

Lake also has reviews of Harnack's Die Apostelgeschichte (pp. 500–503) and—relevant to my purpose here—Gregory's Die griechischen Handschriften des neuen Testaments. For those who don't know, Gregory's work is the precursor to the Kurzgefasste Liste and the reason manuscripts have Gregory-Aland numbers and not just Aland numbers. It is Gregory in this book who devised the system for majuscules to be listed with numbers starting with zero (e.g. 01, 02, etc.), and before Gregory, a manuscript might be one number in the Gospels and a different number elsewhere. For example, if you read Tregelles' account of his collation of the "Queen of the Cursives," he notes "This MS., in cursive letters, is noted 33 in the Gospels, 13 Acts and Cath. Epp., and 17 in St. Paul's Epistles." Of course, now that manuscript is just 33, wherever it is cited—this is thanks to Gregory.

After describing Gregory's system (which we all now take for granted), Lake makes a remark that, in hindsight, is almost laughable: "In spite of the formidable list of names of those who approve of Prof. Gregory's scheme, I do not believe that there is any great probability that his new notation will be widely u[se]d."

It gets better:

Excuse me, what? Lake does admit that von Soden's edition is still not published at the time of his writing, but he optimistically looks forward to von Soden's manuscript numbering system. Lake gives a summary of the three competing systems of numbering in his day:

Lake does admit that Gregory's system could be useful if it were adopted by a major edition (in his assessment, that Gregory himself would publish an edition), and over a century later, we can see now how things have shaken out. I don't think it is the only time Lake has been wrong, but it's still a sobering reminder that even the most brilliant people can be completely wrong about something significant.