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.

Kirsopp Lake Hits the Mainstream

This is too good not to share. I do not know the context of this, but it's from an episode of the popular U.S. sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

I want to honour #AndreBraugher's contribution to New Testament scholarship by remembering the greatest NT textual criticism joke ever to air on television: pic.twitter.com/VtTT8MqYnW

— Isaac T. Soon, PhD (@isaacsoon2) December 13, 2023

What goes around comes around

Sometimes we need to know the history of our discipline better. In his brief bio of Kirsopp Lake in the Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, J. K. Elliott writes,

The link between textual criticism and interpretation was one already made by Lake as early as 1904 with his study The Influence of Textual Criticism on the Exegesis of the New Testament. This was based on the inaugural lecture he gave on January 27, 1904, at the University of Leiden, and it shows how he made that theme pivotal for this professorial appointment. It has taken nearly a century for his general thesis that textual variants must be used as an invaluable source for our study of the history of the church to bear fruit in a determined way. B. D. Ehrman, following Lake’s example, published The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture in 1993... That book was justifiably well reviewed, but for many readers it was as if such opinions were new. Lake had already been preaching some ninety years earlier that text critics had a duty to do more than establish a supposed original text. According to Lake, exegetes must expound the meaning not only of one printed text but also of the ecclesiastical Bible in use at different times, and to see textual variants as a window on the exegesis of the church. To do that, they need to keep a close eye on the critical apparatus (pp. 637–638).

Here is a taste of Lake on this point:

In the first place, he will need to expound the meaning, not of Westcott and Hort’s text, but of the ecclesiastical Bibles in use at different times; for I take it that to explain what a passage in the Gospels ought philologically to mean, or what it probably did mean originally, is only the beginning of exegesis: we need to know what the early Church thought it meant and how it altered its wording in order to emphasize its meaning (pp. 11–12).

Kirsopp Lake on the need for conjectural emendation

Here is a quote I came across today in Kirsopp Lake’s inaugural lecture at the University of Leiden. Note very carefully how Lake argues for the need for conjecture. In the context, he is explaining why he thinks Westcott and Hort failed “spectacularly” in their preference for 01 and 03.

It has become more and more probable that Greek MSS. as a whole only represent one type of text and its corruptions, that the Latin Versions and Fathers represent another type, and the Syriac versions a third, while perhaps Clement of Alexandria may provide us with a fourth.

 It is between these texts, and not between individual MSS., that we shall have in the last resort to judge, so that the situation which we must face is that we have to deal with a number of local texts, that no two localities used quite the same text, that no locality has yet been shown to have used a text which is demonstrably better than its rivals, and that no one of these local texts is represented in an uncorrupt form by any single MS.

The effect on the method of the textual critic is enormous. He has no longer the right to suggest that he can immediately edit the original text. He must go back and edit first the local texts. In the case of each locality he has the evidence of the versions used in the local church and of the writers who used them, but it is not very large, and in no case is without traces of corruption. Therefore, the student of these local texts is reduced to the level of the critic of classical texts. In the face of suspected corruption he has the right to use conjectural emendation. It used to be said that the classical student often needed to make use of conjectural emendation, because he had so few and so poor authorities for the text of his authors, but that the biblical student had no such need, because the MSS. of the New Testament were so numerous and so good that primitive corruption was almost unknown. The argument was reasonable, but when we recognize that in reality the text of the Gospels has not much better attestation than have some classical texts, the whole case is altered and the textual critic must be conceded the right of as free emendation in the Gospels as in the Classics. Granted this freedom it will perhaps be possible some day to reconstruct the texts which were in use at the close of the second century in Africa, in Alexandria, in the East, and perhaps elsewhere. None of these have been yet reconstructed : all that we can say is that each as compared with any of the others presents a definite series of interpolations and a definite series of omissions.

From The Influence of Textual Criticism on the Exegesis of the New Testament (1904), pp. 5-7 

Lakes' Dated Greek Minuscule MSS Online (by Pyle)

I would like to draw our readers' attention to a fine resource for Greek palaeography and codicology: Pyle which aims to (1) collect scattered resources from various individuals and institutions; and (2) aims to promote interaction among scholars, students and all other persons interested in ancient and medieval Greek manuscript books, providing a place to share knowledge, ideas, projects and news.

Just recently, Pyle added this wonderful resource by the Lakes:
Dated Greek Minuscule Manuscripts to the Year 1200, edited by Kirsopp Lake and Silva Lake, I-X, Boston (Massachusetts), The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1934-1939.

HT: Jac Perrin