PART II
What was the nature of this corruption? It consisted of omissions, additions, substitutions, transpositions, and modifications. Burgon detailed these corruptions in The Revision Revised, as well as several other books (all of which are not available as reprints):
‘It matters nothing that all four [Aleph B C D] are discovered on careful scrutiny to differ essentially, not only from ninety-nine out of a hundred of the whole body of extant MSS. besides, but even from one another. This last circumstance, obviously fatal to their corporate pretensions, is unaccountably overlooked. And yet it admits of only one satisfactory explanation: viz. that in different degrees they all five exhibit a fabricated text.
Between the first two (B and Aleph) there subsists an amount of sinister resemblance, which proves that they must have been derived at no very remote period from the same corrupt original. Tischendorf insists that they were partly written by the same scribe. Yet do they stand asunder in every page; as well as differ widely from the commonly received Text, with which they have been carefully collated.
On being referred to this standard, in the Gospels alone, B is found to omit at least 2877 words: to add, 536: to substitute, 935: to transpose, 2098: to modify, 1132 (in all 7578):—the corresponding figures for Aleph being severally 3455, 839, 1114, 2299, 1265 (in all 8972). And be it remembered that the omissions, additions, substitutions, transpositions, and modifications, are by no means the same in both. It is in fact easier to find two consecutive verses in which these two MSS. differ the one from the other, than two consecutive verses in which they entirely agree...
[Note: This only in the Gospels. The same applies to the rest of the New Testament, which has an estimated total of over 13,000 corruptions, as compared to the Received Text.]
'...But by far the most depraved text is that exhibited by codex D. “No known manuscript contains so many bold and extensive interpolations. Its variations from the sacred Text are beyond all other example.” This, however, is not the result of its being the most recent of the five, but (singular to relate) is due to quite an opposite cause. It is thought (not without reason) to exhibit a IInd-century text...
What we are just now insisting upon is only the depraved text of codices Aleph A B C D,— especially of Aleph B D. And because this is a matter which lies at the root of the whole controversy, and because we cannot afford that there shall exist in our reader's mind the slightest doubt on this part of the subject, we shall be constrained once and again to trouble him with detailed specimens of the contents of Aleph B, &c., in proof of the justice of what we have been alleging. We venture to assure him, without a particle of hesitation, that Aleph B D are three of the most scandalously corrupt copies extant:—exhibit the most shamefully mutilated texts which are anywhere to be met with:—have become, by whatever process (for their history is wholly unknown), the depositories of the largest amount of fabricated readings, ancient blunders, and intentional perversions of Truth,—which are discoverable in any known copies of the Word of GOD...
We shall perhaps be told that, scandalously corrupt as the text of Aleph B C D hereabouts may be, no reason has been shown as yet for suspecting that heretical depravation ever had anything to do with such phenomena. That (we answer) is only because the writings of the early depravers and fabricators of Gospels have universally perished... An instructive specimen of depravation follows, which can be traced to Marcion's mutilated recension of S. Luke's Gospel. We venture to entreat the favour of the reader's sustained attention to the license with which the LORD'S Prayer as given in S. Luke's Gospel (xi. 2-4), is exhibited by codices Aleph A B C D... (Revision Revised, pp. 37,28,41,58,59)
Those supporting the critical texts and modern versions have claimed that the changes in these newer versions have no impact on doctrine. That again is a lie. Anyone who takes the time to carefully examine how the doctrines of Christ and the triune Godhead have been attacked will see that the Gnostic heretics who tampered with the New Testament were attempting to change Bible truth and promote their heresies.
