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exactness,) to Brian Walton, who published the fifth volume of his
Polyglott in 1657. Bp. Pearson, who was very curious in such matters,
says, "we find not hos in any copy", a sufficient proof how he read the
place in 1659. Bp. Fell, who published an edition of the New Testament
in 1675, certainly considered Theos the reading of Codex A. Mill, who
was at work on the text of the New Testament from 1677 to 1707,
expressly declares that he saw the remains of Theos in this place.
Bentley, who had himself (1716) collated the MS. with the utmost
accuracy, knew nothing of any other reading. Emphatic testimony on the
subject is borne by Wotton in 1718. "There can be no doubt" (he says)
"that this MS. always exhibited Theos. Of this, any one may easily
convince himself who will be at the pains to examine the place with
attention".
'Two years earlier, (we have it on the testimony of Mr. John Creyk, of
St. John's College, Cambridge,) "the old line in the letter theta was
plainly to be seen". It was "much about the same time", also, (viz.
about 1716), that Wetstein acknowledged to the Rev. John Kippax, "who
took it down in writing from his own mouth, -- that though the middle
stroke of the theta has been evidently retouched, yet the fine stroke
which was originally in the body of the theta is discoverable at each
end of the fuller stroke of the corrector". And Berriman himself, (who
delivered a course of Lectures on the true reading of 1 Tim. 3:16 in
1737 -8), attests emphatically that he had seen it also. "If
therefore" (he adds), "at any time hereafter the old line should become
altogether undiscoverable, there will never be just cause to doubt but
that the genuine, and original reading of the MS. was Theos: and that
the new strokes, added at the top and in the middle by the corrector
were not designed to corrupt or falsify, but to preserve and perpetuate
the true reading, which was in danger of being lost by the decay of
Time"' (Dean John W. Burgon The Revision Revised, Conservative Classics
pp. 432,433).
To this testimony must now be added that of the camera. This has not
only brought to light the faded bar from the Greek word Theos but has also
restored the missing bar from two of the letters 'e' in EUSEBEIA (Godliness).
Such is the testimony of antiquity supplemented by modern science.