Some ‘Western’ Variants in the Text of Acts

Abstract

In his article published in the issues of the American Journal of Theology for January and April 1919 (Vol. XXIII), under the title ‘Fact and Fancy in Theories Concerning Acts,’ my respected colleague Professor Charles C. Torrey appears to resent my characterization as “philological” of the type of criticism displayed in his able articles. The term, however, bears no disparaging connotation, and was not so intended. It was, and will be, employed by the present writer simply to distinguish a particular mode of approach to this outstanding problem of New Testament criticism. The mode chosen by Torrey to the exclusion of all others is ‘philological,’ as distinguished from the mode exemplified in the ‘historical’ (or, as Torrey prefers to call it, the “theologico-conjectural”) type represented by such scholars as Harnack, Schürer, Windisch, Preuschen, Loisy, and others. The present reply to his strictures has been long delayed, awaiting Ropes's “Text of Acts” in Volume III of “The Beginnings of Christianity,” in which the long-debated question of the ‘Western’ Text is discussed with what may be hoped to be advance toward its settlement, If in the present essay the type of criticism which Torrey brings to the common problem is still designated ‘philological,’ it must be understood that the term implies no minimizing of Torrey's great attainments in the fields both of textual and higher criticism.