In this article we will look more closely at the Minority Text and the two men, Westcott and Hort, who were its primary proponents. As noted in a former article they were successful influencing the 1881 Revision Committee to make the radical departure from the Majority Text. This move was not part of the original plan drawn up by the Convocation of Canterbury and departed from the rules which were to guide the translators. How this bold move occurred is owing to the disproportionate degree of influence these two men wielded upon the committee. In his Resume of the book Which Bible, David Otis Fuller writes:

Westcott and Hort-- Who Are They?
Brooke Foss Westcott
D. B. Loughran writes in Bible Versions: “Wescott was a Cambridge scholar who played a leading role in the production of the Revised Version. A very brief look at this man's spiritual standing is sufficient to tell us that the Almighty would never have used him in the preservation of His Word.”
Westcott admits to being a skeptic as he writes in a letter: "I never read of the account of a miracle but I seem instinctively to feel its improbability, and discover some want of evidence in the account of it." [from William Grady's book Final Authority]

Fenton John Anthony Hort
Again D. B. Loughran writes: “Hort believed in the evolutionary theory over a century ago.” Loughran then quotes from a letter written by Hort in the Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort: "Have you read Darwin? How I should like to talk with you (Westcott) about it! In spite of difficulties, I am inclined to think it unanswerable. In any case it is a treat to read such a book."

Dr Henry M Morris, the founder and President Emeritus of the Institute for Creation Research, made these observations concerning these modern translators.
"As far as the Hebrew text developed by Rudolph Kittel is concerned, it is worth noting that Kittel was a German rationalist higher critic, rejecting Biblical inerrancy and firmly devoted to evolutionism. The men most responsible for alterations in the New Testament text were B.F.Westcott and F.J.A.Hort, whose Greek New Testament was largely updated by Eberhard Nestle and Kurt Aland. All these men were evolutionists.
Furthermore, Westcott and Hort denied Biblical inerrance and promoted spiritism and racism. Nestle and Aland, like Kittel, were German theological skeptics.”

As a young man and years before his involvement with the Revision Committee, Hort had already developed a negative predisposition toward the Textus Receptus. At age twenty-three he wrote to an acquaintance: “...I had no idea till the last few weeks of the importance of texts, having read so little Greek Testament. and dragged on with the villainous Textus Receptus.... Think of that vile Textus Receptus leaning entirely on late manuscripts; it is a blessing there are such early ones.” [from Life and Letters of F.J.A Hort]

What are the early manuscripts that Hort refers to in his letter? When the Translation Committee convened thirty years later in 1881, the influential Westcott and Hort didn’t come empty handed-- they brought their new Greek text based on those early manuscripts.

Minority Texts-- What Are They?
The Minority Texts are the basis of the Westcott-Hort Greek text. They are: Vaticanus Codex, Sinaitic Codex, Alexandrian Codex, Parisian Codex, and Codex Bezae. Of these, the Vaticanus and Sinaitic Codex are of particular significance because of the importance given them by Westcott and Hort. Their fascination with these two codices is especially queer considering these two codices contradict each other over 3000 times in the gospels alone. [The Four-Fold Superiority Of The King James Version, By Dr. D.A. Waite]

David Fuller in Which Bible, cites the figures given by Dr Ellicott, the Chairman of the revision committee: “Dr Ellicott, in submitting the Revised Version to the Southern Convocation in 1881, declared that they had made between eight and nine changes in every five verses, and in about every ten verses three of these were made for critical purposes. And for most of these changes the Vatican and Sinaitic Manuscripts are responsible. As Canon Cook says: ‘By far the greatest number of innovations, including those which give the severest shocks to our minds, are adopted on the authority of two manuscripts, or even on one manuscript, against the distinct testimony of all other manuscripts, unical and cursive’... The Vatican Codex ...sometimes alone, generally in accord with the Sinaitic, is responsible for nine-tenths of the most striking innovations in the Revised Version'...”

Sinaitic Codex
This codex was produced in the 4th century. In his book Let's Weigh the Evidence, Barry Burton writes:
"The Sinaiticus is a manuscript that was found in 1844 in a trash pile in St.Catherine's Monastery near Mt. Sinai, by a man named Mr Tischendorf.”

Samuel Gipp writes in his book, An Understandable History Of The Bible, “This MS from all outward appearances looks very beautiful. It is written in book form (codex) on vellum. It contains 147 1/2 leaves. The pages are 15" by 13 1/2" with four columns of 48 lines per page. It contains many spurious books such as the 'Shepherd of Hermes,' the 'Epistle of Barnabas' and even the Didache.”

Vanticanus Codex
D. B. Loughran writes: “The second major manuscript of the Minority Text is known as Codex Vaticanus, often referred to as 'B'. This codex was also produced in the 4th century. It was found over a thousand years later in 1481 in the Vatican library in Rome, where it is currently held. It is written on expensive vellum, a fine parchment originally from the skin of calf or antelope. Some authorities claim that it was one of a batch of 50 Bibles ordered from Egypt by the Roman Emperor Constantine: hence its beautiful appearance and the expensive skins which were used for its pages.”

Despite the fine appearance of both codices there are serious problems with them. D.B. Loughran quotes the Greek scholar, Dr Scrivener, who points this out in his historic work A Full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus where he speaks of correctional alterations made to the MS: 'The Codex is covered with such alterations... brought in by at least ten different revisers, some of them systematically spread over every page, others occasional or limited to separated portions of the MS, many of these being contemporaneous with the first writer, but the greater part belonging to the sixth or seventh century.'

John W Burgon, who personally and thoroughly examined both wrote: 'The impurity of the text exhibited by these codices is not a question of opinion but fact...In the Gospels alone, Codex B(Vatican) leaves out words or whole clauses no less than 1,491 times. It bears traces of careless transcriptions on every page…’

Is Older Better?
You frequently hear critics of the King James Version say: “The best manuscripts say this....”, Or “The older manuscripts have this...”. What are they are referring to? Primarily it is these-- the Vanticanus and Sinaitic Codices.
Bible students are told that Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are older and better than other manuscripts: the implication being that they must, therefore, be more accurate. But this conclusion is wrong. To be sure they are 'better' in appearance, but certainly not in their content. [D.B. Loughran]

John Burgon, having examined both, gives expert testimony how these codices managed to survive. He wrote:
“We suspect that these two Manuscripts are indebted for their preservation, solely to their ascertained evil character, which has occasioned that the one eventually found its way, four centuries ago, to a forgotten shelf in the Vatican library; while the other, after exercising the ingenuity of several generations of critical Correctors, eventually (viz. In A.D. 1844) got deposited in the waste-paper basket of the Convent at the foot of mount Sinai. Had B and Aleph been copies of average purity, they must long since have shared the inevitable fate of books which are freely used and highly prized; namely, they would have fallen into decadence and disappeared from sight."

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