Panin, Westcott, and Hort

In strange circumstances, Ivan Panin attempted to recreate, based on numerics, what he believed would be the original Greek text of the New Testament. He started with “...Westcott & Hort’s Greek edition (which the writer has used throughout)...” Not only was his “numerics” approach faulty, his allegiance to the Westcott & Hort was contradictory.

On one hand, Panin says the Westcott and Hort text “on the whole approaches the autographs nearer than any extant copy of the New Testament” and speaks of the “twenty-eight years’ faithful toil of these two lovers of Holy Writ.” (“Preface,” The New Testament from the Greek Text as Established by Bible Numerics, p. v.)

On the other hand, Panin says that the work of the revisers “has some grievous faults, since no one can handle the Book other than lamely who is not convinced to his very bones that the Bible is God-breathed, inspired in its every letter.” He points out that the revisers “as a body did not believe” in inspiration and that “two of its noblest members…go out of their way to speak in print against Verbal Inspiration.” (“Preface,” The New Testament from the Greek Text as Established by Bible Numerics, p. vi)

Ivan Panin’s whole mathematical approach is faulty, but he evidently believed his math could overcome the flaws he started with. He was wrong.

Also by Ivan Panin: The Writings of Ivan Panin, New Haven, CT: Wilson H. Lee Company, 1918.

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Note:

The method of settling the text by means of NUMERICS is expounded in the Introduction, which is to form the Second Part of this edition, as well as in numerous monographs by the writer printed elsewhere. The standard used for comparison was: for the Greek, the Revision by Westcott & Hort; and, for the English, the American Revised Version. In spite of the onslaught thereon by Dean Burgon, Westcott & Hort (with the exception of some spellings, and of all but two of their fifteen double-bracketed passages stamped by them as ‘Interpolations’) present a text which on the whole approaches the autographs nearer than any extant copy of the New Testament. So that, humanly speaking, but for the twenty-eight years’ faithful toil of these two lovers of Holy Writ, with their excellent clearing of the ground for him, the writer could have hardly furnished at last an indisputable New Testament text.

The New Testament from the Greek Text as established by Bible Numerics, Ivan Panin, Editor. Ontario: Bible Numerics, 1914 (1990 reprint)