[140] The great danger of this method of collection and comparison of various opinions of modern scholars is that it tends to produce among those who are not so learned as Dr. Moffatt the impression that this is right method of study, and that by classifying modern opinion one can arrive at a sort of resultant of right opinion. We have a Resultant Greek Testament, which gives a text based on that method, but in that line of study the method is not so misleading, though equally unscientific. The text of the Greek Testament has to be determined by a comparison and classification of written authorities; but a work like that of Dr. Moffatt is largely a sorting out of the rubbish heap of criticism, a classification of the residuum of useful remarks and suggestions after all the vast mass of useless statements has been rejected. [141] By this method, however, what is kept is not a residuum of true statements, but a residuum of statements possessing sufficient ingenuity or plausibility to conceal their essential falsity and unscientific character.

Moreover, the method of collecting and sorting modern opinions ignores a fundamental factor, essential to right judgment in this matter. Those remarks and suggestions are repeated here apart from their context, whereas they originally formed stages in a wider theory, which in most cases even Dr. Moffatt rejects, and they first came into existence as the application of that theory, which has now few or no believers. The treatises from which they are quoted were each of them the logical carrying out of an idea which) generally speaking, has since been weighed and found wanting; and they all partake of the falsity of the general idea out of which they arise.

The mass of erudition and of quotations from or references to modern scholars and their opinions is enormous, and bears ample witness to the work and care expended on this book by [142] the Author. On page 73, at which the book happens to open, I find fourteen quotations from or allusion to modern critics, and an "etcetera" following one list of five names. I have not verified any of the references to modern scholars, but accept them as correct.