Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901)                               John Anthony Hort (1828-1892)       

 Brooke Foss Westcott (an Anglican bishop and professor at Cambridge University) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (also an ordained priest and professor at Cambridge) produced a Greek New Testament in 1881 based on the findings of Tischendorf. This Greek New Testament was the basis for the Revised Version of that same year. They also developed a theory of textual criticism which underlay their Greek New Testament and several other Greek New Testaments since (including the Nestle-Aland text).

Greek New Testaments such as these produced most of the modern English translations of the Bible we have today.

On one side, their supporters have heralded them as great men of God, having greatly advanced the search for the original Greek text. On the other side, their opponents have leveled charges of heresy, infidelity, apostasy, and many others, claiming that they are guilty of wreaking great damage on the true text of Scripture.

I have no desire to sling mud nor a desire to hide facts. I just want to share the truth about these men. So, put on your seatbelt, and get ready for a quick ride through the beliefs of Westcott and Hort. . .

In order to give you an idea of what they REALLY believed and what their REAL intentions were when creating their Greek New Testament, I will let the men speak for themselves. I will tell you nothing. I will merely let these two men speak for themselves.  The rest of this page will be only quotations. If this makes you angry, don't be angry with me...I'm just giving you the words of Westcott and Hort...

TELLING QUOTATIONS FROM WESTCOTT AND HORT

Concerning the Deity of Christ:

"He never speaks of Himself directly as God, but the aim of His revelation was to lead men to see God in Him." (Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John, p. 297).

"(John) does not expressly affirm the identification of the Word with Jesus Christ." (Westcott, Ibid., p. 16).

Concerning the Scriptures:

"I reject the infallibility of Holy Scriptures overwhelmingly." (Westcott, The Life and Letters of Brook Foss Westcott, Vol. I, p.207).

"Our Bible as well as our Faith is a mere compromise." (Westcott, On the Canon of the New Testament, p. vii).

"Evangelicals seem to me perverted. . .There are, I fear, still more serious differences between us on the subject of authority, especially the authority of the Bible." (Hort, The Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, Vol. I, p.400)

Concerning Hell:

"(Hell is) not the place of punishment of the guilty, (it is) the common abode of departed spirits. (Westcott, Historic Faith, pp.77-78).

"We have no sure knowledge of future punishment, and the word eternal has a far higher meaning." (Hort, Life and Letters, Vol. I, p.149).

Concerning Creation:

"No one now, I suppose, holds that the first three chapters of Genesis, for example, give a literal history. I could never understand how anyone reading them with open eyes could think they did." (Westcott, cited from Which Bible?, p. 191).

"But the book which has most engaged me is Darwin. Whatever may be thought of it, it is a book that one is proud to be contemporary with..... My feeling is strong that the theory is unanswerable." (Hort, cited from Which Bible?, p. 189)

Concerning the Atonement:

"I think I mentioned to you before Campbell's book on the Atonement, which is invaluable as far as it goes; but unluckily he knows nothing except Protestant theology." (Hort, Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 322)

"The popular doctrine of substitution is an immoral and material counterfeit...nothing can be more unscriptural than the the limiting of Christ's bearing our sins and sufferings to His death; but indeed that is only one aspect of an almost universal heresy." (Hort to Westcott, Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 430)

"I confess I have no repugnance to the primitive doctrine of a ransom paid to Satan. I can see no other possible form in which the doctrine of a ransom is at all tenable; anything is better than the doctrine of a ransom to the father." (Hort, The First Epistle of St. Peter 1:1-2:17, p. 77).

Concerning Man:

"It is of course true that we can only know God through human forms, but then I think the whole Bible echoes the language of Genesis 1:27 and so assures us that human forms are divine forms." (Hort to Westcott, August 14, 1860)

"Protestants (must) unlearn the crazy horror of the idea of Priesthood."  (Hort, Life and Letters, Volume II, pp. 49-51)

Concerning Roman Catholicism:

"I wish I could see to what forgotten truth Mariolatry (the worship of the Virgin Mary) bears witness." (Westcott, Ibid. )

"I have been persuaded for many years that Mary-Worship and Jesus-Worship have very much in common." (Hort, Life and Letters, Volume II, pp. 49-51)

"The pure Romanish view seems to be nearer, and more likely to lead to the truth than the Evangelical." (Hort, Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 77)

"I agree with you in thinking it a pity that Maurice verbally repudiates purgatory . . . the idea of purgation, cleansing by fire, seems to me inseparable from what the Bible teaches us of the Divine chastisements."  (Hort, Life and Letters, Vol. II, pp. 336,337)

Concerning the Cumulative Effect of Multiple Changes to the Manuscripts:

"It is quite impossible to judge the value of what appear to be trifling alterations merely by reading them one after another. Taken together, they have often important bearings which few would think of at first. . . The difference between a picture, say of Raffaelle, and a feeble copy of it is made up of a number of trivial differences. . . We have successfully resisted being warned off dangerous ground, where the needs of revision required that it should not be shirked. . . It is, one can hardly doubt, the beginning of a new period in Church history. So far the angry objectors have reason for their astonishment." (Hort, Life and Letters, Vol.I, pp. 138,139)

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It is one thing to have doctrinal differences on baby-sprinkling and perhaps a few other interpretations. It is quite another to be a Darwinian theologian who rejects the authority of scriptures, Biblical salvation, the reality of hell, substitutionary atonement, makes Christ a created being to be worshipped with Mary his mother, and to openly admit that your "trifling alterations" with the Greek Text have begun a "new period in Church history"!!  Yet, these were the views of both Westcott and Hort!! This is UNBELIEVABLE!! No less significant is the fact that both men were involved with the occult and were members of spiritist societies (the Hermes Club and the Ghostly Guild), and both men supposedly "talked" to Spirits of the dead.

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