Charles Forster has a superb section on the Eclogae Propheticae 13.1, and calls it a tacit quotation.
If you are trying to make a case against this being a heavenly witnesses allusion, you really should address the Charles Forster pages.
In Charles Forster's "preface" to "THREE HEAVENLY WITNESSES: &etc"- a tedious and bombastic critique of his opponents, which diverges from the stated remit of the book -I see that he initially cites an argument surrounding the omission of
υπέρ υμών κλώμενον from 1 Cor. xi. 24 in the new TR. But I can't find any reference to this exact Greek quote in the cited reference.
Can you find me a version of "St. Athanasius. ap. Galland. Bible. Patr. tom. v. p. 169" online that actually has these words attributed to Athanasius? (
Δἰ οὗ σώματος παρέδωκεν ἡμΐν μυστήριον, λέγων· Τοῦτό ἐστί μου τὸ σῶμα, τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν κλώμενον· καὶ τὸ αἷμα τῆς καινῆς Βιαθήκης (ού τῆς παλαιᾶς) τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἐκχυνόμενον). The one I looked up
here doesn't seem to have these words, but only similar words.
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.......... The uncertainty of any text founded on such
factitious emendations, is alone its sufficing condemnation.
To multiply examples of failure, would be
endless. But one specimen we may pause on, at once
so venturous an experiment, and so signal a breakdown,
that if it serves not as a lesson to our modern
editors, it may at least serve as a warning to their too
contiding readers: especially to that class of readers
most liable to be endangered by specious novelty,
and most likely, eventually, to endanger others—the
youthful theological students at our Universities. In
a recent critical edition of St. Paul’s Epistles to the
Corinthians, based on an avowedly emendated text,
of which it has been pronounced by high classical
authority that ‘the errors are sown broadcast throughout
the two volumes,’ I was startled and shocked by
one alarming emendation: namely, the expunction
of the word[s
υπέρ υμών]
κλώμενον from 1 Cor. xi. 24.
As this word occurred in the Eucharistic form of words
directly revealed by our Lord himself from heaven to
St. Paul, my attention was riveted by the daring
boldness of such a break in such a text. Knowing
by long and large experience the value of internal
evidence in such cases,—that the true touchstone was
the interna bonitas of the context,—I immediately
examined it, and found, as I had anticipated, the
received reading κλώμενον triumphantly confirmed by
its antecedent, 1 Cor. x. 16, viz., τον άρτον ον κλώμεν:
both terms belonging to the institution of the Eucharist;
and the one preparing the way for the other.
Entirely convinced myself of the integrity of the
received text by this evidence, after a long life spent
in the study of St. Paul’s style, I prepared to vindicate
the Textus Receptus: my only difficulty being
how to bring home to the minds of others the convictions
of my own. With this view I tasked myself
to simplify the proof: certain of the unsoundness of
the proposed emendation, and of its evil theological
bearings. The slenderness of the grounds on which
so grave a change was adventured, almost passed .
credibility. The editor’s avowed process was a balance
of the MS. authorities; and, holding the scales with
trembling hand, he pronounced the balance to incline
slightly against the κλώμενον, and on the strength of
this evanescent preponderance, decided against, and
struck out, a word which (if genuine) THE Lord God
HAD SPOKEN! Shocked by the levity and irreverence
of a mode of textual criticism like this, (however
unconsciously so on the part of its employer,) my
whole soul was bent on its confutation and exposure.
But it pleased Providence, most unexpectedly, to
spare my pains, by the recovery of this GoD-BREATHED
text, in its unrationalistic integrity, in the page of the
great Athanasius. Every catholic spirit will sympathize in
the emotion with which I perused the unmutilated
verse, essentially identical with that in our
Textus Receptus, as it is cited by this glorious champion
of the catholic faith, whose words deserve to be
written in letters of gold:
Δἰ οὗ σώματος παρέδωκεν ἡμΐν μυστήριον, λέγων· Τοῦτό ἐστί μου τὸ σῶμα, τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν κλώμενον· καὶ τὸ αἷμα τῆς καινῆς Βιαθήκης (ού τῆς παλαιᾶς) τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἐκχυνόμενον.— St. Athanasius. ap. Galland. Bible. Patr. tom. v. p. 169
[Trans:
“Through his body he delivers us a mystery saying: This is my body, [the one] that for your sake is broken: and the blood of the new covenant (not the old) [the one] that for your sake is shed.” ]"
Comment is needless. The exposure of the professed
emendation is so overwhelming, as (were not
the integrity of inspired Scripture at stake) almost to
awaken pity for the unlucky emendator. St. Athanasius’s
MSS. of the Greek Testament were older by ~
two or three centuries than the oldest of the MSS.
now extant. His text of the Greek Testament is
evidence final and beyond appeal. And his reading,
κλώμενον, is a death-blow, not only to the rash emenadation at issue,
but to the false principle of judging
texts solely by the evidence of existing Greek MSS.’"
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